Background
Following the Boer declaration of independence for the Transvaal in 1880 the British suffered a series of disastrous defeats in attempting to regain the territory.
On 20 December 1880, Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Robert Anstruther and elements of his regiment, the 94th, marched from Lydenburg to Pretoria, the regiment’s band leading the column playing the popular song “Kiss Me, Mother Darling”.
At Bronkhorstspruit the force was stopped by Boers who courteously required the “Red Soldiers” to turn back. Armstrong equally courteously refused at which the column was devastated by rifle fire from the surrounding Boer ambush. Of the 259 in the column, 155 officers and men became casualties as did some of the women accompanying the regiment.
Instead of waiting for the reinforcements, the British High Commissioner for South East Africa, Major General Sir George Pomeroy Colley, assembled what troops he could and rushed forward, claiming to be moving to relieve the British garrisons in the Transvaal.
Colley gathered his force at Newcastle in Natal, dispatched an ultimatum to the Boers and, on its rejection, advanced towards the Transvaal border.
The first British camp on the march lay some 4 miles short of Laing’s Nek, a ridge in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains that blocked the road between Newcastle and Standerton in Natal, South Africa.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Laing's Nek
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