But either the burghers were half-hearted or there was no real intention to make a stand.  About half-past two their fire slackened and Pole-Carew was directed to push on.  That debonnaire soldier with his two veteran brigades obeyed the order with alacrity, and the infantry swept over the ridge, with some thirty or forty casualties, the majority of which fell to the Warwicks.  The position was taken, and Hamilton, who came up late, was only able to send on De Lisle’s mounted infantry, chiefly Australians, who ran down one of the Boer maxims in the open.  The action had cost us altogether about seventy men.  Among the injured was the Duke of Norfolk, who had shown a high sense of civic virtue in laying aside the duties and dignity of a Cabinet Minister in order to serve as a simple captain of volunteers.  At the end of this one fight the capital lay at the mercy of Lord Roberts.  Consider the fight which they made for their chief city, compare it with that which the British made for the village of Mafeking, and say on which side is that stern spirit of self-sacrifice and resolution which are the signs of the better cause.

In the early morning of June 5th, the Coldstream Guards were mounting the hills which commanded the town.  Beneath them in the clear African air lay the famous city, embowered in green, the fine central buildings rising grandly out of the wide circle of villas.  Through the Nek part of the Guards’ Brigade and Maxwell’s Brigade had passed, and had taken over the station, from which at least one train laden with horses had steamed that morning.  Two others, both ready to start, were only just stopped in time.

The first thought was for the British prisoners, and a small party headed by the Duke of Marlborough rode to their rescue.  Let it be said once for all that their treatment by the Boers was excellent and that their appearance would alone have proved it.  One hundred and twenty-nine officers and thirty-nine soldiers were found in the Model Schools, which had been converted into a prison.  A day later our cavalry arrived at Waterval, which is fourteen miles to the north of Pretoria.  Here were confined three thousand soldiers, whose fare had certainly been of the scantiest, though in other respects they appear to have been well treated. [Footnote:  Further information unfortunately shows that in the case of the sick and of the Colonial prisoners the treatment was by no means good.] Nine hundred of their comrades had been removed by the Boers, but Porter’s cavalry was in time to release the others, under a brisk shell fire from a Boer gun upon the ridge.  Many pieces of good luck we had in the campaign, but this recovery of our prisoners, which left the enemy without a dangerous lever for exacting conditions of peace, was the most fortunate of all.