The Battle of Magersfontein ( MAH-khərss-fon-tayn) was fought on 11 December 1899, at Magersfontein, near Kimberley, South Africa, on the borders of the Cape Colony and the independent republic of the Orange Free State (now in Sol Plaatje Local Municipality, Northern Cape). British forces under Lieutenant General Lord Methuen were advancing north along the railway line from the Cape to relieve the siege of Kimberley, but their path was blocked at Magersfontein by a Boer force that was entrenched in the surrounding hills. The British had already fought a series of battles with the Boers, most recently at Modder River, where the advance was temporarily halted.
Lord Methuen failed to perform adequate reconnaissance in preparation for the impending battle and was unaware that Boer Vecht-generaal (Combat General) De la Rey had entrenched his forces at the foot of the hills, rather than the forward slopes, as was the accepted practice. That allowed the Boers to survive the initial British artillery bombardment, and when the British troops failed to deploy from a compact formation during their advance, the defenders inflicted heavy casualties. The Highland Brigade suffered the worst casualties, and on the Boer side, the Scandinavian Corps was destroyed. The Boers attained a tactical victory and succeeded in holding the British in their advance on Kimberley. The battle was the second of three battles during what became known as the Black Week of the Second Boer War: Stormberg on Sunday 10 December, Magersfontein on Monday 11 December and Colenso on Friday 15 December 1899.
Following their defeat, the British delayed at the Modder River for another two months while reinforcements were brought forward. General Lord Roberts was appointed Commander in Chief of the British forces in South Africa and moved to take personal command of the front. He subsequently lifted the siege of Kimberley and forced Cronje to surrender at the Battle of Paardeberg.
Background
In the early days of the war in the Cape Colony, the Boers surrounded and laid siege to the British garrisons in the towns of Kimberley and Mafeking and destroyed the railway bridge across the Orange River at Hopetown. Substantial British reinforcements (an army corps under General Redvers Buller) arrived in South Africa and were dispersed to three main fronts. While Buller himself advanced from the port of Durban in Natal to relieve the besieged town of Ladysmith and a smaller detachment under Lieutenant General Gatacre secured the Cape Midlands, the reinforced 1st Division under Lord Methuen advanced from the Orange River to relieve Kimberley.
Methuen advanced along the Cape–Transvaal railway line because a lack of water and pack animals made the reliable railway an obvious choice. Also, Buller had given him orders to evacuate the civilians in Kimberley and the railway was the only means of mass transport available. But his strategy had the disadvantage of making the direction of his approach obvious. Nevertheless, his army drove the Boers out of their defensive positions along the railway line at Belmont, Graspan, and the Modder River, at the cost of a thousand casualties. The British were forced to stop their advance within 16 miles (26 km) of Kimberley at the Modder River crossing. The Boers had demolished the railway bridge when they retreated, and it had to be repaired before the army could advance any further. Methuen also needed several days for supplies and reinforcements to be brought forward, and for his extended supply line to be secured from sabotage. The Boers were badly shaken by their three successive defeats and also required time to recover. The delay gave them time to bring up reinforcements, to reorganise, and to improve their next line of defence at Magersfontein.
Prelude
Boer defences
After the Battle of the Modder River, the Boers initially retreated to Jacobsdal, where a commando from Mafeking linked up with them. The following day, Cronje moved his forces 10 miles (16 km) north to Scholtz Nek and Spytfontein, where they began to fortify themselves in the hills that made up the last defensible position along the railway line to Kimberley. Although closer to the British camp than the Boer camp, Jacobsdal was left poorly defended, and continued to function as the Boers' supply base until 3 December.
The Free State government decided to reinforce Cronje's position after the Battle of Belmont. Between eight hundred and a thousand men of the Heilbron, Kroonstad and Bethlehem commandos arrived at Spytfontein from Natal, accompanied by elements of the Ficksburg and Ladybrand commandos from the Basuto border. Reinforcements were also brought up from the Bloemhof and Wolmaranstad commandos who were besieging Kimberley. The remainder of Cronje's force arrived from the siege of Mafeking. Their force now numbered 8,500 fighters, excluding camp followers and the African labourers who performed the actual work of digging the Boer entrenchments.
Koos de la Rey had been absent from the army immediately after the Battle of the Modder River, having gone to Jacobsdal to bury his son Adriaan, who had been killed by a British shell during the battle. He arrived at the defensive positions on 1 December and surveyed the Boer lines the following day. He found the defences lacking, and realised that Cronje's position at Spytfontein was vulnerable to long range artillery fire from the hills at Magersfontein. He therefore recommended that they should move their defensive position forward to Magersfontein, to deny the British this opportunity. Cronje, who was the more senior officer, disagreed with him, so De la Rey telegraphed his objections to President Martinus Theunis Steyn of the Orange Free State. After consulting with President Paul Kruger of the Transvaal, Steyn visited the front on 4 December at Kruger's suggestion. Steyn also wished to settle a rift that had developed between the Transvaal and Free State Boers over the poor performance of his Free Staters in the battle on 28 November. He spent the next day touring the camps and defences, then summoned a krijgsraad (council of war).
