The Boer besiegers cleared off in front of it, and that night (February 15th) the relieving column camped on the plain two miles away, while French and his staff rode in to the rescued city.
The war was a cruel one for the cavalry, who were handicapped throughout by the nature of the country and by the tactics of the enemy.

They are certainly the branch of the service which had least opportunity for distinction.

The work of scouting and patrolling is the most dangerous which a soldier can undertake, and yet from its very nature it can find no chronicler.

The war correspondent, like Providence, is always with the big battalions, and there never was a campaign in which there was more unrecorded heroism, the heroism of the picket and of the vedette which finds its way into no newspaper paragraph.

But in the larger operations of the war it is difficult to say that cavalry, as cavalry, have justified their existence.