rorkesdriftvc.com :: View topic - An Official Re-Evaluation Of Isandlwana ?

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 7:24 pm

Peter et al..Thanks for the overview on the COE. I certainly operated on a big misunderstanding thinking it was like the Custer Court of Inquiry where everyhting was recorded properly when statements were taken by the witnesses called. I'm kind of surprised after so many men dead that the "enquiry" proceeded on as you noted. Even with hindsight perhaps there's an argument that the proceedings should have gone on a much more stringent track. I'll take a look at Keith's book.

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 7:47 pm

Hi

If only Melvill or Coghill had survived....but that's another story.....

Cheers

Simon

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2009 10:15 pm

Coll

But no blame was imputed at all by the COE, so no wrong has to be righted. As soon as the Duke had extracted as much as he needed from his correspondence (through Ellice) with Lord C., he sacked him with all speed. The official (i.e. War Office/Government) blame was apportioned to Lord C and he paid for it with his job without further ado.

Of course, Lord C defended his position when in Engand but that's another matter. There were no "inaccurate conclusions for the farcical COE of the time." There weren't any conclusions at all. You say there wasn't enough proof either way, and the COE appears to have agreed with you, not even bothering to suggest who or what might be remotely to blame. They collected a few (very few) statements & forwarded them to London - that's all. When these and Lord C's answers to a series of questions put to him were to hand, one person got the official blame - the guv'nor.

Any blame attached at the time to Durnford's role - whether correct or not - is no more than the opinions of some of those who survived or who were not present. Since then, historians have also had their say on the matter too, as is their right.

All the time you are courteous, Coll - and you are - you'll annoy no-one, so don't worry. If you come again on this one, I won't see it for a few days, as - still not content with this long, glorious cricketing summer - I'm squeezing in three more fixtures by going on a short tour to God's county, before the six martlets migrate.

Peter

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 1:19 am

Peter

Thanks for your reply.

You are a gentleman, sir.

Sometimes, things have to be said, in order to cover all areas thoroughly.

Coll

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 6:41 am

I wondered when somebody might actually point that out. Official blames as Peter rightly says is attributed in a directed letter by the AG (the C-in-C doing the directing,) to Lord Chelmsford, not by the COI, which is no more than a file with a few interesting survivor's statements in it and arrives at no conclusions.

Rich

I have read the Reno COI several times and they are as chalk and cheese. A man called Beckett produced a thin paperback called Isandlwana, which has the full proceedings of the COI I seem to recall, and which should be cheaply available.

Regards

Mike

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 12:39 pm

Mike

I expected to see your name eventually, especially after my last posting.

Was it a decoy ? (hmm, I wonder)

Peter's excellent previous posts (first answering Rich, then responding to mine) when joined together, give a highly-detailed idea, to those not having seen the C.O.I., of what it consisted of and its outcome, hence the concept of an educational discussion forum, when all types of questions can be asked.

Now, the main question - the tracking down of the original source of the finger pointing, which 'poisoned the well' from then and onwards.

When was it and who was it by ?

Yes. I'm sure it is common knowledge, but it'd be right to add these details here, on this topic.

Coll

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 1:08 pm

Peter/Mike..Thanks for the overview and source on the "Court of Enquiry". I'll be doing some reading.

Coll..if there's a possibility of "fictional"/historical drama I think you got it in spades in a COE screenplay or theater treatment!.... Wink

I always have a visions of a COE "scene" reminiscent of your House Parliamentary debates where the gavel gets smashed down and a stentorian voice rings out..."Ordah! ordah!. You Sir are out of ordah! I beseech you to SIT DOWN! Ordah!"

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 3:08 pm

rich
One other thing to point out is that Chelmsford set up the Court of Inquiry and it was to report to him. It didn't therefore question Chelmsford because he already knew what he knew to add to its report. To me, it always seems like reading only the right-hand page of a novel and wondering all the time what was on the left-hand page. Only half the story.

Posted: Fri Sep 18, 2009 6:32 pm

Julian et al...You know when it comes to the Court of Inquiry I guess from my seat here in the 21st I'm just so puzzled as to how it was carried out even knowing what you have just said and after so many British soldiers were killed in that debacle. It seems to me that I'm caught in a time warp when I view how a society looks at its tragedies. It looks to me that I need a course in British society at that time and how the army functioned and the way of British public opinion on the war. I'm sure that has to answer my question.

Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 4:33 pm

Actually the shoe needs to be on the other foot. Where did the myth of Durnford the dashing hero come from? The answer is Donald Morris, (1964, not 1879, need we remind ourselves), whose interpretation of Isandlwana, (need we remind ourselves), has not withstood the test of history. Here is a bit more real history which does not involve either Donald Morris's fictional figure or Burt Lancaster's creation, but instead cites an authoratative figure who knew the historical Colonel Durnford well. In this case Sir Garnet Wolseley, writing in April 1875:

'Durnford has most injudiciously identified himself with the Colenso side here and as that arithmetical dignitary has taken up a line in opposition to the opinion of all colonists, Dunrford has become so unpopular that his usefulness as a public servant - he is a colonial as well as a military engineer - has been very seriously impaired. I gave him to undersand this which I don't think he relished. He says he feels very deeply aggrieved by Sir A. Cunynghame having held a court of inquiry into the Bushman's Pass affair and by no notice having been taken of his services on that occasion. He is a man too much given to expressing in alarmingly strong terms his opinions upon men and their measures: he denounces everyone who does not agree with him, and thinks because he is honest of purpose and devotes his time and his purse freely to carrying out the line of policy towards the native tribes engaged in the late disturbances, that therefore his actions should command respect. Like so many of our Rl [sic] Engineers, he is thoroughly impractical, ignorant to a large extent not only of the ways of the world but of the feelings that influence human nature in the serious affairs of life. I wish I could get rid of him, for I look upon him rather as a firebrand here and I think that he is not only injudicious but that he is eccentric almost to a degree that might be fairly termed madness. When eccentricity is amusing it often serves a man in the world, but when it is all of the gloomy type the world wishes the 'peculiar person' at the devil, as I do now with my friend Durnford.'

