Napoleon Eugene Louis Bonaparte
Prince Imperial
Born in 1856 Died in 1879
Napoleon Eugène Louis Bonaparte is the only child of Napoleon III and Eugénie. His official title was Prince Imperial and his parents nicknamed him Louis or Loulou. He will be cuddled throughout his childhood, because he is the future of the Bonapartist dynasty. His father gave him a taste for military life, which he kept all his life.
After the disaster at Sedan and the fall of the Empire, the Prince Imperial joined his mother, Empress Eugénie, in England.
On the death of his father in 1873, he took over as head of the Bonaparte family, and placed himself as an imperial successor, ready to respond if called upon.
Wanting to thank the English for their hospitality, the prince enlisted in the British army against advice of his mother and the reluctance of Queen Victoria. He asks to be sent to South Africa, he falls into an ambush in the middle of Zulu country, he dies after a heroic resistance pierced by a spear.
He is buried in England in the chapel where his father and mother, a white cross in the Zulu country recalls the place where he fell, a small monument has been erected at the Château de Malmaison.