Trans History: La Chevalière d'Éon
The iconic saga of a swordfighting soldier/spy/lawyer/legend
Before we get into today’s saga, I want to shout out the queer and trans historians whose work helps to bring stories like this one to light. Some great books about trans history that I recommend are:
Before We Were Trans by Kit Heyam
Female Husbands: A Trans History by Jen Manion
Before Gender: Lost Stories from Trans History by Eli Erlick
These books have all helped me in my journey to learning more about queer and trans history, and I recommend them all very highly to anyone wanting to learn more about this area of history!
I also want to shout out author Maya Deane, who joined me a few years ago on my podcast to share her knowledge about La Chevalière (you can listen to the episode here)
A note on names and pronouns. La Chevalière d'Éon lived as a man for part of their life and as a woman for part of their life, so I will be using she/they pronouns.
Their name at birth was Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont because French people LOVE a lengthy name. When living as a woman, they used the name Charlotte-Geneviève-Louise-Augusta-Andréa-Timothéa d'Éon de Beaumont, sometimes going just by Lia de Beaumont. Today, they are mainly known by their title of La Chevalière d'Éon, which is how I will refer to them in this piece (Chevalière is the feminine version of the male title of Chevalier, which is basically the French version of “Sir” and bestowed upon people when they are knighted.)
PICTURE IT: BURGUNDY, 1728
La Chevalière was born on October 5, 1728 in Tonnerre, Burgundy. This is the wine region of France, and their family was a poor noble family. This is the sort of thing where they had a title, land, and some vineyards, but not much actual money. The family was respectable but still had to work to live. La Chevalière was raised as a boy and heir to the family title and land. Their father was a lawyer, and La Chevalière followed in his footsteps, getting two different law degrees.
They were wildly intelligent, charming, and gorgeous which helped them ascend the ranks of the civil service because everyone wanted La Chevalière in their work group. They landed the job of royal censor for history and literature, which sounds like an interesting job but we won’t get into it because they were also doing a much more interesting job which was: super secret spy!!
SPY-ONEER DAYS
The King at this point was Louis XV, a paranoid, dramatic bitch who did things like invent his own secret spy league called Le Secret du Roi (The King’s Secret). This group reported directly to the King and its members didn’t necessarily even know who else was in the group. Their existence was kept a secret from the French government and its ministries. And La Chevalière was one of their top agents.
They were sent on a spy mission to Russia, but of course, La Chevalière couldn’t tell their friends and family that’s why they were going. So they were given a second job also in Russia, which was as secretary to the French embassy in St. Petersburg. But their actual job was to cozy up to Empress Elisabeth to undermine Habsburg power in that area.
Empress Elisabeth: who was this fabulous bitch??
She was six feet tall and GORGEOUS
After a series of chaotic succession crises, girlfriend got the military on her side and straight-up SEIZED THE THRONE, then ruled for 21 years
She had a super supportive boyfriend named Alexei, who was also her party planner
One of the sorts of parties she and Alexie liked to throw were metamorphosis balls, where people came dressed as all kinds of different genders and where varied gender expression was celebrated.
There are two theories as to how La Chevalière came to dress as a woman in Russia. One theory is that hanging out at these balls, dressed as a woman, they came to embrace this as their true self. And/or, as La Chevalière shared in their later memoir, they were doing a full Mrs. Doubtfire scenario as follows:
Allegedly, the British in the region would only allow women and children across the Russian border, which meant that La Chevalière couldn’t get in… unless she appeared to be a woman. Enter her alter ego, Lia de Beaumont. As Lia, she was permitted into Russia and was so gorgeous and charming that Empress Elisabeth was won over and hired her as a maid of honour. In a twist that would fit in an episode of Three’s Company, La Chevalière simultaneously (in male persona) served as secretary to the French embassy in St. Petersburg. Where is this movie, Hollywood, you cowards??
Unfortunately, this party era came to an end when La Chevalière was recalled to help out, in a military capacity, with France’s role in the Seven Years War. Because they were the best person at every job and were needed now to provide excellence in soldier duties.
For those new to this Substack, we don’t talk much about war here. So all you need to know is that this was a war between (mostly) Britain and France, and La Chevalière’s job was to be Captain of the Dragoons, which is a kind of soldier that got to wear fabulous outfits with leopard-print hats. They were injured in battle, and after recovering, they were called upon to use their legal training to help draft the peace treaty to end the war. For their service in creating this treaty, they were awarded the title of Chevalier, the equivalent of a knighthood.
LONDON CALLING
La Chevalière had gone to London to work on this treaty and chose to remain after the paperwork was concluded. They were named interim ambassador to England, but also (you guessed it) they had super secret spy work to do. Their spy task was to scope out the coastline to find a good spot for the French to invade, in case that needed to happen.
