Second Boer War
2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Pre 1900 Military
| Second Anglo-Boer War | |||||||||
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| Part of the Boer Wars | |||||||||
 Boer guerrillas during the Second Boer War |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 British Empire |
 Orange Free State
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| Commanders | |||||||||
Lord Milner Sir Redvers Buller Lord Kitchener Lord Roberts |
 Paul Kruger Louis Botha Koos de la Rey Martinus Steyn Christiaan de Wet |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 6,000 - 7,000 (A further ~14,000 from disease) | 6,000 - 8,000 (Unknown number from disease) | ||||||||
| Civilians killed [mainly Boers]: 24,000+ | |||||||||
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The Second Boer War (Dutch: Tweede Boerenoorlog, Afrikaans: Tweede Boereoorlog), commonly referred to as The Boer War and also known as the South African War (outside of South Africa), the Anglo-Boer War (among most South Africans) and in Afrikaans as the Boereoorlog or Tweede Vryheidsoorlog ("Second War of Liberation"), was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902, between the British Empire and the two independent Boer republics of the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic).
The origins of the war were complex, resulting from over two centuries of conflict between the Boers and the British. The British had, in 1806, during the Napoleonic Wars, taken permanent possession of the Cape Colony and over subsequent decades successive waves of Boers had migrated away from the rule of the British Empire in the Cape Colony, first along the eastern coast towards Natal and then, after Natal was annexed in 1843, northwards towards the interior where two independent Boer republics (the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic - also called the Transvaal) were established. The British recognised the two Boer Republics in 1852 and 1854 but the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 lead to the First Boer War, 1880-1. After British defeats, most heavily at the Battle of Majuba, Transvaal independence was restored subject to certain conditions but relations were uneasy.
When, in 1886, massive deposits of gold were discovered in the Transvaal, a huge inflow of uitlanders (foreigners), mainly from Britain, came to the region in search of employment and fortune. Gold made the Transvaal the richest and potentially the most powerful nation in southern Africa but it also resulted in the number of uitlanders in the Transvaal eventually exceeding the number of Boers and precipitated confrontations over the old order and the new. Disputes over uitlander political and economic rights resulted in the failed Jameson Raid of 1895. This raid led by (and named after) Dr Leander Starr Jameson, the Administrator in Rhodesia of the Chartered Company, was intended to encourage an uprising of the uitlanders in Johannesburg. However Johannesburg failed to rise and Transvaal government forces surrounded the column and captured Jameson's men before they could reach Johannesburg.
As tensions escalated from local to national level, there were political manouverings and lengthy negotiations to reach a compromise ostensibly over the issue of 'uitlander rights' but ultimately over control of the gold mining industry and the British desire to incorporate the Transvaal and the Orange Free State in a federation under British control. Given the number of British uitlanders already resident in the Transvaal and the ongoing inflow, the Boers recognised that the franchise policy demanded by the British would inevitably result in the loss of independence of the Transvaal. The negotiations failed and in September 1899, Joseph Chamberlain (the British Colonial Secretary) sent an ultimatum to the Boers, demanding full equality for those uitlanders resident in the Transvaal. President Kruger, seeing no other option than war, issued his own ultimatum giving the British 48 hours to withdraw all their troops from the border of the Transvaal, failing which the Transvaal, allied with the Orange Free State, would declare war against the British. The rejection of the ultimatum followed and war was declared.
The war had three distinct phases. First, the Boers mounted pre-emptive strikes into British-held territory in Natal and the Cape Colony, besieging the British garrisons of Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley. The Boers then won a series of tactical victories at Colenso and Spion Kop against a failed British counter-offensive to relieve the three sieges. Second, after the introduction of greatly increased British troop numbers under the command of Lord Roberts, another and this time successful British offensive was launched in 1900 to relieve the sieges. After Natal and the Cape Colony was secure, the British were able to invade the Transvaal and the republic's capital, Pretoria, was captured in June 1900.
Finally, beginning in March 1900, the Boers engaged a protracted hard-fought guerrilla warfare against the British forces. This lasted a further eighteen months during which the Boers raided targets such as British troop columns, telegraph sites, railways and storage depots. In an effort to cut off supplies to the raiders, the British, now under the control of Lord Kitchener, responded with a scorched earth policy of destroying Boer farms and by moving civilians into concentration camps.
