- Julie d'Aubigny was
a famous 17th century French opera singer who
once took the holy vows to enter a convent just so she could have (beep) with a nun. She also had a habit of seducing women, was an opera singer and master duelist. (multiple voices clamoring) And regularly seduced both men and women. (multiple voices clamoring) (multiple voices clamoring) Absolutely hashtag goals. (speaker sighs) If there's one thing all human
beings have always loved, it's salacious, juicy gossip. You may have seen these
memes about Julie d'Aubigny also known as La Maupin floating around the internet for years. And honestly, it's easy to see why. She's a tremendously bombastic
figure in a million ways and was seen even more so in her own time. But if we love interesting
quote worthy stories, the 18th century French
public loved it just as much and exciting and scandalous tales of the aristocracy dominated
people's imaginations as the continued rise of
print media spread this gossip from the confines of letters
in Versailles court whisperers into the hands of regular people. Julie d'Aubigny who made waves
in the French aristocracy due to her hot temper,
talents and taste in fashion was no exception to the
rules of the industry of hearsay resulting centuries later in her legends having overtaken
the already nigh impossible to find details of her real life, as well as her real
personality and feelings. By the way, when you
think of Julie d'Aubigny, you may first think of this
Victorian fencing outfit, a replica of which I put together for my Victorian women in sports video, which you should definitely check out because it's one of my personal favorites. In that one, I briefly talked about how this outfit is popularly
associated with Julie d'Aubigny because of the painting L'escrimeuse by French impressionist,
painter, Jean Beraud. But just a reminder that
painting is not Julie. It is actually a painting
of Parisian fencer, Marguerita Sylvia. Julie lived over 200 years before this painting
was made in the 1890s. She would not have been wearing this. So anyway, just clarifying that. Sorry. So there's no argument that
the famous French sapphic sword fighting opera singer was well, famous, French, sapphic
and an opera singer who could sword fight. But just how much of
this extended wild story is really the truth and what
elements of French society and media at the time
would've influenced the way that Julie's story is told. Well, unfortunately it's
a lot more complicated than you'd think, but it is a hell of a ride. Come learn with me. Side note, I'll get into this at the end but this video does contain
many of my own personal opinions on what may or may not be true about the story of Julie d'Aubigny. Most of these things, well,
we'll never know for sure. So it's okay to have your own opinions. If you strongly disagree
with any of my takes, that's totally fine. But just know that the honest truth, as is so common with history, has been lost to time. All we can do is explore. So let's get into it. But first let's hear a word
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VPN for sponsoring this video. And now let's get back to
learning about Julie d'Aubigny (classical music) If you're not familiar with the entire story of Julie d'Aubigny, questionable parts and all, join me for a moment for a quick overview. I'll be mixing together a bunch of info from various sources and then we can inspect it
closer and pick it apart. She was born around 1670
to '73 to Gaston d'Aubigny and an unknown mother. And Gaston was the secretary
to the Count d'Armagnac, the master of horse to
King Louis the 14th. She moved to the court of
Versailles around 1682, where her father had her educated fully, including boy stuff like
how to ride and sword fight. Julie therefore picked up her
habit of wearing men's clothes early on and became an
extremely accomplished fencer. When she was 14 years old, she apparently became
Count d'Armagnac's mistress and d'Armagnac was 49, married and had over a
dozen children, by the way. Eventually though, she was placed with a husband, Monsieur first name De Maupin, a tax collector who was
something of a huge weenie. He and Julie didn't stay together for long since he was sent away on a job. And so Julie now a married
woman with many more freedoms decided to live her best,
most chaotic life, ah Paris. She ran off with a fencing
master named Serrane and the two made cash
by giving demonstrations in taverns and fairs and places like that. And Julie's fencing prowess plus her choice in men's wear caused people to accuse her
of lying about being a woman, to which she tore her shirt
open to prove a point. It was after this that she
joined the Marseilles opera, which she found great success in because although she had no formal
training or sense of music, she was extremely beautiful
and had an amazing voice. It was here that she
caught the eye of a girl in the audience and they fell in love. The girl was sent to the
convent of the Visitandines in either Forcalquier or Avignon. And Julie followed her under the guise of becoming a student but she
quickly tired of convent life. And one night placed the body
of a recently deceased nun on the bed, set it on fire and escaped with
her girlfriend in the chaos. Supposedly killing and wounding people along the way. For months, they ran and hid away after
which finally the girl was returned to her parents and the Parlament de or
the Parlament de Toulouse sentenced Julie to death
by fire in absentia, calling her Sieur d'Aubigny, apparently to hide the scandalous sapphic element of the incident which is apparently worse than
