by Emily Hahn
Nor was Villinghausen his only experience with that phenomenon of military life now denoted as Snafu. One day on the banks of the Weser the marshal sent him to escort a load of powder and cartridges across the water, under enemy fire. Broglie’s orders were to find one Lieutenant General Comte de Guerchy when d’Eon had made the dangerous crossing, and deliver to him the marshal’s written instructions with regard to the distribution of this ammunition to the troops.
Guerchy, as it happened, was distantly related to d’Eon. But until that day they had never met, and when they did it was hardly the moment to figure out whose aunt had married whose uncle back in Burgundy. Cannonballs were whistling around them; shot and shell continued without surcease. Hastily d’Eon handed over the orders.
One hesitates to say that a lieutenant general could possibly have been afraid. There is no doubt, however, that Guerchy behaved in a manner which indicated he was at least cautious. Instead of following Broglie’s orders, he simply turned horse and galloped off the field, shouting over his shoulder as he disappeared, “If you’ve got any ammunition, take it half a league downriver!”
Naturally, d’Eon was annoyed with Cousin Guerchy. Rallying the other’s officers, he distributed the cartridges himself.
Before the war came to an end he had been wounded twice, and was commended in dispatches by both the count and the marshal for general bravery in action. It was a distinct letdown, when the campaign was over, to return to Paris and find the Broglies in trouble over the Villinghausen controversy. He threw himself into the affair, as one would expect him to do, but politics are never as satisfactorily direct as open battle. All the efforts of d’Eon and the other Broglie supporters could not prevail against La Pompadour, who was on the side of Soubise, and the wrong man won. Louis was feebly noncommittal, as he always was when it came to open defiance of his tyrannical mistress. The Broglies had to retire to their country estates in disgrace. Loyal servants of the Crown, they remained faithful to Louis though he had let them down, and the count, despite the difficulties of distance, continued to act as head of the intelligence corps.
Apart from his superior officers’ troubles, d’Eon had worries of his own. It was the age-old question of the soldier home from the wars: what to do next? For one thing, he was broke. His pay both as legation secretary and as army officer was in arrears, and he had never completely settled that enormous debt incurred when he first went to Russia. True, he was not the only man in the country who found himself in this position; the whole aristocracy of Europe, I sometimes think, must have lived on tick. But though he was in good company, the problem remained pressing until another job came along and saved him, temporarily, from his impatient creditors.
England and France were beginning their preliminary peace talks. In those easygoing days, once a war was over there does not seem to have been any hangover of resentment between nations recently locked in bitter struggle. The Duc de Nivernais went to London, and the Duke of Bedford came to Versailles, to resume diplomatic relations and work out a treaty. D’Eon went with Nivernais as first secretary of the Embassy.
Everyone in England, as I have said, was polite, and there was no hangover from the war, but that does not mean that the haggling over the treaty was not sharp. Every item was fought over, while the British watched the process with cynical eyes. The people hated Lord Bute to begin with. Now they were quick to believe that he was being bribed by Nivernais to give the French the best of every argument. Many other ministers too were accused of corruption, of making their fortunes by selling England’s overseas possessions.
If English ministers were not bribed, it was not for want of Nivernais trying. When d’Eon published his so-called memoirs some years later, he made no allegations to this effect, but he did retail an interesting anecdote of successful trickery on the part of the French, during the course of the negotiations. According to him, the settlement by which Spain recovered Havana from England, swapping Florida for it, was accomplished thus: Nivernais and d’Eon plied the British Undersecretary of State with Tonnerre wine; then, while he slept, d’Eon copied the papers about the Havana affair which the Englishman was carrying in his portfolio. Sent posthaste to France, the papers forewarned the ministers there, and they then found it easy to push the deal through with the Duke of Bedford. Whatever Florida may be worth today, it was not a fair exchange for Havana in 1763, so d’Eon had good reason to boast of his triumph.
