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The Battle of Isandlwana (alternative spelling: Isandhlwana) on 22 January 1879 was the first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom.
- 22 January 1879
- Tristan Hughes
- Lord Chelmsford invaded Zululand with a British army on 11 January. The invasion came after Cetshwayo, the king of the Zulu Kingdom, did not reply to an unacceptable British ultimatum that demanded (among other things) he disband his 35,000-strong army.
- Chelmsford made a fundamental tactical error. Confident that his modernised army could easily quash Cetshwayo’s technologically inferior forces, Chelmsford was more worried that the Zulus would avoid fighting him on the open field.
- 1,300 men were left to defend Isandlwana… Half of this number were either native auxiliaries or European colonial troops; the other half were from British battalions.
- … but the camp was not suited for defence. Chelmsford and his staff decided not to erect any substantial defences for Isandlwana, not even a defensive circle of wagons.
Date of the Battle of Isandlwana: 22 nd January 1879. Place of the Battle of Isandlwana: 10 miles east of the Buffalo River in Zululand, South Africa. Combatants at the Battle of Isandlwana: Zulu army against a force of British troops, Natal units and African levies.
Battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift, (Jan. 22–23, 1879), first significant battles of the Anglo-Zulu War in Southern Africa. In December 1878 Sir Bartle Frere, the British high commissioner for South Africa, issued an ultimatum to Cetshwayo, the Zulu king, that was designed to be impossible to.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jan 25, 2014 · The battle of Isandlwana in 1879 - in which a force of 20,000 Zulus annihilated a British contingent of 1,800 men - became a symbol to black South Africans that white domination was not...
Isandlwana was a humiliating defeat for a British government that hadn’t even ordered the attack on Zululand in the first place. As the remnants of the camp began to flee, no quarter was given to the remaining British and native soldiers.
The Battle of Isandlwana was fought during the morning and early afternoon of 22nd January 1879 when a force of over 20,000 Zulus attacked a portion of the main British invasion force. Most people will be aware of the battle via the film Zulu Dawn.
