Zulu!: The Battle for Rorke's Drift 1879

by Edmund Yorke

Overview

Fought on the night of 22/23 January 1879 and immortalised in the film epic Zulu, Rorke's Drift represented one of the most glorious, if subsequently controversial episodes in British military history.

For twelve desperate hours, outnumbered by over 25-1, barely 140 British soldiers, based at the remote mission station of Rorke's Drift, South Africa, were locked in a ferocious life or death struggle with over 4000 seasoned warriors of the hitherto victorious Zulu Army - the most powerful indigenous African army.

Only hours earlier, in the shadow of the ominous Sphinx-like Isandlwana Crag, other elements of this same Zulu force had virtually annihilated a 1700-strong British colonial force - one of the greatest defeats of Queen Victoria's reign. In the wake of this massacre, the survival of the British Empire in South Africa rested with the tiny garrison of Rorke's Drift.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780752496443
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	07/01/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	794,834
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

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Zulu!

The Battle for Rorke's Drift 1879

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By Edmund Yorke

The History Press

Copyright © 2013 Edmund Yorke,
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-9644-3

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CHAPTER 1

Road to War: The Storm-Clouds Gather, 1877-9

As it happened, a letter urging the postponement of all operations for war with the Zulus reached me some days too late to enable us to recede with any regard to either safety or honour. The aid you are now sending us, will, I hope, enable us to settle the Zulus finally, speedily and with the least possible bloodshed, but it is really not possible, without some loss of life, to render innocuous to his neighbours a savage with 30 or 40 thousand armed men at his absolute command, whose system of government and personal pleasure rest equally on bloodshed, who was never known to forgive, never observe a promise, who believes himself the greatest potentate on earth and whose outposts are on one side of the river fordable for eleven months of the year, and our farmers on the other?

Sir Bartle Frere, High Commissioner South Africa, to Mr Herbert, Under-Secretary of State Colonies, 23 Dec 1878, in J. Martineau, Life of Sir Bartle Frere, p. 266

The causes of the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War continue to be the subject of considerable academic debate. For some historians, the war was essentially a result of an almost subconscious desire by the imperial metropole and local settler governments to exploit and incorporate the virgin Zulu labour pool into the rapidly expanding mine and farm industrial complex of South Africa. For others, it was essentially a question of security – a necessary pre-emptive strike against a volatile, highly militaristic and allegedly barbarised African state which posed a major strategic threat to local under-populated white societies and constituted a deep affront to the principles of 'white civilisation'. Of the officials directly involved in this 'war policy' against the Zulu-men, such as Sir Theophilus Shepstone, Lieutenant-General Frederick Thesiger (Lord Chelmsford) and Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Colonial Secretary, it has been Sir Henry Bartle Frere, the British High Commissioner for South Africa, who has been largely blamed for the prosecution of the Zulu War and the subsequent destruction and break-up of the Zulu nation. Thus leading historians have described Frere as an aggressive unprincipled expansionist, 'a man of tenacious character and grave and lofty if ill calculated aims', and a man who 'by his high-handed conduct plunged the country into an idle and indefensible war against the Zulu'.

This chapter, by critically evaluating the key events leading up to the outbreak of war, will seek to throw fresh light upon the conduct of Sir Bartle Frere. It will focus especially on the support afforded him at the very heart of the Colonial Office, support which continued well after the official government veto on the Zulu War, and which continued even after Frere felt compelled, for good military and strategic reasons, to exceed his instructions and promote and execute what he considered to be a necessary preventative war against the Zulu.

