The Fall of the Asante Empire

by Robert B. Edgerton

  King Kofi Kakari and his councillors were appalled by Wolseley’s harsh conditions. For one thing 50,000 ounces of gold was worth £1.5 million (or over $6 million), substantially more than the cost of the entire British military campaign and far more gold dust than could possibly be delivered on short notice. Furthermore, such high-ranking members of the royal family could not possibly be surrendered. To do so would mean handing over the core of the royal family to British custody, an unimaginable betrayal. Without any reasonable hope of negotiating peace, the king ordered Asante commanders to redouble their efforts to block all the British routes of advance and be prepared to fight if the British attacked. Nevertheless, he sent two more letters again asking Wolseley not to advance and to allow more time for negotiation. He knew that the rains were due soon, and if he could delay until they began, he might be safe. This time Joseph Dawson, who as usual did the translation, included a note of his own, acknowledging some money sent to him by General Wolseley. The note concluded, “Please see 2d Corinthians, chap, ii, ver.II.” Grabbing a Bible from a nearby soldier, one of Wolseley’s staff officers deciphered Dawson’s warning: “Lest Satan should get advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices.”2 Wolseley’s reply was curt: “I halted four days at Fomena to please your Majesty. I cannot halt again until you have complied with my terms.” Then, as if to test the king’s grasp on reality, he concluded, “I am, King, your true friend.”3

  Initially, the Asante military commanders had planned to set up a defensive position at the crest of the one thousand six hundred-foot Adansi Hills, forcing Wolseley to attack up the steep escarpment, something that would have been difficult, especially for the men who would have to haul his artillery. This would have been a very strong position. In fact, it was so formidable that the king’s advisers, including some of his Muslim councillors, feared that the British would find this defensive line so impregnable that they would retreat before the Asante could surround them and capture all their weapons and supplies, something that at least some Asante leaders regarded as perfectly feasible. Persuaded by this argument, the king, who planned to go to batde with his commanders, agreed to leave the Adansi Hills unguarded, surprising the British to such an extent that many officers took it as a sign that the Asante would not fight at all. Henry Stanley agreed with them and cursed the Asante for their cowardice. Wolseley’s intelligence officer, the indomitable Redvers Buller, who would become a great hero in the British war against the Zulus five years later, knew better. His spies told him that the Asante army would fight at a place called Amoafo. Wolseley was pleased by the intelligence and wrote in his memoirs that the Adansi Hills were “delightful.”4

  The Asante army was willing to fight, but there was great controversy about what strategy to follow. In an attempt to vindicate himself, Amankwatia proposed that the entire Asante army mass near Amoafo and, instead of following their usual enveloping tactics, launch a surprise frontal attack against the British. The powerful king of Dwabin with his army of ten thousand men agreed to this plan, but King Kakari insisted on the traditional battle plan proposed by the charismatic Asamoa Nkwanta, Asante’s greatest and highest-ranking general, and perhaps the only man who could inspire the troops to fight. Neither the king nor the Asante troops had confidence in Amankwatia. He was the son of a famous general and the darling of many of the older war hawks, but he had insisted on the invasion of the coast that had not only failed to reap dividends but cost him half his army and, what was worse, brought Wolseley’s army into the Asante kingdom on his heels. Amankwatia also ordered the cosdy frontal attacks on Elmina and Abrakrampa, decisions Kofi Kakari insisted were against his orders.

  The king of Dwaben was so enraged by this decision not to make a frontal attack that he held his men out of the battle. (These men later served the Asante cause by holding back Captain Glover’s force advancing from the east, but their absence at Amoafo was crucial.) Another ten thousand disciplined troops attacking the thinly manned British front could have made a decisive difference.5 Instead, their seventy-year-old, gray-haired, and long-bearded commander, General Nkwanta, chose to fight a defensive battle at a position just south of Amoafo. To attack the Asante line, the British would have to advance through marshy land, drop down into a ravine, and then climb a ridge. The brush was so thick that the Asante troops would be nearly invisible to them. The main Asante force would lie flat on a broad front across Wolseley’s line of march. Two flanking armies would circle the British and attack their rear. One of these would be commanded by Amankwatia. At least ten thousand men assembled at Amoafo, and as the British would soon learn, their failure to fight in the Adansi Hills had nothing to do with cowardice.

