Frederic Augustus Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford, GCB, GCVO, born May 31, 1827 and died April 9, 1905, is a British general best known for having started the Anglo-Zulu War, during which the British army suffered one of its most resounding defeats (Battle of Isandlwana, January 22, 1879 ).
Youth
Frederic A. Thesiger, born May 31, 1827, was the son of Frederic Thesiger, a barrister who was appointed twice (in 1856 and 1866) Lord Chancellor (Lord Chancellor) by Lord Derby (Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby ), and was created 1st Baron Chelmsford.
Frederic Thesiger studied at the elite Eton public school.
Beginnings
Young Frederic was drawn to a career in arms. He could not obtain a post in the very prestigious regiment of the Grenadier Guards, but was able to enter (in 1844) in the Rifle Brigade
In 1845 he was stationed with the Rifle Brigade in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He then has the possibility of buying his transfer as an ensign in the Grenadier Guards; he was lieutenant in November 1845, and captain in 1850.
Thesiger was then appointed aide-de-camp to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Eglinton (1852), then aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, Sir Edward Blakeney, from 1853 to 1854.
Maturity
Crimean War
In May 1855, Thesiger left for the Crimea; he first served with his battalion, then was appointed (in July 1855) aide-de-camp to the commander of the 2nd Division, Lieutenant-General Markham.
In November 1855, he was appointed deputy assistant quartermaster general (second quartermaster) of the general staff. He was then promoted to the rank of Brevet Major, was MiD (Mentioned in Despatches), he was also decorated with the Turkish Order of Medjidie (5th class), and received the British, Turkish and Italian Crimean medals.
In 1857 Frederic Thesiger was promoted to captain and then lieutenant-colonel.
In India and Ethiopia
In 1858 he was transferred (with the same rank) to the "95th Infantry Regiment (Derbyshire)"; he participates in the end of the repression of the Revolt of the sepoys, and is again MiD (mentioned in the dispatches).
From 1861 to 1862 Thesiger was deputy adjutant general (second administrator) in Bombay. In 1863 he was promoted to the rank of colonel.
He was again deputy adjutant general during the British Ethiopian Expedition (1868), after which he was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath and Queen Victoria's aide-de-camp (1868). /P>
He was then adjutant general (senior officer of the administration of the armies) in Southeast Asia from 1869 to 1874.
Return to England
In 1874 Thesiger returned as colonel to Shorncliffe (Kent), then to Aldershot. He was appointed brigadier-general, then major-general in 1877.
In South Africa
In February 1877 Thesiger was appointed commander of the British forces in South Africa, with the rank of lieutenant-general. In October 1878 his father died and he succeeded him as "2nd Baron Chelmsford".
The 9th of the Xhosa Wars
In July 1878 Thesiger won, with a small force, the 9th and last of the Xhosa Wars; he was appointed KCB (Knight of the Order of the Bath) in November 1878.
The Anglo-Zulu War
On January 11, 1879 Thesiger invaded (on the order of the high commissioner in South Africa, Sir Henry Bartle Frere, who did not wait for the approval of the British government) the kingdom of Zululand. The sequence of events leading up to the invasion is complex.
Genesis of the Anglo-Zulu War
In 1865 Cetshwayo kaMpande, heir to the Zulu kingdom, came into conflict with the Boers:he had offered them a strip of land along the southern border of his kingdom (in exchange for his brother who had fled after having, he said, conspired against him) and then challenged the validity of the surrender. After Zulus and Boers clash north of the Pongola River, both sides accept arbitration from the Lieutenant Governor of Natal; but subsequently Zulus and Boers both say they are unhappy with the decision taken by the senior British official...
In 1873, on the death of his father, Cetshawayo became absolute chief of the entire Zulu nation and he began a hostile policy vis-à-vis the whites:he secretly helped rebellious tribes (the Xhosas in the Transkei, those of the chief Sikukuni in the Transvaal), he rearmed and reorganized his Zulus according to the methods of the great warrior that was his uncle Chaka, he bought firearms, he launched a campaign of obstruction against the action of the missionaries.
However in 1874, Henry Herbert (4th Earl of Carnarvon), after having confederated Canada, thought that the same pattern could be applied to South Africa:the desire of the Boers to install a minority white ruling class above of a vast black working class in the service of the sugar factories and the mines is in no way opposed to the British political scheme. But there are 2 notable obstacles to this arrangement:2 free states, the Republic of South Africa and the Kingdom of Zululand.
Sir Henri Bartle Frere, appointed high commissioner in South Africa in 1877, did not take long to create a casus belli against the Zulus by escalating various incidents and creating tensions between the communities.
