was gradually increased, partly by troops from Europe, and partly
by the dispatch of five thousand British troops from India. The 2nd
Berkshires, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, the 1st Manchesters,
and the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers arrived in succession with
reinforcements of artillery. The 5th Dragoon Guards, 9th Lancers,
and 19th Hussars came from India, with the 1st Devonshires, 1st
Gloucesters, 2nd King's Royal Rifles and 2nd Gordon Highlanders.
These with the 21st, 42nd, and 53rd batteries of Field Artillery
made up the Indian Contingent. Their arrival late in September
raised the number of troops in South Africa to 22,000, a force
which was inadequate to a contest in the open field with the
numerous, mobile, and gallant enemy to whom they were to be
opposed, but which proved to be strong enough to stave off that
overwhelming disaster which, with our fuller knowledge, we can now
see to have been impending.

As to the disposition of these troops a difference of opinion broke
out between the ruling powers in Natal and the military chiefs at
the spot. Prince Kraft has said, 'Both strategy and tactics may
have to yield to politics '; but the political necessity should be
very grave and very clear when it is the blood of soldiers which
has to pay for it. Whether it arose from our defective
intelligence, or from that caste feeling which makes it hard for
the professional soldier to recognise (in spite of deplorable past
experiences) a serious adversary in the mounted farmer, it is
certain that even while our papers were proclaiming that this time,
at least, we would not underrate our enemy, we were most seriously
underrating him. The northern third of Natal is as vulnerable a
military position as a player of kriegspiel could wish to have
submitted to him. It runs up into a thin angle, culminating at the