American History Hit - French Spies in the American Revolution

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

The story of the American Revolution is one of the best known in American history. But it could have been very different. Outgunned and outmanned against the might of the British Empire, America’s revolutionaries found themselves backed into a corner from the start. Their solution was to turn to Europe’s other superpower - France - for military aid. But the French were wary. Were it not for the actions of a renegade French spy and a secretive committee held in Philadelphia’s Carpenters Hall in 1775, then French support may not have been forthcoming. Johanna Dunphy tells Don about this cloak and dagger meeting and how it altered the course of the War of Independence.Produced by Benjie Guy. Mixed by Joseph Knight. Senior Producer is Charlotte LongFor more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries, with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. December 1775, the American colonies are in open rebellion. As patriot leaders plot efforts to secure independence from British rule,

nations elsewhere position themselves politically. France considers supporting the Americans, though they are wary of backing a successful revolution for fear of inciting one at home, this would be sweet revenge for their losses to the British in the French and Indian War a decade earlier. A spy with an extraordinary name, Julianne Alexander Archaud de Bonnevilleois, meets with a secret committee of revolutionaries at Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia, where the first Continental Congress had convened in the previous year. For the Americans, the stakes couldn't be higher. They need guns, ammunition, naval support, soldiers, and uniforms. Without French support, the American venture will be for naught.

As it happens in Bonnevolois, they have encountered an unexpected ally. After three clandestine meetings, he will write enthusiastically back to France, raving about the American cause and determination, even greatly exaggerating their resources and numbers of available troops. His faulty intelligence would go far in tipping the balance at the French court, and supplies and support would be forthcoming. In the following years of desperate conflict,

the alliance with the French would prove to be the deciding factor, between American surrender and victory. Hello, everybody. I'm Don Wilde, and welcome to American History. Anyone visiting Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia comes to see the enduring structures and sites dating back to our nation's revolution, Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were conceived and written, the Liberty Bell and its famous fracture, the Ben Franklin Museum on the site of his home,

the Betsy Ross House, where the first star-spangled banner is claimed to have been stitched by Betsy herself. But perhaps the structure, most fundamental to our national identity, is Carpenter's Hall. An elegant, two-story classic Georgian, built between 7070 and 73 about then, it sits a short stroll away from its more famous neighbor, Independence Hall. Founded as a union quarters for the carpenter company of the city and county of Philadelphia, it is still a privately owned property. But it was here that the first Continental Congress met in in 1774 to draw up the response to what colonial legislature saw as the British Crown's unfair treatment. It would be the first time the colonies, 12 of 13 of them anyway, Georgia abstaining from that first round,

would cooperate and, in effect, begin to unite in opposition to Georgia 3rd. It was here in this building that a lot of what underpinned the coming United States was established. Carpenter's Hall was home to so much over the years, even cloak and dagger espionage And here to explain that story and more is Johanna Dumfey. Hello, Johanna. Hi, Don. I'm really glad to be here. Joanna, what's your role in this whole story?

So I work for Historic Philadelphia Incorporated. I have been working as a storyteller and a first-person interpreter for just about 15 years, which means that as a storyteller, I entertain visitors to Philadelphia. And as a first-person interpreter, I wear the clothes and I talk about the people that I portray, whether that's somebody that you've never heard about, like Mark. Margaret McKiven, who was an indentured servant, but also people like Dolly Madison because people don't realize that she had her start in Philadelphia. So she has her own very interesting Philadelphia story. Johnny, give me the orientation of things here. For anybody who's never been there,

we all know from the back of the coin and the dollar bills or whatever, there's the Independence Hall, which is the famous building in which our founding documents were created. But it's a short stroll, as I said in the intro, to a much smaller building, very handsome place called Carpenter's Hall. Why is it there? And how did it orient to the larger, more famous neighbor? Well, Carpenter's Hall was originally built as basically a place for Philadelphia's Carpenter's company to meet and show off their work, for lack of a better way of saying that. But also, they realized they could start renting out the building. And it's a beautiful building. I've spent many a work shift, eating lunch in the basement. It's not as beautiful in the basement as it is on the other

floors. It was really a multi-use building, wasn't it? It was a Carpenter's Hall, Union Hall, but it was also kind of like the only place in town back then in the 1770s to sort of rent to the public. Absolutely. And a certain guy by the name of Ben Franklin actually put his library in the second floor of Carpenter's Hall after it had been in the home of the librarian, and it was actually in Independence Hall for a time before it moved to Independence Hall. I think they charged him like 37, 34 shillings a year for the second floor. Yeah. And there's equipment from his scientific experiments.

