WARFARE IN THE AGE OF EXPLORATION, 1855 - 1876

SOME SCENARIOS FOR WARGAMING DARKEST AFRICA

BY CHRIS PEERS
The last two scenarios in this series both involve H. M. Stanleys second expedition to Africa, which turned out to be perhaps the bloodiest ever
undertaken in the name of exploration. When the death of Livingstone was reported in Europe, Stanley managed to persuade the New York
Herald and the London Daily Telegraph to sponsor him to return to Africa, supposedly to succeed Livingstone in opening up Africa to the
shining light of Christianity. In fact the expedition, which was by far the largest and best equipped ever sent up to that time, was intended purely
for exploration. Stanleys plan, so called, was to have a look at Lake Victoria and find out if it was really one big lake as Speke had assumed;
visit King Mutesa in Uganda, and maybe pop in and say hello to Gordon in the Sudan; and then, in Stanleys own words, beyond this point the
whole appears to me so vague and vast that it is impossible to state at this period what I shall try to do next.
Just try and get a loan with a business plan like that nowadays. Stanley, however, always had plenty of financial backing, and his expeditions were
virtually armies on the march, accompanied by hundreds of armed askaris. This was just as well, for he had a knack for getting into trouble. He
was the sort of man who could start a fight in an uninhabited jungle, and would invariably walk away unscathed, leaving the bodies of his
companions strewn all over the place. (He once whistled at a lion - an accepted method of warning off the usually timid beasts - and it ran off and
returned with nine of its mates.) The casualty lists for his peaceful explorations were longer than those for many small colonial wars. Despite
the lavish scale of his operations, deaths from disease, starvation and plain old accidents were also well above the usual rate. This was mainly
because he marched at such a blistering pace, and never allowed enough time for rest or resupply. None of the other five white men who went on
his first two jaunts came back alive (yes, he did manage to find volunteers for his next big trip, and several of those came to a sticky end as well).
All in all, you wouldnt want to go with Stanley on a trip to the shops,
let alone into Darkest Africa, and this latest expedition was par for the
course. He left Bagamoyo in November 1874. He reached Ituru, south
of Lake Victoria, two months later. This was the easiest stage of the
journey; the country was well travelled, and the tribes were mostly
friendly. Out of 347 men who had begun the march, a mere 20 had died
so far, and 89 had (sensibly) deserted. Many others were sick, and one
had lagged behind and was missing. The white men had done rather
well, because three out of four were still alive - these were Stanley,
Frank Pocock and Frederick Barker. (In case you think I am being
unfair to Stanley, in 1861 - 63 Speke and Grant had had just one fatality
in two years crossing the same region.)
On 21st January 1875 Stanley halted near the village of Vinyata to
repack and redistribute the loads and rest the surviving men, who were
weak from hunger and illness. The surrounding countryside was
mainly grassland, with patches of marsh and forest. Several villages
were scattered about the plain within sight of the camp; the nearest
was only a few hundred yards away. The next day a witchdoctor from
the local Waturu tribe turned up, bringing an ox as a peace offering.
Stanley responded with white mans hospitality, including some of
Huntley and Palmers best and sweetest biscuits, and presented him
with gifts of cloth, wire and empty jam tins. Then, seeing the askaris
slaughtering the ox in preparation for a welcome feast, the
witchdoctor asked if he could keep the animals heart. This seemed a
reasonable request, and it was granted. But Stanley observed with
uneasiness that he and his following cast lingering glances upon the
cloths (the most valuable of his trade goods) which were drying in
camp. Even more ominously, scouts reported that they had found the
body of the missing man, who had been murdered by persons
unknown.
PART THREE: STANLEY IN TROUBLE AGAIN, 1875 - 1876
1). DISASTER AT VINYATA, 23rd TO 25th JANUARY 1875
The significance of the oxs heart was not discovered until afterwards,
but it appears that by inducing them to give it away, the witchdoctor
had put a spell on the explorers which magically weakened them. The
combination of that and the wealth inadvertently on display proved to
be too much temptation for the Waturu. About ten oclock on the
morning of the 23rd, Stanley and his men heard the sound of war-cries.
(For those of you who like to get into the role-playing aspect of the
game, and don't mind what the neighbours think, the Waturu war-cry
is rendered by Stanley as Hehu-a-hehu!)
