The Fall of the Asante Empire (14 page)

Faced with this dramatic evidence of British hostility, Osei Bonsu could hardly have held out much hope for peace, but he nevertheless continued to take extraordinary steps to avoid war, until an unforeseen event overtook him.
In May 1822 an African sergeant stationed near Cape Coast quarrelled with an Asante trader so vehemently that he hurled verbal abuse at the Asante king, a capital crime under Asante law.
Sometime later, a small detachment of Asante troops captured the sergeant and took him fifteen miles inland to a village friendly to the Asante.
Still searching for peace, Osei Bonsu granted a pardon to the man, but members of the war party in his inner council issued orders for his execution, apparently without Osei Bonsu’s knowledge.
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When Governor MacCarthy learned of the execution, he led a force of British regulars and militia to attack the Asante who remained in the village where the execution had taken place.
Whether due to treachery, fear of the Asante, or simple ignorance, their guide led the British force away from the village and into a well-prepared ambush.
The British troops were forced to retreat with ten dead, thirty-nine wounded, and nothing accomplished.

Even after this armed clash, which he had not ordered, King Osei Bonsu sent out another appeal for peace by offering to negotiate all differences between the Asante and the British.
His offer was contemptuously rejected.
Only then, in June 1823, did the king allow his army to advance toward the British along several routes.
For reasons that remain unclear, their progress was unusually slow, and they did not actually threaten the British at Cape Coast until early January 1824.
Governor MacCarthy responded to the Asante advance by dividing his regular troops and now well-armed militia into two columns that marched toward the Asante.
Unfortunately for the British, Sir Charles ordered the columns to march so widely separated from one another that they could not possibly coordinate their actions.
Then, in a decision that would prove to be even less wise, he personally led a small force of five hundred men detached from his larger column of two thousand five hundred men directly into the main Asante battle force of between ten thousand and twenty thousand men commanded by the redoubtable veteran Amankwatia.
Against this powerful army Sir Charles mustered a handful of British army officers all wearing
scarlet and white dress uniforms, a regimental brass band, two hundred fifty semitrained Fante militia led by some of the British traders (also in scarlet uniforms), and an equal number of completely undisciplined Fante under their own chiefs, the most senior of whom was so feeble that he had to be carried the entire way.
Each man carried only twenty rounds of ammunition, although they were followed by carriers bringing more.

After marching through driving rain and mud, Sir Charles camped on the banks of a small tributary of the river Pra, where he was joined by his chief of staff, Major H.
J.
Ricketts, and a few men who had marched all night through mud that was often waist deep.
Ricketts expressed concern about the exhaustion of the troops and their small numbers, but Sir Charles was sublimely confident, saying that “he was determined to see how the Ashantees liked our balls.”
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(Presumably he was referring to musket balls.) The next day the Asante could be heard moving toward them through the dense forest with drums pounding and elephant horns blaring.
MacCarthy’s splendid scarlet uniform was splattered with mud, but as a very stout man who stood well over six feet tall even without his plumed hat, he was still an imposing figure.
As the Asante came closer, Sir Charles ordered his own brass band to play “God Save the King,” and they loudly set themselves to it while he stood at attention.
He was under the singularly misguided impression that many of the Asante were eager to surrender to him.
To the surprise of no one except Sir Charles, none did, and their drums and horns sounded even more loudly in reply.
After several exchanges of martial music with each side attempting to drown out the other, the Asante tired of the musical prelude and unceremoniously opened fire.

Luckily for MacCarthy and his men, the Asante were separated from the British force by a sixty-foot-wide stream that was in flood.
The Asante attempted to cross it by felling trees to use as bridges, but leaving themselves completely exposed, they were repeatedly shot down.
However, after an hour or so of firing, the British were virtually out of ammunition.
Sir Charles had earlier sent for the reserve supply that should have long since arrived.
Now quite alarmed by his situation, he was delighted by the arrival of a man named Brandon, who was in command of the ammunition
carriers.
His joy soon vanished.
Unused to the tricks of West African warfare, Brandon had not driven on his Fante carriers from the rear; he had dashed on ahead of them with a couple of men and a few cases of ammunition.
Once free of Brandon, the remaining Fante promptly set down their loads and fled.
Sir Charles was so appalled that he threatened to have Brandon hanged, but there was no time to waste in hanging poor Brandon; some men were sent back after the abandoned ammunition while others tore open the four cases Brandon had delivered.
The ammunition from the first case was distributed while the other cases were being opened.
In what was an unforgettably absurd moment, the cases were found to contain not bullets but macaroni.

