The Shangani Patrol (or Wilson's Patrol) was a 37-soldier unit of the British South Africa Company that in 1893 was ambushed and annihilated by over 3,000 Matabele warriors in pre-Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), during the First Matabele War. Headed by Major Allan Wilson, the patrol was attacked just north of the Shangani River in Matabeleland, Rhodesia. Its dramatic last stand, sometimes called "Wilson's Last Stand", achieved a prominent place in the British public imagination and, subsequently, in Rhodesian history, similarly to events such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Battle of the Alamo in the United States.
The patrol comprised elements of the Mashonaland Mounted Police and the Bechuanaland Border Police. Scouting ahead of Major Patrick Forbes's column attempting the capture of the Matabele King Lobengula (following his flight from his capital Bulawayo a month before), it crossed the Shangani late on 3 December 1893. It moved on Lobengula the next morning, but was ambushed by a host of Matabele riflemen and warriors near the king's wagon. Surrounded and outnumbered about a hundred-fold, the patrol made a last stand as three of its number broke out and rode back to the river to muster reinforcements from Forbes. However, the Shangani had risen significantly in flood, and Forbes was himself involved in a skirmish near the southern bank; Wilson and his men therefore remained isolated to the north. After fighting to the last cartridge, and killing over ten times their own number, they were annihilated.
The patrol's members, particularly Wilson and Captain Henry Borrow, were elevated in death to the status of national heroes, representing endeavour in the face of insurmountable odds. The anniversary of the battle on 4 December 1893 became an annual public holiday in Rhodesia two years later, and was an official non-work day until 1920. A historical war film depicting the episode, Shangani Patrol, was produced and released in 1970.
Controversy surrounds the breakout before the last stand—which various historians have posited might have actually been desertion—and a box of gold sovereigns, which a Matabele inDuna (leader) later said had been given to two unidentified men from Forbes's rear guard on 2 December, along with a message that Lobengula admitted defeat and wanted the column to stop pursuing him. Two batmen were initially found guilty of accepting the gold, keeping it for themselves and not passing on the message, but the evidence against them was inconclusive and largely circumstantial; the convictions were ultimately overturned.
Background
Amid the Scramble for Africa during the 1880s, the South African-based businessman and politician Cecil Rhodes envisioned the annexation to the British Empire of a swathe of territory connecting the Cape of Good Hope and Cairo—respectively at the southern and northern tips of Africa—and the concurrent construction of a line of rail linking the two. On geopolitical maps, British territories were generally marked in red or pink, so this concept became known as the "Cape to Cairo red line". In the immediate vicinity of the Cape, this ambition was challenged by the presence of independent states to the north-east of Britain's Cape Colony: the Boer republics, and to the north of these the Kingdom of Matabeleland under Lobengula. Having secured the Rudd Concession on mining rights from King Lobengula on 30 October 1888, Rhodes and his British South Africa Company were granted a royal charter by Queen Victoria in October 1889. The company was empowered under this charter to trade with local rulers, form banks, own and manage land, and raise and run a police force: the British South Africa Company's Police, renamed the Mashonaland Mounted Police in 1892.
In return for these rights, the company would govern and develop any territory it acquired, while respecting laws enacted by extant African rulers, and upholding free trade within its borders. The first settlers referred to their new home as "Rhodesia", after Rhodes. Though the company made good on most of its pledges, the assent of Lobengula and other native leaders, particularly regarding mining rights, was often evaded, misrepresented or simply ignored. It also offended Lobengula by demanding that he stop the customary Matabele raids on the Mashona people who inhabited the white-governed areas. Angered by the company's attitude towards his authority, Lobengula made war on the new arrivals and the Mashonas in 1893. Matabele warriors began the wholesale slaughter of Mashonas in the vicinity of Fort Victoria in July that year, and an indaba (tribal conference) organised by Company official Leander Starr Jameson to end the conflict ended with violence, and dispersion by force. The First Matabele War had started.
Company columns rode from Fort Salisbury and Fort Victoria, and combined at Iron Mine Hill, around the centre point of the country, on 16 October 1893. Together the force totalled about 700 men, commanded by Major Patrick Forbes, and equipped with five Maxim machine guns. Forbes's combined column moved on the Matabele king's capital at Bulawayo, to the south-west. The Matabele army mobilised to prevent Forbes from reaching the city, and twice engaged the column as it approached: on 25 October, 3,500 warriors assaulted the column near the Shangani River. Lobengula's troops were well-drilled and formidable by pre-colonial African standards, but the company's Maxim guns, which had never before been used in battle, far exceeded expectations, according to an eyewitness "mow[ing] them down literally like grass". By the time the Matabele withdrew, they had suffered around 1,500 fatalities; the company, on the other hand, had lost only four men. A week later, on 1 November, 2,000 Matabele riflemen and 4,000 warriors attacked Forbes at Bembezi, about 30 miles (48 km) north-east of Bulawayo, but again they were no match for the crushing firepower of the major's Maxims: about 2,500 more Matabele were killed.
Lobengula fled Bulawayo as soon as he heard the news from Bembezi. On 3 November 1893, with the column on the outskirts of the city, he and his subjects left, torching the royal town as they went. In the resultant conflagration, the city's large store of ivory, gold and other treasure was destroyed, as was its ammunition magazine, which exploded. The flames were still rising when the whites entered the settlement the next day; basing themselves in the "White Man's Camp" already present, they set about extinguishing the fire which engulfed the town. Using a tree to improvise a flagstaff, they hoisted first the Company flag, then the Union flag. The reconstruction of Bulawayo began almost as soon as the blaze was out, with a new white-run city rising atop the ruins of Lobengula's former residence. Jameson, who now based himself in Bulawayo, wrote the following letter to the Matabele king on 7 November 1893, in English, Dutch and Zulu:
I send this message in order, if possible, to prevent the necessity of any further killing of your people or burning of their kraals. To stop this useless slaughter you must at once come and see me at Bulawayo, where I will guarantee that your life will be safe and that you will be kindly treated. I will allow sufficient time for these messengers to reach you and two days more to allow you to reach me in your wagon. Should you not then arrive I shall at once send out troops to follow you, as I am determined as soon as possible to put the country in a condition where whites and blacks can live in peace and friendliness.
