This abandonment of the two junctions severed from each other the right and left flanks of the general front, which extended from Stormberg to De Aar, depriving them of mutual support; a condition of disadvantage {p.127} that was not wholly removed until after the occupation of Bloemfontein.

This gain to the Boers, however, was due to no well-combined active operations on their side, but to the mere fact that their opponents were everywhere so hopelessly weaker in numbers that it was insanity any longer to risk these small detachments in places where they ought to have been captured days before.
From these withdrawals it resulted that the British movements in either quarter were of no assistance to those in the other by direct co-operation, but only by diversion--by occupying in front of either flank a certain proportion of the enemy.

The latter attempted no serious movement of attack, but simply waited.

Their plan, alike in the strategy of the campaign and in the tactics of the battlefield, was to abide attack, with the advantages, usual to the defensive, of a carefully chosen position diligently improved.

So placed and secured, they hoped to repel and to hold fast; but at the worst to inflict loss greater than they received and then to slip away successfully, avoiding capture, to another similar position in the rear of the first, {p.128} there to repeat again the same tactic.