249 
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■b 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE v ^ 
 
 Arthur H. and 
 Mary Marden Dean 
 
 Book Fund 
 
With the Compliments of 
 
 C. J. STILLE, 
 
 2201 t^T. James Place, 
 
 Philadelphia. 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924006500577 
 
BEAUMARCHAIS 
 
 AND 
 
 "The Lost Million." 
 
 A Chapter of the Secret History of the 
 American Revolution. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES J. STILLE. 
 

 ^ 
 
 SUSANNB. 
 
 Quant i. la politique? 
 
 BEGEARRS. 
 Ah ! c'est I'art de crter des faits, les ivSnemens 
 etleshommes; I'intfiret est son but; I'intrigue son 
 moyen ; toujours sobre de v^ritSs, ses vastes et 
 riches conceptions sont un prisma qui ^blouit ; aussi 
 profonde que I'Etna. elle brflle et gronde longtemps 
 avant d'ficlater au-dehors, mais alors rien ne lui 
 rSsiste ; elle exige de hauts talens ; le scrupule seul 
 lui peut nuire; c'est le secret des n^gociateurs. — 
 
 La Mire Coupatle : 
 
 Drame par Beaumarchais, 
 
 Acte IV., Sc4ne IV. 
 
 IWO^ 
 
 o 
 
 A>^5 CSS 
 
BE A UMARCHAIS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE LOST MILLION!' 
 
 I. 
 
 HERE are few persons in modern times whose 
 career has given rise to criticism of such an op- 
 posite character as that of Beaumarchais. He 
 was, as all agree, a very considerable personage in France 
 in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, but how far he 
 was a charlatan, and how far in his various enterprises he 
 was a true and honest man, it is not easy to decide. He 
 was the greatest dramatic author of his day, in the sense that 
 he wrote a comedy {Le Mariage de Figaro) which did more to 
 
Beaumarchais 
 
 open men's eyes to the monstrous evils of the government 
 under which they lived than any other literary work of the 
 time ; he was, besides, a secret diplomatic agent employed by 
 two Kings of France in negotiations of the utmost delicacy, 
 which, in order that they might reach a successful issue, re- 
 quired that absolute confidence and trust should be placed 
 in his secrecy and honor (a trust which, we ought to say, 
 seems never to have been misplaced). He was the hero of 
 many lawsuits, which, owing to their connection with the 
 general politics of the time, and to the brilliant way he 
 managed them, gave him a European reputation ; yet he had 
 been condemned by the Parlement de Paris to an infamous 
 punishment for having produced in one of these lawsuits a 
 receipt or discharge of a debt which that Court had pro- 
 nounced suppositious, while by his keen satire of existing 
 abuses he was thought by not a few, including the King, to 
 be really undermining the foundations of the throne which 
 he was professing to serve. To many he seems only a vain, 
 ever active, unscrupulous intriguer, employing without hesi- 
 tation lying and mystification whenever necessary to accom- 
 plish his object, which is assumed to have always been his self- 
 advancement, and the gratification of an inordinate vanity 
 for making himself talked of. By others, he is thought 
 chiefly responsible for the success of two revolutions, — 
 that of France, by holding up in the full light of day before 
 the average Frenchman monstrous evils which had never 
 before been so vividly portrayed, and that of America, by the 
 energy which he exhibited in supplying us with arms and 
 
and " The Lost Million." 
 
 clothing for an army of twenty-five thousand men, supphes 
 which, we must admit, were essential to our military success 
 against Great Britain. In France, in the highly feverish 
 condition of things which existed just before the outbreak 
 of the Revolution, he was undoubtedly one of the foremost 
 leaders of public opinion, his denunciation of practical 
 abuses, which every one recognized, reaching classes of 
 the people wholly unaffected by the humanitarian doctrines 
 of Diderot and Rousseau ; and for his aid to America in the 
 hour of her sorest need, whatever may have been his motive, 
 or however questionable may have been some of his proceed- 
 ings, we should never cease to be profoundly grateful. To 
 his special power as a literary man in France at this time no 
 one is a more competent witness than M. Taine, and he says, 
 " It was necessary for the promoters of the Revolution to en- 
 force the doctrine of the philosophers with brilliancy, with 
 wit, and with a certain gayety of style and manner which 
 would create public scandal. This Beaumarchais did in Le 
 Manage de Figaro. He exhibited a faithful picture of the 
 ancien regime before the chiefs of the ancien regime. He 
 used the stage as the place where a political and social satire 
 would be most effective. He fixed publicly on each abuse 
 a placard which told of its peculiar infamy. In short, he por- 
 trayed by a few bold touches a living picture, reproducing 
 in the most telling way the complaints of the philosophers 
 against the state prisons, against the censorship of the press, 
 against the scandalous sale of public offices, against the 
 privileges of birth and rank, against the arbitrary power 
 
Beaumarchais 
 
 of the ministers, and against the incapacity of the men who 
 then held office." [L Ancie7i Regime, 360.) 
 
 To this man our forefathers were told in the early days 
 of the Revolution to look for succor and safety. The more 
 they heard about him the more completely did his position 
 seem a mystery and riddle to them. To their sober and 
 practical minds it was hard to conceive of him as a benefi- 
 cent fairy who, unsolicited, was willing to send us millions 
 of dollars' worth of the supplies we most needed to carry 
 on the war, and who, as they were told by Arthur Lee, the 
 earliest American commissioner in Europe, never suggested 
 that he was to be paid for them, but merely hinted that it 
 would be well for Congress to make him certain shipments of 
 tobacco to conceal his transactions from the English. The 
 Americans had no experience of merchants who carried on 
 business in this way. It was not their interest, however, to 
 inquire too closely into the source from which these supplies 
 came, and they were inclined to settle down into the belief 
 that Beaumarchais was a convenient pre^e-nom for the French 
 government, which had so many reasons for encouraging us 
 in our resistance, and so many more to conceal the aid it was 
 giving us in our struggle with Great Britain. Whatever the 
 Secret Committee or the Committee on Commerce of the 
 old Congress may have thought or suspected, they did not, 
 so long as the military supplies were provided in reasonable 
 abundance, inquire with too much curiosity into their source. 
 They accepted them with thankfulness, not doubting that 
 they would discover in due time to whom they were indebted 
 
and ' ' The Lost Million. ' ' 
 
 for them. In the mean time they chose to regard them as 
 gifts from the King of France. For more than two years 
 and a half they were under this pleasant delusion. They 
 were confirmed in the opinion expressed by Arthur Lee, 
 by letters written by the American Commissioners in Paris, 
 who told the Secret Committee in October, 1777, that they 
 had been assured that these supplies were intended as don 
 gratuit, or a voluntary gift, on the part of the French gov- 
 ernment. Of course, under these circumstances, they made 
 no effort to pay for them. Beaumarchais, under the name 
 of Roderigue Hortalez & Co., tired of waiting for remit- 
 tances from this country, sent an agent here in the begin- 
 ning of the year 1778, who, in a tone very different from the 
 high-flown rhetoric of his master's letters, demanded full pay- 
 ment for all the supplies which had been sent. This demand 
 dispelled all the dreams about don gratuit on the part of 
 France. After ascertaining from the French government 
 that Beaumarchais, under the name of Hortalez & Co., was 
 really the man they had been dealing with. Congress, in 
 January, 1779, made a partial settlement with his agent, and 
 directed their President to write a letter of thanks and of 
 apology to Beaumarchais for their delay in paying him. He 
 received a large sum on account at that time, but a final set- 
 tlement was delayed until further information from France 
 reached them. While the liquidation was slowly going on, 
 the French government, in 1781, entered into a treaty with 
 our Commissioners in Paris, by which it agreed to loan to the 
 United States a certain sum of money. In the preamble to 
 
Beaumarchais 
 
 this treaty there was a recapitulation of the sums paid by the 
 French government for our use and account, but regarded 
 as voluntary gifts, prior to the treaty of alliance in 1778, 
 and an explicit statement was made that these sums, amount- 
 ing to three millions of Hvres, were to be considered as an ab- 
 solute gift from the French King to us, and we were released 
 from all liability therefor. It was discovered some time after- 
 wards that our Commissioners had been paid by the French 
 government not three millions, but two millions, prior to the 
 treaty. Inquiry was, of course, made in France as to the 
 person to whom this million had been paid. That govern- 
 ment, for reasons which will be explained hereafter, refused 
 to give the name of the person to whom payment had been 
 made, but it gave the date of the payment, June 10, 1776. 
 The accounting officers of the Treasury believed that this 
 particular million was a portion of the secret service money 
 paid by France to Beaumarchais for our use on the loth June, 
 1776, and that it had been expended in the purchase of sup- 
 plies sent us, and as this million had subsequently been 
 made by the action of the French government a present to 
 us, they felt that Beaumarchais should not be paid twice for 
 the same service, and thus they charged it against him in the 
 settlement of his claim. Beaumarchais protested against 
 such a decision. A controversy ensued, which lasted until 
 1835, i" which the questions were, Whence came this 
 " lost million," and what had become of it, by whom had it 
 been used, and for what purpose ? questions between our- 
 selves and Beaumarchais in the first instance, and afterwards 
 
and ' ' The Lost Million. ' ' 
 
 between the French government and ours, which urged in his 
 name his claim upon us. These questions involved inter- 
 minable discussions about the rights and obligations which 
 arose out of our secret diplomatic arrangements with France 
 during the Revolution ; they were the subject of many con- 
 flicting Reports from Committees of Congress for more than 
 fifty years, two Committees on Claims, two Select Commit- 
 tees, and two Attorneys-General recommending the payment 
 of the claim, while two Committees on Claims and one Select 
 Committee reported against its payment. 
 
