Arthur Lee, the Volunteer Diplomat
I
THE Declaration of Independence put a new face upon American negotiations with European powers. Until July 4, 1776, there had been no independent nation. All the time that Arthur Lee had been intriguing with Beaumarchais, his country was still nominally acknowledging British sovereignty; naturally colonies had no claim to diplomatic standing. In March 1776, Congress appointed Silas Deane business agent at Paris; but he was not entrusted with formal diplomatic powers.
The Declaration, however, — at least this was the American pretension, — transformed thirteen dependent provinces into so many independent sovereign states. Their relationship to foreign powers now became a matter of legitimate importance, and something in the nature of a diplomatic corps became essential. Certain leaders in Congress even then regarded American envoys as hardly desirable. What could such emissaries accomplish? To send ministers to the great capitals of Europe, with no assurance that they would be hospitably received, — gentlemen who would trudge wearily from door to door, only to have the doors more or less politely slammed in their faces, — such adventures, it was urged, were unnecessarily foolish and humiliating. ‘Militia diplomacy’ John Adams called such representation, evidently having in mind its amateur and volunteer character, as contrasted with the efficiency of a regular establishment. To Franklin also the proposal seemed revolting. ‘I have not yet changed the opinion I gave in Congress,’ Franklin wrote Arthur Lee on March 21, 1777, ‘ that a virgin state should preserve its virgin character and not go about suitering for alliances, but wait in decent dignity for the applications of others. I was overruled; perhaps for the best.’
At the time Franklin wrote this protest he was himself a ‘militia’ diplomat, head of the American Commission in Paris, and Arthur Lee was sojourning in Vitoria, Spain, engaged in one of the amateur excursions which the philosopher so disapproved. However, the ‘militia’ character of outposts at France and Spain did not utterly besmirch the ‘virgin’ purity of the new United States. Both of these nations had already made half-shamefaced approaches to America. At the time of Franklin’s letter their subsidies amounted to 4,000,000 livres; cannon, mortars, and powder were being stealthily removed at nighttime from His Most Christian Majesty’s arsenals, whence they were transported to French harbors and loaded on ships that presently cleared for parts unknown. Gifts like these might make the most maidenly country suspect that she was an object of interest to distinguished ‘suiters.’ The love affair embellished by these sumptuous gifts was an illicit one, yet it manifestly gave promise of something ultimately more regular and aboveboard. When, in October 1776, the American Commission to France was appointed, with Franklin as head and Silas Deane and Arthur Lee as his associates, Poor Richard evidently saw no reason for not accepting. At his first meeting with Arthur, however, he expressed surprise that his former deputy in the Massachusetts agency should surrender an excellent position in London and identify his lot with Revolutionists.
‘You are making a great sacrifice,’ said the prudent Benjamin. ‘Your employment here is only temporary. When this war is over you will be left without establishment. You will be proscribed in England.’
Lee thanked him for his consideration, but was determined to go on.
That the embassy to France rested on more substantial grounds than contemplated missions to other powers presently appeared, for the three men were cordially received by Vergennes, the Foreign Minister, assured the protection of France, and promised a new gift of 2,000,000 livres — which was duly handed over in installments. The stipulations surrounding this subsidy made it clear that Franco-American friendship still continued on a backalley basis. ‘Such was the King’s generosity,’ the Commissioners wrote Congress, ‘he exacted no condition or promise of repayment. He only required that we should not speak to anyone of our having received their aid.’ At the first meeting with Vergennes, Arthur especially was most cordially greeted. ‘Yes,’ said the Minister, with a smile, ‘I have heard much of Dr. Lee.’ Figaro’s correspondence of the preceding months was clearly still in mind.
II
And now the question arose of approaching that other power which had made friendly gestures in the direction of America. Besides being one of the Commissioners to France, Franklin found himself slightly embarrassed with similar credentials to Spain. The season was midwinter; Franklin was now seventy years old; his letters at this time are full of references to his increasing feebleness. Would not Lee undertake this journey in his stead? Arthur demurred. He had no authority from Congress to visit the Court of Madrid; certainly his usefulness in that capacity, doubtful at best, would be handicapped by this fact. Franklin insisted. He would write Congress, resigning the post to Madrid, and ask for Arthur Lee’s appointment in his stead; meanwhile, in view of the pressing circumstances, he thought the Commissioners had power to make this change.
‘I am really unable, through age,’ Franklin wrote Arthur, ‘to bear the fatigue and inconvenience of such a journey.’ Lee has left a written record of his experiences — still in manuscript form; this indicates on every page that Franklin’s apprehensions were well founded. In this journal one catches glimpses of the sturdy Virginian crossing the Pyrenees in his slow-going chaise, his servant following on horseback, traveling night and day, snatching such sleep as was possible in the jolting conveyance or in the shelter provided by that unprogressive country. There were no inns, even of rudimentary sort; now and then this primitive ambassador of a primitive nation found lodging in the second story of some barn, the ground floor having been preëmpted by horses, cows, hens, swine, rats, and other friendly companions. Arthur, always famous for his complaints, was not sparing of them on this occasion. The backwardness of the country and the dirtiness of the people made him groan. The noble Castilian, as a human being, he rated lower than the American Indian, and further than this dispraise could not go. ‘There is no accommodation for travelers,’ he wrote, ‘or the least attention shown them but by the fleas and other vermin who pay their compliments in troops.’ The natives, however, ‘are alert enough at demanding your money for their dirt and at picking and stealing.’
When the American reached Burgos, halfway to Madrid, another shock awaited him. The Spanish Ambassador in Paris had given him a passport to the Spanish capital, and letters of introduction to important officials there. But here was an impassioned plea from the Marquis Grimaldi not to advance beyond Burgos; that gentleman was himself on his way to the historic city and the negotiations must wait his arrival. Arthur did not appreciate the fact at the moment, but his peregrinations had caused little less than a panic in the Spanish Court. Spain was at war with Portugal over an obscure boundary dispute in La Plata, South America; England was Portugal’s historic ally, and was displaying much interest in this dispute; that she might take a hand in the fray and send her mighty navy crashing on Spanish ports was a momentary fear in Madrid. The presence of Arthur Lee in the capital would probably give British statesmen the excuse for which they seemed to be searching.
Besides, the Declaration of Independence, which had increased French enthusiasm for the American cause, had had the contrary effect in Spain. Spanish statesmen feared — and developments amply justified their suspicions — that an independent Republic in North America would in due course be followed by similar political sovereignties in South America, with the result that the great Spanish Empire would materially shrink. Spain cared nothing for John Locke and ’the state of nature’; the minister who sent this peremptory message to the bland Virginian innocently approaching his capital was that same Grimaldi who had written the letter to Vergennes envisaging in the War of Independence a kind of cockfight, in which, he said, it was to be hoped that both contestants would destroy each other. He was willing to give money to the Americans for this purpose, but for no other.
III
There was nothing of this in Grimaldi’s manner when the two men met at Burgos. His greetings were marked by Latin warmth and sympathy. The whole Spanish Court was afire with zeal for the noble Americans! Underneath all this fervor, however, another emotion was distinctly perceptible — a desperate wish that the representative of Congress would speedily remove himself from Spanish soil. There were personal reasons involved, for Grimaldi’s tenure of office was precarious; he had recently been elevated from marquis to duke, a promotion that usually heralded a statesman’s sequestration to private life; in fact, soon after this meeting with Arthur Lee, Grimaldi did retire, for good, to Naples, and Arthur’s appearance at Madrid would probably have resulted in bringing about this dismissal even earlier.
As these considerations seeped into the American’s consciousness, he decided to turn them to diplomatic advantage. The trip to Madrid was not really essential, from the revolutionary point of view. Neither did Lee and his coworkers especially care at this time for recognition and a treaty with Spain. But this land that impressed the Potomac grandee so unfavorably could still be useful to the cause. It had large supplies of that powder and those muskets which keep constantly coming to the front as the prime necessities of transatlantic revolution. It even had considerable supplies of cash; at this very moment one of those flotas that annually brought tribute from South America was crossing the ocean with treasure to the extent of $40,000,000.
All these things the ragged Continentals sorely needed. They were far more important in American eyes than the international courtesies implied in recognition. True enough, when Grimaldi asked Señor Lee in what way Spain could best assist the Americans, there came murmurs of ‘recognition,’ but when the Duke replied that ‘this was not the moment’ the talk cheerfully passed to more tangible forms of friendship. ‘ You should consider in what way we can help without committing ourselves,’ suggested Grimaldi.
And now another of those experts in illicit traffic who contributed so largely to American success steps on the scene, for Grimaldi had brought with him a merchant of Bilbao, son of the great mercantile house of Gardoqui, a firm already well known in Great Britain and America and showing great partiality for America. Gardoqui, indeed, fulfilled a rôle for Spain not dissimilar to that which Beaumarchais performed for France. He was a very different character, however, for he was a solid, matter-of-fact man of business; a gentleman, greatly admired by Americans, who afterward served Spain as minister to the finally recognized United States.
