The nature of the difficulties presented by the vast extent of the theatre of war, the deficiency of means of communication, the imperfect cultivation of the land, the sparseness of the population and their hostility to the British, and the physical and climatic aspects of South Africa in general, have been broadly indicated in the passages taken from Lord Roberts's despatches. To pursue the inquiry further would be to travel beyond the scope of this work. That, however, there is nothing unusual in the fact that civilian forces, inspired by love of country and aided by physical conditions exceptionally favourable to themselves, should be able to offer a successful resistance to professional soldiers may be seen by a reference to one of the little wars of the seventeenth century. In the year 1690 twenty-two thousand French and Savoyard troops were sent by Louis XIV. to storm the Balsille--a rocky eminence _mutatis mutandis_ the equivalent of a South African kopje--held by 350 Piedmontese Vaudois. Even so the besieged patriots made good their escape, and, owing to the sudden change in the politics of Europe brought about by the accession of William of Orange to the crown of England, actually concluded an honourable peace with their sovereign, Victor Amadeus of Savoy, a few days after they had been driven from the Balsille. Assuming that the British troops employed from first to last in the South African War were five times as numerous as the forces placed in the field by the Dutch nationalists--say 450,000 as against 90,000--we have here a numerical superiority which dwindles into insignificance beside the magnificent disproportion of the professional troops required to deal with a civilian force in this seventeenth-century struggle.[201] [Footnote 201: Any reader desiring to learn the particulars of this struggle is referred to the pages of the writer's _The Valley of Light: Studies with Pen and Pencil in the Vaudois Valleys of Piedmont_. (Macmillan, 1899). It may be added that Napoleon manifested a keen interest in the military details of the engagements between the French and Savoyard troops and the Vaudois. As regards the number of combatants on the Boer side. Lord Kitchener puts the total (from first to last) at 95,000 (Cd. 1790, p. 13). The _Official History_, however, gives, as the result of an elaborate calculation, 87,365 (Vol. I. App. 4).] CHAPTER VIII THE REBELLION IN THE CAPE COLONY The direct share which Lord Milner took in the skilful disposition of the handful of British troops available at the outbreak of the war for the defence of the north-eastern frontier of the Cape Colony has been mentioned. The part which he played during the first period of the war in his relationship to the military authorities is sufficiently indicated by the words which appear in Lord Roberts's final despatch.