A Great Improvisation

A Great Improvisation is a narrative history by Stacy Schiff that chronicles Benjamin Franklin's diplomatic mission to France from 1776 to 1785, a period Schiff identifies as both Franklin's greatest service to his country and the most revealing chapter of his life.

In December 1776, Franklin arrived on the coast of Brittany after a brutal Atlantic crossing, covered in boils and barely able to stand, accompanied by his grandsons William Temple Franklin (Temple), age 16, and Benjamin Franklin Bache (Benny), age seven. Congress had declared independence six months earlier without the means to achieve it: The colonies lacked munitions, money, credit, and common cause. Franklin's predecessor in Paris, Connecticut businessman Silas Deane, had been stranded for months without official title or communication from Congress, while the playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais covertly channeled French munitions to American harbors through fictitious companies.

Franklin's arrival created a sensation across Europe. Celebrated as the scientist who had tamed lightning, he was already among the most famous men in the world. Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes, the French foreign minister, scrambled to contain the publicity, while Lord Stormont, the British ambassador, warned London of Franklin's dangerous charm. On December 28, Franklin met Vergennes at Versailles alongside Deane and the newly arrived third commissioner, Arthur Lee, a Virginia-born lawyer. Vergennes welcomed the Americans but insisted on secrecy, wary of provoking Britain before France was ready for war. In January 1777, King Louis XVI secretly granted two million French livres in aid, so confidential that no document connecting the court to the rebels was ever placed in American hands.

Franklin soon moved to the Hôtel de Valentinois, the Passy estate of Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, a wealthy entrepreneur with court connections, two miles west of central Paris. The estate served as Franklin's headquarters for the duration of his mission. There he settled into the pattern that defined his diplomacy: cultivating French society, waging a quiet propaganda campaign, and waiting for Vergennes to act. Rather than adopting the obligatory Parisian wig, Franklin wore a fur cap and plain clothes, which the French interpreted as the garb of a frontier philosopher. His image appeared on snuffboxes, medallions, and fabric. Yet his popularity masked desperation. Communication with Congress was almost nonexistent. British spies had penetrated his household; every Tuesday, detailed reports of Franklin's activities were smuggled to London. Franklin refused to use invisible ink or cipher, arguing that an honest man had nothing to hide.

Through 1777 the military news was bleak. The British occupied Philadelphia, and Washington's army retreated repeatedly. The 19-year-old marquis de Lafayette sailed secretly for America in April, against the king's orders, buoying pro-American sentiment in France. Franklin sustained morale in Paris through sheer force of personality, insisting publicly that American defeats were temporary while privately confiding there was "nothing better to do here than drink." Everything changed on December 4, 1777, when a messenger arrived with news that General John Burgoyne's entire British army had surrendered at Saratoga, in upstate New York. The victory gave Vergennes the pretext he needed. On February 6, 1778, two treaties were signed: one of amity and commerce, and a military alliance guaranteeing that neither France nor America would make peace until American independence was established. Franklin was presented to Louis XVI at Versailles on March 20 in a plain brown suit and spectacles, a singular appearance that constituted America's formal introduction to the world stage.

The alliance brought new problems. Lee accused Franklin of secrecy and corruption. Ralph Izard, a wealthy South Carolinian appointed commissioner to the court of Tuscany but stranded in Paris, leveled charges of fraud and embezzlement. John Adams, who replaced Deane in April 1778, found the mission in "confusion and darkness" and grew increasingly frustrated with Franklin's social calendar, casual record keeping, and seeming indolence. The cultural divide between Adams and Franklin widened into a rift that would never heal.

Franklin also immersed himself in French social life, cultivating an intense friendship with his Passy neighbor Madame Brillon, a married harpsichordist who designated him "Mon cher Papa," and courting Madame Helvétius, the vivacious widow of the philosopher Claude-Adrien Helvétius. These relationships, conducted through witty letters and playful literary sketches Franklin called bagatelles, revealed the personal warmth that made him so effective in French society.

The alliance proved awkward in practice. French and American officers clashed over discipline and expectations. The French fleet's withdrawal from Newport in 1778 triggered anti-French demonstrations in America. Franklin managed naval affairs he was unqualified to oversee and begged Vergennes for funds with increasing desperation. Congress appointed Franklin sole minister plenipotentiary, or chief diplomatic representative, to France in February 1779 but simultaneously debated his recall, driven by Lee's accusations.

The years 1780 and 1781 brought the mission to its nadir. Supply shipments were delayed by quarrels among intermediaries, and the largest single cargo was captured at sea by the British. Continental currency collapsed. Adams alienated Vergennes so thoroughly with unsolicited advice on French foreign policy that the foreign minister refused to deal with anyone but Franklin. Congress sent 25-year-old John Laurens, an aide to General Washington, as a special envoy, an appointment Franklin read as a humiliating vote of no confidence. Franklin submitted his resignation in March 1781 but not before securing from Vergennes a new loan and an outright gift of six million livres, the war's single greatest gift. The turning point came on November 19, 1781, when a courier brought word that Lord Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, after a siege by combined French and American forces. Congress refused Franklin's resignation and added him to the peace commission alongside Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens, John Laurens's father.

Peace negotiations consumed most of 1782. Richard Oswald, a Scottish merchant, arrived as Britain's emissary. Jay, fresh from two fruitless years negotiating in Spain, distrusted both Vergennes and the British. Adams arrived in October sharing Jay's suspicions of France. On November 30, 1782, the commissioners signed preliminary terms granting complete independence, fishing rights, and the evacuation of British troops, all without consulting Vergennes, in violation of their congressional instructions and the Franco-American treaty. Franklin managed the fallout with a combination of contrition, flattery, and the implicit threat that any public rupture would benefit only Britain.

The definitive Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783. Franklin spent his remaining years in France battling kidney stones, leading a royal commission that debunked the claims of the mesmerist Franz Anton Mesmer, welcoming Thomas Jefferson as his successor, and watching the Montgolfier brothers launch the age of manned flight. He departed Passy on July 12, 1785, amid sobbing well-wishers, and arrived in Philadelphia on September 14 to a thunderous welcome of cannon salutes and pealing bells.

In the epilogue, Schiff traces the fates of the principal figures. Franklin served as president of Pennsylvania's Executive Council and sat at the Constitutional Convention, but Congress never settled his accounts or thanked him for the French mission. Vergennes died in 1787; the American war had bankrupted France, forcing Louis XVI to convene the Estates-General, a representative assembly whose session ignited the French Revolution. Many of Franklin's closest French friends perished in the Terror that followed. Franklin died on April 17, 1790, at 84. France's National Assembly mourned him publicly; in the United States, the Senate declined to wear mourning. Schiff concludes that Franklin's French years established not only an independent nation but a Franco-American relationship defined by mutual misunderstanding, gratitude, and resentment, a pattern that would recur across two centuries.