 It seems to me important for the good name of the 
 country as well as for the truth of history that these trans- 
 actions and their motives should be carefully examined and 
 the fullest possible light thrown upon them. As a matter 
 of curiosity it is certainly worth knowing what became of 
 this lost million, the origin and destiny of which were so care- 
 fully covered up by the French government. But the in- 
 terest in such a discussion is of a wider and more permanent 
 kind, for it embraces not merely a view of the manner in 
 which the military supplies essential to the prosecution of 
 the war of the Revolution were obtained, but how far they 
 were voluntary gifts bestowed upon us by France to secure 
 her own ends in our quarrel, and how far we showed our- 
 selves duly grateful for them. Our government has been 
 branded with something worse than ingratitude — with dis- 
 honesty — in its persistent refusal to pay Beaumarchais this 
 "lost million." Such an impression was doubtless made on 
 the French government by our course, judging from the 
 
Beaumarchais 
 
 voluminous correspondence which was kept up for so many- 
 years between that government and our own, and our con- 
 duct was long spoken of as an illustration of the old saying 
 that Republics were not only ungrateful, but shifty and 
 tricky in their dealings. Such is the conclusion openly 
 avowed by M. Louis de Lomenie, the author of an elaborate 
 life of Beaumarchais, pubUshed in 1856 ; a book looked upon 
 in France as of such high literary merit that it secured for 
 its author a chair in the French Academy. The whole story, 
 which for many years figured among the proceedings of 
 Congress as the most sensational in its details of any which 
 had ever formed the basis of a claim before that body, has 
 strangely slipped out of the memory of the present genera- 
 tion, and it seems to me worth while now to retrace some 
 of its principal features. There were always doubts, no 
 doubt honestly entertained by the majority of Congress, 
 against the validity of the claim, and these doubts, it appears 
 to me, have been strengthened, or, as I should rather say, 
 have been proved to be well founded, by facts which have 
 come to light since the subject passed beyond its jurisdiction 
 in 1835. 
 
 Usually it is dull work plodding through the details of a 
 claim for the payment of money made against the govern- 
 ment. But this is one sui generis. To understand it we 
 must know something of the inner and more secret history 
 of the American Revolution, we must weigh carefully the 
 reasons for the peculiar relations of England and France 
 towards each other prior to the Treaty of Alliance with us 
 
and ' ' The Lost Million. ' ' 
 
 in 1778, we must understand just why and how France was 
 willing to help us, and how essential it was that any aid 
 given by her should be kept as far as it was possible from 
 the knowledge of England. We must know something too 
 of what constituted the secret diplomatic agent of those 
 days, how one of his chief functions was to lie in the most 
 barefaced manner if there seemed to be any danger of com- 
 promising his government by telling the truth, and how he 
 ran the risk at any moment of being disavowed by those who 
 employed him if it suited their purpose. All these things 
 are familiar enough to those who study the tortuous ways 
 of that department of government administration called 
 the secret service, but a drama of this kind with Beau- 
 marchais acting the principal part has a special and peculiar 
 interest of its own, combining all the attractiveness, bril- 
 liancy, and rapid changes of scene so striking in his own 
 comedies. The whole story, indeed, is one of the most cu- 
 rious romances of modern diplomacy. The nature of the 
 service that was rendered to us, and the motives which 
 prompted it, the extraordinary pains which were taken to 
 enable France to disavow any connection with it, and es- 
 pecially the character and the career of the man who was 
 selected as the agent in this business, are well worth the 
 study of those who would understand an important chapter 
 in our early history. Let us see in the first place what was 
 the condition of this country when our fathers first sought 
 aid in Europe ; what they most needed, and how they set 
 about procuring it. 
 
1 2 Beaumarchais 
 
 II. 
 
 At an early period of the Revolution the attention of the 
 Continental Congress was drawn towards the possibility of 
 securing foreign aid and intervention. What we needed 
 most was a supply of arms, and especially of powder for 
 cannon, to enable us to place our armies in the field in a 
 proper condition and efficient state. We were almost with- 
 out any means of supplying their indispensable needs, as is 
 proved by the great scarcity of weapons and the extreme 
 difficulty of procuring powder for cannon, which were points 
 of weakness conspicuous in our early battles. So far as I 
 ■can discover, cannon-powder was not manufactured at that 
 time in this country. We were not only destitute of the 
 weapons with which our enemies were armed, but we had 
 very limited means of clothing our soldiers, and in look- 
 ing forward to a long war the authorities must have been 
 sorely puzzled to determine how these most necessary wants 
 should be supplied. On the 29th November, 1775, a com- 
 mittee of Congress, afterwards called the Secret Committee, 
 consisting of Mr. Harrison, Dr. Franklin, Mr. Johnson, Mr. 
 Dickinson, and Mr. Jay, was appointed, and directed to enter 
 into correspondence with persons of influence in Europe 
 supposed to be friendly to the American cause. What was 
 chiefly relied upon at that time in order to secure the aid 
 and comfort which we needed was the universal jealousy of 
 Great Britain existing on the Continent, where the com- 
 plaint was general that she had abused the victory secured 
 
and ' ' The Lost Million. " 13 
 
 ■by the treaty of 1763 to monopolize the commerce of the 
 world, and especially that with America. This feeling, of 
 course, was more intense in France than anywhere else. 
 She had suffered not only great positive loss by the destruc- 
 tion of her commerce and by being forced to give up by the 
 treaty Canada and her vast possessions in India and the 
 West Indies, but besides all this there was a deep feeling of 
 national humiliation, — how strong none but a Frenchman 
 could know, when he recalled how her armies had been 
 vanquished by those of her rival in both worlds. Dr. 
 Franklin, fully aware of this irritability of national feeling, 
 began the correspondence by writing to a Frenchman, a 
 friend of his, then residing in Holland, whom he knew to be 
 a friend of the struggling colonists. In this letter he hinted 
 that possibly some of the European powers might find it to 
 their advantage to enter into an alliance with us for the 
 benefit to be derived from our commerce, which, he stated, 
 amounted before the war to nearly seven millions sterling, 
 and "which must ultimately increase, as our population 
 grows rapidly." It will be observed as a significant fact 
 that in these first overtures for alliance no appeal whatever 
 was made to any sympathy with the rights of man, in favor 
 of which nearly all educated Europe was then declaiming, 
 and for the maintenance of which we afterwards asserted 
 in the Declaration of Independence we were contending, 
 but only to the common notion of self-interest and to the 
 practical and substantial advantages of the commerce which 
 foreign nations would gain by entering into an alliance with 
 
14 Beaumarchais 
 
 US. It is to be remembered that throughout the Revolu- 
 tion these, and these only, were the inducements we offered 
 to secure either recognition or material aid from foreign 
 powers. 
 
 On the second of March, 1776, the Secret Committee 
 took a further step. They appointed Mr. Silas Deane, then 
 a member of Congress from Connecticut, tlie commercial 
 and political agent of the United States in Europe. He was 
 furnished with letters to Dr. Franklin's friends in France, 
 M. Le Ray de Chaumont and Dr. Dubourg, both of whom 
 held high positions at that time as men of science in Paris. 
 Mr. Deane was told by his instructions that his political 
 business was to sound M. de Vergennes, the foreign min- 
 ister, as to the possibility of procuring aid in the way of 
 suppHes and a loan for us in France ; and if he found him 
 favorable, he was further to hint as to the conditions of a 
 future alliance. His commercial business was to secure 
 permission for the purchase in France of military supplies 
 of all kinds needed for an army of twenty-five thousand men. 
 Mr. Deane was presented by Dr. Dubourg to M. de Ver- 
 gennes in July, 1776. He was received kindly by the min- 
 ister, but was told that recognition and alliance were subjects 
 in " the womb of time," and not then to be discussed. As to 
 permission to purchase military supplies in France, he was 
 told plainly that it could not be given, because it would 
 compromise the obligations of neutrality which France 
 was forced to preserve in our contest with Great Britain. 
 He was informed, however, significantly, that although the 
 
and ' ' The Lost Million. " 15 
 
 government, as such, could do nothing, there was a certain 
 M. de Beaumarchais, a m.erchant, who might possibly aid the 
 American agent to transact his business in France. In the 
 mean time he was promised freedom from molestation while 
 engaged in any transactions concerning the purchase of sup- 
 plies which did not compromise French neutrality. The 
 truth is that at this time the French government was much 
 further on the road towards helping the Americans than 
 Deane suspected, or than was indeed known to any one at 
 that time outside the inner circle of the King's Court. It 
 now appears that Turgot,* the French Controller-General, 
 who had as early as 1767 been the intimate friend of Dr. 
 Franklin, proposed in April, 1776, in a memoir to the King, 
 a plan for the secret intervention of the government in favor 
 of the Colonies, which in its main features was the one finally 
 adopted, and the invention of which, by the way, Beaumar- 
 chais always claimed as his own. Turgot in his secret me- 
 moir proposes that every facility should be given to the 
 Colonies to enable them to procure in the way of commerce 
 such articles as they required, and even the money which they 
 needed, France taking care not to violate its neutrality by 
 giving them succor directly or openly. Doubtless this plan 
 was in the mind of M. de Vergennes when Deane was re- 
 ferred by him for further information to Beaumarchais. 
 
 From this time forth Beaumarchais becomes the principal 
 
 * To him has been ascribed the famous line descriptive of Franklin, 
 Eripuit calo fulmen, scepfrumque tyrannis. 
 
1 6 Beaumarchais 
 
 actor in the drama. This intensely restless gentleman 
 was not satisfied to wait until his government had decided 
 when and how to act, but was constant and profiise in his 
 advice to the King and to De Vergennes in regard to the 
 plan that should be adopted to succor us even in its minutest 
 details. His letters, if one did not know his reputation in 
 France at that time of ■a.fanfaron (in which capacity he was 
 permitted unusual license in his style of writing), seem like 
 an attempt to usurp the proper functions of the heads of 
 the government. On the 29th February, 1776, he sends a 
 memoir to the King, in which he tells him, among other 
 things, — 
 
 "We have now reached the crisis, and I am obliged to 
 inform your Majesty that the preservation of our posses- 
 sions in America, as well as the peace which your Majesty 
 so earnestly desires to maintain, is dependent upon one 
 thing, viz., succor to the Americans^' 
 
 After hinting that the Americans if not succored may 
 conclude peace with Great Britain, a result which, he tells 
 the King, would be disastrous to France, he goes on to 
 speak of the proposition which had been made to him as 
 agent in London by Arthur Lee, whom he calls the secret 
 deputy of Congress. 
 
 "We offer to France," he makes Arthur Lee say, "in 
 return for her secret aid, a secret treaty of commerce, 
 which will enable her to enjoy during a certain number of 
 years all the profit of that commerce which has enriched 
 
and ' ' The Lost Million. " 17 
 
 England for a hundred years ; and, besides, we agree to 
 guarantee the possession of the French colonies as far as 
 we are able." 
 
 It is very doubtful whether Arthur Lee ever made such 
 propositions. It is certain that he never had any authority 
 to do so. In another letter to the King, which is probably 
 the one referred to in the previous memoir as having been 
 written " three months ago," Beaumarchais writes, — 
 
 " The constant effort should be to convince the Congress 
 that, while your Majesty cannot in any way interest himself 
 in its affairs, a company has been formed with the gen- 
 erous intention of turning over to the prudent management 
 of a faithful agent a large sum of money, by which the 
 Americans shall receive constant succor, for which they will 
 pay by shipments of tobacco. Your Majesty will then begin 
 by placing a million at the disposal of your agent, who will 
 assume the name of Roderigue Hortalez & Cie. One-half 
 of this money shall be exchanged into moidores (a Portuguese 
 coin), and sent to America as a basis for their paper money ; 
 the other half shall be expended in the purchase of gun- 
 powder. It is the hope of Hortalez & Cie. that they may 
 be able to buy with this money from the Registers of your 
 Majesty's powder and saltpetre depots all the powder they 
 need at from four to six sols a pound, which powder Hor- 
 talez & Cie. will sell to the Americans at twenty sols a 
 pound." 
 
 He then goes on to explain that this plan is not pro- 
 posed in order that Beaumarchais shall receive these large 
 profits, but that they may constitute a fund which will enable 
 
Beaumarchais 
 
 him to supply the Americans with powder at all times. He 
 then proceeds to show that these profits will increase in a 
 geometrical ratio, and that in a few years the Americans 
 will be bound to France by a debt of nine millions of livres. 
 His mode of raising the money for this operation is very 
 characteristic, and savors rather of the tastes and habits of 
 the dramatist than of those of the merchant. He tells the 
 King,— 
 
 "It is pleasant to think that we may succor the Ameri- 
 cans with English money. This is easily done. Let an 
 order be issued that all the foreign horses and carriages 
 which arrive in any of your seaports shall be taxed with the 
 same duty which ours pay in England. If you adopt this 
 plan you need give yourself no further trouble about finding 
 funds for Hortalez & Cie." 
 
 He goes on to say, — 
 
 " The adoption of this plan in procuring for your Majesty 
 the sweet pleasure of not employing any other money to aid 
 the Americans than such as this duty will draw from England 
 herself has something spicy in it, which seems to me like 
 sowing flowers upon the dry soil of the commercial affairs 
 of Hortalez & Cie."* 
 
 * This letter, which is of great historical value, as showing not merely 
 the nature of the "disinterested services" of France during the Revolu- 
 tion, but also the plan and motives of Beaumarchais when he became the 
 agent, was first published in the second volume of the Ammean-ffhiori- 
 eal Magazine^. o66f Previously it was suppressed, perhaps because too 
 characteristic. 
 
and '^ The Lost Million ." 19 
 
 III. 
 
 How did it happen, then, that a man such as we conceive 
 Beaumarchais to have been, vain, boastful, never satisfied 
 unless he was gratifying his love of notoriety, could have 
 been employed by the French government in negotiations 
 which required the utmost discretion and secrecy, and that 
 he should have been intrusted with vast sums of money for 
 that purpose? How could a man who had given such evi- 
 dence of his inaptitude for managing commercial affairs that, 
 as Dr. Dubourg told M. de Vergennes in 1776, " no merchant 
 or manufacturer in France could be found who would not 
 hesitate to engage in the smallest commercial business with 
 him," — how did he become the trusted agent of the French 
 government in this delicate and difficult business ? To tell 
 the truth, this is not the least of the mysteries in his connec- 
 tion with our affairs, and possibly some light may be thrown 
 upon it by his previous history. 
 
 Beaumarchais was a man of obscure origin. His true 
 name was Caron, and he assumed that of Beaumarchais 
 from a small estate which belonged to his first wife. His 
 father was a watchmaker in Paris, and he followed with 
 some success the same calling. His love of notoriety was 
 his earliest, as it continued to be through life his most 
 striking, characteristic. He called upon the French Acad- 
 emy to decide whether he or a rival workman was the true 
 inventor of an escapement for a watch ; not that he cared 
 for the credit of the invention so much as that this curious 
 
Beaumarchais 
 
 appeal would cause him to be talked about. He was passion- 
 ately fond of music, and had special skill in playing the harp, 
 an instrument then little known in France. He became the 
 teacher of music to Mesdames, as the four unmarried daugh- 
 ters of Louis XV. were then called, and by his skill and 
 pleasant manners soon became a great favorite with them. 
 He was ambitious of advancement, and far from satisfied 
 with a position which had no more solid recompense to give 
 than enabling him to provide gratuitously for the royal 
 amusement. An office to him had no value unless it helped 
 him to make money. For the nobility of the day, especially 
 for those who then held the minor offices at Court, he had the 
 utmost contempt. When reproached by one of his rivals 
 with being a parvenu, and not a noble, he repels the charge 
 with a certain mock dignity which reminds one of scenes in 
 Le Mariage de Figaro, and exclaims, " If any one doubt that 
 I am a noble, let me tell him that I have in my pocket the 
 receipt for the money I paid for the patent." At this time 
 he had purchased the office of Clerc Controleur de la douche 
 de sa Majeste ; in other words, his business was to see that 
 his Majesty's dinner was properly served, a dignified posi- 
 tion which required that the man who undertook to perform 
 its arduous duties should be a nobleman. But in the strange 
 way in which things were then done at the French Court this 
 office could be made use of as a lever to raise him from the 
 obscurity of his position. 
 
