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Title:  The Great Boer War

Author:  Arthur Conan Doyle

Release Date: February, 2002  [Etext #3069]
[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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The Great Boer War

by Arthur Conan Doyle




E-text editor's note: It may come as a surprise that the creator of
Sherlock Holmes wrote a history of the Boer War.  The then 40-year-old
novelist wanted to see the war first hand as a soldier, but the
Victorian army balked at having popular author wielding a pen in its
ranks. The army did accept him as a doctor and Doyle was knighted in
1902 for his work with a field hospital in Bloemfontein. Doyle's vivid
description of the battles are probably thanks to the eye-witness
accounts he got from his patients. This, the best book on the Boer War
I've encountered, is a long out of print lost classic that I stumbled
across in a Cape Town second-hand bookstore.


Preface To The Final Edition

During the course of the war some sixteen Editions of this work have
appeared, each of which was, I hope, a little more full and accurate
than that which preceded it. I may fairly claim, however, that the
absolute mistakes made have been few in number, and that I have never
had occasion to reverse, and seldom to modify, the judgments which I
have formed.  In this final edition the early text has been carefully
revised and all fresh available knowledge has been added within the
limits of a single volume narrative.  Of the various episodes in the
latter half of the war it is impossible to say that the material is
available for a complete and final chronicle. By the aid, however, of
the official dispatches, of the newspapers, and of many private
letters, I have done my best to give an intelligible and accurate
account of the matter.  The treatment may occasionally seem too brief
but some proportion must be observed between the battles of 1899-1900
and the skirmishes of 1901-1902.

My private informants are so numerous that it would be hardly
possible, even if it were desirable, that I should quote their name~.
Of the correspondents upon whose work I have drawn for my materials, I
would acknowledge my obligations to Messrs. Burleigh, Nevinson,
Battersby, Stuart, Amery, Atkins, Baillie, Kinneir, Churchill, James,
Ralph, Barnes, Maxwell, Pearce, Hamilton, and others.  Especially I
would mention the gentleman who represented the `Standard' in the last
year of the war, whose accounts of Vlakfontein, Von Donop's Convoy,
and Tweebosch were the only reliable ones which reached the public.

Arthur Conan Doyle

Undershaw, Hindhead:

September 1902.

CHAPTER I
THE BOER NATIONS

Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended
themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time
when Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with them a
strain of those inflexible French Huguenots who gave up home and
fortune and left their country for ever at the time of the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously be one of the most
rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon earth.  Take this
formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant
warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances
under which no weakling could survive, place them so that they acquire
exceptional skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a
country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the
marksman, and the rider.  Then, finally, put a finer temper upon their
military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an
ardent and consuming patriotism.  Combine all these qualities and all
these impulses in one individual, and you have the modern Boer -- the
most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial
Britain.  Our military history has largely consisted in our conflicts
with France, but Napoleon and all his veterans have never treated us
so roughly as these hard-bitten farmers with their ancient theology
and their inconveniently modern rifles.

Look at the map of South Africa, and there, in the very centre of the
British possessions, like the stone in a peach, lies the great stretch
of the two republics, a mighty domain for so small a people. How came
they there? Who are these Teutonic folk who have burrowed so deeply
into Africa? It is a twice-told tale, and yet it must be told once
again if this story is to have even the most superficial of
introductions. No one can know or appreciate the Boer who does not
know his past, for he is what his past has made him.

It was about the time when Oliver Cromwell was at his zenith -- in
1652, to be pedantically accurate -- that the Dutch made their first
lodgment at the Cape of Good Hope.  The Portuguese had been there
before them, but, repelled by the evil weather, and lured forwards by
rumours of gold, they had passed the true seat of empire and had
voyaged further to settle along the eastern coast.  Some gold there
was, but not much, and the Portuguese settlements have never been
sources of wealth to the mother country, and never will be until the
day when Great Britain signs her huge cheque for Delagoa Bay.  The
coast upon which they settled reeked with malaria.  A hundred miles of
poisonous marsh separated it from the healthy inland plateau.  For
centuries these pioneers of South African colonisation strove to
obtain some further footing, but save along the courses of the rivers
they made little progress. Fierce natives and an enervating climate
barred their way.

But it was different with the Dutch.  That very rudeness of climate
which had so impressed the Portuguese adventurer was the source of
their success. Cold and poverty and storm are the nurses of the
qualities which make for empire. It is the men from the bleak and
barren lands who master the children of the light and the heat. And so
the Dutchmen at the Cape prospered and grew stronger in that robust
climate. They did not penetrate far inland, for they were few in
number and all they wanted was to be found close at hand. But they
built themselves houses, and they supplied the Dutch East India
Company with food and water, gradually budding off little townlets,
Wynberg, Stellenbosch, and pushing their settlements up the long
slopes which lead to that great central plateau which extends for
fifteen hundred miles from the edge of the Karoo to the Valley of the
Zambesi.  Then came the additional Huguenot emigrants -- the best
blood of France three hundred of them, a handful of the choicest seed
thrown in to give a touch of grace and soul to the solid Teutonic
strain. Again and again in the course of history, with the Normans,
the Huguenots, the Emigrés, one can see the great hand dipping into
that storehouse and sprinkling the nations with the same splendid
seed. France has not founded other countries, like her great rival,
but she has made every other country the richer by the mixture with
her choicest and best.  The Rouxs, Du Toits, Jouberts, Du Plessis,
Villiers, and a score of other French names are among the most
familiar in South Africa.

For a hundred more years the history of the colony was a record of the
gradual spreading ,of the Afrikaners over the huge expanse of veld
which lay to the north of them. Cattle raising became an industry, but
in a country where six acres can hardly support a sheep, large farms
are necessary for even small herds.  Six thousand acres was the usual
size, and five pounds a year the rent payable to Government. The
diseases which follow the white man had in Africa, as in America and
Australia, been fatal to the natives, and an epidemic of smallpox
cleared the country for the newcomers. Further and further north they
pushed, founding little towns here and there, such as Graaf-Reinet and
Swellendam, where a Dutch Reformed Church and a store for the sale of
the bare necessaries of life formed a nucleus for a few scattered
dwellings. Already the settlers were showing that independence of
control and that detachment from Europe which has been their most
prominent characteristic.  Even the sway of the Dutch Company (an
older but weaker brother of John Company in India) had caused them to
revolt. The local rising, however, was hardly noticed in the universal
cataclysm which followed the French Revolution. After twenty years,
during which the world was shaken by the Titanic struggle between
England and France in the final counting up of the game and paying of
the stakes, the Cape Colony was added in 1814 to the British Empire.

In all our vast collection of States there is probably not one the
title-deeds to which are more incontestable than to this one. We had
it by two rights, the right of conquest and the right of purchase.  In
1806 our troops landed, defeated the local forces, and took p05session
of Cape Town.  In 1814 we paid the large sum of six million pounds to
the Stadholder for the transference of this and some South American
land. It was a bargain which was probably made rapidly and carelessly
in that general redistribution which was going on.  As a house of call
upon the way to India the place was seen to be of value, but the
country itself was looked upon as unprofitable and
desert. What would Castlereagh or Liverpool have thought could they
have seen the items which we were buying for our six million pounds?
The inventory would have been a mixed one of good and of evil; nine
fierce Kaffir wars, the greatest diamond mines in the world, the
wealthiest gold mines, two costly and humiliating campaigns with men
whom we respected even when we fought with them, and now at last, we
hope, a South Africa of peace and prosperity, with equal rights and
equal duties for all men.  The future should hold something very good
for us in that land, for if we merely count the past we should be
compelled to say that we should have been stronger, richer, and higher
in the world's esteem had our possessions there never passed beyond
the range of the guns of our men-of-war. But surely the most arduous
is the most honourable, and, looking back from the end of their
journey, our descendants may see that our long record of struggle,
with its mixture of disaster and success, its outpouring of blood and
of treasure, has always tended to some great and enduring goal.

The title-deeds to the estate are, as I have said, good ones, but
there is one singular and ominous flaw in their provisions.  The ocean
has marked three boundaries to it, but the fourth is undefined.  There
is no word of the `Hinterland;' for neither the term nor the idea had
then been thought of.  Had Great Britain bought those vast regions
which extended beyond the settlements? Or were the discontented Dutch
at liberty to pass onwards and found fresh nations to bar the path of
the Anglo-Celtic colonists? In that question lay the germ of all the
trouble to come. An American would realise the point at issue if he
could conceive that after the founding of the United States the Dutch
inhabitants of the State of New York had trekked to the westward and
established fresh communities under a new flag. Then, when the
American population overtook these western States, they would be face
to face with the problem which this country has had to solve. If they
found these new States fiercely anti-American and extremely
unprogressive, they would experience that aggravation of their
difficulties with which our statesmen have had to deal.

At the time of their transference to the British flag the colonists --
Dutch, French, and German -- numbered some thirty thousand.  They were
slaveholders, and the slaves were about as numerous as themselves. The
prospect of complete amalgamation between the British and the original
settlers would have seemed to be a good one, since they were of much
the same stock, and their creeds could only be distinguished by their
varying degrees of bigotry and intolerance.  Five thousand British
emigrants were landed in 1820, settling on the Eastern borders of the
colony, and from that time onwards there was a slow but steady influx
of English speaking colonists.  The Government had the historical
faults and the historical virtues of British rule. It was mild, clean,
honest, tactless, and inconsistent.  On the whole, it might have done
very well had it been content to leave things as it found them.  But
to change the habits of the most conservative of Teutonic races was a
dangerous venture, and one which has led to a long series of
complications, making up the troubled history of South Africa.  The
Imperial Government has always taken an honourable and philanthropic
view of the rights of the native and the claim which he has to the
protection of the law. We hold and rightly, that British justice, if
not blind, should at least be colour-blind.  The view is
irreproachable in theory and incontestable in argument, but it is apt
to be irritating when urged by a Boston moralist or a London
philanthropist upon men whose whole society has been built upon the
assumption that the black is the inferior race.  Such a people like to
find the higher morality for themselves, not to have it imposed upon
them by those who live under entirely different conditions.  They
feel -- and with some reason -- that it is a cheap form of virtue which,
from the serenity of a well-ordered household in Beacon Street or
Belgrave Square, prescribes what the relation shall be between a white
employer and his half-savage, half-childish retainers. Both branches
of the Anglo-Celtic race have grappled with the question, and in each
it has led to trouble.

The British Government in South Africa has always played the unpopular
part of the friend and protector of the native servants.  It was upon
this very point that the first friction appeared between the old
settlers and the new administration.  A rising with bloodshed followed
the arrest of a Dutch farmer who had maltreated his slave.  It was
suppressed, and five of the participants were hanged. This punishment
was unduly severe and exceedingly injudicious. A brave race can forget
the victims of the field of battle, but never those of the scaffold.
The making of political martyrs is the last insanity of statesmanship.
It is true that both the man who arrested and the judge who condemned
the prisoners were Dutch, and that the British Governor interfered on
the side of mercy; but all this was forgotten afterwards in the desire
to make racial capital out of the incident. It is typical of the
enduring resentment which was left behind that when, after the
Jameson raid, it seemed that the leaders of that ill-fated venture
might be hanged, the beam was actually brought from a farmhouse at
Cookhouse Drift to Pretoria, that the Englishmen might die as the
Dutchmen had died in 1816.  Slagter's Nek marked the dividing of the
ways between the British Government and the Afrikaners.

And the separation soon became more marked. There were injudicious
tamperings with the local government and the local ways, with a
substitution of English for Dutch in the law courts. With vicarious
generosity, the English Government gave very lenient terms to the
Kaffir tribes who in 1834 had raided the border farmers. And then,
finally, in this same year there came the emancipation of the slaves
throughout the British Empire, which fanned all smouldering
discontents into an active flame.

It must be confessed that on this occasion the British philanthropist
was willing to pay for what he thought was right.  It was a noble
national action, and one the morality of which was in advance of its
time, that the British Parliament should vote the enormous sum of
twenty million pounds to pay compensation to the slaveholders, and so
to remove an evil with which the mother country bad no immediate
connection. It was as well that the thing should have been done when
it was, for had we waited till the colonies affected had governments
of their own it could never have been done by constitutional methods.
With many a grumble the good British householder drew his purse from
his fob, and he paid for what he thought to be right.  If any special
grace attends the virtuous action which brings nothing but tribulation
in this world, then we may hope for it over this emancipation. We
spent our money, we ruined our West Indian colonies, and we started a
disaffection in South Africa, the end of which we have not seen.  Yet
if it were to be done again we should doubtless do it.  The highest
morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told
story comes to be finished.

But the details of the measure were less honourable than the
principle.  It was carried out suddenly, so that the country had no
time to adjust itself to the new conditions.  Three million pounds
were ear-marked for South Africa, which gives a price per slave of
from sixty to seventy pounds, a sum considerably below the current
local rates. Finally, the compensation was made payable in London, so
that the farmers sold their claims at reduced prices to middlemen.
Indignation meetings were held in every little townlet and cattle camp
on the Karoo.  The old Dutch spirit was up -- the spirit of the men
who cut the dykes.  Rebellion was useless. But a vast untenanted land
stretched to the north of them. The nomad life was congenial to them,
and in their huge ox-drawn wagons -- like those bullock-carts in which
some of their old kinsmen came to Gaul -- they had vehicles and homes
and forts all in one. One by one they were loaded up, the huge teams
were inspanned, the women were seated inside, the men, with their
long-barrelled guns, walked alongside, and the great exodus was begun.
Their herds and flocks accompanied the migration, and the children
helped to round them in and drive them.  One tattered little boy of
ten cracked his sjambok whip behind the bullocks. He was a small item
in that singular crowd, but he was of interest to us, for his name was
Paul Stephanus Kruger.

It was a strange exodus, only comparable in modern times to the
sallying forth of the Mormons from Nauvoo upon their search for the
promised laud of Utah.  The country was known and sparsely settled as
far north as the Orange River, but beyond there was a great region
which had never been penetrated save by some daring hunter or
adventurous pioneer. It chanced -- if there be indeed such an element
as chance in the graver affairs of man -- that a Zulu conqueror had
swept over this land and left it untenanted, save by the dwarf
bushmen, the hideous aborigines, lowest of the human race.  There were
fine grazing and good soil for the emigrants.  They traveled in small
detached parties, but their total numbers were considerable, from six
to ten thousand according to their historian, or nearly a quarter of
the whole population of the colony.  Some of the early bands perished
miserably.  A large number made a trysting-place at a high peak to the
east of Bloemfontein in what was lately the Orange Free State. One
party of the emigrants was cut off by the formidable Matabeli, a
branch of the great Zulu nation.  The survivors declared war upon
them, and showed in this, their first campaign, the extraordinary
ingenuity in adapting their tactics to their adversary which has been
their greatest military characteristic.  The commando which rode out
to do battle with the Matabeli numbered, it is said, a hundred and
thirty-five farmers.  Their adversaries were twelve thousand spearmen.
They met at the Marico River, near Mafeking.  The Boers combined the
use of their horses and of their rifles so cleverly that they
slaughtered a third of their antagonists without any loss to
themselves.  Their tactics were to gallop up within range of the
enemy, to fire a volley, and then to ride away again before the
spearmen could reach them. When the savages pursued the Boers
fled. When the pursuit halted the Boers halted and the rifle fire
began anew. The strategy was simple but most effective. When one
remembers how often since then our own horsemen have been pitted
against savages in all parts of the world, one deplores that ignorance
of all military traditions save our own which is characteristic of our
service.

This victory of the `voortrekkers' cleared all the country between the
Orange River and the Limpopo, the sites of what has been known as the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State.  In the meantime another body of
the emigrants had descended into what is now known as Natal, and had
defeated Dingaan, the great Chief of the Zulus.  Being unable, owing
to the presence of their families, to employ the cavalry tactics which
had been so effective against the Matabeli, they again used their
ingenuity to meet this new situation, and received the Zulu warriors
in a square of laagered wagons, the men firing while the women
loaded. Six burghers were killed and three thousand Zulus.  Had such a
formation been used forty years afterwards against these very Zulus,
we should not have had to mourn the disaster of Isandhlwana.

And now at the end of their great journey, after overcoming the
difficulties of distance, of nature, and of savage enemies, the Boers
saw at the end of their travels the very thing which they desired
least -- that which they had come so far to avoid -- the flag of Great
Britain. The Boers had occupied Natal from within, but England had
previously done the same by sea, and a small colony of Englishmen had
settled at Port Natal, now known as Durban.  The home Government,
however, had acted in a vacillating way, and it was only the conquest
of Natal by the Boers which caused them to claim it as a British
colony.  At the same time they asserted the unwelcome doctrine that a
British subject could not at will throw off his allegiance, and that,
go where they might, the wandering farmers were still only the
pioneers of British colonies.  To emphasise the fact three companies
of soldiers were Bent in 1842 to what is now Durban -- the usual
Corporal's guard with which Great Britain starts a new empire.  This
handful of men was waylaid by the Boers and cut up, as their
successors have been so often since.  The survivors, however,
fortified themselves, and held a defensive position -- as also their
successors have done so many times since -- until reinforcements arrived
and the farmers dispersed. It is singular how in history the same
factors will always give the same result.  Here in this first skirmish
is an epitome of all our military relations with these people.  The
blundering headstrong attack, the defeat, the powerlessness of the
farmer against the weakest fortifications -- it is the same tale over and
over again in different scales of importance. Natal from this time
onward became a British colony, and the majority of the Boers trekked
north and east with bitter hearts to tell their wrongs to their
brethren of the Orange Free State and of the Transvaal.

Had they any wrongs to tell? It is difficult to reach that height of
philosophic detachment which enables the historian to deal absolutely
impartially where his own country is a party to the quarrel.  But at
least we may allow that there is a case for our adversary.  Our
annexation of Natal had been by no means definite, and it was they and
not we who first broke that bloodthirsty Zulu power which threw its
shadow across the country.  It was hard after such trials and such
exploits to turn their back upon the fertile land which they had
conquered, and to return to the bare pastures of the upland veldt.
They carried out of Natal a heavy sense of injury, which has helped to
poison our relations with them ever since. It was, in a way, a
momentous episode, this little skirmish of soldiers and emigrants, for
it was the heading off of the Boer from the sea and the confinement of
his ambition to the land.  Had it gone the other way, a new and
possibly formidable flag would have been added to the maritime
nations.

The emigrants who had settled in the huge tract of country between the
Orange River in the south and the Limpopo in the north had been
recruited by newcomers from the Cape Colony until they numbered some
fifteen thousand souls.  This population was scattered over a space as
large as Germany, and larger than Pennsylvania, New York, and New
England.  Their form of government was individualistic and democratic
to the last degree compatible with any sort of cohesion. Their wars
with the Kaffirs and their fear and dislike of the British Government
appear to have been the only ties which held them together.  They
divided and subdivided within their own borders, like a germinating
egg.  The Transvaal was full of lusty little high-mettled communities,
who quarreled among themselves as fiercely as they had done with the
authorities at the Cape.  Lydenburg, Zoutpansberg, and Potchefstroom
were on the point of turning their rifles against each other.  In the
south, between the Orange River and the Vaal, there was no form of
government at all, but a welter of Dutch farmers, Basutos, Hottentots,
and halfbreeds living in a chronic state of turbulence, recognising
neither the British authority to the south of them nor the Transvaal
republics to the north.  The chaos became at last unendurable, and in
1848 a garrison was placed in Bloemfontein and the district
incorporated in the British Empire.  The emigrants made ~ futile
resistance at Boomplats, and after a single defeat allowed themselves
to be drawn into the settled order of civilised rule.

At this period the Transvaal, where most of the Boers had settled,
desired a formal acknowledgment of their independence, which the
British authorities determined once and for all to give them.  The
great barren country, which produced little save marksmen, had no
attractions for a Colonial Office which was bent upon the limitation
of its liabilities. A Convention was concluded between the two
parties, known as the Sand River Convention, which is one of the fixed
points in South African history.  By it the British Government
guaranteed to the Boer farmers the right to manage their own affairs,
and to govern themselves by their own laws without any interference
upon the part of the British.  It stipulated that there should be no
slavery, and with that single reservation washed its hands finally, as
it imagined, of the whole question.  So the South African Republic
came formally into existence.

In the very year after the Sand River Convention a second republic,
the Orange Free State, was created by the deliberate withdrawal of
Great Britain from the territory which she had for eight years
occupied.  The Eastern Question was already becoming acute, and the
cloud of a great war was drifting up, visible to all men. British
statesmen felt that their commitments were very heavy in every part of
the world, and the South African annexations had always been a
doubtful value and an undoubted trouble.  Against the will of a large
part of the inhabitants, whether a majority or not it is impossible to
say, we withdrew our troops as amicably as the Romans withdrew from
Britain, and the new republic was left with absolute and unfettered
independence. On a petition being presented against the withdrawal,
the Home Government actually voted forty-eight thousand pounds to
compensate those who had suffered from the change. Whatever historical
grievance the Transvaal may have against Great Britain, we can at
least, save perhaps in one matter, claim to have a very clear
conscience concerning our dealings with the Orange Free State.  Thus
in 1852 and in 1854 were born those sturdy States who were able for a
time to hold at bay the united forces of the empire.

In the meantime Cape Colony, in spite of these secessions, had
prospered exceedingly, and her population -- English, German, and
Dutch -- had grown by 1870 to over two hundred thousand souls, the
Dutch still slightly predominating.  According to the Liberal colonial
policy of Great Britain, the time had come to cut the cord and let the
young nation conduct its own affairs.  In 1872 complete
self-government was given to it, the Governor, as the representative
of the Queen, retaining a nominal unexercised veto upon
legislation. According to this system the Dutch majority of the colony
could, and did, put their own representatives into power and run the
government upon Dutch lines. Already Dutch law had been restored, and
Dutch put on the same footing as English as the official language of
the country.  The extreme liberality of such measures, and the
uncompromising way in which they have been carried out, however
distasteful the legislation might seem to English ideas, are among the
chief reasons which made the illiberal treatment of British settlers
in the Transvaal so keenly resented at the Cape. A Dutch Government
was ruling the British in a British colony, at a moment when the Boers
would not give an Englishman a vote upon a municipal council in a city
which he had built himself.  Unfortunately, however, 'the evil that
men do lives after them,' and the ignorant Boer farmer continued to
imagine that his southern relatives were in bondage, just as the
descendant of the Irish emigrant still pictures an Ireland of penal
laws and an alien Church.

For twenty-five years after the Sand River Convention the burghers of
the South African Republic had pursued a strenuous and violent
existence, fighting incessantly with the natives and sometimes with
each other, with an occasional fling at the little Dutch republic to
the south.  The semi-tropical sun was waking strange ferments in the
placid Friesland blood, and producing a race who added the turbulence
and restlessness of the south to the formidable tenacity of the north.
Strong vitality and violent ambitions produced feuds and rivalries
worthy of medieval Italy, and the story of the factious little
communities is like a chapter out of Guicciardini.  Disorganisation
ensued.  The burghers would not pay taxes and the treasury was empty.
One fierce Kaffir tribe threatened them from the north, and the Zulus
on the east.  It is an exaggeration of English partisans to pretend
that our intervention saved the Boers, for no one can read their
military history without seeing that they were a match for Zulus and
Sekukuni combined.  But certainly a formidable invasion was pending,
and the scattered farmhouses were as open to the Kaffirs as our
farmers' homesteads were in the American colonies when the Indians
were on the warpath.  Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the British
Commissioner, after an inquiry of three months, solved all questions
by the formal annexation of the country.  The fact that he took
possession of it with a force of some twenty-five men showed the
honesty of his belief that no armed resistance was to be feared. This,
then, in 1877 was a complete reversal of the Sand River Convention and
the opening of a new chapter in the history of South Africa.

There did not appear to be any strong feeling at the time against the
annexation. The people were depressed with their troubles and weary of
contention. Burgers, the President, put in a formal protest, and took
up his abode in Cape Colony, where he had a pension from the British
Government.  A memorial against the measure received the signatures of
a majority of the Boer inhabitants, but there was a fair minority who
took the other view.  Kruger himself accepted a paid office under
Government. There was every sign that the people, if judiciously
handled, would settle down under the British flag.  It is even
asserted that they would themselves have petitioned for annexation had
it been longer withheld.  With immediate constitutional government it
is possible that even the most recalcitrant of them might have been
induced to lodge their protests in the ballot boxes rather than in the
bodies of our soldiers.

But the empire has always had poor luck in South Africa, and never
worse than on that occasion.  Through no bad faith, but simply through
preoccupation and delay, the promises made were not instantly
fulfilled.  Simple primitive men do not understand the ways of our
circumlocution offices, and they ascribe to duplicity what is really
red tape and stupidity.  If the Transvaalers had waited they would
have had their Volksraad and all that they wanted. But the British
Government had some other local matters to set right, the rooting out
of Sekukuni and the breaking of the Zulus, before they would fulfill
their pledges.  The delay was keenly resented. And we were unfortunate
in our choice of Governor. The burghers are a homely folk, and they
like an occasional cup of coffee with the anxious man who tries to
rule them. The three hundred pounds a year of coffee money allowed by
the Transvaal to its President is by no means a mere form. A wise
administrator would fall into the sociable and democratic habits of
the people. Sir Theophilus Shepstone did so. Sir Owen Lanyon did
not. There was no Volksraad and no coffee, and the popular discontent
grew rapidly. In three years the British had broken up the two savage
hordes which had been threatening the land. The finances, too, had
been restored.  The reasons which had made so many favour the
annexation were weakened by the very power which had every interest in
preserving them.

It cannot be too often pointed out that in this annexation, the
starting-point of our troubles, Great Britain, however mistaken she
may have been, had no obvious selfish interest in view.  There were no
Rand mines in those days, nor was there anything in the country to
tempt the most covetous. An empty treasury and two native wars were
the reversion which we took over. It was honestly considered that the
country was in too distracted a state to govern itself, and had, by
its weakness, become a scandal and a danger to its neighbours. There
was nothing sordid in our action, though it may have been both
injudicious and high-handed.

In December 1880 the Boers rose. Every farmhouse sent out its
riflemen, and the trysting-place was the outside of the nearest
British fort. All through the country small detachments were
surrounded and besieged by the farmers.  Standerton, Pretoria,
Potchefstroom, Lydenburg, Wakkerstroom, Rustenberg, and Marabastad
were all invested and all held out until the end of the war.  In the
open country we were less fortunate. At Bronkhorst Spruit a small
British force was taken by surprise and shot down without harm to
their antagonists. The surgeon who treated them has left it on record
that the average number of wounds was five per man. At Laing's Nek an
inferior force of British endeavoured to rush a hill which was held by
Boer riflemen. Half of our men were killed and wounded.  Ingogo may be
called a drawn battle, though our loss was more heavy than that of the
enemy. Finally came the defeat of Majuba Hill, where four hundred
infantry upon a mountain were defeated and driven off by a swarm of
sharpshooters who advanced under the cover of boulders.  Of all these
actions there was not one which was more than a skirmish, and had they
been followed by a final British victory they would now be hardly
remembered. It is the fact that they were skirmishes which succeeded
in their object which has given them an importance which is
exaggerated. At the same time they may mark the beginning of a new
military era, for they drove home the fact -- only too badly learned
by us -- that it is the rifle and not the drill which makes the
soldier.  It is bewildering that after such an experience the British
military authorities continued to serve out only three hundred
cartridges a year for rifle practice, and that they still encouraged
that mechanical volley firing which destroys all individual aim. With
the experience of the first Boer war behind them, little was done,
either in tactics or in musketry, to prepare the soldier for the
second. The value of the mounted rifleman, the shooting with accuracy
at unknown ranges, the art of taking cover -- all were equally
neglected.

The defeat at Majuba Hill was followed by the complete surrender of
the Gladstonian Government, an act which was either the most
pusillanimous or the most magnanimous in recent history.  It is hard
for the big man to draw away from the small before blows are struck
but when the big man has been knocked down three times it is harder
still.  An overwhelming British force was in the field, and the
General declared that he held the enemy in the hollow of his hand.
Our military calculations have been falsified before now by these
farmers, and it may be that the task of Wood and Roberts would have
been harder than they imagined; but on paper, at least, it looked as
if the enemy could be crushed without difficulty. So the public
thought, and yet they consented to the upraised sword being stayed.
With them, as apart from the politicians, the motive was undoubtedly a
moral and Christian one.  They considered that the annexation of the
Transvaal had evidently been an injustice, that the farmers had a
right to the freedom for which they fought, and that it was an
unworthy thing for a great nation to continue an unjust war for the
sake of a military revenge.  It was the height of idealism, and the
result has not been such as to encourage its repetition.

An armistice was concluded on March 5th, 1881, which led up to a peace
on the 23rd of the same month. The Government, after yielding to force
what it had repeatedly refused to friendly representations, made a
clumsy compromise in their settlement.  A policy of idealism and
Christian morality should have been thorough if it were to be tried at
all.  It was obvious that if the annexation were unjust, then the
Transvaal should have reverted to the condition in which it was before
the annexation, as defined by the Sand River Convention.  But the
Government for some reason would not go so far as this.  They niggled
and quibbled and bargained until the State was left as a curious
hybrid thing such as the world has never seen. It was a republic which
was part of the system of a monarchy, dealt with by the Colonial
Office, and included under the heading of `Colonies' in the news
columns of the `Times.' It was autonomous, and yet subject to some
vague suzerainty, the limits of which no one has ever been able to
define. Altogether, in its provisions and in its omissions, the
Convention of Pretoria appears to prove that our political affairs
were as badly conducted as our military in this unfortunate year of
1881.

It was evident from the first that so illogical and contentious an
agreement could not possibly prove to be a final settlement, and
indeed the ink of the signatures was hardly dry before an agitation
was on foot for its revision.  The Boers considered, and with justice,
that if they were to be left as undisputed victors in the war then
they should have the full fruits of victory.  On the other hand, the
English-speaking colonies had their allegiance tested to the
uttermost.  The proud Anglo-Celtic stock is not accustomed to be
humbled, and yet they found themselves through the action of the home
Government converted into members of a beaten race. It was very well
for the citizen of London to console his wounded pride by the thought
that he had done a magnanimous action, but it was different with the
British colonist of Durban or Cape Town, who by no act of his own, and
without any voice in the settlement, found himself humiliated before
his Dutch neighbour. An ugly feeling of resentment was left behind,
which might perhaps have passed away had the Transvaal accepted the
settlement in the spirit in which it was meant, but which grew more
and more dangerous as during eighteen years our people saw, or thought
that they saw, that one concession led always to a fresh demand, and
that the Dutch republics aimed not merely at equality, but at
dominance in South Africa.  Professor Bryce, a friendly critic, after
a personal examination of the country and the question, has left it
upon record that the Boers saw neither generosity nor humanity in our
conduct, but only fear. An outspoken race, they conveyed their
feelings to their neighbours.  Can it be wondered at that South Africa
has been in a ferment ever since, and that the British Africander has
yearned with an intensity of feeling unknown in England for the hour
of revenge?

The Government of the Transvaal after the war was left in the hands of
a triumvirate, but after one year Kruger became President, an office
which he continued to hold for eighteen years.  His career as ruler
vindicates the wisdom of that wise but unwritten provision of the
American Constitution by which there is a limit to the tenure of this
office.  Continued rule for half a generation must turn a man into an
autocrat.  The old President has said himself, in his homely but
shrewd way, that when one gets a good ox to lead the team it is a pity
to change him. If a good ox, however, is left to choose his own
direction without guidance, he may draw his wagon into trouble.

During three years the little State showed signs of a tumultuous
activity.  Considering that it was as large as France and that the
population could not have been more than 50,000, one would have
thought that they might have found room without any inconvenient
crowding.  But the burghers passed beyond their borders in every
direction.  The President cried aloud that he had been shut up in a
kraal, and he proceeded to find ways out of it.  A great trek was
projected for the north, but fortunately it miscarried.  To the east
they raided Zululand, and succeeded, in defiance of the British
settlement of that country, in tearing away one third of it and adding
it to the Transvaal.  To the west, with no regard to the
three-year-old treaty, they invaded Bechuanaland, and set up the two
new republics of Goshen and Stellaland. So outrageous were these
proceedings that Great Britain was forced to fit out in 1884 a new
expedition under Sir Charles Warren for the purpose of turning these
freebooters out of the country. It may be asked, why should these men
be called freebooters if the founders of Rhodesia were pioneers? The
answer is that the Transvaal was limited by treaty to certain
boundaries which these men transgressed, while no pledges were broken
when the British power expanded to the north.  The upshot of these
trespasses was the scene upon which every drama of South Africa rings
down. Once more the purse was drawn from the pocket of the unhappy
taxpayer, and a million or so was paid out to defray the expenses of
the police force necessary to keep these treaty-breakers in order. Let
this be borne in mind when we assess the moral and material damage
done to the Transvaal by that ill-conceived and foolish enterprise, the
Jameson Raid.

In 1884 a deputation from the Transvaal visited England, and at their
solicitation the clumsy Treaty of Pretoria was altered into the still
more clumsy Convention of London.  The changes in the provisions were
all in favour of the Boers, and a second successful war could hardly
have given them more than Lord Derby handed them in time of
peace. Their style was altered from the Transvaal to the South African
Republic, a change which was ominously suggestive of expansion in the
future. The control of Great Britain over their foreign policy was
also relaxed, though a power of veto was retained. But the most
important thing of all, and the fruitful cause of future trouble, lay
in an omission.  A suzerainty is a vague term, but in politics, as in
theology, the more nebulous a thing is the more does it excite the
imagination and the passions of men. This suzerainty was declared in
the preamble of the first treaty, and no mention of it was made in the
second.  Was it thereby abrogated or was it not? The British
contention was that only the articles were changed, and that the
preamble continued to hold good for both treaties.  They pointed out
that not only the suzerainty, but also the independence, of the
Transvaal was proclaimed in that preamble, and that if one lapsed the
other must do so also.  On the other hand, the Boers pointed to the
fact that there was actually a preamble to the second Convention,
which would seem, therefore, to have taken the place of the first. The
point is so technical that it appears to be eminently one of those
questions which might with propriety have been submitted to the
decision of a board of foreign jurists -- or possibly to the Supreme
Court of the United States. If the decision had been given against
Great Britain, we might have accepted it in a chastened spirit as a
fitting punishment for the carelessness of the representative who
failed to make our meaning intelligible.  Carlyle has said that a
political mistake always ends in a broken head for somebody.
Unfortunately the somebody is usually somebody else. We have read the
story of the political mistakes.  Only too soon we shall come to the
broken heads.

This, then, is a synopsis of what had occurred up to the signing of
the Convention, which finally established, or failed to establish, the
position of the South African Republic. We must now leave the larger
questions, and descend to the internal affairs of that small State,
and especially to that train of events which has stirred the mind of
our people more than anything since the Indian Mutiny.

CHAPTER II
THE CAUSE OF QUARREL

There might almost seem to be some subtle connection between the
barrenness and worthlessness of a surface and the value of the
minerals which lie beneath it. The craggy mountains of Western
America, the arid plains of West Australia, the ice-bound gorges of
the Klondyke, and the bare slopes of the Witwatersrand veldt -- these
are the lids which cover the great treasure chests of the world.

Gold had been known to exist in the Transvaal before, but it was only
in 1886 that it was realised that the deposits which lie some thirty
miles south of the capital are of a very extraordinary and valuable
nature. The proportion of gold in the quartz is not particularly high,
nor are the veins of a remarkable thickness, but the peculiarity of
the Rand mines lies in the fact that throughout this 'banket'
formation the metal is so uniformly distributed that the enterprise
can claim a certainty which is not usually associated with the
industry.  It is quarrying rather than mining.  Add to this that the
reefs which were originally worked as outcrops have now been traced to
enormous depths, and present the same features as those at the
surface. A conservative estimate of the value of the gold has placed
it at seven hundred millions of pounds.

Such a discovery produced the inevitable effect. A great number of
adventurers flocked into the country, some desirable and some very
much the reverse.  There were circumstances, however, which kept away
the rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a newly opened
goldfield.  It was not a class of mining which encouraged the
individual adventurer.  There were none of those nuggets which gleamed
through the mud of the dollies at Ballarat, or recompensed the
forty-niners in California for all their travels and their toils.  It
was a field for elaborate machinery, which could only be provided by
capital. Managers, engineers, miners, technical experts, and the
tradesmen and middlemen who live upon them, these were the Uitlanders,
drawn from all the races under the sun, but with the Anglo-Celtic
vastly predominant.  The best engineers were American, the best miners
were Cornish, the best managers were English, the money to run the
mines was largely subscribed in England. As time went on, however, the
German and French interests became more extensive, until their joint
holdings are now probably as heavy as those of the British.  Soon the
population of the mining centres became greater than that of the whole
Boer community, and consisted mainly of men in the prime of life-men,
too, of exceptional intelligence and energy.

The situation was an extraordinary one.  I have already attempted to
bring the problem home to an American by suggesting that the Dutch of
New York had trekked west and founded an anti-American and highly
unprogressive State.  To carry out the analogy we will now suppose
that that State was California, that the gold of that State attracted
a large inrush of American citizens, who came to outnumber the
original inhabitants, that these citizens were heavily taxed and badly
used, and that they deafened Washington with their outcry about their
injuries.  That would be a fair parallel to the relations between the
Transvaal, the Uitlanders, and the British Government.

That these Uitlanders had very real and pressing grievances no one
could possibly deny.  To recount them all would be a formidable task,
for their whole lives were darkened by injustice. There was not a
wrong which had driven the Boer from Gape Colony which he did not now
practise himself upon others -- and a wrong may be excusable in 1885
which is monstrous in 1895.  The primitive virtue which had
characterised the farmers broke down in the face of temptation. The
country Boers were little affected, some of them not at all, but the
Pretoria Government became a most corrupt oligarchy, venal and
incompetent to the last degree. Officials and imported Hollanders
handled the stream of gold which came in from the mines, while the
unfortunate Uitlander who paid nine-tenths of the taxation was fleeced
at every turn, and met with laughter and taunts when he endeavoured to
win the franchise by which he might peaceably set right the wrongs
from which he suffered.  He was not an unreasonable person. On the
contrary, he was patient to the verge of meekness, as capital is
likely to be when it is surrounded by rifles. But his situation was
intolerable, and after successive attempts at peaceful agitation, and
numerous humble petitions to the Volksraad, lie began at last to
realise that he would never obtain redress unless he could find some
way of winning it for himself.

Without attempting to enumerate all the wrongs which embittered the
Uitlanders, the more serious of them may be summed up in this way.

1. That they were heavily taxed and provided about seven-eighths of
the revenue of the country. The revenue of the South African
Republic-which had been 154,000l. in 1886, when the gold fields were
opened-had grown in 1899 to four million pounds, and the country
through the industry of the newcomers had changed from one of the
poorest to the richest in the whole world (per head of population).

2. That in spite of this prosperity which they had brought, they, the
majority of the inhabitants of the country, were left without a vote,
and could by no means influence the disposal of the great sums which
they were providing.  Such a case of taxation without representation
has never been known.

3. That they had no voice in the choice or payment of officials.  Men
of the worst private character might be placed with complete authority
over valuable interests. Upon one occasion the Minister of Mines
attempted himself to jump a mine, having officially learned some flaw
in its title.  The total official salaries had risen in 1899 to a sum
sufficient to pay 40l. per head to the entire male Boer population.

4. That they had no control over education.  Mr. John Robinson, the
Director General of the Johannesburg Educational Council, has reckoned
the sum spent on Uitlander schools as 6501. out of 63,0001. allotted
for education, making one shilling and tenpence per head per annum on
Uitlander children, and eight pounds six shillings per head on Boer
children-the Uitlander, as always, paying seven-eighths of the
original sum.

5. No power of municipal government.  Watercarts instead of pipes,
filthy buckets instead of drains, a corrupt and violent police, a high
death~rate in what should be a health resort -- all this in a city
which they had built themselves.

6. Despotic government in the matter of the press and of the right of
public meeting.

7. Disability from service upon a jury.

8. Continual harassing of the mining interest by vexatious
legislation.  Under this head came many grievances, some special to
the mines and some affecting all Uitlanders.  The dynamite monopoly,
by which the miners had to pay 600,0001. extra per annum in order to
get a worse quality of dynamite; the liquor laws, by which one-third
of the Kaffirs were allowed to be habitually drunk; the incompetence
and extortions of the State-owned railway; the granting of concessions
for numerous articles of ordinary consumption to individuals, by which
high prices were maintained; the surrounding of Johannesburg by tolls
from which the town had no profit -- these were among the economical
grievances, some large, some petty, which ramified through every
transaction of life.

And outside and beyond all these definite wrongs imagine to a free
born progressive man, an American or a Briton, the constant irritation
of being absolutely ruled by a body of twenty-five men, twenty-one of
whom had in the case of the Selati Railway Company been publicly and
circumstantially accused of bribery, with full details of the bribes
received, while to their corruption they added such crass ignorance
that they argue in the published reports of the Volksraad debates that
using dynamite bombs to bring down rain was firing at God, that it is
impious to destroy locusts, that the word 'participate' should not be
used because it is not in the Bible, and that postal pillar boxes are
extravagant and effeminate.  Such OBITER DICTA may be amusing at a
distance, but they are less entertaining when they come from an
autocrat who has complete power over the conditions of your life.

>From the fact that they were a community extremely preoccupied by
their own business, it followed that the Uitlanders were not ardent
politicians, and that they desired to have a share in the government
of the State for the purpose of making the conditions of their own
industry and of their own daily lives more endurable. How far there
was need of such an interference may be judged by any fair-minded man
who reads the list of their complaints. A superficial view may
recognise the Boers as the champions of liberty, but a deeper insight
must see that they (as represented by their elected rulers) have in
truth stood for all that history has shown to be odious in the form of
exclusiveness and oppression. Their conception of liberty has been a
selfish one, and they have consistently inflicted upon others far
heavier wrongs than those against which they had themselves rebelled.

As the mines increased in importance and the miners in numbers, it was
found that these political disabilities affected some of that
cosmopolitan crowd far more than others, in proportion to the amount
of freedom to which their home institutions had made them
accustomed. The continental Uitlanders were more patient of that which
was unendurable to the American and the Briton. The Americans,
however, were in so great a minority that it was upon the British that
the brunt of the struggle for freedom fell.  Apart from the fact that
the British were more numerous than all the other Uitlanders combined,
there were special reasons why they should feel their humiliating
position more than the members of any other race.  In the first place,
many of the British were British South Africans, who knew that in the
neighbouring countries which gave them birth the most liberal possible
institutions had been given to the kinsmen of these very Boers who
were refusing them the management of their own drains and water
supply. And again, every Briton knew that Great Britain claimed to be
the paramount power in South Africa, and so he felt as if his own
land, to which he might have looked for protection, was conniving at
and acquiescing in his ill treatment. As citizens of the paramount
power, it was peculiarly galling that they should be held in political
subjection.  The British, therefore, were the most persistent and
energetic of the agitators.

But it is a poor cause which cannot bear to fairly state and honestly
consider the case of its opponents. The Boers had made, as has been
briefly shown, great efforts to establish a country of their own.
They had travelled far, worked hard, and fought bravely. After all
their efforts they were fated to see an influx of strangers into their
country, some of them men of questionable character, who outnumbered
the original inhabitants.  If the franchise were granted to these,
there could be no doubt that though at first the Boers might control a
majority of the votes, it was only a question of time before the
newcomers would dominate the Raad and elect their own President, who
might adopt a policy abhorrent to the original owners of the
land. Were the Boers to lose by the ballot-box the victory which they
had won by their rifles? Was it fair to expect it?  These newcomers
came for gold.  They got their gold.  Their companies paid a hundred
per cent. Was not that enough to satisfy them? If they did not like
the country why did they not leave it? No one compelled them to stay
there. But if they stayed, let them be thankful that they were
tolerated at all, and not presume to interfere with the laws of those
by whose courtesy they were allowed to enter the country.

That is a fair statement of the Boer position, and at first sight an
impartial man might say that there was a good deal to say for it; but
a closer examination would show that, though it might be tenable in
theory, it is unjust and impossible in practice.

In the present crowded state of the world a policy of Thibet may be
carried out in some obscure corner, but it cannot be done in a great
tract. of country which lies right across the main line of industrial
progress. The position is too absolutely artificial. A handful of
people by the right of conquest take possession of an enormous country
over which they are dotted at such intervals that it is their boast
that one farmhouse cannot see the smoke of another, and yet, though
their numbers are so disproportionate to the area which they cover,
they refuse to admit any other people upon equal terms, but claim to
be a privileged class who shall dominate the newcomers completely.
They are outnumbered in their own land by immigrants who are far more
highly educated and progressive, and yet they hold them down in a way
which exists nowhere else upon earth. What is their right? The right
of conquest.  Then the same right may be justly invoked to reverse so
intolerable a situation.  This they would themselves acknowledge.
'Come on and fight ! Come on!' cried a member of the Volksraad when
the franchise petition of the Uitlanders was presented.  'Protest!
Protest! What is the good of protesting?' said Kruger to
Mr. W. Y. Campbell; 'you have not got the guns, I have.' There was
always the final court of appeal. Judge Creusot and Judge Mauser were
always behind the President.

Again, the argument of the Boers would be more valid had they received
no benefit from these immigrants. If they had ignored them they might
fairly have stated that they did not desire their presence. But even
while they protested they grew rich at the Uitlander's expense. They
could not have it both ways. It would be consistent to discourage him
and not profit by him, or to make him comfortable and build the State
upon his money; but to ill-treat him and at the same time to grow
strong by his taxation must surely be an injustice.

And again, the whole argument is based upon the narrow racial
supposition that every naturalised citizen not of Boer extraction must
necessarily be unpatriotic. This is not borne out by the examples of
history. The newcomer soon becomes 'as proud of his country and as
jealous of her liberty as the old. Had President Kruger given the
franchise generously to the Uitlander, his pyramid would have been
firm upon its base and not balanced upon its apex.  It is true that
the corrupt oligarchy would have vanished, and the spirit of a broader
more tolerant freedom influenced the counsels of the State. But the
republic would have become stronger and more permanent, with a
population who, if they differed in details, were united in
essentials. Whether such a solution would have been to the advantage
of British interests in South Africa is quite another question. In
more ways than one President Kruger has been a good friend to the
empire.

So much upon the general question of the reason why the Uitlander
should agitate and why the Boer was obdurate. The details of the long
struggle between the seekers for the franchise and the refusers of it
may be quickly sketched, but they cannot be entirely ignored by any
one who desires to understand the inception of that great contest
which was the outcome of the dispute.

At the time of the Convention of Pretoria (1881) the rights of
burghership might be obtained by one year's residence. In 1882 it was
raised to five years, the reasonable limit which obtains both in Great
Britain and in the United States. Had it remained so, it is safe to
say that there would never have been either an Uitlander question or a
great Boer war. Grievances would have been righted from the inside
without external interference.

In 1890 the inrush of outsiders alarmed the Boers, and the franchise
was raised so as to be only attainable by those who had lived fourteen
years in the country. The Uitlanders, who were increasing rapidly in
numbers and were suffering from the formidable list of grievances
already enumerated, perceived that their wrongs were so numerous that
it was hopeless to have them set right seriatim, and that only by
obtaining the leverage of the franchise could they hope to move the
heavy burden which weighed them down. In 1893 a petition of 13,000
Uitlanders, couched in most respectful terms, was submitted to the
Raad, but met with contemptuous neglect. Undeterred, however, by this
failure, the National Reform Union, an association which organised the
agitation, came back to the attack in 1894. They drew up a petition
which was signed by 35,000 adult male Uitlanders, a greater number
than the total Boer male population of the country. A small liberal
body in the Raad supported this memorial and endeavoured in vain to
obtain some justice for the newcomers. Mr. Jeppe was the mouthpiece of
this select band. 'They own half the soil, they pay at least three
quarters of the taxes,' said he. 'They are men who in capital, energy,
and education are at least our equals.

What will become of us or our children on that day when we may find
ourselves in a minority of one in twenty without a single friend among
the other nineteen, among those who will then tell us that they wished
to be brothers, but that we by our own act have made them strangers to
the republic?' Such reasonable and liberal sentiments were combated by
members who asserted that the signatures could not belong to
law-abiding citizens, since they were actually agitating against the
law of the franchise, and others whose intolerance was expressed by
the defiance of the member already quoted, who challenged the
Uitlanders to come out and fight. The champions of exclusiveness and
racial hatred won the day.  The memorial was rejected by sixteen votes
to eight, and the franchise law was, on the initiative of the
President, actually made more stringent than ever, being framed in
such a way that during the fourteen years of probation the applicant
should give up his previous nationality, so that for that period he
would really belong to no country at all.  No hopes were held out that
any possible attitude upon the part of the Uitlanders would soften the
determination of the President and his burghers.  One who remonstrated
was led outside the State buildings by the President, who pointed up
at the national flag. 'You see that flag?' said he. 'If I grant the
franchise, I may as well pull it down.' His animosity against the
immigrants was bitter. 'Burghers, friends, thieves, murderers,
newcomers, and others,' is the conciliatory opening of one of his
public addresses.  Though Johannesburg is only thirty-two miles from
Pretoria, and though the State of which he was the head depended for
its revenue upon the gold fields, he paid it only three visits in nine
years.

This settled animosity was deplorable, but not unnatural. A man imbued
with the idea of a chosen people, and unread in any book save the one
which cultivates this very idea, could not be expected to have learned
the historical lessons of the advantages which a State reaps from a
liberal policy. To him it was as if the Ammonites and Moabites had
demanded admission into the twelve tribes. He mistook an agitation
against the exclusive policy of the State for one against the
existence of the State itself. A wide franchise would have made his
republic firm-based and permanent. It was a small minority of the
Uitlanders who had any desire to come into the British system. They
were a cosmopolitan crowd, only united by the bond of a common
injustice. But when every other method had failed, and their petition
for the rights of freemen had been flung back at them, it was natural
that their eyes should turn to that flag which waved to the north, the
west, and the south of them -- the flag which means purity of government
with equal rights and equal duties for all men. Constitutional
agitation was laid aside, arms were smuggled in, and everything
prepared for an organised rising.

The events which followed at the beginning of 1896 have been so
thrashed out that there is, perhaps, nothing left to tell -- except
the truth. So far as the Uitlanders themselves are concerned, their
action was most natural and justifiable, and they have no reason to
exculpate themselves for rising against such oppression as no men of
our race have ever been submitted to. Had they trusted only to
themselves and the justice of their cause, their moral and even their
material position would have been infinitely stronger. But
unfortunately there were forces behind them which were more
questionable, the nature and extent of which have never yet, in spite
of two commissions of investigation, been properly revealed.  That
there should have been any attempt at misleading inquiry, or
suppressing documents in order to shelter individuals, is deplorable,
for the impression left -- I believe an entirely false one -- must be
that the British Government connived at an expedition which was as
immoral as it was disastrous.

It had been arranged that the town was to rise upon a certain night,
that Pretoria should be attacked, the fort seized, and the rifles and
ammunition used to arm the Uitlanders. It was a feasible device,
though it must seem to us, who have had such an experience of the
military virtues of the burghers, a very desperate one. But it is
conceivable that the rebels might have held Johannesburg until the
universal sympathy which their cause excited throughout South Africa
would have caused Great Britain to intervene.  Unfortunately they had
complicated matters by asking for outside help. Mr. Cecil Rhodes was
Premier of the Cape, a man of immense energy, and one who had rendered
great services to the empire.  The motives of his action are obscure
-- certainly, we may say that they were not sordid, for he has always
been a man whose thoughts were large and whose habits were simple. But
whatever they may have been -- whether an ill-regulated desire to
consolidate South Africa under British rule, or a burning sympathy
with the Uitlanders in their fight against injustice -- it is certain
that he allowed his lieutenant, Dr. Jameson, to assemble the mounted
police of the Chartered Company, of which Rhodes was founder and
director, for the purpose of co-operating with the rebels at
Johannesburg.  Moreover, when the revolt at Johannesburg was
postponed, on account of a disagreement as to which flag they were to
rise under, it appears that Jameson (with or without the orders of
Rhodes) forced the hand of the conspirators by invading the country
with a force absurdly inadequate to the work which he had taken in
hand.  Five hundred policemen and three field guns made up the forlorn
hope who started from near Mafeking and crossed the Transvaal border
upon December 29th, 1895.  On January 2nd they were surrounded by the
Boers amid the broken country near Dornkop, and after losing many of
their number killed and wounded, without food and with spent horses,
they were compelled to lay down their arms.  Six burghers lost their
lives in the skirmish.

The Uitlanders have been severely criticised for not having sent out a
force to help Jameson in his difficulties, but it is impossible to see
how they could have acted in any other manner.  They had done all they
could to prevent Jameson coming to their relief, and now it was rather
unreasonable to suppose that they should relieve their reliever.
Indeed, they had an entirely exaggerated idea of the strength of the
force which he was bringing, and received the news of his capture with
incredulity. When it became confirmed they rose, but in a halfhearted
fashion which was not due to want of courage, but to the difficulties
of their position.  On the one hand, the British Government disowned
Jameson entirely, and did all it could to discourage the rising; on
the other, the President had the raiders in his keeping at Pretoria,
and let it be understood that their fate depended upon the behaviour
of the Uitlanders.  They were led to believe that Jameson would be
shot unless they laid down their arms, though, as a matter of fact,
Jameson and his people had surrendered upon a promise of quarter.  So
skillfully did Kruger use his hostages that he succeeded, with the help
of the British Commissioner, in getting the thousands of excited
Johannesburgers to lay down their arms without bloodshed. Completely
out-manoeuvred by the astute old President, the leaders of the reform
movement used all their influence in the direction of peace, thinking
that a general amnesty would follow; but the moment that they and
their people were helpless the detectives and armed burghers occupied
the town, and sixty of their number were hurried to Pretoria Gaol.

To the raiders themselves the President behaved with great generosity.
Perhaps he could not find it in his heart to be harsh to the men who
had managed to put him in the right and won for him the sympathy of
the world. His own illiberal and oppressive treatment of the newcomers
was forgotten in the face of this illegal inroad of filibusters.  The
true issues were so obscured by this intrusion that it has taken years
to clear them, and perhaps they will never be wholly cleared.  It was
forgotten that it was the bad government of the country which was the
real cause of the unfortunate raid. From then onwards the government
might grow worse and worse, but it was always possible to point to the
raid as justifying everything.  Were the Uitlanders to have the
franchise? How could they expect it after the raid? Would Britain
object to the enormous importation of arms and obvious preparations
for war? They were only precautions against a second raid. For years
the raid stood in the way, not only of all progress, but of all
remonstrance.  Through an action over which they had no control, and
which they had done their best to prevent, the British Government was
left with a bad case and a weakened moral authority.

The raiders were sent home, where the rank and file were very properly
released, and the chief officers were condemned to terms of
imprisonment which certainly did not err upon the side of
severity. Cecil Rhodes was left unpunished, he retained his place in
the Privy Council, and his Chartered Company continued to have a
corporate existence. This was illogical and inconclusive. As Kruger
said, 'It is not the dog which should be beaten, but the man who set
him on to me.' Public opinion -- in spite of, or on account of, a
crowd of witnesses -- was ill informed upon the exact bearings of the
question, and it was obvious that as Dutch sentiment at the Cape
appeared already to be thoroughly hostile to us, it would be dangerous
to alienate the British Africanders also by making a martyr of their
favourite leader. But whatever arguments may be founded upon
expediency, it is clear that the Boers bitterly resented, and with
justice, the immunity of Rhodes.

In the meantime, both President Kruger and his burghers had shown a
greater severity to the political prisoners from Johannesburg than to
the armed followers of Jameson.  The nationality of these prisoners is
interesting and suggestive.  There were twenty-three Englishmen,
sixteen South Africans, nine Scotchmen, six Americans, two Welshmen,
one Irishman, one Australian, one Hollander, one Bavarian, one
Canadian, one Swiss, and one Turk. The prisoners were arrested in
January, but the trial did not take place until the end of April. All
were found guilty of high treason. Mr. Lionel Phillips, Colonel Rhodes
(brother of Mr. Cecil Rhodes), George Farrar, and Mr. Hammond, the
American engineer, were condemned to death, a sentence which was
afterwards commuted to the payment of an enormous fine.  The other
prisoners were condemned to two years' imprisonment, with a fine of
2,OOOL. each. The imprisonment was of the most arduous and trying
sort, and was embittered by the harshness of the gaoler, Du
Plessis. One of the unfortunate men cut his throat, and several fell
seriously ill, the diet and the sanitary conditions being equally
unhealthy. At last at the end of May all the prisoners but six were
released. Four of the six soon followed, two stalwarts, Sampson and
Davies, refusing to sign any petition and remaining in prison until
they were set free in 1897. Altogether the Transvaal Government
received in fines from the reform prisoners the enormous sum of
212,000L. A certain comic relief was immediately afterwards given to
so grave an episode by the presentation of a bill to Great Britain for
1,677,938L. 3s. 3d.-- the greater part of which was under the heading
of moral and intellectual damage.

The raid was past and the reform movement was past, but the causes
which produced them both remained. It is hardly conceivable that a
statesman who loved his country would have refrained from making
some effort to remove a state of things which had already caused such
grave dangers, and which must obviously become more serious with every
year that passed. But Paul Kruger had hardened his heart, and was not
to be moved. The grievances of the Uitlanders became heavier than
ever. The one power in the land to which they had been able to appeal
for some sort of redress amid their grievances was the law courts. Now
it was decreed that the courts should be dependent on the
Volksraad. The Chief Justice protested against such a degradation of
his high office, and he was dismissed in consequence without a
pension. The judge who had condemned the reformers was chosen to fill
the vacancy, and the protection of a fixed law was withdrawn from the
Uitlanders.

A commission appointed by the State was sent to examine into the
condition of the mining industry and the grievances from which the
newcomers suffered. The chairman was Mr. Schalk Burger, one of the
most liberal of the Boers, and the proceedings were thorough and
impartial. The result was a report which amply vindicated the
reformers, and suggested remedies which would have gone a long way
towards satisfying the Uitlanders.  With such enlightened legislation
their motives for seeking the franchise would have been less
pressing. But the President and his Raad would have none of the
recommendations of the commission. The rugged old autocrat declared
that Schalk Burger was a traitor to his country for having signed such
a document, and a new reactionary committee was chosen to report upon
the report. Words and papers were the only outcome of the affair. No
amelioration came to the newcomers. But at least they had again put
their case publicly upon record, and it had been endorsed by the most
respected of the burghers. Gradually in the press of the
English-speaking countries the raid was ceasing to obscure the
issue. More and more clearly it was coming out that no permanent
settlement was possible where the majority of the population was
oppressed by the minority. They had tried peaceful means and failed.
They had tried warlike means and failed. What was there left for them
to do? Their own country, the paramount power of South Africa, had
never helped them. Perhaps if it were directly appealed to it might do
so. It could not, if only for the sake of its own imperial prestige,
leave its children for ever in a state of subjection. The Uitlanders
determined upon a petition to the Queen, and in doing so they brought
their grievances out of the limits of a local controversy into the
broader field of international politics. Great Britain must either
protect them or acknowledge that their protection was beyond her
power. A direct petition to the Queen praying for protection was
signed in April 1899 by twenty-one thousand Uitlanders. From that time
events moved inevitably towards the one end. Sometimes the surface was
troubled and sometimes smooth, but the stream always ran swiftly and
the roar of the fall sounded ever louder in the ears.

CHAPTER III
THE NEGOTIATIONS

The British Government and the British people do not desire any direct
authority in South Africa.  Their one supreme interest is that the
various States there should live in concord and prosperity, and that
there should be no need for the presence of a British redcoat within
the whole great peninsula.  Our foreign critics, with their
misapprehension of the British colonial system, can never realise that
whether the four-coloured flag of the Transvaal or the Union Jack of a
self-governing colony waved over the gold mines would not make the
difference of one shilling to the revenue of Great Britain.  The
Transvaal as a British province would have its own legislature, its
own revenue, its own expenditure, and its own tariff against the
mother country, as well as against the rest of the world, and England
be none the richer for the change.  This is so obvious to a Briton
that he has ceased to insist upon it, and it is for that reason
perhaps that it is so universally misunderstood abroad. On the other
hand, while she is no gainer by the change, most of the expense of it
in blood and in money falls upon the home country.  On the face of it,
therefore, Great Britain had every reason to avoid so formidable a
task as the conquest of the South African Republic.  At the best she
had nothing to gain, and at the worst she had an immense deal to lose.
There was no room for ambition or aggression. It was a case of
shirking or fulfilling a most arduous duty.

There could be no question of a plot for the annexation of the
Transvaal. In a free country the Government cannot move in advance of
public opinion, and public opinion is influenced by and reflected in
the newspapers. One may examine the files of the press during all the
months of negotiations and never find one reputable opinion in favour
of such a course, nor did one in society ever meet an advocate of such
a measure.  But a great wrong was being done, and all that was asked
was the minimum change which would set it right, and restore equality
between the white races in Africa.  'Let Kruger only be liberal in the
extension of the franchise,' said the paper which is most
representative of the sanest British opinion, 'and he will find that
the power of the republic will become not weaker, but infinitely more
secure.  Let him once give the majority of the resident males of full
age the full vote, and he will have given the republic a stability and
power which nothing else can. If he rejects all pleas of this kind,
and persists in his present policy, he may possibly stave off the evil
day, and preserve his cherished oligarchy for another few years; but
the end will be the same.'  The extract reflects the tone of all of
the British press, with the exception of one or two papers which
considered that even the persistent ill usage of our people, and the
fact that we were peculiarly responsible for them in this State, did
not justify us in interfering in the internal affairs of the republic.
It cannot be denied that the Jameson raid and the incomplete manner in
which the circumstances connected with it had been investigated had
weakened the force of those who wished to interfere energetically on
behalf of British subjects.  There was a vague but widespread feeling
that perhaps the capitalists were engineering the situation for their
own ends.  It is difficult to imagine how a state of unrest and
insecurity, to say nothing of a state of war, can ever be to the
advantage of capital, and surely it is obvious that if some
arch-schemer were using the grievances of the Uitlanders for his own
ends the best way to checkmate him would be to remove those
grievances.  The suspicion, however, did exist among those who like to
ignore the obvious and magnify the remote, and throughout the
negotiations the hand of Great Britain was weakened, as her adversary
had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest but fussy and
faddy minority.  Idealism and a morbid, restless conscientiousness are
two of the most dangerous evils from which a modern progressive State
has to suffer.

It was in April 1899 that the British Uitlanders sent their petition
praying for protection to their native country. Since the April
previous a correspondence had been going on between Dr. Leyds,
Secretary of State for the South African Republic, and
Mr. Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary, upon the existence or
non-existence of the suzerainty. On the one hand, it was contended
that the substitution of a second convention had entirely annulled the
first; on the other, that the preamble of the first applied also to
the second. If the Transvaal contention were correct it is clear that
Great Britain had been tricked and jockeyed into such a position,
since she had received no quid pro quo in the second convention, and
even the most careless of Colonial Secretaries could hardly have been
expected to give away a very substantial something for nothing. But
the contention throws us back upon the academic question of what a
suzerainty is. The Transvaal admitted a power of veto over their
foreign policy, and this admission in itself, unless they openly tore
up the convention, must deprive them of the position of a sovereign
State. On the whole, the question must be acknowledged to have been
one which might very well have been referred to trustworthy
arbitration.

But now to this debate, which had so little of urgency in it that
seven months intervened between statement and reply, there came the
bitterly vital question of the wrongs and appeal of the
Uitlanders. Sir Alfred Milner, the British Commissioner in South
Africa, a man of liberal views who had been appointed by a
Conservative Government, commanded the respect and confidence of all
parties. His record was that of an able, clear-headed man, too just to
be either guilty of or tolerant of injustice. To him the matter was
referred, and a conference was arranged between President Kruger and
him at Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State. They met on
May 30th.  Kruger had declared that all questions might be discussed
except the independence of the Transvaal.  'All, all, all!' he cried
emphatically. But in practice it was found that the parties could not
agree as to what did or what did not threaten this independence.  What
was essential to one was inadmissible to the other.  Milner contended
for a five years' retroactive franchise, with provisions to secure
adequate representation for the mining districts.  Kruger offered a
seven years' franchise, coupled with numerous conditions which
whittled down its value very much, promised five members out of
thirty-one to represent a majority of the male population, and added a
provision that all differences should be subject to arbitration by
foreign powers, a condition which is incompatible with any claim to
suzerainty. The proposals of each were impossible to the other, and
early in June Sir Alfred Milner was back in Cape Town and President
Kruger in Pretoria, with nothing settled except the extreme difficulty
of a settlement.  The current was running swift, and the roar of the
fall was already sounding louder in the ear.

On June 12th Sir Alfred Milner received a deputation at Cape Town and
reviewed the situation.  'The principle of equality of races was,' he
said, essential for South Africa.  The one State where inequality
existed kept all the others in a fever. Our policy was one not of
aggression, but of singular patience, which could not, however, lapse
into indifference.' Two days later Kruger addressed the Raad. 'The
other side had not conceded one tittle, and I could not give more. God
has always stood by us. I do not want war, but I will not give more
away. Although our independence has once been taken away, God had
restored it.' He spoke with sincerity no doubt, but it is hard to hear
God invoked with such confidence for the system which encouraged the
liquor traffic to the natives, and bred the most corrupt set of
officials that the modern world has seen.

A dispatch from Sir Alfred Milner, giving his views upon the
situation, made the British public recognise, as nothing else had
done, how serious the position was, and how essential it was that an
earnest national effort should be made to set it right.  In it he
said:

'The case for intervention is overwhelming. The only attempted answer
is that things will right themselves if left alone. But, in fact, the
policy of leaving things alone has been tried for years, and it has
led to their going from bad to worse. It is not true that this is
owing to the raid. They were going from bad to worse before the
raid. We were on the verge of war before the raid, and the Transvaal
was on the verge of revolution.  The effect of the raid has been to
give the policy of leaving things alone a new lease of life, and with
the old consequences.

'The spectacle of thousands of British subjects kept permanently in
the position of helots, constantly chafing under undoubted grievances,
and calling vainly to her Majesty's Government for redress, does
steadily undermine the influence and reputation of Great Britain
within the Queen's dominions.  A section of the press, not in the
Transvaal only, preaches openly and constantly the doctrine of a
republic embracing all South Africa, and supports it by menacing
references to the armaments of the Transvaal, its alliance with the
Orange Free State, and the active sympathy which, in case of war, it
would receive from a section of her Majesty's subjects.  I regret to
say that this doctrine, supported as it is by a ceaseless stream of
malignant lies about the intentions of her Majesty's Government, is
producing a great effect on a large number of our Dutch fellow
colonists.  Language is frequently used which seems to imply that the
Dutch have some superior right, even in this colony, to their
fellow-citizens of British birth. Thousands of men peaceably disposed,
and if left alone perfectly satisfied with their position as British
subjects, are being drawn into disaffection, and there is a
corresponding exasperation upon the part of the British.

'I can see nothing which will put a stop to this mischievous
propaganda but some striking proof of the intention of her Majesty's
Government not to be ousted from its position in South Africa.'

Such were the grave and measured words with which the British
pro-consul warned his countrymen of what was to come.  He saw the
storm-cloud piling in the north, but even his eyes had not yet
discerned how near and how terrible was the tempest.

Throughout the end of June and the early part of July much was hoped
from the mediation of the heads of the Afrikander Bond, the political
union of the Dutch Cape colonists.  On the one hand, they were the
kinsmen of the Boers; on the other, they were British subjects, and
were enjoying the blessings of those liberal institutions which we
were anxious to see extended to the Transvaal.  'Only treat our folk as
we treat yours! Our whole contention was compressed into that
prayer. But nothing came of the mission, though a scheme endorsed by
Mr. Hofmeyer and Mr. Herholdt, of the Bond, with Mr. Fischer of the
Free State, was introduced into the Raad and applauded by
Mr. Schreiner, the Africander Premier of Cape Colony. In its original
form the provisions were obscure and complicated, the franchise
varying from nine years to seven under different conditions.  In
debate, however, the terms were amended until the time was reduced to
seven years, and the proposed representation of the gold fields placed
at five.  The concession was not a great one, nor could the
representation, five out of thirty-one, be considered a generous
provision for the majority of the population; but the reduction of the
years of residence was eagerly hailed in England as a sign that a
compromise might be effected. A sigh of relief went up from the
country. 'If,' said the Colonial Secretary, 'this report is confirmed,
this important change in the proposals of President Kruger, coupled
with previous amendments, leads Government to hope that the new law
may prove to be the basis of a settlement on the lines laid down by
Sir Alfred Milner in the Bloemfontein Conference.'  He added that
there were some vexatious conditions attached, but concluded, 'Her
Majesty's Government feel assured that the President, having accepted
the principle for which they have contended, will be prepared to
reconsider any detail of his scheme which can be shown to be a
possible hindrance to the full accomplishment of the object in view,
and that he will not allow them to be nullified or reduced in value by
any subsequent alterations of the law or acts of administration.'  At
the same time, the 'Times' declared the crisis to be at an end.  'If
the Dutch statesmen of the Cape have induced their brethren in the
Transvaal to carry such a Bill, they will have deserved the lasting
gratitude, not only of their own countrymen and of the English
colonists in South Africa, but of the British Empire and of the
civilised world.'

But this fair prospect was soon destined to be overcast.  Questions of
detail arose which, when closely examined, proved to be matters of
very essential importance.  The Uitlanders and British South Africans,
who had experienced in the past how illusory the promises of the
President might be, insisted upon guarantees.  The seven years offered
were two years more than that which Sir Alfred Milner had declared to
be an irreducible minimum.  The difference of two years would not have
hindered their acceptance, even at the expense of some humiliation to
our representative. But there were conditions which excited distrust
when drawn up by so wily a diplomatist. One was that the alien who
aspired to burghership had to produce a certificate of continuous
registration for a certain time. But the law of registration had
fallen into disuse in the Transvaal, and consequently this provision
might render the whole Bill valueless.  Since it was carefully
retained, it was certainly meant for use.  The door had been opened,
but a stone was placed to block it. Again, the continued burghership
of the newcomers was made to depend upon the resolution of the first
Raad, so that should the mining members propose any measure of reform,
not only their Bill but they also might be swept out of the house by a
Boer majority.  What could an Opposition do if a vote of the
Government might at any moment unseat them all? It was clear that a
measure which contained such provisions must be very carefully sifted
before a British Government could accept it as a final settlement and
a complete concession of justice to its subjects.  On the other hand,
it naturally felt loth to refuse those clauses which offered some
prospect of an amelioration in their condition. It took the course,
therefore, of suggesting that each Government should appoint delegates
to form a joint commission which should inquire into the working of
the proposed Bill before it was put into a final form. The proposal
was submitted to the Raad upon August 7th, with the addition that when
this was done Sir Alfred Milner was prepared to discuss anything else,
including arbitration without the interference of foreign powers.

The suggestion of this joint commission has been criticised as an
unwarrantable intrusion into the internal affairs of another
country. But then the whole question from the beginning was about the
internal affairs of another country, since the internal equality of
the white inhabitants was the condition upon which self-government was
restored to the Transvaal.  It is futile to suggest analogies, and to
imagine what France would do if Germany were to interfere in a
question of French franchise.  Supposing that France contained as many
Germans as Frenchmen, and that they were ill-treated, Germany would
interfere quickly enough and continue to do so until some fair MODUS
VIVENDI was established. The fact is that the case of the Transvaal
stands alone, that such a condition of things has never been known,
and that no previous precedent can apply to it, save the general rule
that a minority of white men cannot continue indefinitely to tax and
govern a majority. Sentiment inclines to the smaller nation, but
reason and justice are all on the side of England.

A long delay followed upon the proposal of the Secretary of the
Colonies. No reply was forthcoming from Pretoria.  But on all sides
there came evidence that those preparations for war which had been
quietly going on even before the Jameson raid were now being hurriedly
perfected.  For so small a State enormous sums were being spent upon
military equipment.  Cases of rifles and boxes of cartridges streamed
into the arsenal, not only from Delagoa Bay, but even, to the
indignation of the English colonists, through Cape Town and Port
Elizabeth. Huge packing-cases, marked 'Agricultural Instruments' and
'Mining Machinery,' arrived from Germany and France, to find their
places in the forts of Johannesburg or Pretoria.  Men of many nations
but of a similar type showed their martial faces in the Boer
towns. The CONDOTTIERI of Europe were as ready as ever to sell their
blood for gold, and nobly in the end did they fulfill their share of
the bargain.  For three weeks and more during which Mr. Kruger was
silent these eloquent preparations went on. But beyond them, and of
infinitely more importance, there was one fact which dominated the
situation. A burgher cannot go to war without his horse, his horse
cannot move without grass, grass will not come until after rain, and it
was still some weeks before the rain would be due.  Negotiations,
then, must not be unduly hurried while the veldt was a bare
russet-coloured dust-swept plain.  Mr. Chamberlain and the British
public waited week after week for their answer. But there was a limit
to their patience, and it was reached on August 26th, when the
Colonial Secretary showed, with a plainness of speech which is as
unusual as it is welcome in diplomacy, that the question could not be
hung up for ever.  'The sands are running down in the glass,' said he.
'If they run out, we shall not hold ourselves limited by that which we
have already offered, but, having taken the matter in hand, we will
not let it go until we have secured conditions which once for all
shall establish which is the paramount power in South Africa, and
shall secure for our fellow-subjects there those equal rights and
equal privileges which were promised them by President Kruger when the
independence of the Transvaal was granted by the Queen, and which is
the least that in justice ought to be accorded them.' Lord Salisbury,
a little time before, had been equally emphatic. 'No one in this
country wishes to disturb the conventions so long as it is recognised
that while they guarantee the independence of the Transvaal on the one
side, they guarantee equal political and civil rights for settlers of
all nationalities upon the other. But these conventions are not like
the laws of the Medes and the Persians. They are mortal, they can be
destroyed... and once destroyed they can never be reconstructed in
the same shape.' The long-enduring patience of Great Britain was
beginning to show signs of giving way.

In the meantime a fresh dispatch had arrived from the Transvaal which
offered as an alternative proposal to the joint commission that the
Boer Government should grant the franchise proposals of Sir Alfred
Milner on condition that Great Britain withdrew or dropped her claim
to a suzerainty, agreed to arbitration, and promised never again to
interfere in the internal affairs of the republic. To this Great
Britain answered that she would agree to arbitration, that she hoped
never again to have occasion to interfere for the protection of her
own subjects, but that with the grant of the franchise all occasion
for such interference would pass away, and, finally, that she would
never consent to abandon her position as suzerain
power. Mr. Chamberlain's dispatch ended by reminding the Government of
the Transvaal that there were other matters of dispute open between
the two Governments apart from the franchise, and that it would be as
well to have them settled at the same time.  By these he meant such
questions as the position of the native races and the treatment of
Anglo-Indians.

On September 2nd the answer of the Transvaal Government was returned.
It was short and uncompromising.  They withdrew their offer of the
franchise. They re-asserted the non-existence of the suzerainty. The
negotiations were at a deadlock.  It was difficult to see how they
could be re-opened. In view of the arming of the burghers, the small
garrison of Natal had been taking up positions to cover the frontier.
The Transvaal asked for an explanation of their presence. Sir Alfred
Milner answered that they were guarding British interests, and
preparing against contingencies. The roar of the fall was sounding
loud and near.

On September 8th there was held a Cabinet Council -- one of the most
important in recent years. A message was sent to Pretoria, which even
the opponents of the Government have acknowledged to be temperate, and
offering the basis for a peaceful settlement.  It begins by
repudiating emphatically the claim of the Transvaal to be a sovereign
international State in the same sense in which the Orange Free State
is one. Any proposal made conditional upon such an acknowledgment
could not be entertained.

The British Government, however, was prepared to accept the five
years' 'franchise' as stated in the note of August 19th, assuming at
the same time that in the Raad each member might talk his own
language.

'Acceptance of these terms by the South African Republic would at once
remove tension between the two Governments, and would in all
probability render unnecessary any future intervention to secure
redress for grievances which the Uitlanders themselves would be able
to bring to the notice of the Executive Council and the Volksraad.

'Her Majesty's Government are increasingly impressed with the danger
of further delay in relieving the strain which has already caused so
much injury to the interests of South Africa, and they earnestly press
for an immediate and definite reply to the present proposal. If it is
acceded to they will be ready to make immediate arrangements... to
settle all details of the proposed tribunal of arbitration... If,
however, as they most anxiously hope will not be the case, the reply
of the South African Republic should be negative or inconclusive, I am
to state that her Majesty's Government must reserve to themselves the
right to reconsider the situation DE NOVO, and to formulate their own
proposals for a final settlement.'

Such was the message, and Great Britain waited with strained attention
for the answer.  But again there was a delay, while the rain came and
the grass grew, and the veldt was as a mounted rifleman would have
it. The burghers were in no humour for concessions.  They knew their
own power, and they concluded with justice that they were for the time
far the strongest military power in South Africa.  'We have beaten
England before, but it is nothing to the licking we shall give her
now,' cried a prominent citizen, and he spoke for his country as he
said it.  So the empire waited and debated, but the sounds of the
bugle were already breaking through the wrangles of the politicians,
and calling1 the nation to be tested once more by that hammer of war and
adversity by which Providence still fashions us to some nobler and
higher end.

CHAPTER IV
THE EVE OF WAR

The message sent from the Cabinet Council of September 8th was
evidently the precursor either of peace or of war.  The cloud must
burst or blow over. As the nation waited in hushed expectancy for a
reply it spent some portion of its time in examining and speculating
upon those military preparations which might be needed.  The War
Office had for some months been arranging for every contingency, and
had made certain dispositions which appeared to them to be adequate,
but which our future experience was to demonstrate to be far too small
for the very serious matter in hand.

It is curious in turning over the files of such a paper as the
'Times' to observe how at first one or two small paragraphs of military
significance might appear in the endless columns of diplomatic and
political reports, how gradually they grew and grew, until at last the
eclipse was complete, and the diplomacy had been thrust into the tiny
paragraphs while the war filled the journal.  Under July 7th comes the
first glint of arms amid the drab monotony of the state papers.  On
that date it was announced that two companies of Royal Engineers and
departmental corps with reserves of supplies and ammunition were being
dispatched.  Two companies of engineers!  Who could have foreseen that
they were the vanguard of the greatest army which ever at any time of
the world's history has crossed an ocean, and far the greatest which a
British general has commanded in the field?

On August 15th, at a time when the negotiations had already assumed a
very serious phase, after the failure of the Bloemfontein conference
and the dispatch of Sir Alfred Milner, the British forces in South
Africa were absolutely and absurdly inadequate for the purpose of the
defence of our own frontier.  Surely such a fact must open the eyes of
those who, in spite of all the evidence, persist that the war was
forced on by the British.  A statesman who forces on a war usually
prepares for a war, and this is exactly what Mr. Kruger did and the
British authorities did not.  The overbearing suzerain power had at
that date, scattered over a huge frontier, two cavalry regiments,
three field batteries, and six and a half infantry battalions -- say
six thousand men. The innocent pastoral States could put in the field
forty or fifty thousand mounted riflemen, whose mobility doubled their
numbers, and a most excellent artillery, including the heaviest guns
which have ever been seen upon a battlefield.  At this time it is most
certain that the Boers could have made their way easily either to
Durban or to Cape Town.  The British force, condemned to act upon the
defensive, could have been masked and afterwards destroyed, while the
main body of the invaders would have encountered nothing but an
irregular local resistance, which would have been neutralised by the
apathy or hostility of the Dutch colonists. It is extraordinary that
our authorities seem never to have contemplated the possibility of the
Boers taking the initiative, or to have understood that in that case
our belated reinforcements would certainly have had to land under the
fire of the republican guns.

In July Natal had taken alarm, and a strong representation had been
sent from the prime minister of the colony to the Governor, Sir
W. Hely Hutchinson, and so to the Colonial Office. It was notorious
that the Transvaal was armed to the teeth, that the Orange Free State
was likely to join her, and that there had been strong attempts made,
both privately and through the press, to alienate the loyalty of the
Dutch citizens of both the British colonies.  Many sinister signs were
observed by those upon the spot.  The veldt had been burned unusually
early to ensure a speedy grass-crop after the first rains, there had
been a collecting of horses, a distribution of rifles and ammunition.
The Free State farmers, who graze their sheep and cattle upon Natal
soil during the winter, had driven them off to places of safety behind
the line of the Drakensberg. Everything pointed to approaching war,
and Natal refused to be satisfied even by the dispatch of another
regiment.  On September 6th a second message was received at the
Colonial Office, which states the case with great clearness and
precision.

'The Prime Minister desires me to urge upon you by the unanimous
advice of the Ministers that sufficient troops should be dispatched to
Natal immediately to enable the colony to be placed in a state of
defence against an attack from the Transvaal and the Orange Free
State. I am informed by the General Officer Commanding, Natal, that he
will not have enough troops, even when the Manchester Regiment
arrives, to do more than occupy Newcastle and at the same time protect
the colony south of it from raids, while Laing's Nek, Ingogo River
and Zululand must be left undefended.  My Ministers know that every
preparation has been made, both in the Transvaal and the Orange Free
State, which would enable an attack to be made on Natal at short
notice. My Ministers believe that the Boers have made up their minds
that war will take place almost certainly, and their best chance will
be, when it seems unavoidable, to deliver a blow before reinforcements
have time to arrive.  Information has been received that raids in
force will be made .by way of Middle Drift and Greytown and by way of
Bond's Drift and Stangar, with a view to striking the railway between
Pietermaritzburg and Durban and cutting off communications of troops
and supplies. Nearly all the Orange Free State farmers in the Klip
River division, who stay in the colony usually till October at least,
have trekked, at great loss to themselves; their sheep are lambing on
the road, and the lambs die or are destroyed.  Two at least of the
Entonjanani district farmers have trekked with all their belongings
into the Transvaal, in the first case attempting to take as hostages
the children of the natives on the farm. Reliable reports have been
received of attempts to tamper with loyal natives, and to set tribe
against tribe in order to create confusion and detail the defensive
forces of the colony.  Both food and warlike stores in large
quantities have been accumulated at Volksrust, Vryheid and
Standerton.  Persons who are believed to be spies have been seen
examining the bridges on the Natal Railway, and it is known that there
are spies in all the principal centres of the colony. In the opinion
of Ministers, such a catastrophe as the seizure of . Laing's Nek and
the destruction of the northern portion of the railway, or a
successful raid or invasion such as they have reason to believe is
contemplated, would produce a most demoralising effect on the natives
and on the loyal Europeans in the colony, and would afford great
encouragement to the Boers and to their sympathisers in the colonies,
who, although armed and prepared, will probably keep quiet unless they
receive some encouragement of the sort.  They concur in the policy of
her Majesty's Government of exhausting all peaceful means to obtain
redress of the grievances of the Uitlanders and authoritatively assert
the supremacy of Great Britain before resorting to war; but they state
that this is a question of defensive precaution, not of making war.'

In answer to these and other remonstrances the garrison of Natal was
gradually increased, partly by troops from Europe, and partly by the
dispatch of five thousand British troops from India. The 2nd
Berkshires, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, the 1st Manchesters, and
the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers arrived in succession with reinforcements of
artillery.  The 5th Dragoon Guards, 9th Lancers, and 19th Hussars came
from India, with the 1st Devonshires, 1st Gloucesters, 2nd King's
Royal Rifles and 2nd Gordon Highlanders.  These with the 21st, 42nd,
and 53rd batteries of Field Artillery made up the Indian
Contingent. Their arrival late in September raised the number of
troops in South Africa to 22,000, a force which was inadequate to a
contest in the open field with the numerous, mobile, and gallant enemy
to whom they were to be opposed, but which proved to be strong enough
to stave off that overwhelming disaster which, with our fuller
knowledge, we can now see to have been impending.

As to the disposition of these troops a difference of opinion broke
out between the ruling powers in Natal and the military chiefs at the
spot.  Prince Kraft has said, 'Both strategy and tactics may have to
yield to politics '; but the political necessity should be very grave
and very clear when it is the blood of soldiers which has to pay for
it.  Whether it arose from our defective intelligence, or from that
caste feeling which makes it hard for the professional soldier to
recognise (in spite of deplorable past experiences) a serious
adversary in the mounted farmer, it is certain that even while our
papers were proclaiming that this time, at least, we would not
underrate our enemy, we were most seriously underrating him.  The
northern third of Natal is as vulnerable a military position as a
player of kriegspiel could wish to have submitted to him.  It runs up
into a thin angle, culminating at the apex in a difficult pass, the
ill-omened Laing's Nek, dominated by the even more sinister bulk of
Majuba.  Each side of this angle is open to invasion, the one from the
Transvaal and the other from the Orange Free State.  A force up at the
apex is in a perfect trap, for the mobile enemy can flood into the
country to the south of them, cut the line of supplies, and throw up a
series of entrenchments which would make retreat a very difficult
matter.  Further down the country, at such positions as Ladysmith or
Dundee, the danger, though not so imminent, is still an obvious one,
unless the defending force is strong enough to hold its own in the
open field and mobile enough to prevent a mounted enemy from getting
round its flanks.  To us, who are endowed with that profound military
wisdom which only comes with a knowledge of the event, it is obvious
that with a defending force which could not place more than 12,000 men
in the fighting line, the true defensible frontier was the line of the
Tugela.  As a matter of fact, Ladysmith was chosen, a place almost
indefensible itself, as it is dominated by high hills in at least two
directions.

Such an event as the siege of the town appears never to have been
contemplated, as no guns of position were asked for or sent.  In spite
of this, an amount of stores, which is said to have been valued at
more than a million of pounds, was dumped down at this small railway
junction, so that the position could not be evacuated without a
crippling loss.  The place was the point of bifurcation of the main
line, which divides at this little town into one branch running to
Harrismith in the Orange Free State, and the other leading through the
Dundee coal fields and Newcastle to the Laing's Nek tunnel and the
Transvaal.  An importance, which appears now to have been an
exaggerated one, was attached by the Government of Natal to the
possession of the coal fields, and it was at their strong suggestion,
but with the concurrence of General Penn Symons, that the defending
force was divided, and a detachment of between three and four thousand
sent to Dundee, about forty miles from the main body, which remained
under General Sir George White at Ladysmith.  General Symons
underrated the power of the invaders, but it is hard to criticise an
error of judgment which has been so nobly atoned and so tragically
paid for.  At the time, then, which our political narrative has
reached, the time of suspense which followed the dispatch of the
Cabinet message of September 8th, the military situation had ceased to
be desperate, but was still precarious.  Twenty-two thousand regular
troops were on the spot who might hope to be reinforced by some ten
thousand colonials, but these forces had to cover a great frontier,
the attitude of Cape Colony was by no means whole-hearted and might
become hostile, while the black population might conceivably throw in
its weight against us.  Only half the regulars could be spared to
defend Natal, and no reinforcements could reach them in less than a
month from the outbreak of hostilities. If Mr. Chamberlain was really
playing a game of bluff, it must be confessed that he was bluffing
from a very weak hand.

For purposes of comparison we may give some idea of the forces which
Mr. Kruger and Mr. Steyn could put in the field, for by this time it
was evident that the Orange Free State, with which we had had no
shadow of a dispute, was going, in a way which some would call wanton
and some chivalrous, to throw in its weight against us.  The general
press estimate of the forces of the two republics varied from 25,000
to 35,000 men.  Mr. J. B. Robinson, a personal friend of President
Kruger's and a man who had spent much of his life among the Boers,
considered the latter estimate to be too high.  The calculation had no
assured basis to start from.  A very scattered and isolated
population, among whom large families were the rule, is a most
difficult thing to estimate. Some reckoned from the supposed natural
increase during eighteen years, but the figure given at that date was
itself an assumption.  Others took their calculation from the number
of voters in the last presidential election: but no one could tell how
many abstentions there had been, and the fighting age is five years
earlier than the voting age in the republics.  We recognise now that
all calculations were far below the true figure. It is probable,
however, that the information of the British Intelligence Department
was not far wrong. According to this the fighting strength of the
Transvaal alone was 32,000 men, and of the Orange Free State
22,000. With mercenaries and rebels from the colonies they would
amount to 60,000, while a considerable rising of the Cape Dutch would
bring them up to 100,000. In artillery they were known to have about a
hundred guns, many of them (and the fact will need much explaining)
more modern and powerful than any which we could bring against them.
Of the quality of this large force there is no need to speak. The men
were brave, hardy, and fired with a strange religious enthusiasm. They
were all of the seventeenth century, except their rifles.  Mounted
upon their hardy little ponies, they possessed a mobility which
practically doubled their numbers and made it an impossibility ever to
outflank them. As marksmen they were supreme. Add to this that they
had the advantage of acting upon internal lines with shorter and safer
communications, and one gathers how formidable a task lay before the
soldiers of the empire. When we turn from such an enumeration of their
strength to contemplate the 12,000 men, split into two detachments,
who awaited them in Natal, we may recognise that, far from bewailing
our disasters, we should rather congratulate ourselves upon our escape
from losing that great province which, situated as it is between
Britain, India, and Australia, must be regarded as the very keystone
of the imperial arch.

At the risk of a tedious but very essential digression, something must
be said here as to the motives with which the Boers had for many years
been quietly preparing for war.  That the Jameson raid was not the
cause is certain, though it probably, by putting the Boer Government
into a strong position, had a great effect in accelerating matters.
What had been done secretly and slowly could be done more swiftly and
openly when so plausible an excuse could be given for it. As a matter
of fact, the preparations were long antecedent to the raid. The
building of the forts at Pretoria and Johannesburg was begun nearly
two years before that wretched incursion, and the importation of arms
was going on apace. In that very year, 1895, a considerable sum was
spent in military equipment.

But if it was not the raid, and if the Boers had no reason to fear the
British Government, with whom the Transvaal might have been as
friendly as the Orange Free State had been for forty years, why then
should they arm? It was a difficult question, and one in answering
which we find ourselves in a region of conjecture and suspicion rather
than of ascertained fact. But the fairest and most unbiased of
historians must confess that there is a large body of evidence to show
that into the heads of some of the Dutch leaders, both in the northern
republics and in the Cape, there had entered the conception of a
single Dutch commonwealth, extending from Cape Town to the Zambesi, in
which flag, speech, and law should all be Dutch.  It is in this
aspiration that many shrewd and well-informed judges see the true
inner meaning of this persistent arming, of the constant hostility, of
the forming of ties between the two republics (one of whom had been
reconstituted and made a sovereign independent State by our own act),
and finally of that intriguing which endeavoured to poison the
affection and allegiance of our own Dutch colonists, who had no
political grievances whatever. They all aimed at one end, and that end
was the final expulsion of British power from South Africa and the
formation of a single great Dutch republic.  The large sum spent by
the Transvaal in secret service money -- a larger sum, I believe, than
that which is spent by the whole British Empire -- would give some
idea of the subterranean influences at work.  An army of emissaries,
agents, and spies, whatever their mission, were certainly spread over
the British colonies. Newspapers were subsidised also, and
considerable sums spent upon the press in France and Germany.

In the very nature of things a huge conspiracy of this sort to
substitute Dutch for British rule in South Africa is not a matter
which can be easily and definitely proved.  Such questions are not
discussed in public documents, and men are sounded before being taken
into the confidence of the conspirators.  But there is plenty of
evidence of the individual ambition of prominent and representative
men in this direction, and it is hard to believe that what many wanted
individually was not striven for collectively, especially when we see
how the course of events did actually work towards the end which they
indicated.  Mr. J. P. FitzPatrick, in 'The Transvaal from Within ' --
a book to which all subsequent writers upon the subject must
acknowledge their obligations -- narrates how in 1896 he was
approached by Mr. D. P. Graaff, formerly a member of the Cape
Legislative Council and a very prominent Afrikander Bondsman, with the
proposition that Great Britain should be pushed out of South Africa.
The same politician made the same proposal to Mr. Beit. Compare with
this the following statement of Mr. Theodore Schreiner, the brother of
the Prime Minister of the Cape:

'I met Mr. Reitz, then a judge of the Orange Free State, in
Bloemfontein between seventeen and eighteen years ago, shortly after
the retrocession of the Transvaal, and when he was busy establishing
the Afrikander Bond. It must be patent to every one that at that time,
at all events, England and its Government had no intention of taking
away the independence of the Transvaal, for she had just
"magnanimously" granted the same; no intention of making war on the
republics, for she had just made peace; no intention to seize the Rand
gold fields, for they were not yet discovered. At that time, then, I
met Mr. Reitz, and he did his best to get me to become a member of his
Afrikander Bond, but, after studying its constitution and programme, I
refused to do so, whereupon the following colloquy in substance took
place between us, which has been indelibly imprinted on my mind ever
since:

'REITZ: Why do you refuse? Is the object of getting the people to take
an interest in political matters not a good one?

'MYSELF: Yes, it is ; but I seem to see plainly here between the lines
of this constitution much more ultimately aimed at than that.

'REITZ : What?

'MYSELF: I see quite clearly that the ultimate object aimed at is the
overthrow of the British power and the expulsion of the British flag
from South Africa.

'REITZ (with his pleasant conscious smile, as of one whose secret
thought and purpose had been discovered, and who was not altogether
displeased that such was the case) : Well, what if it is so?

'MYSELF: You don't suppose, do you, that that flag is going to
disappear from South Africa without a tremendous struggle and fight?

'REITZ (with the same pleasant self-conscious, self satisfied, and yet
semi-apologetic smile) : Well, I suppose not; but even so, what of
that?

'MYSELF: Only this, that when that struggle takes place you and I will
be on opposite sides; and what is more, the God who was on the side of
the Transvaal in the late war, because it had right on its side will
be on the side of England, because He must view with abhorrence any
plotting and scheming to overthrow her power and position in South
Africa, which have been ordained by Him.

'REITZ : We'll see.

'Thus the conversation ended, but during the seventeen years that have
elapsed I have watched the propaganda for the overthrow of British
power in South Africa being ceaselessly spread by every possible means
-- the press, the pulpit, the platform, the schools, the colleges, the
Legislature -- until it has culminated in the present war, of which
Mr. Reitz and his co-workers are the origin and the cause. Believe me,
the day on which F. W. Reitz sat down to pen his ultimatum to Great
Britain was the proudest and happiest moment of his life, and one
which had for long years been looked forward to by him with eager
longing and expectation.'

Compare with these utterances of a Dutch politician of the Cape, and
of a Dutch politician of the Orange Free State, the following passage
from a speech delivered by Kruger at Bloemfontein in the year 1887:

'I think it too soon to speak of a United South Africa under one flag.
Which flag was it to be?  The Queen of England would object to having
her flag hauled down, and we, the burghers of the Transvaal, object to
hauling ours down.  What is to be done? We are now small and of little
importance, but we are growing, and are preparing the way to take our
place among the great nations of the world.'

'The dream of our life,' said another, 'is a union of the States of
South Africa, and this has to come from within, not from without. When
that is accomplished, South Africa will be great.'

Always the same theory from all quarters of Dutch thought, to be
followed by many signs that the idea was being prepared for in
practice. I repeat that the fairest and most unbiased historian
cannot dismiss the conspiracy as a myth.

And to this one may retort, why should they not conspire? Why should
they not have their own views as to the future of South Africa? Why
should they not endeavour to have one universal flag and one common
speech? Why should they not win over our colonists, if they can, and
push us into the sea? I see no reason why they should not. Let them
try if they will. And let us try to prevent them. But let us have an
end of talk about British aggression, of capitalist designs upon the
gold fields, of the wrongs of a pastoral people, and all the other
veils which have been used to cover the issue.  Let those who talk
about British designs upon the republics turn their attention for a
moment to the evidence which there is for republican designs upon the
colonies.  Let them reflect that in the one system all white men are
equal, and that on the other the minority of one race has persecuted
the majority of the other, and let them consider under which the
truest freedom lies, which stands for universal liberty and which for
reaction and racial hatred.  Let them ponder and answer all this
before they determine where their sympathies lie.

Leaving these wider questions of politics, and dismissing for the time
those military considerations which were soon to be of such vital
moment, we may now return to the course of events in the diplomatic
struggle between the Government of the Transvaal and the Colonial
Office. On September 8th, as already narrated, a final message was
sent to Pretoria, which stated the minimum terms which the British
Government could accept as being a fair concession to her subjects in
the Transvaal. A definite answer was demanded, and the nation waited
with sombre patience for the reply.

There were few illusions in this country as to the difficulties of a
Transvaal war.  It was clearly seen that little honour and immense
vexation were in store for us. The first Boer war still smarted in our
minds, and we knew the prowess of the indomitable burghers. But our
people, if gloomy, were none the less resolute, for that national
instinct which is beyond the wisdom of statesmen had borne it in upon
them that this was no local quarrel, but one upon which the whole
existence of the empire hung.  The cohesion of that empire was to be
tested.  Men had emptied their glasses to it in time of peace.  Was it
a meaningless pouring of wine, or were they ready to pour their
hearts' blood also in time of war? Had we really founded a series of
disconnected nations, with no common sentiment or interest, or was the
empire an organic whole, as ready to thrill with one emotion or to
harden into one resolve as are the several States of the Union? That
was the question at issue, and much of the future history of the world
was at stake upon the answer.

Already there were indications that the colonies appreciated the fact
that the contention was no affair of the mother country alone, but
that she was upholding the rights of the empire as a whole, and might
fairly look to them to support her in any quarrel which might arise
from it. As early as July 11th, Queensland, the fiery and
semitropical, had offered a contingent of mounted infantry with
machine guns; New Zealand, Western Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, New
South Wales, and South Australia followed in the order named. Canada,
with the strong but more deliberate spirit of the north, was the last
to speak, but spoke the more firmly for the delay. Her citizens were
the least concerned of any, for Australians were many in South Africa
but Canadians few. None the less, she cheerfully took her share of the
common burden, and grew the readier and the cheerier as that burden
came to weigh more heavily. From all the men of many hues who make up
the British Empire, from Hindoo Rajahs, from West African Houssas,
from Malay police, from Western Indians, there came offers of service.
But this was to be a white man's war, and if the British could not
work out their own salvation then it were well that empire should pass
from such a race.  The magnificent Indian army of 150,000 soldiers,
many of them seasoned veterans, was for the same reason left
untouched.  England has claimed no credit or consideration for such
abstention, but an irresponsible writer may well ask how many of those
foreign critics whose respect for our public morality appears to be as
limited as their knowledge of our principles and history would have
advocated such self denial had their own countries been placed in the
same position.

On September 18th the official reply of the Boer Government to the
message sent from the Cabinet Council was published in London. In
manner it was unbending and unconciliatory; in substance, it was a
complete rejection of all the British demands.  It refused to
recommend or propose to the Raad the five years' franchise and the
other measures which had been defined as the minimum which the Home
Government could accept as a fair measure of justice towards the
Uitlanders.  The suggestion that the debates of the Raad should be
bilingual, as they have been in the Cape Colony and in Canada, was
absolutely waived aside. The British Government had stated in their
last dispatch that if the reply should be negative or inconclusive
they reserved to themselves the right to 'reconsider the situation DE
NOVO and to formulate their own proposals for a final settlement.' The
reply had been both negative and inconclusive, and on September 22nd a
council met to determine what the next message should be. It was short
and firm, but so planned as not to shut the door upon peace.  Its
purport was that the British Government expressed deep regret at the
rejection of the moderate proposals which had been submitted in their
last dispatch, and that now, in accordance with their promise, they
would shortly put forward their own plans for a settlement. The
message was not an ultimatum, but it foreshadowed an ultimatum in the
future.

In the meantime, upon September 21st the Raad of the Orange Free State
had met, and it became more and more evident that this republic, with
whom we had no possible quarrel, but, on the contrary, for whom we had
a great deal of friendship and admiration, intended to throw in its
weight against Great Britain.  Some time before, an offensive and
defensive alliance had been concluded between the two States, which
must, until the secret history of these events comes to be written,
appear to have been a singularly rash and unprofitable bargain for the
smaller one. She had nothing to fear from Great Britain, since she had
been voluntarily turned into an independent republic by her and had
lived in peace with her for forty years. Her laws were as liberal as
our own. But by this suicidal treaty she agreed to share the fortunes
of a State which was deliberately courting war by its persistently
unfriendly attitude, and whose reactionary and narrow legislation
would, one might imagine, have alienated the sympathy of her
progressive neighbour.  There may have been ambitions like those
already quoted from the report of Dr. Reitz's conversation, or there
may have been a complete hallucination as to the comparative strength
of the two combatants and the probable future of South Africa; but
however that may be, the treaty was made, and the time had come to
test how far it would hold.

The tone of President Steyn at the meeting of the Raad, and the
support which he received from the majority of his burghers, showed
unmistakably that the two republics would act as one. In his opening
speech Steyn declared uncompromisingly against the British contention,
and declared that his State was bound to the Transvaal by everything
which was near and dear. Among the obvious military precautions which
could no longer be neglected by the British Government was the sending
of some small force to protect the long and exposed line of railway
which lies just outside the Transvaal border from Kimberley to
Rhodesia. Sir Alfred Milner communicated with President Steyn as to
this movement of troops, pointing out that it was in no way directed
against the Free State.  Sir Alfred Milner added that the Imperial
Government was still hopeful of a friendly settlement with the
Transvaal, but if this hope were disappointed they looked to the
Orange Free State to preserve strict neutrality and to prevent
military intervention by any of its citizens.  They undertook that in
that case the integrity of the Free State frontier would be strictly
preserved. Finally, he stated that there was absolutely no cause to
disturb the good relations between the Free State and Great Britain,
since we were animated by the most friendly intentions towards
them. To this the President returned a somewhat ungracious answer, to
the effect that he disapproved of our action towards the Transvaal,
and that he regretted the movement of troops, which would be
considered a menace by the burghers.  A subsequent resolution of the
Free State Raad, ending with the words, 'Come what may, the Free State
will honestly and faithfully fulfill its obligations towards the
Transvaal by virtue of the political alliance existing between the two
republics,' showed how impossible it was that this country, formed by
ourselves and without a shadow of a cause of quarrel with us, could be
saved from being drawn into the whirlpool. Everywhere, from over both
borders, came the news of martial preparations. Already at the end of
September troops and armed burghers were gathering upon the frontier,
and the most incredulous were beginning at last to understand that the
shadow of a great war was really falling across them.  Artillery, war
munitions, and stores were being accumulated at Volksrust upon the
Natal border, showing where the storm might be expected to break. On
the last day of September, twenty-six military trains were reported to
have left Pretoria and Johannesburg for that point.  At the same time
news came of a concentration at Malmani, upon the Bechuanaland border,
threatening the railway line and the British town of Mafeking, a name
destined before long to be familiar to the world.

On October 3rd there occurred what was in truth an act of war,
although the British Government, patient to the verge of weakness,
refused to regard it as such, and continued to draw up their final
state paper.  The mail train from the Transvaal to Cape Town was
stopped at Vereeniging, and the week's shipment of gold for England,
amounting to about half a million pounds, was taken by the Boer
Government. In a debate at Cape Town upon the same day the Africander
Minister of the Interior admitted that as many as 404 trucks had
passed from the Government line over the frontier and had not been
returned. Taken in conjunction with the passage of arms and cartridges
through the Cape to Pretoria and Bloemfontein, this incident aroused
the deepest indignation among the Colonial English and the British
public, which was increased by the reports of the difficulty which
border towns, such as Kimberley and Vryburg, had had in getting cannon
for their own defence.  The Raads had been dissolved, and the old
President's last words had been a statement that war was certain, and
a stern invocation of the Lord as final arbiter.  England was ready
less obtrusively but no less heartily to refer the quarrel to the same
dread Judge.

On October 2nd President Steyn informed Sir Alfred Milner that he had
deemed it necessary to call out the Free State burghers -- that is, to
mobilise his forces. Sir A. Milner wrote regretting these
preparations, and declaring that he did not yet despair of peace, for
he was sure that any reasonable proposal would be favourably
considered by her Majesty's Government.  Steyn's reply was that there
was no use in negotiating unless the stream of British reinforcements
ceased coming into South Africa.  As our forces were still in a great
minority, it was impossible to stop the reinforcements, so the
correspondence led to nothing.  On October 7th the army reserves for
the First Army Corps were called out in Great Britain and other signs
shown that it had been determined to send a considerable force to
South Africa. Parliament was also summoned that the formal national
assent might be gained for those grave measures which were evidently
pending.

It was on October 9th that the somewhat leisurely proceedings of the
British Colonial Office were brought to a head by the arrival of an
unexpected and audacious ultimatum from the Boer Government. In
contests of wit, as of arms, it must be confessed that the laugh has
been usually upon the side of our simple and pastoral South African
neighbours.  The present instance was no exception to the rule.  While
our Government was cautiously and patiently leading up to an
ultimatum, our opponent suddenly played the very card which we were
preparing to lay upon the table.  The document was very firm and
explicit, but the terms in which it was drawn were so impossible that
it was evidently framed with the deliberate purpose of forcing an
immediate war.  It demanded that the troops upon the borders of the
republic should be instantly withdrawn, that all reinforcements which
had arrived within the last year should leave South Africa, and that
those who were now upon the sea should be sent back without being
landed. Failing a satisfactory answer within forty-eight hours, 'the
Transvaal Government will with great regret be compelled to regard the
action of her Majesty's Government as a formal declaration of war, for
the consequences of which it will not hold itself responsible.' The
audacious message was received throughout the empire with a mixture of
derision and anger.  The answer was dispatched next day through Sir
Alfred Milner.

'10th October.-- Her Majesty's Government have received with great
regret the peremptory demands of the Government of the South African
Republic, conveyed in your telegram of the 9th October. You will
inform the Government of the South African Republic in reply that the
conditions demanded by the Government of the South African Republic
are such as her Majesty's Government deem it impossible to discuss.'

And so we have come to the end of the long road, past the battle of
the pens and the wrangling of tongues, to the arbitration of the
Lee-Metford and the Mauser. It was pitiable that it should come to
this.  These people were as near akin to us as any race which is not
our own.  They were of the same Frisian stock which peopled our own
shores.  In habit of mind, in religion, in respect for law, they were
as ourselves. Brave, too, they were, and hospitable, with those
sporting instincts which are dear to the Anglo-Celtic race.  There was
no people in the world who had more qualities which we might admire,
and not the least of them was that love of independence which it is
our proudest boast' that we have encouraged in others as well as
exercised ourselves. And yet we had come to this pass, that there was
no room in all vast South Africa for both of us. We cannot hold
ourselves blameless in the matter.  ' The evil that men do lives after
them,' and it has been told in this small superficial sketch where we
have erred in the past in South Africa. On our hands, too, is the
Jameson raid, carried out by Englishmen and led by officers who held
the Queen's Commission; to us, also, the blame of the shuffling,
half-hearted inquiry into that most unjustifiable business.  These are
matches which helped to set the great blaze alight, and it is we who
held them. Rut the fagots which proved to be so inflammable, they
were not of our setting.  They were the wrongs done to half the
community, the settled resolution of the minority to tax and vex the
majority, the determination of a people who had lived two generations
in a country to claim that country entirely for themselves.  Behind
them all there may have been the Dutch ambition to dominate South
Africa. It was no petty object for which Britain fought. When a nation
struggles uncomplainingly through months of disaster she may claim to
have proved her conviction of the justice and necessity of the
struggle. Should Dutch ideas or English ideas of government prevail
throughout that huge country? The one means freedom for a single race,
the other means equal rights to all white men beneath one common
law. What each means to the coloured races let history declare. This
was the main issue to be determined from the instant that the clock
struck five upon the afternoon of Wednesday, October the eleventh,
eighteen hundred and ninety-nine. That moment marked the opening of a
war destined to determine the fate of South Africa, to work great
changes in the British Empire, to seriously affect the future history
of the world, and incidentally to alter many of our views as to the
art of war. It is the story of this war which, with limited material
but with much aspiration to care and candour, I shall now endeavour to
tell.


CHAPTER V
TALANA HILL

It was on the morning of October 12th, amid cold and mist, that the
Boer camps at Sandspruit and Volksrust broke up, and the burghers rode
to the war.  Some twelve thousand of them, all mounted, with two
batteries of eight Krupp guns each, were the invading force from the
north, which hoped later to be joined by the Freestaters and by a
contingent of Germans and Transvaalers who were to cross the Free
State border.  It was an hour before dawn that the guns started, and
the riflemen followed close behind the last limber, so that the first
light of day fell upon the black sinuous line winding down between the
hills.  A spectator upon the occasion says of them : 'Their faces were
a study.  For the most part the expression worn was one of
determination and bulldog pertinacity.  No sign of fear there, nor of
wavering. Whatever else may be laid to the charge of the Boer, it may
never truthfully be said that he is a coward or a man unworthy of the
Briton's steel.' The words were written early in the campaign, and the
whole empire will endorse them to-day.  Could we have such men as
willing fellow-citizens, they are worth more than all the gold mines
of their country.

This main Transvaal body consisted of the commando of Pretoria, which
comprised 1,800 men, and those of Heidelberg, Middelburg, Krugersdorp,
Standerton, Wakkerstroom, and Ermelo, with the State Artillery, an
excellent and highly organised body who were provided with the best
guns that have ever been brought on to a battlefield.  Besides their
sixteen Krupps, they dragged with them two heavy six-inch Creusot
guns, which were destined to have a very important effect in the
earlier part of the campaign. In addition to these native forces there
were a certain number of European auxiliaries. The greater part of the
German corps were with the Free State forces, but a few hundred came
down from the north. There was a Hollander corps of about two hundred
and fifty and an Irish -- or perhaps more properly an
Irish-American-corps of the same number, who rode under the green flag
and the harp.

The men might, by all accounts, be divided into two very different
types.  There were the town Boers, smartened and perhaps a little
enervated by prosperity and civilisation, men of business and
professional men, more alert and quicker than their rustic
comrades. These men spoke English rather than Dutch, and indeed there
were many men of English descent among them.  But the others, the most
formidable both in their numbers and in their primitive qualities,
were the back-veldt Boers, the sunburned, tangle-haired, full-bearded
farmers, the men of the Bible and the rifle, imbued with the
traditions of their own guerrilla warfare. These were perhaps the
finest natural warriors upon earth, marksmen, hunters, accustomed to
hard fare and a harder couch.  They were rough in their ways and
speech, but, in spite of many calumnies and some few unpleasant
truths, they might compare with most disciplined armies in their
humanity and their desire to observe the usages of war.

A few words here as to the man who led this singular host.  Piet
Joubert was a Cape Colonist by birth -- a fellow countryman, like
Kruger himself, of those whom the narrow laws of his new country
persisted in regarding as outside the pale.  He came from that French
Huguenot blood which has strengthened and refined every race which it
has touched, and from it he derived a chivalry and generosity which
made him respected and liked even by his opponents.  In many native
broils and in the British campaign of 1881 he had shown himself a
capable leader.  His record in standing out for the independence of
the Transvaal was a very consistent one, for he had not accepted
office under the British, as Kruger had done, but had remained always
an irreconcilable.  Tall and burly, with hard grey eyes and a grim
mouth half hidden by his bushy beard, he was a fine type of the men
whom he led.  He was now in his sixty-fifth year, and the fire of his
youth had, as some of the burghers urged, died down within him; but he
was experienced, crafty, and warwise, never dashing and never
brilliant, but slow, steady, solid, and inexorable.

Besides this northern army there were two other bodies of burghers
converging upon Natal.  One, consisting of the commandoes from Utrecht
and the Swaziland districts, had gathered at Vryheid on the flank of
the British position at Dundee.  The other, much larger, not less
probably than six or seven thousand men, were the contingent from the
Free State and a Transvaal corps, together with Schiel's Germans, who
were making their way through the various passes, the Tintwa Pass, and
Van Reenen's Pass, which lead through the grim range of the
Drakensberg and open out upon the more fertile plains of Western
Natal.  The total force may have been something between twenty and
thirty thousand men. By all accounts they were of an astonishingly
high heart, convinced that a path of easy victory lay before them, and
that nothing could bar their way to the sea.  If the British
commanders underrated their opponents, there is ample evidence that
the mistake was reciprocal.

A few words now as to the disposition of the British forces,
concerning which it must be borne in mind that Sir George White,
though in actual command, had only been a few days in the country
before war was declared, so that the arrangements fell to General Penn
Symons, aided or hampered by the advice of the local political
authorities.  The main position was at Ladysmith, but an advance post
was strongly held at Glencoe, which is five miles from the station of
Dundee and forty from Ladysmith.  The reason for this dangerous
division of force was to secure each end of the Biggarsberg section of
the railway, and also to cover the important collieries of that
district.  The positions chosen seem in each case to show that the
British commander was not aware of the number and power of the Boer
guns, for each was equally defensible against rifle fire and
vulnerable to an artillery attack.  In the case of Glencoe it was
particularly evident that guns upon the hills above would, as they
did, render the position untenable.  This outlying post was held by
the 1st Leicester Regiment, the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, and the first
battalion of Rifles, with the 18th Hussars, three companies of mounted
infantry, and three batteries of field artillery, the 13th, 67th, and
69th.  The 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers were on their way to reinforce
it, and arrived before the first action. Altogether the Glencoe camp
contained some four thousand men.

The main body of the army remained at Ladysmith. These consisted of
the 1st Devons, the 1st Liverpools, and the 2nd Gordon Highlanders,
with the 1st Gloucesters, the 2nd King's Royal Rifles, and the 2nd
Rifle Brigade, reinforced later by the Manchesters.  The cavalry
included the 5th Dragoon Guards, the 5th Lancers, a detachment of 19th
Hussars, the Natal Carabineers, the Natal Mounted Police, and the
Border Mounted Rifles, reinforced later by the Imperial Light Horse, a
fine body of men raised principally among the refugees from the Rand.
For artillery there were the 21st, 42nd, and 53rd batteries of field
artillery, and No.10 Mountain Battery, with the Natal Field Artillery,
the guns of which were too light to be of service, and the 23rd
Company of Royal Engineers.  The whole force, some eight or nine
thousand strong, was under the immediate command of Sir George White,
with Sir Archibald Hunter, fresh from the Soudan, General French, and
General Ian Hamilton as his lieutenants.

The first shock of the Boers, then, must fall upon 4,000 men.  If
these could be overwhelmed, there were 8,000 more to be defeated or
masked.  Then what was there between them and the sea? Some
detachments of local volunteers, the Durban Light Infantry at Colenso,
and the Natal Royal Rifles, with some naval volunteers at Estcourt.
With the power of the Boers and their mobility it is inexplicable how
the colony was saved.  We are of the same blood, the Boers and we, and
we show it in our failings.  Over-confidence on our part gave them the
chance, and over-confidence on theirs prevented them from instantly
availing themselves of it. If passed, never to come again.

The outbreak of war was upon October 11th.  On the 12th the Boer
forces crossed the frontier both on the north and on the west.  On the
13th they occupied Charlestown at the top angle of Natal. On the 15th
they had reached Newcastle, a larger town some fifteen miles inside
the border. Watchers from the houses saw six miles of canvas-tilted
bullock wagons winding down the passes, and learned that this was not
a raid but an invasion. At the same date news reached the British
headquarters of an advance from the western passes, and of a movement
from the Buffalo River on the east. On the 13th Sir George White had
made a reconnaissance in force, but had not come in touch with the
enemy.  On the 15th six of the Natal Police were surrounded and
captured at one of the drifts of the Buffalo River.  On the 18th our
cavalry patrols came into touch with the Boer scouts at Acton Homes
and Besters Station, these being the voortrekkers of the Orange Free
State force. On the 18th also a detachment was reported from Hadders
Spruit, seven miles north of Glencoe Camp. The cloud was drifting up,
and it could not be long before it would burst.

Two days later, on the early morning of October 20th, the forces came
at last into collision. At half-past three in the morning, well before
daylight, the mounted infantry picket at the junction of the roads
from Landmans and Vants Drifts was fired into by the Doornberg
commando, and retired upon its supports.  Two companies of the Dublin
Fusiliers were sent out, and at five o'clock on a fine but misty
morning the whole of Symons's force was under arms with the knowledge
that the Boers were pushing boldly towards them. The khaki-clad lines
of fighting men stood in their long thin ranks staring up at the
curves of the saddle-back hills to the north and east of them, and
straining their eyes to catch a glimpse of the enemy.  Why these same
saddle-back hills were not occupied by our own people is, it must be
confessed, an insoluble mystery.  In a hollow on one flank were the
18th Hussars and the mounted infantry.  On the other were the eighteen
motionless guns, limbered up and ready, the horses fidgeting and
stamping in the raw morning air.

And then suddenly -- could that be they? An officer with a telescope
stared intently and pointed. Another and another turned a steady field
glass towards the same place.  And then the men could see also, and a
little murmur of interest ran down the ranks.

A long sloping hill -- Talana Hill -- olive-green in hue, was
stretching away in front of them.  At the summit it rose into a
rounded crest.  The mist was clearing, and the curve was hard-outlined
against the limpid blue of the morning sky. On this, some two and a
half miles or three miles off, a little group of black dots had
appeared.  The clear edge of the skyline had become serrated with
moving figures.  They clustered into a knot, then opened again, and
then --

There had been no smoke, but there came a long crescendo hoot, rising
into a shrill wail.  The shell hummed over the soldiers like a great
bee, and sloshed into soft earth behind them.  Then another -- and yet
another -- and yet another.  But there was no time to heed them, for
there was the hillside and there the enemy.  So at it again with the
good old murderous obsolete heroic tactics of the British tradition!
There are times when, in spite of science and book-lore, the best plan
is the boldest plan, and it is well to fly straight at your enemy's
throat, facing the chance that your strength may fail before you can
grasp it.  The cavalry moved off round the enemy's left flank.  The
guns dashed to the front, unlimbered, and opened fire.  The infantry
were moved round in the direction of Sandspruit, passing through the
little town of Dundee, where the women and children came to the doors
and windows to cheer them.  It was thought that the hill was more
accessible from that side.  The Leicesters and one field battery --
the 67th -- were left behind to protect the camp and to watch the
Newcastle Road upon the west. At seven in the morning all was ready
for the assault.

Two military facts of importance had already been disclosed.  One was
that the Boer percussion-shells were useless in soft ground, as hardly
any of them exploded; the other that the Boer guns could outrange our
ordinary fifteen-pounder field gun, which had been the one thing
perhaps in the whole British equipment upon which we were prepared to
pin our faith. The two batteries, the 13th and the 69th, were moved
nearer, first to 3,000, and then at last to 2,300 yards, at which
range they quickly dominated the guns upon the hill. Other guns had
opened from another crest to the east of Talana, but these also were
mastered by the fire of the 13th Battery.  At 7.30 the infantry were
ordered to advance, which they did in open order, extended to ten
paces.  The Dublin Fusiliers formed the first line, the Rifles the
second, and the Irish Fusiliers the third.

The first thousand yards of the advance were over open grassland,
where the range was long, and the yellow brown of the khaki blended
with the withered veldt.  There were few casualties until the wood was
reached, which lay halfway up the long slope of the hill. It was a
plantation of larches, some hundreds of yards across and nearly as
many deep. On the left side of this wood -- that is, the left side to
the advancing troops -- there stretched a long nullah or hollow, which
ran perpendicularly to the hill, and served rather as a conductor of
bullets than as a cover.  So severe was the fire at this point that
both in the wood and in the nullah the troops lay down to avoid it. An
officer of Irish Fusiliers has narrated how in trying to cut the straps
from a fallen private a razor lent him for that purpose by a wounded
sergeant was instantly shot out of his hand. The gallant Symons, who
had refused to dismount, was shot through the stomach and fell from
his horse mortally wounded. With an excessive gallantry, he had not
only attracted the enemy's fire by retaining his horse, but he had
been accompanied throughout the action by an orderly bearing a red
pennon.  'Have they got the hill? Have they got the hill?' was his one
eternal question as they carried him dripping to the rear. It was at
the edge of the wood that Colonel Sherston met his end.

>From now onwards it was as much a soldiers' battle as Inkermann.  In
the shelter of the wood the more eager of the three battalions had
pressed to the front until the fringe of the trees was lined by men
from all of them.  The difficulty of distinguishing particular
regiments where all were clad alike made it impossible in the heat of
action to keep any sort of formation. So hot was the fire that for the
time the advance was brought to a standstill, but the 69th battery,
firing shrapnel at a range of 1,400 yards, subdued the rifle fire, and
about half-past eleven the infantry were able to push on once more.

Above the wood there was an open space some hundreds of yards across,
bounded by a rough stone wall built for herding cattle.  A second wall
ran at right angles to this down towards the wood.  An enfilading
rifle fire had been sweeping across this open space, but the wall in
front does not appear to have been occupied by the enemy, who held the
kopje above it.  To avoid the cross fire the soldiers ran in single
file under the shelter of the wall, which covered them to the right,
and so reached the other wall across their front. Here there was a
second long delay, the men dribbling up from below, and firing over
the top of the wall and between the chinks of the stones.  The Dublin
Fusiliers, through being in a more difficult position, had been unable
to get up as quickly as the others, and most of the hard-breathing
excited men who crowded under the wall were of the Rifles and of the
Irish Fusiliers.  The air was so full of bullets that it seemed
impossible to live upon the other side of this shelter. Two hundred
yards intervened between the wall and the crest of the kopje. And yet
the kopje had to be cleared if the battle were to be won.

Out of the huddled line of crouching men an officer sprang shouting,
and a score of soldiers vaulted over the wall and followed at his
heels. It was Captain Connor, of the Irish Fusiliers, but his personal
magnetism carried up with him some of the Rifles as well as men of his
own command.  He and half his little forlorn hope were struck down --
he, alas! to die the same night -- but there were other leaders as
brave to take his place.  'Forrard away, men, forrard away!' cried
Nugent, of the Rifles. Three bullets struck him, but he continued to
drag himself up the boulder-studded hill.  Others followed, and
others, from all sides they came running, the crouching, yelling,
khaki-clad figures, and the supports rushed up from the rear.  For a
time they were beaten down by their own shrapnel striking into them
from behind, which is an amazing thing when one considers that the
range was under 2,000 yards.  It was here, between the wall and the
summit, that Colonel Gunning, of the Rifles, and many other brave men
met their end, some by our own bullets and some by those of the enemy;
but the Boers thinned away in front of them, and the anxious onlookers
from the plain below saw the waving helmets on the crest, and learned
at last that all was well.

But it was, it must be confessed, a Pyrrhic victory. We had our hill,
but what else had we? The guns which had been silenced by our fire had
been removed from the kopje. The commando which seized the hill was
that of Lucas Meyer, and it is computed that he had with him about
4,000 men. This figure includes those under the command of Erasmus,
who made halfhearted demonstrations against the British flank.  If the
shirkers be eliminated, it is probable that there were not more than a
thousand actual combatants upon the hill. Of this number about fifty
were killed and a hundred wounded.  The British loss at Talana Hill
itself was 41 killed and 180 wounded, but among the killed were many
whom the army could ill spare.  The gallant but optimistic Symons,
Gunning of the Rifles, Sherston, Connor, Hambro, and many other brave
men died that day. The loss of officers was out of all proportion to
that of the men.

An incident which occurred immediately after the action did much to
rob the British of the fruits of the victory. Artillery had pushed up
the moment that the hill was carried, and had unlimbered on Smith's
Nek between the two hills, from which the enemy, in broken groups of
50 and 100, could be seen streaming away. A fairer chance for the use
of shrapnel has never been. But at this instant there ran from an old
iron church on the reverse side of the hill, which had been used all
day as a Boer hospital, a man with a white flag.  It is probable that
the action was in good faith, and that it was simply intended to claim
a protection for the ambulance party which followed him.  But the too
confiding gunner in command appears to have thought that an armistice
had been declared, and held his hand during those precious minutes
which might have turned a defeat into a rout.  The chance passed,
never to return.  The double error of firing into our own advance and
of failing to fire into the enemy's retreat makes the battle one which
cannot be looked back to with satisfaction by our gunners.

In the meantime some miles away another train of events had led to a
complete disaster to our small cavalry force -- a disaster which
robbed our dearly bought infantry victory of much of its
importance. That action alone was undoubtedly a victorious one, but
the net result of the day's fighting cannot be said to have been
certainly in our favour.  It was Wellington who asserted that his
cavalry always got him into scrapes, and the whole of British military
history might furnish examples of what he meant.  Here again our
cavalry got into trouble.  Suffice it for the civilian to chronicle
the fact, and leave it to the military critic to portion out the
blame.

One company of mounted infantry (that of the Rifles) had been told off
to form an escort for the guns. The rest of the mounted infantry with
part of the 18th Hussars (Colonel Moller) had moved round the right
flank until they reached the right rear of the enemy. Such a movement,
had Lucas Meyer been the only opponent, would have been above
criticism; but knowing, as we did, that there were several commandoes
converging upon Glencoe it was obviously taking a very grave and
certain risk to allow the cavalry to wander too far from support.
They were soon entangled in broken country and attacked by superior
numbers of the Boers.  There was a time when they might have exerted
an important influence upon the action by attacking the Boer ponies
behind the hills, but the opportunity was allowed to pass. An attempt
was made to get back to the army, and a series of defensive positions
were held to cover the retreat, but the enemy's fire became too hot to
allow them to be retained. Every route save one appeared to be
blocked, so the horsemen took this, which led them into the heart of a
second commando of the enemy.  Finding no way through, the force took
up a defensive position, part of them in a farm and part on a kopje
which overlooked it.

The party consisted of two troops of Hussars, one company of mounted
infantry of the Dublin Fusiliers, and one section of the mounted
infantry of the Rifles -- about two hundred men in all.  They were
subjected to a hot fire for some hours, many being killed and
wounded. Guns were brought up, and fired shell into the farmhouse. At
4.30 the force, being in a perfectly hopeless position, laid down
their arms. Their ammunition was gone, many of their horses had
stampeded, and they were hemmed in by very superior numbers, so that
no slightest slur can rest upon the survivors for their decision to
surrender, though the movements which brought them to such a pass are
more open to criticism.  They were the vanguard of that considerable
body of humiliated and bitter-hearted men who were to assemble at the
capital of our brave and crafty enemy.  The remainder of the 18th
Hussars, who under Major Knox had been detached from the main force
and sent across the Boer rear, underwent a somewhat similar
experience, but succeeded in extricating themselves with a loss of Six
killed and ten wounded.  Their efforts were by no means lost, as they
engaged the attention of a considerable body of Boers during the day
and were able to bring some prisoners back with them.

The battle of Talana Hill was a tactical victory but a strategic
defeat.  It was a crude frontal attack without any attempt at even a
feint of flanking, but the valour of the troops, from general to
private, carried it through. The force was in a position so radically
false that the only use which they could make of a victory was to
cover their own retreat.  From all points Boer commandoes were
converging upon it, and already it was understood that the guns at
their command were heavier than any which could be placed against
them.  This was made more clear on October 21st, the day after the
battle, when the force, having withdrawn overnight from the useless
hill which they had captured, moved across to a fresh position on the
far side of the railway. At four in the afternoon a very heavy gun
opened from a distant hill, altogether beyond the extreme range of our
artillery, and plumped shell after shell into our camp.  It was the
first appearance of the great Creusot. An officer with several men of
the Leicesters, and some of our few remaining cavalry, were bit.  The
position was clearly impossible, so at two in the morning of the 22nd
the whole force was moved to a point to the south of the town of
Dundee.  On the same day a reconnaissance was made in the direction of
Glencoe Station, but the passes were found to be strongly occupied,
and the little army marched back again to its original position.  The
command had fallen to Colonel Yule, who justly considered that his men
were dangerously and uselessly exposed, and that his correct strategy
was to fall back, if it were still possible, and join the main body at
Ladysmith, even at the cost of abandoning the two hundred sick and
wounded who lay with General Symons in the hospital at Dundee. It was
a painful necessity, but no one who studies the situation can have any
doubt of its wisdom.  The retreat was no easy task, a march by road of
some sixty or seventy miles through a very rough country with an enemy
pressing on every side.  Its successful completion without any loss or
any demoralisation of the troops is perhaps as fine a military exploit
as any of our early victories.  Through the energetic and loyal
co-operation of Sir George White, who fought the actions of
Elandslaagte and of Rietfontein in order to keep the way open for
them, and owing mainly to the skillful guidance of Colonel Dartnell, of
the Natal Police, they succeeded in their critical manoeuvre. On
October 23rd they were at Beith, on the 24th at Waselibank Spruit, on
the 25th at Sunday River, and next morning they marched, sodden with
rain, plastered with mud, dog-tired, but in the best of spirits, into
Ladysmith amid the cheers of their comrades.  A battle, six days
without settled sleep, four days without a proper meal, winding up
with a single march of thirty-two miles over heavy ground and through
a pelting rain storm -- that was the record of the Dundee column. They
had fought and won, they had striven and toiled to the utmost capacity
of manhood, and the end of it all was that they had reached the spot
which they should never have left. But their endurance could not be
lost -- no worthy deed is ever lost.  Like the light division, when
they marched their fifty odd unbroken miles to be present at Talavera,
they leave a memory and a standard behind them which is more important
than success. It is by the tradition of such sufferings and such
endurance that others in other days are nerved to do the like.


CHAPTER VI
ELANDSLAAGTE AND RIETFONTEIN


While the Glencoe force had struck furiously at the army of Lucas
Meyer, and had afterwards by hard marching disengaged itself from the
numerous dangers which threatened it, its comrades at Ladysmith bad
loyally co-operated in drawing off the attention of the enemy and
keeping the line of retreat open.

On October 20th -- the same day as the Battle of Talana Hill -- the
line was cut by the Boers at a point nearly midway between Dundee and
Ladysmith.  A small body of horsemen were the forerunners of a
considerable commando, composed of Freestaters, Transvaalers, and
Germans, who had advanced into Natal through Botha's Pass under the
command of General Koch.  They had with them the two Maxim-Nordenfelds
which had been captured from the Jameson raiders, and were now
destined to return once more to British hands.  Colonel Schiel, the
German artillerist, had charge of these guns.

