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Updated: June 3, 2025
This would compel the Boers to abandon Bulwana, perhaps to leave behind their heavy guns; would, if successful, prevent their retreat by the direct road into the Free State, and might greatly embarrass or, at least, harass their retreat through the Biggarsberg. The defeat of the Boer army in Natal and the relief of Ladysmith is a great blow to the Boer cause.
You see what it is here, and if the Boers don't lose heart, and defend the Biggarsberg and the Drakensberg, we shall find at least as much difficulty there as we shall here. It is quite certain that the Ladysmith men will take a long time to recover from what they have gone through; and as for the cavalry, I fancy their horses have been eaten.
On March 1 the garrison reverted to a full half-ration of biscuits and horseflesh, and an attempt was made to harass the Boers, who were in full retreat towards the Biggarsberg. Sir George White had made careful inquiries among the regiments for men who would undertake to walk five miles and fight at the end of the march.
In the afternoon General White, having accomplished his purpose and secured the safety of the Dundee column while traversing the dangerous Biggarsberg passes, withdrew his force to Ladysmith. We have no means of ascertaining the losses of the Boers, but they were probably slight. On our side we lost 109 killed and wounded, of which only 13 cases were fatal.
The Boers on the Biggarsberg at first numbered about 15,000, but by the end of March many commandos had been attracted away by Lord Roberts' advance to more strenuous fields. Some time passed without any definite action having been agreed upon between Lord Roberts and Buller.
Dundee is about five miles from Glencoe on a spur of the Biggarsberg range.
The mobility of the Boers was again well demonstrated by the retreat of the burghers from the environs of Ladysmith. After the Krijgsraad decided to withdraw the forces into the Biggarsberg, it required only a few hours for all the many commandos to leave the positions they had held so long; to load their impedimenta and to be well on the way to the northward.
The inaction invited the retreating enemy to halt and occupy the Biggarsberg Range; only a few days after Buller had informed Lord Roberts that he did not expect that any stand would be made south of Laing's Nek.
Near the top of the mountain long schanzes or walls were built to offer a place of security for the burghers, while on the top were miles of walls to attract and to inveigle the enemy to approach the lower wall more closely. The plan was magnificent, but the British forces evaded the Biggarsberg in their advance movements, and the entrenchments were never bathed in human blood.
He succeeded in persuading the burghers to hold the line of the Biggarsberg, but was almost immediately summoned away to the arena in the west; and only a few hours after he was upbraiding the fugitives from Ladysmith and the Tugela for their irresolution and want of faith, the fugitives of the Modder were streaming past him at Poplar Grove.
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