, but this did not keep him from making his elaborate programme
well understood. Himself a trader, he promised France vast profits from
the monopoly of the trade of America when independence should be secure.
He gave other promises not more easy of fulfillment. To Frenchmen
zealous for the ideals of liberty and seeking military careers in
America he promised freely commissions as colonels and even generals and
was the chief cause of that deluge of European officers which proved
to Washington so annoying. It was through Deane's activities that La
Fayette became a volunteer. Through him came too the proposal to send
to America the Comte de Broglie who should be greater than colonel or
general--a generalissimo, a dictator. He was to brush aside Washington,
to take command of the American armies, and by his prestige and skill to
secure France as an ally and win victory in the field. For such services
Broglie asked only despotic power while he served and for life a great
pension which would, he declared, not be one-hundredth part of his real
value. That Deane should have considered a scheme so fantastic reveals
the measure of his capacity, and by the end of 1776 Benjamin Franklin
was sent to Paris to bring his tried skill to bear upon the problem
of the alliance. With Deane and Franklin as a third member of the
commission was associated Arthur Lee who had vainly sought aid at the
courts of Spain and Prussia. France was, however, coy. The end of 1776
saw the colonial cause at a very low ebb, with Washington driven from
New York and about to be driven from Philadelphia. Defeat is not a good
argument for an alliance. France was willing to send arms to America and
willing to let American privateers use freely her ports. The ship which
carried Franklin to France soon busied herself as a privateer and reaped
for her crew a great harvest of prize money. In a single week of June,
1777, this ship captured a score of British merchantmen, of which more
than two thousand were taken by Americans during the war. France allowed
the American privateers to come and go as they liked, and gave England
smooth words, but no redress. There is little wonder that England
threatened to hang captured American sailors as pirates.

It was the capture of Burgoyne at Saratoga which brought decision to
France. That was the victory which Vergennes had demanded before he
would take open action. One British army had surrendered. Another was
in an untenable po