Napoleon, Prince Imperial, was proclaimed Napoleon IV, Emperor of the French by the Bonapartist faction, a powerful force in France who hoped to restore the House of Bonaparte and its style of government. At the outbreak of the Anglo-Zulu War the prince and his mother, Empress Eugénie, were living as exiles in England, his father, Emperor Napoleon lll of France, having died in 1873.
Keen to see military action, the young prince managed to persuade the British government to allow him to participate in the war and he arrived in Durban on March 31, 1879. He quickly became acquainted with the Durban Club and the Royal Hotel.
It was from the hotel lobby that he saw a magnificent horse, a grey, out in the street. Acting on a whim, he managed to buy the horse.
Two months later, the 23-year-old prince found himself patrolling in Zululand under the supervision of a Lieutenant Carey. He made quite a sight mounted on Percy, the grey, and wearing a gleaming white helmet, highly polished boots, spurs and scabbard. He was a popular figure, known to his friends as Louis, but he was impetuous, almost deliberately courting danger.
On June 1, Louis and his troops were ambushed by Zulu warriors during a scouting expedition.
Unable to mount his horse in the confusion, he found himself alone near a small river. Defending himself with his revolver, Louis was hit by an assegai in the thigh. Ripping it out, he then defended himself with it, but seven warriors had crowded around him, arms rising and falling in a flurry of reddening assegais. A small white cairn was later erected to mark the spot where he fell.
This was not the ending anyone had in mind for one of Durban’s earliest royal visitors. But not all visits by royalty during war-time ended this way. Britain had been shaken by its early defeats in the Boer War at the hands of some determined farmers who had dared to challenge the mightiest empire.
The use of concentration camps, with their often squalid conditions, led to the deaths of 26 000 Boer women and children. In the Durban alone, there were more than 500 camp deaths at the Jacobs (47), Merebank (454), Pinetown (20) and Wentworth (16) camps.
Wassermann and Kearney list the names of each of them in Warrior’s Gateway. The camps, along with the burning of thousands of Boer farms, made the final British victory more of an embarrassment than a success.
To help overcome poor public opinion, the duke and duchess of Cornwall went on a worldwide tour of the British Empire in 1901, sailing on the Ophir. The tour was designed to thank the dominions for their participation in the war and to remind British subjects that, for the empire, it was still business as usual in the wake of Queen Victoria’s recent death. The tour achieved its goals, but the painful memories of the Boer War died slowly.
Affectionately known as George and May, the future King George V and Queen Mary arrived in Durban for a short stop on a windswept, rainy August day that was playing havoc with decorations like Venetian masts, arches and even the decorated harbour cranes.
Part of the whirlwind visit included a procession to Albert Park, where the duke delivered his speech, followed by lunch at the Royal Hotel with almost 200 guests, eager to rub shoulders with royalty.
Empress Eugénie of France (1826 –1920). Her husband Napoleon lll was a notorious womaniser, and Eugénie was a notorious virgin. Once when courting her, Napoléon lll is reputed to have asked the way to her heart, to which she coyly replied, “through the chapel, sire”. In 1880, she made a pilgrimage to Zululand, the place of her son’s death.
After lunch at 2.30pm on August 13, the royal train departed for Pietermaritzburg, wayside stations brightly decorated, each with its crowd hoping to catch a glimpse of their future king and queen.
It took almost a generation for their eldest son, Edward VII, as the Prince of Wales, to follow in his parents’ footsteps and come to Durban as part of a larger southern African tour.
While his father had preferred to stay at home pursuing his hobby of stamp collecting, Edward had not. He had shown impatience with court protocol and caused concern among politicians because of his apparent disregard for established constitutional conventions.
None of this was apparent to the adoring Durban public. Residing at King’s House high up in Morningside for a three-day stay, he went about his work dutifully enough.
It included the official opening of the new graving dock at May
don Wharf, racing at Greyville, a cricket match and a meeting
with 23 000 members of the Indian community in Albert Park.
He left for Zululand on June 5, 1925.