This letter, carried by John Grootboom, a coloured man from the Cape, reached Lobengula near Shiloh Mission, about 30 miles (48 km) north of Bulawayo. The king replied in English:
I have heard all that you have said, so I will come, but let me to ask you where are all my men which I have sent to the Cape, such as Maffett and Jonny and James, and after that the three men—Gobogobo, Mantose and Goebo—whom I sent. If I do come where will I get a house for me as all my houses is burn down, and also as soon as my men come which I have sent then I will come.
Jameson did not regard this ambiguity as a proper answer, and impatiently waited for further word from the king. After standing by for the specified two days and receiving nothing, he correctly concluded that Lobengula was stalling him, and using the extra time to distance himself from his former capital. Jameson therefore made good on his pledge, and called for volunteers; he assembled a host of about 470 men, mixed together from the Mashonaland Mounted Police, the Bechuanaland Border Police, and Raaff's Rangers, an independent unit led by the eponymous Commandant Piet Raaff. This force was placed under Forbes's command, with three Maxim guns attached. Jameson told the major to scout the area between Shiloh and Inyati for spoor, with the ultimate objective of capturing Lobengula, and sent him out just before sunset on 14 November 1893.
Prelude: Forbes's pursuit of Lobengula
The column left Bulawayo heading north, and, in an attempt to expedite its progress, reorganised itself into a more compact 290-man force at Shiloh. Lobengula, meanwhile, rode north towards the Shangani in his wagon, which left obvious tracks in its wake. Following the wagon tracks, Forbes's men were soon hot on the trail, routinely finding recently abandoned Matabele camps, provisions and stragglers. Heavy rain slowed both the king and his pursuers, and led Forbes to split his force again; moving on with a flying column of 160 men, he sent the rest back with the wagons. He pushed on, and on 3 December 1893 reached the southern bank of the Shangani, from where he could clearly see Matabele hastily driving cattle behind an impi (regiment) of warriors. The presence of smouldering fires beside the native column betrayed the fact that they had just crossed. Wishing to know whether the king had crossed here or at another point on the river, Forbes sent Major Allan Wilson across to scout ahead with 12 men and eight officers, and told him to return by nightfall.
Meanwhile, Forbes formed a laager (improvised fort) about 200 yards (180 m) from the southern bank. There, he interrogated a captive Matabele, the son of an inDuna (tribal leader), who said that the king was indeed where Wilson had gone, and was ill (the exact ailment was not known for sure, the prisoner said, but was suspected to be gout). The inDuna's son said that Lobengula had with him a force of about 3,000 warriors, about half of whom were armed with Martini–Henry rifles. They were mixed together from various regiments of the previously routed Matabele army, and largely demoralised, but still fiercely determined to prevent Lobengula's capture. Most prominent were the Imbezu, Ingubo and Insukameni Regiments; the Imbezu, Lobengula's favourite, was generally considered the strongest. After three weeks in pursuit of the king, Forbes's rations were running perilously short. He therefore resolved to attack the next day (4 December), hoping to be able to turn back for Bulawayo with Lobengula in custody before nightfall.
Wilson's men remained north of the river far longer than expected, and had still not returned when darkness fell. Forbes, meanwhile, received a report that most of Lobengula's force, commanded by inDuna Mjaan, had separated from the king and was moving to attack the laager the same night (this was actually an exaggeration; only about 300 riflemen had split from the main Matabele force, though they were indeed south of the river, undetected by Forbes). Visibility was poor by now, and rain periodically fell. The laager received no word from Wilson until about 21:00, when Sergeant-Major Judge and Corporal Ebbage arrived from across the river to tell Forbes that Wilson had found Lobengula's tracks, and followed him for 5 miles (8.0 km). Wilson regarded the chances of taking the king alive as so good that he was going to remain north of the river overnight. He asked Forbes to send more men and a Maxim gun in the morning, but did not explain what he planned to do with them.
The Shangani Patrol continued its approach during the late evening, and scouted close to the bush enclosure housing Lobengula. Captain William Napier repeatedly called to the king in the Matabele language, Sindebele, but received no reply from the Matabele leaders, who remained silent and hid themselves. The patrol's actions confused the Matabele, who could not understand why there appeared to be so few Company soldiers, nor why they would reveal their position like this. They concluded that it must be a trap, and were only satisfied that it was not when Wilson's men had stopped during their approach to call to Lobengula five times. Following the fifth call from Napier, Mjaan ordered his riflemen to gather around the patrol, intending to pocket it. Noticing this, Wilson ordered a retreat, and took up a well-covered position in the bush where he could hide until daybreak. When Lieutenant Hofmeyer and Troopers Bradburn and Colquhoun were lost amid the increasingly stormy night, Wilson briefly backtracked to recover them.
On returning to his bush camp, Wilson sent a further message to the laager, which reached its destination at around 23:00: Napier, Scout Bain and Trooper Robertson were the men acting as runners. Wilson repeated that he was going to stay north of the river overnight, close to the king, and asked Forbes to bring the whole column across by 04:00 in the morning. Forbes thought it unwise to attempt a full river crossing at night, which he reasoned might lead to his force being surrounded in the darkness and massacred, but also felt he could not recall Wilson, as to do so would be to lose Lobengula for sure.