WITH HIS FACE TO THE FOE: The Life and Death of the Prince Imperial

by Ian Knight

Witten by the acknowledged authority on the Anglo-Zulu War, this is the tragic and dramatic story of the death of the last heir to the Imperial throne of France, killed while fighting with the British in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, and of the scandal and recrimination which followed his death. The Carey court-martial and its effect on the public and the military establishment is discussed in detail and placed in the context of the Victorian era.

Genres: History, Biography, France, Africa, South Africa, Military Fiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published December 6, 2001

About the author

Ian Knight, BA, FRGS is a historian, author, battlefield guide and artifacts specialist internationally regarded as a leading authority on the nineteenth-century history of the Zulu kingdom, and in particular the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. He has a degree in Afro-Caribbean Studies from the University of Kent and has been researching and writing for more than thirty years. He has published over forty books and monographs, the majority of them on Zulu history and the rest on other nineteenth-century British colonial campaigns. He has appeared on-screen in a number of television documentaries. He is an Honorary Research Associate of the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am perhaps a little stingy in giving this book only three stars but while the author may be master of the details of the Zulu wars in which the Prince Imperial (see my footnote *1 below) met his death I feel the subject required something more then a mastery of the details of battle.

Mr. Knight provides an excellent account of the Prince Imperial's time in England and particularly his time at the Military Academy at Woolwich (the forerunner of Sandhurst) and appointment to Lord Chelmsford staff and time in South Africa during the Zulu wars. He has mastered the relevant archives for his previous books on the Zulu wars and has done further work in the Royal archives dealing with Queen Victoria's relations with the empress Eugenie and her son. The problem with this book is that he has all the facts and information but he fails to realise that simply quoting large chunks of this material does not make for good history or biography. What is needed is an attempt at synthesising and finding something more than simply a rehash of what happened. What we needed was a reason to read 270 pages about the death of young man who is barely a historical footnote.

Although he tries to provide some background with regards to the Bonaparte legend under the Bourbons and the Orleans monarchies and the restored empire of Napoleon III Mr. Knight is not knowledgeable about French history, does not read French well, and the published material he lists in his bibliography on Napoleon III, the Empress Eugenie is limited verging on the superficial. Mr. Knight admits his limited French and makes no claims to knowing anything about French history but this weakness means that his attempts to place the prince imperial within any kind of broader context or to discuss Bonapartism as a movement, idea or party is limited and superficial.

The most interesting thing about Bonapartism is how independent, in many ways, it was from the actual pretenders - all of whom left France as children (the King of Rome as a baby, the future Napoleon III at 8 and the Prince Imperial at 14) and spent the majority of their lives outside France. The King of Rome didn't even have French as a first language, Napoleon III always spoke French with a German accent and, had he lived, the Prince Imperial's French might well have been equally laden with foreign influences.

Exiled from France at 14, dead at 23, the Prince Imperial was, like the King of Rome/Duke of Reichstadt, more a symbol of an idea than anything else. Even as a child he was weighted with significance. At his baptism he had Pope Pius IX and Queen Josephine of Sweden as god parents and by the age of 11 had acquired, aside from the Legion of Honour, eleven of the classiest honours a royal could collect from the Austrian and Russian Empires, and the Kingdoms of Denmark, Portugal, Sardinia (2), Saxony, Spain and Sweden-Norway (at that time one Kingdom). There were also two from the Empire of Mexico but the prince wore them very rarely please see my footnote *2 below). The god parents and distribution of these honours may seem unimportant but for Napoleon III it reflected that he and his empire were accepted as properly 'royal'. Whether the French people had any particular attachment to the empire or the Prince Imperial is doubtful, when he accompanied his father to war in 1870 against Prussia the reports sent back of his 'heroic' actions 'under fire' at the front were met with derision. When his death was announced it caused a storm in France, but only as an occasion for speculation over who caused his death, the British, Freemasons, or Queen Victoria (please see my footnote *3 below).

In fact his death was a combination of factors, the problem of hierarchy and cost cutting in the supply of army material. The Prince was an observer on Lord Chelmsford's staff and not supposed to be doing anything dangerous (pretty difficult in a war zone). On the day he died he was under the 'care' of Lieutenant Jahleel Brenton Carey who was also his superior officer but when they went out on reconnaissance the Prince took the lead, Lt. Carey being unable or unwilling to enforce his authority with the result that when they stopped for a rest no sentries were posted and they were caught unawares by a Zulu war party and while trying to escape the straps on the Prince's saddle broke (the saddle was second rate rubbish supplied by a greedy contractor cutting corners and he was dismounted and killed. Carey faced the choice of returning and being killed along with the other soldiers or returning to camp and reporting what happened, neither was a good choice, but no one was going to forgive him for living.

What no one cared to remember was that the Prince's death was the result of the Prince's ill-defined position, leaving Lt. Carey unsure of exactly what authority he had to countermand the Prince's wishes, and the shoddy goods supplied by army contractors. Instead they all blamed Carey and though cleared by Court Martial and he resumed his career his life was effectively ruined. That he was mercilessly hounded and derided while Lord Chelmsford suffered no disgrace for the battle of Isandlwana says everything you need to know about the difference between being to important to fail and so unimportant that you are marked out as a scapegoat from the start.

Because Mr. Knight is such a knowledgeable historian of the Zulu wars he does cover all the bases that need to be covered but it is not a gripping or exciting read. I often think that these lacuna in history, where the basic story is already known, require a more imaginative or syncretic approach which delves as much into how the story of the life is told and remembered or in the case of the Prince Imperial, barely remembered.

*1 Like all royals he had many names, Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, though known within the family as Louis-Napoleon in history he is almost invariable referred to by his title Prince Imperial; rather like the great Napoleon's son is almost invariably known by his title either the one he had at birth, King of Rome, or the one he had at death Duke of Reichstadt).
*2 If you don't know the story of Napoleon III involvement with Maximilian and the Mexican empire I can only encourage you to google it.
*3 In the play 'Napoleon IV' by Maurice Rostand (son of the author of Cyrano de Bergerac) if you want to seek it out.