{"id":29025,"date":"2014-12-04T00:04:40","date_gmt":"2014-12-04T05:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29025"},"modified":"2019-04-23T15:11:24","modified_gmt":"2019-04-23T19:11:24","slug":"hiram-maxims-business-was-secure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/12\/04\/hiram-maxims-business-was-secure\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Hiram Maxim\u2019s business was secure&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/war-is-boring\/maxims-machine-gun-slaughtered-hundreds-of-thousands-of-people-f9e068f5148\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Richard Huard<\/a> has another in his series of blog posts on the weapons of the 20th century:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>During the early morning of Oct. 25, 1893, a column of 700 soldiers from the British South African Police camped in a defensive position next to the Shangani River.<\/p>\n<p>While they slept, the Matabele king Lobengula ordered an attack on the column, sending a force of up to 6,000 men \u2014 some armed with spears, but many with Martini-Henry rifles.<\/p>\n<p>Among its weapons, the column possessed several Maxim machine guns. Once a bugler sounded the alert, the Maxims spun into action \u2014 and the results were horrific.<\/p>\n<p>The Maxim gunners mowed down more than 1,600 of the attacking Matabele tribesman. As for the British column, it suffered four casualties.<\/p>\n<p>The British military not only measured the Maxim gun\u2019s success by the number of Matabele killed in action. They could gauge the Maxim\u2019s potential as a weapon of psychological warfare.<\/p>\n<p>In the aftermath, several Matabele war leaders committed suicide either by hanging themselves or throwing themselves on their spears. <em>That<\/em> is how Earth-shattering a weapon the Maxim gun was.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe round numbers are suspicious,\u201d C.J. Chivers wrote in <em>The Gun<\/em>, his history of automatic weapons. \u201cBut the larger point is unmistakable. A few hundred men with a few Maxims had subdued a king and his army, and destroyed the enemy\u2019s ranks. Hiram Maxim\u2019s business was secure.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"center\"><div id=\"attachment_29026\" style=\"width: 863px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-29026\" src=\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/British-Maxim-gun-section-in-1895-853x539.jpg\" alt=\"A British Maxim gun section that took part in the Chitral Relief Expedition of 1895. Public domain photo\" width=\"853\" height=\"539\" class=\"size-large wp-image-29026\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/British-Maxim-gun-section-in-1895-853x539.jpg 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/British-Maxim-gun-section-in-1895-150x94.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/British-Maxim-gun-section-in-1895-480x303.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/British-Maxim-gun-section-in-1895.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 853px) 100vw, 853px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-29026\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A British Maxim gun section that took part in the Chitral Relief Expedition of 1895. Public domain photo<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Richard Huard has another in his series of blog posts on the weapons of the 20th century: During the early morning of Oct. 25, 1893, a column of 700 soldiers from the British South African Police camped in a defensive position next to the Shangani River. While they slept, the Matabele king Lobengula ordered [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[362,4,5,15,663],"tags":[31,1265,252],"class_list":["post-29025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-britain","category-military","category-technology","category-weapons","tag-army","tag-machineguns","tag-southafrica"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7y9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29027,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29025\/revisions\/29027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}