Greater News

Doctor Franklin had decided in October how he would take the news when Philadelphia fell, so as not to have to decide it in front of anybody.

All autumn the London papers had arrived with victories set in the cheerful type they kept for American affairs. Howe had beaten Washington at the Brandywine, handsomely, according to Lord Stormont, who saw that Paris heard the word. Franklin read it at breakfast and went on with his egg. He had ridden the twenty-five miles from that creek to Philadelphia often enough as postmaster. There was nothing on the road to stop an army.

So when the word came up from Nantes on the Wednesday night that a fast ship was in from Boston, thirty days out, with a gentleman riding post for Paris with letters for the commissioners, he knew what the letters would say, and went to bed and slept, because he was seventy-one and had learned that bad news kept perfectly well until the morning.

By noon on the Thursday they were all at Passy waiting for it. Mr Deane was there, who lived in the house. Mr Arthur Lee had come over from Chaillot, which he did not often do, since he believed that his colleagues talked about him when he was not in the room and preferred to be present for it. Dr Bancroft, the commission’s secretary, was there with his pens; and young Temple, Franklin’s grandson, who was seventeen and copied the letters; and M. de Chaumont, whose house it was; and M. de Beaumarchais, who had heard of the express by some means of his own, as he heard of everything, and had driven out from Paris to be present, in a coat the colour of a ripe plum, smelling of orange-flower water. Nobody said much. They stood about in the salon with the long windows looking down over the terraces of M. de Chaumont’s garden to the river and the roofs of Paris, and every so often somebody went to the window that gave on the courtyard, and came back.

It was a little after twelve when the chaise came in at the gate. It was splashed with mud to the top of the wheels, and the horses were done, and they all went out into the courtyard to meet it without their hats, in the cold, Franklin last, in his fur cap.

The man who got down was young, not thirty, and so stiff from the road that he had to hold the door to stand. He said that his name was Austin, that he was secretary to the Board of War of the Massachusetts Bay, and that he had the honour to bring letters from the Council.

Franklin did not wait for the letters. He said, “Sir, is Philadelphia taken?”

“Yes, sir.”

Franklin nodded. He had known it would be yes, and he had known what he would do, and he did it: he clasped his hands together in front of him and turned round to go back into the house, because he was an old man and did not choose to have his face looked at for the next minute or two by M. de Beaumarchais.

“But, sir,” said Mr Austin, behind him, “I have greater news than that. General Burgoyne and his whole army are prisoners of war.”

---

He remembered afterwards that he had stopped on the step with his back to them, and that for a moment he had not turned round, because he did not trust what he had heard and did not want to see on their faces that he had heard it wrong.

Then he turned round, and saw that he had not.

They all behaved exactly as they were. Mr Deane, who had been in Paris since the summer of seventy-six spending money the Congress did not have on muskets the Congress could not pay for, sat down on the mounting block with his face in his hands, and when he took them away his eyes were wet, and he said that it was like a sovereign cordial to the dying. Mr Lee said, “May I see the letters?” and held out his hand for them, and took them into the house to read in a corner, where he could be sure they said what Mr Austin said they did. Temple whooped like a boy, which he was, and then remembered that he was a secretary and blushed. Dr Bancroft asked Mr Austin very quietly for the numbers, and wrote them down. M. de Chaumont sent for wine. And M. de Beaumarchais embraced Mr Austin on both cheeks, and embraced Mr Deane, and very nearly embraced Franklin, who saw it coming and put out his hand; and then he was in his carriage and out of the gate at a gallop for Paris, to be the first man there with the news, which with M. de Beaumarchais was always partly patriotism and partly business. They heard the next day that he had driven so fast that the carriage had overturned on the road, and that he had put his arm out of joint and cut his face, and had arrived in Paris second. Dr Bancroft left for London the next morning, on some business of his own that would not wait.

Franklin sat on the bench by the door, in the cold, with his cap on, and listened to Mr Austin tell it.

Burgoyne had laid down his arms on the seventeenth of October. The army would march to Boston and be shipped home on a promise not to serve again in America. Franklin asked Mr Austin to say that part again. Then Austin told him that Arnold had been shot leading the last attack. In the leg. Some said he would lose it.

Near six thousand at the end, Mr Austin thought, of the seven that had come down from Canada. Franklin tried to see them, and could not, and found himself seeing instead the long table at the Cockpit at Whitehall, very nearly four years ago, and the Lords of the Council round it, laughing.

---

Paris took the news as Paris took everything, as a festival got up for its own amusement.

