Rorke's Drift: about 150 men held off 4,000 Zulus

The defence of Rorke’s Drift on 22–23 January 1879 saw roughly 150 British and colonial soldiers hold a mission-station depot on the Buffalo River in Natal against about 4,000 Zulu warriors, only hours after the British disaster at Isandlwana.

The Zulu force, led by Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande, half-brother of King Cetshwayo, arrived at about 4.30 p.m. Lieutenants John Chard of the Royal Engineers and Gonville Bromhead of the 2nd/24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment had decided to stay after Assistant Commissary James Dalton argued that a column slowed by hospital patients would be caught in open country. They walled the post with mealie bags, biscuit boxes and crates of tinned meat. The assaults went on into the night; the hospital was set alight, and patients were dragged to safety through holes hacked in its inner walls. The Zulu withdrew around dawn.

Reputable references still disagree on the basic numbers:

Figure	National Army Museum	EBSCO Research Starters	South African History Online
Garrison	150	139	110
Zulu force	4,000	4,000	4,500
British killed	17	15	17
Zulu killed	400	about 500	350

Garrison totals shift depending on whether sick men and colonial troops are counted, and Zulu losses were tallied from bodies left on the field, so every figure is approximate.

Eleven Victoria Crosses and five Distinguished Conduct Medals went to the survivors, a tally rarely matched for one action, though not the all-time record sometimes claimed. The National Army Museum notes that the government handed out the awards partly to divert public attention from Isandlwana. It did not work: Disraeli’s government lost the 1880 election, brought down in part by the Zulu War. The legend outlived it anyway, through Lady Butler’s 1880 painting and, in 1964, the film Zulu.