To all whom it may concern: You'll love what Benyovsky's up to in Thande's Look to the West saga. There's some pretty amazing Benyovsky stuff in that timeline. 
Benyovsky wasn't a wacko, though. More an unusual and skillful adventurer who'd been through a lot of different things in life. He even had ties to the American Revolutionary War leaders and was admired by them as a freedom fighter and supporter of ideas of liberty.
According to folk Malagasy accounts, at least, he apparently "never laughed and never talked about things he didn't want to talk about".
A while back, I wrote a PM to Thande (due to his interest in Benyovsky) after I watched the latest, in-depth documentary about said historical figure. To those interested, I'm reposting it here. It's part recap, part a collection of various interesting facts and trivia about the guy.
This guy is up there with Emperor Norton I of America and King Boris I of Andorra as lovable obscure wackos.
Benyovsky wasn't a wacko, though. More an unusual and skillful adventurer who'd been through a lot of different things in life. He even had ties to the American Revolutionary War leaders and was admired by them as a freedom fighter and supporter of ideas of liberty.
According to folk Malagasy accounts, at least, he apparently "never laughed and never talked about things he didn't want to talk about".
A while back, I wrote a PM to Thande (due to his interest in Benyovsky) after I watched the latest, in-depth documentary about said historical figure. To those interested, I'm reposting it here. It's part recap, part a collection of various interesting facts and trivia about the guy.
The documentary film, Moric Benyovsky Lives !, was made in 2012. Its goal is to present some recent research into Benyovsky done in archives all over Europe and also on the spot, in the northeastern parts of Madagascar where he lived and worked for a few years.
The primary researcher and producer of the hour-long docu is Vladimír Dudlák, who's been researching ol' Maurice in his free time for several years now. He's also the founder of a civic association focused on Benyovsky's historical legacy. Throughout the docu, the other researchers in Europe, Madagascar and elsewhere who helped him were also interviewed and presented some of the newer findings that were gleaned via this effort. Dudlák's approach to the whole thing is promising, as he himself says that he doesn't want to approach Benyovsky as a mythical adventurer (the usual portrayal), but as a historical personality of flesh and bone, the fate of which was intertwined with multiple nations (Slovaks, Hungarians, Poles, the French, Russians, Japanese, Americans, Malagasy...).
As far as a basic timeline of Benyovsky's life and travels is concerned, the docu was finally able to put together a fairly complete picture. The biggest hurdle of the research team was to sort out the biographical facts that Benyovsky had falsified from the actual facts. It wasn't always easy to independently verify the more contradictory stuff, but along the way, they've managed to debunk some of the until-now often cited data.
1746 - the year he was actually born in, though he himself insisted to the French that it was in 1741. This became the popular version, cited in most sources until recently. Virtually all other sources on his birth date found elsewhere in Europe point to 1746, even some narrowly recovered sources from Vrbové that were long neglected. After extensive research and debate with foreign historians-colleagues, Dudlák and co. discovered that Moric embellished his age during the service for the French by five years. The mostly French documents that list 1741 as his b-day are inaccurate, due to being based on his own falsified input.
1759 - Benyovsky is some fourteen years old and starts to visit the grammar school in Svätý Jur, but only attends it for roughly 2 years.
1766 - there was a dispute at home, he lost property to relatives who were interested in inheritance and he left Vrbové for the Spiš region. He cleverly abused the fact that Spišská Sobota was a town still under de facto Polish governance (thank you, Sigismund of Luxembourg !) and he decided to settle there.
1768 - since he started living in Sobota, he befriended the local Hönsch family. In this year, he married their daughter, Zuzana Hönsch.
1769 - he joined the then Polish civil war between the baron faction and the pro-Russian royalist faction, on the side of the barons. He tried to carry out an espionage mission pretending to be a royalist, which eventually brought him his early fame. However, he was also captured and imprisoned at Ľubovňa Castle. There are some (rather silly) legends about his wife getting the garrison of the prison drunk and then smuggling Maurice out by him hiding underneath her skirt as she left the place. Either way, he eventually ended up in Russia.
1769-1770 - the period of his Russian and Siberian crossing and assorted adventures with his companions. You're no doubt familiar with this era of his life, so there's not much to elaborate. The documentary didn't sniff out anything new on this bit of the bio, probably because it's already documented in quite an amount of detail.
1771 - Benyovsky was visiting the Far East, then Japan, and so on.
ca 1772 - he visits Macau in China, then gradually continues through southern Asia and then across Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean back to Europe.
ca 1773 - he returns to Europe around this time, and while he goes home to reunite with the family, he also catches the attention of Louis XIV. and gets the
1774-1776 - the period when he served as colonial adminstrator and developer for France in northeastern Madagascar, near today's Antalaha. Nearby, he founded the now-vanished colonial trading and garrison outpost/town known as Louisbourg. It has a safe harbour utilising a local coastal lagoon (still present nowadays, but the docks have long since disappeared, sans some archaeological finds), there was a smaller fort on a hill above the town, and a nearby sandy cay some half a mile away from the harbour also had a warehouse storing various provisions. Currently, the small cay is mostly treeless, as its trees were destroyed by a massive hurricane in the mid 2000s, but it was originally slightly wooded. The coast where Louisbourg itself stood is now mostly forested or overrun with grass and herbs (though there are some minor terrain features pointing to the former settlement). According to period records, the local Malagasy clan awarded Benyovsky the title of king after they deemed him a certain form of spiritual incarnation of a previous scion that died prematurely. This is when he started to deepen their relations with them and basically became their ally or friend, of a sort.
