Headline

The Battle of Isandlwana on 22 January 1879 was the first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom. Eleven days after the British commenced their invasion a 20,000 strong Zulu army attacked a portion of the British main column consisting of 1,700 to 2,000 mixed British and colonial forces. The Zulus were equipped mainly with the traditional Assegai iron spears and cow hide shields, but also had a number of muskets and old rifles though they were not formally trained in their use. The British and colonial troops were armed with the then state of the art Martini-Henry breech-loading rifle, and two 7 pounder artillery pieces as well as a rocket battery. Despite a vast disadvantage in weapons technology, the numerically superior Zulus ultimately overwhelmed the poorly led and badly deployed British, killing over 1,300 troops, including all those out on the firing line. The Zulu army suffered around a thousand killed.

The battle was a decisive victory for the Zulus and caused the defeat of the first British invasion. The British army had received its worst defeat fighting against a technologically inferior indigenous force. However, the defeat of the British forces at Isandlwana resulted in Britain taking a much more aggressive approach in the Anglo-Zulu War, resulting in a heavily reinforced second invasion and destroying King Cetshwayo's hopes of a negotiated peace.

Start of the war

Following the imperialist scheme by which Lord Carnarvon had successfully brought about federation in Canada, it was thought that a similar scheme might succeed in South Africa. In 1874, Sir Henry Bartle Frere was sent to South Africa as high commissioner to instigate the scheme. One of the obstacles to such a plan was the presence of the independent states of the South African Republic and the Kingdom of Zululand.

Sir Bartle Frere, High Commissioner of southern Africa for The British Empire, on his own initiative and without the approval of Her Majesty's Government and with the intent of instigating a war with the Zulu, had presented an ultimatum on 11 December 1878, to the Zulu king Cetshwayo with which the Zulu king could not comply. Cetshwayo did not comply and Bartle Frere sent Lord Chelmsford to invade Zululand.

Preliminary manoeuvres

Lord Chelmsford, the Commander-in-Chief of British forces during the war, initially planned a five-pronged invasion of Zululand composed of five columns and designed to encircle the Zulu army and force them to fight as he was concerned that the Zulus would avoid battle. In the event he settled on three invading columns with the main centre column, now consisting of the previously called No. 3 Column and Durnford's No.2 Column, under his direct command. He moved his troops from where they were stationed in Pietermaritzburg to a forward camp at Helpmekaar, past Greytown. On 9 January 1879 they moved to Rorke's Drift, and early on 11 January commenced crossing the Buffalo River into Zululand.

The backbone of the British force under Lord Chelmsford consisted of twelve regular infantry companies: six each of both the 1st and 2nd battalions, 24th Regiment of Foot (2nd Warwickshire Regiment), which were hardened and reliable troops. In addition, there were approximately 2,500 local African auxiliaries of the Natal Native Contingent, led by European officers but considered generally of poor quality; some irregular cavalry units, and a detachment of artillery consisting of two field guns and several Congreve rockets. Adding on wagon drivers, camp followers and servants, there were more than 4,000 men in the Number 3 Column, not including Durnford's Number 2 Column. Because of the urgency required to accomplish their scheme, Bartle Frere and Chelmsford began the invasion during rainy season. This had the consequence of slowing the British advance to a crawl.

The Zulu army, while a product of a warrior culture, was essentially a militia force which could be called out in time of national danger. It had a very limited logistical capacity and could only stay in the field a few weeks before the troops would be obliged to return to their civilian duties. Zulu warriors were armed primarily with Assegai thrusting spears, known in Zulu as iklwa, clubs, some throwing spears and shields made of cowhide. The Zulu warrior, his regiment and the army drilled in the personal and tactical use and coordination of this weapons system. Some Zulus also had old muskets and antiquated rifles stockpiled, a relatively few of which were carried by Zulu impi. However, their marksmanship training was very poor, quality and supply of powder and shot dreadful, maintenance non-existent and attitude towards firearms summed up in the observation that: "The generality of Zulu warriors, however, would not have firearms - the arms of a coward, as they said, for they enable the poltroon to kill the brave without awaiting his attack."