The campaign had been expected by the British government to be over within months, and the protracted war became increasingly unpopular especially after revelations about the conditions in the concentration camps (where thousands died of disease and malnutrition). The demand for peace led to a settlement of hostilities, and in 1902 the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed. The two Republics were absorbed into the British Empire, although the British were forced to make a number of concessions and reparations to the Boers. The granting of limited autonomy for the area ultimately lead to the establishment of the Union of South Africa. The war had a lasting effect on the region and on British domestic politics. The war, known as the last British imperial war, was the longest (almost three years), the most expensive (over £200 million), and the most disastrous of all wars for Britain between 1815 and 1914.
Background
The southern part of the African continent was dominated in the 19th century by a set of epic struggles to create within it a single unified state. While the Berlin Conference of 1884-5 sought to draw boundaries between the European powers' African possessions, it set the stage for further scrambles. The British attempted to annex first the Transvaal in 1880, and then in 1899 both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In 1868, the British annexed Basutoland in the Drakensberg Mountains following an appeal from Moshesh, the leader of a mixed group of African refugees from the Zulu wars, who sought British protection against the Boers. In the 1880s, Bechuanaland (modern Botswana, located north of the Orange River) became the object of dispute between the Germans to the west, the Boers to the east, and 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, the British annexed Bechuanaland in 1885.
The Boers of the Transvaal Republic had in the 1880-1881 war (" First Boer War") proved skillful fighters in resisting the British attempt at annexation, resulting in a series of British defeats. The British government of William Gladstone had been unwilling to become bemired in a distant war, which required substantial troop reinforcement and expense, for what was at the time was perceived to be minimal return. An armistice followed, ending the war, and subsequently a peace treaty followed with the Transvaal President Paul Kruger.
Gold and the Uitlanders
However when, in 1886, a major gold field find was made at an outcrop on a large ridge some thirty miles south of the Boer capital at Pretoria, it reignited British imperial interests. The ridge, known locally as the "Witwatersrand" (literally "white water ridge"—a watershed) contained the world's largest deposit of gold-bearing ore. Although it was not as rich as gold finds in Canada and Australia, its consistency made it especially well-suited to industrial mining methods. With the 1886 discovery of gold in Transvaal, thousands of British and other prospectors and settlers streamed over the border from the Cape Colony (annexed by Britain earlier) and from across the globe.
The city of Johannesburg sprang up as a shanty town nearly overnight as the uitlanders (foreigners) poured in and settled around the mines. The influx was such that the uitlanders quickly outnumbered the Boers in Johannesburg and along the Rand, although they remained a minority in the Transvaal as a whole. The Boers, nervous and resentful of the stream of arrivals and the uitlanders' growing presence, sought to contain their influence through requiring lengthy residential qualifying periods before voting rights were obtained, imposing taxes on the gold industry, and introducing controls through licensing, tariffs and administrative requirements. Amongst the issues giving rise to tension between the Transvaal government on the one hand, and the Uitlanders and British interests on the other, were:
(a) the established uitlanders including the mining magnates wanted political, social and economic control over their lives and hence rights including a stable constitution, a fair franchise law, an independent judiciary, and a better educational system. The Boers for their part recognized 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 Uitlander, that the independence of the Transvaal would be lost and absorbed into the British Empire;
(b) the uitlanders resented the taxes levied by the Transvaal government, particularly where the monies raised were not expended on Johannesburg or uitlander interests but diverted to projects elsewhere in the Transvaal. By way of example, as the gold-bearing ore sloped away from the outcrop underground to the south, more and more blasting was necessary for extraction 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 operation of the Nobel company, which infuriated the British. The so-called "dynamite monopoly" became a major pretext for war.
(c) British imperial interests were alarmed when in 1894–95 Kruger proposed building a railway through Portuguese East Africa to Delagoa Bay, thereby bypassing British controlled ports in Natal and Cape Town and avoiding British tariffs. At the time the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony was Cecil Rhodes, a man driven by a vision of a British controlled Africa extending from Cape to Cairo.
Certain self appointed Uitlanders representatives, and certain British mine owners, became increasingly angered and frustrated by their dealings with the government of the Transvaal Republic. A Reform Committee (Transvaal) was formed to represent the Uitlanders.
