With His Face to the Foe

With His Face to the Foe is Ian Knight’s biography of Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, the Prince Imperial and only son of Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie. It follows his childhood as heir to the Second French Empire, the family’s exile after the Franco-Prussian War, his military education in Britain and the political expectations that continued to surround him as the Bonapartist claimant.

The final part of the book examines his decision to accompany British forces in the Anglo-Zulu War and the reconnaissance patrol on which he was killed on 1 June 1879. Knight reconstructs the circumstances of his death and the controversy that followed, while showing why the loss of the young prince mattered far beyond Zululand. His death removed the most obvious dynastic focus of French Bonapartism.