It was in the Orange Free State where one of the most successful of the Boer guerilla leaders, Christiaan de Wet, operated. De Wet may be said to have been the first to advocate and demonstrate the hit-and-run strategy that the British always found very difficult to counter. With the capture of Bloemfontein, and later Pretoria, by Lord Roberts’s “steamroller” the Boers became very dispirited. It was Christiaan de Wet and President Marthinus Steyn who roused the hopes of their people by a brilliant revival of the form of warfare which was carried on by the Boers with varying success all over South Africa until the end of the war in May 1902.