Forgotten Battles: Gender in the Armouries

D'Éon was recruited to the Secret du Roi (King’s secret service) in 1756 (aged 28) and dispatched to Russia. It was here where she perhaps first experimented with her gender at the Empress Elizabeth’s famed ‘Metamorphosis Balls’ where attendees were expected to dress as another gender.

After fighting in the 7 Years War, she began living openly as a woman in England where she performed in public fencing displays wearing a corset and dress and was known for her ability to win duels even with the restrictions imposed by female clothing. The Chevalière’s identity as a woman seemed widely accepted: The Leeds Intelligencer published a story in May 1771 that stated categorically that she was a woman, and she was praised by Mary Wollstonecraft – a pioneer of feminist writing - as ‘a shining example of female fortitude’.

She returned to France in 1777 and was given a grant from the King for a new wardrobe of women’s clothes, commissioned by Marie Antoinette. But the Chevalière never let her identity as a woman detract from her military skill, displaying her medal on her dresses to remind the court that she was still a knight.

In my contribution to the exhibition, I explore the way masculinity was performed at the Tudor court through the armour worn by Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520), an elaborate 18-day summit between François I of France and Henry VIII. Henry had long been keen to be seen as the more masculine of the two kings and had asked the Venetian Ambassador Giustinian in 1515 (after François’ accession) whether the King of France’s legs could compare with his own ‘good calf’. This was a chance for him to put this comparison to the test and appear the greater man.

Henry had commissioned new armour for the tournament which featured the large codpiece we associate with Henry’s image. Codpieces were worn from the 15th century, reaching their peak for size and decoration during Henry’s reign. Henry himself was known to wear prominent codpieces to – quite literally - emphasise his manhood. Unfortunately for his fashion sense, the French changed the specifications late in the preparations, so the tonlet armour was hurriedly assembled. ‘Tonlet’ refers to the armoured skirt around the waist of the armour which protects the lower body, meaning Henry was no longer going to be sporting a prominent codpiece in the lists.

Henry’s masculine image-making had also fallen short when he forgot his promise not to shave until he met François on the field. Beards were key signifiers of manhood, representing not just maleness but also authority, maturity, and potency. To quote William Shakespeare (writing a few decades later), ‘he that hath no beard [was] less than a man’. In my film, I explore the notion of putting on armour or growing a beard as a conscious performance of gender by drawing a parallel between modern drag and Henry’s exaggerated masculine iconography.

Even Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth I, performed masculinity – essential to her desire to be seen as a proper monarch in a society which considered a woman wielding authority over men to be an abomination in contradiction of God’s ordained natural order. The most famous line of the speech she is said to have given to the troops at Tilbury has her refuting her female exterior in favour of an internal identity defined by masculine authority: ‘I know I have the weak and feeble body of a woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too’.