Charles de Beaumont, knight of Éon

Charles-Genevieve-Louis-Auguste-Andre-Thimothée d' Éon de Beaumont , known as the Knight of Éon (October 5th 1728 with Thunder, France - May 21st 1810 with London). Spy, it is famous for his clothing which made it pass for a woman. With its death, however he was recognized by a council of doctors, like male sex and perfectly made up.

Biography

He is the son of Louis d' Éon de Beaumont, director of the fields of the king, and Francoise de Charanton, girl of a General Police chief of the Wars to the armies of Spain and Italy.

He begins his studies with Tonnerre, then in 1743, he continues them with Paris, the Collège Mazarin and obtains a diploma in civil law and canon law in 1749. It is registered like lawyer at the Parliament of Paris. It is 21 years old. It starts to write, publishes several Historical Considérations and Policies . Noticed by the king Louis XV, it is named royal critic for the History and the Humanities.

Solicited, it is affiliated with the “Secret of the King”, a secret service of information which directs the prince de Conti. It is dispatched at once at the Court of Russia, to obtain from the tsarina Elisabeth an alliance with France. It is dispatched there as embassy secretary. It will tell to have been later there “reader” of the tsarina under the name of Lya de Beaumont. This one bored up to date the disguise and tried to consume, but there remained soft and was treated of insane. In fact, the station does not exist at the court of Russia, and the history appears only at the time where it is in England.

It is again with Saint-Pétersbourg as secretary of Ambassade of 1758 with 1760. Captain of the dragon S in 1760, it leaves the army in 1762 to become again secret agent. He is sent to London in 1762, where he collaborates in the drafting of the treaty which will be signed in Paris the February 10th 1763. Its great diplomatic skill is worth to him to receive one of the rarest distinctions of time: the Royal and Military Order of Saint-Louis.

In parallel, it is charged by the Secrecy with the King with the composition with a plan with invasion on Great Britain, more precisely with a project of descent on England and Wales from which it recognized the coasts with the marquis Carlet of Rozière. It is named thereafter ambassador plenipotentiary for the embassy of the duke of Nivernois. On arrival of the new ambassador, Claude Louis François Régnier, count de Guerchy, he becomes the secretary about it.

The two men are not able to get along, the knight, imbu regard of the king, accepts with difficulty the remarks of its superior. At the time of a meal, the ambassador, according to the testimony of the “victim”, tries to poison his secretary.

An open war settles then with the embassy of France, two camps are formed and a war of makes out is born. The conflict is marked by two lawsuits before the Court of its British Majesty, of which the last in September 1767, gives reason to the knight of Éon.

Its alleged madness was to feed the arguments of Treyssac de Vergy and Ange Goudar, two man of letteen to the orders of the ambassador. The rumor was done persistent, supplied with the attitude ambiguity, nonconformist of the knight. Its change of sex is not either foreign there. Of insane, one claims it Hermaphrodite, then woman. The British carry out many caricatures of the knight whom they baptize Épicène d' Éon (names which are common to both sexes). They go even until ouvir bets on its sex. This change of sex and this dressing-up support several interpretations, interpretations freudiennes like purely political or strategic readings.

At this same time, of Éon is in connection with the French lampoonist Charles Théveneau de Morande. In 1774, Pierre-Augustin Charon de Beaumarchais is sent to London by the king of France Louis XVI to recover near the Knight of Éon the correspondence exchanged with fire king Louis XV. After many adventures, a transaction of more than twenty pages is concluded between them two which stipulates in particular the integral handing-over of the documents and which the signet ring will leave never again its ladies' garments. In exchange of what the life annuity was granted to him. The negotiations lasted fourteen months.

D' Éon left London the August 13rd 1777 and submitted to the court as a captain dragons. An ordinance was taken the August 27th 1777 by the king giving him order “to leave the uniform of dragons which it continues to carry and to take again the clothes of its sex with defense to appear in the kingdom under other clothings that those suitable to the women”. It is exiled in Tonnerre, where there remained six years there.

In November 1785, it regains Great Britain and loses its revenue. It is found in a half-misery and is collected by a British lady of its age, Mrs Cole.
It accommodates the French revolution favorably, proposes with the National Assembly to lead a unit of Amazones, is seen granting a passport, but the declaration of war of the 1793 and heavy debts forces it to remain on the British ground.

In 1804, it is imprisoned for debts; released, he will live still four years in misery, before dying, in London, the May 21st 1810.

By carrying out the last toilet of late, one discovered with amazement that this old woman… was a man. A surgeon accompanied by several members of the medical Faculty of Great Britain declared in a medico-legal report/ratio, the May 23rd 1810: “By the present one, I certify that I examined and dissected the body of the knight of Éon and that I found on this body the male bodies of the generation perfectly formed under all the reports/ratios”.

The knight of Éon is buried in the Middlesex.

The mystery on the sex of the knight of Eon finds an explanation rather different and finally rather simple if one wants to look at well his love life with a little more consideration. Charles Déon de Beaumont, his mother was Luyt, (Déon and not of Eon according to the baptismal certificate signed by his/her father and his godfather in the church of Thunder and who initialed the document under this first orthography, also Charles de Beaumont is not exact, the Déon family carried three different particles: of Beaumont, of Pommard, of Germigny, and all were originating in the area which goes from Rennes to Cancale; area that they fled for theological reasons because shown heresy) had an early love affair with the duchess Charlotte de Mecklembourg-Strelitz, before it becomes the woman of George III of Great Britain. The newborn shortly after the union of the royal couple was probably not the son of the King but the son of the knight. The disguise of Charles in London was a subterfuge which enabled him to see its mistress, and probably to also see his/her son the future George IV. George III probably knew the truth since it tried to make lock up George IV in vain by proclaiming that it was not its blood, the official story retaining an early senility even a psychological disorder of the old King. This " version" history though difficult to prove by files is obviously awkward because difficult to admit for reasons of State. the mystery of the knight of Eon is less his sex that its paternity . Louis XV and especially Louis XVI, excessively pious person who did not like it, were not unaware of this situation, also that explains it why this last obliged the knight to preserve the female dress. Charles did not have much respect for the House of Hanover, his education was influenced by his uncle O' Gorman, jacobite Irish and devoted to the cause of Stuart To the King over the toilets …

Random links: