Chard and Bromhead achieved a certain degree of fame, but
there was another subaltern who became better known in Britain, though for
quite different reasons: he once chose to be prudent rather than heroic. His
fate was tied to the Prince Imperial, Louis Napoleon, only son of Napoleon III
and the Empress Eugénie and the great hope of the French Bonapartists, who
already called him Napoleon IV.
The Prince Imperial had been educated in England and had
attended Woolwich, although he was not given a commission. After Isandhlwana,
when reinforcements were being shipped out to Chelmsford, he begged to be allowed
to go fight. Although Disraeli thought it would be ‘injudicious’, the Empress
Eugénie enlisted the support of the Queen on her son’s behalf and he was at
last permitted to go to war as a ‘spectator’. Chelmsford was told to look after
him. The Prince wrote his will – the only document he ever signed as ‘Napoleon’
— and, taking the sword carried by the first Napoleon at Austerlitz, he sailed
for Durban. There he donned the undress uniform of a British lieutenant and
with a valet, a groom, and two horses – one of which was named ‘Fate’ – he
proceeded to the front to join Chelmsford’s staff.
He was a lively, popular young man and eager to see action.
He went out on a few patrols and worried his commanders by his dash and daring.
The Duke of Cambridge had told Chelmsford: ‘My only anxiety on his conduct
would be, that he is too plucky and go ahead.’ After one experience with the
Prince, Buller refused to take responsibility for him. The Prince told Wood: ‘I
would rather fall by assegai than bullets as it would show we were at close
quarters.’ Chelmsford finally ordered that the Prince should remain in the camp
unless he went out with a strong escort.
Chelmsford’s columns were now beginning to move into
Zululand and the Prince was given the task of sketching the ground over which
one of them travelled. One 1 June the Prince asked if he could extend his
sketch to cover the ground they would be covering on the following day. The
ground had already been gone over by a patrol and no Zulus had been seen, but
orders were given that a dozen troopers accompany him. It was then that another
staff officer, Lieutenant Jahleel Carey, apparently on an impulse, asked and
obtained permission to go with the Prince.
Lieutenant Carey, son of a clergyman, was an exceptionally
religious officer and devoted to his wife, two daughters and his mother. He had
been commissioned in the 3rd West Indian Regiment and had taken part in a minor
expedition to Honduras in 1867. Three years later he went on half pay in order
to go to France with an English ambulance unit. He had now served fourteen
years in the Army and had passed through the staff college. He had transferred
to the 98th Regiment (North Staffordshire) and was soon to be gazetted captain.
This was a fateful day in his life.
Not all of the troopers assigned to go with the Prince
appeared – they reported to the wrong place – but Lieutenant Carey and the
Prince took the seven men that did report and set off. A light rain was falling
as they rode out of camp. Major Francis W. Grenfell saw them and called out to
the Prince, ‘Take care of yourself, and don’t get shot!’ The Prince waved and
replied that Carey would take good care of him.
It is not clear who was, or ought to have been, in command
of this little party. Technically, of course, the Prince had no authority and
Carey, as the only commissioned officer, was in charge, but the Prince seems to
have given most of the orders and the soldiers obeyed him. Shortly past midday
they halted at a deserted kraal, pulled thatch from a roof to build a fire, and
made coffee. The kraal was, they knew, only temporarily deserted, ashes by one
of the huts were still warm, but no lookouts were posted and no member of the
party seemed anxious. Carey and the Prince discussed the campaigns of Napoleon
Bonaparte as they rested and drank their coffee. About 3.30 they prepared to
move on. The horses were saddled. The men stood by their horses’ heads. The
Prince gave the preliminary order, ‘Prepare to mount!’ Each left foot was put
in a stirrup. Then the order, ‘Mount’. And at that moment there was a crash of
musketry and about forty Zulus ran screaming towards them. Most of the troopers
gained their saddles and their horses carried them away, but the Prince’s horse
shied and dashed off before he could mount. For a hundred yards he clung to a
leather holster attached to the saddle; then a strap broke and the Prince fell
beneath his horse.
The horse trampled on his right arm, but he leapt to his
feet, drew his revolver with his left hand, and started to run. The Zulus were
behind him running faster. One hurled an assegai that pierced his thigh. He
stopped, pulled it out and turned on his pursuers. He fired two shots, but
missed. Another assegai struck him in the left shoulder. He tried to fight with
the assegai he had pulled from his thigh, but, weak from loss of blood, he sank
to the ground. In a few moments he was overwhelmed. When found, his body had
eighteen assegai wounds.
