The Fall of the Asante Empire (15 page)

The British-led force of over eleven thousand men consisted of Africans from several tribes, including a contingent of Fante.
Sixty British officers and noncommissioned officers led by Lieutenant Colonel Purdon coordinated the defense.
Two years earlier the British government had sent three hundred British soldiers to Governor MacCarthy, but their susceptibility to disease proved to be devastating.
(The first company of one hundred British troops arrived at Cape Coast in April 1823; eight months later only one man was still alive.
The second company of one hundred men arrived in November 1823; one year later only eight men were alive.
Most of the third company died within three months!
During the same period fifteen white officers also died of disease.
Forty-two wives and sixty-seven children accompanied the men, and they died in similar numbers.)
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The British government was understandably reluctant to commit more white soldiers or their families to Gold Coast graves.
As a result, Colonel Purdon had to depend on the ability of his British officers to train African militia to defend the coastal populations.
One of these officers was the same Major Ricketts who had survived the wounds he suffered in the MacCarthy battle to return to the Gold Coast.

Throughout the preceding seven months, while the Asante army was rampaging through the coastal countryside, Purdon and his officers were frantically recruiting, arming, and training men from their African allies.
By August Purdon had a reasonably well armed force that, for the moment at least, appeared willing to fight.
In addition to the African soldiers’ muskets and knives, Colonel Purdon had several cannon and an ample supply of the newly invented Congreve rockets.
He also had excellent intelligence about the movements of the Asante, who were uncharacteristically open about their intentions.
Purdon took up a defensive position some eight miles south of Dodowa on an open plain.
If the Asante meant to attack, as Asante prisoners said would soon happen, they would have to charge across flat and open grasslands.
Purdon positioned his men along a line that stretched over four miles.
His best trained militia were in the center, backed up by British officers and sixty Royal Marines who had just disembarked with their own artillery and rockets.
Large tribal contingents were on each flank under the command of their kings.

It was a colorful army by any standard.
Each contingent camped under the battle flag of the European nation to which it felt allegiance: many British, Dutch, and Danish flags waved in the slight breeze.
Each man wore white sea shells or a strip of white calico to distinguish himself from the Asante; some tied the calico to the barrels of their muskets.
There was much singing, dancing, and drumming, but there was still no certainty that this coalition would stand and fight.
The Asante army was in position by Sunday, but on that day everyone knew they would never attack.
Hoping that the Asante king would not outflank him tomorrow and that the
kings of his coalition would not decamp overnight (something that would almost certainly have occurred if the squabbling kings had been given another day to quarrel among themselves), Colonel Purdon waited for Monday morning to arrive.

He need not have worried about being outflanked.
King Osei Yaw’s scouts had informed him that the strongest African coalition forces were in the center, reinforced by the British officers and marines.
He decided that his honor called for him to attack the center because it was the strongest part of the British line.
He rejected the urgings of his advance guard’s commander, Yaw Opense, to attack at night under torchlight, insisting instead that he would defiantly show himself to his enemies in the morning light.
He also asked his commanders to give up their hammocks and lead from the front rather than push from the rear, an altogether unconventional idea.
But then, this would be an unconventional battle.
After his men painted their bodies with white stripes, the attack came on Monday morning, at the gentlemanly hour of 9:30
A.M.
The Asante moved forward in disciplined ranks, also waving British, Dutch, and Danish flags along with many others of their own design.
With drums pounding and horns playing, the Asante charged through heavy cannon fire toward the British center.
Many men fell before the front rank drew near enough to kneel and fire a return volley.
The British forces returned fire, and before either side could reload their long muzzle-loading muskets, the two shouting and screaming armies were tangled up together in a savage hand-to-hand knife fight that lasted for over two hours.
The British militia fought courageously but were being forced back when the British left and right flanks overcame initial defeats and began to drive the Asante flanks back.

Despite these reverses miles away on either flank, the Asante troops in the center appeared to be on the verge of victory.
The situation was so serious that several of the African kings made plans to blow themselves up, and one British officer prepared to blow up his gunpowder to keep it out of Asante hands.
At this critical point in the battle, Colonel Purdon ordered his Congreve rockets into use and dozens of these new weapons began to arch deafeningly through the sky trailing red sparks and smoke before they landed with tremendous explosions that sent jagged shards of metal in all
directions.
The Asante might have stood their ground despite the terrible wounds the rockets’ fragments produced, but the red flashes followed by the sound of explosions convinced them that the British had called down the force of nature’s thunder and lightning against them.
This was too much.
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Slowly, and in reasonably good order, the Asante center fell back.

As the British-led African militia pursued, they ripped open the bellies of wounded Asante and tore out their hearts.
They also clubbed their own wounded to death to end their suffering.
As it became obvious that the battle was lost, several Asante commanders ignited kegs of gunpowder and blew themselves up, in one instance slightly wounding some nearby British officers.
The once faint-of-heart king, Osei Yaw, had been in the thick of the battle, and suffering from seven wounds, he was sitting quietly, preparing to die, because in the confusion of the retreat, the man responsible for guarding his stool had lost it.
Several brave Asante officers dashed back into the thick of the battle and returned with it in triumph.
Despite his wounds the king would survive the battle.

