Arms for America: Ben Franklin in France — Lion Feuchtwanger

A master novelist-historian has here produced a new landmark, one of the towering historical novels of our time -- a full, rich, inspiring and exciting story set in one of the most fascinating periods in history. The most imaginative of novelists could not invent anything approaching the color and enchantment of the French court under Louis xvi and his Antoinette. At the time of our story, the shadow of revolution had not yet grayed the splendors of Versailles, although the cold wind of impending change was occasionally felt along its corridors. United States had already revolted against royal tyranny, and Benjamin Franklin was in France, pitting his wisdom and patience against subtle and devious French diplomacy in the all-important negotiations for the arms and money without which the American Revolution might end in disaster. Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais, the worldly author of The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, shares the limelight with Franklin. Mixture of avarice and idealism, petty weaknesses and fiery spirit, lover of liberty but equally enamored of intrigue and alliance, Beaumarchais provides an elegant foil for the American's wily good humor and quiet pertinacity. Both worked with all the devotion and strength of their souls for the same cause -- liberty, equality, and fraternity, though each approached the problem from a different angle, each the quintessence of the characteristics of his own nation. The featured cast of characters: - Antoinette, beautiful, willful, extravagant, and lovable, surely one of the loneliest of queens, surrounded as she was by the fabulous profligates and wasters and self-seekers that made up the chic Lilac Coterie - Louis XVI, weak, petulant, a sorry figure of a king, but somehow appealing in human terms because of his honest simplicity - Désirée, the beautiful actress, wise, lovely, beloved - Voltaire, hated by the King and idolized by the people, coming back to his forbidden Paris at the end of his days - Franklin's compatriots and associates -- ministers, artists, and the fascinating women who made up their circle - the Archduke Joseph of Austria, stern elder brother to the pretty, frivolous Queen; and, - looming like a tower of rock over the petty intrigues of others, the powerful, simple man, more powerful certainly than simple, the grand old man, Benjamin Franklin