The Strategic Background, 1877-9

The political and strategic situation in South Africa that confronted the British government in the late 1870s could only be described as deeply depressing. In many respects, South Africa was undergoing a familiar, periodic turbulence which had already earned it the reputation of being one of Britain's most difficult and complex colonies. By January 1878, the ailing brain-child of Colonial Secretary Lord Carnarvon's grand confederation scheme, aimed at establishing a modern, unified, self-governing and above all loyal and economical dominion of the Empire, was facing disintegration. Strenuous efforts over the preceding decade to achieve political unity had made little headway, for, although three out of the five of the white settler states – the Cape, Natal and Griqualand West – were under British government rule by 1876, no two communities had expressed a willingness to unite and no two constitutions were alike. Old inter-colonial, often commercial jealousies, such as those existing between the Cape and Natal, between Griqualand West and the Cape and even between the Eastern and Western Provinces of the Cape, continued to remain potent obstacles to confederation. The other white settler colonies – the two Boer Republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal – remained extremely hostile to the idea of British rule. It was a hostility dating back to the 'Great Trek' of the 1830s, when hundreds of Boer families trekked north and east to escape the pressures of British authority, especially new tax and anti-slavery laws. The Orange Free State remained solidly independent from British rule and was already benefiting economically from the earlier great diamond field discoveries of the 1860s. By contrast, the under-populated Transvaal was facing bankruptcy and imminent collapse under the pressure of hostile African tribes, and was in danger of creating a serious security vacuum for white settlerdom in the region.

The state of African affairs was similarly unprepossessing. The Cape-Xhosa war was in full swing and others were perceived to be imminent. The diamond discoveries in Griqualand West and the Orange Free State during the late 1860s and 1870s, and the consequent insatiable demand for black labour, had hastened the breakup of tribal societies. The resultant economic and social disquiet lay at the heart of African unrest, which the new South African High Commissioner Sir Bartle Frere was destined to inherit across many of the provinces' borders. There were, as Lord Carnarvon himself remarked, 'clouds gathering all round the horizon', and no cloud could be more ominous and threatening than that of the Zulu 'thunder cloud' overshadowing the isolated, under-populated and consequently highly vulnerable colonies of Natal and the Transvaal. Friction and war between these groups of European settlers and the most powerful African polity in sub-Saharan Africa had been a recurring feature of southern African history for the previous half-century. Major conflict between the two peoples again dated from at least the 1830s, when migrating Boer trekkers had first clashed with Zulu impis (regiments) as they pushed deep into the southern African interior. The great Zulu empire, forged by war out of a few disparate Nguni clans by Chief Shaka, had by the 1870s come to dominate the south-east region of the South African empire, deploying up to 40,000 warriors. Nevertheless, up to the late 1870s, the tiny British colony of Natal (established in 1845), despite its precarious strategic position within Zululand, had maintained relatively amicable relations with successive Zulu chieftains, and imperial forces had not been drawn into any full-scale conflict with the Zulu. Indeed, as we shall see, the British settlers were already rivals of the Boers and had often seemed to be friends if not allies of the Zulu. As even Sir Bartle Frere was later to admit, the Zulu and their current chief Cetshwayo, were

always anti-Boer and therefore philo-Natal,and one sees a good deal of the feeling for him thus engendered among people here, some of whom would sooner see us join the Zulus to teach the Boers manners, than join the Boers to prevent the Zulus from murdering.

Catalyst for War – The Transvaal Annexation (April 1877)

In April 1877, a single legal act had made the Zulu a more potent threat than ever before to the peaceful conditions that Carnarvon had recognised as an essential prerequisite of any successful South African Confederation. The annexation of the Transvaal by the British Administrator, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, an act sanctioned and carried out on behalf of Carnarvon, has been recognised by virtually all historians as a primary catalyst for the Zulu War. B.C. Pine, a former governor of Natal, described it as 'the immediate cause of the Zulu War'. The annexation of what was, admittedly a chronically insolvent and collapsed state, effectively destroyed what Pine described as the 'system of checks and balances' whereby Natal had been safeguarded from Zulu attack by the existence of an independent Transvaal as a counterpoise or buffer. The change of flag in the Transvaal made it impossible for Natal to pursue its hitherto successful but risky policy of employing the long-standing enmity between Boer and Zulu to secure for herself immunity from Zulu aggression. As Shepstone reported:

hitherto the relations of the Amaswazi Zulu with Her Majesty's Government had been from circumstances of those of distant neighbours but by that recent change they had become either adjoining neighbours or subjects.

For the newly arrived High Commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, long regarded as the primary author of the Zulu War, this new, critical strategic situation was one for which he had no direct responsibility. Frere had only arrived at the Cape at the end of March 1877, and it was not until 10 April that he had formally taken up his post as governor of South Africa and High Commissioner for Native Affairs. The first news of Shepstone's action was not telegraphed to him from Kimberley until 16 April, while the official report and copies of the proclamation failed to reach him in Cape Town until 30 April. The annexation, in Frere's own words:

was an act which in no way originated with me, over which I had no control, and with which I was only subsequently incidentally connected ...

