{
 "slug": "isandlwana",
 "title": "Battle of Isandlwana",
 "status": "draft",
 "era": "1850–1900",
 "date_text": "22 January 1879",
 "start": "1879-01-22",
 "end": "1879-01-22",
 "war": "Anglo-Zulu War",
 "cdb90_war": "ZULU WAR",
 "place": {
  "name": "Isandlwana hill, near the Mzinyathi (Buffalo) River, Zulu kingdom (now KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa)",
  "lat": -28.3564,
  "lon": 30.6525,
  "wikidata": "Q747589"
 },
 "lede": "On 22 January 1879 a Zulu army under Ntshingwayo kaMahole and Mavumengwana kaNdlela overran Lord Chelmsford's camp below Isandlwana, killing more than 1,300 of its defenders. It was the worst defeat a British army suffered in colonial Africa.",
 "result": "Decisive Zulu victory",
 "result_cdb90": "attacker win",
 "belligerents": [
  {
   "role": "attacker",
   "name": "Zulu army (amabutho of King Cetshwayo)",
   "commanders": [
    "Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khoza",
    "Mavumengwana kaNdlela Ntuli"
   ],
   "strength": {
    "value": 20000,
    "low": 20000,
    "high": 25000,
    "source": "s5"
   },
   "casualties": {
    "value": 3000,
    "low": 1000,
    "high": 5000,
    "source": "s2"
   }
  },
  {
   "role": "defender",
   "name": "British No. 3 (Centre) Column camp and No. 2 Column detachment",
   "commanders": [
    "Lt-Col Henry Pulleine",
    "Col Anthony Durnford"
   ],
   "strength": {
    "value": 1837,
    "low": 1700,
    "high": 1837,
    "source": "s1"
   },
   "casualties": {
    "value": 1329,
    "low": 1300,
    "high": 1351,
    "source": "s2"
   }
  }
 ],
 "sections": {
  "background": "In December 1878 the British High Commissioner for South Africa, Sir Bartle Frere, sent King Cetshwayo an ultimatum he could not accept, including the disbandment of the Zulu army: the amabutho, the age-regiments through which every Zulu man served the king. It gave him 30 days. When it expired on 11 January 1879, Lieutenant-General Lord Chelmsford invaded Zululand in three columns, aiming at the royal homestead at oNdini (Ulundi). Chelmsford travelled with the Centre Column, No. 3, which crossed the Mzinyathi (Buffalo) River at Rorke's Drift and on 12 January stormed the homestead of the chief Sihayo.\n\nOn 20 January the column camped under Isandlwana, a steep, isolated hill a few hours' march beyond the river. Chelmsford meant it as a staging camp, so it was neither entrenched nor laagered with its wagons, although his own standing orders called for a defensible camp at every halt. Cetshwayo had sent his main army from oNdini against the Centre Column under the senior inDuna Ntshingwayo kaMahole, a man of about seventy, with Mavumengwana kaNdlela. His public order was to 'eat up' the invaders; privately, Wikipedia records, he told Ntshingwayo not to attack at once and to try a parley first.\n\nBy 21 January the army had reached the Ngwebeni valley, behind the Nyoni heights north-east of the camp, without being seen. It lit no fires. That night Chelmsford, hearing that Major Dartnell's patrol had found Zulus to the south-east near Mangeni, decided the enemy was there. At dawn on the 22nd he marched out with roughly half the column to join Dartnell, leaving Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pulleine of the 24th to hold the camp. The Zulu commanders, for their part, did not plan to fight that day: Talana says they were waiting for the 23rd, the day after the new moon.",
  "forces": "Pulleine's camp held five companies of the 1st Battalion and one of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment (2nd Warwickshire), each of about 80 men, armed with the Martini-Henry breech-loader; two 7-pounder guns of N Battery, 5th Brigade, Royal Artillery; mounted volunteers, Natal Mounted Police and mounted infantry; and companies of the Natal Native Contingent (NNC), African levies with European officers in which, by one estimate, only one man in ten had a rifle. Each regular carried 70 rounds, with the reserve in the battalions' wagons. At about 10.30 Colonel Anthony Durnford, RE, arrived from Rorke's Drift with part of No. 2 Column: troops of the Natal Native Horse, mounted African riflemen, NNC infantry and a rocket battery. Durnford was senior to Pulleine, which muddied the command.\n\nThe Zulu army was a part-time national levy of age-regiments, fighting mainly with cowhide shield and stabbing spear, with some firearms. Its strength was its speed over the ground, its discipline in manoeuvre and its standard tactic, the 'horns of the buffalo': a chest to pin the enemy, two horns to envelop him, and the loins held back in reserve. Wikipedia's order of battle puts 3,000–4,000 men in the right horn (uNokhenke, uDududu), 7,000–9,000 in the chest (uMcijo or uKhandempemvu), 5,000–6,000 in the left horn (iNgobamakhosi, uMbonambi, uVe), and 4,000–5,000 in the reserve, the older regiments of the Undi corps.",