The first time Gardoqui came into association with the nation with which his career was to be so pleasantly identified was at this meeting of Grimaldi and Lee in March 1777. He came, at the instructions of the Catholic King, to discuss with Arthur the details of that aid which Charles III was only too anxious to give. At Grimaldi’s request, Lee furnished Gardoqui with a list of the material then most needed. It was a queer assortment: ‘large artillery, large anchors, coarse linens and cloths, white and yellow metal buttons, needles and sewing thread, stockings, shoes and hats, tent cloth, sail cloth and cordage, gun locks, gunpowder muskets, bayonets, tin, copper, lead and “white iron.”’ Both Grimaldi and Gardoqui promised Lee that shiploads of these articles would be presently embarked from Bilbao. Besides there were three thousand tons of powder at New Orleans; the Americans could have this any time they sent for it. At Havana also large supplies of war materials were at the disposition of Congress.
Arthur then suggested a new subject. The United States was building ships of war in Holland, for preying upon British commerce. A credit in Amsterdam to pay for these vessels would be most acceptable. America was also obtaining loans in Europe — or at least she hoped to do so; a credit to assist in meeting interest payments would lubricate these negotiations.
At this Grimaldi hesitated; it was a new idea; he would go back to Madrid and consult the king, and meet Señor Lee at Vitoria on the twelfth of March. He exacted only one promise: Arthur must not go to Madrid. British spies were everywhere; Arthur’s presence would at once be reported to London and such a step would infuriate England and probably ruin the whole plot.
IV
So Arthur Lee philosophically spent a few quiet days at Burgos whiling away his time writing reports of his success to the Secret Committee and a memorial to the Spanish king. The latter Arthur composed in Spanish; it set forth the American situation and the reasons why Spain should accede to the Republican cause. It is quite reminiscent of the letters which Beaumarchais had written, in coöperation with Arthur, to Vergennes and Louis XVI. Those same threatening arguments were again pressed into service. Spain also had great sugar islands in the West Indies — Cuba, San Domingo, Porto Rico, and many smaller possessions. These possessions gave her reasons in plenty for wishing the Americans well. If England subdued the colonies, she would at once pounce on the Pearl of the Antilles; if she should lose her American empire, the Spanish West Indies would be taken as ‘compensation.’ Should America and Britain be reunited, all Europe could not resist them. ‘America,’Arthur Lee admonished the king, ‘has been felt like Hercules in his cradle. Great Britain, knit again to such growing strength, would reign the irresistible though hated arbiter of Europe. This, then, is the moment in which Spain and France may clip her wings and pinion her forever.‘
No record exists of the emotion of His Catholic Majesty on reading this pronunciamento, but Grimaldi, returning to Vitoria for the promised rendezvous, brought royal assurances that all Lee’s proposals — except recognition of independence — would be acceded to. Gardoqui would, from time to time, ship war materials from Bilbao to a colonial destination. The large supplies at New Orleans and Havana could now be regarded as American property. Spanish ports would be opened for the reception and sale of American prizes. A credit would be established in Amsterdam for American use.
‘What amount will that credit be?’ asked the practical Lee.
This point had not been settled, but, said Grimaldi, it would be paid in installments.
Another comforting fact was adduced by the Minister. No payment for these advances was expected; they were to be regarded as free gifts. This, like a similar stipulation made by France, looks like philanthropy, but it was also statecraft. Both nations wished surreptitiously to aid America in her excellent work of harassing England, but desired no contracts and no agreements in return. Lending money and munitions on promise of reimbursement would amount almost to the recognition of the insurgents as a sister nation; the deal might easily rise to plague them; after the aid was once extended, the Bourbon princes wished to have the whole thing sink into forgetfulness. They were simply willing to gamble small sums and count them among their war expenditures against the ancestral foe.
Grimaldi exacted only one favor from Arthur: he must immediately get out of Spain. And here was another case where Arthur Lee’s ‘suspicious’ nature proved an asset to his country. All these promises seemed almost too good to be true; perhaps they were only promises, to be forgotten as soon as he had transported himself across the Pyrenees! So Arthur quietly sat himself down in Vitoria, determined not to leave until Grimaldi’s pleasant gifts had made fair progress towards fulfillment, evidently reasoning that his mere presence on Spanish soil would make the traditionally procrastinating Spaniard get into action.
And for once the Castilian temperament did move expeditiously. That caravan of war materials which proceeded steadily, in the next two years, from Bilbao to American battlefields now set in. And presently Arthur Lee, satisfied that the end had been gained, ascended his creaky chaise, once more braved the mud of Pyrenean roads, and in early April again reached Paris. Soon after arrival, his fondest wishes were realized. The first cash subsidy, of 400,000 livres, came to the American Commission. How personal the transaction had been appeared from the fact that these bills were made payable to Arthur Lee.
