The British army in 1879 was small and professional. Men enlisted for twelve years of service and had to be between eighteen and twenty-five years old, fit and unmarried. On the 4th of July 1879, the Zulu army moved in to attack the British. There, in the very heart of King Cetshwayo's royal military homesteads, the Zulu people were decimated by the concentrated firepower of Lieutenant-General Lord Chelmsford's men, at the battle of Ulundi.