Cetywayo and his White Neighbours | Page 5

to show the slightest hesitation about coming to close quarters with the enemy, he was executed as soon as the fight was over. If a regiment had the misfortune to be defeated, whether by its own fault or not, it would on its return to headquarters find that a goodly proportion of the wives and children belonging to it had been beaten to death by Chaka's orders, and that he was waiting their arrival to complete his vengeance by dashing out their brains. The result was, that though Chaka's armies were occasionally annihilated, they were rarely defeated, and they never ran away. I will not enter in the history of his numerous cruelties, and indeed they are not edifying. Amongst other things, like Nero, he killed his own mother, and then caused several persons to be executed because they did not show sufficient sorrow at her death.
At length, in 1828, he too suffered the fate he had meted out to so many, and was killed by his brothers, Dingaan and Umhlangan, by the hands of one Umbopa. He was murdered in his hut, and as his life passed out of him he is reported to have addressed these words to his brothers, who were watching his end: "What! do you stab me, my brothers, dogs of mine own house, whom I have fed? You hope to be kings; but though you do kill me, think not that your line shall reign for long. I tell you that I hear the sound of the feet of the great white people, and that this land shall be trodden by them." He then expired, but his last words have always been looked upon as a prophecy by the Zulus, and indeed they have been partly fulfilled.
Having in his turn killed Umhlangan, his brother by blood and in crime, Dingaan took possession of the throne. He was less pronounced than Chaka in his foreign policy, though he seems to have kept up the family reputation as regards domestic affairs. It was he who, influenced, perhaps, by Chaka's dying prophecy about white men, massacred Retief, the Boer leader, and his fifty followers, in the most treacherous manner, and then falling on the emigrant Boers in Natal, murdered men, women, and children to the number of nearly six hundred. There seems, however, to have been but little love lost between any of the sons of Usengangacona (the father of Chaka, Dingaan, Umhlangan, and Panda), for in due course Panda, his brother, conspired with the Boers against Dingaan, and overthrew him with their assistance. Dingaan fled, and was shortly afterwards murdered in Swaziland, and Panda ascended the throne in 1840.
Panda was a man of different character to the remainder of his race, and seems to have been well content to reign in peace, only killing enough people to keep up his authority. Two of his sons, Umbelazi and Cetywayo, of whom Umbelazi was the elder and Panda's favourite, began, as their father grew old, to quarrel about the succession to the crown. On the question being referred to Panda, he is reported to have remarked that when two young cocks quarrelled the best thing they could do was to fight it out. Acting on this hint, each prince collected his forces, Panda sending down one of his favourite regiments to help Umbelazi. The fight took place in 1856 on the banks of the Tugela. A friend of the writer, happening to be on the Natal side of the river the day before the battle, and knowing it was going to take place, swam his horse across in the darkness, taking his chance of the alligators, and hid in some bush on a hillock commanding the battlefield. It was a hazardous proceeding, but the sight repaid the risk, though he describes it as very awful, more especially when the regiment of veterans sent by Panda joined in the fray. It came up at the charge, between two and three thousand strong, and was met near his hiding-place by one of Cetywayo's young regiments. The noise of the clash of their shields was like the roar of the sea, but the old regiment, after a struggle in which men fell thick and fast, annihilated the other, and passed on with thinned ranks. Another of Cetywayo's regiments took the place of the one that had been destroyed, and this time the combat was fierce and long, till victory again declared for the veterans' spears. But they had brought it dear, and were in no position to continue their charge; so the leaders of that brave battalion formed its remnants into a ring, and, like the Scotch at Flodden--
"The stubborn spearmen still made good The dark, impenetrable wood; Each stepping where his comrade stood The instant that he fell,"
till there were