Jameson Raid
In 1895, a plan was hatched with the connivance of the Cape Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes, a Johannesburg gold magnate Alfred Beit and Sir Alfred Milner (British High Commissioner for South Africa and Leutentant Governor of the Cape) to liberate Johannesburg from the control of the Transvaal government. A column of 600 armed men (mainly made up of his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen) was led by Dr Leander Starr Jameson (the Administrator in Rhodesia of the Chartered Company of which Cecil Rhodes was the Chairman) over the border from Rhodesia towards Johannesburg. The column was equipped with 6 Maxim machine guns, two 7 pounder mountain guns and a 12 1/2 pounder field piece. The plan was to make a 3 day dash to Johannesburg before the Boer commandos could mobilise, and once there, trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers (uitlanders) organised by the Reform Committee. However, the Transvaal authorities had advance warning of the Jameson Raid) and tracked it from the moment it crossed the border. Four days later, the weary and dispirited column was surrounded near Krugersdorp within sight of Johannesburg. After a brief skirmish in which the column lost 65 killed and wounded, and the Boers lost one man, Jameson's men surrendered and were, in turn, arrested by the Boers.
The botched Jameson Raid resulted in repercussions throughout southern Africa with reverberations in Europe. In Rhodesia, the departure of so many policeman enabled the Matabele and Mashona tribes to rise up against the Chartered Company, and the rebellion could be suppressed only at great cost. A few days after the raid, the Kaiser of Germany sent a telegram (" Kruger telegram") congratulating President Kruger and the Transvaal government on their success, and when this was disclosed in the British press, it raised a storm of anti-German feeling. In the baggage of the raiding column, to the great embarrassment of the British, the Boers found telegrams from Cecil Rhodes, and the plotters in Johannesburg. Joseph Chamberlain, the British Colonial Secretary, quickly moved to condemn the raid despite previously having approved Rhodes' plans to send armed assistance in the case of a Johannesburg uprising. Subsequently Cecil Rhodes was severely censured at the Cape enquiry and the London parliamentary enquiry, and forced to resign as Prime Minister of the Cape and as Chairman of the Chartered Company for having sponsored the failed coup d'état.
What of the British men arrested in the Jameson Raid? The Boer government handed them over to the British for trial. Dr Jameson was tried in England for leading the raid. However, the British press and London society inflamed by anti-Boer and anti-German feeling and in a frenzy of jingoism, lionized Dr Jameson and treated him as a hero. Although sentenced to 15 months imprisonment (which he served in Holloway) Dr Jameson was later rewarded with Prime Ministership 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 Transavaal courts and found guilty of high treason. They were sentenced to death by hanging but this sentence was later commuted to 15 years' imprisonment, and in June 1896, all surviving members of the Committee were released on payment of stiff fines by the British .
Of the Jameson Raid, 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."
Escalation and war
The Jameson Raid alienated many Cape Afrikaners from the British, and united the Transvaal Boers behind President Kruger and his government. It also had the effect of drawing the Transvaal and the Orange Free State (led by President Martinus Theunis Steyn) together in opposition to perceived British imperialism. In 1897 a military pact was concluded between the two republics. President Paul Kruger proceeded to re-equip the Transvaal army, and imported 37,000 of the latest magazine Mauser rifles, and some of the most modern artillery in Europe including German Krupp artillery . The Transvaal army was within a short period transformed; approximately 25,000 men equipped with modern rifles and artillery could mobilise within two weeks. However, President Kruger's victory in the Jameson Raid incident however did nothing to resolve the fundamental problem; the impossible dilemma continued, namely how to make concessions to the Uitlanders without surrendering the independence of the Transvaal.
The failure to gain improved rights for Uitlanders became a pretext for war, and to justify a major military buildup in the Cape Colony. The case for war was justified and espoused as far away as the Australian colonies. Several key British colonial leaders favoured annexation of the independent Boer republics. These figures included the Cape Colony governor Sir Alfred Milner, Cape Prime Minister Cecil Rhodes, British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain and mining syndicate owners or Randlords (nicknamed the gold bugs) such as Alfred Beit, Barney Barnato and Lionel Phillips. Confident that the Boers would be quickly defeated, they planned and organised a short war, citing the Uitlanders' grievances as the motivation for the conflict.
President Steyn of the Orange Free State invited Milner and Kruger to attend a conference in Bloemfontein which started on 30 May 1899, but negotiations quickly broke down, despite Kruger's offer of concessions. In September 1899, Chamberlain sent an ultimatum demanding full equality for British citizens resident in Transvaal. Kruger, seeing that war was inevitable, simultaneously issued his own ultimatum prior to receiving Chamberlain's. This gave the British 48 hours to withdraw all their troops from the border of Transvaal; otherwise the Transvaal, allied with the Orange Free State, would declare war.
