“I would give a letter, written by me to Lord Chelmsford, to Umfunzi, to be given by him with his own hand to Lord Chelmsford, and outside the letter I would say that no one but Lord Chelmsford was to open it. This appeared to please them much. I said I would write to the commanding officers along the road they were going to look after them, and to the officer at Rorke’s Drift to see them safe to Ibabamango.’ ‘Would a white man be safe going with them?’ ‘Yes,’ they said, ‘quite,’ and they wished one could be sent with them; but still more, the King would be pleased if a white man was sent to him. I said I would not send a white man alone into Zululand with them, because my Chief did not approve, still less could I send one to the King, because I was only under the big Chief. Anything they wished to say about peace or anything else they must say to the big Chief when they saw him.”—(P. P. [C. 2374] p. 111).
At no time during the war, indeed, did we encourage the Zulu king in his persistent efforts to get peace; but more of this hereafter. Here we will only add one further instance, namely, that of two messengers sent to Colonel Pearson at Etshowe, who, although brought blindfold into the camp, were kept as prisoners in irons until the garrison was relieved. The pretext for this detention was that they were supposed to be spies; but officers present were satisfied that there were no grounds for the supposition, or for the treatment which they received.
Sir Bartle Frere of course inclines to the opinion that all Cetshwayo’s messengers were spies, his entreaties for peace but treacherous pretexts to cover his evil intentions. Some of the men sent were old accredited messengers to the Government, whose names are frequently mentioned in earlier Blue-books, yet Sir Bartle Frere says of them: “In no case could they give any satisfactory proof that they really came from the king.”[165]
But the High Commissioner’s habit of finding evil motives for every act of the Zulu king, made the case of the latter hopeless from the first.
Meanwhile the despatches received from Sir Michael Hicks-Beach contained comments amounting to censure upon the High Commissioner’s proceedings in forcing on a war with the Zulus. He is plainly told that he should have waited to consult Her Majesty’s Government upon the terms that Cetshwayo should be called upon to accept, and that “they have been unable to find in the documents you have placed before them that evidence of urgent necessity for immediate action which alone could justify you in taking, without their full knowledge and sanction, a course almost certain to result in a war, which, as I had previously impressed upon you, every effort should have been used to avoid.”
“The communication which had passed between us,” continues the Secretary of State, “as to the objects for which the reinforcements were requested and sent, and as to the nature of the questions in dispute with the Zulu king, were such as to render it especially needful that Her Majesty’s Government should understand and approve any important step, not already suggested to them, before you were committed to it; and if that step was likely to increase the probability of war, an opportunity should certainly have been afforded to them of considering as well the time as the manner of coming to issue—should it be necessary to come to issue—with the Zulu king. And though the further correspondence necessary for this purpose might have involved the loss of a favourable season for the operations of the British troops, and might have afforded to Cetywayo the means of further arming and provisioning his forces, the circumstances rendered it imperative that, even at the risk of this disadvantage, full explanations should be exchanged.”
The despatch from which the above is quoted was written on the 19th March, and another, dated the following day, expresses the writer’s “general approval of the principles on which the boundary award was based,” as intimated in a previous despatch, but gives a very qualified assent to Sir B. Frere’s emendations by which he seeks to secure the “private rights” of settlers on the wrongfully appropriated land, and remarks that he is disposed to think that the recognition of these said private rights of European settlers in the district declared to be Zulu territory should have been restricted as far as possible to those cases in which bonâ fide purchasers had improved their farms by building, planting, or otherwise, which restriction would have limited them to a very small number indeed. Sir M. Hicks-Beach also reminds Sir B. Frere that Her Majesty’s Government had distinctly said beforehand that “they could not undertake the obligation of protecting” the missionaries in Zululand. His comments upon the terms of the ultimatum, he says, are intended for Sir B. Frere’s guidance when the time for once more proposing terms should arrive, and he concludes: “It is my wish that, as far as possible, you should avoid taking any decided step, or committing yourself to any positive conclusion respecting any of them until you have received instructions from Her Majesty’s Government.”—(P. P. [C. 2260] pp. 108-111).
Again, upon April 10th, after receiving Sir Bartle Frere’s explanations, Sir M. Hicks-Beach writes as follows:
“Since I addressed to you my despatches of the 19th and 20th March, I have received your two despatches of February 12th and March 1st, further explaining the considerations which induced you to decide that the demands made upon Ketshwayo must be communicated to him without delay. The definite expression of the views and policy of Her Majesty’s Government contained in my despatches already referred to, which will have reached you before you receive this, makes it unnecessary that I should enter into any examination of the arguments or opinions expressed in your present despatches. It is sufficient to say that Her Majesty’s Government do not find in the reasons now put forward by you any grounds to modify the tenor of the instructions already addressed to you on the subject of affairs in South Africa, and it is their desire that you should regulate your future action according to these instructions.