By now the river had subsided somewhat, and this, combined with the slackened British fire, allowed groups of Asante to cross over.
Most of the armed Fante promptly fled, but other groups of MacCarthy’s men fought with bayonets, knives, and clubbed muskets.
Despite the desperate fighting the battle was quickly over.
Taking advantage of the deep underbrush, Major Ricketts and a few of the men were able to escape, but the other British officers were killed or captured, and except for Williams, the colonial secretary (mentioned in chapter 2), who was saved by an Asante officer who knew him, all were beheaded.
MacCarthy, or “Mankato” as his name was mispronounced by the Asante, could not have impressed anyone by his leadership in taking such a small force against an Asante army; but he had fought with great courage and, badly wounded, had shot himself rather than be taken alive.
In respect for his bravery, after beheading him, Asante commanders cut his heart out and ate it.
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In all, 9 British officers were killed along with 178 men.
Three officers and 89 men were wounded, some later to die.
How many prisoners were taken is not known.
Williams was held for some months but then released in reasonably good health despite the well-meant efforts of Asante doctors to extract a bullet from his thigh by squeezing it out with ligatures tied around the leg, one above and one below the wound.
The procedure was as excruciating as it was unsuccessful.
Another officer named Raydon was killed on the return march because he could not keep up.
A merchant named Jones, who was serving as an officer of the Fante militia
was also captured after suffering five wounds.
The Asante believed that anyone with five wounds was so defiled that he endangered others and must be sacrificed, and he was.
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A few weeks later, another large British force, including white troops supported by native militia, fought to a standoff against the same Asante army.
On the British side 176 men were killed and 677 wounded.
Two white soldiers were known to have been taken prisoner.
It seems that three British soldiers had made off with enough rum to make themselves almost insensible when Asante troops found them in the bush.
One man drunkenly charged at the Asante with his bayonet and was decapitated.
The other two were taken to Kumase where they were well treated by the king.
One died of disease after a year.
The other, a private named Riley of the Royal African Corps, was released in good health after four years of captivity and returned to Britain.
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It is not known why these men were taken prisoner instead of being killed or why there was no demand for ransom.

After this battle, the main British forces, complete with their regular troops, withdrew to the coast, and the Asante army made no attempt to interfere.
Their inaction was probably due to the death of Osei Bonsu.
For many years historians had delighted in reporting the delicious historical irony that he had died on the same day as Governor MacCarthy, but it now seems almost certain that he died sometime earlier.
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Probably not yet fifty when he died, Osei Bonsu had devoted his reign to peace.
The Europeans who came to know him praised the king for his honorable character and his good intentions toward the British.
Even some of the British merchants eventually came to respect him highly.
John Swanzy, who fought in battles against Asante troops, expressed this opinion before a select committee of the House of Commons: “I think, of all the native sovereigns of Africa that I have either read or heard of, he is the man most likely to act with good faith.”
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With Osei Bonsu’s death the long-frustrated war faction of the inner council succeeded in electing his younger brother to the Golden Stool.
There were other possible successors but none as warlike or hostile to the British as Osei Yaw, also known as Okotu (orange) because of the light color of his skin.
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One of his first proclamations was that he would use the blood of the British to
“water” (consecrate) the grave of his brother.
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By the time Osei Yaw had been “enstooled” in Kumase, the surviving British forces had retreated to the protection of the cannon and the stone walls of Cape Coast castle.
It was fortunate for them that they did so, because no sooner had Osei Yaw taken power than he marched south with a large new army to join General Amankwatia’s smaller force, which was still in the coastal region.
The combined forces, now under direct command of the new king, numbered nearly thirty thousand men.

Demonstrating immediately how different he was from his peace-loving late brother, Osei Yaw sent a messenger to the fort advising the British to build the fort’s walls higher and take every available cannon and man from the warships off the coast because he, King Osei Yaw, would soon throw every stone from the fort into the sea.
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For three nerve-wracking weeks the British forces strengthened their defenses while the Asante army made menacing feints toward Cape Coast.
From the fort, smoke from their fires could be seen rising along a line three miles in length, and for two days Asante troops maneuvered grandly just out of range of the fort’s guns.
The following night Osei Yaw planned to burn the town that lay just outside the fort’s walls and in the ensuing confusion storm the fort in the darkness.
The plan was betrayed to the British, who preemptively burned the town to the ground during the day.
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Thwarted, the Asante attempted a weak frontal attack against the town, which was broken off after a stray British cannonball grazed the palanquin in which the king was being carried.
Thoroughly intimidated by this evidence of the British ability to locate him despite the thick jungle foliage, the suddenly timid new king ordered his army to return to Kumase.
Despite a worrisome outbreak of smallpox among the soldiers, his officers protested this order, and a high-ranking woman member of the royal family sent Osei Yaw a musical instrument, one played only by women, with the message that in exchange for his sword, which he had dishonored, she was giving him a more appropriate implement.
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This ridicule was too much for the new king, who agreed to continue the campaign until the countryside was completely destroyed, and his army ravaged Fante villages until late in 1824, when disease and hunger again forced the Asante army to withdraw to Kumase.

After a year of peace, the still-combative Osei Yaw again mobilized his army in December 1825.
He was determined to punish his former Accra allies, who had been turned against him by Governor MacCarthy.
Following the traditional religious preparations he ordered his army south in early January 1826.
Once again he took personal command.
For seven months he devastated the countryside, meeting no serious opposition.
His losses were principally to disease, and he made these up by enlisting the aid of soldiers from the Akim and Assin people, groups whose loyalty was split between the Asante and a newly forged British alliance of coastal peoples.
Early in August, his army was camped at Katamanso, just south of a village named Dodowa, a little more than twenty miles north of the seaport of Accra, the target of his campaign.
He planned to attack his British-led African enemies on the following Monday, a propitious day for the Asante to give battle—as his opponents knew, and they prepared their defenses accordingly.
The day may have been lucky, but the circumstances were hardly ideal for the Asante king.
He also chose to attack with only a part of his army.
Perhaps not over ten thousand men joined in the attack.
His men would be outnumbered by the British force, although some of latter were Akim or Assin soldiers of unknown loyalty.
The terrain also favored the British alliance.
It was open grassland, and the Asante king’s men would be exposed to British cannon fire long before they could charge into their ranks.
To the king’s advantage was the disciplined courage of his men; how well the British coalition would stand against them was uncertain, but experience must have convinced the king that they would not stand very well at all.