The Emperor's Shadow

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 and entertained by Betsy Balcombe, the pretty teenage daughter of a local merchant. Anne Whitehead has discovered new evidence that the relationship between Betsy and the Emperor was not just sentimental or romantic, as Betsy claimed in the memoir which turned her into a celebrity. Her father, merchant William Balcombe, was well-connected to the court 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, who was appointed the first Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales. With her extraordinary connections 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.