At the Fireside Read online

  The pudding days were so popular that the diggers used to restrain their ever-hearty appetites when dealing with the beef, mutton and vegetables to make sure they had plenty of room for the wonderful desserts to follow.

  Another luxury was the abundance of milk, another scarce item around Pniel that is enthused about in the old writings. The diggers had it in their tea or coffee at breakfast – an almost unheard-of luxury – and could enjoy milk soup with rice or pearl barley for ‘tiffin’ (this is a light meal or between-meals snack which in British India supplanted afternoon tea).

  Nor did Mrs Jardine neglect the diggers’ best friends, their horses. A number of diggers kept their horses at the inn because she always made sure that there was a good supply of Cape oats for the hundred or so horses that partook of her hospitality, and at half a crown per four-pound sheaf she made a handsome profit.

  No wonder her establishment was so popular – so popular, in fact, that even when Kimberley had grown into a far greater place than Pniel at Klipdrift (this is where Klipdrift brandy gets its name from, incidentally), the people used to come and spend their weekends there.

  Mrs Jardine was a stern and rather austere woman, and everyone knew that when she gave an order it was to be respected and promptly carried out. But she had a heart the size of an ox. For all her sternness she sometimes wept in sympathy on hearing stories of the diggers’ hardships and failure – and, believe me, there were many such – and was always ready to help and advise wherever she could.

  A journalist once reported that Mrs Jardine was a true friend to many young Englishmen who came out seeking fame and fortune but found that fortune favours only a few, and that when it didn’t they were without friends, resources or homes. She played the Good Samaritan whenever she could, and it earned such love and respect for her that in later years many a digger who had been down and out remembered her name with affection.

  It was said that ‘whether a man had money or not, he dined at Mrs Jardine’s on Sundays, and over time she accumulated good-fors, IOU’s and promissory notes worth thousands of pounds, many of which were redeemed, and even more not, and to many, she was the Mother of the Diggers.’

  In February of 1872, with the wet diggings along the river slowly giving way to the inland ‘dry diggings’, the Jardines sold the inn and bought the Vine Hotel in Main Street, Kimberley, which had now blossomed considerably. Soon, however, the Vine Hotel proved far too small for Mrs Jardine’s faithful clientele, so they sold up and took over the Queen’s Hotel.

  The Queen’s Hotel had plenty of accommodation and was quite palatial compared to their previous establishment, but also proved unequal to the demand, and in 1882 the Jardines sank a lot of money into adding a new wing which, as the Diamond Fields Advertiser remarked that September, was delightfully cool and furnished most luxuriously, with a lovely drawing room on the first floor which featured a grand piano for the entertainment of the guests.

  The Jardines marked the opening of the new wing with a grand dinner party for about 90 guests, and here is the menu, just so that you can get an idea of the splendour of the occasion:

  SOUPS

  Turtle Soup, Hare Soup

  Fish

  Fillet of Soles and Shrimp Sauce

  ENTRÉES

  Brain Cutlets and Sausage Rolls

  Salmi Duck with Truffles and Fricassee Tongue

  Partridge Pie and Mutton Cutlets and Champignons

  Paté de Foie Gras

  Chicken Mayonnaise

  REMOVES

  Roast Turkey with Cambridge Sausages

  Roast Saddle Mutton and Red Currant Jelly

  Roast Suckling Pig and Apple Sauce

  Roast Sirloin of Beef and Horseradish

  Boiled Turkey and Oyster Sauce

  Boiled Ham and Champagne

  VEGETABLES

  Potatoes and Peas

  Dressed Asparagus

  SECOND COURSE

  Plum Pudding

  Ice Queen’s Pudding

  Raspberry Jelly

  Lemon Jelly

  Vanilla Cream

  Gooseberry Pie

  Custard in Glasses

  Apple Trifle

  Cheese

  Caviar on Toast

  Dessert and Wines

  After this stupendous repast the well-stuffed guests adjourned to the new drawing room for piano music and dancing. What an occasion it must have been!

