With the Boers in the Transvaal and Orange Free State in 1880-1881 

  Africana Book Society, 1976, Mining, 1976, hardcover, facsimile reprint of the 1887 edition, illustrated,, fold out maps,  398 pages, condition: as new.

The Anglo-Boer conflict of 1880-81 has the distinction of being the only war that the British lost during the whole of Queen Victoria's long reign. In "With The Boers In The Transvaal And Orange Free State" the author, a British officer who had resigned his commission to become correspondent for the London Standard, gives a detailed and gripping account of the drama which so shocked Victorian England.
The discovery of diamonds along the borders of the Transvaal in 1867 led, ten year later, to the annexation of the state to the British Crown. In 1880 the burghers, who had hoped to retain at least some control over their own affairs - a hope that was quickly disappointed - reaffirmed their independence of the Crown and took up arms. It was a revolt which the British believed would be simple enough to crush, but the incompentence of their filed commanders, over-confidence, and a total lack of appreciation of the Boers' fighting qualities culminating in major disaster at Majuba Hill, a bloody action in which the Imperial forces suffered 228 casualties and the loss of thier commander-in-chief, Sir George Colley. The Boers had developed tactics and a discipline admirably suited to the terrain, and they fought with courage. Significantly, their losses at Majuba amounted to just one man killed and five wounded.
Remarkably few contemporary English-language books about the war were published, and this reissue of Charles Norris-Newman's outstanding narrative of the hostilities and of the peace negociations that followed, will be welcomed by both historian and interested layman.