Under Dartnell the Natal Mounted Police served in the Basuto Gun War (1880–81), where they defended the passes of the Drakensberg against attack from the Basuto, and the Transvaal Rebellion (also known as the First Anglo-Boer War) (1880–81) when the NMP was used to form a mounted military force on the border with the Transvaal. When after these Rebellions normal policing duties were resumed men of the NMP provided an escort for the Empress Eugénie in 1880 when she came to Natal to see where her son, Napoléon the Prince Imperial, had been killed the previous year during the Zulu War.