Further disasters – but a glimmer of hope
The British public had certainly had more than its fair share of disasters to absorb. The original invasion of Zululand was considered of such little significance that only one of the London newspapers bothered to send a correspondent to cover it. Instead, all eyes were focused upon the campaign in Afghanistan where, in the event, the British had a comparatively easy advance.
After reports from Charles Norris-Newman of the Standard about a stunning British defeat at a place called Isandlwana, interest swung away from events on the North-West Frontier. Correspondents were ordered to make haste to Natal and attach themselves to Lord Chelmsford's command; for the next few months, reports from Zululand dominated the news and heightened the public's awareness of the war. With the gentlemen of the press attaching themselves to the new invasion force on the border of Zululand, the news-hungry British public looked forward to reading about a resounding victory over Cetshwayo's impis. Instead, they were treated to yet further catastrophes that had descended on the luckless head of Lord Chelmsford.
On 7 March a convoy of eighteen waggons loaded with ammunition and supplies for the second invasion reached Myer's Drift on the Intombe River in northern Zululand. The officer in command was Captain David Moriarty, and after two days of driving rain he had only managed to get two waggons across the river. He tried to form a waggon laager encompassing both sides of the river, but in the early hours of 12 March several thousand Zulus attacked the camp. Within minutes, Moriarty and most of his men, seventy in all, were killed; only the dozen or so soldiers on the far bank had time to form themselves into a small tight defensive group. Their officer, Lieutenant Henry Harward, mounted the only available horse and abandoned his surviving men, ostensibly to obtain help. The survivors, under the command of Sergeant Anthony Booth, slowly fought their way towards the main British position some four miles away. Mounted troopers from the nearby garrison rode to their rescue, but Harward was court-martialled for deserting his men. Sergeant Booth was awarded the Victoria Cross for his part in saving the survivors.
On 28 March further Zulu success occurred at Hlobane mountain in northern Zululand. The same amabutho that had triumphed at Isandlwana just two months before utterly defeated a large British mounted force under Colonel Redvers Buller. However, flushed with victory, the Zulu army moved on to attack Colonel Wood's entrenched position at neighbouring Kambula Hill the following day, only to suffer a serious defeat. Moreover, just a few days later, and at the other end of the country, the Zulu forces investing Pearson's column at Eshowe were scattered at Gingindlovu. At both ends of the country, therefore, the Zulus had been broken, and their total casualties over these three battles numbered nearly 3,000 dead and many more wounded. In the blink of an eye all the strategic advantages that King Cetshwayo had earned at Isandlwana had been lost, and the war had turned decisively against him.
Kambula and Gingindlovu shook the king's faith in his army's ability to bring the war to a successful conclusion by purely military means. Holding back the British, he said, was like ‘warding off a falling tree’. While his warriors dispersed to undergo the necessary post-combat purification rituals and to heal their wounds, the king tried to reopen diplomatic contacts with the British in a final attempt to discover what terms they would accept for peace.
Burying the Isandlwana dead, and the second invasion
On 14 March 1879, seven weeks after the battle, the first formal visit was undertaken to the Isandlwana battlefield. The party was led by Major Black of the 24th, Commandant Cooper and Major Dartnell, accompanied by several 24th officers together with the Natal Native Contingent, and a party of the Natal Mounted Police. On crossing into Zululand they were immediately observed by Zulus who shadowed them to Isandlwana. The Zulus then opened fire, causing the party to retire to Rorke's Drift. Nothing was achieved other than to view the dreadful scene of the wrecked camp and the decomposing bodies scattered around.
On 15 May Black returned to Isandlwana, this time as a freshly promoted Lieutenant Colonel. His party again stayed but twenty minutes to count and assess the condition of the waggons, before following the Fugitives' Trail to the Buffalo River. It was on this survey of the trail that the body of Major Stuart Smith was found near the river and buried under a pile of stones. In 2007 members of the Anglo Zulu War Historical Society visited the area, armed with contemporary sketches, in an attempt to find Smith's grave. As the area is remote, heavily overgrown and very rocky, in spite of their very best efforts no trace of Smith's grave could be found.
By April it was obvious to Lord Chelmsford that the war was turning in his favour, but he and Sir Bartle Frere needed a decisive victory in the field to erase the stain of Isandlwana. Throughout March and April a steady stream of reinforcements had arrived in Durban and Chelmsford now had far more troops at his disposal than he had hoped for at the beginning of the campaign. With the Zulu capacity to mount an offensive broken, he was now in the best position to lead a fresh invasion of Zululand. King Cetshwayo's principle homestead at Ulundi, in the heart of Zululand, remained Chelmsford's target.
