When Louis was fourteen, he followed his father to the front during the Franco-Prussian war in the Lorraine. He had become separated from his father and was on his way north when he learnt of the defeat of Sedan. The young Prince took refuge in Belgium where he found out that his father had been imprisoned, and then he left for England to be reunited with his mother where the deposed Emperor soon joined them. Louis entered the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich on 17 November 1872 to begin his adult military training. After Napoleon III’s death in Chislehurst on 17 November 1872 following a recent gallstones operation, seventeen-year-old Louis became leader of the Bonapartists who hoped for the fall of the fragile Third Republic in France.

From then onwards, Louis channelled his thoughts solely on his future role as Emperor and adopted the name “Napoleon”. He immersed himself in his studies and deepened his political understanding; he even received a large group of French people on 15 August 1873 at Camden Place who had come to ask him to return to France where Rouher, the ex-president of Napoleon’s Council of State, was whipping up support amongst Bonapartists for his return. Since the Comte de Chambord, the Bourbon and legitimist heir to the throne of France, refused to give up the royal white flag for the tricolour flag thereby weakening the royalist position, the time seemed right for Napoleon to act. The leaders of the Bonapartist party organised a grand parade on 16 March to celebrate Louis’s eighteenth birthday and coming of age; 8,000 French made the journey to England cheer on the prince. Becoming Napoleon IV

Louis graduated from Woolwich as an artillery officer like his great-uncle, Napoleon I. He perfected his knowledge of law and economics and consulted French intellectuals of the period to prepare for his return. “I am only a young man who has not yet done anything”, he would say in response to those who wished to see him return to France at that point. Given that the prince was a very religious man, he led a strict life and did everything he could to “make himself worthy of his title”.  In February 1879, at the age of 23, he announced to his mother that he had asked to join the English units sent to Zululand, then a colony of the British Empire facing a revolt by the native inhabitants; Queen Victoria accepted, and the Prince was sent out with the troops.

A group of Zulus ambushed his patrol during a ceasefire on 1 June 1879 and killed two soldiers, driving off the rest of the unit. The prince tried to follow them but his old saddle, which his father had used at Sedan, gave way and he fell. Armed only with a pistol, he tried to defend himself but ultimately perished after he received seventeen spear wounds. Though they stripped his body and disarmed him, the Zulus left the Prince’s body and jewellery untouched, as they viewed him as a valiant warrior. The Prince Impérial, Napoleon IV, was killed during his quest to honour the memory of Napoleon I and his father Napoleon III. A wave of sympathy and respect for the Prince followed. His mortal remains were brought back to Great Britain and buried first in Chislehurst, before being moved to his father Napoleon III’s resting place at the Abbey of St Michael of Farnborough which Eugenie had commissioned as a final resting place for the bodies of both her husband and son. 🇫🇷