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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
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attacked and defeated by an equal or marginally greater number of Boers who exploited their
mobility and marksmanship, the memory of which would fade from British minds before the next war.
The losses appeared massive to people back in Britain, although they numbered eighty-six dead and
120 wounded which is not, by modern standards, impressive. Public opinion was in favour of
revenge, but the British government negotiated a peace granting a substantial measure of
independence to the republic.
See also:
Boer War, First.
Reference:
Castle, Ian, Majuba 1881 (London, Osprey, 1996);
www.battlefields.c0.za/history/1st_war_of_independence
Maps
A major difficulty faced by the British in fighting the Boers was the lack of adequate mapping of the
territory. The Boers were often, quite literally, on home ground and had no need of maps whereas
their enemies were frequently deluded by a false crest of a hill, ignorant of an important ford or drift
or mistaken about distances. This was not an unfamiliar difficulty for soldiers of the Empire, used to
operating by eye and binoculars, but it was nonetheless a problem.
Even in the British colonies, the Cape and Natal, mapping was largely insufficient for military
purposes. The principal aim of what maps there were, cadastral maps, was to record land ownership
and property boundaries rather than topographical features. The huge investment of time and money
needed to do more than this had not been undertaken. The limited amount of military surveying,
producing written descriptions and sketch maps, which was carried out resulted in the publication of
Military Notes on the Dutch Republics of South Africain June 1898, but the most striking
achievement was the work of Major S. C. N. Grant, Royal Engineers, in 1896. Together with that of
Captain W. S. Melville, Leicestershire Regiment, and Captain H. R. Gale, R. E., his work led to the
publication by the Intelligence Department, War Office, of IDWO Number 1223, Military Sketch of
the Biggarsberg and of the Communications in Natal,21 sheets in colour on a scale of one inch to
the mile (1:63,360) in April 1897. The quality of the mapping is good and uses precise contours
instead of the more usual vague shading. Nonetheless, it was, in retrospect, fatally limited as it
covered the area north of Ladysmith as far as Langs Nek on the Transvaal border, and Ladysmith
itself, on sheet 16, is shown in the top left corner with the rest of the sheet blank. Sheet 17 appears to
have been entirely blank. In general, the detail along the roads and railways is good, but the further
away from those one looks, the more vague the information becomes. Moreover, the territory covered
was all taken by the invading Boers in a matter of days in October 1899. Even the field where the
Battle of Elandslaagte (21 October 1899) took place was missing, being too far, at two or three miles
from the railway, to be other than a blank. Other maps were produced, almost
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