The Tugela River crosses Natal from west to east, from its source in the Drakensberg Mountains to its estuary in the Indian Ocean. In 1879, when the Anglo-Zulu War began, it marked the border between the Natal of the Boers in the south and the Kingdom of Cetshwayo in the north
In 1876 Cetshwayo had young Zulu girls executed for refusing to marry his soldiers, which aroused disapproval in the neighboring Transvaal, still opposed to the Zulus on the question of the border between the 2 States. And Sir Bartle Frere states that the commission which judged the border dispute between Zulus and Boers of Natal clearly disadvantaged the whites... Moreover Sir Theophilus Shepstone until then apparently defender of the Zulus and therefore on good terms with Cetshwayo, persuaded the Boers of the Transvaal to accept British protection (in effect, this is an annexation), and therefore openly sided with the enemies of the Zulus.
Tension mounts more and more between the whites and the Zulus. And 3 "major incidents" then occur at the right time for Bartle Frere:twice Zulus cross the border to arrest runaway wives and put them to death - and a team of road workers led by 2 whites is arrested and manhandled in the bed (then almost dry) of the Tugela river, which acts as a border.
Bartle Frere, taking advantage of the slowness of communications with the central power in London to confront him with a fait accompli, then sent an ultimatum with multiple headings to Cetshwayo on December 11, 1878.
In summary, according to the terms of this ultimatum, "King Cetshwayo will have to deliver the looters and those responsible for border incidents to the justice of Natal, pay a fine of several hundred head of cattle, liberalize marriage, let foreign missionaries and their followers to exercise their activities...And above all he will have to accept the presence of a British Resident in his capital, disband his army, stop the intensive training and training of his warriors, and follow with regard to the defense of his kingdom the recommendations of the British. Failing acceptance on January 11, 1879, the British would consider themselves at war with the Kingdom of Zululand. .
Cetsawayo does not answer.
The first invasion
One of Lord Chelmsford's columns forded a stream and entered Zululand. The horsemen (spear slung over their shoulders and rifle in the case) crossing in a column of 2, the big carts driven by a black man with a long whip and pulled by 7 pairs of oxen with big horns, the team of a small field gun drinking in the current. On the right, infantrymen (accompanied by an African auxiliary) are preparing to cross:one unlaces his boot, and the other holds his long Martini-Henry as well as that of his friend; their colleagues are already barefoot, trousers rolled up at the top of the thighs.
Lord Chelsmford, who had a total of 6,400 British soldiers and 5,000 native soldiers (against the 40,000 warriors of Cetshwayo) but did not have the official endorsement of the British government, launched an attack on January 11, 1879 of the Zulu Kingdom.
Faced with the Zulus who are armed only with their shield, assegais (iklwas), sticks and rare firearms, the British have weapons which, they think, should give them an overwhelming superiority over the blacks:2 cannons, the famous Martini-Henry rifle, the Gatling gun and even the Congreve rocket.
Chelsmford forms 3 columns which must pass one by the district of Utrecht (to the west), the other by Rorke's Drift (in the center) and the 3° by the lower course of the river Tugela (to the east ), to converge on Ulundi, the capital of Cetshwayo; 3,000 native soldiers will be left at the Natal border to guard it.
The center column (1,600 British, 2,500 Africans) crosses the ford of Rorke's Drift, and sinks into the hinterland. It's the rainy season, the tracks are muddy, the progress of the men and the 130 big carts drawn by oxen is exhausting and very slow:10 miles in 10 days.
On 22 January Chelsmford, unaware that 20,000 Zulus warriors were nearby12, failed to circle his chariots (laager), divided his forces to go in search of the Zulus and left 1,000 of his redcoats near the peak of Isandlwana .
When 20,000 Zulu warriors attacked the camp, the acting commander left his soldiers scattered in small groups and did not distribute ammunition widely enough. The British are crushed:1300 dead (same number among the Zulus), and more than 1000 Martini-Henry rifles (the pride of the British troops, the weapon which was to allow them to crush the enemies originally equipped ...) in the hands of Zulus, with 400,000 rounds.
On the same day and the next, 4,000 Zulus attacked the ambulance depot established at the Rorke's Drift mission. The British resist victoriously. In the traumatized British public opinion, this feat of arms partially erases the disaster of Isandhlwana.
The eastern column:under Colonel Charles Pearson, it crosses the Tugela river not far from the Indian Ocean coast, pushes back the Zulus who ambushed it (Battle of Inyezane), enters the mission deserted from Eshowe and fortified there.
Chelmsford sends Pearson a letter in which (without mentioning the disaster at Isandhlwana) he orders him to retreat. But the Zulus have already cut the lines of communication, the siege of Eshowe begins.
The western column, led by Colonel Evelyn Wood, was to distract and occupy the Zulu tribes in the northwest. Wood, who had established a kraal (fortified camp) at Tinta, near the mountain of Hlobane, was about to attack an impi (army corps) of 4,000 warriors when he learned of the British defeat at Islandhwana. He decides to withdraw to his kraal:his forces are the only ones that are neither destroyed nor besieged, but they are too weak to continue the offensive.
End of the 1st invasion
Battle of the Ntombe. The British Expeditionary Force was totally dependent on its supply columns. On the banks of the Ntombe river, one of these convoys was annihilated on March 12, 1879. The engraving clearly shows the tactics of the dense front used by the Zulu attackers:this great power of impact has as a corollary a large number of losses under the projectiles of modern invader weapons.
In Great Britain the emotion is considerable after the announcement of the disaster of Islandhwana:we already see Cetshawayo invading Natal. Liberal MPs, emphasizing the loss of life, humiliated national pride and the cost of this clandestinely declared war, demanded the recall of Bartle Frere and Lord Chelsmford. But Lord Beaconsfield (Disraeli) supports them, and we leave, while censuring Bartle Frere, the 2 leaders in place until their replacement, Sir Garnet Wolseley, arrives at work.
It is because the catastrophe in Natal is all the worse because Great Britain is in the pre-election period, and because, as the Afghans are resisting the British army stubbornly, contagion is very much to be feared in the British Empire. On the other hand, if the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 has just ended, the "powder keg of the Balkans" is still at the mercy of a spark, and the enemy of the moment, the Russian empire, can exploit every false not Brits...
But Cetsawayo missed the opportunity to inflict a resounding defeat on the English colonial power:not only did he not destroy the entire center column, and let Lord Chelmsford escape, but he did not continue the war outside from its borders, and let the British reorganize.
However, on March 12, 1879, a British supply convoy was crushed by the Zulus (Battle of the Ntombe).
In the 2 months following Islandhwana, the first British reinforcements arrived in Durban:on March 7, 7 regiments and 2 artillery batteries landed.
On March 29 Chelmsford, at the head of a strong relief column of 3,400 British and 2,300 native soldiers, left to clear Eshowe; instructed by Islandwana, he entrenched his camp every night.
On April 2, the Zulus attacked the column (Battle of Gingindlovu) but were repulsed with heavy losses (1,200, against only 2 dead and 52 wounded on the British side). The next day Chelmsford lifts the siege of Eshowe. On April 5 the British abandoned Eshowe and retreated south.
Lord Chelmsford had ordered the eastern column to attack as he advanced in the centre. On March 28 the British (Staffordshire Volunteers and Boers, 675 men commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Redvers Buller) attacked the Zulus entrenched in Hlobane. But 26,000 warriors come to the aid of their besieged brothers, and crush the British (Battle of Hlobane, 100 British dead).
The next day 25,000 Zulus attacked Wood's kraal, defended by 2,000 men. The British, well entrenched, push back the Zulus (battle of Kambula, 2,000 losses among the blacks, against 29 among the whites).
In sum, in early April 1879 Lord Chelmsford's invasion force returned to its starting point, having lost over a thousand tommies, an enormous amount of materiel, and tarnished the prestige of the British army. /P>
The 2nd invasion and its aftermath
Ulundi, the capital of Cetshwayo, was taken and burned by the British on July 4, 1879 in front of the aligned troops. In the 1st plan, the wounded are supported by their friends or carried in stretchers by black auxiliaries.
Chelmsford absolutely wanted to put an end to the Zulus before Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived in Natal, who (prestigious of his "exemplary campaign" of 1874 during the 3rd of the Anglo-Ashanti wars) had been appointed in his place. So he launched a new expedition against Zululand in June 1879, this time with 16,000 British and 7,000 native soldiers, 600 wagons, 8,000 oxen, artillery and Gatling guns.
The announcement of the death of Prince Imperial Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte during a reconnaissance in Zululand aroused astonishment and emotion in France and the United Kingdom.
Refusing Cetshwayo's peace proposals, ignoring Wolseley's threatening messages (the new general-in-chief is delayed by heavy seas and cannot land), Chelmsford arrives by forced marches at Ulundi.
Adopting this time the tactics of the square of infantry instead of the spaced line, Chelmsford crushes the Zulus (Battle of Ulundi, July 4, 1879) then burns their capital. He passes on his powers to Sir Garnet Wolseley on July 15.
