Roderigue Hortalez and Company
Roderigue Hortalez and Company was a corporation created, enemies of France at the time, through the corporation.
Background
The Seven Years' War had gone badly for France, which had lost nearly all of her North American colonial possessions and had been militarily humiliated by the British. Spain, who had been an ally of France late in the war, had lost the strategically important territory of Florida. Britain, meanwhile, had expanded its colonial territories across large areas of North America.
To get out of legal trouble Pierre Beaumarchais pledged his services to the king in order to restore his civil rights.[6]
In 1774,
The company in operation
Beaumarchais, working as a secret agent, had traveled to London in pursuit of
Before the Declaration of Independence was even signed, weapons and other necessities were already flowing via the ostensibly neutral Dutch island of
Hortalez & Co. conducted business with the Americans from France through Connecticut merchant Silas Deane, who was sharing a covert trade agency with Thomas Morris the half-brother of Robert Morris (financier). Because this business did not include Arthur Lee, Lee then made it a point that Beaumarchais would never be paid for the goods he provided. He did this, not to harm Beaumarchais, but to deprive a political competitor his commission. As a result of Lee's actions, Deane lived in disgrace and poverty for years, and eventually died trying to prove that he was due the money.
In an August 16, 1777, letter from Lee to the "secrete committee of congress", he wrote of Beaumarchais that
This gentleman is not a merchant, but is known as a political agent, employed by the French Court. Remittances, therefore, to him, so far from covering the business, would create suspicions, or rather satisfy the British Court these suspicions are just. At the same time, his circumstances and situation forbid one to hope, that your property, being once in his hands, could ever be recovered; and, as an attempt to force him to account, would hazard a discover of the whole transaction, this government would, of course, discountenance or forbid it".[5]
Opposition
The only major opposition to the plan came from French
References
- ^ Cazorla, Frank, G. Baena, Rosa, Polo, David, Reder Gadow, Marion (2019). The governor Louis de Unzaga (1717-1793) Pioneer in the birth of the United States of America, Foundation. Malaga
- ^ Calleja, G. (2018) Spain Financially Sustained the Continental Congress and its Army during the American Revolutionary War. Iberdrola.
- ^ "XenophonGroup Page - Boende i Nice".
- ^ ISBN 0-8420-2916-8.
- ^ a b "H. Rept. 18-64 - Report of the select committee, to whom was referred the message of the President of the United States in relation to the representatives of the late Caron de Beaumarchais. February 16, 1824. Read: Ordered that it lie upon the table". GovInfo.gov. U.S. Government Printing Office. Retrieved 20 June 2023.
- ^ Beaumarchais: The three Figaro plays, translation and notes by David Edney, Doverhouse, 2000.
- ^ Georges Édouard Lemaître. Beaumarchais. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1949
- ^ a b Jones, Crucible of Power. pp. 6
Further reading
- Bass, Streeter. "Beaumarchais and the American Revolution." Studies in Intelligence 14 (1970): 1-1. CIA report Archived 14 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine
- Meng, John J. "A Footnote to Secret Aid in the American Revolution." American Historical Review (1938) 43#4 pp: 791-795. in JSTOR
- Morton, Brian N. "'Roderigue Hortalez' to the Secret Committee: An Unpublished French Policy Statement of 1777." French Review (1977): 875-890. in JSTOR
- Morton, Brian N. et Donald C. Spinelli, Beaumarchais Correspondances, tomes III et IV, Éditions A.-G. Nizet, Paris.
- de Langlais Tugdual, L'armateur préféré de Beaumarchais Jean Peltier Dudoyer, de Nantes à l'Isle de France, Éd. Coiffard, 2015, 340 p. (ISBN 9782919339280).
- Stillé, Charles J. "Beaumarchais and" The Lost Million"." The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (1887) 11#1 pp: 1-36. in JSTOR
- York, Neil L. "Clandestine Aid and the American Revolutionary War Effort: A Re-Examination." Military Affairs: The Journal of Military History, Including Theory and Technology (1979): 26-30. in JSTOR