The Rayneval and Vaughan Missions to England Editorial Note
The Rayneval and Vaughan Missions to England
On 10 August the Comte de Grasse, who as a paroled prisoner had paid a courtesy call upon Shelburne,1 returned to France with word that the British minister was prepared to make concessions to secure peace. Anxious to test Shelburne’s sincerity and, if possible, to get peace negotiations moving, Vergennes sent Rayneval incognito to England to conduct exploratory talks with him.2 Rayneval left on 7 September and on the 13th entered upon a week’s discussions with Shelburne either at the latter’s country estate, Bowood Park in Wiltshire, or in London.
The primary purpose of the mission was to pave the way for an understanding on issues that had to be addressed in a peace settlement between France and Spain on the one side and Great Britain on the other: especially fishing rights, possessions and commerce in the East and West Indies, and Gibraltar. The formal written instruction which Vergennes handed to Rayneval scrupulously omitted the United States from the agenda. That did not, however, stop Rayneval from discussing issues related to the United States, and, since he reported his conversations to Vergennes, it is clear that he had been given authority to do so.
In the initial conference Rayneval reviewed with Shelburne the propositions set down by de Grasse, the first of which was American independence. Jay was not the only one to want clarification of Britain’s intentions in this regard. The Shelburne ministry had retreated from its predecessor’s willingness to grant independence “in the first instance.” The commission describing Oswald’s powers issued on 25 July had empowered him only to negotiate a peace or truce with certain colonies in North America. However, Rayneval reported unequivocally: “This article is settled”; independence “will be without any restrictions.”3
The focus of the discussion then shifted to France’s concerns about territorial aspects of a prospective peace settlement, including the fisheries. Rayneval let it be known that he thought that “Each nation would fish exclusively in its assigned territory” in Newfoundland. He expressed the hope that the British would not support American claims for fishing rights, and assured Shelburne that the king would never support “unfair demands.”4 Summing up the first day’s talks, Shelburne informed the king that, “the point of independence once settled,” Rayneval appeared “rather Jealous than partial to America upon other points, as well as that of the Fishery.”5
Five days later, on 18 September, the two men revisited the topic of American independence. Shelburne admitted that he had always been opposed to it, “that it was the hardest pill to digest, but that . . . it was necessary to swallow it” in order to achieve a “speedy and lasting peace.” Any lingering concerns France might have that Britain would seek to retain the United States within its orbit by refusing to grant complete and total independence, were, thus, fully satisfied.6
Shelburne acknowledged that “independence alone” would not satisfy the French and offered assurances that the King of England would do them “justice” and that he himself was “very anxious” to have Rayneval inform Vergennes of this so that “a satisfactory resolution” could be arranged. In return, Rayneval indicated that France was not eager to see a robust new American nation emerge. When American boundary claims were discussed he gave Shelburne to understand that “Independence once granted,” the French were disposed “to assist us as to the Boundarys no matter what motives they may have.”7 In the event that a preliminary agreement was reached, he assured Shelburne that there were “ways to keep everything a secret in order to foil the curious,” that the Americans and the Dutch could be led astray, “principally by keeping them in ignorance of the state of the negotiations between France and Spain [on the one side] and England [on the other].”8
Although the French criticized Jay for the secrecy in which he and his colleagues conducted negotiations from this time forward until the preliminaries were concluded, the record of the clandestine talks of Rayneval and Shelburne reveal that America’s ally pursued similar tactics when national interests, and those of her Spanish ally, so dictated.
The day before he left Paris, as he presented his Memoir on Boundaries between Spain and the United States to Jay, Rayneval mentioned that he would be away for a brief spell. Several days later, on 9 September, Matthew Ridley informed Jay that England was Rayneval’s destination. Jay’s suspicions were heightened the next day when the British presented him a copy of an intercepted dispatch from Barbé-Marbois to Vergennes. In it, Barbé-Marbois criticized the American position on the fisheries and described Congress’s instructions to its peace commissioners as making “the King master of the treaty of peace, excepting independence or treaties of alliance.”9
Jay’s unsatisfactory discussions with Vergennes, Rayneval, and Aranda and the developments described above fed his suspicions that some covert move disadvantageous to the United States might be under way. Acting swiftly on his own, he sent Benjamin Vaughan to England to neutralize any attempts Rayneval might make either to undermine his efforts to obtain recognition of independence as a precondition of treaty negotiations or to limit British concessions to the United States. He instructed Vaughan to do all in his power to convince Shelburne that negotiations would not proceed unless the American demand for prior recognition of independence was met.10
During the summer Vaughan had had long talks with both Franklin and Jay about how the differences between the Americans and the mother country might be reconciled. In a report to Shelburne he described a significant talk with Jay held around the middle of August. Jay, he said, had asked “Why will not our court cut the cord that ties us to France; and why can they suppose we can be quiet (while the very end of the treaty is independence) till independence is guaranteed?” “Little,” he had said, “was to be got by bargaining with America, . . . much would be done by conceding the one point to her, and that the best way for England’s to obtain a good bargain with France was by making a good agreement with America.” Failure to guarantee independence, he asserted, would mean an “end to all confidence; and he would rather the war should go on to his grandsons than independence be given up.”11
Vaughan left for London on the evening of 11 September, only a few hours after the courier carrying Oswald’s letters of 10 and 11 September to Townshend and Shelburne that reported Jay’s insistence on prior recognition of American independence. Vaughan’s own letter to Shelburne of the 11th vigorously seconded Jay’s views on the need for a new commission to Oswald designed along lines suggested in the editorial note “John Jay Proposes Altering Oswald’s Commission”.12
1. See de Grasse to Shelburne, 10 Aug. 1782, with enclosure, ALS, MiU-C: Shelburne 71; preliminary project between Shelburne and de Grasse, 17 Aug. 1782, D, ibid., on the tentative terms to be accorded the belligerents, including entire and absolute independence of the U.S. For a variant version with some deletions indicated, see D, FrPMAE: CP-A, 538: 54–55. Still another set includes Spanish and French reactions to the British offer; D, FrPMAE: CP-A, 538: 100–110. In letters of 17 and 18 Aug. 1782, de Grasse reported the results of his meeting to Vergennes. ALS, ibid., 56, 58. He also notified Shelburne that it would be necessary to secure Spanish agreement. De Grasse to Shelburne, 18 Aug. 1782, ALS, MiU-C: Shelburne 71. For Vergennes’s reaction, see Vergennes to Montmorin, 18 Aug. 1782, LbkC, FrPMAE: CP-E, 608: 210–11; and , 319–20.