Note that an additional dramatic event did nothing to increase the popularity of Lord Chelmsford:the son of the former Emperor Napoleon III, Prince Imperial Louis Napoleon, who had enlisted in the British army, is killed by the Zulus on June 1, 1879, while conducting reconnaissance in preparation for the 2nd invasion.
Cetsawayo, taken prisoner, is deposed and sent to London; his dynasty is abolished and his kingdom dismembered.
Sir Henry Bartle Frere was sacked, and the beginning of the First Boer War in December 1880, disastrous for the British, dealt a final blow to his career.
Prime Minister Gladstone, who succeeded Disraeli in 1880, refused to receive Lord Chelmsford when the latter returned to England, thus inflicting a public snub on him; but Thesiger succeeded in obtaining an audience with Queen Victoria, who then asked Gladstone to receive Lord Chelmsford. Moreover, Sir Garnet Wolseley, in his despatches, has the elegance to leave the credit for Ulundi's victory to Lord Chelmsford. Gladstone eventually agrees to interview Thesiger, but the interview is brief and chilling.
A British resident (Melmoth Osborn) is appointed to northern Natal. He will not be able to maintain peace between the supporters of the dethroned king and the chiefs who have received the lands of Cetsawayo.
The British, thinking that only Cetsawayo will be able to bring peace to Zululand, gave him back his throne in 1882. But in 1883 one of his rivals, Uzibepu, who had created a solid army reinforced with white mercenaries, attacked Ulundi and overthrew Cetsawayo. The ex-king, wounded, managed to flee; he subsequently dies in Eshowe.
Return to England and death
As Sir Garnet Wolseley had in his despatches given him all the credit for the victory at Ulundi, Lord Chelmsford is made Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath.
He then became lieutenant-general in 1882, lieutenant of the Tower of London from 1884 to 1889, colonel of the 4th (West London) Rifle Volunteer Corps in 1887, general in 1888, and colonel of the Derbyshire Regiment in 1889, a position he exchanged against the same rank in the 2nd Life Guards in 1900. He was made Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order in 1902.
He was until his death Commander of the Church Lads' Brigade.
In 1905 Lord Chelmsford had a stroke while playing billiards at the United Service Club and died. His grave is in Brompton Cemetery (London).
Family
His sister, Julia Selina (1833–1904), married Sir John Eardley Wilmot Inglis (1814–1862) who commanded the British forces during the Siege of Lucknow in 1857. She published the diary she had kept during the siege.
F.A. Thesiger had 4 sons. The eldest, Frederic Thesiger, had a brilliant career as a colonial administrator, becoming Viceroy of India and 1st Viscount Chelmsford. His son Eric was a page of honor to Queen Victoria and a lieutenant-colonel during the First World War.
Lord Chelmsford and the Anglo-Zulu War in culture
On the battlefield of Isandhlwana, cairns were built at the places where heaps of corpses were found. According to eyewitnesses, in the days following the battle, the sky was darkened by birds of prey
Queen Victoria called the 24th Infantry Regiment which had fought in Zululand "the Noble 24th". The relics of the regiment (the flag found in a river after the battle of Isandhlwana, the Victoria Cross medals etc.) can be seen in Brecon (South Wales).
A monument to British soldiers who died in the Anglo-Afghan and Anglo-Zulu wars stands in the Repository Road in Woolwich. It is a megalith on which is screwed a plate bearing the names of the soldiers; it is flanked by 2 trophies of Afghan and Zulu weapons in molten copper.
In Douglas Hickox's film Zulu Dawn (1979), Lord Chelmsford (played by Peter O'Toole) is depicted as an arrogant, racist and cynical general. He approves of the unacceptable ultimatum issued to the "savages" by the imperialist high commissioner of South Africa Sir Henri Bartle Frere (played by John Mills), and agrees with him that the war will be a military promenade, an easy way to settle the Zulu question.
According to author Cy Enfield's scenario, Chelsmford is further incompetent:at Isandhlwana he neglects to laager (form a circle in) his wagons, scouts with the better half of his troops as the Zulu army surreptitiously approaches , neglects to appoint a replacement and give instructions, and picnics in the distance as his troops are slaughtered. In addition, he blames the disaster on Colonel Anthony Durnford, killed in action.
The Impi song (created by Johnny Clegg with the Juluka orchestra) has become a kind of unofficial anthem in South Africa:the crowd sings it, especially during sports matches between South Africa and Great Britain. .
In Durban, Chelmsford Road was renamed in 2007, and now bears the name of J.B. Marks, a member of the South African Communist Party who died in Moscow in 1972.