the Highland Brigade - Battle of Magersfontein

in the space of five days in december 1899 the british army was defeated three times during the boer war with the loss of 2 800 soldiers killed wounded or captured the british press dumped these disasters black week the boer war of 1899-1902 pitted the might of the british empire against two tiny afrikaner republics of the transpile and the orange free state in south africa i have a short video that gives an overview of the bull war so i don't want to repeat myself for those of you who've seen it but if you want to watch it there's a description in the there's a link in the description below and there's one appearing on the screen well about now the war had started badly for the british with the boers invading their colonies of natal and the cape and besieging british army garrisons and lady smith kimberley and mafiking a british army of 50 000 landed in cape town commanded by the zulu war veteran general bulla bulla's original plan had been to use his whole army to advance on the boer capitals of blonde fontaine and pretoria but the plight of the besieged towns forced him to divide his forces instead lieutenant general methuen the old itonian aristocrat was to lead a force of nearly 20 000 strong to relieve the diamond capital of kimberley whilst bulla himself would personally oversee the relief of lady smith by the end of november as bulla was making his way up the coast to natal general lord mathewin was already marching up the railway line towards kimberley clearing the boers from positions at belmont and graspan although suffering 500 casualties in the process which should have taught him something about his enemy on the 28th of november he had reached the modo river and found himself up against a war force of 8 000. the overconfident british noble walked into an ambush carefully laid by that magnificent boer commander cousteau array the british soldiers were pinned down for nearly 10 hours by accurate boar rifle fire in the hot african sun and could only withdraw under the cover of darkness leaving 70 of their comrades dead on the battlefield behind them general mathewin himself was among the 430 british wounded in the battle and their losses could have been a lot higher had the boers not opened fire prematurely meanwhile the boers having suffered about 80 casualties of their own including delaware's son who was killed silently abandoned their positions and moved back towards the hills around magnafonstein there was now a lull in the british war effort for nearly two weeks as the british brought up further reinforcements and had to repair the railway bridge over the modern river which the boers had destroyed as i said the buzz had fallen back on the formidable hill at magoffonstein and during that two-week lull they too had received reinforcements from their from their army besieging kimberley swelling the ranks of the army based at mcafonstein commanded by general cronier in his sixties cronier was had lost some of the fighting spirit he displayed in the first world war in the 1880s when the boers had achieved notable victory over the british and restored their independence and also at the jameson raid just a few years beforehand he was however fortunate to have the support of general couste de la rey age 52 delaware had served with cronia back in that first war war since then he had opposed kruger's hard-line attitude towards the eight landers the foreigners who settled in the transpiled during the gold rush believing that if they acted too hard on those eight lenders it could lead to war with britain a proud boar he had nevertheless hired an english nanny for his children and when the war that he'd always warned about warned against finally broke out in october 1899 he had escorted her to the safety of british lines de la rey was already proving to be one of the boers most able and aggressive generals it was delayed who had conducted the very first offensive action of the war attacking and capturing a british troop chain destined for mafiking normally reporting into cronier it was actually de la rey who'd lost his son at the modern river just two weeks beforehand who took tactical command at magdafonstain in the intervening two weeks since the modern river de la ray had supervised the construction of an elaborate trench system on the hill extending into the defendable landscape either side forming a 12 mile crescent this 12 mile wide defensive barrier effectively reduced the opportunity for the british to outflank his positions the obvious place for the boers to position themselves was up on the hillside after all holding the high ground has been a military competitive advantage well since time immemorial the only disadvantage in this particular war would be that the british artillery could pummel his positions long before his men could inflict casualties on the british infantry and so dela ray came up with a bold plan he ordered a 1 000 yard trench to be dug at the foot of the hill on the level ground facing the british at british advance it was the last place that the british would expect to find the buzz and in the ground in front of the trenches he covered it with barbed wire along which the boers tied tin