Cetshwayo sent the 24,000 warrior strong main Zulu impi from near present-day Ulundi, on 17 January, across the White Umfolozi River. On the 18th, some 4,000 warriors were detached from the main body to attack Pearson's column near Eshowe. The remaining 20,000 Zulus camped at the isiPhezi ikhanda. On the 19th they arrived and camped near Babanango mountain. On the next day they moved and camped near Siphezi mountain. Finally, on the 21st they moved into the Ngwebeni valley from where they planned to attack the British on the 23rd and where they stayed concealed until their discovery by Raw's scouts on 22 January. Under the command of Ntshigwayo kaMahole the Zulu army had reached its position in easy stages. It marched in two columns within sight of each other but few miles apart to prevent a surprise attack. They were preceded by a screening force of mounted scouts supported by parties of warriors 200- 400 strong tasked with prevent the main columns from being sighted. The speed of the Zulu advance compared to the British is marked. The Zulu impi had advanced over 80 km (50 miles) in 5 days while Chelmsford had only advanced slightly over 16 km (10 miles) in 10 days.

The British under Lord Chelmsford pitched camp at Isandlwana on 20 January, but did not follow standing orders to entrench. No laager (circling of the wagons) was formed. Chelmsford did not see the need for the laager, stating, "It would take a week to make." But the chief reason for the failure to take defensive precautions appears to have been that the British command severely underestimated the Zulu capabilities. The experience of numerous colonial wars fought in Africa was that the massed firepower of relatively small bodies of professional European troops armed with modern firearms and artillery, and supplemented by local allies and levies, would march out to meet the natives whose ragged, badly equipped armies would put up a brave struggle, but in the end would succumb. Chelmsford believed that a force of over 4,000, including 1,000 British infantry armed with Martini-Henry rifles, as well as artillery, had more than sufficient firepower to overwhelm any attack by Zulus armed only with spears, cowhide shields and a few firearms such as Brown Bess muskets. Indeed, with a British force of this size, it was the logistical arrangements which occupied Chelmsford's thoughts. Rather than any fear that the camp might be attacked, his main concern was managing the huge number of wagons and oxen required to support his forward advance.

Once he had established the camp at Isandlwana, Chelmsford sent out two battalions of the Natal Native Contingent to scout ahead. They skirmished with elements of a Zulu force which Chelmsford believed to be the vanguard of the main enemy army. Such was the over-confidence in British military training and firepower that he divided his force, taking about 2,500 men, including half of the British infantry contingent, and set out to find the main Zulu force with the intention of bringing them to battle, so as to achieve a decisive victory. It never occurred to Chelmsford that the Zulus he saw were diverting him away from their main force.

Chelmsford left five companies, around 70–80 fighting men in each, of the 1st battalion and one stronger company of around 150 men from the 2nd battalion of the 24th behind to guard the camp, under the command of Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Henry Pulleine. Pulleine's orders were to defend the camp and wait for further instructions to support the General as and when called upon. Pulleine also had around 500 men of the Natal Native Contingent and approximately 200 local irregulars who were mounted. He also had two artillery pieces, with around 70 men of the Royal Artillery. In total, some 1300 men and 2 guns to defend the camp.

Pulleine, left in command of a rear position, was an administrator with no experience of front-line command on a campaign. Nevertheless, he commanded a strong force, particularly in respect of the six veteran regular infantry companies, which were experienced at colonial combat. The mounted vedettes, cavalry scouts, patrolling some 11 km (7 miles) from camp reported at 7 A.M. that groups of Zulus, numbering around 4,000 men, could be seen. Further reports arrived to Pulleine during the early morning, each reporting movements, both large and small, of Zulus. There was speculation among the officers whether these troops were intending to march against Chelmsford's rear or towards the camp itself.

