On the seventh of February, 1875, the Prince passed the required examinations and left Woolwich with an officer’s commission. He had developed greatly in every respect, to his mother’s joy and the pride of his party, whose hopes were now fixed on him. His amiability and charm of manner won him friends wherever he went. Unlike his father, he objected strongly to any radical measures or political agitation of any sort, and hoped to recover what he considered his rightful crown by the natural allegiance of France. Besides her political ambitions for her son, Eugénie was anxious also to arrange a suitable marriage for him; but in this she was disappointed. The wooing of Napoleon the Fourth met with the same fate as that of his father. There were repeated rumors of a betrothal between him and Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter, Beatrice, who is said to have cherished a warmer feeling than friendship for the exiled Prince; but, deep as was the sympathy felt for him by the English royal house, and true a friend as Victoria had proved herself, to entrust her daughter’s fate to young Napoleon seemed to her a trifle too uncertain. When this plan failed, Eugénie fixed her hopes on the Princess Thyra of Denmark; and in 1878 the Prince made a visit to that country to try his fortune with the Danish court; but here, too, he was rejected as a suitor. The Bonapartists now felt that to have any serious hope of gaining the French crown the Prince must first win his laurels as a soldier; they urged him, therefore, to join the English army, which was about to go to war with the Kaffirs of Zulu. Much as she desired to see her son seated on the throne, Eugénie shrank from this method of achieving it; but the Prince fell in at once with the suggestion, and unmoved by his mother’s attempts to dissuade him, sailed for Africa with the English troops, leaving a message of farewell to his followers. On the ninth of April, 1879, he arrived at the headquarters of the commander-in-chief, Lord Chelmsford, and took part in several actions with great spirit and courage. In May, while he was on a reconnoitring expedition in the neighborhood of Itelezi with a fellow officer and several men, the party was suddenly surprised by a band of Zulus who sprang out from behind an ambuscade. Abandoned by his companions, who fled to save themselves, the Prince held out bravely as long as he could, but at length one of the savages dealt him a fatal blow, and he fell, his body pierced with seventeen spears. The _Military Gazette_, in which the young Prince received honorable mention, says: “Thus did an inscrutable fate grant to him what it cruelly denied both his father and the great founder of their race—to fall in battle, bravely fighting against the foe.”