Nevertheless they repealed the prohibition to play his Barbier de Séville.”
This was near the end of 1774. Already Beaumarchais again had been appealed to, to suppress another scandalous publication, the appearance of which was announced immediately after the accession of Louis XVI to the throne of France. It had for title, Avis à la branche espagnole sur ses droits à la couronne de France, à défaut d’héritiers (Advice to the Spanish branch, upon its claims to the crown of France in default of heirs.) Although in appearance political, it was in reality a libel directed against the young queen Marie Antoinette. In a memoir addressed to the King after the suppression of the publication, Beaumarchais accounts for its appearance in the following manner, he says, “As soon as your Majesty had mounted the throne, several changes made, several courtiers disgraced, having caused strong resentments to germinate, suddenly there appeared in England and Holland a new libel against you, Sire, and against the Queen. I went with all haste, and an express order of your Majesty augmenting my courage, I followed up the book and the editor to the point of extinction.”
Louis XVI
Marie Antoinette
“All that was known of this pamphlet,” says Loménie, “was that its publication was confided to an Italian named Guillaume Angelucci, who in England went under the name of William Atkinson, and who used a host of precautions to insure his incognito. He had at his disposition enough money to enable him to produce two editions at the same time, one in England and the other in Holland. In order to ensure success to his enterprise and still more no doubt, to heighten the importance of the rôle he was about to play, Beaumarchais in accepting this second undesirable mission had demanded a written order from the King, bearing the royal signature. This had been refused. Beaumarchais
started for London without delay, but had by no means given up the idea of obtaining the written order which seemed to him so important.”
“I have seen the Lord Rochford,” he wrote to M. de Sartine, “and found him as affectionate as usual, but when I explained to him this affair, he remained cold as ice. I turned and returned it in every way, I invoked our friendship, reclaimed his confidence, warmed his amour-propre by the hope of being agreeable to our King, but I could judge from the nature of his replies that he regarded my commission as an affair of police, of espionage, in a word of sous-ordre....
“You should do the impossible to bring the King to send me an order or mission signed by him, in about the terms which I have indicated at the end of this letter. This need is as delicate, as it is essential for you to-day. So many agents have been sent to London in relation to the last libel, they were often of so questionable a character, that anyone who seems to belong to the same order, cannot expect to be looked upon except with contempt. This is the basis of your argument with the King. Tell him of my visit to the Lord. It is certain that one cannot decently expect that minister, however friendly he may be, to lend himself to the service of my master, if that master puts no difference between the delicate and secret mission with which he honors an honest man, and an order with which a police officer is charged.”