The political and strategic implications of the annexation of the Transvaal were dire. As Sir Bartle Frere reported to General Ponsonby, Queen Victoria's secretary, in an elegant allegorical phrase, demonstrating his fine command of the English language:

the fact is that while the Boer Republic was a rival and semi-hostile power, it was a Natal weakness rather to pet the Zulus as one might a tame wolf who only devours ones neighbours sheep. We always remonstrated, but rather feebly, and now that both flocks belong to us we are rather embarrassed in stopping the wolf's ravages.

The Zulu 'wolf' was now at Natal's door, and the two nations were propelled onto a collision course, precipitating a tense face-to-face confrontation with Zulu power along a far wider strategic front. According to a keen contemporary observer, Sir H. Rider Haggard, this made Cetshwayo suspiciously hostile to the apparent concerted attempt at the encirclement of Zululand by his former British friends. Sir Bartle Frere's ability to deal with this expanded complex situation enjoyed the full confidence of the Home Government. Frere had come from India to South Africa with an awesome reputation as an imperial statesman, even as a 'troubleshooter'. C.W. De Kiewiet observed that 'no South African Governor had come so rich in a varied experience'. A man perceived to be of the highest honour and integrity, he had, for nine years, been Chief Commissioner in Scinde, where his courageous administration during the Indian Mutiny had moved none other than Sir John Lawrence to observe:

that probably there is no Civil Officer in India, who for eminent exertions, deserves better of the Government than Mr H.E.B. Frere.

He had been governor of Bombay and a member both of the Viceroy's Council and of the Council of India. More significant than anything else, Frere had established a high reputation for his robust views and minutes on Indian frontier policies during the 1860s and 1870s. In stark contrast, Frere's new political master, Colonial Secretary Sir Michael Hicks Beach, possessed virtually no experience in colonial administration, and even his arch-defender and biographer, Lady Hicks Beach, was forced to concede that he became Colonial Secretary 'with no special knowledge of South African affairs'. It boded ill for a minister in charge of one of Britain's most difficult and complicated colonies. He was a loyal Disraelite and, as C.F. Goodfellow remarked:

it was probably his loyalty, as much as his ability which had produced his elevation to the Cabinet while still Chief Secretary for Ireland in November 1876.

His great inexperience clearly showed in his early correspondence with Frere. During the first exchange of letters between the two men, an ill-at-ease Hicks Beach readily confessed that he was a 'poor substitute for Carnarvon' and, rather reminiscent of a pupil addressing his schoolmaster, informed Frere that 'I have been doing my best to make myself acquainted with my new work and more especially with South African Affairs.' Frere was immediately given wide discretion to complete Carnarvon's confederation policies. In one letter, Sir Michael assured Frere of his 'anxiety to co-operate with you in every possible way', and stated that he 'hardly feels in a position to express any opinions on South African affairs'. Frere was encouraged to act on his own initiative and was promised 'support and co-operation in your difficult position which you have a right to expect from anyone here'. Twelve months later, Frere might well have wondered why such support was not forthcoming!

Frere was now plunged into a virtual political vacuum as he proceeded to grapple with the twin problems of implementing the Confederation and addressing the new security problems of Natal and the Transvaal. A number of incidents on the British Transvaal and Natal borders hastened the two empires along the road to war over the next twenty months. At the centre of tension was the long-standing and urgent problem of the border dispute between the Zulus and the Transvaal Boers, a problem now reluctantly inherited by Britain. The dispute stemmed from a Boer claim to a strip of land located in the south-east corner of the Transvaal, territory also claimed by Cetshwayo, paramount Zulu Chief since 1873. With annexation, this problem was now a major British problem, and in February 1878, in response to frequent Zulu protests, the Natal governor, Sir Henry Bulwer, established a commission to arbitrate.

