New Zealand Wars - Strategy and Tactics

Strategy and Tactics

The British Army were professional soldiers who had experience fighting in various parts of the Empire, many from India and Afghanistan, although front-line units were never sent (in contrast to, say, South Africa or other parts of the Empire). They were led by officers who were themselves trained by men who fought at Waterloo. The Māori fighters were warriors from many generations of warrior—survivors of the Musket Wars, 32 years of bitter inter-tribal fighting. One of the reasons for the First New Zealand War was curiosity by Māori warriors to see what kind of fighters these Pākehā soldiers were.

Both sides had developed distinctive war strategies and tactics. The British set out to fight a European-style war, based on defending or attacking an enemy strong point or town. Either there is a battle, or you besiege and then capture the strong point. Conversely, Māori fought for mana and economic advantage, to obtain slaves, goods or control of lands, and for the challenge of a good battle. New Zealand units which gradually took over much of the fighting in the later parts of the conflict, introduced a range of new units, tactics and weapons to match the demands of the campaigns from 1863.

The first British action of the Flagstaff War was the capture and destruction of Pomare's pā near Kororareka. This was a substantial Māori settlement, so to the British it was a victory, but the Māori warriors escaped with their arms, so the Māori did not see it as defeat.

The British then set out to do the same to Kawiti's pā at Puketapu. But this was a purpose-built strong point, with only one objective: to invite attack by the British. It was several kilometres inland, across very difficult country—steep gullies, dense, bush-clad hills and thick, sticky mud. The British troops were already exhausted when they arrived in front of the pā. The next day, the British made a frontal attack only to discover that the bush and gullies they were advancing through were bristling with warriors. Some British troops reached the palisade and discovered that attacking thick wooden walls with muskets was inneffective. After several hours of costly but indecisive skirmishing, the British withdrew. Their Māori Kupapa allies were able to feed them, and they were not attacked by their Māori enemies on the retreat back to the coast.

The attack on Puketapu Pā was typical of Māori-British warfare. The Māori would build a fortified pā, sometimes provocatively close to a British fort or redoubt, and the British would attack it. Their aim was always to bring Māori to battle and to inflict a decisive defeat. In European warfare, besieging an enemy fortress usually provoked a battle. However, the Māori also knew that they would probably lose heavily in open conflict; this had been the result on the few times that it happened. Generally, they were successful in avoiding it.

A Māori pā was not the same as a European fortress, but it took the British years to appreciate the difference. The word pā meant a fortified strong point near a Māori village or community. They were always built with a view to defence, but primarily they were built to safely store food. Puketapu Pā and then Ohaeawai Pā were the first of the so-called “gunfighter pās”, built to engage enemies armed with muskets and cannons. A strong, wooden palisade was fronted with woven flax leaves (Phormium tenax) whose tough, stringy foliage absorbed a lot of penetration. The palisade was lifted a few centimetres from the ground so muskets could be fired from underneath rather than over the top. Sometimes there were gaps in the palisade, which led to killing traps. There were trenches and rifle pits to protect the occupants and, later, very effective artillery shelters. They were usually built so that they were almost impossible to surround completely, but usually presented at least one exposed face to invite attack from that direction. They were cheap and easily built—the L-Pa at Waitara was constructed by eighty men overnight—and they were completely expendable. Time and again, the British would mount an elaborate, often lengthy, expedition to besiege a pā, which would absorb their bombardment and possibly one or two attacks and then be abandoned by the Māori. Shortly afterwards, a new pā would appear in another inaccessible site. Pā like these were built in the dozens, particularly during the First Taranaki War, where they eventually formed a cordon surrounding New Plymouth, and in the Waikato campaign.

For a long time, the modern pā effectively neutralised the overwhelming disparity in numbers and armaments. At Ohaeawai Pa in 1845, at Rangiriri in 1863 and again at Gate Pa in 1864, British and colonial forces discovered that frontal attacks on a defended pā were extremely costly. At Gate Pā, during the 1864 Tauranga Campaign, Māori withstood a day-long bombardment in their bomb shelters. Belich estimated that Gate Pā absorbed in one day a greater weight of explosives per square metre than did the German trenches in the week-long bombardment leading up to the Battle of the Somme, but this has been challenged by military historians. The palisade destroyed, the British troops rushed the pā whereupon Māori fired on them from hidden trenches, killing 38 and injuring many more in the most costly battle for the Pākehā of the New Zealand Wars. The troops retired and Māori abandoned the pā.

British troops soon realised an easy way to neutralise a pā. Although cheap and easy to build, a gunfighter pā required a significant input of labour and resources. The destruction of the Māori economic base in the area around the pā made it difficult for the hapus to support the fighting men. This was the reasoning behind the bush-scouring expeditions of Chute and McDonnell in the Second Taranaki War.

The biggest problem for the Māori was that their society was ill-adapted to support a sustained campaign. Again, while the Māori warrior was a civilian part-time fighter who could not afford to be away from home for too long, the British force consisted of professional soldiers supported by an economic system capable of sustaining them in the field almost indefinitely. While the British could defeat Māori in battle, the defeats were often not decisive, but they were able to outlast them in war.

The two final New Zealand Wars, those of Te Kooti and Titokowaru, present an interesting contrast. Titokowaru used the pā system to such devastating effect that at one stage the New Zealand government thought they had lost the war (see Titokowaru's War). Te Kooti, on the other hand, was an effective guerrilla leader, but showed little or no skill in fighting from a fixed position. He had ill-built pā that were inadequately supplied, and he held on to them for too long. Te Kooti's War ended due to his defeat at Nga Tapa and Te Porere.