Eon de Beaumont, Charles Geneviève Louise Auguste Andre (1728–1810)

French diplomat. He was a trusted agent in Louis XV's secret service, serving him in Russia (1757) and in England (1762–65). In 1759 he fought bravely as captain of the French forces in Germany. He had assumed woman's dress on his first mission to Russia, and after his return to France in 1777 lived as a woman, his true sex becoming a society wager, and Eon de Beaumont doing nothing to dispel the gossip. He revisited England in 1785 and lived there permanently after the French Revolution. He died in London. His political and historical essays appeared in 1775 as Loisirs du Chevalier d'Eon.