On the evening of that day General French, with a strong reconnoitering
party, including the Natal Carabineers, the 5th Lancers, and the 21st
battery, had defined the enemy's position.  Next morning (the 21st) he
returned, but either the enemy had been reinforced during the night or
he had underrated them the day before, for the force which he took
with him was too weak for any serious attack. He had one battery of
the Natal artillery, with their little seven-pounder popguns, five
squadrons of the Imperial Horse, and, in the train which slowly
accompanied his advance, half a battalion of the Manchester
Regiment. Elated by the news of Talana Hill, and anxious to emulate
their brothers of Dundee, the little force moved out of Ladysmith in
the early morning.

Some at least of the men were animated by feelings such as seldom find
a place in the breast of the British soldier as he marches into
battle.  A sense of duty, a belief in the justice of his cause, a love
for his regiment and for his country, these are the common incentives
of every soldier.  But to the men of the Imperial Light Horse,
recruited as they were from among the British refugees of the Rand,
there was added a burning sense of injustice, and in many cases a
bitter hatred against the men whose rule had weighed so heavily upon
them. In this singular corps the ranks were full of wealthy men and
men of education, who, driven from their peaceful vocations in
Johannesburg, were bent upon fighting their way back to them again.  A
most unmerited slur had been cast upon their courage in connection
with the Jameson raid -- a slur which they and other similar corps
have washed out for ever in their own blood and that of their enemy.
Chisholm, a fiery little Lancer, was in command, with Karri Davis and
Wools-Sampson, the two stalwarts who had preferred Pretoria Gaol to
the favours of Kruger, as his majors. The troopers were on fire at the
news that a cartel had arrived in Ladysmith the night before,
purporting to come from the Johannesburg Boers and Hollanders, asking
what uniform the Light Horse wore, as they were anxious to meet them
in battle.  These men were fellow townsmen and knew each other well.
They need not have troubled about the uniform, for before evening the
Light Horse were near enough for them to know their faces.

It was about eight o'clock on a bright summer morning that the small
force came in contact with a few scattered Boer outposts, who retired,
firing, before the advance of the Imperial Light Horse.  As they fell
back the green and white tents of the invaders came into view upon the
russet-coloured hillside of Elandslaagte.  Down at the red brick
railway station the Boers could be seen swarming out of the buildings
in which they had spent the night.  The little Natal guns, firing with
obsolete black powder, threw a few shells into the station, one of
which, it is said, penetrated a Boer ambulance which could not be seen
by the gunners. The accident was to be regretted, but as no patients
could have been in the ambulance the mischance was not a serious one.

But the busy, smoky little seven-pounder guns were soon to meet their
master.  Away up on the distant hillside, a long thousand yards beyond
their own furthest range, there was a sudden bright flash.  No smoke,
only the throb of flame, and then the long sibilant scream of the
shell, and the thud as it buried itself in the ground under a limber.
Such judgment of range would have delighted the most martinet of
inspectors at Okehampton.  Bang came another, and another, and
another, right into the heart of the battery.  The six little guns lay
back at their extremest angle, and all barked together in impotent
fury. Another shell pitched over them, and the officer in command
lowered his field-glass in despair as he saw his own shells bursting
far short upon the hillside.  Jameson's defeat does not seem to have
been due to any defect in his artillery. French, peering and
pondering, soon came to the conclusion that there were too many Boers
for him, and that if those fifteen-pounders desired target practice
they should find some other mark than the Natal Field Artillery. A few
curt orders, and his whole force was making its way to the rear.
There, out of range of those perilous guns, they halted, the telegraph
wire was cut, a telephone attachment was made, and French whispered
his troubles into the sympathetic ear of Ladysmith.  He did not
whisper in vain.  What he had to say was that where he had expected a
few hundred riflemen he found something like two thousand, and that
where he expected no guns he found two very excellent ones.  The
reply was that by road and by rail as many men as could be spared were
on their way to join him.

Soon they began to drop in, those useful reinforcements -- first the
Devons, quiet, business-like, reliable; then the Gordons, dashing,
fiery, brilliant.  Two squadrons of the 5th Lancers, the 42nd R.F.A.,
the 21st R.F.A., another squadron of Lancers, a squadron of the 5th
Dragoon Guards -- French began to feel that he was strong enough for the
task in front of him.  He had a decided superiority of numbers and of
guns. But the others were on their favourite defensive on a hill. It
would be a fair fight and a deadly one.

It was late after noon before the advance began.  It was hard, among
those billowing hills, to make out the exact limits of the enemy's
position.  All that was certain was that 'they were there, and that we
meant having them out if it were humanly possible.  'The enemy are
there,' said Ian Hamilton to his infantry; 'I hope you will shift them
out before sunset -- in fact I know you will.'  The men cheered and
laughed. In long open lines they advanced across the veldt, while the
thunder of the two batteries behind them told the Boer gunners that it
was their turn now to know what it was to be outmatched.

The idea was to take the position by a front and a flank attack, but
there seems to have been some difficulty in determining which was the
front and which the flank. In fact, it was only by trying that one
could know. General White with his staff had arrived from Ladysmith,
but refused to take the command out of French's hands. It is typical
of White's chivalrous spirit that within ten days he refused to
identify himself with a victory when it was within his right to do so,
and took the whole responsibility for a disaster at which he was not
present. Now he rode amid the shells and watched the able dispositions
of his lieutenant.

About half-past three the action had fairly begun. In front of the
advancing British there lay a rolling hill, topped by a further
one. The lower hill was not defended, and the infantry, breaking from
column of companies into open order, advanced over it.  Beyond was a
broad grassy valley which led up to the main position, a long kopje
flanked by a small sugar-loaf one Behind the green slope which led to
the ridge of death an ominous and terrible cloud was driving up,
casting its black shadow over the combatants.  There was the stillness
which goes before some great convulsion of nature.  The men pressed on
in silence, the soft thudding of their feet and the rattle of their
sidearms filling the air with a low and continuous murmur.  An
additional solemnity was given to the attack by that huge black cloud
which hung before them.

The British guns had opened at a range of 4,400 yards, and now against
the swarthy background there came the quick smokeless twinkle of the
Boer reply.  It was an unequal fight, but gallantly sustained. A shot
and another to find the range; then a wreath of smoke from a bursting
shell exactly where the guns had been, followed by another and
another.  Overmatched, the two Boer pieces relapsed into a sulky
silence, broken now and again by short spurts of frenzied activity.
The British batteries turned their attention away from them, and began
to search the ridge with shrapnel and prepare the way for the
advancing infantry.

The scheme was that the Devonshires should hold the enemy in front
while the main attack from the left flank was carried out by the
Gordons, the Manchesters, and the Imperial Light Horse.  The words
'front' and 'flank,' however, cease to have any meaning with so mobile
and elastic a force, and the attack which was intended to come from
the left became really a frontal one, while the Devons found
themselves upon the right flank of the Boers.  At the moment of the
final advance the great black cloud had burst, and a torrent of rain
lashed into the faces of the men.  Slipping and sliding upon the wet
grass, they advanced to the assault.

And now amid the hissing of the rain there came the fuller, more
menacing whine of the Mauser bullets, and the ridge rattled from end
to end with the rifle fire. Men fell fast, but their comrades pressed
hotly on. There was a long way to go, for the summit of the position
was nearly 800 feet above the level of the railway.  The hillside,
which had appeared to be one slope, was really a succession of
undulations, so that the advancing infantry alternately dipped into
shelter and emerged into' a hail of bullets.  The line of advance was
dotted with khaki-clad figures, some still in death, some writhing in
their agony. Amid the litter of bodies a major of the Gordons, shot
through the leg, sat philosophically smoking his pipe.  Plucky little
Chisholm, Colonel of the Imperials, had fallen with two mortal wounds
as he dashed forward waving a coloured sash in the air.  So long was
the advance and so trying the hill that the men sank panting upon the
ground, and took their breath before making another rush. As at Talana
Hill, regimental formation was largely gone, and men of the
Manchesters, Gordons, and Imperial Light Horse surged upwards in one
long ragged fringe, Scotchman, Englishman, and British Africander
keeping pace in that race of death.  And now at last they began to see
their enemy.  Here and there among the boulders in front of them there
was the glimpse of a slouched hat, or a peep at a flushed bearded face
which drooped over a rifle barrel.  There was a pause, and then with a
fresh impulse the wave of men gathered themselves together and flung
themselves forward.  Dark figures sprang up from the rocks in front.
Some held up their rifles in token of surrender.  Some ran with heads
sunk between their shoulders, jumping and ducking among the rocks.
The panting breathless climbers were on the edge of the plateau.
There were the two guns which had flashed so brightly, silenced now,
with a litter of dead gunners around them and one wounded officer
standing by a trail. A small body of the Boers still resisted.  Their
appearance horrified some of our men. 'They were dressed in black
frock coats and looked like a lot of rather seedy business men,' said
a spectator. 'It seemed like murder to kill them.'  Some surrendered,
and some fought to the death where they stood.  Their leader Koch, an
old gentleman with a white beard, lay amidst the rocks, wounded in
three places.  lie was treated with all courtesy and attention, but
died in Ladysmith Hospital some days afterwards.

In the meanwhile the Devonshire Regiment had waited until the attack
had developed and had then charged the hill upon the flank, while the
artillery moved up until it was within 2,000 yards of the enemy's
position.  The Devons met with a less fierce resistance than the
others, and swept up to the summit in time to head off some of the
fugitives.  The whole of our infantry were now upon the ridge.

But even so these dour fighters were not beaten. They clung
desperately to the further edges of the plateau, firing from behind
the rocks.  There had been a race for the nearest gun between an
officer of the Manchesters and a drummer sergeant of the Gordons.  The
officer won, and sprang in triumph on to the piece. Men of all
regiments swarmed round yelling and cheering, when upon their
astonished ears there sounded the 'Cease fire ' and then the 'Retire.'
It was incredible, and yet it pealed out again, unmistakable in its
urgency. With the instinct of discipline the men were slowly falling
back.  And then the truth of it came upon the minds of some of them.
The crafty enemy had learned our bugle calls.  ' Retire be damned!
shrieked a little bugler, and blew the 'Advance ' with all the breath
that the hillside had left him. The men, who had retired a hundred
yards and uncovered the guns, flooded back over the plateau, and in
the Boer camp which lay beneath it a white flag showed that the game
was up. A squadron of the 5th Lancers and of the 5th Dragoon Guards,
under Colonel Gore of the latter regiment, had prowled round the base
of the hill, and in the fading light they charged through and through
the retreating Boers, killing several, and making from twenty to
thirty prisoners. It was one of the very few occasions in the war
where the mounted Briton overtook the mounted Boer.

'What price Majuba?' was the cry raised by some of the infantry as
they dashed up to the enemy's position, and the action may indeed be
said to have been in some respects the converse of that famous
fight. It is true that there were many more British at Elandslaagte
than Boers at Majuba, but then the defending force was much more
numerous also, and the British had no guns there.  It is true, also,
that Majuba is very much more precipitous than Elandslaagte, but then
every practical soldier knows that it is easier to defend a moderate
glaçis than an abrupt slope, which gives cover under its boulders to
the attacker while the defender has to crane his head over the edge to
look down.  On the whole, this brilliant little action may be said to
have restored things to their true proportion, and to have shown that,
brave as the Boers undoubtedly are, there is no military feat within
their power which is not equally possible to the British
soldier. Talana Hill and Elandslaagte, fought on successive days, were
each of them as gallant an exploit as Majuba.

We had more to show for our victory than for the previous one at
Dundee.  Two Maxim-Nordenfeld guns, whose efficiency had been
painfully evident during the action, were a welcome addition to our
artillery.  Two hundred and fifty Boers were killed and wounded and
about two hundred taken prisoners, the loss falling most heavily upon
the Johannesburgers, the Germans, and the Hollanders.  General Koch,
Dr. Coster, Colonel Schiel, Pretorius, and other well-known
Transvaalers fell into our hands.  Our own casualty list consisted of
41 killed and 220 wounded, much the same number as at Talana Hill, the
heaviest losses falling upon the Gordon Highlanders and the Imperial
Light Horse.

In the hollow where the Boer tents had stood, amid the laagered wagons
of the vanquished, under a murky sky and a constant drizzle of rain,
the victors spent the night.  Sleep was out of the question, for all
night the fatigue parties were searching the hillside and the wounded
were being carried in.  Camp-fires were lit and soldiers and prisoners
crowded round them, and it is pleasant to recall that the warmest
corner and the best of their rude fare were always reserved for the
downcast Dutchmen, while words of rude praise and sympathy softened
the pain of defeat.  It is the memory of such things which may in
happier days be more potent than all the wisdom of statesmen in
welding our two races into one.

Having cleared the Boer force from the line of the railway, it is
evident that General White could not continue to garrison the point,
as he was aware that considerable forces were moving from the north,
and his first duty was the security of Ladysmith. Early next morning
(October 22nd), therefore, his weary but victorious troops returned to
the town.  Once there he learned, no doubt, that General Yule had no
intention of using the broken railway for his retreat, but that he
intended to come in a circuitous fashion by road. White's problem was
to hold tight to the town and at the same time to strike hard at any
northern force so as to prevent them from interfering with Yule's
retreat. It was in the furtherance of this scheme that he fought upon
October 24th the action of Rietfontein, an engagement slight in
itself, but important on account of the clear road which was secured
for the weary forces retiring from Dundee.

The army from the Free State, of which the commando vanquished at
Elandslaagte was the vanguard, had been slowly and steadily debouching
from the passes, and working south and eastwards to cut the line
between Dundee and Ladysmith. It was White's intention to prevent them
from crossing the Newcastle Road, and for this purpose he sallied out
of Ladysmith on Tuesday the 24th, having with him two regiments of
cavalry, the 5th Lancers and the 19th Hussars, the 42nd and 53rd field
batteries with the 10th mountain battery, four infantry regiments, the
Devons, Liverpools, Gloucesters, and 2nd King's Royal Rifles, the
Imperial Light Horse, and the Natal Volunteers -- some four thousand
men in all.

The enemy were found to be in possession of a line of hills within
seven miles of Ladysmith, the most conspicuous of which is called
Tinta Inyoni. It was no part of General White's plan to attempt to
drive him from this position -- it is not wise generalship to fight
always upon ground of the enemy's choosing -- but it was important to
hold him where he was, and to engage his attention during this last
day of the march of the retreating column. For this purpose, since no
direct attack was intended, the guns were of more importance than the
infantry -- and indeed the infantry should, one might imagine, have
been used solely as an escort for the artillery.  A desultory and
inconclusive action ensued which continued from nine in the morning
until half-past one in the afternoon.  A well-directed fire of the
Boer guns from the hills was dominated and controlled by our field
artillery, while the advance of their riflemen was restrained by
shrapnel. The enemy's guns were more easily marked down than at
Elandslaagte, as they used black powder.  The ranges varied from three
to four thousand yards.  Our losses in the whole action would have
been insignificant had it not happened that the Gloucester Regiment
advanced somewhat incautiously into the open and was caught in a cross
fire of musketry which struck down Colonel Wilford and fifty of his
officers and men. Within four days Colonel Dick-Cunyngham, of the
Gordons, Colonel Chisholm, of the Light Horse, Colonel Gunning, of the
Rifles, and now Colonel Wilford, of the Gloucesters, had all fallen at
the head of their regiments.  In the afternoon General White, having
accomplished his purpose and secured the safety of the Dundee column
while traversing the dangerous Biggarsberg passes, withdrew his force
to Ladysmith.  We have no means of ascertaining the losses of the
Boers, but they were probably slight.  On our side we lost 109 killed
and wounded, of which only 13 cases were fatal.  Of this total 64
belonged to the Gloucesters and 25 to the troops raised in Natal.
Next day, as already narrated, the whole British army was re-assembled
once more at Ladysmith, and the campaign was to enter upon a new
phase.

At the end of this first vigorous week of hostilities it is
interesting to sum up the net result.  The strategical advantage had
lain with the Boers.  They had made our position at Dundee untenable
and had driven us back to Ladysmith.  They had the country and the
railway for tile northern quarter of the colony in their possession.
They had killed and wounded between six and seven hundred of our men,
and they had captured some two hundred of our cavalry, while we had
been compelled at Dundee to leave considerable stores and our wounded,
including General Penn Symons, who actually died while a prisoner in
their hands.  On the other hand, the tactical advantages lay with
us. We had twice driven them from their positions, and captured two of
their guns. We had taken two hundred prisoners. and had probably
killed and wounded as many as we had lost.  On the whole, the honours
of that week's fighting in Natal may be said to have been fairly equal
-- which is more than we could claim for many a weary week to come.


CHAPTER VII
THE BATTLE OF LADYSMITH


Sir George White had now reunited his force, and found himself in
command of a formidable little army some twelve thousand in number.
His cavalry included the 5th Lancers, the 5th Dragoons, part of the
18th and the whole of the 19th Hussars, the Natal Carabineers, the
Border Rifles, some mounted infantry, and the Imperial Light Horse.
Among his infantry were the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Dublin
Fusiliers, and the King's Royal Rifles, fresh from the ascent of
Talana Hill, the Gordons, the Manchesters, and the Devons who had been
blooded at Elandslaagte, the Leicesters, the Liverpools, the 2nd
battalion of the King's Royal Rifles, the 2nd Rifle Brigade, and the
Gloucesters, who had been so roughly treated at Rietfontein.  He bad
six batteries of excellent field artillery -- the 13th, 21st, 42nd, 53rd,
67th, 69th, and No.10 Mountain Battery of screw guns. No general could
have asked for a more compact and workmanlike little force.

It had been recognised by the British General from the beginning that
his tactics must be defensive, since he was largely outnumbered and
since also any considerable mishap to his force would expose the whole
colony of Natal to destruction.  The actions of Elandslaagte and
Rietfontein were forced upon him in order to disengage his compromised
detachment, but now there was no longer any reason why he should
assume the offensive. He knew that away out on the Atlantic a trail of
transports which already extended from the Channel to Cape de Verde
were hourly drawing nearer to him with the army corps from England. In
a fortnight or less the first of them would be at Durban.  It was his
game, therefore, to keep his army intact, and to let those throbbing
engines and whirling propellers do the work of the empire.  Had he
entrenched himself up to his nose and waited, it would have paid him
best in the end.

But so tame and inglorious a policy is impossible to a fighting
soldier. He could not with his splendid force permit himself to be
shut in without an action.  What policy demands honour may forbid.  On
October 27th there were already Boers and rumours of Boers on every
side of him.  Joubert with his main body was moving across from
Dundee.  The Freestaters were to the north and west.  Their combined
numbers were uncertain, but at least it was already proved that they
were far more numerous and also more formidable than had been
anticipated.  We had had a taste of their artillery also, and the
pleasant delusion that it would be a mere useless encumbrance to a
Boer force had vanished for ever.  It was a grave thing to leave the
town in order to give battle, for the mobile enemy might swing round
and seize it behind us.  Nevertheless White determined to make the
venture.

On the 29th the enemy were visibly converging upon the town. From a
high hill within rifleshot of the houses a watcher could see no fewer
than six Boer camps to the east and north. French, with his cavalry,
pushed out feelers, and coasted along the edge of the advancing host.
His report warned White that if he would strike before all the
scattered bands were united he must do so at once.  The wounded were
sent down to Pietermaritzburg, and it would bear explanation why the
non-combatants did not accompany them.  On the evening of the same day
Joubert in person was said to be only six miles off, and a party of
his men cut the water supply of the town.  The Klip, however, a
fair-sized river, runs through Ladysmith, so that there was no danger
of thirst.  The British had inflated and sent up a balloon, to the
amazement of the back-veldt Boers; its report confirmed the fact that
the enemy was in force in front of and around them.

On the night of the 29th General White detached two of his best
regiments, the Irish Fusiliers and the Gloucesters, with No.10
Mountain Battery, to advance under cover of the darkness and to seize
and hold a long ridge called Nicholson's Nek, which lay about six
miles to the north of Ladysmith. Having determined to give battle on
the next day, his object was to protect his left wing against those
Freestaters who were still moving from the north and west, and also to
keep a pass open by which his cavalry might pursue the Boer fugitives
in case of a British victory.  This small detached column numbered
about a thousand men -- whose fate will be afterwards narrated.

At five o'clock on the morning of the 30th the Boers, who had already
developed a perfect genius for hauling heavy cannon up the most
difficult heights, opened fire from one of the hills which lie to the
north of the town. Before the shot was fired, the forces of the
British had already streamed out of Ladysmith to test the strength of
the invaders.

White's army was divided into three columns.  On the extreme left,
quite isolated from the others, was the small Nicholson's Nek
detachment under the command of Colonel Carleton of the Fusiliers (one
of three gallant brothers each of whom commands a British
regiment). With him was Major Adye of the staff.  On the right British
flank Colonel Grimwood commanded a brigade composed of the 1st and 2nd
battalions of the King's Royal Rifles, the Leicesters, the Liverpools,
and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.  In the centre Colonel Ian Hamilton
commanded the Devons, the Gordons, the Manchesters, and the 2nd
battalion of the Rifle Brigade, which marched direct into the battle
from the train which had brought them from Durban.  Six batteries of
artillery were massed in the centre under Colonel Downing. French with
the cavalry and mounted infantry was on the extreme right, but found
little opportunity for the use of the mounted arm that day.

The Boer position, so far as it could be seen, was a formidable one.
Their centre lay upon one of the spurs of Signal Hill, about three
miles from the town.  Here they had two forty-pounders and three other
lighter guns, but their artillery strength developed both in numbers
and in weight of metal as the day wore on. Of their dispositions
little could be seen. An observer looking westward might discern with
his glass sprays of mounted riflemen galloping here and there over the
downs, and possibly small groups where the gunners stood by their
guns, or the leaders gazed down at that town which they were destined
to have in view for such a weary while.  On the dun-coloured plains
before the town, the long thin lines, with an occasional shifting
sparkle of steel, showed where Hamilton's and Grimwood's infantry were
advancing.  In the clear cold air of an African morning every detail
could be seen, down to the distant smoke of a train toiling up the
heavy grades which lead from Frere over the Colenso Bridge to
Ladysmith.

The scrambling, inconsequential, unsatisfactory action which ensued is
as difficult to describe as it must have been to direct.  The Boer
front covered some seven or eight miles, with kopjes, like chains of
fortresses, between. They formed a huge semicircle of which our
advance was the chord, and they were able from this position to pour
in a converging artillery fire which grew steadily hotter as the day
advanced.  In the early part of the day our forty-two guns, working
furiously, though with a want of accuracy which may be due to those
errors of refraction which are said to be common in the limpid air of
the veldt, preserved their superiority.  There appears to have been a
want of concentration about our fire, and at some periods of the
action each particular battery was firing at some different point of
the Boer half-circle. Sometimes for an hour on end the Boer reply
would die away altogether, only to break out with augmented violence,
and with an accuracy which increased our respect for their
training. Huge shells -- the largest that ever burst upon a
battlefield -- hurled from distances which were unattainable by our
fifteen-pounders, enveloped our batteries in smoke and flame.  One
enormous Creusot gun on Pepworth Hill threw a 96-pound shell a
distance of four miles, and several 40-pound howitzers outweighted our
field guns.  And on the same day on which we were so roughly taught
how large the guns were which labour and good will could haul on to
the field of battle, we learned also that our enemy -- to the disgrace
of our Board of Ordnance be it recorded -- was more in touch with modern
invention than we were, and could show us not only the largest, but
also the smallest, shell which had yet been used. Would that it had
been our officials instead of our gunners who heard the devilish
little one-pound shells of the Vickers-Maxim automatic gun, exploding
with a continuous string of crackings and bangings, like a huge
cracker, in their faces and about their ears!

Up to seven o'clock our infantry had shown no disposition to press the
attack, for with so huge a position in front of them, and so many
hills which were held by the enemy, it was difficult to know what line
of advance should be taken, or whether the attack should not be
converted into a mere reconnaissance.  Shortly after that hour,
however, the Boers decided the question by themselves developing a
vigorous movement upon Grimwood and the right flank.  With field guns,
Maxims, and rifle fire, they closed rapidly in upon him.  The centre
column was drafted off, regiment by regiment, to reinforce the
right. The Gordons, Devons, Manchesters, and three batteries were sent
over to Grimwood's relief, and the 5th Lancers, acting as infantry,
assisted him to hold on.

At nine o'clock there was a lull, but it was evident that fresh
commandoes and fresh guns were continually streaming into the firing
line.  The engagement opened again with redoubled violence, and
Grimwood's three advanced battalions fell back, abandoning the ridge
which they had held for five hours.  The reason for this withdrawal
was not that they could not continue to hold their position, but it
was that a message had just reached Sir George White from Colonel
Knox, commanding in Ladysmith, to the effect that it looked as if the
enemy was about to rush the town from the other side.  Crossing the
open in some disorder, they lost heavily, and would have done so more
had not the 13th Field Battery, followed after an interval by the
53rd, dashed forward, firing shrapnel at short ranges, in order to
cover the retreat of the infantry.  Amid the bursting of the huge
96-pound shells, and the snapping of the vicious little automatic
one-pounders, with a cross-fire of rifles as well, Abdy's and Dawkins'
gallant batteries swung round their muzzles, and hit back right and
left, flashing and blazing, amid their litter of dead horses and
men. So severe was the fire that the guns were obscured by the dust
knocked up by the little shells of the automatic gun. Then, when their
work was done and the retiring infantry had straggled over the ridge,
the covering guns whirled and bounded after them.  So many horses had
fallen that two pieces were left until the teams could be brought back
for them, which was successfully done through the gallantry of Captain
Thwaites.  The action of these batteries was one of the few gleams of
light in a not too brilliant day's work.  With splendid coolness and
courage they helped each other by alternate retirements after the
retreating infantry had passed them. The 21st Battery (Blewitt's) also
distinguished itself by its staunchness in covering the retirement of
the cavalry, while the 42nd (Goulburn's) suffered the heaviest losses
of any.  On the whole, such honours as fell to our lot were mainly
with the gunners.

White must have been now uneasy for his position, and it had become
apparent that his only course was to fall back and concentrate upon
the town. His left flank was up in the air, and the sound of distant
firing, wafted over five miles of broken country, was the only message
which arrived from them.  His right had been pushed back, and, most
dangerous of all, his centre had ceased to exist, for only the 2nd
Rifle Brigade remained there. What would happen if the enemy burst
rudely through and pushed straight for the town? It was the more
possible, as the Boer artillery had now proved itself to be far
heavier than ours. That terrible 96-pounder, serenely safe and out of
range, was plumping its great projectiles into the masses of retiring
troops.  The men had had little sleep and little food, and this
unanswerable fire was an ordeal for a force which is retreating. A
retirement may very rapidly become a rout under such circumstances.
It was with some misgivings that the officers saw their men quicken
their pace and glance back over their shoulders at the whine and
screech of the shell. They were still some miles from home, and the
plain was open. What could be done to give them some relief?

And at that very moment there came the opportune and unexpected
answer.  That plume of engine smoke which the watcher had observed in
the morning had drawn nearer and nearer, as the heavy train came
puffing and creaking up the steep inclines. Then, almost before it had
drawn up at the Ladysmith siding, there had sprung from it a crowd of
merry bearded fellows, with ready hands and strange sea cries, pulling
and hauling, with rope and purchase to get out the long slim guns
which they had lashed on the trucks.  Singular carriages were there,
specially invented by Captain Percy Scott, and labouring and
straining, they worked furiously to get the 12-pounder quick-firers
into action.  Then at last it was done, and the long tubes swept
upwards to the angle at which they might hope to reach that monster on
the hill at the horizon.  Two of them craned their long inquisitive
necks up and exchanged repartees with the big Creusot.  And so it was
that the weary and dispirited British troops heard a crash which was
louder and sharper than that of their field guns, and saw far away
upon the distant hill a great spurt of smoke and flame to show where
the shell had struck. Another and another and another-and then they
were troubled no more.  Captain Hedworth Lambton and his men had
saved the situation. The masterful gun had met its own master and sank
into silence, while the somewhat bedraggled field force came trailing
back into Ladysmith, leaving three hundred of their number behind
them.  It was a high price to pay, but other misfortunes were in store
for us which made the retirement of the morning seem insignificant.

In the meantime we may follow the unhappy fortunes of the small column
which had, as already described, been sent out by Sir George White in
order, if possible, to prevent the junction of the two Boer armies,
and at the same time to threaten the right wing of the main force,
which was advancing from the direction of Dundee, Sir George White
throughout the campaign consistently displayed one quality which is a
charming one in an individual, but may be dangerous in a commander. He
was a confirmed optimist.  Perhaps his heart might have failed him in
the dark days to come had he not been so.  But whether one considers
the non-destruction of the Newcastle Railway, the acquiescence in the
occupation of Dundee, the retention of the non combatants in Ladysmith
until it was too late to get rid of their useless mouths, or the
failure to make any serious preparations for the defence of the town
until his troops were beaten back into it, we see always the same
evidence of a man who habitually hopes that all will go well, and is
in consequence remiss in making preparations for their going ill. But
unhappily in every one of these instances they did go ill, though the
slowness of the Boers enabled us, both at Dundee and at Ladysmith, to
escape what might have been disaster.

Sir George White has so nobly and frankly taken upon himself the blame
of Nicholson's Nek that an impartial historian must rather regard his
self-condemnation as having been excessive.  The immediate causes of
the failure were undoubtedly the results of pure ill-fortune, and
depended on things outside his control. But it is evident that the
strategic plan which would justify the presence of this column at
Nicholson's Nek was based upon the supposition that the main army won
their action at Lombard's Kop.  In that case White might swing round
his right and pin the Boers between himself and Nicholson's Nek. In
any case he could then re-unite with his isolated wing. But if he
should lose his battle-what then?  What was to become of this
detachment five miles up in the air? How was it to be extricated?  The
gallant Irishman seems to have waved aside the very idea of defeat. An
assurance was, it is reported, given to the leaders of the column that
by eleven o'clock next morning they would be relieved.  So they would
if White had won his action.  But --

The force chosen to operate independently consisted of four and a half
companies of the Gloucester regiment, six companies of the Royal Irish
Fusiliers, and No. 10 Mountain Battery of six seven-pounder
screw-guns. They were both old soldier regiments from India, and the
Fusiliers had shown only ten days before at Talana Hill the stuff of
which they were made.  Colonel Carleton, of the Fusiliers, to whose
exertions much of the success of the retreat from Dundee was due,
commanded the column, with Major Adye as staff officer. On the night
of Sunday, October 29th, they tramped out of Ladysmith, a thousand
men, none better in the army. Little they thought, as they exchanged a
jest or two with the outlying pickets, that they were seeing the last
of their own armed countrymen for many a weary month .

The road was irregular and the night was moonless. On either side the
black loom of the hills bulked vaguely through the darkness.  The
column tramped stolidly along, the Fusiliers in front, the guns and
Gloucesters behind.  Several times a short halt was called to make
sure of the bearings.  At last, in the black cold hours which come
between midnight and morning, the column swung to the left out of the
road.  In front of them, hardly visible, stretched a long black kopje.
It was the very Nicholson's Nek which they had come to
occupy. Carleton and Adye must have heaved a sigh of relief as they
realised that they had actually struck it. The force was but two
hundred yards from the position, and all had gone without a hitch. And
yet in those two hundred yards there came an incident which decided
the fate both of their enterprise and of themselves.

Out of the darkness there blundered and rattled five horsemen, their
horses galloping, the loose stones flying around them.  In the dim
light they were gone as soon as seen.  Whence coming, whither going,
no one knows, nor is it certain whether it was design or ignorance or
panic which sent them riding so wildly through the darkness.  Somebody
fired.  A sergeant of the Fusiliers took the bullet through his hand.
Some one else shouted to fix bayonets.  The mules which carried the
spare ammunition kicked and reared.  There was no question of
treachery, for they were led by our own men, but to hold two
frightened mules, one with either hand, is a feat for a Hercules.
They lashed and tossed and bucked themselves loose, and an instant
afterwards were flying helter skelter through the column.  Nearly all
the mules caught the panic.  In vain the men held on to their heads.
In the mad rush they were galloped over and knocked down by the
torrent of frightened creatures.  In the gloom of that early hour the
men must have thought that they were charged by cavalry. The column
was dashed out of all military order as effectively as if a regiment
of dragoons had ridden over them.  When the cyclone had passed, and
the men had with many a muttered curse gathered themselves into their
ranks once more, they realised how grave was the misfortune which had
befallen them.  There, where those mad hoofs still rattled in the
distance, were their spare cartridges, their shells, and their
cannon. A mountain gun is not drawn upon wheels, but is carried in
adjustable parts upon mule-back. A wheel bad gone south, a trail east,
a chase west.  Some of the cartridges were strewn upon the road. Most
were on their way back to Ladysmith.  There was nothing for it but to
face this new situation and to determine what should be done.

It has been often and naturally asked, why did not Colonel Carleton
make his way back at once upon the loss of his guns and ammunition,
while it was still dark?  One or two considerations are evident.  In
the first place, it is natural to a good soldier to endeavour to
retrieve a situation rather than to abandon his enterprise. His
prudence, did he not do so, might become the subject of public
commendation, but might also provoke some private comment.  A
soldier's training is to take chances, and to do the best he can with
the material at his disposal. Again, Colonel Carleton and Major Adye
knew the general plan of the battle which would be raging within a
very few hours, and they quite understood that by withdrawing they
would expose General White's left flank to attack from the forces
(consisting, as we know now, of the Orange Freestaters and of the
Johannesburg Police) who were coming from the north and west.  He
hoped to be relieved by eleven, and he believed that, come what might,
he could hold out until then.  These are the most obvious of the
considerations which induced Colonel Carleton to determine to carry
out so far as he could the programme which had been laid down for him
and his command. He marched up the hill and occupied the position.

His heart, however, must have sunk when he examined it.  It was very
large -- too large to be effectively occupied by the force which he
commanded.  The length was about a mile and the breadth four hundred
yards. Shaped roughly like the sole of a boot, it was only the heel
end which he could hope to hold.  Other hills all round offered cover
for Boer riflemen. Nothing daunted, however, he set his men to work at
once building sangars with the loose stones. With the full dawn and
the first snapping of Boer Mausers from the hills around they had
thrown up some sort of rude defences which they might hope to hold
until help should come.

But how could help come when there was no means by which they could
let White know the plight in which they found themselves? They had
brought a heliograph with them, but it was on the back of one of those
accursed mules.  The Boers were thick around them, and they could not
send a messenger. An attempt was made to convert a polished biscuit
tin into a heliograph, but with poor success. A Kaffir was dispatched
with promises of a heavy bribe, but he passed out of history.  And
there in the clear cold morning air the balloon hung to the south of
them where the first distant thunder of White's guns was beginning to
sound.  If only they could attract the attention of that balloon!
Vainly they wagged flags at it.  Serene and unresponsive it brooded
over the distant battle.

And now the Boers were thickening round them on every side.  Christian
do Wet, a name soon to be a household word, marshaled the Boer
attack, which was soon strengthened by the arrival of Van Dam and his
Police.  At five o'clock the fire began, at six it was warm, at seven
warmer still.  Two companies of the Gloucesters lined a sangar on the
tread of the sole, to prevent any one getting too near to the heel. A
fresh detachment of Boers, firing from a range of nearly one thousand
yards, took this defence in the rear. Bullets fell among the men, and
smacked up against the stone breastwork. The two companies were
withdrawn, and lost heavily in the open as they crossed it. An
incessant rattle and crackle of rifle fire came from all round,
drawing very slowly but steadily nearer.  Now and then the whisk of a
dark figure from one boulder to another was all that ever was seen of
the attackers.  The British fired slowly and steadily, for every
cartridge counted, but the cover of the Boers was so cleverly taken
that it was seldom that there was much to aim at.  'All you could ever
see,' says one who was present, 'were the barrels of the rifles.'
There was time for thought in that long morning, and to some of the
men it may have occurred what preparation for such fighting had they
ever had in the mechanical exercises of the parade ground, or the
shooting of an annual bagful of cartridges at exposed targets at a
measured range. It is the warfare of Nicholson's Nek, not that of
Laffan's Plain, which has to be learned in the future.

During those weary hours lying on the bullet-swept hill and listening
to the eternal hissing in the air and clicking on the rocks, the
British soldiers could see the fight which raged to the south of them.
It was not a cheering sight, and Carleton and Adye with their gallant
comrades must have felt their hearts grow heavier as they watched.
The Boers' shells bursting among the British batteries, the British
shells bursting short of their opponents.  The Long Toms laid at an
angle of forty-five plumped their huge shells into the British guns at
a range where the latter would not dream of unlimbering.  And then
gradually the rifle fire died away also, crackling more faintly as
White withdrew to Ladysmith. At eleven o'clock Carleton's column
recognised that it had been left to its fate.  As early as nine a
heliogram had been sent to them to retire as the opportunity served,
but to leave the hill was certainly to court annihilation.

The men had then been under fire for six hours, and with their losses
mounting and their cartridges dwindling, all hope had faded from their
minds.  But still for another hour, and yet another, and yet another,
they held doggedly on.  Nine and a half hours they clung to that pile
of stones.  The Fusiliers were still exhausted from the effect of
their march from Glencoe and their incessant work since.  Many fell
asleep behind the boulders. Some sat doggedly with their useless
rifles and empty pouches beside them.  Some picked cartridges off
their dead comrades.  What were they fighting for? It was hopeless,
and they knew it.  But always there was the honour of the flag, the
glory of the regiment, the hatred of a proud and brave man to
acknowledge defeat. And yet it had to come.  There wore some in that
force who were ready for the reputation of the British army, and for
the sake of an example of military virtue, to die stolidly where they
stood, or to lead the 'Faugh-a-ballagh' boys, or the gallant 28th, in
one last death-charge with empty rifles against the unseen enemy. They
may' have been right, these stalwarts. Leonidas and his three hundred
did more for the Spartan cause by their memory than by their living
valour.  Man passes like the brown leaves, but the tradition of a
nation lives on like the oak that sheds them -- and the passing of the
leaves is nothing if the bole be the sounder for it. But a counsel of
perfection is easy at a study table. There are other things to he said
-- the responsibility of officers for the lives of their men, the hope
that they may yet be of service to their country.  All was weighed,
all was thought of, and so at last the white flag went up. The officer
who hoisted it could see no one unhurt save himself, for all in his
sangar were hit, and the others were so placed that he was under the
impression that they had withdrawn altogether.  Whether this hoisting
of the flag necessarily compromised the whole force is a difficult
question, but the Boers instantly left their cover, and the men in the
sangars behind, some of whom had not been so seriously engaged, were
ordered by their officers to desist from firing. In an instant the
victorious Boers were among them.

It was not, as I have been told by those who were there, a sight which
one would wish to have seen or care now to dwell upon.  Haggard
officers cracked their sword-blades and cursed the day that they had
been born.  Privates sobbed with their stained faces buried in their
hands.  Of all tests of discipline that ever they had stood, the
hardest to many was to conform to all that the cursed flapping
handkerchief meant to them.  'Father, father, we had rather have
died,' cried the Fusiliers to their priest.  Gallant hearts, ill paid,
ill thanked, how poorly do the successful of the world compare with
their unselfish loyalty and devotion!

But the sting of contumely or insult was not added to their
misfortunes.  There is a fellowship of brave men which rises above the
feuds of nations, and may at last go far, we hope, to heal them.  From
every rock there rose a Boer -- strange, grotesque figures many of
them -- walnut-brown and shaggy-bearded, and swarmed on to the hill.
No term of triumph or reproach came from their lips.  'You will not
say now that the young Boer cannot shoot,' was the harshest word which
the least restrained of them made use of.  Between one and two hundred
dead and wounded were scattered over the hill.  Those who were within
reach of human help received all that could be given.  Captain Rice,
of the Fusiliers, was carried wounded down the hill on the back of one
giant, and he has narrated how the man refused the gold piece which
was offered him.  Some asked the soldiers for their embroidered
waist-belts as souvenirs of the day.  They will for generations remain
as the most precious ornaments of some colonial farmhouse.  Then the
victors gathered together and sang psalms, not jubilant but sad and
quavering.  The prisoners, in a downcast column, weary, spent, and
unkempt, filed off to the Boer laager at Waschbank, there to take
train for Pretoria.  And at Ladysmith a bugler of Fusiliers, his arm
bound, the marks of battle on his dress and person, burst in upon the
camp with the news that two veteran regiments had covered the flank of
White's retreating army, but at the cost of their own annihilation.

CHAPTER VIII

LORD METHUEN'S ADVANCE


At the end of a fortnight of actual hostilities in Natal the situation
of the Boer army was such as to seriously alarm the public at home,
and to cause an almost universal chorus of ill-natured delight from
the press of all European nations. Whether the reason was hatred of
ourselves, or the sporting instinct which backs the smaller against
the larger, or the influence of the ubiquitous Dr. Leyds and his
secret service fund, it is certain that the continental papers have
never been so unanimous as in their premature rejoicings over what,
with an extraordinary want of proportion, and ignorance of our
national character, they imagined to be a damaging blow to the British
Empire. France, Russia, Austria, and Germany were equally venomous
against us, nor can the visit of the German Emperor, though a
courteous and timely action in itself, entirely atone for the
senseless bitterness of the press of the Fatherland. Great Britain was
roused out of her habitual apathy and disregard for foreign opinion by
this chorus of execration, and braced herself for a greater effort in
consequence. She was cheered by the sympathy of her friends in the
United States, and by the good wishes of the smaller nations of
Europe, notably of Italy, Denmark, Greece. Turkey, and Hungary.

The exact position at the end of this fortnight of hard slogging was
that a quarter of the colony of Natal and a hundred miles of railway
were in the hands of the enemy.  Five distinct actions had been
fought, none of them perhaps coming within the fair meaning of a
battle. Of these one had been a distinct British victory, two had been
indecisive, one had been unfortunate, and one had been a positive
disaster.  We had lost about twelve hundred prisoners and a battery of
small guns. The Boers had lost two fine guns and three hundred
prisoners. Twelve thousand British troops had been shut up in
Ladysmith, and there was no serious force between the invaders and the
sea.  Only in those distant transports, where the grimy stokers
shoveled and strove, were there hopes for the safety of Natal and the
honour of the Empire. In Cape Colony the loyalists waited with bated
breath, knowing well that there was nothing to check a Free State
invasion, and that if it came no bounds could be placed upon how far
it might advance, or what effect it might have upon the Dutch
population.

Leaving Ladysmith now apparently within the grasp of the Boers, who
had settled down deliberately to the work of throttling it, the
narrative must pass to the western side of the seat of war, and give a
consecutive account of the events which began with the siege of
Kimberley and led to the ineffectual efforts of Lord Methuen's column
to relieve it.

On the declaration of war two important movements had been made by the
Boers upon the west.  One was the advance of a considerable body under
the formidable Cronje to attack Mafeking, an enterprise which demands
a chapter of its own.  The other was the investment of Kimberley by a
force which consisted principally of Freestaters under the command of
Wessels and Botha. The place was defended by Colonel Kekewich, aided
by the advice and help of Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who had gallantly thrown
himself into the town by one of the last trains which reached it.  As
the founder and director of the great De Beers diamond mines he
desired to be with his people in the hour of their need, and it was
through his initiative that the town had been provided with the rifles
and cannon with which to sustain the siege.

The troops which Colonel Kekewich had at his disposal consisted of
four companies of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment (his own
regiment), with some Royal Engineers, a mountain battery, and two
machine guns.  In addition there were the extremely spirited and
capable local forces, a hundred and twenty men of the Cape Police, two
thousand Volunteers, a body of Kimberley Light Horse, and a battery of
light seven-pounder guns.  There were also eight Maxims which were
mounted upon the huge mounds of debris which surrounded the mines and
formed most efficient fortresses.

A small reinforcement of police had, under tragic circumstances,
reached the town.  Vryburg, the capital of British Bechuanaland, lies
145 miles to the north of Kimberley.  The town has strong Dutch
sympathies, and on the news of the approach of a Boer force with
artillery it was evident that it could not be held.  Scott, the
commandant of police, made some attempt to organise a defence, but
having no artillery and finding little sympathy, he was compelled to
abandon his charge to the invaders.  The gallant Scott rode south with
his troopers, and in his humiliation and grief at his inability to
preserve his post he blew out his brains upon the journey. Vryburg was
immediately occupied by the Boers, and British Bechuanaland was
formally annexed to the South African Republic.  This policy of the
instant annexation of all territories invaded was habitually carried
out by the enemy, with the idea that British subjects who joined them
would in this way be shielded from the consequences of treason.
Meanwhile several thousand Freestaters and Transvaalers with artillery
had assembled round Kimberley, and all news of the town was cut off.
Its relief was one of the first tasks which presented itself to the
inpouring army corps.  The obvious base of such a movement must be
Orange River, and there and at De Aar the stores for the advance began
to be accumulated.  At the latter place especially, which is the chief
railway junction in the north of the colony, enormous masses of
provisions, ammunition, and fodder were collected, with thousands of
mules which the long arm of the British Government had rounded up from
many parts of the world. The guard over these costly and essential
supplies seems to have been a dangerously weak one.  Between Orange
River and De Aar, which are sixty miles apart, there were the 9th
Lancers, the Royal Munsters, the 2nd King's Own Yorkshire Light
Infantry, and the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers, under three thousand
men in all, with two million pounds' worth of stores and the Free
State frontier within a ride of them.  Verily if we have something to
deplore in this war we have much also to be thankful for.

Up to the end of October the situation was so dangerous that it is
really inexplicable that no advantage was taken of it by the enemy.
Our main force was concentrated to defend the Orange River railway
bridge, which was so essential for our advance upon Kimberley. This
left only a single regiment without guns for the defence of De Aar and
the valuable stores. A fairer mark for a dashing leader and a raid of
mounted riflemen was never seen.  The chance passed, however, as so
many others of the Boers' had done.  Early in November Colesberg and
Naauwpoort were abandoned by our small detachments, who concentrated
at De Aar. The Berkshires joined the Yorkshire Light Infantry, and
nine field guns arrived also.  General Wood worked hard at the
fortifying of the surrounding kopjes, until within a week the place
had been made tolerably secure.

The first collision between the opposing forces at this part of the
seat of war was upon November 10th, when Colonel Gough of the 9th
Lancers made a reconnaissance from Orange River to the north with two
squadrons of his own regiment, the mounted infantry of the
Northumberland Fusiliers, the Royal Munsters, and the North
Lancashires, with a battery of field artillery.  To the east of
Belmont, about fifteen miles off, he came on a detachment of the enemy
with a gun.  To make out the Boer position the mounted infantry
galloped round one of their flanks, and in doing so passed close to a
kopje which was occupied by sharpshooters. A deadly fire crackled
suddenly out from among the boulders. Of six men hit four were
officers, showing how cool were the marksmen and how dangerous those
dress distinctions which will probably disappear hence forwards upon
the field of battle.  Colonel Keith-Falconer of the Northumberlands,
who had earned distinction in the Soudan, was shot dead.  So was Wood
of the North Lancashires.  Hall and Bevan of the Northumberlands were
wounded.  An advance by train of the troops in camp drove back the
Boers and extricated our small force from what might have proved a
serious position, for the enemy in superior numbers were working round
their wings.  The troops returned to camp without any good object
having been attained, but that must be the necessary fate of many a
cavalry reconnaissance.

On November 12th Lord Methuen arrived at Orange River and proceeded to
organise the column which was to advance to the relief of
Kimberley. General Methuen had had some previous South African
experience when in 1885 he had commanded a large body of irregular
horse in Bechuanaland.  His reputation was that of a gallant fearless
soldier.  He was not yet fifty-five years of age.

The force which gradually assembled at Orange River was formidable
rather from its quality than from its numbers.  It included a brigade
of Guards (the 1st Scots Guards, 3rd Grenadiers, and 1st and 2nd
Coldstreams), the 2nd Yorkshire Light Infantry, the 2nd Northamptons,
the 1st Northumberlands, and a wing of the North Lancashires whose
comrades were holding out at Kimberley, with a naval brigade of seamen
gunners and marines.  For cavalry he had the 9th Lancers, with
detachments of mounted infantry, and for artillery the 75th and 18th
Batteries R.F.A.

Extreme mobility was aimed at in the column, and neither tents nor
comforts of any sort were permitted to officers or men -- no light
matter in a climate where a tropical day is followed by an arctic
night. At daybreak on November 22nd the force, numbering about eight
thousand men, set off upon its eventful journey.  The distance to
Kimberley was not more than sixty miles, and it is probable that there
was not one man in the force who imagined how long that march would
take or how grim the experiences would be which awaited them on the
way. At the dawn of Wednesday, November 22nd, Lord Methuen moved
forward until he came into touch with the Boer position at Belmont.
It was surveyed that evening by Colonel Willoughby Verner, and every
disposition made to attack it in the morning.

The force of the Boers was much inferior to our own, some two or three
thousand in all, but the natural strength of their position made it a
difficult one to carry, while it could not be left behind us as a
menace to our line of communications. A double row of steep hills lay
across the road to Kimberley, and it was along the ridges, snuggling
closely among the boulders, that our enemy was waiting for us.  In
their weeks of preparation they had constructed elaborate shelter pits
in which they could lie in comparative safety while they swept all the
level ground around with their rifle fire.  Mr. Ralph, the American
correspondent, whose letters were among the most vivid of the war, has
described these lairs, littered with straw and the debris of food,
isolated from each other, and each containing its grim and formidable
occupant.  'The eyries of birds of prey' is the phrase with which he
brings them home to us. In these, with nothing visible but their
peering eyes and the barrels of their rifles, the Boer marksmen
crouched, and munched their biltong and their mealies as the day broke
upon the morning of the 23rd. With the light their enemy was upon
them.

It was a soldiers' battle in the good old primeval British style, an
Alma on a small scale and against deadlier weapons.  The troops
advanced in grim silence against the savage-looking, rock-sprinkled,
crag-topped position which confronted them.  They were in a fierce
humour, for they had not breakfasted, and military history from
Agincourt to Talavera shows that want of food wakens a dangerous
spirit among British troops. A Northumberland Fusilier exploded into
words which expressed the gruffness of his comrades.  As a too
energetic staff officer pranced before their line he roared in his
rough North-country tongue, 'Domn thee!  Get thee to hell, and let's
fire! '  In the golden light of the rising sun the men set their teeth
and dashed up the hills, scrambling, falling, cheering, swearing,
gallant men, gallantly led, their one thought to close with that grim
bristle of rifle-barrels which fringed the rocks above them.

Lord Methuen's intention had been an attack from front and from flank,
but whether from the Grenadiers losing their bearings, or from the
mobility of the Boers, which made a flank attack an impossibility, it
is certain that all became frontal.  The battle resolved itself into a
number of isolated actions in which the various kopjes were rushed by
different British regiments, always with success and always with loss.
The honours of the fight, as tested by the grim record of the casualty
returns, lay with the Grenadiers, the Coldstreams, the
Northumberlands, and the Scots Guards.  The brave Guardsmen lay
thickly on the slopes, but their comrades crowned the heights.  The
Boers held on desperately and fired their rifles in the very faces of
the stormers.  One young officer had his jaw blown to pieces by a
rifle which almost touched him. Another, Blundell of the Guards, was
shot dead by a wounded desperado to whom he was offering his
water-bottle. At one point a white flag was waved by the defenders, on
which the British left cover, only to be met by a volley.  It was
there that Mr. E. F. Knight, of the 'Morning Post,' became the victim
of a double abuse of the usages of war, since his wound, from which he
lost his right arm, was from an explosive bullet.  The man who raised
the flag was captured, and it says much for the humanity of British
soldiers that he was not bayoneted upon the spot. Yet it is not fair
to blame a whole people for the misdeeds of a few, and it is probable
that the men who descended to such devices, or who deliberately fired
upon our ambulances, were as much execrated by their own comrades as
by ourselves.

The victory was an expensive one, for fifty killed and two hundred
wounded lay upon the hillside, and, like so many of our skirmishes
with the Boers, it led to small material results. Their losses appear
to have been much about the same as ours, and we captured some fifty
prisoners, whom the soldiers regarded with the utmost interest.  They
were a sullen slouching crowd rudely clad, and they represented
probably the poorest of the burghers, who now, as in the middle ages,
suffer most in battle, since a long purse means a good horse. Most of
the enemy galloped very comfortably away after the action, leaving a
fringe of sharpshooters among the kopjes to hold back our pursuing
cavalry.  The want of horsemen and the want of horse artillery are the
two reasons which Lord Methuen gives why the defeat was not converted
into a rout. As it was, the feelings of the retreating Boers were
exemplified by one of their number, who turned in his saddle in order
to place his outstretched fingers to his nose in derision of the
victors.  He exposed himself to the fire of half a battalion while
doing so, but he probably was aware that with our present musketry
instruction the fire of a British half-battalion against an individual
is not a very serious matter.

The remainder of the 23rd was spent at Belmont Camp, and next morning
an advance was made to Enslin, some ten miles further on. Here lay the
plain of Enslin, bounded by a formidable line of kopjes as dangerous
as those of Belmont.  Lancers and Rimington's Scouts, the feeble but
very capable cavalry of the Army, came in with the report that the
hills were strongly held.  Some more hard slogging was in front of the
relievers of Kimberley.

The advance had been on the line of the Capetown-Kimberley Railway,
and the damage done to it by the Boers had been repaired to the extent
of permitting an armoured train with a naval gun to accompany the
troops.  It was six o' clock upon the morning of Saturday the 25th
that this gun came into action against the kopjes, closely followed by
the guns of the field artillery. One of the lessons of the war has
been to disillusion us as to the effect of shrapnel fire.  Positions
which had been made theoretically untenable have again and again been
found to be most inconveniently tenanted. Among the troops actually
engaged the confidence in the effect of shrapnel fire has steadily
declined with their experience.  Some other method of artillery fire
than the curving bullet from an exploding shrapnel shell must be
devised for dealing with men who lie close among boulders and behind
cover.

These remarks upon shrapnel might be included in the account of half
the battles of the war, but they are particularly apposite to the
action at Enslin.  Here a single large kopje formed the key to the
position, and a considerable time was expended upon preparing it for
the British assault, by directing upon it a fire which swept the face
of it and searched, as was hoped, every corner in which a rifleman
might lurk.  One of the two batteries engaged fired no fewer than five
hundred rounds. Then the infantry advance was ordered, the Guards
being held in reserve on account of their exertions at Belmont.  The
Northumberlands, Northamptons, North Lancashires, and Yorkshires
worked round upon the right, and, aided by the artillery fire, cleared
the trenches in their front. The honours of the assault, however, must
be awarded to the sailors and marines of the Naval Brigade, who
underwent such an ordeal as men have seldom faced and yet come out as
victors.  To them fell the task of carrying that formidable hill which
had been so scourged by our artillery.  With a grand rush they swept
up the slope, but were met by a horrible fire.  Every rock spurted
flame, and the front ranks withered away before the storm of the
Mauser. An eye-witness has recorded that the brigade was hardly
visible amid the sand knocked up by the bullets. For an instant they
fell back into cover, and then, having taken their breath, up they
went again, with a deep-chested sailor roar.  There were but four
hundred in all, two hundred seamen and two hundred marines, and the
losses in that rapid rush were terrible.  Yet they swarmed up, their
gallant officers, some of them little boy-middies, cheering them on.
Ethelston, the commander of the ' Powerful,' was struck down. Plumbe
and Senior of the Marines were killed.  Captain Prothero of the
'Doris' dropped while still yelling to his seamen to 'take that kopje
and be hanged to it!' Little Huddart, the middy, died a death which is
worth many inglorious years.  Jones of the Marines fell wounded, but
rose again and rushed on with his men.  It was on these gallant
marines, the men who are ready to fight anywhere and anyhow, moist or
dry, that the heaviest loss fell.  When at last they made good their
foothold upon the crest of that murderous hill they had left behind
them three officers and eighty-eight men out of a total of 206 -- a
loss within a few minutes of nearly 50 per cent. The bluejackets,
helped by the curve of the hill, got off with a toll of eighteen of
their number. Half the total British losses of the action fell upon
this little body of men, who upheld most gloriously the honour and
reputation of the service from which they were drawn. With such men
under the white ensign we leave our island homes in safety behind us.

The battle of Enslin had cost us some two hundred of killed and
wounded, and beyond the mere fact that we had cleared our way by
another stage towards Kimberley it is difficult to say what advantage
we had from it. We won the kopjes, but we lost our men. The Boer
killed and wounded were probably less than half of our own, and the
exhaustion and weakness of our cavalry forbade us to pursue and
prevented us from capturing their guns.  In three days the men had
fought two exhausting actions in a waterless country and under a
tropical sun.  Their exertions had been great and yet were barren of
result. Why this should be so was naturally the subject of keen
discussion both in the camp and among the public at home.  It always
came back to Lord Methuen's own complaint about the absence of cavalry
and of horse artillery.  Many very unjust charges have been hurled
against our War Office -- a department which in some matters has done
extraordinarily and unexpectedly well -- but in this question of the
delay in the despatch of our cavalry and artillery, knowing as we did
the extreme mobility of our enemy, there is certainly ground for an
inquiry.

The Boers who had fought these two actions had been drawn mainly from
the Jacobsdal and Fauresmith commandoes, with some of the burghers
from Boshof.  The famous Cronje, however, had been descending from
Mafeking with his old guard of Transvaalers, and keen disappointment
was expressed by the prisoners at Belmont and at Enslin that he had
not arrived in time to take command of them.  There were evidences,
however, at this latter action, that reinforcements for the enemy were
coming up and that the labours of the Kimberley relief force were by
no means at an end. In the height of the engagement the Lancer patrols
thrown out upon our right flank reported the approach of a
considerable body of Boer horsemen, who took up a position upon a hill
on our right rear. Their position there was distinctly menacing, and
Colonel Willoughby Verner was despatched by Lord Methuen to order up
the brigade of Guards. The gallant officer had the misfortune in his
return to injure himself seriously through a blunder of his horse. His
mission, however, succeeded in its effect, for the Guards moving
across the plain intervened in such a way that the reinforcements,
without an open attack, which would have been opposed to all Boer
traditions, could not help the defenders, and were compelled to
witness their defeat. This body of horsemen returned north next day
and were no doubt among those whom we encountered at the following
action of the Modder River.

The march from Orange River had begun on the Wednesday. On Thursday
was fought the action of Belmont, on Saturday that of Enslin.  There
was no protection against the sun by day nor against the cold at
night. Water was not plentiful, and the quality of it was occasionally
vile. The troops were in need of a rest, so on Saturday night and
Sunday they remained at Enslin. On the Monday morning (November 27th)
the weary march to Kimberley was resumed.

On Monday, November 27th, at early dawn, the little British army, a
dust-coloured column upon the dusty veldt, moved forwards again
towards their objective. That night they halted at the pools of
Klipfontein, having for once made a whole day's march without coming
in touch with the enemy. Hopes rose that possibly the two successive
defeats had taken the heart out of them and that there would be no
further resistance to the advance.  Some, however, who were aware of
the presence of Cronje, and of his formidable character, took a juster
view of the situation. And this perhaps is where a few words might be
said about the celebrated leader who played upon the western side of
the seat of war the same part which Joubert did upon the east.

Commandant Cronje was at the time of the war sixty-five years of age,
a hard, swarthy man, quiet of manner, fierce of soul, with a
reputation among a nation of resolute men for unsurpassed
resolution. His dark face was bearded and virile, but sedate and
gentle in expression.  He spoke little, but what he said was to the
point, and he had the gift of those fire-words which brace and
strengthen weaker men.  In hunting expeditions and in native wars he
had first won the admiration of his countrymen by his courage and his
fertility of resource.  In the war of 1880 he had led the Boers who
besieged Potchefstroom, and he had pushed the attack with a relentless
vigour which was not hampered by the chivalrous usages of
war. Eventually he compelled the surrender of the place by concealing
from the garrison that a general armistice had been signed, an act
which was afterwards disowned by his own government.  In the
succeeding years he lived as an autocrat and a patriarch amid his
farms and his herds, respected by many and feared by all. For a time
he was Native Commissioner and left a reputation for hard dealing
behind him. Called into the field again by the Jameson raid, he grimly
herded his enemies into an impossible position and desired, as it is
stated, that the hardest measure should be dealt out to the
captives. This was the man, capable, crafty, iron-hard, magnetic, who
lay with a reinforced and formidable army across the path of Lord
Methuen's tired soldiers.  It was a fair match.  On the one side the
hardy men, the trained shots, a good artillery, and the defensive; on
the other the historical British infantry, duty, discipline, and a
fiery courage.  With a high heart the dust-coloured column moved on
over the dusty veldt.

So entirely had hills and Boer fighting become associated in the minds
of our leaders, that when it was known that Modder River wound over a
plain, the idea of a resistance there appears to have passed away from
their minds.  So great was the confidence or so lax the scouting that
a force equaling their own in numbers had assembled with many guns
within seven miles of them, and yet the advance appears to have been
conducted without any expectation of impending battle.  The
supposition, obvious even to a civilian, that a river would be a
likely place to meet with an obstinate resistance, seems to have been
ignored.  It is perhaps not fair to blame the General for a fact which
must have vexed his spirit more than ours -- ones sympathies go out
to the gentle and brave man, who was heard calling out in his sleep
that he 'should have had those two guns ' -- but it is repugnant to
common sense to suppose that no one, neither the cavalry nor the
Intelligence Department, is at fault for so extraordinary a state of
ignorance.[Footnote: Later information makes it certain that the
cavalry did report the presence of the enemy to Lord Methuen.]  On the
morning of Tuesday, November 28th, the British troops were told that
they would march at once, and have their breakfast when they reached
the Modder River-a grim joke to those who lived to appreciate it.

The army had been reinforced the night before by the welcome addition
of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, which made up for the losses
of the week. It was a cloudless morning, and a dazzling sun rose in a
deep blue sky.  The men, though hungry, marched cheerily, the reek of
their tobacco-pipes floating up from their ranks.  It cheered them to
see that the murderous kopjes had, for the time, been left behind, and
that the great plain inclined slightly downwards to where a line of
green showed the course of the river. On the further bank were a few
scattered buildings, with one considerable hotel, used as a week-end
resort by the businessmen of Kimberley.  It lay now calm and innocent,
with its open windows looking out upon a smiling garden; but death
lurked at the windows and death in the garden, and the little dark man
who stood by the door, peering through his glass at the approaching
column, was the minister of death, the dangerous Cronje.  In
consultation with him was one who was to prove even more formidable,
and for a longer time.  Semitic in face, high-nosed, bushy-bearded,
and eagle-eyed, with skin burned brown by a life of the veldt -- it
was De la Rey, one of the trio of fighting chiefs whose name will always
be associated with the gallant resistance of the Boers.  He was there
as adviser, but Cronje was in supreme command.

His dispositions had been both masterly and original. Contrary to the
usual military practice in the defence of rivers, he had concealed his
men upon both banks, placing, as it is stated, those in whose
staunchness he had least confidence upon the British side of the
river, so that they could only retreat under the rifles of their
inexorable companions.  The trenches had been so dug with such a
regard for the slopes of the ground that in some places a triple line
of fire was secured. His artillery, consisting of several heavy pieces
and a number of machine guns (including one of the diabolical
'pompoms'), was cleverly placed upon the further side of the stream,
and was not only provided with shelter pits but had rows of reserve
pits, so that the guns could be readily shifted when their range was
found. Rows of trenches, a broadish river, fresh rows of trenches,
fortified houses, and a good artillery well worked and well placed, it
was a serious task which lay in front of the gallant little army.  The
whole position covered between four and five miles.

An obvious question must here occur to the mind of every non-military
reader -- ' Why should this position be attacked at all? Why should we
not cross higher up where there were no such formidable obstacles?'
The answer, so far as one can answer it, must be that so little was
known of the dispositions of our enemy that we were hopelessly
involved in the action before we knew of it, and that then it was more
dangerous to extricate the army than to push the attack.  A retirement
over that open plain at a range of under a thousand yards would have
been a dangerous and disastrous movement.  Having once got there, it
was wisest and best to see it through.

The dark Cronje still waited reflective in the hotel garden. Across
the veldt streamed the lines of infantry, the poor fellows eager,
after seven miles of that upland air, for the breakfast which had been
promised them. It was a quarter to seven when our patrols of Lancers
were fired upon.  There were Boers, then, between them and their meal!
The artillery was ordered up, the Guards were sent forward on the
right, the 9th Brigade under Pole-Carew on the left, including the
newly arrived Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. They swept onwards
into the fatal fire zone -- and then, and only then, there blazed out
upon them four miles of rifles, cannon, and machine guns, and they
realised, from general to private, that they had walked unwittingly
into the fiercest battle yet fought in the war.

Before the position was understood the Guards were within seven
hundred yards of the Boer trenches, and the other troops about nine
hundred, on the side of a very gentle slope which made it most
difficult to find any cover.  In front of them lay a serene landscape,
the river, the houses, the hotel, no movement of men, no smoke --
everything peaceful and deserted save for an occasional quick flash
and sparkle of flame. But the noise was horrible and appalling. Men
whose nerves had been steeled to the crash of the big guns, or the
monotonous roar of Maxims and the rattle of Mauser fire, found a new
terror in the malignant 'ploop-plooping' of the automatic
quick-firer. The Maxim of the Scots Guards was caught in the
hell-blizzard from this thing -- each shell no bigger than a large
walnut, but flying in strings of a score -- and men and gun were
destroyed in an instant. As to the rifle bullets the air was humming
and throbbing with them, and the sand was mottled like a pond in a
shower.  To advance was impossible, to retire was hateful. The men
fell upon their faces and huddled close to the earth, too happy if
some friendly ant-heap gave them a precarious shelter. And always,
tier above tier, the lines of rifle fire rippled and palpitated in
front of them.  The infantry fired also, and fired, and fired -- but
what was there to fire at? An occasional eye and hand over the edge of
a trench or behind a stone is no mark at seven hundred yards. It would
be instructive to know how many British bullets found a billet that
day.

