The Disastrous Anglo-Zulu War

This video is brought to you by Incogni. Stick around until the end to find out how you can finally stop companies from collecting and selling your personal information. Resonant chants are tempered by the approach of King Quechuayo. 20,000 men are arrayed variously in ostrich feathers and jaguar pelts, and in their hands, shields and iron-tipped spears. The king addresses them. I have not gone over the seas to look for the white men, yet they have come into my country, and I would not be surprised if they took away our wives and cattle and crops and land. They want to take me. What shall I do? The clans of the Zulu kingdom answer him with loud professions of loyalty, for they have not left their quiet homesteads to be showered here with the ashes of sacred herbs, blessed by the ancestral spirits for the sake of mere ceremony. This is a war camp. Red columns have crossed into Zululand. Some 5,000 British troops, as well as Africans in their service, march at the command of the second Baron Chelmsford. From the center column, Lord Chelmsford has repelled Zulu warriors along the border. He found hundreds of huts set around a pasture, the royal homestead of a high-ranking Zulu, and had it set on fire. With the burning valley at their backs, the British now ride further into Zulu country. The stated reasons for this invasion are frivolous, even by the standards of the British empire. Having brutally colonized diamond-rich land claimed by Africans and Dutch-speaking Boer settlers, the colonial British now border the mighty Zulu kingdom. Virtually every able-bodied man within Zululand can be mobilized by the king for war, and each has been trained from boyhood in the art of combat. The High Commissioner for Southern Africa, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, has cobbled together a series of isolated border incidents into a casus belli against King Ketchwayo, despite the latter's vigorous insistence on avoiding war. Even as Frere's superiors excoriate him for apparent warmongering, this is a chance to strengthen regional British authority, to win glory, and to demolish the largest block of indigenous power in Africa. Chelmsford has eagerly undertaken Sir Frere's quest, writing, The force Chelmsford is hunting, the great Zulu army now passes through undulating valleys and lands once host to manifold clans. It was the great King Shaka in the early 19th century who armed the fledgling Zulu people with iron-tipped spears, and developed the horns of the bull battle tactic to encircle, defeat, and subjugate the warring clans. Zulu tradition holds, Shaka thus founded the Zulu Kingdom, a united network of powerful clans who pledge fealty to the divine king, and several times per year send their men to fight on his behalf. Theirs is a land enchanted by the potent spirits of ancestors, whose favor must be curried by rituals, bravery, and discipline. Through the barehanded slaying of a bull, Ketchwayo's warriors have summoned the powers and their souls have been ritually purified, their minds fixed on war. The British camp stirs early in the morning of January 22nd. A few hundred Zulus have been spotted some miles off, perhaps the vanguard of the larger Zulu force. Neglecting to construct defensive works at the camp, Chelmsford gathers half of his troops and rides out to hunt them. But further north on the same morning, a small scouting mission finds a handful of Zulu warriors herding cattle. They give chase, clamber to the summit of a hill and stop, struck by the fateful sight spread miles across the valley. 25,000 Zulu warriors come to defend their kingdom. The valley shifts and roars, and the nearest clans charge after the British. Ketchwayo's brilliant general, Inchingwayo, reigns in the warriors and strategizes with his officers. Chelmsford has left fewer than 2,000 troops at Isanluana. There, the British camp watches the Zulu tide pour onto the plain, echoing with stirring war chants and the rattle of spears against shields. Thousands of Zulus meanwhile stealthily proceed to the flanks of the thin British firing lines. These are the horns of the bull, the tactic honed since the days of King Shaka. British fire first stalls the advance, cutting down many. Once close enough, the Zulus hail spears and fire outdated guns into the British lines, and then charge. Berserking over heaps of fallen comrades, the relentless Zulus plunge their hand spears into British chests and stomachs. The British fall back to camp, scramble for ammunition, but Zulus charge the holes in their ranks and swarm the firing line from all sides. The sky dims under a solar eclipse. Wretched stragglers pull into makeshift squares and flail their bayonets. Zulus beat them with shields and drive spears through their torsos. One officer, Charles Pope, raises a revolver and fires at a Zulu commander. The shot grazes his neck, another hits his leg. The Zulu throws his spear. Pope staggers into the grass, pulling at the skewer in his own chest, but the Zulu forces it back in and kills him. Some British flee toward a river as Zulus chase them on the rocky banks. All those captured or wounded are killed. The Zulus do not take prisoners. After the final shots of resistance are spent, 1,300 of the invading forces lie dead. The victorious Zulus ritually remove their clothes and disembowel them so as to allow the souls of the dead officers, infantry, and drummer boys to escape through the stomach, lest the Zulus be haunted by a trapped spirit. Night brings fog over the hills. Chelmsford makes his tepid return to Isandlwana with his troops. The shrewd offensive of the Zulus has exposed the imperious folly of Chelmsford and left the grass wet with the entrails of Englishmen. One captain recalled stumbling over the naked, gashed, and ghastly bodies of our late comrades. Although the stout resistance of a small band of British soldiers at Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana itself inflicted a great loss on the Zulus, their ranks remain strong and furious. Zulus ambush a British caravan on the Entombe River and proceed to devastate a British force at Hlobane. They track enemy forces to the camp at Kambula. In a show of defensive discipline, the British unleash a violent torrent of firepower on the charging Zulus. The death count is fewer than British and up to 2,000 Zulus. The war has heretofore been the result of insubordinate scheming on the part of Freyr, but now gruesome war stories reach the British public and statesmen and properly animate the broader British Empire to exact revenge. A second invasion is mobilized in late May and now a foreign force of 25,000 roams Zululand. King Ketchwayo continues as always to ask for peace, but the initial demands of Freyr remain unchanged. Most notably the dismantling of the Zulu military system and the admittance of British colonial officials into the kingdom, terms tantamount to the abdication of the Zulu throne, the disintegration of indigenous autonomy. Chelmsford thus rejects Ketchwayo's attempts at ceasefire and diplomacy. Disgraced by the defeat at Isandlwana, Lord Chelmsford learns that he will be replaced by a man called Sir Garnet Wolseley in a matter of weeks. He will have to restore his reputation before then. Defying orders to stay in place, Chelmsford ravages the countryside, driving inhabitants and cattle from their modest homesteads. It had been cattle that provided the pastoralist Zulus with much of their food, furnished men with status and the means to pay dowries to acquire multiple wives. Women meanwhile fulfilled child-rearing duties and supplemented food supply with small-scale agriculture. Now emerging hazily ahead is the greatest herd in the most sprawling homestead of all, Ondini or Elundi, the capital of the Zulu kingdom and the house of Ketchwayo. Chelmsford rallies his 5,000 troops. Cavalry roam the edges of the battlefield and the infantry forms a large square. Over 10,000 Zulus emerge from the swaying grass for a final stand. The horns of the bull encircle the British and then rush inward, met this time with a thunder of cannons and the tearing of the gatling gun and the ceaseless rifle fire. No Zulu comes within 30 yards. The British shoot to death many of the wounded in retreating. Smoke stacks and hissing flames overtake the valley as the royal capital falls. Tired chiefs surrender and the British burn Zululand in their hunt for Ketchwayo. They find him in the Ngombe forests, imprison him in Cape Town, he tells his captors. I was king of the Zulus, had my country invaded by the queen's troops, tried to defend my country but was beaten, taken captive and brought down here by the queen's orders. Here I intend to remain until the queen restores me to Zululand. The struggle for power is familiar to Ketchwayo, for he first gained the throne by killing his rival brother and slaying the men, women and children of that clan. But if the fallen Zulu kingdom made devastating war against rival clans and peoples, it had also gleamed as a strong and united bastion of African power in an age of colonialism. After a visit to London, Ketchwayo is released to Alundi in 1883 to find his kingdom partitioned by the British into contentious and warring districts. A rival chief opposes his return, enlists the aid of Boer mercenaries and attacks the new homestead of Ketchwayo. The loyal general Inchingwayo is killed and the bleeding king escapes again into the forest. Nearing his 60th year, the deposed king of the Zulus dies, either by heart attack or poison. The British soon annex Zululand, and the old clans are violently pressed into the colonial hierarchy in later South Africa. The path ahead is beset by persecution. It will be endured by millions of Zulus who speak still in the old tongue, sing and dance in the royal tradition, and tell stories of a great kingdom that, for a moment, triumphed against the British Empire. In all likelihood, your private information is being sold on the internet. Today's sponsor, Incogni, has a fix, and a discount for History Dose viewers. 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