Black Week

Black Week refers to the week of Sunday 10 December – Sunday 17 December 1899 during the Second Boer War, when the British Army suffered three devastating defeats by the Boer Republics at the battles of Stormberg on Sunday 10 December, Magersfontein on Monday 11 December and Colenso on Friday 15 December 1899. In total, 2,776 British soldiers were killed, wounded and captured during this period.

The events were an eye opener for the government and troops, who had thought that the war could be won very easily.^[1] British units were armed with then-modern magazine-fed small arms, the .303 caliber Lee–Enfield and Lee–Metford, and breech-loading field artillery. Boers were armed with the 7mm 1893 Mauser rifle, and fielded German-built breech-loading field artillery. The British, however, were accustomed to fighting tribal wars with tactics more suited to the Napoleonic era, and had no tactical doctrine in place to fight against a foe also armed with the same modern weapons, and suffered accordingly.^{[citation needed]}

With new, modernized troops came new tactics; only a few months after Black Week, one of the main British cavalry divisions led a flanking march that ended with a victory.^[2] Besides equipping the cavalry with rapid-firing rifles instead of lances, the new British military doctrine also started using artillery as a defensive unit of the army, and saw innovation in the use of machine guns.^[3]

These new volunteers served as a "new face, untainted by defeat and accusations of defeatism…to breathe life back into the campaigns and restore hope at home."^[4] Other changes enacted by the British immediately following the Black Week disaster were the mobilization of two more divisions, the calling up of the army reserves, raising a force of mounted infantry for better mobility, and most importantly by sending volunteers from home overseas which added more than one hundred thousand additional troops by the end of the war.^[4]

"The week which extended from December 10th to December 17th, 1899, was the blackest one known during our generation, and the most disastrous for British arms during the century. We had in the short space of seven days lost, beyond all extenuation or excuse, three separate actions. No single defeat was of vital importance in itself, but the cumulative effect, occurring as they did to each of the main British forces in South Africa, was very great. The total loss amounted to about three thousand men and twelve guns, while the indirect effects in the way of loss of prestige to ourselves and increased confidence and more numerous recruits to our enemy were incalculable."

— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Great Boer War, Chapter 12 - The Dark Hour