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Updated: May 12, 2025
While the battle of Elandslaagte was being fought the Boers had opened fire from the hills above Glencoe on the British camp, and had compelled it to shift its position. The next day they were again obliged to move by artillery on the Impati mountain, and it was then that General Yule decided to retire at once on Ladysmith.
"Our blankets were very useful last night," Horrocks remarked. "I don't know how we could have got many of those poor fellows down the hill if we had not carried them in the blankets. It was infinitely easier for them and a great deal easier for us. I saw lots of soldiers using theirs in the same way." "Are you sure you will be able to sit your horses down to Ladysmith?"
Then the people gave three lusty cheers, and ended by singing "God Save the Queen," with an effect, the impressiveness of which was deepened by the thought that within a few hours Ladysmith would be under bombardment from all the thundering artillery our enemy could muster.
The relieving force joined hands with us last night, and Ladysmith gave itself away to an outburst of wild enthusiasm at the sight of troops so long expected and so often heard fighting in the distance, that some despondent people had almost begun to think they would never come.
Then, satisfied with having got the range to a nicety, our enemy left us in undisturbed quiet for the night, but with an uncomfortable consciousness that fresh links were being forged in the chain of artillery fire by which Ladysmith is now completely girdled, for two batteries that cannot be exactly located have been shelling steadily all day from each end of Bulwaan, with accurate aim and far-reaching effect, as if to disprove all the theories that led to the error of abandoning that position.
The second correspondent relates that General Joubert overruled the desire of the burghers to assault Ladysmith, saying "at a War Council that the city was not worth to the Boers the lives of 500 burghers." To make war without running risks not mere risk of personal danger, but of military failure has been declared impossible by the highest authority.
But after this first victory it will be necessary to push on and attack the Boers investing Ladysmith. The line of communications must be kept open behind the relieving army or it will be itself in the most terrible danger. Already the Boers' position beyond Potgieter's laps around us on three sides. What if we should break through, only to have the door shut behind us?
As pronounced by him, "Fiyune," his name does not sound familiar to English ears, and it was therefore not until some time afterwards that Major King knew he had been entertained by the notorious Ben Viljoen, who was first reported among the killed at Elandslaagte, then as wounded and a prisoner, but who in fact got away from the fight almost unscathed, and now holds a command in the Boer force outside Ladysmith.
Away over the hills, on December 15, we heard the fierce roll of the artillery, and our hopes beat high. But the ominous silence of the next few days prepared us for the mournful tidings that that attempt had failed. Then came January 6, and the determined assault by the Boers on Ladysmith.
This, then, was the function which the current of events assigned to Ladysmith, and the part which it bore to the subsequent development of the war.
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