Last we left off, Shaka's boss Dingiswayo had just been killed at the hands of a man named Zwide. Shaka had declared vengeance against Zwide and his clan, the Ndwandwe and the Zulu had moved from being a tribe to a fledgling empire as Shaka consolidated control over the Mtethwa, Dingiswayo's powerful clan. Today, we look into the war between Shaka and Zwide and the disaster that followed in its wake. As Shaka took control of the Mtethwa tribe, he began to spread his ideas amongst them, teaching them how to fight in Zulu fashion and having them take on the Zulu name. He instilled in this newly consolidated Zulu clan a warrior culture that had never existed before and changed them from being pastoral herdsmen to conquerers. With this, Shaka began his frequently brutal expansion outward, bringing in neighboring tribes with diplomacy, when possible, but often resorting to the extremities of force. Unlike the ritual warfare of old, when his forces would engage in enemy bands, their goal was to destroy the enemy completely and when the forces under arms were destroyed he would march into the enemy village, often killing all the men of fighting age, assimilating only the women and children into the Zulu tribe. Finally, after training his people and expanding his reach, Shaka felt ready to take on Zwide. As Zwide's Ndwandwe forces pushed their way into what was now Zulu territory, Shaka ran a number of delaying tactics along the Umfolozi river while he moved his people and his cattle out of harms way. Then, he arrayed his forces, about five thousand strong, on a hill, right in the path of the oncoming Ndwandwe army. To the Ndwandwe, this looked like an easy victory. They had more than twice as many men as Shaka could muster and never before had one of the Zulu armies really been able to stand against them. Shaka, seeing his diasdvantage in numbers, split a small contingent from his force and used it to lure off a sizable portion of the enemy's army. But the Ndwandwe coming toward the hill still outnumbered him. This actually turned into an advantage for Shaka though. The Ndwandwe forces got in each others' way as they tried to clamber up the hill in a disorganized mob. This disorder, combined with the uphill ascent made the long throwing spears the Ndwandwe carried useless The Zulu counter-charged, rushing downhill and crashing into the enemy line with their short stabbing spears. The enemy routed, stampeding back down the hill. Shaka gathered his men back into formation at the top of the hill, and waited. Five times that day, the Ndwandwe charged the hill and five times, they were repulsed by the smaller force. As the day wore on, the Ndwandwe began to suffer from that great bane of armies in tropical climes: the heat. Ndwandwe men started to slip off to the river about a mile away. Meanwhile, every time the Ndwandwe fell back the Zulu warriors refreshed themselves with supplies Shaka had hidden atop the hill. The day was going well for Shaka, but even with his successes, his force was still outnumbered. Then, Shaka saw a signal fire in the distance. The diversionary force he had used to lure away a column of the Ndwandwe were letting him know that the contingent chasing them were on their way back. Shaka didn't have much time. He needed to shatter the Ndwandwe before the rest of their forces returned. But even though Zwide's men had been beaten back time and again, they had take a toll on the Zulu's numbers. Seeing this, Zwide marshalled his troops and prepared to lead them personally in one last grand assault. But Shaka was ready for it. All day, this entire time, he had only been fighting with two-thirds of his men. the chest and the horns of his bull's horn strategy. The other third, the loins, had been hidden in a depression behind the hill, rested and fresh. Now, he called on them to join the horns and envelop the enemy. Seeing this large force appear as if from nowhere, the Ndwandwe began to panic. Pinned by the chest and encircled by the horns, this last column of Ndwandwe was crushed, with its tattered remnants fleeing down the hill. Shaka sent a small contingent of men to kill any Ndwandwe they could find taking water at the river while his main force pursued the bulk of the fleeing army. But as the Ndwandwe column that had followed his diversionary force began to close in, Shaka was forced to give up the chase. The day was a bloody one. As was common in this new style of war, neither side took prisoners. As the sun set, nearly 2,000 Zulus lay dead, as did 7,500 Ndwandwe troops But their leader, Zwide, was not among them. Zwide