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

Hlobane was the third and last major Zulu victory of 1879, after Isandlwana and the Ntombe River. 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 north-west

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 north-west.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 south-east 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 1,500.⁴

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

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 rode with a small escort.⁶

Buller began to climb at 3 a.m. on 28 March in a violent thunderstorm. 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 refused 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 spent precious time burying Campbell and Lloyd.⁸

The impi on the plain

Late in the morning the British saw the main Zulu army, which HistoryNet puts at some 22,000 men, advancing below the mountain in its traditional horns formation. 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 beside his 15-year-old son.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 north-west. Buller sent his African levies down first; about 100 of them were overtaken and killed. Then the horsemen scrambled down, leading their horses, while abaQulusi pressed in from the rocks. Some men were thrown from the cliffs; 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

HistoryNet and the account at rorkesdriftvc.com both give 17 officers and 82 white soldiers killed, with about 100 African auxiliaries. HistoryNet adds that only 50 of the 750 men of Wood's Irregulars remained afterward, the rest killed or deserted. Zulu losses are not known; the Zulus called them negligible. HistoryNet counts five Victoria Crosses for the day, to Buller, Leet, Lysons, Fowler and Browne; rorkesdriftvc.com lists four, without Browne.¹¹

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.¹²