page_title: Shangani Patrol
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Shangani Patrol / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture of King Lobengula of the Matabele; by Ralph Peacock, based on a sketch by E. A. Maund. Published by Rhodesian National Archives c1950.
context_page_description: The Shangani Patrol was a 34-soldier unit of the British South Africa Company that in 1893 was ambushed and annihilated by more than 3,000 Matabele warriors in preSouthern Rhodesia, 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 in the United States, the Battle of Shiroyama in Japan, the Battle of the Alamo in Texas, and the Greeks' last stand at Thermopylae.
  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, 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.
context_section_description: 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 bega
caption: King Lobengula of Matabeleland (a posthumous depiction, based on a contemporary sketch)
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