Victoria's Generals

by Steven J Corvi

  In the early afternoon sounds of firing were heard from the direction of the camp, and messages from the camp’s garrison began to reach Chelmsford. Clery afterwards wrote that at that stage he heard Crealock exclaim: ‘How very amusing! Actually attacking our camp! Most amusing!’83 Shortly after 1315 Chelmsford went up Mdutshana hill just north of the new Mangeni campsite with some of his staff to examine the Isandlwana camp through their field glasses. The tents had not been struck as were the regulations during an engagement, and all seemed quiet. Chelmsford therefore came to the conclusion that if there had been a Zulu attack, it had been successfully repulsed. It was only at 1445 that Chelmsford decided to return to Isandlwana at a leisurely pace with a small escort to investigate. About 5 miles from Isandlwana he was met by Lonsdale, who had ridden back to Isandlwana to arrange for supplies to be brought up, and he reported that he had barely escaped the Zulu who were in possession of the camp. Chelmsford was appalled, purportedly exclaiming in disbelief: ‘But I left over 1,000 men to guard the camp.’ Chelmsford then acted decisively. He ordered the already exhausted forces concentrating at the Mangeni campsite 7 miles to the south-west of Isandlwana to retake the camp, though it was not until 1830 that Chelmsford had concentrated all his scattered forces within 3 miles of Isandlwana. Clery later described ‘the look of gloom and pain’ on Chelmsford’s ‘expressive’ countenance, which clearly mirrored his inner turmoil.84 Indeed, a soldier wrote home that he was ‘very near crying’.85 But Chelmsford never ‘flunked’ his duty and, anticipating Zulu resistance, addressed his dismayed troops with determination: ‘Men, the enemy has taken our camp. Many of our friends must have lost their lives defending it. There is nothing left for us now but to fight our way through – and mind, we must fight hard, for we will have to fight for our lives. I know you, and I know I can depend on you.’86

  The men cheered lustily in response. Chelmsford then advanced in darkness with his force in battle array, guns in the centre with British infantry on either flank, a battalion of NNC on each flank of the regulars with the mounted troops in advance of the NNC. Chelmsford halted half a mile from the camp to fire shrapnel. But the victorious Zulu had taken the camp at about 1400 and after looting it had withdrawn, so Chelmsford reoccupied it at about 2030 without resistance, though he remained on the alert for a night attack that never came. It was a horrific night spent bivouacked, as he laconically informed Frere, ‘among the bodies from dead soldiers and of the enemy’.87

  For the loss of about 1,000 men, the Zulu had killed 52 of the 67 British officers, 739 white troops, 67 white NCOs of the NNC and 471 recorded black troops out of a total of 1,707 men left to defend the camp. The defeat at Isandlwana comprehensively shattered Chelmsford’s invasion plans. The heavy loss of life, weapons, ammunition and transport meant that he could make no further advance until his forces had regrouped and been reinforced and fresh transport assembled. Until then, he would have to stand on the defensive and do his best to rally the defences of Natal where panicking colonists were in daily expectation of a Zulu invasion. The stout defence of Rorke’s Drift on the night of 22/23 January helped neutralise somewhat the shattering effects of Isandlwana, but it was now clear that if the British were to maintain their prestige in southern Africa they had to prosecute the war until the Zulu were utterly defeated in the field.

  The Isandlwana disaster severely affected Chelmsford’s health and morale, and for a time he seemed on the verge of a breakdown. Crealock reported several times to Alison in early February that the General was ‘still not himself’.88 Chelmsford unguardedly admitted in an official dispatch of 9 February to Colonel Frederick Stanley, the Secretary of State for War, that ‘the strain of prolonged anxiety & exertion, physical & mental’ was ‘telling’ on him.89 This missive, along with others requesting a major general be sent out as second-in-command lest he break down under the strain, caused the Duke of Cambridge great embarrassment when he had to explain them away to his sceptical peers in the House of Lords. Chelmsford was later ‘extremely annoyed’ when he learned that what he considered confidential correspondence should have been made humiliatingly public.90 To Evelyn Wood, the energetic commander of No. 4 Column, he wrote that he was ‘fairly puzzled’ when he contemplated future operations, and wished he saw his way ‘with honour out of this beastly country’. He added that he was depending on Wood and his dashing commander of mounted troops, Lieutenant Colonel Redvers Buller, to pull him ‘out of the mire’.91 In reporting the ‘sad disaster’ to Cambridge he had, moreover, to explain why he had not remained long enough at the Isandlwana camp to bury the dead (as was expected of a commander), excusing himself primarily in terms of preserving the men’s morale.92 But the dead would continue to lie there, unburied until May, to haunt his reputation.

  Chelmsford’s first act after Isandlwana was to convene a Court of Inquiry on 24 January that sat from 27–29 January. Its instruction was to inquire very specifically into ‘the loss of the camp’, rather than into the surrounding circumstances that led to the Zulu taking it. Clearly, Chelmsford intended that the Court would not probe too deeply into his responsibility for the disaster. Much of the evidence heard was not recorded, since it was deemed irrelevant or repetitious. Conveniently for Chelmsford’s reputation, the Court found that much of the blame for the disaster could be attributed to the imprudent actions of Durnford to whom, so Crealock claimed, he had sent written instruction on the morning of 22 January to take command of the camp. When Durnford (who had then purportedly inherited the superseded Pulleine’s orders) moved out of the camp to support Chelmsford, whom he thought threatened to the rear by a Zulu movement, he allegedly overrode the written orders that Clery stated he had drawn up on his own initiative without consulting Chelmsford requiring Pulleine to stay strictly on the defensive.93 Thus when Durnford encountered the Zulu advancing in force, Pulleine was forced against his instructions (so the argument went) to push troops forward in a haphazard manner to cover Durnford’s retreat, thereby fatally over-extending the British line. Much emphasis was accorded the poor performance of the NNC, whose apparent collapse in the centre of the British line led (it was concluded) to the final Zulu breakthrough. In other words, the Court apportioned the blame for the disaster primarily to the conveniently dead Durnford, who was disliked by the military establishment for being too closely aligned with the colonial viewpoint after years in Natal; to a lesser extent to Pulleine, who was known to be a good administrator but short on combat experience; and to the NNC, who were equally conveniently neither white nor regular British infantry. With the honour of both Chelmsford and the regular British troops secured and the blame thrown on suspect officers, colonials and Africans, this is the version that passed into the official account.94

  Eventually, the fatal holes in the official account would begin to reveal themselves. For one thing, when Crealock’s instructions to Durnford were subsequently recovered from the battlefield, they showed that he had been merely ordered up to the camp without precise instructions either to reinforce it or take command. Earlier orders issued on 19 January had specified that he cooperate with No. 3 Column in clearing the country occupied by Matshana,95 and it can be argued that is exactly what he was trying to do on 22 January. Clery later explained to Alison that when Chelmsford marched out of camp on the morning of 22 January he ‘had not the smallest apprehension about the camp being attacked’ and had thought to leave no special instructions for its defence. Thus when Clery told him he had left written orders, the General, who saw how this would save his reputation, exclaimed: ‘I cannot tell you what a relief it is to me to hear this.’96 Yet these written instructions, if they ever existed, were never found. Much was made of Pulleine’s combat inexperience, but in fact his forward deployment was essentially in accordance with the instructions Chelmsford had issued column commanders in December 1878: guns forward with supporting flanking companies of British troops thrown back; the NNC clear of each flank and to their rear in echelon; mounted infantry covering the flanks
; and a reserve of British infantry. Of course, whether an extended firing line was the most appropriate deployment may be questioned, though at the battle of Nyezane on the same day as Isandlwana, this was precisely the deployment used with great success by Pearson of No. 1 Column.97 And, as a result of modern research, it is clear that the British line did not collapse because the NNC broke. Indeed, the extended skirmishing line falling back on the camp was holding its own well until its flanks were turned by the Zulu advance.

  It is very clear that Chelmsford’s staff and close associates were rallying around their chief to protect his reputation,98 and not being too nice about how they did it. Perhaps the most unsavoury ploy was that initiated by Crealock who, some weeks after Isandlwana, tried to shift some of the blame for the disaster off Chelmsford’s shoulders on to those of Glyn. The guileless but upright Glyn resolutely refused to take the fall, not least because it was well known that Chelmsford had entirely taken over effective command of the column, leaving him only with the discharge of routine duties. Distinctly embarrassed, Chelmsford hastened to disassociate himself from Crealock’s dishonourable insinuations and, according to witnesses, hauled him over the coals for not behaving as a gentleman. As Captain J F Maurice later expressed it: ‘Crealock certainly comes out in a very unpleasant light … The attempt to turn on Glyn … was as feeble as it was unfair.’99

