A man enlisted in the Victorian Army with the near certainty that eventually he would find himself up against a tough ruthless and uncivilized foe fighting on his own familiar terrain where the morale and quality of the soldier himself was often the deciding factor in a gamble between easy victory and brutal annihilation. From 1837 to 1901, British soldiers undertook at least 60 campaigns and fought more than 400 battles in all five continents of the world, making their mark in: Abyssinia; 1868 Aden; 1838 Afghanistan; 1838, 1841, 1878, 1879 Ambela (India); 1863 Ashanti; 1874, 1900 Australia; 1854 Bengal (India); 1857-1859 Benin; 1897 Bhutan (India); 1864 Buner (India); 1898 Burma; 1852, 1884 Canada; 1837, 1870 Chilas (India); 1892 China; 1840, 1859, 1860, 1900-1901 Chitral (India); 1894 Egypt: 1882-1885, 1896-1898 Gwalior (India); 1843 Hunza (India); 1891 India - North West Frontier; 1848, 1849, 1850, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1858, 1864, 1866, 1867, 1877, 1878, 1879, 1880, 1884, 1888, 1890, 1891, 1892, 1897 Japan; 1864 Jubaland; 1898 Levant; 1840 Lushai (India); 1871 Malay; 1875 Malta; 1878 Namipur (India); 1891 Mashonaland; 1896 Mombasa; 1896 Natal; 1879 New Zealand; 1861, 1863, 1864 Niger; 1898 Oudh (India); 1857-1859 Persia; 1856 Punjab; 1845-1846, 1848 Russia; 1854-1857 Sikkim (India); 1861, 1888 Sind (India); 1843 Somaliland; 1890 South Africa; 1846, 1847, 1848, 1851, 1852, 1877, 1879, 1887, 18981902 Sudan; 1884, 1885, 1896-1898 Tibet; 1888 Transvaal; 1881, 1898-1902 Waziristan (India); 1894 Zanzibar; 1896 Of all these campaigns, only one was lost - that against the Boers in 1881. Retrospect and nostalgia lead us to believe sixty-four years of Queen Victoria's reign to have been a great and glorious period in our history as British soldiers added to the Empire in continuous colonial military campaigns. The Crimean War and the 2nd Boer War were, by the standards of their time, relatively major affairs so that every other Victorian military campaign can be classified as a colonial "small war," fought out against a backcloth of constant minor affrays against the tribes on the Northwest Frontier of India. Often beginning as punitive expeditions when small columns of usually unsuitably equipped British and Native troops marched out to take on superior numbers of warrior races fighting on their own familiar soil, these campaigns frequently brought vast new territories under British rule. On occasion they must have been a colorful sight as the slow moving columns of red coated or khaki clad soldiers plodded through the dust, while elephants jostled camels, bullocks padded along with donkeys and yaks and the mules clattered and jingled as they carried the little mountain guns. Sometimes parties of boisterous straw-hatted sailors and marines landed from men-of-war to drag Gatling and Gardner guns through the sands of the Sudan where they treated ailing camels like boats, caulking their huge sores with pitch. Sometimes the enemy felt that discretion was the better part of valor and took evasive action as in the Zhow Valley Campaign of 1896 when the British commander decided to impress his unseen enemy by ordering the East Yorks Regiment to climb a hitherto unscaleable mountain, no doubt with traditional military grousing! These colonial campaigns were invariably accompanied by tremendous communication difficulties because of the absence of roads and railways, so that often they were campaigns against nature with the dour and relentless struggle against tropical conditions causing more casualties than the actual battles. These engagements were small in scope but not in severity, a gamble between easy victory and brutal annihilation. Each of them presented new features and all varied to a surprising extent and untold difficulties and even disaster occurred to the troops concerned when these difficulties were not forseen. For the most part casualties were relatively light because the soldier was better armed and disciplined but when the enemy was primitive and barbarous and did not care about being killed, then British casualties were unpleasantly heavy. The various enemies vanquished by the British army during the Victorian era bore little resemblance to each other in their weapons, tactics, and military organization; sometimes presenting a curious mixture of primitive customs and civilized habits. For instance, the Maori warriors avidly studied the English prayer book while the Ashanti ruler had his palace adorned with valuable china vases, Persian rugs, and engravings of the Duke of Wellington in spite of his liking for mass human sacrifices. British rule was first defied and then accepted by fanatics and fuzzy-wuzzies. Kings, Princes, Rajahs, Chiefs, and mutinous Sepoys, Mullahs, monks and mandarins, Afghans, Africans, Afridis, Ashantis, Baluchis, Bhutans, Boers, Chinese, Ghazis, Japanese, Lushais, Mahrattas, Maoris, Pathans, Sikhs, Wazirs, and even rebellious Canadian halfbreeds