The Fall of the Asante Empire

by Robert B. Edgerton

  Dressed in their sweat-stained scarlet uniforms, Torrane and the handful of British officers who accompanied him to King Osei Bonsu’s camp were cowed by the size and grandeur of the Asante delegation. In a scene reminiscent of Bowdich’s reception in Kumase, Torrane was received by many guards, elegantly dressed in silk and ornamented with gold, who were seated under large umbrellas and attended by hundreds of servants. One of these men was a tall, athletic Arab officer from somewhere to the north of Timbuktu. His men fought with bows and arrows as well as muskets, and several of their arrows with barbed iron heads were found in the fort.5 Why he and his men were fighting beside the Asante is not known.

  Although most of the British officers felt dishonored by Torrane’s treachery in handing over a man to whom he had promised sanctuary, Osei Bonsu was pleased, later saying to a British visitor, “From the hour Torrane delivered up Cheboo (Chibu), … I took the English for my friends, because I saw their object was trade only and they did not care for the people. Torrane was a man of sense, and he pleased me much.”6 As if to prove the king’s point, when Osei Bonsu demanded that all two thousand Fante refugees in the fort be handed over to him as slaves, Torrane did not refuse, as might have been expected of an Englishman whose country would ban the international trade in slaves only a few months later. Instead, Torrane bargained to be allowed to keep one thousand of these refugees for himself. The king agreed, and to the amazement and horror of the other British officers, Torrane did not protect these people. Instead, Torrane, who was in debt, sold them to a slave dealer, who shipped them to America. When John Swanzy, a member of the garrison that had fought so valiantly against the Asante, heard about this outrage, he angrily pulled himself out of a serious attack of malaria and sailed by canoe from Fort James at Accra (some one hundred kilometers away), where he had just become commander, to Cape Coast in an attempt to help the refugees. He arrived too late to do anything but save a handful of people whose ship had not yet sailed and express his contempt for Torrane. Exhausted, Swanzy died a few days later.

  Torrane’s actions were seen by the coastal people and the Asante alike as a British admission of Asante military supremacy. The British later learned that just before the truce was agreed upon, the Asante commander had issued orders for several thousand men to maintain musket fire on the fort’s defenders while several thousand more brought forward enough gunpowder to breach the fort’s gate. Had this attack been carried out, it almost certainly would have succeeded, something both the Asante and the British understood quite well.7 Nothing happened between 1807, the time of this battle, and 1817, when Bowdich arrived in Kumase, to alter the Asante conviction that they were the supreme military power in the Gold Coast.

  Hoping that the British would now encourage the Fante to allow Asante traders to pass peacefully through their territory to the coast, Osei Bonsu withdrew his army from the coast. It had been a long campaign, there had been many casualties (especially those inflicted by British guns at Cape Coast), and many of the surviving soldiers were suffering from smallpox and dysentery. As soon as the Asante army was gone, the Fante once again denied Asante traders free access to the coast, and once again the British did not intervene to protect them. Four years later, in 1811, the king sent another army to the coast to punish the Fante, and after the by now predictably overwhelming victory, the Asante army withdrew. But the Fante restricted trade again and again the British stood by. In 1814 an even larger Asante army dealt the Fante an even more decisive defeat, scattering their army, destroying many villages, and leaving large areas depopulated. Even then the British traders took no steps to restrain their Fante allies or to provide the Asante with the friendship and trade they asked for. In neither of these campaigns did the Asante make any hostile gesture toward the British.

