Louis-Napoléon, Prince Imperial (Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte; 16 March 1856 – 1 June 1879), also known as Louis-Napoléon, was the only child of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, and Empress Eugénie. After his father was dethroned and exiled in 1870, he moved to England, UK with his family. On his father's death in January 1873, he was proclaimed by the Bonapartist faction as Napoléon IV.
In England, he trained as a British Army officer. Keen to see action, he persuaded the British to allow him to participate in the Anglo-Zulu War. In 1879, serving with the British armed forces, he was killed in a skirmish incident with a group of Zulus. His death caused an international sensation and sent shockwaves throughout Europe, as he was the last serious dynastic hope for the restoration of the House of Bonaparte to the throne of France.
Biography
Louis-Napoléon was born at the Tuileries Palace in Paris,The Prince Imperial, Mackinnon, J. P., and S. H. Shadbolt. The South African Campaign, 1879 : a Memorial Volume Containing Sixty Permanent Cabinet Photographs of the Officers of the British Army and Navy Who Lost Their Lives in the Zulu War, Biographical Notices, Detailed Accounts of the Various Engagements, Maps of the Country Showing the Movements of the Various Regiments in the Field, and Separate Records of the Services of Every British Officer Who Was Engaged / Compiled by J.P. Mackinnon ... and Sydney Shadlbolt. Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1880. Pp. 35–39, State Library of New South Wales, TQ047678 and he was baptised on 14 June 1856 at Notre-Dame Cathedral. His godfather was Pope Pius IX, whose representative, Cardinal Patrizi, officiated. His godmother was Eugène de Beauharnais's daughter, Josephine, the Queen of Sweden, who was represented by Grand Duchess Stéphanie of Baden.
His education, after a false start under the academic historian Francis Monnier, was from 1867 supervised by General Frossard as governor, assisted by Augustin Filon as a tutor. His English nurse, Miss Shaw, was recommended by Queen Victoria and taught the prince English from an early age. His valet Xavier Uhlmann and his inseparable friend Louis Conneau also figured prominently in his life. The young prince was known by the nickname "Loulou" in his family circle. In 1868, he visited Corsica and attended the centenary festival of the annexation of the island to France.
At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, he accompanied his father as a sub-lieutenant to the front. The prince was present on the hills above Saarbrücken during the engagement at their base. Still, when the war began to go against the Imperial army, his father sent him to the border with Belgium. In September, his father sent him a message to cross over into Belgium. He travelled from there to England, arriving on 6 September, where his parents joined him, the Second Empire having been abolished. The family settled in England at Camden Place in Chislehurst, Kent. Upon his father's death in 1873, Bonapartists proclaimed him Napoleon IV. On his 18th birthday, a large crowd gathered to cheer him at Camden Place. The prince attended elementary lectures in physics at King's College London. In 1872, he applied and was accepted to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He finished seventh in his class of thirty-four and came top in riding and fencing. He then served for a time with the Royal Artillery at Aldershot.
During the 1870s, there was some talk of a marriage between him and Queen Victoria's youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice. Queen Victoria also reportedly believed that it would be best for "the peace of Europe" if the prince became Emperor of France. The prince remained a devout Catholic, and he retained hopes that the Bonapartist cause might eventually triumph if the secularising Third Republic failed. He supported the tactics of Eugène Rouher over those of Prince Napoléon-Jérôme, breaking with Napoléon-Jérôme in 1876.
With the outbreak of the Zulu War in 1879, the prince, with the rank of lieutenant, forced the hand of the British military to allow him to take part in the conflict, despite the objections of Rouher and other Bonapartists. He was only allowed to go to Africa by the special pleading of his mother, Empress Eugénie, and by the intervention of Queen Victoria herself. He left England on 27 February 1879 with letters of introduction from the Duke of Cambridge, the British commander-in-chief, in the hope he might be allowed to follow the movements of the troops. Once he arrived at Durban, he joined the General's Head-Quarters and met Frederic Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford, the commander in South Africa, on 9 April and was nominally placed on his staff. The prince accompanied Chelmsford on his march into Zululand. Keen to see action and full of enthusiasm, he was warned by Lieutenant Arthur Brigge, a close friend, "not to do anything rash and to avoid running unnecessary risks. I reminded him of the Empress at home and his party in France."
