ifty-seven officers had fallen in that brigade alone,
including their Brigadier and Colonel Downman of the Gordons. Colonel
Codrington of the Coldstreams was wounded early, fought through the
action, and came back in the evening on a Maxim gun. Lord Winchester
of the same battalion was killed, after injudiciously but heroically
exposing himself all day. The Black Watch alone had lost nineteen
officers and over three hundred men killed and wounded, a catastrophe
which can only be matched in all the bloody and glorious annals of that
splendid regiment by their slaughter at Ticonderoga in 1757, when
no fewer than five hundred fell before Montcalm's muskets. Never has
Scotland had a more grievous day than this of Magersfontein. She has
always given her best blood with lavish generosity for the Empire, but
it may be doubted if any single battle has ever put so many families of
high and low into mourning from the Tweed to the Caithness shore. There
is a legend that when sorrow comes upon Scotland the old Edinburgh
Castle is lit by ghostly lights and gleams white at every window in
the mirk of midnight. If ever the watcher could have seen so sinister
a sight, it should have been on this, the fatal night of December
11, 1899. As to the Boer loss it is impossible to determine it. Their
official returns stated it to be seventy killed and two hundred and
fifty wounded, but the reports of prisoners and deserters placed it at a
very much higher figure. One unit, the Scandinavian corps, was placed
in an advanced position at Spytfontein, and was overwhelmed by the
Seaforths, who killed, wounded, or took the eighty men of whom it was
composed. The stories of prisoners and of deserters all speak of losses
very much higher than those which have been officially acknowledged.

In his comments upon the battle next day Lord Methuen was said to have
given offence to the Highland Brigade, and the report was allowed to go
uncontradicted until it became generally accepted. It arose, however,
from a complete misunderstanding of the purport of Lord Methuen's
remarks, in which he praised them, as he well might, for their bravery,
and condoled with them over the wreck of their splendid regiments.
The way in which officers and men hung on under conditions to which no
troops have ever been exposed was worthy of the highest traditions of
the British army. From the death of Wauchope in the early morning, until
the assumption of the command of the brigade