ABSTRACT
When Sir Redvers Buller landed at the Cape in October 1899, he took command of an army which, despite years of fitful reform and Royal Commissions, was grossly ill-prepared for the tasks which lay before it. Short of men, ammunition and reserves of equipment, the army was forced through indecision and defeat to improvise and muddle through. The Second South African War was the final campaign fought by the Victorian army. It was the ultimate act which tested programmes of training, schemes of organizational reform and policies of recruitment, and immediately the army was found to be defective.
