Statecraft & Independence
Peerless
Cetshwayo kaMpande
1826 – 1884
His army destroyed a British column at Isandlwana
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Why they are here
Told to disband his army, he refused. On 22 January 1879 the Zulu overwhelmed seventeen hundred British troops at Isandlwana — the worst defeat a modern European army had suffered from an African force.
Cetshwayo kaMpande was king of the Zulu from 1873 to 1879, the last king of an independent Zulu nation, son of Mpande and half-nephew of Shaka.
When the British high commissioner Henry Bartle Frere demanded in 1879 that he disband his army, he rejected the ultimatum and war followed. On 22 January his forces overwhelmed and destroyed a British column of seventeen hundred men at Isandlwana. The British eventually took his capital at Ulundi and he was captured in the Ngome forest that August. Restored in 1883 as a client king, he was overthrown in the civil war that followed and died in 1884.
When the British high commissioner Henry Bartle Frere demanded in 1879 that he disband his army, he rejected the ultimatum and war followed. On 22 January his forces overwhelmed and destroyed a British column of seventeen hundred men at Isandlwana. The British eventually took his capital at Ulundi and he was captured in the Ngome forest that August. Restored in 1883 as a client king, he was overthrown in the civil war that followed and died in 1884.
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