Free Republic

Our first bona-fide epic at the DfB Theater. Stanley Baker and Michael Caine star in this masterful tale of The Battle of Rorke's Drift (1879), where a mission station of 150 British soldiers faced off a force of 4,000 Zulu warriors. In widescreen format, HQ image.

[On 21-22 January 1879, immediately after the disaster of Isandlwana, Zululand, where Britain's initial invading force was wiped out by the Zulus, aproximately 150 British soldiers, wounded and volunteers defended a supply depot and hospital against 4000 Zulu warriors at a place called Rorke's Drift.] [snip] .... From a position on top of the store's roof, Private Fred Hitch shouted he could see some four to six thousand Zulus advancing towards the post. One wit, Private Augustus Morris, retorted from below, "Is that all?" Chard withdrew the infantry picquets and the Zulus came in sight. Ranged against Chard's command of...

We've all seen the marvellous movie'Zulu', where the heroic Welsh garrison at Rorke's Drift match the power of the awesome Zulu Impis. The Two Armies By the middle of the nineteenth century Great Britain held two colonies in southern Africa, the Cape Colony and Natal. These stretched from the southern tip of the continent (the Cape) upwards along its eastern coast (Natal). In the interior of the region were two independent Boer republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. Among these European enclaves were the remnants of the original African nations, the strongest of which was the Zulu kingdom,...