This painting of the Battle of Paardeberg is the scene of the best-known Canadian engagement of the war. The climax of this ten-day battle came on February 27, the eve of the anniversary of the humiliating British defeat at Majuba Hill, 1881. The commanding officer, Lord Roberts, decided to launch a night attack to dislodge the Boers' Paardeberg entrenchment which blocked the road to the Orange Free State's capital, Bloemfontein. The attack, in which the Canadians played a major part, began at two a.m. just before the rising of the moon. While the men were moving under cover of darkness as close as possible to the Boer trenches, they stumbled into a cleverly designed Boer alarm system consisting of crackling scrub and empty meat tins. The Boers retaliated with a withering volley of rifle fire, catching the British completely off guard. Although the men received a confused order to retreat, the `G' and `H' companies of Canada's first contingent failed to hear or heed the order and held their own, screened behind bushes and later sheltered by a trench which they hastily dug. There, only sixty-five yards from their opponents' entrenchment they kept up a steady fire which confounded the Boers, ignorant of the fact that the others had retired. In the morning the Boers raised the white flag and surrendered en masse.
