The Fall of the Asante Empire

by Robert B. Edgerton

  As this frontal charge was bearing down on the Asante line, two African companies turned the Asante left flank. At this point of danger in all previous battles, the Asante had broken and run, almost every man for himself. But these men of Kofi Kofia’s army were different—they stood and fought, sometimes with their bare hands. As Melliss was slashing at Asante soldiers with his saber, he found himself in single combat with a man who shot at him at point-blank range but missed. Melliss wounded the man with his sword but was immediately thereafter shot through the foot, leaving it paralyzed. The wounded Asante flung himself on Melliss, and the two men wrestled each other to the ground. Just as the Asante appeared to be getting free to unsheath his knife, Captain Godfrey rushed up and shot the man in the head.

  The bayonets of the British troops slowly prevailed but not without cost. Fully half of the Sikhs were wounded, many seriously. But the Asante left flank now caved in just as more British troops, behind heavy cannon fire, burst into the Asante rear. Only then did these Asante soldiers run from battle, leaving their wounded and many rifles behind. Sixty-two Asante dead were counted in the hand-to-hand fight alone, with hundreds of other bodies found elsewhere. Willcocks came upon seventeen men lying dead together in a pile who “were literally riddled” with machine-gun bullets. In another pile he saw seven or eight men jumbled together in death. He wrote that they were “splendid-looking fellows, far superior in physique to any I had seen before.”17 So much blood had been shed in the grass that officers’ legs were stained red to the knee. Many hundreds of Asante wounded were acknowledged, but no one who participated in the battle reported their fate.

  A British column pursued Kofi Kofia’s fleeing Atchumas, finding guns, baggage, and a few wounded men alongside the road. They met an old woman who assured a British officer that the Asante were moving far too fast to be caught. She was right. Even though they were carrying many wounded, the Asante outdistanced their British pursuers. On the long march back to Kumase, the British column encountered an elaborate log fort built into several trees that commanded the road. Montanaro tried to destroy it with eighteen-pound shells, but after a dozen shots it was still undamaged. Willcocks was relieved that it had not been defended.18 The force returned to Kumase on October 3, trailed by the locusts, who carried large numbers of Asante heads slung from long poles. How they came by these trophies is not recorded.

  With no large body of hostile troops still at large, Willcocks gave his men some time to rest and refit. Melliss was among the first to be placed in a hammock for the long trip to the coast and evacuation to England, where his foot required surgery. He would receive the Victoria Cross for his actions, the first man to do so from newly crowned King Edward VII, the eldest son of Queen Victoria. When Melliss left Kumase, the entire garrison enthusiastically turned out to honor him. Melliss recovered fully from his wounds, but three years later he was badly mauled by a lion while campaigning in Somaliland. Once again he recovered.

  Of the British officers who began the campaign, all were either dead or invalided home as a result of disease or wounds except for Hall and Willcocks. Hall somehow never contracted malaria, and although he refused to take quinine, neither did Willcocks. Of course, malaria was just about the only malady Willcocks did not suffer from. The Sikhs who had not been wounded were quite healthy, but the African troops were in poor condition. Due to the rain and cold nights, most had bronchial infections, and the continual marching through mud left their always bare feet badly cut and their legs ulcerated. Dysentery was a continuing problem for them, too, and smallpox outbreaks were common as well. Their uniforms, like those of the long-serving officers, were torn and faded. They looked terrible and felt even worse, but their discipline was always excellent. Carriers and locusts were flogged and sometimes given long prison sentences, but the fighting troops seldom required punishment.

  The fleeing Asante troops had taken refuge in the northwestern corner of Asante where Willcocks feared they would once again come together under either Kofi Kofia, who survived the last battle, or Kobina Cherri, a leader notorious for mutilating his enemies, some seventy-six of whom he was alleged to have killed. He was a favorite of Yaa Asantewaa, who was still free and quite defiant. On the first of November, long after many in the Colonial Office believed the war had ended, Willcocks sent Major Montanaro with seven hundred men, five machine guns, and several 75-mm cannon northwest toward Berekum to find and punish the remaining hostile Asante. They were to rendezvous with another, only slightly smaller, force on the way. With over one thousand two hundred infantry, two thousand five hundred carriers, and numerous locusts this was a major expedition. On November six they received an insolent message from Kobina Cherri that he would fight. As Montanaro pressed forward, his troops mistook some of their locusts for the enemy and opened fire, killing six. Their faded and dirty shoulder sashes could not be seen at a distance. The families of the six men were compensated for their deaths, but the rest of their fellow tribesmen left the column and returned to Kumase, refusing to participate any longer in the campaign.19 Soon after these men left, a tremendous storm struck, nearly blinding everyone with lightning and knocking down huge trees, one of which barely missed killing Montanaro and his staff.

  Despite these misfortunes, Montanaro continued his march northwest to confront Kobina Cherri. Several Asante kings and war leaders surrendered, including the man who had commanded the stockade at Bantama. Through an interpreter he told Montanaro that his men had been determined to defend their position at all costs, but when a white man with a sword charged straight at them all by himself, they were so unnerved by what they took to be a madman that they fled.20 The lone man was Melliss, and he may have owed his survival to Asante law, which forbade the killing of madmen. Another Asante commander who surrendered complained that it was unfair of the British to use swords and bayonets when the Asante had neither.