 In 1760 there lived in France a famous army contractor, 
 Paris du Verney by name. He was one of three brothers 
 
and "The Lost Million." 
 
 who had gained large fortunes by furnishing supplies for the 
 public service. Gains of this kind, although hardly in accord 
 with our notions of the civil service, were then regarded both 
 in England and in France as entirely legitimate, and some of 
 the largest fortunes in both countries have had their origin 
 in this source. This Paris du Verney, it seems, was not 
 satisfied merely with accumulating a large fortune. He de- 
 sired to be remembered by posterity as a public benefactor 
 rather than as a rich man. After the disasters of the wars 
 in Germany, where every one but himself had lost in repu- 
 tation and in pocket, he conceived the plan of building the 
 Military School which is still in existence in the Champs de 
 Mars. After spending vast sums upon the building and in 
 its endowment, he found that the school languished for want 
 of royal countenance and support, Louis XV. being selfishly 
 indifferent to the success of an establishment in which it was 
 proposed to educate officers for his service. Even Madame 
 de Pompadour, who was a friend of Du Verney, could not 
 stir the sluggish blood of the royal voluptuary so far as to 
 make him show an interest in this noble foundation. Du 
 Verney then had recourse to Beaumarchais- in his quality as 
 teacher of the royal Princesses. He urged him to induce 
 these ladies to visit the Military School, not doubting that 
 their visit would be followed by that of their father. Beau- 
 marchais, with that wonderful sagacity which enabled him 
 always keenly to scent afar off the path of self-advancement, 
 and who saw at once how much might be gained by the 
 friendship of Du Verney, persuaded the Princesses to make 
 
Beaumarchais 
 
 the visit. Of course they were greatly deUghted, and Louis 
 XV., whose one really good trait seems to have been a sort 
 of good-natured fondness for his daughters, followed their 
 example, and the future of the Military School was thus as- 
 sured. Du Verney's professions of gratitude to Beaumarchais 
 were profuse, and if that gratitude is to be measured by the 
 favors which he showered upon him, it must have been deep 
 indeed. He recognized his aid by giving him what Beau- 
 marchais most valued, an interest in the profits of a large 
 contract for supplies for the public service, lent him money 
 for speculations by which, under the advice of Du Verney, 
 he made large gains, and he seems to have been ready at 
 all times to advance him money for whatever purpose he 
 needed. This was the stepping-stone to the fortune of 
 Beaumarchais. 
 
 We next hear of him at Madrid, where he endeavors to 
 persuade the government to enter into a contract with him 
 for supplying the Spanish colonies with all the slaves they 
 might need, and for furnishing the Spanish garrisons in 
 Europe and Africa with their daily rations, an operation 
 which would have required, according to his statement, an 
 expenditure of over twenty millions of francs a year. How 
 far he succeeded in entering upon these contracts does not 
 clearly appear, but in a few months he writes, " J^ai deja 
 perdu trois ou quatre fois plus que je n'ai vaillant au monde ; 
 dHndignes ennemis ont barre mon chemi?i," etc. 
 
 The next step in his life which brought him into con- 
 spicuous notoriety was his quarrel with the heirs of Paris 
 
and "The Lost Million.^' 23 
 
 du Verney. They claimed a large sum as due from Beau- 
 marchais to the estate of Du Verney. Beaumarchais, on 
 the trial of this question before the Parlement de Paris, pro- 
 duced an account as settled between himself and Du Ver- 
 ney in his lifetime, in which Beaumarchais appeared as a 
 creditor, and not as a debtor, of his deceased friend and 
 benefactor. His heirs did not hesitate to attack this alleged 
 account as spurious, thereby charging Beaumarchais with 
 an offence which, if not forgery, closely resembled it. On 
 the report of the Judge, Goezman, to whom, according to 
 the French practice, the question was referred, the Court 
 pronounced that the heirs of Du Verney had well-founded 
 reasons for the objection they had made to the account, and 
 Beaumarchais was accordingly sentenced to the punishment 
 technically called blame, which involved civil degradation 
 and incapacity to hold any office. Such a punishment would 
 have completely crushed any other man, but in the case of 
 Beaumarchais it was by his skill and adroitness made the 
 means of his further advancement. The practice then was 
 for a suitor to visit privately the Judge who was charged by 
 the Court to report upon his case, and to endeavor to con- 
 vince him that the report should be in his favor. Beaumar- 
 chais found it difficult to reach the Judge, and he did not 
 hesitate to offer the wife of Goezman one hundred louis in 
 money, a watch of equal value, and an extra douceur of 
 fifteen louis if she would secure him an interview with her 
 husband. The report, as we have seen, was unfavorable to 
 Beaumarchais, whereupon, after a few days, the hundred 
 
24 Beaumarchais 
 
 louis and the watch were, according to agreement, returned, 
 but the fifteen louis were retained, or rather their receipt 
 was positively denied. 
 
 Beaumarchais at once determined to make a bold stroke 
 which he hoped would not merely destroy the Parlement 
 Maupeou and its Judges, who for various reasons were at 
 that time excessively unpopular in France, but would call 
 away public attention from his punishment and turn it to the 
 iniquity of the Parlement. He accordingly presented a peti- 
 tion to the Court, in which he alleged that Madame Goez- 
 man retained the fifteen louis which had been extorted from 
 him as a bribe to secure justice. The accusation made a 
 prodigious sensation both in the Court and in the public. 
 Throughout Europe people became interested in the ques- 
 tion, which involved the purity of the French administration 
 of justice. The excitement was kept up by the printing of 
 Memoires on both sides, according to the French practice, 
 and the result was a controversy in which it was very clear 
 that Beaumarchais was far too strong for his opponents. 
 Goezman lost his place, and the Parlement Maupeou was a 
 short time afterwards abolished, while Beaumarchais, from 
 having been almost a convicted forger, was now looked 
 upon as the hero of the hour, and became the most popular 
 man in Paris. 
 
 We have told this story at some length because it illus- 
 trates not only the extraordinary skill and adroitness of 
 Beaumarchais in getting out of scrapes, but also the manner 
 in which he made them contribute to his one object in life, — 
 
and " The Lost Million. " 25 
 
 his intense desire to keep the public eye fixed upon himself. 
 His exploits of this sort excited universal attention. Even 
 the King, Louis XV., who had become tired of hearing 
 Beaumarchais talked about, and who was not very well sat- 
 isfied with the turn his affairs had taken, began to think that 
 he might be usefully employed in a very delicate negotiation. 
 The necessities of a monarch, like those of other mortals, 
 know no law. The King had been informed that a certain 
 French adventurer in London had printed and was about to 
 publish a Life of Madame Dubarry, in which the special 
 weaknesses of that lady were to be exhibited in the liveliest 
 manner for the amusement of the scandal-loving public. 
 This book, of course, must be suppressed at all hazards and 
 at any cost. In order to accomplish what was certainly not 
 an easy object, the King cast his eyes upon Beaumarchais 
 as having proved that he had the qualities of a fit agent 
 for such a purpose, convict and degraded, in the technical 
 sense, as he still was. Beaumarchais readily undertook the 
 mission, went to London, saw the libeller, and by a mixture 
 of diplomatic shrewdness and the use of money he secured 
 the whole edition of the book, amounting to several thousand 
 copies, and burned them. On his return in triumph to Paris 
 he found Louis XV. ill, and in a few days the King died. 
 Beaumarchais was no richer for the expedition, and was 
 still under the judicial sentence of blame. This, however, did 
 not prevent his being intrusted with a second expedition 
 to London, where Louis XVI, had been informed that a 
 certain Jew was about publishing scandalous memoirs of 
 
26 Beaumarchais 
 
 Marie Antoinette. He succeeded in procuring this man's 
 silence and the destruction of his books by the outlay of a 
 large sum of money. But, according to his story, some of 
 the books were held back, and with them the libeller had 
 fled to Germany, hoping to print an edition there. Beau- 
 marchais, nothing daunted, pursued him to that country, met 
 with a remarkable series of adventures, and finally reached 
 Vienna. There he represented to Maria Theresa, the 
 Empress of Germany, and mother of Marie Antoinette, 
 what had befallen him ; and so absurd did his story appear 
 that he was kept in prison in Vienna for a month as an 
 impostor or a madman, and then sent back to France. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this, Beaumarchais seems to have 
 still retained the confidence of Louis XVI., for he was 
 shortly afterwards employed to obtain from that mysterious 
 personage Le Chevalier d' Eon in London certain secret state 
 papers of importance of which he had the possession and 
 which he threatened to print. Connected with this mis- 
 sion was another of a different kind, which was nothing less 
 than an attempt to induce the Chevalier, by the payment of 
 a large sum of money, to return to France, and thencefor- 
 ward to appear there in woman's clothes only. It is strange 
 that a maitre passe in such matters like Beaumarchais should 
 have been deceived with regard to the sex of the Chevalier ; 
 all the more strange as he attempted to accomplish his 
 object by making love to the supposed lady. He calls 
 her a vieille fille, and the details of his negotiations on this 
 basis are more amusing than edifying. 
 
and ' ' The Lost Million. " 27 
 
 IV. 
 
