Violette Impériale - Eau de toilette

When Napoleon III died in 1873, watching over the Imperial Prince, sole heir to the dynasty, became Eugenie’s only objective. His studies completed, Eugenie decided to send him on a voyage across Europe to champion his right to the throne…

But the Imperial Prince sought his legitimacy in military glory, and with Queen Victoria’s consent (and in spite of his mother’s supplications), he entered the Royal Horse Artillery, which at that time was currently waging war against the Zulu people in South Africa. On the 29th February 1879, the 23-year-old officer boards the Danube, a large riverboat, at Southampton.

He never saw the Empress again. On the 26th March, after twenty-seven days on the water, he reaches the Cape. On the 3rd April, he disembarks at Durban. On the 19th, he arrives at Pietermaritzburg. On the 29th, he settles in Dundee.

                                                                

A few months later, on the 1st June 1879, he embarks on a mission into the bush with a dozen men. At approximately two in the afternoon, the small group stopped to lunch. It seemed like a calm spot. The officers lingered and were suddenly attacked by a group of Zulu warriors who had caught them off-guard from their hiding place in the savannah. Overcome with panic, the English jumped onto their horses and fled without firing a single shot, abandoning Prince Louis, who only had his revolver to defend himself. He held out for a few desperate minutes before a javelin pierced his stomach and another stopped his right eye. The Prince collapsed and the Zulus put an end to his misery.

The following day, a group of Englishmen set out to find the body of the Imperial prince. They found the body mutilated with 17 spear-wounds. They took him back to Durban where he was placed on a boat making for England.

Witnesses claimed that upon hearing the death of her son, the Empress Eugenie ‘let out a horrible cry, then collapsed, as though in a daze…’ For months on end, she was consumed by a dreadful despair.

        The Violet Fragrances of Immortal Love   

In April 1880, she decided to visit South Africa to spend the first anniversary of her son’s death at the exact place the Zulus had killed him, right in the bush…

However, for several weeks the expedition turned in circles in the bush without finding the site of the attack. After fifty nights sleeping in a tent, cast into the most profound doubt, she decided to return to England and spent her final night in the bush crying. In the small hours of the morning, while the group was busy dismantling the campsite, the Empress Eugenie felt a sudden spurt of uncontrollable intuition. She quickly got to her feet and, seizing hold of an axe, she went into the bush, followed by her flabbergasted companions…

Walking at marching speed for hours, without restraint or pause, driven solely by her intuition, slicing through creepers and stumbling, she advanced determinedly, guided by the scent of a violet. All of a sudden, her companions heard her cry triumphantly: ‘This is the place!’

Dumbstruck, they approached and noticed that Eugenie had found a pile of stones in the form of a pyramid. The Empress fell to her knees and cried.

At Eugenie’s request, Sir Evelyn Wood and his companions retreated one hundred metres and set up camp, while the Empress spent the night alone, on her knees, crying next to the stone pyramid in front of which she had lit candles.

Yet, at dawn, a strange thing happened: although there was not a single breath of wind, the Empress suddenly saw the flame of the candles gutter as though someone had tried to blow them out. Stirred, she addressed her dead son: ‘Is it you here? Do you want me to leave?’ The flames then quickly expired, and Eugenie left to rejoin her companions, trembling.

She explained to Sir Evelyn Wood that, as they were about to leave the camp to make their way back to Dundee, in the most extreme distress, she was suddenly beset by an extraordinary and overpowering scent of violets. ‘That perfume,’ she told him, ‘surrounded me and assailed me with such violence that I thought I might faint. Oh, you probably do not know, my son had a real passion for that scent. He made abundant use of it for his toilet. It seemed like a sign to me. And I followed that scent blindly without doubting for an instant that it would lead me to the place where Louis fell.’

                                

The memorial to the Imperial Prince Louis Napoleon exists to this day in the heart of Zululand. It is to be found approximately 70km east of Dundee, near the village of Ukwekwe. A low wall of large stones surrounds a bit of earth where the tombstone stands and the cross that Queen Victoria had erected in homage to her ‘poor and dear prince.’

Bibliography

Breton Guy et Pauwels Louis, Histoire Magiques de l'Histoire de France, Paris : Omnibus, 1999

Iconography

Prince impérial : http://www.napoleon.org/histoire-des-2-empires/dossiers-thematiques/le-prince-imperial-1856-1879/