As well as being a spy, soldier, and diplomat, la Chevalière d’Eon was one of the greatest fencers in the world. She was a regular dinner guest at Domenico Angelo’s house, and most famously fenced with le Chevalier St. Georges (also a soldier, and a composer and musician), in a demonstration bout for the Prince of Wales in 1787. This took place in Carlton House, which was the main London residence of King George IV. To put that in perspective, it would be like you being asked to fence at Buckingham Palace for Prince William. This bout was immortalised in paint by Charles Jean Robineau.

Robineau’s painting was copied many times, in various engravings, such as this one by Victor Marie Picot.

She is a fascinating character, even more so when you consider that she lived the first 49 years of her life as a man, and the final 32 as a woman. And she was still fencing at this level at the age of 58! While nobody at the time would have used the term ‘trans woman’, it would certainly apply.

Regular readers of this blog, or my newsletter, or followers of my podcast, will know that I am very keen on making historical martial arts as inclusive as possible, and as part of that I have created a range of T-shirts featuring women, with the text “If X were alive today, she’d be teaching Y at Swordschool .com”. I have Walpurgis from I.33 for Sword and Buckler, Lady Agnes Hotot for Longsword, and la Maupin for Rapier. When I was trying to think of a good historical person for Y=Smallsword, I thought of d’Eon straight away. The paintings and engravings are actually very difficult to print onto a shirt in a way that looks right, so I asked Claire Mead (@carmineclaire) to create a version, based on the painting.

So here she is, in her most modern incarnation!

And here's a mockup of the shirt:

You can find the shirts here: https://swordschool.shop/collections/la-chevaliere-deon