  "course": "**Morning.** From about 7.00 vedettes on the Nyoni heights reported Zulu groups moving on the skyline to the north-east. Pulleine stood his men to and sent word to Chelmsford, who got it between 9.00 and 10.00 and did not turn back. Durnford arrived at about 10.30 and, hearing of Zulus moving east, decided they threatened Chelmsford's rear. At about noon he rode out east beyond the conical koppie in front of the camp with two troops of the Natal Native Horse, followed by the rocket battery and an NNC escort, and sent other troops under Lieutenant Charles Raw up onto the plateau to the north.\n\n**Discovery, about 11.00 to noon.** Some 11 km from the camp, Raw's men chased a party of herders driving cattle and found themselves looking down into the Ngwebeni valley at the main Zulu army, sitting in silence. They fell back, fighting, towards the camp. Whether or not they wished to fight that day, Ntshingwayo and Mavumengwana now had little choice. The regiments nearest the scouts poured up out of the valley; the commanders and their izinduna shaped the rush into the horns as it went, while the reserve was held back.\n\n**The firing line, about noon to 13.00.** Pulleine pushed his companies out 500 to 800 yards from the tents into a long, extended line facing north and east along the foot of the Nyoni spur, with the two guns on a rise to the left of the camp: Talana describes a half-square some 1.5 miles long. The chest came over the escarpment and down onto the plain under heavy volleys, and for perhaps an hour it went to ground in the long grass. Aikenhead quotes one of its commanders shouting at his men: 'Did your King send you to lie like chickens in the grass?'\n\n**Durnford's fight.** Some 4 miles out, Durnford met the left horn coming over the skyline and fell back in stages, dismounting to fire at intervals. The rocket battery, on a separate route along the foot of the Nyoni, was caught at close range and overrun after firing two or three rockets. Durnford's men reached the Nyogane donga, a dry stream bed south-east of the camp, and held it for perhaps half an hour with colonial volunteers and police alongside. Then, short of ammunition and with the left horn working round their right, they gave way.\n\n**Collapse, about 13.00 to 14.00.** With his right flank open, Pulleine ordered the line back on the camp. As the companies turned, the Zulu chest rose and charged. The NNC company in the line broke first, opening a gap in the centre; the regulars, retiring in the open, were caught before they could re-form. The right horn, unseen behind Isandlwana, came down onto the nek on the Rorke's Drift road and closed the circle. With no wind, gunsmoke hung over the lines and let the Zulu close to stabbing range. Organised resistance ended at about 14.00, Talana says, though groups held out on the hillside, in the wagon park and on the nek for longer; one party of about 150 died together, and Talana thinks Captain Younghusband's company, high on the hill, was the last to fall. The partial eclipse of the sun peaked at about 14.30, after the camp had fallen.\n\n**Flight, 14.00 to about 16.00.** With the road cut, survivors fled south-west over broken ground to the Mzinyathi at what is now called Fugitives' Drift. Lieutenants Teignmouth Melvill and Nevill Coghill tried to save the Queen's Colour of the 1st/24th; it was lost in the river and both men were killed on the Natal bank, probably at about 15.30. The uncommitted Undi reserve, some 4,000 men under Dabulamanzi kaMpande, crossed the river towards Rorke's Drift. Chelmsford came back from Mangeni after dark and spent the night among the dead.",
  "aftermath": "About 1,300 defenders were killed, 52 of them officers; only some 60 Europeans survived, including five imperial officers, Lieutenants Horace Smith-Dorrien and Henry Curling among them. The Zulu lost perhaps 1,000–2,000 dead and many wounded, and took about 1,000 rifles, the guns and the reserve ammunition. Wikipedia records Cetshwayo's reported verdict: 'An assegai has been thrust into the belly of the nation.' That afternoon and night the Undi reserve attacked Rorke's Drift, against the king's orders, and was beaten off.\n\nThe defeat stalled the invasion and damaged the careers of Frere and of Theophilus Shepstone, who lost a son in the camp. Chelmsford returned and broke the Zulu army at Ulundi on 4 July; Cetshwayo was captured on 31 August, and the kingdom was split into 13 chiefdoms and slid into civil war. Ntshingwayo was killed in 1883 when Zibhebhu attacked oNdini.