The Asante rear guard now moved up to protect the army’s retreat, but the British-led forces were far more interested in collecting the spoils of war than they were in pursuing the still-dangerous Asante.
About two million dollars worth of gold, including one nugget weighing twenty thousand ounces, and other valuables were gathered up along with many prisoners.
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By now the long, dry grass was on fire, and although it is impossible to recapture the scene of the battle or its sounds adequately, Ricketts recalled the day this way: “the explosion of Asante captains, who at intervals blew themselves up in despair, which was known by the smoke that arose over the trees; the shouts and groans of the combatants, with the burning grass, and the battle raging all around, formed no bad idea of the infernal regions.”
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At around one in the afternoon, the severed heads of prominent and even royal Asantes were brought into the British camp.
A great stir was caused when what was thought to be the skull of Sir Charles MacCarthy was discovered.
Carried in a leopard-skin cover, the skull was wrapped in paper covered with Arabic characters and a silk cloth.
Ricketts reported that before the battle King Osei Yaw had poured rum on it and invoked it to cause all the
heads of the whites to lie beside it on the battlefield.
Delighted to have recovered MacCarthy’s skull, Lieutenant Colonel Purdon had it sent to England.
Embarrassingly, the skull proved not to be that of Sir Charles MacCarthy at all, but that of the late King Osei Bonsu.
His younger brother had taken it into battle with him in the hope that it would offset the effect of an omen that had warned the king not to launch the campaign.
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All that night the wails of Asante women searching for the bodies of their loved ones could be heard in the British camp.
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Probably because they fought in front of their men instead of in the rear, at least seventy Asante divisional commanders and princes were killed or committed suicide.
Several thousand Asante soldiers died with them, and many others, like the king, had grievous wounds.
Despite these dreadful losses the army retreated in order, ferrying its men across the flooded Pra River without incident.
There were many reasons for the Asante defeat.
Their army was outnumbered by men with better arms, and they attacked the strength of the British line.
The British rockets were a terrifying and deadly weapon that they did not understand.
Also, smoke from the grass fires and the musketry was so thick that one of the two divisions of the Asante center mistook the other for the enemy and fired on it throughout the battle.
Their Akin and Assim allies also fled at the first sign of fighting, leaving the Asante left flank vulnerable.
Not least important, the British-trained African militia fought with unexpected resolve.
It was a humiliating loss for Osei Yaw, especially because as a result of the defeat, he was forced to renounce his sovereignty over six southern states, including his most detested enemy, the Fante.

Though it was clear that Osei Yaw had lost an important battle at Katamanso, Asante military power had not been seriously compromised.
As the new British governor, Sir Neil Campbell, wrote after visiting the battleground and talking to some of the officers who took part in it, the extent of the Asante defeat had been “grossly exaggerated.” In his view, despite the size and stalwart defense of the British-led coalition forces, the Asante had “repulsed” them and were on the verge of victory; only the rocket fire saved the day.
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Sir Neil also chided the British officers and the kings of the alliance for allowing their African allies to cut open the chests
of the dead and wounded Asante to eat their hearts.
The well-intentioned new governor had much to learn about warfare on the Gold Coast.

Not everyone in Kumase was as willing to minimize the Asante defeat as Sir Neil did.
So many men and women of influence in Kumase were openly hostile to him that Osei Yaw stayed out of the city and had to arrange to have many of his enemies killed.
Believing that Muslim clerics had used magic to ensure his defeat, the king had many of these men arrested, and he banned all Muslims from entering the palace, a step that did much to destroy their influence with the court.
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Even so, he could not avoid an impeachment contest, and Kwadwo Adusei, a leader of the peace faction in the inner council, began proceedings to have the king removed from his stool.
Osei Yaw responded by accusing Kwadwo Adusei of a series of offenses from giving bad advice on strategy to outright treason.
After a long and divisive contest Kwadwo Adusei was found guilty and was humiliatingly executed by being pounded to death in a mortar by an elephant’s tusk.
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But in the political maneuvering that led to the king’s exoneration and the execution of his main adversary, Osei Yaw was forced to make major concessions to the peace faction.
In addition to agreeing not to launch any more military expeditions to the south, he even authorized a diplomat to approach the British about peace terms.
The envoy wore a monkey-skin cap bearing a five-inch by two-inch gold plate on which gold weighing scales were beautifully etched.
As he approached the British governor, he laid the cap at his feet as a symbol of submission to the king of England.
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Even though the Asante king offered an apology and reparations, the coastal chiefs and kings remained skeptical.

Nevertheless, after extensive negotiations a draft of a treaty was formulated, and the Asante peace mission that had taken it to the coast returned to Kumase to be received by two hundred thirty senior chiefs.
The treaty called for the king to renounce all warlike acts against the south, as well as the right to tribute from the maritime states under British protection.
The king was required to deliver to the British governor four thousand ounces of gold and two members of the royal family as hostages to guarantee the treaty.
In return the British guaranteed to restrain the coastal states from all
acts of aggression against the Asante state and its traders.
The Asante government was disposed to accept the terms of this treaty, but before all of its terms could be worked out, various chiefs of the British protectorate attacked and blockaded Elmina, the Dutch coastal station where the Asante had traditionally conducted trade.
When the British could do nothing to lift the blockade, the treaty was left unsigned.
In a series of meetings with British envoys in metropolitan Asante in 1828, Osei Yaw made it plain that he did not believe the British were negotiating in good faith.
He emphasized his desire for peace but declared that the next move must come from the British.
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