Around 10:30 A.M., Colonel Anthony Durnford arrived from Rorke's Drift with 5 troops of the Natal Native horse and a rocket battery. This put the issue of command to the fore because Durnford was senior and by tradition would have assumed command. However, he did not over-rule Pulleine's dispositions and after lunch he quickly decided to take to the initiative and move forward to engage a Zulu force which, at that point, Pulleine and Durnford judged to be moving against Chelmsford's rear. He asked for a company of the 24th, but Pulleine was reluctant to agree since his orders had been specifically to defend the camp.

Chelmsford had underestimated the disciplined, well led, well motivated and confident Zulu. The failure to secure an effective defensive position, the poor intelligence about the location of the main Zulu army, Chelmsford's decision to split his force in half, and the Zulus' tactical exploitation of the terrain and the weaknesses in the British formation, all combined to prove catastrophic for the troops at Isandlwana. In contrast, the Zulus responded to the unexpected discovery of their camp with an immediate and spontaneous advance. Even though the indunas would lose control over the advance, the training instilled in the warriors allowed the Zulu troops to form their standard attack formation on the run, their battle line deployed in reverse of its intended order.

The battle

The Zulu Army was commanded by inDunas (Princes) Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khozalo and Mavumengwana kaNdlela Ntuli. The inDuna Dabulamanzi kaMpande, half brother of Cetshwayo, would command the Undi Corps after kaMapitha, the regular inkhosi, or commander, was wounded.

While Chelmsford was in the field seeking them, the entire Zulu army had outmanoeuvred him, moving behind his force with the intention of attacking the British army on the 23rd. They were discovered at around 8 A.M. by men of Lt. Raw's troop of scouts who chased a number of Zulus into a valley, only then seeing around 20,000 men of the main enemy force sitting in total quiet. Having been discovered the Zulu force leapt to the offensive. Raw's men began a fighting retreat back to the camp and a messenger was sent to warn Pulleine of the situation. Pulleine observed Zulus on the hills to his left front and sent word to Chelmsford which was received by the General between 9 and 10 A.M.

The Zulu attack then developed in the traditional horns and chest of the buffalo, with the aim of encircling the British position. From Pulleine's vantage point in the camp, at first only the right horn and then the chest (centre) of the attack seemed to be developing. Pulleine sent out first one, then all of his six companies of the 24th Foot into an extended firing line, with the aim of meeting the Zulu attack head on and checking it with firepower. Durnford's men, upon meeting elements of the Zulu centre, had retreated to a donga, a dried out watercourse, on the British right flank where they formed a defensive line. The Rocket Battery under Durnford's command, which was not mounted and dropped behind the rest of the force, was isolated and overrun very early in the engagement. The two battalions of native troops were in Durnford's line, while all the officers and NCOs carried rifles only one in ten of the ranks was armed with a muzzle-loading musket with limited ammunition and many of them started to leave the battlefield at this point. Pulleine only made one change to the original disposition after about twenty minutes of firing, which was to bring in the companies in the firing line slightly closer to the camp.

For a few hours until noon, the disciplined British volleys pinned down the Zulu centre, inflicting some casualties and causing the advance to stall. Indeed, morale remained high within the British line. The Martini-Henry rifle was a powerful weapon and the men were experienced. Additionally, the fire of the cannons of the Royal Artillery forced some Zulu regiments to take cover behind the reverse slope of a hill. Nevertheless, the left horn of the Zulu advance was moving to outflank the British right flank position and envelop it.

Durnford's men, who had been fighting longest, began to withdraw and their rate of fire diminished. Durnford's withdrawal exposed the right flank of the British regulars, which, with the general threat of the Zulu encirclement, caused Pulleine to order a withdrawal back to the camp. The regulars' retreat was performed with order and discipline and the men of the 24th conducted a fighting withdrawal into the camp. Durnford's retreat, however, exposed the flank of G Company, 2nd/24th, which was overrun relatively quickly.

An officer in advance from Chelmsford's force gave this eyewitness account of the final stage of the battle at about 3 P.M.

"In a few seconds we distinctly saw the guns fired again, one after the other, sharp. This was done several times -a pause, and then a flash - flash! The sun was shining on the camp at the time, and then the camp looked dark, just as if a shadow was passing over it. The guns did not fire after that, and in a few minutes all the tents had disappeared."

