it before the public, in spite of the King and his ministers. Such a man was Beaumarchais, that it is no wonder that he failed to receive recognition for his serious labors, or that many people refused to believe him in earnest at all. If his own nation regarded him somewhat in the light of an adventurer, surely the men of the New World, bred in stern necessity, accustomed to deal only with hard facts and unyielding realities, may be judged with less severity if they failed in comprehending the true nature of their benefactor and friend. He himself was the first to forgive them, and no spirit of enmity or personal resentment was ever to be observed in his subsequent attitude towards them. To the end he called them “My friends, the free men of America.”

When, during the French Revolution, Beaumarchais, finding himself an exile, reduced to a beggarly garret in an obscure quarter of Hamburg while his wife, his daughter, and his sisters were languishing in a French prison, his property confiscated, and his credit ruined, addressed a final desperate appeal to the American people, begging for justice,

not a voice was raised in his favor. Since Robert Morris, the Philadelphia financier, was allowed to remain for years in a debtor’s prison, it is not surprising that little interest was roused by the claims of a foreigner, in whose existence even, people refused seriously to believe.

Tardy and very partial justice was at last rendered the heirs of Beaumarchais by the United States Government, when in 1835 their claims were settled by the payment of a portion of the debt owed to him; but as a personality he still remains unknown to us. The study which follows aims at portraying this unusual character in its true colors; it does not attempt to make of him an ideal hero, faultless and blameless; but it endeavors to show him as he was, full of violent contrasts, of limitless resource and energy, raising constantly about him a whirlwind of opposition, loved by his family and friends, hated by those whom he outstripped in the rapidity of his advancement, plunging from one gigantic enterprise into another, never at rest; ready at all times to come to the aid of distress which presented itself in any form, entering with sympathetic interest into the minutest details, always with time for everything, but above all, with persistent determination demanding justice, and in the pursuit of this aim, rousing the antagonism of all classes; attacking fearlessly time-honored institutions,—literary, social and judicial,—so that he becomes one of the most powerful undermining forces which finally brought about the total collapse of the old regime.

In his adventurous career, the part which he played in the War of American Independence forms but an incident. Though the primary object of this book is to show what that part really was, yet it is necessary to study his life and character in order to understand why Beaumarchais was interested in our cause, and how it came about that he was able to render us such signal service.