during the whole month of January to hold them in their positions at Colesberg. On the Burghersdorp-Queenstown line, General Gatacre and the Boer forces were watching each other without attempting any decisive movement. Thus in the western theatre of war the forces on both sides were fully occupied, so that a decided change could be expected only from the arrival on the scene of fresh forces for one side or the other. The fresh British forces were on the sea; fresh Boer forces did not exist, but there was the possibility of a transfer of troops from the Boer army in Natal to some point within the Free State.

In Natal Sir Redvers Buller, after the repulse of Colenso, had drawn to himself the greater part of Sir Charles Warren's division, and, so soon as that division should have been provided with transport, would be in a position to take the field with three divisions and a respectable force of artillery. It was high time that he should be able to act. On Saturday, the 6th of January, a considerable Boer force made an assault upon the defences of Ladysmith. The attack began at a quarter to three in the morning, and was renewed time after time with great determination. Some of the British entrenchments on Waggon Hill, which was defended by Colonel Ian Hamilton, were three times taken by the Boers, and three times retaken by the British. At half-past seven in the evening, however, the last Boer attack was beaten off. The assault had failed, and the Boers had suffered heavy loss. Sir George White had at one time heliographed to Sir Redvers Buller that he was very hard pressed; and there could be little doubt that if the Boers should be able once or twice to repeat a desperate attack of this kind, the defence of Ladysmith might be overpowered. It was therefore a matter of urgency that Sir Redvers Buller with his army corps should attack and defeat the Boer army which was covering the siege of Ladysmith, and should effect a union between his own forces and those of Sir George White. There was no reason to suppose his army inadequate to the task. In order to maintain the investment of Ladysmith, the Boers were forced to keep in the works by which the town was encircled a garrison which could not safely be diminished below the strength of Sir George White's force. The Boer Commanderin-chief could hardly have at his disposal in Natal a force large enough to supply this garrison and at the same time to confront Sir Redvers Buller with numbers anything like those of the British army corps. The union of Sir Redvers Buller with Sir George White would make the British army in Natal strong enough to try conclusions with any force which the Boers could possibly assemble.

The British Commander-in-chief, in framing his plan of operations, had to consider as his main object that destruction of the Boer military power which alone would enable the British Government to give effect to its policy in regard to the future of South Africa. The reinforcements due in the course of a few weeks would give him such a numerical superiority as would justify an offensive aiming at the most decisive results. At the same time, he had to bear in mind the importance of preventing any local and temporary reverse to the British arms, and in particular to avoid, if possible, so great a disaster as the destruction of Sir George White's force.

The great feature of Napoleonic strategy was the single line of operations and the advantage to be drawn from interior lines. Napoleon himself, commenting upon the campaigns of 1796 and 1797, speaks of the principle that an army ought to have only a single line of operations.' It is one of the great merits of Jomini to have analysed the conditions of the Napoleonic strategy, and to have shown that, in his adoption of the single line of operations, Napoleon conformed to the fundamental principles of the art of war. The most systematic of recent French writers on strategy, the late General Berthaut, was so much under the spell of the Napoleonic tradition that he hesitated to approve, even in case of great numerical superiority, of any departure from the single line. But the year 1813 and the campaign of Leipsic proved that the convergent attack, if undertaken with sufficient numbers, may overpower even the greatest commander; and Jomini, in his famous Précis,' admits that the double line of operations may be rendered necessary, either by the configuration of the theatre of war or by a division of the enemy's forces, involving the necessity of resistance to each of his great masses. Consequently (he allows) the double line is justified when there is a numerical superiority so pronounced that it is possible to operate by two different lines without running the risk that one of the two bodies may be overwhelmed by the enemy.

Clausewitz, whose analysis of war, though it lacks the charm of graceful exposition, is so profound that it repays the most exhaustive study, had the advantage of looking back, as he wrote, upon the whole course of the Napoleonic period, as well as of an intimate personal acquaintance with those who had directed the movements of the Allies in the final struggle. He was of opinion that, given a sufficient preponderance of force, the convergent attack, the offensive conducted by independent armies operating on two or three separate lines, is the most effective. The same opinion was independently expressed by Willisen,

the most logical of all the great writers on war. It may therefore fairly be said that Lord Roberts, in determining to use the reinforcements which he expected for the purpose of an advance through the Free State, while leaving Sir Redvers Buller to effect his junction with Sir George White in Natal, was acting in accordance with the principles upon which the best analysts of the military art are agreed. There is, moreover, a condition which rendered the formation of two separate armies especially desirable in South Africa: there is always a limit to the number of troops which can be conveniently supplied in a single district or on a single line of operations. The embarrassment of great concentrations, from the point of view both of movement and supply, was admirably explained by Moltke, who went so far as to say that the essence of strategy consists in the arrangement of separate marches with due consideration for timely concentration.' In a country like South Africa, with few roads, a sparse population, and the scantiest possibilities for the local supply of the troops with provisions, the limit to the numbers that can be moved and fed as a single army is very much smaller than in Europe, and this limit is greatly curtailed the moment it becomes necessary for the army to move to any considerable distance from a railway line.

