(left) At the Battle of Batoche the British army, reinforced with Canadian militiamen, overran the Métis in trenches and in the buildings of the town on a bend in the Saskatchewan River.

Everyone still wore red, and attacked in the closely bunched "Thin Red Line" formation, that would cause extremely heavy casualties in the opening months of the Boer War just a dozen years later.

GW Bacon started issuing battle prints in the 1880s. Colour printing was in its infancy and Bacon capitalized in combining advances in colour printing with the fabulous exploits of the Victorian army in exotic locales around the globe.

Typical is that of the 1898 Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan (left) where General Kitchener's massive walls of British rifle fire cut down 10,000 Arab tribesmen while suffering only three killed himself. (Found in London, ON)

Young Winston Churchill (below) was here as a trooper, and wrote "how exhilarating, to be fired on without effect."

But the carpet of dead bodies gave Kitchener and his soldiers a false sense of invincibility when they faced the Boers only months later.

For the fifty years since the Crimean War, British soldiers had fought only "Fuzzy-Wuzzies," non-white, primitive tribesmen using spears and swords or outdated rifles.

When war with the Boers broke out, British soldiers would be facing Europeans armed with modern rifles for the first time since 1855. They were in for a deadly surprise.

The first print of the Boer War was on the first battle of the war, Talana Hill, in the British territory of Natal. The print correctly shows waves of closely packed soldiers (hey it worked at Omdurman) charging Boer sharpshooters on Talana Hill.

But this time, hundreds were shot down including the British General Penn-Symons, while trying to rally his men (below).

This led to new tragedies for the British when they fired on their own soldiers after they took the top of Talana Hill, killing officers and men alike. With the extended range of new artillery pieces, the fighting was too far away for gunners to tell Boer and Briton apart - clearly shown in the print above. The Boers had long ago, fled on their horses.

At Elandslaagte, the British once again, stormed a hilltop, but General Ian Hamilton suggested that this time, they stay more spread out "in extended order" as they charged. His innovation was a first for European armies, and marked the end for the famous British "Thin Red Line" which now was little short of suicide when advancing on modern clip-loading magazine rifles in expert hands.

Then occurred an event given pride of place in the Bacon print in the left foreground, the Charge of the Lancers upon the fleeing Boers. Just as the sun was going down, they fell upon the fleeing farmers from behind and in minutes, killed over 60 with lances and swords before darkness ended the carnage.

Never again would the Boers allow themselves to be caught in the open.

The charge also was the end for the lancers, though they could not know it at the moment of their triumph. Their day in history had passed.

Elandslaagte proved to be the "last charge" for them, but produced a national hero in 14 year old bugler James Shurlock who grabbed a revolver and shot three Boers dead (left, and below with pistol and bugle).

To the adoring British public Mrs. Shurlock praised her son, "He is a brave, good and generous son."

A lantern slide (above) featured Trooper Shurlock in the midst of the cavalry charge. And Corporal Kelly (left) won brief renown for spearing two Boers at once just before he himself was killed. But these were destined to be the last heroic pictures that would ever be published of lancers at work.

After Elandslaagte, Boer Mauser rifles, accurate to 2 km, cut the cavalrymen down long before they could even see the enemy they were trying to charge and destroy with sword and lance.

With modern long-range rifles, the cavalry disappeared as an effective fighting force on the battlefields of the Boer War.

In fact during the Siege of Ladysmith (Bacon Print right), General White thought the cavalry could be put to best use in the kitchen. Over the fuming protests of the officers, he ordered the cavalry horses slaughtered to feed the townsfolk.

After winning two supposed victories over the Boers the British army fled back to the safety of Ladysmith and fortified themselves inside. The Boers surrounded them, and bombarded them daily with artillery.

White used a balloon to scout the Boer positions and waited to be rescued. It would take 4 months.

balloons were often hit with rifle fire or artillery shells. The fabric would rip, bringing the balloon slowly drifting down. Since the bullets and shells were not incendiary (hot), they could not ignite the hydrogen used to inflate them.

Canadians at Belmont: In the far west General Methuen was ordering his men to sweep over the Boers on the hilltops at the Battle of Belmont (Bacon print right). He lost far more men than the Boers, who fled on horseback. Since he had far more men he was willing to lose than they did, he won.

Two weeks after this battle, the Royal Canadians under Colonel Otter, (below right), arrived to hold these hills against Boer attack. They would be here for two months, bored out of their minds. They would write their names on the rocks of the hills in the background (below).