Gratuitous Flashman Posting

Benedict Franklin?

One of the great pleasures of reading George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series is the tremendous amount of history one picks up, both in Flashy's narratives themselves and in the footnotes that accompany each tale. Indeed, on several occasions I've dashed out and bought the source material referenced by Fraser, mostly because I was interested in the subject matter but also because I was curious to see how faithful Fraser was to the historical record. My experience to date is that he is very faithful to it, indeed more so than many historians in that Fraser goes out of his way to try and take history on its own terms, not overlaying it with fadish revisionism.

My most recent acquisition is Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, Sir Harry's account of how he wound up with John Brown, bottled up in the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Early on in the story, in a discourse about popular perceptions of heroes, Flashy makes a flat-out accusation that caught my eye: He claims that Benjamin Franklin, while serving at the American Embassy in Paris, also worked as an agent ("Agent No. 72") for British Intelligence, passing on information that led to heavy losses in American shipping. In the footnotes, Fraser cites A History of British Secret Service by Richard Deacon (1980) as his source.

My question is - how about this? I've read a couple biographies of Franklin, most recently the one by Walter Isaacson, but don't recall any mention of such activities. On the other hand, by now I trust Fraser not to serve up such a stupendous accusation without having some pretty solid support for it. (Of course, I know nothing about this Deacon feller, but my experience is that Fraser stays away from the more wild-eyed brand of historian.)

I must say that from what I have read about Franklin, the idea that he might have been working for the Brits does not greatly surprise me. Of all the Founding Fathers, he is one of my least favorite, his motto always being "Ben First." A little bet-hedging with the Crown seems perfectly in keeping with this character.

Anyone have any thoughts?

UPDATE: I know about the story that Franklin's private secretary in Paris, Edward Bancroft, was a British spy. Indeed, I'm not sure there's much controversy about this. It's also fairly common knowledge that the American Embassy was chock full of British and French agents, that the Brits regularly tried to woo Franklin with promises of this, that and the other, and that a hefty amount of back-stabbing went on among the mission personnel themselves.

In assessing the claim against Franklin himself, it's important to have in mind what exactly one means by "spying." I don't really believe that Ben would have been working actively to bring down the American government. On the other hand, the man was a wiley player and in a very difficult situation and might very well have tolerated Bancroft's activities and perhaps connived a bit himself just so that he'd have some coin with the Crown in the event the Revolution went belly-up.

Incidently, Fraser tosses this episode into Flashy's tale to illustrate the point that people do not wish to hear bad things about their heroes.