Chevalier D'Eon - Life As A Woman

Life As A Woman

Despite d'Éon's wearing a dragoon's uniform all the time, there were rumors that he was actually a woman, and a betting pool was started on the London Stock Exchange about his true sex. D'Éon was invited to join, but declined, saying that an examination would be dishonouring, whatever the result. After a year without progress, the wager was abandoned. In 1774, after the death of Louis XV, d'Éon tried to negotiate a return from exile. The French government's side of the negotiations was handled by the writer Pierre de Beaumarchais. The resulting twenty-page treaty permitted D'Éon to return to France and keep his ministerial pension, but required that d'Éon turn over the secret correspondence about le Secret du Roi.

The Chevalier d'Éon claimed to be physically not a man, but a woman, and demanded recognition by the government as such. Claiming to have been born anatomically female, but to have been raised as a boy because Louis d'Éon de Beaumont could only inherit from his in-laws if he had a son. King Louis XVI and his court complied, but demanded that d'Éon dress appropriately and wear women's clothing. He agreed, especially when the king granted him funds for a new wardrobe. In 1777 after fourteen months of negotiation, d'Éon returned to France, and was banished to Tonnerre for six years.

When France began to help the rebels during the American War of Independence, d'Éon asked to join the French troops in America but his banishment prevented him from doing so.

In 1779, d'Éon published the memoirs La Vie Militaire, politique, et privée de Mademoiselle d'Éon. They were ghostwritten by a friend named La Fortelle, and are probably embellished.

He returned to England in 1785. The pension which had been granted by Louis XV was lost because of the French Revolution necessitating the sale of d'Éon's personal library. In 1792, he sent a letter to the French National Assembly, offering to lead a division of women soldiers against the Habsburgs; the offer was rebuffed. d'Éon participated in fencing tournaments until being seriously wounded in 1796. His last years were spent with a widow, Mrs. Cole. In 1804 d'Éon was imprisoned for debt but released in 1805, upon which a contract was signed for an autobiography. The book was never published, because d'Éon became paralyzed following a fall. His final four years were spent bedridden, and on 21 May 1810 he died in poverty in London at the age of 82.

Doctors who examined the body after death discovered that the Chevalier was anatomically male.