uests
in the West Indies, Spain by regaining Gibraltar, Minorca, and Jamaica.
In 1775 an agent of the French court went over to America with offers of
help, and early in 1776 the Count de Vergennes, foreign minister of
Louis XVI., proposed as a system of policy that the Bourbon kings should
give secret aid to the Americans and strengthen their own forces,
taking care, however, to persuade England that their intentions were
pacific. About the same time congress sent Deane to France as a secret
agent.

In accordance with the proposal of Vergennes the French and Spanish
courts provided money for the Americans; and Beaumarchais, the
dramatist, who masqueraded as a firm of merchants in order to conceal
the participation of his government, spent it in purchasing military
stores for them. The young Marquis de Lafayette and other Frenchmen
entered their army. So too did the Poles, Kosciusko and Pulaski, and the
Germans, Kalb and Steuben. In December Franklin went over to Paris. The
philosophic movement was then at its height in France. The _philosophes_
desired freedom of thought in religion, constitutional liberty, and the
abolition of privilege of all kinds. They speculated as to the origins
of political and social institutions and the laws of human progress. The
works of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu were eagerly studied by the
nobles and fine ladies of the court with whom _philosophisme_ was
fashionable. America they regarded as a land of freedom and primitive
simplicity; and they hailed the crude assertions of the Declaration of
Independence, issued by a body largely composed of slave-owners, that
all men are created equal and with an inalienable right to liberty, as
bringing their theories within the range of practical politics. Franklin
was received with ludicrous adulation as an embodiment of republican
virtue and philosophic thought. He busied himself in stirring up
hostility to England. Another American envoy sought help from Prussia.
Frederick showed his hatred of England by forbidding some German troops
which George had hired to pass through his dominions; but his quarrel
with Austria with reference to the Bavarian succession rendered him
unwilling to provoke Great Britain: he had no sympathy with the
Americans and would not receive their envoy.

[Sidenote: _THE INTERVENTION OF FRANCE._]

Besides the stores sent by Beaumarchais and 1,000 livres in cash, France
helped the Americans by neglecting to prevent t