Betsy Balcombe
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 as the second oldest of four children of William and Jane Balcombe. Her father was a shipping agent and food supplier for the East India Company on the located in the South Atlantic island of St. Helena. Betsy Balcombe and her two-year older sister Jane attended until 1814 in England a school there and learned French. The family lived in a about 2 km from the main town of Jamestown located estate called The Briars.
The after his defeat at Waterloo exiled by the British on the island of St. Helena French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte arrived there on 17 October 1815. Since his domicile Longwood House was not ready, he lived at the Balcombes on The Briars gazebo. In the two months that Napoleon spent here, the 13 -year-old Betsy Balcombe lost their fear of the French and became friends with him. They shared their sense of humor. When they for fun Napoleon with a saber endangered made this episode in Europe headlines. Napoleon's courtiers and servants resented the young Englishwoman. Were they kept Napoleon to talk to your Majesty, called him Betsy Balcombe disrespectful Boney.
After moving to Longwood House, she visited the Emperor frequently. The European press, which did not go unnoticed this friendship, scenting an amorous relationship between the mid-forties and the teenager. In March 1818, the Balcombes allegedly left the ailing health of Betsy's mother for St. Helena to England. The real background is in the good relations between the Balcombes and Napoleon. The English Governor Hudson Lowe suspected them smuggle secret messages of the Emperor of Longwood House.
In May 1821 married Betsy Balcombe, with Edward Abell and became the mother of a daughter. The marriage was not happy and failed. With music lessons, she earned a living for herself and her child. In the 1830s she lived with her family in New South Wales, but returned and lived for a time in France. Time life Betsy Balcombe was associated with the Bonaparte family in conjunction. In 1830 Joseph Bonaparte visited her in London and gave her a Kameering. Napoleon's nephew, Emperor Napoleon III. gave Betsy Balcombe gratitude for the friendly service that they proved his uncle, a 500 -acre vineyard in Algeria. About her time on St. Helena, she wrote an autobiography.
Betsy Balcombes grandniece, the Australian writer Mabel Brookes, acquired the estate of The Briars and made it in memory of the bonds of their family to Napoleon Bonaparte of the French nation to the present.