The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879

735 pp. 8vo. Five maps in text, 77 illustrations, maps on endpapers. "The Washing of the Spears is the definitive account of a bloody and tragic story: the rise of the Zulu nation under the great ruler Shaka, and its fall under Cetshwayo in the Zulu War of 1879. For over a century after the European landing at Capetown in the seventeenth century, the Boers advanced unopposed into the vast interior of Africa, encountering only scattered bands of Hottentots and Bushmen. They met, fought and defeated the Bantu in the Kaffir Wars, but it was not until 1824 that Europeans came face to face with another expanding and imperial power, the Zulus -- the most formidable nation in black Africa. That confrontation ignited a prolonged struggle, which culminated in a bitter war, the last despairing effort of Africans to stem the tide of white civilization. The Zulus challenged the might of Victorian England, and armed only with their assegais, their rawhide shields and their incredible courage, they inflicted upon the British the worst defeat a modern army has ever suffered at the hands of savages. The record of that war is studded with tales of unparalleled drama: the Battle of Isandhlwana, where the Zulu impis wiped out the major British Column; Rorke's Drift, where a handful of troops beat off thousands of attacking warriors (and for which no fewer than eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded); the tragic death of the Prince Imperial of France, the son of Napoleon III... Mr. Morris also traces the careers of Bantu, Boer and Briton; of the great Zulu kings who founded and ruled the nation; of the Boer leaders who led their people in to the wilderness in the Great Trek; of such Englishmen as Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who went into Zululand to crown Cetshwayo; of Bishop John William Colenso, excommunicated for heresy, who waged a lone battle to save the Zulu nation he had befriended; of John Dunn, who remembered 49 Zulu wives and 117 children in his will, and who ruled over a Zulu kingdom in the name of Queen Victoria. The Washing of the Spears is a unique work of scholarship, recording the full sweep and vivid excitement of a decisive factor in the history of southern Africa."