\n\nThe argument began at once. Chelmsford blamed Durnford for leaving the camp and for not entrenching it, although there is no evidence he was ever ordered to entrench; Durnford's defenders, Frances Colenso first, blamed Chelmsford for splitting his force and leaving the camp unlaagered. The other great argument is ammunition. Smith-Dorrien later wrote of rusted screws and too few screwdrivers; Ian Knight and archaeological work since 2000 have found no supply failure along most of the line, only among Durnford's men, and put the defeat down to an over-extended line and the Zulu commanders' skill. Today a Zulu memorial stands on the field beside the British cairns.",
  "wargaming": "Isandlwana is a gift for a two-player or multi-player game because both sides face real decisions and the result is not foreordained. At company level, with each British company and gun section a unit and each Zulu ibutho split into several, and turns of about ten minutes, the whole battle fits a large table: the Ngwebeni valley and Nyoni escarpment on one edge, the camp, nek and Isandlwana on the other, the Nyogane donga and conical koppie between. Raw's discovery and Durnford's ride make a good skirmish-scale curtain-raiser, and Fugitives' Drift is a tense pursuit game.\n\nThe terrain matters more than it looks. The escarpment hides the Zulu approach until very late; the long grass and dead ground let warriors go to ground under fire; the nek is the British line of retreat and the right horn's objective. Rules need to model Martini-Henry firepower at long range, the time it takes to carry ammunition out from the wagons, gunsmoke, and Zulu morale under fire, since the chest's pause and its renewed rush decide the battle.\n\nThe 'what ifs' are many. What if Pulleine had drawn a tight perimeter on the camp, or laagered the wagons? What if Durnford had stayed? What if Chelmsford had turned back at the first message, or the Zulu commanders had waited for the 23rd as they intended? The Zulu player's problem is coordination: launching the horns and chest together over a wide front, with a reserve to commit or hold back."
 },
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  {
   "file": "File:Zulu Encirclement at Isandlwana.png",
   "kind": "map",
   "caption": "The Zulu envelopment of the camp at Isandlwana, from Horace Smith-Dorrien's memoirs (1925); X marks where Melvill and Coghill were killed.",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Zulu_Encirclement_at_Isandlwana.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
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   "licence": "Public domain",
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   "artist": "General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien",
   "credit": "Memories of Forty-Eight Years' Service Page 12",
   "width": 644
  },
  {
   "file": "File:Military Map of Zulu Land.jpg",
   "kind": "map",
   "caption": "Military Map of Zulu Land, Intelligence Branch, Quartermaster-General's Department, 1879.",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/78/Military_Map_of_Zulu_Land.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
   "thumb": "https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/78/Military_Map_of_Zulu_Land.jpg/960px-Military_Map_of_Zulu_Land.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail",
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   "artist": "Intelligence Branch of the Quartermaster General’s Department of the British Army",
   "credit": "Military Map of Zulu Land, 1879 https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/51031/military-map-of-zulu-land-compiled-from-most-recent-informat-quartermaster-generals-department",
   "width": 2307
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  {
   "file": "File:Nthsingwayo kaMahole.jpg",
   "kind": "portrait",
   "caption": "Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khoza, the Zulu commander at Isandlwana, photographed in 1879.",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Nthsingwayo_kaMahole.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
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   "artist": "Unknown photographer (Life time: Unknown, but late 1800s.)",
   "credit": "Original publication : Unknown Immediate source : Italian war history site Ars Bellica. URL: http://www.arsbellica.it/pagine/contemporanea/Isandlwana/Isandlwana.html",
   "width": 647
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   "file": "File:AnthonyWilliamDurnfordRE.jpg",