V
Arthur’s next adventure in ‘militia’ diplomacy has engaged the pen of Thomas Carlyle; it forms the subject of a most inaccurate chapter in his History of Frederick the Great. This expedition had certain qualities of confusion and bleak humor which naturally appealed to that sardonic genius.
That the Americans should approach the Hohenzollern was inevitable. Frederick the Great hated England and its king, and any injury they might suffer, from any source, only afforded him gleeful satisfaction. With rebels he had no more sympathy than had the courts of France and Spain, but, like them, he saw that rebels whose activities weakened the enemy could serve the royal purpose. The position of Frederick, however, was quite different from that of his Bourbon confreres. Prussia was a military, not a naval power; she had no colonies in the West Indies or elsewhere, not much of a mercantile marine, and very little commerce. Prussia therefore was not greatly interested from a material point of view in the outcome of the struggle. The humiliation of Great Britain, on general grounds, would be welcomed, but advantages in trade and possessions, which France and Spain might anticipate, held forth little promise to the Prussian Court. Therefore to win Prussia to the American side and obtain from Berlin the money and supplies that had been wangled out of the Bourbons was about the most discouraging mission that ‘militia’ diplomacy had yet presented to its devotee.
Arthur Lee left Paris on May 15, traveling in an English post chaise, painted a deep green, embellished with his initials in cipher — the nearest approach to diplomatic insignia that it was safe to use. With him, as companion and secretary, wont Stephen Sayre, an entertaining character who years before had been William Lee’s partner in London. As Sayre and Arthur wheeled out of Paris that May morning in 1777, Sayre told his friend that, after Berlin, he intended to assail Petersburg to try his powers on Empress Catherine. Her interest in handsome men, said Sayre, was well known, and not unlikely she might satisfy her curiosity in an American cavalier. Arthur’s humor was not so gay. The route to Berlin was uncomfortable and circuitous. So many of the German states were in alliance with Great Britain, selling their peasants to King George as soldiers in America, that this American embassy was forced to make the trip in most roundabout fashion. Their carriage, drawn by two horses, went first to Strassburg, then to Munich, then to Vienna, and finally, by way of Prague and Dresden, to Berlin.
The roads were almost as bad as those on the Spanish expedition; and the reception from official quarters, while polite, was more disheartening. Baron von Schulenburg, Frederick’s chief minister, was courtesy itself; he promptly returned Arthur’s call, invited him to dinner, and offered the hospitality of Berlin and its protection. The king had not the slightest objection to the envoys’ presence in Berlin— unofficially — and any purchases they might make from German merchants, even for war purposes, would not be interfered with. But His Majesty could not receive the envoys, for that would be an unfriendly act toward Great Britain, a nation with which he was on terms of amity; neither could he make loans or supply munitions — for the same reason. Lee and Sayre were forced to spend their time visiting manufacturers, inquiring about tent cloth and linen, — closely followed by English spies, — when an event suddenly took place which has made this trip one of the most famous on the lighter side of diplomatic history.
The English Minister at the Court of Frederick the Great was a scion of the House of Minto — Mr. Hugh Elliot, then twenty-five years old, an age that naturally inspired adventurous deeds. Mr. Elliot’s legation was not far from Baron Schulenburg’s house; every time Arthur Lee’s chariot drew up before the mansion His Excellency had a perfect view; and naturally these evidences of friendly association of Frederick’s chief minister with the arch American rebel proved exasperating. To learn what took place in confabulations of this sort was one of the things for which Elliot had been sent to Berlin, and presently the less delectable side of the diplomatic trade began to function.
A German servant in the British Legation was taken into Elliot’s confidence; he, in turn, made friends with several retainers in the Hotel Corzica, where Arthur lodged, ‘gaining’ (that is, bribing) them. How did the American emissaries pass their time? Lee, it was reported, spent many hours, especially in the evening, with his pen; in particular he was accustomed to make nightly entries in a journal, evidently an abstract of his day’s proceedings — the same Journal which forms the basis of our knowledge of his voyagings in Spain and Germany. ’I would give two thousand ducats,’ exclaimed Elliot, in the hearing of servants, ‘for that journal!’ Presently he and a German lackey completed plans.
