s despatch the War Office answered on 14th November that a fifth
infantry division would be sent out at an early date, under command of
Sir C. Warren.

[Sidenote: The original scheme of march through Free State to be
carried out after relief of Ladysmith.]

In arriving at the decisions recorded in the above official telegrams,
Sir Redvers Buller had not abandoned the intention of carrying out
ultimately the original plan of campaign. On the contrary, with a view
to its resumption, after the relief of Ladysmith had been effected, he
determined to instruct the General Officer Commanding the 1st
division, Lieut.-General Lord Methuen, as soon as he had thrust aside
the Boer commandos between the Orange river and Kimberley, to throw
into that town supplies and a reinforcement of one and a half
battalions of infantry and some naval long-range guns, and then move
back to the Orange river, withdrawing with him the women and children
and natives. Meantime, while the cavalry division, as its units
arrived from England, was being prepared for the front at a camp near
Cape Town, its commander, Lieut.-General French, who had been recalled
from Ladysmith, was to form a flying column at Naauwpoort, with
instructions to risk no engagement, but to manoeuvre and worry the
enemy, and thus check any invasion of the central districts of the
Cape. On the eastern side of that colony, the Commander-in-Chief
decided to assemble at Queenstown a force, under Lieut.-General Sir W.
Gatacre, the commander of the 3rd infantry division, whose duty it
would be to operate northwards, and endeavour to stop recruiting by
the enemy and protect the loyal. On Lord Methuen's return to Orange
River, it was Sir Redvers' intention that he should march eastwards in
conjunction with French, occupy the bridges of Colesberg, Norval's
Pont and Bethulie, and thus prepare for the advance on Bloemfontein,
which would be undertaken as soon as the relief of Ladysmith set him
(Sir Redvers) free from Natal.

[Sidenote: Dissolution of Army organisation.]

The decision to despatch to Natal the bulk of the earliest
reinforcements arriving from home has been often referred to as "the
break-up of the army corps." In a sense it was much more than that.
From the point of view of organisation, the transfer of one or more
intact divisions of the original army corps to Natal would have been
immaterial, since they would have remained still under the supreme
control of the General