21. Beaumarchais was forgotten in America once the French alliance took hold
In 1779, in response to a letter from the Frenchman, the President of the Continental Congress, John Jay, wrote an acknowledgment of the financial debt owed to Beaumarchais. Jay promised the debt would be paid. In 1782, Beaumarchais sent American financier Robert Morris an itemized list of all the cargoes which had been purchased and sent to the Americans, including the costs of shipping. Following the adoption of the Constitution the new Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, investigated the case. He acknowledged the United States owed a debt to Beaumarchais of 2,280,000 French francs, which was significantly less than what the Frenchman claimed.
It really didn’t matter if it was less or not, since it wasn’t paid. By then France was within the throes of its own revolution. The attitude of the American government was that treaties of amity with France had been with the court of Louis XVI, not the French revolutionaries. Beaumarchais was forced to live in exile for a time during the French Revolution, labeled as an émigré aristocrat by some of the Jacobins. He was neither, but he opted to live in various German provinces until the Reign of Terror was over in France. He returned to Paris, where his plays remained popular, and the revenue from his investments in water distribution allowed him to live luxuriously.