Probably there were erroneous estimates on both sides, but at any rate it is certain that our foes were confident of being able to win by massed surprise, and their effort was made with an adroitness not less astonishing than the audacity of its conception.  After this it will be ridiculous for anybody to contend that the Boers are not brave fighters, though they lack the daring by which alone fights like that of Saturday can be decided.  Their tactics have changed little since the old days, and it remains true now as then that they are an offensive but not an attacking force.  Having gained by stealth the positions that were supposed to command our outpost defences on Caesar’s Camp and Waggon Hill, they acted from that moment as if on the defensive, trusting for victory not to any forward movement of their own but to the belief that our men would give way, and might then be rolled back in panic upon Ladysmith by thousands of mounted Boers who awaited that turn of events to make their meditated dash.  Such undoubtedly was the plan conceived by Free State and Transvaal commanders at the Krygsraad when Joubert, Prinsloo, Schalk-Burger, Viljoen, and other leaders met together in council some days ago.  The manner of its execution may be conjectured by the light of subsequent events.

The attack began before daybreak with a determined attempt to capture the whole range of Bester’s Ridge, which is divided officially into Caesar’s Camp and Waggon Hill, forming the southern chain of our defences, and held by the outposts of Colonel Ian Hamilton’s Brigade.  Seventy of the Imperial Light Horse held Waggon Hill with a small body of bluejackets and a few Engineers having charge of the 4.7 naval gun, which they had brought up overnight for mounting in that position, but it still remained on a bullock waggon.  Next to them were several companies of the King’s Royal Rifles under Colonel Gore-Browne, while the Manchester Regiment held Caesar’s Camp with pickets pushed forward to the southern crest and eastern shoulder.  Nearly the whole length of ridge hence to Waggon Hill is a rough plateau, strong but presenting little cover from artillery fire or the rifles of any foe bold enough to scale the heights under cover of darkness.  It was scarcely entrenched at all, having only a few sangars dotted about as rallying-points.  The Boer movements were marked by a searchlight from Bulwaan, which played for hours in a curious way across Intombi Hospital Camp to the posts occupied by our men, intensifying the obscurity of all-surrounding blackness.

All we know absolutely is that long before dawn Free Staters were in possession of the western end of Bester’s Ridge, where Waggon Hill dips steeply down from the curiously tree-fringed shoulder in bold bluffs to a lower neck, and thence on one side to the valley in which Bester’s Farm lies amid trees, and on the other to broad veldt that is dominated by Blaauwbank (or Rifleman’s Ridge), and enfiladed by Telegraph