The School of Musketry

John Tenniel, artist

Swain, engraver

Punch (7 May 1881)

Boer (to F.-M. H.R.H. the Commander-in-Chief: “I say, Dook! You don’t happen to want a practical ‘musketry instructor,’ do you?”

Tenniel here makes a particularly bitter comment on British strategy and training whose shortcomings appeared during the early disastrous days of the Boer War when enemy sharpshooters relentless picked off officers and men who, repeating the errors of the American Revolutionary War, advanced in formation on open ground while the enemy shot at them from hiding and then moved away. To make things even worse, British troops suffered heavy losses from lightweight, easily moveable artillery pieces originally commissioned by the British . . . and then rejected as ineffective.