Emperess Eugenie

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Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Paris on 20th April 1808, the son of Louis (brother of Napoleon I) and Queen Hortense de Beauharnais (daughter of Napoleon's first wife, Josephine). After the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo the Bonaparte family was exiled from France and had to find refuge abroad. Hortense established herself at Arenenberg in Switzerland where she lived with her son Louis.

Louis considered himself to be the official pretender to the Imperial succession and he attempted on two occasions, in 1836 and 1840, to seize power. In 1848 his moment came. Louis Philippe was forced to abdicate, the Second Republic was proclaimed and universal suffrage introduced. The Prince returned to France and was elected to the National Assembly by an overwhelming majority. By the end of that year he was also elected President of the Republic. A coup d'etat in 1851 extended his tenure to ten years; the following year the majority of French people voted for the restoration of the Empire and so Louis Napoleon assumed the title of Emperor Napoleon III.

Imperial Family in 1857

The Emperor married Eugenie de Gusman, Countess of Teba, of a noble Spanish family. Her father had fought for Napoleon and she herself had Bonapartist sympathies. In 1856 their only child was born - Louis, the Prince Imperial. That same year saw the end of the Crimean War, in which France and England had fought side by side, thus consolidating the entente between the two countries for which Napoleon III worked so hard.

The Second Empire fell on 14th September 1870. Napoleon III, already suffering from the illness that was to prove fatal, had been drawn by the schemes of Bismarck into war with Prussia. The end came quickly with the disaster of Sedan. The Emperor was taken prisoner, the Prince Imperial escaped to England by way of Belgium, and the outbreak of revolution in Paris forced the Empress to flee from France to England. The three were ultimately in exile at Chislehurst in Kent. The Emperor died there in 1873 and was buried in Chislehurst at the small Catholic church of St Mary before his body was moved to the Mausoleom here at St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough.

Louis, Prince Imperial

At the time of his father's death the Prince, a student at the Royal Military College at Woolwich, was preparing to take up a commission in the British army, hoping that the pursuit of a military career by a Napoleon would facilitate a possible return to France.

Anxious to take part in a campaign, he prevailed upon his mother and Queen Victoria to allow him to join the expedition against the Zulus in 1879. On 1st June, while on reconnaissance, his party was ambushed by Zulus and the Prince was surrounded and killed. He was 23 years old. Seventeen wounds from Zulu assegais, all to the front of his body, proved that he had died a brave death. To Queen Victoria and the British it was an enormous shock. To Eugenie it was the crowning tragedy. "I died in 1879" she would say.

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