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Updated: June 4, 2025
Sir Redvers Buller's army has met with another serious check in the attempt to relieve Ladysmith. We have approached, tested, and assailed the Boer positions beyond the Tugela, fighting more or less continuously for five days, and the result is that we find they cannot be pierced from the direction of Trichardt's Drift any more than at Colenso.
The loveliest trees and the greatest variety I have ever seen anywhere, except approaching Darjeeling. Have not heard anyone call Natal the garden of South Africa, but that is what it probably is. It was when Bishop of Natal that Colenso raised such a storm in the religious world. The concerns of religion are a vital matter here yet. A vigilant eye is kept upon Sunday.
At Colenso a Wakkerstroom youth of twelve years captured three English scouts and compelled them to march ahead of him to the commandant's tent. During one of the lulls in the fighting at Magersfontein a burgher of fifteen years crept up to within twenty yards of three British soldiers and shouted "Hands up!"
'How many? 'About four hundred and fifty. 'Out of a thousand? 'Well, out of about nine hundred. This war has fallen heavily on some regiments. Scarcely any has suffered more severely, none has won greater distinction, than the Dublin Fusiliers everywhere at the front Dundee, Lombard's Kop, Colenso, Chieveley, Colenso again, and even here at Spion Kop.
What seemed like the answer came on the following day, the 21st, when we have the following entry: Sir Redvers Buller's heavy batteries opened fire early this morning from some position south-west of Colenso.
Colenso itself had been in a similar manner rendered almost impregnable to a frontal attack, and could hardly have been captured by an assaulting force until Hlangwane had been taken. The hills beyond the railway still covered the road bridge by their fire, and had the troops marched across it they would have suffered severely.
The wildest stories flew: General French had been seen in the street; his brigade was almost in sight; Methuen was at Colenso with overwhelming force. The townspeople took heart. One man who had spent his days in a stinking culvert since the siege began now crept into the sun.
As a matter of record, Churchill's soldiering never seemed to interfere with his writing, nor, in a fight, did his duty to his paper ever prevent him from mixing in as a belligerent. War was declared October 9th, and only a month later, while scouting in the armored train along the railroad line between Pietermaritzburg and Colenso, the cars were derailed and Churchill was taken prisoner.
In the second, Hlangwane mountain was the one point from which the Boer position at Colenso could be certainly enfiladed, and therefore the fruits of victory would be greater on that flank than on the other.
Villebois-Mareuil was a firm believer in the final success of the Boer arms, and he received the credit of planning two battles second Colenso and Magersfontein which gave the Boers at least temporary success. The Viscount was a writer for the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Correspondant, and La Liberté, the latter of which referred to him as the latter-day Lafayette.
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