  Late in 1816 Captain Sir James Yeo, the senior Royal Navy officer assigned to West Africa and a veteran of the War of 1812 against the United States, expressed his view of the situation in a report that the Admiralty took seriously enough to forward to the Colonial Office:

  The people of the coast called Fantees have done everything in their power to prevent the Ashantees, natives of the interior, from having any communication with it [the coast]; as by excluding them from the trade, they act as brokers between the Ashantees and the European merchants. They are a vile, abandoned set of people who rob both one and the other; and what is more extraordinary, we have countenanced them in it, although it is both unjust to the Ashantees and in direct opposition to our commercial interests, as a free trade with the natives of the interior would be of great national importance, and which the King of the Ashantees is most anxious to establish.8

  What Captain Yeo and others saw so clearly, the merchants of the African Company were now reluctantly forced to acknowledge as well. They knew that the Asante were preparing another invasion of the coast to devastate the Fante yet again, and perpetual war was decidedly bad for business. Ten years earlier, King Osei Bonsu had suggested to the merchants that they send one of their officers to the Asante capital as their resident representative. Not until ten years had passed and the British fear of a Dutch trade monopoly with the Asante had grown did the Bowdich mission to Kumase in 1817 set forth.

  The Asante Army

  The Asante army that devastated the Fante and could have taken the British fort at Cape Coast was large by any standard and was far larger than any of its West African opponents. Bowdich estimated its strength in full mobilization at 200,000, and this may not have been an overestimate.9 But even if its actual size were only half this, it was still larger than that of its most formidable foe, the kingdom of Dahomey to the east, whose women warriors—the so-called Amazons—would later so capture the fancy of European visitors, including Sir Richard Burton. The large size of the Asante army was only one reason for its military prowess, however, and not the most important one. Its great successes against other African armies came in part from its advantage in firearms, but more important was its remarkable organization and the exceptional discipline and bravery of its officers and men.

  Because the availability of Asante gold enabled them to acquire large numbers of muskets before their northern neighbors could (they were farther from the coastal trading routes), the Asante were able to defeat them and make them tributary states. Part of this tribute would be paid in able-bodied male slaves to serve in the Asante army, helping to increase its size even further. In fact, although all officers in the army were metropolitan Asantes and the high-ranking commanders were usually aristocrats, the great majority of the common soldiers were slaves.10 Slaves not needed for the army or the Asante economy were traded to the coast for more muskets and gunpowder. Success in batde also heightened Asante esprit and confirmed the belief that bravery would bring victories, not to mention the spoils of war. Success bred arrogance, an attitude the Asante were well known for.

  Much like the president of the United States, the Asante king was the commander in chief of the army, and it was for him to appoint its field commanders. But the decision to go to war lay with the inner council and the national assembly, much as it does with the U.S. Congress. The field commander and all of his high-ranking officers were much like feudatory lords in Europe. Most were aristocrats or royal leaders of large districts during peacetime but took prescribed roles in the national army in times of war. Though these leaders were referred to as chiefs by the British, the title understates their role and power. They were, more accurately, “priest-chiefs” (Obene Okomofo), whose stool gave them powers that were established equally by Asante law and religion. In many respects they closely resembled the lord lieutenants of an English county in their ability to retain the loyalty of men in their district, as well as the legal right to call them to war when needed. Unlike many African armies, the Asante did not call up men in regiments based on age or the date on which they were circumcised. In fact, the Asante did not practice circumcision at all, believing that the body should be kept intact, a belief that put them very much at odds wit
h their Islamicized northern neighbors, many of whom would fight against them later in the century. The foundation of the Asante army was territorial: men from the same district owed allegiance to their leader.

  Beginning early in the nineteenth century, the king maintained a small force of several hundred regular soldiers to serve as a kind of royal guards unit. Later in the century, other full-time guards units were established, and there was also a full-time medical corps, a drum company, and about one thousand regular war messengers, or couriers, whose ability rapidly to communicate information over a considerable distance in battle was vital.11 Like British bugle calls, Asante “talking drums” could convey certain kinds of standardized information over considerable distances. So too could traditional melodies played on elephant-tusk horns, but for complicated messages to be conveyed in the noise and confusion of battle, messengers were vital. The remainder of the army, and by far its largest part, consisted of slaves, retainers, or freemen owing obedience to their chief or district king, who had the right to summon them to war. These chiefs were given quotas to fill depending on the extent of the mobilization and the seasonal needs for agricultural labor or other activities. The largest of these quotas were given to the kings of Dwaben or Bekwai, either of which could easily mobilize over ten thousand men. These part-time soldiers were expected to own their own muskets and other weapons; the king was required to provide them with gunpowder and shot. Sometimes these locally raised armies marched directly to battle after assembling in their own districts and being joined by senior Asante commanders, but on those occasions when a major campaign had been ordered, they marched to Kumase where the entire army came together to prepare for war.

