Botha's pass, and after a sharp action at Alleman's Nek on 11 June reached Volksrust in the Transvaal. Lord Roberts had entered Pretoria on 5 June.
As soon as the railway was repaired Buller advanced to Standerton, and by 4 July the Natal army came in touch with the main army. A combined movement on Belfast was arranged, and on 7 Aug. Buller marched north with 11,000 men. On the 21st he came into collision with the left flank of the Boer forces under Louis Botha, which were opposing the advance of Roberts eastward, along the Delagoa Bay railway. On the 27th the Boers were defeated in the battle of Bergendal, so called from an intrenched kopje on the Boer left which was stormed by Buller's troops. As Lord Roberts reported on 10 Oct.: ‘The success of this attack was decisive. It was carried out in view of the main Boer position, and the effect of it was such, that the enemy gave way at all points, flying in confusion to the north and cast.’ Thus it fell to Buller to give the coup de grâce to the resistance of the Boer republics in the way of regular warfare. Their operations from that time onward were of a guerilla character.
While part of the army went on to Komati Poort, Buller marched north to Lydenburg, and made a circuit through that mountainous district, dislodging the Boers from some very strong positions and dispersing their bands. On 2 Oct. he was back at Lydenburg, and took farewell of his troops, for the Natal army was to be broken up. He went to Pretoria on the 10th, and in a special army order of that date Lord Roberts thanked him for the great services he had rendered to his country. He returned to England by Natal, and was presented with a sword of honour at Maritzburg. He landed at Southampton on 9 Nov. He was warmly welcomed and received the freedom of the borough, an example soon followed by Exeter and Plymouth. He was the guest of Queen Victoria at Windsor on the 17th. His services were mentioned in Lord Roberts's despatches of 28 March, 3 and 10 July 1900, and 2 April 1901. He received the G.C.M.G. and the Queen's medal with six clasps.
In January 1901 he resumed command of the Aldershot division, and on 1 Oct. this was merged in the 1st army corps, under a new organisation. Buller had still two years of his five years' term to complete, and he was given command of the corps for that period. But it had been announced that the new army corps would be commanded in peace by the men who would lead them in war, and his appointment was sharply criticised in the press. He was aggrieved that the war office did not defend him or allow him to defend himself. At a public luncheon at the Queen's Hall, Westminster, on 10 Oct. he made a speech which his friends admitted to be a grave indiscretion, and which the government held to be a breach of the King's Regulations. On the 21st he was removed from his command, and was not employed again, though he remained on the active list five years longer. A motion in the House of Commons by Sir Edward Grey, on 17 July 1902, blaming the action of the government, was defeated by 236 votes to 98.
He spent the rest of his life as a country gentleman, regarded locally as one of the foremost worthies of Devon, and meeting a hearty reception at Birmingham and Liverpool, when he visited them in 1903. An equestrian statue of him by Captain Adrian Jones was erected at Exeter in 1905, near Hele's school, by ‘his countrymen at home and beyond the seas,’ bearing the inscription ‘He saved Natal.’ In February 1903 he gave very full evidence before the royal commission on the war, which was reprinted in pamphlet form (pp. 160). He was prime warden of the goldsmiths' company in 1907–8. But his health was beginning to fail, and he died at his home near Crediton on 2 June 1908. He was buried at Crediton with military honours, the escort consisting of a battalion of rifles and a battalion of the Devonshire regiment, which alike laid claim to him. The depôt of the rifles is at Winchester, and in the north transept of Winchester cathedral a memorial of him, a recumbent figure in bronze on a tomb, by Mr. Bertram Mackennal, A.R.A., was unveiled by Lord Grenfell on 28 Oct. 1911. There is also a memorial in Crediton church. H. Tanworth Wells [q. v. Suppl. II] painted a portrait in 1889. There is a cartoon by ‘Spy’ in ‘Vanity Fair’ (1900).
On 10 Aug. 1882 he married Lady Audrey Jane Charlotte, daughter of the 4th Marquis Townshend, and widow of Greville Howard, son of the 17th earl of Suffolk. They had one daughter.
