Battle of Colenso

Background

The Second Boer War opened in October 1899 with Boer commandos invading Natal. On 30 October Sir George White was driven back into Ladysmith, where he was soon besieged with, by his own count, 12,000 men. By 10 November the Boers held Colenso and the line of the Tugela, and their raiders pushed south as far as the Mooi River before falling back after Willow Grange on 23 November. General Sir Redvers Buller, sent out as commander-in-chief in South Africa, took personal charge of the relief and reached Frere on 6 December.

Buller first chose the safer route, a flank march west to Potgieter's Drift, and on 12 December reported that a direct assault on Colenso 'would be too costly'. Within hours he heard of Methuen's repulse at Magersfontein, following Gatacre's defeat at Stormberg. A flank march would mean abandoning his communications, and he now judged that he might share White's fate and leave Natal open. He switched to a frontal attack at Colenso, where the railway and the road bridges crossed the river.

The position was formidable. On the south bank a long, open slope ran down to the river. The Tugela itself was broad and deep, crossable only at the bridges and a few drifts that the British maps placed wrongly. Beyond it rose tier after tier of hills. Louis Botha had spent three weeks entrenching them, and the naval guns that shelled the hills on 13 and 14 December drew no reply. Buller told White to expect the attack about the 17th, then delivered it on the 15th, so the garrison never made the sortie it had prepared.

The armies

Buller had about 19,400 men of all ranks and 44 guns: four infantry brigades (Hildyard's 2nd, Lyttelton's 4th, Hart's 5th Irish and Barton's 6th Fusilier brigade), Dundonald's mounted brigade, five batteries of 15-pounders and naval 4.7-inch and 12-pounder guns from HMS Terrible and other ships. Doyle called it the finest force any British general had handled since the Alma. Reservists made up 40–50 per cent of the infantry, and infantry officers had given up their swords for rifles after heavy officer losses earlier in the war. Many of Dundonald's mounted men belonged to newly raised colonial corps, such as Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry and the South African Light Horse, in their first action.

Botha, aged 37 and in command because Piet Joubert had been hurt in a fall from his horse, had perhaps 4,500 men on the day, of whom fewer than 3,000 were engaged. His trenches ran along the lower slopes and the flats by the river, nearly invisible from the south bank. Only the works on the Colenso kopjes, notably Fort Wylie, could be seen. His guns were few: a 120 mm howitzer on Red Hill, field guns near the western Ladysmith road, and four or five 75 mm guns and a pom-pom or two on the kopjes. They were shifted between gun pits the night before. The burghers were Mauser riflemen under strict orders to hold their fire until Botha's signal, a shot from the howitzer.

The battle

Preliminaries (about 3.30–5.20 am). The British moved off in the dark. Long's 14th and 66th Field Batteries and six naval 12-pounders crossed the railway at 3.30 am, and the brigades marched at about 4 am. At 5.20 the main naval battery, 4,500 yards from Fort Wylie, began shelling the kopjes. For half an hour nothing answered. The plan put Hart's brigade across at Bridle Drift on the left and Hildyard's at the Colenso bridges in the centre, with Lyttelton between them in support. Dundonald was to take Hlangwane, a hill on the south bank, and Barton was to support him on the right.

Hart in the loop (6–10.30 am). Hart marched in mass of quarter-columns, guided by a sketch map that misplaced both the Doornkop Spruit and Bridle Drift and by an African guide who spoke no English. The guide led him to his own ford at the head of a narrow loop of the river. Hart ignored three warnings from the Royal Dragoons that Boers were on his front and left. Shortly after 6 am, as the column neared the mouth of the loop, a Boer gun fired, against Botha's orders. The battalions deployed under shrapnel and pushed up the loop by rushes, enfiladed from trenches on three sides. Units dissolved into groups following the nearest officer. Parties of Dublins, Connaughts and Inniskillings reached the river bank about 100 yards from the Boer trenches but could find no ford. Hart's brigade-major tried one and had to swim back. Buller sent orders to retire and Lyttelton brought up two battalions to cover them, but the foremost men did not begin to fall back until about 10.30. Botha ordered the Middelburg and Free State commandos to cross upstream and fall on Hart's flank; they refused.

