The Zulus live in South-Eastern Africa. Originally they were not one tribe but many, though the same blood was in them all. Nobody knows whence they came or who were their forefathers; but they seem to have sprung from an Arab or Semitic stock, and many of their customs, such as the annual feast of the first fruits, resemble those of the Jews. At the beginning of this century there arose a warrior king, called Chaka, who gathered up the scattered tribes of the Zulus as a woodman gathers sticks, and as of the frail brushwood the woodman makes a stout faggot, that none can break, so of these tribes Chaka fashioned a nation so powerful that no other black people could conquer it.
The deeds of Chaka are too many to write of here. Seldom has there been a monarch, black or white, so terrible or so absolute, and never perhaps has a man lived more wicked or more clever. Out of 'nothing,' as the Kafirs say, he made the Amazulu, or the 'people of heaven,' so powerful, that before he died he could send out an army of a hundred thousand men to destroy those whom he feared or hated or whose cattle he coveted. These soldiers were never beaten; if they dared to turn their back upon an enemy, however numerous, they were killed when the battle was done, so that soon they learned to choose death with honour before the foe in preference to death with shame at the hands of the executioner. Where Chaka's armies went they conquered, till the country was swept of people for hundreds of miles in every direction. At length, after he had killed or been the cause of the violent death of more than a million human beings, in the year 1828 Chaka's own hour came; for, as the Zulu proverb says, 'the swimmer is at last borne away by the stream.' He was murdered by the princes of his house and his body servant Umbopo or Mopo. But as he lay dying beneath their spear thrusts, it is said that the great king prophesied of the coming of white men who should conquer the land that he had won.
'What,' he said, 'do you slay me, my brothers—dogs of mine own house whom I have fed, thinking to possess the land? I tell you that I hear the sound of running feet, the feet of a great white people, and they shall stamp you flat, children of my father.'
After the death of Chaka his brother Dingaan reigned who had murdered him. In due course he was murdered also, and his brother Panda succeeded to the throne. Panda was a man of peace, and the only one of the four Zulu kings who died a natural death; for though it is not commonly known, the last of these kings, our enemy Cetywayo, is believed to have met his end by poison. In 1873, Cetywayo was crowned king of Zululand in succession to his father Panda on behalf of the English Government by Sir Theophilus Shepstone. He remained a firm friend to the British till Sir Bartle Frere declared war on him in 1879. Sir Bartle Frere made war upon the Zulus because he was afraid of their power, and the Zulus accepted the challenge because we annexed the Transvaal and would not allow them to fight the Boers or the Swazis. They made a brave resistance, and it was not until there were nearly as many English soldiers in their country armed with breech-loading rifles as they had effective warriors left alive in it, for the most part armed with spears only, that at length we conquered them. But their heart was never in the war; they defended their country against invasion indeed, but by Cetywayo's orders they never attacked ours. Had they wished to do so, there was nothing to prevent them from sweeping the outlying districts of Natal and the Transvaal after our first great defeat at Isandhlwana, but they spared us.
And now I have done with dull explanations, and will go on to tell of the disaster at Isandhlwana or the 'place of the Little Hand,' and of the noble defence of Rorke's Drift.
On the 20th of January, 1879, one of the British columns that were invading Zululand broke its camp on the left bank of the Buffalo river, and marched by the road that ran from Rorke's Drift to the Indeni forest, encamping that evening under the shadow of a steep-cliffed and lonely mountain, called Isandhlwana. This force was known as number 3 column, and with it went Lord Chelmsford, the general in command of the troops. The buildings at Rorke's Drift were left in charge of sixty men of the 2nd battalion 24th regiment under the late Colonel Bromhead, then a lieutenant, and some volunteers and others, the whole garrison being commanded, on the occasion of the attack, by Lieutenant Chard, R.E.
On January 21, Colonel, then Major, Dartnell, the officer in command of the Natal Mounted Police and volunteers, who had been sent out to effect a reconnaissance of the country beyond Isandhlwana, reported that the Zulus were in great strength in front of him. Thereupon Lord Chelmsford ordered six companies of the 2nd battalion 24th regiment, together with four guns and the Mounted Infantry, to advance to his support. This force, under the command of Colonel Glyn, and accompanied by Lord Chelmsford himself, left Isandhlwana at dawn on the 22nd, a despatch having first been sent to Lieut.-Colonel Durnford, R.E., who was in command of some five hundred friendly Natal Zulus, about half of whom were mounted and armed with breech-loaders, to move up from Rorke's Drift and strengthen the camp, which was now in charge of Lieut.-Colonel Pulleine of the 1st battalion 24th regiment. Orders were given to Colonel Pulleine by the general that he was to 'defend' the camp.
About ten o'clock that morning Colonel Durnford arrived at Isandhlwana and took over the command of the camp, which was then garrisoned by seven hundred and seventy-two European and eight hundred and fifty-one native troops, in all one thousand six hundred and twenty-three men, with two guns. Little did Lord Chelmsford and those with him guess in what state they would find that camp when they returned to it some eighteen hours later, or that of those sixteen hundred men the great majority would then be dead!
Meanwhile a Zulu 'impi' or army, numbering about twenty thousand men, or something more than one-third of King Cetywayo's entire strength, had moved from the Upindo Hill on the night of January 21, and taken up its position on a stony plain, a mile and a half to the east of Isandhlwana. The impi was made up of the Undi regiment, about three thousand strong, that formed its breast, or centre, the Nokenke and Umcityu regiments, seven thousand strong, that formed its right wing or horn, and the Imbonanbi and Nkobamikosi regiments, ten thousand strong, forming its left horn or wing. That night the impi slept upon its spears and watched in silence, lighting no fires. The king had reviewed it three days previously, and his orders to it were that it should attack number 3 column, and drive it back over the Buffalo, but it had no intention of giving battle on the 22nd, for the state of the moon was not propitious, so said the 'doctors'; moreover, the soldiers had not been 'moutied,' that is, sprinkled with medicines to 'put a great heart' into them and ensure their victory. The intention of the generals was to attack the camp at dawn on the 23rd; and the actual engagement was brought about by an accident.
Before I tell of this or of the fight, however, it may be as well to describe how these splendid savages were armed and disciplined. To begin with, every corps had a particular head-dress and fighting shields of one colour, just as in our army each regiment has its own facings on the tunics. These shields are cut from the hides of oxen, and it is easy to imagine what a splendid sight was presented by a Zulu impi twenty thousand strong, divided into several regiments, one with snow-white shields and tall cranes' feathers on their heads, one with coal-black shields and black plumes, and others with red and mottled shields, and bands of fur upon their foreheads. In their war with the English many of the Zulus were armed with muzzle-loading guns and rifles of the worst description, of which they could make little use, for few of them were trained to handle firearms. A much more terrible weapon in their hands, and one that did nearly all the execution at Isandhlwana, was the broad-bladed short-shafted stabbing assegai. This shape of spear was introduced by the great king Chaka, and if a warrior cast it at an enemy, or even chanced to lose it in a fight, he was killed when the fray was over. Before Chaka's day the Zulu tribes used light assegais, which they threw at the enemy from a distance, and thus their ammunition was sometimes spent before they came to close quarters with the foe.