First Boer War
Gladstone, the incoming Liberal Prime Minister was convinced that Beaconfieldism had alienated the Boers. To soften the blow of annexation by the British Empire, he resolved to decentralise a form of local government to the Transvaal Boers. This would be administered to them by the Governor-General of the Cape, Sir Bartle Frere, and the new Governor of the Natal, Major-General Sir George Colley. On 24 April 1880, he was appointed to the Natal command, with the rank of major-general, succeeding Sir Garnet Wolseley as governor and commander-in-chief in Natal, and high commissioner for South-eastern Africa. The close of that year found affairs in the Transvaal, which had been annexed since 1877, in a very critical state.
On 'Dingan's Day', 16 December 1880, a Boer republic was proclaimed at Heidelberg, Transvaal. Colley telegraphed London to express doubt that a Boer revolt was unlikely. The Liberal Government was in disarray: while left-leaning MPs called on the cabinet and colonial office to withdraw from the Transvaal and 'end the war', the Queen's Speech indicated that Her Majesty required imperial authority be restored. Yet within the new year, Colley found himself compelled to take immediate measures for the relief of the small garrisons of British troops scattered throughout that territory, and those already besieged. With the small force available, about fifteen hundred men, he at once proceeded to the extreme northern border of Natal, and in the course of January had several conflicts with the Boer forces, the principal being at Battle of Laing's Nek and Ingogo Heights, the former of which was unsuccessful.
On 17 February 1881, Sir Evelyn Wood, who had been appointed second in command, arrived at Newcastle with some additional troops, afterwards returning to Pietermaritzburg, and on 26 February, by a night march, Colley, with part of the troops, occupied, after an arduous climb of eight hours, a height known as Majuba, with a commanding view overlooking the Boer camp. The next morning, Colley was informed Boers were advancing on the British position. He took no action until subordinates impressed upon him the seriousness of the situation. Engaging at range, they picked off the British, Colley being shot dead by a rifle bullet through the forehead. As Edward Mahon, Surgeon, later explained to Sir George's brother Henry:
'I saw him [the General] near the centre of the plateau on the top of the hill. They [the Boers] asked me to identify him, and this I did. He was only wounded once, and that through the top of the skull. Death must have been instantaneous. From the direction of the wound, he must have been facing the Boers when hit.'
On the same day, London received a cable that Colley had been killed. The Prime Minister was ill in bed when he received the news, which he referred to as "The Hand of Judgment?" and interpreted as a punishment for his Africa policy.
He is buried at Mount Prospect Cemetery, Natal. Colley's death persuaded the Imperial government to act, to reassert its authority. The Queen urged the negotiating convention to avoid "troubles" in South Africa. In August the Pretoria session opened, and a British Resident was proposed as a permanent Crown representative in which was described as "an illusionist's trick". The Volksraad would have to ratify the convention's proceedings if the Boer republic was to accept its own freedom reinforcing their own volkisch, nationhood and identity. "The government", said Gladstone, sought to "signalise itself by walking in the plain and simple ways of right and justice, and which desires never to build up an empire except in the happiness of the governed." Lord Salisbury was disgusted by the convention, demanding that the empire's suzerainty was immediately enforced. Colley's defeat and death highlighted the strains and tensions between empire and the governed, local governance and an Imperial Parliament.
