Betsy and the Emperor: The True Story of Napoleon, a Pretty Girl, a Regency Rake, and an Australian Colonial Misadventure
Author(s): Anne Whitehead
After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, he was sent into exile on Saint Helena. He became 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 brings to life Napoleon's last years on Saint Helena, revealing the central role of the Balcombe family. She also lays to rest two centuries of speculation about Betsy's relationship with Napoleon...After Napoleon's death, Betsy travelled to Australia in 1823 with her father, who was appointed the first Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales. When the family lost their fortune, she returned to London and published a memoir which made her a celebrity...With her extraordinary connections to royalty and high society, Betsy Balcombe led a life worthy of a Regency romance, but she was always fighting for her independence. This new account reveals Napoleon at his most vulnerable, human and reflective, and a woman caught in some of the most dramatic events of her time.
Product Information
Anne Whitehead is an author, historian and former TV producer-director with the ABC. She is the author of Bluestocking in Patagonia and her book Paradise Mislaid was winner of the NSW Premier's Award for Australian History.
Preface..PART ONE..1 The News..2 The Prisoner..3 Friends and Foes..4 The Briars..5 The Pavilion..6 Boney's Little Pages..7 The French Suite..8 The Admiral's Ball..9 Last Days at the Pavilion..10 Longwood House..11 The New Governor..12 Gold Lace and Nodding Plumes..13 This Accursed Place..14 The Thinning Ranks..15 The Sick Lion..16 Our Beautiful Island..17 The Company of a Green Parrot..18 At the Mercy of the English..19 Farewell to the Island..PART TWO..20 The Ties that Bind..21 The Embattled Surgeon..22 An Impending Tempest..23 The St Helena Plot..24 Official Disgrace..25 An Item of News..26 The One that Got Away..27 Marry in Haste ...28 'La Petite Angleterre'..29 The Clearing Fog..PART THREE..30 Sydney Town..31 'The Interesting Mrs Abell'..32 The Fashionables..33 A Fleeting Entente Cordiale..34 The Treasury Under the Bed..35 'Terrible Hollow'..36 A Fractured Family..37 Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon..Acknowledgements..Note on Sources..Notes..Index
General Fields
- :
- : Allen & Unwin
- : Allen & Unwin
- : July 2015
- : 234mm X 153mm
- : Australia
- : September 2015
- : books
Special Fields
- : Anne Whitehead
- : Paperback
- : Paperback
- : very good
- : very good
- : 464
- : 464