By the Friday it was in every café on the boulevards, and by Saturday they were drinking to it at the Opera. Mr Austin, who had never been out of New England, was carried from dinner to dinner and toasted by duchesses in a language he did not speak, and came back to Passy at two in the morning looking like a man who had been very kindly beaten. Ladies sent notes. Gentlemen sent their compliments, and a number of them sent proposals for supplying the Congress with things the Congress did not want at prices it could not pay. And everywhere Franklin went, somebody took his hand and condoled with him on the loss of Philadelphia, because it was the fashion that week to be tender about Philadelphia.

He bore it. At a dinner on the Saturday a gentleman of the court, very kind, with a great deal of powder, told him across the table how sorry everyone was that General Howe had taken his city.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Franklin. “Philadelphia has taken General Howe.”

It was all over Paris by Monday. He had known it would be when he said it, which was why he had said it in front of a duchess; and he did not mind that it was taken for a joke, because it was also true. Sir William had his city, and his winter quarters, and his balls and his assemblies among the loyal ladies of Chestnut Street, and his army was two hundred miles from where it had been wanted, and would stay there until the spring. Franklin had lived in Philadelphia, on and off, for fifty years. He knew what it did to people.

He did not tell the dinner guests that his own house was off Market Street, or that he did not know where Sally had taken her children. Austin could not tell him. On Friday night he wrote to her and left the letter unaddressed.

Temple came in with the papers that wanted his signature. He sorted them on the table, setting the longest nearest the candle, and Franklin watched his hands. The boy had his father’s hands.

“Have you written to him?” Franklin asked.

Temple looked up. He did not ask who.

“Not lately, sir.”

“You may, you know.”

“I know.” Temple squared the papers. “Shall I leave these for the morning?”

Franklin took the pen. William was in a prison in Connecticut, still loyal to the King who had made him governor. None of that answered the boy standing at the table.

“No,” he said. “We had better finish them.”

---

On the Saturday M. Gérard came out from Versailles.

He came in a plain carriage, as the first secretary of the Comte de Vergennes always came to Passy, so that anybody who saw him go in could suppose he was calling on M. de Chaumont; and he brought the minister’s compliments and his congratulations, very warmly expressed, on an event so happy for the Americans and so honourable to their arms. He stayed half an hour. He spoke of the weather and of the Opera. And at the door, putting on his gloves, he observed in a quite general way that if the gentlemen had any proposition to make to His Majesty’s government, it might be a good moment to renew it.

Franklin thanked him, and saw him to his carriage, and went back indoors and stood for a while at the fire.

The money and arms had come through Beaumarchais and doors without the King’s name on them. The treaty had not. Vergennes had waited a year for evidence that the Americans could last. Franklin put his bad foot nearer the fire. Six thousand prisoners should do.

On the Monday they sent Temple to Versailles with a paper.

The paper was short, signed by all three commissioners. Temple took it because nobody at the palace gates noticed a boy with a letter as they noticed Franklin’s carriage. He returned at dusk with the Count’s words, repeated until he had them by heart: an answer in two days, and then they would see how much France was disposed to serve America.

They heard on the Wednesday. On the Friday, the twelfth, they went to Versailles in a hired coach, the three of them, the most famous man in France in a hackney carriage that smelled of the last fare’s dinner, and got down not at the palace but at a house half a mile short of it, in a street of quiet houses, where the Comte de Vergennes was waiting for them in a small room with M. Gérard and a good fire.

---

Vergennes was a careful, round-faced man with the manners of a diplomat who had been ambassador at Constantinople and at Stockholm and had found that the less a face told, the more its owner was told. He congratulated them. He said the King his master had heard the news with the greatest satisfaction. And then he said something that Franklin had not expected, and that he thought about afterwards for some time: that what had struck him most in the dispatches was not Saratoga at all. It was that General Washington, beaten at the Brandywine and driven out of Philadelphia, had come back within the month and attacked General Howe’s army at Germantown, in a fog, and very nearly beaten it. To bring an army raised within the year to that, the Count said, promised everything.

Franklin thought that the Count was quite right, and that it was the most intelligent thing anybody in Europe had said about the war. He would have given a good deal to know whether Mr Washington knew it.

Then they came to business, and the business was Spain.

The King of France could do nothing without his cousin the King of Spain. The two crowns were bound together by the Family Compact, and His Majesty would not take a step of this consequence without consulting Madrid; a courier would set out that night; they might expect an answer in three weeks. Franklin bowed, and said he understood perfectly, and did. Spain had colonies of her own, a great many of them, and the King of Spain did not much care for the spectacle of colonies in arms, even other people’s, even against his enemy.

