Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799) lived a resume that sounds invented: a watchmaker who revolutionized the escapement, harp tutor to the daughters of Louis XV, secret agent for the French crown, and the playwright behind The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. This episode traces how a middle-class Parisian used charm, audacity and the court of public opinion to climb into the elite of 18th-century France.

We follow his fight against the royal clockmaker who stole his invention, his ruinous legal battles and the satirical pamphlets that made him a folk hero, and the shell company Roderigue Hortalez and Company that secretly shipped French cannons, muskets and gunpowder to the American rebels before Saratoga. We also explore why Louis XVI banned The Marriage of Figaro, how Beaumarchais preserved Voltaire’s works, and how he survived prison and exile during the French Revolution.

• How a 21-year-old Beaumarchais beat a royal clockmaker over a stolen escapement design and became purveyor to the king
• Why his scathing pamphlets against judge Goezman turned a legal defeat into public adoration
• The secret gun-running operation that supplied American troops, and why Congress never fully repaid him
• Why The Marriage of Figaro’s mockery of hereditary aristocracy alarmed King Louis XVI
• The central contradiction of a critic of privilege who spent his life seeking a place inside it