Pierre Beaumarchais

Beaumarchais was born the son of a Parisian master watchmaker and trained in his father's trade.

The young watchmaker devised a new escapement that allowed much more accurate and compact watches, winning a dispute over its authorship before the Academy of Sciences.

After his first marriage he adopted the name Beaumarchais, derived from a property of his wife; she died less than a year later.

Beaumarchais's musical talent won him a position teaching harp to the French princesses, opening his way into court circles and finance.

After initial censorship troubles, Le Barbier de Séville premiered in Paris and became a lasting success.

With secret backing from the French and Spanish crowns, Beaumarchais ran a front company that shipped weapons and supplies to the American revolutionaries.

Beaumarchais financed and organized a monumental edition of Voltaire's works, printed at Kehl to evade French censorship.

La Folle Journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro finally reached the stage of the Comédie-Française and became one of the greatest theatrical triumphs of the century.

Declared an émigré after a failed scheme to procure muskets for revolutionary France, Beaumarchais spent several years in exile, largely in Hamburg, before returning to Paris in 1796.

Beaumarchais died of a stroke at his home in Paris and was later reburied in Père Lachaise Cemetery.