First Boer WarSouth Africa · 1880–1881“A thread from the great cord of two hundred and fifty. Hold it while I speak.”Britain had annexed the bankrupt Transvaal with a proclamation and assumed the matter closed. In 1880 the Boers reopened it with rifles — farmers who shot springbok at three hundred paces against redcoats trained for parade volleys — and at Majuba Hill in 1881 they shot a British force off a mountaintop in a morning.