The Second Boer War was a conflict fought between 1899 and 1902 between the British Empire and the Boer republics (the South African Republic and Orange Free State), triggered by the discovery of gold in the Transvaal, specifically the Witwatersrand gold fields, and the ensuing political dispute over the voting rights of British expatriates (Uitlanders). In 1877, the British annexed the bankrupt Transvaal, and the British military neutralized the regional threat of the Zulu Kingdom in 1879 in the Anglo-Zulu War. With their borders secure, the Boers subsequently revolted and regained their independence after defeating the British in the First Boer War (1880–1881). The Witwatersrand Gold Rush caused an influx of "foreigners" (Uitlanders), most of them British from the Cape Colony, to the South African Republic (SAR), an independent Boer Republic. As they were permitted to vote only after 14 years' residence, they protested to the British authorities in the Cape. Negotiations failed at the botched Bloemfontein Conference in June 1899. The conflict broke out in October after the British government decided to send 10,000 troops. The war had three phases. In the first, the Boers mounted preemptive strikes into British-held territory in Natal and the Cape Colony, besieging British garrisons at Ladysmith, Mafeking, and Kimberley. The Boers won victories at Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso and Spion Kop. In the second phase, British fortunes changed when their commanding officer, General Redvers Buller, was replaced by Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener, who relieved the besieged cities and invaded the Boer republics at the head of a 180,000-strong expeditionary force. The Boers, aware that they were unable to resist such a force, refrained from fighting pitched battles, thereby allowing the British to occupy both republics and their capitals. Boer politicians fled or went into hiding; the British annexed the two republics in 1900. In Britain, the Conservative ministry attempted to capitalise by calling an early general election, dubbed a "khaki election". In the third phase, Boer fighters launched a guerrilla campaign. They used hit-and-run attacks and ambushes against the British for two years. The guerrilla campaign proved difficult for the British to defeat, due to unfamiliarity with tactics and support among civilians. British high command ordered scorched earth policies as part of a counterinsurgency campaign. Over 100,000 Boer civilians were forcibly relocated into concentration camps, where 26,000 died, by starvation and disease. Native Africans were interned to prevent them from supplying the Boers; 20,000 died. British mounted infantry were deployed to track down guerrillas, and few combatants were killed in action, most dying from disease. Kitchener offered terms to remaining Boer leaders to end the conflict. Eager to ensure Boers were released from the camps, most Boer commanders accepted the terms in the Treaty of Vereeniging, surrendering in May 1902. The former republics were transformed into the British colonies of the Transvaal and Orange River, and in 1910 were merged with the Natal and Cape Colonies to form the Union of South Africa, a self-governing colony within the British Empire. British expeditionary efforts were aided significantly by colonial forces from the Cape Colony, the Natal, Rhodesia, and many volunteers from the British Empire. Native African recruits contributed increasingly to the British effort. International public opinion was sympathetic to the Boers and hostile to the British. Even within the UK, there existed significant opposition to the war. As a result, the Boer cause attracted volunteers from neutral countries, including the German Empire, the United States, Russia and parts of the British Empire, such as Australia and Ireland. Some consider the war the beginning of questioning the British Empire's global dominance, due to the war's surprising duration and unforeseen losses suffered by the British. A trial for British war crimes, including the killings of civilians and prisoners of war, was opened in January 1902. The war had a lasting effect on the region and on British domestic politics.
Name
The conflict is commonly referred to simply as "the Boer War" because the First Boer War (1880–81) was much smaller. Boer (meaning "farmer") is the common name for Afrikaans-speaking white South Africans descended from the Dutch East India Company's settlers at the Cape of Good Hope. Among some South Africans, it is known as the (Second) Anglo–Boer War. In Afrikaans, it is called the 'Tweede Vryheidsoorlog ("Second Freedom War"), 'Tweede Boereoorlog ("Second Boer War"), Anglo–Boereoorlog ("Anglo–Boer War") or Engelse oorlog ("English War"). In South Africa, it is officially called the South African War. According to a 2011 BBC report, "most scholars prefer to call the war of 1899–1902 the South African War, thereby acknowledging that all South Africans, white and black, were affected by the war and that many were participants".
== Origins == The war's origins were complex and stemmed from a century of conflict between the Boers and Britain. Of immediate importance, however, was the question of who would control and benefit most from the lucrative Witwatersrand gold mines discovered in 1884.