  The court’s convenient finding was not sufficient to still criticism and angry public questioning in both Natal and Britain about Chelmsford’s conduct of the war and his attempt to shift the blame for Isandlwana.100 His own staff discreetly questioned his generalship.101 Initially, though, the government stood by Chelmsford in harsh parliamentary debates that excoriated him for culpable incapacity as a commander, the Horse Guards for shielding his incompetence and the government for starting the unfortunate war in the first place.102 On 16 February 1879 the government agreed to Chelmsford’s urgent request for reinforcements and dispatched 6 battalions, 2 cavalry regiments, 2 artillery batteries and a company of engineers to Natal. By the end of March Chelmsford felt strong enough to march to the relief of Eshowe where the Zulu had been blockading No. 1 Column ever since Isandlwana. Chelmsford was determined to avoid his previous mistakes, and this time organised effective forward reconnaissance and while on the march painstakingly laagered every night. On the early morning of 1 April, the 5,670 men of the Eshowe Relief Column under Chelmsford’s ‘personal command’ (as he could not resist reminding Stanley in his official dispatch that hums with a deep sense of personal vindication) routed the Zulu force of 10,000 men that attacked his laager at Gingindlovu. He then evacuated the Eshowe garrison.103 Meanwhile, on 29 March at Khambula, far away in north-western Zululand, Wood had already routed the Zulu veterans of Isandlwana in a ferocious pitched battle. Khambula would prove the turning point of the war and the ruination of Zulu morale because it proved to the Zulu (a realisation confirmed at Gingindlovu) that they could not prevail against the British if they failed to catch them in the open as they had at Isandlwana, and that it was hopeless to attack them in prepared positions. Yet for once the usually punctiliously courteous Chelmsford could not bring himself to rise to the occasion, writing to his far too successful subordinate: ‘One line to congratulate you upon your successful repulse of the attack made upon Kambula laager – I am up to my ears in work & cannot say as much as I could wish …’.104

  The overwhelming victories at Khambula and Gingindlovu greatly buoyed up Chelmsford, who grasped that he had entirely regained the initiative. Yet it was not immediately clear to him what strategy he ought to follow in order to bring the war to an end. He seemed embarrassed by the large number of reinforcements rushed out to him by the anxious government, and was swamped by special-service officers anxious for action and promotion. He also had to allocate suitable commands for the four major generals Cambridge selected to accompany the troops, and whom he described with more regard to their proven loyalty to him (none being a Wolseley man) than to their abilities as ‘excellent men, very intelligent, reliable and active’.105 Moreover, the growing concentration of troops in Natal was putting intolerable strain on his Commissariat and Transport Department, which had already shown itself unequal to the demands placed upon it and now had to arrange for additional transport and supplies and establish depots. One thing, though, was clear to Chelmsford. This time he would exercise extreme caution to avoid a repetition of Isandlwana, and his second invasion of Zululand was characterised by his uninspiring motto: ‘slow and steady wins the race’.106

  Although his senior officers had advocated sending in a single column to place less strain on the Commissariat and Transport Department, Chelmsford eventually decided to send in two widely spaced columns to screen the Transvaal and Natal from a possible Zulu counter-blow.107 The 1st Division of 7,500 men, under Major General Henry Crealock, was to advance on oNdini up the coast. The 2nd Division of 5,000 men, under Major General Edward Newdigate and accompanied by Chelmsford, was to march on oNdini from the north-west, on the way rendezvousing with Wood’s 3,200 men, now renamed the Flying Column. The 2nd Division would not advance along the same route as the ill-fated No. 3 Column, but would take a longer and unfamiliar route that required much reconnaissance, but which avoided Isandlwana and the still unburied British dead. On 21 May, however, while the 2nd Division was concentrating at Landman’s Drift and sending out patrols to clear the country ahead of it, a reconnaissance in force began the long-overdue interment at Isandlwana, stilling both public criticism and Chelmsford’s own uneasy conscience.108

  As a strong believer in the ‘active defence’, Chelmsford ordered diversionary raids by colonial troops across the Natal–Zululand border in support of his own advance. This brought him into sharp conflict with Bulwer and the Natal government, who correctly feared a damaging cycle of raid and counter-raid would be initiated. Much to the indignation of Chelmsford, who claimed command over all troops in the area of operations, Bulwer forbade the use of Natal troops in cross-border raids. Relations between General and Lieutenant Governor swiftly deteriorated, and both bombarded the home authorities with inordinately long and intemperate dispatches.109

