Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
Battle after battle, Magersfontein, Colenso, Spion Kop, lost on the playing fields of Eton, had humiliated the nation and dealt the death-blow to the prestige of the aristocracy and gentry who till then had found no one seriously to oppose their assertion that they possessed a natural instinct of government. The old order was being swept away: history was being made indeed.
Before it closed, Kimberley and Ladysmith had been relieved and Cronje forced to surrender. After the affair at Magersfontein, December 11, Methuen and Cronje remained confronting one another. Shelling by guns of long range was carried on intermittingly by both parties, and there were small affairs from time to time, but nothing on a large scale occurred.
The gate-money was handed over to the Widows' and Orphans' Fund. Our happy speculations on what happened at Magersfontein served a good purpose here in stimulating the generosity of the spectators. The game was well contested, but the superior discipline of the Colonel's lot told, and they won. At break of day on Tuesday the Column's guns were at it again.
How far the transactions of the firm would extend we were not yet to know; but the details of the massacre at Magersfontein, which kept pouring in, indirectly suggested that the business might extend very far indeed. The losses sustained at Magersfontein were more appalling than we were at first led to believe. They were a bitter sequel to the memorable cannonade of ten days before.
The Belmont battle was a stale story when the Modder River fight was fresh, and the latter was now in all conscience stale enough. Of Magersfontein, not a word. This reticence in regard to Magersfontein intensified our curiosity; it was the parent of a pessimism that was to thrive. Common sense and the dictates of reason would clamour for recognition.
That was when the Union Jack was threatened, when British regiments were melting away before the rifles of a peasant people at Magersfontein, Colenso and Graspan, when Ladysmith was being besieged, and Downing Street trembled for the safety of the empire.
Flushed by the victory at Magersfontein, the General did not contemplate the possibility of such a bitter reverse. He was going to strike another hard blow at the enemy he did strike it, but at too great a cost. Had he realised his position the first or second day after the siege was begun, he might still have escaped. The convoy would have been captured, but the men would have been saved.
In 1890 a balloon section was introduced into the Army as a unit of the Royal Engineers, and not long afterwards, the Balloon Factory was established at South Farnborough, where in 1912 it was transformed into the Royal Aircraft Factory. Four balloon sections took part in the South African War and were used during the Siege of Ladysmith, at Magersfontein and Paardeburg.
Cronje, who for two months had held stubbornly to Magersfontein, was reported to be trekking to the east. French's relief of Kimberley, the presence of an infantry division at Klip Drift, and the occupation of Jacobsdaal, were facts which even his obstinacy could not disregard.
Because men not so encumbered escaped north, it cannot be certainly concluded that he could by the same course have saved his trains. Be it as it may, Friday morning the 16th found the Boer lines at Magersfontein empty.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking