So what’s
to do when you’re a newly-founded nation, who has just revolted against and
kicked the crap out of your former colonial master, the most powerful country
in the world? Why not be a total dick toward and pick a fight with the country
who was your best ally in your revolt. It’s . . . the Quasi-War (with France).
First, let’s get out of the way the
question as to whether or not the United States would exist without the help of
France. I’m not given to speaking in sureties often; it’s a big, wide world and
almost anything can happen, but I’m about a hundred percent damn sure that the American
Colonies’ rebellion against the British Crown would not have succeeded without
the help of the French. Rugged, plucky
individualists Americans were and remain, but that don’t mean jack shit if you
don’t have the money to field an army. As much as a certain segment of the 2nd
Amendment-Patriot-nutjob crowd who smoked too much weed while watching Red Dawn
WAY too many times in high school wants to believe that they’ll hold off a
tyrannical Army following the orders of some hypothetical Kenyan Islamo-Marxist
American dictator, that dog just ain’t gonna hunt.
Without the
steady supply of war materials bought at discount by the Colonies through a shell-company
set up by France (with the cooperation of Spain and a nod from the Dutch) the
early phase of the American Revolution would most likely have fizzled out. As
importantly, these arms and other supplies allowed America to defeat a British
army at Saratoga in 1777, which convinced France to go all in.
Fast
forward to October 19, 1781 at Yorktown, and you’ve got British Brigadier
General Charles O'Hara surrendering to General George Washington and French
commander, Lieutenant General Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de
Rochambeau. The allied army there was composed of about equal numbers of French
and American soldiers. Lord Cornwallis, the British commander at Yorktown had pled
off that he was too sick to surrender himself. Yep, sick of getting his ass
kicked. O’Hara offered his sword to Rochambeau, who shook his head and
indicated he should give it to Washington. Washington waved him off also and
had him hand it to Major General Benjamin Lincoln, Washington’s second in
command. I think those three guys worked that sick burn out beforehand.
So what
could mess up this great bromance America had with the French to the point that
less than 20 years later they were engaged in a ‘quasi-war’ with them? The
answer: a revolution, a load of bad debt, some Olympic-level assholery, and a
whole mess of butt-hurt.
In 1794 a
revolution in France overthrew the monarchy, and the new French Republic (the
first one; they’re currently on their fifth) went to war with just about
everyone in Europe, including Great Britain.
America,
still with major British trade interests, decided to stay out of it, and
negotiate a new trade treaty with our former enemy, which debatably violated
our standing Treaty of Alliance with France. France was of course outraged.
They were also broke. The debt they had gone into to fund America’s revolution
had been a large factor in tanking their economy, which was a major, if not
THE, contributing factor that led to their revolution.
To top it
off, America, operating on the principal that “we owed money to the Kingdom of
France, not the Republic of France” refused to keep paying on the debt they had
worked up buying all those discounted muskets and canon. This was a fine bit of
lawyerly rhetoric on America’s part that would call down the unholy wrath of
any Congressional Select Committee nowadays. Remember that when you start
yapping about Freedom Fries and that kind of shit. The French people were the
best friends America had and America stabbed them in the back. It was a total
dick move on their part, so it’s no surprise that the French got dickish back.
France was
like, “Okay, if you won’t pay us, we’ll just take it out of your ass some other
way”, and began issuing letters of marque to privateers, who seized American
merchant ships to sell off. Not a bad move considering America pretty much had
no navy to speak of.
In 1795
America paid off its debt to France with the help of a high-flying financier,
James Swan. Swan was a veteran of the American Revolution from Boston who had
made out during the war, but soon ended up in debt and fled to France. After
making a killing in France he returned to America where he worked out a deal
where he would privately assume the debts owed to France at a slightly higher
interest rate. He then resold them at profit to debt speculators. He would
eventually end up back in France in debtors’ prison.
But the
damage to French relations was already done, and when the US sent a new
ambassador to France in 1796, they refused to receive him. President John
Adams, probably because they didn’t have Twitter back then, had to address
Congress, and tell them that America might want to start thinking about getting
ready for a defensive war with France.
Congress
was already split into two parties. Not surprisingly, the split was mainly
about the same shit the current two parties are still arguing about now; how
much power the federal government should have. The Federalists, led by
President Adams were on the side of more power, and a standing military force.
The Democratic-Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson were in favor of less power
and no standing army or navy. The latter fact coincidentally left America wide
open to having their shipping raided with impunity.
Opinions on
France were also split along party lines, with the Federalists favoring a
closer relationship with Great Britain, viewing the French Republic as a bunch
of dangerous radicals. The Democratic-Republicans, taking more of an
ideological stance, wanted closer ties to France. Congress was at an impasse.
The straw
that broke the camels back though, was something called the XYZ Affair. It had
started in 1797 when America sent a commission to France to see if the whole diplomatic
brouhaha could be resolved. The French diplomats the commissioners were to
negotiate with refused to receive them until they were offered some pre-set
conditions, including a sizeable loan and hefty bribe. Things went back and
forth, with President Adams trying to keep it hushed up, hoping to avoid
demands for war from the more hawkish members of his party, but like they
always do, rumors got out.
In a rare
bipartisan move, the Democratic-Republicans, not believing that things were as
bad as rumor said, united with the hawkish faction of the Federalist Party and
demanded Adams released all the communications from the commission. When they
were released, the hawks were like, “Yeah! WAR!!!” and the Republicans were
like, “Man! That did not work out the way we wanted it to!”
