It was during this reign, and the latter part of the preceding one, that the singular personage, Le Chevalier d’Eon, made his appearance. He was born at Tonnerre in 1728; and had been successively a lawyer, a censor, a political writer, a captain of dragoons, a diplomatist, and a fencing-master. It was under the cloak of the last profession, when giving lessons of fencing to the Grand Duke of Russia, that he was entrusted with a secret and delicate mission; which he fulfilled with so much success, that he obtained the title of secretary of embassy, the rank of captain, and the cross of St. Louis. He was subsequently sent to England as minister plenipotentiary, to ratify the treaty of 1763.
This D’Eon was most expert in all deeds of arms, and had fought several duels, in which he always came off successfully. When attached to the French legation in London, he thought proper to give his ambassador, the Count de Guerchy, a slap in the face; and, on complaint being made to the cabinet of Versailles of this desperate conduct, it was decided that he should be seized, and carried over to France. D’Eon, however, being apprised of this project, sought refuge in the city; where he was taken up for a breach of the peace, having fought with another Frenchman of the name of Vergy, in the open street and at noon-day.
The circumstance which gave rise to the report that he was a woman, was singular; and originated from a thrust he received in the breast from a foil while fencing: a mammary tumour arose, which required extirpation, and it was immediately reported that D’Eon was a female in disguise. This report gained credence from his affected indifference in removing the erroneous impression, and his repeated refusal to give a satisfactory reply to questions put to him on this doubtful subject.
Various are the reported motives of his subsequent assumption of female sex and attire. By some it was attributed to an order from the Duc d’Aiguillon, minister of foreign affairs, prohibiting his appearance in France except in a female dress; while D’Eon pretended that he had assumed this costume to preserve the honour of De Guerchy, whose face he had slapped. Others asserted that he wore this disguise to enable the cabinet of Versailles to throw the blame attached to the treaty of 1763 on a woman. Howbeit, he only made his appearance in France after the deaths both of D’Aiguillon and Guerchy; and on his return to Paris presented a memorial to Maurepas the then minister, praying that the order which enjoined him to wear female attire might be revoked, and the following was the strange tenor of this application:
“I am under the necessity of humbly submitting to your lordship that the period of my female noviciate is expired, and that it is impossible that I should become as professed. I have been able, in obedience to the orders of the late King and his ministers, to remain in petticoats during peace; but that is quite out of the question in time of war. It is necessary for the honour of the illustrious house of De Guerchy that I should be allowed to continue my military services; such, at least, is the opinion of the whole army and the world. I have always thought and acted like Achilles; I never wage war with the dead, and I only kill the living when they attack me.”
The Count de Guerchy, whom he had mortally insulted, was dead; but his only son was living, and anxious to wipe off in D’Eon’s blood the unavenged insult offered to his family; when the countess his mother, justly apprehensive of the issue of a meeting between the young count and the most experienced swordsman in the country, supplicated the minister to exert his influence and reject the application of the dubious D’Eon. The injunction to wear a female garb was renewed; and the pension of five hundred pounds per annum, granted to him by Louis XV, was continued on this condition. This strange position exposed our disguised hero to many curious scenes and insults; and, having one day involved himself in a serious quarrel at the play-house, he was sent a close prisoner to the citadel of Dijon.
At the revolution of 1789 D’Eon returned to England, where he gave lessons in the sword exercise; and on several occasions fenced in public, and not unfrequently with the Prince of Wales. This extraordinary person died in London in 1810, at the advanced age of seventy-nine; when the celebrated medical friar and favourite of Carlton House, Père Elysée, after a post-mortem examination, put the mooted question beyond further doubt by the official assertion of the manhood of the defunct.
The rival of the Chevalier d’Eon, both in swordsmanship and fashionable popularity, was the Chevalier St. George, a man of colour, son of M. de Boulogne, a receiver-general of Guadaloupe, and a negress; and who at an early age was placed in the hands of La Boissière, the celebrated fencing-master. His skill in arms and his numerous duels rendered him such a favourite amongst the ladies, that his dark complexion and woolly head were forgotten. He was soon appointed equerry to Madame de Montesson, whom the Duke of Orleans had privately married; and then captain in the guards of his son, the Duke de Chartres. In 1776 he was anxious to become manager of the Opera; but the actresses and dancers, headed by Mesdemoiselles Arnould, Guimart, and Rosalie, supplicated the Queen not to degrade the dignity of the Royal Academy of Music by placing it under the direction of a mulatto. The Queen yielded to their supplication; and St. George felt so much offended at this interference, that it was to a vindictive feeling against that unfortunate princess that his exertions in the revolution against the royal family were attributed. He was foremost in the popular meetings of that period, and was sent to the emigrants at Tournai on a secret mission by the Duke d’Orleans; a service of considerable danger, and one in which he would have forfeited his life but for the governor of the town, who enabled him to effect his escape. After this he raised a regiment of light cavalry, which he commanded under Dumouriez, whom he afterwards denounced to the Convention. Notwithstanding his jacobinical exertions, he would have been sacrificed in his turn, but for the 9th Thermidor, which liberated him from prison. St. George died in a state of poverty in 1799, at the age of fifty-four. He was justly considered the first swordsman and the best shot of his time. One of his feats was throwing up two crown-pieces in the air, and hitting them both with his pistols. He was an excellent musician, amiable and polished in his manners, and of a most agreeable conversation; his humanity and charitable disposition were universally acknowledged; and, although engaged in many duels, he had generally been the insulted party, and was never known to avail himself of his reputation to insult any one less skilled in the science of destruction. He was often known, however, to give a salutary lesson to quarrelsome and troublesome young men; and an instance is recorded of his meeting at Dunkirk in the company of several ladies a young officer of hussars, who, not knowing him, was boasting of his skill as a swordsman, and asserting that no fencer in France was a match for him. “Did you ever meet the famous St. George?” asked one of the ladies. “St. George! many a time; he could not stand a moment before me!” answered the hussar, twirling his mustachios. “That is strange,” observed St. George, “and I should much like to have a trial of skill with you, young man. Possibly the ladies could procure us foils, and an assaut d’armes might entertain them.” The young officer assented to the proposal with a smile of contempt: foils belonging to the brother of the lady of the house were produced, and without hesitation the hussar was preparing to shame his aged antagonist, who, politely addressing the ladies, asked them to name the buttons he should touch on his adversary’s doliman. The delighted women, glad to see a coxcomb corrected, named the number of the buttons; which St. George touched one after the other, and then whipped the foil out of the inexperienced hand of the boaster, who, infuriated by rage and shame, wanted immediate satisfaction; when St. George quietly observed, “Young man, your time is not yet come, you may still live to serve your country; but recollect you have met St. George, for I am that very person who could not at any time prove a match for you.” The lesson was a severe one: the young officer, confused and concealing his offended vanity, withdrew, and never after visited at the house.
The efforts of the sovereign to reform the court, and maintain at least an appearance of propriety and good order, were more or less successful in repressing the ostentation of vice that had but lately polluted it: but the dissatisfied roués of the day sought in the orgies of the Palais Royal another scene for their dissipation and excesses; where, to use the expression of a modern writer, “vice became principle, and corruption a system.”
As the crusades had shed their influence on European society, operating a surprising change in its manners and ideas; so did the war of independence in the United States produce a material alteration in the French court. Several noblemen had honourably served in the armies of America, and returned home with enthusiastic notions of liberty and independence. Such was the Duc de Lauzun, a nobleman of elegant manners, and as celebrated for his duels as his bonnes fortunes.