cans which would clang when the wire was touched alerting them to any nighttime attack now it was obvious to general methuen that uh the boers were blocking his path to kimberley and they were centered on the hill at a magnafonstein what he wasn't aware of was the exact boer positions the army coming into the boer war had a paradigm based upon fighting ill-equipped native armies for decades beforehand once those opponents were brave they tended to be armed with spears sword shields and they attacked in vast numbers under those circumstances the british infantry didn't need to have accurate rifle fire they just needed a lot of rifle fire fired in unison into those masked ranks of their enemies and they had mastered this this controlled volley fire into deadly with deadly effect as witnessed the year before at the battle of omdurman in sudan allied to that disciplined volley fire was a disciplined bayonet charge to storm enemy positions and to clear them back in 1882 general wallsey had won the battle of tel al kabir with a dawn at bane at charge on the unsuspecting egyptians so all their experiences are to onderman and tell el al-kabir at barra in sudan or lundy in the zulu wars showed that these tactics worked as long as your enemy massed up against you and they didn't have any means of really firing back unfortunately for the british the boers were a very different kind of enemy they didn't do massed charges against ranks of british infantry but they concealed themselves behind boulders and in trenches and with the latest german mauser rifles and crooks artillery they most certainly could fire back and against the boers it was the british tactics of standing shoulder to shoulder firing volleys and charging with bayonets that was to look antiquated because it was those tactics and that way of habitual thinking that was to prove so disastrous to the british army in black week 1899. black week had started on the 10th of december when the british were defeated at stormberg losing over 700 men mainly captured i've done a video about that battle too and on that very same day the 10th of december 1899 general methuen began his advance to break through the board positions at magdalfonstein his plan was simple storm at the boar positions with a dawn attack unfortunately that very same tactic had ended in disaster at stormberg that very morning rather like stormbrook methuen had not adequately scouted ahead meaning he didn't really know the bird dispositions at magdafonstein this lack of scouting was another handicap in the british army that was exposed by the boer war to be fair to the general it wasn't for lack of trying despite the lack of skills his mounted units had gone forward but they've been driven off by fast-moving boer commandos likewise for the previous two days the british army had been firing at the hills trying to force the boers to fire back and therefore give away their positions but the buzz held their fire so without pinpointing the boar guns and with limited scouting intelligence general mathewin was not clear exactly where the british the bull positions actually were i mean he had enough military experience to deduce the burs were entrenched on the hill at mcafonstein indeed delaware couldn't actually hide all of those trenches could he and what he actually did was he exposed some of his ones near the summit to sort of reinforce british thinking that they would be at the head top of the hill and keeping their attention away from the base because that trench at the bottom of the hill was most certainly concealed and the british had no idea that they were about to advance into a deadly ambush so lacking inaccurate intelligence but confident in the tried and tested methods of britain's colonial wars general methuen ordered his men forward in a four mile nighttime march the british would attack on a seven mile wide front the ninth brigade consisting of the northumberland fusiliers the northamptons the loyal north lanks the king's own yorkshire light infantry and the first manchester regiment would attack on the left-hand side over on the right the attack would be delivered by the guards brigade consisting of those illustrious regiments the coldstream guards the grenadier guards and the scots guards the same red-coated soldiers that modern tourists see changing the guard outside buckingham palace by 1899 those famous red uniforms were only for ceremonial use the british army had converted to kharki to provide better camouflage certainly the last time the british had fought the boers back in 1881 it was their red tunics that have made them highly vulnerable targets and had contributed to their decisive defeat at the battle of majuba and in the center the highland brigade would lead the attack on mcfonstein hill itself the highland brigade consisted of some of britain and scotland's finest fighting regiments leading the assault would bleed the black watch behind them with the seaforth highlanders the argyle and sutherland highlanders and the highland light infantry the highland brigade was commanded by major general andy warchope the from the black watch 53 year old warchop came from a wealthy mining family in scotland politically ambitious he'd actually taken on