setting a convent on fire. Julie continued moseying around France when she met a nobleman
named Comte d'Albert who thinking she was a man
challenged her to a duel. She beat him brutally and
then nursed him to health after which they either became
very close friends or lovers, depending on who's telling the story. Julie then took some singing lessons and met a new beau, Gabrielle Vincent Thevenard, who ended up getting into the Paris opera and got Julie in with him. By this point, she was only 17 years old and was a huge success on the stage, now known as Mademoiselle de Maupin. Things were smooth sailing
until a ball was held by either the King or the Duc d'Orleans. And Julie showed up in men's clothing and seduced and kissed a
woman on the dance floor causing three guys who were
interested in the woman to challenge her to a duel. She told them to meet her outside and beat all three of them or killed them. She returned to the ball
and King Louis was like, "um, Maupin bestie, what did I say about duels?" And she was like, "ah, you
said we can't have them." And Louis was like chill
about it for some reason and didn't prosecute her, but she did have to fuck
off to Brussels for a bit. In Brussels apparently she had a fling with the elector of
Bavaria who ditched her after she stabbed herself on stage. So Julie thusly fucked off to Madrid where she became the
maid to Countess Marino. Julie hated this woman so bad. And so one day before a ball, Julie dressed the Countess's
hair with radishes to embarrass her and then fucked off back to
Paris before she could get got. By this point, Julie had been pardoned by
the King for the dueling and the convent arson. So she returned to the Paris opera. Here, she got into a spat
with a tenor named Dumenil who was apparently being gross and handsy with the chorus girls. Julie mugged him and stole his
snuff box and pocket watch. And the next day when Doman claimed he was accosted by three men, she threw the stolen goods at his feet to prove that she alone did it. Then she became obsessed with
the soprano Fanchon Moreau and apparently tried to kill herself because the affections were one sided. Then she attacked her landlord
for not cooking her dinner and went back to court. And then she bit Thevenard's
ear on stage and drew blood. Although they for some
reason remained best pals. She also remained immensely
popular among opera audiences, which surely ticked off her
many enemies in the court. Then in 1703, she met the love of her life the Marquise de Florensac, who was often described as the most beautiful woman in France. Though a married woman with two children, La Florensac was being
pestered by the Dauphin and as a result had to flee to Brussels. Sadly though, Florensac and La Maupin lived quietly and harmoniously together, it was cut tragically short when Florensac died of a fever in 1705. Julie's despair was boundless and she apparently reconnected
with the weenie husband and then promptly entered a convent where she died miserably
in 1707 at the age of 33. Hmm. (laughs) Kind of a hell of a lot, right? And if all of it really is true, what an incredibly colorful life. The problem is though, we've got over 11
questionable stories here, many of which have outright
false elements to them even if they're rooted in truth and only a couple of which
I'll be interrogating in depth. When I first started hearing
about Julie d'Aubigny, I was amazed but a big part of my brain that knows what 18th
century France was like with regards to its celebrities and especially its queer or otherwise gender non-conforming ones, it was more than a little suspicious. My queer history senses were
tingling, you could say. So let's unpack this. Shall we? Starting with the world
of France's print media and sensationalism. (upbeat piano music) Well, in 17th to 18th century France, people didn't have those
buck wild tabloid magazines that you see in the checkout
Lena grocery stores. What they did have were the
memoirs of the aristocracy and collection books like various topic dictionaries and
anecdote encyclopedias. You may look at the word
dictionary or encyclopedia today and think it's a well
researched source of facts, but this could not be further
from the truth in this case. This is a very interesting time in France with regards to people's
connection to sexuality plus religion. Early on in the 16th century in general, people were more attached to the churches' ideas of sexuality and what was or wasn't okay. Over the course of the next 200 years, things changed drastically. And by the time that Julie was alive, she lived in an era of
extremely fraught tension between the more open ideas of sexuality and the church desperately clawing back any strings of control over
culture that they could. People were more open but equally more anxious. When Julie lived, it actually wasn't unbelievable to hear about women running
around in men's clothes and sword fighting. But that made it all the
more tasty to gossip about, much in the same way that the
new women engaging in sports and bloomers were in
the late Victorian era, the Edwardian Gibson girls
or the flappers of the '20s, which we'll discuss in the next video. In the decades following Julie's death in the early 1700s, this culture would only
become more extreme. Something that was extremely apparent if you go look at French
erotic literature of the time, which sometimes was so
graphically violent and horrific, it makes a lot of today's
