Conflict: Second Boer War
Combatants: Boers vs. British
Location: South Africa
Outcome: Boer victory
Boer hostility toward the British had simmered, and sometimes boiled over, ever since Great Britain had annexed the Transvaal in 1877 and the First Boer War of 1880. The discovery of gold in the Transvaal in the 1890s brought a flood of additional British settlers, further straining relations. Cecil Rhodes, the Prime Minister of Cape Colony, openly sought to incorporate even more Boer territory. In 1899, the Orange Free State and the South African Republic allied with one another and went to war once again with the British Empire.
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By July of 1900, much of the formal Boer resistance to the British had been defeated and that August, British General Sir Redvers Buller was advancing on Louis Botha's commando forces in Belfast. Between the 21st and 27th of that month, Buller's troops engaged in a series of skirmishes with the Boers in and around the Bergendal farms. The battle was fought on foot, with mounted troops, and with artillery on both sides. A large portion of the defense was fought by ZARPs (Zuid-Afrikaansche Rijdende Politie), the police force of the Boer Republic. The Boers were finally defeated and driven off by an artillery bombardment and British charge on August 27th.
The British lost over 300 soldiers in the battle while the Boers lost less than 80, but the back of the South African resistance was broken.
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Points of Interest:
Although the British had defeated the Boer armies, guerilla warfare continued for two more years. Lord Kitchener 'solved' the guerilla problem by placing 120,000 Boers in concentration camps.
Louis Botha would be elected Prime Minister of the new Union of South Africa in 1910.
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Sources:
Dupuy, Trevor N., Johnson, Curt, & Bongard, David L. (1992). The Harper's Encyclopedia of Military Biography. New York: Castle Books (HarperCollins).
Dupuy, R. Ernest & Dupuy, Trevor N. (1993). The Harper's Encyclopedia of Military History. New York: HarperCollins.
Eggenberger, David (1985). An Encyclopedia of Battles: Accounts of Over 1,560 Battles from 1479 B.C. to the Present. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
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