War, Benjamin Franklin and other american envoys lobbied in france and spain. The papers of the Continental Congress contained the longrunning correspondence between congress and its envoys of envoys abroad. The american diplomats efforts were rewarded in the treaty of alliance and the treaty with france, and the entry of spain into the war in 1799. Arms and supplies from the spanish governor of louisiana aided the american cause. And at the end of the war, the french army and navy made the yorktown victory possible. The stories of our nations early days cannot be told without reference to the records here at the National Archives diplomatic correspondence, treaties, military commissions, and more documents on the International Side of the American Revolution. The two office we had here with us tonight will enlighten us about the roles france and spain played in our countrys formative years. So lets now hear from the panel. To leave the discussions on it, we are happy to have Rosemarie Zagarri, professor of history at george mason university. Backl of revolutionary ash. Larrie ferreiro. He teaches history and engineering at george mason university. ,nd france off furstenberg author of when the united oftes spoke france, author history at Johns Hopkins university. His parents, are the furstenbergs here . If you have ever shopped on connecticut at furst, it is furstenberg. Please welcome Rosemarie Zagarri, larrie ferreiro, and rinse off furstenberg. [applause] prof. Zagarri good evening. I am Rosemarie Zagarri from george mason university. We are thrilled see you all here tonight. For this wonderful program. The first item is to let you know it will not be in french. [laughter] maybe youre disappointed but maybe you are pleased. In any case, what we would like to do first is have each of for athors speak to you few minutes about their books and give you a general sense about what they talk about in their books. We will be talking among ourselves, and try and give you a good understanding of some of the issues that they discuss. These are issues that you may not have thought about, because when we think about early america, the postrevolutionary period, we tend to think primarily about england and the new United States. This discussion will introduce you to a whole other dimension of the conflict involving france and spain. So lets start with professor ferreiro to talk about his book, brothers at arms. Prof. Ferreiro thank you. In early 1776, britain was engaged in war, and we were fighting for independence but without gunfire, artillery, or a navy. It was only france and spain who were the historical enemies of britain who had both military to defeatval strength the british, which is why we needed their alliance. But they would not ally with us if they saw it simply as a civil war. They had to be convinced we were fighting as a sovereign nation, a separate nation. You can see john adams quote, up there, which i have to turn and read. The foreign powers would not engage with us until we had acknowledged ourselves as an independent nation, and adams was not known as a fan of foreign entanglements. Thomas jefferson also said that the declaration of independence alone would allow European Countries to treat with us. This is important. The declaration was not commissioned by congress as a message to george iii. He had already gotten the memo. He knew the americans were fighting for independence, and the americans knew this. They also were not sending the declaration for the American People, because they american the American People had sent their delegates to philadelphia to vote for independence. In fact, the document that is upstairs in the rotunda was written specifically as a call to arms, an engraved invitation asking france and spain to come and fight alongside us. Now, when we started the war, we were bereft of gun power, guns, artillery i mentioned that and it was france and spain who first began to furnish all of these arms. Even before the declaration of independence had been signed, a french merchant named beaumarcher, and silas deane, the envoy in paris, were negotiating for the sale of arms to the United States. In late 1776, early 1777, a large shipment of arms under beaumarchais, carried 20,000 guns and other accoutrements that arrived just in time to supply the americans who were about to face, who bourgoin at saratoga. You can see this quote by caleb stark who was there and you what would happen that unless arms had been timely furnished to the americans, he said, they would bourgoin would have made an easy march to albany. So it was french arms which turned the tide of the battle and gave the americans their first taste of victory, major victory at saratoga. In the meantime, there were volunteers from france and other parts of europe who came to the United States. They came to fight the british, because that was where the enemy was. But along the way, they came to make the american cause their own. And washington came to depend upon these immigrants who got the job done. As the musical hamilton so aptly portrays. My right, Louis Duportail became washingtons righthand man. He was able to help washington deploy the strategic intent of the continental army, that thought is a professional professional army under the not so gentle gaze and the lash of baron von steuben who created a program at valley forge, and took a somewhat ragtag group of militia and formed an army that could actually go toetotoe against the british. And of course, lafayette, the best known of the group, ended up with an independent command in the southern theater. And in those engagements, he kept cornwallis from coming north. And he also followed cornwallis all the way to yorktown. Now back in europe, there were two individuals who were the most important characters