The diary was kept in a portefeuille, with other papers, in a locked bureau. Arthur’s room was also kept constantly locked, but the making of duplicate keys was a simple matter. On the afternoon of June 26, Elliot’s trusty spies reported that both Mr. Lee and Mr. Sayre had left for the country to dine with friends; on such expeditions they usually returned about eight in the evening. Mr. Elliot’s German servant immediately made his way to the back of Arthur’s hotel, climbed up to the window, entered the room, unlocked the bureau, seized the portfolio, and rushed with it to the British Legation. It was four o’clock: the Minister was entertaining several guests, all of high rank, at dinner — such was the dinner hour in those days; all these gentlemen instantaneously dropped their knives and forks, seized goose quills and paper, and began furiously copying the American’s documents.
While these writing implements, in the hands of members of the British aristocracy, were transcribing the stolen matter, the British Minister blandly sauntered over to Arthur’s hotel on the pretext of visiting a friend. About eight o’clock Arthur Lee and Stephen Sayre came in. Mr. Elliot greeted them pleasantly, and in a few moments all four men were engaged in conversation. The British Minister was delighted, he said, to meet travelers who spoke his language; it was a rare experience; the talk, ingeniously prolonged, lasted for two hours — thereby giving the lightning-like scribes, a short distance away, just that much more time for their labors.
At ten Arthur rose; he must be excused, he said, for he had some writing to do (that is, he must make the customary entry in his Journal). A minute or two afterward, sounds of tumult were heard from the general direction of the Virginian’s room. In the hubbub such words as ‘Thieves! Robbers! Police!’ struck the Englishman’s ear. In a few moments Arthur himself appeared, in a high state of mental disorder, and, seizing the landlord, rushed from the hotel, shouting that his papers had been stolen and that he was to lay an information before the authorities.
Arthur’s disappearance gave Elliot another opportunity; the Minister hurried to his own mansion, grabbed the papers from the noble scribblers, — whose work was practically finished, — disguised himself (the statement is made on the authority of an official British report), and hastened back to Lee’s hotel. Soon the servants gathered in the public room heard a knock, and a smothered voice through the loophole: ‘ Here are the papers of your American.’ The landlady went to the door and presently returned with the portefeuille in her hands. ‘No one was there,’ she said, ‘but I found these on the step.’ The story was not accurate, for the landlady was in the plot, having been ‘gained.’ In reality, in opening the door, she had beer, confronted by the ‘disguised’ British Minister, who handed her the parcel and sprinted home.
When Arthur and Sayre returned, with officers of police, his precious papers were surrendered. Copies, however, were soon on their way to the Intelligence Office in London. All of these documents repose at the present time among the manuscripts of the Public Record Office.
VI
Many of the most hardened diplomats of the day — a day not especially squeamish in method — thought this proceeding a little beneath the dignity of the British Empire. Even that great practitioner of realistic statecraft, Frederick the Great, was disgusted. In a letter to the Prussian Minister at London, the king relates the episode, with the following comment: ‘What a worthy pupil of Bute! What an incomparable man is your goddam Elliot! In truth Englishmen should blush with shame for sending such ministers to foreign courts.’ But Elliot fared better with his own royal master. He was reprimanded, of course, for ‘excessive zeal,’ but a few months following this letter came another from Lord Suffolk, Colonial Secretary, conveying his congratulations, and enclosing a draft from the king of £1000, as a reward.
‘This astonishing mass of papers,’ writes Carlyle, relating the incident, ‘is still extant in England; — the outside of them I have seen, by no means the inside, had I wished it; — but am able to say, from other sources, which are open to all the world, that seldom had a supreme council board procured for itself, by improper or proper ways, a discovery of less value.’ This is only one of many inaccuracies in Carlyle’s account. The present generation can see the inside as well as the outside of the packages. They contain information that must have been of great importance to the British Government. Arthur’s Journal itself is a mine of secrets. It tells all about the reception of the American Commissioners by Vergennes, of the French promises of supplies and of the 2,000,000 livres additional subsidy, of Arthur’s negotiations with Grimaldi in Spain, of the Spanish plans and aid, and many matters of similar consequence. That British spies in Paris had reported many of these proceedings is true, but Arthur Lee’s portfolio must have been invaluable as corroborative evidence and as giving precisely the light the British service needed as to the reliability of its agents. Indeed, as one surveys this packet, the tip of £1000 which Hugh Elliot received from his royal master seems an inadequate reward.
Only one event was necessary to crown this tragi-comedy. Many years afterward, when the United States had become a free nation and was on terms of amity with Great Britain, the post of Minister to Washington fell vacant. Hugh Elliot, now in mature years and a distinguished member of the British corps, was suggested. However, Washington’s memory was still active, and word was conveyed to London that Mr. Elliot was not acceptable.