Once more he found himself making friends and influencing people everywhere he went. The British court liked him, and the French made much of him when he brought messages from Nivernais to Versailles. Praslin, French Minister for Foreign Affairs, had no real reason to love d’Eon, being an anti-Broglie man himself, but he commended him nevertheless, and actually gave him three thousand livres in hard cash. Louis was even more generous. He rewarded the secretary with a six months’ warrant of protection against his creditors, a gesture which pleased everyone but the creditors, its chief beauty being that it cost the donor nothing. But even this splendid gift was insignificant compared with the Cross of St. Louis which the King bestowed on d’Eon. This presentation marked the Burgundian’s proudest hour; he returned to London a chevalier.
He had reached, I repeat, his proudest hour. Crisis is close upon him. Before it overtakes him, knowing in advance as we do in what form it comes, a summary seems to be indicated. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the Chevalier d’Eon, firmly installed in favor on both sides of the Channel. A man among men. An astute statesman, a loyal subject, a discreet intelligencer, a levelheaded drinker, a good fellow. He is a famous swordsman. Tried under fire, he has come through with an excellent record, under superior officers whose word cannot be doubted.
In the face of all this, how could there have been any possibility that he wasn’t really a man? I mention the matter at this point deliberately. Later the canvas gets so crowded that certain small things might easily be lost to sight in the picture. I do not at all mean to say that a woman could not have been just as astute as a man, just as courteous, discreet, good at drinking and fencing and all the rest of it; I refer to less spiritual matters. Sooner or later, if the chevalier had been a woman, somebody was bound to see her body and reveal the masquerade. It would have been awkward enough always to manage to undress in privacy, though it could be done. But there were other considerations. Remember the habits of eighteenth-century gentlemen, for only one example, at dinner parties. At these it was the custom for the ladies to take their leave of the table when the long meal had come to an end, and retire to the drawing room. Today a remnant of the custom remains, but in our time the gentlemen do not as a general rule dally for hours over their port; sooner or later they have got to rejoin the ladies. In d’Eon’s time there was none of this nonsense about rejoining the ladies; the gentlemen settled down quite simply and frankly to get stinking drunk together. Bottles were brought in, the fire was repaired, and there you were. You didn’t even have to leave the room to go to the gentleman’s room. There were chamber pots provided; they were kept in that left-hand aperture of the buffet which was made on purpose to hold them handy for the company.
Well, under these circumstances, how could d’Eon possibly …
And another thing. He was twice wounded in battle: it’s on the record. The most redoubtable of male impersonators, if they join the Army, usually get caught out when that happens. One of his wounds was in the thigh. But after all, I need not draw diagrams. My point is that the public, later, must have been more credulous than even Barnum gave it credit for.
The treaty was ratified: Nivernais’s mission was at an end, and he was recalled. To assume the post of peacetime ambassador, the court at Versailles named the Comte de Guerchy, d’Eon’s distant relation, the poltroon of the ammunition incident in Germany. The chevalier would have had reason had he declared bitterly on hearing the news that it is a small world after all. Almost certainly he did say it, and attempted to get himself transferred to some other post rather than work under
a man he held in such contempt. But he was advised by his superiors to stay. Once more, as in Petersburg, his peculiar talents were in demand. Once again the King of France, having signed a treaty, was now brooding about the terms and casting about for some way of going back on his word. For this he needed expert help, and he was used to D’Eon’s methods. The chevalier had to remain. He could solace himself if he liked with the reflection that Versailles was not a healthy place for a man committed, as he was, to the support of the Broglies. And in another way the change did him good, for Nivernais insisted that Praslin name d’Eon, during the absence of any other responsible diplomat, French resident in London. On general principles Praslin objected, but at last he gave in.
Louis’s latest project, held secret as usual from his own Foreign Office, was dynamite. The peace had just been signed, and Nivernais’s London bed was not yet cold before the King of France began plotting to invade England. Regrettable as the fact may be, d’Eon threw himself with enthusiasm into the plan when he found out that his chief, the Comte de Broglie, had conceived the original idea. The chevalier’s part of the work was especially important, for he constituted the nucleus of the French cell on the isle of Britain. He was to carry on with the usual routine duties of resident, but his real duty was more complicated.
