He served, again as deputy adjutant general, in the 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia, for which he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath and made an aide-de-camp to Queen Victoria in 1868. He was Adjutant-General, India from 1869 to 1874. Thesiger returned to England in 1874 as colonel on the staff, commanding the forces at Shorncliffe Army Camp, and was appointed to command a brigade at Aldershot, with the temporary rank of brigadier general, in 1877. He had however requested a posting overseas in order to benefit from the cheaper cost of living. Anglo-Zulu Wars Thesiger was promoted to major general in March 1877, appointed to command British forces in the Cape Colony with the local rank of lieutenant general in February 1878, and in October succeeded his father as 2nd Baron Chelmsford. He brought the Ninth Cape Frontier War to its completion in July 1878, and was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in November 1878. His experiences fighting against the Xhosa created a low opinion of the fighting capabilities of African soldiers, which later led to disastrous consequences during the Anglo-Zulu War. In January 1879, the official Sir Henry Bartle Frere, a personal friend of Chelmsford, engineered the outbreak of the Anglo-Zulu War by issuing the Zulu king Cetshwayo an ultimatum to effectively disband his military. Cetshwayo refused this ultimatum, an act which led to an outbreak of war between the British Empire and the Zulu Kingdom. A British expeditionary force under the command of Chelmsford invaded the Zulu Kingdom, heading in three columns towards the Zulu capital, Ulundi. The force was attacked by a Zulu force at Isandlwana, during which the Zulus overran and destroyed the central column of Chelmsford's separated forces. The engagement was an unexpected victory for the Zulus, which threw British war plans into disarray. Afterwards, the British government, anxious to avoid the Zulus threatening Natal, issued orders for the hasty relief of Chelmsford of his command and for him to be replaced with Sir Garnet Wolseley. However, this order could not be implemented until the arrival of Wolseley, and in the meantime Chelmsford ignored diplomatic overtures from King Cetshwayo and made plans to capture Ulundi, aiming to defeat them in a decisive engagement and salvaging his reputation before Wolseley's arrival. The Battle of Ulundi took place on 4 July 1879, being the last major battle of