The presence of large numbers of bodies grouped together suggests the resistance was more protracted than originally thought and they made a number of desperate last stands. Evidence of this is that many of the bodies, today marked by cairns, were found in several large groups around the camp — including one stand of around 150 men. A Zulu account describes a group of the 24th forming a square on the neck of Isandlwana. What is clear is that the slaughter was complete in the area around the camp and back to Natal along the Fugitive's Drift. The fighting had been hand-to-hand combat and no quarter given to the British regulars. The Zulus had been commanded to ignore the civilians in black coats. This meant that many officers, whose patrol dress was dark blue and black at the time, were spared. The British fought back-to-back with bayonet and rifle butt when their ammunition had finally been expended.

Over 1,300 British troops and African auxiliaries had died of the more than 1,700 strong force, most of them Europeans. The two commanders on the field Pulliene and Durnford were killed and only five Imperial officers survived. The NNC lost some 400 men and there were 240 lost from one group of 249 African auxiliaries. Some 1,000 Martini-Henry rifles, 2 canons, 400,000 rounds of ammunition, most of the hundreds of draft animals, impedimenta like tinned food, biscuits, beer, overcoats, tents and other supplies were taken by the Zulu. Of the survivors, most were from the auxiliaries. The Zulus had lost around 1,000 killed with various unconfirmed estimates for their wounded.

Isandlwana was an immediate catastrophe for the British. However, the victory of the Zulus did not end the war. With the decisive defeat of Chelmsford's central column, the entire invasion of Zululand collapsed and would have to be restaged. Not only were there heavy manpower casualties to the Main Column, but most of the supplies, ammunition, and draught animals were lost. As King Cetshwayo feared, the embarrassment of the defeat would force the policy makers in London, who to this point had not supported the war, to rally to the support of the pro-war contingent in the Natal government and commit whatever resources were needed to defeat the Zulus. Despite local numerical superiority, the Zulus did not have manpower, technological resources or logistical capacity to match the British in another, more extended, campaign.

While the battle was a triumph for the Zulus, they missed a tremendous opportunity to exploit their victory and possibly win the war that day on their own territory. The reconnaissance force under Chelmsford was more vulnerable to being defeated by an attack than the camp. It was strung out and somewhat scattered, it had marched with limited rations and ammunition it could not now replace and it was panicky and demoralized by the defeat at Isandlwana.

Near the end of the battle, about 4,000 Zulu warriors of the unengaged reserve Undi impi, after cutting off the retreat of the survivors to the Buffalo River southwest of Isandlwana, crossed the river and attacked the fortified mission station at Rorke's Drift. It was defended by only 139 British soldiers who inflicted serious casualties upon the attacking Zulus, and successfully beat them back. Elsewhere, the left and right flanks of the invading forces were now isolated and without support. The No. 1 column under the command of Charles Pearson would be besieged for two months by a Zulu force at Eshowe while the No. 4 column under Evelyn Wood halted its advance and spent most of the next two months skirmishing in the northwest around Tinta's Kraal.

Following the news of Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift, the British and Colonials were in complete panic over the possibility of a counter invasion of Natal by the Zulus. All the towns of Natal 'laagered' up and fortified and provisions and stores laid in. Bartle Frere stoked the fear of invasion despite the fact that, aside from Rorke's Drift, the Zulus made no attempt to cross the border. Unknown to them, Cetshwayo, still hoping to avoid a total war, had prohibited any crossing of the border in retaliation and was incensed over the violation of the border by the attack on Rorke's Drift. Immediately following the battle, one Zulu Prince urged them to advance and take the war into the colony but they were restrained by a commander reminding them of Cetshwayo's prohibiting the crossing the border.