1777 - Maurice befriended Ben Franklin while they were both in Paris. They even played chess together, which apparently helps them enhance their camaraderie as they got to know each other and discussed various opinions. Along with some documents from the first Madagascar period, records from these years point to Benyovsky being rather outspoken about his opposition to slavery and being in favour of combating or banning it.
late 1770s to 1782 - possible POD alert (!): Benyovsky seriously considered raising a unit of recruits from (Upper) Hungarian volunteers to help fight on the side of the burgeoning US (!). However, by the time he sent his letter to the US government, it was a little late for that. Nevertheless, still an interesting tidbit. Also, he did visit the US personally, along with his wife. She even stayed in Baltimore for a while when he was overseas at one time during the 1780s.
1786 - probable year of his death, as he tried to return to Madagascar and continue eeking out an existence there, in the same colony he helped foster. By this time, though, he he had fallen out of favour with the French court and the colonial government, and they grew to see him as competition and a possible rebel leader of the Malagasy he had befriended in the area. The exact location of his grave is unknown, but from what's known about his last whereabouts, he was simply burried in or near Louisbourg.
Fun fact: When the members of the clan were interviewed by the researcher team, the king of this clan revealed to them that the clan had been using an emblem and a flag since at least the late 18th century. Which wouldn't be weird, but the only symbol of the two insignia is a crescent lying on its back (like a set of bull horns) and above each tip of the crescent there is a six-pointed heraldic star. Guess who's coat of arms served as an inspiration for the clan's insignia ?![]()
Needless to say, that the tradition has continued for over two centuries, and Benyovsky was indirectly remember this way - even when he otherwise faded a bit in local oral histories - was a very pleasant shock to the docu team while they were in Antalaha.
As for the timeline of the docu itself, they spent most of the late 2000s scouting archives here, in Hungary, in France, Poland and several other countries. Then, in 2011-2012, the primarily German-Slovak research team (the German co-researcher being a Madagascar citizen who lives in Antalaha) did field work in Antalaha and particularly at Louisbourg and the off-shore sandy cay where the warehouse outpost was. Most of the research was into local records research, but at the former Louisbourg site, they also conducted geophysical surveys and metal detector recon. They didn't want to start some massive archaeological effort, as they don't have the paperwork or the manpower for such an undertaking yet. But they were still interested in whether the site of the supposed grave could yield anything. It did, a bit. They found some coroded iron parts of a wooden chest, and a few complete and deformed lead musket pellets dating to the 18th-19th century. Though this encouraged them, they were having difficulty with a more detailed assessment, and they noted that properly researching the Louisbourg area is a job for years and years ahead. In 2011, the research team interviewed the current head and the members of the Malagasy noble family that Benyovsky became affiliated with, as I've already mentioned.
On the 17 January 2012, a new memorial was opened at a green on the outskirts of Antalaha, and the research team took part in the ceremonies as guests. The park is being worked on and the adjacent street has been named after Benyovsky by local authorities. They were planning this earlier, but now that there's been newly forged cooperation between local (Malagasy and German) and our overseas enthusiasts (from SVK, HUN and POL), the whole effort got a much bigger shot in the arm. Still, while this phase of the research into reassessing Benyovsky and finding more details on his life is largely over, there is a long-term plan for potential future archaeological research. It's a thing for the long run, unfortunately.
But at least we're getting somewhere, and there's been some increased international cooperation and understanding on the figure now, instead of the older arguments about M.'s nationality and what languages the plaques on the memorial marker at Louisbourg should be in. (The docu did focus a bit on how the last two or three decades saw sort of a petty "plaque war" concering the older memorial at Louisbourg, with different Benyovsky enthusiasts emphasizing their own, until the research team helped settle the disputes over the plaques.)
The docu also briefly interviewed some Polish members of the 2012 Benyovsky Ochotsk expedition. The interviews were done as they were setting off on the 11 000 km journey, in all-terrain vehicles. Basically, their expedition across the entirety of Russia was made to commemorate and emulate Benyovsky's unusual Far East travels from the early 1770s.
One slightly meta bit of the docu was their interviews with Jozef Adamovič, who portrayed Maurice in the 1975 historical series Vivat, Beňovský. (Here's an ep, if you're interested.) They were particularly interested in how Adamovič prepared psychologically for the role of the character, and how the role and its portrayal were influenced by then available knowledge on the figure. (Which, in light of these more recently uncovered new facts, might be a bit erroneous or incomplete in a few places, even if the majority of the stuff known back then that made it into the show was accurate.)
Here's an archived interview with Dudlák, made while the documentary was undergoing post-production. I really like how, both in the interview and the film, Dudlák is very passionate about rekindling an interest in Benyovsky among Slovaks. Especially that he wants them to see him as more than a wacky adventurer, but also show both the flawed side (the embellishments, etc.) and the honourable and progressive side of his personality (his skills as a diplomat, governor and trader, his opposition to slavery, general humanism and support of reformist ideas and policies, etc.). Based on how well-paced the documentary was in terms of dosing the facts and the new discoveries, I think he and the team really succeeded in their effort. I liked that the documentary really pulled no punches in putting its 1 hour runtime to good use. I can't say it was boring or uneducational, and based on everything I've seen collected in it, they've taken a very good major first step in founding a new research tradition focused on Benyovsky, his life and work.
Dudlák and the team of researchers that cooperates with him are now slowly working on a new documentary, The Legacy of Maurice Benyovsky. Here's a few trailers/previews: