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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...

Like Lions They Fought: The Last Zulu War  By: Robert B. Edgerton (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1988) 244 pages. Perhaps no other conflict in the pantheon of British (United Kingdom) military history is as surrounded by  mysticism and falsities bore out of legend, like the Zulu War of 1879. Edgerton's Like Lions They Fought fills a very important gap in academic and popular research into the heavily studied and revisited period of British rule in South Africa and their greater military conquests of Africa in the mid to late 19th century. The author does a flawless job bridging the socio-cultural analysis of both the British and Zulu societies of this era with a concise and an engaging narrative of the conflict that became one of the most, if not they most celebrated colonial conflict of the 19th century. British forces arrive under the field command of Colonels Henry Pulleine and Anthony Durnford Unlike almost any other book on the topic of the Zulu War or ...