In the evening Lyttelton, having thwarted an attempt by the enemy to recover Vaalkrantz, was relieved by Hildyard.  On the following afternoon, Buller, in spite of Lord Roberts’ message, made up his mind to withdraw.  Further reconnaissances had shown that the North Hill, even if taken, could hardly be held.  A council of war was summoned, at which, as might have been anticipated, Hart alone was for persevering, and at which Warren again put forward the scheme rejected by Buller at Frere, but now gladly adopted by him, of advancing on Ladysmith by way of Hlangwhane.

Orders were issued for the withdrawal of the force from Vaalkrantz during the night.  It was skilfully carried out, and Buller was once more ferrying his men across the Tugela, having for the third time failed to reach Ladysmith.

On February 8 the Army was retracing its steps on the road by which four weeks before it had marched from Springfield to Potgieter’s Drift; and on the 11th it was concentrated at Chieveley, from which eight weeks before it had been thrown at the Colenso heights.  All the Tugela operations had been conducted in a rarified medium.  Want of determination, want of system, the absence of maps, the lack of a sufficient staff, were responsible for two months of misadventure.  Buller, like the Boers, was easily discouraged by failure, but unlike them was unable to quicken himself readily for a renewed effort.  He lost confidence in himself, and then in his subordinates.  Like a nervous child, he opened the door of a dark chamber, but was afraid to enter.  The terror of the unknown drove him back in a panic.  When his plans, which were usually well thought out, miscarried, he became peevish, and scarcely made an attempt to reconstruct them.  Only an Army of which the backbone was the stolid, unimaginative Englishman of the lower classes, and which believed that its leader was doing his best, could have remained undemoralized by the campaign on the Tugela.

Buller possessed one quality which to a great extent outweighed his shortcomings as a military commander:  namely the power of inspiring confidence.  His men believed in him, and would do anything for him.  They liked him for his bluff, John-Bullish, and rampant manner.  The enlisted man is a curious differentiation from the class to which he belongs.  His democratic instincts become less acute when he shoulders the Lee-Metford, and he readily accommodates himself to the will of a benevolent despot of robust appearance, and blunt and somewhat contemptuous address; whom in fact he prefers to the ascetic, dispassionate General Officer of quiet habit and speech.

The criticisms passed upon Buller were far more friendly in the men’s than in the officers’ bivouacs.  Possibly the men’s opinions, as being the more natural and spontaneous, were also the more correct.  The enemy conducted the war upon principles which were strange to the British Army, and to which it had to adapt itself painfully; and the men seem to have recognized sooner than the professors the difficulties of the situation, and to have been less intolerant of ill-success.