The British losses at the battle of Nooitgedacht amounted to 60 killed, 180 wounded, and 315 prisoners, all of whom were delivered up a few days later at Rustenburg.  Of the Boer losses it is, as usual, impossible to speak with confidence, but all the evidence points to their actual casualties being as heavy as those of the British.  There was the long struggle at the camp in which they were heavily punished, the fight on the mountain, where they exposed themselves with unusual recklessness, and the final shelling from shrapnel and from lyddite.  All accounts agree that their attack was more open than usual.  ’They were mowed down in twenties that day, but it had no effect.  They stood like fanatics,’ says one who fought against them.  From first to last their conduct was most gallant, and great credit is due to their leaders for the skilful sudden concentration by which they threw their whole strength upon the exposed force.  Some eighty miles separate Warm Baths from Nooitgedacht, and it seems strange that our Intelligence Department should have remained in ignorance of so large a movement.

General Broadwood’s 2nd Cavalry Brigade had been stationed to the north of Magaliesberg, some twelve miles westward of Clements, and formed the next link in the long chain of British forces.  Broadwood does not appear, however, to have appreciated the importance of the engagement, and made no energetic movement to take part in it.  If Colvile is open to the charge of having been slow to ’march upon the cannon’ at Sanna’s Post, it might be urged that Broadwood in turn showed some want of energy and judgment upon this occasion.  On the morning of the 13th his force could hear the heavy firing to the eastward, and could even see the shells bursting on the top of the Magaliesberg.  It was but ten or twelve miles distant, and, as his Elswick guns have a range of nearly five, a very small advance would have enabled him to make a demonstration against the flank of the Boers, and so to relieve the pressure upon Clements.  It is true that his force was not large, but it was exceptionally mobile.  Whatever the reasons, no effective advance was made by Broadwood.  On hearing the result he fell back upon Rustenburg, the nearest British post, his small force being dangerously isolated.

Those who expected that General Clements would get his own back had not long to wait.  In a few days he was in the field again.  The remains of his former force had, however, been sent into Pretoria to refit, and nothing remained of it save the 8th R.F.A. and the indomitable cow-gun still pocked with the bullets of Nooitgedacht.  He had also F battery R.H.A., the Inniskillings, the Border regiment, and a force of mounted infantry under Alderson.  More important than all, however, was the co-operation of General French, who came out from Pretoria to assist in the operations.  On the 19th, only six days after his defeat, Clements found himself on the very same spot fighting some at least of the very same men.