The earliest is a letter Madeleine wrote to the Comtesse de Maurepas 15 October 1699, in which she gives her story in a petition for a pension. She wrote a longer, greatly embellished version dated 1722 or later to Governor Beauharnois at his request. Claude-Charles de La Potherie in 1722 published two accounts: the first is virtually the same as Madeleine's letter of 1699, and the second virtually the same as the later to Beauharnois; both may have been based on, or were even the basis of, Madeleine's own. Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix published another embellished version in 1744. In 1730 Gervais Levebre, a priest against whom Madeleine had initiated a legal process, was recorded stating, "God fears neither hero nor heroine", which suggests her story was well known by that time. Accounts progressively emphasized Madeleine's disguising herself as a man, the necessity of which is questioned: her mother had commanded a similar defense two years earlier with no such disguise. In her first account, Madeleine describes how she escaped from an Iroquois by leaving her scarf in his hands and then replacing her headdress with a soldier's helmet. Charlevoix adds to this that she knotted up her hair and put on a man's jerkin. Later accounts may represent later societies' anxieties over Madeleine's transvestism. The 1730 lawsuit was over the priest Levebre's calling Madeleine a "whore", which may suggest notions of free sexuality the public had of women who assumed such a traditionally male role as that of a warrior. Many writers took pains to ensure that, after the siege, Madeleine returned fully to her traditional feminine role and demeanor. In 1912, a journalist wrote that she "was a perfect woman, as good a housekeeper as a mother". The curate Frédéric-Alexandre Baillairgé wrote that though "strong, was nonetheless soft and sensitive". Some were more explicit, as Lionel Groulx who wrote that women "must sometimes fill in for men, but they must render them the arms for the battles that are more appropriate for them". While female writers also often emphasized Madeleine's return to a traditional role supporting the men, others used her story to advance a feminist position of the role of women in Canadian history. Comparisons have been drawn between Madeleine and Joan of Arc—both teenaged virgins who dressed as males—and to Jeanne Hachette, who led the defense of Beauvais. Parallels have also been seen with Madeleine's