The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-06-07 00:00:00

THE ZULU WAR.

AN INTtRVIEW WITH CETEWAYO.
A remstkable account of an- interview with Coto-
war) iT one of Weatherley's Horse named Grandier,
vviko :vas taken prisoner, has been given t—
'" enthe few who escaped from the fatal goritt at
'Mohan° bad gained the open ground at the !cot of the
mountain Grandier picked up a comrade, also a Frenchman,
tinned Bandon, and carried him retne little distance on
his horse; but soon feeling that his tired horse would be men.
able tO save them both, h; being fresher than his eotirade,
rel!alquished to him the horse and took te his heels.
Alter running on for a couple of milei ce.• Lay he fell, utterly
.zhansted and ai most in a state of etioonsclousness, in the
grass, and lay more dead than ellve. He was roueed, how-
ever, from his lethargic condition by feeling himself
grasped by the legs, and on opening his eyes he saw him-
self surrounded by five or six natives, and gave himself up •
gor dead. '1 seemed,' he said, to feel the assegala
already entering my body and quivering in my flesh'
however, the savages did nothing worse thah to strip him
of all his clothes and feel him all over to see whether or not
be was injured. Grandier, who understands a little of the
Zulu language, overheard them then settling that they
would send him to CettWaye as a present. Ile was told to
vise; but found himoelf still unable to make any e ffort, and
only after they had dragged him a hundred feet or so he
managed to gain an upright position and Walk. He was
taken back the same road he had come, and perceived, strewn
all along the path, the bodies of his Comrades, so frightfully
mutilated that he could only recognise a very few, amongst
Which were those of the poor Colonel and his bugler. lie,
Was brought to that part of the hill which was Bret at-
tacked, where be found a large portion of the Inapt encamped,
the blames and Umbelini in the centre, and to these he
Was brought, and bound hand and foot. On the follow-
In Morning, when the inapi was on its road to
attack the cemp, he was left under guard in the
Mountain until the return of the beaten army. Mean.
While the body of one of Weatherley's Corps, a man '
teemed Bernhardt, who had been killed and buried in the
early part of the action, had been disinterred, and the Zulus,
having stripped the body, were fighting over the clothes they
had taken off it and the blanket in which it bad been en-
veloped. Early next day Grandier was sent under escort
and on foot, quite as naked, to the King's kraal. Cetewayo
having left Ulundi, he was taken to a military kraal some
twelve miles farther inland to which the King had retired
and which, like all military kraals was surrounded
by a high wooden palisade some eight feet high and two
thick. The King resides in a house ' 'like one in which
Boers dwell,' said Grandier, placed in the centre of the
kraal, with the native's huts all around it. When the
interview occurred between the King and the prisoner the
Royal personage was nearly as nak,ai his captive, with
the exception of a cloak that bore a suspicious resemblance
to a table cloth with fringed edges. Cetewayo was seated
on a mat, and his inquiries were chiefly directed with a
View as to whether Grandier could unspike the two cannons
captured at Isandula, and if he was • able to do so he was
promised many oxen and fine kraals, and told that he
would be considered a great man by the Zulus. Fortu-
nately Grandier was able to say with a clear conscience,
that he was quite unable to do so, and he added that even
If be could have managed it be would never have
done so, even had death been the consequence. When
the strength of the British was touched upon, and the
prisoner said how many more thousands and hundreds
of thousands of Men the English could send from beyond
the sea. Cetewayo merely laughed, and said that he
intended killing all the English with the assistance of
8_ acf-ieteui and the Boers, and when they had driven them into
:Re sea he would slay every Boer, and then divide the land
and cattle with his ally. During the eight days the unfortunate
prisoner remained at the King's kraal he was allowed twice a
day to be led to mettle fields while his hands were unbound
and a rheim' which was held by a Zulu attached to his foot,
and he was thus permitted to feed on green mealtes.
Five- mounted Zulus arrived one day, and brought the
news that Umbeline had' succumbed to his wounds re-
ceived on tee 29th of March. On learning these tidings
Cetewayo cried aloud, and all in the kraal did the mania.
tor some time. Then Grandier was called up again and
told that he would be sent back to Umbeline's people
tor them to torture him to death in revenge for their chief's
death. Cetewayo also told him how he would be cut into
small pieces, shpwing him with an assegai from finger to
shoulder the parts that would be first chopped off. The
/King then said that if he could only catch Sir Theophilus
ehepstone he would cut his head off, and asked parentheti-
cally what was done in England with the heads of
criminais when they were cut off. When told his
prisoner really did net know he merely laughed, as if it
were a good juke. The interview was held through
an interpreter, who was a Zulu, but who spoke English
better than the prisoner, and who held in his hands some
English newspapers, one of which was a European Mail,
and another some Natal paper, which be had been reading
to the King when the prisoner was brought up. Grandier,
says that the King had but ore hundred and fifty to one
hundred and sixty men with him in the kraal, all married
men, and, seemingly of great importance in the councils.
The kraal itself is not situated in the mountains, but in a
considerable plain, withforests rising behind it in the distant
Mountains towards the sea. The country round about is
'wooded. But to return to our prisoner. He was despatched
Under escort of two men, one armed with a rifie and the other
'only with assegais, bound at the wrist. On his return journey
to the Ziobane, fearing to be tortured to death he tried to
enrage his captors, in order to goad them to put him to a
'peed), end, and feigned fatigue in order to make them drag
along. At a mealie field where they halted, tired and
heated, the guards loosened the hands of their captive in
order to let him eat, when—watching an opportunity whilst
one guard was engaged in taken a pinch of snuff—he seized
an assegai which had been incautiously placed on the ground
and stabbed the guard who had the gun through the chest,
Pinning him to the
grnund. The other ran off as fast as he
Could travel when he saw the white man in possession of
WA arms, and after a terrible journey of two days and a
half he was picked up by two of Raaf's men, in a state of
great exhaustion, but happy at again being with his comrades
and determined to remain and have his revenge for the in-
dignitias he was made to suffer."