was not well liked among the nearby tribes, and as cracks in the mighty Ndwandwe army began to show, Shaka was able to gain new allies, and new client states for his confederacy, bolstering his numbers. After eighteen more months of minor skirmishes, the final battle between the two forces came at the Mhlatuze River. As the Ndwandwe forces were trying to cross, the Zulu engaged, trapping half their forces on each side. Over the course of two days of running battle, the Ndwandwe forces were scattered. Seeing his opportunity, Shaka took his forces and marched on the Ndwandwe capital before word of their army's defeat could reach them. As he approached, before his men were close enough to be seen clearly from the capital, he had them start to sing Ndwandwe victory songs. Upon hearing the singing, the populace rushed out to greet them, only to be slaughtered by the oncoming forces. Zwide managed to escape, but his mother did not. Shaka locked her in a house with jackals and hyenas to eat her alive and when the night was done, he had the house burnt to the ground, so only ash would remain. Over the coming years, Shaka continued to expand his reach and assert Zulu dominance over all the tribes in the area. He turned his confederacy into a true empire, and exerted influence far beyond even the regions he could control. But all those tribes he had pushed out, all the fleeing refugees he had left behind, all the warriors he had driven from their homes, spread out like a fire across the savannah. All those men who had seen the Zulu fight adopted the Zulu way of war and as they fled the now mighty Zulu, they inflicted the same brutality on those around them. This was the mfecane, the crushing. These tribes that fled the Zulu either died out or formed kingdoms of their own with the same bloody tactics they had learned from the Zulu, and at an incredible price. Over the next 15 years, well over a million people would die as these refugees from the Zulu cut their way across the southern half of Africa. But by 1827, not all was right in the Zulu kingdom. Shaka's mother, the parent who had raised him, died, and he went mad with grief. Sources report him ordering that no grain be planted for a year, that any woman who got pregnant was to be executed along with her husband, that milk was not to be gathered from their cattle. It's said that he had 7,000 people killed for not grieving enough, that he had cows slaughtered so that their calves would know what it was like to lose a mother. It goes without saying that shortly after this, he was assassinated by his brothers. They'd been trying to get rid of him for some time anyway. But, as so often happens with these things, his two brothers shortly became one brother as there's just not enough room for two on the throne. And so, with two brothers bumped off in short succession, a man named Dingane became the leader of the Zulu empire. After either bribing or killing anybody still loyal to Shaka, Dingane faced a new threat: Dutch settlers, pushed east by the British colonial efforts in south Africa, began to enter Zulu land. At first, relations appeared cordial, with the Dutch helping to recover some 7000 cattle from Dingane's enemies in return for land in the Zulu territory. But when the Dutch came to Dingane's capital to sign the agreement, in the midst of a ceremonial dance, Dingane shouted to have them seized and dragged off to a nearby hill where they were all clubbed to death. Dingane then sent troops off to massacre the now undefended Dutch wagon train As is so often the case, none of this ends well for anybody. The Dutch sent out another wagon train, but this one full of nothing but fighters. In what's now known as the Battle of Bloody River, over ten thousand Zulus attacked the circled wagons of the Dutch, but with only their short spears to fight with, and on poor terrain, funneled into a killing plain, three thousand Zulus lay dead by the end of the day, and only three of the Dutch were even wounded. This battle broke the back of Dingane's forces. The last remaining half-brother of Dingane, who had fled with thousands of his followers, after seeing how Dingane treated the rest of his relatives now came storming back and the Dutch immediately became his allies. In the end he crushed Dingane, and he himself took over the leadership of the Zulu. He established a wary peace with the Dutch settlers, granting them land in return for their aid and began his reign in relative tranquility. Next week, we'll find out just how that peace turned out, and follow the lengthy reign of the new Zulu king, Mpande.
