SOUTH AFRICAN WAR, 1899-1902. The South Afri can War may be divided into three distinct periods. The first comprises the Boer invasion, terminating with the relief of Lady smith on Feb. 28. The second ended in Oct. 190o with the flight of President Kruger. The third consisted of guerrilla warfare on the part of the Boers, met by the blockhouses and punitive col umns of the British, which operations were in force until May 31, 1902, when peace was ratified at Pretoria.
Operations in Natal.—The war opened with the investment of Mafeking by a Transvaal force under P. A. Cronje and the envelopment of Kimberley by Free State commandos under Gen. Wessels. But these were minor operations. The main Boer effort was made in Natal, where their forces were com manded by P. J. Joubert, while Lieut.-Gen. Sir George White was the British commander-in-chief. The northern part of Natal presented two faces of a triangle to the two enemies, the short base being formed by the Tugela river. Close to the head of the triangle at Dundee and Glencoe was posted a small British force under Maj.-Gen. Sir W. Penn Symons. Against this force there advanced a Boer force under Lukas Meyer from the east, and, more slowly, the foremost portion of the main Boer army from the north, while at the same time other Transvaalers de scended upon the railway between Glencoe and Ladysmith, and the Free Staters from the passes of the Drakensberg advanced towards Ladysmith, the British centre of operations at which the reinforcements sent from India gathered. On Oct. 20 the Dun dee brigade vigorously and successfully attacked Talana hill, and drove back Lukas Meyer, but Symons was mortally wounded, and 226 officers and men were killed and wounded. Half the mounted men lost their way in attempting to pass the enemy's flank and were taken, and the brigade, threatened to its left rear by Joubert's advance and by the force that had seized the rail way, only escaped by retreating upon Ladysmith, where it arrived in an exhausted state on Oct. 26. Meanwhile Sir George White had discovered the Boer force on the railway, and, though anxious on account of the advance of the Free Staters, on the 21st, stimu lated by the news of Talana, he sent out a force of all arms under Gen. French to drive the Boers from Elandslaagte and so to clear Symons's line of retreat. This was accomplished by French and his subordinate, Col. Ian Hamilton, in the action of Elands laagte on Oct. 21 (British losses, 258). But on the 22nd the Free Staters' advance caused the victorious force to be recalled to Lady smith, and the third action north of that town, Rietfontein was only a demonstration to cover the retirement of the Dundee force. By Oct. 29, all the British forces at the front and their re inforcements had fallen in on Ladysmith, which the Transvaalers on the north and east and the Free Staters on the west side began to invest. Before the junction of the two allied wings was com plete Sir George White attempted by a general attack to break up their line. The result of this decision was the battle of Lom
bard's Kop, outside Ladysmith, in which the whole of the avail able British force was engaged. The engagement was disastrous to the British, who had undertaken far too comprehensive an attack, and the Natal Field Force was obliged to fall back upon Ladysmith with the loss of 1,5oo men, including a large number of prisoners belonging to the left column, who were cut off at Nicholson's Nek and forced to surrender by a mixed force of Transvaalers and Free Staters under Christian de Wet. Two days later Ladysmith was isolated, but not before French had escaped south by train, and the naval authorities had been induced to send into the town a naval brigade with large guns, able to answer Joubert's artillery.
Buller's Arrival.—Gen. Sir Redvers Buller, who had been appointed to the supreme command in South Africa as soon as it was perceived that war was imminent—his force being one army corps in three divisions, the divisional generals being Lord Methuen, Sir W. Gatacre and Sir C. F. Clery—arrived in Cape Town, ahead of his troops, on the day following Lombard's Kop. The situation which presented itself was delicate in the extreme. In Natal practically the whole of the available defence force was swallowed up by the steady success of the invasion ; on the west ern frontier two British towns were isolated and besieged ; and Boer commandos were on the point of invading Cape Colony, where the Dutch population seemed on the verge of rebellion. The army corps was about to arrive, practically as a whole unit, in South Africa; but it was evident that the exigencies of the situation, and the widely divided areas of invasion, would at least defer the execution of the plan which had been formed for an invasion of the Orange Free State from Cape Colony. The first duty was to effect the relief of the British forces which had been rendered immobile, and another duty imposed by political circum stances was to relieve Kimberley (where Cecil Rhodes was), while the prospect of rebellion forbade the complete denudation of the central part of the colony. Thus Buller had no choice but to disintegrate the army corps. Clery and some brigades werc sent to Natal; Gatacre with less than a brigade, instead of a di vision, was despatched to Queenstown, Cape Colony; while Lord Methuen, with a division, was sent off to relieve Kimberley. As November wore on, the situation did not improve. Cape Colony was invaded; while in Natal a flying column of Boers, 'pushing down from the Tugela, for a short time isolated the newly-arrived force under Gen. Hildyard, which opposed Joubert's advance on Pietermaritzburg at Estcourt. The situation in Natal seemed so serious that on Nov. 22 Buller left Cape Town and sailed for Durban.