in this whole story. To my right was the French Foreign minister, the comte de vergennes. And of all the characters, he was the one who made most of the decisions that concerned the alliances both between france and the United States and between france and spain. France and spain were allied. They had been allied through family ties. Was called the bourbon family compact. Both kings were descended from louis the 14th. Even though they were allied, they had much different goals. The goal of france, under vergennes, was to significantly weaken britain so it could regain the balance of power it had lost during the sevenyear war. In that alliance was also spain. Spain had also come out rather badly during the seven years war, and they lost a lot of territory, including florida. So spains primary goal was to regain territory. The frenchamerican alliance of 1778 brought france into the war for the first time. And what that did was bring, most importantly, the french navy into american waters. Any war at this time with britain was always going to be in naval war. Remember britannia ruled the waves. ,o it prevented britain suddenly, from having the kind of dominance it used to to be able to resupply and move troops around. That knocked them back on their heels, but it would not have been enough until the Spanish Foreign minister, the conde de floridablanca, on my left, who , as i mentioned, established the spanish goals of recovering territory like gibraltar and florida, to come into the war. The entry of spain and to the war in 1779 fundamentally changed the nature of the war from a regional clash in north america to a global conflict. And the combined spanish and french navies outnumbered the british, and they were overwhelmed. They had to defend not only their troops and territories in north america, but their colonies in the caribbean. They had to defend land such as gibraltar and mallorca, even as far away as india. Meanwhile, back in louisiana, the governor of spanish louisiana was supplying the american troops with gunpowder and guns and supplies, but as soon as war was declared in 1779, he lost a series of raids that brought down the britain posts that included baton rouge. But the goal was always pensacola, which included the capital of british west florida and was the key to gulf of mexico, which spain wanted to recapture. And after a few setbacks by a series of devastating hurricanes, in 1781, he launched a joint spanishfrench attack that took pensacola and got the british out of the gulf of mexico, which happened at just the right time. Because right about then, the french commander came to the caribbean and asked the spanish to please guard the french colonies in the caribbean. Remembered, that is where the money was. Sugar plantations in the caribbean. Please guard those colonies from the british while i take my entire fleet north to the chesapeake. The comte de grasse was a fighting admiral who was loved by his sailors. 64aid of him, he stands and 65 in days of battle. Was learned washington heading to the chesapeake, and they raced south from new york to meet him, and surrounded cornwallis in yorktown. When they got there and washington came aboard degras flagship, degras, who stood two inches tall are than washington, he explained the real story. Before you ask, yes, he was one of the ancestors of the rockstar astrophysicists Neil Degrasse tyson. Degrasse was landing his fleet around the chesapeake when the british fleet under Thomas Graves appeared. Degrasse sortied his entire graves, orated either drove him off, and once that happens the British Forces , at yorktown could neither be resupplied nor evacuated. That sealed their fate. The story of yorktown is pretty well known. Washington and rochambeau led the troops on a quick march, surrounded yorktown, laid siege for five days. And that siege was directed by french officers, who also directed the trenches and the gunfire. The french also lost twice as many men as the americans. So when charles ohara, who was cornwallis second in command came out to surrender, he saw it as a french victory, and offered to surrender to rochambeau. Rochambeau, of course knew the , moment belonged to washington. He directed ohara to washington. Washington would not take surrender from somebody elses second in command, so he directed him to benjamin lincoln, his second in command, and the battle was over. So the battle was over, but the war was not. I just said the war was a world war. By the time yorktown was fought, britain was fighting five separate nationstates, and they were overwhelmed. The United States, france, britain. They dragged the dutch republic into it, and the kingdom of mysore in india were all fighting britain. In summary, during this battle during this war, 200,000 french and spanish soldiers and sailors fought, as compared with about 250,000 to 380,000 americans. They were as invested in this war as we were. So i want you to know that america could never have won the war without france, and france would never have fought the war without spain. And what i hope all of you take away is this that america did not achieve independence by itself. Instead, it was borne at a centerpiece of an International Coalition which, together, worked to defeat a common adversary. That is pretty much who we are today. We are the centerpiece of International Coalitions striving towards a common goal, and that is why we remain, today the indispensable nation. , thank you. Prof. Zagarri thank you. [applause] now, we will have professor talk aboutrstenberg his book, when the United States spoke french. Prof. Furstenberg let me begin by thanking Rosemarie Zagarri for moderating this panel discussion. It is terrific. It is an honor to be here. Larrie, and thanks to you for hosting. It is really an ideal