“I want to learn all I can about him,” he said; “I have heard some strange stories of him.”
“I don’t know what the stories may have been, Mr Margetts,” rejoined Baylen, “but certainly enough might be told about him to startle any one. He was the first person who brought the Zulus into notice. I don’t know whose son he was, or who was king before him; nobody does seem to know. But it was about the year 1820 that he first began to attract attention. The Zulus had been an insignificant tribe before that. But soon after the beginning of his reign, he set about forming a large army, which he developed and disciplined in a manner that had been quite unknown to African chiefs before his time. There is a strange story as to what put this fancy into his head. If I don’t mistake, Hardy, it was you who told it to me.”
“Very likely,” said Hardy. “I know what I heard from some French soldiers in India. They had been in Africa, and had known Chaka.”
“What was it, Mr Hardy, if I might ask?” inquired Margetts.
“Why, these men told me they had been the servants of some French officers, who, after the close of Napoleon’s wars, travelled in South Africa, and became King Chaka’s guests. Chaka was fond of inquiring about what had happened in Europe. One of the officers told him a good deal about the Emperor Napoleon—his splendid army, the vast number of men he had collected under his standard, the perfect discipline to which he had reduced them, and their unbounded devotion to his service. By their help, Napoleon had conquered nation after nation, until nearly the whole of Europe had been subjected by him. ‘That was something like a king,’ Chaka had remarked, and from that day he began forming his famous army.”
“Well, I can believe that,” observed Baylen, “because his action corresponded very accurately to it. He got together a force of nearly a hundred thousand men, of whom fifteen thousand were always at his immediate command. He subjected his soldiers to severe and continual discipline. He built large barracks, in which they lived quite by themselves, not being allowed to marry until they were elderly men. The least hesitation in obeying his orders was instantly punished by the most cruel of all deaths, impalement. With this army he attacked and conquered his neighbours in all directions, until he became an object of universal terror.”
“A black Napoleon, in fact,” returned Redgy,—“what he wanted to be.”
“He was curiously like him,” remarked Baylen, “allowing for the differences of race. I have heard that Napoleon never spared any soldier who showed want of courage in carrying out an order. That was Chaka’s policy certainly, though he pursued it after a somewhat different fashion. After one of his campaigns, he would assemble his soldiers, and cause every regiment to pass before him. As it halted in front of his seat, he would call out, ‘Bring out the cowards,’ and any man who had not been as forward as the others was straightway dragged out and killed. The shrub, under which he usually sat in this manner to review his soldiers, was known as the ‘coward’s bush.’”
“Didn’t he overrun Natal, father?” asked Wilhelm Baylen.
“Yes, and made it a desert for the time. Before his invasion it was densely populated, and in a most thriving condition. But the carnage caused by his troops was so great, that the population was reduced, I believe, to a few hundreds. That was one reason, probably, why he was willing for the English to settle there.”