Improbable Patriot

by Harlow Giles Unger

  “The sweetest thing in the world, my dear friend,” Beaumarchais replied, “is the generosity of your sincere friendship. Everyone tells me that I have a reprieve; add to this the news that it is the king’s free will that I obtain it. May God hear your prayers, my generous friend.”20

  In March 1774, after a month in exile, Beaumarchais returned to Paris, and, according to his friend Gudin, attracted swarms of admirers, including a Swiss lady of considerable wealth, “endowed with beauty, a tender heart and a firmness of character capable of supporting him in the cruel combats that would be his destiny.” Gudin insists she “burned with a desire” to see him:

  Under the pretext of busying herself with music, she sent … to beg him to lend her his harp. Beaumarchais understood. He replied, “I lend nothing, but if the lady wishes to come here, I will hear her play and she may hear me.” She came. It was difficult to see Beaumarchais without loving him. What an impression he made, regarded as the defender of oppressed liberty, avenger of the public … his charm, looks, voice, bearing. … The attraction of the first moment increased from hour to hour as each discovered excellent qualities in the other. … Their hearts were united from that moment by a bond which no circumstance could break and which love, esteem and time … rendered indissoluble.21

  Still without his civil rights, he could not marry her; nevertheless, the starstruck Marie-Thérèse Amélie de Willermaulaz became his full-time companion and lover, adding a gay, cheerful presence — and stately good looks — to his life and eventually taking full responsibility for preserving the atmosphere of song, laughter, good cheer, good food, and good wine that had characterized every Beaumarchais home since his childhood.

  Shortly after Beaumarchais met Marie-Thérèse, Sartine came from the palace with details of the mission Beaumarchais was to undertake for the king: Théveneau de Morande, a French writer of little consequence living in London, had extorted large sums from French notables by detailing their sexual adventures — but not their names — in a periodical he edited called Le Gazetier cuirassé ou Anecdotes scandaleuses de la Cour de France — “The Journalist in Armor or Scandalous Anecdotes from the French Court.” Morande’s audacity peaked with the printing of a tale entitled Mémoires secrets d’une femme publique — “The Secret Memoirs of a Prostitute” — which purported to relate the early life of Madame du Barry before she became the king’s mistress. After Madame de Pompadour died in 1764, Louis XV spent four years experimenting with a procession of women, until his keen eye spotted the beautiful twenty-two-year-old Jeanne Bécu, who, according to Morande’s version of her biography, was dining with his valet. Insisting she was the illegitimate daughter of a seamstress, Morande said Bécu had gone to work in a Paris brothel at fifteen, where the owner appropriated the young beauty as his own at first, then used her and other young girls to win favors at court by taking them to the king’s summer palace in Compiègne, north of Paris, for the pleasure of the king’s servants. When the fifty-eight-year-old king saw her, according to Morande’s lascivious tale, she so aroused his lust that he snatched her up and took her to his royal chamber, despite his valet’s warnings that she had slept on the streets and might transmit venereal disease. To minimize scandal, Morande explained, the king ennobled her by ordering her to marry Count Guillaume du Barry, who barely finished uttering his oath of marriage when the king seized Madame’s arm and, exercising his droit du seigneur — the right of a lord to sleep with his vassal’s bride on the wedding night — he led her back to the royal bed to consummate her wedding.

  Marie-Thérèse Amélie de Willermaulaz, who became Beaumarchais’s full-time companion, lover, and mother of his child, before restoration of his civil rights allowed them to marry.

  AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  Madame du Barry was the successor to Madame de Pompadour as King Louis XV’s official Royal Mistress. She was the target of a libelous pamphlet that Beaumarchais, acting as a secret agent for the king, succeeded in suppressing.