A large body of natives then appeared a hundred yards away from
the camp, and announced that they were on the warpath because one of
the askaris had stolen some milk. Stanley offered payment for the milk
and all seemed to be well again, until a new party of Waturu arrived
and began to argue with the first, obviously trying to incite them to
fight instead of accepting the compensation. Then a Zanzibari who
had been out cutting wood burst into the camp, bleeding from several
wounds, and broke the news that the tribesmen had just murdered his
brother. The talks broke up, and soon afterwards the first volleys of
arrows were shot into the camp.
Stanley ordered Pocock to distribute 20 rounds to each of the askaris,
but forbade anyone to shoot. (According to one of his varying
accounts, the men took cover behind pieces of the steel boat, the Lady
Alice, which was being carried up to Lake Victoria in sections.) Then
when the advancing natives were within 30 yards, he sent his men out
to countercharge them. The Waturu fell back a couple of hundred
yards, and the askaris deployed in skirmish formation in front of them.
A brisk firefight ensued and lasted for an hour, after which the
tribesmen retired. Fifteen of the enemy had been killed according to
one account, six according to another - including one man
whose fate was probably unique in the annals of
African wars. The expeditions bulldog ran out, bit
him on the leg and held on to him until someone
shot the hapless warrior.
Luckily, although the party had so far had
no reason to anticipate trouble (except of
course for the fact that Stanley was with
them), they had followed normal
procedure in setting up the camp in a
defensible spot on top of a low hill.
While the skirmishers kept the enemy at
a distance, Pocock and 60 of the porters
set to work building a stockade, with
firing positions at each corner, and
clearing a field of fire 200 yards wide
around the camp. Then later in the
day, according to a tantalising sentence
in Stanleys Expedition Diaries, the
natives gathered on the tops of their
tembes (large huts designed for defence,
for which see Part Two of this series), but a
lucky shot at 1200 yards distance left us
unmolested for the day. Who fired this shot and
with what weapon we are not told, and the incident is
not mentioned in the generally more detailed account in Through the
Dark Continent. At any rate, by nightfall the position was secure.
A Day of Disaster
The next morning the Waturu returned in greater force, having
received reinforcements from the neighbouring villages. Once again
Stanley deployed his men as skirmishers and gained a temporary
respite, but realising that they had too little food to be able to
withstand a siege, he decided on more drastic action. The soldiers
were recalled and organised into seven detachments of ten men each -
one detachment for camp defence, two as reserves, and four to go out
and attack the hostile villages. The white men remained in the camp.
The four assault groups, according to Stanleys Diaries, were to drive
the natives from the plain, procure food and cattle and burn all the
villages. This seems rather over-ambitious for such small parties, but
they were supposed to be close enough to each other to give aid if
necessity demanded it.
In the event, this did not happen. Stanley shifts the blame onto the
leader of the first detachment on the left, Farjalla, who he says went
too far to the left and ended up in a swamp, isolated from the others.
The enemy quickly overran him, killing him and all his men except for
one, who fled back to the camp with the news. The tribesmen then
rushed the second detachment, under Ferahan, but this group included
some crack shots, who held the enemy off with their Snider rifles until
15 men from the reserve arrived to rescue them. One of the askaris, a
youth named Mirabo, especially distinguished himself. He first tried
single-handedly to rescue a wounded comrade, then, finding himself
outnumbered, took cover in a small boma (probably an abandoned
hut), which he defended alone until Ferahan joined him. Ferahan was
wounded by a spear, but his men were relatively lucky;
only two of them were killed.
What happened to the third detachment, under
Chakanja, is not clear. It advanced boldly out
of sight of the camp, but only five of its men
were ever seen again. These joined the
fourth group, led by Safeni. This officer,
whom Stanley describes as most
efficient, came upon the witchdoctors
village, set it on fire, and captured some
cattle. Reinforced by another ten men
from the reserves, they went on to
several of the other villages which were
scattered across the plain and burnt each
one, before returning in triumph to the
camp.
But this minor victory could not disguise
the fact that the days fighting as a whole
had been a catastrophe for the expedition.
Stanley had divided his forces in the face of a
more numerous enemy, and as usual his
followers had paid the price. 22 were dead, and
three wounded - more than a third of the total force.
COXSWAIN ULEDI, & MANWA SERA, CHIEF CAPTAIN
18 rifles and two revolvers were also lost, which was in some ways
even worse since they could not be replaced. Enemy casualties were
estimated at at least 35 dead plus many wounded, but for a rifle-armed
force up against opponents using only bows and spears this was still an
appallingly bad ratio of losses.
