Cetshwayo kaMpande

Cetshwayo kaMpande (c. 1826-1884) was king of the Zulu Kingdom from 1873 to 1879 and again briefly from 1883 to 1884, best remembered for leading Zulu forces against the British invasion of 1879. Early in that war his army inflicted a major defeat on British troops at the Battle of Isandlwana in January 1879, one of the most significant losses a modern colonial army suffered against African forces during the nineteenth century, though the British ultimately regrouped and defeated the Zulu at the Battle of Ulundi later that year. Captured and exiled to Cape Town and then London, where he became a public curiosity and successfully lobbied the British government for a partial restoration, he was reinstated as king over part of his former territory in 1883, but factional civil war forced him to flee his own capital before his death the following year.