In a recent book, 17 Carnations, Andrew Morton writes: “He was the first royal sex symbol of the modern age, the wistful features of the Prince of Wales adorning the bedside tables and dormitory walls of thousands of schoolgirls and young women across Britain and its dominions.
“He may have been the despair of his austere father, but he was the undisputed darling of the empire.”
His father was also disgusted by his endless affairs, particularly with married women, and was reluctant to see him inherit the crown. He is on record as saying: “After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in 12 months.”
These words turned out to be prophetic. Ascending to the throne after his father’s death on January 20, 1936, Edward’s abdication came on December 11 the same year,
leaving him free to marry his twice-divorced American mistress, Wallis Simpson, a woman who
the British people could never have accepted as their queen.
The constitutional crisis that he brought about severely threatened the monarchy.
But life and empire went on.
On March 5, 1934, one of Edward’s younger brothers, Prince George, arrived at Durban’s Berea Road Station, inspected the guard of honour and proceeded by car to the city hall where the official welcome awaited him.
Prince George, Duke of Kent (1902-1942), was the fifth child of King George V and Queen Mary. He visited Durban as part of a larger tour in 1934. Prince George embraced the Roaring Twenties, enjoying a party life of drink, drugs and wild sex. He died in an air crash during World War II.
Other events included a civic banquet, a grand fancy dress dance at the Pavilion on the beachfront, Currie Cup cricket and a banquet under the auspices of the Natal Indian Congress at the Durban Light Infantry Hall. His tour was not that different from his older brother’s almost 10 years earlier, along with all the fuss and fanfare.
On Thursday, March 8 he boarded the royal train in Durban Station and left for Ladysmith.
Prince George is not to be confused with Edward’s younger brother, Albert or “Bertie” to family and close friends who, after the abdication, went on to become King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II, the current monarch.
Prince George, Duke of Kent, was the fifth child of King George V and Queen Mary. According to Andrew Morton: “Prince George embraced the Roaring Twenties full on, enjoying a party life of drink, drugs and wild sex.”
His string of lovers were said to have included Noel Coward and Barbara Cartland and his social antics reputedly led him to fathering one illegitimate child after another while fighting off various drug addictions.
Those who went to cheer him en route to the station in Durban in 1934 before his trip to Ladysmith were blissfully unaware of any scandal, as had been the case with his oldest brother, Edward, nearly 10 years before.
“They were worshipping a false god,” said Morton.
“It was all a grotesque illusion, a monstrous charade played out before an innocent public.”
Charade or not and as fascinating as these grubby details can be, it was not these two brothers who were at the helm in Britain’s greatest crisis, World War II. It was a reluctant but capable and competent King George VI who managed to steer his empire through its darkest days at great personal cost, providing inspiration and hope just as his father, King George V, had done during World War I.
In war, it is the soldiers who die, but it is usually the women who pay a more terrible price, the price of loneliness and despair, of sadness and longing for what might have been.
During the Anglo-Zulu War, 10 000 mothers’ sons died, black and white. For the Prince Imperial in 1879 at the beginning of this story, death was instant. For his mother, Empress Eugénie of France, this was when the journey to death began.
Within a year of her son’s passing, on April 23, 1880, the empress disembarked in Durban. She was dressed in black and visibly bore the pain of a dreadful loss. Though greeted quietly by large crowds, she did not stay in Durban long, departing by train with her group.
On June 1, 1880, the empress and her party, numbering more than 70, were camped at the Tshotshosi River in Zululand. She spent the whole night alone in prayer next to the small white cairn marking the place of her son’s death.
She may have been Eugénie, Empress of the French, but in Africa she was just a woman mourning the death of her child as only a mother can. It was exactly a year to the day since her tragic loss.
During her all-night vigil she sat with her head in her hands, and in her despair she whispered over and over: “Louis, mon garçon, mon garçon, oh my boy, my boy”.
l Catherine Greenham is a teacher and published author of the novel Rebellion. Michael Greenham is a chartered accountant and lecturer. Together they have a great interest in history, particularly Durban history. They live in an Edwardian home in Currie Road and have a large collection of books on history and English literature as well as old Durban postcards which they use to illustrate their articles.