=== European settlement === The first European settlement in South Africa was founded at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, and administered as part of the Dutch Cape Colony. As a result of political turmoil in the Netherlands, the British occupied the Cape three times during the Napoleonic Wars, and the occupation became permanent after the Battle of Blaauwberg in 1806. The colony was then home to about 26,000 colonists settled under Dutch rule. Most represented old Dutch families brought to the Cape during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Broadly speaking, the colonists included distinct subgroups, including the Boers. The Boers were itinerant farmers who lived on the colony's frontiers, seeking better pastures for their livestock. Many were dissatisfied with aspects of British administration, in particular with Britain's abolition of slavery in 1834. Boers who used forced labor were unable to collect compensation for their slaves. Between 1836 and 1852, many elected to migrate away from British rule in what became known as the Great Trek. Around 15,000 trekking Boers departed the Cape Colony and followed the eastern coast towards Natal. After Britain annexed Natal in 1843, they journeyed farther north into South Africa's eastern interior. There, they established two independent Boer republics: the South African Republic (1852; also known as the Transvaal Republic) and the Orange Free State (1854).
Scramble for Africa
The southern part of Africa was dominated in the 19th century by a set of struggles to create within it a single unified state. In 1868, Britain annexed Basutoland in the Drakensberg Mountains, following an appeal from Moshoeshoe I, the king of the Sotho people, who sought British protection against the Boers. While the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 sought to draw boundaries between the European powers' African possessions, it also set the stage for further scrambles. Britain attempted to annex first the South African Republic in 1880, and then, in 1899, both the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. In the 1880s, Bechuanaland (modern Botswana) became the object of a dispute between the Germans to the west, the Boers to the east, and Britain's Cape Colony to the south. Although Bechuanaland had no economic value, the "Missionaries Road" passed through it towards territory farther north. After the Germans annexed Damaraland and Namaqualand (modern Namibia) in 1884, Britain annexed Bechuanaland in 1885. By 1877, the Transvaal government under President Thomas François Burgers was completely bankrupt due to the failed Pedi War and mounting foreign debts. When British official Sir Theophilus Shepstone annexed the republic in April of that year, the state treasury contained only 12 shillings and 6 pence. In the First Boer War of 1880–1881 the Boers of the Transvaal Republic proved skilful fighters in resisting Britain's attempt at annexation, causing a series of British defeats. The British government of William Ewart Gladstone was unwilling to become mired in a distant war, requiring substantial troop reinforcement and expense, for what was perceived at the time to be a minimal return. An armistice ended the war, and subsequently a peace treaty was signed with the Transvaal President Paul Kruger.
Witwatersrand Gold Rush
In June 1884, British imperial interests were ignited in the discovery by Jan Gerrit Bantjes of what would prove to be the world's largest deposit of gold ore at an outcrop on a ridge 69 km (43 mi) south of the Boer capital at Pretoria. The ridge was known locally as the "Witwatersrand" (white water ridge, a watershed). A gold rush to the Transvaal brought thousands of British and other prospectors from around the globe and over the border from the Cape Colony, which had been under British control since 1806.
The city of Johannesburg sprang up nearly overnight as a shanty town. Uitlanders (foreigners, white outsiders) poured in and settled around the mines. The influx was so rapid that uitlanders quickly outnumbered the Boers in Johannesburg and along the Rand, although they remained a minority in the Transvaal. The Boers, nervous and resentful of the uitlanders' growing presence, sought to contain their influence through requiring lengthy residential qualifying periods before voting rights could be obtained; by imposing taxes on the gold industry; and introducing controls through licensing, tariffs and administrative requirements. Among the issues giving rise to tension between the Transvaal government on the one hand and the uitlanders and British interests on the other, were:
Established uitlanders, including the mining magnates, wanted political, social, and economic control over their lives. These rights included a stable constitution, a fair franchise law, an independent judiciary and a better educational system. The Boers recognised that the more concessions they made to the uitlanders the greater the likelihood—with approximately 30,000 white male Boer voters and potentially 60,000 white male uitlanders—that their independent control of the Transvaal would be lost, and the territory absorbed into the British Empire. The uitlanders resented the taxes levied by the Transvaal government, particularly when this was not spent on Johannesburg or uitlander interests but diverted to projects elsewhere in the Transvaal. For example, as the gold-bearing ore sloped away from the outcrop underground to the south, more and more blasting was necessary to extract it, and mines consumed vast quantities of explosives. A box of dynamite costing five pounds included five shillings tax. Not only was this tax perceived as exorbitant, but British interests were offended when President Paul Kruger gave monopoly rights for the manufacture of the explosive to a non-British branch of the Nobel company, which infuriated Britain. The so-called "dynamite monopoly" became a casus belli. British imperial interests were alarmed when in 1894–95 Kruger proposed building a railway through Portuguese East Africa to Delagoa Bay, bypassing British-controlled ports in Natal and Cape Town and avoiding British tariffs. The Prime Minister of the Cape Colony was Cecil Rhodes, a man driven by a vision of a British-controlled Africa extending from the Cape to Cairo. Uitlander representatives and British mine owners became increasingly frustrated and angered by their dealings with the Transvaal government. A Reform Committee (Transvaal) was formed to represent the uitlanders.