Ben Franklin lived a short amount of yards from this place, really. This would have been the downtown of that time, obviously, the big fancy buildings, the government center. Independence Hall back in those days was the Pennsylvania State House, which was why when they came together for the first. Continental Congress in 1774, they couldn't meet in that statehouse. That would come the next year when they finally got down to business. For the time being, they used the Carpenthal, which in those days had been a brand new building, so it would have been perfect. John, I want to understand the

difference between the first and second Continental Congress. Okay, so this is the very beginning of things. We're in 1774. What has happened is that in 1773, the Boston Tea Party happens, and that results in the blockading of the Boston Harbor. And this is really the beginnings of the big rumblings that become revolution. In response to this and other acts before this, the different colonial legislatures start to create these committees of correspondents. They start talking to each other about these feelings. And this all boils up into what becomes a more formal gathering, which is the First Continental Congress.

It's different than the second. Why is that? How is that? Well, the First Continental Congress, it's. the first time that there are delegates from all the colonies meeting to discuss what's going on and what the future is going to be. The joke that I always have is, what was the point of the First Continental Congress to have a second Continental Congress? I mean, at the end of the day, that was the biggest conclusion from the First Continental Congress, but there was a whole list

of declaration, so to speak. And not declaring freedom, of course, that was the second Continental Congress, but the first Continental Congress was trying to make some adjustments to the fact that they're tired of taxation without representation in Parliament. So the first Continental Congress rejected a plan for reconciliation with Britain. That was a big major step. And they also had a declaration of personal rights and life, liberty, property, assembly, and also trial by jury, which we don't talk about this a lot, but that's also a very much a Quaker thing. but that maybe will be for another podcast episode. The Quaker episode. The Quaker episode.

I can't wait. The point you're making it, I understand, is the First Continental Congress starts with a declaration of loyalty to George III. This is not a outright seditious act, these guys coming together. It's just the first step in uniting these colonies, which all had been created separately for almost separate purposes and had to this point existed that way in service to the king. they were sort of all functioning states unto themselves. Now, suddenly they're all being threatened, as many of them perceive, by this oppressive tyranny from England. And so the first Continental Congress is really the beginning of them coming together and

saying, okay, if we get together, maybe they'll understand how a grieve we really are. And we'll create a series of declarations, as you're outlining here, that really tell the king back off and reconsider this whole relationship. Absolutely. They even go as far as to boycott British goods. Eventually, that even turns to basically a boycott in exporting any American goods. This all comes from this meeting, of which there are 12 of the 13 colonies represented. And it only lasts for seven weeks.

This is the beginning of September into the middle of October. One of their big accomplishments is the Continental Association. It, in effect, created a lot of what you're talking about, these economic sanctions against the crown. And they went into effect in December. So while they on one hand, we're trying to send a big unified message. It was also the beginnings of a lot of rethinking of what this could really end up being. I mean, it's not too far away that the first shots are fired. Absolutely.

I mean, a lot of times I like to think about history and not just as like facts and numbers and things like that, but I think about the people and the humanity of it and what people are struggling with and going through. And sometimes even think of it as a relationship. When we use that word a lot, but in these terms, it has become a bad relationship. The colonists are not getting any support. In fact, they're getting abused and put in these terrible situations. There's always 15 sides to every story, but I think about how much they're struggling, but also how they want to keep their own sense of independence, depending on which colony they're in,

you know, in some of the southern states, they have a different way of looking at things than those in the north, which of course plays into things many, many years later. It's an important thing that most Americans these days don't understand or don't at least address that there's a sort of Act 1 and Act 2 of the beginnings of revolution. Act 1 conveniently has the First Continental Congress, and they're about repairing the relationship with the Crown. They're about telling them exactly how they feel as a unified body and getting this out there.

