page_title: Sophie Blanchard
section_title: Solo career
hierarchical_section_title: Sophie Blanchard / Biography / Solo career
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of French balloonist Sophie Blanchard standing in the decorated basket of her balloon during her flight in Milan, Italy, in 1811, in the presence of the imperial and royal highness.
context_page_description: Sophie Blanchard, commonly referred to as Madame Blanchard and is also known by many combinations of her maiden and married names, including Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard, Marie Madeleine-Sophie Blanchard, Marie Sophie Armant and Madeleine-Sophie Armant Blanchard, was a French aeronaut and the wife of ballooning pioneer Jean-Pierre Blanchard. Blanchard was the first woman to work as a professional balloonist, and after her husband's death she continued ballooning, making more than 60 ascents. Known throughout Europe for her ballooning exploits, Blanchard entertained Napoleon Bonaparte, who promoted her to the role of "Aeronaut of the Official Festivals", replacing André-Jacques Garnerin. On the restoration of the monarchy in 1814 she performed for Louis XVIII, who named her "Official Aeronaut of the Restoration".
  Ballooning was a risky business for the pioneers. Blanchard lost consciousness on a few occasions, endured freezing temperatures and almost drowned when her balloon crashed in a marsh. In 1819, she became the first woman to be killed in an aviation accident when, during an exhibition in the Tivoli Gardens in Paris, she launched fireworks that ignited the gas in her balloon.
context_section_description: Sophie conducted experiments with parachutes as her husband had, parachuting dogs from her balloon, and as part of her entertainments she launched fireworks and dropped baskets of pyrotechnics attached to small parachutes. Other aeronauts were making names for themselves by demonstrating parachute jumps from the baskets of balloons, in particular the family of André-Jacques Garnerin, whose wife, daughter and niece all performed regularly. His niece, Élisa Garnerin, was Blanchard's chief rival as a female aeronaut, and it was rare for a suitable event to lack a performance by one or the other. Blanchard may have given some demonstrations of parachuting herself, but her primary interest was in ballooning.
  The couple had still been in debt at the time of Blanchard's death, so to minimise her expenses, Sophie was as frugal as possible in her choice of balloon. She used a hydrogen-filled gas balloon (or Charlière), as it allowed her to ascend in a basket little bigger than a chair, and there was no requirement for the volume of material necessary for a hot air balloon. A hydrogen balloon also freed her from having to tend a fire to keep the craft airborne. Having a smaller, easily inflatable balloon was also important in an era when "balloon riots" were common, and disappointed crowds were known to destroy balloons and attack aeronauts when balloons failed to go up as planned. Because she was small and light, she was able to cut back on the amount of gas used to inflate the balloon. Sophie had used, or at least owned, a hot air balloon; Colonel Francis Maceroni recorded in his memoirs that she sold it to him in 1811 for £40.
  She became a favourite of Napoleon, and he appointed her to replace André-Jacques Garnerin in 1804. Garnerin had disgraced himself by failing to control the balloon that he had sent up to mark Napoleon's coronation in Paris; the balloon eventually drifted as far as Rome, where it crashed into the Lago di Bracciano and became the subject of many jokes at Napoleon's expense. The title given to her by Napoleon is unclear: he certainly made her "Aeronaut of the Official Festivals" ("Aéronaute des Fêtes Officielles") with responsibility for organising ballooning displays at major events, but he may have also made her his Chief Air Minister of Ballooning, in which role she is reported to have drawn up plans for an aerial invasion of England. She was able to dissuade Napoleon from this impractical plan by pointing out that the prevailing winds over the Channel made such an invasion nearly impossible.  
  She made ascents for Napoleon's entertainment on 24 June 1810 from the Champ de Mars in Paris and at the celebration mounted by the Imperial Guard for his marriage to Marie-Louise of Austria. On the birth of Napoleon's son, Blanchard took a balloon flight over Paris from the Champs de Mars and threw out leaflets proclaiming the birth. She performed at the official celebration of his baptism at the Château de Saint-Cloud on 23 June 1811, with a firework display launched from the balloon, and again at the "Féte de l'Emperor" in Milan on 15 August 1811. She made an 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 1811. When Louis XVIII entered Paris on 4 May 1814 after being restored to the French throne, Blanchard ascended in her balloon from the Pont Neuf as part of the triumphal procession. Louis was so taken with her performance that he dubbed her "Official Aeronaut of the Restoration".
  Known throughout Europe, Blanchard drew large crowds for her ascents. In Frankfurt she was apparently the cause of the poor reception of Carl Maria von Weber's opera Silvana on its opening night, 16 September 1810: the people of the city flocked to see her demonstration while only a few attended the opera's debut. She gave many displays in Italy. In 1811 she travelled from Rome to Naples, splitting the journey in half with a stop after 60 miles (97 km), and later ascended again from Rome to a height of 12,000 feet (3,660 m)
caption: Sophie makes her ascent in Milan on 15 August 1811 to mark the 42nd birthday of Napoleon.
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