Cambridge send sympathetic messages to the seat of war. It was reinforcements that were needed, if the English in South-East Africa were not to be driven into the sea. Parliament, when it met on the 8th of February, was as wrathful as the country. The Government had let Sir Bartle Frere drag the country into a war, which in a few days the disaster of Isandhlwana showed they were incompetent to conduct with credit to the Empire. If Ministers were not able to emerge, without ignominy, from a conflict with the Zulu king, what must have happened had they been allowed to challenge the Czar of Muscovy to mortal combat? Criticism was felt to be futile, in view of the pressing need to retrieve the disgrace of a defeat, none the less ignominious that the Government and their agents had courted it. But a stern demand was heard on all sides for the recall of Frere and Chelmsford, a demand which, like a vote of censure that was proposed in the House of Lords by Lord Lansdowne on the 25th, and in the Commons by Sir Charles Dilke on the 11th of March, Ministers evaded by administering a strong rebuke to the High Commissioner. As a man of spirit, Frere would have naturally resigned after this rebuke. But he held on to his place, and this was so discreditable, that to account for his conduct a strange theory was mooted. It was said that private letters were sent to him by high personages, some of them connected with the Government, assuring him that the censure of the Secretary of State was not meant to be taken as real, but had been penned merely to save Ministers from a Parliamentary defeat.[143] Sir M. Hicks-Beach’s despatch with the censure ended with these words: “But I have no desire to withdraw the confidence hitherto reposed in you.” Such was the feeble manner in which the Government dealt with a satrap who had virtually usurped the prerogative of the Sovereign to declare war. Soon after the Ministry had warded off the vote of censure in Parliament, the country was again agitated by tidings of further reverses in Zululand, and it was not till the 21st of April that the Government could announce that Pearson’s column, which had been locked up at Ekowe since the outbreak of the war, had been able to save itself by retreat. The indignation of the country grew apace, and at last it was found necessary to allay it by superseding Sir Bartle Frere’s authority in Natal and the Transvaal. Sir Garnet Wolseley was accordingly sent to take supreme command at the scene of action. Ere he could arrive Chelmsford, stimulated into action by Colonel Evelyn Wood, had however taken a decisive step. He gave the Zulus battle at Ulundi on the 3rd of July, and won a victory which put an end to the war. Cetewayo was taken prisoner on the 28th of August, and, despite the efforts made by Sir Garnet Wolseley and others to set up another Government for the one which had been destroyed, Zululand lapsed into the confusion and anarchy in which it has since remained.