Harriet Howard

Harriet Howard, born Elizabeth Ann Haryett (1823–1865) was a mistress and financial backer of Louis-Napoleon, later Napoleon III of France.

At a party given by Lady Blessington in 1846, Howard met Louis Napoleon, the Bonapartist pretender to the throne of France, at that time exiled in London.

Napoleon, after having been rejected by Carola of Vasa of Sweden and other high-standing members of the nobility, chose Eugenie de Montijo.

Howard was sent away to Le Havre when Napoleon announced this marriage, and her secretary desk was emptied of its compromising letters.

[1] Eventually in 1854, Howard married Captain Clarence Trelawny, an English horse breeder who used her money for his business.

[3] The relationship to her son Martin was also strained – at his 21st birthday party, he asked her publicly: "Now that I'm grown, Mother, won't you tell me who my father was?".