  It was a sad day for Kimberley when Mrs Jardine left to run a boarding house in Cape Town’s Sea Point which she called ‘Teesside Grove’. It was within easy walking distance to the sea and many, many holidaying Kimberley folk frequented it over time. One frequent visitor, it is said, was none other than the mega-rich Randlord JB Robinson who had started out at Pniel in the early diamond days and, like many another young man, had eaten on Mrs Jardine’s credit (and yes, he paid his IOUs).

  Eventually Mrs Jardine decided to retire to the green and misty Scottish hills where she had grown up. So she sold up and left our shores forever. But she did not forget us and it is said that on her deathbed she asked her son to fetch ‘the box of notes’, as she called it, and went through every one, recalling the people and happenings of her long, richly varied life in the dry, dusty, faraway place. Then, with a smile of pleasant recollection, she burned every one. That was the ‘the Mother of the Diggers’.

  The Battle of Hlobane

  THE BATTLE OF HLOBANE

  Over the last 20 years I have spent a considerable amount of time finding out the truth about the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. I started by listening to that wonderful storyteller and raconteur David Rattray, talking to anyone who would care to listen to his account of the battle of Islandwana.

  From there I went on to absorbing information from many others who have spoken and written about that fateful battle – people like John Laband, John Bird, Ian Knight and Rob Gerard, Donald Morris, Frank Emery and Alan Lloyd.

  And, as I listened and read, I saw the face of this very famous battle slowly move from a ‘disastrous British blunder’ towards a now-acclaimed absolute Zulu victory. And so the whole truth emerges: that it was not one or the other but a combination of both.

  It was a British blunder – their scouting and intelligence-gathering were deficient, and they did not restructure their lines after part of the force went off on another mission – and it was a Zulu success because Cetewayo’s fighting leaders had drawn the right conclusions, deployed their forces tactically and pressed home their attack in spite of horrendous losses of their own.

  This leaves me thinking that the finely oiled spin-doctoring machine of the British is slowly being dismantled, so that the real truth about the Anglo-Zulu war is starting to emerge.

  Let’s just step back a moment and take a bird’s-eye view of the whole scenario.

  There were four major battles in the eventual defeat of the Zulu kingdom in 1879: the Battle of Islandwana on 22 January, the Battle of Khambula on 29 March, the Battle of Gingindlovu on 2 April and finally the Battle of Ulundi on 4 July. In addition there were two smaller actions, at Nyezane on 22 January and Hlobane on 28 March 1879.

  Now, the story of Isandlwana is well known because everybody loves a catastrophe, and so is Ulundi’s because it was such a turning-point in Zulu (and Natal) history, but hardly anything is ever said about Hlobane, and that is the one I would like to tell you about. In the official histories it is marked down as a glorious British victory, but I leave it up to you to decide for yourselves whether it was either glorious or even a victory.

  Let’s start, however, by looking at the real motives behind the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.

  The Zulus were among several small but potentially troublesome independent nations which declined, politely or otherwise, to become part of the British Empire, and as the las
t two decades of the 19th century approached, this matter was finally taken in hand.

  The first domino to fall was the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. In 1877 the Administrator of Natal, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, summarily annexed it in spite of the British guarantees of its independence contained in the 1852 Sand River Convention, without a shot being fired (the shooting came a few years later, in 1880 and 1881).

  In 1878 the British finally achieved a long-held aim by decisively defeating the Xhosa nation in the latest of a series of wars going back to 1811. Now it was the turn of the Zulu kingdom which was to be subjugated in whatever way they could find.

  So they triumphantly marched their troops away from the Eastern Cape and towards Zululand, along with all the officers who had fought the Xhosas, among them Lord Chelmsford (the commander), Colonel Evelyn Wood, Colonel Richard Glyn and a cavalryman named Lieutenant-Colonel Redvers Buller.

  It has now been firmly established that Cetewayo KaMpande did not want a war with Britain at all, but that was neither here nor there, and the Zulus were simply pushed into a position where war was inevitable (essentially the same technique that was used to provoke war with the ZAR in 1899).

  As we know, the first battle to be fought, at Isandlwana, was a total disaster for the British; to put it in a nutshell, the Zulus outgeneralled the inept Chelmsford, launched a surprise attack and virtually wiped out the poorly deployed British camp there, losing heavily themselves but killing 858 redcoats and 471 tribal auxiliaries.

