s been arrived at after the
collation of so much independent testimony, that it may be taken as
fairly accurate.[77]

[Footnote 77: See Appendix 4.]

The grand total does not, of course, represent the number of men in
the field at any one time. It is an estimate of the numbers of all who
bore arms against the British troops at any time whatever during the
campaign. The Boer army numerically was the most unstable known to
history,[78] varying in strength as it varied in fortune in the field,
varying even with the weather, or with that mercurial mental condition
of which, in irregular forces, the numbers present at the front best
mark the barometer. Those numbers, even in the heroic stages of the
campaign, ranged from about 55,000 men to 15,000, with every
intermediate graduation. It is impossible to trace the vicissitudes of
an army which lost, regained, then lost again fifty per cent. of its
strength within a week. Nor is a periodic enumeration of vital
military interest. With the Boers the numbers actually present in the
fighting line were not, as with European troops, the measure of their
effective force. For the Boer, whether as absentee at his farm, or
wandering demoralised over the veld, was often little less a portion
of the strength of his side than his comrade who happened to be lying
alert in a shelter trench at the same moment. He intended to fight
again; and instances were not wanting of parties of burghers, thus
deserting their proper front, being attracted by the sound or the news
of fighting in a totally different direction, and riding thither to
form a reinforcement, as little expected upon the new battle ground by
their friends as by their enemies.

[Footnote 78: The armies during the war between North and
South in America ran it close in this respect.]

CHAPTER V.

THE BRITISH ARMY.

[Sidenote: Various employments of British Army.]

Every army necessarily grows up according to the traditions of its
past history. Those of the Continent having only to cross a frontier,
marked by Royal, Imperial or Republican stones, have, in their rare
but terrible campaigns, to pursue definite objects that can be
anticipated in nearly all their details years beforehand. The British
army, on the contrary, throughout the nineteenth century, since the
great war came to an end in 1815, has had to carry out a series of
expeditions in every variety of climate, in all quarters of the