He was forced to flee the city, and Julie decided to go with him. The Lieutenant-General of Police, Nicolas-Gabriel de La Reynie, was an avid enforcer of the anti-duelling laws, and d’Armagnac may have a sked him to take a hard line with his ex-flame’s lover. Unfortunately, in 1687 Sérannes killed a man in a duel, and duelling was (at the time) illegal. One of those masters, a man named Sérannes from Marseilles, became her lover. She frequented the fencing schools, where she would compete against the masters – unconventional, but not really scandalous, as nobles did have a certain latitude. Julie stayed in Paris however, and became known as something of a firebrand. Louis de Lorraine, Comte d’Armagnac, Grand Squire of France and Julie’s first lover. Both the marriage and the affair barely lasted a year however, and Maupin was given a job out in the provinces – perhaps in the hope that he would take Julie with him. Germain-en-Laye as a cover – a noble-born young girl like Julie could hardly be a public mistress, after all. He arranged her marriage to a man named Maupin of St. At the age of 14, she caught the eye of the Comte d’Armagnac, and became his mistress. Her father, who by all reports was no stranger to the seamier side of Paris, was determined that his daughter should be able to handle herself. She was somewhat a tomboy, and wore boy’s clothing to learn subjects like horseriding and fencing alongside the pages. As she grew up, Julie received all the same training the pages received, though naturally she received it over a longer period, this may have left her one of the most well-educated teenagers in France at the time. D’Armagnac was responsible for the royal household and retinue, and Julie’s father’s particular responsibility was the training of the pages of the royal court. He was one of secretaries of the Comte d’Armagnac, the Grand Squire of France. Julie d’Aubigny was born in 1673, the daughter of a minor noble named Gaston d’Aubigny. Given her tendency to embrace the drama of any situation, one feels that Julie would have approved. In fact, the most famous fictionalised account of her life ( Mademoiselle de Maupin by Théophile Gautier) toned her down considerably and still wound up being banned in several countries. If Dumas had written her life story then the author of Three Musketeers would have been denounced as even more of a sensationalist than he already was. Mark Twain once wrote “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities Truth isn’t.” Few things illustrate that quite like the life and career of Julie”La Maupin” d’Aubigny, the 18th century noble-born openly bisexual crossdressing swordfighter and opera singer. Julie d’Aubigny in her opera-singing years – one of the few pictures of her from her lifetime that survives.
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