Britain is strong, there is no doubt about this. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The British colony covers an area of more than 30 million square kilometers, equivalent to one-fifth of the world's land area, accounting for one-half of the total colonies of the great powers, equal to more than 100 times the local area, and the colonial population is nearly 400 million, equal to 9 times the population of its own country, the colonial scope includes all continents, and it is the largest colonial empire in the world.

Britain's world hegemony was established in the middle of the eighteenth century, and in this almost a century and a half, Britain, with the support of its vast colonies, rapidly increased its national power and became the world's rightful hegemon.

A century and a half will increase the strength of Britain to what extent, the world does not know how much wealth has been gathered in the hands of the British, these wealth is the British heritage, a heritage that is difficult to easily shake the British status, unless a world war breaks out, and Britain is the protagonist in the war, will let the British heritage be quickly consumed.

Now, such a powerful country is going to war with two small regional states with a total population of less than 440,000 (the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State, both founded by the Boers), and it seems that the outcome of the war is already doomed, the difference is that Britain will pay as much as a price to conquer the Boer state, and at the same time, outsiders will admire the courage of the Boers and dare to say no to the British.

Time passed, and the pace of war was approaching.

According to the political blueprint for the future of South Africa designed by the British, Britain needed to establish a federal South Africa, including the Transvaal, Orange and Natal, led by the Cape Colony, to establish a British-style parliamentary representative system in these autonomous colonies, to protect British trade interests and labor supply in South Africa, and to ensure the security of its dependencies and subjects, so as to establish a strong British colonial system in southern Africa.

In fact, the British and the Boers negotiated only to buy time to mobilize more troops to South Africa, and of course, everything was better from the negotiating table, and the war could not avoid its own casualties.

In September of the 7th year of Xinghua, the President of the Transvaal, Kruger, told Sir Milner that consideration could be given to reducing the period of residence of aliens to obtain Transvaal citizenship from 14 years to five years, but asked Britain to cease its claims to the Transvaal Republic of suzerainty in the future.

Influenced by domestic public opinion, the British Parliament said in its reply to Kruger: "...... Her Majesty and the Government consider the response of the Government of the Republic of South Africa to be negative or inconclusive...... Her Majesty the Queen and the Government reserve the right to reconsider the current situation and to adopt a final solution accordingly. ”

In order to increase military pressure on the Transvaal, the British sent 2,000 troops each from India and the Mediterranean to reinforce the Natal colony.

On 9 October, the Transvaal government issued an ultimatum to Britain, demanding that Britain halt the build-up of troops in South Africa, withdraw all troops that had arrived in South Africa after 1 June, and submit all disputed issues to diplomatic arbitration within 48 hours for a reply.

On 10 October, British Colonial Secretary Neville Chamberlain ordered Sir Milner to reject South Africa's offer.

At five o'clock in the afternoon of October 11, the federal parliaments of the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State declared war on Great Britain, and the war officially began.

Before the war, the British army in South Africa about 20,000 people, of which 13,000 were deployed in the Natal colony, 7,000 were stationed in the Cape Colony, and 47,000 were on the way to help.

The Boer war plan was to concentrate superior forces before British reinforcements arrived in South Africa, divide into two routes, attack Natal all the way to the east, divide and encircle the two main British strongholds: Leddy Smith and Dundee, and occupy the port of Durban to gain access to the sea; The other way southwest, occupying two strategic points on the Western Cape railway line where the main British forces were stationed: Mafrtin and Kimberley.

At the same time, it was necessary to incite Boer rebellion in the Cape Colony, to contain the British forces, especially to disrupt the transportation of the two Cape Railways in the east and west, to prevent the reinforcements of the British army from using the railway to advance northward, and in order to prevent the African natives from taking advantage of the war to attack the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State, the Boers also divided three forces to defend three important areas.

The British and the Boers each had their own plans for war, but the Boers declared war on Britain first, and the war initially went in the direction planned by the Boers.

On 11 October, General Delarry, known as the "Lion of the West Transvaal", led a cloth army into British Bechuanaland, cutting off the Western Cape Railway and thus cutting off the connection between the Cape and Rhodesia.

On 12 October, the Boer coalition of the Transvaal Army and the Orange Armed Forces marched eastward, with the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, General Piert Joubert, leading the main force from East Orange over the Drakensberg and into the Natal colony, where the main force of the British army in Natal was Leddy Smith.

In the early morning of 20 October, the pursuing Burundi army engaged in a battle with the British brigade stationed here to defend the outer line of Ladysmith at Mount Tarana, and the commander of the Burunes, General Meir, took advantage of the favorable terrain and the cover of the morning fog to launch a surprise attack on the British army, with the British losing 465 men and the Boer army losing 145 men, the first large-scale battle since the British and the Boers fought.

On 30 October, Leddy Smith's 4,000 British troops under the command of Lieutenant General George White launched a counteroffensive against the Cloth army, and encountered the main force of the Cloth army under the command of Joubert in Nicholson Canyon, and the British army was defeated with a loss of 1,272 men, and the rest retreated to Leddy Smith.

At the end of October, 20,000 British troops led by the commander-in-chief of the British reinforcements (the South African Expeditionary Force) and General Redforth Buller, who had suppressed the local uprising in Ireland, finally arrived in Cape Town, and from mid-November, the British army under the command of Buller launched a counteroffensive against the Burenos forces on three fronts: eastern, central and western.

But in the following week, all British forces suffered varying degrees of defeat, the British lost as many as 4,000 men, Admiral Buller because of the defeat, blamed for the resignation of the British Expeditionary Force commander-in-chief, on December 17, Lord Roberts was appointed by the British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury as commander-in-chief of the South African Expeditionary Force, Kitchener as chief of staff, because of the defeat, belligerence rose among the British people, Salisbury's cabinet policy of "carry the war to the end" was supported.

As more British troops entered the battlefield, the war between the British and the Boers changed fundamentally, and the Boers were finally unable to resist the powerful British, and when the Boers were in danger, it was the time when the Chinese Empire struck, although it could not help the Boers to defeat the British completely, but it was also able to continue the war and make the British pay more costs.