It looked
like America was going to war with France. There were two problems though: The
first was that President Adams refused to ask for a declaration of war against
a country that on paper were still our allies. Well, that turned out to be not
that big of a problem. America was already in a de facto state of war with France. On July 7, 1798 Congress annulled
our Treaty of Alliance with France and authorized attacks on the privateers
without formally declaring war. Thus the name, Quasi-War. The second, more
practical problem, as I mentioned previously in a couple of places, was that America
had no real navy. All they had was the ancestor of the Coast Guard, which they
hadn’t even bothered to give a name to, referring to it by the catchy phrase:
“the system of cutters”. Cutters referred to the type of ship utilized by the
“system”. They were small, fast, lightly-armed vessels outfitted with the
express purpose of chasing down smugglers and slave traders. They worked for
the Treasury Department in something like a contract arrangement.
Luckily
though, in 1794 Congress had already commissioned some frigates to protect our shipping
in the Mediterranean and Atlantic against the pirates of the Barbary States of
North Africa. But when America established treaties with them in 1796, it
triggered an amendment (attached by the Republicans of course) which halted
funding and construction. President Washington, realizing that having a bunch
of half-completed frigates lying around was bullshit, talked Congress into
funding the most completed three of the six to be finished. Despite this
agreement, from 1796-1798, wrangling over budgetary issues and whatnot still had
kept any of them from being completed. Now, facing an undeclared war with
France, America needed to get those frigates finished fast. But even before our
formal non-declaration of war with France on July 7, 1798, Congress, in a fit
of foresightedness, had authorized the creation of a US Navy which was
authorized to command the “system of cutters”, and buy and outfit merchant
ships to attack the French.
With those
problems resolved, it was time for some action. The first took place the same
day as the American revocation of the treaty and authorization to engage in
combat. A French privateer, Croyable had been preying on shipping on
the Mid-Atlantic coast. Unfortunately for them when they boarded and robbed one
ship, leaving it to go on its way, its captain relayed the approximate location
of the French privateer to the commander of one of the US Navy’s retro-fitted
merchantmen, Delaware. The commander
was Stephen Decatur, Sr., whose son, Stephen Decatur, Jr. would go on to win
fame as a hero of the Barbary Wars and War of 1812 as well as infamy for dying
in a duel with a fellow naval officer in 1820. Delaware handily defeated and captured Croyable off of Egg Harbor on the New Jersey coast. The privateer was
sold to the US Navy and renamed Retaliation.
The first
action between heavier warships took place in February, 1799 when the frigate
USS Constellation, which had finally
been finished, fought and captured the faster, better-armed French frigate L’Insurgente in the Caribbean after a dramatic chase
through a storm.
In the
naval actions that followed, the US Navy came out much better than the French,
only losing one ship, Retaliation,
which had been captured from the French in the first place, and was recaptured by
the Americans before the end of the quasi-war anyway. By my reading that left
America up one ship they didn’t have before. Don’t go breaking out the
champagne yet though, because despite these impressive victories, between 1,800
and 2000 American merchant ships had been captured by the time peace was agreed
upon. We’ll generously call it a draw.
In 1799, in
the middle of the Quasi-War, a coup in France had replaced the Directory, the republican
government the United States had been so careful not to go to official war with.
One of the leaders of the coup was a Corsican general named Napoleon Bonaparte,
who had been picked by the other coup leaders to be the strong right military
arm of the new government. The coup established the executive authority of the
government in three consuls, with legislative power in the hands of three
assemblies and the Senate. Napoleon was of course in the position of First
Consul, with the position of Second and Third Consuls being filled by some
dudes you’ve never heard of. Tell you what; I’m gonna do those guys a solid and
give you their names. The Second and Third Consuls of the provisional
Consulate, which lasted until a new constitution was written were respectively (like
it matters) Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès and Roger Ducos. Sieyès had been the main
leader of the coup and had wanted to be named the head of the government but
was outmaneuvered by Napoleon and ended up in crappy Second Consul place. Sieyès
was a guy who knew which way the wind was blowing though, and totally knuckled
under to Napoleon. Sieyès and Ducos resigned their positions for leadership
roles in the Senate, and once the constitution was voted on in a plebiscite,
with 99% of Frenchmen voting in favor, supposedly, the Second and Third Consul
positions were filled by Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès and Charles-François
Lebrun. You’re welcome, obscure dead French guys!
Anyway, being
more pragmatic than the previous government, the Consulate, aka Napoleon, realized
that their navy could not hold out in a war against the British Royal Navy and
the growing power of the American Navy. It was time for the French to deal, and
deal they did. The Treaty of 1800 formally ended hostilities between France and
the US as well as formally dissolving the Treaty of Alliance with France that
Congress had already abandoned without France’s agreement in 1798. Private American
ship owners got all their ships back and France got guaranteed fishing rights
off the coast of Newfoundland and Gulf of St. Lawrence. By that time of the treaty Napoleon had consolidated his
power enough that two months later when a royalist assassination attempt was used
as an excuse to clean out the Assemblies of any political opponents. This left
the Senate, which was well on the way to becoming a rubber stamp for the First
Consul, as the supreme legislative power. Surely nothing bad that could keep
Europe in a constant state of war for the next fifteen years was going to
happen.
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