28 



THi: STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



tl White 



repi: ''in. near 



Lady-mi r LMth. Five days Inter the 



Boers began the siege of Lad\-mith. On Octo- 

 ber. SOth. in a :>>inith. the British 



1 and d< nd the I'. 



cap' Mimumeation with 



.smith was cut otY by the Boer- on Novem- 

 \t day the Briti-h e\ aruated 

 :al. Tbe Boen >helled Mafeking 

 r ith. hut \\rre rvpuUed in an attack 

 the British position. The tir-t British trans- 

 port carrying reinforcement-* reaehed ( 'ape Town 

 :iher Jlth. and proceeded to Durban. 

 Boers wrecked a British armored train near 

 East ':tl. on November Kith, capturing 



including Winston Churchill. 

 mber --'M, near Gra- Pan. Lord Me- 

 i the Boers and drove them from 

 their position, and on November L'litli the British 

 won a sanguinary victory at Modder River. A 

 series of Boer successes then followed. On De- 

 cember loth, the British, under General Gatacre, 

 were led into a Boer ambuscade near Stormberg 

 Junction and lost 1.000 men. including (572 cap- 

 tured, while on the same and following day 

 huen failed to take the Boer position 

 ^pytiontein after desperate fighting and 

 y losses, General Wauchope being killed. 

 ( >n December 1 ">th. General Buller was severely 

 defeated while attempting to force the Tugela 

 River, near Colenso, he losing 1,000 men and 

 eleven guns. The British losses to this date 

 were 7.030 men killed, wounded, and missing, 

 and the attention of the civilized world was 

 riveted upon the war. After Buller's signal 

 defeat, Field Marshal Lord Roberts was ordered, 

 December 18th, to South Africa, to take com- 

 mand of military operations, with Lord Kitch- 

 ener as chief of staff, and with a reinforcement 

 of 100.000 men. 



General French captured Colesburg on New 

 lay, 1'XM). On January Ot h", Roberts 

 and Kitchener arrived in South Africa, and on 

 the same date the Boers were repulsed with 

 heavy loss in an attack on Ladysmith. On 

 January L'.'i-^oth, occurred some of the most 

 desperate and famous lighting of the war, when 

 a British forming party under General Warren 



M Kop, but, after heavy lo- 

 withdrew. General Buller made a third attempt 

 to relieve Ladysmith. but failed, February !Mh, 

 Lord Roberts began an invasion of the 

 Orange Free State on February 12th. General 

 French relieved Kimberley on February 15th. 

 < )n February L'_'-_'7t h there was severe fighting 

 between Roberts and Cronje. terminating with 

 the capitulation of the latter, with 1. 000 men 

 and six guns. Lord Dundonald entered Lady- 

 smith on February L'Mh. and General Gatacre 

 occupied Stormberg on March 5th. On March 

 7th. Lord Roberts turned the Boer position near 

 Modder River and advanced triumphantly on 

 Bloemfontein. capital of the Orange Free State, 

 which surrendered to the British on March l.'Jth. 

 The Boer Commander-in-chief. General Joubert , 

 died on March L'7th. and Colonel de Villebois 

 Mareuil, French officer with the Boers, was 

 killed in a skirmish on April 5th. General 

 Cronje and the other Boer prisoners were sent 



to St. Helena, where they arrived April 14th, 

 and the demoralization of the Boers seemingly 

 begun. On April 20th, Mr. Pettigrew, in the 

 I'nited States Senate, introduced a. resolution of 

 sympathy with the Boers, but it was voted 

 down, L'!> to L'o. On May lid, Lord Roberts 

 iiis advance on Pretoria. 



The Boers now turned to the United States 

 and Kurope for intervention, but the United' 

 States was the only government in the world 

 of all those approached by the South African 

 Republic which tendered' its good offices to 

 either of the combatants in the interest of the 

 lion of hostilit i> 



So the war continued. On May 10th. the 

 British crossed the /and River and occupied 

 Kroonstad, and on May 15th, General Buller 

 occupied Dundee. The Boer envoys to the 

 United States reached New York on May 16th, 

 the day that Mafeking was relieved, after a 

 siege of 217 days. President McKinley received 

 the envoys unofficially, but they were officially 

 informed by Secretary of State Hay that the 

 United States could not intervene in the war. 

 The end of the struggle was not yet, however, 

 in sight. On May 28th, Lord Roberts pro- 

 claimed the annexation of the Orange Free State 

 to the British Empire. The British entered 

 Johannesburg on May 30th, and on the same 

 day President Kruger retired from Pretoria, 

 which city surrendered on June 5th to the Brit- 

 ish army. General Prinsloo and 3,348 Boers 

 surrendered at Naauwpoort, and Harrismith 

 surrendered to General Macdonald on August 

 4th. Several conspirators against the life of 

 Lord Roberts were tried at Pretoria August 17th, 

 and their leader was executed. Macliadodorp, 

 Kruger's new capital, was occupied by General 

 Buller August 28th. On September 1st. the 

 Transvaal was proclaimed a part of the British 

 Empire by Lord Roberts. Guerilla warfare, 

 which had begun July 1st, was now general in 

 the Transvaal, and the Boer Generals DeWet 

 and Botha continued to harass the British by 

 sporadic raids. Ex-President Kruger, aband- 

 oning the Transvaal, began his journey to Eu- 

 rope September 12th. He arrived at Marseilles 

 on November 22d, and had an ovation from 

 the French people, the demonstrations of wel- 

 come continuing through his journey to Paris, 

 while the National French Assembly adopted 

 resolutions of sympathy. On November 3()th, 

 the supreme military command in South Africa 

 was turned over to Lord Kitchener by Lord 

 Roberts, who departed for home, sailing for 

 Kngland from Cape Town on December ll'th. 

 In the meantime, the German Government inti- 

 mated to Mr. Kruger on December 1st, that a 

 vi-it by him to Berlin would be inopportune. 

 Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, on the 

 contrary, welcomed Mr. Kruger at a dinner on 

 December 15th. The British met with a severe 

 reverse al Nooltgedaeht December 13th, Colonel 

 Le<_ r L r e being killed. On December 14th, Sir 

 Alfred Milner was appointed Administrator of 

 the ( (range River and Transvaal colonies, and 

 the year closed with both sides grimly deter- 

 mined to continue the terrible warfare to a 

 definite conclusion. 



The first battle of 1901 was at Lindley, 



