The Fall of the Asante Empire (29 page)

As word spread of the gathering of British military force, the Golden Stool and other valuables were removed from Kumase and hidden.
Some factions in Asante wanted to mobilize the army, but Prempe refused, saying, “I am not prepared to fight the British troops in spite I am to be captured by them [
sic
]; … I would rather surrender to secure the lives and tranquillity of my people and countrymen.”
²⁷
But disturbing the tranquillity of the Asante people was exactly what the British had in mind.
When a delegation of Asante diplomats hurried to the coast with promises of payment of all verified debts, Governor Maxwell curtly rebuked them, saying that their promises were empty words and that words alone could not send away the thousands of British soldiers who had been brought to the Gold Coast.
Words of peace were not wanted.
A British army would march to Kumase.

Command of what was called the Ashantee Expeditionary Force was given to Colonel Sir Francis Scott, who in 1874 had been a young officer in the 42nd Highlanders during Wolseley’s march to Kumase.
Scott’s contempt for Africans was extreme even for his time, and he was as confident of victory as he was eager to fight.
He had served in the Gold Coast for some time and in 1893 had led an expeditionary force of four hundred Hausas equipped with a Maxim gun to the north of the Gold Coast to prevent Asante expansion.
He was well aware that the Asante could not hope to mobilize more than a few thousand men to oppose him, but several hundred of those men would be armed with Sniders, and a few would have modern French rifles.
Properly led, troops with these weapons could be dangerous.

If the Asante chose to fight, they would face a somewhat smaller but much better-armed force than Wolseley had commanded.
The West India Regiment of 380 African troops commanded by 20 British officers and 1,000 Hausas led by 30 British officers, as well as perhaps 500 native levies, were joined by the West Yorkshire Regiment of 400 men and 20 officers, as well as a special-service corps of 12 volunteer officers and 254 picked men chosen from some of the most prestigious regiments in the British army, including the Coldstream Guards, Scots Guards, and Grenadier Guards.
What is more, Wolseley’s radical idea of highly qualified volunteers finally had its day Each man had to be at least twenty-four years old, have four years of service, be a good rifle shot, and pass a stiff medical examination.
²⁸
Nevertheless, one of these men died of “heat apoplexy” on his first day in the Gold Coast.

Unlike Wolseley’s force, Scott’s army had no Naval Brigade.
He did have various surgeons, engineers, supply and artillery officers, and thousands of carriers, perhaps ten thousand in all.
The combat troops would have an even greater advantage in weapons than Wolseley’s troops did.
The Snider rifle had been replaced by a lighter, faster-firing and longer-range carbine, the Martini-Henry.
The cumbersome and unreliable Gatling gun, which had been of little use to Wolseley, had been replaced by another American invention, the Maxim gun, a reliable, rapid-firing machine gun much like those that turned World War I into a slaughterhouse.
²⁹
They also had newly issued 75-mm field pieces, capable of rapidly firing
heavy explosive shells for great distances.
And, of course, they still had bayonets.

The first troops arrived at Cape Coast in December 1895 on board a far nicer ship than the one Wolseley and his special-service officers so detested.
There were few duties, the food was surprisingly good, and the men arranged concerts that mysteriously featured, among other songs, “Swanee River.”
³⁰
As it was for Wolseley two decades earlier, health was Scott’s constant concern.
The senior medical officer posted orders that called for men to eat “immediately” after rising because early morning was the “time of lowest vitality.” A cup of soup, cocoa, or coffee was recommended along with bread and butter.
Two grains of quinine were to be taken immediately after breakfast.
All told, five grains per day were issued on the march.
Everyone was ordered to avoid the sun, damp clothing, unboiled water, and any food not supplied by the government.
Bowels were to be “open daily,” and all men were required to wear a flannel cummerbund at night, apparently to prevent the loss of vital body heat.
³¹
Hospitals were set up as far into the interior as Wolseley’s old camp at Prahsu, and a large hospital ship was anchored off shore.
Huge depots of food were established, and as it was in Wolseley’s campaign, the emphasis was on meat (once again each man was to receive 1 ½ pounds of meat each day) and freshly baked bread.
Despite all precautions, fever quickly began to take its toll, and victims were rapidly invalided home.
One of the first to fall was a robust thirty-one-year-old major named Ferguson, whose fever rose to 110° before he died.
He was buried next to Captain Huyshe, who died on Wolseley’s campaign.
³²

