Cetshwayo kaMpande

""An assegai has been thrust into the belly of this nation, there are not enough tears to mourn this nation"

- Cetshwayo Kampande Cetshwayo Kampande (1826-8 February 1884) was the King of the Zulu Kingdom from 1872 to 1879 and its leaders during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. He famously led the Zulu nation to victory against the British in the Battle of Isandlwana.

As he conquered a tribe, he enrolled its remnants in his army, so that they might in their turn help to conquer others. He armed his regiments with the short stabbing assegai, instead of the throwing assegeiwhich they had been accustomed to use, and kept them to subject to an iron discipline. If a man showed the slightest hesitation to a close quarters with the enemy, he was executed as soon as the fight was over. If a regiment had the misfortune to be defeated, whether it was by their own fault or not, it would on its return to headquarters find that a goodly proportion of of the wives and children belonging to it had been beaten to death by Cetshwayo's orders, and that he was waiting their arrival to complete his vengeance by dashing out their brains. The results, that though Cetshwayo's armies were occasionally annihilated, they were rarely defeated and they never ran away.