ABSTRACT
In the space of a few months between December 1899 and February 1900, the last chapter in the history of the Victorian army was written. To a shocked and incredulous British public, accustomed to reading about the colonial triumphs of their heroes, Roberts, Wolseley and Kitchener, the defeats of ‘Black Week’ and Vaal Krantz were disasters as great as any experienced by the British Army. There was little to applaud in the news from South Africa. The main British army of 47,000 men under the command of General Sir Redvers Buller, a red-faced Devon squire, had stumbled from crisis to crisis. In December 1899 Lord Methuen, sent with a strengthened division to relieve Kimberley, had been repulsed at Magersfontein. General Gatacre, who had been sent with a brigade to clear the Boers from the north of Cape Colony, had been defeated at Stormberg. The commander himself, trying to relieve Ladysmith, had been so badly beaten at Colenso on the Tugela River that he had ordered the beleaguered garrison to surrender.