Chelmsford had learned much from the disastrous first invasion of January. Whereas his original columns had been weak and failed to take proper precautions on the march, he intended the new columns to be veritable juggernauts. They would be much stronger, and would not only protect their halts with improvised laagers each night but would also establish a chain of fortified posts in their wake to guard their lines of communication.
For this second invasion of Zululand, Chelmsford planned to make two main thrusts. The first would follow the coastline northwards into Zululand, using troops from Pearson's old column. This force was designated the First Division and was under the command of Major General Henry Crealock, one of several Major Generals who had been sent to South Africa as reinforcements. Crealock was an experienced officer whose younger brother, John North Crealock, was Chelmsford's Assistant Military Secretary. Chelmsford planned that his second main thrust would come from the north-west, following roughly the line of the former Centre Column. However, as Chelmsford wished to spare his men the sight of the battlefield of Isandlwana, where the dead still lay unburied, he planned a new line of communication through the village of Dundee, crossing the Mzinyathi and Ncome Rivers upstream of Rorke's Drift. This column would thus bypass Isandlwana to rejoin the old planned line of advance near Babanango Mountain. It would be called the Second Division and was composed of troops fresh out from England. Although Chelmsford planned to accompany this column, it was to be commanded by another new arrival, Major General Edward Newdigate, who, like Glyn before him, would find himself with little real opportunity to exercise his authority. A new cavalry division, consisting of the 1st (King's) Dragoon Guards and 17th Lancers commanded by Major General Frederick Marshall, was to be attached to the Second Division. Evelyn Wood's column was re-designated the Flying Column. Its orders were to effect a junction with the Second Division and advance in tandem with it to Ulundi.
Meanwhile, Chelmsford was greatly concerned by the lack of transport waggons, while the accumulation of reinforcements created further logistical demands. The Natal authorities were becoming more and more reluctant to cooperate with Chelmsford's requests; they were increasingly worried that the ordinary commercial economy of the colony would grind to a halt as transport drivers abandoned their regular work for the easy pickings offered by the army. Many of the waggons accumulated by the old Centre Column were still lying abandoned on the field of Isandlwana, so Chelmsford decided to recover any serviceable transport from the battlefield. On 21 May he dispatched General Marshall to bury the dead and recover any undamaged waggons. A force of 2,490 men was dispatched, including the 17th Lancers, the King's Dragoon Guards and four companies of the 24th. They were accompanied by a sizeable force of natives with 150 army horses to bring the waggons back. The complete force assembled at Rorke's Drift and set off at daybreak. A detachment of Lancers made a detour to Sihayo's kraal to clear the area and, unopposed, met up with the main force at Isandlwana. Major Bengough's natives were deployed in skirmishing formation to search the slopes of the Nqutu Plateau, while the main force, led by the marching 24th, approached the devastated camp site. Once General Marshall was satisfied the area was free of Zulus, the solemn but ghastly task of burying the dead commenced. The whole area was strewn with human bones, some covered with parchment-like skin; the scene was made grimmer still by the ravages of vultures and predatory animals, including the formidable pack of soldiers' dogs, which had reverted to the wild (see Appendix I). Most of the bodies were unrecognisable; others had been desiccated by the hot African sun, which left their features still shockingly recognizable. Captain Shepstone pointed out the face of Colonel Durnford, who was buried where he fell.
The party recovered forty-five waggons along with a large supply of stores that had been ignored by the victorious Zulus. Apart from the bodies of men of the 24th Regiment, the dead were now buried. Colonel Glyn of the 24th had requested that the bodies of his regiment should be buried by his own men at some later time. It was not until 20 June that a party of the 2/24th under Lieutenant Colonel Black returned to undertake the task; it took the burial party until 26 June to complete their work, digging shallow graves and marking their positions across the battlefield with piles of large stones. On the 25th a burial party from the Natal Carbineers was permitted to search for their lost comrades. They found the bodies of Lieutenant Scott and Troopers Davis, Borain, Lumley, Hawkins, Dickinson, Tarboton and Blaikie on the Nek. Nearby were Moodie, Swift and Jackson. Trooper Macleroy was found a mile along the Fugitives' Trail, where he was buried. The following day Quartermaster London and Troopers Bullock, Ross and Deane were found in the main camp area. The bodies of only two members of the Carbineers remained missing. Sadly, the heavy rains which are a feature of the area soon eroded the grave sites and re-exposed the bodies to the elements.