The British government's reasoning for a new invasion was threefold. The first was jingoistic to a degree and national honour demanded that the enemy, victors in one battle, should lose the war. The second concerned the domestic political implications with ramifications at the next parliamentary elections. However, despite the new invasion, the British Prime Minister Disraeli and his party would lose the 1880 election. Finally, there were considerations affecting the Empire: unless the British were seen to win a clear-cut victory against the Zulus, it would send a signal that the British Empire was vulnerable and that the defeat of a British field army could alter policy. Until then, one of the arguments against a war with the Zulus was that the costs could not be justified.[citation needed] If the Zulu victory at Isandlwana encouraged resistance elsewhere in the Empire, then committing the resources necessary to defeat the Zulus would, in the long term, prove cheaper than fighting wars that the Zulu success inspired against British Imperialism elsewhere.

After Isandlwana, the British field army was heavily reinforced and again invaded Zululand. Sir Garnet Wolseley was sent to take command and relieve Chelmsford, as well as Bartle Frere. Chelmsford, however, avoided handing over command to Wolseley and managed to defeat the Zulus in a number of engagements, the last of which was the Battle of Ulundi followed by capture of King Cetshwayo. The British encouraged the subkings of the Zulus to rule their subkingdoms without acknowledging a central Zulu power. By the time King Cetshwayo was allowed to return home there was no longer an independent Zulu kingdom.

The measure of respect that the British gained for their opponents as a result of Isandlwana can be seen that in none of the other engagements of the Zulu War did the British attempt to fight again in their typical linear formation, known famously as The Thin Red Line in an open field battle with the main Zulu impi. In the battles that followed the British entrenched themselves or formed very close order formations, such as the square, when facing the Zulu.

Reasons for the Zulu victory

The primary reason for the Zulu victory is that the Zulus, unlike the British, kept their main fighting force concentrated. Further, they made a very successful effort to conceal the advance and location of this force until they were within a few hours striking distance of their enemy. In comparison, the British made no such efforts. Finally, when the location of the main Zulu Impi was discovered by British scouts, the Zulus, without hesitation, immediately advanced and attacked, achieving tactical surprise. This tactical surprise prevented the British, although they now had some warning of a Zulu advance, from concentrating their central column. It also left little time and gave scant information for Pulleine to organize a sufficient defence for his command. Simply put, the Zulus had completely outmanoeuvred Chelmsford and their victory at Isandlwana would wreck the British invasion of Zululand until a second, far larger, British army could be shipped to South Africa.

In addition to the obvious courage exhibited by the Zulu warriors, there are several factors that contributed to the ferocity and effectiveness of the attack. The warriors were initially indoctrinated into the Zulu army, using methods not unlike those employed by modern armies for recruit training. They were isolated from their families and the surrounding communities in an attempt to re socialize them, to encourage and force them to adopt common attitudes and common modes of thinking. The army employed classic military indoctrination techniques, such as drill and war dances, in order to coalesce individuals into cohesive fighting units.

Reasons for the British defeat

Debate persists as to how and why the British lost the battle. Many arguments focus on possible local tactical occurrences as opposed to the strategic lapses and failings in grand tactics on the part of high command under Chelmsford and Bartle Frere.

The tactical arguments for the defeat:

* The initial view, reported by Horace Smith-Dorrien, was that the British had difficulty unpacking their ammunition boxes fast enough and that the quartermasters were reluctant to distribute ammunition to units other than their own. Well-equipped and well-trained British soldiers could fire 10-12 rounds a minute. The lack of ammunition caused a lull in the defence. In subsequent engagements with the Zulus, ammunition boxes were unscrewed in advance for rapid distribution.
* Donald Morris in The Washing of the Spears argues that the men, fighting too far from the camp, ran out of ammunition, starting first with Durnford's men who were holding the right flank and who had been in action longer, which precipitated a slowdown in the rate of fire against the Zulus. This argument suggests that the ammunition was too far from the firing line and that the seventy rounds each man took to the firing line was not sufficient.

Perhaps the most persuasive view, however, recently supported with evidence from the battlefield, such as Ian Knight and Lt. Colonel Snook's works, (the latter having written How Can Man Die Better?), suggest that although Durnford's men probably did run out of ammunition, the majority of men in the firing line did not. The discovery of the British line so far out from the camp has led Ian Knight to conclude that the British were defending too large a perimeter.

Article thanks to Wikipedia