Revolutionary Aid from a Transvestite
In 1775, Arthur Lee, a colonial agent
for Massachusetts, met French playwright Caron de Beaumarchais in England. With
the American Revolution already in its infant stages, Lee lost no time trying
to persuade Beaumarchais that the French government should strike at it sold
enemy, the English, by aiding the colonies. When Beaumarchais returned home, he
carried Lee’s message to the French court. Spurred on by his efforts, the
French government supplied approximately 90 percent of the munitions used by
the colonists in the first two years of the war. Eventually, of course, the
French entered the war on the side of the Americans. Almost every contemporary
observer and historian agrees that without the aid of the French, the American Revolution
would have taken a very different course.
But why was Beaumarchais in England?
The man who was instrumental in persuading the French to help the colonies was
traveling on a secret mission to retrieve stolen documents from the Chevalier d’Eon,
a transvestite, about whose sex no one was certain. D’Eon was a championship
fencer – in the female competition. Once, a captain of the Grenadiers proposed
to d’Eon. Some contemporaries even reported that Beaumarchais believed d’Eon
was in love with the playwright. On the other hand, d’Eon was also a captain of
the French dragoons and a former diplomatic agent – both male occupations. At d’Eon’s
death in 1810, over thirty-five years later, an autopsy found “the male organs
of generation perfectly formed in every respect.” ………. So Now You Know!
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