The cavalry was useless, the infantry was powerless -- there only
remained the guns.  When any arm is helpless and harried it always
casts an imploring eye upon the guns, and rarely indeed is it that the
gallant guns do not respond. Now the 75th and 18th Field Batteries
came rattling and dashing to the front, and unlimbered at one thousand
yards. The naval guns were working at four thousand, but the two
combined were insufficient to master the fire of the pieces of large
calibre which were opposed to them. Lord Methuen must have prayed for
guns as Wellington did for night, and never was a prayer answered more
dramatically.  A strange battery came lurching up from the British
rear, unheralded, unknown, the weary gasping horses panting at the
traces, the men, caked with sweat and dirt, urging them on into a last
spasmodic trot.  The bodies of horses which had died of pure fatigue
marked their course, the sergeants' horses tugged in the gun-teams,
and the sergeants staggered along by the limbers. It was the 62nd
Field Battery, which had marched thirty-two miles in eight hours, and
now, hearing the crash of battle in front of them, had with one last
desperate effort thrown itself into the firing line.  Great credit is
due to Major Granet and his men.  Not even those gallant German
batteries who saved the infantry at Spicheren could boast of a finer
feat.

Now it was guns against guns, and let the best gunners win! We had
eighteen field-guns and the naval pieces against the concealed cannon
of the enemy. Back and forward flew the shells, howling past each
other in mid-air.  The weary men of the 62nd Battery forgot their
labours and fatigues as they stooped and strained at their
clay-coloured 15-pounders. Half of them were within rifle range, and
the limber horses were the centre of a hot fire, as they were destined
to be at a shorter range and with more disastrous effect at the
Tugela.  That the same tactics should have been adopted at two widely
sundered points shows with what care the details of the war had been
pre-arranged by the Boer leaders.  'Before I got my horses out,' says
an officer, 'they shot one of my drivers and two horses and brought
down my own horse. When we got the gun round one of the gunners was
shot through the brain and fell at my feet.  Another was shot while
bringing up shell.  Then we got a look in.' The roar of the cannon was
deafening, but gradually the British were gaining the upper hand. Here
and there the little knolls upon the further side which had erupted
into constant flame lay cold and silent.  One of the heavier guns was
put out of action, and the other had been withdrawn for five hundred
yards. But the infantry fire still crackled and rippled along the
trenches, and the guns could come no nearer with living men and
horses. It was long past midday, and that unhappy breakfast seemed
further off than ever.

As the afternoon wore on, a curious condition of things was
established.  The guns could not advance, and, indeed, it was found
necessary to withdraw them from a 1,200 to a 2,800 yard range, so
heavy were the losses. At the time of the change the 75th Battery had
lost three officers out of five, nineteen men, and twenty-two horses.
The infantry could not advance and would not retire.  The Guards on
the right were prevented from opening out on the flank and getting
round the enemy's line, by the presence of the Riet River, which joins
the Modder almost at a right angle. All day they lay under a
blistering sun, the sleet of bullets whizzing over their heads.  'It
came in solid streaks like telegraph wires,' said a graphic
correspondent.  The men gossiped, smoked, and many of them slept.
They lay on the barrels of their rifles to keep them cool enough for
use.  Now and again there came the dull thud of a bullet which had
found its mark, and a man gasped, or drummed with his feet; but the
casualties at this point were not numerous, for there was some little
cover, and the piping bullets passed for the most part overhead.

But in the meantime there had been a development upon the left which
was to turn the action into a British victory. At this side there was
ample room to extend, and the 9th Brigade spread out, feeling its way
down the enemy's line, until it came to a point where the fire was
less murderous and the approach to the river more in favour of the
attack. Here the Yorkshires, a party of whom under Lieutenant Fox had
stormed a farmhouse, obtained the command of a drift, over which a
mixed force of Highlanders and Fusiliers forced their way, led by
their Brigadier in person.  This body of infantry, which does not
appear to have exceeded five hundred in number, were assailed both by
the Boer riflemen and by the guns of both parties, our own gunners
being unaware that the Modder had been successfully crossed.  A small
hamlet called Rosmead formed, however, a POINT D'APPUI, and to this
the infantry clung tenaciously, while reinforcements dribbled across
to them from the farther side.  'Now, boys, who's for otter hunting?'
cried Major Coleridge, of the North Lancashires, as he sprang into the
water. How gladly on that baking, scorching day did the men jump into
the river and splash over, to climb the opposite bank with their wet
khaki clinging to their figures!  Some blundered into holes and were
rescued by grasping the unwound putties of their comrades. And so
between three and four o'clock a strong party of the British had
established their position upon the right flank of the Boers, and were
holding on like grim death with an intelligent appreciation that the
fortunes of the day depended upon their retaining their grip.

'Hollo, here is a river!' cried Codrington when he led his forlorn
hope to the right and found that the Riet had to be crossed.  'I was
given to understand that the Modder was fordable everywhere,' says
Lord Methuen in his official despatch.  One cannot read the account of
the operations without being struck by the casual, sketchy knowledge
which cost us so dearly.  The soldiers slogged their way through, as
they have slogged it before; but the task might have been made much
lighter for them had we but clearly known what it was that we were
trying to do.  On the other hand, it is but fair to Lord Methuen to
say that his own personal gallantry and unflinching resolution set the
most stimulating example to his troops.  No General could have done
more to put heart into his men.

And now, as the long weary scorching hungry day came to an end, the
Boers began at last to flinch from their trenches.  The shrapnel was
finding them out and this force upon their flank filled them with
vague alarm and with fears for their precious guns. And so as night
fell they stole across the river, the cannon were withdrawn, the
trenches evacuated, and next morning, when the weary British and their
anxious General turned themselves to their grim task once more, they
found a deserted village, a line of empty houses, and a litter of
empty Mauser cartridge-cases to show where their tenacious enemy had
stood.

Lord Methuen, in congratulating the troops upon their achievement,
spoke of 'the hardest-won victory in our annals of war,' and some such
phrase was used in his official despatch.  It is hypercritical, no
doubt, to look too closely at a term used by a wounded man with the
flush of battle still upon him, but still a student of military
history must smile at such a comparison between this action and such
others as Albuera or Inkerman, where the numbers of British engaged
were not dissimilar. A fight in which five hundred men are killed and
wounded cannot be classed in the same category as those stern and
desperate encounters where more of the victors were carried than
walked from the field of battle. And yet there were some special
features which will differentiate the fight at Modder River from any
of the hundred actions which adorn the standards of our regiments. It
was the third battle which the troops had fought within the week, they
were under fire for ten or twelve hours, were waterless under a
tropical sun, and weak from want of food. For the first time they were
called upon to face modern rifle fire and modern machine guns in the
open.  The result tends to prove that those who hold that it will from
now onwards be impossible ever to make such frontal attacks as those
which the English made at the Alma or the French at Waterloo, are
justified in their belief.  It is beyond human hardihood to face the
pitiless beat of bullet and shell which comes from modern quick-firing
weapons. Had our flank not made a lodgment across the river, it is
impossible that we could have carried the position. Once more, too, it
was demonstrated how powerless the best artillery is to disperse
resolute and well-placed riflemen.  Of the minor points of interest
there will always remain the record of the forced march of the 62nd
Battery, and artillerymen will note the use of gun-pits by the Boers,
which ensured that the range of their positions should never be
permanently obtained.

The honours of the day upon the side of the British rested with the
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the Yorkshire Light Infantry, the
2nd Coldstreams, and the artillery.  Out of a total casualty list of
about 450, no fewer than 112 came from the gallant Argylls and 69 from
the Coldstreams.  The loss of the Boers is exceedingly difficult to
gauge, as they throughout the war took the utmost pains to conceal it.
The number of desperate and long-drawn actions which have ended,
according to the official Pretorian account, in a loss of one wounded
burgher may in some way be better policy, but does not imply a higher
standard of public virtue, than those long lists which have saddened
our hearts in the halls of the War Office.  What is certain is that
the loss at Modder River could not have been far inferior to our own,
and that it arose almost entirely from artillery fire, since at no
time of the action were any large number of their riflemen visible.
So it ended, this long pelting match, Cronje sullenly withdrawing
under the cover of darkness with his resolute heart filled with fierce
determination for the future, while the British soldiers threw
themselves down on the ground which they occupied and slept the sleep
of exhaustion,

CHAPTER IX

BATTLE OF MAGERSFONTEIN

Lord Methuen's force had now fought three actions in the space of a
single week, losing in killed and wounded about a thousand men, or
rather more than one-tenth of its total numbers. Had there been
evidence that the enemy were seriously demoralised, the General would
no doubt have pushed on at once to Kimberley, which was some twenty
miles distant.  The information which reached him was, however, that
the Boers had fallen back upon the very strong position of
Spytfontein, that they were full of fight, and that they had been
strongly reinforced by a commando from Mafeking. Under these
circumstances Lord Methuen had no choice but to give his men a
well-earned rest, and to await reinforcements.  There was no use in
reaching Kimberley unless he had completely defeated the investing
force. With the history of the first relief of Lucknow in his memory
he was on his guard against a repetition of such an experience.

It was the more necessary that Methuen should strengthen his position,
since with every mile which he advanced the more exposed did his line
of communications become to a raid from Fauresmith and the southern
districts of the Orange Free State. Any serious danger to the railway
behind them would leave the British Army in a very critical position,
and precautions were taken for the protection of the more vulnerable
portions of the line.  It was well that this was so, for on the 8th of
December Commandant Prinsloo, of the Orange Free State, with a
thousand horsemen and two light seven-pounder guns, appeared suddenly
at Enslin and vigorously attacked the two companies of the Northampton
Regiment who held the station. At the same time they destroyed a
couple of culverts and tore up three hundred yards of the permanent
way. For some hours the Northamptons under Captain Godley were closely
pressed, but a telegram had been despatched to Modder Camp, and the
12th Lancers with the ubiquitous 62nd Battery were sent to their
assistance.  The Boers retired with their usual mobility, and in ten
hours the line was completely restored.

Reinforcements were now reaching the Modder River force, which made it
more formidable than when it had started.  A very essential addition
was that of the 12th Lancers and of G battery of Horse Artillery,
which would increase the mobility of the force and make it possible
for the General to follow up a blow after he had struck it. The
magnificent regiments which formed the Highland Brigade -- the 2nd
Black Watch, the 1st Gordons, the 2nd Seaforths, and the 1st Highland
Light Infantry had arrived under the gallant and ill-fated
Wauchope. Four five-inch howitzers had also come to strengthen the
artillery.  At the same time the Canadians, the Australians, and
several line regiments were moved up on the line from De Aar to
Belmont.  It appeared to the public at home that there was the
material for an overwhelming advance; but the ordinary observer, and
even perhaps the military critic, had not yet appreciated how great is
the advantage which is given by modern weapons to the force which acts
upon the defensive. With enormous pains Cronje and De la Rey were
entrenching a most formidable position in front of our advance, with a
confidence, which proved to be justified that it would be on their own
ground and under their own conditions that in this, as in the three
preceding actions, we should engage them.

On the morning of Saturday, December 9th, the British General made an
attempt to find out what lay in front of him amid that semicircle of
forbidding hills.  To this end he sent out a reconnaissance in the
early morning, which included G Battery Horse Artillery, the 9th
Lancers, and the ponderous 4-7 naval gun, which, preceded by the
majestic march of thirty-two bullocks and attended by eighty seamen
gunners, creaked forwards over the plain.  What was there to shoot at
in those sunlit boulder-strewn hills in front? They lay silent and
untenanted in the glare of the African day.  In vain the great gun
exploded its huge shell with its fifty pounds of lyddite over the
ridges, in vain the smaller pieces searched every cleft and hollow
with their shrapnel.  No answer came from the far-stretching hills.
Not a flash or twinkle betrayed the fierce bands who lurked among the
boulders.  The force returned to camp no wiser than when it left.

There was one sight visible every night to all men which might well
nerve the rescuers in their enterprise. Over the northern horizon,
behind those hills of danger, there quivered up in the darkness one
long, flashing, quivering beam, which swung up and down, and up again
like a seraphic sword-blade.  It was Kimberley praying for help,
Kimberley solicitous for news. Anxiously, distractedly, the great De
Beers searchlight dipped and rose.  And back across the twenty miles
of darkness, over the hills where Cronje lurked, there came that other
southern column of light which answered, and promised, and soothed.
'Be of good heart, Kimberley. We are here! The Empire is behind us.
We have not forgotten you.  It may be days, or it may be weeks, but
rest assured that we are coming.'

About three in the afternoon of Sunday, December 10th, the force which
was intended to clear a path for the army through the lines of
Magersfontein moved out upon what proved to be its desperate
enterprise.  The 3rd or Highland Brigade included the Black Watch, the
Seaforths, the Argyll and Sutherlands, and the Highland Light
Infantry.  The Gordons had only arrived in camp that day, and did not
advance until next morning. Besides the infantry, the 9th Lancers, the
mounted infantry, and all the artillery moved to the front.  It was
raining hard, and the men with one blanket between two soldiers
bivouacked upon the cold damp ground, about three miles from the
enemy's position.  At one o'clock, without food, and drenched, they
moved forwards through the drizzle and the darkness to attack those
terrible lines.  Major Benson, R.A., with two of Rimington's scouts,
led them on their difficult way.

Clouds drifted low in the heavens, and the falling rain made the
darkness more impenetrable.  The Highland Brigade was formed into a
column -- the Black Watch in front, then the Seaforths, and the other
two behind.  To prevent the men from straggling in the night the four
regiments were packed into a mass of quarter column as densely as was
possible, and the left guides held a rope in order to preserve the
formation.  With many a trip and stumble the ill-fated detachment
wandered on, uncertain where they were going and what it was that they
were meant to do. Not only among the rank and file, but among the
principal officers also, there was the same absolute
ignorance. Brigadier Wauchope knew, no doubt, but his voice was soon
to be stilled in death.  The others were aware, of course, that they
were advancing either to turn the enemy's trenches or to attack them,
but they may well have argued from their own formation that they could
not be near the riflemen yet.  Why they should be still advancing in
that dense clump we do not now know, nor can we surmise what thoughts
were passing through the mind of the gallant and experienced chieftain
who walked beside them.  There are some who claim on the night before
to have seen upon his strangely ascetic face that shadow of doom which
is summed up in the one word 'fey.'  The hand of coming death may
already have lain cold upon his soul.  Out there, close beside him,
stretched the long trench, fringed with its line of fierce, staring,
eager faces, and its bristle of gun-barrels.  They knew he was
coming. They were ready.  They were waiting.  But still, with the dull
murmur of many feet, the dense column, nearly four thousand strong,
wandered onwards through the rain and the darkness, death and
mutilation crouching upon their path.

It matters not what gave the signal, whether it was the flashing of a
lantern by a Boer scout, or the tripping of a soldier over wire, or
the firing of a gun in the ranks. It may have been any, or it may have
been none, of these things. As a matter of fact I have been assured by
a Boer who was present that it was the sound of the tins attached to
the alarm wires which disturbed them. However this may be, in an
instant there crashed out of the darkness into their faces and ears a
roar of point-blank fire, and the night was slashed across with the
throbbing flame of the rifles. At the moment before this outflame some
doubt as to their whereabouts seems to have flashed across the mind of
their leaders. The order to extend had just been given, but the men
bad not had time to act upon it.  The storm of lead burst upon the
head and right flank of the column, which broke to pieces under the
murderous volley. Wauchope was shot, struggled up, and fell once more
for ever. Rumour has placed words of reproach upon his dying lips, but
his nature, both gentle and soldierly, forbids the supposition.  'What
a pity!' was the only utterance which a brother Highlander ascribes to
him.  Men went down in swathes, and a howl of rage and agony, heard
afar over the veldt, swelled up from the frantic and struggling crowd.
By the hundred they dropped -- some dead, some wounded, some knocked
down by the rush and sway of the broken ranks.  It was a horrible
business. At such a range and in such a formation a single Mauser
bullet may well pass through many men.  A few dashed forwards, and
were found dead at the very edges of the trench. The few survivors of
companies A, B, and C of the Black Watch appear to have never actually
retired, but to have clung on to the immediate front of the Boer
trenches, while the remains of the other five companies tried to turn
the Boer flank.  Of the former body only six got away unhurt in the
evening after lying all day within two hundred yards of the enemy. The
rest of the brigade broke and, disentangling themselves with
difficulty from the dead and the dying, fled back out of that accursed
place.  Some, the most unfortunate of all, became caught in the
darkness in the wire defences, and were found in the morning hung up
'like crows,' as one spectator describes it, and riddled with bullets.

Who shall blame the Highlanders for retiring when they did? Viewed,
not by desperate and surprised men, but in all calmness and sanity, it
may well seem to have been the very best thing which they could do.
Dashed into chaos, separated from their officers, with no one who knew
what was to be done, the first necessity was to gain shelter from this
deadly fire, which had already stretched six hundred of their number
upon the ground.  The danger was that men so shaken would be stricken
with panic, scatter in the darkness over the face of the country, and
cease to exist as a military unit.  But the Highlanders were true to
their character and their traditions.  There was shouting in the
darkness, hoarse voices calling for the Seaforths, for the Argylls,
for Company C, for Company H, and everywhere in the gloom there came
the answer of the clansmen.  Within half an hour with the break of day
the Highland regiments had re-formed, and, shattered and weakened, but
undaunted, prepared to renew the contest. Some attempt at an advance
was made upon the right, ebbing and flowing, one little band even
reaching the trenches and coming back with prisoners and reddened
bayonets.  For the most part the men lay upon their faces, and fired
when they could at the enemy; but the cover which the latter kept was
so excellent that an officer who expended 120 rounds has left it upon
record that he never once had seen anything positive at which to aim.
Lieutenant Lindsay brought the Seaforths' Maxim into the firing-line,
and, though all her crew except two were hit, it continued to do good
service during the day.  The Lancers' Maxim was equally staunch,
though it also was left finally with only the lieutenant in charge and
one trooper to work it.

Fortunately the guns were at hand, and, as usual, they were quick to
come to the aid of the distressed. The sun was hardly up before the
howitzers were throwing lyddite at 4,000 yards, the three field
batteries (18th, 62nd, 75th) were working with shrapnel at a mile, and
the troop of Horse Artillery was up at the right front trying to
enfilade the trenches.  The guns kept down the rifle-fire, and gave
the wearied Highlanders some respite from their troubles.  The whole
situation had resolved itself now into another Battle of Modder
River. The infantry, under a fire at from six hundred to eight hundred
paces, could not advance and would not retire. The artillery only kept
the battle going, and the huge naval gun from behind was joining with
its deep bark in the deafening uproar.  But the Boers had already
learned -- and it is one of their most valuable military qualities
that they assimilate their experience so quickly -- that shell fire is
less dangerous in a trench than among rocks.  These trenches, very
elaborate in character, had been dug some hundreds of yards from the
foot of the hills, so that there was hardly any guide to our artillery
fire.  Yet it is to the artillery fire that all the losses of the
Boers that day were due. The cleverness of Cronje's disposition of his
trenches some hundred yards ahead of the kopjes is accentuated by the
fascination which any rising object has for a gunner.  Prince Kraft
tells the story of how at Sadowa he unlimbered his guns two hundred
yards in front of the church of Chlum, and how the Austrian reply fire
almost invariably pitched upon the steeple.  So our own gunners, even
at a two-thousand yard mark, found it difficult to avoid overshooting
the invisible line, and hitting the obvious mark behind.

As the day wore on reinforcements of infantry came up from the force
which had been left to guard the camp. The Gordons arrived with the
first and second battalions of the Coldstream Guards, and all the
artillery was moved nearer to the enemy's position. At the same time,
as there were some indications of an attack upon our right flank, the
Grenadier Guards with five companies of the Yorkshire Light Infantry
were moved up in that direction, while the three remaining companies
of Barter's Yorkshiremen secured a drift over which the enemy might
cross the Modder.  This threatening movement upon our right flank,
which would have put the Highlanders into an impossible position had
it succeeded, was most gallantly held back all morning, before the
arrival of the Guards and the Yorkshires, by the mounted infantry and
the 12th Lancers, skirmishing on foot.  It was in this long and
successful struggle to cover the flank of the 3rd Brigade that Major
Milton, Major Ray, and many another brave man met his end.  The
Coldstreams and Grenadiers relieved the pressure upon this side, and
the Lancers retired to their horses, having shown, not for the first
time, that the cavalryman with a modern carbine can at a pinch very
quickly turn himself into a useful infantry soldier.  Lord Airlie
deserves all praise for his unconventional use of his men, and for the
gallantry with which he threw both himself and them into the most
critical corner of the fight.

While the Coldstreams, the Grenadiers, and the Yorkshire Light
Infantry were holding back the Boer attack upon our right flank the
indomitable Gordons, the men of Dargai, furious with the desire to
avenge their comrades of the Highland Brigade, had advanced straight
against the trenches and succeeded without any very great loss in
getting within four hundred yards of them.  But a single regiment
could not carry the position, and anything like a general advance upon
it was out of the question in broad daylight after the punishment
which we had received. Any plans of the sort which may have passed
through Lord Methuen's mind were driven away for ever by the sudden
unordered retreat of the stricken brigade.  They had been very roughly
handled in this, which was to most of them their baptism of fire, and
they had been without food and water under a burning sun all day.
They fell back rapidly for a mile, and the guns were for a time left
partially exposed.  Fortunately the lack of initiative on the part of
the Boers which has stood our friend so often came in to save us from
disaster and humiliation. It is due to the brave unshaken face which
the Guards presented to the enemy that our repulse did not deepen into
something still more serious.

The Gordons and the Scots Guards were still in attendance upon the
guns, but they had been advanced very close to the enemy's trenches,
and there were no other troops in support.  Under these circumstances
it was imperative that the Highlanders should rally, and Major Ewart
with other surviving officers rushed among the scattered ranks and
strove hard to gather and to stiffen them.  The men were dazed by what
they had undergone, and Nature shrank back from that deadly zone where
the bullets fell so thickly.  But the pipes blew, and the bugles sang,
and the poor tired fellows, the backs of their legs so flayed and
blistered by lying in the sun that they could hardly bend them,
hobbled back to their duty.  They worked up to the guns once more, and
the moment of danger passed.

But as the evening wore on it became evident that no attack could
succeed, and that therefore there was no use in holding the men in
front of the enemy's position. The dark Cronje, lurking among his
ditches and his barbed wire, was not to be approached, far less
defeated. There are some who think that, had we held on there as we
did at the Modder River, the enemy would again have been accommodating
enough to make way for us during the night, and the morning would have
found the road clear to Kimberley.  I know no grounds for such an
opinion -- but several against it.  At Modder Cronje abandoned his
lines, knowing that he had other and stronger ones behind him. At
Magersfontein a level plain lay behind the Boer position, and to
abandon it was to give up the game altogether.  Besides, why should he
abandon it? He knew that he had hit us hard. We had made absolutely no
impression upon his defences. Is it likely that he would have tamely
given up all his advantages and surrendered the fruits of his victory
without a struggle? It is enough to mourn a defeat without the
additional agony of thinking that a little more perseverance might
have turned it into a victory.  The Boer position could only be taken
by outflanking it, and we were not numerous enough nor mobile enough
to outflank it. There lay the whole secret of our troubles, and no
conjectures as to what might under other circumstances have happened
can alter it.

About half-past five the Boer guns, which had for some unexplained
reason been silent all day, opened upon the cavalry.  Their appearance
was a signal for the general falling back of the centre, and the last
attempt to retrieve the day was abandoned.  The Highlanders were
dead-beat ; the Coldstreams had had enough; the mounted infantry was
badly mauled. There remained the Grenadiers, the Scots Guards, and two
or three line regiments who were available for a new attack.  There
are occasions, such as Sadowa, where a General must play his last
card. There are others where with reinforcements in his rear, he can
do better by saving his force and trying once again.  General Grant
had an axiom that the best time for an advance was when you were
utter]y exhausted, for that was the moment when your enemy was
probably utterly exhausted too, and of two such forces the attacker
has the moral advantage.  Lord Methuen determined -- and no doubt
wisely -- that it was no occasion for counsels of desperation.  His
men were withdrawn -- in some cases withdrew themselves -- outside the
range of the Boer guns, and next morning saw the whole force with
bitter and humiliated hearts on their way back to their camp at Modder
River.

The repulse of Magersfontein cost the British nearly a thousand men,
killed, wounded, and missing, of which over seven hundred belonged to
the Highlanders. Fifty-seven officers had fallen in that brigade alone,
including their Brigadier and Colonel Downman of the Gordons. Colonel
Codrington of the Coldstreams was wounded early, fought through the
action, and came back in the evening on a Maxim gun.  Lord Winchester
of the same battalion was killed, after injudiciously but heroically
exposing himself all day. The Black Watch alone had lost nineteen
officers and over three hundred men killed and wounded, a catastrophe
which can only be matched in all the bloody and glorious annals of
that splendid regiment by their slaughter at Ticonderoga in 1757, when
no fewer than five hundred fell before Montcalm's muskets. Never has
Scotland had a more grievous day than this of Magersfontein. She has
always given her best blood with lavish generosity for the Empire, but
it may be doubted if any single battle has ever put so many families
of high and low into mourning from the Tweed to the Caithness
shore. There is a legend that when sorrow comes upon Scotland the old
Edinburgh Castle is lit by ghostly lights and gleams white at every
window in the mirk of midnight. If ever the watcher could have seen so
sinister a sight, it should have been on this, the fatal night of
December 11, 1899. As to the Boer loss it is impossible to determine
it.  Their official returns stated it to be seventy killed and two
hundred and fifty wounded, but the reports of prisoners and deserters
placed it at a very much higher figure. One unit, the Scandinavian
corps, was placed in an advanced position at Spytfontein, and was
overwhelmed by the Seaforths, who killed, wounded, or took the eighty
men of whom it was composed.  The stories of prisoners and of
deserters all speak of losses very much higher than those which have
been officially acknowledged.

In his comments upon the battle next day Lord Methuen was said to have
given offence to the Highland Brigade, and the report was allowed to
go uncontradicted until it became generally accepted.  It arose,
however, from a complete misunderstanding of the purport of Lord
Methuen's remarks, in which he praised them, as he well might, for
their bravery, and condoled with them over the wreck of their splendid
regiments. The way in which officers and men hung on under conditions
to which no troops have ever been exposed was worthy of the highest
traditions of the British army.  From the death of Wauchope in the
early morning, until the assumption of the command of the brigade by
Hughes-Hallett in the late afternoon, no one seems to have taken the
direction.  'My lieutenant was wounded and my captain was killed,'
says a private. 'The General was dead, but we stayed where we were,
for there was no order to retire.'  That was the story of the whole
brigade, until the flanking movement of the Boers compelled them to
fall back.

The most striking lesson of the engagement is the extreme bloodiness
of modern warfare under some conditions, and its bloodlessness under
others.  Here, out of a total of something under a thousand casualties
seven hundred were incurred in about five minutes, and the whole day
of shell, machine-gun, and rifle fire only furnished the odd three
hundred.  So also at Ladysmith the British forces (White's column)
were under heavy fire from 5.30 to 11.30, and the loss again was
something under three hundred.  With conservative generalship the
losses of the battles of the future will be much less than those of
the past, and as a consequence the battles themselves will last much
longer, and it will be the most enduring rather than the most fiery
which will win.  The supply of food and water to the combatants will
become of extreme importance to keep them up during the prolonged
trials of endurance, which will last for weeks rather than days.  On
the other hand, when a General's force is badly compromised, it will
be so punished that a quick surrender will be the only alternative to
annihilation.

On the subject of the quarter-column formation which proved so fatal
to us, it must be remembered that any other form of advance is hardly
possible during a night attack, though at Tel-el-Kebir the exceptional
circumstance of the march being over an open desert allowed the troops
to move for the last mile or two in a more extended formation.  A line
of battalion double-company columns is most difficult to preserve in
tho darkness, and any confusion may lead to disaster.  The whole
mistake lay in a miscalculation of a few hundred yards in the position
of the trenches.  Had the regiments deployed five minutes earlier it
is probable (though by no means certain) that the position would have
been carried.

The action was not without those examples of military virtue which
soften a disaster, and hold out a brighter promise for the future.
The Guards withdrew from the field as if on parade, with the Boer
shells bursting over their ranks. Fine, too, was the restraint of G
Battery of Horse Artillery on the morning after the battle.  An
armistice was understood to exist, but the naval gun, in ignorance of
it, opened on our extreme left.  The Boers at once opened fire upon
the Horse Artillery, who, recognising the mistake, remained motionless
and unlimbered in a line, with every horse, and gunner and driver in
his place, without taking any notice of the fire, which presently
slackened and stopped as the enemy came to understand the situation.
It is worthy of remark that in this battle the three field batteries
engaged, as well as G Battery, R.ll.A., each fired over 1,000 rounds
and remained for 30 consecutive hours within 1,500 yards of the Boer
position.

But of all the corps who deserve praise, there was none more gallant
than the brave surgeons and ambulance bearers, who encounter all the
dangers and enjoy none of the thrills of warfare. All day under fire
these men worked and toiled among the wounded. Beevor, Ensor, Douglas,
Probyn -- all were equally devoted.  It is almost incredible, and yet
it is true, that by ten o'clock on the morning after the battle,
before the troops had returned to camp, no fewer than five hundred
wounded were in the train and on their way to Cape Town.


CHAPTER X

THE BATTLE OF STORMBERG

Some attempt has now been made to sketch the succession of events
which had ended in the investment of Ladysmith in northern Natal, and
also to show the fortunes of the force which on the western side of
the seat of war attempted to advance to the relief of Kimberley.  The
distance between these forces may be expressed in terms familiar to
the European reader by saying that it was that which separates Paris
from Frankfort, or to the American by suggesting that Ladysmith was at
Boston and that Methuen was trying to relieve Philadelphia. Waterless
deserts and rugged mountain ranges divided the two scenes of action.
In the case of the British there could be no connection between the
two movements, but the Boers by a land journey of something over a
hundred miles had a double choice of a route by which Cronje and
Joubert might join hands, either by the
Bloemfontein-Johannesburg-Laing's-Nek Railway, or by the direct line
from Harrismith to Ladysmith. The possession of these internal lines
should have been of enormous benefit to the Boers, enabling them to
throw the weight of their forces unexpectedly from the one flank to
the other.

In a future chapter it will be recorded how the Army Corps arriving
from England was largely diverted into Natal in order in the first
instance to prevent the colony from being overrun, and in the second
to rescue the beleaguered garrison.  In the meantime it is necessary
to deal with the military operations in the broad space between the
eastern and western armies.

After the declaration of war there was a period of some weeks during
which the position of the British over the whole of the northern part
of Cape Colony was full of danger.  Immense supplies had been gathered
at De Aar which were at the mercy of a Free State raid, and the
burghers, had they possessed a cavalry leader with the dash of a
Stuart or a Sheridan, might have dealt a blow which would have cost us
a million pounds' worth of stores and dislocated the whole plan of
campaign. However, the chance was allowed to pass, and when, on
November 1st, the burghers at last in a leisurely fashion sauntered
over the frontier, arrangements had been made by reinforcement and by
concentration to guard the vital points. The objects of the British
leaders, until the time for a general advance should come, were to
hold the Orange River Bridge (which opened the way to Kimberley), to
cover De Aar Junction, where the stores were, to protect at all costs
the line of railway which led from Cape Town to Kimberley, and to hold
on to as much as possible of those other two lines of railway which
led, the one through Colesberg and the other through Stormberg, into
the Free State.  The two bodies of invaders who entered the colony
moved along the line of these two railways, the one crossing the
Orange River at Norval's Pont and the other at Bethulie.  They
enlisted many recruits among the Cape Colony Dutch as they advanced,
and the scanty British forces fell back in front of them, abandoning
Colesberg on the one line and Stormberg on the other. We have, then,
to deal with the movements of two British detachments.  The one which
operated on the Colesberg line -- which was the more vital of the two, as
a rapid advance of the Boers upon that line would have threatened the
precious Capetown-Kimberley connection -- consisted almost entirely of
mounted troops, and was under the command of the same General French
who had won the battle of Elandslaagte.  By an act of foresight which
was only too rare upon the British side in the earlier stages of this
war, French, who had in the recent large manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain
shown great ability as a cavalry leader, was sent out of Ladysmith
in the very last train which made its way through. His operations,
with his instructive use of cavalry and horse artillery, may be
treated separately.

The other British force which faced the Boers who were advancing
through Stormberg was commanded by General Gatacre, a man who bore a
high reputation for fearlessness and tireless energy, though he had
been criticised, notably during the Soudan campaign, for having called
upon his men for undue and unnecessary exertion.  'General Back-acher'
they called him, with rough soldierly chaff.  A glance at his long
thin figure, his gaunt Don-Quixote face, and his aggressive jaw would
show his personal energy, but might not satisfy the observer that he
possessed those intellectual gifts which qualify for high command. At
the action of the Atbara he, the brigadier in command, was the first
to reach and to tear down with his own hands the zareeba of the enemy
-- a gallant exploit of the soldier, but a questionable position for
the General.  The man's strength and his weakness lay in the incident.

General Gatacre was nominally in command of a division, but so cruelly
had his men been diverted from him, some to Buller in Natal and some
to Methuen, that he could not assemble more than a brigade. Falling
back before the Boer advance, he found himself early in December at
Sterkstroom, while the Boers occupied the very strong position of
Stormberg, some thirty miles to the north of him. With the enemy so
near him it was Gatacre's nature to attack, and the moment that he
thought himself strong enough he did so.  No doubt he had private
information as to the dangerous hold which the Boers were getting upon
the colonial Dutch, and it is possible that while Buller and Methuen
were attacking east and west they urged Gatacre to do something to
hold the enemy in the centre.  On the night of December 9th he
advanced.

The fact that he was about to do so, and even the hour of the start,
appear to have been the common property of the camp some days before
the actual move. The 'Times' correspondent under the date December 7th
details all that it is intended to do. It is to the credit of our
Generals as men, but to their detriment as soldiers, that they seem
throughout the campaign to have shown extraordinarily little power of
dissimulation. They did the obvious, and usually allowed it to be
obvious what they were about to do.  One thinks of Napoleon striking
at Egypt; how he gave it abroad that the real object of the expedition
was Ireland, but breathed into the ears of one or two intimates that
in very truth it was bound for Genoa.  The leading official at Tolilon
had no more idea where the fleet and army of France had gone than the
humblest caulker in the yard. However, it is not fair to expect the
subtlety of the Corsican from the downright Saxon, but it remains
strange and deplorable that in a country filled with spies any one
should have known in advance that a so-called 'surprise' was about to
be attempted.

The force with which General Gatacre advanced consisted of the 2nd
Northumberland Fusiliers, 960 strong, with one Maxim; the 2nd Irish
Rifles, 840 strong, with one Maxim, and 250 Mounted Infantry. There
were two batteries of Field Artillery, the 74th and 77th. The total
force was well under 3,000 men.  About three in the afternoon the men
were entrained in open trucks under a burning sun, and for some
reason, at which the impetuous spirit of the General must have chafed,
were kept waiting for three hours.  At eight o'clock they detrained at
Molteno, and thence after a short rest and a meal they started upon
the night march which was intended to end at the break of day at the
Boer trenches. One feels as if one were describing the operations of
Magersfontein once again and the parallel continues to be painfully
exact.

It was nine o'clock and pitch dark when the column moved out of
Molteno and struck across the black gloom of the veldt, the wheels of
the guns being wrapped in hide to deaden the rattle.  It was known
that the distance was not more than ten miles, and so when hour
followed hour and the guides were still unable to say that they had
reached their point it must have become perfectly evident that they
had missed their way.  The men were dog-tired, a long day's work had
been followed by a long night's march, and they plodded along drowsily
through the darkness.  The ground was broken and irregular. The weary
soldiers stumbled as they marched. Daylight came and revealed the
column still looking for its objective, the fiery General walking in
front and leading his horse behind him.  It was evident that his plans
had miscarried, but his energetic and hardy temperament would not
permit him to turn back without a blow being struck.  However one may
commend his energy, one cannot but stand aghast at his dispositions.
The country was wild and rocky, the very places for those tactics of
the surprise and the ambuscade in which the Boers excelled. And yet
the column still plodded aimlessly on in its dense formation, and if
there were any attempt at scouting ahead and on the flanks the result
showed how ineffectively it was carried out.  It was at a quarter past
four in the clear light of a South African morning that a shot, and
then another, and then a rolling crash of musketry, told that we were
to have one more rough lesson of the result of neglecting the usual
precautions of warfare. High up on the face of a steep line of hill
the Boer riflemen lay hid, and from a short range their fire scourged
our exposed flank.  The men appear to have been chiefly colonial
rebels, and not Boers of the backveldt, and to that happy chance it
may be that the comparative harmlessness of their fire was due. Even
now, in spite of the surprise, the situation might have been saved had
the bewildered troops and their harried officers known exactly what to
do.  It is easy to be wise after the event, but it appears now that
the only course that could commend itself would be to extricate the
troops from their position, and then, if thought feasible, to plan an
attack.  Instead of this a rush was made at the hillside, and the
infantry made their way some distance up it only to find that there
were positive ledges in front of them which could not be climbed. The
advance was at a dead stop, and the men lay down under the boulders
for cover from the hot fire which came from inaccessible marksmen
above them. Meanwhile the artillery had opened behind them, and their
fire (not for the first time in this campaign) was more deadly to
their friends than to their foes.  At least one prominent officer fell
among his men, torn by British shrapnel bullets. Talana Hill and
Modder River have shown also, though perhaps in a less tragic degree,
that what with the long range of modern artillery fire, and what with
the difficulty of locating infantry who are using smokeless powder, it
is necessary that officers commanding batteries should be provided
with the coolest heads and the most powerful glasses of any men in the
service, for a responsibility which will become more and more terrific
rests upon their judgment.

The question now, since the assault had failed, was how to extricate
the men from their position. Many withdrew down the hill, running the
gauntlet of the enemy's fire as they emerged from the boulders on to
the open ground, while others clung to their positions, some from a
soldierly hope that victory might finally incline to them, others
because it was clearly safer to lie among the rocks than to cross the
bullet-swept spaces beyond.  Those portions of the force who
extricated themselves do not appear to have realised how many of their
comrades had remained behind, and so as the gap gradually increased
between the men who were stationary and the men who fell back all hope
of the two bodies reuniting became impossible. All the infantry who
remained upon the hillside were captured.  The rest rallied at a point
fifteen hundred yards from the scene of the surprise, and began an
orderly retreat to Molteno.

In the meanwhile three powerful Boer guns upon the ridge had opened
fire with great accuracy, but fortunately with defective shells.  Had
the enemy's contractors been as trustworthy as their gunners in this
campaign, our losses would have been very much heavier, and it is
possible that here we catch a glimpse of some consequences of that
corruption which was one of the curses of the country.  The guns were
moved with great smartness along the ridge, and opened fire again and
again, but never with great result. Our own batteries, the 74th and
77th, with our handful of mounted men, worked hard in covering the
retreat and holding back the enemy's pursuit.

It is a sad subject to discuss, but it is the one instance in a
campaign containing many reverses which amounts to demoralisation
among the troops engaged. The Guards marching with the steadiness of
Hyde Park off the field of Magersfontein, or the men of Nicholson's
Nek chafing because they were not led in a last hopeless charge, are,
even in defeat, object lessons of military virtue. But here fatigue
and sleeplessness had taken all fire and spirit out of the men.  They
dropped asleep by the roadside and had to be prodded up by their
exhausted officers.  Many were taken prisoners in their slumber by the
enemy who gleaned behind them.  Units broke into small straggling
bodies, and it was a sorry and bedraggled force which about ten
o'clock came wandering into Molteno.  The place of honour in the rear
was kept throughout by the Irish Rifles, who preserved some military
formation to the end.

Our losses in killed and wounded were not severe -- military honour would
have been less sore had they been more so.  Twenty-six killed,
sixty-eight wounded -- that is all.  But between the men on the hillside
and the somnambulists of the column, six hundred, about equally
divided between the Irish Rifles and the Northumberland Fusiliers, had
been left as prisoners. Two guns, too, had been lost in the hurried
retreat.

It is not for the historian -- especially for a civilian historian --
to say a word unnecessarily to aggravate the pain of that brave man
who, having done all that personal courage could do, was seen
afterwards sobbing on the table of the waiting-room at Molteno, and
bewailing his 'poor men.'  He had a disaster, but Nelson had one at
Teneriffe and Napoleon at Acre, and built their great reputations in
spite of it. But the one good thing of a disaster is that by examining
it we may learn to do better in the future, and so it would indeed be
a perilous thing if we agreed that our reverses were not a fit subject
for open and frank discussion.

It is not to the detriment of an enterprise that it should be daring
and call for considerable physical effort on the part of those who are
engaged in it. On the contrary, the conception of such plans is one of
the signs of a great military mind.  But in the arranging of the
details the same military mind should assiduously occupy itself in
foreseeing and preventing every unnecessary thing which may make the
execution of such a plan more difficult.  The idea of a swift sudden
attack upon Stormberg was excellent -- the details of the operation
are continually open to criticism.

How far the Boers suffered at Stormberg is unknown to us, but there
seems in this instance no reason to doubt their own statement that
their losses were very slight.  At no time was any body of them
exposed to our fire, while we, as usual, fought in the open.  Their
numbers were probably less than ours, and the quality of their
shooting and want of energy in pursuit make the defeat the more
galling.  On the other hand, their guns were served with skill and
audacity.  They consisted of commandos from Bethulie, Rouxville, and
Smithfield, under the orders of Olivier, with those colonials whom
they had seduced from their allegiance.

This defeat of General Gatacre's, occurring, as it did, in a
disaffected district and one of great strategic importance, might have
produced the worst consequences.

Fortunately no very evil result followed.  No doubt the recruiting of
rebels was helped, but there was no forward movement and Molteno
remained in our hands. In the meanwhile Gatacre's force was reinforced
by a fresh battery, the 79th, and by a strong regiment, the
Derbyshires, so that with the 1st Royal Scots and the wing of the
Berkshires he was strong enough to hold his own until the time for a
general advance should come.  So in the Stormberg district, as at the
Modder River, the same humiliating and absurd position of stalemate
was established.

CHAPTER XI

BATTLE OF COLENSO


Two serious defeats had within the week been inflicted upon the
British forces in South Africa.  Cronje, lurking behind his trenches
and his barbed wire entanglements barred Methuen's road to Kimberley,
while in the northern part of Cape Colony Gatacre's wearied troops had
been defeated and driven by a force which consisted largely of British
subjects. But the public at home steeled their hearts and fixed their
eyes steadily upon Natal.  There was their senior General and there
the main body of their troops.  As brigade after brigade and battery
after battery touched at Cape Town, and were sent on instantly to
Durban, it was evident that it was in this quarter that the supreme
effort was to be made, and that there the light might at last break.
In club, and dining room, and railway car -- wherever men met and
talked -- the same words might be heard: 'Wait until Buller moves.'
The hopes of a great empire lay in the phrase.

It was upon October 30th that Sir George White had been thrust back
into Ladysmith.  On November 2nd telegraphic communication with the
town was interrupted. On November 3rd the railway line was cut. On
November 10th the Boers held Colenso and the line of the Tugela.  On
the 14th was the affair of the armoured train.  On the 18th the enemy
were near Estcourt. On the 21st they had reached the Mooi River.  On
the 23rd Hildyard attacked them at Willow Grange.  All these actions
will be treated elsewhere.  This last one marks the turn of the tide.
>From then onwards Sir Redvers Ruller was massing his troops at
Chieveley in preparation for a great effort to cross the river and to
relieve Ladysmith, the guns of which, calling from behind the line of
northern hills, told their constant tale of restless attack and
stubborn defence.

But the task was as severe a one as the most fighting General Could
ask for.  On the southern side the banks formed a long slope which
could be shaved as with a razor by the rifle fire of the enemy.  How
to advance across that broad open zone was indeed a problem.  It was
one of many occasions in this war in which one wondered why, if a
bullet-proof shield capable of sheltering a lying man could be
constructed, a trial should not be given to it. Alternate rushes of
companies with a safe rest after each rush would save the troops from
the continued tension of that deadly never ending fire. However, it is
idle to discuss what might have been done to mitigate their trials.
The open ground had to be passed, and then they came to -- not the
enemy, but a broad and deep river, with a single bridge, probably
undermined, and a single ford, which was found not to exist in
practice. Beyond the river was tier after tier of hills, crowned with
stone walls and seamed with trenches, defended by thousands of the
best marksmen in the world, supported by an admirable artillery.  If,
in spite of the advance over the open and in spite of the passage of
the river, a ridge could still be carried, it was only to be commanded
by the next; and so, one behind the other, like the billows of the
ocean, a series of hills and hollows rolled northwards to Ladysmith.
All attacks must be in the open.  All defence was from under cover.
Add to this, that the young and energetic Louis Botha was in command
of the Boers.  It was a desperate task, and yet honour forbade that
the garrison should be left to its fate.  The venture must be made.

The most obvious criticism upon the operation is that if the attack
must be made it should not be made under the enemy's conditions.  We
seem almost to have gone out of our way to make every obstacle -- the
glacislike approach, the river, the trenches -- as difficult as
possible. Future operations were to prove that it was not so difficult
to deceive Boer vigilance and by rapid movements to cross the
Tugela. A military authority has stated, I know not with what truth,
that there is no instance in history of a determined army being
stopped by the line of a river, and from Wellington at the Douro to
the Russians on the Danube many examples of the ease with which they
may be passed will occur to the reader. But Buller had some
exceptional difficulties with which to contend. He was weak in mounted
troops, and was opposed to an enemy of exceptional mobility who might
attack his flank and rear if he exposed them.  He had not that great
preponderance of numbers which came to him later, and which enabled
him to attempt a wide turning movement.  One advantage he had, the
possession of a more powerful artillery, but his heaviest guns were
naturally his least mobile, and the more direct his advance the more
effective would his guns be. For these or other reasons he determined
upon a frontal attack on the formidable Boer position, and he moved
out of Chieveley Camp for that purpose at daybreak on Friday, December
15th.

The force which General Buller led into action was the finest which
any British general had handled since the battle of the Alma.  Of
infantry he had four strong brigades: the 2nd (Hildyard's) consisting
of the 2nd Devons, the 2nd Queen's or West Surrey, the 2nd West
Yorkshire, and the 2nd East Surrey; the 4th Brigade (Lyttelton's)
comprising the 2nd Cameronians, the 3rd Rifles, the 1st Durhams, and
the 1st Rifle Brigade; the 5th Brigade (Hart's) with the 1st
Inniskilling Fusiliers, the 1st Connaught Rangers, 2nd Dublin
Fusiliers, and the Border Regiment, this last taking the place of the
2nd Irish Rifles, who were with Gatacre. There remained the 6th
Brigade (Barton's), which included the 2nd Royal Fusiliers, the 2nd
Scots Fusiliers, the 1st Welsh Fusiliers, and the 2nd Irish Fusiliers
-- in all about 16,000 infantry.  The mounted men, who were commanded
by Lord Dundonald, included the 13th Hussars, the 1st Royals,
Bethune's Mounted Infantry, Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry, three
squadrons of South African Horse, with a composite regiment formed
from the mounted infantry of the Rifles and of the Dublin Fusiliers
with squadrons of the Natal Carabineers and the Imperial Light Horse.
These irregular troops of horse might be criticised by martinets and
pedants, but they contained some of the finest fighting material in
the army, some urged on by personal hatred of the Boers and some by
mere lust of adventure.  As an example of the latter one squadron of
the South African Horse was composed almost entirely of Texan
muleteers, who, having come over with their animals, had been drawn by
their own gallant spirit into the fighting line of their kinsmen.

Cavalry was General Buller's weakest arm, but his artillery was strong
both in its quality and its number of guns.  There were five batteries
(30 guns) of the Field Artillery, the 7th, 14th, 63rd, 64th, and
66th. Besides these there were no fewer than sixteen naval guns from
H.M.S.'Terrible ' -- fourteen of which were 12-pounders, and the other
two of the 4-7 type which had done such good service both at Ladysmith
and with Methuen. The whole force which moved out from Chieveley Camp
numbered about 21,000 men.

The work which was allotted to the army was simple in conception,
however terrible it might prove in execution.  There were two points
at which the river might be crossed, one three miles off on the left,
named Bridle Drift, the other straight ahead at the Bridge of
Colenso. The 5th or Irish Brigade was to endeavour to cross at Bridle
Drift, and then to work down the river bank on the far side so as to
support the 2nd or English Brigade, -- which was to cross at Colenso.
The 4th Brigade was to advance between these, so as to help either
which should be in difficulties.  Meanwhile on the extreme right the
mounted troops under Dundonald were to cover the flank and to attack
Hlangwane Hill, a formidable position held strongly by the enemy upon
the south bank of the Tugela.  The remaining Fusilier brigade of
infantry was to support this movement on the right.  The guns were to
cover the various attacks, and if possible gain a position from which
the trenches might be enfiladed. This, simply stated, was the work
which lay before the British army. In the bright clear morning
sunshine, under a cloudless blue sky, they advanced with high hopes to
the assault.  Before them lay the long level plain, then the curve of
the river, and beyond, silent and serene, like some peaceful dream
landscape, stretched the lines and lines of gently curving hills. It
was just five o'clock in the morning when the naval guns began to bay,
and huge red dustclouds from the distant foothills showed where the
lyddite was bursting.  No answer came back, nor was there any movement
upon the sunlit hills.  It was almost brutal, this furious violence to
so gentle and unresponsive a countryside.  In no place could the
keenest eye detect a sign of guns or men, and yet death lurked in
every hollow and crouched by every rock.

It is so difficult to make a modern battle intelligible when fought,
as this was, over a front of seven or eight miles, that it is best
perhaps to take the doings of each column in turn, beginning with the
left flank, where Hart's Irish Brigade had advanced to the assault of
Bridle Drift.

Under an unanswered and therefore an unaimed fire from the heavy guns
the Irish infantry moved forward upon the points which they had been
ordered to attack.  The Dublins led, then the Connaughts, the
Inniskillings, and the Borderers.  Incredible as it may appear after
the recent experiences of Magersfontein and of Stormberg, the men in
the two rear regiments appear to have been advanced in quarter column,
and not to have deployed until after the enemy's fire had opened.  Had
shrapnel struck this close formation, as it was within an ace of
doing, the loss of life must have been as severe as it was
unnecessary.

On approaching the Drift -- the position or even the existence of
which does not seem to have been very clearly defined -- it was found
that the troops had to advance into a loop formed by the river, so
that they were exposed to a very heavy cross-fire upon their right
flank, while they were rained on by shrapnel from in front.  No sign
of the enemy could be seen, though the men were dropping fast.  It is
a weird and soul-shaking experience to advance over a sunlit and
apparently a lonely countryside, with no slightest movement upon its
broad face, while the path which you take is marked behind you by
sobbing, gasping, writhing men, who can only guess by the position of
their wounds whence the shots came which struck them down. All round,
like the hissing of fat in the pan, is the monotonous crackle and
rattle of the Mausers; but the air is full of it, and no one can
define exactly whence it comes. Far away on some hill upon the skyline
there hangs the least gauzy veil of thin smoke to indicate whence the
six men who have just all fallen together, as if it were some grim
drill, met their death.  Into such a hell-storm as this it was that
the soldiers have again and again advanced in the course of this war,
but it may be questioned whether they will not prove to be among the
last of mortals to be asked to endure such an ordeal.  Other methods
of attack must be found or attacks must be abandoned, for smokeless
powder, quick-firing guns, and modern rifles make it all odds on the
defence!

The gallant Irishmen pushed on, flushed with battle and careless for
their losses, the four regiments clubbed into one, with all military
organisation rapidly disappearing, and nothing left but their gallant
spirit and their furious desire to come to hand-grips with the enemy.
Rolling on in a broad wave of shouting angry men, they never winced
from the fire until they had swept up to the bank of the river.
Northern Inniskilling and Southern man of Connaught, orange and
green, Protestant and Catholic, Celt and Saxon, their only rivalry
now was who could shed his blood most freely for the common cause.
How hateful seem those provincial politics and narrow sectarian creeds
which can hold such men apart!

The bank of the river had been gained, but where was the ford? The
water swept broad and unruffled in front of them, with no indication
of shallows. A few dashing fellows sprang in, but their cartridges and
rifles dragged them to the bottom.  One or two may even have struggled
through to the further side, but on this there is a conflict of
evidence.  It may be, though it seems incredible, that the river had
been partly dammed to deepen the Drift, or, as is more probable, that
in the rapid advance and attack the position of the Drift was lost.
However this may be, the troops could find no ford, and they lay down,
as had been done in so many previous actions, unwilling to retreat and
unable to advance, with the same merciless pelting from front and
flank.  In every fold and behind every anthill the Irishmen lay thick
and waited for better times.  There are many instances of their cheery
and uncomplaining humour.  Colonel Brooke, of the Connaughts, fell at
the head of his men.  Private Livingstone helped to carry him into
safety, and then, his task done, he confessed to having 'a bit of a
rap meself,' and sank fainting with a bullet through his throat.
Another sat with a bullet through both legs. 'Bring me a tin whistle
and I'll blow ye any tune ye like,' he cried, mindful of the Dargai
piper. Another with his arm hanging by a tendon puffed morosely at his
short black pipe.  Every now and then, in face of the impossible, the
fiery Celtic valour flamed furiously upwards.  'Fix bayonets, men, and
let us make a name for ourselves,' cried a colour sergeant, and he
never spoke again.  For five hours, under the tropical sun, the grimy
parched men held on to the ground they had occupied. British shells
pitched short and fell among them. A regiment in support fired at
them, not knowing that any of the line were so far advanced.  Shot at
from the front, the flank, and the rear, the 5th Brigade held grimly
on.

But fortunately their orders to retire were at hand, and it is certain
that had they not reached them the regiments would have been uselessly
destroyed where they lay.  It seems to have been Buller himself, who
showed extraordinary and ubiquitous personal energy during the day,
that ordered them to fall back. As they retreated there was an entire
absence of haste and panic, but officers and men were hopelessly
jumbled up, and General Hart -- whose judgment may occasionally be
questioned, but whose cool courage was beyond praise -- had hard work
to reform the splendid brigade which six hours before had tramped out
of Chieveley Camp. Between five and six hundred of them had fallen --
a loss which approximates to that of the Highland Brigade at
Magersfontein.  The Dublins and the Connaughts were the heaviest
sufferers.

So much for the mishap of the 5th Brigade.  It is superfluous to point
out that the same old omissions were responsible for the same old
results.  Why were the men in quarter column when advancing against an
unseen foe? Why had no scouts gone forward to be certain of the
position of the ford? Where were the clouds of skirmishers which
should precede such an advance?  The recent examples in the field and
the teachings of the text-books were equally set at naught, as they
had been, and were to be, so often in this campaign.  There may be a
science of war in the lecture-rooms at Camberley, but very little of
it found its way to the veldt.  The slogging valour of the private,
the careless dash of the regimental officer -- these were our military
assets -- but seldom the care and foresight of our commanders.  It is
a thankless task to make such comments, but the one great lesson of
the war has been that the army is too vital a thing to fall into the
hands of a caste, and that it is a national duty for every man to
speak fearlessly and freely what he believes to be the truth.

Passing from the misadventure of the 5th Brigade we come as we move
from left to right upon the 4th, or Lyttelton's Brigade, which was
instructed not to attack itself but to support the attack on either
side of it. With the help of the naval guns it did what it could to
extricate and cover the retreat of the Irishmen, but it could play no
very important part in the action, and its losses were
insignificant. On its right in turn Hildyard's English Brigade had
developed its attack upon Colenso and the bridge.  The regiments under
Hildyard's lead were the 2nd West Surrey, the 2nd Devons (whose first
battalion was doing so well with the Ladysmith force), the East
Surreys, and the West Yorkshires.  The enemy had evidently anticipated
the main attack on this position, and not only were the trenches upon
the other side exceptionally strong, but their artillery converged
upon the bridge, at least a dozen heavy pieces, besides a number of
quick-firers, bearing upon it.  The Devons and the Queens, in open
order (an extended line of khaki dots, blending so admirably with the
plain that they were hardly visible when they halted), led the attack,
being supported by the East Surrey and the West Yorkshires.  Advancing
under a very heavy fire the brigade experienced much the same ordeal
as their comrades of Hart's brigade, which was mitigated by the fact
that from the first they preserved their open order in columns of
half-companies extended to six paces, and that the river in front of
them did not permit that right flank fire which was so fatal to the
Irishmen. With a loss of some two hundred men the leading regiments
succeeded in reaching Colenso, and the West Surrey, advancing by
rushes of fifty yards at a time, had established itself in the
station, but a catastrophe had occurred at an earlier hour to the
artillery which was supporting it which rendered all. further advance
impossible.  For the reason of this we must follow the fortunes of the
next unit upon their right.

This consisted of the important body of artillery who had been told
off to support the main attack.  It comprised two field batteries, the
14th and the 66th, under the command of Colonel Long, and six naval
guns (two of 4.7, and four 12-pounders) under Lieutenant Ogilvy of the
'Terrible.'  Long has the record of being a most zealous and dashing
officer, whose handling of the Egyptian artillery at the battle of the
Atbara had much to do with the success of the action. Unfortunately,
these barbarian campaigns, in which liberties may be taken with
impunity, leave an evil tradition, as the French have found with their
Algerians.  Our own close formations, our adherence to volley firing,
and in this instance the use of our artillery all seem to be legacies
of our savage wars.  Be the cause what it may, at an early stage of
the action Long's guns whirled forwards, outstripped the infantry
brigades upon their flanks, left the slow-moving naval guns with their
ox-teams behind them, and unlimbered within a thousand yards of the
enemy's trenches.  From this position he opened fire upon Fort Wylie,
which was the centre of that portion of the Boer position which faced
him.

But his two unhappy batteries were destined not to turn the tide of
battle, as he had hoped, but rather to furnish the classic example of
the helplessness of artillery against modern rifle fire.  Not even
Mercer's famous description of the effect of a flank fire upon his
troop of horse artillery at Waterloo could do justice to the blizzard
of lead which broke over the two doomed batteries.  The teams fell in
heaps, some dead, some mutilated, and mutilating others in their
frantic struggles. One driver, crazed with horror, sprang on a leader,
cut the traces and tore madly off the field. But a perfect discipline
reigned among the vast majority of the gunners, and the words of
command and the laying and working of the guns were all as methodical
as at Okehampton.  Not only was there a most deadly rifle fire, partly
from the lines in front and partly from the village of Colenso upon
their left flank, but the Boer automatic quick-firers found the range
to a nicety, and the little shells were crackling and banging
continually over the batteries.  Already every gun had its litter of
dead around it, but each was still fringed by its own group of furious
officers and sweating desperate gunners. Poor Long was down, with a
bullet through his arm and another through his liver.  'Abandon be
damned!  We don't abandon guns!' was his last cry as they dragged him
into the shelter of a little donga hard by.  Captain Goldie dropped
dead.  So did Lieutenant Schreiber. Colonel Hunt fell, shot in two
places.  Officers and men were falling fast.  The guns could not be
worked, and yet they could not be removed, for every effort to bring
up teams from the shelter where the limbers lay ended in the death of
the horses.  The survivors took refuge from the murderous fire in that
small hollow to which Long had been carried, a hundred yards or so
from the line of bullet-splashed cannon.  One gun on the right was
still served by four men who refused to leave it. They seemed to bear
charmed lives, these four, as they strained and wrestled with their
beloved 15-pounder, amid the spurting sand and the blue wreaths of the
bursting shells.  Then one gasped and fell against the trail, and his
comrade sank beside the wheel with his chin upon his breast.  The
third threw up his hands and pitched forward upon his face; while the
survivor, a grim powder-stained figure, stood at attention looking
death in the eyes until he too was struck down.  A useless sacrifice,
you may say; but while the men who saw them die can tell such a story
round the camp fire the example of such deaths as these does more than
clang of bugle or roll of drum to stir the warrior spirit of our race.

For two hours the little knot of heart-sick humiliated officers and
men lay in the precarious shelter of the donga and looked out at the
bullet-swept plain and the line of silent guns.  Many of them were
wounded. Their chief lay among them, still calling out in his delirium
for his guns.  They had been joined by the gallant Baptie, a brave
surgeon, who rode across to the donga amid a murderous fire, and did
what he could for the injured men.  Now and then a rush was made into
the open, sometimes in the hope of firing another round, sometimes to
bring a wounded comrade in from the pitiless pelt of the bullets.  How
fearful was that lead-storm may be gathered from the fact that one
gunner was found with sixty-four wounds in his body.  Several men
dropped in these sorties, and the disheartened survivors settled down
once more in the donga.

The hope to which they clung was that their guns were not really lost,
but that the arrival of infantry would enable them to work them once
more. Infantry did at last arrive, but in such small numbers that it
made the situation more difficult instead of easing it. Colonel
Bullock had brought up two companies of the Devons to join the two
companies (A and B) of Scots Fusiliers who had been the original
escort of the guns, but such a handful could not turn the tide.  They
also took refuge in the donga, and waited for better times.

In the meanwhile the attention of Generals Buller and Clery had been
called to the desperate position of the guns, and they had made their
way to that further nullah in the rear where the remaining limber
horses and drivers were.  This was some distance behind that other
donga in which Long, Bullock, and their Devons and gunners were
crouching.  'Will any of you volunteer to save the guns?' cried
Buller.  Corporal Nurse, Gunner Young, and a few others responded.
The desperate venture was led by three aides-de-camp of the Generals,
Congreve, Schofield, and Roberts, the only son of the famous soldier.
Two gun teams were taken down; the horses galloping frantically
through an infernal fire, and each team succeeded in getting back with
a gun.  But the loss was fearful. Roberts was mortally wounded.
Congreve has left an account which shows what a modern rifle fire at a
thousand yards is like.  'My first bullet went through my left sleeve
and made the joint of my elbow bleed, next a clod of earth caught me
smack on the right arm, then my horse got one, then my right leg one,
then my horse another, and that settled us.'  The gallant fellow
managed to crawl to the group of castaways in the donga. Roberts
insisted on being left where he fell, for fear he should hamper the
others.

In the meanwhile Captain Reed, of the 7th Battery, had arrived with
two spare teams of horses, and another determined effort was made
under his leadership to save some of the guns.  But the fire was too
murderous. Two-thirds of his horses and half his men, including
himself, were struck down, and General Buller commanded that all
further attempts to reach the abandoned batteries should be given
up. Both he and General Clery had been slightly wounded, and there
were many operations over the whole field of action to engage their
attention.  But making every allowance for the pressure of many duties
and for the confusion and turmoil of a great action, it does seem one
of the most inexplicable incidents in British military history that
the guns should ever have been permitted to fall into the hands of the
enemy. It is evident that if our gunners could not live under the fire
of the enemy it would be equally impossible for the enemy to remove
the guns under a fire from a couple of battalions of our infantry.
There were many regiments which had hardly been engaged, and which
could have been advanced for such a purpose. The men of the Mounted
Infantry actually volunteered for this work, and none could have been
more capable of carrying it out.  There was plenty of time also, for
the guns were abandoned about eleven and the Boers did not venture to
seize them until four.  Not only could the guns have been saved, but
they might, one would think, have been transformed into an excellent
bait for a trap to tempt the Boers out of their trenches. It must have
been with fear and trembling that Cherry Emmett and his men first
approached them, for how could they believe that such incredible good
fortune had come to them? However, the fact, humiliating and
inexplicable, is that the guns were so left, that the whole force was
withdrawn, and that not only the ten cannon, but also the handful of
Devons, with their Colonel, and the Fusiliers were taken prisoners in
the donga which had sheltered them all day.

We have now, working from left to right, considered the operations of
Hart's Brigade at Bridle Drift, of Lyttelton's Brigade in support, of
Hildyard's which attacked Colenso, and of the luckless batteries which
were to have helped him.  There remain two bodies of troops upon the
right, the further consisting of Dundonald's mounted men who were to
attack Hlangwane Hill, a fortified Boer position upon the south of the
river, while Barton's Brigade was to support it and to connect this
attack with the central operations.

