Chevalier d'Eon , Charles de Beaumont (1728-1810) is a French secret agent famous for having disguised himself as a woman for a long time. Charged by Louis XV, in 1755, with a secret mission in Russia to the court of Empress Elisabeth Petrovna, he averted the suspicions of those around the Tsarina by dressing up to become her regular reader and thus allowing a rapprochement between France and Russia. During the Seven Years' War, he fought as a captain of the dragoons, then he was sent to London where he was appointed embassy secretary. Back in France in 1777, Louis XVI ordered him not to take off his feminine clothes. The knight, leaving doubt about his true identity, now presents himself as "the knight of Éon". In 1783, he returned to live in England, where he died.
The youth of the Chevalier d'Eon
Charles Geneviève Louis Auguste André Thimothée d'Eon de Beaumont was born in October 1728 in Tonnerre, Burgundy, in the Renaissance-style Hôtel d'Uzès. His father Louis was a nobleman, a lawyer in the parliament of Paris, adviser to the king and director of the domains of the King.
Raised strictly, he learned Latin and mathematics, before heading to Paris and enrolling at the Collège des Quatre-Nations to take courses in dance, horsemanship, swordsmanship. At twenty, with a good diploma in hand, he entered law school and obtained the lawyer's certificates a year later in August 1749. Not inheriting a large fortune on the death of his father in October 1749, he meets Berthier who helps him to become royal censor:affix his signature before the printing of any work. He then embarked on writing (newspaper articles, essays, books), and this charming young man, fine, intelligent, quick-witted, made friends like the Duke of Penthièvre (grandson of Louis XIV) , the count of Lauragais, the duke of Nivernais.
His first steps in Versailles
The Chevalier d'Eon thus meets the Comtesse de Rochefort, a young widow who invites him to a carnival ball at Versailles. Everyone dresses up, Eon looks like a woman, skilfully made up...this is how the story begins.
Using his disguise abilities, Louis XV enlisted him in the "Secret du Roi", a spy organization headed by the Prince of Conti. The alliance of England and Prussia threatens the understanding with Russia. Eon, who became Lia de Beaumont, was sent to Russia in July 1755, accompanying Douglass Mackensie, a Scottish secret agent and geologist. Douglass is rejected (smelling too much of a French spy), so it's up to Lia to approach the Tsarina and deliver a letter from the King of France.
The Chevalier d'Eon in Russia
Lia, introduced to the court as a reader, hands the precious document to the tsarina and then reports the response to the king of France three months later. In her words, she wants to ally herself with France against Prussia and England but it is necessary to "get rid" of the Sublime Porte; but Louis XV could not. Douglas Mackensie is dispatched as an official envoy... followed closely by a knight... Eon, the brother of Lia de Beaumont! With his fiery temper, the knight accomplished his mission perfectly and the tsarina was conquered. Back in France, despite a broken leg, Eon presents the king with Russia's plan of attack against Prussia, and announces the lost battle of the Prussians against the Austrians. The happy king offers him a pension of three thousand pounds and a golden snuffbox.
Appointed Lieutenant in the Dragoons in August 1757 and forced to rest, he wrote several essays on the finance of countries, learned of the defeat of the Franco-Austrian army and the cold reigning between France and Russia (the king of France did not agree to be the godfather of the tsarina's grandson). The knight then makes his third trip to Russia to save the day. Appointed embassy secretary, he takes the place of the current ambassador… inefficient and too spendthrift. Well in court, the tsarina offers him to stay in Russia, but he declines the offer while accepting in exchange a rank of captain colonel general of the Dragons!
After four winters spent in Russia, disappointed by Baron de Breteuil, the new ambassador, Eon returned to France in the summer of 1760, sick with smallpox but provided with recommendations and compliments on his good work, his good behavior, his mastery against the opponent...
War breaks out in Germany, and the Eon regiment is not part of it; he then enlisted under the orders of the Comte de Broglie. In the army and despite the Count's protection, the first gossip arose:he was "a dangerous roué, endowed with the grace of a young woman" and yet he succeeded in perilous missions while others hesitated and dithered like the Count of Guerchy. The Tsarina dies and Catherine the Great is favorable to the Prussians:peace with England is essential.