And their true hope, I assume, is that they will be met with grace. and that this will start a new kind of relationship, a more balanced relationship between the colonies and the homeland. The second Continental Congress is them admitting that nothing happened as a result of all that process before. And they all realized that this is all going to go wrong because by that time, shots have been fired in the spring of 1775. The second Continental Congress meets again in Philadelphia in May of 75, and we're off and running at that point. Absolutely. I mean, I think a lot about just the merchants of Philadelphia and, of course, all the colonies, and how scared everyone must have been. Because if you don't have that tie with England, you think about your own business and what happened to your business if you don't have these imports coming in.

And also, if you can't export things, what are you going to do? So I think at this point in our common thought process, people think like, of course, I'd be a patriot. But would you? And that is the question that's on everyone's mind. It's a Quaker city, and a lot of the Quakers are peaceful people. They do not want to engage, but also many of those Quakers are business people. They are merchants. They don't want to cause any problems.

And the thing that's also forgotten about is that America, or wasn't America yet, but the colonies helped England during the French and Indian War in 1754. So we were trying to help. We wanted to make this relationship work, but we keep asking for you to be nice to us, and you're refusing to be nice to us. I'll be back with more from Johanna Dunphy after this short break. March 2020-3 marked 20 years since the start of the Iraq War. The war was waged to rid the world of a brutal dictator, yet it would end marred in controversy.

So why did the Iraq War go so badly wrong? And what legacies has it left behind today? Well, I'm your host, James Patton Rogers, and every Monday on the Warfare podcast from History Hit, we're exploring a different aspect of this tumultuous period in history. We'll be asking, what was the role of the UK government and Prime Minister Tony Blair? Could the Secretary of State legally order British forces into Iraq, and could British forces follow that law? And how did ISIS rise from the destruction left behind?

But ISIS, this peculiar strain that we all came to know very well in the mid-2010s, really got its start because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Join me, James Patton Rogers, on the Warfare Podcast from History Hit, as we look back on one of the most controversial conflicts in recent history. So in the midst of all of this, you have the French. And the French are England's rival and are sort of orbiting this whole situation. With their own interests, their recent hurt from the French and Indian War, the Seven Years' War, losing Canada to the English.

And they're very interested in what hurt the colonists can do to their enemy. Louis XVIth is fascinated by the potential. Step one is to send some spies into the situation. They've already got a court spy in England and all that sort of thing. But they decide to launch a mission to the American colonies and find out what the story really is. But it involves a particular spy who's sent to America to find out about things going on. Who is the spy? So his name is Julianne, a cha, de Bon Vuvoir.

He had visited the colonies in the early 1770s. He had traveled around. He'd been in Philadelphia. In fact, I read some of the two that he talked to some of the men from the First Continental Congress. So he already knew some of the key players here. And he goes back to France. And here's the thing about Bon Vuir, who we love and hold dear.

He's basically the black sheep of the family. he had a childhood injury that gave him a limp. He was sort of talked up a lot as somebody who's like perfect for the task of going to spy on the colonists, but a little bit was fudged. His background was fudged a little bit. When you think about a great spy movie,

he wasn't this perfect spy. He was kind of bumbling. He was actually given very strict rules. He wasn't even allowed to say the word French. It was important that nobody knew that he was a part of the French government, at all, or that he was sent by the French government. The three major rules were that the French had no interest in Canada,

France wished them well, and that the French ports are open for you, should you need them? And those were the only three things that Bonneville was allowed to say. He was not allowed to guarantee any support from the French. As I said, he wasn't allowed to say the word French or France at all. and he found his way to have these conversations. The part that sticks out to me quite a bit is the fact that it's clear that he wasn't very good at this because of all of the questions

that John Jay and Ben Franklin were asking him. They were asking him very specific questions about getting munitions and things from France and getting that kind of support that the colonists desperately needed. Because, I mean, look, Ben Franklin especially, he's kind of known for his franklin. Eichlan ideas, and he could see where all of this was heading.