Jameson Raid
In 1895, a plan to take Johannesburg, and end the control of the Transvaal government, was hatched with the connivance of Cape Prime Minister Rhodes and Johannesburg gold magnate Alfred Beit. A column of 600 armed men was led over the border from Bechuanaland towards Johannesburg by Leander Starr Jameson, the Administrator in Rhodesia of the British South Africa Company, of which Rhodes was the chairman. The column, mainly made up of Rhodesian and Bechuanaland British South Africa Policemen, was equipped with Maxim machine guns and artillery pieces. The plan was to make a three-day dash to Johannesburg and trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate uitlanders, organised by the Johannesburg Reform Committee, before the Boer commandos could mobilise. However, the Transvaal authorities had warning of the raid and tracked it from when it crossed the border. Four days later, the dispirited column was surrounded near Krugersdorp, within sight of Johannesburg. After a skirmish in which the column lost 65 killed and wounded—while the Boers lost one man—Jameson's men surrendered and were arrested. The botched raid had repercussions throughout southern Africa and Europe. In Rhodesia, the departure of so many policemen enabled the Matabele and Mashona peoples' rising against the British South Africa Company. The rebellion, known as the Second Matabele War, was suppressed only at a great cost. A few days after the raid, the German Kaiser sent the "Kruger telegram", congratulating President Kruger and the government of the South African Republic on their success. When the text was disclosed in the British press, it generated a storm of anti-German feeling. In the baggage of the raiding column, to the embarrassment of Britain, the Boers found telegrams from Rhodes and other plotters in Johannesburg. Chamberlain had approved Rhodes' plans to send armed assistance in the case of a Johannesburg uprising, but he quickly moved to condemn the raid. Rhodes was censured at the Cape and London parliamentary inquiries, and forced to resign as Prime Minister and Chairman of the British South Africa Company. The Boer government handed their prisoners over to the British for trial. Jameson was tried in England, where the press and London society, inflamed by anti-Boer and anti-German feeling and in a frenzy of jingoism, treated him as a hero. Although sentenced to 15 months imprisonment, Jameson was rewarded by being named Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (1904–08) and ultimately anointed as one of the founders of the Union of South Africa. For conspiring with Jameson, the uitlander members of the Reform Committee (Transvaal) were tried in the Transvaal courts and found guilty of treason. The four leaders were sentenced to death, but this was commuted to 15 years' imprisonment. In 1896, the other members of the committee were released on payment of £2,000 in fines, all paid by Rhodes. One Reform Committee member, Frederick Gray, committed suicide while in Pretoria jail. His death was a factor in softening the Transvaal government's attitude to the surviving prisoners. Jan C. Smuts wrote, in 1906:
The Jameson Raid was the real declaration of war ... And that is so in spite of the four years of truce that followed ... [the] aggressors consolidated their alliance ... the defenders on the other hand silently and grimly prepared for the inevitable". The raid alienated many Cape Afrikaners from Britain and united the Transvaal Boers behind President Kruger and his government. It drew the Transvaal and Orange Free State together in opposition to British imperialism. In 1897, the two republics concluded a military pact.
Arming the Boers
Kruger re-equipped the Transvaal army, importing 37,000 of the latest 7x57 mm Mauser Model 1895 rifles supplied by Germany, and 40 to 50 million rounds of ammunition. Some commandos used the Martini-Henry Mark III, because thousands of these had been purchased. Unfortunately, the large puff of white smoke after firing gave away the shooter's position. Roughly 7,000 Guedes 1885 rifles had also been purchased a few years earlier, and these were also used during the hostilities. As the war went on, some commandos relied on captured British rifles, such as the Lee-Metford and Enfield. When the ammunition for the Mausers ran out, the Boers relied primarily on the captured Lee-Metfords. Few Boers used bayonets. The Boers also purchased the best European German Krupp artillery. By October 1899, the Transvaal State Artillery had 73 heavy guns, including four 155 mm Creusot fortress guns and 25 of the 37 mm Maxim Nordenfeldt guns. The Boers' Maxim, larger than the British Maxims, was a large calibre, belt-fed, water-cooled "auto cannon" that fired explosive rounds at 450 rounds per minute. It became known as the "Pom Pom". The Transvaal army was transformed: approximately 25,000 men equipped with modern rifles and artillery could mobilise within two weeks. However, Kruger's victory in the Jameson Raid did nothing to resolve the fundamental problem of finding a formula to conciliate the uitlanders, without surrendering the independence of the Transvaal.