A spy in England
In September 1762, the Duke of Nivernais appointed ambassador and his secretary the Chevalier d'Eon of course, landed in England. On this occasion, Eon outdoes himself. Appreciated at court, in the odor of sanctity with King George III, he succeeded in stealing the papers concerning the future peace treaty (finally signed in February 1763) to send them urgently to Choiseul in order to better negotiate. On his return to Versailles, Eon was given a standing ovation, received a gratuity (one year's salary), a knighthood of the order of Saint Louis and praise from the Duke of Nivernais.
The knight, back in England, replaces the sick Duke of Nivernais and receives another mission:to check the state of the English coast, in order to be able to organize a landing and defeat this country .
The knight leads a great lifestyle with his twenty-two servants, twelve stable horses and receptions every day, but things go wrong when he begs France to provide for it. to his great needs. The minister refuses, Eon feels rejected, neglected, unloved... Everything escalates with the arrival of the new ambassador, the Count of Guerchy, enemy of the knight. Receiving remonstrances and his recall to France, Eon turns a deaf ear and manages to be provoked during a dinner:if he fights he is dishonored; if he shirks, he loses face in front of All London!
After a poisoning, then a visit to his home, Eon reports it to the king in person. Threatened with extradition to England, from the Bastille in France, Eon remains in London and carefully keeps the secret documents. Today is December 31, 1763.
While in France, the knight loses his ranks and is accused of the crime of lèse-majesté having badly received the envoys of the king wanting to recover the secret papers, in England all the people support the knight, faced with his disputes with the ambassador, who loses the battle despite the pamphlets distributed treating the knight as mentally ill, neither man nor woman... and during this time, Eon who plays dead, writes a volume of four hundred pages, calling Guerchy a coward, the first edition of which will be sold out and quickly sold out. But in France, it's anxiety…how far will this quarrel go? And he was deprived of his Foreign Affairs pension.
Guerchy makes life difficult for the knight and even organizes an attack against him. Eon is asking for help from France, otherwise he will divulge all the state secrets. Having to appear in court, he hides at a friend's house... in the guise of an old woman! A providential windfall presented itself to Eon in the person of Vergy, a pamphleteer writer swearing in court that Guerchy had initiated the attack…Guerchy was convicted of murder in February 1765, Eon exulted, calmed down and cooperated with France. He receives his pension again, but faced with the lack of money, sells some secret papers to each envoy of the King of France.
The knight, as we have seen, disguises himself as a woman. In March 1771, the rumor ran, the bets were launched, the amounts reaching several hundred thousand pounds. In France, the news travels quickly and questions also arise. An envoy from the King of France comes to see...Eon plays the game and makes him "feel" the place in question...Convinced of having to deal with a woman, he rushes to reveal the news to the King of France and his ministers! The knight does this on purpose so that France continues to talk about him.
One fine day in November 1773, Eon received a letter that forced him to dress permanently and forever as a woman, if he wanted to return to France. As a spy, he receives a new mission:to recover the memoirs of Madame du Barry (on her prowess in bed with the king) written by Théveneau de Morande, a scandalous author. Eon offers a deal (eight hundred pounds which the king is not ready to pay), but two French emissaries arrive, one of whom is Beaumarchais, who burns the Memoirs, the operation amounts to one hundred and fifty-four thousand pounds!
When the king died in May 1774, the "King's Secret" no longer existed. What will become of the knight? Louis XVI admits to let "the knight" back in return for the documents and a gratuity of twelve thousand pounds, but changes his mind having received a complete memorandum written by the knight in January 1775, accounting for the costs incurred and not reimbursed since the beginning of his missions to Russia:the total amounts to three hundred and eighteen thousand pounds!
In London, Beaumarchais meets the knight who tells him his story, his status as a poor single woman, his setbacks with the former ambassador Guerchy, his unsuccessful requests to the King of France , his only desire to return to France, his lack of money. Beaumarchais does not allow himself to be fooled and informs France. He obtains an authorization mentioning “full latitude to make all arrangements…”. Against delivery of the secret documents, the knight would receive an annuity of twelve thousand pounds, a safe-conduct to return to France and the obligation to dress henceforth as a woman, as well as to bear the name of Mlle d'Eon.
