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. Stanley’s 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. Stanley’s “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 Stanley’s 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 wouldn’t 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 man’s hospitality, including “some of Huntley and Palmer’s 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 animal’s 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 ox’s 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 o’clock 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 expedition’s 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 Stanley’s 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 DisasterThe 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 Stanley’s 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 witchdoctor’s 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 day’s 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.

Stanley’s long-term position, however, was still untenable. At two o’clock 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 FightThis 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 Stanley’s 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 Ferahan’s 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 1876Late 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 Mtagamoyo’s 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 Stanley’s 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 hadn’t 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 BattleStanley 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 Stanley’s 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 expedition’s 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. Stanley’s 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 harm’s 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 “marksmen’s 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 party’s 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 enemy’s 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 Tib’s 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 tribesmen’s canoes adrift, thus preventing any pursuit. This was the end of Tippu Tib’s 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 ForcesThe remarks on Stanley’s 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. Stanley’s 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 Mtagamoyo’s 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 Stanley’s men were wounded before the battle at Vinya-Njara by archers sniping from the jungle, but none of them died.

SourcesBoth of the above battles are described Stanley’s 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