British case for war
The failure to gain improved rights for uitlanders (notably the dynamite tax) became a pretext for war and justification for a military build-up in Cape Colony. The case for war was developed and espoused as far away as the Australian colonies. Cape Colony Governor Sir Alfred Milner; Rhodes; Chamberlain; and mining syndicate owners such as Beit, Barney Barnato, and Lionel Phillips, favoured annexation of the Boer republics. Confident that the Boers would be quickly defeated, they planned and organised a short war, citing the uitlanders' grievances as the motivation. In contrast, the influence of the war party within the British government was limited. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury despised jingoism. He was uncertain of the abilities of the British Army. Despite his moral and practical reservations, Salisbury led the UK to war to preserve the Empire's prestige and a feeling of obligation to British South Africans. Salisbury detested the Boer treatment of native Africans, referring to the London Convention of 1884, following Britain's defeat in the first war, as an agreement "really in the interest of slavery". Salisbury was not alone in this. Roger Casement, already on the way to becoming an Irish Nationalist, was nevertheless happy to gather intelligence for the British against the Boers because of their cruelty to Africans.
The British government went against the advice of its generals and declined to send substantial reinforcements to South Africa before war broke out. Secretary of State for War Lansdowne did not believe the Boers were preparing for war and that if Britain were to send large numbers of troops, it would strike too aggressive a posture and possibly derail a negotiated settlement—or even encourage a Boer attack.
=== Negotiations fail === Steyn of the Orange Free State invited Milner and Kruger to attend a conference in Bloemfontein. The conference started on 30 May 1899, but negotiations quickly broke down, as Kruger had no intention of granting meaningful concessions, and Milner had no intention of accepting his normal delaying tactics. On 9 October 1899, after convincing the Orange Free State to join him and mobilising their forces, Kruger issued an ultimatum giving Britain 48 hours to withdraw troops from the border of Transvaal, despite the fact the only regular British troops near the border of either republic were 4 companies deployed to defend Kimberley. Otherwise, the Transvaal, allied with the Orange Free State, would declare war. News of the ultimatum reached London on the day it expired. The editor of the Times purportedly laughed out loud when he read it, saying 'an official document is seldom amusing and useful yet this was both'. The Times denounced the ultimatum as an 'extravagant farce' and The Globe denounced this 'trumpery little state'. Most editorials were similar to the Daily Telegraph's, which declared: 'of course there can only be one answer to this grotesque challenge. Kruger has asked for war and war he must have!' Such views were far from those of the British government and the army. Army reform had been a matter of pressing concern since the 1870s, put off because the public did not want the expense of a larger, more professional army and because a large home army was not politically welcome. The Prime Minister had to tell a surprised Queen Victoria that 'We have no army capable of meeting even a second-class Continental Power'.
First phase: The Boer offensive, October–December 1899
=== British Army deployed === When war with the Boers seemed imminent in September 1899, a Field Force, referred to as the Army Corps was mobilised and sent to Cape Town. It was "about the equivalent of the I Army Corps of the existing mobilization scheme" and was placed under the command of Gen Sir Redvers Buller, general officer commanding-in-chief of Aldershot Command. In South Africa the corps never operated as such and the 1st, 2nd, 3rd divisions were widely dispersed. Speaking to Alistair McAlpine in the 1950s, participating soldier Lord Morley (1878–1962) recounted his deployment from Southampton:
His regiment was paraded on the dock, as Queen Victoria was to inspect them before they left. Up and down the ranks the Queen progressed, stiff as a ramrod until she came opposite the young Lord Morley. Turning to an aide, she rested her hand on his shoulder and dabbed tears from her eyes. 'My fine young men all going to war', the Queen murmured, 'so few of them will ever come back'. Lord Morley told me that he did not find the Queen's words reassuring as he boarded the liner that was to take him and his regiment to South Africa.
=== Boer organization and skills === War was declared on 11 October with a Boer offensive into the British-held Natal and Cape Colony areas. The Boers had about 33,000 soldiers, and outnumbered the British, who could move only 13,000 troops to the front line. The Boers had no problems with mobilisation, since the independent Boers had no regular army units, apart from the Staatsartillerie (Dutch for 'State Artillery'). As with the First Boer War, since most of the Boers were members of civilian militias, none had adopted uniforms or insignia. Only the members of the Staatsartillerie wore light green uniforms.
