Greaves - Isandlwana: How the Zulus Humbled the British Empire

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by

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Copyright Adrian Greaves, 2011

ISBN 978 1 84884 532 9

eISBN 978 1 84468 602 5

PRC ISBN 978 1 84468 603 2

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I have spent my professional career visiting battlefields, and have found that each conveys its own distinct impression. Sometimes this is frustration at haunted acres swamped by the tarmac and concrete of the 20th Century: a motorway link across the southern limit of the 1645 battlefield of Naseby, and the brook near Preston where Scots and Parliamentarians met in 1648 is choked by plastic bags, bottles and supermarket trolleys. Sometimes the site has simply been over-celebrated, and has begun to sink beneath the weight of memorials, museums and commercial outlets it has to bear: Waterloo is the prime case in point. And sometimes the place exudes an almost spectral chill that makes me profoundly uneasy; I find the charnel hills around the little French town of Verdun, scene of a dreadful battle in 1916, harder and harder to bear.

My first really clear view of the sphinx-shaped mountain of Isandlwana came from the back of a horse as I rode with half a dozen companions along the little road that crosses the Buffalo River on a new bridge alongside the drift (ford) named after the trader James Rorke. Long before I reached it, the mountain's brooding presence drew me on like a magnet. We spent the evening beneath it round a blazing fire listening to the incomparable David Rattray tell the story of what had happened there on the day of the dead moon, and as I curled up to sleep I reflected, not for the first time on that trip, on the frailty of sleeping-bag zips. I was awakened from a chilly and fitful sleep by the sound and sensation of drumming, profoundly unwelcome at that time and, above all, in that place. As I crouched and looked out of my tent I saw our horses stream past.

We spent the next hour catching them, and as I scrambled about the battlefield, stumbling, from time to time, over the low whitened cairns that cover the bones of British soldiers, I came to my own accommodation with the place. The great sphinx rode triumphantly amongst the scudding clouds in what was now clear moonlight, like the prow of a mighty ship. The men who lay beneath my feet had marched the length of South Africa in their iron-heeled boots and rough red tunics. They were no strangers to night alarms, and would have had their own brusque opinions about the brain power of horses. Some, we know, had fled, meeting death from assegai or knobkerrie as they gasped terror-stricken on what was to become known as the fugitives' trail. But the majority had looked it square in the face, through the stinking clouds of smoke from their own Martini-Henry rifles; as rifle and bayonet met shield and assegai in hand-to-hand combat, and, for the remnants of one company which charged behind its commander Zulu oral tradition remembers an Induna (officer) with a long flashing sword taking the bayonet to their monarch's enemies as redcoats had done for a century and a half. Their spirits now held no terrors for me. I slipped back into my sleeping bag, rearranged the saddlebag that served as a pillow, and slept dreamlessly till dawn.

On 22nd January 1879 a small British army was utterly defeated by the Zulu impies at Isandlwana: it was a battle which, as Adrian Greaves shows, caused a profound shock in a Britain unused to such disasters. Of course it was not without parallel.

In 1842 a British-Indian force, including the 44th Regiment, was cut to pieces as it retreated from Kabul; a single wounded survivor rode into Jellalabad to bring news of this signal catastrophe. And in 1880 another British-Indian force was routed by the Afghans at Maiwand, where much of the 66th Regiment perished. Other colonial powers had their share of disasters, which all too often stemmed from misunderstanding their savage opponents. However, few could equal the Italian General Baratieris' defeat by the Ethiopians at Adowa in 1896 which cost him almost half his 17,000 men. But Adrian Greaves is right to observe that there was something special about Isandlwana. In part it was the suddenness of the defeat, coming so soon after the beginning of the war: in part, too, it was the totality, with six full companies of British infantry killed to a man. And in part it reflected a fatal underestimation of the Zulus in which racism unquestionably played its part.

The chief concern of Lord Chelmsford, the British commander, was that the Zulus would not fight: he was wrong in this as in much else.

Adrian Greaves' study of the battle reflects his background as an infantry officer and senior police officer, combining a soldier's feel for the ground, which he knows well, with a detective's instinct for evidence. The latter is especially important, for some details of Isandlwana have long remained obscured, and oft-repeated myth has assumed the status of fact. The process has not been helped by contemporary distortion of the evidence to ensure that Colonel Anthony Durnford, killed while fighting bravely, shouldered the blame for the defeat. Dr Greaves uses recently-discovered material to exonerate Durnford, and to suggest that the faulty disposition at Isandlwana stemmed from Lord Chelmsford's own standing orders. Perhaps the most durable myth is that which suggests that the British lost because they ran out of ammunition. Adrian Greaves comprehensively debunks this, and in doing so gives the battle its proper balance, recognising that the single most important reason for it to take the shape it did was not British command errors (though these played their baneful part) but the enormous bravery and skill of the Zulus. No cairns or monuments marked their sacrifice until the year 2000, but, as the men who fought them that day recognised all too well, they were warriors indeed.

Richard Holmes

In preparing this book, I owe a number of people my grateful thanks for their support and willingness to supply information. I am grateful to my wife Debbie for her unfailing enthusiasm. I also owe special thanks to a number of people for their encouragement, including, during the initial drafting, David and Nicky Rattray at Fugitives' Drift Lodge for their generous hospitality and, during his life, for unrestricted access to David's extensive library. I also thank Brian Best of the VC Society and Ian Knight, Dr David Payne and Ron Lock for their advice. I also acknowledge the generosity of the Anglo Zulu War Historical Society for allowing me access to their valuable records, documents and research material, and the Royal Geographical Society and the Regimental Museums and their staffs at Brecon, Deepcut, Woolwich and Chatham for their generosity in assisting my research. Any errors and interpretations are mine alone; my research conclusions are supported by primary sources and referenced to enable others to conduct further research.