Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XXIII

Nor was this all: for the moment Sir R. Buller thought that, by direct order of the Cabinet, the 5th division had been assigned to the task of relieving Kimberley,[245] and he judged that without reinforcements the relief of Ladysmith was impracticable. Late, therefore, in the evening of the 15th December, when the work of that exhausting and disheartening day was drawing to a close, he telegraphed in the following terms to the Secretary of State for War:—