Of the Prince’s escort, two had been killed and one was
missing. Lieutenant Carey and the four remaining men had been carried off by
their frightened horses at the first volley but they stopped and came together
in a depression about fifty yards from where the Prince was killed. None had
fired a shot at the Zulus. To Carey it seemed foolhardy to return to look for
the Prince when they were so obviously outnumbered. He led his men back to
camp.
When Lieutenant Carey entered the officers’ mess he was
greeted for the last time by a cheery remark from a fellow officer: Major
Grenfell called out, ‘Why, Carey, you’re late for dinner. We thought you’d been
shot.’
‘I’m all right,’ Carey said glumly, ‘but the Prince has been
killed.’
The word soon spread through the camp. Chelmsford was
shaken. All those responsible knew the importance of the tragedy, not only to
the world at large but to their own careers and reputations. The wretched
Lieutenant Carey sat down that night and wrote the whole story to his wife: ‘I
am a ruined man, I fear. … But it might have been my fate. The bullets tore
around us and with only my revolver what could I do. … I feel so miserable
and dejected!’ He had reason for feeling sorry for himself. It was probably
true that there was little he could have done to save the Prince and that he
probably would have been killed himself had he tried. But he did not try. And
for this he was condemned by every officer in Zululand; indeed, by every
officer in the British army. He tried to find excuses for himself. Apparently
he came to believe in his own blamelessness and to resent the scorn of his
fellow officers. He demanded a court of inquiry to clear his name. The court
met and recommended that he be court-martialled. At his trial Carey maintained
that he had not been in command of the party but had only accompanied the
Prince to correct his sketches. He did everything possible to shift the blame
for the disaster onto the victim. He did not succeed. The court found him
guilty of misbehaviour in the face of the enemy.
The news of the death of the Prince Imperial created a
sensation in England. Queen Victoria heard of it on the forty-second
anniversary of her accession to the throne while at Balmoral castle. The
newspapers were soon full of it. It was the biggest story of the year and was
given more coverage in the press than the defeat at Isandhlwana, and far more
than the gallant defence of Rorke’s Drift.
Carey was sent back to England where he found considerable
sympathy among civilians who did not understand the soldiers’ code and who
thought that Chelmsford and the Duke of Cambridge were more to be blamed than
he. Carey, in his talks with the many reporters who interviewed him, put more
and more of the blame on the Prince. In spite of everything, Eugénie pleaded
with Queen Victoria not to allow him to be punished and the Queen reluctantly wrote
to the review board to ask them to drop the charge, which they did. Carey was
ordered to report to his regiment, but he was still not content. He felt that
he would be completely vindicated only if Eugénie received him. He wrote time
and time again requesting this, but, unknown to him the text of the letter he
had written his wife immediately after the fight admitting his cowardice, had
been sent to Eugénie. He wrote and talked so much that at last the Empress
released the letter to the press. Carey was ruined.
When he rejoined his regiment Carey found himself a pariah.
No one spoke to him. Officers turned their backs when he approached them. He
had disgraced his regiment and the army, and he was never forgiven. Oddly
enough, he did not resign but endured this social hell for six years until he
died in Bombay.
Soldiers and civilians obviously had different views of the
affair. For the most part the soldiers kept their mouths shut, but Wolseley,
writing to his wife, expressed the views of many officers when he said: ‘He was
a plucky young man, and he died a soldier’s death. What on earth could he have
better? Many other brave men have also fallen during this war, and with the
Prince’s fate England as a nation had no concern. Perhaps I have insufficient sympathy
with foreign nations; I reserve all my deep feeling for Her Majesty’s
subjects.’
A month after the Battle of Ulundi, Cetewayo was captured
and sent off to England. There on 14 August 1882 he was presented to Queen
Victoria. She recorded the meeting in her journal: ‘Cetewayo is a very fine man
in his native costume, or rather no costume. He is tall, immensely broad, and
stout, with a good-humoured countenance, and an intelligent face.
Unfortunately, he appeared in a hideous black frock coat and trousers. …’
Cetewayo could not wear his necklace of lions’ claws for it had been
appropriated by Wolseley, who broke up the necklace, had the claws suitably
mounted, and presented them to the wives of important men.
Cetewayo was later returned to Zululand and reinstated. The
Queen thought this a mistake, but, as she told Sir Henry Ponsonby, ‘Cetewayo is
unscrupulous, as might be expected, but he is not a fool; and I do not think he
will with his eyes open come into collision with us again.’ She was right.
The British army went away to fight elsewhere and the Zulus
were left to try to recover from their disaster. They never did. Eighteen years
later Zululand was annexed to Natal. In 1906 the Zulus made a last attempt to
be free, but their revolt was quickly suppressed. The Zulus still exist, one
tribe among many in the Republic of South Africa, and they still make their
distinctive black and white cowhide shields and their sharp assegais – tourists
like them.