And at the end, as they rose to go, the Count said, almost as an afterthought, looking at Franklin, that there was another difficulty, which was not Spain’s.

“You are commissioners of the United Colonies, gentlemen.”

“We are, Monsieur le Comte.”

“Colonies are the possessions of a crown. You will not have forgotten that the Congress voted in July of last year on whether to be anything else, and decided not.” Vergennes said it without any emphasis at all. “I have the account of the debate. I believe you were present, Doctor. I believe you voted for it.”

“I did.”

“Then you will understand the difficulty better than I could explain it.” The Count smiled for the first time. “His Majesty has a great regard for the Americans. He can help them. He has helped them. But a king makes treaties with sovereigns, Doctor. He does not make them with another king’s subjects, however much he admires them, because there is a word for a king who does that, and the word is not ally.”

---

On the Monday after, a gentleman from London called on Mr Deane.

His name was Wentworth. He was an American himself, a New Hampshire man who had lived in London for years, made money in it and kept on good terms with everybody who might be useful, and he had come over on purpose, though he would not say for whom. He had no powers. He said so frankly. He was a private gentleman who had the honour of knowing some gentlemen in the ministry, and who believed, from what he heard from them, that the government at home was disposed to be very generous indeed, now, if only the commissioners would say what would content them. Anything, he gave Mr Deane to understand, within reason. Anything short of what the Congress had asked for in its paper of the Fourth of July.

“Short of a Parliament,” said Franklin, when Deane told him that evening.

“He did not say so. He was very careful not to say anything.”

“He did not need to say it. It is the one thing they have never offered us, and the one thing they never will.” Franklin was sitting by the fire with his bad foot on a stool, and his cap on, and a dish of tea, and he looked at the fire. “He will want to see me.”

“He asked whether you would.”

“Not alone. Not until it is too late to matter.” He drank his tea. “He came to the house in a carriage, I suppose.”

“He did.”

“Then Lord Stormont’s people saw him go in, and the police saw Lord Stormont’s people seeing him, and it will be in a report on the Comte de Vergennes’s table by tomorrow noon, and the Count will read it with his chocolate and understand that the King of England has begun to bid.” Franklin smiled at the fire. “It is the best thing that has happened to us since Mr Austin. You must give Mr Wentworth my compliments, the next time you see him, and an excellent dinner.”

He did not mind being watched. He had a rule about it, which he had written out last winter for a lady who had warned him that he was surrounded by spies: that he should be concerned in no affairs that he would blush to have made public, and do nothing but what spies might see and welcome; and that if he were sure his own valet was a spy, as very probably he was, he did not think he would discharge him for it, if he liked him otherwise. He liked everybody at Passy, more or less. He liked Bancroft, who was clever and obliging and knew London, and who went over there sometimes on business of his own. Mr Lee did not like Bancroft. But Mr Lee did not like anybody, and believed that all of them were betraying him, and was wrong, Franklin supposed, as often as anybody else.

---

M. Gérard came back on the Wednesday, the seventeenth, in the plain carriage, at eleven in the morning.

Mr Lee was at Chaillot, and nobody sent for him. M. Gérard had come, he said, with a message from the King, and the King’s messages did not wait for anybody. So it was Franklin and Deane who received it, in the salon with the windows on the garden, standing, with Temple at the door to keep it shut.

M. Gérard spoke in French, slowly and plainly, a French made for Americans, and Franklin watched his face through the lower glasses of his spectacles as he spoke, because he had found that he understood French a good deal better when he could see the mouth it came out of.

He said that His Majesty had considered the situation of the Americans with the greatest attention. He said that His Majesty had determined to make with them a treaty of amity and commerce, and with it, if they wished, an alliance; to support them in the war with every means in his power; and that he would not wait upon Madrid for ever to do it. He said that in this treaty no advantage would be taken of their present situation to obtain terms they would not otherwise think it convenient to grant, since His Majesty desired that the treaty, once made, should be durable, which it could only be if both parties found their interest in it. And he said, with a little bow, that His Majesty did not pretend to act wholly for their sakes. It was manifestly the interest of France that the power of England should be diminished by the separation of the colonies from it, and His Majesty would not insult their intelligence by pretending otherwise.

“By the separation,” said Franklin.

