Pressed by the French authorities, the pretender boarded a ship in Boulogne and left for Britain; Suelves travelled with him, accompanying Carlos VII also in course of further voyages across the Atlantic to the United States and Mexico. In 1877 the claimant and his entourage returned to Europe and headed for the Balkans; in the Romanian Ploiești they met the Russian Tsar Alexander II and agreed taking part in the commencing Russo-Turkish War. The four Spaniards were assigned to the Russian IX. Corps, probably first to 34th and later to ; they witnessed the siege of Nicopolis, crossed the Danube, joined the headquarters of prince Carol I of Romania and took part in two battles of Plevnia. It is not clear whether Suelves accompanied the claimant during the rest of his "bon vivant" period and in successive journeys to Britain, again the United States, India, Africa and South America in the late 1870s and early 1880s, though some sources indicate that his wedding of 1886 took place in Peru.