When danger loomed, all the burgers (citizens) in a district would form a military unit called a commando and elect officers. A full-time official called a Veldkornet maintained muster rolls but had no disciplinary powers. Each man brought his own weapon, usually a hunting rifle, and horse. Those who could not afford a gun were given one by the authorities. The presidents of the Transvaal and Orange Free State simply signed decrees to concentrate within a week, and the commandos could muster between 30,000-40,000 men. Many did not look forward to fighting against fellow Christians and, by and large, fellow Protestants. Many had an overly optimistic sense of what the war would involve, imagining victory could be achieved as fast and easily as in the First Anglo-Boer War. Many, including many generals, had a sense their cause was holy and just, and blessed by God. It rapidly became clear that the Boers presented the British forces with a severe tactical challenge. The Boers presented a mobile and innovative approach to warfare, drawing on their experiences from the First Boer War. The Boers who made up their commandos were farmers who had their working life in the saddle, as farmers and hunters. They depended on the pot, horse and rifle; they were skilled stalkers and marksmen. As hunters, they had learned to fire from cover; from a prone position and to make the first shot count, knowing that if they missed, the game would be long gone or could charge and potentially kill them. At community gatherings, target shooting was a major sport; they practised shooting at targets, such as hens' eggs perched on posts 100 metres (110 yd) away. They made expert mounted infantry, using cover, from which they could pour in a destructive fire using modern, smokeless, Mauser rifles. In preparation for hostilities, the Boers had acquired around 100 of the latest Krupp field guns, all horse-drawn and dispersed among the Kommando groups and several Le Creusot "Long Tom" siege guns. The Boers' skill in adapting themselves to become first-rate artillerymen shows that they were a versatile adversary. The Transvaal had an intelligence service that stretched across South Africa, and of whose extent and efficiency the British were as yet unaware.
Boers besiege Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley
The Boers struck first on 12 October at the Battle of Kraaipan, an attack that heralded the invasion of the Cape Colony and Natal between October 1899 and January 1900. With speed and surprise, the Boers drove quickly towards the British garrison at Ladysmith and the smaller ones at Mafeking and Kimberley. The quick Boer mobilisation resulted in military successes against scattered British forces. Sir George Stuart White, commanding the British division at Ladysmith, unwisely allowed Major-General Penn Symons to throw a brigade forward to the coal-mining town of Dundee (also reported as Glencoe), surrounded by hills. This became the war's first major clash, the Battle of Talana Hill. Boer guns began shelling the British camp from the summit of Talana Hill at dawn on 20 October. Penn Symons immediately counter-attacked: His infantry drove the Boers from the hill, for the loss of 446 British casualties, including Penn Symons. Another Boer force occupied Elandslaagte, which lay between Ladysmith and Dundee. The British under Major General John French and Colonel Ian Hamilton attacked to clear the line of communications to Dundee. The resulting Battle of Elandslaagte was a clear-cut British tactical victory, but White feared more Boers were about to attack his main position and ordered a chaotic retreat from Elandslaagte, throwing away the advantage gained. The detachment from Dundee was compelled to make an exhausting cross-country retreat to rejoin White's main force. As Boers surrounded Ladysmith and opened fire with siege guns, White ordered a major sortie against them. The result was a disaster, with 140 men killed and over 1,000 captured. The siege of Ladysmith lasted months. Meanwhile, to the north-west at Mafeking, on the border with Transvaal, Colonel Robert Baden-Powell had raised two regiments of local forces amounting to about 1,200 men in order to attack and create diversions if things went wrong further south. As a railway junction, Mafeking provided good supply facilities and was the obvious place for Baden-Powell to fortify in readiness for such attacks. However, instead of being the aggressor, Baden-Powell was forced to defend Mafeking when 6,000 Boer, commanded by Piet Cronjé, attempted a determined assault. This quickly subsided into a desultory affair, with the Boers prepared to starve the stronghold into submission. So, on 13 October, the 217-day siege of Mafeking began. Lastly, over 360 kilometres (220 mi) to the south of Mafeking lay the diamond mining city of Kimberley, which was also subjected to a siege. Although not militarily significant, it represented an enclave of British imperialism on the borders of the Orange Free State and was hence an important Boer objective. In early November, about 7,500 Boer began their siege, again content to starve the town into submission. Despite Boer shelling, the 40,000 inhabitants, of which only 5,000 were armed, were under little threat, because the town was well-stocked with provisions. The garrison was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Kekewich, although Rhodes was also a prominent figure in the town's defences. Siege life took its toll on the defending soldiers and civilians, as food began to grow scarce after a few weeks. In Mafeking, Sol