On Christmas Day two ships arrived carrying the special-service troops and the 2nd Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment.
The men came ashore much more easily than their unruly mules, which threatened to capsize the small boats, and the white troops immediately began their march inland.
Units of the special-service corps, including a company from the same Rifle Brigade that fought in 1874, had no difficulty on the march, but the 2nd West Yorkshire, the Old West Yorks, had a terrible time.
This battalion had been stationed in Aden before being ordered to the Gold Coast, and many were ill.
They were also said to have consumed far too much beer and done too little marching.
On the first day eighty men fell
out and had to be carried.
It was not until much later in the campaign that the men became reasonably fit.
³³
Later that same day Prince Henry of Battenburg, Queen Victoria’s son-in-law, came ashore riding a donkey and carrying a small white umbrella as protection against the sun.
He was eager to show his enthusiasm for the military actions of his adopted country.
With him as an aide-decamp was His Highness Prince Victor of Schleswig-Holstein.
Christmas dinner for the troops included fresh meat, plum pudding, and a bottle of beer.
It was declared excellent.
³⁴

The road that Wolseley’s engineers had built two decades earlier was in total disrepair.
In many places the troops had to advance in single file, climbing over fallen trees and cutting away vines and underbrush.
When clearings were reached, the troops were trained in the tactics Scott thought would be necessary to fight against an unseen enemy in the dense brush.
Scott disdained Wolseley’s lightweight gray uniforms.
This was the last time that British troops wore scarlet tunics on active service, but by the end of the first day’s march, the woolen tunics were so soaked with sweat that they turned black and stayed that way throughout the campaign.
Somehow Scott had not learned from Wolseley.
Before the force entered metropolitan Asante, patrols searched for the Asante army, and spies were paid to provide information about their whereabouts and plans.
Though there were several alarms that led the British to take up defensive positions, there was no sign of Asante troops.
All the British found were small villages, the formerly prosperous but now ruined towns of Fomena and Amoafo, streams that the engineers had to bridge, and shrines—so-called fetish houses—which the troops destroyed “in a ruthless, unheeding way,” despite orders to leave them alone.
³⁵

As Scott’s column approached Kumase, a group of high-ranking Asante envoys, attempting to meet with the colonel to discuss peace, were beaten and robbed by the Hausa soldiers.
Officers eventually restored order, returned the Asante envoys’ property, and flogged some of the thieves.
A newspaper correspondent for the
Daily Telegraph
commented, consistent with the rabidly racist feelings of many Britons on this expedition, “Sambo does not bear flogging well, usually howling piteously.”
³⁶
Captain Donald Stewart, Scott’s so-called political officer, apologized to the envoys and
asked them to assure the king that it was an accident.
He also assured them that the British had no intention of deposing King Prempe if he accepted British protection, allowed a resident to be appointed, paid a war indemnity of an unspecified amount, and provided hostages to assure payment of the balance.
The Asante were not pleased, but they dutifully returned to Kumase.

On the night of January 16, Scott’s army camped just outside Kumase.
In a scene reminiscent of Wolseley’s expedition, a tremendous thunderstorm kept everyone awake all night.
When word came the next morning that Scott’s scouts had entered Kumase without opposition, Scott called the correspondents together to hear this fatuous declaration: “I want you correspondents to make a note of it: That it has been entirely owing to the rapidity of my movements there has been no fighting.
The celerity of my movements have [
sic
] completely paralyzed Prempe’s efforts.
Besides, bear in mind, we have come up in far less time than Lord Wolseley took in the last war.”
³⁷
One correspondent felt compelled to observe that Wolseley had to fight his way to Kumase.