all made their stand and were defeated. The only European troops encountered in the Victorian era were the Russians in the Crimea, and the only other white enemies were the Boers of South Africa. In 1837, a few months after the young queen came to the throne, the first military operations of her reign occurred in Canada when Sir John Colborne (who led the 52nd Regiment into the flank of the French Imperial Guard in the late evening at Waterloo) put down a rebellion by the colonists of Lower Canada. Soon followed the first Afghan War; an insane enterprise with military considerations pushed aside by a political policy that was only abandoned after a disastrous retreat from Kabul. In 1840 Commander Sir Charles Napier enthusiastically commanded a mixed force of Turks, Austrian Rocketeers, and Royal Marines against the Albanians of the Levant. Two years later his cousin, hardswearing General Sir Charles Napier, an incongruous figure with gigantic spectacles, long flowing hair and a beard, topped by a huge sun helmet, led 350 British soldiers uncomfortably perched on camels across more than a hundred miles of trackless desert to seek out and destroy a gun-bristling Indian fortress. Gallant and courageous, Sir Hugh Cough, who preferred "bludgeon" rather than "rapier" tactics, won a war in China in 1841 and the "1-day campaign" in Gwalior in 1843, being triumphant at Maharajpore after an elephant carrying his wife had stumbled upon the enemy when leading the British column. During the two Sikh Wars of 1845/6 and 1848/9 Cough's British troops suffered heavily when defeating the martial Sikhs who were trained by European officers and possessed powerful artillery. In South Africa during the Kaffir War of 1850-1854, the soldiers suffered greatly from hardship and exposure as they fought a poorly-armed enemy deficient in courage but difficult to subdue amid his own bush and jungle. The climactic conditions made the 2nd Burmese War of 1852 an arduous affair but discomforts of the troops reached their peak in 1854/5 when Britain and France embarked upon an unnecessary and ill-planned war against the Russians in the Crimea. Here the British soldier overcame administrative inefficiency through tenacity and bravery, though at a great cost in human life. These were the last of the wars when the British soldier was not only dressed and armed as he was in the Peninsula, but also fought in the same tradition and manner, with every leader of note a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. Retaining the laid-down Order of Battle, the British Army paraded with regiments formed up in line or column, cavalry on the flanks and guns in the intervals. When the hurling roundshot or the hissing showers of canister or grape tore lanes through the closely formed ranks, the soldiers were brusquely ordered to "close-up" - because they were trained with an iron discipline that brooked no dissent. They obeyed without question. Their officers, although almost invariably men of extraordinary courage, were stolid and unimaginative, regarding tactical innovations with suspicion. Yet the naive British soldier of this day, grateful for the smallest consideration, looked up to his officers and called them by affectionate nicknames while relating legends of their idiosyncrasies. A small successful war was fought against the Persians in 1856 but the British soldiers were not told when the war had ended. Eight days after the peace treaty was signed, it is said that an observant NCO noticed that each man was issued with only 20 rounds of ammunition instead of the usual 50. He wrote, "So it is a pretty sure sign of peace." In the following year, the mutiny of the Bengal Army in India caught the British unawares but the far smaller British forces through sheer indomitable spirit defeated vastly superior numbers of well trained and equipped Sepoys. Although it was perhaps one of the greatest British successes in the Victorian era, the victories of the Indian Mutiny were gained by an almost complete disregard of every strategic and tactical principle. Although individually the mutineers were brave, they lacked leaders and cohesion and seemed to find it impossible to unite and fight hard and strenuously for their independence. When attacked in a manner other than that expected, invariably they gave way without inflicting any great loss. Towards the end of the campaign, Sir Hugh Rose, chasing a rebel leader, marched a force 1,000 miles to Jhanai under record temperatures of 150 degrees Fahrenheit that rendered rifles useless through the metal expanding in the heat. At the end of 1859, 14,000 men went from India to China to win a very skilful little campaign carried out by Sir Hope Grant. In the same year began the struggle against the Maoris in New Zealand, which continued until 1866. Capably using their muskets, the Maori defended elaborate earthworks (pahs) against which close order assaults proved costly and ineffective. In spite of