Blood River 1838 The Zulu – Boer War And The Great Trek – Ian Knight

The expedition’s pack horses were left in the rear, guarded by a party of 60 men under Piet Uys’ elder brother, Jakobus. The remaining Trekkers then descended with the intention of driving the Zulus off the hills ahead of them, with Potgieter on the left and Uys on the right. Uys’ men began the attack, riding to within 40 yards of the Zulu position before dismounting. Seeing their opportunity, the Zulus rose up and charged, but Uys’ men had been ready to fire and loosed a volley at perhaps just 20 yards’ range.

Few of the Zulus had experienced close-range musketry before, and under the shock and sudden casualties the attack stalled, enabling Uys’ men to quickly reload and fire a second volley at almost point-blank range. Stunned, the Zulus began to fall back over the crest of the hill – and at this point Uys’ men began to lose cohesion.

Encouraged by the sight of the Zulus apparently running, some of Uys’ men rode over the crest of the hill and into the valley beyond. The rest refused to follow them, but Uys himself watched as fresh Zulu forces, concealed among mealie fields below, emerged to threaten his over-enthusiastic vanguard.

Realizing that they were in danger, he rode forward with 15 men, including his 15-year-old son, Dirkie, to warn them. Once he had separated from those who remained behind on the hilltop, parties of Zulus quickly cut him off, preventing him rejoining them and instead driving the Boers back up along the valley between the two hills, in the direction from which they had come. The Zulus were now making effective use of their throwing spears and showered great clouds of them onto the retreating Boers, several of whom were unhorsed, while Piet Uys himself was hit low in the back by a spear which passed through into his groin.

The battle of eThaleni n The battle of the Thukela n The battle of Veglaer The Blood River/Ncome expedition n The battle of oPathe The battle of amaQongqo and the end of the war AFTERMATH 86 The effects of the war THE BATTLEFIELDS TODAY 89 FURTHER READING AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 93 INDEX 95 Late on the afternoon of 23 September 1828, the great Zulu king, Shaka kaSenzangakhona, was assassinated in a palace coup.

His killers were two of his brothers, the princes Dingane and Mhlangana, who, with the covert help of King Shaka’s trusted aunt, Mnkabayi, had laid their plot carefully. King Shaka had been a strong leader who had forged the Zulu kingdom over a period of 12 years by an adroit mix of astute diplomacy and ruthless military force, expanding from a small heartland by incorporating neighbouring groups with various degrees of coercion and persuasion. By 1827, however, the strain of managing the kingdom, imposing new unifying administrative structures, containing internal dissent and countering external threats was beginning to tell, and King Shaka’s behaviour had become increasingly erratic.

Sensing that the public mood within the kingdom was leaving the king increasingly isolated, the two princes had waited until Shaka’s army was away on campaign, and had surprised him as he was sitting outside his hut in a small private enclave outside his great royal homestead at KwaDukuza, accompanied by only a handful of courtiers and envoys.

The assassins had been able to surprise him and stab him to death. However, according to Zulu tradition, as he lay dying, Shaka had admonished his killers, predicting that the Zulu Royal House would ruin itself through fratricidal in-fighting, and that as a result the country would fall prey to Europeans, who were coming like locusts to eat it up. ORIGINS OF THE CAMPAIGN By the end of the 18th century, the farming community, the descendants of the original Dutch and French Huguenot settlers at the Cape, had begun to develop a distinct identity and lived hardy lives largely dependent on their own self- reliance.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• Language: English (en)

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