  Chiefs or district kings who failed to respond to the Asante king’s request for soldiers risked royal displeasure that could easily take the extreme form of a punitive expedition against them. But it was not only fear that led to cooperation. A successful campaign could lead to great amounts of booty in the form of gold, guns, gunpowder, captives, and land. In principle all war booty belonged to the king, but he usually returned at least two thirds of it to his commanders, who in turn shared it with those loyal to them. For many powerful men war was the royal road to glory and riches. The victorious General Amankwatia III, for example, who had triumphed in 1803, was given the town of Sreso, seven miles from Kumase, with nearly all of its eight thousand inhabitants as his personal soldiers, slaves, or retainers. When he visited the court in Kumase, the flourish his horn players loudly trumpeted meant “no one dares trouble me.”12 Other generals had equally boastful airs. These men might fall out of favor and lose their wealth or be killed in batde, but there were always others eager to lead an army to glory and riches.

  The organization and tactics of the Asante army on the march were highly standardized. Originally modeled after ants, who march in several columns before joining at the crucial moment, the army in a traditional fully-mobilized campaign was led by two or three thousand scouts (akwansrafo) who marched well in advance of the regular troops, often at night to avoid detection. Most of these scouts were professional hunters who, when detected, used their skill as marksmen to snipe at their enemy’s advanced forces, often from a perch high in a tree. To draw the enemy’s fire and force them to reveal their positions in the jungle foliage, they carried long wooden sticks with hooks on the end to shake trees as if someone were in them. Because it was considered unlucky for a scout to be killed, these men were not expected to become involved in any prolonged fighting. After exchanging a few shots with the enemy, the scouts typically withdrew through the next wave of troops, the advance guard (twafo).

  When the forest was open enough to permit maneuvers, a condition common in the north of Kumase but rare in the south, this guard advanced in two or three long lines. After the men in the first line fired their muskets, the next line advanced through them while they reloaded. Then the rear line advanced, and the entire process was repeated or the advance was halted. No one was permitted to retreat. To assure that no one did, the advance guard was backed up by a line of trusted metropolitan Asante freemen known as sword bearers (afonasoato). Armed with hippopotamus-hide whips and heavy swords, these men flogged or slashed anyone who attempted to flee. The same practice, though not often publicized, was common in European armies during the nineteenth century and on both sides during the American Civil War. Behind the brave Confederate soldiers who charged to their deaths at Gettysburg were others with bayonets (they were called “file closers”) to make certain they did not change their minds. All of these armies understood the importance of making it as dangerous for its troops to retreat as it was for them to advance. Asante soldiers were taught to repeat this saying: “If I go forward, I die; if I flee, I die; better to go forward and die in the mouth of battle.”13

  Behind these sword bearers would come the main body (adonten), which could consist of twenty thousand men or more. An equally large force marched on each flank with orders to surround the enemy. The commander of the army followed the main body, surrounded by his retainers and bodyguard. In each of these large forces, there were hundreds of men who were armed only with knives to dispatch the enemy’s wounded. Behind the main body marched many thousands of slaves who carried supplies on their heads and all manner of camp followers, including many women.14 Finally, there was a smaller rear guard (kyidom) that always faced the rear during an engagement in case the enemy attempted to encircle the army.15 Each of the flank units as well as the rear guard had its own senior commanders in addition to many lower-ranking officers. Men from the various Asante districts had traditional places in the flank units, the rear guard, or the main body that marched forward in every campaign. They understood the tactics necessary for them to succeed in battle. Of course, some battles did not develop as planned, and these formations became jumbled together.