  RÉUNION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX

  The king’s prime minister, the duc de Choiseul, was but one of many critics at court who found the king’s behavior disgraceful. Eager to promote his own sister for consideration as the king’s royal mistress, he described du Barry as “contemptible scum and a danger to the king at his age and declining health.” The king ignored Choiseul and his other critics, however, and, toward the end of April 1769, he presided over a “formal presentation at Court of a whore from the streets of Paris and her elevation to the rank of Royal Mistress.”22

  When Morande threatened to reveal the name of la femme publique, King Louis asked his brother monarch the British king to have his agents kill Morande and seize materials with any references to Madame du Barry. Time after time, however, Morande escaped — and, with each escape, he increased the price for documents relating to Madame du Barry. Having read The Barber of Seville, the king decided that only a brilliant scamp like Figaro would be able to outsmart Morande, and he called on Figaro’s creator to go to London.

  Although Beaumarchais arrived at Morande’s door in disguise under the name of Ronac (an anagram of Caron), Morande turned out to be warm and amusing, with winning ways that quickly turned Beaumarchais into a friend and confederate. As a master designer of intricate plots, Beaumarchais appreciated Morande’s bravura in exposing aristocratic life in France, and, in the aftermath of his outrageous imprisonment by the duc de La Vrillière, he shared Morande’s deep loathing for the aristocracy. Indeed, his abhorrence for French nobility had already spawned a sense of comradeship with Americans and their rebellion against British rule. The people of Boston had thrown British tea into the sea rather than pay exorbitant taxes to drink it, and city after city in America was following suit in the spring of 1774. A mob disguised as Indians boarded a tea ship in New York City in March and dumped its entire cargo into the water. In April, a tea ship tied up in Annapolis, Maryland, only to a have a mob set fire to it and destroy its cargo. A ship attempting to land tea in Greenwich, New Jersey, met the same fate. Infuriated by colonist insolence, the British monarch and his parliamentary aristocrats punished them by closing Boston to all trade — in effect threatening the city with starvation. Beaumarchais would equate the response of Britain’s parliament with the sort of injustice that he had suffered at the hands of the French judiciary. In his mind and heart, he was at one with American patriots — none of whom he had ever met. They were creations of his imagination — godlike defenders of individual liberty.

  Before their conversations had ended, Beaumarchais decided to team up with Morande by taking a copy of the du Barry pamphlet back to Versailles with Morande’s conditions for destroying all copies. Less than a week after going to London, Beaumarchais was back in Versailles displaying the pamphlet to the king’s secret-service director, whose agents had tried for months to lay hands on it — and Morande — without success:

  “You must be the devil,” said the king’s man incredulously as he looked at the pamphlet.

  “It is only Monsieur de Beaumarchais, at your service, my lord.”23

  On April 8, Beaumarchais returned to London with 20,000 livres (about $80,000 today) for Morande and a king’s contract to pay Morande 4,000 livres annually if he destroyed the pamphlets and swore an oath of allegiance that would subject him to summary execution for disloyalty. With Beaumarchais watching, Morande burned the pamphlets on the evening of April 24, 1774. With his newfound wealth, he went into legitimate journalism, becoming editor of Le Courier de l’Europe, to which Beaumarchais would frequently contribute under a pseudonym.

  When Beaumarchais returned to France, he all but sprinted to Versailles to claim his royal reprieve and resume his storied life where he had left off before being swept up by a torrent of prejudice, calumny, and villainy. To his dismay, Louis XV was ill with smallpox and died a few days later — without leaving a word in writing to confirm his authorization of the Beaumarchais mission and recompense. The new king and his ministerial appointees knew nothi
ng about it. The few officials who did know were unwilling to risk their futures by intervening on Beaumarchais’s behalf after the new king and his Austrian queen, Marie Antoinette, expressed their disgust for Madame du Barry and exiled her from the palace. Beaumarchais was left with nothing to show for his London adventure — not even his travel expenses, let alone his civil rights or a “letter of relief” to stave off impending bankruptcy and imprisonment. Astonished by what he called “the strange fate that pursues me,” Beaumarchais lamented, “If the king had lived for eight more days, I would have recovered my civil rights. I had his royal word for it.”24

  Beaumarchais tried to salvage some advantage from his service to the late king: “I hope you don’t want me to remain without civil rights because of a decision by a discredited court,” he reasoned with his friend, Police Chief Sartine. “All Europe has absolved me of its odious and absurd judgment, but I need a new decree to destroy the one it issued. I shall not cease to work toward this end. I hope your good offices will help attain this important object.”25 Sartine could only suggest that Beaumarchais await an opportunity to serve the new king as he had the old.