Sir Bartle Frere and the Zulu 'Frankenstein'

By that time, Sir Bartle Frere had decided that in the strategic interest of achieving a modern 'civilised' confederation, prolonged physical security and, with it, hopefully the loyalty of both British and Boer white interests in South Africa, the Zulu Empire would have to be dismantled. In this decision, he had been deeply influenced by Theophilus Shepstone, the new Administrator of the Transvaal. Initially, he had been a friend of Cetshwayo, having attended his coronation in 1873. In October 1877, however, after meeting with Cetshwayo's envoys on the frontier to seek a final settlement to the border dispute, he had been met by them in an allegedly 'self asserting, aggressive and defiant spirit'. Thereafter, Shepstone took an increasingly anti-Zulu and pro-Boer stance in his communications with Frere. By December 1877 he was openly accusing Cetshwayo of violating his coronation promises of 'good government' and the Zulu of acting as a catalyst for all African unrest:

one thing is certain that if we are forced into hostilities we cannot stop short of breaking down the Zulu power, which after all is the root and real strength of all native difficulties in South Africa.

With reference to the boundary dispute, he expressed his belief that this 'difficulty is a preconcerted matter and that Cetshwayo really believes in his power to overcome us all without much difficulty'. Such reports convinced Frere by June 1878 that the Galeka and Gaika risings, the earlier war with Sekukuni, were the result of a general conspiracy headed by the Zulu 'incubus'. In a crucial dispatch to R.W. Herbert, Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office, sent in mid-March 1878, he expounded these deeply-held beliefs:

I do not think I ever expressed to you my conviction which has been gradually and unwillingly growing, that Shepstone and others of experience in the country, were right as to the existence of a wish among the great Chiefs to make this war a general and simultaneous rising of Kaffirdom against white civilisation.

Frere continued:

this conviction has been forced on me by a hundred little bits of evidence from different quarters ... and ... there was a wide spread feeling among them, from Secocoeni to Sandilli, that the time has come for them all to join to resist the flood of new ideas and ways which threaten to sweep away the idle, sensuous, elysium of Kaffirdom such as Gaika and Chaka and Dingaan fought for and enjoyed ...

There were more sinister ulterior motives beyond this security problem presented by the Zulu. Cetshwayo's warrior army of up to 40,000 males represented a 'virgin', untapped labour pool, presenting a golden opportunity to 'modernise' the Zulu. A break-up of the Zulu Empire would clearly serve the rapacious needs of the mines and farms of white settlerdom. In Shepstone's words:

had Cetshwayo's 30,000 warriors been in time changed to labourers working for wages, Zululand would now have been a prosperous peaceful country instead of what it now is, a source of perpetual danger to itself and its neighbours.

But for Sir Bartle Frere, it was, above all, a security problem. He knew from his bitter experiences, particularly during the Indian Mutiny but also in the Sind, the Punjab and Afghanistan, where 'native conspiracies' were seen to be rife, that a robust forward policy was essential – there could be no uncertainty as to whether European or 'native' power was the strongest. In his concept of a robust 'Pax Britannica', a civilised and uncivilised power could not, he held, exist peaceably side by side as European nations could, unless the uncivilised power distinctly recognised that it was the weaker of the two, and that it must in essentials conform to the civic standard of right and wrong of the other. Thus in an 1863 minute, Frere defined the English 'frontier system' as 'a reserve of physical force amply sufficient to enforce its moral obligations whenever an appeal to physical force was inevitable'. This was not as arbitrary and ruthless as it seemed, as he also stressed that force should only be employed when conciliatory methods such as attempts at open diplomacy and good neighbourliness had been exhausted.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Zulu! by Edmund Yorke. Copyright © 2013 Edmund Yorke,. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Preface,
1 Road to War: The Storm-Clouds Gather, 1877-9,
2 Preparations for War: The Two Opposing Armies,
3 The Isandlwana Massacre: Day of the Aasvogels,
4 Battle Analysis: The Lessons of the Isandlwana Disaster,
5 The Flight from Isandlwana: Prelude to Rorke's Drift,
6 The First Zulu Assaults,
7 Nadir: The Hospital Fight (6p.m. –10p.m.),
8 The Final Ordeal (10p.m. –8a.m.),
9 Aftermath: Relief, Recovery and Retribution,
10 Legacies and Lessons: The Military, Social and Political Significance of Rorke's Drift,
Conclusion,
Postscript,
Notes,
Select Bibliography,