british prime minister william gladstone in his seat of midlothian and nearly won it from the colossus of victorian politics back in 1892. just after midnight on monday the 11th of december 1899 the highland brigade formed up ready for a frontal attack on the boars wherever they were it was inky black and the rain was falling steadily as their commander ordered the advance against war jobs better judgment he carried out general methuen's orders to advance in parade ground fashion his men actually held onto ropes to keep their lines straight in the darkness and we were to see similar tactics of course in the first world war it was four am and the very first streaks of the african dawn were appearing in the sky the highland brigade started to form an extended line to the attack the black watch were wheeling to the right the sea fourths in the center the argyles to the left with the highland light infantry acting as a reserve it was then that the kilted highlanders got tangled in the barbed wire jangling tin cans alerted the boars and then from the left somewhere ahead of them a few hundred yards ahead a single shot rang out the highlanders were swept by a storm of rifle fire not from up on the hillside but from just 400 yards away straight in front of them firing their smokeless mauser rifles the buoys lying low on their trenches and firing on the horizontal were almost invisible to the british attackers sir arthur conan doyle creator of sherlock holmes wrote an account shortly after the battle and claimed that 700 highlanders were hit in the opening seven minutes of the battle amongst one of the very first to die was major general andrew warchope as light filled the sky the boers were now able to deliver even more accurate fire and the rifleman further up on the hillside joined in with them in scenes reminiscent of the future first world war scottish soldiers were entangled on barbed wire and were shot to pieces by german rifles for the next 10 hours the highlanders were pinned down with no food or water under the baking african sun burning the backs of their legs below their kilts despite the cold stream guards and the gordon highlanders trying to offer some sort of support there was no way forward for the highland brigade the only respite came from when the british artillery started to actually shell the ball positions and as boers took cover small groups of highlanders would make a would try and make a run back to safety by late afternoon the highlanders had started a general retreat under heavy boar fire with his center collapsing and with the boar artillery finally opening up and showing their positions general lord methuen ordered a complete retreat the battle had been a disaster for the british overall british casualties at the battle of magdafonstein were 970 men killed wounded or captured the bulk of those casualties had befallen at the highland brigade who had lost 53 officers and 650 soldiers it was one of the biggest losses suffered by the british army in a single day's fighting since the crimean war the boer losses were just 250 mainly from british artillery shelling kimberly remained besieged general mathieu was shortly to be sidelined but he remained in the field for the rest of the war however misfortune docked him almost to the very end just one month before the war ended in 1902 he was captured in a battle by a large bore commando force led by none other than his nemesis atmagafonstein coustela ray badly injured he was released by de la ray and sent home to britain on a hospital ship he continued to serve in the british army into the first world war and upon retirement he actually became the constable of the tower of london eventually dying in 1932. the brave highland brigade continued on active service throughout the rest of the boer war under the command of the legendary general hector mcdonald mcdonald was an is an amazing character he was the son of a humble crofter who rose almost to the very top of the class ridden at victorian army yeah i'm i think his story is worth telling uh maybe i should do a video on it what do you think uh put a comment below the buzz had achieved two notable victories over the british at stormberg and magathon's teen in the space of 24 hours but there was still worse to come in this black week for the british army watch out for my final video from black week it's the battle of calenso when bulla himself falls foul of the boers under their young energetic commander louis botha it's coming soon so make sure you hit the subscribe icon below so you don't miss it thanks for watching and i'll see you very soon [Music]

Channel: The History Chap

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Keywords: british history, the history chap, history of england, military history, the highland brigade battle of magersfontein, the highland brigade at magersfontein, battle of magersfontein, battle of magersfontein south africa, the battle of magersfontein, battle of magersfontein 1899, the battle of magersfontein 1899, black week 1899, black week boer war, boer war black week, boer war, south africa, second boer war, the boer war, history of south africa

Id: ktyMb86c52k

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 29 2022