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Military History – South Africa – Europe – England 19th Century
.Article – Online Historic Information | Military
.Page xvii
force was now as strong as Buller had originally recommended. Roberts undertook two
movements to outflank the Boer positions at Magersfontein, first a cavalry thrust to relieve Kimberley
and then a march eastwards towards Bloemfontein. The relief operation succeeded at a terrible cost
to the cavalry in broken-down horses and the march turned into a pursuit of the Boers whom Piet
Cronjé led away from Magersfontein into what became a trap at Paardeberg. Here, on the anniversary
of the British defeat at Majuba Hill, over 4,000 Boers surrendered, giving the British their first
substantial victory of the war. Christiaan De Wet was given command of the Orange Free State forces
and he attempted to resist the advance to Bloemfontein, but in the end had to accept that it was
impossible to defend, and the capital was occupied by the British on 13 March.
At the same time Buller was making progress towards Ladysmith in Natal. In a series of limited
battles on the Tugela Heights, in which close artillery support for the infantry was employed with
outstanding skill, the Boer positions were chipped away. Ladysmith was relieved on the evening of
27 February, another Majuba Day success.
While the British paused in their pursuit of conventional warfare, Roberts to allow supplies to
come up despite the disruptive reorganisation of the transport system and to permit recovery from the
epidemic of enteric fever that plagued his army, and Buller to deal with the ravages of the siege on
the Ladysmith garrison and to await the all-clear from Roberts, the Boers decided what to do next. A
meeting at Kroonstad, at which Piet Joubert spoke only days before he died, decided to adopt a
policy of guerrilla warfare, although that was not the terminology used. In essence, they decided to
give up the concept of the laager, the defensive wagon circle, and the slow-moving, reactive tactics it
implied, in favour of mobile warfare and persistent harassment of the British. Within two weeks De
Wet had applied the new thinking with his ambush of General Broadwood at Sannaspos, where he
had originally planned to wreck the waterworks and keep the typhoid going in Bloemfontein. During
this, the fourth phase of the war, conventional and guerrilla warfare were carried on simultaneously.
Roberts started north from Bloemfontein on 3 May 1900 and Buller began his advance into
northern Natal ten days later. In the west British columns from north and south converged on Mafeking
and raised the siege on 17 May. The massive force at Roberts’s disposal could not be stopped by the
Boers, who were repeatedly outflanked and forced to fall back to allow the British to enter
Johannesburg on 30 May and Pretoria on 5 June. President Kruger and his government, instead of
surrendering, took up residence in a railway carriage and moved eastwards along the Delagoa Bay
line. Buller bypassed the Boers defending Langs Nek with a flanking movement to the west and
pushed northwards to meet Roberts’s force coming east from Pretoria after its victory at Diamond
Hill (or Donkerhoek). In the Orange Free State the Boers were herded back east into the Brandwater
Basin and while De Wet and President Steyn were among those to escape, General Prinsloo
surrendered 4,500 men and a vast number of cattle and sheep to the British. The united force of
Buller’s and
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