News of the ultimatum reached London on the day it expired. Outrage and laughter were the main responses. The editor of the Times 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', The Globe denounced this 'trumpery little state'. Most editorials were similar to the Daily Telegraph, which declared: 'of course there can only be one answer to this grotesque challenge. Kruger has asked for war and war he must have!'.
First phase: The Boer offensive (October – December 1899)
War was declared on 11 October 1899. The Boers had no problems with mobilisation, since the fiercely independent Boers had no regular army units (apart from the Staatsartillerie of both republics). When danger threatened, all the burghers (citizens) in a district would form a military unit called a commando and would elect officers. A full-time official titled a Feldcornet maintained muster rolls, but had no disciplinary powers. Each man brought his own weapon and his own horses. The Presidents of the Transvaal and Orange Free State simply signed decrees to concentrate within a week and the Commandos could muster between 30-40,000 men.
Although it seemed a mismatch between the might of the British Empire on the one hand and farmers on the other, and the British anticipated a quick and easy victory, it became clear from the start that Britain would have problems. What the Boers presented was a mobile and innovative approach to warfare, drawing on their experiences from the First Boer War and strategies that had first appeared in the American Civil War. The average Boers who made up their Commandos were farmers who had spent almost all their working life in the saddle both as farmers and hunters. They had to depend for the pot on their horse and their rifle and were skilled stalkers and marksmen. As hunters they had learnt 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. At community gatherings, target shooting was a major sport and they practised shooting at targets such as hens' eggs perched on posts 100 yards away. They made expert light cavalry, using every scrap of cover, from which they could pour in a destructive fire using their modern Mauser rifles. Furthermore, in preparation for hostilities the Boers had acquired around one hundred of the latest Krupp field guns, all horse drawn and dispersed among the various Commando group, and several Le Creusot "Long Tom" siege guns. The Boers' skill in adapting themselves to becoming first-rate artillerymen shows them to have been a versatile adversary.
The Boers struck first by invading Cape Colony and Colony of Natal between October 1899 and January 1900. With elements of both speed and surprise the Boer drove quickly towards the major British garrison at Ladysmith and the smaller ones at Mafeking and Kimberley. The quick Boer mobilisation resulted in early military successes against the scattered British forces.
Sir George White, commanding the British division at Ladysmith, had unwisely allowed Major-General Penn Symons to throw a brigade forward to the coal-mining town of Dundee (also reported as Glencoe) which was surrounded by hills. This became the site of the first engagement of the war, the Battle of Talana Hill. Boer guns began shelling the British camp from the summit of Talana Hill at dawn on October 20. Penn-Symons immediately counter-attacked. His infantry drove the Boers from the hill, but at the cost of 464 British casualties including Penn-Symons himself.
Another Boer force had 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 Sir George White feared that more Boers were about to attack his main position and ordered a chaotic retreat from Elandslaagte, throwing away any 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 on the town with siege guns, White ordered a major sortie against the Boer artillery positions. The result was a disaster, with 140 men killed and over 1000 captured. The Siege of Ladysmith began, and was to last several 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 some 1,200 men in order to attack and create diversions if things further south went amiss. Mafeking, being a railway junction, 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 and Mafeking were forced to defend when 6,000 Boer, commanded by Piet Cronje, attempted a determined assault on the town. But this quickly subsided into a desultory affair with the Boer prepared to starve the stronghold into submission and so, on the 13th October, began the 217-day Siege of Mafeking.
Lastly, over 200 miles to the south of Mafeking lay the large town of Kimberley, the centre of diamond mining, which was also subject to a siege. Although not militarily significant it nonetheless represented existing British Imperialism and hence an important Boer prize. From early November about 7,500 Boer began their siege, again content to starve the town into submission, but the 50,000 inhabitants of which only 5,000 were armed were under little threat as the town was well-stocked with provisions. The defending troops were commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Kekewich.
Siege life took its toll on both the defending soldiers and the civilians in the cities of Mafeking, Ladysmith, and Kimberley 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 under siege also dealt with constant artillery bombardment, making the streets a dangerous place. Near the end of the siege of Kimberley, it was expected that the Boers would intensify their bombardment, so a notice was displayed encouraging people to go down into the mines for protection. The townspeople panicked, and people flowed into the mineshafts constantly for a 12-hour period. Although the bombardment never came, this did nothing to diminish the distress of the civilians. Many of the townspeople, now under siege, sheltered in the local convent, now the Mcgregor museum. Since the mining that occurred there, for diamonds, was open air, the people were not able to shelter in mine shafts. The mine is now known as the Big Hole, a popular tourist attraction in the area.