 This was the man and such were his antecedents when 
 M. de Vergennes referred Silas Deane to Beaumarchais as 
 Hkely to aid him in his business in France. In the spring 
 of 1776, when Beaumarchais was notorious in London for 
 his relations with D'Eon, he met at the dinner-table of 
 Wilkes, then the Lord Mayor, Mr. Arthur Lee, the secret 
 agent or Deputy of Congress in Europe. According to 
 Mr. Lee's statement to Congress, Beaumarchais on this 
 occasion, without any solicitation on Lee's part, offered on be- 
 half of the French government to send Congress two hun- 
 dred thousand iouis d'or, as well as such arms, ammunition, 
 and other military stores as might be needed. These gifts 
 he proposed should be transmitted in a secret manner, so as 
 to avoid compromising the French obligations of neutrality 
 towards Great Britain. In order to accomplish this object, 
 he proposed that the business should appear to be a simple 
 commercial transaction, and that some tobacco or other pro- 
 duce of the United States should be shipped to France as a 
 pretext of payment. It is right to say that Beaumarchais 
 always denied that he had ever made any such proposition 
 to Lee on behalf of the French government, while Lee and 
 his brothers (one of whom was the celebrated Richard Henry 
 Lee of Virginia, who moved the adoption of the Declaration 
 of Independence) always insisted in Congress that such had 
 been the original agreement. 
 
 Be that as it may, Beaumarchais shortly afterwards 
 
28 Beaumarchais 
 
 returned to Paris, where, in July, 1776, he met Mr. Deane, 
 and in that month, having convinced the agent of the United 
 States of his abiHty to furnish supplies, an agreement, rather 
 than a formal contract, was made between them, by which 
 cannon, powder, small-arms, ammunition, and clothing suffi- 
 cient for the equipment of an army of twenty-five thousand 
 men were to be sent to America. Deane proposed that 
 these articles should be paid for, not in money, of which at 
 that time the United States had none, but in shipments 
 of tobacco to the house of Roderigue Hortalez & Co., the 
 pseudonym which Beaumarchais had assumed for this pur- 
 pose. Deane, however, was careful to point out that these 
 payments could not be depended upon with any regularity, 
 as the American ships were liable to be captured, and other 
 unforeseen accidents might occur. These arrangements 
 were acquiesced in by Beaumarchais, and the shipments 
 were made during the last six months of 1776. In all, eight 
 cargoes were sent, the money value of which was about five 
 millions of livres ; their value to the American Colonies, as 
 they encouraged them to persevere and placed in the hands 
 of their soldiers the arms and equipment which enabled them 
 to gain the victories of the campaigns of 1 777, was of course 
 simply priceless. Of the funds which enabled Beaumarchais 
 to purchase these articles it now appears that France pro- 
 vided, on the loth of June, 1776, a million (a sum the source 
 and destination of which, under the name of " the lost million," 
 France and the United States disputed about for more than 
 fifty years), and Spain, at the request of France, about the 
 
and "The Lost Million. " 29 
 
 same time, another million. It seems probable, too, that 
 many French noblemen, whose names were purposely con- 
 cealed, embarked in what they considered a profitable spec- 
 ulation by contributing to the capital of Hortalez & Co. 
 Whether that house bought the powder, as Beaumarchais 
 had proposed to the King, from the royal depots at from 
 four to six sols a pound and sold it to the Americans at 
 twenty soi^s, does not appear. If it did, and anything like 
 such a profit was made on the other articles sent, it did not 
 need a large money capital to conduct its business. The 
 Americans, however, do not seem to have complained of the 
 prices charged them for the articles sent, for the supplies 
 were cheap to them at any cost. 
 
 The greatest difficulties arose in the shipment of these 
 articles. The French government did not molest the agents 
 of Beaumarchais, but insisted, for its own safety, on the 
 preservation of absolute secrecy. France was full of Eng- 
 lish spies, and every precaution was taken by the govern- 
 ment to avoid any open infraction of its own law which 
 prohibited the exportation of military supplies to America. 
 The cannon, the arms, and the powder were taken from the 
 royal arsenals in different parts of the kingdom, and thence 
 conveyed to the various seaports for embarkation. Two or 
 three times the vessels upon which they were laden were 
 stopped on the complaint of the English Ambassador, but 
 they all at last got to sea, and reached their destination 
 safely. The chief obstacle to their departure was interposed 
 by the vanity of Beaumarchais himself, which led him to 
 
30 Beaumarchais 
 
 forget that in an enterprise such as he was engaged in, in- 
 volving, if it were discovered, the danger of a war between 
 France and England, absolute secrecy was indispensable. 
 But he never could resist the temptation of making himself 
 notorious, whatever might be the risk. He went to Havre, 
 ostensibly to urge the departure of his ships. While there, 
 one of his comedies was played at the theatre of that town, 
 and he did not hesitate to make his appearance in public 
 on that occasion. The result was that the suspicions of 
 the English spies were confirmed by his presence, and his 
 imprudent conduct had wellnigh shipwrecked the whole 
 enterprise. 
 
 The French government was so anxious to conceal its 
 part in providing these supplies that it at first tried hard 
 to mislead the American Commissioners in Paris themselves 
 — Dr. Franklin, Mr. Deane, and Mr. Arthur Lee — as to the 
 source from which they really came. When this was found 
 impossible, the French Minister insisted that what was re- 
 garded as a state secret should not be communicated either 
 to Congress or to its Secret Committee. The Commis- 
 sioners very properly thought that, as they were the agents 
 not of France, but of the United States, it was their duty to 
 write confidentially to the Secret Committee, setting forth 
 all the information they had on the subject. This letter was 
 written In October, 1777, but it was intercepted, and its 
 duplicate did not reach the Secret Committee until the close 
 of March, 1778. In it the Commissioners speak of "the 
 assurances they have received that no repayment will ever 
 
and ' ' The Lost Million. " 31 
 
 be required from us for what has been already given us 
 either in money or military stores." Meantime, and before 
 the arrival of this letter, Congress had made, as has been 
 already explained, a partial settlement with the agent of 
 Beaumarchais, and had entered into a contract with him for 
 further supplies. This contract, however, was never exe- 
 cuted, our treaty of alliance with France of February, 1778, 
 rendering any further concealment or dealing with third 
 parties unnecessary. 
 
 Congress was much perplexed in deciding which of these 
 stories was the true one, that of their Commissioners, who 
 told them that no payment was expected for these supplies, 
 because they were due to the generosity of the King, or 
 that of the agent of Beaumarchais, supported by the direct 
 testimony of one of those Commissioners, Mr. Deane, who 
 asserted that he had bought the articles from the house of 
 Roderigue Hortalez & Co., and that they were to be paid 
 for by the government of the United States. They directed 
 their Commissioners in Paris to make direct inquiry of the 
 government to whom and for how much they were indebted. 
 M. de Vergennes replied that the King had furnished noi/i- 
 ing, that he had merely permitted Beaumarchais to with- 
 draw from the arsenals certain arms and powder on condition 
 that he would replace them, and that neither the King nor 
 himself knew anything about the house of Hortalez & Co., 
 or how far it could be depended upon to fulfil its contracts. 
 This obvious diplomatic lie, one of a very long series, did 
 not deceive Congress; but of course it was out of the 
 
3 2 B eaumarchais 
 
 question at that time to quarrel with France, and so it 
 submitted. 
 
 Poor Silas Deane was made the scapegoat in this in- 
 trigue. He was ordered home from France, and a strong 
 party in Congress accused him of having employed money 
 given by the King as " don gratuit" to the United States as 
 the basis for his own private commercial speculations. Of 
 course there was no ground for such an accusation, but the 
 result was that he was very hardly treated at the time, and 
 that he has never received since the full credit which was 
 due to him for his agency in securing military equipments 
 for our armies in the darkest days of the Revolution. 
 
 V. 
 
