Sir George Pomeroy Colley was a Victorian general who met his death on 27 February 1881, whilst fighting the Boers in South Africa.

(The author of the book, William Francis Butler, was the husband of the famous military painter, Lady Elizabeth Butler).

The title fascinated me because here was a book about a man that shared my family name, and an important one at that (he had to be important to have had a book written about him). I always assumed we were related because we were both Colleys. And, to add to the excitement, he was a ‘Sir’. Perhaps some great-great-grandfather.

To this day I still don’t know. It might be just a coincidence of name but then why would my father have this book on his shelves rather than a more famous Victorian general?

Colley was an all-round clever man and well thought of. He passed through his military school with the highest ever recorded marks, was fluent in various languages and was a dab hand with the paintbrush. But like many a British general of the time, he underestimated his enemy – and that proved his undoing.

The First Boer War

In 1877 the British had annexed the South African state of the Transvaal, and two years later made it a crown colony. The Boers naturally resented this, and in December 1880 revolted. At the time there were only 1,700 British troops dotted around the Transvaal in small, isolated garrisons. Colley, recently appointed governor in neighbouring Natal, was ordered to deal with the situation.

The Boers, fully expecting the arrival of the British, set up camp on the Natal / Transvaal border at a pass called Laing’s Neck, the only practical route into the Transvaal from Natal. Sure enough, Colley, leading a convoy of over 1,000 troops, duly appeared.

On 28 January 1881, the British attacked the Boers at Laing’s Neck and were thoroughly repulsed. That was the first defeat. Whilst Colley awaited reinforcements, another skirmish resulted in another bloody nose, heavy losses and a second defeat. Within two weeks Colley had lost two battles and a third of his men. And the Boers, it has to be remembered, were not trained soldiers, but simply farmhands who happened to be excellent shots. But things were about to get a whole lot worse for Sir George and his professionally trained army.

Majuba Hill

Colley decided to make use of a flat-topped hill called Majuba Hill overlooking the pass. If he could occupy the hill it would put the Boers, down in the pass, at a disadvantage.

Thus, in the late hours of 26 February, Colley led 500 of his men, each with three day’s worth of rations, on a march up the hill. Silently, most silently, they climbed. Four o’clock the following morning they reached the summit, found it unoccupied and felt so jubilant they started yelling down and jeering at the Boers far below.

Colley too was pleased. The hill provided a commanding position – ‘We could stay here forever,’ he said.

Colley’s assistant suggested that perhaps they should dig some entrenchments. Colley, over brimming with new-found confidence, refused. There was no way the Boers could climb up this hill with his men on top. Satisfied that his position was secure, and tired after the long trek, Colley went off to his tent for a well-earned snooze.

But the Boers did climb the hill – not the seasoned older men, but the younger boys, 200 of them. By midday they had reached the summit and crackshots that they were, the boys quickly decimated the British presence. Over half of Colley’s men fell, killed or wounded; others, in panic, fled back down the hill.

‘Poor Sir G. Colley killed’

Colley was last seen emerging from his tent brandishing a pistol. A bullet hit him right through the forehead and there, on Majuba Hill, he fell. He was 45.

A bunch of untrained boys barely out of school had finished off a professional force double its size and with it, one of Britain’s most thought-of generals. ‘Poor Sir G. Colley killed,’ as Queen Victoria wrote in her diary.

And thus the First Boer War (or South African War) ended in defeat after just three battles over the course of two months. The British government recognised Boer independence and all was well for almost two decades before war erupted again, with the second, much longer Boer War of 1899 to 1902.

A colleague of mine, on an occasion I cocked up at work, said, ‘Good God, Colley, no wonder we lost Majuba!’

WF Butler’s book is still there in my parental home, and I still don’t know whether I’m related to Sir General George Pomeroy Colley.

Somehow I rather hope not.

Rupert Colley.

Gathered together in one collection, 60 of Rupert Colley’s history articles, The Savage Years: Tales From the 20th Century. Available in paperback and ebook formats.

The post The Cleverest General: the Life and Death of Sir George Pomeroy Colley first appeared on Rupert Colley.

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On 14 December 1861, Albert, the Prince Consort, died. He was only 42. His unexpected death plunged Queen Victoria into grief so overwhelming that it endured for the rest of her life. Her pain was shared by the nation in an outpouring of angst that would not be seen again until the death, 136 years later, of Princess Diana. But after a while, the public and politicians alike began to ask whether the Queen’s period of mourning would ever end.