Long's guns (from about 6.15 am). Long meant to come into action 2,000–2,500 yards from Fort Wylie but, misjudging the distance in the early light, unlimbered his twelve field guns in the open about 1,250 yards from the fort and not much more than 1,000 from the riverside trenches. Botha now gave the signal. The Boers had marked the ranges with whitewash. Long and the brigade-division commander, Hunt, were soon wounded. The gunners kept firing for about an hour, 80–100 rounds a gun, and silenced Fort Wylie for a time. At about 7.15, with ammunition gone and about four men left to a gun, the survivors sheltered in a donga behind the guns.

Buller calls it off (about 8 am). Told that the batteries were out of action, Buller decided that without guns the river could not be forced. He sent Hildyard forward only to cover the guns. By 9.30 the Queen's held Colenso village and Lieutenant-Colonel Bullock had reached the donga with a few Devons. On the right Dundonald's men were stopped at the foot of Hlangwane by about 800 burghers. Barton declined to send infantry without Buller's sanction, and Buller judged Hlangwane useless without Colenso.

Saving the guns. Volunteers galloped limber teams out from the rear donga: Captains Congreve and Schofield, Lieutenant Freddy Roberts, Lord Roberts's only son, Corporal Nurse and drivers of the 66th Battery. They brought two guns back. Roberts fell mortally wounded. A second attempt by Captain Reed of the 7th Battery failed, and Buller, himself hit by a shrapnel bullet, forbade any more.

Withdrawal (11 am–4.30 pm). At about 11 Buller ordered the guns abandoned and the army back to camp. The order never reached Bullock's party. The Boers waited until the naval guns had gone, then crossed, took the men in the donga prisoner, Bullock resisting to the last, and limbered up ten guns and their wagons.

Aftermath

British losses were about 1,140: 143 killed, about 750 wounded and some 240 prisoners or missing, most taken in the donga or at the head of the loop. Hart's brigade lost 500–550, the Dublin Fusiliers and Connaught Rangers worst. Botha's men lost under 40. Seven Victoria Crosses were awarded, to Congreve, Schofield, Reed, Nurse, Roberts (posthumously), Private Ravenhill of the Royal Scots Fusiliers and the surgeon Major Babtie. Roberts died two days later.

That night Buller telegraphed London that he ought to 'let Ladysmith go'. Next day he signalled to White suggesting he fire away his ammunition and make 'best terms you can'. White refused, saying he would not think of terms until forced to. The Cabinet told Buller that abandoning Ladysmith would be 'a national disaster of the greatest magnitude', and on 16 December decided to send Lord Roberts out as commander-in-chief, with Kitchener as chief of staff. Buller kept the Natal command, failed again at Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz, and relieved Ladysmith on 28 February 1900.

Buller blamed Long's advance for the defeat. Doyle thought that unfair and found the abandonment of the guns harder to excuse, since the Boers did not come for them until hours later. The Official History notes that Buller did not learn until the next day that men had been available to fight the guns all along. Botha later said the premature fire on Hart and the loss of the guns had cost him the chance of a ruinous British defeat.

Wargaming it

Colenso is a big, wide game: a front of seven or eight miles, four British brigades against a few thousand burghers who are almost never seen. A brigade-level game with battalion or company bases suits it, with the Boers as hidden markers revealed only when they fire. Smaller tables can take one sector: Hart in the loop, Long's guns and the donga, or Dundonald at Hlangwane.

The special rules matter more than the counts. The British should plan from a faulty map, with a chance that the guide leads Hart into the loop and that Long misjudges his range in the early light. The Boers fire only on Botha's signal, or by a die roll that an eager gunner opens early, as one did on Hart. Ranges are pre-marked for the Boers. Heat should wear down British infantry over the day, and orders should be slow to reach units in the open, so that some, like Bullock's party, never hear the recall.

The what-ifs are rich. Can Hart be extricated, or pushed to the real Bridle Drift a mile west? Does Long stay at 2,500 yards? Does Barton reinforce Dundonald so that Hlangwane, the key to the position later in the campaign, falls on the first day? Can the British hold Colenso until dark and bring the guns away? For the Boers, does Botha keep his nerve and let the British cross into the trap, and do the Free Staters obey and fall on Hart's flank?

Maps and pictures