It is easy to see how this custom of holding a review almost immediately after the battle, and causing either reward or punishment to come swiftly upon the soldiers, must have added to the efficiency of the armies, especially when the system was carried out by a man like its originator Tchaka, an astute, sanguinary, determined, and pitiless despot. Under the two successive reigns of Dingan and Panda, and especially under the latter, the efficiency of the Zulu army—the eaters of men—has notably diminished, this result being probably owing to the neighborhood of the English colony at Natal, in which the Zulu warriors can find a refuge when they fear that their lives are endangered. Formerly, the men had no possible refuge, so that a Kaffir was utterly in the power of his chief, and the army was therefore more of a machine than it is at present.

Reviews such as have been described are not only held in war time, but frequently take place in times of peace. It has been mentioned that the king of the Zulu tribe has twenty-six war-kraals, or garrison towns, and he generally contrives to visit each of them in the course of the year. Each time that he honors the kraal by his presence the troops are turned out, and a review is held, though not always accompanied by the lavish distribution of rewards and punishment which distinguishes those which are held after battle.

The vicissitudes of Kaffir warfare are really remarkable from a military point of view. Originally, the only idea which the Kaffirs had of warfare was a desultory kind of skirmishing, in which each man fought “for his own hand,” and did not reckon on receiving any support from his comrades, each of whom was engaged in fight on his own account. In fact, war was little more than a succession of duels, and, if a warrior succeeded in killing the particular enemy to whom he was opposed, he immediately sought another. But the idea of large bodies of men acting in concert, and being directed by one mind, was one that had not occurred to the Kaffirs until the time of Tchaka.

When that monarch introduced a system and a discipline into warfare, the result was at once apparent. Individual skirmishers had no chance against large bodies of men, mutually supporting each other, moving as if actuated by one mind, and, under the guidance of a single leader, advancing with a swift but steady impetuosity that the undisciplined soldiers of the enemy could not resist. Discipline could not be turned against the Zulus, for Tchaka left the conquered tribes no time to organize themselves into armies, even if they had possessed leaders who were capable of that task. His troops swept over the country like an army of locusts, consuming everything on their way, and either exterminating the various tribes, or incorporating them in some capacity or other among the Zulus.

In truth, his great policy was to extend the Zulu tribe, and from a mere tribe to raise them into a nation. His object was, therefore, not so much to destroy as to absorb, and, although he did occasionally extirpate a tribe that would not accept his conditions, it was for the purpose of striking terror into others, and proving to them the futility of resistance. Those that had accepted his offers he incorporated with his own army, and subjected to the same discipline, but took care to draught them off into different regiments, so that they could not combine in a successful revolt. The result of this simple but far-seeing policy was, that in a few years the Zulu tribe, originally small, had, beside its regular regiments on duty, some twelve or fifteen thousand men always ready for any sudden expedition, and at the end of five or six years the Zulu king was paramount over the whole of Southern Africa, the only check upon him being the European colonies. These he evidently intended to sweep away, but was murdered before he could bring his scheme to maturity. Tchaka’s system was followed by Moselekatze in the north of Kaffirland, who contrived to manage so well that the bulk of his army belonged to Bechuanan and other tribes, some of whose customs he adopted.

The military system of Tchaka prevailed, as must be the case when there is no very great inequality between the opposing forces, and discipline is all on one side. But, when discipline is opposed to discipline, and the advantage of weapons lies on the side of the latter, the consequences are disastrous to the former. Thus it has been with the Kaffir tribes. The close ranks of warriors, armed with shield and spear, were irresistible when opposed to men similarly armed, but without any regular discipline, but, when they came to match themselves against fire-arms, they found that their system was of little value.

The shield could resist the assagai well enough, but against the bullet it was powerless, and though the stabbing-assagai was a terrible weapon when the foe was at close quarters, it was of no use against an enemy who could deal destruction at the distance of several hundred yards. Moreover, the close and compact ranks, which were so efficacious against the irregular warriors of the country, became an absolute element of weakness when the soldiers were exposed to heavy volleys from the distant enemy. Therefore, the whole course of battle was changed when the Zulus fought against the white man and his fire-arms, and they found themselves obliged to revert to the old system of skirmishing, though the skirmishers fought under the commands of the chief, instead of each man acting independently, as had formerly been the case.

We remember how similar changes have taken place in our European armies, when the heavy columns that used to be so resistless were shattered by the fire of single ranks, and how the very massiveness of the column rendered it a better mark for the enemy’s fire, and caused almost every shot to take effect.

Tchaka was not always successful, for he forgot that cunning is often superior to force, and that the enemy’s spears are not the most dangerous weapons in his armory. The last expedition that Tchaka organized was a singularly unsuccessful one. He had first sent an army against a tribe which had long held out against him, and which had the advantage of a military position so strong that even the trained Zulu warriors, who knew that failure was death, could not succeed in taking it. Fortunately for Tchaka, some Europeans were at the time in his kraal, and he obliged them to fight on his behalf. The enemy had, up to that time, never seen nor heard of fire-arms; and when they saw their comrades falling without being visibly struck, they immediately yielded, thinking that the spirits of their forefathers were angry with them, and spat fire out of their mouths. This, indeed, was the result which had been anticipated by the bearers of the fire-arms in question, for they thought that, if the enemy were intimidated by the strange weapons, great loss of life would be saved on both sides. The battle being over, the conquered tribe were subsidized as tributaries, according to Tchaka’s custom, and all their cattle given up.

