Battle of Hlobane, 1879: the retreat down Devil's Pass

Hlobane was the last Zulu victory of the war, after Isandlwana in January and the Ntombe River on 12 March. It came just before the British victory at Khambula, fought the very next day by the same Zulu army. For the British it was a raid that turned into a rout, and the narrow slope by which they escaped has been called Devil's Pass ever since.²

A diversion in the northwest

The British invasion of Zululand had gone badly wrong. The central column was destroyed at Isandlwana on 22 January 1879, and the coastal column under Colonel Charles Pearson was besieged at Eshowe. The only British force still able to act in Zululand was No. 4 Column under Colonel Henry Evelyn Wood, camped on a hill at Khambula in the northwest.³

On 20 March Lord Chelmsford, preparing to relieve Eshowe, asked Wood to make a demonstration in his area to draw Zulu strength away. Wood and his cavalry commander, Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Redvers Buller, had long wanted to strike at Hlobane, a flat-topped mountain about 20 miles southeast of Khambula and the stronghold of the abaQulusi, a group loyal to King Cetshwayo. Their raids along the border were reinforced by the followers of Prince Mbilini, a Swazi pretender allied to Cetshwayo, who on 12 March had surprised a company of the 80th Regiment on the Ntombe River and killed most of it. HistoryNet puts the warriors on Hlobane at about 1,500; according to the War Office's official narrative, when Wood looked at the mountain on 15 March he judged its southern side held by 800 to 1,000 men.⁴ › Battle of Spion Kop, 1900

What Wood did not know for certain was that on 24 March Cetshwayo had sent his main army north from Ulundi, under Mnyamana kaNgqengelele with Ntshingwayo kaMahole, the victor of Isandlwana, as field commander. Wood had reports of its march on 26 March and went ahead anyway.⁵

Two columns and a storm

According to the SA Military History Society, Wood split his mounted force of about 1,315 men in two. Buller, with about 675 mounted men, all irregulars, and a battalion of Wood's African Irregulars, was to climb the eastern end; Lieutenant Colonel John Cecil Russell, with about 640 mounted men and another battalion, was to take the western end. Wood himself, with his staff and a mounted escort of eight men of the 90th and seven Africans, joined Russell's bivouac on the evening of 27 March and rode east after Buller before dawn. The War Office's official narrative and HistoryNet give Buller a smaller column: about 400 mounted men and some 280 to 300 men of Wood's Irregulars.⁶

Buller's column set off at 3:30 a.m. on 28 March; HistoryNet describes a blinding thunderstorm, the War Office narrative a morning mist that hid the climb. At dawn the abaQulusi opened fire from barricades and caves among the rocks, and two officers of the Frontier Light Horse were killed, but Buller's men fought their way to the top and began rounding up cattle. The Border Horse under Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Weatherley had lost Buller in the dark and stayed below.⁷

Wood, riding to the firing, met Weatherley's men under the cliffs. A shot from the rocks mortally wounded his political assistant and interpreter, Llewellyn Lloyd, and his horse was killed. When the Border Horse were slow to obey an order to clear the cave from which the fire came, Wood's staff officer Captain Ronald Campbell charged it with Lieutenant Henry Lysons and a few men of the 90th Light Infantry and was shot dead at its mouth. Wood then had Campbell and Lloyd buried halfway down the hill, still under fire.⁸

The impi on the plain

From about 9 a.m. the British saw the main Zulu army, some 20,000 men by the War Office narrative and 22,000 by HistoryNet, advancing below the mountain in its traditional formation of horns and chest. Buller tried to recall Captain Robert Barton, whom he had sent east with 30 men, by ordering him to retire "by the right of the mountain." The message was misread, and Barton and Weatherley's Border Horse rode straight into the Zulu army. Weatherley died with his son, who HistoryNet says was 15.⁹

Buller's only way off the plateau was a steep, boulder-strewn drop toward the lower plateau of Ntendeka. Russell, who might have covered the descent, had misread an order from Wood and withdrawn to the northwest. Buller sent his African levies down first; many of them were overtaken and killed as they fled, about 100 by HistoryNet's count. Then the horsemen scrambled down, leading their horses, while abaQulusi pressed in from the rocks. Horses fell from the ledges, and the Zulus closed with the assegai on men left behind; HistoryNet adds that some were thrown from the cliffs and others shot themselves rather than be taken. Buller held a small rearguard and rode back again and again to bring out men who had lost their horses. The Boer leader Piet Uys turned back to help his son and was speared.¹⁰

The cost

The counts of the dead differ. Wood's first return, printed in The London Gazette, lists 11 officers and 80 men of the mounted corps killed; the War Office's official narrative gives 92 Europeans of Buller's force killed, 12 of them officers, and 16 officers and 79 men in its casualty table; HistoryNet gives 17 officers and 82 men. Wood reported about 80 of the allied chief Hamu's people killed, HistoryNet about 100 African auxiliaries. Of Wood's Irregulars, some 750 to 800 strong, only about 50 remained afterward, the rest killed or deserted. Zulu losses are not known; according to HistoryNet the Zulus called them negligible.¹¹

Four Victoria Crosses are usually credited to Hlobane, to Buller, Leet, Lysons and Private Edmund Fowler. HistoryNet adds a fifth, to Edward Browne of the 24th Foot: his citation in The London Gazette names Inhlobana but is dated 29 March, the day of Khambula, so his deed is placed at either battle.¹²

The SA Military History Society sees in Hlobane the same mistakes as at Italeni in 1838: the Zulus' strength in broken ground was underrated, reconnaissance was poor and the command divided. But the victory had a price for the Zulus. The next day, 29 March, the same army attacked Wood's fortified camp at Khambula and was defeated with heavy loss.¹³