On 22 January 1879, the Battle of Isandlwana was the first major encounter in the Anglo-Zulu War between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom. Eleven days after the British commenced their invasion of Zululand in Southern Africa, a Zulu force of some 20,000 warriors annihilated a portion of the British main column consisting of about 1,800 British, colonial and native troops and perhaps 400 civilians.
Following the scheme by which Lord Carnarvon had brought about the "Confederation of Canada" through the 1867 British North America Act, it was thought that a similar plan might succeed in South Africa. Accordingly, in 1877 Sir Henry Bartle Frere was appointed as High Commissioner for Southern Africa to instigate the scheme. One of the obstacles to such a plan was primarily the Kingdom of the Zulu, which the British Empire would attempt to overcome by force of arms.
Bartle Frere, on his own initiative, without the approval of the British government and with the intent of instigating a war with the Zulu, had presented a provocative ultimatum to the Zulu King Cetshwayo on 11 December 1878 with which the Zulu King could not possibly comply. When the ultimatum expired a month later, Frere ordered Lord Chelmsford to proceed with an invasion of Zululand, for which plans had already been made.
Chelmsford, the Commander-in-Chief of British forces during the war, initially planned a five-pronged invasion of Zululand consisting of over 16,500 troops in five columns and designe