Prince Albert and Princess Victoria meet

The 16-year-old Princess was immediately smitten – on meeting Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha for the first time, she confided in her diary that her German cousin was ‘extremely good looking’. It was 18 May 1836. They would not meet again for another 3½ years by which time, October 1839, Victoria had become queen. This time, her praise went even further – ‘It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert – who is beautiful’. Albert had the teenage queen’s heart ‘quite going’.

The motivation for the visit was marriage – the queen, her politicians decided, was in need of a husband – not a king, the young queen was adamant on this, but a consort. Victoria, who previously had been against marriage, was now ready to embrace it. Etiquette forbade Albert from proposing; the onus fell on the gushing queen. With graciousness, he accepted, saying in German that he would be honoured ‘to share life with you’. Victoria was overjoyed – ‘Oh! how I adore and love him’.

Marriage

Four months later, on 10 February 1840, Victoria and Albert were married. That night, their wedding night, they ‘did not sleep much’, and she woke to find his ‘beautiful angelic face’ next to hers. Within weeks she was pregnant. She was not happy to be pregnant but she would spend much of their 20-year marriage with child, eventually bearing nine children.

The public however was less impressed by this German in their midst; a foreigner after ‘England’s fat queen and England’s fatter purse’. They would have liked it even less had they known the extent that the queen relied on him. From the affairs of state to the minutia of domesticity, she sought his advice on everything – and invariably accepted it.  Without him, she wrote, she did nothing… ‘moved not a finger, didn’t put on a gown or bonnet if he didn’t approve it’. Prince Albert was king in all but name.

The Sickly Prince

On 1 October 1860, Prince Albert suffered an accident – horses bearing his carriage bolted and, unable to control them as they headed towards a level crossing, he had to throw himself off. He suffered only cuts and bruises but felt as if his ‘last hour had come’. His doctor feared that Albert’s constitution had been so badly affected that if he was to fall ill, he would lack the strength to fight it.

On 16 March 1861, Queen Victoria’s mother died of cancer. For a whole month, she became a recluse – refusing to see her husband or children, eating alone, and poring over her childhood mementos saved by her mother. Burdened by his wife’s instability, overworked and overwrought, Albert became plump and lost more of his hair to the point of wearing a wig. His mood was not helped by the shenanigans and indiscretions of his eldest son, Bertie, the future Edward VII, which, he felt, threatened to make a nonsense of the monarchy. On 24 November, in the pouring rain, Albert paid a visit to his wayward son in Cambridge. The visit brought a degree of rapprochement between the two, but Albert caught a dreadful chill. The queen later blamed her son for Albert’s illness – ‘That boy…I never can, or ever shall look at him without a shudder.’

Depressed and run down, Albert complained of stomach pains that had been troubling him for a number of years. He feared the illness would kill him but kept his fears to himself. Once he told his wife that if he fell ill he would not ‘struggle for life. I have no tenacity of life’.

The queen began to tire of her husband’s complaints, writing in a letter, ‘I need not tell you what a trial it is to me’. Only on 11 December, three days before his death, did the doctors convey the true extent of her husband’s illness. Albert was too weak to even hold a pen and wandered from room to room listlessly, with Victoria following him, hallucinating he was back in Germany. Albert had contracted, so his doctors told Victoria, a fever, a euphemism for typhoid. Subsequent theories point to stomach cancer.

In his final hours, doctors administered constant doses of brandy. They were powerless. At 11pm, 14 December 1861, Prince Albert died. He was buried nine days later, the Queen too grief-stricken to attend the funeral.

The Widow of Windsor

The Blue Room in which Prince Albert died remained unaltered for the rest of Victoria’s life, a snapshot of the time when her life changed forever. The glass from which he had taken his last sip was kept on his bedside table, his blotting book and pen forever opened at its last entry, fresh flowers delivered every day.

Victoria retreated into her period of mourning, which by the dictates of Victorian society, was expected to be a year. However, Queen Victoria doggedly refused to come out of mourning. She wore black for the rest of her life, and retired from public life and matters of the state for many years. The politicians feared she was suffering from insanity – after all, her grandfather, King George III, had been inflicted.

Queen Victoria would reign for another 40 years without her husband to guide her. As Benjamin Disraeli wrote, ‘With Prince Albert we have buried our sovereign. This German prince has governed England for 21 years with a wisdom and energy such as none of our kings has ever shown’.

Rupert Colley.

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