  Before marching toward battle, the fully mobilized army assembled in Kumase, where gunpowder and shot from the king’s apparently huge armory (no European is known actually to have seen it), located three miles outside of the city, were distributed to the men. Much of the gunpowder was of inferior quality, having been adulterated by European traders or damaged in transit, and their ammunition was inferior, too. Unlike contemporaneous European armies, whose men usually fired lead bullets that more or less fitted the bore of their muskets, the Asante typically fired an assortment of nails or slugs cut from the lead or iron bars that European traders sold to them. Their guns were six-foot-long muskets known as “Long Danes,” after the Danish traders who introduced them to the region. These heavy, flintlock weapons were often shoddily manufactured (many of them in Birmingham, England), but they could be deadly at short range. Difficult and time-consuming to reload (it took seven distinct movements and up to a minute to do so), rifles as long and heavy (nearly twenty pounds) as these were hardly ideal for jungle warfare.16 Yet they were the only firearms then available on the Gold Coast, and they were well cared for and lavishly decorated, often with patterns of red shells attached to the stocks. Very early in the nineteenth century some soldiers carried poisoned arrows and javelins, while officers and sword bearers carried heavy swords, but after 1807 these weapons were not used against the British. Horses were known to have survived in Kumase, but because they could not survive in the tsetse fly-infested forest zone to the south, there was no cavalry. Although high-ranking officers sometimes rode horses in Kumase with all the hauteur of a European guards officer, they did not ride to battle. Instead, they were carried in ornate hammocks.

  On ceremonial occasions both officers and common soldiers were elaborately uniformed. In addition to the officers described by Bowdich (see chapter 1), these same British visitors to Kumase came upon hundreds of what appeared to be junior officers wearing leopard-skin tunics covered with cockleshells. Several small blue-handled knives in silver and gold sheaths were fastened to the front of their tunics, and similarly ornamented elephant-hide cartridge belts were worn around their waists. Each man carried a gold-handled
sword in a scabbard behind his left shoulder, and half a dozen brighdy colored silk scarves and white horse’s tails streamed from their arms, which cradled their long Danish muskets, richly ornamented with gold and red shells. When Bowdich and his companions passed by these men, they then came upon thousands of soldiers who sat so closely together that the British visitors could not pass through them without stepping on their feet, “to which they were perfectly indifferent,” Bowdich wrote.17 Each man wore a cap made of anteater and leopard skin, carried a cluster of small knives on his shoulders and hips, and wore cartridge pouches embossed with red shells and brass bells. The stocks of their muskets were covered with leopard skin. Their faces and arms were painted with long white stripes. A few wore iron chain collars that signified their exceptional bravery in past batdes. Bowdich wrote that they were prouder of these collars “than of gold.”18

  Once the army was on the march, they simplified their uniforms. The ordinary troops went barefoot; most wore only a cotton cloth tied around the waist like a girdle and carried gourds of gunpowder and pouches of shot as well as their weapons. Many officers and soldiers wore cotton shirts covered with Muslim amulets intended to ward off harm. Most of these men carried maize flour, dried beans, cassava, ground nuts, and other provisions in a large skin bag slung over the shoulder, but some had food carried for them by their younger brothers or unarmed slaves. When close to their enemy, they ate only maize meal mixed with water and ground nuts in order not to reveal their position by lighting fires. Consistent with their high social rank, officers were accompanied by slaves who carried their food; some of their wives accompanied them, too. High-ranking officers were carried in palanquins under vast umbrellas. Officers and men alike let their beards grow on the march, and soldiers let their hair grow as well, often tying it up in a dozen or so foot-long spikes. Specialists joined the march as well: priests with shrines to various gods, physicians, Muslim religious advisers, diplomats, and councillors. Of special importance were medical orderlies, who treated the wounded on the field or carried them to the rear and also carried away the dead. It was important to the Asante that their dead not fall into enemy hands where they would be decapitated, leaving their souls defiled. Throughout their wars of the entire nineteenth century, the British were amazed by the ability of the Asante to remove their dead despite being under devastating fire.