For this installment of “Let’s Learn About France!” I wanted to find something really interesting, if not scandalous, to share with you. I think I have both covered. The interesting part is that we’re going to learn about someone who was a French spy. The scandalous twist is that we’re going to learn about a French spy who lived half of…er, his…life as a man and the other half as a woman.

Chevalier d’Eon
(aka, Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Éon de Beaumont) (1728 – 1810)

Like me, you probably thought the only noteworthy cross-dresser in French history was Joan d’Arc. Not so, it turns out. There was another. And his story is just as interesting even for the lack of divine involvement.

Chevalier d’Eon was born in 1728. According to…um, her(?) memoirs, she was forced to pretend to be male by her father, an attorney who was concerned about inheritance matters. So, being the dutiful, er, son, Chevalier complied. He did a bang up job of it, too. He did very well in school and became an accomplished fencer. After graduating college he worked as a secretary to the equivalent of a controller general in Paris.

The story goes that d’Eon became a spy for King Louis XV in 1756. Supposedly, one of d’Eon’s missions was to go to Russia and befriend Czarina Elizabeth. See, Louis needed someone to mingle with folks over there and gather intelligence to help bring down the Habsburgs in Austria. So, how do you get close enough to a Czarina that she’ll decide to keep you around all the time?

Apparently, you disguise yourself as a woman.

So, the girl pretending to be a boy became the girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be a girl. Well, a lady, actually: Mademoiselle Lia de Beaumont. It turns out that d’Eon had a certain affinity for this role and she and the Czarina became fast friends. D’Eon became part of Elizabeth’s entourage and even moved in for a while.

So the legend goes, anyway.

There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that none of that Russian spy stuff actually happened, apparently. What is true, though, is that some years after all of this (allegedly) went down d’Eon returned to France, became a captain of the Dragoons and fought in the Seven Years War until being wounded and earning the Cross of Saint Louis. Life got pretty good after that. His valor had officially earned him the noble title Chevalier and a position of some prestige in London. He performed his duties while continuing to spy for the King.

After several years, rumors began to circulate that d’Eon was actually a woman, possibly even a hermaphrodite. Meanwhile d’Eon was getting restless in London. After Louis XV died in 1774, d’Eon took the opportunity to negotiate some conditions surrounding his return to France. Using the intelligence he’d gathered all those years for Louis XV as leverage with Louis XVI, he got France to officially recognize him as a woman. The catch: the King said that if he wanted to be recognized as a woman he’d have to dress like one. And so he did, until he died in 1810.

Upon his death it was revealed that Chevalier d’Eon had, in fact, been male the whole time.

There’s obviously much more to this story than my anemic overview can offer. Do yourself a favor and research it. It’s fascinating stuff.

See you next time.