 Meanwhile, the examination of Beaumarchais' accounts 
 went slowly on, it having at last been decided that he was 
 the person to whom we were really indebted. While this 
 matter was pending, the declaration of the French signers 
 of the treaty of 1781 that three millions had been advanced 
 to the Americans gratuitously, and the subsequent expla- 
 nation that of this sum one million had been paid for our 
 use on the tenth of June, 1776, confirmed the Treasury offi- 
 cials in their opinion that Beaumarchais had received this 
 identical sum for our use, and had expended it in the pur- 
 chase of supplies sent us, with the cost of which he, by his ac- 
 count, sought now to charge us. Under these circumstances 
 they refused to settle his accounts finally until he should 
 
and " The Lost Million. ' ' 33 
 
 furnish some satisfactory explanation of the disposition of 
 this million. Beaumarchais was in a most awkward position. 
 He never forgot the peculiar danger to which he was liable 
 as secret agent. If he did not tell the truth, he might lose his 
 fortune ; if he did, he ran great risk of losing his liberty, 
 and possibly his life. So he equivocated. He insisted, of 
 course, that he was suffering great wrong and injustice from 
 the American government, and he protested that he had never 
 received a penny from the King or any one else which was 
 intended as a gift to us. He neither admitted nor denied 
 that he had received the money which was the subject of 
 dispute. His answer was not considered satisfactory. We 
 claimed that as this million had been given to us we suc- 
 ceeded to all the rights which the donor had in it previous 
 to the gift, among others the liability of the receiver to 
 account for its use to us, especially as it was claimed that 
 in some secret and unexplained way it had been used for 
 our benefit. The whole trouble, it should be borne in mind, 
 arose from the statement of the French government itself 
 in 1 78 1 when, unprompted, it declared that it had given 
 us three millions, whereas it was afterwards obliged to 
 admit that two only had been paid to our Commissioners. 
 
 Thus matters stood until 1794, when a new light was 
 thrown upon the subject. France by this time had become 
 a Republic. Gouverneur Morris was the American Min- 
 ister. By an adroit use of a little flattery he succeeded 
 in inducing Buchot, then the French Minister of Foreign 
 Relations, to institute a search among the archives of the 
 
34 Beaumarchais 
 
 Ministry for the receipt that was given to the French govern- 
 ment on the tenth of June, 1776, for the " lost million," telling 
 him in the high-flown language of the day (which no one 
 knew better how to assume than Morris) that "mysteries 
 serve too often no other purpose than to hide dilapidations 
 of which the people are victims," and saying that this receipt 
 was needed by the United States to settle their accounts 
 with Beaumarchais. The following receipt was shortly 
 afterwards produced by the Minister, and a copy was given 
 to Mr. Morris : 
 
 "1776. 
 
 " I have received from Monsieur du Vergier, agreeably 
 to the orders transmitted to him by Monsieur the Count 
 of Vergennes, dated the 5th current, the sum of one million, 
 for which I will account to the Count de Vergennes. 
 
 " Caron de Beaumarchais. 
 
 "Paris, June lo, 1776. 
 
 " Good for one million of livres tournois." 
 
 This receipt, of course, removed the last doubt as to the 
 person to whom the money was paid, and it did much to 
 confirm our government in the opinion that its theory of the 
 purpose for which it had been used was the correct one. 
 
 Beaumarchais died in 1799, after enduring hardships and 
 suffering of all kinds, perhaps quite as great as those under- 
 gone by any man who escaped the guillotine during the 
 Reign of Terror. The next year the French government 
 took up his claim and urged its payment. Talleyrand was 
 
and "The Lost Million. " 35 
 
 Foreign Minister at that time, and he was under peculiar 
 obligations to Beaumarchais. To explain this it is necessary 
 to recall the disgraceful proceedings of the French Directory 
 in 1796, when the Commissioners whom we had sent to 
 negotiate a treaty with France were given plainly to under- 
 stand by the members of the Directory that no treaty could 
 be concluded unless they were paid fifty thousand pounds, 
 or twelve thousand five hundred pounds to each one of 
 them. Talleyrand was a member of the Directory, and our 
 Commissioners of course refused to pay a farthing for any 
 such purpose. Beaumarchais, who seems always to have 
 hovered around men in power, and whose moral sense was 
 so obtuse that he could not understand the scruples of the 
 Commissioners, believed, or affected to believe, that the real 
 obstacle to offering this bribe was a want of ready money. 
 In order, therefore, to accommodate Talleyrand, as well as 
 to get some ready money for himself, of which at that time 
 he was sorely in need, he proposed that if the State of Vir- 
 ginia, against whom he had a claim for one hundred and 
 forty-five thousand pounds, would pay him without delay, 
 he would set apart fifty thousand pounds, part of that 
 sum, for the purpose of bribing the Directors to conclude 
 the treaty. This attempted intervention of Beaumarchais, 
 by which he hoped to be of service to the United States, to 
 fill his own pockets, and to provide a handsome douceur for 
 his friend Talleyrand all at one stroke, did not make, when 
 it became known here, an impression very favorable to the 
 honesty of his methods of doing business. 
 
36 Beavmarchais 
 
 Under these circumstances Talleyrand instructed M. 
 Pichon, the French Minister here, to urge, in 1801, the pay- 
 ment of the claim of Beaumarchais in the name of the 
 French government. He took the singular ground that 
 there was a distinction to be made between a political agent 
 and a commercial agfent, and that the "lost million" had 
 been paid to Beaumarchais in his former capacity only. This 
 sort of reasoning, as we may suppose, produced Httle or 
 no effect. It was followed up in 1806 by the new Minis- 
 ter, General Turreau, in a series of elaborate despatches, 
 which were much more to the purpose, and carried convic- 
 tion to the minds of many. He relied upon four new 
 grounds to support his position, and made an effort to meet 
 more particularly the objections which had been made to 
 the claim. He insisted, ist, that the money had been given 
 to Beaumarchais by the King for a secret political purpose, 
 and that this purpose was a mystere de cabinet, which the 
 King did not think proper to reveal ; adly, that Beaumarchais 
 had promised to account to the King alone for the use he 
 had made of the money ; 3dly, that, consequently, he was 
 not only under no obligations to account to the United States, 
 but was forbidden by his position as secret agent to do so ; 
 and, 4thly, that the money paid June 10, 1776, had never 
 been expended in the purchase of military supplies, but for 
 another purpose (which was kept secret), of benefit to us. 
 The subject during these years, and for many years there- 
 after, was referred to different Committees of Congress, 
 and while their opinions, as has been stated, differed, their 
 
and " The Lost Million:' 37 
 
 reports are all marked with wonderful fairness and a spirit of 
 international comity. They all, without exception, recognize 
 the delicacy of the position in which the French government 
 claimed to have been placed, and acknowledge the force of 
 its declaration that it could not disclose the truth without 
 compromising the honor of the King. 
 
 So earnest was the desire of our government to pay to 
 Beaumarchais' heirs any sum which it could be proved we 
 really owed him, that in 1816 Mr. Gallatin, then our Minister 
 to France, wrote to the Due de Richelieu, the French Foreign 
 Minister, that if his government would give us a formal as- 
 surance that the money in question was not paid nor used 
 for the purchase of military supplies for us, such an assurance 
 would doubtless dispose Congress favorably towards the 
 payment of his claim. The Duke replied to Mr. Gallatin, 
 " I am warranted, sir, after a fresh examination of the facts, 
 in persisting in the declarations above stated" (that is, the 
 previous declarations of the French government as to the dis- 
 posal of the "lost miUion"), "and in considering as a matter 
 of certainty that the million paid on the tenth of June was not 
 applied to the purchase of the shipments made to the United 
 States at that period by M. de Beaumarchais." Fortified 
 by this letter, M. Hyde de Neuville, the Minister here, re- 
 turned once more to an appeal to Congress, and although 
 he was supported by the reports of two Committees, one 
 in 1823 and the other in 1828, recommending the payment 
 of the claim principally upon the ground of the faith which 
 ought to be given to the French declaration, there was 
 
38 Beaumarchais 
 
 always found an invincible repugnance on the part of the 
 majority of Congress to vote money for that purpose. At 
 last, in 1835, this long dispute came to an end as far as Con- 
 gress was concerned. In that year the French government 
 paid us the five millions of dollars which by the treaty of 
 1 83 1 it had agreed to pay for spoliations of our commerce 
 subsequent to the year 1800. Out of this fund the heirs of 
 Beaumarchais were paid, they agreeing to abandon their 
 demand of one million livres, receiving eight hundred thou- 
 sand francs in payment of other claims which we had never 
 disputed, and we were thereupon released from all further 
 obligation to them. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Thus the matter rested until the year 1856, when M. de 
 Lomenie published his work " Beaumarchais et son Temps." 
 In the mean time we were forced to rest under the imputa- 
 tion, not only in the judgment of foreign powers, but also in 
 that of many of our own countrymen, of having refused to 
 pay a large portion of a debt contracted by us in the pur- 
 chase of the military supplies by which we were enabled to 
 achieve our independence. M. de Lomenie tells us that he 
 had the full co-operation of the family of Beaumarchais in 
 preparing his work. He relates how he was taken by one 
 of them to an old house in Rue de Pas du Mule, where the 
 vast mass of papers left by Beaumarchais was gathered. 
 They filled, he says, a number of rooms, were covered with 
 dust, and were piled together in great confusion. They had 
 
and " The Lost Million." 39 
 
 apparently not been disturbed, or at least had not been ex- 
 amined, during the fifty years which had elapsed since Beau- 
 marchais' death. With no small difficulty he classified and 
 arranged these scattered papers, and he then found that he 
 had abundant material, much of which was entirely new, to 
 enable him to tell the truth about the many stormy episodes 
 in the life of his hero. 
 
 Confining ourselves to that portion of these papers which 
 referred to the relations of Beaumarchais with the United 
 States during the Revolution, we find that he discovered in 
 them abundant evidence to prove that the disputed or " lost 
 million," the source and history of which we have been en- 
 deavoring to trace, was actually paid by the French govern- 
 ment to Beaumarchais on the loth June, 1776, that it was 
 intended by that government solely as the basis of a subven- 
 tion to enable Beaumarchais to purchase supplies and for- 
 ward them to us, and that it was actually so employed. In 
 this transaction there never was and never was intended to 
 be the slightest mysiere de cabinet, nor any suggestion that 
 the money was to be used, as the French government had 
 so long maintained in its dispute with us, for any other 
 "secret political purpose" than the purchase of arms and 
 military equipments for our use. In the negotiations with 
 Beaumarchais secrecy of course had been enjoined, but its 
 only motive was stated to be a fear lest the obligations of 
 French neutrality might be compromised in case the supply 
 and shipment of these arms should be discovered. The 
 French government said to Beaumarchais, " We give you 
 
40 Beaumarchais 
 
 secretly a million. We will endeavor to procure from the 
 Court of Spain another million for the same purpose. With 
 these two millions, and the co-operation of private persons 
 who may wish to become partners in your enterprise, you 
 will establish a commercial house, and at your own risk you 
 will furnish the United States with arms, munitions of war, 
 clothing, and all other objects which may be necessary to 
 carry on the war. In a word, it is necessary that the busi- 
 ness secretly founded [subventionee) by us should become 
 thereafter self-supporting." In point of fact it would seem 
 that this " lost million" was the only direct subsidy or sub- 
 vention which Beaumarchais ever received from the French 
 treasury in money during the year 1776 for the support of 
 his operations in America. He had, of course, by its order 
 peculiar privileges and peculiar opportunities for making 
 large profits, as we have explained, since he was permitted 
 to withdraw a large amount of the supplies from the royal 
 arsenals. 
 
 Beaumarchais received on the eleventh of August, 1776, 
 from the Court of Spain the other million promised by De 
 Vergennes. It reached the French treasury in a very 
 roundabout way, in order to conceal from the English 
 government all traces from whence it came or whither it 
 went. If any other proof is needed of the origin and dis- 
 position of this million, it is found in two letters, one from 
 M. de Vergennes, the other from the King. In the first, 
 dated May 2, 1776, the Minister writes to the King, "Sire, 
 fai I'honneur de mettre aux pieds de voire Majeste la feuille 
 
and " The Lost Million. ' ' 4^ 
 
 ^uz dott m'auforiser a fournir un million de livres pour le 
 service des colotiies anglaises,"* etc. The other is from the 
 King of France to the King of Spain, dated January 8, 
 1 778. After speaking of the liberty which had been given 
 both to the English and to their rebellious Colonies to trade 
 with France, notwithstanding the war, the King says, " De 
 cette maniere V Amerique s'est pourvue d'armes et de munitions 
 dont elle manquait ; je ne parle pas des secours d argent, et 
 autres que nous leur avons donnes, le tout etant passe sur le 
 compte de commerce y-\ etc. 
 
 In all these accounts of the transactions of Beaumarchais 
 with the French government there is not, as I have said, 
 the slightest hint that the money paid him on the tenth of 
 June, 1776, was ever used for any other purpose than that 
 contended for by the majority of the American Congress, 
 viz., the purchase of military stores for us. It follows as a 
 matter of course that both Beaumarchais and the French 
 government must always have been fully aware that such 
 was the true state of the case, and that Beaumarchais had 
 actually been paid by France the very money which he 
 claimed from us. It is difficult to refrain from characterizing 
 as it deserves the conduct of the French government in this 
 business, while it had in its possession the best evidence that 
 the claim it was urging upon us was unfounded. The at- 
 tempt on its part to show after the discovery of 1794. that 
 although the money had really been paid to Beaumarchais, 
 
 * De Flassan, Histoire de la Diplomatie fran9aise. \ Ibid. 
 
42 Beaumarchais 
 
 yet it was not proper to give us any account of its dis- 
 posal because it was secret du roi, and that the money had 
 been used for some other " secret political purpose" for our 
 benefit, and, further, that the motive for such a disposal could 
 not be inquired into, because it was myslere de cabinet, — all 
 these were diplomatic subterfuges, or, to speak more plainly, 
 absolute falsehoods. 
 
 If we had not discovered by accident that France had 
 ostentatiously declared in 1781 that it had given us three 
 millions instead of the two which we had actually received, and 
 had not been thus set upon inquiry, doubtless this fraud of 
 Beaumarchais', aided by his government, would have been 
 successful. This boastful blunder in the treaty of 1 781 came 
 back to plague its inventors many times during the succeed- 
 ing half-century. It certainly gave rise to more diplomatic 
 falsehood and deception than any international question we 
 have ever had to discuss. From the beginning to the end 
 the conduct of the French government seems uncandid and 
 disingenuous to the last degree. When M. Grand, the 
 banker of the American government in Paris, at its sugges- 
 tion, asked M. de Vergennes to whom the money had been 
 paid, the Minister, it will be remembered, refused to give his 
 name. The reason now appears for the first time in this 
 book of M. de Lomenie. In the confidential correspond- 
 ence between the Minister and the chief of the money 
 department of the foreign office now brought to light, it 
 seems that the name of Beaumarchais was not given up lest 
 the disclosure might prejudice him in the settlement of his 
 
and "The Lost Million." 43 
 
 accounts with the United States, both he and the French 
 Minister being then perfectly aware that one item of that 
 account was a charge against the United States of a miUion 
 which had already been paid him by France. The truth is, 
 sad to say, that the attempt to extort this money from us was 
 based throughout all these long negotiations upon false pre- 
 tences. When the question, in 1816, seemed to be narrowed 
 down to one point, viz., whether France would explicitly 
 declare that the said million was not applied to the purchase 
 of the supplies furnished by M. de Beaumarchais to the 
 United States, and the Due de Richelieu, then Foreign Min- 
 ister, declared positively that the said million was not so 
 applied, the Minister was treading in the footsteps of his 
 predecessors, and making, like all of them, false statements. 
 As M. de Lomenie says, " Cela iietait exact, qu officielle- 
 ment," leaving us to imagine what language could be em- 
 ployed to make a denial more general or positive. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that a good deal of the distrust 
 felt by public men in this country of the declarations of the 
 French government was created by the experience they 
 had already had in their dealings with the agents of his 
 Christian Majesty. Thus, Dr. Franklin relates in one of his 
 letters that at an interview which was held in 1782 between 
 M. de Vergennes and Mr. Grenville (at which he was 
 present) in which the basis for negotiations for peace was 
 discussed, Mr. Grenville, in the course of conversation, 
 remarked " that the war had been provoked by the en- 
 couragement given by France to the Americans to revolt. 
 
44 Beaumarchais 
 
 Whereupon the French Minister grew warm, and declared 
 that the breach was made and independence declared by 
 the Americans long before they received the least encour- 
 agement from France, and he defied the world to prove it." 
 (See Pitkin's History of the United States, vol. i. p. 421.) 
 And all this, be it remembered, in the presence of Franklin, 
 who had himself, as Commissioner, received two millions of 
 this same secret service money, the existence of which was 
 so strenuously denied by the Minister. We may imagine 
 the " calm and serene sage" keeping silence, but probably 
 thinking, as John Adams did on a similar occasion, "that 
 human nature was curiously constituted." 
 
 Our government, therefore, notwithstanding the many 
 reasons we had to be grateful for the assistance which was 
 sent to us from France, and our anxious desire to pay hon- 
 estly for all that had been received, was often perplexed by 
 the tortuous policy pursued by that power, and at a loss 
 what course to take. At one time, 1778, we were told that 
 the French government had furnished nothing, and that 
 Beaumarchais alone was to be paid for the supplies ; at an- 
 other, 1 781, that government informs us that it makes us a 
 present, to the extent of one million, of the supplies which 
 it had previously told us that it did not furnish. No wonder 
 that we looked upon all the representations which came from 
 France on this subject as tainted with suspicion. And the 
 subsequent developments seem to me to show that we were 
 quite right in doing so. 
 