During the second invasion of Zululand, a young British nurse, Janet Wells, had been sent from England as part of a group of six nurses to assist army doctors. Due to her experience in the Russo-Turkish war of 1878 she was sent to Utrecht in northern Zululand, where she worked under the supervision of Dr Fitzmaurice. On the cessation of hostilities, she was directed to return to Durban by pony trap, via Rorke's Drift, where the remaining garrison were known to be suffering from various gastric complaints. On arriving at Rorke's Drift she ordered all water used by the soldiers to be boiled; the men recovered within days. With some spare time on her hands, she walked and rode around the mission station, visited the graves of Coghill and Melvill and undertook a full tour of Isandlwana. At Isandlwana she collected various souvenirs still littering the battlefield, including a soldier's identification papers, part of a Bible and abandoned official documents (see Appendix J). At the two drifts, she collected herbs and wild flowers which she carefully pressed into her scrapbooks. (3)
Complaints continued to be received from visitors to the battlefield that bones could still be seen, usually following heavy rain; so on 19 September, on instructions from the new British commander, General G.P. Colley, Brevet Major C. Bromhead (brother of Bromhead VC) set up camp at Isandlwana to collect and burn the debris and rebury bodies and bones which had become exposed. Where Bromhead's party found the greatest concentration of bodies, three large stone cairns were built. Isolated human bones were collected on to canvas sheets dragged around the battlefield by parties of soldiers; when sufficient bones had been gathered, they were buried and the site marked with a cairn. The burial party also used waggons to recover military equipment left strewn across the battlefield; this was taken back to a site near Fort Melvill and buried. Despite these efforts, reports of exposed bodies continued to reach army headquarters. On 20 February 1880 General Sir Garnet Wolseley instructed Lieutenant O'Connell of the 60th Rifles to return to the battlefield, where his party worked from 13 to 26 March collecting up any bones that they found and burying them in communal pits. Cairns were built to identify these locations.
After the Zulu War, a steady stream of visitors began to make their way to the battlefields; that stream continues to this day. Most of the early visitors continued to be disturbed by discovering Isandlwana battlefield was still littered with debris from the battle – smashed boxes, parts of waggons, rotting clothing and, most distressingly, scattered bleached human bones. Over the next two years further protests about the condition of the battlefield, mainly from civilian visitors, continued to reach the Governor General of Natal. This resulted in the employment of Alfred Boast, a civil servant, to organise the proper clearing of the site. The task took one month and was completed on 9 March 1883. Boast even removed the skeletons of the artillery horses killed in the ravine during the flight along the Fugitives' Trail, although some eroded cairns have since been found to contain the bodies of both men and horses. The bodies of Captain Anstey and Durnford were recovered and re-buried by their families, Anstey at Woking and Durnford at Pietermaritzburg. Boast submitted a report from Greytown on 13 March in which he described how 298 graves were dug, containing between two and four skeletons each. Cairns were built on the graves, and where possible, the identity of the fallen was marked. (4)
The largest cairn on the site of the Nek, no doubt where many of the 24th Regiment died, was chosen as the site of the 24th's regimental memorial, the concrete work being built over the cairn. Today, the concrete around its base is showing signs of erosion and the original cairn stones are clearly visible.
The second invasion
From the first, Crealock's coastal column suffered from a serious lack of transport; they were dubbed ‘Crealock's Crawlers’ by the rest of the army. The health of Crealock's troops also deteriorated rapidly which seriously slowed his progress. Outbreaks of enteric fever, typhoid and dysentery soon hospitalised a worryingly high proportion of his men. Nevertheless, Crealock achieved some of his objectives when he destroyed two large Zulu homesteads containing over 900 huts. The Zulus made no attempt to distract the British from burning these two important complexes, which suggests their capacity to resist was weakening. The King now realised the grim truth that, while many Zulus remained loyal to him, with so many of their young men now dead they stood little chance of resisting the huge British column which was steadily occupying their country.
Chelmsford's advance commenced on 31 May and was very different in character to that of Crealock's coastal division. Almost immediately further tragedy struck. It was not another great defeat at the hands of the Zulus but the death of the young exiled heir to the throne of France, Prince Louis Napoleon. The Zulus had deployed a large number of scouting parties to observe British progress; the main British advance was therefore accomplished in the face of almost constant skirmishing. On 1 June a small patrol including Lieutenant Jaheel Brenton Carey of the 98th Regiment and the exiled Prince Imperial of France set out from the Second Division to select a suitable camping ground for Chelmsford's force. Despite the fact that the area had already been swept for Zulus and the Flying Column was only a few miles away, the patrol was ambushed at a deserted homestead and the Prince was killed. Although the Prince's death created a scandal, it was an incident of minor importance in the course of the war. At home, it created a greater stir than the defeat at Isandlwana and resulted in a story that was set to run and run. The ingredients for headlines were potent: ‘Brave young descendant of the century's outstanding leader forced into exile while serving with his adopted country in a far-off place’, ‘A violent death and cowardice by the British officer who abandoned him’, ‘A grieving widowed mother’, ‘Queen Victoria's involvement and the end of a dynasty’. In fact, the public's mood was largely one of schadenfreude, all the more so because a Frenchman was involved!
