Lafayette had retired to the Rapidan as the imposing and triumphant army of Cornwallis advanced on Richmond. Here, joined by the Pennsylvania troops under General Wayne and a body of riflemen from the western part of Virginia, he was able to retrace his steps, and to press Cornwallis's retreat towards the Chesapeake. Extricating himself from an unequal engagement at Jamestown, he moved up the river, and reposed at Malvern Hill—since celebrated as a refuge in a greater contest of arms. Subsequently, at Williamsburg, he was joined by the allied forces under Washington and Rochambeau—and then commenced the combination that was to compass Cornwallis, and to constitute the last splendid scene of the war.
It was a broad scene. On the 30th of August, 1781, twenty-eight line-of-battle ships, bearing the flag of France, rode on the beautiful expanse of the Chesapeake. They had come from the West Indies. Eight other ships suddenly appeared from the opposite point of the compass: the French squadron from Rhode Island, which had entered the Chesapeake, in spite of the efforts of the English admirals to intercept it. The Ville de Paris, the flag-ship of the French admiral, had held in council the great actors of the drama—Washington, Rochambeau, and the Count de Grasse; and it only remained to draw the lines, by sea and land, around the despairing enemy. The splendid fleet of France was the barrier between Cornwallis and the succors that Sir Henry Clinton had promised from New York. It was the element of victory—the apparition of a new hope risen from the seas. On the other wing of the scene floated the flags of Washington and Rochambeau. On the land were the splendid armies of France side by side with the militia of the young republic, and almost as numerous as the soldiers, a vast concourse of country people, watching the sublime wonders of a bombardment that laced the night skies, and enchanted by the music of the French timbrel, an instrument then unknown in America. Three French commands, those of the Count Rochambeau, the Marquis de Lafayette, and the Marquis de Saint-Simon, stood on the field of Yorktown.
In this circle, made possible only by the links of the French aid, went down the flag of Cornwallis and the hopes of England. It was a memorable scene, and one which brought into strong relief the assistance of our ally. In a letter to General Washington from Mr. Jefferson, who had just retired from the gubernatorial chair of Virginia, the distinguished patriot, after offering his congratulations, justly wrote: "If in the minds of any, the motives of gratitude to our good allies were not sufficiently apparent, the part they have borne in this action must amply evince them." At the height of its emotions of joy and gratitude, Congress promised a monument for the scene. It was resolved that it would "cause to be erected at York, in Virginia, a marble column, adorned with emblems of the alliance between the United States and his Most Christian Majesty, and inscribed with a succinct narrative." The pledge to this day remains unfulfilled; and no monument testifies our early and imperishable obligations to France, except such as may yet exist in the hearts of our people.
Here, with the illumination of Yorktown, we would willingly conclude the history of the Franco-American alliance. But there is a sequel not to be omitted—a painful story that belongs yet to the justice of history.
In the negotiations for peace that followed Yorktown, the American Congress, new and timorous in diplomacy, betook itself to a refuge, the shallowness of which is especially conspicuous in diplomacy—that of supposing wisdom in a multitude of counsellors. It constituted no less than five commissioners to treat at Paris. The selections were ill; and in some instances the worst that could have been made. Of the five, Mr. Jefferson did not attend. Mr. Adams was personally distasteful to the French government. How far Mr. Henry Laurens might be suspected of undue deference to England might have been judged from his famous Tower letter, the cringing humiliations of which had opened the doors of his prison; and it is said that when this letter was divulged to Congress it would have recalled his commission, had there not been doubts of the authenticity of the document, so extraordinary was its tone. But it is justice to add that the subsequent conduct of Mr. Laurens repelled the charge of partiality for England; however, the French Government may have had reason to be displeased at his antecedents. Mr. Jay was of a suspicious temper, an intrigant rather than a diplomatist; illustrating precisely that lowest notion of diplomacy, that it is essentially a game of deceptions—a part that can be performed only with a false face. Happily, the world has outlived this degrading idea of a really august office, and has come to question why deception should be considered more necessary in diplomacy than in any other branch of public service. Indeed, there is room in diplomacy for the exercise of the highest abilities, an arena for the busiest and most exacting competitions of intellectual skill, without calling into requisition the weapons of chicanery and fraud. There is no political service that more strongly than the office of the diplomatist tests that sum of powers which the world calls character: the clear, strong purpose, with its quick and happy selection of opportunities, the instinct, the tact, and the decisiveness which hold the secret of what is greatness in history, rather than any amount of learned accomplishments or any training of the intellectual closet. The diplomatist must be quick, yet strong and unremitting; he must have unbounded confidence in himself, without the weakness of vanity; he must be patient, yet not dilatory; thoroughly imbued with the true spirit of the French proverb, that "he who learns to wait is master of his fortune." He must have the faculty of putting things in the strongest possible light—that best and rarest of rhetorical talents, the power of statement. He must have a nice sense of opportunities; the delicate touch with the iron will; he must practise what Byron numbered among the cardinal virtues, "tact"; of all men he must wear that excellent motto, suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. Here, surely, is a theatre for many virtues and abilities, without calling to aid the mask and sinister weapons of professional deceit. The greatest diplomatist of modern times, the unequalled Bismarck, is said to be remarkable for the bluntness and directness that have overcome by the very surprises of openness the chicanery of his opponents. The robustness of his dealings with the finesse of the old traditional school of European diplomacy reminds one of the duel in "Peter Simple." A sturdy Englishman engages a master of fence, and while the latter practises the most scientific attitude and has his rapier poised according to the figures of the science, he is infinitely surprised to have it seized in mid-air by the naked hand of his antagonist, and himself run through the body. Not secundum artum, but a most efficient way of concluding the combat. Of the open and best school of diplomacy, Franklin at the French court was a fair representative, the very opposite of Jay. The philosopher of Pennsylvania has never been justly measured as a diplomatist; he had been successful beyond all other American envoys; he was now the Bismarck of the diplomatic collection at Paris, although he unhappily gave way to the leadership of Jay.
