The Libellous Letters of the Chevalier d’Eon

On 27 November 1776 a case came before Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench, in which, the Morning Chronicle reported,  proceedings were repeatedly interrupted by the ‘loud and hearty laughs’ of all in attendance. The cause of such mirth was the reading aloud of a set of letters written by the Chevalier d’Eon, a French spy and diplomat, and complainant in the case.

D’Eon was no stranger to the English courts. In 1764 he was tried and found guilty of libel for the publication of Lettres, Mémoires & Negociations Particulières du Chevalier d’Eon, a scandalous work that criticised the then French ambassador to Britain, the Comte de Guerchy. By 1776, however, d’Eon was better-known for the remarkable rumour that the Chevalier was, in fact, the Chevalière; not a man but a woman. Such a tantalising rumour had inspired the gamblers of 18th-century London, with tens of thousands of pounds wagered – in the form of insurance policies – on his proving female.

On 10 September Charles Théveneau de Morande, a French blackmailer and spy, had published a letter in the Public Ledger insisting not only that d’Eon was a woman but also that ‘she’ had a financial interest in these insurance policies:

I declared on oath that Miss D’Eon was a woman, and I now acquaint the world that I shall prove it. Let her contradict me, if she can.

In response, d’Eon pursued a libel action against Morande; the November 1776 case was to decide whether this action should proceed.

In the weeks before 27 November, d’Eon, Morande, and their witnesses provided statements to the court. D’Eon’s witnesses confirmed that Morande had written the letter and tacitly implied that d’Eon was male, clarifying in their statements that ‘the words Miss D’Eon and She throughout the said libel are used and intended to signify’ the Chevalier d’Eon. Attached to d’Eon’s statement was a copy of the Public Ledger containing Morande’s libellous letter.

The main argument put forward by Morande’s counsel was that the King’s Bench did not entertain cases where the plaintiff was as guilty as the defendant; complainants ‘must go into Court with clean hands’. Morande’s defence was therefore framed around three letters, purportedly written by the Chevalier d’Eon, which proved that d’Eon was as guilty of libel and slander as Morande (allegedly) was. When these letters were produced, William Claudius d’Aubarede, a colonel in the French service, confirmed that the letters were in d’Eon’s handwriting. To submit them as evidence, John Goy – a man who ‘very well understands the French and the English languages’ – was summoned to court to provide translations.

The first letter was a copy of the certificate of sauf-conduit (safe conduct) that Louis XVI had granted to d’Eon in August 1775. Morande was involved in its negotiation and claimed that d’Eon requested to be referred to as a woman in the document, ‘apprehending that she [d’Eon] should be exposed to some danger with sauf-conduit under the title of a man, when in fact she was a woman’. Though made over a year earlier this certificate, acknowledging d’Eon as female in the eyes of the French court, was not yet public knowledge. Until, that is, it was produced as evidence here.

The second letter written by d’Eon was sent to Morande on 3 August 1776. D’Eon had previously fallen out with Morande because d’Eon believed Morande to be profiting from the wagers concerning his sex. To defend his honour, d’Eon had continually challenged Morande to a duel. Morande, believing d’Eon to be a woman, continually refused. To get around this, d’Eon – writing as ‘Mademoiselle d’Eon’ in the letter – claimed that her ‘brother’ the Chevalier d’Eon would gladly duel in her place. Both ‘siblings’ entreated:

Mr de Morande either to keep himself quiet or to go and get himself bougred in good French ... She [Mademoiselle d’Eon] pities her [Mrs de Morande] very sincerely to have for a husband a man so corrupted, so wrongheaded, and so fiery, who is only dangerous to women and children; but not at all to the Chevalier d’Eon.

The final letter produced by Morande, written by d’Eon on 8 August, continued the tirade:

I’ll treat you only as they do your country asses, that is to say caning and kicking your arse with my foot … Adieu for the last time coward, rogue, in the expectation that thou mayest soon give the mob of London thy blessing with thy broad feet at Tyburn.

On 27 November the translations of these letters were read out in court to great amusement. Lord Mansfield, convinced that d’Eon was as equally guilty of libel as Morande, dismissed the case.

This may have abruptly ended the legal proceedings between d’Eon and Morande, but evidence of d’Eon writing letters as ‘Mademoiselle d’Eon’ and a formal certificate by the French king treating d’Eon as a woman had now been produced in an English court of law. Those wagering that d’Eon was female now took the policymakers to court to get them to pay out. Three King’s Bench cases in 1777 concerned these wagers. In each case, the jury thought the policies valid and found in favour of the parties wagering that d’Eon was female.

By this point, too, d’Eon had returned to France as a woman, under the certificate of safe conduct produced in the November 1776 case. But there was to be a final twist in the tale for those expecting a windfall now the matter of d’Eon’s sex was seemingly resolved. At a meeting of leading judges in January 1778, Lord Mansfield declared that any policies negatively impacting a third party, such as wagers on d’Eon’s sex, were invalid. Here, the letters produced in the November 1776 case were also mentioned. Some judges argued that if these letters had not been produced as part of d’Eon and Morande’s dispute, the subsequent wager cases may never have come to pass.

The letters were only recently discovered in the King’s Bench collections at the National Archives, enclosed in John Goy’s translations. These letters, and the legal records created as part of these cases, provide us with an invaluable insight into the enigmatic Chevalier d’Eon during this transitional period in his life.

Daniel Gosling is Principal Legal Records Specialist at the National Archives.