The War of 1812 began in June of that year when the United States declared war against Britain. Britain and France had been engaged in nearly two decades of ruthless worldwide war, and the United States, with the largest neutral trade, was caught in between. As America went to war, the U.S. Army was small, poorly supplied, inadequately trained, and led by aged and incompetent officers, and the Navy, though highly professional, had just 16 ships of all sizes on the Atlantic coast, against a Royal Navy with hundreds of ships.1
To the astonishment of many, in the first six months of the war, the small U.S. Navy won three frigate actions—the frigate Constitution smashed HMS Guerriere into a wreck that was set afire, the United States captured the Macedonian, which became an American frigate, and the Constitution pummeled the Java into a hulk that was blown up.
The impact of these victories was felt far and wide. France was not allied with the United States but was a cobelligerent against Britain. France’s navy had been crushed at the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805, and the Royal Navy’s blockade of Continental Europe made it difficult for French warships to get to sea. Yet Napoleon insisted on building ships-of-the-line and frigates in ports all over Europe, as a constant threat to British naval supremacy.2 In fact, in 1813, Napoleon decided to build France’s frigates along the “American model.”3
As Napoleon confronted the allied armies massing against him in central Europe, he had time to consider the U.S. Navy’s fight against the British. In June 1813, from Dresden, Napoleon wrote the French Minister of the Navy, Admiral Denis Decrès:
The Americans complain that we are not sending frigates to weaken the enemy, and they would even like six of my ships to be sent to their ports. Confer on this with the American minister [William H. Crawford], when he arrives in Paris. I would have no difficulty in sending six ships to America and selling them to the Americans for what they are worth, or in sending six of my ships to their ports, provided that it was a feasible operation and one that would bring a result. But you know that my principle is not to risk my ships, and to only send out my frigates, until there is more balance between the two navies.4
Napoleon’s letter is curious and raises many questions. It is unclear who, how, and when an American suggested the French send a squadron of six frigates across the Atlantic. In addition, it is unclear whether the Americans preferred for the French to man their own ships and fight with them, despite the problems of coordination, or to buy the frigates for the U.S. Navy and man them with American sailors, despite the difficulties in finding and paying an additional 2,500 of them. Moreover, it is unclear what Napoleon meant by a “complaint” that reached him. Finally, it is important to consider what happened as a result of this proposal.
Despite all the excellent histories of the U.S. Navy during the War of 1812, it appears that Napoleon’s letter to Decrès about sending frigates to America has never been mentioned or cited before. If the proposal came from the Madison administration, it reflects an international strategy that few think the U.S. government had. Gaining six frigates “off the shelf” would have been an ingenious way to acquire additional naval power. Had an arrangement been agreed on and had the French frigates arrived in a timely manner, it is easy to imagine them disrupting the British blockade or devastating British trade convoys.
Presumably, such a request would have come from President James Madison, in a letter to Napoleon, directly or through the U.S. Ministers to France, Joel Barlow and then William H. Crawford; or through the French Consul General to the United States, Louis Barbe Charles Sérurier, resident in Washington.
Less likely, though possible, is that the proposal came from Secretary of State James Monroe or Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton (or his successor, William Jones, who became Secretary in mid-January 1813), written to their opposite numbers in the French government: Hugues-Bernard Maret, the duc de Bassano, the French foreign minister; or Decrès, the Minister of the Navy, which again might have been transmitted directly or through Barlow or Sérurier.
Strangely, no such letter has been found. President Madison wrote four letters directly to Napoleon, but the last was in 1811, before the war began.5 Madison wrote one letter to Minister Barlow after the War of 1812 began, and that letter, dated 11 August 1812, says nothing about French frigates.6 Madison wrote one letter to Sérurier, but that was in 1831.7 No letter from Monroe, Hamilton, or Jones referring to French frigates is published in any of the volumes of The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History.8 The correspondence from Barlow to his boss, Secretary Monroe, and to the French foreign minister, Maret, in State Department records and in Yale’s Beinecke Library, says nothing about French frigates, albeit a small part of a few letters are in cypher—the code for which is unknown.9
Because Barlow died in December 1812 without seeing Napoleon after the invasion of Russia in June 1812, he could not have delivered the proposal verbally to him, and Maret accompanied the French Army during the invasion. Crawford, who was appointed as Barlow’s successor, did not sail to France until 18 June 1813, so he could not have had a conversation with Napoleon or any of his ministers, as Napoleon’s letter itself indicates.10
A few American newspapers printed a rumor that dispatches arriving for the government from France indicated that “French frigates were to be immediately sent to this country, to be taken by the U. States in part payment for French spoliations on American commerce.” Those rumors were soon squelched. Although the Foreign Ministry sent translations of significant foreign newspapers daily to Napoleon, it is highly unlikely that a stray American newspaper printing rumors known to be false would have been translated and forwarded to the Emperor, who then would write Decrès as he did.11
On the other hand, it is theoretically possible Napoleon made up the proposal as a trial balloon for his navy or to seek a means of binding the United States closer to France against their common enemy. But these notions are doubtful. The Emperor of the French had enormous demands on his time, as he dealt with all aspects of French civil and military administration, not just his army in the field. His many letters to Decrès demonstrate a directness and attention to detail about ships, commanders, and strategy, however little he may have understood about maritime affairs.
It remains a mystery by whom, how, and when the United States reached out to Napoleon for help from the French Navy. But it is an important reminder that the War of 1812 was fought within the wider context of the Napoleonic Wars. Yet nothing came from the proposal: Napoleon wrote nothing more about sending frigates to the United States; no French frigate squadron sailed to use ports across the Atlantic to fight Britain; and France never proffered six frigates for the United States to buy.
A French frigate squadron operating from American ports might have been an enormous boost to the United States’ war effort. Had a deal been made in the summer of 1813 to sell the frigates once they had been sailed across the Atlantic, the fighting power of the U.S. Navy would have essentially doubled, if logistical and manning difficulties could have been overcome. Whether the proposal came from the Americans or from Napoleon himself, why nothing came from this idea is another mystery.
1. Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 7–8, 75–78, and John R. Elting, Amateurs to Arms!: A Military History of the War of 1812 (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1991), 1–10, deal with the army’s dire situation; Kevin D. McCranie, Utmost Gallantry: The U.S. and Royal Navies at Sea in the War of 1812 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011), 17–25, covers the U.S. Navy in the run-up to the war.
2. James Davey, In Nelson’s Wake: The Navy and the Napoleonic Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 10–11, 112, 149–50; Richard Glover, “The French Fleet, 1807–1814: Britain’s Problem; and Madison’s Opportunity,” Journal of Modern History 39, no. 3 (September 1967): 233–52.
3. “You will receive a decree by which I order that an American-type frigate be built in Toulon, Rochefort and Cherbourg . . . Those that you will have built . . . will maneuver in the harbor and let us know what to think of this model.” Fondation Napoleon, Paris, Correspondence of Napoleon, Correspondance Générale (“CG”), 14–35768, Napoleon to Admiral Denis Decrès, 7 August 1813 (“Vous recevrez un décret par lequel j’ordonne qu’on construise à Toulon, à Rochefort et à Cherbourg une frégate de construction américaine . . . Celles que vous ferez construire . . . manœuvreront dans la rade et nous feront connaître ce qu’il faut penser de ce modèle.”).
4. Fondation Napoleon, CG 13–34632, Napoleon to Admiral Denis Decrès, 13 June 1813, www.napoleonica.org/en/collections/correspondance/CG13-34632 (“Les Américains se plaignent de ce que nous n’envoyons pas de frégates pour fatiguer l’ennemi, et ils désireraient même que six de mes vaisseaux fussent envoyés dans leurs ports. Conférez là-dessus avec le ministre d’Amérique, quand il sera arrivé à Paris. Je ne verrais pas de difficulté à envoyer en Amérique six vaisseaux, et à les vendre aux Américains pour ce qu’ils valent, ou bien à envoyer six de mes vaisseaux dans leurs ports, pourvu que ce fût une opération faisable et qui amenât un résultat. Mais vous savez que mon principe est de ne pas hasarder mes vaisseaux, et de ne faire sortir que mes frégates, jusqu’à ce qu’il y eût plus d’équilibre entre les deux marines.”)
5. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, DC, Founders Online, www.founders.archives.gov/ (author = Madison; recipient = Napoleon).
6. Founders Online, James Madison to Joel Barlow, 11 August 1812 (author = Madison; recipient = Barlow).
7. Founders Online, James Madison to Louis Sérurier, 5 August 1831 (author = Madison; recipient = Sérurier).
8. William S. Dudley et al., eds., The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History (4 vols.) (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, 1992–2023).
9. NARA, Record Group 59, General Records of the Department of State (“State Department Records”), Diplomatic Instructions, 1 May 1808–21 July 1815, NAID 149288306 (various letters from Monroe to Barlow); NARA, State Department Records, Dispatches from U.S. Ministers, 29 September 1811–25 March 1813, NAID 188672594 (various letters from Barlow to Monroe and Maret).
10. Chase C. Mooney, William H. Crawford, 1772–1834 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1974), 52.
11. New-York Gazette, 26 January 1813 (printing rumor); [New York] Commercial Advertiser, 4 March 1813 (squelching rumor); and Edward A. Whitcomb, Napoleon’s Diplomatic Service (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979), 116.