In the negotiations for peace that ensued, Mr. Jay, leading more or less willingly the other commissioners, was soon over head and ears in an intrigue with the English ministry; acting on that lowest supposition of tyroism in diplomacy—that the other party must necessarily design a fraud, and that a counter-fraud must be prepared to meet it. Congress had instructed that there should be made "the most candid and confidential communications upon all subjects to the ministers of our generous ally, the King of France"; and it took occasion to give a remarkable expression of gratitude to France, its resolutions declaring "how much we rely on his majesty's influence for effectual support in everything that may be necessary to the present security or future prosperity of the United States of America." Mr. Jay, who had taken the lead in the negotiations, willingly followed by Adams, "dragging in Franklin," and resisted to some extent by Laurens proceeded deliberately to violate these instructions. He had conceived the suspicion that France was secretly hostile to an early acknowledgment of the independence of America, and wished to postpone it until she had extorted objects of her own from the dependence of her ally. It is now known that this suspicion was wholly imaginary. But Mr. Jay and his colleagues acted upon it, and were twisted around the fingers of the English ministry to the extent of treating with them, without giving the French government knowledge of the steps and progress of the negotiation, thus contributing to the adroit purpose of England to sow distrust in the alliance that had humbled her. While the American commissioners were professing to the French minister that negotiations were yet at a distance, they had actually signed the provisional articles of a treaty of peace with the crown of Great Britain. Worse than this, they had agreed to a secret article, which stipulated a more favorable northern boundary for Florida, in the event of its conquest by the arms of Great Britain, than if it should remain in the possession of Spain at the termination of the war. Spain was at that time an ally of France; and so it may be imagined how the latter would be embarrassed by this secret article, and how England might meditate in it an advantage in disturbing the understanding of France and America.
Mr. Jay, unconscious that he had been made a catspaw of British diplomacy, felicitated himself that he had made an excellent bargain and done an acute thing; possessed as he was with that fatuity of all deceivers, that omits to calculate the time when the deception must necessarily become known. When the game that had been played upon its ally became known to Congress, it plunged that body into the most painful embarrassment. Mr. Madison, in his diary of the proceedings of Congress, thus records its impressions: "The separate and secret manner in which our ministers had proceeded with respect to France, and the confidential manner with respect to the British ministers, affected different members of Congress differently. Many of the most judicious members thought they had all been in some measure ensnared by the dexterity of the British minister, and particularly disapproved of the conduct of Mr. Jay in submitting to the enemy his jealousy of the French, without even the knowledge of Dr. Franklin, and of the unguarded manner in which he, Mr. Adams, and Dr. Franklin had given, in writing, sentiments unfriendly to our ally, and serving as weapons for the insidious policy of the enemy. The separate article was most offensive, being considered as obtained by Great Britain, not for the sake of the territory ceded to her, but as a means of disuniting the United States and France, as inconsistent with the spirit of the alliance, and as a dishonorable departure from the candor, rectitude, and plain dealing professed by Congress."
Congress did not extricate itself from the dilemma; it could not do it. Suppression of what had been done could not be continued; still less was it possible to make explanations to France; the only thing to do was to say nothing, and to let the painful exposure work itself out. The King of France had acted with an openness and an attention to his allies, the contrasts of which made the exposure one of great bitterness and shame. The Count de Vergennes had assured the American commissioners: "The king has been resolved that all his allies should be satisfied, being determined to continue the war, whatever advantages may be offered to him, if England is disposed to wrong any of them." Now, when the articles were brought into council to be signed, the French monarch could not be other than surprised and indignant. He put royal restraint upon his speech; but he could not forbear saying, with a bluntness that must have bruised American pride, and staggered the self-felicitations of Mr. Jay, that "he did not think he had such allies to deal with."
The court of France sustained the insult with dignity, and yet with evidence of a deep sense of wrong. When inquiry was made whether expostulations would be made to the American Congress, the reply of M. Marbois was heroic: "A great nation," he answered, "does not complain; but it feels and remembers."