balloons unmanned for weather observations: ‘Balloons carrying “register” thermometers and barometers might be capable of ascending alone to altitudes between eight and twelve miles.’ But such experiments would have to wait for a time of international scientific cooperation, ‘when nations shall at last become satisfied with cultivating the arts of peace, instead of sanguinary, destructive and fruitless wars’.11
Indeed, it was the celebration balloon, used for propaganda and patriotic rather than scientific purposes, that most readily held the public’s attention in France. In December 1804 Napoleon commissioned Garnerin to construct and launch a massive, decorated but unmanned balloon to celebrate his coronation as emperor in Paris. It was festooned with silk drapes, flags and banners, and carried an enormous golden imperial crown suspended from its hoop on golden chains. Having been successfully launched above Notre Dame during the coronation ceremony, this fantastic contraption flew southwards right across France, and amazingly crossed the Alps during the night. The following day it was spotted symbolically descending upon Rome, the imperial city, a triumph for Garnerin’s craftsmanship.12
The huge balloon veered towards St Peter’s and the Vatican Palace, then swooped down low across the Forum. But here the symbolic triumph was turned into a propaganda disaster. The enormous golden crown became hooked on the top of an ancient Roman tomb and broke off, leaving the balloon to disappear, with its banners flapping, over the Pontine Marshes. By unbelievable coincidence, or thoroughly appropriate bad luck (you can never tell with balloons), the tomb upon which Garnerin’s prophetic balloon had deposited Napoleon’s golden crown was that of the infamous tyrant and murderous pervert, the Emperor Nero. Napoleon’s name was hooped like a deck-quoit over Nero’s.fn9 Once this ill-starred news was efficiently relayed back to Paris by Napoleon’s diplomatic service, Garnerin and his balloons began to fall out of imperial favour.14
4
Garnerin was replaced, almost at once, by the most justly famous of all the French Revolutionary balloonists. She was a woman – the small, fearless and enigmatic Sophie Blanchard. Born at the sea port of La Rochelle in March 1778, Sophie somehow became involved with the experimental balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard, who had first crossed the Channel with Dr Jeffries in 1785, when Sophie was only eight. How their romance began remains a mystery, since Blanchard was already married with children, and spent much of the 1790s touring the cities of Europe and America. But it was rumoured that he first saw her when she was still a child, standing in the crowd at one of his launches, and vowed to return and marry her when she came of age in 1799.
However, the first definite record of them together is not until December 1804, when Blanchard took Sophie on her first balloon flight, above Marseille. According to him she was immediately smitten, breaking her customary painful silence to gasp, ‘Sensation incomparable!’ Pictures show her to be petite and pretty, with large eyes and a dark fringe. But she was also said to be frail and ‘bird-like’, abnormally nervous on the ground, terrified of crowds, loud noises, horses and coach travel, and shy to the point of self-effacement. Yet all this changed completely once she was in the air. In a balloon she became confident and commanding, a natural entertainer and a provoking exhibitionist, daring to the point of recklessness.
Blanchard, who was ageing and nearly bankrupt, evidently saw the possibilities of reviving his aeronautical career with this fearless young woman, who could instinctively control a balloon, manage aerial fireworks, do acrobatics, and wear eye-catching hats and dresses to please a crowd. He married Sophie when she was twenty-six, and she became his balloon partner for several years, taking over all the arrangements as his health gradually failed. Blanchard died from a heart attack in 1810, while landing in a damaged balloon near The Hague.15 Immediately after his death, Sophie gave her first major solo balloon display in Paris. Like Garnerin, she specialised in night ascents and firework displays, but with much greater daring and eventually recklessness. She deliberately set herself up to rival the other famous female aeronaut of the time, Garnerin’s niece Lisa. Both seemed to vie for official recognition, though Lisa suffered from the waning popularity of the Garnerin name with Napoleon.
Sophie Blanchard seems to have caught the Emperor’s attention during a midsummer ascent from the Champ de Mars in Paris on 24 June 1810. Soon after, she was asked to contribute to the celebration mounted by the Imperial Guard for Napoleon’s marriage to the Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria. From then on she became a fixture at the imperial court, with propaganda as well as entertainment duties. On the birth of Napoleon’s son in March 1811, she took a balloon flight over Paris from the Champ de Mars and threw out leaflets proclaiming the happy event. She again performed at the official celebration of his baptism at the Château de Saint-Cloud on 23 June, with a spectacular firework display launched from her balloon. In the same year, in an ascent above Vincennes, she climbed so high to avoid being trapped in a hailstorm that she lost consciousness, and spent 14½ hours in the air as a result.
Napoleon now made Sophie’s position official. He appointed her Aéronaute des Fêtes Officielles, a position especially created for her, and gave her responsibility for organising ballooning displays at all major events in Paris. It was also said that he made her his ‘Chief Air Minister of Ballooning’, with secret instructions to draw up plans for an aerial invasion of England. However this seems more like English counter-propaganda, as Napoleon’s idea for an invasion of England had long since been displaced by the ultimately disastrous invasion of Russia, which began in the spring of 1812.
Sophie had by now developed her own peculiar free-style of ballooning. She abandoned her husband’s large canopy and unwieldy basket, both of which were by this time much battered. To replace them she commissioned a much smaller silk balloon, capable of lifting her on a tiny, decorative silver gondola. This was shaped like a small canoe or child’s cradle, curved upwards at each end but otherwise quite open. It was little more than three feet long and one foot high at the sides. One end was upholstered to form a small armchair (in which she sometimes slept), but otherwise the gondola offered astonishingly little protection. When she stood up, grasping the balloon ropes, the edge of the gondola did not reach above her knees. It was virtually like standing in a flying champagne bucket.
She also began to adopt distinctive outfits, which could be seen at a considerable distance. For this purpose her dresses were always white cotton and narrowly cut, with the fashionable English Regency style of high waist and low décolletage. Her sleeves were long, coming right down to her knuckles, presumably to keep her hands warm at high altitudes. Most important of all, she wore a series of white bonnets extravagantly plumed with coloured feathers, to increase her height and visibility. The combined effect of these dramatic clothes and the tiny silver gondola was to make her look both flamboyant and vulnerable. She also appeared terrifyingly exposed, an effect she evidently cultivated.
Sophie now began to give displays in Italy. In the summer of 1811 she took her balloon across the Alps by coach, and celebrated Napoleon’s birthday, the Fête de l’Empereur on 15 August, with an ascent above Milan. She travelled on to Rome with instructions to efface the memory of the unfortunate incident of Nero’s tomb. Here she ascended spectacularly to a height of twelve thousand feet, and stayed aloft all night in her tiny upholstered chair, claiming that she fell into a profound sleep, before landing much refreshed at dawn at Tagliacozzo. She then flew by balloon from Rome to Naples, splitting the journey in half with a stop after sixty miles. She made a daring ascent in bad weather over the Campo Marte in Naples to accompany the review of the troops by Napoleon’s brother-in-law Joachim Murat, the King of Naples.
In 1812, the third Aeronautical
