THE TAKING OF A KING

Drums and horns sounded furiously, soon King Prempeh, his mother and an entourage appeared.

The King was carried in a hammock, where he sat propped up by silk cushions and shaded by a blue velvet umbrella.

Led by a detachment of British troops, the Asante were ushered into a large square of more British troops, who were lined up two abreast. The British soldiers, with white leather belts and shoulder straps contrasting with red coats and with bayonets glistening in the sun, were a striking complement to the multi-coloured silk togas of the Asante court.

Three scarlet-clad hunchbacked dwarfs danced in front of the King as he was carried into the square.

Across the square from the umbrella-shaded royal party sat Governor Maxwell, flanked on one side by Colonel Scott and on the other by Colonel Kempster. They sat on folding camp chairs that were placed on top of a dais made of large biscuit boxes.

Wearing a white toga, the young King sat silently holding a kola nut in his mouth. In Asante court tradition the nut symbolized the king’s inability to speak an untruth.

Without so much as an ounce of diplomatic curtesy, Governor Maxwell began by accusing the Asante of not maintaining the roads from the coast and not abolishing human sacrifice. The Governor went on to tell the king that he must submit to British rule as well as pay the remaining war indemnity owed by the Asante.

As these dramatic events were unfolding, soldiers from the Old West Yorks were passing out in the heat, one after the other. In all, thirty-six of them collapsed, as well as one soldier from the special-service corps. They lay there in the dust until the ceremony was over.

For some time Prempeh sat motionless, no Asante king had ever made a personal submission to another authority.

Eventually Prempeh deliberately removed his golden sandals and a golden circlet from his head. Joined by the queen mother, Prempeh walked toward the biscuit box dais. Mother and son knelt and placed their arms around the leather boots of the governor and the two colonels.

The Asante onlookers watched open-mouthed, never did they ever imagine that they would ever witness this unprecedented humiliation of their monarch.

Prempeh regained his seat but he now insisted he was unable to pay the war indemnity in full, he therefore offered to pay the sum in instalments.

Maxwell refused this offer and announced that if the king was unable to pay in full, he would take the king, the queen mother and others of high rank as hostages until the remainder of the indemnity was paid.

Prempeh however insisted: “It is usual for a man, before he takes his meals, to take something to sharpen his appetite. Then, if the Governor takes an instalment, that will sharpen his; he will look the keener after the remainder.”

Maxwell was not amused by Prempeh’s wit. He read the names of the hostages he would take from a list he had already prepared.

The Asante onlookers watched stunned as their King was forced to remove all emblems of his sovereignty.

The British soldiers smashed down the doors of the royal palace and seized more hostages. The palace was looted and the nearby royal mausoleum was desecrated and destroyed.

Eventually, the British soldiers and their hostages set off for Cape Coast, most of the royal hostages were carried in hammocks but their humiliation could simply not go unnoticed due to the presence of their armed captors.

This expedition marched out of Kumasi in January 1896 to begin the long fourteen day trek to Cape Coast.

As soon as the hostages reached the coast, small boats took them out to the HMS Raccoon, waiting offshore. Prempeh and his entourage were then taken to Elmina where they were kept until December 1896. They were then moved to Freetown in the more distant colony of Sierra Leone, arriving there on 1st January 1897.

In August 1900, the British moved the royal hostages, their spouses and children – fifty-six in all – to the totally inaccessible Seychelles Islands, off the coast of East Africa. The Asante prisoners arrived at the Seychelles in September 1900.

Prempeh was baptized along with his mother on May 29th 1904. He was baptized as Edward.

After twenty four years in exile in the Seychelles, Prempeh was allowed to return to the Gold Coast.

Prempeh landed on the shores of Takoradi on Tuesday 11th November 1924.

From Takoradi, the King travelled by train to Kumasi the very next day.

At this time a smallpox epidemic was raging in Ashanti-land, so the government ordered that there should be no grand durbar for his return. Despite the warning, Ashantis from all parts of the state came in their numbers to meet their king. To avoid a great multitude of people meeting him at the railway station, the train stopped about a kilometre from the city. Prempeh was then driven by car to the city.

Even then he was met by a huge jubilant crowd as he stepped out of the car. They celebrated his return despite the fact he was now dressed in fine European clothes and an immaculate black-felt homburg which he elegantly doffed on seeing the throngs of people waiting to see him.

Asantehene [King] Prempeh the 1st breathed his last on 12th May 1931.