I got to the "Eugene is gay" part and it delivered! I mean not with citations, there are no footnotes, only in-text references to memoirs and letters (but not where to find them), but it delivered on the gossip!
Google translated because I'm at work, but I did read it in French this morning. ;)
The friends have indeed founded a society with the aim of regularly celebrating orgies. One meets there favorites of Monsieur, brother of the King: the knight of Lorraine, the count of Guiche or the duke of Nevers. We also meet Eugène there, of whom Ezéchiel Spanheim, soon to be representative of Brandenburg in Paris, said bluntly: "It is certain that there is no greater sodomite in France than him and it would be a bad start for a young prince to begin his life with the most horrible debauchery in the world.”
Monsieur is of course gay Philippe, this Ezechiel quote is the one that we saw before. But it gets better!
The young androgynous François-Timoléon de Choisy recounts his "exploits" in his insolent Memoirs. Choisy does not hide his feminine nature. He bought a house, where "Madame" receives ladies and many gentlemen to whom she gives the opportunity to ascertain her sex. She has her self called herself by them the Comtesse de Barres. But at court he is a very neat abbot. However, Monsieur, the King's brother, shares part of his time with him because he likes cross-dressing and even more: "I was dressed as a girl every time the little Monsieur came to the house, and he came there at least two or three times a week. I had pierced ears, diamonds, beauty patches, and all the other little affectations to which one becomes very easily accustomed, and which is very difficult to get rid of. Monsieur, who also loved all that, always gave me a hundred marks of affection. In his Memoirs, the Marquis d'Argenson, future Lieutenant General of Police, to whom Choisy related his worst follies, wrote:
"The Abbé de Choisy kept as long as he could this impertinent habit of dressing as a woman, and we know all the follies he committed in this guise. “In his childhood,” said Sainte-Beuve finally, “his mother made him wear corsets which tightened him to the extreme and thus brought up a fat and chubby chest, so that, when he grew up, he had as much cleavage as a fifteen year old girl."
These follies, Choisy shares with Eugène, who has the opportunity to transform his deformed body into a more attractive silhouette thanks to the frilly outfits he likes to wear. At this same period, he already took a liking to tobacco, gambling and hunting, which he would love all his life. For the rest, the only times he would leave Vienna later, except to go to war, would be only to hunt down stags or wild boars. Even the court of France, which cannot boast of severity in this area, is indignant in the name of morality. The young princes take their friendships too far. The approximately 90,000 indiscreet letters left by Princess Palatine are not the only accounts we have. There is also a court document that relates the same incident. The princess, ugly, frustrated in her marriage to Philippe d'Orléans, ill-suited to the court of France, nostalgic for her German origins, compensates for her discomfort with an often outrageous prolixity. She speaks of the young Prince Eugene in these terms:
“When he was still very young, he was already called Madame Simone and Madame Lansiene (the old one) because, it was said, he often played the lady for young people."
But when the men say the same things about the same guy, they're not ugly and compensating? Sigh.
The small meetings in which one regularly finds the Choisys or the “Madames Simone” become a sensational affair when Louis XIV forces his fifteen-year-old son, the Count of Vermandois, to make revelations. He formed among his relatives a homosexual circle that almost all the young princes of the blood and their close friends are part of. Cardinal de Bouillon, brother-in-law of the poetess Marianne Mancini, the youngest of Eugène's aunts, is not absent. But the King cannot exterminate all the offspring of the high nobility. He must content himself with threats. He doesn't have time to think very seriously about purifying the mores of his court because he himself is too busy being dissolute.
*snort*
On the other hand, the Princess of Savoy-Carignan, Eugene's grandmother, outraged by his behavior, did not hesitate to kick her grandson out. Fortunately, the prince has too many friends in the capital to have trouble finding accommodation. Louvois writes to Condé that a certain Baigneur is giving him hospitality.
Re: French gossipy sensationalism
Google translated because I'm at work, but I did read it in French this morning. ;)
The friends have indeed founded a society with the aim of regularly celebrating orgies. One meets there favorites of Monsieur, brother of the King: the knight of Lorraine, the count of Guiche or the duke of Nevers. We also meet Eugène there, of whom Ezéchiel Spanheim, soon to be representative of Brandenburg in Paris, said bluntly: "It is certain that there is no greater sodomite in France than him and it would be a bad start for a young prince to begin his life with the most horrible debauchery in the world.”
Monsieur is of course gay Philippe, this Ezechiel quote is the one that we saw before. But it gets better!
The young androgynous François-Timoléon de Choisy recounts his "exploits" in his insolent Memoirs. Choisy does not hide his feminine nature. He bought a house, where "Madame" receives ladies and many gentlemen to whom she gives the opportunity to ascertain her sex. She has her self called herself by them the Comtesse de Barres. But at court he is a very neat abbot. However, Monsieur, the King's brother, shares part of his time with him because he likes cross-dressing and even more: "I was dressed as a girl every time the little Monsieur came to the house, and he came there at least two or three times a week. I had pierced ears, diamonds, beauty patches, and all the other little affectations to which one becomes very easily accustomed, and which is very difficult to get rid of. Monsieur, who also loved all that, always gave me a hundred marks of affection. In his Memoirs, the Marquis d'Argenson, future Lieutenant General of Police, to whom Choisy related his worst follies, wrote:
"The Abbé de Choisy kept as long as he could this impertinent habit of dressing as a woman, and we know all the follies he committed in this guise. “In his childhood,” said Sainte-Beuve finally, “his mother made him wear corsets which tightened him to the extreme and thus brought up a fat and chubby chest, so that, when he grew up, he had as much cleavage as a fifteen year old girl."
These follies, Choisy shares with Eugène, who has the opportunity to transform his deformed body into a more attractive silhouette thanks to the frilly outfits he likes to wear. At this same period, he already took a liking to tobacco, gambling and hunting, which he would love all his life. For the rest, the only times he would leave Vienna later, except to go to war, would be only to hunt down stags or wild boars. Even the court of France, which cannot boast of severity in this area, is indignant in the name of morality. The young princes take their friendships too far. The approximately 90,000 indiscreet letters left by Princess Palatine are not the only accounts we have. There is also a court document that relates the same incident. The princess, ugly, frustrated in her marriage to Philippe d'Orléans, ill-suited to the court of France, nostalgic for her German origins, compensates for her discomfort with an often outrageous prolixity. She speaks of the young Prince Eugene in these terms:
“When he was still very young, he was already called Madame Simone and Madame Lansiene (the old one) because, it was said, he often played the lady for young people."
But when the men say the same things about the same guy, they're not ugly and compensating? Sigh.
The small meetings in which one regularly finds the Choisys or the “Madames Simone” become a sensational affair when Louis XIV forces his fifteen-year-old son, the Count of Vermandois, to make revelations. He formed among his relatives a homosexual circle that almost all the young princes of the blood and their close friends are part of. Cardinal de Bouillon, brother-in-law of the poetess Marianne Mancini, the youngest of Eugène's aunts, is not absent. But the King cannot exterminate all the offspring of the high nobility. He must content himself with threats. He doesn't have time to think very seriously about purifying the mores of his court because he himself is too busy being dissolute.
*snort*
On the other hand, the Princess of Savoy-Carignan, Eugene's grandmother, outraged by his behavior, did not hesitate to kick her grandson out. Fortunately, the prince has too many friends in the capital to have trouble finding accommodation. Louvois writes to Condé that a certain Baigneur is giving him hospitality.