  Although their will to resist had miraculously been rekindled since their humiliating withdrawal from the British protectorate only a few weeks earlier, the Asante were so short of powder and shot that many men would have to load their Dane guns with pebbles or even snail shells.6 A handful of Asante had modern breech-loading British Enfield rifles that fired deadly bullets, but the only other additions to the antiquated Asante weaponry were one thousand well-worn French smooth-bore muskets originally used in 1814 at Waterloo! Ironically, the brunt of the Asante fire at Amoafo would be taken by the Black Watch, a regiment that had lost 330 men at Waterloo, perhaps to fire from the same muskets.7

  Hoping to surprise the British, the Asante assigned highway police to prevent anyone from approaching Amoafo by road, but a spy hired for £20 was able to slip through, and he reported to Wolseley exacdy how the Asante troops were deployed.8 In an attempt to gain more information, Wolseley offered large rewards to anyone who could bring in an Asante prisoner, but there was little success, partly because the African advance troops of Wood’s and Russell’s brigades preferred killing Asante prisoners to handing them over for questioning.9 For example, on one occasion Colonel Wood’s aide, Lieutenant Arthur Eyre, ran to the colonel, asking him to hurry along with his pistol so that he could shoot some of his Mende troops who were practicing their sword strokes by seeing if they could cut an Asante prisoner in half with a single blow. When Wood arrived, he found that the man was dead but cut only three quarters of the way in half. Wood could not find the culprits because the African sentry who witnessed the act said he could not tell one Mende from another.10

  Wolseley never failed to send African scouts under British officers in advance of his main body, and far in advance of these men was Lord Gifford with forty picked men from various tribes, including some Mende. They wore short pants, had no shirts, and were barefooted; but some sported monkey-skin or buffalo-horn caps, others had long feather headdresses that stood straight up, and others had their own hair braided into long spikes that stood out in all directions.11 Gifford and his men had survived many harrowing encounters with Asante scouts, including one particularly frustrating episode in which Gifford challenged an advance party of armed Asante to fight, only to be indignantly told that they could not because they had no orders to fight white men. He did not realize that these men were highway police, not soldiers, and thus quite properly refused to fight without orders.12

  Early in the morning of January 30, Gifford cautiously led his men through the gloomy, shadowless forest so dark that a man could not read written orders, toward the small village of Egginassie, a mile south of Amoafo. Throughout the advance Gifford’s men had come upon magical and religious paraphernalia intended to deflect the British from their purpose or send them away. One was a long white thread, apparently mimicking the telegraph wire that was thought to be British magic. Earlier that morning the scouts found an emasculated slave impaled on a bamboo stake. Disgusted, but lacking any tools to dig a grave, Gifford threw the man’s body down a deep ravine. As Gifford’s scouts moved closer to Egginassie, a sudden roar of Asante musketry dropped three of Gifford’s men; he quickly withdrew, sending word back to Wolseley that the enemy were in strength and had opened fire. Later that day another British patrol stormed an Asante village, capturing fifty-three mus
kets, twelve kegs of powder, and the umbrella of Essaman Quantah, a venerable Asante general who had taught Amankwatia the art of war. The old general barely escaped capture.13 It was an impressive little victory but not without loss. Captain Nicol, a brave officer whom Wolseley characterized as elderly, was shot dead as he led his men into the village. Some of Wolseley’s young officers blamed Nicol’s death on the general’s order to his men not to fire first. One went so far as to refer to it as murder.14 Later that day General Wolseley ordered that a general advance against Amoafo would take place on the following morning, January 31.