  The British continued the march through open grasslands, where at first they enjoyed the sun but soon wilted in the heat. It became increasingly apparent that Kobina Cherri had been unable to raise an army. There was no resistance, but the British listened to stories of the terror Kobina Cherri had rained on the rubber traders in the area. It was said that some seventy-six men who either could not or would not pay the amounts of money he demanded were tortured to death. On the thirteenth the column arrived in Berekum, whose king had remained loyal to the British throughout the war. He was delighted to see so many British troops. The next day they began the return march, and thanks to information provided by a girl whose father had been killed by Kobina Cherri, a small British force captured the fugitive. Montanaro described him as defiant and insolent but could not help admiring his courage.21 On the twenty fourth the troops returned to Kumase with thirty-one kings and chiefs as prisoners, nine hundred guns, and five thousand pounds of rubber. They also laid waste much of the countryside along their route.

  In a monument to timely justice, Kobina Cherri was tried by military tribunal the next day, charged with murdering over fifty British subjects. It was testified that after torturing these people, he cut off their hands and drove them into the forest to die. He was found guilty, and Willcocks, who headed the tribunal, sentenced him to be hanged the following morning. Later that night Kobina Cherri asked to see Willcocks. When the colonel went to the guardroom to see the handcuffed prisoner, he was told that if he pardoned the Asante war leader, Kobina Cherri would reveal the hiding place of a large sum of gold and the Golden Stool. Willcocks urged him to do both as a last good deed but said that the death sentence was final. An unknown number of Asante had already been hanged, and some had been tied to trees and executed by firing squad.22

  Early the next morning the prisoner again sent for Willcocks and asked if there were any possibility of a pardon. Told no, he then offered to reveal the name of the man who actually committed the murders, a close friend of his as it turned out. These negotiations, which were not inappropriate for a high-ranking Asante, did nothing to diminish his dignity
. Indeed, when Kobina Cherri was marched to the gallows, he did so with imposing courage, pausing only to spit at two African traders whose testimony had helped to convict him. Once he mounted the bamboo scaffold, he stood as erect as any soldier and glared defiance.23 When he fell to his death, “an involuntary murmur of admiration arose.”24

  Colonel Willcocks left Kumase on December 3, passing down a two-mile-long avenue of troops and Asante chiefs, who fired their Dane guns exuberantly. The war was over, and authority would now be exercised by a British resident, Captain Donald Stewart (the son of a field marshal), who had campaigned with the troops during the latter stages of the hostilities and served as Colonel Scott’s political officer in 1896. No significant number of armed Asante were still hostile to British rule; but even though an amnesty for all but those accused of murder had been in effect since October, a substantial number of people who had played prominent roles in the war were still at large. Stewart let it be known that unless these people surrendered, he would use his remaining 1,225 troops under Colonel Burroughs and twenty-three other British officers to devastate even more of the Asante countryside. In no time several hundred Asante, including many women, surrounded a forested area and seized two wanted men. Within two weeks all of the prominent leaders had surrendered. One of the last to do so was Yaa Asantewaa. Most of these last leaders to surrender were deported to Sierra Leone, but the queen mother was sent to the Seychelles to join her son and King Prempe in exile.

  A sad footnote to the campaign was written by the men of the West African Regiment from Sierra Leone. Like the other African soldiers under British command, they had fought bravely and well throughout the long and savage war. However, when they were told that they would remain in Asante indefinitely, they rebelled, insisting that they had been promised that they would return home as soon as the fighting ended. All the old British officers whom they had known and trusted had been killed or invalided home and their replacements knew nothing about any past promises. Taking matters into their own hands, the frustrated men seized an ample supply of food and ammunition and marched off to Cape Coast in perfect order under their own Sierra Leone sergeant. Unwilling to start a blood bath, Colonel Burroughs let them go. When they arrived at Cape Coast, the new governor attempted to reason with the men, explaining the seriousness of mutiny, but they refused to listen and set off on the thousand-mile walk back to Sierra Leone. Pursued by Hausas and fired at by a gunboat, some were killed and a few were captured, including the man most responsible for organizing the mutiny. He was found guilty and shot. The great majority disappeared into the jungle and were not seen again. Perhaps they were able to return to their homes. If they did, the British government did not attempt to track them down.