They enjoyed this London era, living in a fabulous house and making friends with the English nobility, who were won over by La Chevalière’s overall coolness as well as by the amount of Burgundy wine they shipped in to give out as gifts. In fact, La Chevalière imported so much wine that they got an official reprimand from the French government and were fired from the ambassador gig. Can’t a girl have a little fun??
Nobody puts La Chevalière in a corner, and they refused to leave England because they knew they’d be put in jail in France. In an attempt to stay in England, they claimed that the new ambassador had tried to poison them and, so shouldn’t La Chevalière be named ambassador again, pretty please? This did not convince anyone.
The French government ordered the British government to extradite La Chevalière, but everyone in England loved them so much that they didn’t comply. The British foreign minister, clearly a fan of Burgundy wine, pronounced La Chevalière free to stay in Britain as a private citizen. In retribution, the French government stopped sending over the pension La Chevalière had been receiving for their years of military and spy services. And sort of like the 18th-century trans version of John Wick, La Chevalière fought off other spies who were sent to try and kidnap them because nobody was as skilled with a sword as she was.
Finally, La Chevalière made a big move to get the country of France to stop bothering her: she published a book of super secret French spy secrets from Le Secret Du Roi. And just to make themselves clear, they stated that even more confidential info would be made public unless Franch left her alone. And you know who had their back? THE LONDON MOB, who lived for drama, hated France, and knew a goddamn superstar when they saw one. The mob jeered La Chevalière’s enemies, throwing stones at the homes of anyone not supporting this legend.
And this plan worked because, in 1766, Louis XV granted La Chevalière a generous salary provided they never revealed any more spy secrets. You’d think that this would be the end of her spy career, but not so, because she continued on doing spy work for the French King while in London. This goddamn ICON.
THE TRANSACTION
So, La Chevalière was killing it in London: your favourite spy’s favourite spy. And then rumours started that they were actually a woman. Some historians, myself included, suspect she either started or helped fan the flames of these rumours. Why would she have done this? To set the scene for their social transition.
These rumours spread so widely that the London Stock Exchange started taking wagers on La Chevalière’s “real” gender. Another reason La Chevalière probably encouraged these rumours is that she, probably, was getting a cut of money from the wagers. The more people who bet and the longer this dragged on, the more money she’d make. And her soldier pension wasn’t nearly enough money to live as luxuriously as La Chevalière wanted, so this side hustle was helping pay her bills.
La Chevalière was invited to have a medical examination so the wager could be settled, but she refused to consider doing so, saying that this sort of examination would be “dishonouring.” (And also, would put an end to the wagers, and her income stream.) The mob became so obsessed with her that she had to hire bodyguards to protect herself just to step outside their home, lest people rip off her clothes to examine her body.
In the midst of this Britney Spears circa 2007 chaos, La Chevalière was also making plans for a grand return to France. Remember, if she returned there, she would be arrested for the whole “refusing to leave the country,” scenario. And so, calling upon her years of legal training, she negotiated her return to France. She agreed to turn over the rest of her secret spy papers and never publish any more of them; in return, France agreed to recognize her as a woman and also to pay the cost of a new, fabulous wardrobe. This 22-page document became known as The Transaction.
After she left, the London Stock Exchange had to figure out what to do about the many wagers placed on her gender. Ultimately, the Court of the King’s Bench in Westminster Hall officially declared La Chevalière a woman. Their decision, as described by La Chevalière in their later biography, was as follows:
She who had called herself the Chevalier d’Éon until that day was an individual who did not possess what the appellation ‘man’ promised and that she was a ‘virago’1 disguised in a uniform.
And so, aged 49, La Chevalière d’Éon was legally recognized as a woman in both England and France.
OUI OUI BONJOUR
La Chevalière returned to France a celebrity, because obviously. And like the makeover scene from the first Princess Diaries film, she was brought to the country’s most talented hair, makeup, and wardrobe team, including:
Rose Bertin, Marie Antoinette’s personal dresser
Monsieur Léonard, Marie Antoinette’s fav hairstylist
Both Bertin and Léonard had experience working theatrically, and so, together with La Chevalière, they knew how to make her Versailles debut2 a major moment. The makeover montage here took four hours, after which La Chevalière made her grand entrance. Mark the date in your calendars: November 21, 1777, a day worth commemorating annually as the day La Chevalière slayed them all with her timeless look, much like a modern celebrity making their debut at the Met Gala.