Plaatje wrote, "I saw horseflesh for the first time being treated as a human foodstuff." The cities also dealt with constant artillery bombardment, making the streets dangerous. Near the end of the siege of Kimberley, it was expected that the Boers would intensify their bombardment, so Rhodes displayed a notice encouraging people to go down into shafts of the Kimberley Mine for protection. The townspeople panicked, and people surged into the mineshafts constantly for a 12-hour period. Although the bombardment never came, this did nothing to diminish the anxious civilians' distress. The most well-heeled of the townspeople, including Rhodes, sheltered in the Sanatorium, site of the present-day McGregor Museum; the poorer residents, notably the black population, did not have any shelter from shelling. In retrospect, the Boers' decision to commit themselves to sieges (Sitzkrieg) was a mistake and an illustration of their lack of strategic vision. Of the seven sieges in the First Boer War, the Boers had prevailed in none. More importantly, it handed the initiative back to the British and allowed them to recover. Generally throughout the campaign, the Boers were too defensive and passive, wasting the opportunities they had for victory. Yet that passivity testified to the fact they had no desire to conquer British territory, but only to preserve their ability to rule in their own territory.
First British relief attempts
On 31 October 1899, General Sir Redvers Henry Buller, a much-respected commander, arrived in South Africa with the Army Corps, made up of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd divisions. Buller originally intended an offensive straight up the railway leading from Cape Town through Bloemfontein to Pretoria. Finding on arrival that British troops were under siege, he split his army corps into detachments to relieve the besieged garrisons. One division, led by Lieutenant General Lord Methuen, was to follow the Western Railway to the north and relieve Kimberley and Mafeking. A smaller force of 3,000, led by Major General William Gatacre, was to push north towards the railway junction at Stormberg and secure the Cape Midlands District from Boer raids and rebellions by Boer inhabitants. Buller led the major part of the army corps to relieve Ladysmith to the east. The initial results of this offensive were mixed, with Methuen winning bloody skirmishes in the Battle of Belmont on 23 November, the Battle of Graspan on 25 November, and at a larger engagement, the Battle of Modder River, on 28 November resulting in British losses of 71 dead and over 400 wounded. British commanders had been trained on the lessons of the Crimean War and were adept at battalion and regimental set pieces, with columns manoeuvring in jungles, deserts and mountainous regions. What British generals failed to comprehend was the impact of destructive fire from trench positions and the mobility of cavalry raids. The British troops had antiquated tactics—and in some cases antiquated weapons—against the mobile Boer forces with the destructive fire of their modern Mausers, the latest Krupp field guns and their novel tactics. On 7 December, a raid at Enslin Station further highlighted British weaknesses, notably their supply line, which was vulnerable to guerrilla attacks. The middle of December was disastrous for the British. In a period known as Black Week (10–15 December 1899), the British suffered defeats on three fronts. On 10 December, General Gatacre tried to recapture Stormberg railway junction about 80 kilometres (50 mi) south of the Orange River. Gatacre's attack was marked by administrative and tactical blunders and the Battle of Stormberg ended in a British defeat, with 135 killed and wounded and two guns and over 600 troops captured. At the Battle of Magersfontein on 11 December, Methuen's 14,000 British troops attempted to capture a Boer position in a dawn attack to relieve Kimberley. This too turned into a disaster when the Highland Brigade became pinned down by accurate Boer fire. After suffering from intense heat and thirst for nine hours, they eventually broke in ill-disciplined retreat. The Boer commanders, Koos de la Rey and Cronjé, had ordered trenches to be dug in an unconventional place to fool the British and give their riflemen a greater firing range. The plan worked, and this tactic helped to write the doctrine of the supremacy of the defensive position, using modern small arms and trench fortifications. The British lost 120 killed and 690 wounded and were prevented from relieving Kimberley and Mafeking. A British soldier said of the defeat:
Such was the day for our regimentDread the revenge we will take.Dearly we paid for the blunder –A drawing-room General's mistake.Why weren't we told of the trenches?Why weren't we told of the wire? Why were we marched up in column,May Tommy Atkins enquire ... The nadir of Black Week was the Second Battle of Colenso on 15 December, where 21,000 British troops, commanded by Buller, attempted to cross the Tugela River to relieve Ladysmith, where 8,000 Transvaal Boers under the command of Louis Botha were waiting. Through a combination of artillery and accurate rifle fire and better use of the ground, the Boers repelled British attempts to cross the river. After his first attacks failed, Buller broke off the battle and ordered a retreat, abandoning many wounded men, several isolated units and ten field guns to be captured by Botha's men. Buller's forces lost 145 men killed and 1,200 missing or wounded and the Boers suffered only 40 casualties, including 8 killed.