MRS.

Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 5:01 pm

Mike

TWOTS and 'Zulu Dawn'. Why do you always use these pathetic comparisons, against those, who think well of Col. D., instead of crediting them with a bit of knowledge ?

This is a predictable and tired old card to play. It's boring.

As for quoting Wolseley, what a turnaround.

This is the very man you dislike greatly, but apparently now is of some use to you.

He wrote about other men too, which you must then, also believe to be true.

I often wonder, how the book HCMDB, would have read, if Col. Durnford had been a 24th officer.

Coll

Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 10:33 pm

Hi,

I�m relatively new to this forum and I know quite a bit about the AZW from a wargaming perspective and have quite an extensive library but I do not count myself as one of the �illuminati�.

Looking at it as such, Coll and Mike - you are never going to agree about Col D.

Mike � you are a high ranking military man and as such you are not used to being questioned about your views and can sometimes be a little forthright. You are justifiably proud of your regiment � which shows in your books.

Coll � you seem (to me) to have an �obsession� about Durnford, which some may find worrying � now don�t get me wrong, I feel that history has been a trifle unfair to him�and whilst I do not hold him totally culpable for Isandlwana but he played his part.

I feel that you are going have to agree to disagree��.

No offence intended chaps.

Simon

Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 2:12 am

It should be appreciated that the situation at the moment is that one of our members, who to my mind is unreasonably preoccupied, will not permit anything critical to be written about Colonel Durnford without immediate resort to banality and abuse. He wants to argue, yet offers no countervailing case in return. I am not inclined to retaliate in kind - as to do so would be both demeaning and unecessary - but neither am I prepared to be bullied into silence by such outbursts.

The position I take on Col Durnford is a perfectly sustainable one, well grounded in evidence. It is in no way a personal matter for me. It is merely where lengthy, considered and impartial analysis takes me. I might add that, in the end, it proves to be a not even remotely marginal case - there simply isn't any compelling evidence to stack up on the 'defence' side of the scales - I know because I've looked for it. There is nothing to suggest that here was a perfectly competent military commander who was somehow unlucky on the big day. Rather we encounter a rather sad and deluded figure, desperate to be taken seriously as a soldier, who had quite simply plodded his way through an entirely unremarkable career, but who, unfortunately for everybody within his compass, found himself in a very remarkable place on the last day of his life. He did nothing right at Isandlwana; his tactical thinking was deeply flawed - he was the wrong man for the job - for any job which involved keeping a calm head in the face of the enemy. Ironically Lord Chelmsford knew this in advance of the unhappy event and must have spent the rest of his life kicking himself for placing such a man at what proved to be the campaign's decisive point. Concentration of force is one of the major principles of war; yet this man contrived to scatter his assets all around the veldt in the face of what he had been told was a powerful enemy force. It is only because Isandlwana has been so badly written about over the past fifty years, substantially on the back of one commanding but deeply flawed interpretation dating to 1964, that we are even having this conversation. In truth, when AWD's career, character and actions at Isandlwana are subjected to any remotely competent form of military analysis, the 'pro-Durnford' case reveals itself as little more than a travesty.

I have included above an important piece of source evidence, (all the more compelling because it pre-dates Isandlwana by a substantial margin), which has not been very widely seen and which should be of genuine interest to AZW enthusiasts - only, once more, to attract banalities in return. The evidence establishes that all the British senior officers in South Africa in succession, Cunynghame, Wolseley and Chelmsford had grave reservations about Durnford. Are we, then, expected to arbitarily overturn the views of all the general officers who knew the real Durnford in life, in favour of a blind and evidentially unsupportable belief in some saintly, entirely virtuous and wholly mythical figure?

Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 11:27 am

Coll

Can I add my own personal view of the battle. I am not a qualified historian, I only have a strong interest in the campaign and have formed my own opinions over the years.
I know how you must feel by Mike's evaluation of Durnford. He did after all, in H.C.M.D.B. imply strong accusations to my hero, Edward Essex, of cowardice. My response was immediate that he must have misjudged the man. His dismisal that others were "finished" and Essex was "keeping his head down" really annoyed me. However, everyone is entitled to their own opinions and I know, deep down, that he must really be wrong on this matter.
My own opinions on Durnford are as follows.
He was the senior officer at Isandlwana at the time of the battle and was therefore responsible for the management of the men there.
He did abdicate this responsibility, by deciding to ride out from a position which required his immediate attention.
He knew that Zulus were in the area and if so, they were probably there in considerable numbers.
He left Pulleine to carry on as if he was just passing through as a spectator.
He did put into jeopardy the dispositions of the Imperial troops by insisting on receiving support if required.
His foray across the plain was pointless, reckless and irresponsible.
He did virtually abandon his rocket troop by riding away so fast as to leave them toiling in his wake.
However brave his stand in the donga was, it did not compensate for his behaviour before this happened.
He has little to commend him as a commander and much to be criticized.

I hope that this opinion does not upset you too much, but you do need evidence to support your view of the man's behaviour.

Regards Graham

Posted: Sun Sep 20, 2009 11:34 am

Mike

I had to check it was your name beside the above post. I'm really not understanding you now. I'm debating best I can and seem to be doing okay. Why are you twisting everything, in history and the forum ?

My stance isn't threatening to your conclusions. People will always believe you, more than I.

Coll