  British losses since the beginning of the war in April were comparatively slight. Only 16 officers had been killed, but 52 had been wounded, and another 54 had to be sent home in hospital ships. Of the various African and Sikh troops only 113 had been killed in action, although another 102 died from disease, and 41 were missing and presumed dead. Nearly 700 had been wounded, and almost 5,000 had to be admitted to hospital at one time or another.25 Although only 1 carrier was officially considered to have been killed in action, it is likely that at least 500 were killed and an equal number probably died of disease, because of the 15,000 carriers who served, over 5,000 had been admitted to hospitals. It was also reported that 50 locusts had been killed, although the actual number must have been larger.26

  Many of the surviving British officers went on to distinguished careers. Willcocks became a major general and commanded the Indian Corps in France in 1914. Surprisingly, given his reckless courage, Melliss lived to be a Lieutenant General. Several others reached general rank or became colonial governors. Hodgson became the governor of Barbados and British Guiana, Montanaro became the governor of Sierra Leone, and after World War I Willcocks served as the governor of Bermuda, a plum post for an aging hero. Some, of course, died in later wars. Godfrey was killed in Somaliland while saving the life of another officer, as he had earlier saved Melliss. Sergeant Mackenzie, who won a VC, was killed in World War I, where he served as a major in the Black Watch. Hall eventually lost his sight from a wound he later suffered in Nigeria. A medal was issued to all who served in the war, and England feted its returning heroes.

  How many Asante died in the war can never be known, but shells, bullets, and bayonets must have slain several thousand; many others must have died of their wounds, and still others of disease. Opoku Mensa, who as much as anyone had led the Asante resistance, died in captivity in the fort at Kumase, apparently from natural causes. While Willcocks was receiving a gold Sword of Honor from the city of London, the Asante kingdom was in ruins, its golden swords of diplomacy of no further use. Villages had been burned, fields devastated, and its leaders dead or in exile. Except for the limited powers of local chiefs, all authority now rested with the British. They divided the former area of metropolitan Asante into four districts, each with its own British-appointed commissioner. The traditional districts such as Kumase, Mampon, and Dwaben ceased to have political significance.

  In 1903 the railroad that Wolseley had hoped for was actually opened, when a track was completed that connected Kumase to the coast at Sekondi, west of Elmina. The ravaged city of Kumase received new life, rapidly becoming a trading and administrative center. Government offices were built, and men were once again making a profit from rubber, timber, gold, and especially cocoa. The economic recovery was so rapid and the political climate so tranquil that when the chiefs petitioned for King Prempe’s return in 1910, the British governor gave it some consideration before rejecting it, and he pointedly did not repeat Hodgson’s declaration that Prempe would never return.

  Peace and prosperity continued until 1921 when once again the fate of the Golden Stool threatened to lead to armed conflict. The British-led Gold Coast government had undertaken an extensive program of road building, and one of the proposed roads was to pass directly over the still-secret hiding place of the Golden Stool. By the time that word of this was passed to the handful of men who knew where the hiding place was, the laborers were on the verge of digging up the sacred area. By inventing a story about dangerous supernatural forces in the area, the laborers were induced to flee, and the roadwork was delayed long enough to permit the Golden Stool to be removed. But the damage had been done. The Asante remembered Hodgson’s heavy-handed attempts to find the stool, and they assumed that the road-building activity was simply another ruse by the government to seize the it. Rumors spread all over Asante, and preparations were made for war.

  However, before the stool had been reburied, one of the men entrusted with its protection secretly removed some of the gold from it. Just before hostilities seemed ready to break out, an Asante woman recognized the golden ornaments from the stool as they were being offered for sale. Thanks to the research of a government anthropologist, R. S. Rattray, the British now understood the significance of the Golden Stool and took immediate steps to arrest fourteen Asante men accused of desecrating it. They also allowed the accused to be tried by the Kumase council of chiefs. Six of the accused were sentenced to death, and seven were given life prison terms. Although all these sentences were commuted by the British, usually to exile, the Asante were favorably impressed by the trial and by British assurances that the Golden Stool would forever remain in Asante hands.

  Shortly after the trial the principal spokesman for the chiefs of Kumase referred to the stool and its meaning for the Asante with the same sentiments that had led to the uprising of 1900: “The Golden Stool is very great. It contains the soul of the nation. We honor it so much that if it had been tampered with by anyone from outside we would have risen in arms, and it would not have mattered to us if we all perished the same day.”.27

  In November 1924, only three years after the peaceful resolution of this crisis, King Prempe was allowed to return to Kumase. He and his relatives had been well treated in the Seychelles, where they were paid a
monthly allowance, adequately housed, treated with respect, and allowed the freedom of the island. Some of the king’s children married Seychelles islanders. British education was also made available, and so was Christianity King Prempe eventually became an enthusiastic convert but was unsure which denomination to declare as his own until he asked a British official which church the British monarch belonged to. He then quickly declared that he too would join the Church of England, and he became a devout Anglican who attended church every Sunday and preached Christian values.

  Prempe was not above having a drink, or even several, but he was not given to any of the excesses of many of his royal ancestors.28 He enjoyed lively conversation and was skilled at many games, including bridge, and while sailing from the Seychelles to Accra on his return home, he defeated everyone who played against him at checkers.29 Much had changed in the twenty-eight years since his humiliating and illegal arrest. British officials met him with appropriate ceremony when he left the ship, and a special train took him to Kumase, where he was met by a huge throng of Asante wearing white clothes, their faces painted with white stripes as a sign of joy. When he stepped off the train, there were loud cheers, and many people wept with joy. He was dressed in a European suit, and despite the heat, he wore a wool overcoat. As they greeted him, he smiled and lifted his black-felt homburg to them. He then stepped into a waiting automobile, which took him to a house that had been prepared for him.