  In typical British fashion, Chelmsford then tried to lay the blame on Colonel Richard Glyn, just as Colonel Evelyn Wood later unfairly blamed the hapless Lieutenant Jahweel Carey for the death of the French Prince Imperial who actually met his end through his own rashness.

  There is an interesting little side-story here which I cannot resist telling. An Estcourt transport rider named Jocelyn Cooke was instructed to take the Prince Imperial’s remains down to the rail-head at Botha’s Hill, just outside of Durban.

  He did so and then put in an invoice for £30. The British Army refused to pay, on the grounds that Cooke’s wagon was not official military transport. The Empress Eugene, Napoleon’s mother, also refused to pay, on the grounds that it was the military’s responsibility. Neither would budge, and when Cooke died 30 years later he was still waiting for his money.

  Pointing fingers elsewhere seems to have been quite common. For example, during the Second Anglo-Boer War a couple of decades later, Lord Kitchener blamed Major-General Clements for the defeat at the Battle of Nooitgedacht, whereas we now know that the blame lay squarely on his own shoulders. But such was the politics of spin in the professional military, where wars meant advancement but a bad defeat could seriously disrupt your progression up the ranks.

  But back to Zululand in 1879.

  Chelmsford’s plan for conquering Zululand was fatally flawed from the start. While formulating the invasion plan, both he and Sir Henry Bartle Frere, Governor the Cape Colony and commissioner for ‘native affairs’, had concluded that Zululand was too large to be occupied in the normal way. The only path to victory lay in advancing on the Zulu capital of Ulundi, destroying any impi or impis that stood in the way and (if possible) capturing Cetewayo.

  This assessment was sound, but not Chelmsford’s invasion plan. Instead of concentrating his forces into one irresistible sledgehammer, he split them up into five columns, of which two would effectively be left out of battle – one column which would be held back in Natal in reserve, and No 5 Column under Colonel Hugh Rowlands VC which would be stationed at Luneville, just inside the border of the recently annexed ZAR.

  This was to prevent interference by either the disgruntled ZAR Boers or the Pedi chief Sekhukhune, a known Cetewayo ally. The remaining three columns – left, centre and right – would advance on Ulundi from three different directions, meet at Ulundi and capture it.

  Chelmsford’s force crossed the Buffalo River on 11 January and the three columns began their advance. Unfortunately for them, Cetewayo and his generals had spotted the weakness of Chelmsford’s divided force and worked out their battle plans accordingly. In essence, certain Zulu regiments were detailed to harass the slow-moving British columns, while the bulk of Cetewayo’s army was concentrated into one highly mobile main body of about 20 000 men which would ‘eat up’ the columns one by one.

  The first British element to see action was No 4 Column under Colonel Evelyn Wood whose task was to occupy the attention of the semi-independent clans dwelling on the plains of north-western Zululand, so that they would keep their warriors in place rather than allow them to interfere with No 3 Column under Colonel ARE Durnford during his advance to Isandlwana and then Ulundi.

  Wood’s immediate target was a chain of flat-topped mountains named Zunguin, Hlobane and Ityentika which were occupied by the abaQulusi Zulus. Each of the three was connected to its neighbour by a nek, and the chain ran north-eastwards for 15 miles (or 24 kilometres) above north-west Zululand’s plains.

  On 17 January Wood formed a defensive laager of wagons about 10 miles (or 16 kilometres) south of the three mountains. It was still being set up when scouts he had sent out to reconnoitre the chain were chased away by about 1 000 warriors from Zunguin. Wood retaliated next morning with an assault on the mountain, and its defenders fled to neighbouring Hlobane.

  He was then informed that about 4 000 Zulus had been seen drilling on Hlobane, and on the 24th he set about attacking it. While thus occupied, he received the shattering news about the defeat at Isandlwana on the 21st. Wood called the attack off and shifted his laager to a feature called Khambula, about 14 miles west of Zunguin.

