The French Role in the American Revolution

When Americans think about the War for Independence, many of us picture ragged militiamen, George Washington at Valley Forge, and the “Spirit of ’76.” What often gets left out is the role our allies played, particularly France. Without French involvement, the United States might never have become the United States at all.

In some ways, The Chevalier and His Unlikely Lady started out as a homage to the French, and one man in particular—a young French aristocrat named Gilbert du Motier, better known as the Marquis de Lafayette. As readers know, the marquis plays a significant role in the novel. In this post, I thought I’d provide a bird’s-eye view of French involvement and some about the marquis’ particular role.

The Marquis de Lafayette, unknown photographer, from Flickr’s The Commons via the George Eastman Museum, no known copyright restrictions, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Marquis_de_Lafayette.jpg.

Let’s Start with the Why

France did not back the American rebels out of pure idealism. Animosity between the French and the English stretched back centuries, at least to the Norman Conquest of 1066. By the 1700s, the two powers were locked in a long-standing rivalry for dominance in Europe and overseas. When the colonies declared independence, the French Crown was still smarting from its defeat in the Seven Years’ War and the loss of its North American empire, so helping Britain’s rebellious colonies offered a chance both to weaken a traditional enemy and to exact a measure of revenge.

At the same time, some French officials and intellectuals were genuinely drawn to the colonists’ talk of liberty and self-government, seeing in the American struggle a living example of Enlightenment ideals. In little more than a decade, France would launch its own revolution under the banner of liberté, égalité, fraternité—liberty, equality, and fraternity—though that experiment would take a far bloodier and more chaotic turn. That, however, is a story for another day.

The Timeline

I took a bit of poetic license with the timeline in The Chevalier and His Unlikely Lady, implying that France had not yet begun sponsoring the war. In the story, the Chevalier de Mont Trignon is sent to gauge the Americans’ resolve and decide whether their cause is worth funding.

Reports like his certainly existed, but by the autumn of 1777—the setting for my story—France was already secretly backing the revolution. Open support, however, risked serious trouble at home and abroad. To put the plotline in context, here’s a high-level look at the timeline:

1775–1776: Secret Aid Begins—French officials quietly funnel guns, powder, and money to the colonies through dummy companies and Spanish or Dutch intermediaries. Engineers and military specialists slip across the Atlantic as “volunteers,” bringing expertise the Americans sorely lack.

1776: Diplomacy in Paris—Benjamin Franklin and other American commissioners arrive in France, cultivating sympathy at court and in salons, while French foreign minister Vergennes balances enthusiasm for the American cause against fear of provoking Britain too soon.

April 1777: Lafayette Defies the French King—Against orders from Louis XVI, a nineteen-year-old Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, buys his own ship and sails for America, determined to fight for the “liberty of a new world.” This is the ship the hero of my story, the Chevalier de Mont Trignon, took to America.

Summer–Fall 1777: Lafayette Joins the War—Lafayette reaches Philadelphia, offers to serve without pay, and is commissioned a major general in the Continental Army on July 31, 1777. That autumn he fights at the Battle of Brandywine, where he is wounded while helping rally retreating American troops—already proving his worth to Washington and his officers. Both of these incidents are mentioned in the book.

Washington and Lafayette at the Battle of Brandywine, By John Vanderlyn - https://collections.gilcrease.org/object/011018, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=167404976

October 1777: Saratoga Changes Everything—American victory over Burgoyne’s army at Saratoga convinces France that the colonies can actually win, making it safer for France to make their alliance public. In one of the last scenes in my story that takes place on American soil, Mont Trignon is informed of Burgoyne’s defeat. While the story of The Chevalier and His Unlikely Lady ends a few weeks later, the American Revolution is far from over.

February 1778: The Franco-American Alliance—France and the United States sign the Treaty of Alliance and a commercial treaty, turning a colonial rebellion into an international war. French aid now includes not only supplies but also regular troops and naval squadrons. Culturally very different from the Americans, coordination with the French could be challenging at times—but of course, I’m gathering that from American sources.

1778–1780: War Goes Global—French fleets challenge British control of the Atlantic, Caribbean, and even European waters, forcing Britain to spread its navy thin and divert troops to defend its empire. French money, uniforms, weapons, and engineers flow steadily to the Continental Army.

1780: Rochambeau’s Army Arrives—Some 6,000 French soldiers under General Rochambeau land in Rhode Island, beginning the close cooperation that will culminate at Yorktown.

1781: Yorktown and Victory—A French fleet under Admiral de Grasse controls the Chesapeake, while Washington and Rochambeau’s combined forces trap Cornwallis at Yorktown. French ships, French soldiers, and French gold all converge to make the decisive victory possible.

1783: Peace and Aftermath—The war formally ends with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, leaving the United States independent and France deeply in debt—a burden that will help push France toward its own revolution a few years later.

The Cost of an Alliance

Here’s a sobering thought to end with: between 1778 and 1782, France committed roughly 63 warships, 22,000 sailors, and 12,000 soldiers to the war effort, suffering heavy casualties for a cause that was not their own.[1] Nearly one in ten of the men who fought and died for the American cause were French.[2]

A Hero of Two Worlds

Ultimately, Lafayette survived both the American and French Revolutions, dying in 1834 at the respectable age of 76. It could easily have gone the other way—during the French Revolution, his moderate stance and support for the constitutional monarchy made him suspect to radicals. When he tried to flee France, he was arrested and spent years imprisoned by Austria at Olmütz (modern Olomouc in the Czech Republic). To my mind, there’s no other way to understand this, but that Lafayette narrowly missed the guillotine.

American and French allies lobbied for his release. Pressure from sympathizers (including American envoys) helped keep his case alive until he was finally freed in 1797 by Emperor Francis II, under the terms of the Campo Formio treaty negotiated by Napoleon.

Every year on the Fourth of July, the American flag that flies over Lafayette’s grave in Paris is ceremonially replaced, with French and American officials and heritage groups gathering to mark the transatlantic bond he helped forge. The tradition echoes the famous 1917 visit when American officers came to his grave, raised the flag, and declared, “Lafayette, we are here,” a promise that the country he’d once championed had finally crossed the ocean to aid France in her own time of need.

[1] How Did the French Alliance Help Win American Independence? Jamestown‑Yorktown Foundation.

[2] Tom Shachtman, How the French Saved America: Soldiers, Sailors, Diplomats, Louis XVI, and the Success of a Revolution (author talk, Newberry Library, Chicago, October 16, 2017).