The decisive battle of the American Revolution at Saratoga in October 1777 would not have had the same outcome without the contribution of three unlikely smugglers.
“We are now without money in our treasury and without arms in our stores,” wrote George Washington, the first President of the United States and commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution, to a trusted officer in January 1776.
Shortly after taking command of the Continental Army in July 1775, Washington ordered an inventory of the colonists' gunpowder reserves. When he learned that only 90 barrels of ammunition were available, one eyewitness claimed that Washington “didn’t speak for half an hour.”
Things hadn't changed dramatically by early 1776, and so Washington wrote this letter to express his frustration over the lack of supplies, feeling his efforts had reached a dead end.
What he didn't know was that help was already on its way.
France's Contribution
In March 1776, the Congressional Secret Correspondence Committee sent Connecticut merchant and politician Silas Deane on a mission to France, where he secretly met with Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, a confidant of King Louis XVI.
Beaumarchais, who described himself in a letter to Congress as a fervent supporter of the American revolutionaries, created a fictitious organization, Roderigue Hortalez & Company, to smuggle French, Dutch, and Spanish weapons, clothing, and other supplies to the colonists, both directly and via the West Indies. He also supplied Washington’s troops with gunpowder manufactured by Antoine Lavoisier—France's gunpowder expert.
The Best Gunpowder in Europe
In 1775, Lavoisier took control of France’s national gunpowder production. Often regarded as the founder of modern chemistry, he brought strict standards and new refining techniques to what had previously been a rudimentary and imprecise process of mixing three basic ingredients. After extensive testing, Lavoisier settled on a mixture of 75 percent saltpeter, 12.5 percent charcoal, and 12.5 percent sulfur. He later declared that the resulting French gunpowder was “the best in Europe.”
More important than its quality, however, was its availability. The Colonies lacked the industrial capacity to produce gunpowder and weapons, so they didn’t necessarily need the best material—they just needed any material.
Thanks to Beaumarchais and other sympathetic figures, they got it. By the end of 1777, France had smuggled approximately two million pounds of gunpowder and 60,000 French muskets into the Colonies—about one for every soldier in the Continental Army.
It is questionable whether the American victory at Saratoga in October 1777 would have happened—or even been possible at that specific moment in history—without these shipments.