pairing, these two books, because if i had written it a little bit later, i would have understood it as a sequel to larries. [laughter] prof. Ferreiro i am so glad you wrote yours first. Prof. Furstenberg leaned heavily on it. Would have sold more. As we learned, the American Revolution was really a french victory. Something like that. At least, i think it is fair to say it was a french war, a french and spanish war, as much as it was an american war. Maybe one of the things we can talk about i have been thinking about this but we really need a new name for this war, dont we . So in a sense, everything i will talk about follows from what larrie was talking about, because just as the seven years war led into the American Revolution, so did the American Revolution lead, a decade later, into another war, the french revolution and the napoleonic wars, which lasted nearly a quarter century. There are lots of factors and causes of the french revolution. I think probably a few things have been as studied as that one. I think it is fair to say that debt left over from french involvement in the American Revolution because everything you are talking about was enormously expensive. People keep forgetting that wars are very expensive. And this left a crushing debt on the french government. And it was that debt that really was the catalyst for the french revolution. When the french revolution broke out, americans were thrilled. They could hardly have been more excited about these events. This was the most powerful monarchy in europe that had suddenly, out of nowhere, fallen to its knees. It was like a dream for people, it seemed surreal. It is hard to capture the excitement and shock. You have to think of may of 1968, maybe, the fall of the berlin wall, arab spring, donald trump, all of these astonishing, sort of unbelievable events, all of them wrapped up into this one spectacular moment. Best of all, americans thought they started this all. In 1792, france became a republic, and the excitement in the United States became a frenzy. Everywhere, there were marches. Then in 1793, king louis the 16th was executed, and aristocrats were massacred in the streets of paris. Thousands of people fled, including many of them to the United States. So the book that i wrote was about five of these refugees who came to the United States on their american adventure. I thought using their stories would be a way of looking at Early American History from a different perspective, from slightly different eyes. I had originally envisioned this this is the story of many books, i am sure as a small, little project, something i could get over in a couple years, but it quickly ballooned into something much bigger. It took me way beyond paris and philadelphia through london, the caribbean, and deep into the american continental interior. And it grew beyond the five aristocrats who are started the book with to include anchors in amsterdam, bankers in amsterdam slaves in haiti, native americans in the ohio valley, and all of them were involved with the story that i was trying to tell about these five figures. So i do not have a whole lot of time tonight to tell you all about the book. I will introduce you briefly to the five characters and structure the account, and tell you three to four important lessons i drew from the research and writing i did, and we can elaborate on that as we talk at through talked it through. The first characters i studied was the former french archbishop who proposed the nationalization of church land. He would go on to be frances lard in this longest serving french minister. He spent a couple of years here along with all these others. There was also louismarie vicomte de noailles, lafayettes brotherinlaw, who fought in the American Revolution. He was the person who actually negotiated the french terms at the surrender, cornwallis surrender. In the 1780s, after he returned to france, he became a figure in reform circles, and it was he who presided on august 4, 1789 when feudalism was formally abolished. The third character was one of the wealthiest aristocrats of old regime france. As the master of the kings liancourt whowas burst into his bed chambers to tell him of the uprising in paris. Is it a revolt, the king asked . There was a traveler and a famous writer and future senator. The last character was moreau de saintmery, a lawyer and historian who had been born in the caribbean, married into a wealthy planter family and had gone to paris to write about french politics. These men were all aristocrats , but they were liberal aristocrats. They saw themselves following in the footsteps of the American Revolution. They admire the United States and the constitution that have been recently crafted. And they hoped to implement a Constitutional Monarchy in france that would look substantially similar to the u. S. Revolution. When the french revolution began, they became its leaders. I think it is fair to say that had history taken a different path, they would today be considered the french republics founding fathers. We would be singing songs about them, maybe. But that was not the path history took. They were forced to flee, and they came to the United States and settled in philadelphia. As i say, i do not have time to talk about the whole book, we have copies on sale outside, but i will make a few points here and talk about what sort of surprised me as i did the research. It was reinforced as i did the writing and research on this book. The first really built on what larrie was talking about. The kind of marginality, if you want to think about it that way, of the United States. Came at a time when the United States was nothing like the power it is today. I think it takes a leap of imagination to understand the country, as it was then, a weak, fragile collection of