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Updated: June 3, 2025
"As long as he is stationary there it is likely enough that the bulk of Joubert's army will cling to Natal, knowing well enough that before we shall be in a condition to move forward they can entrench their positions on the Biggarsberg and the Drakenberg until they are quite as formidable as those we have been knocking our heads against.
President Steyn came over from Bloemfontein to stimulate the discouraged, and President Kruger was brought round from Joubert's Head Quarters in Natal, where he had been successful in persuading the burghers dismayed by the relief of Ladysmith to hold on to the Biggarsberg positions.
While these two columns on the 18th were moving on Dundee, a third force of about 1,000 mounted men, under General Koch, coming from the north, passed round Glencoe to the westward, crossing the Biggarsberg, a lofty spur of nearly 6,000 feet, that extends from the western mountains almost across Natal, with occasional depressions, through one of which the railroad passes.
What is worse, they would have isolated the still smaller force lately thrown forward to Dundee, so as to break the strong defensive position of the Biggarsberg, which cuts off the north of Natal, and can only be traversed by three difficult passes.
Across the north of Natal lies the chain of the Biggarsberg mountains, and to this the Transvaal Boers had retired, while the Freestaters had hurried through the passes of the Drakensberg in time to make the fruitless opposition to Roberts's march upon their capital.
Towards the middle of May his advance began, directed against the positions which the Boers had taken upon the Biggarsberg mountains, and on the 15th he reoccupied Dundee and Glencoe. Into the detail of these movements it is not proposed to enter.
His work would have been comparatively easy if he could have remained at the spot where his presence was most necessary, but it was absolutely impossible for him to lead the defensive movements in the Free State without men, and in order to secure them he was obliged to desert that important post and go to the Biggarsberg, where many burghers were idle.
Sixty-six casualties, of which nearly half were killed, were the result of this action, which seems to have depended, like most of our reverses, upon defective scouting. Buller, having called up his two remaining divisions and having mended the railway behind him, proceeded now to manoeuvre the Boers out of Laing's Nek exactly as he had manoeuvred them out of the Biggarsberg.
On May 2 Lord Roberts informed Buller that he was ready to start from Bloemfontein, and that he expected the Natal Army to co-operate with him by attacking the Boers on the Biggarsberg, and then advancing towards the Transvaal.
Not less than twenty thousand sabres and bayonets were ready and eager for the passage of the Biggarsberg mountains. This line of rugged hills is pierced by only three passes, each of which was held in strength by the enemy. Considerable losses must have ensued from any direct attempt to force them.
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