Dundonald's force was entirely too weak for such an operation as the
capture of the formidable entrenched hill, and it is probable that the
movement was meant rather as a reconnaissance than as an assault. He
had not more than a thousand men in all, mostly irregulars, and the
position which faced him was precipitous and entrenched, with
barbed-wire entanglements and automatic guns. But the gallant
colonials were out on their first action, and their fiery courage
pushed the attack home.  Leaving their horses, they advanced a mile
and a half on foot before they came within easy range of the hidden
riflemen, and learned the lesson which had been taught to their
comrades all along the line, that given approximately equal numbers
the attack in the open has no possible chance against the concealed
defence, and that the more bravely it is pushed the more heavy is the
repulse.  The irregulars carried themselves like old soldiers, they
did all that mortal man could do, and they retired coolly and slowly
with the loss of 130 of the brave troopers. The 7th Field Battery did
all that was possible to support the advance and cover the
retirement. In no single place, on this day of disaster, did one least
gleam of success come to warm the hearts and reward the exertions of
our much-enduring men.

Of Barton's Brigade there is nothing to be recorded, for they appear
neither to have supported the attack upon Hlangwane Hill on the one
side nor to have helped to cover the ill-fated guns on the other.
Barton was applied to for help by Dundonald, but refused to detach any
of his troops.  If General Buller's real idea was a reconnaissance in
force in order to determine the position and strength of the Boer
lines, then of course his brigadiers must have felt a. reluctance to
entangle their brigades in a battle which was really the result of a
misunderstanding.  On the other hand, if, as the orders of the day
seem to show, a serious engagement was always intended, it is strange
that two brigades out of four should have played so insignificant a
part.  To Barton's Brigade was given the responsibility of seeing that
no right flank attack was carried out by the Boers, and this held it
back until it was clear that no such attack was contemplated. After
that one would have thought that, had the situation been appreciated,
at least two battalions might have been spared to cover the abandoned
guns with their rifle fire. Two companies of the Scots Fusiliers did
share the fortunes of the guns.  Two others, and one of the Irish
Fusiliers, acted in support, but the brigade as a whole, together with
the 1st Royals and the 13th Hussars, might as well have been at
Aldershot for any bearing which their work had upon the fortunes of
the day.

And so the first attempt at the relief of Ladysmith came to an end.
At twelve o'clock all the troops upon the ground were retreating for
the camp.  There was nothing in the shape of rout or panic, and the
withdrawal was as orderly as the advance; but the fact remained that
we had just 1,200 men in killed, wounded, and missing, and had gained
absolutely nothing. We had not even the satisfaction of knowing that
we had inflicted as well as endured punishment, for the enemy remained
throughout the day so cleverly concealed that it is doubtful whether
more than a hundred casualties occurred in their ranks.  Once more it
was shown how weak an arm is artillery against an enemy who lies in
shelter.

Our wounded fortunately bore a high proportion to our killed, as they
always will do when it is rifle fire rather than shell fire which is
effective. Roughly we had 150 killed and about 720 wounded. A more
humiliating item is the 250 or so who were missing. These men were the
gunners, the Devons, and the Scots Fusiliers, who were taken in the
donga together with small bodies from the Connaughts, the Dublins, and
other regiments who, having found some shelter, were unable to leave
it, and clung on until the retirement of their regiments left them in
a hopeless position. Some of these small knots of men were allowed to
retire in the evening by the Boers, who seemed by no means anxious to
increase the number of their prisoners. Colonel Thackeray, of the
Inniskilling Fusiliers, found himself with a handful of his men
surrounded by the enemy, but owing to their good humour and his own
tact he succeeded in withdrawing them in safety. The losses fell
chiefly on Hart's Brigade, Hildyard's Brigade, and the colonial
irregulars, who bore off the honours of the fight.

In his official report General Buller states that were it not for the
action of Colonel Long and the subsequent disaster to the artillery he
thought that the battle might have been a successful one.  This is a
hard saying, and throws perhaps too much responsibility upon the
gallant but unfortunate gunner.  There have been occasions in the war
when greater dash upon the part of our artillery might have changed
the fate of the day, and it is bad policy to be too severe upon the
man who has taken a risk and failed.  The whole operation, with its
advance over the open against a concealed enemy with a river in his
front, was so absolutely desperate that Long may have seen that only
desperate measures could save the situation. To bring guns into action
in front of the infantry without having clearly defined the position
of the opposing infantry must always remain one of the most hazardous
ventures of war.  'It would certainly be mere folly,' says Prince
Kraft, 'to advance artillery to within 600 or 800 yards of a position
held by infantry unless the latter were under the fire of infantry
from an even shorter range.'  This 'mere folly' is exactly what
Colonel Long did, but it must be remembered in extenuation that he
shared with others the idea that the Boers were up on the hills, and
had no inkling that their front trenches were down at the river.  With
the imperfect means at his disposal he did such scouting as he could,
and if his fiery and impetuous spirit led him into a position which
cost him so dearly it is certainly more easy for the critic to
extenuate his fault than that subsequent one which allowed the
abandoned guns to fall into the hands of the enemy. Nor is there any
evidence that the loss of these guns did seriously affect the fate of
the action, for at those other parts of the field where the infantry
had the full and unceasing support of the artillery the result was not
more favourable than at the centre.

So much for Colenso. A more unsatisfactory and in some ways
inexplicable action is not to be found in the range of British
military history. And the fuller the light which has been poured upon
it, the more extraordinary does the battle appear.  There are a
preface and a sequel to the action which have put a severe strain upon
the charity which the British public has always shown that it is
prepared to extend to a defeated General. The preface is that General
Buller sent word to General White that he proposed to attack upon the
17th, while the actual attack was delivered upon the 15th, so that the
garrison was not prepared to make that demonstration which might have
prevented the besiegers from sending important reinforcements to
Botha, had he needed them.  The sequel is more serious. Losing all
heart at his defeat, General Buller, although he had been officially
informed that White had provisions for seventy days, sent a heliogram
advising the surrender of the garrison. White's first reply, which
deserves to live with the anecdote of Nelson's telescope at his blind
eye, was to the effect that he believed the enemy had been tampering
with Buller's messages. To this Buller despatched an amended message,
which with Sir George White's reply, is here appended:

Message of December 16th, as altered by that of
	December 17th, 1899.

'I tried Colenso yesterday, but failed; the enemy is too strong for my
force except with siege operations, and these will take one full month
to prepare. Can you last so long?

'How many days can you hold out? I suggest you firing away as much
ammunition as you can, and making best terms you can. I can remain
here if you have alternative suggestion, but unaided I cannot break
in. I find my infantry cannot fight more than ten miles from camp, and
then only if water can be got, and it is scarce here. Whatever
happens, recollect to burn your cipher, decipher, and code books, and
all deciphered messages.'

>From Sir G. White to Sir R. Buller.
     December 16th, 1899.

'Yours of today received and understood.  My suggestion is that you
take up strongest available position that will enable you to keep
touch of the enemy and harass him constantly with artillery fire, and
in other ways as much as possible.  I can make food last for much
longer than a month, and will not think of making terms till I am
forced to.  You may have hit enemy harder than you think.  All our
native spies report that your artillery fire made considerable
impression on enemy.  Have your losses been very heavy? If you lose
touch of enemy, it will immensely increase his opportunities of
crushing me, and have worst effect elsewhere.  While you are in touch
with him and in communication with me, he has both of our forces to
reckon with. Make every effort to get reinforcements as early as
possible, including India, and enlist every man in both colonies who
will serve and can ride. Things may look brighter. The loss of 12,000
men here would be a heavy blow to England.  We must not yet think of
it. I fear I could not cut my way to you. Enteric fever is increasing
alarmingly here.  There are now 180 cases, all within last month.
Answer fully. I am keeping everything secret for the present till I
know your plans.'

Much allowance is to be made for a man who is staggering under the
mental shock of defeat and the physical exertions which Buller had
endured.  That the Government made such allowance is clear from the
fact that he was not instantly recalled.  And yet the cold facts are
that we have a British General, at the head of 25,000 men,
recommending another General, at the head of 12,000 men only twelve
miles off, to lay down his arms to an army which was certainly very
inferior in numbers to the total British force; and this because he
had once been defeated, although he knew that there was still time for
the whole resources of the Empire to be poured into Natal in order to
prevent so shocking a disaster.  Such is a plain statement of the
advice which Buller gave and which White rejected. For the instant the
fate not only of South Africa but even, as I believe, of the Empire
hung upon the decision of the old soldier in Ladysmith, who had to
resist the proposals of his own General as sternly as the attacks of
the enemy. He who sorely needed help and encouragement became, as his
message shows, the helper and the encourager. It was a tremendous
test, and Sir George White came through it with a staunchness and a
loyalty which saved us not only from overwhelming present disaster,
but from a hideous memory which must have haunted British military
annals for centuries to come.


CHAPTER XII

THE DARK HOUR

The week which extended from December 10th to December 17th, 1899, was
the blackest one known during our generation, and the most disastrous
for British arms during the century. We had in the short space of
seven days lost, beyond all extenuation or excuse, three separate
actions.  No single defeat was of vital importance in itself, but the
cumulative effect, occurring as they did to each of the main British
forces in South Africa, was very great.  The total loss amounted to
about three thousand men and twelve guns, while the indirect effects
in the way of loss of prestige to ourselves and increased confidence
and more numerous recruits to our enemy were incalculable.

It is singular to glance at the extracts from the European press at
that time and to observe the delight and foolish exultation with which
our reverses were received. That this should occur in the French
journals is not unnatural, since our history has been largely a
contest with that Power, and we can regard with complacency an enmity
which is the tribute to our success.  Russia, too, as the least
progressive of European States, has a natural antagonism of thought,
if not of interests, to the Power which stands most prominently for
individual freedom and liberal institutions.  The same poor excuse may
be made for the organs of the Vatican. But what are we to say of the
insensate railing of Germany, a country whose ally we have been for
centuries? In the days of Marlborough, in the darkest hours of
Frederick the Great, in the great world struggle of Napoleon, we have
been the brothers-in-arms of these people.  So with the Austrians
also. If both these countries were not finally swept from the map by
Napoleon, it is largely to British subsidies and British tenacity that
they owe it. And yet these are the folk who turned most bitterly
against us at the only time in modern history when we had a chance of
distinguishing our friends from our foes.  Never again, I trust, on
any pretext will a British guinea be spent or a British soldier or
sailor shed his blood for such allies.  The political lesson of this
writer has been that we should make ourselves strong within the empire,
and let all outside it, save only our kinsmen of America, go their own
way and meet their own fate without let or hindrance from us. It is
amazing to find that even the Americans could understand the stock
from which they are themselves sprung so little that such papers as
the 'New York Herald' should imagine that our defeat at Colenso was a
good opportunity for us to terminate the war. The other leading
American journals, however, took a more sane view of the situation,
and realised that ten years of such defeats would not find the end
either of our resolution or of our resources.

In the British Islands and in the empire at large our misfortunes were
met by a sombre but unalterable determination to carry the war to a
successful conclusion and to spare no sacrifices which could lead to
that end. Amid the humiliation of our reverses there was a certain
undercurrent of satisfaction that the deeds of our foemen should at
least have made the contention that the strong was wantonly attacking
the weak an absurd one. Under the stimulus of defeat the opposition to
the war sensibly decreased.  It had become too absurd even for the
most unreasonable platform orator to contend that a struggle had been
forced upon the Boers when every fresh detail showed how thoroughly
they had prepared for such a contingency and how much we had to make
up. Many who had opposed the war simply on that sporting instinct
which backs the smaller against the larger began to realise that what
with the geographical position of these people, what with the nature
of their country, and what with the mobility, number, and hardihood of
their forces, we had undertaken a task which would necessitate such a
military effort as we had never before been called upon to make. when
Kipling at the dawn of the war had sung of 'fifty thousand horse and
foot going to Table Bay,' the statement had seemed extreme.  Now it
was growing upon the public mind that four times this number would not
be an excessive estimate. But the nation rose grandly to the effort.
Their only fear, often and loudly expressed, was that Parliament would
deal too tamely with the situation and fail to demand sufficient
sacrifices.  Such was the wave of feeling over the country that it was
impossible to hold a peace meeting anywhere without a certainty of
riot.  The only London daily which had opposed the war, though very
ably edited, was overborne by the general sentiment and compelled to
change its line.  In the provinces also opposition was almost silent,
and the great colonies were even more unanimous than the mother
country.  Misfortune had solidified us where success might have caused
a sentimental opposition.

On the whole, the energetic mood of the nation was reflected by the
decided measures of the Government. Before the deep-sea cables had
told us the lists of our dead, steps had been taken to prove to the
world how great were our latent resources and how determined our
spirit.  On December 18th, two days after Colenso, the following
provisions were made for carrying on the campaign.

1. That as General Buller's hands were full in Natal the supervision
and direction of the whole campaign should be placed in the hands of
Lord Roberts, with Lord Kitchener as his chief of staff. Thus the
famous old soldier and the famous young one were called together to
the assistance of the country.

2. That all the remaining army reserves should be called out.

3. That the 7th Division (10,000 men) should be despatched to Africa,
and that an 8th Division should be formed ready for service.

4. That considerable artillery reinforcements, including a howitzer
brigade, should go out.

5. That eleven Militia battalions be sent abroad.

6. That a strong contingent of Volunteers be sent out.

7. That a Yeomanry mounted force be despatched.

8. That mounted corps be raised at the discretion of the
Commander-in-Chief in South Africa.

9. That the patriotic offers of further contingents from the colonies
be gratefully accepted.

By these measures it was calculated that from seventy to a hundred thousand men would be added to our South African armies, the numbers of which were already not short of a hundred thousand.

It is one thing, however, to draw up paper reinforcements, and it is
another, in a free country where no compulsion would be tolerated, to
turn these plans into actual regiments and squadrons. But if there
were any who doubted that this ancient nation still glowed with the
spirit of its youth his fears must soon have passed away.  For this
far-distant war, a war of the unseen foe and of the murderous
ambuscade, there were so many volunteers that the authorities were
embarrassed by their numbers and their pertinacity. It was a
stimulating sight to see those long queues of top-hatted, frock-coated
young men who waited their turn for the orderly room with as much
desperate anxiety as if hard fare, a veldt bed, and Boer bullets were
all that life had that was worth the holding.  Especially the Imperial
Yeomanry, a corps of riders and shots, appealed to the sporting
instincts of our race. Many could ride and not shoot, many could shoot
and not ride, more candidates were rejected than were accepted, and
yet in a very short time eight thousand men from every class were
wearing the grey coats and bandoliers.  This singular and formidable
force was drawn from every part of England and Scotland, with a
contingent of hard-riding Irish fox-hunters. Noblemen and grooms rode
knee to knee in the ranks, and the officers included many well-known
country gentlemen and masters of hounds.  Well horsed and well armed,
a better force for the work in hand could not be imagined.  So high
did the patriotism run that corps were formed in which the men not
only found their own equipment but contributed their pay to the war
fund. Many young men about town justified their existence for the
first time.  In a single club, which is peculiarly consecrated to the
JEUNESSE DOREE, three hundred members rode to the wars.

Without waiting for these distant but necessary reinforcements, the
Generals in Africa had two divisions to look to, one of which was
actually arriving while the other was on the sea.  These formed the
5th Division under Sir Charles Warren, and the 6th Division under
General Kelly-Kenny. Until these forces should arrive it was obviously
best that the three armies should wait, for, unless there should be
pressing need of help on the part of the besieged garrisons or
imminent prospects of European complications, every week which passed
was in our favour. There was therefore a long lull in the war, during
which Methuen strengthened his position at Modder River, Gatacre held
his own at Sterkstroom, and Buller built up his strength for another
attempt at the relief of Ladysmith. The only connected series of
operations during that time were those of General French in the
neighbourhood of Colesberg, an account of which will be found in their
entirety elsewhere. A short narrative may be given here of the doings
of each of these forces until the period of inaction came to an end.

Methuen after the repulse at Magersfontein had fallen back upon the
lines of Modder River, and had fortified them in such a way that he
felt himself secure against assault. Cronje, on the other hand, had
extended his position both to the right and to the left, and had
strengthened the works which we had already found so formidable.  In
this way a condition of inaction was established which was really very
much to our advantage, since Methuen retained his communications by
rail, while all supplies to Cronje had to come a hundred miles by
road. The British troops, and especially the Highland Brigade, were
badly in need of a rest after the very severe ordeal which they had
undergone. General Hector Macdonald, whose military record had earned
the soldierly name of 'Fighting Mac,' was sent for from India to take
the place of the ill-fated Wauchope. Pending his arrival and that of
reinforcements, Methuen remained quiet, and the Boers fortunately
followed his example. From over the northern horizon those silver
flashes of light told that Kimberley was dauntless in the present and
hopeful of the future.  On January 1st the British post of Kuruman
fell, by which twelve officers and 120 police were captured.  The town
was isolated, and its capture could have no effect upon the general
operations, but it is remarkable as the only capture of a fortified
post up to this point made by the Boers.

The monotony of the long wait was broken by one dashing raid carried
out by a detachment from Methuen's line of communications.  This force
consisted of 200 Queenslanders, 100 Canadians (Toronto Company), 40
mounted Munster Fusiliers, a New South Wales Ambulance, and 200 of the
Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry with one horse battery.  This
singular force, so small in numbers and yet raked from the ends of the
earth, was under the command of Colonel Pilcher.  Moving out suddenly
and rapidly from Belmont, it struck at the extreme right of the Boer
line, which consisted of a laager occupied by the colonial rebels of
that part of the country.  Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm of the
colonists at the prospect of action.  'At last!' was the cry which
went up from the Canadians when they were ordered to advance. The
result was an absolute success. The rebels broke and fled, their camp
was taken, and forty of them fell into our hands.  Our own loss was
slight, three killed and a few wounded.  The flying column occupied
the town of Douglas and hoisted the British flag there; but it was
decided that the time had not yet come when it could be held, and the
force fell back upon Belmont.  The rebel prisoners were sent down to
Cape Town for trial.  The movement was covered by the advance of a
force under Babington from Methuen's force.  This detachment,
consisting of the 9th and 12th Lancers, with some mounted infantry and
G troop of Horse Artillery, prevented any interference with Pilcher's
force from the north. It is worthy of record that though the two
bodies of troops were operating at a distance of thirty miles, they
succeeded in preserving a telephonic connection, seventeen minutes
being the average time taken over question and reply.

Encouraged by this small success, Methuen's cavalry on January 9th
made another raid over the Free State border, which is remarkable for
the fact that, save in the case of Colonel Plumer's Rhodesian Force,
it was the first time that the enemy's frontier had been violated. The
expedition under Babington consisted of the same regiments and the
same battery which had covered Pilcher's advance. The line taken was a
south-easterly one, so as to get far round the left flank of the Boer
position. With the aid of a party of the Victorian Mounted Rifles a
considerable tract of country was overrun, and some farmhouses
destroyed.  The latter extreme measure may have been taken as a
warning to the Boers that such depredations as they had carried out in
parts of Natal could not pass with impunity, but both the policy and
the humanity of such a course appear to be open to question, and there
was some cause for the remonstrance which President Kruger shortly
after addressed to us upon the subject. The expedition returned to
Modder Camp at the end of two days without having seen the enemy. Save
for one or two similar cavalry reconnaissances, an occasional
interchange of long-range shells, a little sniping, and one or two
false alarms at night, which broke the whole front of Magersfontein
into yellow lines of angry light, nothing happened to Methuen's force
which is worthy of record up to the time of that movement of General
Hector Macdonald to Koodoosberg which may be considered in connection
with Lord Roberts's decisive operations, of which it was really a
part.

The doings of General Gatacre's force during the long interval which
passed between his disaster at Stormberg and the final general advance
may be rapidly chronicled.  Although nominally in command of a
division, Gatacre's troops were continually drafted off to east and to
west, so that it was seldom that he had more than a brigade under his
orders.  During the weeks of waiting, his force consisted of three
field batteries, the 74th, 77th, and 79th, some mounted police and
irregular horse, the remains of the Royal Irish Rifles and the 2nd
Northumberland Fusiliers, the 1st Royal Scots, the Derbyshire
regiment, and the Berkshires, the whole amounting to about 5,500 men,
who had to hold the whole district from Sterkstroom to East London on
the coast, with a victorious enemy in front and a disaffected
population around.  Under these circumstances he could not attempt to
do more than to hold his ground at Sterkstroom, and this he did
unflinchingly until the line of the Boer defence broke down.  Scouting
and raiding expeditions, chiefly organised by Captain De Montmorency
-- whose early death cut short the career of one who possessed every
quality of a partisan leader -- broke the monotony of inaction.
During the week which ended the year a succession of small skirmishes,
of which the town of Dordrecht was the centre, exercised the troops in
irregular warfare.

On January 3rd the Boer forces advanced and attacked the camp of the
Cape Mounted Police, which was some eight miles in advance of
Gatacre's main position.  The movement, however, was a half-hearted
one, and was beaten off with small loss upon their part and less upon
ours. From then onwards no movement of importance took place in
Gatacre's column until the general advance along the whole line had
cleared his difficulties from in front of him.

In the meantime General Buller had also been playing a waiting game,
and, secure in the knowledge that Ladysmith could still hold out, he
had been building up his strength for a second attempt to relieve the
hard-pressed and much-enduring garrison.  After the repulse at
Colenso, Hildyard's and Barton's brigades had remained at Chieveley
with the mounted infantry, the naval guns, and two field batteries.
The rest of the force retired to Frere, some miles in the
rear. Emboldened by their success, the Boers sent raiding parties over
the Tugela on either flank, which were only checked by our patrols
being extended from Springfield on the west to Weenen on the east.  A
few plundered farmhouses and a small list of killed and wounded
horsemen on either side were the sole result of these spasmodic and
half-hearted operations.

Time here as elsewhere was working for the British, for reinforcements
were steadily coming to Buller's army. By the new year Sir Charles
Warren's division (the 5th) was nearly complete at Estcourt, whence it
could reach the front at any moment.  This division included the 10th
brigade, consisting of the Imperial Light Infantry, 2nd Somersets, the
2nd Dorsets, and the 2nd Middlesex; also the 11th, called the
Lancashire Brigade, formed by the 2nd Royal Lancaster, the 2nd
Lancashire Fusiliers, the 1st South Lancashire, and the York and
Lancaster. The division also included the 14th Hussars and the 19th,
20th, and 28th batteries of Field Artillery. Other batteries of
artillery, including one howitzer battery, came to strengthen Buller's
force, which amounted now to more than 30,000 men. Immense transport
preparations had to be made, however, before the force could have the
mobility necessary for a flank march, and it was not until January
11th that General Buller's new plans for advance could be set into
action. Before describing what these plans were and the disappointing
fate which awaited them, we will return to the story of the siege of
Ladysmith, and show how narrowly the relieving force escaped the
humiliation -- some would say the disgrace -- of seeing the town which
looked to them for help fall beneath their very eyes. That this did
not occur is entirely due to the fierce tenacity and savage endurance
of the disease-ridden and half-starved men who held on to the frail
lines which covered it.


CHAPTER XIII

THE SIEGE OF LADYSMITH


Monday, October 30th, 1899, is not a date which can be looked back to
with satisfaction by any Briton. In a scrambling and ill-managed
action we had lost our detached left wing almost to a man, while our
right had been hustled with no great loss but with some ignominy into
Ladysmith.  Our guns had been outshot, our infantry checked, and our
cavalry paralysed. Eight hundred prisoners may seem no great loss when
compared with a Sedan, or even with an Ulm; but such matters are
comparative, and the force which laid down its arms at Nicholson's Nek
is the largest British force which has surrendered since the days of
our great grandfathers, when the egregious Duke of York commanded in
Flanders.

Sir George White was now confronted with the certainty of an
investment, an event for which apparently no preparation had been
made, since with an open railway behind him so many useless mouths had
been permitted to remain in the town. Ladysmith lies in a hollow and
is dominated by a ring of hills, some near and some distant.  The near
ones were in our hands, but no attempt had been made in the early days
of the war to fortify and hold Bulwana, Lombard's Kop, and the other
positions from which the town might be shelled. Whether these might or
might not have been successfully held has been much disputed by
military men, the balance of opinion being that Bulwana, at least,
which has a water-supply of its own, might have been retained.  This
question, however, was already academic, as the outer hills were in
the hands of the enemy. As it was, the inner line -- Caesar's Camp,
Wagon Hill, Rifleman's Post, and round to Helpmakaar Hill -- made a
perimeter of fourteen miles, and the difficulty of retaining so
extensive a line goes far to exonerate General White, not only for
abandoning the outer hills, but also for retaining his cavalry in the
town.

After the battle of Ladysmith and the retreat of the British, the
Boers in their deliberate but effective fashion set about the
investment of the town, while the British commander accepted the same
as inevitable, content if he could stem and hold back from the colony
the threatened flood of invasion.  On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
and Friday the commandoes gradually closed in upon the south and east,
harassed by some cavalry operations and reconnaissances upon our part,
the effect of which was much exaggerated by the press.  On Thursday,
November 2nd, the last train escaped under a brisk fire, the
passengers upon the wrong side of the seats. At 2 P.M. on the same day
the telegraph line was cut, and the lonely town settled herself
somberly down to the task of holding off the exultant Boers until the
day-supposed to be imminent -- when the relieving army should appear from
among the labyrinth of mountains which lay to the south of them.  Some
there were who, knowing both the enemy and the mountains, felt a cold
chill within their hearts as they asked themselves how an army was to
come through, but the greater number, from General to private, trusted
implicitly in the valour of their comrades and in the luck of the
British Army.

One example of that historical luck was ever before their eyes in the
shape of those invaluable naval guns which had arrived so dramatically
at the very crisis of the fight, in time to check the monster on
Pepworth Hill and to cover the retreat of the army. But for them the
besieged must have lain impotent under the muzzles of the huge
Creusots.  But in spite of the naive claims put forward by the Boers
to some special Providence -- a process which a friendly German critic
described as `commandeering the Almighty' -- it is certain that in a very
peculiar degree, in the early months of this war there came again and
again a happy chance, or a merciful interposition, which saved the
British from disaster. Now in this first week of November, when every
hill, north and south and east and west, flashed and smoked, and the
great 96-pound shells groaned and screamed over the town, it was to
the long thin 4·7's and to the hearty bearded men who worked them,
that soldiers and townsfolk looked for help. These guns of Lambton's,
supplemented by two old-fashioned 6·3 howitzers manned by survivors
from No.10 Mountain Battery, did all that was possible to keep down
the fire of the heavy Boer guns. If they could not save, they could at
least hit back, and punishment is not so bad to bear when one is
giving as well as receiving.

By the end of the first week of November the Boers had established
their circle of fire. On the east of the town, broken by the loops of
the Klip River, is a broad green plain, some miles in extent, which
furnished grazing ground for the horses and cattle of the
besieged. Beyond it rises into a long flat-topped hill the famous
Bulwana, upon which lay one great Creusot and several smaller guns.
To the north, on Pepworth Hill, was another Creusot, and between the
two were the Boer batteries upon Lombard's Kop. The British naval guns
were placed upon this side, for, as the open loop formed by the river
lies at this end, it is the part of the defences which is most liable
to assault. From thence all round the west down to Besters in the
south was a continuous series of hills, each crowned with Boer guns,
which, if they could not harm the distant town, were at least
effective in holding the garrison to its lines.  So formidable were
these positions that, amid much outspoken criticism, it has never been
suggested that White would have been justified with a limited garrison
in incurring the heavy loss of life which must have followed an
attempt to force them.

The first few days of the siege were clouded by the death of
Lieutenant Egerton of the 'Powerful,' one of the most promising
officers in the Navy.  One leg and the other foot were carried off, as
he lay upon the sandbag parapet watching the effect of our fire.
'There's an end of my cricket,' said the gallant sportsman, and he was
carried to the rear with a cigar between his clenched teeth.

On November 3rd a strong cavalry reconnaissance was pushed down the
Colenso road to ascertain the force which the enemy had in that
direction. Colonel Brocklehurst took with him the 18th and 19th
Hussars, the 5th Lancers and the 5th Dragoon Guards, with the Light
Horse and the Natal Volunteers.  Some desultory fighting ensued which
achieved no end, and was chiefly remarkable for the excellent
behaviour of the Colonials, who showed that they were the equals of
the Regulars in gallantry and their superiors in the tactics which
such a country requires.  The death of Major Taunton, Captain Knapp,
and young Brabant, the son of the General who did such good service at
a later stage of the war, was a heavy price to pay for the knowledge
that the Boers were in considerable strength to the south.

By the end of this week the town had already settled down to the
routine of the siege.  General Joubert, with the chivalry which had
always distinguished him, had permitted the garrison to send out the
non-combatants to a place called Intombi Camp (promptly named
Funkersdorp by the facetious) where they were safe from the shells,
though the burden of their support still fell of course upon the
much-tried commissariat.  The hale and male of the townsfolk refused
for the most part to avoid the common danger, and clung tenaciously to
their shot-torn village.  Fortunately the river has worn down its
banks until it runs through a deep channel, in the sides of which it
was found to be possible to hollow out caves which were practically
bomb-proof. Here for some months the townsfolk led a troglodytic
existence, returning to their homes upon that much appreciated seventh
day of rest which was granted to them by their Sabbatarian besiegers.

The perimeter of the defence had been divided off so that each corps
might be responsible for its own section. To the south was the
Manchester Regiment upon the hill called Cæsar's Camp.  Between
Lombard's Kop and the town, on the north-east, were the Devons.  To
the north, at what seemed the vulnerable point, were the Rifle
Brigade, the Rifles, and the remains of the 18th Hussars.  To the west
were the 5th Lancers, 19th Hussars, and 5th Dragoon Guards. The rest
of the force was encamped round the outskirts of the town.

There appears to have been some idea in the Boer mind that the mere
fact that they held a dominant position over the town would soon
necessitate the surrender of the army. At the end of a week they had
realised, however, just as the British had, that a siege lay before
both.  Their fire upon the town was heavy but not deadly, though it
became more effective as the weeks went on.  Their practice at a range
of five miles was exceedingly accurate.  At the same time their
riflemen became more venturesome, and on Tuesday, November 7th, they
made a half-hearted attack upon the Manchesters' position on the
south, which was driven back without difficulty.  On the 9th, however,
their attempt was of a more serious and sustained character.  It began
with a heavy shell-fire and with a demonstration of rifle-fire from
every side, which had for its object the prevention of reinforcements
for the true point of danger, which again was Cæsar's Camp at the
south. It is evident that the Boers had from the beginning made up
their minds that here lay the key of the position, as the two serious
attacks-that of November 9th and that of January 6th-were directed
upon this point.

The Manchesters at Cæsar's Camp had been reinforced by the 1st
battalion 60th Rifles, who held the prolongation of the same ridge,
which is called Waggon Hill. With the dawn it was found that the Boer
riflemen were within eight hundred yards, and from then till evening a
constant fire was maintained upon the hill. The Boer, however, save
when the odds are all in his favour, is not, in spite of his
considerable personal bravery, at his best in attack.  His racial
traditions, depending upon the necessity for economy of human life,
are all opposed to it. As a consequence two regiments well posted were
able to hold them off all day with a loss which did not exceed thirty
killed and wounded, while the enemy, exposed to the shrapnel of the
42nd battery, as well as the rifle-fire of the infantry, must have
suffered very much more severely.  The result of the action was a
well-grounded belief that in daylight there was very little chance of
the Boers being able to carry the lines. As the date was that of the
Prince of Wales's birthday, a salute of twenty-one shotted naval guns
wound up a successful day.

The failure of the attempt upon Ladysmith seems to have convinced the
enemy that a waiting game, in which hunger, shell-fire, and disease
were their allies, would be surer and less expensive than an open
assault. From their distant hilltops they continued to plague the
town, while garrison and citizens sat grimly patient, and learned to
endure if not to enjoy the crash of the 96-pound shells, and the
patter of shrapnel upon their corrugated-iron roofs. The supplies were
adequate, and the besieged were fortunate in the presence of a
first-class organiser, Colonel Ward of Islington fame, who with the
assistance of Colonel Stoneman systematised the collection and issue
of all the food, civil and military, so as to stretch it to its
utmost. With rain overhead and mud underfoot, chafing at their own
idleness and humiliated by their own position1 the soldiers waited
through the weary weeks for the relief which never came.  On some days
there was more shell-fire, on some less; on some there was sniping, on
some none; on some they sent a little feeler of cavalry and guns out
of the town, on most they lay still -- such were the ups and downs of
life in Ladysmith. The inevitable siege paper, 'The Ladysmith Lyre,'
appeared, and did something to relieve the monotony by the
exasperation of its jokes.  Night, morning, and noon the shells rained
upon the town until the most timid learned fatalism if not bravery.
The crash of the percussion, and the strange musical tang of the
shrapnel sounded ever in their ears. With their glasses the garrison
could see the gay frocks and parasols of the Boer ladies who had come
down by train to see the torture of the doomed town.

The Boers were sufficiently numerous, aided by their strong positions
and excellent artillery, to mask the Ladysmith force and to sweep on
at once to the conquest of Natal. Had they done so it is hard to see
what could have prevented them from riding their horses down to salt
water. A few odds and ends, half battalions and local volunteers,
stood between them and Durban. But here, as on the Orange River, a
singular paralysis seems to have struck them. When the road lay clear
before them the first transports of the army corps were hardly past
St. Vincent, but before they had made up their mind to take that road
the harbour of Durban was packed with our shipping and ten thousand
men had thrown themselves across their path.

For a moment we may leave the fortunes of Ladysmith to follow this
southerly movement of the Boers. Within two days of the investment of
the town they had swung round their left flank and attacked Colenso,
twelve miles south, shelling the Durban Light Infantry out of their
post with a long-range fire.  The British fell back twenty-seven miles
and concentrated at Estcourt, leaving the all-important Colenso
railway-bridge in the hands of the enemy. From this onwards they held
the north of the Tugela, and many a widow wore crepe before we got our
grip upon it once more. Never was there a more critical week in the
war, but having got Colenso the Boers did little more. They formally
annexed the whole of Northern Natal to the Orange Free State -- a
dangerous precedent when the tables should be turned. With amazing
assurance the burghers pegged out farms for themselves and sent for
their people to occupy these newly won estates.

On November 5th the Boers had remained so inert that the British
returned in small force to Colenso and removed some stores -- which
seems to suggest that the original retirement was premature. Four days
passed in inactivity -- four precious days for us -- and on the
evening of the fourth, November 9th, the watchers on the signal
station at Table Mountain saw the smoke of a great steamer coming past
Robben Island. It was the 'Roslin Castle' with the first of the
reinforcements. Within the week the 'Moor,' 'Yorkshire,' 'Aurania,'
'Hawarden Castle,' 'Gascon,' Armenian,' 'Oriental,' and a fleet of
others had passed for Durban with 15,000 men. Once again the command
of the sea had saved the Empire.

But, now that it was too late, the Boers suddenly took the initiative,
and in dramatic fashion. North of Estcourt, where General Hildyard was
being daily reinforced from the sea, there are two small townlets, or
at least geographical (and railway) points. Frere is about ten miles
north of Estcourt, and Chieveley is five miles north of that and about
as far to the south of Colenso.  On November 15th an armoured train
was despatched from Estcourt to see what was going on up the
line. Already one disaster had befallen us in this campaign on account
of these clumsy contrivances, and a heavier one was now to confirm the
opinion that, acting alone, they are totally inadmissible. As a means
of carrying artillery for a force operating upon either flank of them,
with an assured retreat behind, there may be a place for them in
modern war, but as a method of scouting they appear to be the most
inefficient and also the most expensive that has ever been
invented. An intelligent horseman would gather more information, be
less visible, and retain some freedom as to route. After our
experience the armoured train may steam out of military history.

The train contained ninety Dublin Fusiliers, eighty Durban Volunteers,
and ten sailors, with a naval 7-pounder gun.  Captain Haldane of the
Gordons, Lieutenant Frankland (Dublin Fusiliers), and Winston
Churchill, the well-known correspondent, accompanied the
expedition. What might have been foreseen occurred. The train steamed
into the advancing Boer army, was fired upon, tried to escape, found
the rails blocked behind it, and upset. Dublins and Durbans were shot
helplessly out of their trucks, under a heavy fire. A railway accident
is a nervous thing, and so is an ambuscade, but the combination of the
two must be appalling.  Yet there were brave hearts which rose to the
occasion.  Haldane and Frankland rallied the troops, and Churchill the
engine-driver.  The engine was disentangled and sent on with its cab
full of wounded. Churchill, who had escaped upon it, came gallantly
back to share the fate of his comrades.  The dazed shaken soldiers
continued a futile resistance for some time, but there was neither
help nor escape and nothing for them but surrender. The most Spartan
military critic cannot blame them.  A few slipped away besides those
who escaped upon the engine.  Our losses were two killed, twenty
wounded, and about eighty taken. It is remarkable that of the three
leaders both Haldane and Churchill succeeded in escaping from
Pretoria.

A double tide of armed men was now pouring into Southern Natal. From
below, trainload after trainload of British regulars were coming up to
the danger point, feted and cheered at every station. Lonely
farmhouses near the line hung out their Union Jacks, and the folk on
the stoep heard the roar of the choruses as the great trains swung
upon their way.  From above the Boers were flooding down, as Churchill
saw them, dour, resolute, riding silently through the rain, or
chanting hymns round their camp fires -- brave honest farmers, but
standing unconsciously for mediævalism and corruption, even as our
rough-tongued Tommies stood for civilisation, progress, and equal
rights for all men.

The invading force, the numbers of which could not have exceeded some
few thousands, formidable only for their mobility, lapped round the
more powerful but less active force at Estcourt, and struck behind it
at its communications. There was for a day or two some discussion as
to a further retreat, but Hildyard, strengthened by the advice and
presence of Colonel Long, determined to hold his ground. On November
21st the raiding Boers were as far south as Nottingham Road, a point
thirty miles south of Estcourt and only forty miles north of the
considerable city of Pietermaritzburg. The situation was
serious. Either the invaders must be stopped, or the second largest
town in the colony would be in their hands.  From all sides came tales
of plundered farms and broken households.  Some at least of the
raiders behaved with wanton brutality. Smashed pianos, shattered
pictures, slaughtered stock, and vile inscriptions, all exhibit a
predatory and violent side to the paradoxical Boer
character.[Footnote: More than once I have heard the farmers in the
Free State acknowledge that the ruin which had come upon them was a
just retribution for the excesses of Natal.]

The next British post behind Hildyard's at Estcourt was Barton's upon
the Mooi River, thirty miles to the south.  Upon this the Boers made a
half-hearted attempt, but Joubert had begun to realise the strength of
the British reinforcements and the impossibility with the numbers at
his disposal of investing a succession of British posts.  He ordered
Botha to withdraw from Mooi River and begin his northerly trek.

The turning-point of the Boer invasion of Natal was marked, though we
cannot claim that it was caused, by the action of Willow Grange.  This
was fought by Hildyard and Walter Kitchener in command of the Estcourt
garrison, against about 2,000 of the invaders under Louis Botha.  The
troops engaged were the East and West Surreys (four companies of the
latter), the West Yorkshires, the Durban Light Infantry, No.7 battery
R.F.A., two naval guns, and some hundreds of Colonial Horse.

The enemy being observed to have a gun upon a hill within striking
distance of Estcourt, this force set out on November 22nd to make a
night attack and to endeavour to capture it.  The hill was taken
without difficulty, but it was found that the gun had been removed.  A
severe counter-attack was made at daylight by the Boers, and the
troops were compelled with no great loss and less glory to return to
the town.  The Surreys and the Yorkshires behaved very well, but were
placed in a difficult position and were badly supported by the
artillery.  Martyn's Mounted Infantry covered the retirement with
great gallantry, but the skirmish ended in a British loss of fourteen
killed and fifty wounded or missing, which was certainly more than
that of the Boers.  From this indecisive action of Willow Grange the
Boer invasion receded until General Buller, coming to the front on
November 27th, found that the enemy was once more occupying the line
of the Tugela.  He himself moved up to Frere, where he devoted his
time and energies to the collection of that force with which he has
destined, after three failures, to make his way into Ladysmith.

One unexpected and little known result of the Boer expedition into
Southern Natal was that their leader, the chivalrous Joubert, injured
himself through his horse stumbling, and was physically incapacitated
for the remainder of the campaign. He returned almost immediately to
Pretoria, leaving the command of the Tugela in the hands of Louis
Botha.

Leaving Buller to organise his army at Frere, and the Boer commanders
to draw their screen of formidable defences along the Tugela, we will
return once more to the fortunes of the unhappy town round which the
interest of the world, and possibly the destiny of the Empire, were
centering. It is very certain that had Ladysmith fallen, and twelve
thousand British soldiers with a million pounds' worth of stores
fallen into the hands of the invaders, we should have been faced with
the alternative of abandoning the struggle, or of reconquering South
Africa from Cape Town northwards. South Africa is the keystone of the
Empire, and for the instant Ladysmith was the keystone of South
Africa. But the courage of the troops who held the shell-torn townlet,
and the confidence of the public who watched them, never faltered for
an instant.

December 8th was marked by a gallant exploit on the part of the
beleaguered garrison. Not a whisper had transpired of the coming
sortie, and a quarter of an hour before the start officers engaged had
no idea of it. 0 SI SIC OMNIA! At ten o'clock a band of men slipped
out of the town. There were six hundred of them, all irregulars, drawn
from the Imperial Light Horse, the Natal Carabineers, and the Border
Mounted Rifles, under the command of Hunter, youngest and most dashing
of British Generals. Edwardes and Boyston were the subcommanders. The
men had no knowledge of where they were going or what they had to do,
but they crept silently along under a drifting sky, with peeps of a
quarter moon, over a mimosa-shadowed plain. At last in front of them
there loomed a dark mass -- it was Gun Hill, from which one of the
great Creusots had plagued them. A strong support (four hundred men)
was left at the base of the hill, and the others, one hundred
Imperials, one hundred Borders and Carabineers, ten Sappers, crept
upwards with Major Henderson as guide. A Dutch outpost challenged, but
was satisfied by a Dutch-speaking Carabineer.  Higher and higher the
men crept, the silence broken only by the occasional slip of a stone
or the rustle of their own breathing. Most of them had left their
boots below. Even in the darkness they kept some formation, and the
right wing curved forward to outflank the defence. Suddenly a Mauser
crack and a spurt of flame-then another and another! 'Come on, boys!
Fix bayonets!' yelled Karri Davies. There were no bayonets, but that
was a detail. At the word the gunners were off, and there in the
darkness in front of the storming party loomed the enormous gun,
gigantic in that uncertain light. Out with the huge breech-block! Wrap
the long lean muzzle round with a collar of gun-cotton! Keep the guard
upon the run until the work is done! Hunter stood by with a night
light in his hand until the charge was in position, and then, with a
crash which brought both armies from their tents, the huge tube reared
up on its mountings and toppled backwards into the pit.  A howitzer
lurked beside it, and this also was blown into ruin. The attendant
Maxim was dragged back by the exultant captors, who reached the town
amid shoutings and laughter with the first break of day. One man
wounded, the gallant Henderson, is the cheap price for the
best-planned and most dashing exploit of the war. Secrecy in
conception, vigour in execution -- they are the root ideas of the
soldier's craft. So easily was the enterprise carried out, and so
defective the Boer watch, that it is probable that if all the guns had
been simultaneously attacked the Boers might have found themselves
without a single piece of ordnance in the morning.[Footnote: The
destruction of the Creusot was not as complete as was hoped. It was
taken back to Pretoria, three feet were sawn off the muzzle, and a new
breech-block provided. The gun was then sent to Kimberley, and it was
the heavy cannon which arrived late in the history of that siege and
caused considerable consternation among the inhabitants.]

On the same morning (December 9th) a cavalry reconnaissance was pushed
in the direction of Pepworth Hill. The object no doubt was to
ascertain whether the enemy were still present in force, and the
terrific roll of the Mausers answered it in the affirmative. Two
killed and twenty wounded was the price which we paid for the
information. There had been three such reconnaissances in the five
weeks of the siege, and it is difficult to see what advantage they
gave or how they are to be justified. Far be it for the civilian to
dogmatise upon such matters, but one can repeat, and to the best of
one's judgment endorse, the opinion of the vast majority of officers.

There were heart burnings among the Regulars that the colonial troops
should have gone in front of them, so their martial jealousy was
allayed three nights later by the same task being given to them. Four
companies of the 2nd Rifle Brigade were the troops chosen, with a few
sappers and gunners, the whole under the command of Colonel Metcalfe
of the same battalion. A single gun, the 4·7 howitzer upon Surprise
Hill, was the objective. Again there was the stealthy advance through
the darkness, again the support was left at the bottom of the hill,
again the two companies carefully ascended, again there was the
challenge, the rush, the flight, and the gun was in the hands of the
stormers.

Here and only here the story varies. For some reason the fuse used for
the guncotton was defective, and half an hour elapsed before the
explosion destroyed the howitzer. When it came it came very
thoroughly, but it was a weary time in coming. Then our men descended
the hill, but the Boers were already crowding in upon them from either
side. The English cries of the soldiers were answered in English by
the Boers, and slouch hat or helmet dimly seen in the mirk was the
only badge of friend or foe. A singular letter is extant from young
Reitz (the son of the Transvaal secretary), who was present. According
to his account there were but eight Boers present, but assertion or
contradiction equally valueless in the darkness of such a night, and
there are some obvious discrepancies in his statement. 'We fired among
them,' says Reitz. 'They stopped and all cried out "Rifle Brigade."
Then one of them said "Charge!" One officer, Captain Paley, advanced,
though he had two bullet wounds already. Joubert gave him another shot
and he fell on the top of us. Four Englishmen got hold of Jan Luttig
and struck him on the head with their rifles and stabbed him in the
stomach with a bayonet. He seized two of them by the throat and
shouted "Help, boys!" His two nearest comrades shot two of them, and
the other two bolted. Then the English came up in numbers, about eight
hundred, along the footpath' (there were two hundred on the hill, but
the exaggeration is pardonable in the darkness), 'and we lay as quiet
as mice along the bank. Farther on the English killed three of our men
with bayonets and wounded two. In the morning we found Captain Paley
and twenty-two of them killed and wounded.' It seems evident that
Reitz means that his own little party were eight men, and not that
that represented the force which intercepted the retiring
riflemen. Within his own knowledge five of his countrymen were killed
in the scuffle, so the total loss was probably considerable. Our own
casualties were eleven dead, forty-three wounded, and six prisoners,
but the price was not excessive for the howitzer and for the MORALE
which arises from such exploits. Had it not been for that unfortunate
fuse, the second success might have been as bloodless as the first.
'I am sorry,' said a sympathetic correspondent to the stricken
Paley. 'But we got the gun,' Paley whispered, and he spoke for the
Brigade.

Amid the shell-fire, the scanty rations, the enteric and the
dysentery, one ray of comfort had always brightened the
garrison. Buller was only twelve miles away -- they could hear his
guns -- and when his advance came in earnest their sufferings would be
at an end. But now in an instant this single light was shut off and
the true nature of their situation was revealed to them. Buller had
indeed moved... but backwards. He had been defeated at Colenso, and
the siege was not ending but beginning. With heavier hearts but
undiminished resolution the army and the townsfolk settled down to the
long, dour struggle. The exultant enemy replaced their shattered guns
and drew their lines closer still round the stricken town.

A record of the siege onwards until the break of the New Year centres
upon the sordid details of the sick returns and of the price of
food. Fifty on one day, seventy on the next, passed under the hands of
the overworked and devoted doctors.  Fifteen hundred, and later two
thousand, of the garrison were down.  The air was poisoned by foul
sewage and dark with obscene flies. They speckled the scanty food.
Eggs were already a shilling each, cigarettes sixpence, whisky five
pounds a bottle: a city more free from gluttony and drunkenness has
never been seen.

Shell-fire has shown itself in this war to be an excellent ordeal for
those who desire martial excitement with a minimum of danger. But now
and again some black chance guides a bomb -- one in five thousand
perhaps -- to a most tragic issue.  Such a deadly missile falling
among Boers near Kimberley is said to have slain nine and wounded
seventeen. In Ladysmith too there are days to be marked in red when
the gunner shot better than he knew. One shell on December 17th killed
six men (Natal Carabineers), wounded three, and destroyed fourteen
horses. The grisly fact has been recorded that five separate human
legs lay upon the ground. On December 22nd another tragic shot killed
five and wounded twelve of the Devons.  On the same day four officers
of the 5th Lancers (including the Colonel) and one sergeant were
wounded -- a most disastrous day.  A little later it was again the
turn of the Devons, who lost one officer killed and ten wounded.
Christmas set in amid misery, hunger, and disease, the more piteous
for the grim attempts to amuse the children and live up to the joyous
season, when the present of Santa Claus was too often a 96-pound
shell. On the top of all other troubles it was now known that the
heavy ammunition was running short and must be husbanded for
emergencies. There was no surcease, however, in the constant hail
which fell upon the town.  Two or three hundred shells were a not
unusual daily allowance.

The monotonous bombardment with which the New Year had commenced was
soon to be varied by a most gallant and spirit-stirring clash of arms.
On January 6th the Boers delivered their great assault upon Ladysmith
-- an onfall so gallantly made and gallantly met that it deserves to
rank among the classic fights of British military history.  It is a
tale which neither side need be ashamed to tell. Honour to the sturdy
infantry who held their grip so long, and honour also to the rough men
of the veldt, who, led by untrained civilians, stretched us to the
utmost capacity of our endurance.

It may be that the Boers wished once for all to have done at all costs
with the constant menace to their rear, or it may be that the
deliberate preparations of Buller for his second advance had alarmed
them, and that they realised that they must act quickly if they were
to act at all.  At any rate, early in the New Year a most determined
attack was decided upon.  The storming party consisted of some
hundreds of picked volunteers from the Heidelberg (Transvaal) and
Harrismith (Free State) contingents, led by de Villiers.  They were
supported by several thousand riflemen, who might secure their success
or cover their retreat. Eighteen heavy guns had been trained upon the
long ridge, one end of which has been called Cæsar's Camp and the
other Waggon Hill.  This hill, three miles long, lay to the south of
the town, and the Boers had early recognised it as being the most
vulnerable point, for it was against it that their attack of November
9th had been directed. Now, after two months, they were about to renew
the attempt with greater resolution against less robust opponents.  At
twelve o'clock our scouts heard the sounds of the chanting of hymns in
the Boer camps. At two in the morning crowds of barefooted men were
clustering round the base of the ridge, and threading their way, rifle
in hand, among the mimosa-bushes and scattered boulders which cover
the slope of the hill. Some working parties were moving guns into
position, and the noise of their labour helped to drown the sound of
the Boer advance. Both at Cæsar's Camp, the east end of the ridge, and
at Waggon Hill, the west end (the points being, I repeat, three miles
apart), the attack came as a complete surprise.  The outposts were
shot or driven in, and the stormers were on the ridge almost as soon
as their presence was detected. The line of rocks blazed with the
flash of their guns.

Cæsar's Camp was garrisoned by one sturdy regiment, the Manchesters,
aided by a Colt automatic gun.  The defence bad been arranged in the
form of small sangars, each held by from ten to twenty men.  Some few
of these were rushed in the darkness, but the Lancashire men pulled
themselves together and held on strenuously to those which remained.
The crash of musketry woke the sleeping town, and the streets
resounded with the shouting of the officers and the rattling of arms
as the men mustered in the darkness and hurried to the points of
danger.

Three companies of the Gordons had been left near Cæsar's Camp, and
these, under Captain Carnegie, threw themselves into the
struggle. Four other companies of Gordons came up in support from the
town, losing upon the way their splendid colonel, Dick-Cunyngham, who
was killed by a chance shot at three thousand yards, on this his first
appearance since he had recovered from his wounds at
Elandslaagte. Later four companies of the Rifle Brigade were thrown
into the firing line, and a total of two and a half infantry
battalions held that end of the position. It was not a man too
much. With the dawn of day it could be seen that the Boers held the
southern and we the northern slopes, while the narrow plateau between
formed a bloody debatable ground. Along a front of a quarter of a
mile fierce eyes glared and rifle barrels flashed from behind every
rock, and the long fight swayed a little back or a little forward with
each upward heave of the stormers or rally of the soldiers. For hours
the combatants were so near that a stone or a taunt could be thrown
from one to the other.  Some scattered sangars still held their own,
though the Boers had passed them.  One such, manned by fourteen
privates of the Manchester Regiment, remained untaken, but had only
two defenders left at the end of the bloody day.

With the coming of the light the 53rd Field Battery, the one which had
already done so admirably at Lombard's Kop, again deserved well of its
country. It was impossible to get behind the Boers and fire straight
at their position, so every shell fired bad to skim over the heads of
our own men upon the ridge and so pitch upon tho reverse slope.  Yet
so accurate was the fire, carried on under an incessant rain of shells
from the big Dutch gun on Bulwana, that not one shot miscarried and
that Major Abdy and his men succeeded in sweeping the further slope
without loss to our own fighting line. Exactly the same feat was
equally well performed at the other end of the position by Major
Blewitt's 21st Battery, which was exposed to an even more searching
fire than the 53rd.  Any one who has seen the iron endurance of
British gunners and marvelled at the answering shot which flashes out
through the very dust of the enemy's exploding shell, will understand
how fine must have been the spectacle of these two batteries working
in the open, with the ground round them sharded with
splinters. Eye-witnesses have left it upon record that the sight of
Major Blewitt strolling up and down among his guns, and turning over
with his toe the last fallen section of iron, was one of the most
vivid and stirring impressions which they carried from The fight.
Here also it was that the gallant Sergeant Bosley, his arm and his leg
stricken off by a Boer shell, cried to his comrades to roll his body
off the trail and go on working the gun.

At the same time as -- or rather earlier than -- the onslaught upon
Caesar's Camp a similar attack had been made with secrecy and
determination upon the western end of the position called Waggon Hill.
The barefooted Boers burst suddenly with a roll of rifle-fire into the
little garrison of Imperial Light Horse and Sappers who held the
position.  Mathias of the former, Digby-Jones and Dennis of the
latter, showed that 'two in the morning' courage which Napoleon rated
as the highest of military virtues.  They and their men were surprised
but not disconcerted, and stood desperately to a slogging match at the
closest quarters.  Seventeen Sappers were down out of thirty, and more
than half the little body of irregulars.  This end of the position was
feebly fortified, and it is surprising that so experienced and sound a
soldier as Ian Hamilton should have left it so. The defence had no
marked advantage as compared with the attack, neither trench, sangar,
nor wire entanglement, and in numbers they were immensely
inferior. Two companies of the 60th Rifles and a small body of the
ubiquitous Gordons happened to be upon the hill and threw themselves
into the fray, but they were unable to turn the tide.  Of thirty-three
Gordons under Lieutenant MacNaughten thirty were wounded.[Footnote:
The Gordons and the Sappers were there that morning to re-escort one
of Lambton's 4·7 guns, which was to be mounted there. Ten seamen were
with the gun, and lost three of their number in the defence.] As our
men retired under the shelter of the northern slope they were
reinforced by another hundred and fifty Gordons under the stalwart
Miller-Wallnutt, a man cast in the mould of a Berserk Viking.  To
their aid also came two hundred of the Imperial Light Horse, burning
to assist their comrades. Another half-battalion of Rifles came with
them. At each end of the long ridge the situation at the dawn of day
was almost identical. In each the stormers had seized one side, but
were brought to a stand by the defenders upon the other, while the
British guns fired over the heads of their own infantry to rake the
further slope.

It was on the Waggon Hill side, however, that the Boer exertions were
most continuous and strenuous and our own resistance most desperate.
There fought the gallant de Villiers, while Ian Hamilton rallied the
defenders and led them in repeated rushes against the enemy's line.
Continually reinforced from below, the Boers fought with extraordinary
resolution. Never will any one who witnessed that Homeric contest
question the valour of our foes.  It was a murderous business on both
sides.  Edwardes of the Light Horse was struck down.  In a
gun-emplacement a strange encounter took place at point-blank range
between a group of Boers and of Britons. De Villiers of the Free State
shot Miller-Wallnut dead, Ian Hamilton fired at de Villiers with his
revolver and missed him. Young Albrecht of the Light Horse shot de
Villiers. A Boer named de Jaeger shot Albrecht. Digby-Jones of the
Sappers shot de Jaeger.  Only a few minutes later the gallant lad, who
had already won fame enough for a veteran, was himself mortally
wounded, and Dennis, his comrade in arms and in glory, fell by his
side.

There has been no better fighting in our time than that upon Waggon
Hill on that January morning, and no better fighters than the Imperial
Light Horsemen who formed the centre of the defence. Here, as at
Elandslaagte, they proved themselves worthy to stand in line with the
crack regiments of the British army.

Through the long day the fight maintained its equilibrium along the
summit of the ridge, swaying a little that way or this, but never
amounting to a repulse of the stormers or to a rout of the
defenders. So intermixed were the combatants that a wounded man more
than once found himself a rest for the rifles of his enemies.  One
unfortunate soldier in this position received six more bullets from
his own comrades in their efforts to reach the deadly rifleman behind
him. At four o'clock a huge bank of clouds which had towered upwards
unheeded by the struggling men burst suddenly into a terrific
thunderstorm with vivid lightnings and lashing rain. It is curious
that the British victory at Elandslaagte was heralded by just such
another storm. Up on the bullet-swept hill the long fringes of
fighting men took no more heed of the elements than would two
bulldogs who have each other by the throat. Up the greasy hillside,
foul with mud and with blood, came the Boer reserves, and up the
northern slope came our own reserve, the Devon Regiment, fit
representatives of that virile county. Admirably led by Park, their
gallant Colonel, the Devons swept the Boers before them, and the
Rifles, Gordons, and Light Horse joined in the wild charge which
finally cleared the ridge.

But the end was not yet. The Boer had taken a risk over this venture,
and now he had to pay the stakes. Down the hill he passed, crouching,
darting, but the spruits behind him were turned into swirling streams,
and as he hesitated for an instant upon the brink the relentless sleet
of bullets came from behind. Many were swept away down the gorges and
into the Klip River, never again to be accounted for in the lists of
their field-cornet. The majority splashed through, found their horses
in their shelter, and galloped off across the great Bulwana Plain, as
fairly beaten in as fair a fight as ever brave men were yet.

The cheers of victory as the Devons swept the ridge had heartened the
weary men upon Cæsar's Camp to a similar effort. Manchesters, Gordons,
and Rifles, aided by the fire of two batteries, cleared the
long-debated position. Wet, cold, weary, and without food for
twenty-six hours, the bedraggled Tommies stood yelling and waving,
amid the litter of dead and of dying.

It was a near thing. Had the ridge fallen the town must have followed,
and history perhaps have been changed. In the old stiff-rank Majuba
days we should have been swept in an hour from the position. But the
wily man behind the rock was now to find an equally wily man in front
of him. The soldier had at last learned something of the craft of the
hunter. He clung to his shelter, he dwelled on his aim, he ignored his
dressings, he laid aside the eighteenth-century traditions of his
pigtailed ancestor, and he hit the Boers harder than they had been hit
yet. No return may ever come to us of their losses on that occasion;
80 dead bodies were returned to them from the ridge alone, while the
slopes, the dongas, and the river each had its own separate tale. No
possible estimate can make it less than three hundred killed and
wounded, while many place it at a much higher figure. Our own
casualties were very serious and the proportion of dead to wounded
unusually high, owing to the fact that the greater part of the wounds
were necessarily of the head.  In killed we lost 13 officers, 135
men. In wounded 28 officers, 244 men -- a total of 420, Lord Ava, the
honoured Son of an honoured father, the fiery Dick-Cunyngham, stalwart
Miller-Wallnutt, the brave boy sappers Digby-Jones and Dennis, Adams
and Packman of the Light Horse, the chivalrous Lafone -- we had to
mourn quality as well as numbers. The grim test of the casualty
returns shows that it was to the Imperial Light Horse (ten officers
down, and the regiment commanded by a junior captain), the
Manchesters, the Gordons, the Devons, and the 2nd Rifle Brigade that
the honours of the day are due.

In the course of the day two attacks had been made upon other points
of the British position, the one on Observation Hill on the north, the
other on the Helpmakaar position on the east. Of these the latter was
never pushed home and was an obvious feint, but in the case of the
other it was not until Schutte, their commander, and forty or fifty
men had been killed and wounded, that the stormers abandoned their
attempt. At every point the assailants found the same scattered but
impenetrable fringe of riflemen, and the same energetic batteries
waiting for them.

Throughout the Empire the course of this great struggle was watched
with the keenest solicitude and with all that painful emotion which
springs from impotent sympathy. By heliogram to Buller, and so to the
farthest ends of that great body whose nerves are the telegraphic
wires, there came the announcement of the attack. Then after an
interval of hours came 'everywhere repulsed, but fighting continues.'
Then, 'Attack continues. Enemy reinforced from the south.'  Then
'Attack renewed. Very hard pressed.'  There the messages ended for the
day, leaving the Empire black with apprehension. The darkest forecasts
and most dreary anticipations were indulged by the most temperate and
best-informed London papers. For the first time the very suggestion
that the campaign might be above our strength was made to the
public. And then at last there came the official news of the repulse
of the assault. Far away at Ladysmith, the weary men and their sorely
tried officers gathered to return thanks to God for His manifold
mercies, but in London also hearts were stricken solemn by the
greatness of the crisis, and lips long unused to prayer joined in the
devotions of the absent warriors.


CHAPTER XIV

THE COLESBERG OPERATIONS


Of the four British armies in the field I have attempted to tell the
story of the western one which advanced to help Kimberley, of the
eastern one which was repulsed at Colenso, and of the central one
which was checked at Stormberg. There remains one other central one,
some account of which must now be given.

It was, as has already been pointed out, a long three weeks after the
declaration of war before the forces of the Orange Free State began to
invade Cape Colony. But for this most providential delay it is
probable that the ultimate fighting would have been, not among the
mountains and kopjes of Stormberg and Colesberg, but amid those
formidable passes which lie in the Hex Valley, immediately to the
north of Cape Town, and that the armies of the invader would have been
doubled by their kinsmen of the Colony. The ultimate result of the war
must have been the same, but the sight of all South Africa in flames
might have brought about those Continental complications which have
always been so grave a menace.

The invasion of the Colony was at two points along the line of the two
railways which connect the countries, the one passing over the Orange
River at Norval's Pont and the other at Bethulie, about forty miles to
the eastward. There were no British troops available (a fact to be
considered by those, if any remain, who imagine that the British
entertained any design against the Republics), and the Boers jogged
slowly southward amid a Dutch population who hesitated between their
unity of race and speech and their knowledge of just and generous
treatment by the Empire. A large number were won over by the invaders,
and, like all apostates, distinguished themselves by their virulence
and harshness towards their loyal neighbours. Here and there in towns
which were off the railway line, in Barkly East or Ladygrey, the
farmers met together with rifle and bandolier, tied orange puggarees
round their hats, and rode off to join the enemy. Possibly these
ignorant and isolated men hardly recognised what it was that they were
doing. They have found out since.  In some of the border districts the
rebels numbered ninety per cent of the Dutch population.

In the meanwhile, the British leaders had been strenuously
endeavouring to scrape together a few troops with which to make some
stand against the enemy. For this purpose two small forces were
necessary -- the one to oppose the advance through Bethulie and
Stormberg, the other to meet the invaders, who, having passed the
river at Norval's Pont, had now occupied Colesberg. The former task
was, as already shown, committed to General Gatacre. The latter was
allotted to General French, the victor of Elandslaagte, who had
escaped in the very last train from Ladysmith, and had taken over this
new and important duty. French's force assembled at Arundel and
Gatacre's at Sterkstroom. It is with the operations of the former that
we have now to deal.

General French, for whom South Africa has for once proved not the
grave but the cradle of a reputation, had before the war gained some
name as a smart and energetic cavalry officer. There were some who,
watching his handling of a considerable body of horse at the great
Salisbury manoeuvres in 1898, conceived the highest opinion of his
capacity, and it was due to the strong support of General Buller, who
had commanded in these peaceful operations, that French received his
appointment for South Africa.  In person he is short and thick, with a
pugnacious jaw.  In character he is a man of cold persistence and of
fiery energy, cautious and yet audacious, weighing his actions well,
but carrying them out with the dash which befits a mounted leader. He
is remarkable for the quickness of his decision -- 'can think at a
gallop,' as an admirer expressed it.  Such was the man, alert,
resourceful, and determined, to whom was entrusted the holding back of
the Colesberg Boers.

Although the main advance of the invaders was along the lines of the
two railways, they ventured, as they realised how weak the forces were
which opposed them, to break off both to the east and west, occupying
Dordrecht on one side and Steynsberg on the other. Nothing of
importance accrued from the possession of these points, and our
attention may be concentrated upon the main line of action.

French's original force was a mere handful of men, scraped together
from anywhere.  Naauwpoort was his base, and thence he made a
reconnaissance by rail on November 23rd towards Arundel, the next
hamlet along the line, taking with him a company of the Black Watch,
forty mounted infantry, and a troop of the New South Wales Lancers.
Nothing resulted from the expedition save that the two forces came
into touch with each other, a touch which was sustained for months
under many vicissitudes, until the invaders were driven back once more
over Norval's Pont. Finding that Arundel was weakly held, French
advanced up to it, and established his camp there towards the end of
December, within six miles of the Boer lines at Rensburg, to the south
of Colesberg. His mission -- with his present forces -- was to prevent
the further advance of the enemy into the Colony, but he was not
strong enough yet to make a serious attempt to drive them out.

