Zulu!

The Battle for Rorke's Drift 1879

Fought in January 1879 and immortalized in the film epic Zulu, Rorke's Drift represented one of the most glorious, if subsequently controversial episodes in British military history. For 12 desperate hours, outnumbered by over 25-1, barely 140 British soldiers, based at the remote mission station of Rorke's Drift, South Africa, were locked in a ferocious life or death struggle with over 4,000 seasoned warriors of the hitherto victorious Zulu Army—the most powerful indigenous African army. Only hours earlier, in the shadow of the ominous Sphinx-like Isandlwana Crag, other elements of this same Zulu force had virtually annihilated a 1,700-strong British colonial force—one of the greatest defeats of Queen Victoria's reign. In the wake of this massacre, the survival of the British Empire in South Africa rested with the tiny garrison of Rorke's Drift.