Laure Junot, duchesse d’Abrantès (1784–1838)

Laure Adelaïde Constance Permon was born in Montpellier, France. In 1800, at age 15, she married Jean-Andoche Junot, Napoleon Bonaparte's aide-de-camp. The couple had four children. Her husband was promoted to general and then ennobled as the duc d’Abrantès by the Emperor Napoleon for his victories during the Peninsular War, making Laure duchesse d’Abrantès. After her husband went mad and committed suicide, and the Emperor fell from power in 1815, she went to live in Rome and wrote her memoirs of life at court. Back in Paris many years later, she became the mistress of the young Honoré de Balzac, who encouraged her writing. After the success of her monumental 8-volume Mémoires sur Napoléon, la Révolution, le Consulat, l’Empire et la Restauration (1831–1835), her works failed to find a publisher and she fell into poverty. Her daughter Constance Marie-Antoinette Junot d'Abrantès became a journalist and femme de lettres.