  WOLSELEY’S CAMPAIGN ROUTE of 1874

  As far as the jungle would permit, a traditional British square would advance along a six hundred-yard-wide front. Royal Engineers and African laborers would do their best to open up the brush enough for the men to move forward. The 42nd Highlanders, bearded veteran troops led by clean-shaven officers who seemed to Henry Stanley to be mere boys, would be in front, closely followed by Rait’s Hausa artillerymen with their cannon and rockets. The front line would be commanded by Brigadier General Sir Archibald Alison, a veteran who had lost an arm in the Crimean War twenty years earlier. The left flank, which would extend very loosely for over two miles to the rear, would be manned by half of the Naval Brigade followed by Russell’s African troops. The right flank, equally long and vulnerable, would be led by the other half of the Naval Brigade followed by Wood’s African brigade. The Rifle Brigade would be the rear guard. Wolseley and his staff would direct the battle from the middle of the square, which would also hold the supply carriers and the 23rd Royal Welch Fusiliers led by their aggressive colonel, the aptly named Honorable Savage Mostyn. Because the serious thigh wound he had suffered years earlier in Burma had been causing him great pain, Wolseley had ridden all the way to the battleground in a rickety American-made buggy pulled by four Africans, but once the battle started, he would be on foot like the other officers.

  Lord Gifford’s advance guard once again came under Asante fire at the village of Egginassie, but reinforced by two companies of the Black Watch, he pressed forward until he ran into the main Asante line. By 8:15 A.M. the entire front was engulfed in pungent sulfurous smoke from thousands of Asante muskets. There was no wind, and the smoke hugged the ground, obscuring everyone’s vision. Under the command of Colonel Cluny MacPherson, whose name left no doubt about his Scottish ancestry, the Highlanders did everything men could to press forward against the Asante fire. The sound of the weapons was so intense—the Dane guns booming, the Sniders much sharper—that the Scots could not hear the skirl of the bagpipes that always accompanied them into battle. The Highlanders came under tremendous fire before they could see anyone to fire at, and they began to take heavy casualties. Lying down, they returned fire in the general direction of the Asante smoke, but they could not advance. Sir Archibald Alison, who had campaigned in India and the Crimea, wrote, “The Ashantis stood admirably, and kept up one of the heaviest fires I ever was under.”15 Wolseley’s written assurance that the Asante would never dare to stand against white men must have caused a few dark thoughts among the troops.

  After an hour the battlefield resembled a scene from the Western front in World War I. All the bark and leaves had been stripped off the trees, but as usual the Asante fired high, sparing most of the men who were lying down.16 The Asante also launched a series of attacks against the Highlanders’ flanks, forcing Alison to move up his reserve companies. Others climbed trees to fire down on the British, most of whom, except for officers, were now returning fire while lying down. At 9:30 A.M., after an hour and fifteen minutes of intense fighting, Alison sent a messenger to Wolseley, reporting that his reserves had been committed and he was heavily engaged: “The enemy is holding his ground stoutly in the front and left flank; some relief to my men would be advantageous, if possible, from the Rifle Brigade, as they are getting tired from this continuous fighting. Our loss in wounded is pretty severe.”17 If the king of Dwaben had allowed his ten thousand Asante troops to add their fire at this point, it might well have changed the course of the battle. The British infantry had been stopped cold, and they were beginning to waver.

  The Royal Engineers were also under heavy fire, and unlike the soldiers, they had to remain standing to cut brush and command the African laborers, most of whom had either thrown themselves down or left the front altogether. Captain Buckle was killed while trying to rouse these men. At the same time the advancing left flank of the Naval Brigade came under such heavy fire that it was forced to lie down and return fire. Wolseley sent a company of the Royal Welch Fusiliers to aid Alison at the front just as Alison’s dispatch arrived asking for surgeons to treat wounded Highlanders. The Asante now opened fire up and down both flanks. At 10:30 A.M. General Alison again reported that he could not advance and asked for half a battalion of the rifles. At the same time Colonel MacPherson was carried back to Wolseley’s headquarters with three wounds, the one in his ankle being incapacitating. He confirmed Alison’s report that the infantry could not advance.

