The Leadership of the Natal Native Contingent in the Anglo-Zulu War

184 Pages·2006·2.5 MB·English

by  Keith Smith

The Commandants:
The Leadership of the Natal Native Contingent
in the Anglo-Zulu War

By
Keith I. Smith, B.A. Hons (Macq.)

This thesis is presented for the degree of Master of Arts
of the University of Western Australia.

School of Humanities

October, 2005

Abstract

The senior Imperial officers who took part in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 are
comparatively well known and their service in that brief period has been well
documented, as indeed has that of many of their junior colleagues. Much less, however,
is known about the officers who served as commandants of the Natal Native Contingent,
although more than half of them were Imperial officers on special service duties. Most
of the rest were British ex-officers who lived in South Africa, while one of the
remaining two was an adventurer and mercenary. Many of them had already found
service with the South African force during the Ninth Cape Border War against the
Ngqika and Gcaleka which had only ended in mid-1878.
According to official documents, the Natal Native Contingent initially numbered
more than 8,000 native troops, in three regiments, under the command of European
officers and non-commissioned officers.1 At the time of the invasion of Zululand in
January, 1879, the contingent therefore made up about 62% of the invading force. This
bald statistic, as so often, hides the true story.
The thesis examines each of the commandants, and the extent to which their
abilities and personalities were reflected in the performance of the native troops under
their command, while at the same time revealing the evolution of the Contingent itself
as an arm of the invading force under Lieutenant General Lord Chelmsford. One or two
of the commandants served quietly and unspectacularly, but others were remarkably
controversial and their stories remain largely untold. Some of them were seemingly
discarded after the abortive First Invasion, covering only the period from the crossing of

1 We shall see that these numbers were somewhat optimistic.

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the Zulu border on 11th January until shortly after the battle of Isandlwana on 22nd
January, 1879, while others were re-assigned. The subsequent re-organisation of the
Contingent led to the introduction of some new commandants, who are also included
within the purview of the thesis. The quality of the new officers is compared to that of
those whose services were terminated.
The reputation which the NNC earned during the war was generally perceived as
entirely discreditable. The perception was, however, largely based on the performance
of the native forces during only the few days of the First Invasion as recounted by their
officers. That sullied reputation was not merited by all units, but it was to overshadow
the service of the re-constituted NNC in the later stages of the war. The haste with
which the regiments were assembled, their often inhuman treatment by their officers,
the minimal or non-existent training they received and the way they were armed and
dressed all combined to qualify their subsequent performance in the field. A comparison
of the NNC is drawn with the performances of the Native Mounted Contingent, and the
men of Colonel, later Brigadier General, Evelyn Wood’s Irregulars.
The conclusion of the thesis is that the commandants did indeed have a profound
effect on the quality and performance of the Africans who served under them. In
general, the units under serving British officers performed best, while the colonial
officers did less well. The mercenary officer was almost certainly the worst, but by only
a slim margin.

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Contents

Abstract i
Abbreviations iv
Acknowledgements v
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The Background to the War 7
Chapter 2 Genesis of the NNC 23
Chapter 3 Invasion and Defeat 53
Chapter 4 Withdrawal and Re-organisation 78
Chapter 5 Demonstrations and Relief 100
Chapter 6 Victory and the Aftermath 126
Conclusion 150
Appendix I Post War Careers of the Commandants 160
Appendix II Instructions for the Management of Natives 164
Bibliography 167

Maps
The First Invasion 52
The Second Invasion 125

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Abbreviations

AGO Records of the Attorney-General’s Office, Natal.
BPP British Parliamentary Papers, Command series, in the Library of
New South Wales, Sydney.
CP Chelmsford Papers, National Army Museum, UK.
CSO Records of the Colonial Secretary’s Office, Natal.
GH Records of Government House, Natal.
JSA Webb, C. de B. and Wright, J.B. (eds.), The James Stuart Archive
of Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu
and Neighbouring Peoples, in five volumes.
MSCE Records of the Master of the Supreme Court, Estates, Natal.
NGG Natal Government Gazette.
PP Pearson Papers, National Army Museum, UK.
RSC Records of the Supreme Court, Pietermaritzburg.
SNA Records of the Secretary of Native Affairs, Natal.
SP Shepstone Papers.
TNA (PRO) The National Archives (Public Record Office), Kew, UK.
VLM Resident Magistrate records, Verulam.

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Acknowledgements

The composition and actions of the Natal Native Contingent (NNC), and associated
units, from its inception to the capture of King Cetshwayo, are related comprehensively
in the only substantial work on the subject by a modern author, Dr Paul Thompson.1
The detail provided by Dr Thompson on the sources for his work is remarkably
extensive and is obviously the fruit of many years of research. His scholarship has not
perhaps reached the wide audience that it should, when one considers the proportion of
African to European troops in the conflict.
In his very detailed account of the force, Dr Thompson has touched only lightly
upon the men who led the regiments and their component battalions and yet these men
must have had some impact, positive or otherwise, upon the way each unit behaved.
Why, for example, did the NNC perform so poorly? To what extent was the imposition
of a British military leadership responsible for that performance? These are questions,
among others, to be resolved in this present work, and the great debt owed by the writer
to Dr Thompson in unwittingly providing the stimulus for this research is hereby readily
acknowledged. That debt was substantially enhanced when Dr Thompson gave me
permission to examine his personal notes, now donated to the Pietermaritzburg Archives
Repository.
I am also indebted to those curators and staff of museums and libraries who have
been so sympathetic to my frequent visits and enquiries. In particular, I must mention
the staff of the following: Killie Campbell Africana Library, Durban; the library of the
University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg; the Pietermaritzburg Archive Repository; the
National Archives (Public Record Office), Kew; the National Army Museum, Chelsea;

1 P.S. Thompson, The Natal Native Contingent in the Anglo-Zulu War 1879, (Pietermaritzburg, 1997).

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the State Library of New South Wales, for access to their British Parliamentary Papers
in a very deep basement.
The photographs used to illustrate the work are from the following sources:
Commandant R. la T. Lonsdale, from R. Lock and P. Quantrill, Zulu Victory, p. 111;
Major Bengough, frontispiece, H.M. Bengough, Memories of a Solder’s Life;
Commandant Hamilton-Browne, frontispiece, G. Hamilton-Browne, A Lost Legionary
in South Africa; Commandant Montgomery, Natal Who’s Who, 1906, p. 140.
Photographs of the other commandants, other than Lieutenant Colonel Durnford, were
not able to be traced. The photographs of the men of the 2nd Regiment NNC and of
Sikhotha are reproduced by courtesy of the Killie Campbell Africana Library. The
photographs of the 2nd and 4th Battalions NNC are reproduced from Christopher
Wilkinson-Latham’s Uniforms and Weapons of the Zulu War.2 The two maps are taken
from Ian Knight’s, The National Army Museum Book of the Zulu War.3
Finally, particular gratitude is extended to Professor Norman Etherington, whose
supervision of my work in the preparation of this thesis, while rigorous, has always been
constructive, with large measures of encouragement. The work would be of much less
worth without his most valuable contribution and any blemishes which remain are
entirely those of the writer.

2 Christopher Wilkinson-Latham, Uniforms and Weapons of the Zulu War, (London, 1978).
3 Ian Knight, The National Army Museum Book of the Zulu War, (London, 2003).

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How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses, 1842.

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