La Chevalière was now living her truth, but she found herself in need of a challenge. She’d spent her life as a lawyer, author, spy and soldier, and found the life of an 18th-century noblewoman, hanging out in Versailles was not as action-packed as she’d prefer.
When the American Revolution kicked off and France supported the patriot side in 1778, she saw her chance to use her skills to help out. She offered to oversee an all-female battalion of French fighters against the British redcoats in America. This request was denied. Insultingly, the French government suggested that she should, rather, join a convent and become a nun. La Chevalière did not let this go, as she knew she’d be an asset to the French in this new war. She was so insistent in arguing about this that she got sent to a dungeon prison for three months and then forced to return to her hometown in Normandy. But to quote another girl not content with a small, provincial life, La Chevalière craved adventure in the great wide somewhere!
In 1779, she worked with her friend La Fortelle to write her memoirs, titled La Vie Militaire, politique, et privée de Mademoiselle d'Éon. It was in these memoirs that she provided an explanation as to her gender. She claimed that her father had always wanted a son, and when La Chevalière was born with indeterminate genitalia (intersex), her father chose to raise her as a son. By living as a woman, she was not donning a disguise: she was removing one, and living a more honest life as the woman she had always been.
But she was still bored and needed to find a way to make money. In 1785, she was granted permission to return to London, where she would live out the rest of her life. She moved in with a roommate of a similar age named Mrs. Cole and set about collecting all of the feminist writing being produced at that time, like Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women. She made money by making appearances at fencing demonstrations, often opposite her friend Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. One of these matches was commissioned in 1787 by George, Prince of Wales, and was captured in a painting.
Meanwhile, back in France, the French Revolution occurred. One result of this was that the King was executed; this led to the end of La Chevalière receiving a pension. The Revolution also seized property belonging to various aristocratic families, like hers. Without her family’s vineyards, she had no income at all. Now aged 64, she was as smart and valuable as ever and offered her services to the French military. She suggested that she could lead a division of female soldiers to fight against France’s Habsburg enemies in the wars currently going on; again, her offer was refused.
She was forced to retire from fencing after suffering a serious injury in 1796. Without an income or pension, she was sent to debtor’s prison for five months. She signed a contract with a writer named Thomas William Plummer to work on a new memoir, presumably to make money from book sales, but this book was never published. Following a fall, she became paralyzed and was bedridden, with Mrs. Cole left to care for her.
La Chevalière d'Éon died in poverty in London on May 21, 1810, aged 81. She had lived openly as a woman for the final thirty-three years of her life.
LEGACY
Her longtime roommate Mrs. Cole discovered her body. She set about changing the clothes so that they could receive mourners in their apartment. But in so doing, she noticed that La Chevalière had what looked like male genitalia. She brought in a physician to verify La Chevalière’s gender, which led to more physicians coming in to take a peek. One of these surgeons recorded that La Chevalière had “male organs in every respect perfectly formed,” along with “feminine characteristics” such as “unusual roundness in the formation of limbs,” and “breast remarkably full.” Drawings of her anatomy are currently housed in the archive at the British Museum in London.
La Chevalière was buried in a pauper’s grave in the churchyard of St. Pancras Old Church. There is no gravestone there as it has been lost to time. The Burdett-Coutts Memorial at St Pancras Gardens notes her as one of the notable people buried there whose graves have been lost.
The Beaumont Society, a trans support group in England, is named after her surname of Beaumont.
In 2012, London’s National Portrait Gallery purchased a newly-identified portrait of La Chevalière which is on display along with several other images of her (as of my visit there in August 2024.) You can see several images of her here.
Dutch artist Jan Jupiter created the Chevalière image at the top of this post. You can get this image on merch at my Dashery shop.
VULGAR HISTORY A LA CARTE is a feminist women’s history comedy newsletter. It is the companion publication to the Vulgar History podcast. Click here to hear the latest episode of the podcast.
Ann Foster is a writer and podcaster. Her first book, REBEL OF THE REGENCY: THE SCANDALOUS SAGA OF CAROLINE OF BRUNSWICK, BRITAIN’S UNCROWNED QUEEN, is currently available for preorder. She’s represented by Amy Bishop-Wycisk at Trellis Literary Management.
References:
themstory: How This 18th Century French Spy Came Out As Trans by Hugh Ryan
The gender fluidity of the Chevalier d'Éon by Lydia Figes
Chevalièr d’Éon: the tale of an 18th-century gender non-conforming spy
“Virago” was a word used in this time to mean, basically, a woman with masculine attributes
She had been to Versailles before, but not presenting as a woman.
I loved this, thank you! The full spectrum of people and all their glorious genders has always been around...we just heard about only the rich white dudes who wrote the history. Brava, Ann!
fascinating read