was made in the war. The attack was carried out across an open
glacis by the 2nd Rifle Brigade and by the Inniskilling Fusiliers, the
men of Pieter's Hill. Through a deadly fire the gallant infantry swept
over the position, though Metcalfe, the brave colonel of the Rifles,
with eight other officers, and seventy men were killed or wounded.
Lysley, Steward, and Campbell were all killed in leading their
companies, but they could not have met their deaths upon an occasion
more honourable to their battalion. Great credit must also be given to
A and B companies of the Inniskilling Fusiliers, who were actually the
first over the Boer position. The cessation of the artillery fire was
admirably timed. It was sustained up to the last possible instant. 'As
it was,' said the captain of the leading company, 'a 94-pound shell
burst about thirty yards in front of the right of our lot. The smell of
the lyddite was awful.' A pom-pom and twenty prisoners, including the
commander of the police, were the trophies of the day. An outwork of the
Boer position had been carried, and the rumour of defeat and disaster
had already spread through their ranks. Braver men than the burghers
have never lived, but they had reached the limits of human endurance,
and a long experience of defeat in the field had weakened their nerve
and lessened their morale. They were no longer men of the same fibre as
those who had crept up to the trenches of Spion Kop, or faced the lean
warriors of Ladysmith on that grim January morning at Caesar's Camp.
Dutch tenacity would not allow them to surrender, and yet they realised
how hopeless was the fight in which they were engaged. Nearly fifteen
thousand of their best men were prisoners, ten thousand at the least had
returned to their farms and taken the oath. Another ten had been killed,
wounded, or incapacitated. Most of the European mercenaries had left;
they held only the ultimate corner of their own country, they had lost
their grip upon the railway line, and their supply of stores and of
ammunition was dwindling. To such a pass had eleven months of war
reduced that formidable army who had so confidently advanced to the
conquest of South Africa.

While Buller had established himself firmly upon the left of the Boer
position, Pole-Carew had moved forward to the north of the railway line,
and French had advanced as far as Swart Kopjes upon the Boer right.
These operations on August 26th and 27th were met with some resi