February 1778. Jean-Pierre Blanchard, inventor, then without success, of several machines supposed to conquer the sky, stays in an inn near La Rochelle, in Yves, at a place called Les Trois-Canons more precisely. Unable to pay his boarding expenses with the innkeeper, eight months pregnant, he undertakes to adopt the future child of this woman if it is a boy and to marry her if it is. a girl. A promise kept a few years later, when Sophie, née Armant, became Sophie Blanchard. In the meantime, this perfect autodidact has become one of the most famous French aeronauts who, in the wake of the famous Montgolfier brothers, succeeded in the first manned flight of a balloon of his design, this one being inflated with hydrogen , equipped with a propeller and feather oars moved by the force of the arms… On January 7, 1785, accompanied by an American patron, he even crossed the English Channel aboard his flying creation, which earned him glory. throughout Europe, where the man who became the first professional balloonist in the world would then perform on numerous occasions for flight demonstrations.
Initiated in the art of making this fascinating machine take off and float in the air, Sophie does not want to remain a mere spectator of her husband’s exploits, especially since serious financial problems encourage the couple to perform together during their ” show climbs”. In 1808, tragedy struck
their door: victim of a heart attack in flight, Jean-Pierre Blanchard fell from his balloon and died a few months later as a result of this fall. It was time to take her destiny into her own hands for Sophie Blanchard, who had made her first solo flight three years earlier. Even if she was not the first woman aeronaut, nor the one who made the first trip in a gas balloon, this true adventurer will create a precedent in the history of aeronautics by piloting her own machine and making her own balloon. occupation. Queen of the Air, where she compiled the climbs in front of thousands of enthusiastic spectators in Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, Saint Petersburg, Rome and Turin, she made a prestigious ascent in 1810 in Paris to celebrate the marriage of Marie Louise of Austria with the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, of whom she is moreover both a favorite and a minister.
Perhaps because she proved to be intrepid inveterate, certainly because the crowds who flock to her performances display an ever more insatiable curiosity, the one who was named “official balloonist of the Restoration” by Louis XVIII multiplies the catches of risk. Close to drowning during a landing in the marshes, Sophie does not give up defying the danger by always giving more to the public. On July 7, 1819, in the heart of the famous Parisian garden of the Tivoli, his sixty-seventh climb will be the last. Reached 300 meters high, with plans to release fireworks over the park, it ignites its aerostat which descends to the ground, before hitting the roof of a house and causing the fatal fall of its occupant. Her tragic fate will end up making her an aeronautical legend and a model for women who will dream of embracing careers traditionally reserved for men. Today, this heroine of the air rests in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, in a tomb depicting an airship on fire.
The illustrator:
Pauline Marguier is a self-taught illustrator, whose soft and poetic universe turns
around childhood. Hers was particularly marked by her holidays spent on the Island of Oléron, which she visits every summer and which continues to mark her world.
