Battle of Isandlwana at sundown long after the battle ended and the Zulu army had marched off. The British camped on the field that night but left before sunrise without any examination of the ground as Chelmsford felt that it would demoralize his troops. The column then proceeded to Rorke's Drift. Though Isandlwana was a disaster for the British, the Zulu victory did not end the war. With the decisive defeat of Chelmsford's central column, the entire invasion of Zululand collapsed and would have to be restaged. Not only were there heavy manpower casualties to the Main Column, but most of the supplies,
Anglo-Zulu War region. Preparations for a British invasion of the Zulu kingdom had been underway for months. In December 1878, notwithstanding the reluctance of the British government to start yet another colonial war, Frere presented Cetshwayo with an ultimatum that the Zulu army be disbanded and the Zulus accept a British resident. This was unacceptable to the Zulus as it effectively meant that Cetshwayo, had he agreed, would have lost his throne. Shaka Zulu, the first Zulu king, had, through war and conquest, built the small Zulu tribe into the Zulu Kingdom which by 1825 encompassed an area of around . In