“Just so, Doctor.” M. Gérard looked at him. “That is the only condition, and it is not His Majesty’s condition, you understand, but the nature of the thing. His Majesty can sign a treaty with a sovereign power. He cannot sign one with the subjects of the King of Great Britain. Let the Congress declare the colonies free and independent States, as it very nearly did in July of last year, and empower you to sign for them; and His Majesty will sign with you the same day, and engage not to lay down his arms until their independence is assured. They for their part will engage never to give it up, in any peace they may make with England.” He paused. “It is a great deal, Doctor. I do not think any king has offered so much to any people in our time.”

“It is a great deal,” said Franklin. “And if the Congress will not?”

M. Gérard spread his hands a little.

“Then His Majesty will be very sorry,” he said, “and will consider his own interests, which are not, I think, so very different from yours.” He bowed. “The Count will be glad to see you all, at your convenience, to settle the articles. Gentlemen.”

---

When the carriage had gone Deane took Franklin by both hands, with something of M. de Beaumarchais’s manner.

“It is done,” he said. “Doctor, it is done. We have it.”

“We have it offered,” said Franklin.

“The Congress cannot refuse this. Not now. Not with Burgoyne taken and Philadelphia gone and the King of France holding the door open. They would be mad.”

“They refused it in July of seventy-six,” said Franklin, “when nobody was holding anything open at all.” He sat down. He found that he was tired, suddenly, as he had not been tired on the morning of Mr Austin. “I was there, Silas. I counted it. It was six to six, and Mr Rodney rode eighty miles through the rain to make it so, and the men who voted against it were not mad. I have known some of them for thirty years, and four of them sat at my own colony’s table. They had a paper they liked better.”

Deane was happy. Franklin let him be. The men who had refused independence were now living with the King’s army in their towns; he could not tell whether that would harden or soften them. Wentworth’s arrival gave them something else to wait for. He did not put any of that to Deane.

Mr Lee came at four. He had been told on the road. He stood in the middle of the salon with his hat in his hand and said, very white, that it would have been more decent if his colleagues had sent for him, since he was, he believed, a commissioner of the Congress on the same footing as themselves; and he said a good deal more, for some time, about the manner in which he had been treated since he came to France. Franklin let him say it. Then he gave him a chair and a glass of wine and told him exactly what M. Gérard had said, word for word, as near as he could, and watched Mr Lee forget, by degrees, that he had been insulted; because Mr Lee was a Virginian, and his brother had moved the motion in seventy-six, and he wanted this more than any of them.

“They will take it,” said Lee, at the end.

“Your brother will vote for it,” said Franklin. “And Mr Adams. And Mr Samuel Adams. I wish I knew who else.”

---

It was a Wednesday, and on Wednesdays he went to Madame Brillon’s.

He had been going since the spring, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, across the village to the big house among the trees where she lived with her husband, who was a great deal older than she was and very rich and did not mind. She played the harpsichord for him, music she had written herself, and gave him tea, and called him her papa, and scolded him; and afterwards they played at chess, which he loved and she played very well. He went that night because it was Wednesday, and because if he did not go Paris would want to know why.

She beat him in an hour. She said he had not been attending.

“I was thinking about kings, madame.”

“You are always thinking about kings. It is why you play so badly. You want to keep them all.” She took his bishop. “You must be ready to lose a piece, papa, if you want to win the game.”

“I have lost a great many,” said Franklin. “I am not sure I have ever known which game I was playing.”

He walked home afterwards through the village in the dark, with Temple carrying the lantern, and the frost on the road, and Paris lying below them along the river with its lights going out one by one. At the house he sent Temple to bed, and sat down at his table, and began the letter to the Congress.

He set down Gérard’s offer in Gérard’s words, with the condition plainly stated. His own opinion needed no rehearsal; he had given it at Pennsylvania’s table and been outvoted four to three. He left it out.

When it was done he read it over, and sanded it, and sat for a while in the cold with his cap on.

Then he got up, and took the candle, and went upstairs to the press where his clothes were kept, and found at the back of it, in a linen bag, the suit of spotted Manchester velvet. He had worn it at the Cockpit, on the day in January of seventy-four when Mr Wedderburn had stood up before the Lords of the Council and abused him for an hour, as a thief and a man without honour, while the Lords laughed and Franklin stood and said nothing at all. He had not worn it since. He had brought it to France in his trunk without quite knowing why, and had known why for about a fortnight.

He held it up to the candle. It had kept very well. Then he folded it again, carefully, and put it back in its bag, and put the bag back at the back of the press, and went to bed.