_P.S._—It is desirable that a staff officer should at once
accompany M. d’Eon to effect this distribution to the troops
under your orders.
Is it true, as d’Eon asserted later in the libel which he published
in London against the ambassador, that the Comte de Guerchy contented
himself with putting the order in his pocket, saying to d’Eon: “If
you have a supply of ammunition, you have only to remove it to a park
of artillery you will find at half-a-league’s distance,” and that, in
spite of discipline, the young aide-de-camp had to gallop after the
lieutenant-general to recover the order, and to take it upon himself
to carry out the marshal’s instructions? The Comte de Guerchy naturally
took care not to admit the truth of the story, which he treated as a wild
fabrication, and the tardy and interested testimony of so biassed and
insincere a person as d’Eon can only be accepted with extreme caution.
However that may be, it is interesting to record this first meeting on
the battlefield of two officers who were destined three years later, as
colleagues in the same embassy, to quarrel so violently and to astonish
the whole of Europe by the scandal of their dispute.
Yet despite his exemplary conduct in the army and the ability he
displayed in discharging the duties of a dragoon on real battlefields
after following in embassies what he called “the trade of a scribe and
pharisee,” d’Eon quitted the service before the month of September 1762,
when the preliminaries of peace were signed. Towards the end of December,
1761, he returned to Paris in compliance with an order from the ministry.
There was some question of sending him back to St. Petersburg, where he
had so successfully made his first diplomatic campaign, and of appointing
him successor to the Baron de Breteuil. Once more he was about to change
his career, by gaining another promotion. He left Cassel, where he
chanced to be with Marshal de Broglie’s staff, taking away with him the
certificate which recorded his brilliant military exploits, and reached
France in the beginning of the year 1762. Hardly had he set out when the
Czarina died, bearing away to her grave d’Eon’s prospects of an embassy.
If, notwithstanding his comparatively inferior rank and origin, he had
seemed in the eyes of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the King
peculiarly qualified for the accomplishment of a confidential mission
to the Empress, who had known him for several years and had frequently
given him proofs of her good-will, the accession of a new sovereign at
St. Petersburg considerably diminished the importance of these particular
reasons, and the impetuous Burgundian was thwarted once again in his
aspirations by the obstacle of caste.
In fact, instead of sending d’Eon to Russia, where the ministry decided
upon leaving the Baron de Breteuil, they conceived the idea of turning
the young diplomatist’s indefatigable zeal and remarkable talents to
profitable account in the negotiations for peace. The Duc de Choiseul
appointed him secretary to the Duc de Nivernais, selected as the most
subtle and expert arbitrator in the whole of France for the difficult
task of concluding peace with England.