Then, as now, the British were in number far inferior.

Then, as now, they were scattered here and there in small detachments.

Then the Boers had achieved successes which doubtless surprised themselves as well as their enemies, and had produced for them the unfortunate result of overvaluing their own prowess, and of inducing a secure belief that both they and their opponents, after twenty years, remained in native and acquired qualities in the same relative {p.118} positions of individual superiority and inferiority that they had somewhat prematurely assumed.
It was a natural result of such prepossessions that, instead of concentrating to hold in mass some decisive position by which to prolong the war, or to destroy or capture some important detachment--such as that at Ladysmith--they should settle themselves down to sieges, to a war of posts.

In 1881, of several posts they had in the same manner leisurely invested, one surrendered.

They probably believed that the others would have done so, had not the British Government of that day yielded and made peace.