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   "caption": "Colonel Anthony Durnford, Royal Engineers, commander of No. 2 Column, killed at Isandlwana.",
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   "file": "File:Charles Edwin Fripp (1854-1906) - The Battle of Isandlwana, 22 January 1879 - NAM. 1960-11-182 - National Army Museum.jpg",
   "kind": "painting",
   "caption": "The Battle of Isandlwana, 22 January 1879, by Charles Edwin Fripp, 1885 (National Army Museum).",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Charles_Edwin_Fripp_%281854-1906%29_-_The_Battle_of_Isandlwana%2C_22_January_1879_-_NAM._1960-11-182_-_National_Army_Museum.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
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   "file": "File:Isandlwana.jpg",
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   "caption": "Melvill and Coghill escaping with the Queen's Colour of the 1st/24th, after John Charles Dollman, The Graphic, 15 March 1879.",
   "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Isandlwana.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original",
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   "licence": "Public domain",
   "licence_url": "",
   "artist": "After John Charles Dollman",
   "credit": "The original description page was here . All following user names refer to en.wikipedia.",
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  {
   "file": "File:Isandlwanamassgrave.JPG",
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   "caption": "Isandlwana hill today, with a whitewashed cairn marking a British mass grave in the foreground.",
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 "sources": [
  {
   "id": "s1",
   "title": "Battle of Isandlwana (Wikipedia)",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s2",
   "title": "Charles Aikenhead, 'Isandlwana and a Four-Letter Word', Military History Journal 18:2 (South African Military History Society, June 2018)",
   "url": "https://www.samilitaryhistory.org/jnl2/vol182ca.html",
   "kind": "article"
  },
  {
   "id": "s3",
   "title": "'3 popular myths of Isandlwana', Military History Matters (2011)",
   "url": "https://www.military-history.org/feature/3-popular-myths-of-isandlwana-1879-zulu-war.htm",
   "kind": "article"
  },
  {
   "id": "s4",
   "title": "Day of the Zulu: interview with Ian Knight (PBS, Secrets of the Dead)",
   "url": "https://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/day-of-the-zulu-interview-with-ian-knight/7031",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s5",
   "title": "Isandlwana (Talana Museum, Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal)",
   "url": "https://www.talana.co.za/battles-of-the-area/isandlwana/",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s6",
   "title": "Mark Cartwright, 'Battle of Isandlwana', World History Encyclopedia",
   "url": "https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2909/battle-of-isandlwana/",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s7",
   "title": "Pat Rundgren, 'Isandlwana: Durnford's last stand' (Battlefields Route, KwaZulu-Natal)",
   "url": "https://www.battlefieldsroute.co.za/isandlwana-durnfords-last-stand-by-pat-rundgren/",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s8",
   "title": "Zulu army defeat British Army at the Isandlwana Mountain (South African History Online)",
   "url": "https://www.sahistory.org.za/node/72835",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s9",
   "title": "Ntshingwayo Khoza (Wikipedia)",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntshingwayo_Khoza",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s10",
   "title": "'Anthony Durnford', Military History Matters (2011)",
   "url": "https://www.military-history.org/feature/anthony-durnford.htm",
   "kind": "article"
  },
  {
   "id": "s11",
   "title": "Battle of Isandlwana (britishbattles.com)",
   "url": "https://www.britishbattles.com/zulu-war/battle-of-isandlwana/",
   "kind": "web"
  },
  {
   "id": "s12",
   "title": "National Army Museum, 'The Battle of Isandlwana, 22 January 1879' (Army in Art: Fripp's painting)",
   "url": "https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/battle-isandlwana-22-january-1879",
   "kind": "web"
  }
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 "cdb90": [
  230
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    "work_id": "wikisource:en:In Flanders Fields and Other Poems/Isandlwana",
    "title": "Isandlwana",
    "in": "In Flanders Fields and Other Poems",
    "author": "John McCrae",
    "life": "1872–1918",
    "year": null,
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