Cavalier and young lady d'Eon: feminist, admirer of Russia, spy and genderqueer of the 18th century

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

When transgender people of the past are remembered, the names of those who were born as girls and took on a masculine life and a masculine personality are almost always resurrected, starting a career that girls were not allowed to participate in. These are, for example, the renowned surgeon James Barry and the conquistador Alonso de Guzman, aka Antonio Eraso. But there was also a reverse case, and a very famous one. Born a boy, d'Eon, who changed his social role from male to female and vice versa several times in his life.

How they become spies

Charles d'Eon began his life quite normally. Born into a family of a lawyer, throughout his childhood he wore only clothes for boys, learned everything that a young man from a good family should learn, including fencing - and became an excellent swordsman. At the appropriate age, he went to Paris, studied at the Mazarin College. In general, it all started in Paris.

Charles was a petite and fragile youth, with a gentle face and graceful movements. In eighteenth-century Paris, where free morals reigned, he immediately attracted the attention of not only women - lovers of ephebes, but also men with similar tastes. Later, dozens of whirlwind romances were attributed to him, however, as he admitted in a frank letter to a friend, he himself was then really only interested in books. However, he found out how much he looks like a girl in Paris, and this gave him certain thoughts.

D'Eon started her career as usual as her life: as a clerk in the tax department. Seven years later, a brilliantly educated, excellent swordsman, witty androgynous young man attracted the attention of the secret service of French diplomats, known as the Royal Secret. D'Eon was recruited, and his life went much more interesting. Charles's first assignment was to scout sentiments in Russia.

Favorite reader of Vorontsova

In the second half of the eighteenth century, Russia and France treated each other with mutual distrust - this is easily remembered by everyone who has watched the adventure pictures about midshipmen. France, meanwhile, needed to understand what Russia's relations with Austria and Prussia were and whether Russia could become an ally against Frederick II. Before d'Eon went to a distant country, the French ambassador was expelled with a scandal - he spoke very disrespectfully about the Russian Empress Elizabeth I in his personal correspondence.

D'Eon's mission was to enter Russia under the guise of a lady, become one of his own in court circles and, using a "fur cipher", transmit the necessary information to his homeland. Each type of fur signified some influential Russian politician or head of a foreign power. The main enemy of the French at the Russian court, Bestuzhev-Ryumin, was designated as a sable.

D'Eona went to Russia as the companion of a British dissident, a Scotsman named Douglas, a fur trader. Letters were also sent on behalf of Douglas. Britain and Russia have traditionally been at odds; the British welcomed the Russian opposition, the Russians en masse accepted the British opposition Scots for military service. Douglas, however, was successfully recruited by the Royal Secret to spy against Russia.

According to one version, d'Eon entered Russia as Douglas's secretary, a man, but at the same time he incarnated in Mademoiselle de Beaumont and began to lead the usual female life for his circle: he wore clothes with a crinoline, discussed fashion, gossiped, indulged in innocent entertainment and became friends with Princess Vorontsova - she liked the way Mademoiselle de Beaumont reads.

Fall in love with Russia and leave it forever

Life in a woman's dress was not a gimmick for d'Eon - it was the environment in which he felt confident. Charles even in France disguised himself as a woman's - but at masquerades, here he became just Mademoiselle, a new personality (which, perhaps, secretly existed before).

Russia charmed Mademoiselle d'Eon. Much later, having left this country forever, Mademoiselle the spy will return there in thoughts. He considered Russians to be kind, Russian soldiers to be fearless. Besides, d'Eon proved to be a shrewd, meticulous observer. He cleverly made copies of all the papers that came into his hands, and provided his superiors with some amazingly accurate studies of the laws and economics of Russia.

However, D'Eon didn’t like everything. For example, he noted that positions are handed out somehow, for bribes and sympathy, and a Russian officer makes the heroism of a Russian soldier meaningless, since he is usually extremely stupid and has no talents.

Still, D'Eon is not a good spy. The praises of his superiors turned his head, and, wishing to make a dizzying career, he took out from Russia not only copies of real documents, but also several high-profile forgeries, including the "testament of Peter the Great", full of threats to Europe; a long-term plan to seize world domination through wars with weak countries and clashes between strong countries so that Russia could then conquer the victor, weakened by the war.

D'Eon returned to France as a man, received a large reward and an army rank for his service - and, of course, the obligation to really participate in actual battles. However, the false information delivered by him, in fact, probably greatly influenced the secret policy of France in relation to Russia, making it not very successful and closing the possibility of full-fledged cooperation.

Hero of war and scandalous stories

Naturally, at the front, d'Eon was also a man and, by the way, proved to be an excellent brave man. He bravely took the bastions, swam across the river under the fire of enemy guns, with a hundred dragoons captured an entire battalion of the Prussians, was wounded in the arm and head.

Meanwhile, the war was drawing to a close. Great Britain was an ally of Prussia, and it was necessary to find out the mood of the British leaders. D'Eon has been recruited into the Secret Service again. He went to London as the secretary of the embassy, which gave him the opportunity to turn around in the right circles and imagine what could be offered to the British for a peace treaty.

