Cut to size
Sirl was sorry to see Charle's Moore (Another voice, 15 January) repeat the old canard, as though from the mouth of John Aspinall, that the Zulus 'defeated the entire British Empire at Isandlwana'.
What the Zulus defeated (and complete- ly destroyed) was an ad hoc battalion of the 24th Regiment of Foot, less the company left at Rorke's Drift, plus small detach- ments of cavalry, gunners and Natal Native troops. The 24th had just done six weeks on a troop-ship, and marched some 200 miles inland from Durban. It was so inexperi- enced that it camped, and marched out to meet the Impi, in open order.
At the time of Isandlwana, the British Army consisted of almost 100 regiments of infantry, some with two battalions, and, as we are speaking of the British Empire, the Indian Army as many again. If all this might was defeated at Isandlwana, how was it that a few weeks later the Zulu power was broken for a century to come, at Ulun- di?
R.J. Francis
19 Lynch Road, Farnham, Surrey
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