[Sidenote: DEC. 20-27, 1899.] _Arrival of the Fifth Division._] [Sidenote: Fifth Division reaches Natal.] [Sidenote: [DEC. 1899.] [Sidenote: Want of howitzers.] In the week which followed the battle reinforcements began to arrive. Sir Charles Warren with the Fifth Division, 9,000 combatants strong, had left England in November, and a part of his command had reached South Africa even before the week of defeats. At first it had been intended to use his division in the central field of war, for the operations around Colesberg, and two battalions, the 2nd Royal Warwick and 1st Yorkshires, with his cavalry regiment, the 14th Hussars, were sent to that point. But when General Buller urgently needed more men, he had to call for the rest of the division, which sailed round to Durban and concentrated at Estcourt, six battalions and three batteries strong. It was thus composed:-- _Tenth Brigade._ _Eleventh Brigade._ MAJOR-GENERAL J. T. COKE. MAJOR-GENERAL E. R. P. WOODGATE. 2nd Dorsetshire. 2nd Royal Lancaster. 2nd Middlesex. 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers. 1st South Lancashire. 1st York and Lancaster. 19th, 28th, and 78th Field Batteries. These reinforcements numbered about 7,000 combatants. In addition, one extra field battery, the 73rd, and a single howitzer battery, the 61st, were sent to Natal, bringing up the total of batteries to ten, of which, however, two, from the losses in guns, horses, and men at Colenso, had virtually ceased to exist. Even at full strength ten batteries, or sixty field guns, would have been a miserable proportion for an army of 30,000 infantry and cavalry, and there were deep and well-founded complaints among the correspondents--who, perhaps, accurately reflected the feeling of the younger officers--as to the paucity of howitzers, after the proved efficiency of these weapons at Omdurman. "Here they are simply clamouring for guns, guns, guns," wrote an officer of the Fifth Division, "and guns we send them, undrilled, unready, outclassed in range, and with raw horses and raw reservists.... To cross the river and face the Boer position with only 30,000 and no heavy artillery to speak of must mean heavy loss, and we feel very bitter." All these complaints were fully justified by events, yet British Ministers were, at the very hour when this was written, professing that the British artillery was all that could be desired and more than ample in strength, and British "experts" were explaining at home that the folly and wickedness of the Boers in arming themselves with "guns of position" were the causes of all the evil. Unhappily, it turned out that the enemy's "guns of position" could be moved and handled just as readily as our short-range field pieces. [Illustration: [_Facsimile of a sketch on the spot by F. A. Stewart._