Before the move to Arundel on December 13th his detachment had
increased in size, and consisted largely of mounted men, so that it
attained a mobility very unusual for a British force. On December 13th
there was an attempt upon the part of the Boers to advance south,
which was easily held by the British Cavalry and Horse Artillery.  The
country over which French was operating is dotted with those singular
kopjes which the Boer loves -- kopjes which are often so grotesque in
shape that one feels as if they must be due to some error of
refraction when one looks at them.  But, on the other hand, between
these hills there lie wide stretches of the green or russet savanna,
the noblest field that a horseman or a horse gunner could wish.  The
riflemen clung to the hills, French's troopers circled warily upon the
plain, gradually contracting the Boer position by threatening to cut
off this or that outlying kopje, and so the enemy was slowly herded
into Colesberg.  The small but mobile British force covered a very
large area, and hardly a day passed that one or other part of it did
not come in contact with the enemy.  With one regiment of infantry
(the Berkshires) to hold the centre, his hard-riding Tasmanians,
New-Zealanders, and Australians, with the Scots Greys, the
Inniskillings, and the Carabineers, formed an elastic but impenetrable
screen to cover the Colony.  They were aided by two batteries, 0 and
R, of Horse Artillery. Every day General French rode out and made a
close personal examination of the enemy's position, while his scouts
and outposts were instructed to maintain the closest possible touch.

On December 30th the enemy abandoned Rensburg, which had been their
advanced post, and concentrated at Colesberg, upon which French moved
his force up and seized Rensburg. The very next day, December 31st, he
began a vigorous and long-continued series of operations. At five
o'clock on Sunday evening he moved out of Rensburg camp, with R and
half of 0 batteries R.H.A., the 10th Hussars, the Inniskillings, and
the Berkshires, to take up a position on the west of Colesberg.  At
the same time Colonel Porter, with the half-battery of 0, his own
regiment (the Carabineers), and the New Zealand Mounted Rifles, left
camp at two on the Monday morning and took a position on the enemy's
left flank.  The Berkshires under Major McCracken seized hill, driving
a Boer picket off it, and the Horse enfiladed the enemy's right flank,
and after a risk artillery duel succeeded in silencing his guns.  Next
morning, however (January 2nd, 1900), it was found that the Boers,
strongly reinforced, were back near their old positions, and French
had to be content to hold them and to wait for more troops.

These were not long in coming, for the Suffolk Regiment had arrived,
followed by the Composite Regiment (chosen from the Household Cavalry)
and the 4th Battery R.F.A. The Boers, however, had also been
reinforced, and showed great energy in their effort to break the
cordon which was being drawn round them.  Upon the 4th a determined
effort was made by about a thousand of them under General Shoemann to
turn the left flank of the British, and at dawn it was actually found
that they had eluded the vigilance of the outposts and had established
themselves upon a hill to the rear of the position. They were shelled
off of it, however, by the guns of 0 Battery, and in their retreat
across the plain they were pursued by the 10th Hussars and by one
squadron of the Inniskillings, who cut off some of the fugitives. At
the same time, De Lisle with his mounted infantry carried the position
which they had originally held. In this successful and well-managed
action the Boer loss was ninety, and we took in addition twenty-one
prisoners. Our own casualties amounted only to six killed, including
Major Harvey of the 10th, and to fifteen wounded.

Encouraged by this success an attempt was made by the Suffolk Regiment
to carry a hill which formed the key of the enemy's position. The town
of Colesberg lies in a basin surrounded by a ring of kopjes, and the
possession by us of any one of them would have made the place
untenable. The plan has been ascribed to Colonel Watson of the
Suffolks, but it is time that some protest should be raised against
this devolution of responsibility upon subordinates in the event of
failure. When success has crowned our arms we have been delighted to
honour our general; but when our efforts end in failure our attention
is called to Colonel Watson, Colonel Long, or Colonel Thorneycroft. It
is fairer to state that in this instance General French ordered
Colonel Watson to make a night attack upon the hill.

The result was disastrous. At midnight four companies in canvas shoes
or in their stocking feet set forth upon their venture, and just
before dawn they found themselves upon the slope of the hill. They
were in a formation of quarter column with files extended to two
paces; H Company was leading. When half-way up a warm fire was opened
upon them in the darkness. Colonel Watson gave the order to retire,
intending, as it is believed, that the men should get under the
shelter of the dead ground which they had just quitted, but his death
immediately afterwards left matters in a confused condition.  The
night was black, the ground broken, a hail of bullets whizzing through
the ranks.  Companies got mixed in the darkness and contradictory
orders were issued.  The leading company held its ground, though each
of the officers, Brett, Carey, and Butler, was struck down.  The other
companies had retired, however, and the dawn found this fringe of men,
most of them wounded, lying under the very rifles of the Boers. Even
then they held out for some time, but they could neither advance,
retire, or stay where they were without losing lives to no purpose, so
the survivors were compelled to surrender. There is better evidence
here than at Magersfontein that the enemy were warned and ready. Every
one of the officers engaged, from the Colonel to the boy subaltern,
was killed, wounded, or taken. Eleven officers and one hundred and
fifty men were our losses in this unfortunate but not discreditable
affair, which proves once more how much accuracy and how much secrecy
is necessary for a successful night attack.  Four companies of the
regiment were sent down to Port Elizabeth to re-officer, but the
arrival of the 1st Essex enabled French to fill the gap which had been
made in his force.

In spite of this annoying check, French continued to pursue his
original design of holding the enemy in front and working round him on
the east.  On January 9th, Porter, of the Carabineers, with his own
regiment, two squadrons of Household Cavalry, the New-Zealanders, the
New South Wales Lancers, and four guns, took another step forward and,
after a skirmish, occupied a position called Slingersfontein, still
further to the north and east, so as to menace the main road of
retreat to Norval's Pont.  Some skirmishing followed, but the position
was maintained.  On the 15th the Boers, thinking that this long
extension must have weakened us, made a spirited attack upon a
position held by New-Zealanders and a company of the 1st Yorkshires,
this regiment having been sent up to reinforce French. The attempt was
met by a volley and a bayonet charge. Captain Orr, of the Yorkshires,
was struck down; but Captain Madocks, of the New-Zealanders, who
behaved with conspicuous gallantry at a critical instant, took
command, and the enemy was heavily repulsed. Madocks engaged in a
point-blank rifle duel with the frock-coated top-hatted Boer leader,
and had the good fortune to kill his formidable opponent. Twenty-one
Boer dead and many wounded left upon the field made a small set-off to
the disaster of the Suffolks.

The next day, however (January 16th), the scales of fortune, which
swung alternately one way and the other, were again tipped against
us. It is difficult to give an intelligible account of the details of
these operations, because they were carried out by thin fringes of men
covering on both sides a very large area, each kopje occupied as a
fort, and the intervening plains patrolled by cavalry.

As French extended to the east and north the Boers extended also to
prevent him from outflanking them, and so the little armies stretched
and stretched until they were two long mobile skirmishing lines. The
actions therefore resolve themselves into the encounters of small
bodies and the snapping up of exposed patrols -- a game in which the
Boer aptitude for guerrilla tactics gave them some advantage, though
our own cavalry quickly adapted themselves to the new conditions.  On
this occasion a patrol of sixteen men from the South Australian Horse
and New South Wales Lancers fell into an ambush, and eleven were
captured.  Of the remainder, three made their way back to camp, while
one was killed and one was wounded.

The duel between French on the one side and Schoeman and Lambert on
the other was from this onwards one of maneuvering rather than of
fighting. The dangerously extended line of the British at this period,
over thirty miles long, was reinforced, as has been mentioned, by the
1st Yorkshire and later by the 2nd Wiltshire and a section of the 37th
Howitzer Battery. There was probably no very great difference in
numbers between the two little armies, but the Boers now, as always,
were working upon internal lines.  The monotony of the operations was
broken by the remarkable feat of the Essex Regiment, which succeeded
by hawsers and good-will in getting two 15-pounder guns of the 4th
Field Battery on to the top of Coleskop, a hill which rises several
hundred feet from the plain and is so precipitous that it is no small
task for an unhampered man to climb it. From the summit a fire, which
for some days could not be localised by the Boers, was opened upon
their laagers, which had to be shifted in consequence. This energetic
action upon the part of our gunners may be set off against those other
examples where commanders of batteries have shown that they had not
yet appreciated what strong tackle and stout arms can accomplish.  The
guns upon Coleskop not only dominated all the smaller kopjes for a
range of 9,000 yards, but completely commanded the town of Colesberg,
which could not however, for humanitarian and political reasons, be
shelled.

By gradual reinforcements the force under French had by the end of
January attained the respectable figure of ten thousand men, strung
over a large extent of country. His infantry consisted of the 2nd
Berkshires, 1st Royal Irish, 2nd Wiltshires, 2nd Worcesters, 1st
Essex, and 1st Yorkshires; his cavalry, of the 10th Hussars, the 6th
Dragoon Guards, the Inniskillings, the New-Zealanders, the
N.S.W. Lancers, some Rimington Guides, and the composite Household
Regiment; his artillery, the R and 0 batteries of R.H.A., the 4th
R.F.A., and a section of the 37th Howitzer Battery. At the risk of
tedium I have repeated the units of this force, because there are no
operations during the war, with the exception perhaps of those of the
Rhodesian Column, concerning which it is so difficult to get a clear
impression.  The fluctuating forces, the vast range of country
covered, and the petty farms which give their names to positions, all
tend to make the issue vague and the narrative obscure. The British
still lay in a semicircle extending from Slingersfontein upon the
right to Kloof Camp upon the left, and the general scheme of
operations continued to be an enveloping movement upon the
right. General Clements commanded this section of the forces, while
the energetic Porter carried out the successive advances. The lines
had gradually stretched until they were nearly fifty miles in length,
and something of the obscurity in which the operations have been left
is due to the impossibility of any single correspondent having a clear
idea of what was occurring over so extended a front.

On January 25th French sent Stephenson and Brabazon to push a
reconnaissance to the north of Colesberg, and found that the Boers
were making a fresh position at Rietfontein, nine miles nearer their
own border. A small action ensued, in which we lost ten or twelve of
the Wiltshire Regiment, and gained some knowledge of the enemy's
dispositions.  For the remainder of the month the two forces remained
in a state of equilibrium, each keenly on its guard, and neither
strong enough to penetrate the lines of the other. General French
descended to Cape Town to aid General Roberts in the elaboration of
that plan which was soon to change the whole military situation in
South Africa.

Reinforcements were still dribbling into the British force, Hoad's
Australian Regiment, which had been changed from infantry to cavalry,
and J battery R.H.A. from India, being the last arrivals. But very
much stronger reinforcements had arrived for the Boers -- so strong
that they were able to take the offensive. De la Rey had left the
Modder with three thousand men, and their presence infused new life
into the defenders of Colesberg.  At the moment, too, that the Modder
Boers were coming to Colesberg, the British had begun to send cavalry
reinforcements to the Modder in preparation for the march to
Kimberley, so that Clements's Force (as it had now become) was
depleted at the very instant when that of the enemy was largely
increased. The result was that it was all they could do not merely to
hold their own, but to avoid a very serious disaster.

The movements of De la Rey were directed towards turning the right of
the position. On February 9th and 10th the mounted patrols,
principally the Tasmanians, the Australians, and the Inniskillings,
came in contact with the Boers, and some skirmishing ensued, with no
heavy loss upon either side. A British patrol was surrounded and lost
eleven prisoners, Tasmanians and Guides. On the 12th the Boer turning
movement developed itself, and our position on the right at
Slingersfontein was strongly attacked.

The key of the British position at this point was a kopje held by
three companies of the 2nd Worcester Regiment. Upon this the Boers
made a fierce onslaught, but were as fiercely repelled.  They came up
in the dark between the set of moon and rise of sun, as they had done
at the great assault of Ladysmith, and the first dim light saw them in
the advanced sangars. The Boer generals do not favour night attacks,
but they are exceedingly fond of using darkness for taking up a good
position and pushing onwards as soon as it is possible to see.  This
is what they did upon this occasion, and the first intimation which
the outposts had of their presence was the rush of feet and loom of
figures in the cold misty light of dawn. The occupants of the sangars
were killed to a man, and the assailants rushed onwards. As the sun
topped the line of the veldt half the kopje was in their
possession. Shouting and firing, they pressed onwards.

But the Worcester men were steady old soldiers, and the battalion
contained no less than four hundred and fifty marksmen in its
ranks. Of these the companies upon the hill had their due proportion,
and their fire was so accurate that the Boers found themselves unable
to advance any further. Through the long day a desperate duel was
maintained between the two lines of riflemen. Colonel Cuningham and
Major Stubbs were killed while endeavouring to recover the ground
which had been lost.  Hovel and Bartholomew continued to encourage
their men, and the British fire became so deadly that that of the
Boers was dominated. Under the direction of Hacket Pain, who commanded
the nearest post, guns of J battery were brought out into the open and
shelled the portion of the kopje which was held by the Boers. The
latter were reinforced, but could make no advance against the accurate
rifle fire with which they were met. The Bisley champion of the
battalion, with a bullet through his thigh, expended a hundred rounds
before sinking from loss of blood. It was an excellent defence, and a
pleasing exception to those too frequent cases where an isolated force
has lost heart in face of a numerous and persistent foe. With the
coming of darkness the Boers withdrew with a loss of over two hundred
killed and wounded. Orders had come from Clements that the whole right
wing should be drawn in, and in obedience to them the remains of the
victorious companies were called in by Hacket Pain, who moved his
force by night in the direction of Rensburg. The British loss in the
action was twenty-eight killed and nearly a hundred wounded or
missing, most of which was incurred when the sangars were rushed in
the early morning.

While this action was fought upon the extreme right of the British
position another as severe had occurred with much the same result upon
the extreme left, where the 2nd Wiltshire Regiment was stationed. Some
companies of this regiment were isolated upon a kopje and surrounded
by the Boer riflemen when the pressure upon them was relieved by a
desperate attack by about a hundred of the Victorian Rifles. The
gallant Australians lost Major Eddy and six officers out of seven,
with a large proportion of their men, but they proved once for a]l
that amid all the scattered nations who came from the same home there
is not one with a more fiery courage and a higher sense of martial
duty than the men from the great island continent. It is the
misfortune of the historian when dealing with these contingents that,
as a rule, by their very nature they were employed in detached parties
in fulfilling the duties which fall to the lot of scouts and light
cavalry -- duties which fill the casualty lists but not the pages of
the chronicler. Be it said, however, once for all that throughout the
whole African army there was nothing but the utmost admiration for the
dash and spirit of the hard-riding, straight, shooting sons of
Australia and New Zealand.  In a host which held many brave men there
were none braver than they.

It was evident from this time onwards that the turning movement had
failed, and that the enemy had developed such strength that we were
ourselves in imminent danger of being turned.  The situation was a
most serious one: for if Clements's force could be brushed aside there
would be nothing to keep the enemy from cutting the communications of
the army which Roberts had assembled for his march into the Free
State. Clements drew in his wings hurriedly and concentrated his whole
force at Rensburg. It was a difficult operation in the face of an
aggressive enemy, but the movements were well timed and admirably
carried out.  There is always the possibility of a retreat
degenerating into a panic, and a panic at that moment would have been
a most serious matter.  One misfortune occurred, through which two
companies of the Wiltshire regiment were left without definite orders,
and were cut off and captured after a resistance in which a third of
then number was killed and wounded.  No man in that trying time worked
harder than Colonel Carter of the Wiltshires (the night of the retreat
was the sixth which he had spent without sleep), and the loss of the
two companies is to be set down to one of those accidents which may
always occur in warfare.  Some of the Inniskilling Dragoons and
Victorian Mounted Rifles were also cut off in the retreat, but on the
whole Clements was very fortunate in being able to concentrate his
scattered army with so few mishaps.  The withdrawal was heartbreaking
to the soldiers who had worked so hard and so long in extending the
lines, but it might be regarded with equanimity by the Generals, who
understood that the greater strength the enemy developed at Colesberg
the less they would have to oppose the critical movements which were
about to be carried out in the west. Meanwhile Coleskop had also been
abandoned, the guns removed, and the whole force on February 14th
passed through Rensburg and felt back upon Arundel, the spot from
which six weeks earlier French had started upon this stirring series
of operations.  It would not be fair, however, to suppose that they
had failed because they ended where they began.  Their primary object
had been to prevent the further advance of the Freestaters into the
colony, and, during the most critical period of the war, this had been
accomplished with much success and little loss. At last the pressure
had become so severe that the enemy had to weaken the most essential
part of their general position in order to relieve it.  The object of
the operations had really been attained when Clements found himself
back at Arundel once more.  French, the stormy petrel of the war, had
flitted on from Cape Town to Modder River, where a larger prize than
Colesberg awaited him.  Clements continued to cover Naauwport, the
important railway junction, until the advance of Roberts's army caused
a complete reversal of the whole military situation.


CHAPTER XV

SPION KOP


Whilst Methuen and Gatacre were content to hold their own at the
Modder and at Sterkstroom, and whilst the mobile and energetic French
was herding the Boers into Colesberg, Sir Redvers Buller, the heavy,
obdurate, inexplicable man, was gathering and organising his forces
for another advance upon Ladysmith.  Nearly a month had elapsed since
the evil day when his infantry had retired, and his ten guns had not,
from the frontal attack upon Colenso.  Since then Sir Charles Warren's
division of infantry and a considerable reinforcement of artillery had
come to him.  And yet in view of the terrible nature of the ground in
front of him, of the fighting power of the Boers, and of the fact that
they were always acting upon internal lines, his force even now was,
in the opinion of competent judges, too weak for the matter in hand.

There remained, however, several points in his favour. His excellent
infantry were full of zeal and of confidence in their chief.  It
cannot be denied, however much we may criticise some incidents in his
campaign, that he possessed the gift of impressing and encouraging his
followers, and, in spite of Colenso, the sight of his square figure
and heavy impassive face conveyed an assurance of ultimate victory to
those around him.  In artillery he was very much stronger than before,
especially in weight of metal. His cavalry was still weak in
proportion to his other arms.  When at last he moved out on January
10th to attempt to outflank the Boers, he took with him nineteen
thousand infantry, three thousand cavalry, and sixty guns, which
included six howitzers capable of throwing a 50-lb lyddite shell, and
ten long-range naval pieces.  Barton's Brigade and other troops were
left behind to hold the base and line of communications.

An analysis of Buller's force shows that its details were as follows:

Clery's Division
	Hildyard's Brigade
		   2nd West Surrey
                   2nd Devonshire
                   2nd West Yorkshire
                   2nd East Surrey
        Hart's Brigade
	           1st Inniskilling Fusiliers
                   1st Border Regiment
                   1st Connaught Rangers
                   2nd Dublin Fusiliers
        Field Artillery, three batteries, 19th, 28th, 63rd;
        one squadron 13th Hussars;
        Royal Engineers.

Warren's Division
        Lyttelton's Brigade
                   2nd Cameronians
                   3rd King's Royal Rifles
                   1st Durham Light Infantry
                   1st Rifle Brigade
        Woodgate's Brigade
                   2nd Royal Lancaster
	           2nd Lancashire Fusiliers
                   1st South Lancashire
                   York and Lancasters
        Field Artillery, three batteries, 7th, 78th, 73rd ;
        one squadron 13th Hussars.

Corps Troops
        Coke's Brigade
                   Imperial Light Infantry
                   2nd Somersets
                   2nd Dorsets
                   2nd Middlesex
        61st Howitzer Battery; two 4.7 naval guns; eight naval 12-pounder guns;
        one squadron 13th Hussars;
        Royal Engineers.

Cavalry
	1st Royal Dragoons
	14th Hussars
	Four squadrons South African Horse
	One squadron Imperial Light Horse
	Bethune's Mounted Infantry
	Thorneycroft's Mounted Infantry
	One squadron Natal Carabineers
	One squadron Natal Police
	One company King's Royal Rifles Mounted Infantry
	Six machine guns

This is the force whose operations I shall attempt to describe.

About sixteen miles to the westward of Colenso there is a ford over
the Tugela River which is called Potgieter's Drift.  General Buller's
apparent plan was to seize this, together with the ferry which runs at
this point, and so to throw himself upon the right flank of the
Colenso Boers.  Once over the river there is one formidable line of
hills to cross, but if this were passed there would be comparatively
easy ground until the Ladysmith hills were reached. With high hopes
Buller and his men sallied out upon their adventure.

Dundonald's cavalry force pushed rapidly forwards, crossed the Little
Tugela, a tributary of the main river, at Springfield, and established
themselves upon the hills which command the drift. Dundonald largely
exceeded his instructions in going so far, and while we applaud his
courage and judgment in doing so, we must remember and be charitable
to those less fortunate officers whose private enterprise has ended in
disaster and reproof.  There can be no doubt that the enemy intended
to hold all this tract, and that it was only the quickness of our
initial movements which forestalled them.  Early in the morning a
small party of the South African Horse, under Lieutenant Carlisle,
swam the broad river under fire and brought back the ferry boat, an
enterprise which was fortunately bloodless, but which was most coolly
planned and gallantly carried out. The way was now open to our
advance, and could it have been carried out as rapidly as it had begun
the Boers might conceivably have been scattered before they could
concentrate.  It was not the fault of the infantry that it was not so.
They were trudging, mud-spattered and jovial, at the very heels of the
horses, after a forced march which was one of the most trying of the
whole campaign. But an army of 20,000 men cannot be conveyed over a
river twenty miles from any base without elaborate preparations being
made to feed them.  The roads were in such a state that the wagons
could hardly move, heavy rain had just fallen, and every stream was
swollen into a river; bullocks might strain, and traction engines
pant, and horses die, but by no human means could the stores be kept
up if the advance guard were allowed to go at their own pace.  And so,
having ensured an ultimate crossing of the river by the seizure of
Mount Alice, the high hill which commands the drift, the forces waited
day after day, watching in the distance the swarms of strenuous dark
figures who dug and hauled and worked upon the hillsides opposite,
barring the road which they would have to take. Far away on the
horizon a little shining point twinkled amid the purple haze, coming
and going from morning to night. It was the heliograph of Ladysmith,
explaining her troubles and calling for help, and from the heights of
Mount Alice an answering star of hope glimmered and shone, soothing,
encouraging, explaining, while the stern men of the veldt dug
furiously at their trenches in between.  'We are coming!  We are
coming!' cried Mount Alice.  'Over our bodies,' said the men with the
spades and mattocks.

On Thursday, January 12th, Dundonald seized the heights, on the 13th
the ferry was taken and Lyttelton's Brigade came up to secure that
which the cavalry had gained. On the 14th the heavy naval guns were
brought up to cover the crossing.  On the 15th Coke's Brigade and
other infantry concentrated at the drift.  On the 16th the four
regiments of Lyttelton's Brigade went across, and then, and only then,
it began to be apparent that Buller's plan was a more deeply laid one
than had been thought, and that all this business of Potgieter's Drift
was really a demonstration in order to cover the actual crossing which
was to be effected at a ford named Trichard's Drift, five miles to the
westward. Thus, while Lyttelton's and Coke's Brigades were
ostentatiously attacking Potgieter's from in front, three other
brigades (Hart's, Woodgate's, and Hildyard's) were marched rapidly on
the night of the 16th to the real place of crossing, to which
Dundonald's cavalry had already ridden. There, on the 17th, a pontoon
bridge had been erected, and a strong force was thrown over in such a
way as to turn the right of the trenches in front of Potgieter's. It
was admirably planned and excellently carried out, certainly the most
strategic movement, if there could he said to have been any strategic
movement upon the British side, in the campaign up to that date.  On
the 18th the infantry, the cavalry, and most of the guns were safely
across without loss of life.  The Boers, however, still retained their
formidable internal lines, and the only result of a change of position
seemed to be to put them to the trouble of building a new series of
those terrible entrenchments at which they had become such experts.
After all the combinations the British were, it is true, upon the
right side of the river, but they were considerably further from
Ladysmith than when they started.  There are times, however, when
twenty miles are less than fourteen, and it was hoped that this might
prove to be among them. But the first step was the most serious one,
for right across their front lay the Boer position upon the edge of a
lofty plateau, with the high peak of Spion Kop forming the left corner
of it.  If once that main ridge could be captured or commanded, it
would carry them halfway to the goal.  It was for that essential line
of hills that two of the most dogged races upon earth were about to
contend. An immediate advance might have secured the position at once,
but, for some reason which is inexplicable, an aimless march to the
left was followed by a retirement to the original position of Warren's
division, and so two invaluable days were wasted. We have the positive
assurance of Commandant Edwards, who was Chief of Staff to General
Botha, that a vigorous turning movement upon the left would at this
time have completely outflanked the Boer position and opened a way to
Ladysmith.

A small success, the more welcome for its rarity, came to the British
arms on this first day.  Dundonald's men had been thrown out to cover
the left of the infantry advance and to feel for the right of the Boer
position. A strong Boer patrol, caught napping for once, rode into an
ambuscade of the irregulars. some escaped, some held out most
gallantly in a kopje, but the final result was a surrender of
twenty-four unwounded prisoners, and the finding of thirteen killed
and wounded, including de Mentz, the field-cornet of Heilbron.  Two
killed and two wounded were the British losses in this well-managed
affair. Dundonald's force then took its position upon the extreme left
of Warren's advance.

The British were now moving upon the Boers in two separate bodies, the
one which included Lyttelton's and Coke's Brigades from Potgieter's
Drift, making what was really a frontal attack, while the main body
under Warren, who had crossed at Trichard's Drift, was swinging round
upon the Boer right. Midway between the two movements the formidable
bastion of Spion Kop stood clearly outlined against the blue Natal
sky.  The heavy naval guns on Mount Alice (two 4.7's and eight
twelve-pounders) were so placed as to support either advance, and the
howitzer battery was given to Lyttelton to help the frontal
attack. For two days the British pressed slowly but steadily on to the
Boers under the cover of an incessant rain of shells. Dour and long-
suffering the Boers made no reply, save with sporadic rifle-fire, and
refused until the crisis should come to expose their great guns to the
chance of injury.

On January 19th Warren's turning movement began to bring him into
closer touch with the enemy, his thirty-six field guns and the six
howitzers which had returned to him crushing down the opposition which
faced him. The ground in front of him was pleated into long folds, and
his advance meant the carrying of ridge after ridge. In the earlier
stages of the war this would have entailed a murderous loss; but we
had learned our lesson, and the infantry now, with intervals of ten
paces, and every man choosing his own cover, went up in proper Boer
form, carrying position after position, the enemy always retiring with
dignity and decorum. There was no victory on one side or rout on the
other -- only a steady advance and an orderly retirement.  That night
the infantry slept in their fighting line, going on again at three in
the morning, and light broke to find not only rifles, but the
long-silent Boer guns all blazing at the British advance. Again, as at
Colenso, the brunt of the fighting fell upon Hart's Irish Brigade, who
upheld that immemorial tradition of valour with which that name,
either in or out of the British service, has invariably been
associated. Upon the Lancashire Fusiliers and the York and Lancasters
came also a large share of the losses and the glory. Slowly but surely
the inexorable line of the British lapped over the ground which the
enemy had held. A gallant colonial, Tobin of the South African Horse,
rode up one hill and signaled with his hat that it was clear.  His
comrades followed closely at his heels, and occupied the position with
the loss of Childe, their Major.  During this action Lyttelton had
held the Boers in their trenches opposite to him by advancing to
within 1,500 yards of them, but the attack was not pushed further.  On
the evening of this day, January 20th, the British had gained some
miles of ground, and the total losses had been about three hundred
killed and wounded.  The troops were in good heart, and all promised
well for the future. Again the men lay where they had fought, and
again the dawn heard the crash of the great guns and the rattle of the
musketry.

The operations of this day began with a sustained cannonade from the
field batteries and 61st Howitzer Battery, which was as fiercely
answered by the enemy. About eleven the infantry began to go forward
with an advance which would have astonished the martinets of
Aldershot, an irregular fringe of crawlers, wrigglers, writhers,
cronchers, all cool and deliberate, giving away no points in this grim
game of death.  Where now were the officers with their distinctive
dresses and flashing swords, where the valiant rushes over the open,
where the men who were too proud to lie down? -- the tactics of three
months ago seemed as obsolete as those of the Middle Ages. All day the
line undulated forward, and by evening yet another strip of
rock-strewn ground had been gained, and yet another train of
ambulances was bearing a hundred of our wounded back to the base
hospitals at Frere.  It was on Hildyard's Brigade on the left that the
fighting and the losses of this day principally fell. By the morning
of January 22nd the regiments were clustering thickly all round the
edges of the Boer main position, and the day was spent in resting the
weary men, and in determining at what point the final assault should
be delivered.  On the right front, commanding the Boer lines on either
side, towered the stark eminence of Spion Kop, so called because from
its summit the Boer voortrekkers had first in 1835 gazed down upon the
promised land of Natal. If that could only be seized and held!  Buller
and Warren swept its bald summit with their field-glasses. It was a
venture.  But all war is a venture; and the brave man is he who
ventures most.  One fiery rush and the master-key of all these locked
doors might be in our keeping.  That evening there came a telegram to
London which left the whole Empire in a hush of anticipation.  Spion
Kop was to be attacked that night.

The troops which were selected for the task were eight companies of
the 2nd Lancashire Fusiliers, six of the 2nd Royal Lancasters, two of
the 1st South Lancashires, 180 of Thorneycroft's, and half a company
of Sappers. It was to be a North of England job.

Under the friendly cover of a starless night the men, in Indian file,
like a party of Iroquois braves upon the war trail, stole up the
winding and ill-defined path which led to the summit. Woodgate, the
Lancashire Brigadier, and Blomfield of the Fusiliers led the way. It
was a severe climb of 2,000 feet, coming after arduous work over
broken ground, but the affair was well-timed, and it was at that
blackest hour which precedes the dawn that the last steep ascent was
reached.  The Fusiliers crouched down among the rocks to recover their
breath, and saw far down in the plain beneath them the placid lights
which showed where their comrades were resting. A fine rain was
falling, and rolling clouds hung low over their heads.  The men with
unloaded rifles and fixed bayonets stole on once more, their bodies
bent, their eyes peering through the mirk for the first sign of the
enemy -- that enemy whose first sign has usually been a shattering
volley.  Thorneycroft's men with their gallant leader had threaded
their way up into the advance.  Then the leading files found that they
were walking on the level.  The crest had been gained.

With slow steps and bated breath, the open line of skirmishers stole
across it. Was it possible that it had been entirely abandoned?
Suddenly a raucous shout of `Wie da?' came out of the darkness, then a
shot, then a splutter of musketry and a yell, as the Fusiliers sprang
onwards with their bayonets.  The Boer post of Vryheid burghers
clattered and scrambled away into the darkness, and a cheer that
roused both the sleeping armies told that the surprise had been
complete and the position won.

In the grey light of the breaking day the men advanced along the
narrow undulating ridge, the prominent end of which they had
captured. Another trench faced them, but it was weakly held and
abandoned. Then the men, uncertain what remained beyond, halted and
waited for full light to see where they were, and what the work was
which lay before them -- a fatal halt, as the result proved, and yet
one so natural that it is hard to blame the officer who ordered
it. Indeed, he might have seemed more culpable had he pushed blindly
on, and so lost the advantage which had been already gained.

About eight o'clock, with the clearing of the mist, General Woodgate
saw how matters stood.  The ridge, one end of which he held, extended
away, rising and falling for some miles.  Had he the whole of the end
plateau, and had he guns, he might hope to command the rest of the
position.  But he held only half the plateau, and at the further end
of it the Boers were strongly entrenched. The Spion Kop mountain was
really the salient or sharp angle of the Boer position, so that the
British were exposed to a cross fire both from the left and
right. Beyond were other eminences which sheltered strings of riflemen
and several guns.  The plateau which the British held was very much
narrower than was usually represented in the press. In many places the
possible front was not much more than a hundred yards wide, and the
troops were compelled to bunch together, as there was not room for a
single company to take an extended formation.  The cover upon this
plateau was scanty, far too scanty for the force upon it, and the
shell fire -- especially the fire of the pom-poms -- soon became very
murderous. To mass the troops under the cover of the edge of the
plateau might naturally suggest itself, but with great tactical skill
the Boer advanced line from Commandant Prinsloo's Heidelberg and
Carolina commandos kept so aggressive an attitude that the British
could not weaken the lines opposed to them.  Their skirmishers were
creeping round too in such a way that the fire was really coming from
three separate points, left, centre, and. right, and every corner of
the position was searched by their bullets. Early in the action the
gallant Woodgate and many of his Lancashire men were shot down. The
others spread out and held on, firing occasionally at the whisk of a
rifle-barrel or the glimpse of a broad-brimmed hat.

>From morning to midday, the shell, Maxim, and rifle fire swept across
the kop in a continual driving shower. The British guns in the plain
below failed to localise the position of the enemy's, and they were
able to vent their concentrated spite upon the exposed infantry. No
blame attaches to the gunners for this, as a hill intervened to screen
the Boer artillery, which consisted of five big guns and two pom-poms.

Upon the fall of Woodgate, Thorneycroft, who bore the reputation of a
determined fighter, was placed at the suggestion of Buller in charge
of the defence of the hill, and he was reinforced after noon by Coke's
brigade, the Middlesex, the Dorsets, and the Somersets, together with
the Imperial Light Infantry.  The addition of this force to the
defenders of the plateau tended to increase the casualty returns
rather than the strength of the defence.  Three thousand more rifles
could do nothing to check the fire of the invisible cannon, and it was
this which was the main source of the losses, while on the other hand
the plateau had become so cumbered with troops that a shell could
hardly fail to do damage.  There was no cover to shelter them and no
room for them to extend. The pressure was most severe upon the shal]ow
trenches in the front, which had been abandoned by the Boers and were
held by the Lancashire Fusiliers.  They were enfiladed by rifle and
cannon, and the dead and wounded outnumbered the hale. So close were
the skirmishers that on at least one occasion Boer and Briton found
themselves on each side of the same rock.  Once a handful of men,
tormented beyond endurance, sprang up as a sign that they had had
enough, but Thorneycroft, a man of huge physique, rushed forward to
the advancing Boers.  'You may go to hell!' he yelled.  'I command
here, and allow no surrender. Go on with your firing.'  Nothing could
exceed the gallantry of Louis Botha's men in pushing the attack. Again
and again they made their way up to the British firing line, exposing
themselves with a recklessness which, with the exception of the grand
attack upon Ladysmith, was unique in our experience of them. About two
o'clock they rushed one trench occupied by the Fusiliers and secured
the survivors of two companies as prisoners, but were subsequently
driven out again.  A detached group of the South Lancashires was
summoned to surrender.  'When I surrender,' cried Colour-Sergeant
Nolan, 'it will be my dead body!'  Hour after hour of the
unintermitting crash of the shells among the rocks and of the groans
and screams of men torn and burst by the most horrible of all wounds
had shaken the troops badly.  Spectators from below who saw the shells
pitching at the rate of seven a minute on to the crowded plateau
marvelled at the endurance which held the devoted men to their post.
Men were wounded and wounded and wounded yet again, and still went on
fighting.  Never since Inkerman had we had so grim a soldier's battle.
The company officers were superb. Captain Muriel of the Middlesex was
shot through the check while giving a cigarette to a wounded man,
continued to lead his company, and was shot again through the
brain. Scott Moncrieff of the same regiment was only disabled by the
fourth bullet which hit him.  Grenfell of Thorneycroft's was shot, and
exclaimed, 'That's all right.  It's not much.'  A second wound made
him remark, 'I can get on all right.'  The third killed him. Ross of
the Lancasters, who had crawled from a sickbed, was found dead upon
the furthest crest. Young Murray of the Scottish Rifles, dripping from
five wounds, still staggered about among his men. And the men were
worthy of such officers. 'No retreat!  No retreat!' they yelled when
some of the front line were driven in.  In all regiments there are
weaklings and hang-backs, and many a man was wandering down the
reverse slopes when he should have been facing death upon the top, but
as a body British troops have never stood firm through a more fiery
ordeal than on that fatal hill..

The position was so bad that no efforts of officers or men could do
anything to mend it.  They were in a murderous dilemma.  If they fell
back for cover the Boer riflemen would rush the position. If they held
their ground this horrible shell fire must continue, which they had no
means of answering.  Down at Gun Hill in front of the Boer position we
had no fewer than five batteries, the 78th, 7th, 73rd, 63rd, and 61st
howitzer, but a ridge intervened between them and the Boer guns which
were shelling Spion Kop, and this ridge was strongly entrenched.  The
naval guns from distant Mount Alice did what they could, but the range
was very long, and the position of the Boer guns uncertain. The
artillery, situated as it was, could not save the infantry from the
horrible scourging which they were enduring.

There remains the debated question whether the British guns could have
been taken to the top. Mr. Winston Churchill, the soundness of whose
judgment has been frequently demonstrated during the war, asserts that
it might have been done. Without venturing to contradict one who was
personally present, I venture to tbink that there is strong evidence
to show that it could not have been done without blasting and other
measures, for which there was no possible time. Captain Hanwell of the
78th R.F.A., upon the day of the battle had the very utmost difficulty
with the help of four horses in getting a light Maxim on to the top,
and his opinion, with that of other artillery officers, is that the
feat was an impossible one until the path had been prepared.  When
night fell Colonel Sim was despatched with a party of Sappers to clear
the track and to prepare two emplacements upon the top, but in his
advance he met the retiring infantry.

Throughout the day reinforcements had pushed up the hill, until two
full brigades had been drawn into the fight. From the other side of
the ridge Lyttelton sent up the Scottish Rifles, who reached the
summit, and added their share to the shambles upon the top. As the
shades of night closed in, and the glare of the bursting shells became
more lurid, the men lay extended upon the rocky ground, parched and
exhausted.  They were hopelessly jumbled together, with the exception
of the Dorsets, whose cohesion may have been due to superior
discipline, less exposure, or to the fact that their khaki differed
somewhat in colour from that of the others. Twelve hours of so
terrible an experience had had a strange effect upon many of the men.
Some were dazed and battle-struck, incapable of clear understanding.
Some were as incoherent as drunkards.  Some lay in an overpowering
drowsiness.  The most were doggedly patient and long-suffering, with a
mighty longing for water obliterating every other emotion.

Before evening fell a most gallant and successful attempt had been
made by the third battalion of the King's Royal Rifles from
Lyttelton's Brigade to relieve the pressure upon their comrades on
Spion Kop.  In order to draw part of the Boer fire away they ascended
from the northern side and carried the hills which formed a
continuation of the same ridge. The movement was meant to be no more
than a strong demonstration, but the riflemen pushed it until,
breathless but victorious, they stood upon the very crest of the
position, leaving nearly a hundred dead or dying to show the path
which they had taken.  Their advance being much further than was
desired, they were recalled, and it was at the moment that Buchanan
Riddell, their brave Colonel, stood up to read Lyttelton's note that
he fell with a Boer bullet through his brain, making one more of those
gallant leaders who died as they had lived, at the head of their
regiments.  Chisholm, Dick-Cunyngham, Downman, Wilford, Gunning,
Sherston, Thackeray, Sitwell, MacCarthy O'Leary, Airlie -- they have
led their men up to and through the gates of death. It was a fine
exploit of the 3rd Rifles.  'A finer bit of skirmishing, a finer bit
of climbing, and a finer bit of fighting, I have never seen,' said
their Brigadier.  It is certain that if Lyttelton had not thrown his
two regiments into the fight the pressure upon the hill-top might have
become unendurable; and it seems also certain that if he had only held
on to the position which the Rifles had gained, the Boers would never
have reoccupied Spion Kop.

And now, under the shadow of night, but with the shells bursting
thickly over the plateau, the much-tried Thorneycroft had to make up
his mind whether he should hold on for another such day as he had
endured, or whether now, in the friendly darkness, he should remove
his shattered force.  Could he have seen the discouragement of the
Boers and the preparations which they had made for retirement, he
would have held his ground. But this was hidden from him, whille the
horror of his own losses was but too apparent.  Forty per cent. of his
men were down. Thirteen hundred dead and dying are a grim sight upon a
wide-spread battle-field, but when this number is heaped upon a
confined space, where from a single high rock the whole litter of
broken and shattered bodies can be seen, and the groans of the
stricken rise in one long droning chorus to the ear, then it is an
iron mind indeed which can resist such evidence of disaster. In a
harder age Wellington was able to survey four thousand bodies piled in
the narrow compass of the breach of Badajos, but his resolution was
sustained by the knowledge that the military end for which they fell
had been accomplished. Had his task been unfinished it is doubtful
whether even his steadfast soul would not have flinched from its
completion.  Thorneycroft saw the frightful havoc of one day, and he
shrank from the thought of such another.  'Better six battalions
safely down the hill than a mop up in the morning,' said he, and he
gave the word to retire.  One who had met the troops as they staggered
down has told me how far they were from being routed. In mixed array,
but steadily and in order, the long thin line trudged through the
darkness.  Their parched lips would not articulate, but they whispered
'Water! Where is water?' as they toiled upon their way. At the bottom
of the hill they formed into regiments once more, and marched back to
the camp.  In the morning the blood-spattered hill-top, with its piles
of dead and of wounded, were in the hands of Botha and his men, whose
valour and perseverance deserved the victory which they had won. There
is no doubt now that at 3 A.M. of that morning Botha, knowing that the
Rifles had carried Burger's position, regarded the affair as hopeless,
and that no one was more astonished than he when he found, on the
report of two scouts, that it was a victory and not a defeat which had
come to him.

How shall we sum up such an action save that it was a gallant attempt,
gallantly carried out, and as gallantly met? On both sides the results
of artillery fire during the war have been disappointing, but at Spion
Kop beyond all question it was the Boer guns which won the action for
them.  So keen was the disappointment at home that there was a
tendency to criticise the battle with some harshness, but it is
difficult now, with the evidence at our command, to say what was left
undone which could have altered the result. Had Thorneycroft known all
that we know, he would have kept his grip upon the hill.  On the face
of it one finds it difficult to understand why so momentous a
decision, upon which the whole operations depended, should have been
left entirely to the judgment of one who in the morning had been a
simple Lieutenant-Colonel.  'Where are the bosses? ' cried a Fusilier,
and the historian can only repeat the question.  General Warren was at
the bottom of the hill.  Had he ascended and determined that the place
should still be held, he might have sent down the wearied troops,
brought up smaller numbers of fresh ones, ordered the Sappers to
deepen the trenches, and tried to bring up water and guns.  It was for
the divisional commander to lay his hand upon the reins at so critical
an instant, to relieve the weary man who had struggled so hard all
day.

The subsequent publication of the official despatches has served
little purpose, save to show that there was a want of harmony between
Buller and Warren, and that the former lost all confidence in his
subordinate during the course of the operations. In these papers
General Buller expresses the opinion that had Warren's operations been
more dashing, he would have found his turning movement upon the left a
comparatively easy matter.  In this judgment he would probably have
the concurrence of most military critics. He adds, however, 'On the
19th, I ought to have assumed command myself.  I saw that things were
not going well -- indeed, everyone saw that.  I blame myself now for
not having done so.  I did not, because, if I did, I should discredit
General Warren in the estimation of the troops, and, if I were shot,
and he had to withdraw across the Tugela, and they had lost confidence
in him, the consequences might be very serious.  I must leave it to
higher authority whether this argument was a sound one.' It needs no
higher authority than common-sense to say that the argument is an
absolutely unsound one. No consequences could be more serious than
that the operations should miscarry and Ladysmith remain unrelieved,
and such want of success must in any case discredit Warren in the eyes
of his troops. Besides, a subordinate is not discredited because his
chief steps in to conduct a critical operation.  However, these
personal controversies may be suffered to remain in that pigeon-hole
from which they should never have been drawn.

On account of the crowding of four thousand troops into a space which
might have afforded tolerable cover for five hundred the losses in the
action were very heavy, not fewer than fifteen hundred being killed,
wounded, or missing, the proportion of killed being, on account of the
shell fire, abnormally high.  The Lancashire Fusiliers were the
heaviest sufferers, and their Colonel Blomfield was wounded and fell
into the hands of the enemy.  The Royal Lancasters also lost heavily.
Thorneycroft's had 80 men hit out of 180 engaged.  The Imperial Light
Infantry, a raw corps of Rand refugees who were enduring their baptism
of fire, lost 130 men. In officers the losses were particularly heavy,
60 being killed or wounded. The Boer returns show some 50 killed and
150 wounded, which may not be far from the truth. Without the shell
fire the British losses might not have been much more.

General Buller had lost nearly two thousand men since he had crossed
the Tugela, and his purpose was still unfulfilled.  Should he risk the
loss of a large part of his force in storming the ridges in front of
him, or should he recross the river and try for an easier route
elsewhere? To the surprise and disappointment both of the public and
of the army, he chose the latter course, and by January 27th he had
fallen back, unmolested by the Boers, to the other side of the
Tugela. It must be confessed that his retreat was admirably conducted,
and that it was a military feat to bring his men, his guns, and his
stores in safety over a broad river in the face of a victorious enemy.
Stolid and unmoved, his impenetrable demeanour restored serenity and
confidence to the angry and disappointed troops.  There might well be
heavy hearts among both them and the public. After a fortnight's
campaign, and the endurance of great losses and hardships, both
Ladysmith and her relievers found themselves no better off than when
they started. Buller still held the commanding position of Mount
Alice, and this was all that he had to show for such sacrifices and
such exertions.  Once more there came a weary pause while Ladysmith,
sick with hope deferred, waited gloomily upon half-rations of
horse-flesh for the next movement from the South.

CHAPTER XVI

VAALKRANZ

Neither General Buller nor his troops appeared to be dismayed by the
failure of their plans, or by the heavy losses which were entailed by
the movement which culminated at Spion Kop.  The soldiers grumbled, it
is true, at not being let go, and swore that even if it cost them
two-thirds of their number they could and would make heir way through
this labyrinth of hills with its fringe of death.  So doubtless they
might. But from first to last their General had shown a great -- some
said an exaggerated -- respect for human life, and he had no intention
of winning a path by mere slogging, if there were a chance of finding
one by less bloody means.  On the morrow of his return he astonished
both his army and the Empire by announcing that he had found the key
to the position and that he hoped to be in Ladysmith in a week.  Some
rejoiced in the assurance. Some shrugged their shoulders.  Careless of
friends or foes, the stolid Buller proceeded to work out his new
combination.

In the next few days reinforcements trickled in which more than made
up for the losses of the preceding week. A battery of horse artillery,
two heavy guns, two squadrons of the 14th Hussars, and infantry drafts
to the number of twelve or fourteen hundred men came to share the
impending glory or disaster.  On the morning of February 5th the army
sallied forth once more to have another try to win a way to
Ladysmith. It was known that enteric was rife in the town, that shell
and bullet and typhoid germ had struck down a terrible proportion of
the garrison, and that the rations of starved horse and commissariat
mule were running low. With their comrades -- in many cases their
linked battalions -- in such straits within fifteen miles of them,
Buller's soldiers had high motives to brace them for a supreme effort.

The previous attempt had been upon the line immediately to the west of
Spion Kop. If, however, one were to follow to the east of Spion Kop,
one would come upon a high mountain called Doornkloof.  Between these
two peaks, there lies a low ridge, called Brakfontein, and a small
detached hill named Vaalkranz. Buller's idea was that if he could
seize this small Vaalkranz, it would enable him to avoid the high
ground altogether and pass his troops through on to the plateau
beyond. He still held the Ford at Potgieter's and commanded the
country beyond with heavy guns on Mount Alice and at Swartz Kop, so
that he could pass troops over at his will.  He would make a noisy
demonstration against Brakfontein, then suddenly seize Vaalkranz, and
so, as he hoped, hold the outer door which opened on to the passage to
Ladysmith.

The getting of the guns up Swartz Kop was a preliminary which was as
necessary as it was difficult. A road was cut, sailors, engineers, and
gunners worked with a will under the general direction of Majors
Findlay and Apsley Smith.  A mountain battery, two field guns, and six
naval 12-pounders were slung up by steel hawsers, the sailors
yeo-hoing on the halliards. The ammunition was taken up by hand.  At
six o'clock on the morning of the 5th the other guns opened a furious
and probably harmless fire upon Brakfontein, Spion Kop, and all the
Boer positions opposite to them.  Shortly afterwards the feigned
attack upon Brakfontein was commenced and was sustained with much fuss
and appearance of energy until all was ready for the development of
the true one. Wynne's Brigade, which had been Woodgate's, recovered
already from its Spion Kop experience, carried out this part of the
plan, supported by six batteries of field artillery, one howitzer
battery, and two 4.7 naval guns.  Three hours later a telegram was on
its way to Pretoria to tell how triumphantly the burghers had driven
back an attack which was never meant to go forward.  The infantry
retired first, then the artillery in alternate batteries, preserving a
beautiful order and decorum.  The last battery, the 78th, remained to
receive the concentrated fire of the Boer guns, and was so enveloped
in the dust of the exploding. shells that spectators could only see a
gun here or a limber there. Out of this whirl of death it quietly
walked, without a bucket out of its place, the gunners drawing one
wagon, the horses of which had perished, and so effected a leisurely
and contemptuous withdrawal.  The gallantry of the gunners has been
one of the most striking features of the war, but it has never been
more conspicuous than in this feint at Brakfontein.

While the attention of the Boers was being concentrated upon the
Lancashire men, a pontoon bridge was suddenly thrown across the river
at a place called Munger's Drift, some miles to the eastward.  Three
infantry brigades, those of Hart, Lyttelton, and Hildyard, had been
massed all ready to be let slip when the false attack was sufficiently
absorbing.  The artillery fire (the Swartz Kop guns, and also the
batteries which had been withdrawn from the Brakfontein demonstration)
was then turned suddenly, with the crashing effect of seventy pieces,
upon the real object of attack, the isolated Vaalkranz.  It is
doubtful whether any position has ever been subjected to so terrific a
bombardment, for the weight of metal thrown by single guns was greater
than that of a whole German battery in the days of their last great
war.  The 4-pounders and 6-pounders of which Prince Kraft discourses
would have seemed toys beside these mighty howitzers and 4·7's. Yet
though the hillside was sharded off in great flakes, it is doubtful if
this terrific fire inflicted much injury upon the cunning and
invisible riflemen with whom we had to contend.

About midday the infantry began to stream across the bridge, which had
been most gallantly and efficiently constructed under a warm fire, by
a party of sappers, under the command of Major Irvine.  The attack was
led by the Durham Light Infantry of Lyttelton's Brigade, followed by
the 1st Rifle Brigade, with the Scottish and 3rd Rifles in support.
Never did the old Light Division of Peninsular fame go up a Spanish
hillside with greater spirit and dash than these, their descendants,
facing the slope of Vaalkranz. In open order they moved across the
plain, with a superb disregard of the crash and patter of the
shrapnel, and then up they went, the flitting figures, springing from
cover to cover, stooping, darting, crouching, running, until with
their glasses the spectators on Swartz Kop could see the gleam of the
bayonets and the strain of furious rushing men upon the summit, as the
Jast Boers were driven from their trenches.  The position was gained,
but little else.  Seven officers and seventy men were lying killed and
wounded among the boulders. A few stricken Boers, five unwounded
prisoners, and a string of Basuto ponies were the poor fruits of
victory -- those and the arid hill from which so much had been hoped,
and so little was to be gained.

It was during this advance that an incident occurred of a more
picturesque character than is usual in modern warfare.  The
invisibility of combatants and guns, and the absorption of the
individual in the mass, have robbed the battle-field of those episodes
which adorned, if they did not justify it.  On this occasion, a Boer
gun, cut off by the British advance, flew out suddenly from behind its
cover, like a hare from its tussock, and raced for safety across the
plain.  Here and there it wound, the horses stretched to their utmost,
the drivers stooping and lashing, the little gun bounding behind.  To
right to left, behind and before, the British shells burst, lyddite
and shrapnel, crashing and riving.  Over the lip of a hollow, the
gallant gun vanished, and within a few minutes was banging away once
more at the British advance. With cheers and shouts and laughter, the
British infantrymen watched the race for shelter, their sporting
spirit rising high above all racial hatred, and hailing with a 'gone
to ground' whoop the final disappearance of the gun.

The Durhams had cleared the path, but the other regiments of
Lyttelton's Brigade followed hard at their heels, and before night
they had firmly established themselves upon the hill.  But the fatal
slowness which had marred General Buller's previous operations again
prevented him from completing his success.  Twice at least in the
course of these operations there is evidence of sudden impulse to drop
his tools in the midst of his task and to do no more for the day.  So
it was at Colenso, where an order was given at an early hour for the
whole force to retire, and the guns which might have been covered by
infantry fire and withdrawn after nightfall were abandoned.  So it was
also at a critical moment at this action at Vaalkranz.  In the
original scheme of operations it had been planned that an adjoining
hill, called the Green Hill, which partly commanded Vaalkranz, should
be carried also. The two together made a complete position, while
singly each was a very bad neighbour to the other.  On the
aide-de-camp riding up, however, to inquire from General Buller
whether the time had come for this advance, he replied, 'We have done
enough for the day,' and left out this essential portion of his
original scheme, with the result that all miscarried.

Speed was the most essential quality for carrying out his plan
successfully.  So it must always be with the attack.  The defence does
not know where the blow is commg, and has to distribute men and guns
to cover miles of ground.  The attacker knows where he will hit, and
behind a screen of outposts he can mass his force and throw his whole
strength against a mere fraction of that of his enemy.  But in order
to do so he must be quick.  One tiger spring must tear the centre out
of the line before the flanks can come to its assistance.  If time is
given, if the long line can concentrate, if the scattered guns can
mass, if lines of defence can be reduplicated behind, then the one
great advantage which the attack possesses is thrown away. Both at the
second and at the third attempts of Buller the British movements were
so slow that had the enemy been the slowest instead of the most mobile
of armies, they could still always have made any dispositions which
they chose. Warren's dawdling in the first days of the movement which
ended at Spion Kop might with an effort be condoned on account of
possible difficulties of supply, but it would strain the ingenuity of
the most charitable critic to find a sufficient reason for the
lethargy of Vaalkranz.  Though daylight comes a little after four, the
operations were not commenced before seven. Lyttelton's Brigade had
stormed the hill at two, and nothing more was done during the long
evening, while officers chafed and soldiers swore, and the busy Boers
worked furiously to bring up their guns and to bar the path which we
must take.  General Buller remarked a day or two later that the way
was not quite so easy as it had been. One might have deduced the fact
without the aid of a balloon.

The brigade then occupied Vaalkranz and erected sangars and dug
trenches.  On the morning of the 6th, the position of the British
force was not dissimilar to that of Spion Kop.  Again they had some
thousands of men upon a hill-top, exposed to shell fire from several
directions and without any guns upon the hill to support them.  In one
or two points the situation was modified in their favour, and hence
their escape from loss and disaster. A more extended position enabled
the infantry to avoid bunching, but in other respects the situation
was parallel to that in which they had found themselves a fortnight
before.

The original plan was that the taking of Vaalkranz should be the first
step towards the outflanking of Brakfontein and the rolling up of the
whole Boer position. But after the first move the British attitude
became one of defence rather than of attack.  Whatever the general and
ultimate effect of these operations may have been, it is beyond
question that their contemplation was annoying and bewildering in the
extreme to those who were present.  The position on February 6th was
this.  Over the river upon the hill was a singgle British brigade,
exposed to the fire of one enormous gun -- a 96-pound Creusot, the
longest of all Long Toms -- which was stationed upon Doornkloof, and
of several smaller guns and pom-poms which spat at them from nooks and
crevices of the hills.  On our side were seventy-two guns, large and
small, all very noisy and impotent.  It is not too much to say, as it
appears to me, that the Boers have in some ways revolutionised our
ideas in regard to the use of artillery, by bringing a fresh and
healthy common-sense to bear upon a subject which had been unduly
fettered by pedantic rules.  The Boer system is the single stealthy
gun crouching where none can see it.  The British system is the six
brave guns coming into action in line of full interval, and spreading
out into accurate dressing visible to all men. 'Always remember,' says
one of our artillery maxims, 'that one gun is no gun.' Which is
prettier on a field-day, is obvious, but which is business -- let the
many duels between six Boer guns and sixty British declare. With black
powder it was useless to hide the gun, as its smoke must betray
it. With smokeless powder the guns are so invisible that it was only
by the detection with powerful glasses of the dust from the trail on
the recoil that the officers were ever able to localise the guns
against which they were fighting. But if the Boers had had six guns in
line, instead of one behind that kopje, and another between those
distant rocks, it would not have been so difficult to say where they
were. Again, British traditions are all in favour of planting guns
close together. At this very action of Vaalkranz the two largest guns
were so placed that a single shell bursting between them would have
disabled them both.  The officer who placed them there, and so
disregarded in a vital matter the most obvious dictates of
common-sense, would probably have been shocked by any want of
technical smartness, or irregularity in the routine drill. An
over-elaboration of trifles, and a want of grip of common-sense, and
of adaptation to new ideas, is the most serious and damaging criticism
which can be levelled against our army.  That the function of infantry
is to shoot, and not to act like spearmen in the Middle Ages; that the
first duty of artillery is so far as is possible to be invisible --
these are two of the lessons which have been driven home so often
during the war, that even our hidebound conservatism can hardly resist
them.

Lyttelton's Brigade, then, held Vaalkranz; and from three parts of the
compass there came big shells and little shells, with a constant
shower of long-range rifle bullets. Behind them, and as useful as if
it had been on Woolwich Common, there was drawn up an imposing mass of
men, two infantry divisions, and two brigades of cavalry, all
straining at the leash, prepared to shed their blood until the spruits
ran red with it, if only they could win their way to where their
half-starved comrades waited for them. But nothing happened. Hours
passed and nothing happened.  An occasional shell from the big gun
plumped among them.  One, through some freak of gunnery, lobbed slowly
through a division, and the men whooped and threw their caps at it as
it passed. The guns on Swartz Kop, at a range of nearly five miles,
tossed shells at the monster on Doornkloof, and finally blew up his
powder magazine amid the applause of the infantry. For the army it was
a picnic and a spectacle.

But it was otherwise with the men up on Vaalkranz. In spite of sangar
and trench, that cross fire was finding them out; and no feint or
demonstration on either side came to draw the concentrated fire from
their position. Once there was a sudden alarm at the western end of
the hill, and stooping bearded figures with slouch hats and bandoliers
were right up on the ridge before they could be stopped, so cleverly
had their advance been conducted. But a fiery rush of Durhams and
Rifles cleared the crest again, and it was proved once more how much
stronger is the defence than the attack.  Nightfall found the position
unchanged, save that another pontoon bridge had been constructed
during the day. Over this Hildyard's Brigade marched to relieve
Lyttelton's, who came back for a rest under the cover of the Swartz
Kop guns. Their losses in the two days had been under two hundred and
fifty, a trifle if any aim were to be gained, but excessive for a mere
demonstration.

That night Hildyard's men supplemented the defences made by Lyttelton,
and tightened their hold upon the hill. One futile night attack caused
them for an instant to change the spade for the rifle. When in the
morning it was found that the Boers had, as they naturally would,
brought up their outlying guns, the tired soldiers did not regret
their labours of the night.  It was again demonstrated how innocuous a
thing is a severe shell fire, if the position be an extended one with
chances of cover. A total of forty killed and wounded out of a strong
brigade was the result of a long day under an incessant cannonade. And
then at nightfall came the conclusion that the guns were too many,
that the way was too hard, and down came all their high hopes with the
order to withdraw once more across that accursed river. Vaalkranz was
abandoned, and Hildyard's Brigade, seething with indignation, was
ordered back once more to its camp.

281CIIAPTER XVII

BULLER'S FINAL ADVANCE


THE heroic moment of the siege of Ladysmith was that which witnessed
the repulse of the great attack.  The epic should have ended at that
dramatic instant.  But instead of doing so the story falls back to an
anticlimax of crowded hospitals, slaughtered horses, and sporadic
shell fire. For another six weeks of inactivity the brave garrison
endured all the sordid evils which had steadily grown from
inconvenience to misfortune and from misfortune to misery.  Away in
the south they heard the thunder of Buller's guns, and from the hills
round the town they watched with pale faces and bated breath the
tragedy of Spion Kop, preserving a firm conviction that a very little
more would have transformed it into their salvation.  Their hearts
sank with the sinking of the cannonade, and rose again with the roar
of Vaalkranz.  But Vaalkranz also failed them, and they waited on in
the majesty of their hunger and their weakness for the help which was
to come.

It has been already narrated how General Buller had made his three
attempts for the relief of the city. The General who was inclined to
despair was now stimulated by despatches from Lord Roberts, while his
army, who were by no means inclined to despair, were immensely cheered
by the good news from the Kimberley side.  Both General and army
prepared for a last supreme effort.  This time, at least, the soldiers
hoped that they would be permitted to burst their way to the help of
their starving comrades or leave their bones among the hills which had
faced them so long. All they asked was a fight to a finish, and now
they were about to have one.

General Buller had tried the Boers' centre, he had tried their extreme
right, and now he was about to try their extreme left.  There were
some obvious advantages on this side which make it surprising that it
was not the first to be attempted.  In the first place, the enemy's
main position upon that flank was at Hlangwane mountain, which is to
the south of the Tugela, so that in case of defeat the river ran
behind them. In the second, Hlangwane mountain was the one point from
which the Boer position at Colenso could be certainly enfiladed, and
therefore the fruits of victory would be greater on that flank than on
the other. Finally, the operations could be conducted at no great
distance from the railhead, and the force would be exposed to little
danger of having its flank attacked or its communications cut, as was
the case in the Spion Kop advance. Against these potent considerations
there is only to be put the single fact that the turning of the Boer
right would threaten the Freestaters' line of retreat.  On the whole,
the balance of advantage lay entirely with the new attempt, and the
whole army advanced to it with a premonition of success. Of all the
examples which the war has given of the enduring qualities of the
British troops there is none more striking than the absolute
confidence and whole hearted delight with which, after three bloody
repulses, they set forth upon another venture.

On February 9th the movements were started which transferred the
greater part of the force from the extreme left to the centre and
right.  By the 11th Lyttelton's (formerly Clery's) second division and
Warren's fifth division had come eastward, leaving Burn Murdoch's
cavalry brigade to guard the Westem side. On the 12th Lord Dundonald,
with all the colonial cavalry, two battalions of infantry, and a
battery, made a strong reconnaissance towards Hussar Hill, which is
the nearest of the several hills which would have to be occupied in
order to turn the position.  The hill was taken, but was abandoned
again by General Buller after he had used it for some hours as an
observatory. A long-range action between the retiring cavalry and the
Boers ended in a few losses upon each side.

What Buller had seen during the hour or two which he had spent with
his telescope upon Hussar Hill had evidently confirmed him in his
views, for two days later (February 14th) the whole army set forth for
this point. By the morning of the 15th twenty thousand men were
concentrated upon the sides and spurs of this eminence. On the 16th
the heavy guns were in position, and all was ready for the advance.

Facing them now were the formidable Boer lines of Hlangwane Hill and
Green Hill, which would certainly cost several thousands of men if
they were to take them by direct storm. Beyond them, upon the Boer
flank, were the hills of Monte Christo and Cingolo, which appeared to
be the extreme outside of the Boer position. The plan was to engage
the attention of the trenches in front by a terrific artillery fire
and the threat of an assault, while at the same time sending the true
flank attack far round to carry the Cingolo ridge, which must be taken
before any other hill could be approached.

On the 17th, in the early morning, with the first tinge of violet in
the east, the irregular cavalry and the second division (Lyttelton's)
with Wynne's Brigade started upon their widely curving flanking march.
The country through which they passed was so broken that the troopers
led their horses in single file, and would have found themselves
helpless in face of any resistance. Fortunately, Cingolo Hill was very
weakly held, and by evening both our horsemen and our infantry had a
firm grip upon it, thus turning the extreme left flank of the Boer
position.  For once their mountainous fortresses were against them,
for a mounted Boer force is so mobile that in an open position, such
as faced Methuen, it is very hard and requires great celerity of
movement ever to find a flank at all.  On a succession of hills,
however, it was evident that some one hill must mark the extreme end
of their line, and Buller had found it at Cingolo.  Their answer to
this movement was to throw their flank back so as to face the new
position.

Even now, however, the Boer leaders had apparently not realised that
this was the main attack, or it is possible that the intervention of
the river made it difficult for them to send reinforcements. However
that may be, it is certain that the task which the British found
awaiting them on the 18th proved to be far easier than they had dared
to hope.  The honours of the day rested with Hildyard's English
Brigade (East Surrey, West Surrey, West Yorkshires, and 2nd
Devons). In open order and with a rapid advance, taking every
advantage of the cover -- which was better than is usual in South
African warfare -- they gained the edge of the Monte Christo ridge,
and then swiftly cleared the crest. One at least of the regiments
engaged, the Devons, was nerved by the thought that their own first
battalion was waiting for them at Ladysmith.  The capture of the hill
made the line of trenches which faced Buller untenable, and he was at
once able to advance with Barton's Fusilier Brigade and to take
possession of the whole Boer position of Hlangwane and Green Hill.  It
was not a great tactical victory, for they had no trophies to show
save the worthless DEBRIS of the Boer camps.  But it was a very great
strategical victory, for it not only gave them the whole south side of
the Tugela, but also the means of commanding with their guns a great
deal of the north side, including those Colenso trenches which had
blocked the way so long.  A hundred and seventy killed and wounded (of
whom only fourteen were killed) was a trivial price for such a
result. At last from the captured ridges the exultant troops could see
far away the haze which lay over the roofs of Ladysmith, and the
besieged, with hearts beating high with hope, turned their glasses
upon the distant mottled patches which told them that their comrades
were approaching.