Sealing the Victory
There was one thing to be said for Stanley, though. He did not know
when he was beaten. The next morning, according to his Diary entry,
I thought it my duty to seal our victory with a fresh display of force.
The battle recommenced in the usual way, with a mass of skirmishing
tribesmen appearing outside the camp and being driven off by the
askaris. Then, having learned his lesson, Stanley sent out 40 men in a
single unit, led by Manwa Sera. Some of the porters volunteered to fill
the gaps in the ranks of the soldiers (porters were often provided with
old flintlocks for self-defence, even though they were not normally
expected to fight). This time the Waturu declined to face the massed
askaris, who burnt some more villages, and returned without further
loss.
Stanleys long-term position, however, was still untenable. At two
oclock on the morning of the 26th, the expedition struck camp and
moved on, travelling for 15 miles before building another fortified
camp. Here, says Stanley - putting the best possible face on things,
as ever - we mourned the brave dead, talked of their virtues and
laughed at the folly of the robber Wanyaturu who had needlessly
provoked the vengeance we had inflicted on them. But if the battle
had been a victory for the explorers, it was a Pyrrhic one by any
standards. On 26th February they reached Lake Victoria. Of the 347
people who had begun the march three months before, only 166 were
left. And the fighting had scarcely begun.
Reconstructing the Fight
This battle shows that confrontations with spear and bow-armed
natives were not always a walk-over for the whites. We do not know
the exact strength of the Waturu, but the explorers force was small
enough to be represented at one-to-one scale in a big skirmish game
using a simple system like my In Darkest Africa rules. The only
problem with reconstructing the desperate
fighting of the second day is likely to be that no
player will be stupid enough to divide his force
like Stanley did. I think that the best way round
this will be to put a number of players in the roles
of the leaders of the small detachments, with the
umpire giving them their overall tasks and also
controlling the Waturu. The players will then
find themselves unavoidably in a very sticky
situation, thanks to the blundering of their
commander, and can win or lose according to
how well they get themselves out of it.
Thanks to Stanleys meticulous records, we know the exact strength
of the expedition when it arrived at Vinyata. There were three white
men, 70 askaris armed with Snider rifles, 160 porters, 25 women, and
six boys. Stanley would have had available his heavy elephant gun,
which he often loaded with lead shot and used as a giant shotgun. For
game purposes we can ignore most of the porters, but allow 20 or so to
replace askari losses if the refight goes into a second day. They will
only be armed with flintlocks, though, as even if Sniders are available
(taken from dead askaris, for example) they would not have been
trained to use them. Their weapon skills will be fairly poor, as they
were hired as non-combatants, but as volunteers we can assume that
their morale will be average to good.
The askaris were quite good troops. They were wangwana (see Part
One) recruited in Zanzibar, and some were veterans of several
expeditions. They were well enough trained to hold their fire when
ordered, and knew how to adopt skirmishing tactics as well as carry
out a close assault - though some, such as those in Ferahans
detachment, were clearly better shots than others. If using my In
Darkest Africa skirmish rules, I suggest classifying about half of the
askaris as Elite, to reflect this variability. The Waturu (or Wanyaturu)
fought in standard East African fashion with throwing spears, shields
and bows. They appear to have acquired few or no guns at this time.
There were also some clubs or knobsticks about, since the
Zanzibari woodcutter was wounded with one. As usual,the Foundry
range is the obvious choice for figures. For the Waturu, use ordinary
spearmen with the oval hide shields
STANLEY
2). VINYA-NJARA, 19th - 20th DECEMBER 1876
Late in 1876, Stanley and those of his people who were still alive
found themselves on the Upper Lualaba, where the Arabs supplied
them with more porters, and entertained them with stories of the
horrors to be met in the jungles downstream (see Mtagamoyos
adventure in Part One of this series). By now Stanley was fairly certain
that the Lualaba was the source of the mighty Congo River, and he
decided to prove it by sailing downstream to the Atlantic. The Arab
slave trader Tippu Tib was persuaded to accompany him with his
armed retainers for sixty days march by land, while Stanley and his
people travelled by water, in 23 wooden canoes and the steel boat,
Lady Alice.
