On this day 250 years ago in London, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais wrote to the French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, comte de Vergennes in Paris regarding his meeting with Arthur Lee in which Lee pleaded on behalf of the Continental Congress that

“We need arms, powder, and above all engineers: only you can help us, and it is to your interest to do so.”

Beaumarchais added his own entreaty to Lee’s:

The Americans are as well placed as possible; army, fleet provisions, courage, everything is excellent, but without powder and engineers how can they conquer or even defend themselves? Are we going to let them perish rather than loan them one or two millions? Are we afraid of losing the money?

. . . is it really true, M. le Comte, that you will do nothing for the Americans?

Will you not have the goodness to show once more to the King how much he can gain, without striking a blow, in this one campaign? And will you not attempt to convince His Majesty that this miserable pittance which they demand, and over which we have been disputing for more than a year, will bring to us all the fruits of a great victory without undergoing the dangers of a combat?

Source: Kite, Elizabeth S., Beaumarchais And the War of American Independence, Vol. II, Boston: The Gorham Press (1918) at 66-67 accessed at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40340/40340-h/40340-h.htm#Page_31; https://jaykravetz.substack.com/p/april-26-1776-disorder-in-the-streets

On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress passed a resolution for “disarming non-associators and disaffected persons and that [their firearms] be delivered to the New York troops” by “the convention, and committee of safety of New York”

Source: https://americanfounding.org/entries/second-continental-congress-april-26-1776/