Chelmsford, mindful of his duty, attached the prince to the staff of Colonel Richard Harrison of the Royal Engineers, where it was felt he could be active but safe. Harrison was responsible for the column's transport and for reconnaissance of the forward route on the way to Ulundi, the Zulu capital. While he welcomed the presence of the prince, he was told by Chelmsford that the prince must be accompanied at all times by a strong escort. Lieutenant Jahleel Brenton Carey, a French speaker and British subject from Guernsey, was given particular charge of him. The prince took part in several reconnaissance missions. However, his eagerness for action almost led him into an early ambush when he exceeded orders in a party led by Colonel Redvers Buller. Despite this, on the evening of 31 May 1879, Harrison agreed to allow the prince to scout in a forward party scheduled to leave in the morning, mistakenly believing that the path ahead was free of Zulu skirmishers.
Death
On the morning of 1 June 1879, the troop set out, earlier than intended and without the whole escort, largely owing to the prince's impatience. Led by Carey, the scouts rode deeper into Zululand. Without Harrison or Buller present to restrain him, the prince took command from Carey, even though the latter had seniority. At noon, the prince halted the troop at a temporarily deserted kraal. The prince and Carey made some sketches of the terrain and used part of the thatch to make a fire. No lookout was posted. As they were preparing to leave, about 40 Zulus fired upon them and rushed towards them, screaming. The prince ran to mount his horse and was able to grab onto the holster on the saddle of his horse. The prince's horse then dashed off before he could mount. After about , the strap the prince was clinging to broke and the horse kicked the prince in the belly, winding him. The prince fell beneath his horse, and his right arm was trampled. He leapt up, drawing his revolver with his left hand, and started to run, but the Zulus outpaced him.
The prince fired three shots from his revolver at his assailants, but he missed each shot. The prince then fired two more shots, albeit slower, in order to better aim. However, these, too, missed.Mwunzane's testimony in Ian Knight (ed) "Kill Me in the Shadows" in 'The Bowden Collection of Anglo-Zulu War Oral History' in Soldiers of the Queen 74 (September 1993) 17. One of the prince's assailants, a Zulu named Langalibalele, threw his spear at the prince, but missed.Langalibalele's testimony, 1 June 1880, in Wood Collection (National Archives Depot, Pietermaritzburg) II/1/2, quoted in John Laband ' "He fought like a lion": An assessment of Zulu accounts of the death of the Prince Imperial of France during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879' (Society for Army Historical Research, Autumn 1998) Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 76 (307) 194–201 [198–199], Another spear, thrown by a Zulu named Zabanga, struck the prince's left shoulder. The prince tried to fight on, wielding the spear thrown by Langalibalele in his right hand and his revolver in his left.Langalibalele's testimony, 1 June 1880, Nyadana's testimony, 27 May 1880, & Mphalazi's testimony, 28 May 1880, in Wood Collection (National Archives Depot, Pietermaritzburg) II/1/2, quoted in John Laband ' "He fought like a lion": An assessment of Zulu accounts of the death of the Prince Imperial of France during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879' (Society for Army Historical Research, Autumn 1998) Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 76 (307) 194–201 [198–199], However, weakened by his wounds, the prince sank to the ground and was overwhelmed. Zabanga stabbed the prince again with an assegai, followed by Gwabakana; and then the prince suffered a final blow from Klabawathunga – who stabbed the prince in the right eye – penetrating the prince's brain and killing him. When the prince's corpse was recovered the next day, it was found naked and an examination by surgeon-major F. B. Scott counted 18 wounds, all of which were stab wounds.Laband, John. ""He fought like a lion": An assessment of Zulu account of the death of the Prince Imperial of France during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879". Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research. 76 (307): 194–201 [196–197], citing a quote attributed to Surgeon-Major F B Scott in Charles L Norris-Newman, 'In Zululand with the British throughout the war of 1879' (London, 1880), appendix H, 301–302.