Note (return) — Chapter III

The arrival of Sir Redvers Buller at Cape Town on October 31, 1899, the morrow of the battle of Lombard's Kop, encouraged the despondent at home and in Cape Colony.19 Twenty years previously he had distinguished himself in the command of a Boer contingent which served with the British Army during the Zulu campaign; and it was doubtless from the experience then gained that he formed the opinion that the war which he was now called upon to direct, could be brought to a successful conclusion only "by the actual conquest of every man in the field: a task doubly difficult owing to the extreme mobility of the enemy."