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concentrate his force to the south of the Orange River, but in the light of the pleas for as-
sistance he received from the besieged garrisons in Kimberley and Ladysmith, he decided
to temporarily deviate from his planned strategy. Consequently, he divided his army corps
into four portions: one section, under Lord Methuen, was sent to Orange River Station, from
where they were to relieve Kimberley; another section, under Major-General John French,
was sent to the Colesberg front; Major-General W.F. Gatacre was sent to the north-eastern
Cape Colony front, and Buller went to Natal (to relieve Ladysmith) with the largest portion
of the army corps. French succeeded in keeping the Boers at bay at Colesberg, but all three
other senior officers failed: in the space of one week, Gatacre was defeated at Stormberg
(10 December 1899), Methuen at Magersfontein (11 December) and Buller at Colenso (15
December). There was an outcry in Britain, and in the wake of the so-called “black week”
defeats, Lord Roberts (with Lord Kitchener at his side) was sent to South Africa to replace
Buller as Commander-in-Chief. 12
After their arrival in Cape Town on 10 January 1900, Roberts and Kitchener consolidated
the British position in South Africa. Large numbers of reinforcements arrived and were sent
to the various fronts, and Kitchener assisted Roberts with transport arrangements and the
forming of more detachments of mounted infantry. On 8 February 1900, these two senior of-
ficers arrived at their operational base at the Modder River, south of Kimberley, where Rob-
erts had concentrated the largest portion of his available forces. On 11 February, at the start
of the third phase of the war, Roberts launched an elaborate indirect strategy: he outflanked
General Piet Cronjé’s entrenched army at Magersfontein, surrounded Cronjé at Paardeberg,
and, after some heavy fighting and bombardments, forced him to surrender on 27 Febru-
ary. In the meantime, French relieved Kimberley on 15 February. From Paardeberg, Roberts
marched to Bloemfontein, the Orange Free State capital, which was occupied without any
fighting on 13 March. 13
As a result of their drinking contaminated water from the Modder River in the vicinity of
the Paardeberg battlefield, coupled with the gross neglect of elementary sanitary precautions
in the military camps, several thousand British soldiers went down with typhoid (then called
enteric fever), and more than a thousand died in Bloemfontein alone. As a consequence, Rob-
erts was forced to remain in Bloemfontein for seven weeks, and only resumed his advance to-
wards the north, all along the main railway line (with Kitchener at his side), on 3 May 1900.
There was little opposition. Kroonstad was captured on 12 May, the Vaal River was reached
on 28 May (and the Orange Free State consequently annexed and renamed the Orange River
Colony, ORC), Johannesburg was occupied unopposed on 31 May, and Pretoria likewise on
5 June. In terms of European warfare, the war was now supposed to be over, but in practice, a
completely new conflict had in the meantime broken out. (More on that in the next section.)
After Roberts consolidated his position in Pretoria, French was ordered to lead the British
advance eastwards, along the Delagoa Bay railway line, all the way to Komatipoort, on the
border with Mozambique (then a Portuguese colony). At Bergendal (21-27 August 1900),

12 For the events of October-December 1899, see, for example, Amery (ed.), pp. 98-467; Breytenbach, pp. 179-
462 and 2 (Pretoria, 1978), passim; B. Nasson, The South African War (London, 1999), pp. 81-135.
13 Amery (ed.), 3 (London, 1905), pp. 338-342, 392-396, 401-458, 473-487, 560-569; Breytenbach, 4 (Preto-
ria, 1983), pp. 204-430; Nasson, pp. 149-163.