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Part I, Great Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1900 As Field Marshall Frederick Roberts looked for a decisive conclusion to hostilities between his armies and the Afrikaner Boer guerrillas, his chief-of-staff, Lord General  Kitchener was tasked with rounding up Boer pockets of resistance near the Cape Colonies in the former Transvaal and Orange Free State . He had come down with the flu shortly after his arrival in South Africa  and thus it would be  Kitchener basically who had complete control over most of the British forces in country as the next highest ranking general and as the chief-of-staff. He took to his task of defeating the Boer insurgency with quickly and with fervor, marching across the Modder River to engage Piet Cronje’s commando Held up in a laager on the banks of the Moddan River at the Paardeberg Drift. The old Boer was with his wife and 4,200 Boer guerrillas under arms. Cronje would be a major prize for the British army if he could be neutralized. The victor o...

Part II, Great Anglo-Boer War, 1900-1902 The Second Anglo-Boer War, or Second Boer War of 1899-1902, brought the British Empire into conflict yet again with the Afrikaner-Boers, the European pioneers of South Africa , who sought independence from England for their brother-nations, the Orange Free State and Transvaal republics. Led by an aging Queen Victoria, Sir Alfred Milner, High Commissioner for South Africa, and Joseph Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary, and a slew of regular army generals, the British land forces looked to establish commonwealth control over the Boer republics, utterly rich in diamond and gold mines, the colonial importance of South Africa was paramount to  the military and political spheres in London  throughout the years leading up to conflict, 1896-1899. Remembered today as one of the last major colonial conflicts of the 19 th century, the Great Anglo-Boer War , named so rather heroically by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (b.1859-1930), left dead 22,000...

On this day in 1879 the last direct claimant to the throne of France, Napoleon, Prince Imperial was killed in Zululand in an ambush by Zulu warriors. The only child of former emperor Napoleon III (1808-1873) the prince had lived comfortably in exile attending the Royal Military academy Woolwich  and later using his mothers influence with Queen Victoria to earn a commission as a artillery officer. Louis Napeolon, Prince Imperial 1856- June 1st, 1879 By all accounts Louis Napoleon was a charming and well liked 22 year old who received top marks in cavalry and fencing while at Woolwich. Despite the relative scandal of having a Frenchman, no less the last hope for  Napoleonic  succession, as an officer in the British army of engineers and artillery. The Prince Imperial The Prince arrived in Zululand well after the great succession of early battles between the British Army and Zulu warriors of King Cetshwayo, of which in several the Brit...