This proved to be a useful precaution: it goes without saying, given
Stanleys record, that the Congo tribes were hostile. Not so much
because they knew who he was - they called him the Wizard, and
most of them thought he was an evil spirit from the Land of the Dead -
but because he insisted on barging his way down the river without
stopping to negotiate, pay tolls, or explain what he was doing. He
seldom even knew the names of the tribes he fought against, being able
to tell when he passed from the territory of one to that of another only
because the war-cries changed. (Hehu-a-hehu, it seems, would have
been regarded as utterly naff in this part of the world. The happenin
sounds on the Congo in 76 were Ooh-hu-hu, ooh-hu, ooh-hu-hu or,
as at Vinya-Njara, Bo-bo, bo-bo, bo-bo-o-o-oh. Some cannibal
tribes responded to the appearance of the strangers with cries of
Niama!, Meat!) Altogether the expedition fought 32 battles on the
Congo. Things eventually got so bad that on the lower reaches of the
river the normally peaceful Bolobo tribe came out into the river in
canoes and attacked the party as they sailed past for no apparent reason
at all. They later explained to puzzled missionaries that since every
other tribe they knew of had had a go at Stanley, their neighbours
would have thought that they were cowards if they hadnt joined in.
The first real trouble came from a famous warrior tribe known as the
Kusu. The expedition blasted its way through them, then defeated
their neighbours the Mutako. Then, 125 miles north of Nyangwe, they
came upon a cluster of villages called Vinya-Njara. Its chief was
known to be both powerful and hostile to strangers, so that it would be
impossible to pass without a fight. Stanley had been warned about this
place by a friendly Pygmy, but had forgotten all about it. So it came as
a surprise when on 18th December, coming ashore to prepare a camp
site, the river party was pelted with arrows from the jungle. They
endured the skirmishing all night, and in the morning Stanley gave
orders for a brushwood fence to be built around the camp in case of
attack, and a 50 yard wide strip of ground beyond that to be cleared of
vegetation to deprive any attackers of cover.
The Battle
Stanley had with him 40 askaris, as well as a hundred or so civilians
and sick. The only other surviving white man at this stage was Frank
Pocock. Most of the askaris went to work on preparing the defences,
while ten of them were sent out into the jungle as scouts. No sooner
was the job completed and the scouts recalled than hundreds of
savages burst suddenly out of the trees onto the cleared ground.
These were their old friends the Kusu, who had been brought in as
mercenaries by the chief of Vinya-Njara. They had obviously been
waiting in the jungle, and had mistaken the orderly retreat of the
scouts for the beginning of a panic flight. But they were met with rifle
fire from the palisade, and a desperate fight broke out. It is best
described in Stanleys own words:
Again and again the savages hurled themselves upon our stockade,
launching spear after spear with deadly force into the camp, to be each
time repulsed. Sometimes the muzzles of our guns almost touched
their breasts. The shrieks, cries, shouts of encouragement, the rattling
volleys of musketry, the booming war-horns, the yells and defiance of
the combatants, the groans and screams of the women and children in
the hospital camp, made together such a medley of hideous noises as
can never be effaced from my memory.
This mayhem continued for two hours, and several times Pocock and
Uledi, the expeditions coxswain, had to drive panic-stricken askaris
back to their posts at gunpoint. At dusk the tribesmen fell back, but the
defenders spent another anxious and sleepless night, punctuated by
the occasional arrow. At one point Uledi and two men sneaked out to
try and capture an infiltrator who was spotted crawling towards the
stockade. They jumped on him, but his friends came running to the
rescue. Stanleys men were lucky to get back alive, but they had
probably thwarted a planned night attack.
The next morning, 19th December, there was a lull in the fighting,
allowing the defenders to prepare breakfast. Stanley had himself
rowed 500 yards out into the river so that he could have a good look at
the shore, and was horrified to see that they had unwittingly camped
only a quarter of a mile upstream from Vinya-Njara, which he
describes as a large town. The nearest of the villages which made up
this town was apparently deserted, so he at once decided to occupy it,
as it would provide some cover for the sick, and also the possibility of
food. As the boats had been left loaded on the previous day, it took
only a few minutes to get everyone into them and start rowing towards
the town.
The natives were obviously taken by surprise by this move, for the
explorers party landed and occupied the village unopposed. They cut
down some trees to block the path at either end of the street, and
generally put the place in readiness for defence. The sick were
installed in some of the houses out of harms way, and three or four
marksmen were placed in trees overlooking the tall grass which grew
on the landward side of the village. Soon the enemy attacked as
expected, but after a firefight which lasted until noon they retired for
the day. Stanley made use of the respite to deploy a screen of scouts in
the forest, and to cut down all the vegetation within 100 yards of the
houses. Luckily for the explorers, the inhabitants had left a number of
logs lying around in the village, together with a supply of the bark
rope which they used for fishing. The resourceful Stanley used these
to build two towers or marksmens nests, one at each end of the
street. These were 15 feet high, and commanded all the landward
approaches. Each could be manned by up to ten men.
