Sir Alfred (afterwards Viscount) Milner had been appointed in 1897 to succeed Lord Rosmead (Sir Hercules Robinson) as Governor of Cape Colony and High Commissioner of South Africa. Attempts were made between 1897 and the spring of 1899 to solve the South African problem peacefully by inducing the Boer Government of the South African Republic to grant the franchise to the “Outlanders” (foreigners) after a term of residence of a few years’ duration; but Kruger would accept no sufficiently short term to enfranchise those most agitating for a voice in the Transvaal administration. But the war that broke out in October 1899 was due immediately to an ultimatum from the Transvaal Government requiring Great Britain to cease any preparations for offence or defence on the Transvaal frontiers. The Orange Free State immediately made common cause with the Boers of the South African Republic, and a Boer invasion of Natal took place, to be followed by similar invasions of the eastern part of Cape Colony. The British were taken unprepared. Disaster followed disaster. Had the Boer leaders been wider in their knowledge and more daring, they might have taken possession of Natal and have gone far to wreck the British Empire in South Africa. But they delayed over the siege of Ladysmith, ably defended by Sir George White. British reinforcements on a large scale were sent to South Africa under the leadership of Lord (afterwards Earl) Roberts and Lord Kitchener. The British marched through the Orange Free State to Bloemfontein and Pretoria, and the Boers were finally expelled from Natal and Bechuanaland. It seemed as though, by the summer of 1900, the war was at an end; but after the flight of President Kruger, Boer activities revived in such a marvellous way that the world wondered at the tenacity of the struggle, and for nearly two years longer the Boer forces held out against the British, and made an effective occupation of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal impossible. The Boers in their turn, however, were worn out by the persistency of Viscount Kitchener and his ‘sweeping’ movements. In the summer of 1902 the Boer leaders asked for peace, and obtained it on terms highly honourable to themselves.