Relief of Ladysmith Relief of Ladysmith When the Second Boer War broke out on 11 October 1899, the Boers had a numeric superiority within Southern Africa. They quickly invaded the British territory and laid siege to Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking. Britain meanwhile transported thousands of troops both from the United Kingdom itself and from elsewhere in the Empire and by the time the siege of Ladysmith had been lifted, had a huge numeric superiority. The Colony of Natal was bisected from east to west by the Tugela River which rose in the Drakensberg (to the west) and flowed into the Indian Ocean to
Military history of Italy during World War II initial success. However, German and Japanese actions in 1941 led to the entry of the US and the USSR in the War, thus ruining the Italian plan and postponing indefinitely the objective of forcing Britain to agree to a negotiated peace settlement. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was aware that Italy (whose resources were reduced by pre-WWII military interventions, albeit successful, in Spain, Ethiopia and Albania) was not ready for a long conflict against three superpowers but opted to remain in the war as the imperial ambitions of the Fascist regime, which aspired to restore the Roman Empire in the