In accordance with the proposal of Vergennes the French and Spanish courts provided money for the Americans; and Beaumarchais, the dramatist, who masqueraded as a firm of merchants in order to conceal the participation of his government, spent it in purchasing military stores for them. The young Marquis de Lafayette and other Frenchmen entered their army. So too did the Poles, Kosciusko and Pulaski, and the Germans, Kalb and Steuben. In December Franklin went over to Paris. The philosophic movement was then at its height in France. The _philosophes_ desired freedom of thought in religion, constitutional liberty, and the abolition of privilege of all kinds. They speculated as to the origins of political and social institutions and the laws of human progress. The works of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu were eagerly studied by the nobles and fine ladies of the court with whom _philosophisme_ was fashionable. America they regarded as a land of freedom and primitive simplicity; and they hailed the crude assertions of the Declaration of Independence, issued by a body largely composed of slave-owners, that all men are created equal and with an inalienable right to liberty, as bringing their theories within the range of practical politics. Franklin was received with ludicrous adulation as an embodiment of republican virtue and philosophic thought. He busied himself in stirring up hostility to England. Another American envoy sought help from Prussia. Frederick showed his hatred of England by forbidding some German troops which George had hired to pass through his dominions; but his quarrel with Austria with reference to the Bavarian succession rendered him unwilling to provoke Great Britain: he had no sympathy with the Americans and would not receive their envoy. [Sidenote: _THE INTERVENTION OF FRANCE._]