For one thing, he entertained and aided a certain French officer, the Marquis Carlet de la Rozière, who came to England ostensibly on a visit, but actually to survey the coast and select a good landing place for Louis’s troops. (La Rozière was related to d’Eon.) D’Eon acted as clearing agent for the necessary correspondence between La Rozière and Broglie. A cipher code was selected in order to confound the not-yet-arrived Guerchy, if by any chance the envoy upon arrival should suspect the plot and attempt to discover it. As a final precaution against publicity, a certain young lieutenant named Charles Maurice d’Eon de Moulize stood by in order to receive The Papers and keep them out of Guerchy’s hands, just in case anything like illness or sudden death should happen to the chevalier. Moulize, like La Rozière and Guerchy, was related to d’Eon, and the entire affair began to assume the appearance of a family reunion.
In France, Guerchy was not too busy with his packing to collect general information about the world he would soon enter. He was not quite happy with the reports he received about the French resident. D’Eon sounded much too popular with the English to please his cousin, who was not a Broglie man. The King and Queen liked the chevalier, the English aristocracy liked the chevalier; everyone, it seemed, liked the chevalier, which was all wrong, since his own chief, Praslin, did not like the chevalier. Would Guerchy be able to take the spotlight away from this pretty upstart, this temporary resident? Like d’Eon, he had not forgotten their first encounter, and he resented the man who had seen him behave badly. The chevalier could not possibly have been on Guerchy’s mind in those days as much as Guerchy was on the chevalier’s, but whenever d’Eon did happen to come onto the scene, Guerchy was irked.
Then, even before he set sail for England, the tiresome underling began to make trouble for him, though d’Eon would have put it another way. Once more the chevalier was running into financial difficulties. His six months’ grace had expired, and though he was out of the country creditors were again snapping at his heels. It wasn’t only the old ones, but a host of new, and d’Eon felt, aggrievedly, that the debts for which they claimed settlement were not his to pay. The old debts could have been paid if only the arrears owing him from the Government and Army had been settled; while as for the new, they had been incurred by the entire Embassy in London. True, he had been promoted to minister plenipotentiary, but that did not mean he was personally responsible for embassy expenses. Rather, the Embassy should have been responsible for him.
Plaintively at first he wrote to Nivernais, to Praslin and to Guerchy in turn as his difficulties increased. The replies were never satisfactory. In time-honored bureaucratic style each man handed him on to the next. The chevalier was harried, and as his resentment grew it seemed to center on one figure alone, out of the number who had incurred it. Guerchy was the man he blamed; Guerchy was the man he suddenly, surprisingly, amazingly attacked. Without warning, and without any obvious cause—for, after all, debts had been a chronic complaint with d’Eon for many years—he seems to have gone mad.
Mere loss of temper might have accounted for one or two of the letters he wrote. Even diplomats sometimes behave in undiplomatic fashion, and he had ample provocation. He wrote angrily to Praslin, which was unwise, and to Guerchy, which was equally unwise, both men being his superiors. Yet if he had stopped there, all might have been smoothed over, but he did not stop. Their replies were naturally angry in turn, and the reprimands stung him to greater fury. His next letters were too extreme to be ignored even had the recipients wished him well to begin with.
It was altogether strange. Until this crisis one would have said that coolness and balance were d’Eon’s outstanding qualities. Without them he would never have succeeded as he did with the Czarina. He must have possessed calm judgment, too, when he dealt with such an important matter of state as the peace treaty recently concluded between France and England. No one at the court of George III had ever accused him of lacking tact. It was Guerchy, evidently, and Guerchy alone who could drive the chevalier to such wild fury that he lost all his ordinary self-control.
