The Battle of Rorke's Drift

the story of Rorke's drift is of a hundred and fifty British soldiers who for almost ten hours held out against repeated zulu charges during the siege or the Battle of Rorke's drift from the 22nd to the 23rd of January 1879 where the British Empire faced off against the warriors of the Zulu Kingdom now South Africa in 1879 was a mismatch of different nations the largest being the British Cape Colony as well as two board Republic's in the north and the rising Zulu Kingdom which had risen under Shaka Zulu in the previous century now the Boers who were these descendants of the Dutch settlers were often fighting with the Zulus during this time and especially around the 1880s all the 1879 was between the Blood River area where they claimed land that had been granted to them by the Zulu King Dingaan II although the Zulus refused this and so there was conflict now one of these border public's was in the north and was rather poor was called the South African city publique although the British called it trans file during this time they had lots of internal conflict as well as a border conflict with the other large borough Republic the or onufry staff and so in 1877 the British decided to annex the city African Surrey publique the next step for the British to fully federalized South Africa as they were doing in Canada at the same time was to deal with the independent Zulu Kingdom to the south east which would then allow them to create a federation in South Africa but of course the Zulus very much enjoyed having their own freedom so the British sent them an ultimatum with ridiculous demands that they knew they could never comply to and indeed the Zulus only complied to two of the somewhat like 1015 and exactly demands that they said and so the British decided to invade Zulu land with several different columns of course they were very confident of victory as they had highly superior technology to the Zulus and thought that an indigenous foe would be easily enough to defeated however the Zulus were to prove them decisively wrong at their first engagement at the Battle of hiss and eluana on the 22nd of January 1879 this being because they although they had much inferior technology to the British the British of course using firearms while the Zulus were using short Spears and shields made of oxen hide actually managed to envelop the British positions by using the horns of the buffalo where they sent two flanking troops around while the loins of the buffalo so the the first line to go forward soaked up the british fire this resulted in some 1300 British casualties and remains to this day the costliest defeat in British military history against an indigenous foe and of course the Zulus were technologically although perhaps not tactically far inferior to the British and this really sent shockwaves through the British Empire which had been believed to be almost undefeatable especially by a native foe like the Zulus so one of these columns that had been sent in and was actually set left behind by the Maine Army that went to his hand Alanna was left behind at a missionary post on the Buffalo River at a place called Rorke's drift which had been set up by Swedish missionaries earlier in the century and now they were of course out only six miles away from the battlefield vasantha rowana and Zulus knew that they were there and of course here at Rorke's drift would be the second major engagement of the anglers who knew war following the catastrophe of ease and lawanna so the British forces left behind there were a total of 152 soldiers 141 were British regulars and 11 were colonial troops I believe there were one or two boards there that I know there was a Swiss and Swiss Minh there as well as a few Swedes and there were a hundred native natal Horseman and who I believe were led by a Colonel Henderson now the Zulu forces that came to attack Rorke's drift on the river were a total of around 3,000 to 4,000 men and a few of these would have had firearms although of course they were not trained in them many of them would have taken them from the bodies of the British they'd killed at his hands Luana and most of them were out of date and old and so they weren't really as well drilled as the British all that they did have them although the majority of Zulus as I already said would be armed with the short spear called the asagai and the shields made of oxen hide cowhide and they would fight in the traditional manner as well as using throwing spears and things like that so this is a map of Rorke's drift and actually what the British did to defend themselves against his Zulu attack that they knew would come in a Mele style rather than the traditional European style of just shooting at each other from not very far away was to construct sandbags around the area and they did this with a huge wall called the meekly war to protect the soldiers on the inside not as well as this they also created an inner wall called the biscuit bag wall and a readout which is sort of this circular formation of sandbags for in case they needed to retreat from the larger part of the melee bag wall at the end of the battle now behind this wall the British soldiers and their allies waited for the Zulu attack to come which it soon did around four o'clock in the afternoon now the first Zulu attack actually swung around the south wall and then slammed into the north wall around the hospital where the British obviously had troops stationed so this again was some kind of zulu decoy and actually at this first stage of the Zulu battle the Zulus