Britain had no reason to cherish the Zulu king Cetshwayo kaMpande in the early days of 1879. He inflicted on the British Empire the most crushing military defeat it had known, claiming the lives of 867 white soldiers and 440 black auxiliaries in a single day. Only the legendary British fightback at Rorke's Drift, immortalised in the film Zulu starring Michael Caine, has preserved the reputation of those military leaders who decided to take him on in the Zulu War.
King Cetshwayo's struggle with the British, at the head of an army equipped only with shields and spears, seems to make him an unlikely recipient of an English Heritage blue plaque - the commemorative marker affixed to buildings linked to great figures of the past.
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