On the other hand, the Guerchy affair may have been merely coincidental with some sort of general nerve collapse on his part. The chevalier had risen to dizzy heights, after several years of intense effort to do his job. He had been saddled of late with responsibility of a peculiarly grave kind. He had shouldered similar burdens before, but this time even Louis’s tortuous mentality had outdone itself. At the behest of his royal master, d’Eon was finding it necessary to double-cross in a particularly unpleasant way not only his hosts the English but his own superior officers. Plot was piled upon plot, and now, as if this were not enough, they, conspirators and uninformed together, were pressing him for money, and refusing to pay him his rightful salary, and accusing him of graft.… The world was against him; he felt he had just learned it. Had he no other cause for hysterics, these would have been sufficient.
Remember that the chevalier was not normal. Whether at this time he began to consider himself a woman, or only knew dimly, as he must have known for years, that he wasn’t like other men, there must have been considerable accumulated strain on his nervous system, like a blight which worked inwards in the dark under a veneer of self-control.
Latins, Italians, southern French and Spanish alike take their honor seriously and often use it as an excuse to blow up in the scenes their stormy natures crave. D’Eon the Burgundian now luxuriated in self-abandonment. He continued to write letters which no diplomat should ever send to his own chief no matter what happens. At Versailles, Praslin furiously complained to La Pompadour, and the correspondence with him, as well as equally uncontrolled missives to Broglie and Tercier, was all turned over to Louis. Dear, dear, said Louis to himself; it was evidently necessary to recall this man. He wrote to Tercier:
“D’Eon’s office as Minister Plenipotentiary appears to have turned his head.” When Guerchy arrived in London, in October 1763, he brought orders from Louis that d’Eon was to turn the embassy business over to the envoy, return immediately to Paris, and—a final insult—not present himself at court until summoned.
From that moment on, if not before, genuine madness seems to have taken possession of the unfortunate chevalier. He ignored his orders to go to France. As to the embassy business, he gave a portion of the ordinary aboveboard correspondence to Guerchy, but he retained the remainder, as well as all documents which had to do with the invasion plan and which, naturally, he was not expected to give Guerchy in any case. Tercier and Broglie had intended to take those over, after d’Eon’s return to Paris. Both of them, friends of his though they were, were worried about his behavior and had come to the obviously correct conclusion that he was out of his head. But d
’Eon wouldn’t come home.
It was, to say the least, a very awkward situation for Louis’s secret service. All their most private, shameful plans were in the hands of a lunatic who was where they could not get at him, and who in defense of his honor or what-not might quite easily tell all, to everyone concerned. They felt like animal trainers whose prize gorilla has got loose and is romping about with a gun. Perhaps they felt even worse. After all, animal trainers presumably expect accidents, but Louis was not a zoo keeper; he was a king. It was worse for him, because as King he should not have had guns lying about.
An odd state of affairs now obtained in London’s diplomatic circles. Guerchy had to put a good face on the matter. However much he may have wanted to choke d’Eon’s stiff neck he must not do so, nor even administer to him so much as a public snub. The English were not to know anything about this civil war among France’s distinguished representatives. A Frenchman who had refused to obey orders and was holding his sovereign’s property as an instrument of blackmail must nevertheless be allowed to come and go in the French Embassy as he liked, and continue to be received everywhere as minister plenipotentiary, though he had been officially demoted and recalled. Whatever next?
In our unhappy times renegade diplomats usually ask protection from the governments where they are resident, and then call in the press. Kidnapings are feared; indeed, kidnapings sometimes actually take place. The methods of totalitarians in our unhappy times are not always quite original. D’Eon feared some similar retaliation, but he was not yet ready to ask protection from the British. Anyway, it is unlikely he would have received it without making a full confession of Louis’s plans, and this he did not—as yet—think of doing. He did not blame Louis, but Guerchy. Guerchy was the man who was after him, Guerchy and the traitor Praslin. Anyone who sided with Guerchy joined the sinister mob against him, but Louis, of course, would side with himself. At all costs d’Eon must defend himself against the abominable Guerchy.