Second phase: British offensive, January-September 1900
The British government took these defeats badly and with the sieges continuing was compelled to send two more divisions plus large numbers of colonial volunteers. By January 1900 this would become the largest force Britain had ever sent overseas, amounting to 180,000 men with further reinforcements being sought. While watching for these reinforcements, Buller made another bid to relieve Ladysmith by crossing the Tugela west of Colenso. Buller's subordinate, Major General Charles Warren, successfully crossed the river, but was faced with a fresh defensive position centred on a prominent hill known as Spion Kop. In the resulting Battle of Spion Kop, British troops captured the summit by surprise during the early hours of 24 January 1900, but as the fog lifted, they realised too late that they were overlooked by Boer gun emplacements on the surrounding hills. The rest of the day resulted in a disaster caused by poor communication between Buller and his commanders. Between them they issued contradictory orders, on the one hand ordering men off the hill, while other officers ordered fresh reinforcements to defend it. The result was 350 men killed and nearly 1,000 wounded and a retreat across the Tugela River into British territory. There were nearly 300 Boer casualties. Buller attacked Louis Botha again on 5 February at Vaal Krantz and was again defeated. Buller withdrew early when it appeared that the British would be isolated in an exposed bridgehead across the Tugela, for which he was nicknamed "Sir Reverse" by some of his officers.
Buller replaced
By taking command in person, Buller had allowed the overall direction of the war to drift. Because of concerns about his performance and negative reports from the field, he was replaced as Commander in Chief by Lord Roberts. Roberts assembled a new team for headquarters staff from far and wide: Lord Kitchener (Chief of Staff) from the Sudan; Frederick Russell Burnham (Chief of Scouts), the American scout, from the Klondike; George Henderson from the Staff College; Neville Bowles Chamberlain from Afghanistan; and William Nicholson (Military Secretary) from Calcutta. Like Buller, Roberts first intended to attack directly along the Cape Town–Pretoria railway but, again like Buller, was forced to relieve the beleaguered garrisons. Leaving Buller in command in Natal, Roberts massed his main force near the Orange River and along the Western Railway behind Methuen's force at the Modder River and prepared to make a wide outflanking move to relieve Kimberley. Except in Natal, the war had stagnated. Other than a single attempt to storm Ladysmith, the Boers made no attempt to capture the besieged towns. In the Cape Midlands, the Boers did not exploit the British defeat at Stormberg and were prevented from capturing the railway junction at Colesberg. In the dry summer, the grazing on the veld became parched, weakening the Boers' horses and draught oxen, and many Boer families joined their menfolk in the siege lines and laagers (encampments), fatally encumbering Cronjé's army.
=== Roberts relieves the sieges === Roberts launched his main attack on 10 February 1900 and although hampered by a long supply route, managed to outflank the Boers defending Magersfontein. On 14 February, a cavalry division under French launched a major attack to relieve Kimberley. Although encountering severe fire, a massed cavalry charge split the Boer defences on 15 February, opening the way for French to enter Kimberley that evening, ending its 124 days' siege. Meanwhile, Roberts pursued Piet Cronjé's 7,000-strong force, which had abandoned Magersfontein to head for Bloemfontein. French's cavalry was ordered to assist in the pursuit by embarking on an epic 50 km (31 mi) drive towards Paardeberg where Cronjé was attempting to cross the Modder River. At the Battle of Paardeberg from 18 to 27 February, Roberts then surrounded Cronjé's retreating Boer army. On 17 February, a pincer movement involving French's cavalry and the main British force attempted to take the entrenched position, but the frontal attacks were uncoordinated and so repulsed by the Boers. Finally, Roberts resorted to bombarding Cronjé into submission. It took ten days, and when the British troops used the polluted Modder River as water supply, typhoid killed many troops. General Cronjé was finally forced to surrender at the Battle of Paardeberg with 4,000 men.
