The New Zealand Wars resumed as British forces led by General Duncan Cameron began the invasion of the Waikato.

The New Zealand Wars took place from 1845 to 1872 between the New Zealand colonial government and allied Māori on one side, and Māori and Māori-allied settlers on the other. Though the wars were initially localised conflicts triggered by tensions over disputed land purchases, they escalated dramatically from 1860 as the government became convinced it was facing united Māori resistance to further land sales and a refusal to acknowledge Crown sovereignty. The colonial government summoned thousands of British troops to mount major campaigns to overpower the Kīngitanga movement and also conquest of farming and residential land for British settlers. Later campaigns were aimed at quashing the Pai Mārire religious and political movement, which was strongly opposed to the conquest of Māori land and eager to strengthen Māori identity. Māori religious movements that promoted pan-Māori identity played a major role in the Wars.

General Sir Duncan Alexander Cameron, was a British Army officer who fought in the Crimean War and part of the New Zealand Wars. He was later a governor of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

The invasion of the Waikato became the largest and most important campaign of the 19th-century New Zealand Wars. Hostilities took place in the North Island of New Zealand between the military forces of the colonial government and a federation of Māori tribes known as the Kingitanga Movement. The Waikato is a territorial region with a northern boundary somewhat south of the present-day city of Auckland. The campaign lasted for nine months, from July 1863 to April 1864. The invasion was aimed at crushing Kingite power and also at driving Waikato Māori from their territory in readiness for occupation and settlement by European colonists. The campaign was fought by a peak of about 14,000 Imperial and colonial troops and about 4,000 Māori warriors drawn from more than half the major North Island tribal groups.