Curious by nature, Beaumarchais will do everything to find out the nature of Eon's sex. Unable to take it any longer, the knight agrees to sign this compromise, but plays the comedy by cajoling it, by being the coquette...so much so that the marriage between these two very different people is announced in all the London newspapers. This farce will last a year. The knight is exhausted, Beaumarchais not keeping his word, not paying him any amount, speculation resuming, forced to justify himself in court (still on his possible femininity) this situation looks like hell. Exhausted in January 1777, the knight accepts all the conditions whatever. He packs his bags, convinced he is a woman...but wearing the costume of dragons.
The return of the Chevalier d'Eon to France
At Tonnerre in August, he is greeted with exaltation:cannon shots, gunfire, a guard of honor, feasts, fireworks. His last hours as a man have arrived! On the way to Versailles, he stopped at his friend Berthier who urged him to wear feminine clothes:“Your political and military career is over. Your girlish glory will begin”.
To appear at court, the queen, who took pity on him, sent him a voucher for twenty-four thousand pounds to build up his wardrobe. Learning is difficult, high heels and pointed shoes do not facilitate the task, as for the whales of the bodice….not to mention the feminine conversations about rags, hairstyles and adornments! The knight was presented at court on November 23, 1777, dressed by Rose Bertin, in a basket dress, frou-frou, fan…the whole assembly was hilarious. Nobody is fooled:"you can't take this transvestite for a woman, with hairy and muscular arms, his emerging beard under the powder, his sudden gestures". And yet, everyone tears him away, he is invited from everywhere, always in a black dress, climbing the stairs four by four, sitting with his legs apart... such behavior is unbelievable, it intrigues everyone...
When war in America breaks out, Eon wants to enlist, but having no answer, he then threatens to return to England and receives an order of exile for Burgundy. The knight doesn't do anything about it, on the contrary, he walks the streets, dressed as a dragon captain! Arrested on March 20, 1779, after a stint in a convent in Auxerre, then in a "golden" prison in Dijon, he was sent to Tonnerre with a ban on leaving and always being dressed as a woman.
To pass the time, he takes care of his land, plants vines, builds a family tree with prestigious ancestors, a case that will be refused in court. He helps the people of his village and spends social evenings, interspersed with reading, until 1783 when the king lets him return to Paris. When the owner of his London apartment demanded the rent from him, on pain of selling all his belongings at auction (books, libraries and secret papers), he returned to London in 1785, provided with the ministerial agreement, a passport and six thousand pounds. But how to move a huge library and more than eight thousand books? He decides to stay in England where people recognize him, and love him...
His end in England
To survive, he makes performances, demonstrations, fights where he can earn about four hundred pounds. During a performance, the Chevalier d'Eon crossed swords with the Chevalier de Saint Georges and the Prince of Wales, then resigned himself to selling part of his library in May 1791. Unfortunately for him, in France "the 'iron cabinet', containing the secret papers. His house in Tonnerre was then searched, nine boxes of paper plus a packet of letters sealed with red wax were discovered.
During the fights he continued to earn a few pennies, a blade pierced him in August 1796. He spent four months between life and death and remained paralyzed. At sixty-nine, no longer fighting, he stayed with a friend until 1804 when the police were looking for him for non-payment of his debts. After five months in prison, released thanks to a French priest, he only has two memories left:his cross of Saint Louis adorned with diamonds and the gold snuff box received from Louis XV, which he will deposit at the pawnshop. .
Sick and crippled, the Chevalier d'Eon died peacefully in his sleep on May 21, 1810, after a stroke two months earlier. During the mortuary toilet, her old friend discovers... her true male sex! The autopsy carried out confirms that Charles Geneviève is indeed a man. The Courrier Universel mentions the knight's death in June. But two days later, the Journal de Paris publishes a long article on the uncertainty of the sex of the knight... Everything starts again...
Bibliography
- “The Knight of Eon” – Michel de Decker. France-Empire, 1999
- "The Chevalier d'Eon:a life without head or tail" - Evelyne Lever. Fayard, 2009.