Betsy Balcombe

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Lucia Elizabeth "Betsy" Balcombe Abell (* 1802 ; † June 29, 1871 in London ) was an English confidante of Napoleon Bonaparte in his exile on St. Helena .

Life

Betsy Balcombe was born in 1802, the second oldest of William and Jane Balcombe's four children. Her father was a shipping agent and supplier of provisions for the East India Company on the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic . Betsy Balcombe and her sister Jane, two years older than her, attended school in England until 1814 , where they also learned French . The family lived in an estate called The Briars, about 2 km from the main town of Jamestown .

The French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, banished by the British to the island of St. Helena after his defeat in Waterloo , arrived there on October 17, 1815. Since his domicile Longwood House was not yet ready to move into, he lived in a pavilion at the Balcombes on The Briars . In the two months that Napoleon spent here, 13-year-old Betsy Balcombe lost her fear of the French and made friends with him. Both had a sense of humor in common. When she threatened Napoleon with a saber for fun, that episode made headlines in Europe. Napoleon's courtiers and servants were annoyed with the young Englishwoman. If they were supposed to address Napoleon as Your Majesty , Betsy Balcombe disrespectfully called him Boney .

After moving to Longwood House , she visited the Emperor frequently. The European press, who did not miss this friendship, sensed an amorous relationship between the mid-forties and the teenager . In March 1818, the Balcombes allegedly left the poor health of Betsy's mother for St. Helena for England. The real background lies in the good relations between the Balcombes and Napoleon. The English governor Hudson Lowe suspected them of smuggling secret messages from the Emperor out of Longwood House.

In May 1821, Betsy Balcombe married Edward Abell and had one daughter. The marriage was not happy and failed. She earned a living for herself and her child with music lessons. She lived with her family in New South Wales in the 1830s , but returned and lived temporarily in France. Betsy Balcombe was associated with the Bonaparte family throughout her life . In 1830 Joseph Bonaparte visited her in London and gave her a cameering . Napoleon's nephew, Emperor Napoleon III. As a thank you for the friendly service she had shown his uncle, Betsy Balcombe gave a 500 hectare winery in Algeria . She wrote an autobiography about her time on St. Helena. Betsy Balcombe died in London in 1871 at the age of 69 and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery .

Betsy Balcombe's great-niece, Australian writer Mabel Brookes , acquired The Briars estate and gifted it to the French nation in memory of her family's ties to Napoleon Bonaparte .

Web links

filming

  • In the historical four-part series Napoleon , broadcast on ZDF in 2003, Napoleon told his adolescent confidante Betsy, played by Tamsin Egerton , his life story.
  • The English-French feature film Monsieur N. from 2003 is set during Napoleon's exile on St. Helena. In this fictional film, Betsy Balcombe is portrayed by Siobhan Hewlett .

literature

  • Ben Weider, David Hapgood, Sten Forshufvud: The murderer of Napoleon , Hestia Verlag GmbH, Bayreuth, 1983, ISBN 3-7770-0247-X
  • Lucia Elizabeth Balcombe Abell: To Befriend an Emperor: Betsy Balcombes Memoirs of Napoleon on St. Helena , Welwyn Garden City, UK: Ravenhall, 2005, ISBN 1905043031
personal data
SURNAME Balcombe, Betsy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Balcombe Abell, Lucia Elizabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English confidante of Napoleon Bonaparte in his exile
DATE OF BIRTH 1802
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 1871
Place of death London