using a 1 l0-pdr Armstrong gun, probably the heaviest gun ever used against natives, in one operation, three successive frontal attacks only resulted in a futile loss of life. Ten battalions of British soldiers were needed to break the power of the Maori, who turned out to be as good as any of the native enemies the British soldier had ever encountered. Gurkhas and Sikhs emulated European discipline and methods while the formidable Zulus were fierce and tough but the brave and chivalrous Maoris and their own code of war. They were capable of slaughtering wounded prisoners and sometimes eating them but a Maori would plunge through the fire of both sides to save the life of a fallen foe, so that the British soldier held him in deep respect and recognized his noble side while overlooking his savagery. In 1863, the Indian government entangled itself in an awkward little mountain campaign in the Ambela Pass that lasted for three difficult months at a cost of a thousand casualties. Then in 1867/8 came the Abyssinian Expedition, one of the most difficult and dangerous enterprises ever carried to a successful conclusion by the British Army. Jetties were built on a harborless marsh in the Red Sea and 12 miles of railroad constructed across salt flats before the army began a 400 mile march over trackless mountains intersected by deep ravines. Napier had to rescue European captives from Magdala, destroy Theodore's army and then get back to the coast before the rains swelled the river gorges and blocked his retreat. In a triumph that owed more to logistics and engineering than to orthodox military skills, Napier only lost 35 men from his army of 13,000. In the Ashanti Campaign of 1874 Wolseley had to fight through he jungle to Kumasi, the enemy capital, against very redoubtable native foes who made the greatest use of their familiar bush terrain. In doing so, he had to maintain a line of communication for supplies and reinforcements besides having a return route in case of retreat and for the sick and wounded. During the Victorian era, there were two notable instances of British generals abandoning lines of communication, both in Afghanistan. In 1880 Sir Donald Stewart covered 200 miles in six weeks from Kandahar to Haider Kel to link up with the Kabul Field Force. A few months later, Sir Frederick Roberts marched from Kabul with a force of 10,000 soldiers and nearly as many camp followers with 2,800 ponies, 4,500 mules and 950 donkeys but without wheeled vehicles or heavy guns. The force was not attacked but suffered severely from dust storms and inclement weather in covering 318 miles to relieve Kandahar. The years 1873 and 1880 saw two of the greatest disasters ever to befall British arms. At Isandhlwana more than 1,300 British and native soldiers were killed by Zulus after being overrun when their fire slackened because they were unable to open the reserve boxes of ammunition. With the exception of one company who covered themselves with glory at Rorke's Drift on the following day, the 24th Regiment was wiped out. In 1880, during the 3rd Afghan War, a force of 2,390 men under General Burrows were wiped out at Maiwand by an Afghan force six times stronger than themselves, possessing modern artillery placed by Russian officers. The defense of Rorke's Drift in January 1879 (when 139 men, 35 of them being sick or wounded, held out against 4,000 Zulus and won 11 Victoria Crosses) was a perfect illustration of the manner in which superior numbers of fearless natives could be defeated by the power of modern firearms in the hands of trained and well-led troops. Although armed only with primitive weapons, the Zulu impis were a highly disciplined and organized army capable of carrying out rapid maneuvers with order and precision. Even in their final defeat at Ulundi, the Zulus aroused the admiration of their foes, as the War Correspondent of the Army and Navy Gazette for the 26th July 1879 testified: "...we must not withhold our tribute of admiration from the Zulus ... they advanced to the assault in the most resolute and orderly manner...in the teeth of a deadly and unceasing fire from rifles, gatlings and artillery. The most disciplined troops could not have behaved better than did these African savages and we doubt whether we have ever had to deal with a more fearless race of warriors." But this sort of colonial warfare was the worst possible training for the 1st Boer War that followed two years later in 1881 when the commanders, officers, and men suffered a new and shocking experience. Crack rifle shots with a natural talent for taking the greatest advantage of the terrain they knew so well, the Boers were the least primitive and most sophisticated enemy encountered by the British in the last half of the 19th century. When the 58th Regiment attacked at Laing's Nek, it was one of the last recorded engagements where the soldier wore the redcoat that had served with such distinction over so many fields. It was also the last time in military history that British Regimental Colors were carried into battle. With these out-moded practices the British soldiers in close order, their scarlet parade ground uniforms, white pip-clay helmets and belts, and glittering buttons formed an easy target in the morning sun as they slowly and steadily plodded up the hill as though it were a field exercise at Aldershot. Mounted and with naked sword in hand, Colonel Daens who led them was an officer of the old school with a sense of tactics that would not have been out of place in Marlborough's armies. He believed that success would come by a shoulder-to-shoulder advance until within short-range of the enemy when the troops would carry out a parade ground deployment before firing a volley and then charging with the bayonet. Allowing his contempt for the South Africans to lead him into tactical errors and omissions that made his defeat inevitable, Sir George Pomeroy Colley lost his life together with large numbers of his troops at this battle and at Majuba Hill. With official insistence on parade ground precision taking precedence over marksmanship, it was the classic example of how the "passionate devotion to the daily routine of army life had killed the living spirit of tactical enterprise." Some of the enemies encountered by the British during the Victorian era had been trained by instructors possessing the knowledge of European methods so that their armies had the form and organization of regular troops. One such army was Arabi Pasha's Egyptian force of 30,000 men with 70 guns who were defeated by Wolseley at Tel-el-Kebir in 1882. The Dervish followers of the Mahdi and the Khalifa in the Sudan were of a very different type - true religious fanatics, they attempted to overwhelm British formations by incredibly brave charges. Old orders of battle and tactics had to be revived to cope with the brave recklessness and tactical unsophistication of these stalwart warriors. So, in huge square formations the British force marched across the desert to the relief of Gordon in Khartoum. In the fiercely contested battles at El Teb, Tamai, and Abu Klea these battered squares of British soldiers and sailors were hard put to hold off hordes of courageous and reckless dervishes. Commanding the relief column, Sir Garnet Wolseley gave a I00-pound prize to the Royal Irish Regiment for being first in the race to row their boats up the Nile. An incredible Camel Corps was formed from detachments Cavalry Regiments and little gunboats chuffed up the Nile only to arrive at Khartoum a few days too late. Twelve years passed and Kitchener came to Egypt to fight the Dongola Campaign, culminating in a victory at Omdurman in 1898 when, at a cost of 48 killed and 382 wounded, The British and Egyptian troops inflicted on the Dervish army losses of 11,000 dead, 16,000 wounded, and 4,000 prisoners. It was a Waterloo-type battle fought in close order and line with front ranks kneeling, rear ranks standing and the gallopers carrying messages backwards and forward across the battlefield. In 1899 the 2nd Boer War broke out and the British suffered a number of defeats through incredible tactical deficiencies and lack of foresight on the part of their commanders. In one "black week" disastrous defeats were suffered at Colenso where a number of guns were lost, at Spion Kop, and at Magersfontein. The war dragged on for three long years before ending in sporadic guerrilla warfare. In January 1901, when Queen Victoria lay dying, the Boer leader DeWet was concentrating his forces for a fresh invasion of Cape Colony. Throughout almost the whole of the Victorian era the troublesome tribesmen of the Northwest Frontier of India kept a large British army mobilized for active service. Never quite at peace, the Frontier occasionally flared up in large-scale operations such as Ambele in 1863, Hazara 1888, Waziristan 1894, Chitral 1895, Tochi and Malakand 1897, and Tirah in 1898. This was the natural training ground where the Victorian soldier was `blooded' against well-armed fanatical cutthroats displaying remarkable ability for guerrilla warfare over hilly terrain peculiarly well adapted to their method of making war. One notable feature of the Victorian era was the periodic stimulation of the nation when news percolated back of a garrison beleaguered by bloodthirsty natives and rescued in the nick of time by a hastily assembled relieving column. The siege and relief of Lucknow in 1857 is a typical example of this and in 1895 the Northwest Frontier fort of Chitral was besieged for 46 days when its garrison of 370 held off superior numbers of enemy tribesmen. The fierce fighting included mining and counter-mining by both attackers and defenders. With a large relieving force fighting their way forward, a small column of native troops under Colonel Kelly battled against the enemy, fatigue, and snow blindness through deep snow and mountainous terrain to reach the fort. In 1899 the Boers besieged Kimberley, Ladysmith, and Mafeking where Baden-Powell displayed an almost boyish nonchalance in holding out until relieved, news of which aroused the English public to a pitch of patriotic fervor unknown before or since. The whole of the world felt involved in 1900 when the Chinese Boxers besieged the Legation at Peking defended by a makeshift force of soldiers and civilians from America, Austria, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and Russia. After severe fighting, the city was relieved by an international force composed of soldiers and marines from seven nations, uniquely combining to save their countrymen in Peking. But all Victorian sieges did not consist of British soldiers being inside the walls of beleaguered cities. Some of the most glorious annals of the British Army revolve around fortresses that were besieged, usually by British soldiers inferior in number to the enemy sheltered behind the walls. In 1839 during the 1st Afghan War a British force marched 1,200 miles to Ghazni only to find that their commander had left the siege guns behind at Kandahar so that a daring assault had to be made and the gates breached by gunpowder before the seemingly impregnable fortress was taken at a cost of 17 men killed and 165 wounded. In 1854-5 British soldiers probably reached almost the lowest levels of misery and suffering in front of the Russian fortress-city of Sebastopol. Their much publicized sufferings did more to bring about a change in the public attitude to the army than anything else. Three years later less than 5,000 British and native soldiers sat astride a small ridge outside the huge walls of the sprawling city of Delhi, garrisoned by about 70.00(1 well-armed and trained mutineers. before the minute force successfully stormed the city. In contrast the only pitched battle that has ever taken place on Australian soil occurred when a number of frustrated miners defied the police and the army behind the Eureka stockade in 1854. It was not a battle in the true sense of the word but a singular Victorian event nevertheless. The very nature of Colonial "small wars" allowed tactics to be highly effective though they had become obsolete among regular armies. For example, the development of more sophisticated weapons and tactics had outdated infantry volley firing in European warfare but it still remained the most effective way of turning back the headlong rushes of fanatical and courageous natives. The effects of such fire at Rorke's Drift and Omdurman, together with numerous instances in the Sudan, proved the value of massed and controlled volley firing. In European warfare a cavalry charge with lance or saber was a thing of the past (although cavalry did not recognize the fact) but this form of attack was highly effective against natives, particularly when the lance was used. Not only the tribesmen of the Northwest Frontier recorded their dread of this weapon but even the Boers greatly feared it after being pursued by lancers at Elandslaagte in 1899. The guiding principle of these small wars was to overawe the native enemy by bold initiative and resolute action - one blow had to be followed up with a succession of others. The impetuosity and courage of the natives could be turned against them, as at Kambula in 1879 when Colonel Evelyn Wood had his mounted infantry dismount and fire upon the Zulus at close range in a challenge the natives were unable to resist. They pursued the now mounted infantry until drawn within range of the British laager where they were mowed down by volley firing. In these colonial wars it was useless merely to chase the enemy from the battlefield without causing him the heaviest possible casualties. Having accepted battle the native enemy had to be made to experience the devestating punishment that a disciplined army could inflict as at Omdurman and Ulundi. Usually outnumbered, often inadequately equipped for the prevailing conditions, and frequently physically inferior to his native enemy, the British soldier invariably displayed a quiet and disciplined courage. To credit his successes to the Martini-Henry rifle, the Gatling, and the mountain gun is unjust and incorrect. To counter the more natural barbarity and savagery of their native opponents on occasions the British were brutal, prejudiced, and ruthless but like those who went before and after him, the Victorian soldier took no pleasure in killing his enemy and on numerous occasions suffered through his readiness to accept treacherous signs of surrender. Repeatedly throughout the Victorian era his various native enemies showed incredible standards of courage and dignity so that perhaps the shortcomings of both British soldiers and their native opponents were cancelled out by the noble virtue of courage. Back to MWAN # 128 Table of Contents Back to MWAN List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 2004 Hal Thinglum This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com