  This shrill dispute was one of the final straws for a British government that already perceived Chelmsford to be demoralised, uncertain of his strategy and unable to bring the increasingly expensive war to a speedy conclusion.110 The public had heaped criticism upon Chelmsford after Isandlwana, but he had survived thus far in his command thanks to the increasingly grudging support of the Horse Guards and of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Disraeli had left Chelmsford Senior out of his Cabinet in 1868 because he thought him an incompetent Lord Chancellor, and it distressed him to have to supersede the son as an incompetent general.111 Cambridge had initially stood staunchly behind Chelmsford, but was anxious to understand better what had gone wrong at Isandlwana, which had hit him like ‘a clap of thunder’.112

  On 6 March the AG, Major General Sir Charles Ellice, wrote to Chelmsford requesting satisfactory replies to seven searching questions on issues not covered adequately by the Court of Inquiry. Over the next months Chelmsford and his staff scrambled to come up with acceptable explanations, but their inadequacies left the Duke ever more perplexed and irritated.113 At the same time that he started pressing for better answers about what had gone wrong at Isandlwana, the Duke was also becoming acutely conscious of Chelmsford’s ineffectual logistical arrangements. In March the Duke sent out his ADC, Major General the Hon. Sir Henry Clifford, VC as Inspector General of Line of Communications and Base and to succeed to Chelmsford’s command should he break down or die. Clifford resented that his command stopped at the Zulu border and was assiduous in denigrating Chelmsford’s conduct of the second invasion to the home authorities. Chelmsford had initially welcomed Clifford’s energetic efficiency in moving up supplies, but the latter’s criticisms eventually stung him deeply.114 Whatever the wrongs or rights of this fresh dispute, it did Chelmsford’s reputation no goo
d. Now even Cambridge began severely to question his conduct of the campaign.115 The cabinet met three times between 19 and 23 May to discuss the South African situation. In a letter of 27 May Disraeli reported to the Queen (who was inclined to support Chelmsford): ‘No one upheld Lord Chelmsford. Even the Secretary of War gave him up, and spoke as if the military authorities had done the same.’116 The Cabinet’s reverse judgement of Solomon was to create a single, unified command in South Africa that would subordinate both Chelmsford and Bulwer, and sideline Frere. Cambridge suggested Chelmsford’s old commander, Napier, for the post but, to the fury of the Horse Guards, the cabinet selected Wolseley instead.117 Chelmsford learned on 16 June of Wolseley’s appointment, but was not appraised of the terms until 5 July, the day after his victory at the battle of Ulundi. In fact, it was only on 9 July that he at last received formal notice of his supersession.118 Until then he continued to act as if he were still Officer Commanding in South Africa, although sure knowledge that Wolseley was on his way undoubtedly spurred him on to bring the war to a successful conclusion before his rival could rob him of the credit.119 Although Chelmsford did his best to maintain an imperturbable front, back in England a bitter Lady Chelmsford understood well how ‘insulting’ her ‘cruelly abused’ husband found it to be ‘thrown over by the Govt. without a word of thanks for all his hard work’.120

  Yet further misfortunes and vexations continued to dog Chelmsford’s path. On 1 June the Prince Imperial of France – who was accompanying his headquarters as an observer, and whose safety Chelmsford had assured Cambridge and the Empress Eugénie he would look after ‘to the best of my ability’121 – was killed while out on a patrol he had joined without Chelmsford’s prior knowledge.122 The Prince’s death, the probing questions in Parliament,123 the publicity surrounding the subsequent court martial of Lieutenant J B Carey (the officer in command of the patrol) and the popular impression that the latter was being made a scapegoat for the folly of his superiors, all occasioned as much consternation in Britain as the battle of Isandlwana, and further damned Chelmsford in the public eye.124 Unfortunately for Chelmsford, he was very inept in his handling of the war correspondents that by 1879 were a standard presence with any British army on active service, and who were now joining his force in growing numbers. Determined self-publicists like Wolseley cultivated them to ensure a laudatory press, but Chelmsford, smarting deeply at press criticisms he considered ill-informed if not plainly malicious, could not bring himself to work positively with the war correspondents he so clearly despised and mistrusted.125