2. Vergennes to Rayneval, 6 Sept. 1782, ALS, and draft letter of introduction to Shelburne and Grantham, 8 Sept., FrPMAE: CP-A, 538: 117–18, 124.
3. , 327–29; , 1: 392, 471–72. In a letter of 27 July, Shelburne assured Oswald that, while he was reluctant to concede American independence, he wanted this to be done “decidedly” so as to avoid enmity. , 1: 480. Both JJ and BF reported French concerns about Shelburne’s sincerity. Rayneval’s mission satisfied Vergennes that Shelburne was committed to the peace process. See “The Rayneval and Vaughan Missions to England” (editorial note) on pp. 95–99; JJ to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 17 Nov., below; and , 38: 96–98, 223. Rayneval’s reports on his conferences with Shelburne are in FrPMAE: CP-A, 538: 146–206, passim. Except for the conferences on 15 and 16 Sept., they were published by Doniol. See his “Conference de M. De Rayneval avec les Ministres Anglais,” Revue d’Histoire Diplomatique, 6, no. 1 (Paris, 1892): 62–89.
4. Shelburne was undoubtedly aware of French opposition to America’s fishery claims. On 29 Aug. Fitzherbert reported to Grantham: “He [Rayneval] signified to me in pretty plain terms that nothing could be farther from the wishes of this court than that the said claim be admitted.” See Fitzherbert to Grantham, 29 Aug. 1782, UkLPR: FO, 27/ 3; and below at note 9.
5. Sir John Fortescue, ed., The Correspondence of King George the Third from 1760 to December 1783 (6 vols.; London, 1927–28), 6: 125; , 32–31.
6. , 329. For Britain’s earlier offer to concede American independence to France as an element in the peace settlement, see “The Status of the Peacemaking on John Jay’s Arrival in Paris” (editorial note) on p. 4. Shelburne’s comments here reflect concerns raised by Oswald in his reports of 7–9, 11–13, and 15–17 Aug. 1782, above.
7. , 331; Shelburne to Townshend, [28 Oct. 1782], ALS, UkLPR: FO, 95/ 511; and “The Preliminary Treaty, Second Draft” (editorial note) on pp. 200–205.
8. Conference between Rayneval and Shelburne, 18 Sept. 1782, C, in French, FrPMAE: CP-A, 538: 172–92; , 330.
9. See 104. On the Barbé-Marbois letter, 13 Mar. 1782, see JJ to the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 18 Sept. and 17 Nov. 1782, below. Oswald suspected that Rayneval’s mission was intended to secure for Spain “the whole of the country from W. Florida, of a certain Width, quite up to Canada so as to have both Banks of the Missisippi clear. & would wish to have such Cession from Engd before a Cession to the Colonies takes place.” The Spanish, he added “have the French Title & would gladly compleat one to the whole of that District by patches from the English pretensions Which they could not hope for once we have agreed with the Colonies.” See , 1: 577–78.
10. JJ’s suspicions were not without justification. One of the major obstacles to a European peace settlement was Spain’s desire to regain Gibraltar, which France was committed to support. Military efforts were costly and unsuccessful. In a dispatch of 6 Oct, 1782, Vergennes reported to Montmorin that, in the course of discussions with Rayneval, Shelburne “let it be known that the Cession of the Floridas with a district in the environs of New Orleans joined to the vast lands that are situated between the Mississippi, the Lakes, and the western frontiers of the United States of America would form an equivalent sufficient to flatter and to satisfy the English nation, and that would not expose the Minister who would consent to such an arrangement to paying for it with his head.” Vergennes also reported that Aranda had been given a copy of Rayneval’s report. See , 1: 601.
For the argument that Shelburne had been prepared to concede independence, cession of the backlands, and fishing rights from the moment he took office the previous April, even though Rayneval’s visit made it plain that he could have used French pressure to curtail American demands, see , 1: 300–301.
11. See Vaughan to Shelburne, 6, 18 Aug. 1782, Tr, PPAmP: Vaughan; and 24 Aug. 1782, above. For Vaughan’s contacts with BF and his consistent support of the Americans’ peace terms, see , 1: 484–86.
12. On the new commission, see “John Jay Proposes Altering Richard Oswald’s Commission” (editorial note) on pp. 108–11.