  On arrival there on the 31st he received more bad news in a message from Lord Chelmsford which informed him that his current orders had been scrapped: he was now on his own, he could not expect any reinforcements and must be prepared to face an attack by the entire Zulu army at any moment.

  The fact was that Chelmsford was in dire straits. Isandlwana had cost him a large part of his central column and part of Colonel ARE Durnford’s No 3 Column. The following day Colonel CN Pearson’s No 1 Column was attacked at Nyezane while advancing up the coast. Pearson beat the attackers off, but when the news of Isandlwana reached him on the 28th he realised that he was now out on a limb and dug in at Eshowe where he was to be besieged for some time.

  Chelmsford’s advance on Ulundi had now ground to a halt, and he had no option but to beat an embarrassing retreat back over the Buffalo River into Natal. This meant that Evelyn Wood’s column was the only battle-worthy British force left in Zululand: the first round had gone to Cetewayo in no uncertain terms. He must have felt extremely lonely.

  Back in Natal, Chelmsford pondered his future plans, and in the meantime reinforced Wood with most of the men from Rowlands’ No 5 Column on the ZAR border and local troops, both black and white, from the remnants of the central column (one of the most effective regiments, in fact, was a well-armed, well-disciplined and well-equipped black unit called the Natal Native Horse).

  Wood stayed put at Khambula for the next seven weeks, occupying himself with building a formidable defensive position, complete with six light artillery pieces, sending out mounted patrols to assist Rowlands’ much-depleted No 5 Column on the ZAR border, which was being harassed by Zulu raiders, and trying without notable success to wean the local chiefs away from Cetewayo.

  He also received more reinforcements – mounted troops and five companies of British regulars – which were welcome but did not do much to even up the odds in the event of a mass attack on Khambula.

  Then on 20 March he received a message. Chelmsford believed that a Zulu impi was on the way to attack Pearson’s modest force at Eshowe. He would set off to relieve Pearson, he said, while Wood mounted a diversionary attack which, it was hoped, would draw away some of the impi.

  Wood and his cavalry commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Buller, now resu
rrected the original plan for the attack on Hlobane. They knew that by now the AbaQulusi had been reinforced by a renegade Swazi force under a royal prince called Mbelini (most Swazis were loyal to the British); but even with the arrival of the Swazis it was estimated that no more than about 1 500 warriors defended Hlobane.

  The final plan of attack was dictated by Hlobane’s structure. It consisted of two plateaux, the lower and smaller at the eastern end of the four-mile-long nek that linked Hlobane to Zunguin. At its own eastern end this plateau then rose steeply for about 60 metres up a narrow, boulder-strewn slope (the British called it the ‘Devil’s Pass’) to the top of the second plateau. This was the main objective, containing about 2 000 head of cattle and about 1 000 warriors.

  Wood’s plan called for dismounted troops and friendly Zulu levies under Buller to climb the eastern track to the higher plateau, which would be under fire by rocket artillery in the meantime, scatter the defenders and drive the cattle away. At the same time a similar force under Major RA Russell would climb up and capture the lower plateau.

  This would bring several benefits. It would scatter the abaQulusi and their Swazi allies, cut down on the harassing raids against Rowlands’ depleted No 5 Column on the ZAR border and distract the impi heading for Eshowe. Khambula was now thoroughly fortified, which Isandlwana had not been. The British were renowned for the technique of the stubborn defensive battle in which an enemy would be allowed to attack, given a bloody nose and then destroyed by a strong counter-attack.

  What Wood did not know was that Chief Mbelini had urgently requested Cetewayo to send reinforcements to Hlobane. Cetewayo obliged on 24 March by despatching his Mehlokazulu regiment (‘The eyes of the people’), consisting of five impis, all under the joint command of Ntshingwayo, the victor of Isandlwana, and a prince called Nyamana.

  On the 26th Wood was told that Ntshingwayo was on the way from Ulundi and would probably attack Khambula. If these reports were true, it meant that Khambula was in imminent danger, since part of his force would probably be engaged at Hlobane when it arrived. Nevertheless, he set off early next morning as planned with a mixed force consisting of about 400 local volunteer mounted units and 277 black troops – volunteers from the ZAR’s indigenous population and a batch of loyal Swazis.