29 March 1879 On 29 March 1879, British cavalry and troops massacred hundreds of fleeing and wounded Zulu warriors after the Battle of Kambula, after an officer reminded his troops – ‘No Quarter Boys !’ A soldier from Devon confessed in a letter – ‘I can tell you some murdering went on,’ while a Liverpool…
23 JANUARY 1879 On 23 January 1879 hundreds of Zulu warriors, injured during the battle at Rorke’s Drift the previous day, were murdered by British troops. RORKE’S DRIFT – THE BATTLE Almost everyone has heard of the heroic defence of the missionary outpost the previous day, made famous by the 1964 film Zulu starring Michael Caine which…
8 APRIL 1898 THE BATTLE OF ATBARA – A HIGHLY ASYMETRICAL CONTEST Few people In Britain today have heard of the Battle of Atbara fought on 8 April 1898, amid the arid brushland surrounding the River Atbara, a tributary of the Nile in Sudan, some 200 miles north east of Khartoum. As the sun rose,…
28 September 1778 During the American Revolutionary War, many British officers did not consider those ‘damn’d American rebels’, as they called recruits of George Washington’s Continental Army, to be entitled to the rights normally accorded to combatants in conflict. Major General Charles Grey was among those more committed to unforgiving cutthroat tactics, leading operations in…
16 APRIL 1746 During the autumn of 1745, Jacobite rebels, led by ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie,’ and desiring to replace the Hanoverian king George II with the prince’s catholic father, James Stuart, marched on London, reaching as far south as Derby before they retreated to Scotland. The rebellion was motivated by a range of complex issues,…
20 September 1857 Today in 1857, after a week of fierce street fighting, British troops under General Sir Archdale Wilson finally obtained the surrender of the remaining pockets of Indian Mutineers still holding out in the city. Much of the city had already been sacked and many murdered in their homes [see 13 September 1857]….
13 September 1882 Today in 1882, a British army advancing on Cairo, under the command of General Sir Garnet Wolseley, butchered hundreds of Egyptians, who were either fleeing for their lives or lying wounded and helpless on the battlefield of Tel el-Kebir.  A reporter who watched the battle, informed his readers that British cavalry committed ‘fearful…
11 September 1649 Historian Micheál Ó Siochrú, in his book God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland, writes that ‘the storming of Drogheda (by British parliamentary forces) on 11 September shocked contemporary opinion and established Cromwell’s reputation for cruelty and savagery, which has persisted until the present day.’1 Although now forgotten by most people in…
2 September 1892 On 2 September 1892, the army of the Mahdi, a Sudanese religious leader, was massacred by a British force, under General Kitchener, at the so called battle of Omdurman. About sixteen thousand Dervishes were killed for the loss of just 48 of Kitchener’s men. British soldiers were then ordered to shoot the…
4 July 1879 On 4 July 1879, British infantry used their overwhelming fire power to decisively defeat the Zulu nation at the battle of Ulundi. The battle itself, in which fifty Zulus were killed for every Redcoat, is occasionally recalled, but the even less glorious aftermath, in which the victorious troops immediately set about slaughtering…