First British relief attempts
It was at this point that General Sir Redvers Henry Buller, a much respected commander, arrived in South Africa with major British reinforcements (including an Army Corps of three divisions). Buller originally intended an offensive straight up the railway line leading from Cape Town through Bloemfontein to Pretoria. Finding on arrival that the British troops already in South Africa were under siege, he split his Army Corps into several widely spread detachments, to relieve the besieged garrisons. One force, led by Lieutenant General Lord Methuen, was to follow the Western Railway to the north and relieve Kimberley and Mafeking. A smaller force of about 3,000 led by Major General William Gatacre, was to push north toward the railway junction at Stormberg, to secure the Cape Midlands district from Boer raids and local rebellions by Boer inhabitants. Finally, Buller himself would lead the major force and relieve Ladysmith to the east.
The initial results of this offensive were mixed with Methuen winning several bloody skirmishes at Belmont on November 23, Graspan on November 25 and a larger conflict at the Modder River on November 28 resulting in British losses of 71 dead and over 400 wounded. British commanders had 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 they entirely failed to comprehend was the impact of destructive fire from trench positions, and the mobility of cavalry raids both of which had been developed in the American Civil War. The British troops went to war with what would prove to be 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 innovative tactics.
The middle of December was disastrous for the British army. In a period known as Black Week (10 – 15 December 1899), the British suffered a series of devastating losses at Magersfontein, Stormberg, and Colenso.
On December 10, General Gatacre tried to recapture Stormberg railway junction about 50 miles (80 km) 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, as well as two guns and over 600 troops captured.
At the Battle of Magersfontein on December 11, Methuen's 14,000 British troops attempted to capture a Boer position in a dawn attack to relieve Kimberley. This 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 Piet Cronje, had devised a plan to dig trenches in an unconventional place to fool the British and to give their riflemen a greater firing range. The plan worked and this tactic helped 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 encapsulated the soldiers view of the defeat:
"Such was the day for our regiment
Dread 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…."
But the nadir of Black Week was the Battle of Colenso on December 15 where 21,000 British troops commanded by Buller himself, attempted to cross the Tugela River to relieve Ladysmith where 8,000 Transvaal Boers, under the command of Louis Botha, were awaiting them. Through a combination of artillery and accurate rifle fire, and a better use of the ground, the Boers repelled all 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. The Boers suffered 40 casualties.
Second phase: The British offensive of January to September 1900
The British Government took these defeats badly and with the sieges still 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 some 180,000 men with further reinforcements being sought.
While waiting for these reinforcements, Buller attempted to recover some of his lost reputation by making 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 then 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 January 24, 1900, but as the early morning 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 back across the Tugela River into British territory. There were nearly 300 Boer casualties.
Buller attacked Louis Botha again on February 5 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, and was nicknamed "Sir Reverse" by some of his officers.
By taking command in person in Natal, 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 Field Marshal Lord Roberts. Roberts first intended like Buller 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. Except for 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 Cronje's army.
Roberts launched his main attack on February 10, 1900 and although hampered by a long supply route, managed to outflank the Boers defending Magersfontein. On February 14, a cavalry division under Major General John French launched a major attack to relieve Kimberley. Although encountering severe fire, a massed cavalry charge split the Boer defences on February 15, opening the way for French to enter Kimberley that evening, ending its 124 days’ siege.
Meanwhile, Roberts pursued Piet Cronje’s 7,000 strong force, which had abandoned Magersfontein to head for Bloemfontein. General French’s cavalry was also ordered to assist in the pursuit by embarking on an epic 30-mile drive towards Paardeberg where Cronje was entrenched. At the Battle of Paardeberg from February 18 to February 27, Roberts then surrounded General Piet Cronje's retreating Boer army. On the 17th February, a pincer movement involving both French’s cavalry and the main British force attempted to take the entrenched position, but the frontal attacks were unco-ordinated and so easily repulsed by the Boers. Finally, Roberts resorted to bombarding Cronje into submission, but it took a further ten precious days and with the British troops using the polluted Modder River as water supply, resulting in a typhoid epidemic killing many troops. General Cronje was forced to surrender with 4000 men.