The decision of Lord Roberts to operate himself with the principal army in the western theatre of war implied, of course, that he would form the bulk of the fresh troops which would arrive during the next few weeks into a single army, which he would so move as to unite with it in succession the other bodies already distributed over the field of operations. The plan involved a considerable delay, for it would be necessary to postpone the opening of the campaign until the forces were thoroughly equipped for the field, and the transport so organised as to permit of rapid movement with or without the support of a line of railway. In the meantime, it might reasonably be expected, Sir Redvers Buller would be able to raise the siege of Ladysmith, and to effect the junction of Sir George White's division with his own army corps, now stronger by almost a whole division than it had been on the unfortunate 15th of December. To reinforce it further by again detaching troops from the Cape would lead either to the postponement of the opening of the campaign in the Free State, or to a diminution of the force which would for that purpose be available.

Sir Redvers Buller lost no time before opening his new campaign. The last of his reinforcements reached him during the first week of January, and on the 10th his army was in motion. On the 11th of January Lord Dundonald with a mounted

brigade occupied, without opposition, the heights on the south bank of the Tugela opposite Potgieter's Drift, about seventeen miles in a straight line to the west of Colenso. A party of his men swam the river, and brought the pont or ferry-boat across without serious opposition from the Boers. A brigade of infantry was left to protect the camp and railhead at Chieveley, and the main body of the army set out from Chieveley and Frere towards Springfield, a point on the Little Tugela seven miles south of Potgieter's Drift. The weather was wet, the rivers swollen, the hilly and difficult ground exceedingly heavy, and the tracks, which have the name without the quality of roads, rendered the marching, and still more the movement of the baggage-trains, extremely laborious. One of the waggons which stuck fast in a ford could not be moved by eighty oxen, though it was eventually dragged out by a traction-engine. Several days were occupied in the movement to Springfield, in the preliminaries for a further advance, and in marching from Springfield to the Tugela. On the 16th, Lyttelton's brigade with a battery crossed the river at Potgieter's Drift, and on the 17th Lyttelton was demonstrating against the enemy in his front; while Clery's division, without serious opposition, seized the passage at Trichard's Drift, five or six miles to the west of Potgieter's Drift, bridged the stream, and began its passage. The whole of the force which here crossed, two divisions and a cavalry brigade, seems to have been entrusted to the general direction of Sir Charles Warren.

The interval between the 11th and the 16th had been used by the Boers in preparations to resist the new movement. Between the two drifts the hills which form the northern slope of the Tugela valley bend away to the north-west to form the margin, not of the valley of the Tugela, but of the valley or plain of its tributary, Venter's Spruit. This range of hills had been selected by the Boers as their defensive position. The slopes rise to a height of three or four hundred feet above the level of the river and lead to a flat summit a mile or two in width. Behind the obtuse angle formed by the north-westerly bend of the hills rises from the top of the tableland a peak called Spion Kop, several hundred feet higher than any other point of the plateau. Trichard's Drift appears to lie a mile or two to the westward of the apex or corner of the plateau. Sir Charles Warren, having pushed forward a small advance-guard to hold the hill or ridge directly covering his bridges, turned the head of his column to the north-west, Lord Dundonald with the cavalry leading the way towards Acton Homes, where on the 18th he drove away a party of Boers from the Acton Homes

and Ladysmith road. Behind the cavalry came Clery's division, and behind that Warren's. On Friday the 19th, while Lyttelton's brigade was still holding the edge of the plateau in front of Potgieter's Drift, the divisions of Clery and Warren, forming front to the north-east, began a careful reconnoitring advance up the slopes of the plateau. On Saturday, the 20th, the edge of the plateau was in the possession of the British, who found the Boers entrenched in carefully chosen positions at medium ranges from the edge, and therefore commanding with their fire the intervening comparatively level ground. Throughout Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, the musketry and artillery contest was carried on along the whole distance from Brakfontein Kopje, in front of Potgieter's Drift, on the British right, to a point near the Acton Homes road, on the British left. Sir Charles Warren found that the Boers on Spion Kop commanded the ground in their front and on both flanks for a considerable distance, and came to the conclusion that this peak was the key to the position. With the concurrence of Sir Redvers Buller he decided to capture this height by a night attack; and during the night of Tuesday, the 23rd, the hill was scaled and a lodgment on its summit effected under the direction of General Woodgate. The Boers were not driven off the hill, but remained in possession of entrenchments from which that portion of the summit occupied by the British was commanded. During the whole of Wednesday the British on the hill, constantly reinforced until the numbers present were greater than the space available for their effective employment, were exposed to a heavy fire both of musketry and artillery, and of machine guns, to which, from the difficulty experienced in finding or creating cover, and from the fact that the Boers were well sheltered, they found it impossible to make an effective reply. It was not found practicable to take guns up the hill, and when night fell the British troops had lost heavily, among the wounded being General Woodgate, who has since died. The troops holding the position were, as is common in such cases, in some disorder, as the units were mixed and many officers had been killed or disabled. During the night of Wednesday Colonel Thorneycroft, the senior officer present, having, as it seems, received no communication either from the Commanderin-chief or from Sir Charles Warren, and not being visited by any officer of superior rank or by any staff officer representing his superiors, and judging that he would be unable next day to prolong the conflict under conditions like those of the day before, gave the order for retirement. On Tuesday morning Sir Redvers Buller, riding over to Sir Charles Warren's quarters, Vol. 191.-No. 382. 20