Dead Zulus piled up against sandbanks and fortifications, British officers with rifles and bayonets standing above them, perpetrating the myth that Rorke's Drift was an important victory, when in fact the British army had suffered one of its most humiliating defeats earlier the same day, January 22nd 1879, at Isandhlwana, where they were routed by the zulu army. Rorke's Drift was successfully defended, but it was a tiny and insignificant fort.