German-born Marie-Henriette Heiniken was an adventurous woman, better known as “Madame de Xaintrailles,” who disguised herself as a man in order to serve in the military during the Napoleonic Wars, earning her rank “at the point of the sword.” In this diminutive portrait, she is shown wearing the military uniform of a French cavalry major. Heiniken purportedly acted as aide-de-camp to General Charles Antoine Xaintrailles, who is cited in most sources as her husband, and in others as her lover. 

Heiniken was one of only a few women to become a Freemason during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to one account, she went to the Masonic Loge des Frères Artistes in Paris in hopes of joining the French Adoption Rite, a lodge specifically for women. Instead, when the brothers learned her identity, they decided to initiate her into the First, or Entered Apprentice, Degree in the male lodge because of her brave service. Period sources have yet to be uncovered to verify the details, but the story has been published repeatedly in Masonic histories.