All around him the ground was trampled, torn, and stained by gouts of blood.
A bier was now formed by crossed lances of the 17th Lancers, covered by cut rushes and a cavalry cloak. Reverently and almost with womanly tenderness did our soldiers raise the body, and on this bier, so befitting to one of his name, Prince Napoleon was borne by loving hands by the rough and rugged track that led towards the hill of Itelezi; while all around the place where they had found him were flowers of gold and crimson tint, where in the gouts and pools of blood bright-winged moths and butterflies were battening.
That the Prince was duly prepared to meet any fate that might befall him the remarkable prayer composed by him fully attests. It was found in his repositories, and was published in the papers of the time.
The entire Second Division was under arms to receive his remains when brought into the camp beside the river. The body was borne through the lines on a gun-carriage, wrapped in linen and shrouded by a Union Jack; the funeral service was performed by the Catholic chaplain to the forces, and Lord Chelmsford acted as chief mourner. Though tolerably accustomed to bloodshed now, a profound impression of gloom pervaded the faces of the troops.
By mule-cart the body was sent to Pietermaritzburg, and in passing through Ladysmith there occurred a scene that was touching from its simplicity. This is a small village in the Division of Riversdale or Kannaland, where the body remained for the night at the entrance thereof, in the bleak open veldt, under a guard of honour; but from the school-house there came forth, and lined the roadway, a procession of little black children, who, to the accompaniment of an old cracked harmonium, sang a hymn, as the soldiers of the 58th Regiment took the body away, and sweetly and softly the voices of the little ones rose and fell on the chilly air of the morning.
'This,' says Captain Thomasson, of the Irregular Horse, in his narrative, 'was but one mark of the feeling that all in the colony, whatever their age, colour, position, or sex, had at the sudden and terrible close of that bright young life. And it may safely be affirmed that not one disassociated in his mind from the thought of the dead son, the recollection of the blow awaiting the widowed mother.'
The next striking scene was at Durban, the only port in Natal Colony, where the troops handed over the remains to the blue-jackets of H.M.S. Shah for conveyance to England.
Here the poor old majordomo of the Prince was left behind. He was so inconsolable for the loss of his master, that it was feared he would lose his reason, and more than once he said, with simple truth and bitterness:
'My master would not have abandoned one of them!'