It was not until the following morning that the next assault came, and
the new defences so surprised the tribesmen that they broke almost at
once and fled back to the jungle, from where they kept up a
frightening but harmless barrage of war-cries and blasts on their ivory
horns. This, however, was only a diversion. The real attack began
about noon, when a fleet of native canoes, carrying between five and
eight hundred warriors from Vinya-Njara, was seen going upriver
along the far bank. Then, when about half a mile upstream, they
turned and let the current carry them down towards the village. At the
same time, the Kusu resumed the attack from the forest with a hail of
arrows.
The men in the watchtowers, led by Pocock and Sheikh Abdallah,
were left to hold off the enemy on that side, while Stanley took the
remaining 20 askaris down to the bushes along the river bank. For the
next half hour the fighting was desperate. Stanley pays tribute to the
courage and steadiness of his men, but does not explain in detail
exactly what form the canoe-borne attack took. Probably the enemy
did not try to land immediately - for if they had, 500 of them would
surely have overwhelmed the gallant 20 - but kept up a hail of arrows
from out in the river. On other occasions Stanley managed to sink
native canoes by shooting holes in them with his elephant gun, and it
may be that the threat of this prevented them from closing. It was noted
in several river fights that the tribesmen were intimidated by the
partys firepower and so did not try to get closer than a hundred yards
or so, even though by exchanging fire with riflemen at long range they
were fighting on the enemys terms. At any rate, numbers did
eventually begin to tell, and Stanley admits that the defenders could
not have held out for ever, even though they still had plenty of
ammunition.
Then, at the last moment, just as the emboldened enemy were
making the most strenuous efforts to effect a landing, the sound of
war-horns from the forest signalled the withdrawal of both of the
native forces. The canoeists disappeared behind an island about 1600
yards away on the opposite side of the river, while the Kusu melted
away into the forest. Their scouts had observed the approach of Tippu
Tibs party, which was struggling along the shore to link up with
Stanley. The expedition was saved in the nick of time. Its total
casualties had been a mere four killed, and 13 wounded. That night,
Stanley completed the victory by leading a party over to the island and
cutting the tribesmens canoes adrift, thus preventing any pursuit. This
was the end of Tippu Tibs involvement with the explorers, for he had
had enough of Stanley by this time. He decided that it was too
dangerous to carry on, and turned back southwards. But Stanley and
his men sailed on downstream, towards the next violent encounter.
The Forces
The remarks on Stanleys people under the heading of the Vinyata
fight will in general still apply here, although the askaris were reduced
in numbers, and some losses had been replaced from Central African
tribes like the Manyema. It is not entirely clear which local tribes were
present at this battle. Stanleys map names the country on the left and
right banks of the river at this point as Ukengeri and Ubwire
respectively. Also on the right bank, opposite Vinya-Njara, is
Ukongora Meno - the land of the desperate cannibals of
Mtagamoyos campaign, whose name means the people with filed
teeth. For figures I suggest using the archers and spearmen from the
Foundry range - the latter with the large wooden or basketwork
shields popular in the Congo, and probably a lot of parrot-feather
head-dresses.
The Kusu should be classified as better fighters than the average -
Warrior Spearmen in my skirmish rules - and perhaps distinguished
from their allies by a different type of shield. The tribes on this stretch
of the Lualaba/Congo - including the Kusu - had not yet managed to
acquire firearms, and so fought only with the spear and the bow.
Arrows were often poisoned, but the poison does not appear to have
been very effective. The application of silver nitrate or similar
compounds was found to be an effective antidote: four of Stanleys
men were wounded before the battle at Vinya-Njara by archers
sniping from the jungle, but none of them died.
Sources
Both of the above battles are described Stanleys own accounts of this
expedition in:
H. M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, London, 1890.
R. Stanley and A. Neames, eds., The Expedition Diaries of H. M.
Stanley, 1961.
The following are also recommended as general introductions to the
battles and other events of the period of exploration in Africa:
C. Hibbert, Africa Explored - Europeans in the Dark Continent, 1769
- 1889, 1982.
F. McLynn, Hearts of Darkness - The European Exploration of
Africa, 1992.
Pygmy Chief. Painting by Kevin Dallimore