corn look fairly tame. Sorry, I have to use that stupid word. If I say the real word, YouTube will come smash
this video like a bug, but anyway, a lot of French cornographic
literature at the time, both drew from and
encouraged its male readers desires to see women and especially lesbian women be essentially tortured and killed in creative ways. And even when it didn't quite go that far, it often involved the lesbian
characters in question being either punished
physically or by an act of God, repenting or being cured by a man. The immense popularity of these stories I think is telling on itself. And you can see echoes of this ending and the way that many writers
talked about Julie's death. They say she felt remorse
for her life of sin and her lust for women. And so she reunited with her husband and became a devout nun, repenting to God until
she died two years later of unknown causes. But the writers make certain, you know, she died alone unloved. Although the stories of Julie d'Aubigny are never extreme in a
graphically sexual sense, in part because they're always
framed as being true stories and therefore have certain limits. To readers of the time, it would've still been very salacious. And as a famous woman
who clearly was unwilling to abide by aristocratic gender roles, she would've been a prime target to become the subject of these stories. 18th century French readers hearing about a sapphic woman may
have had mixed feelings hearing them too. Today the idea of Julie
setting a convent on fire to run off with her girlfriend
sounds totally badass. And many readers back
then who were struggling with their own relationships to the church may have felt vindicated by the violence, not only to the convent, but also in desecrating
the corpse of a nun as evidenced by many
French writings of the era where nuns are physically brutalized or
otherwise shown as villains. But this too is a nuanced topic. Many French writers, all male, who wrote stories of
violence involving nuns often did so as a way to express their own personal anxieties
about sapphic women in general. They feared the convent
as one of the only places where women had the power, not men. They also feared the women they loved being sent to a convent and being seduced into
lesbianism by other nuns. The best example of this is "The Nun" by Denis Diderot written around 1760. The protagonist Suzanne
is forced by her mother to become a nun after
which she is tortured by the sadistic other nuns at the convent. She is later made the victim by an evil, apparently lesbian mother superior. Diderot's story is a
thinly veiled examination of his real life anxiety
surrounding his mistress, Sophie Volland's close
relationship to her sister, Madame Le Gendre and Diderot wrote numerous
times of his anxiety surrounding women with power and his disbelief that women can be any smarter than children. So readers even long before "The Nun" would have already noted
the historically intertwined nature of the convent and lesbianism. Whether or not Julie truly did burn down that convent to break out her nun girlfriend, as
badass as it sounds, we will never know because the original source of
the story is unknown. And the style of its writing is just so in line with other
fabricated celebrity tales of that era, something we'll get into with regards to this specific story here in a minute. Additionally, writings from
the 17th to 18th centuries on sapphic women very
frequently were done, as well, revenge pieces. As Lillian Faderman observed in "Surpassing the Love of Men," "these works were
usually more than erotic. They were based on actual personages, women who were, in every case, aggressive and unretiring, not at all like the
conventional 18th century ideal of femininity. These women have generally
tread on the author's toes by their assertiveness. They had stepped out of line and behaved in unwomanly fashion, either by attempting to outsmart a man or by imposing themselves
on male business, or simply by not extending to a man the deference he believed do to him. What better way to shame such women than to attribute them
fierce sexual appetites at a time when it was not
proper for women to have them. Keeping in mind the sort
of person that Julie was, and the fact that very few
readers of these stories would've seen her as
an admirable character and therefore that mindset
would influence the author, much sapphic literature of the era was written as thinly veiled
attacks on real life women, who in some way, annoyed or insulted the author. These women perhaps really were sapphic and therefore may have been an easy target if they acted out too much, which I personally believe
might have been the case with Julie, who undeniably was sapphic
and had a huge temper. We know that Julie made a
number of enemies in her life. Most of whom were influential men. Any number of whom may
have been interested in spreading tall tales about her in these anecdote books or
in their letters and memoirs, a few of which we'll get to in a minute. It's no coincidence that
all the most extreme stories about Julie were published,
not during her short lifetime, but in the years following her death when she was no longer
around to defend herself or sue for libel. This type of writing wasn't just used as an attack on aristocratic
women with little power. It's very telling that gossip
of aggressive lesbianism was used later by the male revolutionaries of the French revolution who passed out political pamphlets claiming that Maria Antoinette was a bisexual predator who engaged in enumerable
