The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Atkinson

Minor court positions came to Beaumarchais, including walking in livery with a sword on his hip in the procession that preceded the king’s meat course. He made money as an arms dealer in the Seven Years’ War, as a lumber merchant, and as an agent for the Crown, including one mission in which he quashed the publication of Secret Memoirs of a Prostitute, a salacious pamphlet about a royal courtesan; Beaumarchais bought all the copies from a blackmailer and burned them in a London limekiln. In another recent mission to Britain, he retrieved from a renegade French expatriate an iron safe containing secret war plans drafted in Versailles for an attack on southern England. More government offices came to him, notably lieutenant general of the preserves in the bailiwick, and captain of the warren of the Louvre. Among other adornments, he wore an enormous diamond ring given to him by Empress Maria Theresa of Austria for services rendered, according to the biographer Georges Lemaitre. He was forever embroiled in spats, duels, lawsuits, indictments, judgments, and misjudgments. “My life,” he admitted, “is a combat.” During a squabble over a woman in 1773, a sword-wielding duke attacked him in his study, inflicting wounds on the coachman, cook, and footman trying to intervene; Beaumarchais, a witness reported, was “as cheerful and assured as if he had passed the most tranquil day.” His bestselling memoir, published in 1774, drew praise from Goethe and Voltaire. In late February 1775,...