He rebuked the burghers for their cowardice, which he attributed to the waning of their trust in the power of the Almighty to help them in their distress, and with many instances and quotations from Holy Writ, he adjured them to stand fast in faith.  He was confident that the cause which he in all sincerity believed to be the cause of the Church of Christ would prevail in the end, and justifiably encouraged by successes in the field against superior numbers he exhorted the commandos to endure without flinching the purification by fire.  Kruger’s passionate appeal availed, and the waverers returned to their posts.  The incident disclosed the power of the factor of moral force, wherein the Boer strength lay; and it will in a great measure account for the prolongation of the war.  When their cause seemed hopeless, they comforted themselves with the honest and irradicable belief that its righteousness was the assurance of final success.  Though most of their leaders were incompetent, though they themselves were easily discouraged; disobeyed orders; often malingered and mutinied; quitted the field with their wagons which they were reluctant to abandon, under such frivolous pretexts that the verlafpest or leave-plague became a bye-word; though time after time their power of resistance seemed to be exhausted; though in their thousands they were distributed over the British Empire as prisoners of war; though their confident expectation of European intervention was not realized; though they were always greatly outnumbered; they continued stubbornly to defy for the space of two years and seven months the most numerous and the most efficient Army which has ever left the shores of Great Britain, until at last they were worn down by mechanical friction and attrition, and not by the stroke of war.  When the Boers were driven out of the Hlangwhane positions, they took up a new position facing S.E. on the left bank of the Tugela.  Their right was near the head of Hart’s loop, and their centre came within a few hundred yards of the river at Wynne’s Hill, whence the line was carried on towards Pieter’s Hill.

At noon on February 21 Buller began once more to send his men across the Tugela, intending to content himself that day with establishing his force “comfortably” on the position north of the railway bridge enclosed by the bend of the river, which was now free of the enemy.  He ordered Talbot Coke with the 10th Brigade of Warren’s Division to pass over the Colenso Kopjes on to the open ground beyond, from which the Onderbroek valley could be enfiladed by artillery.  He had received information that the enemy were there in force, and in the belief that “what Boers there were, were hiding in that kloof,” he changed his plan of moving northwards at once on Wynne’s Hill.

On February 21 Coke advanced in three lines, but soon after he had cleared the hilly ground, his scouting line came under fire from the Grobelaar slopes, and his right flank was also involved from the direction of Wynne’s Hill.  His Brigade was pinned to the ground by rifle and shell fire until nightfall, when it was retired to the Colenso Kopjes, where Wynne’s Brigade of Warren’s Division had arrived during the afternoon.