debauched liaisons. I have seen these pamphlets circulated in queer history circles before as excited evidence of Maria
Antoinette's bisexuality, ignoring the reason they were
written in the first place, not as a revelation or celebration
of her actual sexuality, whatever it may be, but as a calculated political move to take advantage of the people's disgust at the idea that a woman, especially a powerful one, could love other women too. It's dangerous, unfortunately, to take many historical
claims of a person's queerness at face value without interrogating the environment and
motivations it was written in and who they were. That said, although we have no concrete
evidence of most of her relationships as the
writings on her relationships with women and the ones with men came out a number of
decades after her death. And in fact, many of her male relationships
often were first spoken of even later than the female ones, meaning she was equally
as likely to have loved women as men. There is absolutely nothing
wrong with viewing her as a queer, sapphic, historical figure. Because even based on the ways
that she was talked about, in all likelihood, she was. We have no reason to believe she wasn't, especially given the way
that her relationships to women in themselves for the most part are not written in a
necessarily defamatory manner, especially when speaking
about her last girlfriend, Madame La Marquise De Florensac, also known as Marie Louise
Therese de Senneterre. Rather, that relationship is described by Louis de Rouvroy,
Le Duc de Saint-Simon, who lived during Julie's time and was her contemporary
in the court of Versailles, "for two years, they
lived on this tenderness they thought ideal, ethereal and beyond the reach of the stain of men. The young women isolated
themselves, enamored, only appearing in public at occasions where their presence was essential. Indeed one finds, after 1702, no songs or satire against
the two women was written." This sweet description of the relationship by Saint-Simon is particularly interesting since he's one of her
actual contemporaries to write about her the earliest and he hated her guts. Some of the earliest
writings on Julie though still appearing close
to or after her death come from three key figures
in the French aristocracy who knew her personally and
all of whom despised her. Saint-Simon, Cardinal Guillaume Dubois and Madame Du Noyer. (classical music) Okay, so as I got deeper
into researching La Maupin, I knew the key to figuring
out fact from fiction probably lies in
following the paper trails back, back, back, back as far as possible. And it was not easy. This is incredibly
difficult because obviously the best sources are going to
be court and arrest records, death records and descriptions of crimes. Sadly, I came up short
finding any of those. I would likely need to go to France and spend days or months in dusty archives using my barely mediocre French skills to find what I'm looking for. So in the absence of legal documents, the search shifted instead to the people talking about said crimes, who were alive when they happened. And the earliest voice in the game is a pretty infamous character named Madame Anne-Marguerite Du Noyer. Now, Madam Du Noyer is widely recognized as one of the first female journalists due to her prominent role in reporting on political conflicts. She ran away from her controlling husband with her daughters and made a career to support
all of them by writing, well, hot, juicy goss and selling it to anyone who would buy. Cardinal Dubois, who it seems had a low
opinion of just about everyone except himself describes
her in his memoirs, "this lady who is no longer
young or pretty or gallant, had abandoned France and
her religion in order to have a pretext for leaving her husband, who kept her behind locked bars. Madame Du Noyer had lived by
her own industry in England and lived on that of her
two daughters in Holland. The mother, in the pay
of the book sellers, as she has long been in
the pay of her lovers, gained her poor livelihood
by concocting libels. And I should not have been spared if I had not gilded her pen." Cardinal Dubois ragging on Du Noyer for constructing libels is laughable given the fact that most of his memoirs are straight up lies, but he's not wrong either. In her own letters, Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu complained to her friend
about Du Noyer's letters. "10,000 thanks to you for
Madame Du Noyer's letters. The stories are very extraordinary, but I know not whether she
has not added a few agremens of invention to them. However, there is some truth... Say nothing of my malice." And in another, "Mr. Resingade told me he would send you the two tomes of Madame
Du Noyer's memoirs. I fancy you will find
yourself disappointed in them, for they are horribly grave and insipid. And instead of the
gallantry you might expect, they are full of dull morals." Madame Du Noyer, it seems, was an avid and very creative liar with a lot of truth sprinkled in between. She even lied in many of her letters, many of which were published in 1705. And it is in one of
her letters to a friend that the story of Julie stabbing herself on stage comes from. You see, Madame Du Noyer
hated Julie d'Aubigny. And although her writings
don't mention her frequently, it is with considerable
venom when they do. As you can see here, in a very rough machine translation. This of course isn't to say that Julie didn't stab herself on stage. She was dramatic after all, but Du Noyer may have had the motivation to add in some extra details
