Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, Vol. 2

by Elizabeth Sarah Kite

“I believe Carmichaël is the only one who appreciates all you have done for this country. He arrived at York two days ago, before I went to Virginia. The moment of our meeting was one of the most agreeable that I have passed in this country. We did not quit each other for two days. During these two days, I rendered him a service by letting him into the private character of all the members of Congress. I told him those who were his friends, and those who were opposed to his nomination as Secretary of Legation. In gratitude I hope he will serve you well.... I made the President feel that your letter to M. Sartine clearly demonstrated that the assertions of du Coudray and Lee were vile and infamous lies. The force and energy of this letter astonished him. He could not help saying to me that he would not have believed that anyone could have written with such freedom to a minister in France....

“I believe Carmichaël is your friend; if I am mistaken, I never wish to speak to an American again, as long as I live.” Then follows a most doleful picture of the discord, selfishness, and greed, which seemed to reign everywhere. Upon this part of the letter, Hon. J. Bigelow has commented admirably. He says:

“A little more experience with the world would probably have taught the young man that any crisis which puts in peril all that society undertakes to secure to us by its laws, uncovers our hearts to the world, strips bare our native selfishness of all its disguises, and makes us appear to each other, pretty nearly as bad as we must always appear to the angels. There is no doubt but the revolted colonists, struggling for their very existence, appeared disadvantageously to a sentimental enthusiast like de Francy, but we have yet to hear of any people while having so much at risk, appearing better.

“Of course after having been kept so long without tobacco, and treated with undisguised distrust as a swindler or as the agent of one, de Francy takes very dyspeptic views of the men who compose the Continental Congress.”

As a matter of fact, he hits off one after another of our great heroes with anything but the reverential tone which we are wont to use in referring to them. “President Laurens,” he says, “is a very upright merchant, but no more; in important affairs he is an old woman.” “Samuel Adams is an old fox who has genius.” “The famous Hancock is precisely the Corbeau revêtu.” “Robert Morris works for himself while working for the Republic.” “General Washington,” here his tone changes, “has honor, courage, and a truly disinterested patriotism.... I have seen much of him and I really believe he is the first man on the continent, although to tell you the truth, he is very difficult to know well....”

The unaccountably bad faith of Congress began to arouse the suspicions of the agent of Beaumarchais, which he hastened to communicate to his superior. On the 31st of July, 1778, de Francy wrote: “I have not been able to obtain a perusal of the letters of Lee. Two of his brothers, members of Congress, had possession of the foreign correspondence during the past year, and they have abstracted all his letters for fear they would be prejudicial to him; but I cannot doubt but you are there painted in the blackest colors. I know at least that anonymous letters were written against you, filled with lies, insults, and atrocities; and what is of a marked fatality, your excessive zeal for the Americans has been the basis of the lies of Lee, and of all the misgivings with regard to you. Doubtless you recollect that at the commencement of 1776, while you were in London, you promised this little doctor, then humble and suppliant, that if the Americans fully decided never to reunite with England, you would send out under the name of Roderigue Hortalès et Cie., all the succor of which they would have need; and the enthusiasm which then animated you, gave great latitude to your promise. At least, the doctor so communicated it; and to give importance to what he said, he made an ambassador of you, and instead of naming you, he remarked that the promise came from the ambassador of France. Behold here the origin of his elevation! His brothers have strongly supported his high pretensions and he was named agent. He was obliged to maintain what he had written, but fearing lest the reserve of the ministers towards the agents in France should make Congress suspect that the French Ambassador never had spoken to him in England, he abandoned his first assertion and then wrote that it was you who called upon him in London to make him such beautiful promises on the part of the French Minister. The Memoir of du Coudray attests, on the other hand, that the minister put you forward that he might disavow you if he desired. Congress readily allowed itself to be persuaded that everything that arrived on your vessels was a present, or at least a loan from your government which it might acquit at its pleasure.

“When after my arrival at York, I announced my purpose and the reclamations I came to make, I did not find a single member of Congress disposed to believe that it was an individual who had rendered them such signal services, and that he was to be paid for them, as it was impossible to find on this continent a man who would ever have attempted for the freedom of his country the one-hundredth part of what you have done.... True Americans are infinitely rarer here than in Paris, and I am satisfied there is not one whose zeal approaches yours.”

As a sample of what Lee had been writing to Congress, the few following passages quoted at random, will suffice: “Upon this subject of returns I think it my duty to say ... that the ministry have repeatedly assured me that no returns are expected for these subsidies.” At another time he wrote, speaking of a shipment just being made, “this is gratis as formerly, and what has been sent I have paid for; so that those merchants Hortalès et Cie. have no demand upon you; nor are you under any necessity of sending effects to them, unless you think it a proper market for some things, as it certainly is for fish.” (See Vindication of Arthur Lee.)

“These assertions,” says Loménie (Vol. II, p. 178), “offering the advantage of dispensing America from all gratitude and all payment to Beaumarchais, Congress was naturally disposed to adopt.” It must be remembered, however, that at this moment the party which upheld Arthur Lee, headed by his two brothers and Samuel Adams, were at the height of their power, so that the opposite side, in whose ranks stood the upright and clear-sighted John Jay, was temporarily overruled.

Before inserting the last letter which we give of de Francy, a short explanation is necessary. Already the reader has been apprised through these letters, of the difficult position in which Silas Deane had been placed, through the secret disavowal of his acts by Congress, even while he still remained their credited commissioner in France. Unconscious of the perfidy of Lee, yet thoroughly distrusting him, dismayed at the attitude of Franklin, who explained nothing, but who took from the first the part of ignoring all Deane’s previous transactions, the latter was forced to submit for the present to this embarrassing state of affairs, and to place his whole hope of adjustment in the equity of Congress in which he still firmly believed. Slowly it began to dawn on him, that the ground of his colleagues’ resentment to him was largely a matter of money. In the beginning Deane, realizing to the full the lack of trained military men among the insurgents, had freely promised commissions of high rank, with proportionately high pay, to the French officers who came to him well recommended and who had a desire to serve. As most of these men were either unable or unwilling to provide their own equipment and traveling expenses, Deane had advanced them money in the name of Congress, but taking it, not from his own resources, for he had none, but from those of his friend Beaumarchais, with the understanding, of course, that it should all be repaid.