What did Betsy do to get exiled on Sainte Hélène? For some reason, I thought she arrived either at the same time or a bit later than Napoléon, not before!
Ha ha! Well, I was being a little facetious before: Betsy Balcombe wasn't exiled to Saint Helena. But she did live there with her family: mother, father, a sister and two brothers.
We often forget that like, Saint Helena isn't really a deserted island. Until the Suez Canal, it was vital to trade. The Portuguese even used it as a bit of an "ace in the hole" when they discovered it: an island with fresh water and the capability to be farmed almost halfway between the water route between Europe and India? That is like, a save point, or a gas station, and hundreds of ships stopped at Saint Helena every single year, including the years of Napoleon's imprisonment. Which is one of the many reasons I think the idea that Napoleon could never have escaped the island laughable: he didn't, because Hudson Lowe was good at his job, but that was by no means a guarantee.
Like, people live there even today. And they pay rent and everything. And I don't blame them. Ignore everything Napoleon says about Saint Helena being nothing more than a rock to chain "Prometheus" to. Like:
It's gorgeous. The Duke of Wellington probably wasn't even lying when he claimed that he believed that Napoleon could be kept comfortably there. Wellington had stayed there before, too, and indeed even met a toddler!Betsy.
Anyway, so Betsy's father worked on Saint Helena as a provisioner and naturally kept his family with him. Which brings about when Betsy and Napoleon enter P v P mode.
The people of Saint Helena learned that Napoleon escaped from Elba, reclaimed the throne of the French, lost the battle of Waterloo, abidcated again and was being exiled to their island about 24 hours before Napoleon landed on the island. They had to learn all of this in about one conversation. I imagine many eyebrows were raised.
Anyway, since they learned Napoleon was coming approximately around the time they would've seen his ship on the horizon, they didn't really. Have a place to put him. Like, it was unsafe to keep Napoleon at an inn in Jamestown for too long and also he doesn't want to do that, but where do we put him?
Enter: the Balcombe house.
While being taken on an excursion to review where his future home/prison would be located, Napoleon saw the Balcombe house, known as the Briars, and asked if he could stay there instead. And the Balcombes said, "uh, I guess."
And so Napoleon Bonaparte became the weirdest house guest anyone could ever expect with less than 24 hours notice. Betsy, meanwhile, had grown up hearing the whole "if you don't do your homework, Boney will eat you" schtick, and so was a little weirded out when Napoleon Bonaparte was just. Having dinner in her house.
Fun fact: the Balcombe adults did not understand or speak French. And Napoleon's English was ass. Betsy, however, knew French from having a French governess. So she became de facto translator.
I like to imagine that his first dinner there with the middle class family had to be the weirdest experience anyone there had had. And Napoleon had had a lot of weird experiences but I feel like this had to rank among them.
Napoleon stayed with them for a few months and even when he left he remained on friendly terms with the family, although he does seem to have had a falling out with the father probably becaues Mr. Balcombe may or may not have been using Napoleon in a weird embezzlement scheme or because Napoleon may or may not have been sleeping with his wife.
Anyway, Betsy would proceed to menace Napoleon like it was her job or something. She pushed him down a ravine, burned him with hot wax, tried to stab him with the sword he wore at Austerlitz, sicced her dog on him, tried to destroy his memoirs, cut the coat he wore at Waterloo, laughed at him when he was in pain post-tooth pulling, may or may not have bribed her brother to give Napoleon poisonous candy, insulted Napoleon for wearing his jammies too late in the day etc. al; Napoleon, for his part, stole a dress she wanted to wear to a ball, weirdly taught her how to shoot a gun which brings about the question of why we still allow Napoleon to have guns, gaslit her into thinking she was haunted by a ghost of her dead tutor, and tried to bribe her into setting the French commissioner on fire.
She may not have been exiled to Saint Helena
But I feel like she would have deserved that.
Ironically, she and her family were later exiled from Saint Helena, either because they were too friendly with Napoleon or because, again, Betsy's father may have been skimming so much money off the top with embezzlement that the government couldn't ignore it anymore. Scam everyone even your government.
Anyway, it's a delightful anecdote in history! thank you for asking!