 But it will be asked, How could the French government, 
 
and ' ' The Lost Million. ' ' 45 
 
 with a full knowledge of all the circumstances which have 
 been related, urge with such persistence upon the American 
 government the payment of a million which had been pre- 
 viously paid by itself? M. de Lomenie, who evidently thinks 
 that Beaumarchais was very harshly treated by the United 
 States, but whose book furnishes the best evidence which 
 has yet appeared why he should not have been paid, persists 
 in maintaining that, notwithstanding all this, Beaumarchais 
 was a genuine creditor of this country. He arrives at this 
 conclusion in the following way. He insists, first, that Beau- 
 marchais when he signed the receipt of June 10, 1776, prom- 
 ised only to account to the King, and not to us ; and, sec- 
 ondly, that as Beaumarchais had been a great loser in his 
 dealings with us, we should pay him for his losses. 
 
 In regard to the first point, it is probably true that he 
 did account to the King satisfactorily for the use and dis- 
 posal of the million, for the Treasury order in regard to the 
 reimbursement of the funds paid to Beaumarchais has been 
 produced, and it is marked in the royal handwriting with the 
 word " Bon," that, it seems, being the method adopted by 
 the King to express his approval of secret disbursements of 
 money. But certainly it is manifest that, although this pro- 
 ceeding may have settled the account between the French 
 government and Beaumarchais, it could in no way affect his 
 claim upon us, or our liability to him. It is a universal but 
 very elementary principle of law, that when a man is in- 
 trusted with money by one person for the use and benefit 
 of another, he owes a double duty. He must account not 
 
46 Beaumarchais 
 
 only to the giver but to the receiver also. This is put in a 
 very clear light by Mr. Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, 
 in a letter dated January 27, 1806, to the Chairman of the 
 Committee on Claims. He says, — 
 
 "It is evident that if he was rightfully charged by the 
 United States with the sum in question, it is to them and 
 not to the French government that he is accountable. The 
 solemn declaration that that million was a gratuitous gift to 
 the United States seems inconsistent with the supposition 
 that it was not applied as an aid and subsidy, but given 
 without their consent and knowledgfe to an individual re- 
 sponsible for the application, not to the government who had 
 received but to that who gave the subsidy. And that answer, 
 so far as relates to the French government, appears con- 
 clusive," 
 
 In regard to the second point, M. de Lomenie does not 
 seem to stand upon any firmer ground when he argues that 
 we should have allowed the payment of the million, because 
 Beaumarchais had suffered great losses in his dealings with 
 us, and therefore we should have reimbursed him for those 
 losses. At the close of the war it is said that he had be- 
 come very poor through zeal in our service, and that it 
 would have been a graceful and a generous act on our part 
 had we not permitted him to suffer. As to his poverty, we 
 may say that this book of M. de Lomenie furnishes the best 
 evidence that he was no poorer at the close of the American 
 war than he had been at the beginning. A statement is 
 given of his accounts, from which it appears that in 1783 he 
 
and " The Lost Million." 47 
 
 was worth at least forty-eight thousand francs more than he 
 was in 1776, the difference of course being due to his deal- 
 ings with us. But his poverty or even his losses have noth- 
 ing whatever to do with the rightfulness of the particular 
 claim he made upon us. If, indeed, his zeal or his gener- 
 osity in our service had led him so far as to involve serious 
 losses on his part, although the whole affair was a mere 
 commercial speculation with its inevitable risks, no one 
 who knows the American people or their history can doubt 
 that a claim upon us based upon such grounds would have 
 received a favorable consideration. But Beaumarchais made 
 no such claim, and he attempted to do what any vulgar ad- 
 venturer might have done. He simply overcharged us, 
 trusting that he would not be discovered. He made no 
 appeal ad misericordiain even when reduced to the ex- 
 tremest poverty in Hamburg in 1794, but insisted that his 
 claim was strictissimi juris, and, as such, ought to be paid in 
 full at once. 
 
 The author of his life tells us that he was compensated 
 for his losses in the French service, and therefore should 
 have been treated in the same way by us. He refers es- 
 pecially to the injury which was done to one of his armed 
 vessels while convoying a large number of ships (either 
 belonging to him or laden with his cargoes), in an engage- 
 ment with the English fleet, under Admiral Byron, off" the 
 island of Grenada in 1779. It seems that his ship, Le fier 
 Roderique, with its convoy, was cruising off this island on the 
 eve of the battle, and that the French admiral D'Estaing 
 
48 Beaumarchais 
 
 insisted that it should take part in the fight. The result was 
 that Le fier Roderique was much injured, her captain killed, 
 the convoy dispersed, and some of the vessels captured. 
 For his losses the French government paid him in 1784- 
 1 786 two millions of francs. But is there anything in his 
 services to us resembling this ? and can we doubt that if 
 there had been, and a claim for reimbursement and indem- 
 nity had been made, it would have been cheerfully paid, 
 although we had not, as the French government under the 
 Bourbons always had, the ever-present consciousness that 
 while it was dealing with an ordinary merchant, like Beau- 
 marchais, the man who would enforce his claim in case 
 of need was the author of the "Mariage de Figaro" ? 
 Possibly the remembrance of the power that personage had 
 shown in his conflict with the Parlement Matipeou, and the 
 fear of what he might be able to do with a feeble ministry 
 if tempted, were not without their influence in determining 
 M. de Vergennes to support him in maintaining a claim 
 which none better than he knew was without any foundation 
 in right or justice. 
 
 From the account we have given of the manner in which 
 military supplies were furnished us by the French govern- 
 ment, and by its agent Beaumarchais, we can gain some 
 idea of the nature and extent of the aid and succor which 
 we received from them both during the Revolution. From 
 France we received three millions of livres (including in it 
 
and "The Lost Million. ' ' 49 
 
 the disputed million paid to Beaumarchais for our use) pre- 
 vious to the treaty of 1778, and six millions of livres in 
 1 78 1, in all nine millions of livres, or about one million eight 
 hundred thousand dollars, and from Beaumarchais supplies 
 valued at about five millions of livres, all of which (except 
 those for which he wrongfully charged us one million) were 
 duly paid for. We cannot too often express our opinion 
 that this French aid was of inestimable value to us during 
 the war, and we can never be too thankful for it. But in 
 our thankfulness we must not forget that this succor was in 
 no sense disinterested, either on the part of France or that 
 of Beaumarchais. There is a common impression in France, 
 and perhaps to a certain extent in this country, that we 
 owed the possibility of maintaining our independence to 
 French intervention and succor. In a certain sense this 
 may be true, but in considering the action of France we 
 may ask. What material advantages did she gain by spending 
 less than two millions of dollars, and declaring war against 
 England, as methods of helping us? We must remember 
 that her interest in our quarrel was solely the opportunity 
 it gave her of humiliating her hereditary enemy, of recon- 
 quering the prestige which she had lost as a military power 
 by the treaty of 1763, and especially of securing for herself 
 the benefit of that commerce from which she was excluded 
 as long as we were English colonies. In each of these 
 cherished hopes France was signally successful. The terri- 
 ble humiliations of national pride from which she had suf- 
 fered by the provisions of the treaty of 1763, owing to the 
 
5o Beaumarchais 
 
 loss of her possessions in the East and West Indies and of 
 Canada, were amply avenged when, in 1 783, the brightest 
 jewel in the British Crown — the American Colonies — was 
 rudely torn from it. At that time it was the universal opin- 
 ion both in England and France, and indeed it was openly 
 proclaimed in the House of Commons, that the sun of Eng- 
 land's glory had set forever, and France rejoiced over her 
 downfall with a savage joy which knew no bounds. But 
 while her revenge was gratified by the recognition on the 
 part of England of the independence of the United States, 
 vast substantial advantages soon accrued to her. Her 
 power, her influence, and her wealth were all enormously 
 increased by our independence. With the birth of the 
 United States as a nation a new continent was opened to 
 French commercial enterprise. What that commerce may 
 have been worth to her during the century which she has 
 freely enjoyed it cannot be told here, but no one can doubt 
 that it was cheaply purchased by the payment of less than 
 two millions of dollars and a war of five years against our 
 common enemy. 
 
 It is possible, therefore, to overrate the disinterestedness 
 of France in regard to the succors furnished by her during 
 the Revolution. There was (and let it never be forgotten) 
 but one disinterested Frenchman who served us during that 
 war, and that was the Marquis de Lafayette. He made the 
 American cause his own, because he believed it to be that 
 of liberty and human rights. He fought for us not because 
 he hated England as an enemy to France, but because he 
 
 V- \ V> V^ s • 
 
 X b 
 
and " The Lost Million. ' ' 
 
 51 
 
 was moved by the same principle which governed Wash- 
 ington and his companions. He alone, of all the foreigners 
 in our army, clamored for no recognition of his services, 
 and asked for no pay. The conduct of Lafayette had many 
 admirers among his countrymen, but no imitators. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 E 249.S849 
 
 Beaumarchals and "the lost mlllion."A ch 
 
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