The Last Emperor
There was a minor scandal in France when the 26-year old Eugenie married the 45-year old Napoleon III in 1853. Eugenie's mother, Miss Kirkpatrick of Closeburn, had lived a somewhat unusual life, at one time running a wine bar in Spain. She married the lame and one-eyed Don Cipriano, Comte de Teba, and had two daughters, Paca and Eugenie. Paca was conceived and born while her father languished in Santiago prison, jailed as a liberale. Eugenie was concieved in Paris, while her father remained in Santiago prison. Gossip linked her mother with George Villiers at this time, later to become fourth earl of Clarendon and British Foreign Secretary.(1)
The sixteen year-old Eugenie had expected a proposal from the Duc d'Alba, and when he proposed to her sister Paca instead, she took poison and almost died. Seven years of rather louche wandering around the capitals of Europe followed, before her marriage to the nephew of the first Emperor Napoleon. In 1856, she gave the third Napoleon (the second was a fiction) the son and heir he had become desperate for. In one of those strange paradoxes that haunt Woolwich, it was Napoleon III's naval ambitions, and Britain's fears of losing naval superiority, that spurred Britain to embark on the warship race. The ill-judged war of 1870 saw the end of the second empire and exile. The Prince Imperial joined the Woolwich Academy in 1872, living in a house on Woolwich Common. He found difficulties with his studies, perhaps because English was not his first language, and he behaved at times with an almost infantile exuberance.
When the Zulu war broke out (click here for a Zulu perspective), it was regarded as little more than a colonial skirmish. After the humiliating defeat of the British at Isandlwana, it became a national obsession that the defeat should be avenged. Young Louis and his mother pulled strings; he felt it was his duty to be there. Eventually the War Office gave way - he was to leave for Zululand In the capacity of a spectator. In Zululand, the Prince again behaved irresponsibly. He would break away from patrols, sword held high, to chase down isolated Zulus. When he was cornered and assegaied to death on 1st June 1879, it cannot have been wholly unexpected. In the opinion of consultant clinical psychologist Dr Adrian Greaves, Louis fitted the profile of a neurotic and an extrovert. As a child, he was concerned that a minor operation scar on the hip would be mistaken for a wound taken from behind. He confided to his tutor that A brave man ought to have his wounds in front. He got his wish.
His body was landed at the Royal Arsenal on 11th July 1879. One of the riverside guardhouses, normally used as an armoury, had been fitted out as a mortuary chapel, where the coffin was opened and the corpse formally identified. He was first buried at Chislehurst, where Eugenie lived, before being moved to Farnborough where he now rests. His death suited the mood of popular Victorian melodrama (perhaps tempered with a little zenophobia); a contemporary writer described the ..undying admiration of the English people for the brave young Prince, who, though a foreigner, had given up his life for England. Clearly, that Louis was probably half-British was something that was best ignored.
One other Arsenal connection with the Zulu war may be noted. Driver Charles Robson RE, Lt Chard's batman, took part in the defence of Rourke's Drift. He and his wife Jane eventually settled in Swingate Lane, Plumstead. During the Great War, he and his wife both worked in the Arsenal. He retired in 1919, at the age of 64, and died in 1933. Originally buried in an unmarked grave in Woolwich Old Cemetery, the local RE Association recently gave him a permanent headstone.

(1)Villiers relationship with Eugenie's mother was described by his sister as "very wicked". Villiers took Eugenie under his protection in England, and it was later he who arranged her introduction to Napoleon III. His open affair with her mother continued until their advanced years.