The success of this expedition incited Tchaka to repeat the experiment, and his troops had hardly returned when he sent them off against a chief named Sotshangana. This chief had a spy in the camp of Tchaka, and no sooner had the army set off than the spy contrived to detach himself from the troops, and went off at full speed to his master. Sotshangana at once sent out messengers to see whether the spy had told the truth, and when he learned that the Zulu army was really coming upon him, he laid a trap into which the too confident enemy fell at once. He withdrew his troops from his kraals, but left everything in its ordinary position, so as to look as if no alarm had been taken. The Zulu regiments, seeing no signs that their presence was expected, took possession of the kraal, feasted on its provisions, and slept in fancied security. But, at the dead of night, Sotshangana, accompanied by the spy, whom he had rewarded with the command of a regiment, came on the unsuspecting Zulus, fell upon them while sleeping, and cut one regiment nearly to pieces. The others rallied, and drove off their foes; but they were in an enemy’s country, where every hand was against them.

Their wonderful discipline availed them little. They got no rest by day or by night. They were continually harassed by attacks, sometimes of outlying skirmishers, who kept them always on the alert, sometimes of large forces of soldiers who had to be met in battle array. They could obtain no food, for the whole country was against them, and the weaker tribes, whom they attacked in order to procure provisions, drove their cattle into the bush, and set fire to their own corn-fields. It is said also, and with some likelihood of truth, that the water was poisoned as well as the food destroyed; and the consequence was, that the once victorious army was obliged to retreat as it best could, and the shattered fragments at last reached their own country, after suffering almost incredible hardships. It was in this campaign that the soldiers were obliged to eat their shields. At least twenty thousand of the Zulu warriors perished in this expedition, three-fourths having died from privation, and the others fallen by the spears of the enemy.

What would have been Tchaka’s fury at so terrible a defeat may well be imagined; but he never lived to see his conquered warriors. It is supposed, and with some show of truth, that he had been instrumental in causing the death of his own mother, Mnande. This word signifies “amiable” or “pleasant,” in the Zulu tongue, and never was a name more misapplied. She was violent, obstinate, and wilful to a degree, and her son certainly inherited these traits of his mother’s character, besides superadding a few of his own. She was the wife of the chief of the Amazulu, then a small and insignificant tribe, who lived on the banks of the White Folosi river, and behaved in such a manner that she could not be kept in her husband’s kraal. It may be imagined that such a mother and son were not likely to agree very well together; and when the latter came to be a man, he was known to beat his mother openly, without attempting to conceal the fact, but rather taking credit to himself for it.

Therefore, when she died, her family had some good grounds for believing that Tchaka had caused her to be killed, and determined on revenge. Hardly had that ill-fated expedition set out, when two of her sisters came to Dingan and Umhlangani, the brothers of Tchaka, and openly accused him of having murdered Mnande, urging the two brothers to kill him and avenge their mother’s blood. They adroitly mentioned the absence of the army, and the terror in which every soldier held his bloodthirsty king, and said that if, on the return of the army, Tchaka was dead, the soldiers would be rejoiced at the death of the tyrant, and would be sure to consider as their leaders the two men who had freed them from such a yoke. The two brothers briefly answered, “Ye have spoken!” but the women seemed to know that by those words the doom of Tchaka was settled, and withdrew themselves, leaving their nephews to devise their own plans for the murder of the king.

This was no easy business. They would have tried poison, but Tchaka was much too wary to die such a death, and, as force was clearly useless, they had recourse to treachery. They corrupted the favorite servant of Tchaka, a man named Bopa, and having armed themselves with unshafted heads of assagais, which could be easily concealed, they proceeded to the king’s house, where he was sitting in conference with several of his councillors, who were unarmed, according to Kaffir etiquette. The treacherous Bopa began his task by rudely interrupting the councillors, accusing them of telling falsehoods to the king, and behaving with an amount of insolence to which he well knew they would not submit. As they rose in anger, and endeavored to seize the man who had insulted them, Dingan and Umhlangani stole behind Tchaka, whose attention was occupied by the extraordinary scene, and stabbed him in the back. He attempted to escape, but was again stabbed by Bopa, and fell dying to the ground, where he was instantly slain. The affrighted councillors tried to fly, but were killed by the same weapons that had slain their master.

This dread scene was terminated by an act partly resulting from native ferocity, and partly from superstition. The two murderers opened the still warm body of their victim, and drank the gall. Their subsequent quarrel, and the accession of Dingan to the throne, has already been mentioned. The new king would probably have been murdered by the soldiers on their return, had he not conciliated them by relaxing the strict laws of celibacy which Tchaka had enforced, and by granting indulgences of various kinds to the troops. As to the dead Mnande, the proximate cause of Tchaka’s death, more will be said on a future page.