  Beaumarchais decided to provide the opportunity for himself.

  The threat of a scandalous revelation had provoked Beaumarchais’s mission for the old king, he reasoned. A similar threat to the new king might yield the same results. This time, however, Beaumarchais intended to collect his just rewards in advance.

  I’m the Busiest, Cleverest Fellow I Know

  WITHIN DAYS of Sartine’s suggestion that Beaumarchais await an opportunity to serve the new king, a scandalous document appeared mysteriously — indeed, miraculously — under Sartine’s door at Versailles. It was entitled Avis à la branche espagnole sur ses droits à la couronne de France, à défaut d’héritiers (The Rights of the Spanish Branch [of the Bourbon Kings] to Claim the French Throne in the Absence of Any Heirs to the French King). The potentially explosive document stated with certainty that twenty-year-old king Louis XVI was unable to procreate and sire an heir, thus giving the Spanish Bourbons the right to claim the French throne.

  The pamphlet devastated the royal couple. After four years of marriage Louis and his queen had indeed failed to produce any children. Theirs was the usual arranged royal marriage — in this case allying France and Austria by the union of the French heir apparent with Archduchess Marie Antoinette, a daughter of Austrian empress Marie Theresa.

  Marie Antoinette’s new husband, however, was taciturn, portly, and disinterested in society and sex. He was happiest alone in a quiet room, in a comfortable chair, studying history books and maps — and making delicate little metal trinkets with his fat little fingers. In contrast, his queen was a wildly outgoing beauty, raised in a ceaseless whirl of balls and entertainment in Vienna and the nearby summer palace of Schönbrun. Only nineteen when crowned queen of France, she had chafed beside her all-but-impotent fat prince during the four last dismal years of Louis XV’s reign. With the old man’s death, she abandoned her husband to his maps and trinkets and staged a nonstop frenzy of balls, banquets, and theater galas that illuminated the skies over Versailles and Paris. Up all night, asleep all day, she had as little inclination as her husband to mate and breed royal heirs. The document proclaiming royal sterility, however, cast a different — and dangerous — light on their behavior and threatened to provoke pretenders to the throne from the rival French House of Orléans or the Spanish Bourbons to plot the overthrow of the timorous king. The king and his counselors knew they had to destroy the pamphlet and its author.

  The Austrian-born queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and her husband, King Louis XVI, also were about to become targets of libelous pamphlets when Beaumarchais stepped into the picture. Again acting as secret agent to a king, Beaumarchais pursued the mysterious author of the libelous materials into the Vienna Woods.

  RÉUNION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX

  Additional information materialized from no-one-knew-where naming the author as one “Guillaume Angelucci,” an Italian adventurer living in England as “William Atkinson.” An apparent master of disguises, the evil Angelucci successfully eluded all efforts by French — and English — agents to find even of a trace of his existence, past or present. All they learned was that he had the resources to flood Europe with copies of the document by publishing simultaneous editions in different languages in England and Holland.

  The circumstances surrounding the document resembled so closely those of the du Barry pamphlet that Sartine approached the king and proposed Beaumarchais as the ideal agent to root out Angelucci and suppress publication of the document that threatened the royal family with scandal. Beaumarchais all but leaped at the opportunity to serve his king, but demanded, as a reward, an immediate “letter of relief” and restoration of his civil rights after he found Angelucci and destroyed the libelous document. Beaumarchais also demanded a written order from the king to guarantee his compensation if and when he succeeded in his mission:

  The Sieur de Beaumarchais, charged by my secret orders, will start for his destination as soon as possible; the discretion and energy he invests in their execution will be the most agreeable proofs which he can give me of his zeal for my service.

  Louis.

