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The use of repeating rifles had already given Europeans the upper hand in colonial wars, but the Maxim was a devastating weapon that no contemporary African force could match. In 1892, in his poem ‘Vitaï Lampada’, Henry Newbolt famously wrote, ‘The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead’. By 1898, however, Hilaire Belloc struck a different tone: Whatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun, and they have not.11 The Maxim was portable as well as lethal; Admiral Rawson’s main force on the Ologbo route carried sixteen by hand (Phillips had predicted one would be sufficient to take Benin).
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Barnaby Phillips (Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes (Revised and Updated Edition))