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Updated: May 29, 2025
The Black Week had just ended; but the humiliation of it lay, as a dead weight, upon the heart of London. Three crushing reverses in eight days Stormberg, Magersfontein, and finally Colenso! There was no getting rid of the facts, or the meaning of them in respect of incapacity, blundering, and reckless waste of personal valour. It was a sorry tale, and one over which Europe at large chuckled.
We hear that Methuen has been beaten at Magersfontein, and that he has been brought to a stand-still within the sound of the guns round Kimberley, just as we are here, and that the Boers have a very strong position there also. So at present the advance is as much checked there as it is here. Gatacre has had a misfortune too, so that we are all in the same boat.
Buller was again helplessly wringing his hands and reaching round to find excuses for his misadventures. Lord Roberts wisely left him alone and went on with his own work. He saw what Buller refused to see, that the Tugela could be crossed at Magersfontein and Ladysmith relieved at a drift of the Modder River.
A mixed body, hardly exceeding the strength of three companies, pushed on in obedience to the last words that fell from Wauchope's lips, to reinforce the right; and succeeded in wriggling round the eastward flank of the enemy's advanced trenches and in shattering a foreign contingent in the Boer service which was holding the gap of level ground between the low arc and the Magersfontein Ridge.
"Little they think of those strong limbs That moulder deep below." And I sit back in my corner ashamed of my dirty old tunic and the holes in it, and peer between two small flaxen heads at hills I last saw alive with bursting shell. At Modder village I hired a horse and rode across the plain to Magersfontein.
The cold nights and the scorching days, the monotonous drudgery, found them always ready and willing, because they believed that when the order came for a great battle at Magersfontein, or an onward march to Kimberley, they would be in the thick of it. But for some reason, known only to those who gave the order, they were sent away from the front, and they felt it keenly.
It seems a misfortune that Cronje was able to escape eastwards from Magersfontein, though it would be wrong until full knowledge of what took place is obtained to assume that this could have been avoided. Cronje, however, has not been able to make good his escape. A Renter's telegram from Paardeberg dated. Tuesday explicitly states that Cronje's force was enclosed and remained enclosed.
The front rank held their rifles in the left hand and each extended right hand grasped the sleeve of the man next it. The rear rank had their rifles slung and carried spades. The long line stole through a pitchy darkness, knowing that at any instant a blaze of fire such as flamed before the Highlanders at Magersfontein might crash out in front of them.
Magersfontein, Colenso, Stormberg; we could do with a change. But what a revelation, is it not? Are these the prisoners that we played at dice for? One thing in it all pleases me, and that is the temper and attitude of England.
From him we learnt that Cronjé had definitely abandoned the whole Magersfontein position, that this was the tail of his force going through, and that consequently there was nothing to be feared from a rear attack.
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