TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD CHELMSFORD'S DESPATCH.
IT is with deep regret that we feel compelled to join our Tory contemporaries, in asking whether the Government still intends to continue to entrust the active command of the British Army in Zululand to Lord Chelmsford. The cold determination which supports an officer under even merited disaster, because of a conviction that it is the sense of support which makes great officers, has usually our cordial approval ; and we have read history enough to know how often capable commanders, and even commanders of the first rank, have fallen into disastrous errors. Kings have learned to be con- querors very often because they could not be removed for defeat, and the democratic impatience which cannot be satis- fied without victory has cost hecatombs of human lives. There is nothing, moreover, in Lord Chelmsford to exasperate public opinion. His military record both in India and Abyssinia was a very good one, and though he may have owed his position in South Africa to his connec- tions, so did Marlborough, Wellington, and many another greatly successful General. He did not do anything that is known to provoke this war, he asked perservingly for rein- forcements, and he appears from the first, if we may judge from his manifesto to the Colonists, imploring them for mounted men, because "I have no real cavalry," to have re- cognised the arduous nature of his undertaking. Even in his despatch on Isandula, on which the public has condemned him, a despatch written on January 27th at Pietermaritzburg, the fine nature of the writer is conspicuous to all who read. It is the despatch of a man utterly saddened by events, full of pity for his people, disdaining all concealment, resolute to tell his superiors the whole truth, painful or satisfactory, so far as he knows it. But it is also the despatch of a man who, unless great soldiers can see in it something which wholly escapes civilians, should not be entrusted with the command of a large army, engaged on a most difficult and hazardous undertaking. From first to last, it is the diary of a man who may be a good officer, or even a fair leader of a brigade, but who has not the qualities required in any large, independent command. He has not the primary faculty of understanding what his own subordinates and the enemy are about. He had collected no accurate idea of the country he was about to invade, even for ten miles from his own starting-point, saying, with the heart- breaking naivete( which runs through the whole communica- tion, "the country "—i.e., the country ten miles in advance of Rorke's Drift—" is far more difficult than I had been led to expect, and the labour of advancing with a long train of waggons is enormous. It took seven days' hard work by one-half of No. 3 column to make the ten miles of road between Rorke's Drift and Insalwana Hill practicable, and even then, had it rained hard, I feel sure that the convoy could not have got on." Those surely were primary facts in Zululand cam- paigning, the very first ideas upon which the Staff plans should have been based. How is even one day's work to be arranged, when the country a mile ahead is to the General like the surface of a new planet ? He was at once aware of the neces- sity of guarding his communications, and utterly neglectful of them. He says, "The line of communication is very much exposed, and would require a party of mounted men always patrolling, and fixed entrenched posts of infantry at intervals of about ten miles." Yet he kept up no communication be- tween Isandula and the point ten miles in advance to which he accompanied Colonel Glyn, with the bulk of the latter's column, in order to assist Major Dartnell, who had been ordered out to reconnoitre a stronghold, who found the enemy in force in front of him, and who had made up his mind to an attack. Lord Chelmsford, moved by urgent messages from this officer, who had been sent out with nothing to eat—for biscuit had to be forwarded on the night of the 21st to his soldiers—moved out very early on the 22nd from Isandula to support him, taking again nothing but biscuit for his men, for he specially men- tions in his despatch that the men had had nothing else, and very little of that, though Major Dartnell had asked per- mission to attack, though thousands of Zulus were in the neighbourhood, and though he himself dreaded an attack on the immense convoy at Isandula. This is evident, for Lord Chelmsford ordered up Colonel Durnford by express with his native column to strengthen the camp, and left strict instructions with the officer in charge of the camp —Lieutenant-Colonel Pulleine—not to quit it, orders which were, at first at least, strictly obeyed. But Lord Chelmsford never provided the entrenchment he himself says is necessary, kept no patrol on Ate way, though he had mounted men, and but for an accident would never have heard of the attack on the camp, and would himself have ridden into the midst of the victorious Zulus, to his certain death. His own account of his own proceedings we must give in his own words, for it is simply wonderful, both in its transparent truthfulness an-I its extraordinary ineptitude. He had just driven off the enemy, when, at nine a.m. of the 22nd,— " Colonel Glyn received, about 9 a.m., a short note from Lieutenant- Colonel Pulleine, saying that firing was heard to the left front of the camp, but giving no further particulars. I sent Lieutenant Milne, R.N., my A.D.C., at once to the top of a high hill from which the camp could be seen, and he remained there at least an hour with a very powerful telescope, but could detect nothing unusual in that direction. Having no cause, therefore, to feel any anxiety about the safety of the camp, I ordered Lieutenant-Colonel Russell to make a sweep round with the mounted infantry to the main waggon-track, whilst a portion of the infantry went over the hill-top to the same point, and the guns, with an escort, retraced their steps. I, myself, proceeded with Colonel Glyn to fix upon a site for our new camp, which I had determined to shift the next day to ground near the Mangeni River, which runs into Matyana's stronghold. One battalion of the Native Contingent was ordered to march back to camp across country, and to examine en route the different deep dongas or water-cuttings, which intersect the plain, and which might very possibly conceal some of the enemy. Having fixed upon the situation for the camp, and having ordered the troops then on the ground to bivouac there that night, I started to return to camp with the mounted infantry, under Lieutenant-Colonel Russell, as my escort.. When within about six miles of the camp I found the 1st Battalion Native Contingent halted, and shortly after Commandant Lonsdale rode up to report that he had ridden into camp, and found it in possession of the Zulus."
Lieutenant Milne, speculating for an hour from a high hilt, through a telescope, on the condition of a camp which a mounted man could have reached in the time, and reporting- all right, and the Commander-in-Chief then riding on with a few Volunteer troopers into that camp, at a moment when it was in the possession of 15,000 of the enemy, and Captain Lonsdale's report, are, we venture to say, unex- ampled incidents in war. "The camp, Sir," one hears the gallant Volunteer say, "is in possession of the enemy.' Once warned, Lord Chelmsford recalled his men from the front, and marched rapidly back to camp, to bivouac' for a night of horrors among the clibris of the plundered camp and the bodies of the slain Europeans, now at last known to have exceeded 900 in number :--I4 At early dawn the following morning I ordered the troops to move off' with all speed to Rorke's Drift, about which post I was in. some anxiety. The troops had no spare ammunition, and only a few biscuits, a large portion of them had had no other food for forty-eight hours. All had marched at least thirty miles the day before, and had passed an almost sleepless night on- the stony ground. No one, therefore, was fit for any prolonged exertion, and it was certain that daylight would reveal a sight which could not but have a demoralising effect upon the whole force." If Rorke's Drift bad been lost, as it seemed to be, for flames appeared ascending from it—they were flames from the house of the Swedish Missionary Witt, and not from the post itself —it would seem as if the British column, already half-starved, would have been absolutely without supplies, and must have perished of fatigue and hunger ; while if the Zulus had known of the ghastly bivouac among the dead, the whole column, Lord Chelmsford included, must have been cut up. Attacks by night are the Zulus' forte, and the Missionary Witt reports in his narrative that it was the light of his blazing house which helped to foil the attack upon Rorke's Drift Fortunately, Lieutenant Chard's bravery and cool resourceful- ness in stockading the garden of the post with sacks of Indian corn, and the courage of Lieutenant Bromhead and the men, had protected the post, and thereby saved Natal from a terrible invasion. But not for this result is the country in- debted to any generalship, or any precautions, or any attention to the commonest rules of warfare exhibited by Lord Chelms- ford. If he had been riding to hounds in Leicestershire, he could not have been less wary or more easily taken in, and he would have taken far more trouble to know the country.
There is precisely the same incompetence to obtain informa- tion visible in the General's speculations as to the fate of the unfortunate garrison of the camp:— "One company went off to the extreme left, and has never been heard of since, and the other five, I understand, engaged the enemy about a mile to the left front of the camp, and made there a most stubborn and gallant resistance. So long- as they kept their faces to the enemy, the Zulus were, I am told, quite unable to drive them
back, and fell in heaps before the deadly fire poured into them. An officer who visited this part of the field of battle on the following morning reported that the loss of the Zulus in killed could not be less than 2,000. When, however, the Zeus got round the left flank of these brave men, they appear to have lost their presence of mind, and to have retired hastily through the tents, which had never been struck. Immediately the whole Zulu force surrounded them, they were overpowered by numbers, and the camp was lost. Those who were mounted ran the gauntlet, and some small portion managed to reach the river, which, however, at the point of crossing was deep and rapid. Many were shot or assegaied, and many were swept away by the current, and, it is presumed, have been drowned. Had the force in question but taken up a defensive position in the camp itself, and utilised there the materials for a hasty entrenchment which lay near to hand, I feel absolutely confident that the whole Zulu army would not have been able to dislodge them. It appears that the oxen were yoked to the waggons three hours before the attack took place, so that there was ample time to construct that waggon laager which the Dutch in former days understood so well."
Yet this simple precaution had not been taken by Lord Chelmsford, who had contented himself with ordering that the camp should not be left, an order only disobeyed when, after Lieutenant-Colonel Pulleine had, in obedience to Lord Chelmsford's orders, rejected an appeal from Colonel Durnford to lend him some men for an attack, the Zulus drew him out by a feigned retreat. It is easy, and may be just, to blame Lieutenant-Colonel Pulleine for carelessness in not striking the tents and not linking the waggons, as the Dutch do, but where were the orders to make those preparations of which the General has so high an opinion ? The truth is, the General knows little about the matter, less probably than is known by experts here, and he is too truthful not to reveal the plenitude of his own ignorance. That little touch about one com- pany—the General does not know which—which went off of itself—the General does not know where—except that it went somewhere "to the left" into space, and on the fate of which he has not even a speculation, speaks volumes as to the capacity of the General, who had or ought to have cross-examined the one or two men, including one officer at least, who escaped to Rorke's Drift. There is a want of grasp of the situation, of mental energy, of everything except sad reflectiveness, which, coupled with the self-made revelations of want of precaution, leave in our minds no possibility of any other conclusion than that the General is by nature unadapted to independent command. The despatch is the melancholy, reflective, but ill-informed report of a special correspondent to his em- ployers about a disaster for which he is in himself no way responsible. It is a document to excite, not anger, or even contempt, but deep pity for a man of fine qualities, placed in a position to which he was obviously unequal, and who, we cannot help thinking, feels his inequality. There is every reason to be just to the sad man who has to record such a narrative of failure, yet who, from first to last, never offers one self- excusatory word ; but justice does not require that he should again be left in supreme command of a British army which, when the reinforcements have joined, may seem small to Continental critics, but which will number exactly five-sixths of the European army in India when the Mutiny broke out, which broke up a Sepoy army of 100,000 men, and captured Delhi before a single regiment of the rein- forcements had arrived. Is there no competent soldier in England of rank sufficient to supersede Lord Chelmsford, with- oat punishing him, who would undertake the task ? It is not even yet too late, for a new General could reach the Tugela before the troops, and might be worth a further division of reinforcements. This Government thinks much and talks much of prestige, but does not appear to value the prestige of victory which gives soldiers such confidence, even in men like Lord Gough, who, they knew, might waste their lives, but who, up to Chillianwallah, had behind him a record of unchecked success.
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