And he knew that the colonists couldn't do anything without more support. So they're asking these questions that if they really just thought that Bonne Loire was just a merchant as he was pretending to be, they wouldn't have asked those questions. Okay. So I'm understanding this. So under the auspices of having a mercantile conversation, a meeting is set between Ben Franklin, John Jay, who goes on to become the Supreme Court just, you know, he's the legal mind of the United States at that time, and this guy from France, who's coming to meet with these two men in Carpenter's Hall, because that's the available place to do this. It's also the library of town. What are Franklin Jay's motives in this meeting? What did they want to gain from this? The main thing is trying to figure out where they stand with France. And one thing I need to make sure that I comment on is that this all couldn't have happened. without Francis Damon, who was the library's librarian, who was also a Frenchman,

who helped to translate some of these more complicated exchanges. And Francis Damon was actually Ben Franklin's tutor. He taught French on the side to whoever wanted to learn, but he was also the librarian at Carpenter's Hall. Going back to the question that you asked, I really think that John Jay and Ben Franklin were trying to figure out who is actually their friend, who's actually going to support them. Is France just blowing smoke or is this something that they can potentially use later? Well, this is early days also. This is December of 1775. So by this time, we've had a lot of action up in New England, but very little elsewhere.

They're basically trying to take a measure of the fact that they're into a long-term war with the major superpower in the world. They know all too well is going to overwhelm them. They can't possibly do battle with this foe without the help of another superpower. They're going to have to turn to France. So Franklin and Jay read the tea leaves and know that they can't win this war without the help of France. So this is an accepted meeting. I'm curious if they knew whether this guy was coming as a spy really or whether they actually thought they were just talking to a French businessman about France. We can sort of speculate a little bit there because we did have in the Committee of Secret Correspondents,

There were other members. It wasn't just John Jay and Ben Franklin. They also had Arthur Lee, who was a member of the Committee of Secret Correspondents in London, who worked to help to gain information. So I'm pretty sure that he knew that Bonneville War was coming on over. But it was a committee of secret correspondence. There's a lot of secrets there. You're mentioning the Committee of Secret Correspondents.

No better word. It sounds like it's from a Harry Potter novel. What exactly was that? Well, it wasn't originally the Committee of Secret Correspondents. It was simply the Committee of Correspondents. It was realizing that the colonies needed to be able to correspond with other folks in other superpowers, as you've mentioned. But slowly, from like the first Continental Congress, they started to use the word the

Committee of Secret Correspondence, which, you know, gives a little air of mystery. And so my feeling is once you name something, something like that, you can get away with being a little bit more sneaky. And so when we're talking about this super secret meeting between Ben Franklin, John Jay, and Bonne Vueuard, this is not happening during normal business hours. I mean, Francis Damon is the one that's supposed to keep the fires going to make sure the room is warm and he's not allowed to put the fires on because if there's smoke coming out of the chimney, people will know that they're meeting and they have to be sneaky about it. And also, John, even though Ben Franklin lived across the street from Carpenter's Hall, just right across chestnut's

I've walked that route many times. It takes maybe three minutes if you're sauntering. But he and John Jay made sure to take opposite routes and change their route. Because I think they met three times, multiple times at the end of December, around the Christmas season. And they had to be sneaky. They didn't want to be caught by any of the British spies. They didn't want their goings on to be noticed or witnessed by anyone.

They're covered to be blown. This is so exciting to consider that they are now in a war. They know this. We're about six months away, so eight months away from the Declaration of Independence even being written, let alone read aloud. And what an intense time these guys are now in the midst of. And they take the measure of this man. They have three meetings in the library of Carpenter's Hall. You figure by the second meeting they know what's going on here.

They know that what they're talking about with this man. is going to be reported back to France. But I found it be so surprising about this meeting to discover it is that it happens two years before the Battle of Saratoga. So typically in sort of the amateur view of things in revolutionary history, Saratoga, the winning of the Battle of Saratoga, triggers off the momentum for France to join the war. And when you read the child of textbooks, that's kind of what you think,

oh, we want a battle, it got reported back to France, and they said, oh, let's join into this war. this is a good idea. No, this is years in the making. And these seeds have been sown starting back in 1775 in the Christmas season in these secret meetings in Carpenter's Hall. That's so chewy. That's so mysterious. But that's the truth. Yeah, for the most part, I feel like anytime that there's these huge battles, I mean, even when we think about the Declaration of Independence, we think about it as like, oh, this is when we stood up and said, we declare we are free. But it didn't happen out of nowhere. It didn't just erupt out of nothing.

The seeds were sown years prior. All of that came from somewhere. And same with having France's support. True. I find this to be so satisfying these conversations I keep having through this podcast. As a matter of fact, I hope listeners feel the same way. That which always seemed to be, oh, that other history that was so deep and complicated beforehand, actually is the really good stuff.