  Marly, July 10, 1774.1

  Beaumarchais put the document in a gold locket he hung from his neck, pledged his “head, heart and arms” to the king’s service, and within days wrote to Sartine from London that he had found Angelucci alias Atkinson, paid him £1,400 (about $5,000 in today’s currency), and burned 1,000 copies of the pamphlet in Angelucci’s possession. Using his anagrammatic name of Ronac, he and Angelucci, he said, would leave immediately for Holland to destroy copies there.

  Beaumarchais’s next letter described the successful completion of his mission in Holland — only to end with a horrifying, hastily scribbled addendum, breathlessly detailing the treacherous Angelucci’s escape with an unburned copy. Writing that his quarry was fleeing to Nuremberg, Beaumarchais pledged to catch him and burn the last copy of the infamous document.

  “I am like a lion,” he wrote to Sartine. “I am out of money, but I have my own diamonds and jewelry that I will sell and, with rage in my heart … I shall travel day and night to find that abominable man. … I shall strip him of his papers and kill him.”2

  Beaumarchais followed Angelucci across Germany, detailing every step of the melodramatic chase in letters to Sartine. He wrote that he had trapped the villain at the forest of Neustadt, near Nuremberg, that Angelucci was on his horse and tried galloping away into the woods, but Beaumarchais had been too quick. He leaped from his coach, raced into the woods on foot, and, with Herculean strength, caught Angelucci’s boot and wrestled him off his horse to the ground. With Angelucci pleading for his life, Beaumarchais searched the man’s pockets, opened his valise, and lay hands on the last copy of the document that might have disgraced the French royal couple. He destroyed it immediately before turning his attention to his cringing prisoner. After receiving assurances that Angelucci would return to Italy and never again threaten the French royals, he allowed him to flee, even giving him a few banknotes to pay for his passage.

  As Beaumarchais left the forest, though, two robbers set upon him and wounded him with a knife.

  “Mein Gott,” the coachman cried out when he saw the bleeding Beaumarchais approach.

  “I immediately urinated on my handkerchief,” Beaumarchais wrote, “and applied the urine-soaked cloth to my wound.”

  When he got to town, he applied a clean bandage — this time choosing eau-de-vie, or fruit brandy, instead of urine, as a more appetizing antiseptic. After learning that Angelucci had masterminded the attack, Beaumarchais asked for an audience with Empress Marie Theresa to obtain help in tracking the mysterious Italian who was blackmailing the king and queen of France:

  EMPRESS: How did you acquire such zeal for the interests of my son-in-law and, above all, my daughter?

  BEAUMARCHAIS: I was one of the most unfortu
nate men in France toward the close of the last reign, Madame. The queen … did not disdain to show some sympathy for me. … In serving her now, without even a hope that she will ever know, I am only acquitting an immense debt. …

  EMPRESS: But, what was the need for you to change your name, Monsieur?

  BEAUMARCHAIS: I am only too well known throughout Europe, Madame. If I appeared under the name of Beaumarchais, I would no longer be free to work secretly as so delicate a mission requires; that is why I begged the king to let me travel under the name of Ronac, as indicated in my passport.3

  That evening a squad of soldiers stormed into his room and charged him with being an impostor, liar, and adventurer. His coach driver had filed a report saying that Beaumarchais had staged the entire Neustadt Forest scene and, indeed, had stabbed himself with a razor. After seizing his papers and other possessions, police placed him under house arrest, posting guards by his door twenty-four hours a day. He sent an urgent appeal to Sartine, and after a month’s imprisonment, a letter arrived from Versailles, assuring the Austrian government that Beaumarchais/Ronac was a personal envoy of the king. The empress ordered Beaumarchais released, and along with her apologies, she sent him 1,000 ducats (about $6,000 in modern currency). In a grand, theatrical gesture, however, Beaumarchais returned the money, saying, “I accept no favors but from my master.” Warned that he was “taking a great liberty to refuse the empress’s favors,” Beaumarchais replied indignantly, “Monsieur, the only liberty which cannot be taken from a very respectful but cruelly outraged man is the liberty to refuse favors. For the rest, my master will decide.”4 The empress replaced the money with a diamond ring that Beaumarchais would wear the rest of his life.