or made up context, who knows. Which is what makes the convent
fire story so confusing. So far as I can tell, the earliest mention of this story actually comes from Madame Du Noyer. But her version of the tale
doesn't mention Julie at all. And in fact is in many ways, very different from the
popular story we know today. She writes, "a nun who had become
enamored of a gentleman who had whispered his
love for her at the grill, resolved to scale the convent walls and rejoined the swain. Love they say burns fiercely
beneath the nun's veil and the Monk's habit. Thus, did the nun make every attempt she could think of to gain her freedom. She told her lover of a plan, but he thought it would be
very difficult to carry it out. Yet whatever the obstacles, love they say will always find out a way. And now, what do you
think our nun thought of? You shall hear. She told her lover to be
next right at a certain spot. And all she wanted him to bring with him was a pair of good horses. She then left him in order to
put her plan into execution and I think he will agree it was a pretty bold one. That day there had been a
funeral in the community. One of the sisters had been buried and the grave had not yet been sealed. When all was quiet in the convent, she got into the place with the sepulcher, bore the dead nun to her cell and then laid the corpse on her bed. Then she set fire to the
cell by a means of a ladder which she had managed to obtain and which she had contrived
to drag up after her. She scaled the garden
wall and flung herself into the arms of her lover who was waiting for her
burning with impatience. They lost no time in
putting as much distance between themselves and the
convent as they possibly could. And their journey was
the happiest imaginable. When the alarm of fire
was raised in the convent, all the nuns had hurried
to the burning cell. And as the dead nun was
attired in her habit and was already half consumed with flames, they never had the slightest
doubt of who she was now the runaway was really
the victim of disaster. As soon as the lovers were
beyond reach of pursuit, they duly entered into
the bond of matrimony. The gentleman took up some
sort of business career and amassed a lot of money. They had several children
who would've been very rich if their mother scruples
had not exposed them to ruin by reason of
the illegal proceedings, which are now in question. The woman's husband died and she was so grief
stricken at losing him that she also resolved
to die to the world. She therefore withdrew to a convent where remorse for the
inequities of her past life led her to make a confession, which her children would've
been better without, "what the result of the
litigation will be depends on the verdict of the
Parliament of Toulouse." Okay, so in his 1930 book,
"Women in Men's Guise," Oscar Paul Gilbert comes to the conclusion that this story evolved into
being about Julie d'Aubigny, because the story actually was about her and Madame Du Noyer was
concealing her identity. Now given what we know about Du Noyer and her hatred of Julie, plus that this was written
in a letter to a friend, I have absolutely no idea why Du Noyer would care to protect
Julie's name to this extent, even going so far as to change around the entire structure of the story. To me personally, it seems much more likely that perhaps some true tale of
Julie's life was mixed up with Du Noyer's story here or if Du Noyer was recounting
a true story from the news then perhaps the people who
seem to have attributed it to Julie first, Dubois and Saint-Simon, mixed Julie into the story
either out of false memory or on purpose to smear her name. Both entirely possible but without any original
records of this convent fire, we'll never know. I sent emails to some officials in both Avignon and Forcalquier asking if they have any records but have not heard back. So where does this story make
its way to Julie d'Aubigny? Well, enter stage left, Cardinal Guillaume Dubois. Where do I even begin with this man? He was certainly a big personality with a lot of connections, but he had many enemies, not in the least, the Duc de Saint-Simon himself. Saint-Simon apparently had a painting of the Cardinal Dubois on
the wall of his bathroom. I assume to help him shit faster. He describes Dubois as, "a little pitiful wizened, herring-gutted man in a flaxen
wig with a weasel's face, brightened by some intellect. All the vices, perfidy,
avarice, debauchery, ambition, flattery fought
within him for the mastery. He was so consummate a liar, that when taken in the fact, he could brazenly deny it. Even his wit and knowledge
of the world were spoiled and his affected gaiety
was touched with sadness, by the odor of falsehood, which escaped through
every pore of his body." Which is brutal. Now just like Du Noyer, Dubois had a habit of making his stories basically whatever he wanted them to be, whatever sounded most interesting. Even the introduction to his memoirs needs to make this clear. The evidence of recent
research tends rather to regard the work as apocryphal. The Comte de Seillac in his, "l'Abbe Dubois," published in 1862, one of the most important works in the life of the Cardinal, disregards the memoirs altogether. M. Ch. Aubertin in his interesting, "L'Espirit publique au XVIII siecle," (mumbles), whoa. My two years of French class are not coming in clutch right now. Published in 1873, comes to the conclusion that
they are probably spurious. While M. Querard, in his "Les Supercheries
