page_title: Napoléon, Prince Imperial
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Napoléon, Prince Imperial / Biography / Death
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte (* 16. März 1856 in Paris, Palais des Tuileries; † 1. Juni 1879 in Südafrika) war kaiserlicher Prinz von Frankreich (Prince Imperial und Fils de France) und einziger Sohn von Kaiser Napoléon III. und dessen Ehefrau, Kaiserin Eugénie de Montijo.
context_page_description: Napoléon, Prince Imperial, also known as Louis-Napoléon, was the only child of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, and Empress Eugénie. After his father was dethroned in 1870, he relocated with his family to England. On his father's death in January 1873, he was proclaimed by the Bonapartist faction as Emperor Napoleon IV.
  In England, he trained as a soldier. Keen to see action, he successfully put pressure on the British to allow him to participate in the Anglo-Zulu War. In 1879, serving with British forces, he was killed in a skirmish with a group of Zulus. His early death 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.
context_section_description: On the morning of 1 June, the troop set out, earlier than intended and without the full escort, largely owing to Louis'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 troop was halted at a temporarily deserted kraal while Louis 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's horse dashed off before he could mount, the Prince clinging to a holster on the saddle. After about a hundred yards a strap broke, and 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 could run faster.
  The Prince was speared in the thigh but pulled the assegai from his wound.  As he turned and fired on his pursuers, another assegai, thrown by a Zulu named Zabanga, struck his left shoulder. The Prince tried to fight on, using the assegai he had pulled from his leg, but, weakened by his wounds, he sank to the ground and was overwhelmed. When recovered, his body had eighteen assegai wounds; one stabbing had burst his right eye and penetrated his brain.  Two of his escort were killed and another was missing.  Lt. Carey and the four men remaining came together about fifty yards from where the Prince made his final stand, but did not fire at the Zulus. Carey led his men back to camp. After a court of inquiry, a court martial, intervention by the Empress Eugénie and Queen Victoria, he returned to his regiment. Carey died in Bombay, India, on 22 February 1883.
  Louis Napoleon's death caused an international sensation. Rumours spread in France that the prince had been intentionally "disposed of" by the British. Alternatively, the French republicans or the Freemasons were blamed. In one account, Queen Victoria was accused of arranging the whole thing, a theory that was later dramatised by Maurice Rostand in his play Napoleon IV. The Zulus later claimed that they would not have killed him if they had known who he was. Langalabalele, his chief assailant, met his death in July at the Battle of Ulundi. Eugénie later made a pilgrimage to Sobuza's kraal, where her son had died.  The Prince, who had begged to be allowed to go to war (taking the sword carried by Napoleon I at Austerlitz with him) and who had worried his commanders by his dash and daring, was described by Garnet Wolseley as "a plucky young man, and he died a soldier's death. What on earth could he have done better?"
  His badly decomposed body was brought back to Spithead on board the British troopship HMS Orontes, and thence transferred onto HMS Enchantress for sailing on to Woolwich Arsenal; overnight, he lay in state in the western octagonal guardhouse by the riverfront. The funeral procession, including Queen Victoria, went from there to Chislehurst, where he was buried.  On 9 January 1888, his body was transferred to a special mausoleum constructed by his mother as the Imperial Crypt at Saint Michael's Abbey, Farnborough, Hampshire, England, next to his father.  The Prince Imperial had appointed Prince Napoléon Victor Bonaparte as his heir, thus skipping the genealogically senior heir, Victor's father, Prince Napoléon.
caption: The prince in South Africa in 1879
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