According to d'Éon's memoirs (although there is no documentary evidence to support that account) the monarch sent d'Éon with the Chevalier Douglas, Alexander Peter Mackenzie Douglas, Baron of Kildin, a Scottish Jacobite in French service, on a secret mission to Russia in order to meet Empress Elizabeth and conspire with the pro-French faction against the Habsburg monarchy. It sometimes promoted policies that contradicted official policies and treaties. In 1756, d'Éon joined the secret network of spies called the Secret du Roi (King's Secret) employed by King Louis XV without the knowledge of the government. D'Éon became secretary to Bertier de Sauvigny, intendant of Paris, served as a secretary to the administrator of the fiscal department, and was appointed a royal censor for history and literature by Malesherbes in 1758. D'Éon began literary work as a contributor to Fréron's Année littéraire, and attracted notice as a political writer by two works on financial and administrative questions, which were published in 1753. ĭ'Éon excelled in school, moving from Tonnerre to Paris in 1743, graduating in civil law and canon law from the Collège Mazarin in 1749 at age 21. Most of what is known about d'Éon's early life comes from a partly ghost-written autobiography, The Interests of the Chevalier d'Éon de Beaumont and Bram Stoker's essay on the Chevalier in his 1910 book Famous Impostors. D'Éon's mother, Françoise de Charanton, was the daughter of a Commissioner General to the armies of the wars of Spain and Italy. D'Éon's father, Louis d'Éon de Beaumont, was an attorney and director of the king's dominions, later mayor of Tonnerre and sub-delegate of the intendant of the généralité of Paris. Caricature of d'Éon dressed half in women's clothes, half in men's clothesĭ'Éon was born at the Hôtel d'Uzès in Tonnerre, Burgundy, into a poor French noble family.
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