In Natal, Buller began his fourth attempt to relieve Ladysmith on February 14. Despite reinforcements his progress was painfully slow against stiff opposition. However, on February 26, after much deliberation, Buller used all his forces in one all-out attack for the first time and at last succeeded in forcing a crossing of the Tugela, and defeated Botha's outnumbered forces north of Colenso. Ladysmith was relieved after a siege lasting 118 days the day after Cronje surrendered, but at a total cost of 7,000 British casualties.
After a succession of defeats the Boers realised that against such overwhelming superiority of troops they had little chance of defeating the British and so became demoralised. Roberts then advanced into the Orange Free State from the west, capturing Bloemfontein, the capital, unopposed on March 13 with the Boer defenders escaping and scattering. Meanwhile, he detached a small force to relieve Baden-Powell, and the Relief of Mafeking on May 18, 1900 provoked riotous celebrations in Britain.
On the 28th May the Orange Free State was annexed and renamed the Orange River Colony.
After being forced to delay for several weeks at Bloemfontein due to shortage of supplies and enteric fever (caused by poor hygiene, drinking bad water at Paardeburg and appalling medical care),, Roberts 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, then finally captured Johannesburg on May 31 and the capital of the Transvaal, Pretoria, on June 5. The first into Pretoria, was Lt. William Watson of the New South Wales Mounted Rifles, who persuaded the Boer to surrender the capital.(Before the war, the Boers had constructed several forts south of Pretoria, but the artillery had been removed from the forts for use in the field, and in the event the Boers abandoned Pretoria without a fight).
This allowed the Roberts to declare the war over, having won the principal cities and so, on the 3rd September 1900, the South African Republic was formally annexed.
British observers believed the war to be all but over after the capture of the two capital cities. 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 23 miles (37 km) east of the city, and ambushed a heavily escorted convoy which resulted in 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 beyond striking distance of Pretoria. Although Roberts drove the Boers from the hill, the Boer commander, Louis Botha, did not regard it as a defeat, for he inflicted more casualties on the British (totalling 162 men) while suffering around 50 casualties.
The set-piece period of the war now largely gave way to a mobile 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 August 26. 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. Under the new conditions of the war, heavy equipment was no use to them, and therefore no great loss.
There was much sympathy for the Boers on mainland Europe and in October, President Kruger and members of the Transvaal government left South Africa on the Dutch warship De Gelderland, sent by the Queen of the Netherlands Wilhelmina, who had simply ignored the British naval blockade of South Africa. Paul Kruger's wife however was too ill to travel and remained in South Africa where she died on 20 July 1901 without seeing Paul Kruger again. President Kruger first went to Marseille and then on to The Netherlands where he stayed for a while before moving finally to Clarens, Switzerland, where he died in exile on 14 July 1904.
POWs sent overseas
The first sizable batch of Boer prisoners of war taken by the British consisted of those captured at the Battle of Elandslaagte on 21 October 1899. At first, many were put on ships, but as numbers grew, the British decided they did not want them kept locally. The capture of 400 POWs in February 1900 was a key event, which made the British realise they could not accommodate all POWs in South Africa. The British feared they could be freed by sympathetic locals. They already had trouble supplying their own troops in South Africa, and did not want the added burden of sending supplies for the POWs. Britain therefore chose to send many POWs overseas.
The first overseas (off African mainland) camps were opened in Saint Helena, which ultimately received about 5,000 POWs. About 5,000 POWs were sent to Ceylon. Other POWs were sent to Bermuda and India. Some POWs were even sent outside the British Empire, with 1443 Boers (mostly POWs) sent to Portugal. No evidence exists of Boer POWs being sent to the Dominions of the British Empire such as Australia, Canada or New Zealand.
Third phase: Guerrilla war (September 1900 – May 1902)
By September 1900, the British were nominally in control of both Republics, with the exception of the northern part of Transvaal. However, they soon discovered that they only controlled directly the territory which their columns physically occupied. The Boer commanders adopted guerrilla warfare tactics, primarily conducting raids against infrastructure, resource and supply targets, all aimed at disrupting the operational capacity of the British Army.
Each Boer commando unit was sent to the district from which its members had been recruited which meant that they could rely on local support and personal knowledge of the terrain and the towns within the district thereby enabling them to live off the land. Their orders were simply to act against the British whenever possible. Their tactics were to strike fast and hard causing as much damage to the enemy as possible, and then to withdraw and vanish before enemy reinforcements could arrive. The vast distances of the Republics allowed the Boer commandos considerable freedom to move about and made it impossible for the 250,000 British troops to control the territory effectively using columns alone. As soon as a British column left a town or district, British control of that area faded away.