Battle of Rorke's Drift Battle of Rorke's Drift The Battle of Rorke's Drift, also known as the Defence of Rorke's Drift, was a battle in the Anglo-Zulu War. The defence of the mission station of Rorke's Drift, under the command of Lieutenants John Chard of the Royal Engineers and Gonville Bromhead, immediately followed the British Army's defeat at the Battle of Isandlwana on 22 January 1879, and continued into the following day. Just over 150 British and colonial troops successfully defended the garrison against an intense assault by 3,000 to 4,000 Zulu warriors. The massive but piecemeal Zulu attacks on Rorke's Drift came very
Ndwandwe–Zulu War was killed, and most of the Ndwandwe abandoned their lands and migrated north establishing Zulu-like (named Ngoni after the ethno-linguistic name "Nguni") kingdoms in Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania. This was the final phase of the Mfecane, a catastrophic, bloody civil war and eventual migration of many different tribes in the area, initially (ca. 1802) caused by famine but ultimately as a result of escaping from the Zulus. The Ngoni groups caused their own havoc by using Zulu tactics in war. They established stronger political units in other countries and thus posed a threat to European colonisation, for example during