Map of the Battle of Ulundi on 4th July 1879 in the
Zulu War: map by John Fawke
The Burning of Ulundi
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. At the
two drifts, she collected herbs and wild flowers which she carefully pressed
into her scrapbooks.
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.
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 weather-beaten, 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.
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.
