Shangani Patrol ambushed and annihilated

[Asid]

Shangani Patrol ambushed and annihilated

3–4 December 1893


Sketch map of the area drawn by Frederick Russell Burnham, 1895

The Shangani Patrol (or Wilson's Patrol), comprising 34 soldiers in the service of the British South Africa Company, was ambushed and annihilated by more than 3,000 Matabele warriors during the First Matabele War in 1893.[n 1] Headed by Major Allan Wilson, the patrol was attacked just north of the Shangani River in Matabeleland in Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe). Its dramatic last stand, sometimes called "Wilson's Last Stand", achieved a prominent place in the British public imagination and, subsequently, in Rhodesian history, mirroring events such as the Battle of Shiroyama in Japan, the Alamo massacre in Texas and the ancient Greeks' last stand at Thermopylae.


There Were No Survivors, an 1896 depiction of the patrol's last stand, by Allan Stewart (1865–1951)

Read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangani_Patrol