In Natal, the Battle of the Tugela Heights, which started on 14 February was Buller's fourth attempt to relieve Ladysmith. The losses Buller's troops had sustained convinced Buller to adopt Boer tactics "in the firing line—to advance in small rushes, covered by rifle fire from behind; to use the tactical support of artillery; and above all, to use the ground, making rock and earth work for them as it did for the enemy." Despite reinforcements his progress was painfully slow against stiff opposition. However, on 26 February, after much deliberation, Buller used all his forces in one all-out attack for the first time and succeeded in forcing a crossing of the Tugela to defeat Botha's outnumbered forces north of Colenso. After a siege lasting 118 days, the Relief of Ladysmith was effected, the day after Cronjé surrendered, but at a total cost of 7,000 British casualties. Buller's troops marched into Ladysmith on 28 February. After a succession of defeats, the Boers realised that against such overwhelming numbers of troops, they had little chance and became demoralised. Roberts then advanced into the Orange Free State from the west, putting the Boers to flight at the Battle of Poplar Grove and capturing Bloemfontein, the capital, unopposed on 13 March with the Boer defenders escaping and scattering. Meanwhile, he detached a small force to relieve Baden-Powell. The Relief of Mafeking on 18 May 1900 provoked riotous celebrations in Britain, the origin of the Edwardian slang word "mafficking". On 28 May, the Orange Free State was annexed and renamed the Orange River Colony.
Capture of Pretoria
After being forced to delay for several weeks at Bloemfontein by a shortage of supplies, an outbreak of typhoid at Paardeberg, and poor medical care, Roberts finally resumed his advance. He was forced to halt again at Kroonstad for 10 days, due once again to the collapse of his medical and supply systems, but captured Johannesburg on 31 May and the capital of the Transvaal, Pretoria, on 5 June. Before the war, the Boers had constructed forts south of Pretoria, but the artillery had been removed from the forts for use in the field, and in the event they abandoned Pretoria without a fight. Having won the principal cities, Roberts declared the war over on 3 September 1900; and the South African Republic was formally annexed.
British observers believed the war to be all but over after the capture of the two capitals. However, the Boers had earlier met at the temporary new capital of the Orange Free State, Kroonstad, and planned a guerrilla campaign to hit the British supply and communication lines. The first engagement of this new form of warfare was at Sanna's Post on 31 March where 1,500 Boers under the command of Christiaan de Wet attacked Bloemfontein's waterworks about 37 kilometres (23 mi) east of the city, and ambushed a heavily escorted convoy, which caused 155 British casualties and the capture of seven guns, 117 wagons, and 428 British troops. After the fall of Pretoria, one of the last formal battles was at Diamond Hill on 11–12 June, where Roberts attempted to drive the remnants of the Boer field army under Botha beyond striking distance of Pretoria. Although Roberts drove the Boers from the hill, Botha did not regard it as a defeat, for he inflicted 162 casualties on the British while suffering only around 50 casualties.
=== Boers retreat === The set-piece period of the war now largely gave way to a guerrilla war, but one final operation remained. President Kruger and what remained of the Transvaal government had retreated to eastern Transvaal. Roberts, joined by troops from Natal under Buller, advanced against them, and broke their last defensive position at Bergendal on 26 August. As Roberts and Buller followed up along the railway line to Komatipoort, Kruger sought asylum in Portuguese East Africa (modern Mozambique). Some dispirited Boers did likewise, and the British gathered up much war material. However, the core of the Boer fighters under Botha easily broke back through the Drakensberg Mountains into the Transvaal highveld after riding north through the bushveld. As Roberts's army occupied Pretoria, the Boer fighters in the Orange Free State retreated into the Brandwater Basin, a fertile area in the south-east of the Republic. This offered only temporary sanctuary, as the mountain passes leading to it could be occupied by the British, trapping the Boers. A force under General Archibald Hunter set out from Bloemfontein to achieve this in July 1900. The hard core of the Free State Boers under De Wet, accompanied by President Steyn, left the basin early. Those remaining fell into confusion and most failed to break out before Hunter trapped them. 4,500 Boers surrendered and much equipment was captured, but as with Roberts's drive against Kruger, these losses were of relatively little consequence, as the hard core of the Boer armies and their most determined and active leaders remained at large. From the Basin, Christiaan de Wet headed west. Although hounded by British columns, he succeeded in crossing the Vaal into western Transvaal, to allow Steyn to travel to meet their leaders. There was much sympathy for the Boers in Europe. In October, President Kruger and members of the Transvaal government left Portuguese East Africa on the Dutch warship De Gelderland, sent by the Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Paul Kruger's wife, however, was too ill to travel and remained in South Africa where she died on 20 July 1901 without seeing her husband again. President Kruger first went to Marseille and then to the Netherlands, where he stayed before moving to Clarens, Switzerland, where he died in exile in 1904.
