 Several historians have challenged this assertion and pointed out that the victory stands on its own merits, regardless of other concerns.Victor Davis Hanson responded to it directly in "Carnage and Culture" (also published as "Why the West Has Won"), saying, "Modern critics suggest such lavishness in commendation was designed to assuage the disaster at Isandhlwana and to reassure a skeptical Victorian public that the fighting ability of the British soldier remained unquestioned.Maybe, maybe not, but in the long annals of military history, it is difficult to find anything quite like Rorke's Drift, where a beleaguered force, outnumbered forty to one, survived and killed twenty men for every defender lost".