The Boers had learnt in earlier battles that the British artillery was superior in numbers to theirs, and could pound any high ground where they placed their guns or rifle pits. At Ladysmith, the Boers used rocks to build defensive sangars, but the ground at Magersfontein was sandy and less rocky. De la Rey recommended, contrary to common practice, that they should entrench themselves forward of the line of kopjes, rather than on the facing slopes. The trenches overlooking the receding, open ground sloping down towards the British axis of advance afforded the Boers concealment and protection from fire, and permitted them to use the flat trajectory of their Mauser rifles to greater effect. Since the trenches were concealed, they could thwart the standard British tactic of advancing to within close range under cover of darkness and then storming the Boer position at daybreak. A final consequence of De la Rey's defensive layout was that the troops would not be able to retreat, as Commandant General Marthinus Prinsloo's forces had done at Modder River. Before leaving the front, Steyn raised the morale of the Free State burghers by dismissing Prinsloo, who was seen as the chief reason for the defeats in earlier battles.
The new defensive line occupied a wide crescent-shaped front, extending for 6 miles (10 km) and straddling the road and the railway line that Methuen's advance depended upon. The main trench directly in front of the Magersfontein Hill was 2 miles (3.2 km) long, and protected on the right flank by a single trench. The trenches that were to protect the left flank in the direction of the river were not completed before the battle commenced. Two high wire fences complemented the natural obstacles created by the thick scrub bush. One ran north-northeast and marked the border of the Orange Free State, while a second protected the trenches in front of the Boer position.
British plan
Methuen believed that the Boers were occupying the crests of the line of kopjes, as they had done at Belmont, but he was unable to reconnoitre the position; his mounted scouts could not roam the countryside freely on account of wire farm fences, nor could they approach any closer than 1 mile (1.6 km) to the Boer positions without being driven off by rifle fire. No serviceable maps were available; those in the possession of the British officers had been prepared for the purposes of land registration, with no consideration of military operations. Officers supplemented these maps with hasty sketches based on limited daily reconnaissance. The poor maps and lack of reconnaissance would prove critical to the outcome of the battle.
Ever since the victory against an Egyptian army at the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir, the standard British tactic against an entrenched position was an approach march at night in close order to maintain cohesion, followed by deployment into open order within a few hundred yards of the objective and a frontal attack with the bayonet at first light. Methuen planned to bombard the Boer positions with artillery from 16:50 to 18:30 on 10 December. Following the barrage, the newly arrived Highland Brigade under Major General Wauchope was to make a night march that would position them to launch a frontal attack on the Boers at dawn the following day. Wauchope had argued for a flanking attack along the Modder River, but had been unable to convince his superior.
Methuen's orders show that his intention was to "hold the enemy on the north and to deliver an attack on the southern end of Magersfontein Ridge." The advance was to be made in three columns. The first column consisted of the Highland Brigade, the 9th Lancers, the 2nd King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and supporting artillery and engineer sections as well as a balloon section. The first column was ordered to march directly on the south-western spur of the kopje and on arrival, before dawn, the 2nd Black Watch were to move east of the kopje, where he believed the Boers had a strong-point. He ordered the 2nd Seaforth Highlanders to advance to the south-eastern point of the hill, and the 1st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders to extend the line to the left. The 1st Highland Light Infantry was to advance as a reserve. All units were to advance in a mass of quarter columns, the most compact formation in the drill book: 3,500 men in 30 companies aligned in 90 files, all compressed into a column 45 yards (41 m) wide and 160 yards (150 m) long, with the outer sections using ropes to guide the four battalions in their night march and deployment for the dawn attack. The second column, on the left under Major-General Reginald Pole-Carew, consisted of a battalion from the 9th Brigade, the Naval Brigade with a 4.7-inch naval gun, and Rimington's Guides (a mounted infantry unit raised in Cape Town). The third column, led by Major-General Sir Henry Edward Colville, was in reserve and was composed of the 12th Lancers, the Guards Brigade, and artillery, engineer, and medical support elements.
Advance to attack
A drizzle started by mid-afternoon on 10 December and continued throughout the artillery bombardment, which was delivered by 24 field guns, four howitzers, and a 4.7-inch naval gun. In preparation for the attack, the British soldiers bivouacked in the rain 3 miles (4.8 km) from the Boer lines. Instead of "softening" the Boer positions, the explosions of lyddite shells against the facing slopes above their trenches merely alerted the Boers to the impending attack. As midnight approached, the rain increased to a downpour and the leading elements of the Highland Brigade commenced their advance towards their objective at the southern end of Magersfontein ridge. Wauchope had made a similar night march in his advance on Tel el Kebir in 1882, but this time he was faced not by flat desert terrain and clear skies, but rather by torrential rain, rocky outcrops, and thorn scrub, which caused delays and annoyance. The thunderstorm and the high iron ore content of the surrounding hills played havoc with compasses and navigation.
The brigade was advancing in quarter column as directed by Methuen's orders. The soldiers advanced packed as closely together as possible, with each ordered to grasp his neighbour to prevent the men losing contact with each other in the darkness. As first light approached, the storm abated and the Brigade was on course, but the delays put them 1,000 yards (910 m) from the line of hills. Wauchope's guide, Major Benson of the Royal Artillery, suggested to Wauchope that it was no longer safe to continue in closed formation and that the Brigade should deploy. Wauchope replied "... I'm afraid my men will lose direction. I think we will go a little further." Still in quarter column, the Highlanders advanced further towards the main Boer trench, and when about 400 metres from it, started to extend into attack formation, by which time they were now visible to the Boer riflemen.