We just had Sophie Le Balleur on tour here with us in the beautiful Georgian Bishop’s Palace and it turns out she is the great, great, great, great, great grand daughter of Laetitia Bonaparte Wyse.
She is seen here with Napoleon Bonaparte’s ‘mourning cross’, which was commissioned by Madame Mère, Napoleon’s mother, on the death of the Emperor in 1821, this is the only surviving one of the twelve that were made for all the female members of the family.
It belonged to the Emperor’s niece Laetitia, wife of Thomas Wyse of Waterford, the scion of the leading Waterford Catholic family.
