De Bonchamps served as a cavalry officer in France and then spent several seasons in North America, hunting in the Rocky Mountains.

De Bonchamps was the first of the other officers to reach the scene of the shooting, and it fell to him to restore order in the chaos and to evacuate the wounded, including the dying Bodson after he had been shot in turn by one of Msiri's men.

In this magazine narrative, de Bonchamps revealed that the expedition had cut off Msiri's head and hoisted it on a pole in plain view as a "barbaric lesson" to his people, a fact which the English account by Joseph Moloney omitted.

The Ethiopian Highlands were too great an obstacle, however, and the de Bonchamps Expedition suffered accidents and attacks from hostile tribesmen.

In 1892, upon returning from the Stairs Expedition, which achieved its objectives for the Belgian king, de Bonchamps said he regretted that his suffering had not been for France.