When you start filling in the gaps and understanding the real things, sources where the roots are grown. That's when you really understand how this whole idea of the United States of America really began. And you're right. It was a gradual process over time, a real development and evolution of an idea of a nation among these brilliant human beings who were considering this idea. But it wasn't one thing at a time. I mean, it wasn't one moment that triggered it all off. It was one thing at a time. It was a process. And that's so interesting to understand. And this process of gaining information about the colonel. and whether they were capable of doing this war, which had to be France's main question.

How the hell are these colonists ever going to go to war with England? England just beat France. You know, it's just a few years earlier. So these upstarts aren't going to get very far. What's the report that Bonnevoulouin sends back to France? He sends some amazing stuff. I'm going to read to you directly from some of the report that Bonneville were sent out on December 28th of 17.

One of the things he says is, as I expected, I found this country in an incredible turmoil. The Confederates, rebels, are preparing themselves extensively for the coming spring, and despite the severity of the season, they continue the fight. And he continues on, and he says, everyone here is a soldier. The troops are well-clothed, well-paid, and well-armed. They have more than 50,000 regular soldiers and an even larger number of volunteers who do not wish to be. paid. Judge how men of this caliber will fight. They are more powerful than we could have ever thought. Beyond imagination, powerful. You will be astonished by it. Nothing shocks or frightens them. You can count on that. Independence is a certainty for 1776. There will be no drawing back.

Wow. That is not true. None of that's true. No. He flat out lies in his report. It makes me laugh every time I read it because I keep considering, why would you lie? Why would you put that in your report? Just to be clear, he writes that there's 50,000 regular soldiers. 50,000. They had a peak, 18,000 in the summer of 1776, which fell to 5,000 in the end of the year. Eventually, they managed to get, when the war's getting a little better, 20,000. And then that declines.

I mean, it's a roller coaster ride of recruitment throughout the entire experience, but it's never anywhere close to 50,000, much less do they absolutely. intend to win. I mean, it's all crazy. So he has completely blown smoke here. To what end? I mean, why did he want to report all this? Were they lying to him? There's two conclusions that I've come to. One of which is that he really liked the Americans and he just wanted them to have the support. Because he's looking at them saying, hey, I see what England's been doing to you and I hate those English. so maybe I can do something to help you defeat them at another point. The other thing that I've sort of extrapolated is perhaps people didn't really have a lot of faith in him, it seemed.

It's not that they thought he was going to 100% fail, but as the Black Sheep and all these things, he had all these big dreams that he was never going to accomplish. So I feel like it was also this part of like trying to do the right thing and make himself look better. Like he got all this information and he was really good at. He felt he'd been sent to deliver the goods, so he needed to deliver the goods. Exactly, exactly. Maybe people also who he was, I mean, we're all speculating here, but maybe there was also a desire to see what they wanted to see in this potential. Still, pretty hyperbolic facts he's sending home.

But the stakes are very high. I mean, when you consider what a role France plays in this war, it is fundamental. One of these great historic postscripts of the Revolutionary War is the invasion of Normandy. You know, in World War II, that was. almost payback for the great role that France played in our War of Independence, in a sense. That's the intricate relationship between the United States and France. It plays out over hundreds of years. But in order to win this war, they had to use the French Navy. We needed the soldiers, of course, to march towards Yorktown eventually. We would not have been able to fight many of

these battles without secret armaments being sent over, not the least of which were muskets that really worked. All kinds of stuff, big and small, had to be provided by France. So that requires a lot of logistics and a lot of planning, even on the manufacturing end of things. So this is a transatlantic effort that's happening long before the French Navy even sails over. But this is a story that speaks to the underpinning of all of that, which is early conversations between this very sort of misfit spy, Bonne Vu-Lois, one of the great names of history. And of course, Ben Franklin and John Jay in these circumstances. Thank you, Johanna.

This is an amazing story. We're scratching the surface of what obviously is going to be a gigantic movie someday. We can only wait and see. And you got to go see Philadelphia and go see these historic sites and march into Carpenter's Hall, which is a beautiful place to be. Take care of, Joanna. We'll see you again. Absolutely. Thank you, Don. Have a great day. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit.

I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.