Soon d'Eon was appointed head of the diplomatic mission, and he formally drafted a peace treaty that would satisfy both sides. At the same time, he secretly coordinated the French military infiltrating Britain under the guise of tourists from the continent, in case the peace talks failed at the last moment and a French invasion was needed. The officers were to facilitate this invasion by capturing a number of important fortifications from within the country.

However, in France there was a game between the king and his favorite. And as a result of this game, a new ambassador arrived in London, hostile to the king's henchman. D'Eon was required to hand over all cases and account for each gold spent. The king hastily handed over a letter after which d'Eona seized the archives of the embassy and firmly refused to hand them over to the new ambassador.

The real hunt began. New officers-agents, arrived with the ambassador, tried to catch the war hero. He fought back with a sword, then escaped in a woman's guise. They tried to take his house by storm, like a fortress!

Then the ambassador started an information war. He collected all the scandalous gossip about Charles and launched them into the press. A thief, a madman, a hermaphrodite - now in all coffee houses in London these scandalous descriptions of the former head of the French diplomatic mission were discussed. D'Eon responded by publishing a most repugnant pamphlet. For the pamphlet they tried to arrest him by the British police, but the police found only women in the house: d'Eon was gone!

D'Eon nevertheless came to court when he managed to drag one of the assassins hired by the ambassador and the embassy barman to his side, who confessed that, on behalf of the ambassador, he added sleeping pills to d'Eon's drinks. New scandal! It was hushed up with great difficulty, and the ambassador had to hastily leave Britain.

Mademoiselle de Beaumont

Soon, the king at the same time appointed Charles a boarding house and demanded that the secret documents be returned to France. However, d'Eon, jokingly fearing for his life, refused to return anything. The king threatened to stop paying; d'Eon replied that classified documents are always a good, highly paid commodity. It became necessary to remove d'Eon from the game. It was entrusted to … Beaumarchais, a renowned playwright and at the same time an employee of the Royal Secret. Beaumarchais was at that time the only one who could compete with d'Eon in cunning.

Long negotiations and intrigues led to the fact that d'Eon agreed to a special condition set by Beaumarchais: henceforth always be considered a woman, introduce himself only as a woman and wear women's clothes. The treaty on his behalf was thus signed by "Mademoiselle d'Eon de Beaumont", who was formerly known as the Knight Commander of the Order of St. Louis and the captain of the Dragoon regiment.

“The young lady de Beaumont admits that, at the behest of her parents, she still lived under a male guise alien to her, and from now on, in order to put an end to this ambiguous situation, she will again wear a woman's dress and will never refuse it, for which she will be allowed return to France. Once this condition is met, she will receive a life annuity of 12 thousand livres, and all her debts made in London will be paid. Considering her military merits, she is allowed to wear the cross of St. Louis on a woman's dress and 2,000 crowns are allocated for the purchase of a woman's wardrobe, all the men’s clothes will be confiscated from her, so as not to awaken the desire to use it again,”the document read, among other things.

So d'Eon returned to France and became Mademoiselle de Beaumont forever. "Cavalier d'Eon is now his own widow," London newspapermen reacted to the murder of the brilliant diplomat's career.

In France, d'Eon tried to visit Versailles in the uniform of a dragoon regiment on the pretext that women's attire was too expensive. In response, Marie Antoinette, the queen, provided him with her personal dressmaker, and the king, without further ado, signed a decree strictly forbidding Mademoiselle d'Eon to ever wear parts of a man's costume. Charles, who, apparently, was usually satisfied with the dual role and the advantages that gave him the transition from sex to sex, these decree left in the role of Mademoiselle d'Eon forever. To teach obedience, he was also sent to a nunnery for a while. Mademoiselle de Beaumont learned the lesson. At the first opportunity she left France and went to England. The homeland was no longer her homeland.

Mademoiselle has well-developed male organs

The young lady de Beaumont spent the rest of her life making money on memoirs, in which (according to the contract) she told that she had always been a girl, who, however, was raised as a boy because of inheritance laws, and she retells the hottest gossip about herself under the guise of her adventure.

And Mademoiselle needed money - the king was soon executed by the revolutionaries, and the receipts stopped. However, de Beaumont did not even try to return to the role of a man. Everything suited her, although those around her just refused to recognize her as a woman - just as they sometimes refused to recognize a man in d'Eon before.

The main income of the young lady de Beaumont was fencing lessons. Her skill has been known since the days of the ambassador's hunt in London. However, old age did not spare, the accuracy of movements deteriorated, and de Beaumont was injured, after which fencing had to be abandoned. She tried to live off playing chess for money, but did not succeed. I had to sell my extensive library under the hammer. Interestingly, a huge part of it was made up of books by early feminists about the role of women in history.

After the death of de Beaumont, all of Britain froze in anticipation of the doctors' testimony: they were waiting for confirmation that de Beaumont was a hermaphrodite, that her body was somehow unusually arranged. However, after examining the body, the doctors reported that the young lady de Beaumont had an ordinary male body and well-developed male genitals. England finally calmed down on this, except for a short discussion about who Madame de Beaumont, with her developed male organs, was a companion with whom she lived for several years. However, both ladies were so old that the topic quickly faded.

Another young lady of the eighteenth century still excites minds. Princess Tarakanova - a fearless adventurer or an unrecognized Russian princess?