THE STORY BEHIND THE COMMEMORATION

Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, only son of the Emperor Napoléon III and the Empress Eugénie came out with the British reinforcements after the battle of Isandlwana. The Prince Imperial had obtained permission from Queen Victoria and the Duke of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief of the British army, to come out as a “special observer”. He arrived in Cape Town on March 26, 1879, staying for two days during which time he visited False Bay and Constantia and enjoyed a reception at Government House. He sailed on to Durban where he disembarked on March 31, 1879, and was attached to the staff of Lord Chelmsford as an extra aide-de-camp. He stayed in Durban for 19 days and then came up to Pietermaritzburg where he spent six days and was a guest of the Governor in Government House, attended mass in the French-missionary-built St Mary’s chapel, and he visited a local hotel which was renamed in his honour after his visit.

Then, with the other soldiers, he set off from Fort Napier on April 26, 1879, for Zululand, via Ladysmith and Dundee. A gifted reconnaissance scout, the Prince set out on June 1, in a group comprising Lieutenant Carey, six Troopers of Bettington’s Horse and a guide, to choose the camp for the army’s march on Ulundi to engage with Cetshwayo, the Zulu king. Tragedy struck in the Jojosi valley, near to a supposed deserted kraal, and were surprised by a horde of Zulu warriors. Two soldiers were killed, as well as the guide. The rest galloped off across the dongas. The Prince, unable to mount a bucking and rearing horse, grabbed the holster-strap in an effort to hoist himself up, but the strap broke and he fell.

The horse trampled his right arm, his sword fell from his waist in the scramble and he was left to face his foes. His slayers said of him: “he fought like a lion, and we did not dare to close ’til he sank down facing us”. The Prince’s body was recovered the following day and brought down from Zululand via Pietermaritzburg to the coast, and hence back to England.

He was initially buried in St Mary’s Church, Chislehurst, but in 1888, his remains together with those of his father, were re-interred in St Michael’s Abbey, Farnborough, Hampshire.