> First, they were short spears. And second, the Zulus only managed that
trick once. It failed at
> Rourke's Drift. The battle you are thinking of is Isandhlwana.
>
> The Zulus never won a battle after Isandhlwana, though they did kill the
Prince Imperial.
from Donald Morris, "The Washing of the Spears", one of the best books of military history I have ever read, which is quite good, as far as I can tell, about dealing with the Zulu side equally with the British side insofar as possible:
(The British had formed up into a square, with their supply train in the middle and a defensive line all around, the strategy being just to mow down the attackers with a storm of bullets before they could get close)
"The battle was still going well, but a faint flicker of uneasiness passed over one or two officers. Durnford was one of the first to feel it. His men were firing as steadily as ever, and the inGobamakhosi had gotten no closer, but here and there a man in the line along the lip of the donga had stopped firing and was nudging his neighbor, or had slipped back to search the pockets of the few men who had been killed by head shots and had fallen back into the donga. Others had simply turned and were watching him expectantly. The Natal Native Horse was running out of cartridges. ... The bugle had brought [the men, other than Cavaye's] tumbling out of their tents and away from their lunches half-clad, and while they had all been wearing their belts with forty rounds in the pouches, few had brought their haversacks with the extra two packets and some had taken off their expense pouches with the loose ten rounds. The bulk of the men, in other words, had started the fight with only forty or fifty rounds, and Cavaye had now been firing for close to an hour and the rest of the companies for thirty minutes and more. "The company officers were quite aware of this situation, although it hardly worried them. The battalion quartermasters were stationed by the wagons with the regimental reserve 0 thirty additional rounds for every man - and another 480,000 rounds were packed into wagons parked somewhere on the saddle. Long before the pouches were empty, they had sent their messengers, drummer boys and bandsmen, back to the wagons to bring fresh packets up to the firing line."
BUT
"The tension was considerably higher around the two battalion ammunition wagons than it was on the line ... The regimental reserve for each battalion was packed in the heavy wooden ammunition boxes, and the lid of each crate was held down by two copper bands, each fastened with nine large screws. ... Six screws had to be removed to raise a lid, and the screws were frequently rusted into the wood and hard to start. .. [Pullen and Bloomfield] wre careful, methodical soldiers ... Cartridges were more than ammunition to them, since each and every one whould have to be accounted for as expended after the fight. Even the boxes were accountable."
(So then these guys started quarrelling with the runners about who should get cartridges from which wagon, and where is your own regimental wagon? These are not your cartridges. Get your own cartridges from your own wagon! It's not our fault if you don't know where it is. Eventually..)
"Lieutenant Smith-Dorrien .. hunted out the wagon with the field reserve for the 1st Battalion and set out to open several of the crates. There were no extra screwdrivers, and it was slow work. Chelmsford had requisitioned spare ones for this very purpose, but the order was lost somewhere in Natal. The man hacked at the copper bands with axes or thrust bayonets under them and attempted to snap them or prize them up over the screwheads. Smith-Dorrien finally worried one of the boxes open and began to thrust handfuls of the precious packets into the helmets and haversacks that were eagerly held up to him. Bloomfield, working in the regimental reserve wagon nearby, looked up and saw him. He was horrified. "For heaven's sake don't take that, man," he yelled, "for it belongs to our battalion!" Smith-Dorrien snarled back, "Hang it all, you don't want a requisition now, do you?" ...
"A trickle was starting out to the companies, but it was not enough. More and more men were coming back in desperation, searching the wagons until they found the familiar crates and pounding the boxes apart with stones when they found them. The fire in the line began to slacken. [...] The mounted men had no proper bayonets, only a fitting at the end of the short carbines to which a hunting knife could be attached ... the stand in the donga was over ... [T]he men deserted the lip, found their horses in the donga, and cantered back along the track past Pope's right flank ...
"The inGobamakhosi and the uMbonambi, freed of the terrible fire from the donga, rose and started forward. Pope's company, its flank now fully exposed, edged back and wheeled to face them. ... [T[he fire was slackening everywhere, and the warriors still stretched in the grass around the camp noted the change. Then a great voice cried out in Zulu from the thick of the umCijo regiment: "The 'Little Branch of Leaves That Extinguished the Fire' (a praise name for Cetshwayo) gave no such order as this!" Thousands of Zulus heard him and took fresh heart. They leaped to their feet and charged forward. ....."
(well, that was it basically)
lp