Roderigue Hortalez and Company
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Roderigue Hortalez and Company was a corporation created[1] by Luis de Unzaga as coordinator of interests of Spain and France in May[2] of 1775[3] in order to provide arms and financial assistance to American Revolutionaries in anticipation of the American Revolutionary War against Britain.[4] The ruse was organized by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, a French playwright, watch-maker, inventor, musician, politician, fugitive, spy, publisher, arms-dealer, and revolutionary.[5] Weapons and materials were procured to help the Americans fight the British, 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, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes was appointed the foreign minister of France by Louis XVI. Vergennes was strongly anti-England, at one point declaring "England is the natural enemy of France."[4] His chance to strike at Britain came through Pierre Beaumarchais.
The company in operation
- ↑ 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".
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Jones, Howard (2002). Crucible of Power: A History of American Foreign Relations to 1913. Scholarly Resources Inc. p. 5. ISBN 0-8420-2916-8.
- ↑ "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.