  Hard pressed on all sides and with virtually no reserves remaining, General Wolseley was faced with a difficult choice. His men had been stopped in their tracks, casualties were mounting, and Asante fire showed no sign of slackening. He could have fallen back on a nearby village and formed a strong defensive position, but he refused even to consider such an action for fear that it would encourage the Asante to fight even harder. The sound of Asante musketry continued to be deafening, as Wolseley later wrote, but he calmly ordered Major Rait, his favorite artillery officer, to have his Hausa gunners manhandle their cannon across the swamp and fire at point-blank range into the Asante front line. With great effort and many casualties they managed to bring their guns to bear at close range, and their fire of rockets exploded against tree trunks with deafening crashes while their canister and explosive shells caused such appalling casualties that Asante fire began to slacken.

  Seizing the opportunity, Alison ordered the Highlanders to charge with fixed bayonets. Unable to defend themselves against bayonets because it took them so long to reload, a portion of the Asante line retreated, drawing other Asante on their flanks back with them to a nearby ridge where they took up another strong position. Rait’s artillery pursued, and once again the Asante front was driven back with great losses. As the Highlanders and Royal Welch moved forward, they passed by hundreds of Asante dead, all so terribly mutilated by the cannon fire that the correspondents who saw them were moved to comment on their horrible wounds. The huge .57-caliber Snider bullets had torn fist-sized holes through the dead, while the rockets and shells had left arms, heads, torsos, legs, and entrails in piles on the ground with blood and chunks of flesh scattered through the brush and trees.

  By midday, after four hours of fierce combat, General Alison had pushed his men into the town of Amoafo. Hearing heavy fire on both flanks and knowing that his men were done in, General Alison halted his advance and took a defensive position while he awaited orders from Wolseley. The Asante strategy had always called for allowing the head of Wolseley’s column to advance, although obviously not without stiff resistance, while the crucial attacks would be made on the flanks and the rear of the British army. The Asante flanking armies, especially the one led by Amankwatia, who was desperate to salvage his reputation, continued these attacks without letup, probing for weak spots that they could exploit. At one point earlier in the day, Colonel Wood, on the right flank, had been so annoyed by the inability of his men to advance or even to see the enemy that he rushed ahead and began to push the brush away with his hands. Fortunately for Wood, Lieutenant Eyre, his adjutant, almost tackled him to hold him back because an Asante soldier was in the brush only a few yards away. The man fired and somehow missed as Wood was pulled down. Later, as the Asante fire increased, Wood was hit above the heart with a nail head and fell heavily. The surgeons could do nothing and were so certain Wood would not live that they sent word to Wolseley that Wood was dying. Wolseley adamantly refused to beli
eve them, but the doctor in charge, Surgeon Major Mackinnon insisted, “No, Sir, you never yet saw a man live with a shot in his pericardium.”18 Dosed with brandy, Wood lay on a stretcher guarded by his Sierra Leone servant, who sat beside him armed with a Snider. To the astonishment of the surgeons, Wood recovered and rejoined his command the next day.

  At the peak of the fighting, Wolseley strolled about without apparent concern, smoking a cigar, appearing to be wholly fearless.19 Asante slugs were cutting the air all around him, but he shrugged them off, telling his staff that nearly everyone had been hit by a slug or a pebble, usually without harm. However, he later wrote that it was a strange sensation to realize that there were thousands of people trying to kill him and his men, yet none of them could be seen. He also added that if the Asante had been armed with Sniders, the British force would have been annihilated.20 The General was quite impressed by newsman Winwood Reade, who rushed to the front to join the Highlanders’ attack, and by the veteran African explorer Henry Stanley, who was cool under fire and shot back like a veteran, which for all practical purposes he was. But Wolseley called one unnamed newsman a craven coward.21 By 2 P.M. the firing in front stopped, but the Asante now enveloped the British rear and overwhelmed a supply column led by Colonel Colley. The unarmed carriers threw down their loads and stampeded, trampling Colley as they ran for their lives. Troops from the Rifle Brigade and the 2nd West India Regiment arrived just in time to save Colley, but many of the supplies were lost. The West Indians fought gallantly, but Wolseley never praised them, perhaps because his prejudice blinded him to their courage.22 There was no more heavy fighting that afternoon, but bursts of fire continued at various places along the British flanks until sunset.