By February 20th the British had firmly established themselves along
the whole south bank of the river, Hart's brigade bad occupied
Colenso, and the heavy guns had been pushed up to more advanced
positions. The crossing of the river was the next operation, and the
question arose where it should be crossed. The wisdom which comes with
experience shows us now that it would have been infinitely better to
have crossed on their extreme left flank, as by an advance upon this
line we should have turned their strong Pieters position just as we
had already turned their Colenso one. With an absolutely master card
in our hand we refused to play it, and won the game by a more tedious
and perilous process.  The assumption seems to have been made (on no
other hypothesis can one understand the facts) that the enemy were
demoralised and that the positions would not be strongly held.  Our
flanking advantage was abandoned and a direct advance was ordered from
colenso, involving a frontal attack upon the Pieters position.

On February 21st Buller threw his pontoon bridge over the river near
Colenso, and the same evening his army began to cross. It was at once
evident that the Boer resistance had by no means collapsed. Wynne's
Lancashire Brigade were the first across, and found themselves hotly
engaged before nightfall. The low kopjes in front of them were blazing
with musketry fire.  The brigade held its own, but lost the Brigadier
(the second in a month) and 150 rank and file.  Next morning the main
body of the infantry was passed across, and the army was absolutely
committed to the formidable and unnecessary enterprise of fighting its
way straight to Ladysmith.

The force in front had weakened, however, both in numbers and in
morale.  Some thousands of the Freestaters had left in order to defend
their own country from the advance of Roberts, while the rest were
depressed by as much of the news as was allowed by their leaders to
reach them. But the Boer is a tenacious fighter, and many a brave man
was still to fall before Buller and White should shake hands in the
High Street of Ladysmith.

The first obstacle which faced the army, after crossing the river, was
a belt of low rolling ground, which was gradually cleared by the
advance of our infantry. As night closed in the advance lines of Boers
and British were so close to each other that incessant rifle fire was
maintamed until morning, and at more than one point small bodies of
desperate riflemen charged right up to the bayonets of our
infantry. The morning found us still holding our positions all along
the line, and as more and more of our infantry came up and gun after
gun roared into action we began to push our stubborn enemy northwards.
On the 21st the Dorsets, Middlesex, and Somersets had borne the heat
of the day.  On the 22nd it was the Royal Lancasters, followed by the
South Lancashires, who took up the running. It would take the patience
and also the space of a Kinglake in this scrambling broken fight to
trace the doings of those groups of men who strove and struggled
through the rifle fire. All day a steady advance was maintained over
the low kopjes, until by evening we were faced by the more serious
line of the Pieter's Hills. The operations had been carried out with a
monotony of gallantry. Always the same extended advance, always the
same rattle of Mausers and clatter of pom-poms from a ridge, always
the same victorious soldiers on the barren crest, with a few crippled
Boers before them and many crippled comrades behind. They were
expensive triumphs, and yet every one brought them nearer to their
goal. And now, like an advancing tide, they lapped along the base of
Pieter's Hill. Could they gather volume enough to carry themselves
over? The issue of the long-drawn battle and the fate of Ladysmith
hung upon the question.

Brigadier Fitzroy Hart, to whom the assault was entrusted, is in some
ways as singular and picturesque a type as has been evolved in the
war. A dandy soldier, always the picture of neatness from the top of
his helmet to the heels of his well-polished brown boots, he brings to
military matters the same precision which he affects in
dress. Pedantic in his accuracy, he actually at the battle of Colenso
drilled the Irish Brigade for half an hour before leading them into
action, and threw out markers under a deadly fire in order that his
change from close to extended formation might be academically
correct. The heavy loss of the Brigade at this action was to some
extent ascribed to him and affected his popularity; but as his men
came to know him better, his romantic bravery, his whimsical soldierly
humour, their dislike changed into admiration. His personal disregard
for danger was notorious and reprehensible. 'Where is General Hart?'
asked some one in action. 'I have not seen him, but I know where you
will find him. Go ahead of the skirmish line and you will see him
standing on a rock,' was the answer. He bore a charmed life. It was a
danger to be near him. 'Whom are you going to?'  'General Hart,' said
the aide-de-camp. 'Then good-bye!' cried his fellows. A grim humour
ran through his nature. It is gravely recorded and widely believed
that he lined up a regiment on a hill-top in order to teach them not
to shrink from fire. Amid the laughter of his Irishmen, he walked
through the open files of his firing line holding a laggard by the
ear. This was the man who had put such a spirit into the Irish Brigade
that amid that army of valiant men there were none who held such a
record. 'Their rushes were the quickest, their rushes were the
longest, and they stayed the shortest time under cover,' said a shrewd
military observer. To Hart and his brigade was given the task of
clearing the way to Ladysmith.

The regiments which he took with him on his perilous enterprise were
the 1st Inniskilling Fusiliers, the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, the 1st
Connaught Rangers, and the Imperial Light Infantry, the whole forming
the famous 5th Brigade. They were already in the extreme British
advance, and now, as they moved forwards, the Durham Light Infantry
and the 1st Rifle Brigade from Lyttelton's Brigade came up to take
their place. The hill to be taken lay on the right, and the soldiers
were compelled to pass in single file under a heavy fire for more than
a mile until they reached the spot which seemed best for their
enterprise. There, short already of sixty of their comrades, they
assembled and began a cautious advance upon the lines of trenches and
sangars which seamed the brown slope above them.

For a time they were able to keep some cover, and the casualties were
comparatively few. But now at last, as the evening sun threw a long
shadow from the hills, the leading regiment, the Inniskillings, found
themselves at the utmost fringe of boulders with a clear slope between
them and the main trench of the enemy. Up there where the shrapnel was
spurting and the great lyddite shells crashing they could dimly see a
line of bearded faces and the black dots of the slouch hats. With a
yell the Inniskillings sprang out, carried with a rush the first
trench, and charged desperately onwards for the second one. It was a
supremely dashing attack against a supremely steady resistance, for
among all their gallant deeds the Boers have never fought better than
on that February evening. Amid such a smashing shell fire as living
mortals have never yet endured they stood doggedly, these hardy men of
the veldt, and fired fast and true into the fiery ranks of the
Irishmen. The yell of the stormers was answered by the remorseless
roar of the Mausers and the deep-chested shouts of the farmers. Up and
up surged the infantry, falling, rising, dashing bull-headed at the
crackling line of the trench. But still the bearded faces glared at
them over the edge, and still the sheet of lead pelted through their
ranks. The regiment staggered, came on, staggered again, was overtaken
by supporting companies of the Dublins and the Connaughts, came on,
staggered once more, and finally dissolved into shreds, who ran
swiftly back for cover, threading their way among their stricken
comrades.  Never on this earth was there a retreat of which the
survivors had less reason to be ashamed. They had held on to the
utmost capacity of human endurance. Their Colonel, ten officers, and
more than half the regiment were lying on the fatal hill. Honour to
them, and honour also to the gallant Dutchmen who, rooted in the
trenches, had faced the rush and fury of such an onslaught! Today to
them, tomorrow to us -- but it is for a soldier to thank the God of
battles for worthy foes.

It is one thing, however, to repulse the British soldier and it is
another to rout him. Within a few hundred yards of their horrible
ordeal at Magersfontein the Highlanders reformed into a military body.
So now the Irishmen fell back no further than the nearest cover, and
there held grimly on to the ground which they had won. If you would
know the advantage which the defence has over the attack, then do you
come and assault this line of tenacious men, now in your hour of
victory and exultation, friend Boer! Friend Boer did attempt it, and
skilfully too, moving a flanking party to sweep the position with
their fire. But the brigade, though sorely hurt, held them off without
difficulty, and was found on the morning of the 24th to be still lying
upon the ground which they had won.

Our losses had been very heavy, Colonel Thackeray of the
Inniskillings, Colonel Sitwell of the Dublins, three majors, twenty
officers, and a total of about six hundred out of 1,200 actually
engaged. To take such punishment and to remain undemoralised is the
supreme test to which troops can be put. Could the loss have been
avoided? By following the original line of advance from Monte Christo,
perhaps, when we should have turned the enemy's left. But otherwise
no. The hill was in the way and had to be taken. In the war game you
cannot play without a stake. You lose and you pay forfeit, and where
the game is fair the best player is he who pays with the best grace.
The attack was well prepared, well delivered, and only miscarried on
account of the excellence of the defence. We proved once more what we
had proved so often before, that all valour and all discipline will
not avail in a frontal attack against brave coolheaded men armed with
quick-firing rifles.

While the Irish Brigade assaulted Railway Hill an attack had been made
upon the left, which was probably meant as a demonstration to keep the
Boers from reinforcing their comrades rather than as an actual attempt
upon their lines. Such as it was, however, it cost the life of at
least one brave soldier, for Colonel Thorold, of the Welsh Fusiliers,
was among the fallen. Thorold, Thackeray, and Sitwell in one
evening. Who can say that British colonels have not given their men a
lead?

The army was now at a deadlock. Railway Hill barred the way, and if
Hart's men could not carry it by assault it was hard to say who
could. The 24th found the two armies facing each other at this
critical point, the Irishmen still clinging to the slopes of the hill
and the Boers lining the top. Fierce rifle firing broke out between
them during the day, but each side was well covered and lay low. The
troops in support suffered somewhat, however, from a random shell
fire. Mr. Winston Churchill has left it upon record that within his
own observation three of their shrapnel shells fired at a venture on
to the reverse slope of a hill accounted for nineteen men and four
horses. The enemy can never have known how hard those three shells had
hit us, and so we may also believe that our artillery fire has often
been less futile than it appeared.

General Buller had now realised that it was no mere rearguard action
which the Boers were fighting, but that their army was standing
doggedly at bay; so he reverted to that flanking movement which, as
events showed, should never have been abandoned. Hart's Irish Brigade
was at present almost the right of the army.  His new plan -- a
masterly one -- was to keep Hart pinning the Boers at that point, and
to move his centre and left across the river, and then back to
envelope the left wing of the enemy. By this manoeuvre Hart became the
extreme left instead of the extreme right, and the Irish Brigade would
be the hinge upon which the whole army should turn. It was a large
conception, finely carried out. The 24th was a day of futile shell
fire -- and of plans for the future. The heavy guns were got across once
more to the Monte Christo ridge and to Hlangwane, and preparations
made to throw the army from the west to the east.  The enemy still
snarled and occasionally snapped in front of Hart's men, but with four
companies of the 2nd Rifle Brigade to protect their flanks their
position remained secure.

In the meantime, through a CONTRETEMPS between our outposts and the
Boers, no leave had been given to us to withdraw our wounded, and the
unfortunate fellows, some hundreds of them, had lain between the lines
in agonies of thirst for thirty-six hours -- one of the most painful
incidents of the campaign. Now, upon the 25th, an armistice was
proclaimed, and the crying needs of the survivors were attended to. On
the same day the hearts of our soldiers sank within them as they saw
the stream of our wagons and guns crossing the river once more. What,
were they foiled again? Was the blood of these brave men to be shed in
vain? They ground their teeth at the thought. The higher strategy was
not for them, but back was back and forward was forward, and they knew
which way their proud hearts wished to go.

The 26th was occupied by the large movements of troops which so
complete a reversal of tactics necessitated. Under the screen of a
heavy artillery fire, the British right became the left and the left
the right. A second pontoon bridge was thrown across near the old Boer
bridge at Hlangwane, and over it was passed a large force of infantry,
Barton's Fusilier Brigade, Kitchener's (VICE Wynne's, VICE Woodgate's)
Lancashire Brigade, and two battalions of Norcott's (formerly
Lyttelton's) Brigade. Coke's Brigade was left at Colenso to prevent a
counter attack upon our left flank and communications.  In this way,
while Hart with the Durhams and the 1st Rifle Brigade held the Boers
in front, the main body of the army was rapidly swung round on to
their left flank. By the morning of the 27th all were in place for the
new attack.

Opposite the point where the troops bad been massed were three Boer
hills; one, the nearest, may for convenience sake be called Barton's
Hill. As the army had formerly been situated the assault upon this
hill would have been a matter of extreme difficulty; but now, with the
heavy guns restored to their commanding position, from which they
could sweep its sides and summits, it had recovered its initial
advantage. In the morning sunlight Barton's Fusiliers crossed the
river, and advanced to the attack under a screaming canopy of
shells. Up they went and up, darting and crouching, until their
gleaming bayonets sparkled upon the summit. The masterful artillery
had done its work, and the first long step taken in this last stage of
the relief of Ladysmith. The loss had been slight and the advantage
enormous. After they had gained the summit the Fusillers were stung
and stung again by clouds of skirmishers who clung to the flanks of
the hill, but their grip was firm and grew firmer with every hour.

Of the three Boer hills which had to be taken the nearest (or eastern
one) was now in the hands of the British. The furthest (or western
one) was that on which the Irish Brigade was still crouching, ready at
any moment for a final spring which would take them over the few
hundred yards which separated them from the trenches. Between the two
intervened a central hill, as yet untouched. Could we carry this the
whole position would be ours. Now for the final effort! Turn every gun
upon it, the guns of Monte Christo, the guns of Hlangwane! Turn every
rifle upon it -- the rifles of Barton's men, the rifles of Hart's men,
the carbines of the distant cavalry!  Scalp its crown with the
machine-gun fire! And now up with you, Lancashire men, Norcott's men!
The summit or a glorious death, for beyond that hill your suffering
comrades are awaiting you! Put every bullet and every man and all of
fire and spirit that you are worth into this last hour; for if you
fail now you have failed for ever, and if you win, then when your
hairs are white your blood will still run warm when you think of that
morning's work. The long drama had drawn to an end, and one short
day's work is to show what that end was to be.

But there was never a doubt of it. Hardly for one instant did the
advance waver at any point of its extended line. It was the supreme
instant of the Natal campaign, as, wave after wave, the long lines of
infantry went shimmering up the hill. On the left the Lancasters, the
Lancashire Fusiliers, the South Lancashires, the York and Lancasters,
with a burr of north country oaths, went racing for the summit. Spion
Kop and a thousand comrades were calling for vengeance. 'Remember,
men, the eyes of Lancashire are watching you,' cried the gallant
MacCarthy O'Leary.  The old 40th swept on, but his dead body marked
the way which they had taken. On the right the East Surrey, the,
Cameronians, the 3rd Rifles, the 1st Rifle Brigade, the Durhams, and
the gallant Irishmen, so sorely stricken and yet so eager, were all
pressing upwards and onwards. The Boer fire lulls, it ceases -- they
are running! Wild hat-waving men upon the Hlangwane uplands see the
silhouette of the active figures of the stormers along the sky-line
and know that the position is theirs.  Exultant soldiers dance and
cheer upon the ridge. The sun is setting in glory over the great
Drakensberg mountains, and so also that night set for ever the hopes
of the Boer invaders of Natal. Out of doubt and chaos, blood and
labour, had come at last the judgment that the lower should not
swallow the higher, that the world is for the man of the twentieth and
not of the seventeenth century. After a fortnight of fighting the
weary troops threw themselves down that night with the assurance that
at last the door was ajar and the light breaking through. One more
effort and it would be open before them.

Behind the line of hills which had been taken there extended a great
plain as far as Bulwana -- that evil neighbour who had wrought such harm
upon Ladysmith. More than half of the Pieters position had fallen into
Buller's hands on the 27th, and the remainder had become untenable. The
Boers had lost some five hundred in killed, wounded, and
prisoners.[Footnote: Accurate figures will probably never be obtained,
but a well-known Boer in Pretoria informed me that Pieters was the
most expensive fight to them of the whole war.] It seemed to the
British General and his men that one more action would bring them
safely into Ladysmith.

But here they miscalculated, and so often have we miscalculated on the
optimistic side in this campaign that it is pleasing to find for once
that our hopes were less than the reality. The Boers had been beaten
-- fairly beaten and disheartened. It will always be a subject for
conjecture whether they were so entirely on the strength of the Natal
campaign, or whether the news of the Cronje disaster from the western
side had warned them that they must draw in upon the east. For my own
part I believe that the honour lies with the gallant men of Natal, and
that, moving on these lines, they would, Cronje or no Cronje, have
forced their way in triumph to Ladysmith.

And now the long-drawn story draws to a swift close. Cautiously
feeling their way with a fringe of horse, the British pushed over the
great plain, delayed here and there by the crackle of musketry, but
finding always that the obstacle gave way and vanished as they
approached it. At last it seemed clear to Dundonald that there really
was no barrier between his horsemen and the beleaguered city. With a
squadron of Imperial Light Horse and a squadron of Natal Carabineers
he rode on until, in the gathering twilight, the Ladysmith picket
challenged the approaching cavalry, and the gallant town was saved.

It is hard to say which had shown the greater endurance, the rescued
or their rescuers.  The town, indefensible, lurking in a hollow under
commanding hills, had held out for 118 days.  They had endured two
assaults and an incessant bombardment, to which, towards the end,
owing to the failure of heavy ammunition, they were unable to make any
adequate reply. It was calculated that 16,000 shells had fallen within
the town.  In two successful sorties they had destroyed three of the
enemy's heavy guns. They had been pressed by hunger, horseflesh was
already running short, and they had been decimated by disease. More
than 2,000 cases of enteric and dysentery had been in hospital at one
time, and the total number of admissions had been nearly as great as
the total number of the garrison. One-tenth of the men had actually
died of wounds or disease. Ragged, bootless, and emaciated, there
still lurked in the gaunt soldiers the martial spirit of warriors. On
the day after their relief 2,000 of them set forth to pursue the
Boers.  One who helped to lead them has left it on record that the
most piteous sight that he has ever seen was these wasted men,
stooping under their rifles and gasping with the pressure of their
accoutrements, as they staggered after their retreating enemy. A
Verestschagen might find a subject these 2,000 indomitable men with
their emaciated horses pursuing a formidable foe. It is God's mercy
they failed to overtake them.

If the record of the besieged force was great, that of the relieving
army was no less so. Through the blackest depths of despondency and
failure they had struggled to absolute success. At Colenso they had
lost 1,200 men, at Spion Kop 1,700, at Vaalkranz 400, and now, in this
last long-drawn effort, 1,600 more. Their total losses were over 5,000
men, more than 20 per cent. of the whole army. Some particular
regiments had suffered horribly. The Dublin and Inniskilling Fusiliers
headed the roll of honour with only five officers and 40 per cent. of
the men left standing. Next to them the Lancashire Fusiliers and the
Royal Lancasters had been the hardest hit. It speaks well for Buller's
power of winning and holding the confidence of his men that in the
face of repulse after repulse the soldiers still went into battle as
steadily as ever under his command.

On March 3rd Buller's force entered Ladysmith in state between the
lines of the defenders. For their heroism the Dublin Fusiliers were
put in the van of the procession, and it is told how, as the soldiers
who lined the streets saw the five officers and small clump of men,
the remains of what had been a strong battalion, realising, for the
first time perhaps, what their relief had cost, many sobbed like
children. With cheer after cheer the stream of brave men flowed for
hours between banks formed by men as brave. But for the purposes of
war the garrison was useless. A month of rest and food would be
necessary before they could be ready to take the field once more.

So the riddle of the Tugela had at last been solved. Even now, with
all the light which has been shed upon the matter, it is hard to
apportion praise and blame. To the cheerful optimism of Symons must be
laid some of the blame of the original entanglement; but man is
mortal, and he laid down his life for his mistake. White, who had been
but a week in the country, could not, if he would, alter the main
facts of the military situation. He did his best, committed one or two
errors, did brilliantly on one or two points, and finally conducted
the defence with a tenacity and a gallantry which are above all
praise. It did not, fortunately, develop into an absolutely desperate
affair, like Masséna's defence of Genoa, but a few more weeks would
have made it a military tragedy. He was fortunate in the troops whom
he commanded -- half of them old soldiers from India -- [Footnote: An
officer in high command in Ladysmith has told me, as an illustration
of the nerve and discipline of the troops, that though false alarms in
the Boer trenches were matters of continual occurrence from the
beginning to the end of the siege, there was not one single occasion
when the British outposts made a mistake.] -- and exceedingly
fortunate in his officers, French (in the operations before the
siege), Archibald Hunter, Ian Hamilton, Hedworth Lambton,
Dick-Cunyngham, Knox, De Courcy Hamilton, and all the other good men
and true who stood (as long as they could stand) by his side. Above
all, he was fortunate in his commissariat officers, and it was in the
offices of Colonels Ward and Stoneman as much as in the trenches and
sangars of Cæsar's Camp that the siege was won.

Buller, like White, had to take the situation as he found it. It is
well known that his own belief was that the line of the Tugela was the
true defence of Natal. When he reached Africa, Ladysmith was already
beleaguered, and he, with his troops, had to abandon the scheme of
direct invasion and to hurry to extricate White's division. Whether
they might not have been more rapidly extricated by keeping to the
original plan is a question which will long furnish an excellent
subject for military debate. Had Buller in November known that
Ladysmith was capable of holding out until March, is it conceivable
that he, with his whole army corps and as many more troops as he cared
to summon from England, would not have made such an advance in four
months through the Free State as would necessitate the abandonment of
the sieges both of Kimberley and of Ladysmith? If the Boers persisted
in these sieges they could not possibly place more than 20,000 men on
the Orange River to face 60,000 whom Buller could have had there by
the first week in December. Methuen's force, French's force, Gatacre's
force, and the Natal force, with the exception of garrisons for
Pietermaritzburg and Durban, would have assembled, with a reserve of
another sixty thousand men in the colony or on the sea ready to fill
the gaps in his advance. Moving over a flat country with plenty of
flanking room, it is probable that he would have been in Bloemfontein
by Christmas and at the Vaal River late in January. What could the
Boers do then? They might remain before Ladysmith, and learn that
their capital and their gold mines had been taken in their absence. Or
they might abandon the siege and trek back to defend their own
homes. This, as it appears to a civilian critic, would have been the
least expensive means of fighting them; but after all the strain had
to come somewhere, and the long struggle of Ladysmith may have meant a
more certain and complete collapse in the future. At least, by the
plan actually adopted we saved Natal from total devastation, and that
must count against a great deal.

Having taken his line, Buller set about his task in a slow,
deliberate, but pertinacious fashion. It cannot be denied, however,
that the pertinacity was largely due to the stiffening counsel of
Roberts and the soldierly firmness of White who refused to acquiesce
in the suggestion of surrender. Let it be acknowledged that Buller's
was the hardest problem of the war, and that he solved it. The mere
acknowledgment goes far to soften criticism. But the singular thing is
that in his proceedings he showed qualities which had not been
generally attributed to him, and was wanting in those very points
which the public had imagined to be charactenstic of him. He had gone
out with the reputation of a downright John Bull fighter, who would
take punishment or give it, but slog his way through without
wincing. There was no reason for attributing any particular
strategical ability to him. But as a matter of fact, setting the
Colenso attempt aside, the crossing for the Spion Kop enterprise, the
withdrawal of the compromised army, the Vaalkranz crossing with the
clever feint upon Brakfontein, the final operations, and especially
the complete change of front after the third day of Pieters, were
strategical movements largely conceived and admirably carried out.  On
the other hand, a hesitation in pushing onwards, and a disinclination
to take a risk or to endure heavy punishment, even in the case of
temporary failure, were consistent characteristics of his generalship.
The Vaalkranz operations are particularly difficult to defend from the
charge of having been needlessly slow and half-hearted.  This
'saturnine fighter,' as he had been called, proved to be exceedingly
sensitive about the lives of his men -- an admirable quality in
itself, but there are occasions when to spare them to-day is to
needlessly imperil them tomorrow.  The victory was his, and yet in the
very moment of it he displayed the qualities which marred him. With
two cavalry brigades in band he did not push the pursuit of the routed
Boers with their guns and endless streams of wagons.  It is true that
he might have lost heavily, but it is true also that a success might
have ended the Boer invasion of Natal, and the lives of our troopers
would be well spent in such a venture. If cavalry is not to be used in
pursuing a retiring enemy encumbered with much baggage, then its day
is indeed past.

The relief of Ladysmith stirred the people of the Empire as nothing,
save perhaps the subsequent relief of Mafeking, has done during our
generation. Even sober unemotional London found its soul for once and
fluttered with joy.  Men, women, and children, rich and poor, clubman
and cabman, joined in the universal delight.  The thought of our
garrison, of their privations, of our impotence to relieve them, of
the impending humiliation to them and to us, had lain dark for many
months across our spirits. It had weighed upon us, until the subject,
though ever present in our thoughts, was too painful for general
talk. And now, in an instant, the shadow was lifted. The outburst of
rejoicing was.not a triumph over the gallant Boers. But it was our own
escape from humiliation, the knowledge that the blood of our sons had
not been shed in vain, above all the conviction that the darkest hour
had now passed and that the light of peace was dimly breaking far away
-- that was why London rang with joy bells that March morning, and why
those bells echoed back from every town and hamlet, in tropical sun
and in Arctic snow, over which the flag of Britain waved.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SIEGE AND RELIEF OF KIMBERLEY


It has already been narrated how, upon the arrival of the army corps
from England, the greater part was drafted to Natal, while some went
to the western side, and started under Lord Methuen upon the perilous
enterprise of the relief of Kimberley. It has also been hown how,
after three expensive victories, Lord Methuen's force met with a
paralysing reverse, and was compelled to remain inactive within twenty
miles of the town which they had come to succour.  Before describe how
that succour did eventual]y arrive, some attention must be paid to the
incidents which had occurred within the city.

'I am directed to assure you that there is no reason for apprehending
that Kimberley or any part of the colony either is, or in any
contemplated event will be, in danger of attack.  Mr. Schreiner is of
opinion that your fears are groundless and your anticipations in the
matter entirely without foundation.' Such is the official reply to the
remonstrance of the inhabitants, when, with the shadow of war dark
upon them, they appealed for help. It is fortunate, however, that a
progressive British town has usually the capacity for doing things for
itself without the intervention of officials. Kimberley was
particularly lucky in being the centre of the wealthy and alert De
Beers Company, which had laid in sufficient ammunition and supplies to
prevent the town from being helpless in the presence of the enemy. But
the cannon were popguns, firing a 7-pound shell for a short range, and
the garrison contained only seven hundred regulars, while the
remainder were mostly untrained miners and artisans. Among them,
however, there was a sprinkling of dangerous men from the northern
wars, and all were nerved by a knowledge that the ground which they
defended was essential to the Empire. Ladysmith was no more than any
other strategic position, but Kimberley was unique, the centre of the
richest tract of ground for its size in the whole world.  Its loss
would have been a heavy blow to the British cause, and an enormous
encouragement to the Boers.

On October 12th, several hours after the expiration of Kruger's
ultimatum, Cecil Rhodes threw himself into Kimberley.  This remarkable
man, who stood for the future of South Africa as clearly as the Dopper
Boer stood for its past, had, both in features and in character, some
traits which may, without extravagance, be called Napoleonic.  The
restless energy, the fertility of resource, the attention to detail,
the wide sweep of mind, the power of terse comment -- all these recall
the great emperor.  So did the simplicity of private life in the midst
of excessive wealth. And so finally did a want of scruple where an
ambition was to be furthered, shown, for example, in that enormous
donation to the Irish party by which he made a bid for their
parliamentary support, and in the story of the Jameson raid. A certain
cynicism of mind and a grim humour complete the parallel. But Rhodes
was a Napoleon of peace. The consolidation of South Africa under the
freest and most progressive form of government was the large object on
which he had expended his energies and his fortune but the development
of the country in every conceivable respect, from the building of a
railway to the importation of a pedigree bull, engaged his unremitting
attention.

It was on October 15th that the fifty thousand inhabitants of
Kimberley first heard the voice of war. It rose and fell in a
succession of horrible screams and groans which travelled far over the
veldt, and the outlying farmers marvelled at the dreadful clamour from
the sirens and the hooters of the great mines. Those who have endured
all -- the rifle, the cannon, and the hunger -- have said that those
wild whoops from the sirens were what had tried their nerve the most.

The Boers in scattered bands of horsemen were thick around the town,
and had blocked the railroad.  They raided cattle upon the outskirts,
but made no attempt to rush the defence.  The garrison, who, civilian
and military, approached four thousand in number, lay close in rifle
pit and redoubt waiting for an attack which never came.  The perimeter
to be defended was about eight miles, but the heaps of tailings made
admirable fortifications, and the town had none of those inconvenient
heights around it which had been such bad neighbours to
Ladysmith. Picturesque surroundings are not favourable to defence.

On October 24th the garrison, finding that no attack was made,
determined upon a reconnaissance.  The mounted force, upon which most
of the work and of the loss fell, consisted of the Diamond Fields
Horse, a small aumber of Cape Police, a company of Mounted Infantry,
and a body called the Kimberley Light Horse. With two hundred and
seventy volunteers from this force Major Scott-Turner, a redoubtable
fighter, felt his way the north until he came in touch with the
Boers. The latter, who were much superior in numbers, manoeuvred to
cut him off, but the arrival of two companies of the North Lancashire
Regiment turned the scale in our favour. We lost three killed and
twenty-one wounded in the skirmish.  The Boer loss is unknown, but
their commander Botha was slain.

On November 4th Commandant Wessels formally summoned the town, and it
is asserted that he gave Colonel Kekewich leave to send out the women
and children.  That officer has been blamed for not taking advantage
of the permission -- or at the least for not communicating it to the
civil authorities. As a matter of fact the charge rests upon a
misapprehension. In Wessels' letter a distinction is made between
Africander and English women, the former being offered an asylum in
his camp. This offer was made known, and half a dozen persons took
advantage of it. The suggestion, however, in the case of the English
carried with it no promise that they would be conveyed to Orange
River, and a compliance with it would have put them as helpless
hostages into the hands of the enemy. As to not publishing the message
it is not usual to publish such official documents, but the offer was
shown to Mr. Rhodes, who concurred in the impossibility of accepting
it.

It is difficult to allude to this subject without touching upon the
painful but notorious fact that there existed during the siege
considerable friction between the military authorities and a section
of the civilians, of whom Mr. Rhodes was chief. Among other
characteristics Rhodes bore any form of restraint very badly, and
chafed mightily when unable to do a thing in the exact way which he
considered best. He may have been a Napoleon of peace, but his warmest
friends could never describe him as a Napoleon of war, for his
military forecasts have been erroneous, and the management of the
Jameson fiasco certainly inspired no confidence in the judgment of any
one concerned.  That his intentions were of the best, and that he had
the good of the Empire at heart, may be freely granted; but that these
motives should lead him to cabal against, and even to threaten, the
military governor, or that he should attempt to force Lord Roberts's
hand in a military operation, was most deplorable.  Every credit may
be given to him for all his aid to the military -- he gave with a good
grace what the garrison would otherwise have had to commandeer -- but
it is a fact that the town would bave been more united, and therefore
stronger, without his presence. Colonel Kekewich and his chief staff
officer, Major O'Meara, were as much plagued by intrigue within as by
the Boers without.

On November 7th the bombardment of the town commenced from nine
9-pounder guns to which the artillery of the garrison could give no
adequate reply.  The result, however, of a fortnight's fire, during
which seven hundred shells were discharged, was the loss of two
non-combatants.  The question of food was recognised as being of more
importance than the enemy's fire. An early relief appeared probable,
however, as the advance of Methuen's force was already known.  One
pound of bread, two ounces of sugar, and half a pound of meat were
allowed per head.  It was only on the small children that the scarcity
of milk told with tragic effect. At Ladysmith, at Mafeking, and at
Kimberley hundreds of these innocents were sacrificed.

November 25th was a red-letter day with the garrison, who made a
sortie under the impression that Methuen was not far off, and that
they were assisting his operations.  The attack was made upon one of
the Boer positions by a force consisting of a detachment of the Light
Horse and of the Cape Police, and their work was brilliantly
successful.  The actual storming of the redoubt was carried out by
some forty men, of whom but four were killed.  They brought back
thirty-three prisoners as a proof of their victory, but the Boer gun,
as usual, escaped us. In this brilliant affair Scott-Turner was
wounded, which did not prevent him, only three days later, from
leading another sortie, which was as disastrous as the first had been
successful.  Save under very exceptional circumstances it is in modern
warfare long odds always upon the defence, and the garrison would
probably have been better advised had they refrained from attacking
the fortifications of their enemy -- a truth which Baden-Powell
learned also at Game Tree Hill. As it was, after a temporary success
the British were blown back by the fierce Mauser fire, and lost the
indomitable Scott-Turner, with twenty-one of his brave companions
killed and twenty-eight wounded, all belongmg to the colonial corps.
The Empire may reflect with pride that the people in whose cause
mainly they fought showed themselves by their gallantry and their
devotion worthy of any sacrifice which has been made.

Again the siege settled down to a monotonous record of decreasing
rations and of expectation. On December 10 there came a sign of hope
from the outside world. Far on the southern horizon a little golden
speck shimmered against the blue African sky. It was Methuen's balloon
gleaming in the sunshine.  Next morning the low grumble of distant
cannon was the sweetest of music to the listening citizens. But days
passed without further news, and it was not for more than a week that
they learned of the bloody repulse of Magersfontein, and that help was
once more indefinitely postponed.  Helio graphic communication had
been opened with the relieving army, and it is on record that the
first message flashed through from the south was a question about the
number of a horse. With inconceivable stupidity this has been cited as
an example of military levity and incapacity.  Of course the object of
the question was a test as to whether they were really in
communication with the garrison. It must be confessed that the town
seems to have contained some very querulous and unreasonable people.

The New Year found the beleaguered city reduced to a quarter of a
pound of meat per head, while the health of the inhabitants began to
break down under their confinement.  Their interest, however, was
keenly aroused by the attempt made in the De Beers workshops to build
a gun which might reach their opponents. This remarkable piece of
ordnance, constructed by an American named Labram by the help of tools
manufactured for the purpose and of books found in the town, took the
shape eventually of a 28 lb. rifled gun, which proved to be a most
efficient piece of artillery. With grim humour, Mr. Rhodes's
compliments had been inscribed upon the shells -- a fair retort in
view of the openly expressed threat of the enemy that in case of his
capture they would carry him in a cage to Pretoria.

The Boers, though held off for a time by this unexpected piece of
ordnance, prepared a terrible answer to it.  On February 7th an
enormous gun, throwing a 96 lb. shell, opened from Kamfersdam, which
is four miles from the centre of the town. The shells, following the
evil precedent of the Germans in 1870, were fired not at the forts,
but into the thickly populated city. Day and night these huge missiles
exploded, shattering the houses and occasionally killing or maiming
the occupants. Some thousands of the women and children were conveyed
down the mines, wbere, in the electric-lighted tunnels, they lay in
comfort and safety. One surprising revenge the Boers had, for by an
extraordinary chance one of the few men killed by their gun was the
ingenious Labram who had constructed the 28-pounder. By an even more
singular chance, Leon, who was responsible for bringing the big Boer
gun, was struck immediately afterwards by a long-range rifle-shot from
the garrison.

The historian must be content to give a tame account of the siege of
Kimberley, for the thing itself was tame.  Indeed 'siege' is a
misnomer, for it was rather an investment or a blockade. Such as it
was, however, the inhabitants became very restless under it, and
though there were never any prospects of surrender the utmost
impatience began to be manifested at the protracted delay on the part
of the relief force. It was not till later that it was understood how
cunningly Kimberley had been used as a bait to hold the enemy until
final preparations had been made for his destruction.

And at last the great day came.  It is on record how dramatic was the
meeting between the mounted outposts of the defenders and the advance
guard of the relievers, whose advent seems to have been equally
unexpected by friend and foe.  A skirmish was in progress on February
15th between a party of the Kimberley Light Horse and of the Boers,
when a new body of horsemen, unrecognised by either side, appeared
upon the plain and opened fire upon the enemy.  One of the strangers
rode up to the patrol. 'What the dickens does K.L.H. mean on your
shoulder-strap?' he asked.  'It means Kimberley Light Horse.  Who are
you?'  'I am one of the New-Zealanders.'  Macaulay in his wildest
dream of the future of the much-quoted New-Zealander never pictured
him as heading a rescue force for the relief of a British town in the
heart of Africa.

The population had assembled to watch the mighty cloud of dust which
rolled along the south-eastern horizon. What was it which swept
westwards within its reddish heart? Hopeful and yet fearful they saw
the huge bank draw nearer and nearer.  An assault from the whole of
Cronje's army was the thought which passed through many a mind.  And
then the dust-cloud thinned, a mighty host of horsemen spurred out
from it, and in the extended far-flung ranks the glint of spearheads
and the gleam of scabbards told of the Hussars and Lancers, while
denser banks on either flank marked the position of the whirling
guns. Wearied and spent with a hundred miles' ride the dusty riders
and the panting, dripping horses took fresh heart as they saw the
broad city before them, and swept with martial rattle and jingle
towards the cheering crowds.  Amid shouts and tears French rode into
Kimberley while his troopers encamped outside the town.

To know how this bolt was prepared and how launched, the narrative
must go back to the beginning of the month. At that period Methuen and
his men were still faced by Cronje and his entrenched forces, who, in
spite of occasional bombardments, held their position between
Kimberley and the relieving army. French, having handed over the
operations at Colesberg to Clements, had gone down to Cape Town to
confer with Roberts and Kitchener. Thence they all three made their
way to the Modder River, which was evidently about to be the base of a
more largely conceived series of operations than any which had yet
been undertaken,

In order to draw the Boer attention away from the thunderbolt which
was about to fall upon their left flank, a strong demonstration ending
in a brisk action was made early in February upon the extreme right of
Cronje's position.  The force, consisting of the Highland Brigade, two
squadrons of the 9th Lancers, No.7 Co. Royal Engineers, and the 62nd
Battery, was under the command of the famous Hector Macdonald.
'Fighting Mac' as he was called by his men, had joined his regiment as
a private, and had worked through the grades of corporal, sergeant,
captain, major, and colonel, until now, still in the prime of his
manhood, he found himself riding at the bead of a brigade.  A bony,
craggy Scotsman, with a square fighting head and a bulldog jaw, he had
conquered the exclusiveness and routine of the British service by the
same dogged qualities which made him formidable to Dervish and to
Boer. With a cool brain, a steady nerve, and a proud heart, he is an
ideal leader of infantry, and those who saw him manoeuvre his brigade
in the crisis of the battle of Omdurman speak of it as the one great
memory which they carried back from the engagement.  On the field of
battle he turns to the speech of his childhood, the jagged, rasping,
homely words which brace the nerves of the northern soldier.  This was
the man who had come from India to take the place of poor Wauchope,
and to put fresh heart into the gallant but sorely stricken brigade.

The four regiments which composed the infantry of the force -- the
Black Watch, the Argyll and Sutherlands, the Seaforths, and the
Highland Light Infantry -- left Lord Methuen's camp on Saturday,
February 3rd, and halted at Fraser's Drift, passing on next day to
Koodoosberg. The day was very hot, and the going very heavy, and many
men fell out, some never to return.  The drift (or ford) was found,
however, to be undefended, and was seized by Macdonald, who, after
pitching camp on the south side of the river, sent out strong parties
across the drift to seize and entrench the Koodoosberg and some
adjacent kopjes which, lying some three-quarters of a mile to the
north-west of the drift formed the key of the position. A few Boer
scouts were seen hurrying with the news of his coming to the head
laager.

The effect of these messages was evident by Tuesday (February 6th),
when the Boers were seen to be assembling upon the north bank. By next
morning they were there in considerable numbers, and began an attack
upon a crest held by the Seaforths.  Macdonald threw two companies of
the Black Watch and two of the Highland Light Infantry into the
fight. The Boers made excellent practice with a 7-pounder mountain
gun, and their rifle fire, considering the good cover which our men
had, was very deadly.  Poor Tait, of the Black Watch, good sportsman
and gallant soldier, with one wound hardly healed upon his person, was
hit again.  'They've got me this time,' were his dying words. Blair,
of the Seaforths, had his carotid cut by a shrapnel bullet, and lay
for hours while the men of his company took turns to squeeze the
artery. But our artillery silenced the Boer gun, and our infantry
easily held their riflemen. Babington with the cavalry brigade arrived
from the camp about 1.30, moving along the north bank of the river. In
spite of the fact that men and horses were weary from a tiring march,
it was hoped by Macdonald's force that they would work round the Boers
and make an attempt to capture either them or their gun.  But the
horsemen seem not to have realised the position of the parties, or
that possibility of bringing off a considerable coup, so the action
came to a tame conclusion, the Boers retiring unpursued from their
attack. On Thursday, February 8th, they were found to have withdrawn,
and on the same evening our own force was recalled, to the surprise
and disappointment of the public at home, who had not realised that in
directing their attention to their right flank the column had already
produced the effect upon the enemy for which they had been sent.  They
could not be left there, as they were needed for those great
operations which were pending.  It was on the 9th that the brigade
returned; on the 10th they were congratulated by Lord Roberts in
person; and on the 11th those new dispositions were made which were
destined not only to relieve Kimberley, but to inflict a blow upon the
Boer cause from which it was never able to recover.

Small, brown, and wrinkled, with puckered eyes and alert manner, Lord
Roberts in spite of his sixty-seven years preserves the figure and
energy of youth.  The active open-air life of India keeps men fit for
the saddle when in England they would only sit their club armchairs,
and it is hard for any one who sees the wiry figure and brisk step of
Lord Roberts to realise that he has spent forty-one years of
soldiering in what used to be regarded as an unhealthy climate.  He
had carried into late life the habit of martial exercise, and a
Russian traveller has left it on record that the sight which surprised
him most in India was to see the veteran commander of the army ride
forth with his spear and carry off the peg with the skill of a
practised trooper. In his early youth he had shown in the Mutiny that
he possessed the fighting energy of the soldier to a remarkable
degree, but it was only in the Afghan War of 1880 that he had an
opportunity of proving that he had rarer and more valuable gifts, the
power of swift resolution and determined execution.  At the crisis of
the war he and his army disappeared entirely from the public ken only
to emerge dramatically as victors at a point three hundred miles
distant from where they had vanished.

It is not only as a soldier, but as a man, that Lord Roberts possesses
some remarkable characteristics.  He has in a supreme degree that
magnetic quality which draws not merely the respect but the love of
those who know him.  In Chaucer's phrase, he is a very perfect gentle
knight.  Soldiers and regimental officers have for him a feeling of
personal affection such as the unemotional British Army has never had
for any leader in the course of our history.  His chivalrous courtesy,
his unerring tact, his kindly nature, his unselfish and untiring
devotion to their interests have all endeared him to those rough loyal
natures, who would follow him with as much confidence and devotion as
the GROGNARDS of the Guard had in the case of the Great Emperor. There
were some who feared that in Roberts's case, as in so many more, the
donga and kopje of South Africa might form the grave and headstone of
a military reputation, but far from this being so he consistently
showed a wide sweep of strategy and a power of conceiving the effect
of scattered movements over a great extent of country which have
surprised his warmest admirers.  In the second week of February his
dispositions were ready, and there followed the swift series of blows
which brought the Boers upon their knees. Of these we shall only
describe here the exploits of the fine force of cavalry which, after a
ride of a hundred miles, broke out of the heart of that reddish
dustcloud and swept the Boer besiegers away from hard-pressed
Kimberley.

In order to strike unexpectedly, Lord Roberts had not only made a
strong demonstration at Koodoosdrift, at the other end of the Boer
line, but he had withdrawn his main force some forty miles south,
taking them down by rail to Belmont and Enslin with such secrecy that
even commanding officers had no idea whither the troops were going.
The cavalry which had come from French's command at Colesberg had
already reached the rendezvous, travelling by road to Naauwpoort, and
thence by train. This force consisted of the Carabineers, New South
Wales Lancers, Inniskillings, composite regiment of Household Cavalry,
10th Hussars, with some mounted infantry and two batteries of Horse
Artillery, making a force of nearly three thousand sabres.  To this
were added the 9th and 12th Lancers from Modder River, the 16th
Lancers from India, the Scots Greys, which had been patrolling Orange
River from the beginning of the war, Rimington's Scouts, and two
brigades of mounted infantry under Colonels Ridley and Hannay.  The
force under this latter officer had a severe skirmish on its way to
the rendezvous and lost fifty or sixty in killed, wounded, and
missing. Five other batteries of Horse Artillery were added to the
force, making seven in all, with a pontoon section of Royal Engineers.
The total number of men was about five thousand.  By the night of
Sunday, February 11th, this formidable force had concentrated at
Ramdam, twenty miles north-east of Belmont, and was ready to
advance. At two in the morning of Monday, February 12th, the start was
made, and the long sinuous line of night-riders moved off over the
shadowy veldt, the beat of twenty thousand hoofs, the clank of steel,
and the rumble of gunwheels and tumbrils swelling into a deep low roar
like the surge upon the shingle.

Two rivers, the Riet and the Modder, intervened between French and
Kimberley.  By daylight on the 12th the head of his force had reached
Waterval Drift, which was found to be defended by a body of Boers with
a gun.  Leaving a small detachment to hold them, French passed his men
over Dekiel's Drift, higher up the stream, and swept the enemy out of
his position.  This considerable force of Boers had come from
Jacobsdal, and were just too late to get into position to resist the
crossing.  Had we been ten minutes later, the matter would have been
much more serious.  At the cost of a very small loss he held both
sides of the ford, but it was not until midniglit that the whole long
column was brought across, and bivouacked upon the northern bank.  In
the morning the strength of the force was enormously increased by the
arrival of one more horseman.  It was Roberts himself, who had ridden
over to give the men a send-off, and the sight of his wiry erect
figure and mahogany face sent them full of fire and confidence upon
their way.

But the march of this second day (February 13th) was a military
operation of some difficulty.  Thirty long waterless miles had to be
done before they could reach the Modder, and it was possible that even
then they might have to fight an action before winning the drift.  The
weather was very hot, and through the long day the sun beat down from
an unclouded sky, while the soldiers were only shaded by the dust-bank
in which they rode.  A broad arid plain, swelling into stony hills,
surrounded them on every side.  Here and there in the extreme
distance, mounted figures moved over the vast expanse -- Boer scouts
who marked in amazement the advance of this great array.  Once or
twice these men gathered together, and a sputter of rifle fire broke
out upon our left flank, but the great tide swept on and carried them
with it.  Often in this desolate land the herds of mottled springbok
and of grey rekbok could be seen sweeping over the plain, or stopping
with that curiosity upon which the hunter trades, to stare at the
unwonted spectacle.

So all day they rode, hussars, dragoons, and lancers, over the
withered veldt, until men and horses drooped with the heat and the
exertion. A front of nearly two miles was kept, the regiments moving
two abreast in open order; and the sight of this magnificent cloud of
horsemen sweeping over the great barren plain was a glorious one.  The
veldt had caught fire upon the right, and a black cloud of smoke with
a lurid heart to it covered the flank.  The beat of the sun from above
and the swelter of dust from below were overpowering. Gun horses fell
in the traces and died of pure exhaustion. The men, parched and
silent, but cheerful, strained their eyes to pierce the continual
mirage which played over the horizon, and to catch the first glimpse
of the Modder. At last, as the sun began to slope down to the west, a
thin line of green was discerned, the bushes which skirt the banks of
that ill-favoured stream.  With renewed heart the cavalry pushed on
and made for the drift, while Major Rimington, to whom the onerous
duty of guiding the force had been entrusted, gave a sigh of relief as
he saw that he had indeed struck the very point at which he had aimed.

The essential thing in the movements had been speed -- to reach each
point before the enemy could concentrate to oppose them.  Upon this it
depended whether they would find five hundred or five thousand waiting
on the further bank. It must have been with anxious eyes that French
watched his first regiment ride down to Klip Drift.  If the Boers
should have had notice of his coming and have transferred some of
their 40-pounders, he might lose heavily before he forced the stream.
But this time, at last, he had completely outmanoeuvred them.  He came
with the news of his coming, and Broadwood with the 12th Lancers
rushed the drift. The small Boer force saved itself by flight, and the
camp, the wagons, and the supplies remained with the victors.  On the
night of the 13th he had secured the passage of the Modder, and up to
the early morning the horses and the guns were splashing through its
coffee-coloured waters.

French's force had now come level to the main position of the Boers,
but had struck it upon the extreme left wing.  The extreme right wing,
thanks to the Koodoosdrift demonstration, was fifty miles off, and
this line was naturally very thinly held, save only at the central
position of Magersfontein.  Cronje. could not denude this central
position, for he saw Methuen still waiting in front of him, and in any
case Klip Drift is twenty-five miles from Magersfontein.  But the Boer
left wing, though scattered, gathered into some sort of cohesion on
Wednesday (February 14th), and made an effort to check the victorious
progress of the cavalry.  It was necessary on this day to rest at Klip
Drift, until Kelly-Kenny should come up with the infantry to hold what
had been gained. All day the small bodies of Boers came riding in and
taking up positions between the column and its objective.

Next morning the advance was resumed, the column being still forty
miles from Kimberley with the enemy in unknown force between.  Some
four miles out French came upon their position, two hills with a long
low nek between, from which came a brisk rifle fire supported by
artillery. But French was not only not to be stopped, but could not
even be retarded. Disregarding the Boer fire completely the cavalry
swept in wave after wave over the low nek, and so round the base of
the hills.  The Boer riflemen upon the kopjes must have seen a
magnificent military spectacle as regiment after regiment, the 9th
Lancers leading, all in very open order, swept across the plain at a
gallop, and so passed over the nek. A few score horses and half as
many men were left behind them, but forty or fifty Boers were cut down
in the pursuit.  It appears to have been one of the very few occasions
during the campaign when that obsolete and absurd weapon the sword was
anything but a dead weight to its bearer.

And now the force had a straight run in before it, for it had outpaced
any further force of Boers which may have been advancing from the
direction of Magersfontein. The horses, which had come a hundred miles
in four days with insufficient food and water, were so done that it
was no uncommon sight to see the trooper not only walking to ease his
horse, but carrying part of his monstrous weight of saddle gear.  But
in spite of fatigue the force pressed on until in the afternoon a
distant view was seen, across the reddish plain, of the brick houses
and corrugated roofs of Kimberley.  The Boer besiegers cleared off in
front of it, and that night (February 15th) the relieving column
camped on the plain two miles away, while French and his staff rode in
to the rescued city.

The war was a cruel one for the cavalry, who were handicapped
throughout by the nature of the country and by the tactics of the
enemy. They are certainly the branch of the service which had least
opportunity for distinction.  The work of scouting and patrolling is
the most dangerous which a soldier can undertake, and yet from its
very nature it can find no chronicler. The war correspondent, like
Providence, is always with the big battalions, and there never was a
campaign in which there was more unrecorded heroism, the heroism of
the picket and of the vedette which finds its way into no newspaper
paragraph. But in the larger operations of the war it is difficult to
say that cavalry, as cavalry, have justified their existence.  In the
opinion of many the tendency of the future will be to convert the
whole force into mounted infantry.  How little is required to turn our
troopers into excellent foot soldiers was shown at Magersfontein,
where the 12th Lancers, dismounted by the command of their colonel,
Lord Airlie, held back the threatened flank attack all the morning. A
little training in taking cover, leggings instead of boots, and a
rifle instead of a carbine would give us a formidable force of twenty
thousand men who could do all that our cavalry does, and a great deal
more besides.  It is undoubtedly possible on many occasions in this
war, at Colesberg, at Diamond Hill, to say 'Here our cavalry did
well.' They are brave men on good horses, and they may be expected to
do well.  But the champion of the cavalry cause must point out the
occasions where the cavalry did something which could not have been
done by the same number of equally brave and equally well-mounted
infantry.  Only then will the existence of the cavalry be justified.
The lesson both of the South African and of the American civil war is
that the light horseman who is trained to fight on foot is the type of
the future.

A few more words as a sequel to this short sketch of the siege and
relief of Kimberley. Considerable surprise has been expressed that the
great gun at Kamfersdam, a piece which must have weighed many tons and
could not have been moved by bullock teams at a rate of more than two
or three miles an hour, should have eluded our cavalry.  It is indeed
a surprising circumstance, and yet it was due to no inertia on the
part of our leaders, but rather to one of the finest examples of Boer
tenacity in the whole course of the war.  The instant that Kekewich
was sure of relief he mustered every available man and sent him out to
endeavour to get the gun.  It had already been removed, and its
retreat was covered by the strong position of Dronfield, which was
held both by riflemen and by light artillery. Finding himself unable
to force it, Murray, the commander of the detachment, remained in
front of it.  Next morning (Friday) at three o'clock the weary men and
horses of two of French's higades were afoot with the same object. But
still the Boers were obstinately holding on to Dronfield, and still
their position was too strong to force, and too extended to get round
with exhausted horses. It was not until the night after that the Boers
abandoned their excellent rearguard action, leaving one light gun in
the hands of the Cape Police, but having gained such a start for their
heavy one that French, who had other and more important objects in
view, could not attempt to follow it.

CHAPTER XIX

PAARDEBERG


Lord Roberts's operations, prepared with admirable secrecy and carried
out with extreme energy, aimed at two different results, each of which
he was fortunate enough to aftain.  The first was that an overpowering
force of cavalry should ride round the Boer position and raise the
siege of Kimberley: the fate of this expedition has already been
described.  The second was that the infantry, following hard on the
heels of the cavalry, and holding all that they had gained, should
establish itself upon Cronje's left flank and cut his connection with
Bloemfontein. It is this portion of the operations which has now to be
described.

The infantry force which General Roberts had assembled was a very
formidable one.  The Guards he had left under Methuen in front of the
lines of Magersfontein to contain the Boer force. With them he had
also left those regiments which had fought in the 9th Brigade in all
Methuen's actions.  These, as will be remembered, were the 1st
Northumberland Fusiliers, the 2nd Yorkshire Light Infantry, the 2nd
Northamptons, and one wing of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment.
These stayed to hold Cronje in his position.

There remained tbree divisions of infantry, one of which, the ninth,
was made up on the spot.  These were constituted in this way:

Sixth Division (Kelly-Kenny)
      12th Brigade (Knox)
	     Oxford Light Infantry
             Gloucesters (2nd)
	     West Riding
	     Buffs
      18th Brigade (Stephenson)
             Essex
             Welsh
             Warwicks
             Yorks
Seventh Division (Tucker)
      14th Brigade (Chermside)
	     Scots Borderers
             Lincolns
	     Hampshires
	     Norfolks
      15th Brigade (Wavell)
	     North Staffords
             Cheshires
	     S. Wales Borderers
	     East Lancashires
Ninth Division (Colvile)
       Highland Brigade (Macdonald)
             Black Watch
	     Argyll and Sutherlands
	     Seaforths
	     Highland Light Infantry
       19th Brigade (Smith-Dorrien)
	     Gordons
	     Canadians
	     Shropshire Light Infantry
	     Cornwall Light Infantry

With these were two brigade divisions of artillery under General
Marshall, the first containing the 18th, 62nd, and 75th batteries
(Colonel Hall), the other the 76th, 81st, and 82nd (Colonel
McDonnell).  Besides these there were a howitzer battery, a naval
contingent of four 4.7 guns and four 12-pounders under Captain
Bearcroft of the ' Philomel.' The force was soon increased by the
transfer of the Guards and the arrival of more artillery; but the
numbers which started on Monday, February 12th, amounted roughly to
twenty-five thousand foot and eight thousand horse with 98 guns-a
considerable army to handle in a foodless and almost waterless
country.  Seven hundred wagons drawn by eleven thousand mules and
oxen, all collected by the genius for preparation and organisation
which characterises Lord Kitchener, groaned and creaked behind the
columns.

Both arms had concentrated at Ramdam, the cavalry going down by road,
and the infantry by rail as far as Belmont or Enslin. On Monday,
February 12th, the cavalry had started, and on Tuesday the infantry
were pressing hard after them.  The first thing was to secure a
position upon Cronje's flank, and for that purpose the 6th Division
and the 9th (Kelly-Kenny's and Colvils's) pushed swiftly on and
arrived on Thursday, February 15th, at Klip Drift on the Modder, which
had only been left by the cavalry that same morning. It was obviously
impossible to leave Jacobsdal in the hands of the enemy on our left
flank, so the 7th Division (Tucker's) turned aside to attack the town.
Wavell's brigade carried the place after a sharp skirmish, chiefly
remarkable for the fact that the City Imperial Volunteers found
themselves under fire for the first time and bore themselves with the
gallantry of the old train-bands whose descendants they are. Our loss
was two killed and twenty wounded, and we found ourselves for the
first time firmly established in one of the enemy's towns. In the
excellent German hospital were thirty or forty of our wounded.

On the afternoon of Thursday, February 15th, our cavalry, having left
Klip Drift in the morning, were pushing hard for Kimberley. At Klip
Drift was KellyKenny's 6th Division.  South of Klip Drift at Wegdraai
was Colvile's 9th Division, while the 7th Division was approaching
Jacobsdal.  Altogether the British forces were extended over a line of
forty miles.  The same evening saw the relief of Kimberley and the
taking of Jacobsdal, but it also saw the capture of one of our convoys
by the Boers, a dashing exploit which struck us upon what was
undoubtedly our vulnerable point.

It has never been cleared up whence the force of Boers came which
appeared upon our rear on that occasion.  It seems to have been the
same body which had already had a skirmish with Hannay's Mounted
Infantry as they went up from Orange Biver to join the rendezvous at
Ramdam.  The balance of evidence is that they had not come from
Colesberg or any distant point, but that they were a force under the
command of Piet De Wet, the younger of two famous brothers.
Descending to Waterval Drift, the ford over the Riet, they occupied a
line of kopjes, which ought, one would have imagined, to have been
carefully guarded by us, and opened a brisk fire from rifles and guns
upon the convoy as it ascended the northern bank of the river.
Numbers of bullocks were soon shot down, and the removal of the
hundred and eighty wagons made impossible.  The convoy, which
contained forage and provisions, bad no guard of its own, but the
drift was held by Colonel Ridley with one company of Gordons and one
hundred and fifty mounted infantry without artillery, which certainly
seems an inadequate force to secure the most vital and vulnerable spot
in the line of communications of an army of forty thousand men. The
Boers numbered at the first some five or six hundred men, but their
position was such that they could not be attacked.  On the other hand
they were not strong enough to leave their shelter in order to drive
in the British guard, who, lying in extended order between the wagons
and the assailants, were keeping up a steady and effective fire.
Captain Head, of the East Lancashire Regiment, a fine natural soldier,
commanded the British firing line, and neither he nor any of his men
doubted that they could hold off the enemy for an indefinite time.  In
the course of the afternoon reinforcements arrived for the Boers, but
Kitchener's Horse and a field battery came back and restored the
balance of power.  In the evening the latter swayed altogether in
favour of the British, as Tucker appeared upon the scene with the
whole of the 14th Brigade; but as the question of an assault was being
debated a positive order arrived from Lord Roberts that the convoy
should be abandoned and the force return.

If Lord Roberts needed justification for this decision, the future
course of events will furnish it.  One of Napoleon's maxims in war was
to concentrate all one's energies upon one thing at one
time. Roberts's aim was to outflank and possibly to capture Cronje's
army.  If he allowed a brigade to be involved in a rearguard action,
his whole swift-moving plan of campaign might be dislocated.  It was
very annoying to lose a hundred and eighty wagons, but it only meant a
temporary inconvenience.  The plan of campaign was the essential
thing.  Therefore he sacrificed his convoy and hurried his troops upon
their original mission.  It was with heavy hearts and bitter words
that those who had fought so long abandoned their charge, but now at
least there are probably few of them who do not agree in the wisdom of
the sacrifice.  Our loss in this affair was between fifty and sixty
killed and wounded.  The Boers were unable to get rid of the stores,
and they were eventually distributed among the local farmers and
recovered again as the British forces flowed over the country. Another
small disaster occurred to us on the preceding day in the loss of
fifty men of E company of Kitchener's Horse, which bad been left as a
guard to a well in the desert.

But great events were coming to obscure those small checks which are
incidental to a war carried out over immense distances against a
mobile and enterprising enemy.  Cronje had suddenly become aware of
the net which was closing round him.  To the dark fierce man who had
striven so hard to make his line of kopjes impregnable it must have
been a bitter thing to abandon his trenches and his rifle pits.  But
he was crafty as well as tenacious, and he had the Boer horror of
being cut off -- an hereditary instinct from fathers who had fought on
horseback against enemies on foot.  If at any time during the last ten
weeks Methuen had contained him in front with a thin line of riflemen
with machine guns, and had thrown the rest of his force on Jacobsdal
and the east, he would probably have attained the same result.  Now at
the rumour of English upon his flank Cronje instantly abandoned his
position and his plans, in order to restore those communications with
Bloemfontein upon which he depended for his supplies. With furious
speed he drew in his right wing, and then, one huge mass of horsemen,
guns, and wagons, he swept through the gap between the rear of the
British cavalry bound for Kimberley and the head of the British
infantry at Klip Drift.  There was just room to pass, and at it he
dashed with the furious energy of a wild beast rushing from a trap. A
portion of his force with his heavy guns had gone north round
Kimberley to Warrenton; many of the Freestaters also had slipped away
and returned to their farms.  The remainder, numbering about six
thousand men, the majority of whom were Transvaalers, swept through
between the British forces.

This movement was carried out on the night of February 15th, and had
it been a little quicker it might have been concluded before we were
aware of it. But the lumbering wagons impeded it, and on the Friday
morning, February 16th, a huge rolling cloud of dust on the northern
veldt, moving from west to east, told our outposts at Klip Drift that
Cronje's army had almost slipped through our fingers.  Lord Kitchener,
who was in command at Klip Drift at the moment, instantly unleashed
his mounted infantry in direct pursuit, while Knox's brigade sped
along the northern bank of the river to cling on to the right haunch
of the retreating column. Cronje's men had made a night march of
thirty miles from Magersfontein, and the wagon bullocks were
exhausted.  It was impossible, without an absolute abandonment of his
guns and stores, for him to get away from his pursuers.

This was no deer which they were chasing, however, but rather a grim
old Transvaal wolf, with his teeth flashing ever over his
shoulder. The sight of those distant white-tilted wagons fired the
blood of every mounted infantryman, and sent the Oxfords, the Buffs,
the West Ridings, and the Gloucesters racing along the river bank in
the glorious virile air of an African morning. But there were kopjes
ahead, sown with fierce Dopper Boers, and those tempting wagons were
only to be reached over their bodies.  The broad plain across which
the English were hurrying was suddenly swept with a storm of
bullets. The long infantry line extended yet further and lapped round
the flank of the Boer position, and once more the terrible duet of the
Mauser and the Lee-Metford was sung while the 81st field battery
hurried up in time to add its deep roar to their higher chorus. With
fine judgment Cronje held on to the last moment of safety, and then
with a swift movement to the rear seized a further line two miles off,
and again snapped back at his eager pursuers. All day the grim and
weary rearguard stalled off the fiery advance of the infantry, and at
nightfall the wagons were still untaken.  The pursuing force to the
north of the river was, it must be remembered, numerically inferior to
the pursued, so that in simply retarding the advance of the enemy and
in giving other British troops time to come up, Knox's brigade was
doing splendid work.  Had Cronje been well advised or well informed,
he would have left his guns and wagons in the hope that by a swift
dash over the Modder he might still bring his army away in safety. He
seems to have underrated both the British numbers and the British
activity.

On the night then of Friday, February 16th, Cronje lay upon the
northern bank of the Modder, with his stores and guns still intact,
and no enemy in front of him, though Knox's brigade and Hannay's
Mounted Infantry were behind. It was necessary for Cronje to cross the
river in order to be on the line for Bloemfontein. As the river tended
to the north the sooner he could cross the better.  On the south side
of the river, however, were considerable British forces, and the
obvious strategy was to hurry them forward and to block every drift at
which he could get over.  The river runs between very deep banks, so
steep that one might almost describe them as small cliffs, and there
was no chance of a horseman, far less a wagon, crossing at any point
save those where the convenience of traffic and the use of years had
worn sloping paths down to the shallows.  The British knew exactly
therefore what the places were which had to be blocked.  On the use
made of the next few hours the success or failure of the whole
operation must depend.

The nearest drift to Cronje was only a mile or two distant, Klipkraal
the name; next to that the Paardeberg Drift; next to that the
Wolveskraal Drift, each about seven miles from the other.  Had Cronje
pushed on instant]y after the action, he might have got across at
Klipkraal. But men, horses, and bullocks were equally exhausted after
a long twenty-four hours' marching and fighting.  He gave his weary
soldiers some hours' rest, and then, abandoning seventy-eight of his
wagons, he pushed on Before daylight for the farthest off of the
three fords (Wolveskraal Drift).  Could he reach and cross it before
his enemies, he was safe.  The Klipkraal Drift had in the meanwhile
been secured by the Buffs, the West Ridings, and the Oxfordshire
Light Infantry after a spirited little action which, in the rapid rush
of events, attracted less attention than it deserved.  The brunt of
the fighting fell upon the Oxfords, who lost ten killed and
thirty-nine wounded.  It was not a waste of life, however, for the
action, though small and hardly recorded, was really a very essential
one in the campaign.