By this time, Chelmsford had become increasingly ruthless in his determination to bring the war to a conclusion by any means possible. The soldiers regularly burned any Zulu homestead they came across, whether it had a military connection or not, and drove off whatever cattle they could find.
At the end of June Chelmsford established camp on the banks of the White Mfolozi River overlooking King Cetshwayo's capital. A flurry of last-minute diplomatic activity by the Zulu king took place. Chelmsford was not concerned with Cetshwayo's diplomatic overtures so much as his own urgent need to bring the war to a close. His replacement, Sir Garnet Wolseley, was already in South Africa, and both wanted the glory of the final battle. Wolseley sent Chelmsford several desperate telegrams attempting to halt the British advance; Chelmsford ignored them.
At first light on 4 July 1879 Chelmsford led the fighting men of the Second Division and Flying Column across the river to bring the second invasion of Zululand to its dreadful and inevitable conclusion. They engaged with and defeated the Zulu army at Ulundi in a brief, one-sided battle dominated by the Gatling machine-gun. By this stage, the marching troops were unrecognizable as such; their faces were weatherbeaten, their uniforms were in tatters, many of their red jackets had disintegrated and long hair and beards were common.
King Cetshwayo escaped but was finally captured by a patrol on 28 August. The British forces then marched out of Zululand and left its people to their fate. Starved of good news and needing a lift, the British nation cheered; the public welcomed home the worn-out regiments that had suffered so greatly during this mismanaged campaign. There were plenty of heroes to fete and their names became known in every household. Queen Victoria, after years of mourning widowhood during which she refused to involve herself in the nation's affairs, was pleased to pin decorations and orders on the fresh tunics of her brave soldiers. For several weeks the nation enjoyed being proud of its army, until memories faded and fresh news succeeded old. Sir Bartle Frere was recalled, his credibility ruined. He defended his position to the end; on his death-bed his last words were: ‘Oh, if only they would read “The Further Correspondence”, they must understand’. (1) Lord Chelmsford survived the wrath of the press, and, being a favourite of Queen Victoria, still more honours came his way, although Disraeli refused to receive him. He died of a heart attack in 1906 while playing billiards at his club.
King Cetshwayo was exiled to Capetown, from where he frequently petitioned Queen Victoria to grant him an audience. He was described in Parliament as:
A gallant Monarch defending his country and his people against one of the most wanton and wicked invasions that ever could be made upon an independent people. (5)
He finally arrived in England in July 1882 and was presented to Queen Victoria at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. As a result of the meeting, Cetshwayo was escorted back to Zululand and re-instated as King of the Zulus. During Cetshwayo's three-year absence, Wolseley had independently restructured Zululand into thirteen chiefdoms – a classic case of ‘divide and rule’. It was never in the newly-appointed chiefs’ interest to accept King Cetshwayo in his former role, and in 1883 his homestead was attacked by rival Zulus, causing him to flee. He took refuge under the protection of the British resident at Eshowe but died on 8 February 1884; it is believed his own people poisoned him.
Meanwhile, the debacle of the Zulu War convinced the Boers that the British army was not invincible. Encouraged by widespread discontent throughout the Transvaal, the Boer community made preparations to resist further British influence. Within a few months they commenced limited military action against the British. It was a conflict that quickly developed into the First Boer War. Zululand itself remained in turmoil until 1906, when the country erupted in a ferocious civil war from which it never recovered.
Identification of bodies at Isandlwana: an archaeological perspective
The mortal remains of soldiers who fell at the Battle of Isandlwana on 22 January 1879 have, since the first attempts at burial, been repeatedly reexposed by the combined effects of heavy rain and associated erosion. In the four years after the battle, the battlefield was visited by a number of, at best, clumsy burial parties. Many of the cairns visible at Isandlwana today are most likely the results of Boast's work, superimposed upon and modifying the efforts of the earlier burial parties, especially that of Major Bromhead. Some cairns mark the place where an officer is known to have fallen, but none of the cairns, except Shepstone's, mark the resting place of any individual soldier.
The dearth of artefacts and the casual re-interment procedures that have occurred, collectively suggest that Boast's cairns have limited archaeological value. However, they provide a powerful visual and emotional reminder to visitors of the scale of the British defeat.
Zulu accounts of the battle
Rightly, the reader may question why so few Zulu accounts exist. Firstly, the Zulu language in 1879 was oral and not written. Secondly, any Zulu account would have been recorded by Chelmsford's staff, who would not record anything that discredited Chelmsford. Furthermore, such Zulus would have been apprehensive for their safety and compliant under questioning; methods of interrogation used were such that those under questioning eventually gave the answers being sought.