Whatever the reasoning, it was to the method of 1881 that the Boers resorted.

After the preliminary battles in Natal, already narrated, in each of which the British attacked, they settled down with facile indolence to an investment of Ladysmith.
The dissemination of the enemy on the Free State frontier, so graphically summarized by Steevens, could not induce them to crush, with the concentrated force permitted by their imposing superiority of numbers, any one {p.119} of the small detachments thus fatally exposed.

The place, not the force within, had military value in their eyes.

To the general result contributed no doubt the tendency of local interest to dominate general considerations in a rural and loosely organised population.

It was noted at the time that the principle of local operation decided not only that the Transvaal should operate chiefly in Natal, and the Orange Free State toward Cape Colony, but also determined the course of action within each state.