discovered that the sandbag wall that the British had constructed was too high for them to get over obviously they had to get over the wall so that they could use their asagai their spears and on the British because they were a Mele kind of attack rather than the ranged attack of the British but this was too high so what they started to do was to climb over there the bodies of their own dead obviously to try and poke through the wall and to sit underneath the wall and try to grab the rifles of the British as well as to fire up if they had firearms and kill the British and actually quite a few of the British casualties during the war are during the Battle of Rorke's drift we're from these firearms by the Zulus who are crouching underneath the wall to attack them but ultimately this first attack was successfully repulsed by the British behind the sandbags and now actually a second attack also came and this was much more around the western edge of the defenses and this attack was much harder to repel for the British and actually they then gave the order to retreat from the outer bag of the the melee bag wall and into this second line of defence that they've constructed obviously this was a much smaller area to defend so they could have many more rifles over a much smaller area and so it would be a lot harder for the Zulus to storm however in doing this although this was a fighting retreat and it was successful that the men were able to get into their new positions and this did mean that the hospital was now isolated and there were several wounded men from asan DeWanna who had escaped in the hospital this led to a very valiant defense of this hospital and actually nine out of the eleven men who were trapped inside the hospital were able to fight their way out and rejoin the others and as is depicted in the film zoom as many of the events here are and Zulu is actually quite an accurate representation of what went on at the battle if you're interested now this then led to the finals who to attack both coming from the eastern side so also the western side sorry as the Zulus had come up with a melee back wall and attacked this second line this biscuit bag wall that the British had constructed as well as through the cattle crowd the crowd being this word for and the kind of enclosure that they had for cattle in South Africa and the Zulus attacked from both sides but the British thanks to their concentration of rifle fire I think they went down from about 20,000 rounds to 900 rounds during this time so they came really close to being out of ammunition they kept up a volley fire and this ultimately was able to repel the Zulu attack as they kept coming and actually the Zulus kept attacking through the night as well so the British were fighting standing in their positions fighting for hours and hours and it seemed that the Zulus would keep attacking until the British ran out of ammunition but there also came an end to the Zulu desire to carry on the fight and actually they did retreat in the morning hours at around dawn and so the British finally got a rest after about 10 hours of fighting and it's because of this that 11 Victoria Crosses were handed out to people at Rorke's drift and obviously out of 150 soldiers eleven is a huge amount Victoria Cross was a massive honour although it's possible that this was only to compensate for the terrible defeat of the British force at 'santa lawanna of course this came the it was on the same day as the Battle of Isandlwana and into the next day the 23rd of January so it's possible that they wanted to and essentially bolster the victory at Rorke's drift to compensate for their loss although it goes without saying that the valiant defense of Rorke's drift by the British soldiers and the very brave attack of the Zulu warriors who of course were charging in with and essentially stone-age weapons while the British were firing modern firearm both shouldn't be forgotten and are in their own right very impressive as a last stand and I think we should remember everyone who fought at the Battle of Rorke's drift but everyone so thank you very much for watching this has been my video about the Battle of Rorke's drift telling the sabaton story of Rorke's drift and what went on there I would like to say that I have actually made and I have actually done a collaboration with armchair historian so if you're interested in the Zulu war and more stuff about that then go and check him out I'll have cards at various points in the video as well as links in the description he is made a two-part series about the angler Zulu War which goes into more of the the prelude as well as the actual war itself and I do actually have a video which I made in collaboration with him on the earlier history of South Africa if you'd like to know more about the bush and the Zulus and the Gaza and the British in South Africa and all of that things again to the patreon for helping me out and to make this video I hope you have enjoyed this don't forget to vote in the poll and I will see you all very soon thank you for watching I've been history with Albert

Channel: History With Hilbert

Views: 114,877

Keywords: Rorke's Drift, Battle of Rorke's Drift, Anglo-Zulu War, Zulu War, Battle of Isandlwana, Sabaton, Sabaton Rorke's Drift, The Last Stand, Zulu Kingdom, Zulu Film, South African History, Zulu History, Boer War, Anglo-Boer War, History of South Africa, Armchair Historian Zulu War, British Battles, British History, Zulu Movie, Zulu Battle

Id: iYOCVPIl0Cg

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 23 2018