The Massacre at Isandlwana
The Zulu nation survived the death of Shaka, but it did not survive the arrival of the white man. While the Zulu remains a coherent nation, their great days came to end in 1879 with the Anglo-Zulu War. They did not, however, go down without a fight, and the Battle of Isandlwana, fought on January 22, 1879, is acknowledged as the worst defeat ever inflicted on the British Army by a native force.
The background to the Anglo/Zulu War is both complicated and simple. The simple version is that South Africa had gold and diamonds in mythic quantity, as well as a landscape with climate that Europeans found compatible. They wanted the land and its resources, and a powerful, fully configured and aggressive native monarchy, ruled by terror, and inimical to British domination, simply could not be allowed to stand.
The Zulu King Cetshwayo, not by any means the same man as his half-brother Shaka, realized that he ruled a nation living on borrowed time. As the British and Boer applied pressure, prodding the Zulu into a war that they did not want, and could not win, he conceded and accommodated until he could do so no more. The British issued an ultimatum, the details of which are not important here, and on January 11, 1879, war broke out.
Under the command of General Lord Chelmsford, a highly ambitious soldier, the British marched into Zululand in force, crossing the Buffalo River at a point known as Rourke’s Drift. Chelmsford fully expected the Zulu to be routed in the time-honored tradition, and he was therefore rather casual and careless in his deployments. The British arrived in the shadow of a large hill known as Isandlwana, and there a base was established. Chelmsford then separated his force, removing two-thirds of his 5,000 men to follow up what he believed was the main Zulu force. It was not. A force of 20,000 Zulu were lying in wait just five miles south of the main British camp.
Isandlwana held a small garrison force of just 1,750 men. At 11h00 on January 22, spotted by advance scouts, the Zulu began to move. Adopting what was known as the Bull and Horns tactic – a heavy frontal assault backed up by two flanking sweeps – the Zulu began to bear down on a hopelessly outnumbered garrison. Even though armed mainly with traditional weapons – shields and assegais – the Zulu bore down and soon overwhelmed the defenders, armed in the main with Henri-Martini breech-loading rifles.
By 15h00 that afternoon, despite heavy losses, the Zulu had taken the camp. Of the original 1,750, of whom 1,000 were white and 750 black auxiliaries, 1,350 lay dead on a blood-soaked battlefield. The survivors fled the scene, making their way back the way they came. As the first of them arrived at Rourke’s Drift, they warned the tiny garrison there that the Zulu were on their way.