After they were expelled from France following their defeat at Sedan, Napoleon III and his family settled near Chislehurst in Kent. When the Emperor died in 1873, Empress Eugenie's life re-centred on her son, Louis Napoleon, the Prince Imperial. When the Zulu War broke out in 1879, the Prince begged to be allowed and did fight for his adopted country England. On June 1, 1879, the Prince's party was ambushed, all escaping except the Prince who sustained seventeen wounds from Zulu assassins and died. To Empress Eugenie, the loss of her only son, coming so soon after the fall of the Empire and the death of her husband, was the crowning tragedy. In her sorrow she went on a pilgrimage to the scene of her son's death and resolved to build a memorial over the tombs of her husband and son. She acquired the property at Farnborough consisting of a large ornate mansion with some three hundred acres. A little later she purchased some high ground where St. Michael's Abbey church was built to receive the remains of her husband and son. M. Destailleur of Paris was hired as the architect with foundation work on the mausoleum begun in 1883 and completed in 1888. Empress Eugenie died in Spain on July 11, 1920 and was buried in England. The house was sold in 1927 to an order of teaching nuns "The Religious of Christian Education" and Farnborough Hill has remained a convent and college ever since.