The departure of De Wet, who picked up De Beer and Steyn on his way, enabled the gap in the circle of investment to be filled in, and the agony of the laager was drawn out for six days. Nothing but a strenuous attack from outside the circle could save it. De Wet indeed, who had trekked in the direction of Poplar Grove, and who had received reinforcements from Colesberg and Natal, which placed 5,000 burghers under his orders, made an unsuccessful attempt to recover the kopje and retreated hastily, though a gallant remnant of eighty-seven burghers under Theunissen held on, and were not made prisoners until a brigade had been launched against them. An envoy was sent by De Wet into the laager to urge Cronje to break out. A half-hearted consent was given, but at the appointed time the river was in flood and the attempt was postponed. The exhaustion of the cavalry, and the report of the arrival of reinforcements at Poplar Grove, compelled Lord Roberts to abandon his plan of sending on French to Bloemfontein; but as he confidently looked to an early occupation of the Free State capital, he detached Kitchener to Naauwpoort with instructions to see to the opening up of the railway from the south, upon which the Army would depend for its supplies as soon as it reached Bloemfontein. He was, perhaps, glad of an excuse to employ his Chief of the Staff elsewhere for a time, for although the Divisional Commanders had loyally accepted the situation, he could not but feel that they had not been quite fairly treated, and that the Kitchener dictatorship had not been a success. The end came on February 27. Soon after sunrise on the anniversary of Majuba Hill the white flag was raised in the laager. During the last five days, Tucker, who with a portion of his Division had been ordered up from Jacobsdaal when the news of the investment reached Lord Roberts, closed gradually in on the west, and Stephenson on the east; and on the 26th the laager was severely bombarded by four newly arrived howitzers. The final stroke was delivered by two companies of the Royal Canadians, who, disregarding a false order to retire, held on, and by daybreak had entrenched themselves within 100 yards of the flanking trench of the laager; and though this feat was not the direct cause of the surrender, which had been decided on the previous evening, it was not the less meritorious. Cronje in vain endeavoured to persuade the burghers to postpone the surrender over Majuba Day. In a few hours 4,000 men, the majority of whom were Transvaalers, were under guard as prisoners of war, and Cronje was on his way to St. Helena, there to commune with the Shade of Napoleon. It is said that when Kruger heard of the capitulation of Vendutie Drift he exclaimed, "The real war will now begin." To the British public, the surrender of Cronje, followed in a few hours by the relief of Ladysmith, seemed to prove that the real war had now ended.