Boer War, First (Tranasvaal Revolt)

The Transvaal Boers revolt on December 16, 1880, and take action at Bronkhorstspruit against a British column of the 94th Foot, who are returning to reinforce Pretoria.

At the first battle at Bronkhorstspruit, Lieutenant-Colonel Anstruther and one hundred and twenty men of the 94th Foot (Connaught Rangers) are dead or wounded by Boer fire within minutes of the first shots.

Boer losses total two killed and five wounded.

This mainly Irish regiment had been marching westward toward Pretoria, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Anstruther, when halted by a Boer commando group.

Its leader, Commandant Frans Joubert (Brother of General Piet Joubert, had ordered Anstruther and the column to turn back, stating that the territory was now again a Boer Republic and therefore any further advance by the British would be deemed an act of war.

Anstruther had refused and ordered that ammunition be distributed.

The Boers opened fire and the ambushed British troops were annihilated.

With the majority of his troops dead or wounded, the dying Anstruther had ordered surrender.

With the defeat of the Zulus, and the Pedi, The Transvaal Boers had been able to give voice to the growing resentment against the 1877 British annexation of the Transvaal and complain that it had been a violation of the Sand River Convention of 1852, and the Bloemfontein Convention of 1854.

Major-General Sir George Pomeroy Colley, after returning briefly to India, had finally taken over as Governor of Natal, Transvaal, High Commissioner of SE Africa and Military Commander in July 1880.

Multiple commitments had prevented Colley from visiting the Transvaal, where he knows many of the senior Boers.

Instead, he relied on reports from the Administrator, Sir Owen Lanyon, who had no understanding of the Boer mood or capability.

Belatedly, Lanyon had asked for troop reinforcements in December 1880 but had been overtaken by events.

The fiercely independent Boers have no regular army; when danger threatens, all the men in a district form a militia organized into military units called commandos and elect officers.

The Boer uprising has caught by surprise the six small British forts scattered around Transvaal, housing some two thousand troops between them, including irregulars with as few as fifty men at Lydenburg in the east where Anstruther had just left.

Being isolated, and with so few troops, all the forts can do is prepare for sieges, and wait to be relieved.

The other five forts, with a minimum of fifty miles between any two, are at Wakkerstroom and Standerton in the south, Marabastadt in the north and Potchefstroom and Rustenburg in the west.

British army garrisons all over the Transvaal become besieged from December 22, 1880 to January 6, 1881.

Although generally called a war, the actual engagements are of a relatively minor nature, considering the few men involved on both sides and the short duration of the combat, lasting some ten weeks of sporadic action.

At the Battle of Laing's Nek on January 28, 1881, the Natal Field Force under Major-General Sir George Pomeroy Colley attempts with cavalry and infantry attacks to break through the Boer positions on the Drakensberg mountain range to relieve their garrisons.

The British are repelled with heavy losses by the Boers under the command of Piet Joubert.

Of the four hundred and eighty British troops who make the charges, one hundred and fifty never return.

Furthermore, sharpshooting Boers have killed or wounded many senior officers.

Major-General Sir George Pomeroy Colley had sought refuge with the Natal Field Force at Mount Prospect, three miles to the south to await reinforcements.

However, Colley is soon back into action.

On February 7, a mail escort on its way to Newcastle had been attacked by the Boers and forced back to Mount Prospect.

The next day Colley, determined to keep his supplies and communication route open, escorts the mail wagon personally and this time with a larger escort.

At the Battle of Schuinshoogte (also known as Ingogo), the Boers attack the convoy at the Ingogo River crossing, but with a stronger force of some three hundred men.

The firepower is evenly matched and the fight continues for several hours, but the Boer marksmen dominate the action until darkness and a storm permits Colley and the remainder of his troops to retreat back to Mount Prospect.

In this engagement, the British lose one hundred and thirty-nine officers and men, half the original force that had set out to escort the mail convoy.

Hostilities had been suspended on February 14, awaiting the outcome of peace negotiations initiated by an offer from Paul Kruger.

Colley's promised reinforcements had arrived during this time with more to follow.

The British government in the meantime had offered a Royal Commission investigation and possible troop withdrawal, and their attitude toward the Boers is conciliatory.

Colley is critical of this stance and, while waiting for Kruger's final agreement, decides to attack again with a view to enabling the British government to negotiate from a position of strength.

Unfortunately, this results in the disaster of the Battle of Majuba Hill on February 27, 1881, the greatest humiliation for the British.

Amid great confusion and with casualties among his men rising, Colley attempts to order a fighting retreat, but is shot and killed by Boer marksmen.

The rest of the British force flees down the rear slopes of Majuba, where more are hit by the Boer marksmen, who had lined the summit in order to shoot at the retreating foe.

An abortive rearguard action is staged by the 15th King's Hussars and 60th rifles, who had marched from a support base at Mount Prospect, although this makes little impact on the Boer forces.

Two hundred and eighty-five Britons are killed, captured or wounded, including Captain Cornwallis Maude, son of Government Minister Cornwallis Maude, 1st Earl de Montalt.

The Boers suffer only one killed and five wounded.

As the British flee the hill, many are picked off by the superior rifles and marksmen of the Boers.

Several wounded soldiers soon find themselves surrounded by Boer soldiers and will later give their accounts of what they had seen.

Many of the Boers are simply farm boys armed with rifles.

It is thus a major hit on British prestige to have been defeated by a group of Dutch farm boys with a handful of older soldiers leading them.

Britain will never recover from the injury to its honor.

Although small in scope, the battle is historically significant for three reasons: It leads to the signing of a peace treaty and later the Pretoria Convention, between the British and the newly created South African Republic, ending the First Boer War.

The fire and movement ("vuur en beweeg" in Afrikaans) tactics employed by the Boers, especially Commandant Smit in his final assault on the hill, are years ahead of their time.

Coupled with the defeats at Laing's Nek and Schuinshoogte, this third crushing defeat at the hands of the Boers ratifies the strength of the Boers in the minds of the British, arguably to have consequences in the Second Anglo-Boer War.

"Remember Majuba" will become a rallying cry.

Hostilities continue until March 6, 1881, when a truce is declared, ironically on the same terms that Colley had disparaged.

The Transvaal forts have endured, contrary to Colley's forecast, with the sieges being generally uneventful, the Boers content to wait for hunger and sickness to strike.

The forts had suffered only light casualties as an outcome of sporadic engagements, except at Potchefstroom, where twenty-four were killed, and seventeen at Pretoria, in each case resulting from occasional raids on Boer positions.

The British government of William Gladstone is conciliatory as it realizes that any further action will require substantial troop reinforcements, and it is likely that the war would be costly, messy and protracted.

Unwilling to get bogged down in a distant war the British government orders a truce.

Under instructions from the British government, Sir Evelyn Wood (who had replaced Colley upon his death on February 27, 1881) signs an armistice to end the war, and subsequently a peace treaty is signed with Kruger at O'Neil's Cottage on March 6, bringing the war to an end on March 23, 1881.

The Pretoria Convention is signed on August 3, 1881 and ratified on October 25, 1881, by the Transvaal Volksraad (parliament).

This leads to the withdrawal of the last British troops.

In the final peace treaty, the Pretoria Convention, negotiated by a three-man Royal Commission, the British had agreed to complete Boer self-government in the Transvaal under British suzerainty, the Boers accepting the Queen's nominal rule and British control over external relations, African affairs and native districts.