Since being made Colonel of the Blues, Lord Wolseley took great care to ask the Queen permission to send a squadron from each of the three Household regiments to South Africa.
Ambushed by 300 Boers at Sannah's Post, where Broadwood's exhausted men were under canvas at 4.30 am on 31 March they into a trap: completely outnumbered by a combined force of 5,000 Boers.