February 18, 1900 · Orange Free State Theater
February 18, 1900
Roberts's sweeping flanking maneuver in February 1900 cut off Piet Cronje's Boer force of approximately 4,000 men and their wagons on the Modder River at Paardeberg. Kitchener, in temporary command while Roberts was ill, launched frontal assaults on the laager on February 18 — 'Paardeberg Sunday' — that cost nearly 1,300 British casualties in a single day without breaking the Boer position. Roberts arrived, overruled Kitchener's assaults, and settled into a siege. Cronje refused to abandon his women and wagons and surrender. After ten days, with dead cattle putrefying in the river providing the garrison's only water source, Cronje surrendered on February 27 — the nineteenth anniversary of Majuba Hill. Over 4,000 Boers were taken prisoner, the largest Boer capitulation of the war.
Commanders