As a Hausa brass band incongruously played “Home Sweet Home,” the British troops marched smartly into the bedraggled city, watched by a small crowd of somber Asante.
After posting sentries, Scott met with King Prempe at about 5
P.M.
.
Prempe greeted him with a wildly discordant medley of drums, horns, and metallic clanging, complete with dancing executioners and dwarfs as well as endless shouted eulogies by pages to the greatness of the Asante monarch.
Following an exchange of greetings, Scott told the king that he would meet with him again when Governor Maxwell arrived in a day or so.
He also peremptorily told him not to make loud noise at night, to cut the long grass in the streets, and to clean up the “filthy” city.
Prempe returned to his palace accompanied by the Ansa brothers, who despite their European clothing joined in some riotous dancing on the way.
The British troops put up tents and “slept soundly under cover, convinced there would be no attempt on the part of the miserable natives to disturb their rest,” as one member of the expedition scornfully put it.
³⁸

The next day, as Colonel Scott waited for Governor Maxwell, he was informed that eight people held as captives by King Prempe were pleading to be rescued before they were executed.
These people
were relatives of King Akrampa, a rival claimant to the throne before Prempe had been enstooled.
Most of his followers had already died or been executed, but these eight, including his sister, were still alive, and they begged for their lives.
Sir Francis was unwilling to interfere in any way, saying that their rescue might annoy King Prempe, and besides, as a correspondent who was a witness reported, “He was sure the black people did not mind or care much about their fate.”
³⁹
Colonel F.
J.
Kempster of the West Yorkshire Regiment angrily objected, insisting that all human beings cared about their lives.
After some vigorous discussion Scott reluctantly agreed to the rescue, and at ten that night British troops drove away the Asante guard and freed the prisoners.
Scott would have been surprised by their reaction.
“When at last they were made to understand they were set free, their joy and gratitude were unbounded, and they cried and blessed their deliverers again and again.”
⁴⁰

Two days later at 6
A.M.
, not an hour King Prempe would ordinarily have chosen to conduct state business, Captain Stewart and an escort of special-service troops waited impatiently for King Prempe.
The king, as it turned out, was ready promptly at six, but some members of his large retinue were tardy.
When Stewart was told that the king was not yet ready, he testily said that he would give Prempe five more minutes and if he were not ready by then, his troops would enter the palace by force and carry the king to the meeting place.
Three minutes later, drums and horns sounded furiously, functionaries of all sorts dashed about, and King Prempe, his mother, and entourage appeared.
He was carried in his hammock, where he sat propped up by silk cushions and shaded by a blue velvet umbrella.
Led by a detachment of British troops, the Asante were ushered into a large square of more British troops, who were lined up two abreast.
The soldiers, with white leather belts and shoulder straps contrasting with once red coats and with bayonets glistening in the sun, were a striking complement to the multicolored silk togas of the Asante court and the formal European clothing of the Ansa brothers.
To add a note of even greater incongruity, three scarlet-clad hunchbacked dwarfs danced in front of the king.

Across the square from the umbrella-shaded royal party sat Governor Maxwell, flanked on one side by Colonel Scott and on the other by Colonel Kempster.
They sat on folding camp chairs that
were perched precariously on top of a dais made of large biscuit boxes.
The arrangement was hardly majestic, but elevation over native peoples was always a vital prop of colonial rule, just as it often was with African kings.
Wearing a white toga, the light-skinned, plump King Prempe, with what observers found to be intelligent eyes, sat silently holding a kola nut in his mouth.
In Asante court tradition the nut symbolized the king’s inability to speak an untruth.
Not surprisingly, the British found the practice absurd.
Major Robert Baden-Powell—who would later found the Boy Scouts and use an Asante scouting sign as the model for the Boy Scout salute—was not impressed.
He wrote that the king’s “flabby yellow face” glistened with oil and “his somewhat stupid expression [was] rendered more idiotic by his sucking a large nut like a fat cigar.”
⁴¹
An aristocratic young officer agreed, describing the king as “an oily, well-fed looking brute.”
⁴²
Both agreed that he appeared agitated.