BETSY AND THE EMPEROR

The true story of the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte's relationship with the English merchant William Balcombe and his teenage daughter Betsy, and his lasting impact on their lives.

After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, he was sent into exile on St Helena, arriving in October 1815. For the six years until his death, he was an 'eagle in a cage', reduced from the most powerful figure in Europe to a prisoner on a rock in the South Atlantic. But the fallen emperor was charmed by the pretty teenage daughter of a local merchant, Betsy Balcombe. Anne Whitehead has discovered new evidence that the relationship between Betsy and the Emperor was not just sentimental or romantic, as Betsy claimed. Her father, merchant William Balcombe was well- ?connected in London, and he smuggled letters and undertook a clandestine mission to Paris for Napoleon. Betsy's relationship with Napoleon cast a shadow over the rest of her colourful life. She married a Regency cad, who soon left her and their daughter, and she travelled to Australia in 1823 with her father. With her extraordinary connections both to royalty in London and to Napoleon, the Bonaparte family and his courtiers, Betsy Balcombe led a life worthy of a Regency romance. This new account draws on the author's painstaking research in the UK, St Helena, France and Australia, revealing Napoleon at his most vulnerable, human and reflective, and a woman caught in some of the most dramatic events of her time. Anne Whitehead is an author, historian and former TV producer-director with the ABC. Her Paradise Mislaid: In Search of the Australian Tribe of Paraguay was winner of the 1998 NSW Premier's Award for Australian History. Her Bluestocking in Patagonia was published by Profile Books in 2003 and was a finalist for the 2005 Magarey Australian Biography Medal.