litteraires devoilees," 1869, decides they were composed by the above mentioned Paul Lacroix, and founded on a certain Vie
Privee Du Cardinal Dubois, published in London in 1789. These memoirs published
for the first time in 1829, but apparently written in the 1720s have a lot to say about Julie d'Aubigny. Dubois claims that d'Aubigny
was constantly threatening to kill him, which... But his memories of her are
valuable in a different way. They offer yet another explanation for the convent fire story. Dubois actually claims
the story came to him directly from Dumenil's lips. Dumenil, the lecherous
drunken opera singer that she mugged, yet another person who
famously hated Julie and notoriously wanted to take her down. "The Maupin's sorriest
defect, in my opinion, was her passion for her own sex. Dumenil, an actor of the opera, having seen the failure
of his amorous projects with La Maupin, as a
scheme of vengeance planned to cause a quarrel between
her and the Duc de Chartres. He had made my acquaintance, since my habit of going behind the scenes, he sought me out and the resentment I
felt against the Maupin incited me to second him. He related to me among other
exploits of this young lady, an incident which might have landed her in a prison perhaps even further. When she was a member of the
Opera Company of Marseilles, she became tenderly
attached to a young person who was relegated by her
family to a convent at Avignon. She was wrath at the separation and contrived to be accepted as a novice in the same convent. There she consecrated herself
to the service of her mistress rather than of God. But tired of the restraint
to which both had to submit, the two friends formed a plan of escape which was more fortunate than prudent. A nun died and was buried. Maupin during the night exhumed the body, carried it into the cell of her accomplice and escaped with her, thanks
to the outbreak of a fire. They took refuge in Germany and let themselves be tried
and found guilty in default. Maupin was condemned to be burned. But 10 years having passed, she owed her impunity to
the forgetfulness of justice and the protection of her lovers. I retailed this adventure
in the Palais-Royal and seasoned it with a thousand witticisms which were not to the
honor of the Maupin." He then goes on to
suggest that the incident where Julie accosted Dumenil was due to the story
of him spreading rumors about her starting a fire at a convent to run off with a nun. Based on what we can gather about Dumenil, this doesn't seem too far fetched. But even from this story, it's hard to say for certain that this means an incident
involving Julie never happened. The Cardinal also details
the story of Julie going to the ball, dressed in men's clothing, kissing a Mademoiselle de Sevigne and then fighting three
men and beating them, a story which escalates
every new time it is told. We'll come back to that. First, we need to circle
back to our friend, the Duc de Saint-Simon, who had his own memoirs to account for. Saint-Simon's memoirs were
written around the 1740s but not published until 1829, the same year as Dubois. And somehow it's even more aggressive towards Julie than Dubois was. And his retelling of the convent story takes a decidedly sharp
turn into portraying Julie as even more of a villain. It places her and the young
woman as eloping in the night and hiding in the convent to escape the girl's pursuing family. He says that this girl was afraid of Julie and did not love her, and so was essentially being held captive. Then he makes an even
more extreme accusation, "interrupted in her designs
and irritated by opposition, this theatrical miscreant
set fire at midnight to the building that had so
hospitably sheltered her. And in the general confusion, secured her unhappy victim and fled to a sequestered village, where they were concealed
for several weeks. But the country being alarmed
at such a flagrant enormity, a diligent search took place, the offender was traced to her retreat and seized after a long resistance in which she killed one
of the officers of justice and dangerously wounded two others. In a crowded theater, conceiving herself a fronted by Dumenil, a favorite actor, remarkable for mild temper
and inoffensive manners, she rushed up on stage, poured forth a torrent of
abuse on the unlucky fellow, interrupted the entertainment and actually caned him
before all the audience. At a ball given by the
prince of the blood, La Maupin insolently parading
the room in men's clothes and treating a lady of
distinction very indecently, was called out at different
times by three gentlemen, each of whom she ran through the body." So Saint-Simon appears to be one of, if not the first people, to
actually accuse Julie of murder. If she actually murdered and
publicly beat people like this, I highly doubt Madame Du
Noyer and Cardinal Dubois would've sat out on the
chance to talk about it. Not only that, but the duels at the ball story
doesn't sit right with me, given the culture of
French dueling at the time. You didn't just challenge someone to duel and then go outside and duke it out. It was very organized
and typically involved setting a scheduled day and time and would not have been three on one. And as strong as her
connections may have been, it's extremely unlikely that she would've been
protected from the law if she really was out there
killing aristocrats in public or even officers of the law. To date, no one has ever found any proof that Julie ever killed anyone. It's almost certain she
fought people, sure, but Julie d'Aubigny was not a murderer. (acoustic guitar music) Even though the Dubois
and Saint-Simon memoirs were written in the 1720s to 40s, they weren't published until the 1800s. But clearly people were
already talking about Julie and these stories long before then, loudly enough that she
was being reported on in British newspapers by the 1780s. Why? Well, the answer comes back
to those anecdote collections and dictionaries that
I brought up earlier. The most famous early ones being the two written by the Parfait brothers, the "Dictionnaire des Theatres De Paris" from 1769 and the "Anecdotes
Dramatiques" from 1775. Interestingly enough, the dictionnaire actually
talks about Julie in very mild terms, but does mention that she
has a lot of wild stories about her that they
admit are only half true. So they don't wanna report on it. Then in the eight years later, they give in and they do
report the juicy stories in Anecdotes Dramatiques because, well, it's a book called, "Dramatic Anecdotes" and that's what people wanna hear. It's obvious that these stories about Julie were circulating widely for decades after her death. The Parfait brothers
reportedly got these stories from a memoir written by Julie herself. But the memoir, if it even really existed, has been lost to time. The issue is that a lot of
early print media and documents just weren't made to last. What has survived till today has done so out of immense protection or
completely by luck or accident. France, in particular, experienced so many political
and social upheavals and wars in the last 300 years, that it's a miracle that
anything survived at all. So it's no wonder that as time
went on and proof of facts became harder and harder to find, people seeking to tell La
Maupin's story had no choice but to rely on previous second or third or fourth hand accounts. And sometimes they took it even further. Julie's story circulated
over and over for decades, eventually inspiring
the romantic novelist, the Theophile Gautier to
write "Mademoiselle de Maupin" in the 1830s, a story which is based only
very, very loosely on Julie and yet heavily influenced
later generations image of her. The novel inspired even more encyclopedia, dictionary and anecdote collection writers to take on her story. And with each retelling, the details changed more and more. In 1910, friend of the
channel, Bram Stoker, got in on the action with
his book, "Famous Imposters." Much like Saint-Simon, Stoker has a decidedly
negative view of Julie and fancies her a serial killer. In fact, his version of the convent tale, the caning of the Dumenil incident, and more all look to be pulled directly from Saint-Simon's
version point for point. He's got such an attitude about it too, but I guess I can't judge him because I'm also having an
attitude about this whole thing. He is definitely haunting me
though and I'd wish he'd stop. So obviously, a million and one different publications have all taken on Julie's story. So I'm not gonna go through all of them, but the next most prominent
ones are "Gallant Ladies" by Cameron Rogers, published in 1928. And "Women in Men's Guise"
by Oscar Paul Gilbert, published in 1932. Now Cameron Rogers and Oscar Paul Gilbert, both published some of the longest, most elaborated takes
on Julie that we have and injected some random dialogue that appears to have
been completely made up. Rogers actually takes pains to ignore her attraction to women
and relationships with them and leans into the rumor
that the Comte d'Albert was the love of her life, which of course may be true, but the evidence is extremely fishy. I will say though, that I'm loving the fact
that in Roger's version of the Julie mugging Dumenil story, he adds in an, and then
everybody claps trope. Gilbert on the other hand
has some truly bizarre takes. As I mentioned earlier, he is of the opinion that
Madame Du Noyer's story was about Julie and she was
trying to protect Julie's name. Gilbert also garnishes the story heavily with details that absolutely no one could have possibly known and
paints 14 year old, Julie, as a seductress who fought
for d'Armagnac's affections, a 49 year old man. Boo Gilbert, your antics or nasty, disgusting. Ironically though, despite the fact that Gilbert also falls into the idea that the Comte d'Albert was Julie's great singular romance, he also is one of the only ones to give any significant space
to Madame de Florensac. He brings up one telling quote
from the Parfait brothers, "La Maupin's retirement was occasioned by the death of Madame
la Comtesse de Florensac, who honored Mademoiselle de Maupin with her friendship and her protection. Mademoiselle Maupin, after bitterly grieving
for this lady's death, asked to be released from her engagements and retired to some sequestered
and distant retreat." He claims that Florensac's
young death of a fever compelled Julie in her
grief to turn to religion and give up her career
for a hermit like life in a convent where she
died two years later. He claims with basically no sources that she was tormented by mystical hallucinations
and died in a suburb of Paris where her body was cast
upon the rubbish heap. A claim that I have not seen anywhere else and seems particularly cruel. At least many of the others
who handled her story admitted that we don't know how she died or where, or at least had her reconcile
with her weenie husband. But Gilbert furnished her
story with a swath of other seemingly random new details. I expect an unknown ending was just not spicy enough for him, as if Julie's beautiful lover dying young after they both finally found happiness is not punishment enough for La Maupin. I mean, perhaps that's a thing though. Innumerable writers, whether or not they knew her personally, have tried to posthumously
punish Julie d'Aubigny by turning her into something she wasn't for the crime of being sapphic, gender non-conforming and
truthfully very aggressive. Too much so for her own good. In a time where those were things a woman shouldn't be. I've spent a lot of time in this video, picking at these stories maybe in a way that makes it look like I'm trying to disprove
the parts of her that makes her such a cool and enticing historical figure test today. But it's not her queerness
or even her temper that was suspect to me. I mean, look at my Caravaggio video. If a historical figure
is queer and an asshole, it is what it is and
I'll tell you about it. But Julie d'Aubigny is
an interesting case. She has become a queer icon, not in spite of or
ignorance of the bad things she supposedly did, but because of them. It's girl bossification
in action, I suppose. People hear that she
killed a bunch of dudes and that sounds pretty cool because we love to see
badass women in history. And she like reminds us of
a game of Thrones character or something. But Julie d'Aubigny was a real person and from what we can glean
from certain accounts of her, these rumors, which were
fairly mild in her time, made her upset enough to mug a guy or send death threats to a
powerful Cardinal, allegedly. I'm not saying she was tame and all of these stories
are complete lies. I'm saying she's worth a closer look than what may very well
be homophobically charged libel about her written
or spread by people who openly hated her. I mean, Cardinal Dubois literally admitted that he lied about her
to make her look bad. How many other people did
and just didn't admit it? Unfortunately, we'll never know because we have no input from Julie herself to cut through the noise. The thing is though that because we can't say 100% sure
which stories are completely untrue or not, who Julie d'Aubigny really is, is up to you, I guess. You get to decide what you believe. And to an extent, none of us are more
correct than the others. I've given you my personal opinion and you're totally free
to disagree with me. Based on what I've read and deduced, based on what I know about
French society at the time, I think that Julie d'Aubigny was exactly what most of us can agree on, a sapphic, hot tempered,
sword fighting, opera singer who loved to wear men's clothes, loved to flirt with people and stood up for whatever she
believed that justice was. I think there's a lot
there worthy of admiration. I don't think she ever murdered anyone, but a brawl or two adds
some spice to life. And until we get some hard evidence, I don't think she burned down a convent. I don't think she fought off three dudes at once set a Royal ball,
much less killed them, but I think it's very believable that she would've shown
up in men's clothes and kissed a woman in front of everyone. Maybe even asked for a duel. I don't know if I believe she publicly caned Dumenil on stage, but if she did, I think she was justified. And lastly, I think the best evidence
in support of her great love for Madame de Florensac is the fact that so many writers were too scared to talk about it. But if the grief of La Maupin was boundless after Florensac's death, enough for her to retire in her 30s and uncharacteristically
enter a life of solitude and die in a convent no less when only a decade
prior the religious life had been so distasteful to her, what else but love could it be. Julie d'Aubigny for all of her simultaneous explosive
life details and ambiguity as a result becomes a character that is what you want her to be. Writers who hated the
homosexual aspect of her life either used it to demonize her or completely ignored it in favor of expanding on or inventing her male love interests. Writers who hated her talents and belief in outspokenly
standing up for herself and other women used it
as an excuse to accuse her of numerous violent crimes that we'll maybe never
know were true or not. And now in the age of the internet, Julie d'Aubigny has been transformed into a memeble history girly that is easy to use as punchy content. Hashtag girl boss, hashtag
pussy hat, hashtag bad bitch. Whoever she truly was will never know, but the fact that she existed at all and wreaked so much havoc on the psyches of the pompous Versailles
aristocracy, well, I guess that really is
worthy of a legend or two. Thank you for exploring the legacy of Julie d'Aubigny with me. I'm sorry that maybe this
video was a bit boring because a lot of it is
me going over sources. So I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. Massive thanks to Kelly Gardner for their immensely helpful blog and many years of research on Julie and for kindly answering
a couple of my questions. Thank you to Jim Burrows for his very old but still incredibly
helpful website on La Maupin and thank you as well to the
BBC's Your Dead To Me podcast recent episode on Julie, which I have linked below. It is so well done and
very much worth the listen. Be sure to take advantage
of Atlas VPN huge discount by getting a three year subscription for just a $1.99 a month with
a 30 day money back guarantee. Time is running out, so get your deal by clicking the link in the description below. Anyway, I'll see you next
month for a couple videos that take us forward in
time to the Edwardian era. So until then wash thy hands, wear thy mask and keep your enemies close but your swords even closer. (upbeat music)
