The Rare and Historically Important British South Africa Company Medal for Matabeleland to a Trooper in the Salisbury Horse Who Was One of the 34 Men Killed in Wilson’s Famous Last Stand at the Shangani River in December 1893, British South Africa Company Medal 1890-97 with Matabeleland 1893 reverse, engraved in the correct style, ‘TRPR W P DEVAS SALISBURY H’. Generally good condition.Noted on the medal roll of the British South Africa Company for Matabeleland as Trooper Philip Wouter De Vos (Dead) with a subsequent comment, ‘one of Wilson’s party’.The Shangani Patrol (or Wilson’s Patrol) was a 34-soldier unit of the British South Africa Company that in 1893 was ambushed and annihilated by more than 3,000 Matabele warriors in pre-Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), during the First Matabele War. Headed by Major Allan Wilson, the patrol was attacked just north of the Shangani River in Matabeleland, Rhodesia. Its dramatic last stand, sometimes called “Wilson’s Last Stand”, achieved a prominent place in the British public imagination and, subsequently, in Rhodesian history, similarly to events such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Battle of the Alamo in the United States.The patrol comprised elements of the Mashonaland Mounted Police and the Bechuanaland Border Police. Scouting ahead of Major Patrick Forbes’s column attempting the capture of the Matabele King Lobengula (following his flight from his capital Bulawayo a month before), it crossed the Shangani late on 3 December 1893 and moved on Lobengula the next morning but was ambushed by an estimated 3000 Matabele riflemen and warriors near the king’s wagon. Surrounded and outnumbered about a hundred-fold, the patrol made a valiant last stand as three of its number broke out and rode back to the river to muster reinforcements from Major Forbes’s column on the south bank of the river. However, the Shangani had risen significantly in flood, and Forbes was himself involved in a skirmish near the southern bank so was unable to send help; Wilson and his men therefore remained isolated to the north. After fighting to the last cartridge, and killing over ten times their own number, they were annihilated.What happened to the Shangani Patrol is known only from Matabele sources. Witness accounts were slowly gathered over three decades following the affair and various versions of events were offered. According to these accounts, the warriors offered the remaining Troopers their lives if they surrendered, but Wilson’s men refused to give up. They used their dead horses for cover and killed more than ten times their own number (about 500 was estimated), but they were steadily whittled down as the overwhelming Matabele force closed in from all sides. The Company soldiers continued fighting even when grievously wounded, to the astonishment of the Matabele, who thought the soldiers must be bewitched: “These are not men but magicians,” said one Matabele induna.The remains of the patrol’s members were buried on the battle ground and were later moved to be interred at Worlds View, in the Matopos Hills, alongside the body of Cecil Rhodes as per the request in his will.