But Lord Roberts's energy had infused itself into his divisional
commanders, his brigadiers, his colonels, and so down to the humblest
Tommy who tramped and stumbled through the darkness with a devout
faith that 'Bobs' was going to catch 'old Cronje' this time.  The
mounted infantry had galloped round from the north to the south of the
river, crossing at Klip Drift and securing the southern end of
Klipkraal.  Thither also came Stephenson's brigade from Kelly-Kenny's
Division, while Knox, finding in the morning that Cronje was gone,
marched along the northern bank to the same spot.  As Klipkraal was
safe, the mounted infantry pushed on at once and secured the southern
end of the Paardeberg Drift, whither they were followed the same
evening by Stephenson and Knox.  There remained only the Wolveskraal
Drift to block, and this had already been done by as smart a piece of
work as any in the war. Wherever French has gone he has done well, but
his crowning glory was the movement from Kimberley to head off
Cronje's retreat.

The exertions which the mounted men had made in the relief of
Kimberley have been already recorded. They arrived there on Thursday
with their horses dead beat.  They were afoot at three o'clock on
Friday morning, and two brigades out of three were hard at work all
day in an endeavour to capture the Dronfield position. Yet when on the
same evening an order came that French should start again instantly
from Kimberley and endeavour to head Cronje's army off, he did not
plead inability, as many a commander might, but taking every man whose
horse was still fit to carry him (something under two thousand out of
a column which had been at least five thousand strong), he started
within a few hours and pushed on through the whole night.  Horses died
under their riders, but still the column marched over the shadowy
veldt under the brilliant stars. By happy chance or splendid
calculation they were heading straight for the one drift which was
still open to Cronje. It was a close thing.  At midday on Saturday the
Boer advance guard was already near to the kopjes which command
it. But French's men, still full of fight after their march of thirty
miles, threw themselves in front and seized the position before their
very eyes.  The last of the drifts was closed. If Cronje was to get
across now, he must crawl out of his trench and fight under Roberts's
conditions, or he might remain under his own conditions until
Roberts's forces closed round him.  With him lay the alternative. In
the meantime, still ignorant of the forces about him, but finding
himself headed off by French, he made his way down to the river and
occupied a long stretch of it between Paardeberg Drift and Wolveskraal
Drift, hoping to force his way across.  This was the situation on the
night of Saturday, February 17th.

In the course of that night the British brigades, staggering with
fatigue but indomitably resolute to crush their evasive enemy, were
converging upon Paardeberg. The Highland Brigade, exhausted by a heavy
march over soft sand from Jacobsdal to Klip Drift, were nerved to
fresh exertions by the word 'Magersfontein,' which flew from lip to
lip along the ranks, and pushed on for another twelve miles to
Paardeberg.  Close at their heels came Smith-Dorrien's 19th Brigade,
comprising the Shropshires, the Cornwalls, the Gordons, and the
Canadians, probably the very finest brigade in the whole army.  They
pushed across the river and took up their position upon the north
bank.  The old wolf was now fairly surrounded.  On the west the
Highianders were south of the river, and Smith-Dorrien on the north.
On the east Kelly-Kenny's Division was to the south of the river, and
French with his cavalry and mounted infantry were to the north of it.
Never was a general in a more hopeless plight. Do what he would, there
was no possible loophole for escape.

There was only one thing which apparently should not have been done,
and that was to attack him. His position was a formidable one.  Not
only were the banks of the river fringed with his riflemen under
excellent cover, but from these banks there extended on each side a
number of dongas, which made admirable natural trenches.  The only
possible attack from either side must be across a level plain at least
a thousand or fifteen hundred yards in width, where our numbers would
only swell our losses.  It must be a bold soldier and a far bolder
civilian, who would venture to question an operation carried out under
the immediate personal direction of Lord Kitchener; but the general
consensus of opinion among critics may justify that which might be
temerity in the individual.  Had Cronje not been tightly surrounded,
the action with its heavy losses might have been justified as an
attempt to hold him until his investment should be complete.  There
seems, however, to be no doubt that he was already entirely
surrounded, and that, as experience proved, we had only to sit round
him to insure his surrender.  It is not given to the greatest man to
have every soldierly gift equally developed, and it may be said
without offence that Lord Kitchener's cool judgment upon the actual
field of battle has not yet been proved as conclusively as his
longheaded power of organisation and his iron determination.

Putting aside the question of responsibility, what happened on the
morning of Sunday, February 18th, was that from every quarter an
assault was urged across the level plains, to the north and to the
south, upon the lines of desperate and invisible men who lay in the
dongas and behind the banks of the river. Everywhere there was a
terrible monotony about the experiences of the various regiments which
learned once again the grim lessons of Colenso and Modder River. We
surely did not need to prove once more what had already been so amply
proved, that bravery can be of no avail against concealed riflemen
well entrenched, and that the more hardy is the attack the heavier
must be the repulse. Over the long circle of our attack Knox's
brigade, Stephenson's brigade, the Highland brigade, Smith-Dorrien's
brigade all fared alike.  In each case there was the advance until
they were within the thousand-yard fire zone, then the resistless
sleet of bullets which compelled them to get down and to keep down.
Had they even then recognised that they were attempting the
impossible, no great harm might have been done, but with generous
emulation the men of the various regiments made little rushes, company
by company, towards the river bed, and found themselves ever exposed
to a more withering fire.  On the northern bank Smith-Dorrien's
brigade, and especially the Canadian regiment, distinguished
themselves by the magnificent tenacity with which they persevered in
their attack.  The Cornwalls of the same brigade swept up almost to
the river bank in a charge which was the admiration of all who saw it.
If the miners of Johannesburg had given the impression that the
Cornishman is not a fighter, the record of the county regiment in the
war has for ever exploded the calumny.  Men who were not fighters
could have found no place in Smith-Dorrien's brigade or in the charge
of Paardeberg.

While the infantry had been severely handled by the Boer riflemen, our
guns, the 76th, 81st, and 82nd field batteries, with the 65th howitzer
battery, had been shelling the river bed, though our artillery fire
proved as usual to have little effect against scattered and hidden
riflemen.  At least, however, it distracted their attention, and made
their fire upon the exposed infantry in front of them less
deadly. Now, as in Napoleon's time, the effect of the guns is moral
rather than material.  About midday French's horse-artillery guns came
into action from the north.  Smoke and flames from the dongas told
that some of our shells bad fallen among the wagons and their
combustible stores.

The Boer line had proved itself to be unshakable on each face, but at
its ends the result of the action was to push them up, and to shorten
the stretch of the river which was held by them.  On the north bank
Smith. Dorrien's brigade gained a considerable amount of ground. At
the other end of the position the Welsh, Yorkshire, and Essex
regiments of Stephenson's brigade did some splendid work, and pushed
the Boers for some distance down the river bank. A most gallant but
impossible charge was made by Colonel Hannay and a number of mounted
infantry against the northern bank. He was shot with the majority of
his followers. General Knox of the 12th Brigade and General Macdonald
of the Highlanders were among the wounded.  Colonel Aldworth of the
Cornwalls died at the head of his men.  A bullet struck him dead as he
whooped his West Countrymen on to the charge. Eleven hundred killed
and wounded testified to the fire of our attack and the grimness of
the Boer resistance.  The distribution of the losses among the various
battalions -- eighty among the Canadians, ninety in the West Riding
Regiment, one hundred and twenty in the Seaforths, ninety in the
Yorkshires, seventy-six in the Argyll and Sutherlands, ninetysix in
the Black Watch, thirty-one in the Oxfordshires, fifty-six in the
Coruwnlls, forty-six in the Shropshires -- shows how universal was the
gallantry, and especially how well the Highland Brigade carried
itself. It is to be feared that they had to face, not only the fire of
the enemy, but also that of their own comrades on the further side of
the river. A great military authority has stated that it takes many
years for a regiment to recover its spirit and steadiness if it has
been heavily punished, and yet within two months of Magersfontein we
find the indomitable Highlanders taking without flinching the very
bloodiest share of this bloody day -- and this after a march of thirty
miles with no pause before going into action. A repulse it may have
been, but they hear no name of which they may be more proud upon the
victory scroll of their colours.

What had we got in return for our eleven hundred casualties? We had
contracted the Boer position from about three miles to less than
two. So much was to the good, as the closer they lay the more
effective our artillery fire might be expected to be. But it is
probable that our shrapnel alone, without any loss of life, might have
effected the same thing. It is easy to be wise after the event, but
it does certainly appear that with our present knowledge the action at
Paardeberg was as unnecessary as it was expensive.  The sun descended
on Sunday, February 18th, upon a bloody field and crowded field
hospitals, but also upon an unbroken circle of British troops still
hemming in the desperate men who lurked among the willows and mimosas
which drape the brown steep banks of the Modder.

There was evidence during the action of the presence of an active Boer
force to the south of us, probably the same well-handled and
enterprising body which had captured our convoy at Waterval. A small
party of Kitchener's Horse was surprised by this body, and thirty men
with four officers were taken prisoners. Much has been said of the
superiority of South African scouting to that of the British regulars,
but it must be confessed that a good many instances might be quoted in
which the colonials, though second to none in gallantry, have been
defective in that very quality in which they were expected to excel.

This surprise of our cavalry post had more serious consequences than
can be measured by the loss of men, for by it the Boers obtained
possession of a strong kopje called Kitchener's Hill, lying about two
miles distant on the south-east of our position. The movement was an
admirable one strategically upon their part, for it gave their
beleaguered comrades a first station on the line of their retreat.
Could they only win their way to that kopje, a rearguard action might
be fought from there which would cover the escape of at least a
portion of the force. De Wet, if he was indeed responsible for the
manoeuvres of these Southern Boers, certainly handled his small force
with a discreet audacity which marks him as the born leader which he
afterwards proved himself to be.

If the position of the Boers was desperate on Sunday, it was hopeless
on Monday, for in the course of the morning Lord Roberts came up,
closely followed by the whole of Tucker's Division (7th) from
Jacobsdal. Our artillery also was strongly reinforced. The 18th, 62nd,
and 75th field batteries came up with three naval 4.7 guns and two
naval 12-pounders.  Thirty-five thousand men with sixty guns were
gathered round the little Boer army.  It is a poor spirit which will
not applaud the supreme resolution with which the gallant farmers held
out, and award to Cronje the title of one of the most grimly resolute
leaders of whom we have any record in modern history.

For a moment it seemed as if his courage was giving way.  On Monday
morning a message was transmitted by him to Lord Kitchener asking for
a twenty-four hours' armistice. The answer was of course a curt
refusal. To this he replied that if we were so inhuman as to prevent
him from burying his dead there was nothing for him save surrender. An
answer was given that a messenger with power to treat should be sent
out, but in the interval Cronje had changed his mind, and disappeared
with a snarl of contempt into his burrows. It had become known that
women and children were in the laager, and a message was sent offering
them a place of safety, but even to this a refusal was given.  The
reasons for this last decision are inconceivable.

Lord Roberts's dispositions were simple, efficacious, and above all
bloodless.  Smith-Dorrien's brigade, who were winning in the Western
army something of the reputation which Hart's Irishmen had won in
Natal, were placed astride of the river to the west, with orders to
push gradually up, as occasion served, using trenches for their
approach.  Chermside's brigade occupied the same position on the
east. Two other divisions and the cavalry stood round, alert and
eager, like terriers round a rat-hole, while all day the pitiless guns
crashed their common shell, their shrapnel, and their lyddite into the
river-bed. Already down there, amid slaughtered oxen and dead horses
under a burning sun, a horrible pest-hole had been formed which sent
its mephitic vapours over the countryside.  Occasionally the sentries
down the river saw amid the brown eddies of the rushing water the
floating body of a Boer which had been washed away from the Golgotha
above.  Dark Cronje, betrayer of Potchefstroom, iron-handed ruler of
natives, reviler of the British, stern victor of Magersfontein, at
last there has come a day of reckoning for you!

On Wednesday, the 21st, the British, being now sure of their grip of
Cronje, turned upon the Boer force which had occupied the hill to the
south-east of the drift. It was clear that this force, unless driven
away, would be the vanguard of the relieving army which might be
expected to assemble from Ladysmith, Bloemfontein, Colesberg, or
wherever else the Boers could detach men.  Already it was known that
reinforcements who had left Natal whenever they heard that the Free
State was invaded were drawing near. It was necessary to crush the
force upon the hill before it became too powerful.  For this purpose
the cavalry set forth, Broadwood with the 10th Hussars, 12th Lancers,
and two batteries going round on one side, while French with the 9th
and 16th Lancers, the Household Cavalry, and two other batteries
skirted the other. A force of Boers was met and defeated, while the
defenders of the hill were driven off with considerable loss. In this
well-managed affair the enemy lost at least a hundred, of whom fifty
were prisoners. On Friday, February 23rd, another attempt at rescue
was made from the south, but again it ended disastrously for the
Boers.  A party attacked a kopje held by the Yorkshire regiment and
were blown back by a volley, upon which they made for a second kopje,
where the Buffs gave them an even rougher reception. Eighty prisoners
were marched in. Meantime hardly a night passed that some of the Boers
did not escape from their laager and give themselves up to our
pickets.  At the end of the week we had taken six hundred in all.

In the meantime the cordon was being drawn ever tighter, and the fire
became heavier and more deadly, while the conditions of life in that
fearful place were such that the stench alone might have compelled
surrender. Amid the crash of tropical thunderstorms, the glare of
lightning, and the furious thrashing of rain there was no relaxation
of British vigilance. A balloon floating overhead directed the fire,
which from day to day became more furious, culminating on the 26th
with the arrival of four 5-inch howitzers.  But still there came no
sign from the fierce Boer and his gallant followers.  Buried deep
within burrows in the river bank the greater part of them lay safe
from the shells, but the rattle of their musketry when the outposts
moved showed that the trenches were as alert as ever. The thing could
only have one end, however, and Lord Roberts, with admirable judgment
and patience, refused to hurry it at the expense of the lives of his
soldiers.

The two brigades at either end of the Boer lines had lost no chance of
pushing in, and now they had come within striking distance.  On the
night of February 26th it was determined that Smith-Dorrien's men
should try their luck.  The front trenches of the British were at that
time seven hundred yards from the Boer lines. They were held by the
Gordons and by the Canadians, the latter being the nearer to the
river. It is worth while entering into details as to the arrangement
of the attack, as the success of the campaign was at least accelerated
by it. The orders were that the Canadians were to advance, the Gordons
to support, and the Shropshires to take such a position on the left as
would outflank any counter attack upon the part of the Boers.  The
Canadians advanced in the darkness of the early morning before the
rise of the moon.  The front rank held their rifles in the left hand
and each extended right hand grasped the sleeve of the man next
it. The rear rank had their rifles slung and carried spades. Nearest
the river bank were two companies (G and H.) who were followed by the
7th company of Royal Engineers carrying picks and empty sand bags. The
long line stole through a pitchy darkness, knowing that at any instant
a blaze of fire such as flamed before the Highlanders at Magersfontein
might crash out in front of them. A hundred, two, three, four, five
hundred paces were taken.  They knew that they must be close upon the
trenches.  If they could only creep silently enough, they might spring
upon the defenders unannounced. On and on they stole, step by step,
praying for silence. Would the gentle shuffle of feet be heard by the
men who lay within stone-throw of them?  Their hopes had begun to rise
when there broke upon the silence of the night a resonant metallic
rattle, the thud of a falling man, an empty clatter! They had walked
into a line of meat-cans slung upon a wire. By measurement it was only
ninety yards from the trench. At that instant a single rifle sounded,
and the Canadians hurled themselves down upon the ground. Their bodies
had hardly touched it when from a line six hundred yards long there
came one furious glare of rifle fire, with a hiss like water on a
red-hot plate, of speeding bullets. In that terrible red light the men
as they lay and scraped desperately for cover could see the heads of
the Boers pop up and down, and the fringe of rifle barrels quiver and
gleam. How the regiment, lying helpless under this fire, escaped
destruction is extraordinary.  To rush the trench in the face of such
a continuous blast of lead seemed impossible, and it was equally
impossible to remain where they were. In a short time the moon would
be up, and they would be picked off to a man. The outer companies upon
the plain were ordered to retire. Breaking up into loose order, they
made their way back with surprisingly little loss; but a strange
contretemps occurred, for, leaping suddenly into a trench held by the
Gordons, they transfixed themselves upon the bayonets of the men. A
subaltern and twelve men received bayonet thrusts -- none of them
fortunately of a very serious nature.

While these events had been taking place upon the left of the line,
the right was hardly in better plight. All firing had ceased for the
moment -- the Boers being evidently under the impression that the whole
attack had recoiled. Uncertain whether the front of the small party on
the right of the second line (now consisting of some sixty-five
Sappers and Canadians lying in one mingled line) was clear for firing
should the Boers leave their trenches, Captain Boileau, of the
Sappers, crawled forward along the bank of the river, and discovered
Captain Stairs and ten men of the Canadians, the survivors of the
firing line, firmly ensconced in a crevice of the river bank
overlooking the laager, quite happy on being reassured as to the
proximity of support.  This brought the total number of the daring
band up to seventy-five rifles.  Meanwhile, the Gordons, somewhat
perplexed by the flying phantoms who had been flitting into and over
their trenches for the past few minutes, sent a messenger along the
river bank to ascertain, in their turn, if their own front was clear
to fire, and if not, what state the survivors were in.  To this
message Colonel Kincaid, R.E., now in command of the remains of the
assaulting party, replied that his men would be well entrenched by
daylight.  The little party had been distributed for digging as well
as the darkness and their ignorance of their exact position to the
Boers would permit.  Twice the sound of the picks brought angry
volleys from the darkness, but the work was never stopped, and in the
early dawn the workers found not only that they were secure
themselves, but that they were in a position to enfilade over half a
mile of Boer trenches.  Before daybreak the British crouched low in
their shelter, so that with the morning light the Boers did not
realise the change which the night had wrought. It was only when a
burgher was shot as he filled his pannikin at the river that they
understood how their position was overlooked.  For half an hour a
brisk fire was maintained, at the end of which time a white flag went
up from the trench.  Kincaid stood up on his parapet, and a single
haggard figure emerged from the Boer warren.  'The burghers have had
enough; what are they to do?' said he.  As he spoke his comrades
scrambled out behind him and came walking and running over to the
British lines.  It was not a moment likely to be forgotten by the
parched and grimy warriors who stood up and cheered until the cry came
crashing back to them again from the distant British camps. No doubt
Cronje had already realised that the extreme limit of his resistance
was come, but it was to that handful of Sappers and Canadians that the
credit is immediately due for that white flag which fluttered on the
morning of Majuba Day over the lines of Paardeberg.

It was six o'clock in the morning when General Pretyman rode up to
Lord Roberts's headquarters. Behind him upon a white horse was a
dark-bearded man, with the quick. restless eyes of a hunter,
middle-sized, thickly built, with grizzled hair flowing from under a
tall brown felt hat. He wore the black broadcloth of the burgher with
a green summer overcoat, and carried a small whip in his hands. His
appearance was that of a respectable London vestryman rather than of a
most redoubtable soldier with a particularly sinister career behind
him.

The Generals shook hands, and it was briefly intimated to Cronje that
his surrender must be unconditional, to which, after a short silence,
he agreed. His only stipulations were personal, that his wife, his
grandson, his secretary, his adjutant, and his servant might accompany
him.  The same evening he was despatched to Cape Town, receiving those
honourable attentions which were due to his valour rather than to his
character.  His men, a pallid ragged crew, emerged from their holes
and burrows, and delivered up their rifles. It is pleasant to add
that, with much in their memories to exasperate them, the British
privates treated their enemies with as large-hearted a courtesy as
Lord Roberts had shown to their leader. Our total capture numbered
some three thousand of the Transvaal and eleven hundred of the Free
State.  That the latter were not far more numerous was due to the fact
that many had already shredded off to their farms. Besides Cronje,
Wolverans of the Transvaal, and the German artillerist Albrecht, with
forty-four other field-cornets and commandants, fell into our hands.
Six small guns were also secured.  The same afternoon saw the long
column of the prisoners on its way to Modder River, there to be
entrained for Cape Town, the most singular lot of people to be seen at
that moment upon earth -- ragged, patched, grotesque, some with goloshes,
some with umbrellas, coffee-pots, and Bibles, their favourite baggage.
So they passed out of their ten days of glorious history.

A visit to the laager showed that the horrible smells which had been
carried across to the British lines, and the swollen carcasses which
had swirled down the muddy river were true portents of its condition.
Strong-nerved men came back white and sick from a contemplation of the
place in which women and children had for ten days been living. From
end to end it was a festering mass of corruption, overshadowed by
incredible swarms of flies.  Yet the engineer who could face evil
sights and nauseous smells was repaid by an inspection of the deep
narrow trenches in which a rifleman could crouch with the minimum
danger from shells, and the caves in which the non-combatants remained
in absolute safety. Of their dead we have no accurate knowledge, but
two hundred wounded in a donga represented their losses, not only
during a bombardment of ten days, but also in that Paardeberg
engagement which had cost us eleven hundred casualties. No more
convincing example could be adduced both of the advantage of the
defence over the attack, and of the harmlessness of the fiercest shell
fire if those who are exposed to it bave space and time to make
preparations.

A fortnight had elapsed since Lord Roberts had launched his forces
from Ramdam, and that fortnight had wrought a complete revolution in
the campaign. It is hard to recall any instance in the history of war
where a single movement has created such a change over so many
different operations.  On February 14th Kimberley was in danger of
capture, a victorious Boer army was facing Methuen, the lines of
Magersfontein appeared impregnable, Clements was being pressed at
Colesberg, Gatacre was stopped at Stormberg, Buller could not pass the
Tugela, and Ladysmith was in a perilous condition. On the 28th
Kimberley had been relieved, the Boer army was scattered or taken, the
lines of Magersfontein were in our possession, Clements found his
assailants retiring before him, Gatacre was able to advance at
Stormberg, Buller had a weakening army in front of him, and Ladysmith
was on the eve of relief. And all this had been done at the cost of a
very moderate loss of life, for most of which Lord Roberts was in no
sense answerable. Here at last was a reputation so well founded that
even South African warfare could only confirm and increase it. A
single master hand had in an instant turned England's night to day,
and had brought us out of that nightmare of miscalculation and
disaster which had weighed so long upon our spirits.  His was the
master hand, but there were others at his side without whom that hand
might have been paralysed: Kitchener the organiser, French the cavalry
leader -- to these two men, second only to their chief, are the
results of the operations due.  Henderson, the most capable head of
Intelligence, and Richardson, who under all difficulties fed the army,
may each claim his share in the success.

CHAPTER XX

ROBERTS'S ADVANCE ON BLOEMFONTEIN

The surrender of Cronje had taken place on February 27th, obliterating
for ever the triumphant memories which the Boers had for twenty years
associated with that date. A halt was necessary to provide food for
the hungry troops, and above all to enable the cavalry horses to pick
up.  The supply of forage had been most inadequate, and the beasts had
not yet learned to find a living from the dry withered herbage of the
veldt.[Footnote: A battery which turned out its horses to graze found
that the puzzled creatures simply galloped about the plain, and could
only be reassembled by blowing the call which they associated with
feeding, when they rushed back and waited in lines for their nosebags
to be put on.] In addition to this, they had been worked most
desperately during the fortnight which had elapsed.  Lord Roberts
waited therefore at Osfontein, which is a farmhouse close to
Paardeberg, until his cavalry were fit for an advance. On March 6th he
began his march for Bloemfontein.

The force which had been hovering to the south and east of him during
the Paardeberg operations had meanwhile been reinforced from Colesberg
and from Ladysmith until it had attained considerable
proportions. This army, under the leadership of De Wet, had taken up a
strong position a few miles to the east, covering a considerable range
of kopjes.  On March 3rd a reconnaissance was made of it, in which
some of our guns were engaged; but it was not until three days later
that the army advanced with the intention of turning or forcing it. In
the meantime reinforcements had been arriving in the British camp,
derived partly from the regiments which had been employed at other
points during these operations, and partly from newcomers from the
outer Empire.  The Guards came up from Klip Drift, the City Imperial
Volunteers, the Australian Mounted Infantry, the Burmese Mounted
Infantry and a detachment of light horse from Ceylon helped to form
this strange invading army which was drawn from five continents and
yet had no alien in its ranks.

The position which the enemy had taken up at Poplars Grove (so called
from a group of poplars round a farmhouse in the centre of their
position) extended across the Modder River and was buttressed on
either side by well-marked hills, with intermittent kopjes between.
With guns, trenches, rifle pits, and barbed wire a bull-headed general
might have found it another Magersfontein. But it is only just to Lord
Roberts's predecessors in command to say that it is easy to do things
with three cavalry brigades which it is dilficult to do with two
regiments.  The ultimate blame does not rest with the man who failed
with the two regiments, but with those who gave him inadequate means
for the work which he had to do.  And in this estimate of means our
military authorities, our politicians, and our public were all in the
first instance equally mistaken.

Lord Roberts's plan was absolutely simple, and yet, had it been
carried out as conceived, absolutely effective. It was not his
intention to go near any of that entanglement of ditch and wire which
had been so carefully erected for his undoing.  The weaker party, if
it be wise, atones for its weakness by entrenchments. The stronger
party, if it be wise, leaves the entrenchments alone and uses its
strength to go round them.  Lord Roberts meant to go round. With his
immense preponderance of men and guns the capture or dispersal of the
enemy's army might be reduced to a certainty. Once surrounded, they
must either come out into the open or they must surrender.

On March 6th the cavalry were brought across the river, and in the
early morning of March 7th they were sent off in the darkness to sweep
round the left wing of the Boers and to establish themselves on the
line of their retreat. Kelly-Kenny's Division (6th) had orders to
follow and support this movement.  Meanwhile Tucker was to push
straight along the southern bank of the river, though we may surmise
that his instructions were, in case of resistance, not to push his
attack home. Colvile's 9th Division, with part of the naval brigade,
were north of the river, the latter to shell the drifts in case the
Boers tried to cross, and the infantry to execute a turning movement
which would correspond with that of the cavalry on the other flank.

The plan of action was based, however, upon one supposition which
proved to be fallacious.  It was that after having prepared so
elaborate a position the enemy would stop at least a little time to
defend it.  Nothing of the sort occurred, however, and on the instant
that they realised that the cavalry was on their flank they made off.
The infantry did not fire a shot.

The result of this very decisive flight was to derange all
calculations entirly.  The cavalry was not yet in its place when the
Boer army streamed off between the kopjes.  One would have thought,
however, that they would have had a dash for the wagons and the guns,
even if they were past them.  It is unfair to criticise a movement
until one is certain as to the positive orders which the leader may
have received; but on the face of it it is clear that the sweep of our
cavalry was not wide enough, and that they erred by edging to the left
instead of to the right, so leaving the flying enemies always to the
outside of them.

As it was, however, there seemed every possibility of their getting
the guns, but De Wet very cleverly coveved them by his skirmishers.
Taking possession of a farmhouse on the right flank they kept up a
spirited fire upon the 16th Lancers and upon P battery R.H.A. When at
last the latter drove them out of their shelter, they again formed
upon a low kopje and poured so galling a fire upon the right wing that
the whole movement was interrupted until we had driven this little
body of fifty men from their position. When, after a delay of an hour,
the cavalry at last succeeded in dislodging them -- or possibly it may
be fairer to say when, having accomplished their purpose, they retired
-- the guns and wagons were out of reach, and, what is more important,
the two Presidents, both Steyn and Kruger, who had come to stiffen the
resistance of the burghers, had escaped.

Making every allowance for the weary state of the horses, it is
impossible to say that our cavalry were handled with energy or
judgment on this occasion. That such a force of men and guns should be
held off from an object of such importance by so small a resistance
reflects no credit upon us.  It would have been better to repeat the
Kimberley tactics and to sweep the regiments in extended order past
the obstacle if we could not pass over it. At the other side of that
little ill-defended kopje lay a possible termination of the war, and
our crack cavalry regiments manoeuvred for hours and let it pass out
of their reach. However, as Lord Roberts good-humouredly remarked at
the end of the action, 'In war you can't expect everything to come out
right.'  General French can afford to shed one leaf from his laurel
wreath.  On the other hand, no words can be too high for the gallant
little band of Boers who had the courage to face that overwhelming
mass of horsemen, and to bluff them into regarding this handful as a
force fighting a serious rearguard action. When the stories of the war
are told round the fires in the lonely veldt farmhouses, as they will
be for a century to come, this one deserves an honoured place.

The victory, if such a word can apply to such an action, had cost some
fifty or sixty of the cavalry killed and wounded, while it is doubtful
if the Boers lost as many.  The finest military display on the British
side had been the magnificent marching of Kelly-Kenny's 6th Division,
who had gone for ten hours with hardly a halt.  One 9 lb. Krupp gun
was the only trophy.  On he other hand, Roberts had turned them out of
their strong position, had gained twelve or fifteen miles on he road
to Bloemfontein, and for the first time shown how helpless a Boer army
was in country which gave our numbers a chance. From now onwards it
was only in surprise and ambuscade that they could hope for a success.
We had learned and they had learned that they could not stand in the
open field.

The action of Poplars Grove was fought on March 7th. On the 9th the
army was again on its way, and on the 10th it attacked the new
position which the Boers had occupied at a place called Driefontein,
or Abram's Kraal. They covered a front of some seven miles in such a
formation that their wings were protected, the northern by the river
and the southern by flanking bastions of hill extending for some
distance to the rear. If the position had been defended as well as it
had been chosen, the task would have been a severe one.

Since the Modder covered the enemy's right the turning movement could
only be developed on their left, and Tucker's Division was thrown out
very wide on that side for the purpose. But in the meanwhile a
contretemps had occurred which threw out and seriously hampered the
whole British line of battle. General French was in command of the
left wing, which included Kelly-Kenny's Division, the first cavalry
brigade, and Alderson's Mounted Infantry. His orders had been to keep
in touch with the centre, and to avoid pushing his attack home. In
endeavouring to carry out these instructions French moved his men more
and more to the right, until he had really squeezed in between the
Boers and Lord Roberts's central column, and so masked the latter.
The essence of the whole operation was that the frontal attack should
not be delivered until Tucker had worked round to the rear of the
position.  It is for military critics to decide whether it was that
the flankers were too slow or the frontal assailants were too fast,
but it is certain that Kelly-Kenny's Division attacked before the
cavalry and the 7th Division were in their place.  Kelly-Kenny was
informed that the position in front of him had been abandoned, and
four regiments, the Buffs, the Essex, the Welsh, and the Yorkshires,
were advanced against it. They were passing over the open when the
crash of the Mauser fire burst out in front of them, and the bullets
hissed and thudded among the ranks.  The ordeal was a very severe one.
The Yorkshires were swung round wide upon the right, but the rest of
the brigade, the Welsh Regiment leading, made a frontal attack upon
the ridge.  It was done coolly and deliberately, the men taking
advantage of every possible cover.  Boers could be seen leaving their
position in small bodies as the crackling, swaying line of the British
surged ever higher upon the hillside.  At last, with a cheer, the
Welshmen with their Kent and Essex comrades swept over the crest into
the ranks of that cosmopolitan crew of sturdy adventurers who are
known as the Johannesburg Police.  For once the loss of the defence
was greater than that of the attack.  These mercenaries had not the
instinct which teaches the Boer the right instant for flight, and they
held their position too long to get away. The British had left four
hundred men on the track of that gallant advance, but the vast
majority of them were wounded -- too often by those explosive or
expansive missiles which make war more hideous. Of the Boers we
actually buried over a hundred on the ridge, and their total
casualties must have been considerably in excess of ours.

The action was strategically well conceived; all that Lord Roberts
could do for complete success had been done; but tactically it was a
poor affair, considering his enormous preponderance in men and
guns. There was no glory in it, save for the four regiments who set
their faces against that sleet of lead.  The artillery did not do
well, and were browbeaten by guns which they should have smothered
under their fire.  The cavalry cannot be said to have done well
either. And yet, when all is said, the action is an important one, for
the enemy were badly shaken by the result. The Johannesburg Police,
who had been among their CORPS D'ELITE, had been badly mauled, and the
burghers were impressed by one more example of the impossibility of
standing in anything approaching to open country against disciplined
troops, Roberts had not captured the guns, but the road had been
cleared for him to Bloemfontein and, what is more singular, to
Pretoria; for though hundreds of miles intervene between the field of
Driefontein and the Transvaal capital, he never again met a force
which was willing to look his infantry in the eyes in a pitched
battle.  Surprises and skirmishes were many, but it was the last time,
save only at Doornkop, that a chosen position was ever held for an
effective rifle fire -- to say nothing of the push of bayonet.

And now the army flowed swiftly onwards to the capital.  The
indefatigable 6th Division, which had done march after march, one more
brilliant than another, since they had crossed the Riet River, reached
Asvogel Kop on the evening of Sunday, March 11th, the day after the
battle.  On Monday the army was still pressing onwards, disregarding
all else and striking straight for the heart as Blucher struck at
Paris in 1814. At midday they halted at the farm of Gregorowski, he
who had tried the Reform prisoners after the Raid.  The cavalry pushed
on down Kaal Spruit, and in the evening crossed the Southern railway
line which connects Bloemfontein with the colony, cutting it at a
point some five miles from the town.  In spite of some not very
strenuous opposition from a Boer force a hill was seized by a squadron
of Greys with some mounted infantry and Rimington's Guides, aided by U
battery R.H.A., and was held by them all that night.

On the same evening Major Hunter-Weston, an officer who had already
performed at least one brilliant feat in the war, was sent with
Lieutenant Charles and a handful of Mounted Sappers and Hussars to cut
the line to the north.  After a difficult journey on a very dark night
he reached his object and succeeded in finding and blowing up a
culvert.  There is a Victona Cross gallantry which leads to nothing
save personal decoration, and there is another and far higher
gallantry of calculation, which springs from a cool brain as well as a
hot heart, and it is from the men who possess this rare quality that
great warriors arise.  Such feats as the cutting of this railway or
the subsequent saving of the Bethulie Bridge by Grant and Popham are
of more service to the country than any degree of mere valour
untempered by judgment.  Among other results the cutting of the line
secured for us twenty-eight locomotives, two hundred and fifty trucks,
and one thousand tons of coal, all of which were standing ready to
leave Bloemfontein station.  The gallant little band were nearly cut
off on their return, but fought their way through with the loss of two
horses, and so got back in triumph.

The action of Driefontein was fought on the 10th. The advance began on
the morning of the 11th.  On the morning of the 13th the British were
practically masters of Bloemfontein.  The distance is forty miles.  No
one can say that Lord Roberts cannot follow a victory up as well as
win it.

Some trenches had been dug and sangars erected to the north-west of
the town; but Lord Roberts, with his usual perverseness, took the
wrong turning and appeared upon the broad open plain to the south,
where resistance would have been absurd.  Already Steyn and the
irreconcilables had fled from the town, and the General was met by a
deputation of the Mayor, the Landdrost, and Mr. Fraser to tender the
submission of the capital. Fraser, a sturdy clear-headed Highlander,
had been the one politician in the Free State who combined a perfect
loyalty to his adopted country with a just appreciation of what a
quarrel A L'OUTRANCE with the British Empire would mean.  Had Fraser's
views prevailed, the Orange Free State would still exist as a happy
and independent State.  As it is, he may help her to happiness and
prosperity as the prime minister of the Orange River Colony.

It was at half-past one on Tuesday, March 13th, that General Roberts
and his troops entered Bloemfontein, amid the acclamations of many of
the inhabitants, who, either to propitiate the victor, or as a sign of
their real sympathies, had hoisted union jacks upon their
houses. Spectators have left it upon record how from all that
interminable column of yellow-clad weary men, worn with half rations
and whole-day marches, there came never one jeer, never one taunting
or exultant word, as they tramped into the capital of their enemies.
The bearing of the troops was chivalrous in its gentleness, and not
the least astonishing sight to the inhabitants was the passing of the
Guards, the dandy troops of England, the body-servants of the great
Queen.  Black with sun and dust, staggering after a march of
thirty-eight miles, gaunt and haggard, with their clothes in such a
state that decency demanded that some of the men should be discreetly
packed away in the heart of the dense column, they still swung into
the town with the aspect of Kentish hop-pickers and the bearing of
heroes.  She, the venerable mother, could remember the bearded ranks
who marched past her when they came with sadly thinned files back from
the Crimean winter; even those gallant men could not have endured more
sturdily, nor have served her more loyally, than these their worthy
descendants.

It was just a month after the start from Ramdam that Lord Roberts and
his army rode into the enemy's capital.  Up to that period we had in
Africa Generals who were hampered for want of troops, and troops who
were hampered for want of Generals.  Only when the Commander-in-Chief
took over the main army had we soldiers enough, and a man who knew how
to handle them.  The result was one which has not only solved the
question of the future of South Africa, but has given an illustration
of strategy which will become classical to the military student.  How
brisk was the course of events, how incessant the marching and
fighting, may be shown by a brief recapitulation.  On February 13th
cavalry and infantry were marching to the utmost capacity of men and
horses.  On the 14th the cavalry were halted, but the infantry were
marching hard.  On the 15th the cavalry covered forty miles, fought an
action, and relieved Kimberley.  On the 16th the cavalry were in
pursuit of the Boer guns all day, and were off on a thirty-mile march
to the Modder at night, while the infantry were fighting Cronje's
rearguard action, and closing up all day.  On the 17th the infantry
were marching hard.  On the 18th was the battle of Paardeberg. From
the 19th to the 27th was incessant fighting with Cronje inside the
laager and with De Wet outside.  From the 28th to March 6th was
rest. On March 7th was the action of Poplars Grove with heavy
marching; on March 10th the battle of Driefontein.  On the 11th and
12th the infantry covered forty miles, and on the 13th were in
Bloemfontein. All this was accomplished by men on half-rations, with
horses which could hardly be urged beyond a walk, in a land where
water is scarce and the sun semi-tropical, each infantryman carrying a
weight of nearly forty pounds. There are few more brilliant
achievements in the history of British arms.  The tactics were
occasionally faulty, and the battle of Paardeberg was a blot upon the
operations; but the strategy of the General and the spirit of the
soldier were alike admirable.


CHAPTER XXI

STRATEGIC EFFECTS OF LORD ROBERTS'S MARCH


>From the moment that Lord Roberts with his army advanced from Ramdam
all the other British forces in South Africa, the Colesberg force, the
Stormberg force, Brabant's force, and the Natal force, had the
pressure relieved in front of them, a tendency which increased with
every fresh success of the main body. A short chapter must be devoted
to following rapidly the fortunes of these various armies, and tracing
the effect of Lord Roberts's strategy upon their movements.  They may
be taken in turn from west to east.

The force under General Clements (formerly French's) had, as has
already been told, been denuded of nearly all its cavalry and horse
artillery, and so left in the presence of a very superior body of the
enemy. Under these circumstances Clements had to withdraw his
immensely extended line, and to concentrate at Arundel, closely
followed by the elated enemy.  The situation was a more critical one
than has been appreciated by the public, for if the force had been
defeated the Boers would have been in a position to cut Lord Roberts's
line of communications, and the main army would have been in the air.
Much credit is due, not only to General Clements, but to Carter of the
Wiltshires, Hacket Pain of the Worcesters, Butcher of the 4th R.F.A.,
the admirable Australians, and all the other good men and true who
did their best to hold the gap for the Empire.

The Boer idea of a strong attack upon this point was strategically
admirable, but tactically there was not sufficient energy in pushing
home the advance. The British wings succeeded in withdrawing, and the
concentrated force at Arundel was too strong for attack Yet there was
a time of suspense, a time when every man had become of such
importance that even fifty Indian syces were for the first and last
time in the war, to their own supreme gratification, permitted for
twenty-four hours to play their natural part as soldiers.[Footnote:
There was something piteous in the chagrin of these fine Sikhs at
being held back from their natural work as soldiers. A deputation of
them waited upon Lord Roberts at Bloemfontein to ask, with msny
salaams, whether 'his children were not to see one little fight before
they returned.'] But then with the rapid strokes in front the hour of
danger passed, and the Boer advance became first a halt and then a
retreat.

On February 27th, Major Butcher, supported by the Inniskillings and
Australians, attacked Rensburg and shelled the enemy out of it.  Next
morning Clements's whole force had advanced from Arundel and took up
its old position.  The same afternoon it was clear that the Boers were
retiring, and the British, following them up, marched into Colesherg,
around which they had manoeuvred so long.  A telegram from Steyn to De
Wet found in the town told the whole story of the retirement: 'As long
as you are able to hold the positions you are in with the men you
have, do so.  If not, come here as quickly as circumstances will
allow, as matters here are taking a serious turn.'  The whole force
passed over the Orange River unimpeded, and blew up the Norval's Pont
railway bridge behind it.  Clements's brigade followed on March 4th,
and succeeded in the course of a week in throwing a pontoon bridge
over the river and crossing into the Orange Free State. Roberts having
in the meanwhile seized Bloemfontein, communication was restored by
railway between the forces, and Clements was despatched to
Philippolis, Fauresmith, and the other towns in the south-west to
receive the submission of the inhabitants and to enforce their
disarmament. In the meantime the Engineers worked furiously at the
restoration of the railway bridge over the Orange River, which was
not, however, accomplished until some weeks later.

During the long period which had elapsed since the repulse at
Stormberg, General Gatacre had held his own at Sterkstroom, under
orders not to attack the enemy, repulsing them easily upon the only
occasion when they ventured to attack him.  Now it was his turn also
to profit by the success which Lord Roberts had won.  On February 23rd
he re-occupied Molteno, and on the same day sent out a force to
reconnoitre the enemy's position at Stormberg.  The incident is
memorable as having been the cause of the death of Captain de
Montmorency,[Footnote: De Montmorency had established a remarkable
influence over his rough followers. To the end of the war they could
not speak of him without tears in their eyes. When I asked Sergeant
Howe why his captain went almost alone up the hill, his answer was,
'Because the captain knew no fear.' Byrne, his soldier servant (an
Omdurman V.C. like his master), galloped madly off next morning with a
saddled horse to bring back his captain alive or dead, and had to be
forcibly seized and restrained by our cavalry.] one of the most
promising of the younger officers of the British army.  He had formed
a corps of scouts, consisting originally of four men, but soon
expanding to seventy or eighty.  At the head of these men he confirmed
the reputation for desperate valour which he bad won in the Soudan,
and added to it proofs of the enterprise and judgment which go to make
a leader of light cavalry. In the course of the reconnaissance he
ascended a small kopje accompanied by three companions, Colonel
Hoskier, a London Volunteer soldier, Vice, a civilian, and Sergeant
Howe.  'They are right on the top of us,' he cried to his comrades, as
he reached the summit, and dropped next instant with a bullet through
his heart. Hoskier was shot in five places, and Vice was mortally
wounded, only Howe escaping. The rest of the scouts, being farther
back, were able to get cover and to keep up a fight until they were
extricated by the remainder of the force. Altogether our loss was
formidable rather in quality than in quantity, for not more than a
dozen were hit, while the Boers suffered considerably from the fire of
our guns.

On March 5th General Gatacre found that the Boers were retreating in
front of him -- in response, no doubt, to messages similar to those
which had already been received at Colesberg.  Moving forward he
occupied the position which had confronted him so long.  Thence,
having spent some days in drawing in his scattered detachments and in
mending the railway, he pushed forward on March 12th to Burghersdorp,
and thence on the 13th to Olive Siding, to the south of the Bethulie
Bridge.

There are two bridges which span the broad muddy Orange River, thick
with the washings of the Basutoland mountains.  One of these is the
magnificent high railway bridge, already blown to ruins by the
retreating Boers.  Dead men or shattered horses do not give a more
vivid impression of the unrelenting brutality of war than the sight of
a structure, so graceful and so essential, blown into a huge heap of
twisted girders and broken piers.  Half a mile to the west is the road
bridge, broad and old-fashioned.  The only hope of preserving some
mode of crossing the difficult river lay in the chance that the troops
might anticipate the Boers who were about to destroy this bridge.

In this they were singularly favoured by fortune. On the arrival of a
small party of scouts and of the Cape Police under Major Nolan-Neylan
at the end of the bridge it was found that all was ready to blow it
up, the mine sunk, the detonator fixed, and the wire laid.  Only the
connection between the wire and the charge had not been made.  To make
sure, the Boers had also laid several boxes of dynamite under the last
span, in case the mine should fail in its effect.  The advance guard
of the Police, only six in number, with Nolan-Neylan at their head,
threw themselves into a building which commanded the approaches of the
bridge, and this handful of men opened so spirited and well-aimed a
fire that the Boers were unable to approach it.  As fresh scouts and
policemen came up they were thrown into the firing line, and for a
whole long day they kept the destroyers from the bridge. Had the enemy
known how weak they were and how far from supports, they could have
easily destroyed them, but the game of bluff was admirably played, and
a fire kept up which held the enemy to their rifle pits.

The Boers were in a trench commanding the bridge, and their brisk fire
made it impossible to cross.  On the other hand, our rifle fire
commanded the mine and prevented any one from exploding it.  But at
the approach of darkness it was certain that this would be done. The
situation was saved by the gallantry of young Popham of the
Derbyshires, who crept across with two men and removed the detonators.
There still remained the dynamite under the further span, and this
also they removed, carrying it off across the bridge under a heavy
fire.  The work was made absolutely complete a little later by the
exploit of Captain Grant of the Sappers, who drew the charges from the
holes in which they had been sunk, and dropped them into the river,
thus avoiding the chance that they might be exploded next morning by
shell fire.  The feat of Popham and of Grant was not only most gallant
but of extraordinary service to the country; but the highest credit
belongs to Nolan-Neylan, of the Police, for the great promptitude and
galantry of his attack, and to McNeill for his support.  On that road
bridge and on the pontoon bridge at Norval's Pont Lord Roberts's army
was for a whole month dependent for their supplies.

On March 15th Gatacre's force passed over into the Orange Free State,
took possession of Bethulie, and sent on the cavalry to Springfontein,
which is the junction where the railways from Gape Town and from East
London meet.  Here they came in contact with two battalions of Guards
under Pole-Carew, who had been sent down by train from Lord Roberts's
force in the north.  With Roberts at Bloemfontein, Gatacre at
Springfontein, Clements in the south-west, and Brabant at Aliwal, the
pacification of the southern portion of the Free State appeared to be
complete. Warlike operations seemed for the moment to be at an end,
and scattered parties traversed the country, 'bill-sticking,' as the
troops called it -- that is, carrying Lord Roberts's proclamation to
the lonely farmhouses and outlying villages.

In the meantime the colonial division of that fine old African
fighter, General Brabant, had begun to play its part in the campaign.
Among the many judicious arrangements which Lord Roberts made
immediately after his arrival at the Cape was the assembling of the
greater part of the scattered colonial bands into one division, and
placing over it a General of their own, a man who had defended the
cause of the Empire both in the legislative assembly and the field.
To this force was entrusted the defence of the country lying to the
east of Gatacre's position, and on February 15th they advanced from
Penhoek upon Dordrecht. Their Imperial troops consisted of the Royal
Scots and a section of the 79th R.F.A., the Colonial of Brabant's
Horse, the Kaffrarian Mounted Rifles, the Cape Mounted Rifles and Cape
Police, with Queenstown and East London Volunteers.  The force moved
upon Dordrecht, and on February 18th occupied the town after a
spirited action, in which Brabant's Horse played a distinguished
part. On March 4th the division advanced once more with the object of
attacking the Boer position at Labuschague's Nek, some miles to the
north.

Aided by the accurate fire of the 79th R.F.A., the colonials
succeeded, after a long day of desultory fighting, in driving the
enemy from his position. Leaving a garrison in Dordrecht Brabant
followed up his victory and pushed forward with two thousand men and
eight guns (six of them light 7-pounders) to occupy Jamestown, which
was done without resistance.  On March 10th the colonial force
approached Aliwal, the frontier town, and so rapid was the advance of
Major Henderson with Brabant's Horse that the bridge at Aliwal was
seized before the enemy could blow it up. At the other side of the
bridge there was a strong stand made by the enemy, who had several
Krupp guns in position; but the light horse, in spite of a loss of
some twenty-five men killed and wounded, held on to the heights which
command the river. A week or ten days were spent in pacifying the
large north-eastern portion of Cape Colony, to which Aliwal acts as a
centre.  Barkly East, Herschel, Lady Grey, and other villages were
visited by small detachments of the colonial horsemen, who pushed
forward also into the south-eastern portion of the Free State, passing
through Rouxville, and so along the Basutoland border as far as
Wepener.  The rebellion in the Colony was now absolutely dead in the
northeast, while in the north-west in the Prieska and Carnarvon
districts it was only kept alive by the fact that the distances were
so great and the rebel forces so scattered that it was very difficult
for our flying columns to reach them.  Lord Kitchener had returned
from Paardeberg to attend to this danger upon our line of
communications, and by his exertions all chance of its becoming
serious soon passed. With a considerable force of Yeomanry and Cavalry
he passed swiftly over the country, stamping out the smouldering
embers.

So much for the movements into the Free State of Clements, of Gatacre,
and of Brabant.  It only remains to trace the not very eventful
history of the Natal campaign after the relief of Ladysmith.

General Buller made no attempt to harass the retreat of the Boers,
although in two days no fewer than two thousand wagons were counted
upon the roads to Newcastle and Dundee.  The guns had been removed by
train, the railway being afterwards destroyed. Across the north of
Natal lies the chain of the Biggarsberg mountains, and to this the
Transvaal Boers had retired, while the Freestaters had hurried through
the passes of the Drakensberg in time to make the fruitless opposition
to Roberts's march upon their capital.  No accurate information had
come in as to the strength of the Transvaalers, the estimates ranging
from five to ten thousand, but it was known that their position was
formidable and their guns mounted in such a way as to command the
Dundee and Newcastle roads.

General Lyttelton's Division had camped as far out as Elandslaagte
with Burn Murdoch's cavalry, while Dundonald's brigade covered the
space between Burn Murdoch's western outposts and the Drakensberg
passes.  Few Boers were seen, hut it was known that the passes were
held in some strength.  Meanwhile the line was being restored in the
rear, and on March 9th the gallant White was enabled to take train for
Durban, though it was not until ten days later that the Colenso bridge
was restored. The Ladysmith garrison had been sent down to Colenso to
recruit their health.  There they were formed into a new division, the
4th, the brigades being given to Howard and Knox, and the command to
Lyttelton, who had returned his former division, the second, to Clery.
The 5th and 6th brigades were also formed into one division, the 10th,
which was placed under the capable command of Hunter, who had
confirmed in the south the reputation which he had won in the north of
Africa.  In the first week of April Hunter's Division was sent down to
Durban and transferred to the western side, where they were moved up
to Kimberley, whence they advanced northwards. The man on the horse
has had in this war an immense advantage over the man on foot, but
there have been times when the man on the ship has restored the
balance.  Captain Mahan might find some fresh texts in the
transference of Hunter's Division, or in the subsequent expedition to
Beira.

On April 10th the Boers descended from their mountains and woke up our
sleepy army corps by a brisk artillery fire.  Our own guns silenced
it, and the troops instantly relapsed into their slumber.  There was
no movement for a fortnight afterwards upon either side, save that of
Sir Charles Warren, who left the army in order to take up the
governorship of British Bechuanaland, a district which was still in a
disturbed state, and in which his presence had a peculiar
significance, since he had rescued portions of it from Boer
dornination in the early days of the Transvaal Republic.  Hildyard
took over the command of the 5th Division.  In this state of inertia
the Natal force remained until Lord Roberts, after a six weeks' halt
in Bloenifontein, necessitated by the insecurity of his railway
communication and his want of every sort of military supply, more
especially horses for his cavalry and boots for his infantry, was at
last able on May 2nd to start upon his famous march to Pretoria.
Before accompanying him, however, upon this victorious progress, it is
necessary to devote a chapter to the series of incidents and
operations which had taken place to the east and south-east of
Bloemfontein during this period of compulsory inactivity.

One incident must be recorded in this place, though it was political
rather than military.  This was the interchange of notes concerning
peace between Paul Kruger and Lord Salisbury.  There is an old English
jingle about 'the fault of the Dutch, giving too little and asking too
much,' but surely there was never a more singular example of it than
this.  The united Presidents prepare for war for years, spring an
insulting ultimatum upon us, invade our unfortunate Colonies, solemnly
annex all the portions invaded, and then, when at last driven back,
propose a peace which shall secure for them the whole point originally
at issue.  It is difficult to believe that the proposals could have
been seriously meant, but more probable that the plan may have been to
strengthen the hands of the Peace deputation who were being sent to
endeavour to secure European intervention.  Could they point to a
proposal from the Transvaal and a refusal from England, it might, if
not too curiously examined, excite the sympathy of those who follow
emotions rather than facts.

The documents were as follow:--

`The Prsidents of the Orange Free State and of the South African
Republic to the Marquess of Salisbury.
	    Bloemfontein March 5th, 1900.

`The blood and the tears of the thousands who have suffered by this
war, and the prospect of all the moral and economic ruin with which
South Africa is now threatened, make it necessary for both
belligerents to ask themselves dispassionately and as in the sight of
the Triune God for what they are fighting and whether the aim of each
justifies all this appalling misery and devastation.

`With this object, and in view of the assertions of various British
statesmen to the effect that this war was begun and is carried on with
the set purpose of undermining Her Majesty's authority in South
Africa, and of setting up an administration over all South Africa
independent of Her Majesty's Government, we consider it our duty to
solemnly declare that this war was undertaken solely as a defensive
measure to safeguard the threatened independence of the South African
Republic, and is only continued in order to secure and safeguard the
incontestable independence of both Republics as sovereign
international States, and to obtain the assurance that those of Her
Majesty's subjects who have taken part with us in this war shall
suffer no harm whatsoever in person or property.

`On these conditions, but on these conditions alone, are we now as in
the past desirous of seeing peace re-established in South Africa, and
of putting an end to the evils now reigning over South Africa; while,
if Her Majesty's Government is determined to destroy the independence
of the Republics, there is nothing left to us and to our people but to
persevere to the end in the course already begun, in spite of the
overwhelming pre-eminence of the British Empire, conscious that that
God who lighted the inextinguishable fire of the love of freedom in
our hearts and those of our fathers will not forsake us, but will
accomplish His work in us and in our descendants.

`We hesitated to make this  declaration earlier to your Excellency  as
we feared that, as long  as the advantage was  always on our side, and
as long  as our forces held  defensive positions  far in Her Majesty's
Colonies, such a declaration might hurt the  feelings of honour of the
British people.  But now  that the prestige  of the British Empire may
be considered to be assured  by the capture  of one of our forces, and
that we are  thereby forced to  evacuate other positions  which we had
occupied, that difficulty  is over and  we  can no longer  hesitate to
inform your Government and people in the sight  of the whole civilised
world why   we are fighting  and on  what conditions  we  are ready to
restore peace.

Such was the message, deep in its simplicity and cunning in its
candour, which was sent by the old President, for it is Kruger's style
which we read in every line of it.  One has to get back to facts after
reading it, to the enormous war preparations of the Republics, to the
unprepared state of the British Colonies, to the ultimatum, to the
annexations, to the stirring up of rebeflion, to the silence about
peace in the days of success, to the fact that by 'inextinguishable
love of freedom' is meant inextinguishable determination to hold other
white men as helots -- only then can we form a just opinion of the worth
of his message. One must remember also, behind the homely and pious
phraseology, that one is dealing with a man who has been too cunning
for us again and again -- a man who is as wily as the savages with whom
he has treated and fought.  This Paul Kruger with the simple words of
peace is the same Paul Kruger who with gentle sayings insured the
disarmament of Johannesburg, and then instantly arrested his
enemies -- the man whose name was a by-word for 'slimness' throughout
South Africa.  With such a man the best weapon is absolute naked truth
with which Lord Salisbury confronted him in his reply:--
	   Foreign Office: March 11th.

`I have the honour to acknowledge your Honours' telegram dated March
5th from Bloemfontein, of which the purport was principally to demand
that Her Majesty's Government shall recognise the "incontestable
independence" of the South African Republic and Orange Free State as
"sovereign international States," and to offer on those terms to bring
the war to a conclusion.

`In the beginning of October last peace existed between Her Majesty
and the two Republics under the conventions which then were in
existence. A discussion had been proceeding for some months between
Her Majesty's Government and the South African Republic, of which the
object was to obtain redress for certain very serious grievances under
which British residents in the. Republic were suffering.  In the
course of those negotiations the Republic had, to the knowledge of Her
Majesty's Government, made considerable armaments, and the latter had
consequently taken steps to provide corresponding reinforcements to
the British garrisons of Cape Town and Natal.  No infringement of the
rights guaranteed by the conventions had up to that time taken place
on the British side.  Suddenly, at two days' notice, the South African
Republic, after issuing an insulting ultimatum, declared war, and the
Orange Free State with whom there had not even been any discussion,
took a similar step.  Her Majesty's dominions were immediately invaded
by the two Republics, siege was laid to three towns within the British
frontier, a large portion of the two Colonies was overrun with great
destruction to property and life, and the Republics claimed to treat
the inhabitants as if those dominions had been annexed to one or other
of them.  In anticipation of these operations the South African
Republic had been accumulating for many years past military stores
upon an enormous scale, which by their character could only have been
intended for use against Great Britain.

`Your Honours make some observations of a negative character upon the
object with which these preparations were made.  I do not think it
necessary to discuss the questions which you have raised.  But the
result of these preparations, carried on with great secrecy, has been
that the British Empire has been compelled to confront an invasion
which has entailed a costly war and the loss of thousands of precious
lives.  This great calamity has been the penalty which Great Britain
has suffered for having in recent years acquiesced in the existence of
the two Republics.

`In view of the use to which the two Republics have put the position
which was given to them, and the calamities which their unprovoked
attack has inflicted upon Her Majesty's dominions, Her Majesty's
Government can only answer your Honours' telegram by saying that they
are not prepared to assent to the independence either of the South
African Bepublic or of the Orange Free State.'

With this frank and uncompromising reply the Empire, with the
exception of a small party of dupes and doctrin aires, heartily
agreed.  The pens were dropped, and the Mauser and the Lee-Metford
once more took up the debate.


CHAPTER XXII

THE HALT AT BLOEMFONTEIN


On March 13th Lord Roberts occupied the capital of the Orange Free
State.  On May 1st, more than six weeks later, the advance was
resumed.  This long delay was absolutely necessary in order to supply
the place of the ten thousand horses and mules which are said to have
been used up in the severe work of the preceding month. It was not
merely that a large number of the cavalry chargers had died or been
abandoned, but it was that of those which remained the majority were
in a state wbich made them useless for immediate service. How far this
might have been avoided is open to question, for it is notorious that
General French's reputation as a horsemaster does not stand so high as
his fame as a cavalry leader. But besides the horses there was urgent
need of every sort of supply, from boots to hospitals, and the only
way by which they could come was by two single-line railways which
unite into one single-line railway, with the alternative of passing
over a precarious pontoon bridge at Norval's Pont, or truck by truck
over the road bridge at Bethulie.  To support an army of fifty
thousand men under these circumstances, eight hundred miles from a
base, is no light matter, and a premature advance which could not be
thrust home would be the greatest of misfortunes.  The public at home
and the army in Africa became restless under the inaction, but it was
one more example of the absolute soundness of Lord Roberts's judgment
and the quiet resolution with which he adheres to it.  He issued a
proclamation to the inhabitants of the Free State promising protection
to all who should bring in their arms and settle down upon their
farms.  The most stringent orders were issued against looting or
personal violence, but nothing could exceed the gentleness and good
humour of the troops. Indeed there seemed more need for an order which
should protect them against the extortion of their conquered enemies.
It is strange to think that we are separated by only ninety years from
the savage soldiery of Badajoz and San Sebastian.

The streets of the little Dutch town formed during this interval a
curious object-lesson in the resources of the Empire.  All the
scattered Anglo-Celtic races had sent their best blood to fight for
the common cause. Peace is the great solvent, as war is the powerful
unifier. For the British as for the German Empire much virtue had come
from the stress and strain of battle. To stand in the market square of
Bloemfontein and to see the warrior types around you was to be assured
of the future of the race.  The middle-sized, square-set,
weather-tanned, straw-bearded British regulars crowded the footpaths.
There also one might see the hard-faced Canadians, the loose-limbed
dashing Australians, fireblooded and keen, the dark New-Zealanders,
with a Maori touch here and there in their features, the gallant men
of Tasmania, the gentlemen troopers of India and Ceylon, and
everywhere the wild South African irregulars with their bandoliers and
unkempt wiry horses, Rimington's men with the racoon bands, Roberts's
Horse with the black plumes, some with pink puggarees, some with
birdseye, but all of the same type, hard, rugged, and alert. The man
who could look at these splendid soldiers, and, remembering the
sacrifices of time, money, and comfort which most of them had made
before they found themselves fighting in the heart of Africa, doubt
that the spirit of the race burned now as brightly as ever, must be
devoid of judgment and sympathy.  The real glories of the British race
lie in the future, not in the past.  The Empire walks, and may still
walk, with an uncertain step, but with every year its tread will be
firmer, for its weakness is that of waxing youth and not of waning
age.

The greatest misfortune of the campaign, one which it was obviously
impolitic to insist upon at the time, began with the occupation of
Bloemfontein. This was the great outbreak of enteric among the
troops. For more than two months the hospitals were choked with
sick. One general hospital with five hundred beds held seventeen
hundred sick, nearly all enterics.  A half field hospital with fifty
beds held three hundred and seventy cases. The total number of cases
could not have been less than six or seven thousand -- and this not of
an evanescent and easily treated complaint, but of the most persistent
and debilitating of continued fevers, the one too which requires the
most assiduous attention and careful nursing. How great was the strain
only those who had to meet it can tell.  The exertions of the military
hospitals and of those others which were fitted out by private
benevolence sufficed, after a long struggle, to meet the crisis. At
Bloemfontein alone, as many as fifty men died in one day, and more
than 1,000 new graves in the cemetery testify to the severity of the
epidemic.  No men in the campaign served their country more truly than
the officers and men of the medical service, nor can any one who went
through the epidemic forget the bravery and unselfishness of those
admirable nursing sisters who set the men around them a higher
standard of devotion to duty.

Enteric fever is always endemic in the country, and especially at
Bloemfontein, but there can be no doubt that this severe outbreak had
its origin in the Paardeberg water. All through the campaign, while
the machinery for curing disease was excellent, that for preventing it
was elementary or absent. If bad water can cost us more than all the
bullets of the enemy, then surely it is worth our while to make the
drinking of unboiled water a stringent military offence, and to attach
to every company and squadron the most rapid and efficient means for
boiling it -- for filtering alone is useless. An incessant trouble it
would be, but it would have saved a division for the army. It is
heartrending for the medical man who has emerged from a hospital full
of water-born pestilence to see a regimental watercart being filled,
without protest, at some polluted wayside pool. With precautions and
with inoculation all those lives might have been saved. The fever died
down with the advance of the troops and the coming of the colder
weather.

To return to the military operations: these, although they were
stagnant so far as the main army was concerned, were exceedingly and
inconveniently active in other quarters.  Three small actions, two of
which were disastrous to our arms, and one successful defence marked
the period of the pause at Bloemfontein.

To the north of the town, some twelve miles distant lies the
ubiquitous Modder River, which is crossed by a railway bridge at a
place named Glen. The saving of the bridge was of considerable
importance, and might by the universal testimony of the farmers of
that district have been effected any time within the first few days of
our occupation. We appear, however, to have imperfectly appreciated
how great was the demoralisation of the Boers. In a week or so they
took heart, returned, and blew up the bridge. Roving parties of the
enemy, composed mainly of the redoubtable Johannesburg police,
reappeared even to the south of the river. Young Lygon was killed, and
Colonels Crabbe and Codrington with Captain Trotter, all of the
Guards, were severely wounded by such a body, whom they gallantly but
injudiciously attempted to arrest when armed only with revolvers.

These wandering patrols who kept the country unsettled, and harassed
the farmers who had taken advantage of Lord Roberts's proclamation,
were found to have their centre at a point some six miles to the north
of Glen, named Karee. At Karee a formidable line of hills cut the
British advance, and these had been occupied by a strong body of the
enemy with guns. Lord Roberts determined to drive them off, and on
March 28th Tucker's 7th Division, consisting of Chermside's brigade
(Lincolns, Norfolks, Hampshires, and Scottish Borderers), and Wavell's
brigade (Cheshires, East Lancashires, North Staffords, and South Wales
Borderers), were assembled at Glen. The artillery consisted of the
veteran 18th, 62nd, and 75th R.F.A. Three attenuated cavalry brigades
with some mounted infantry completed the force.

The movement was to be upon the old model, and in result it proved to
be only too truly so. French's cavalry were to get round one flank, Le
Gallais's mounted infantry round the other, and Tucker's Division to
attack in front.  Nothing could be more perfect in theory and nothing
apparently more defective in practice.  Since on this as on other
occasions the mere fact that the cavalry were demonstrating in the
rear caused the complete abandonment of the position, it is difficult
to see what the object of the infantry attack could be.  The ground
was irregular and unexplored, and it was late before the horsemen on
their weary steeds found themselves behind the flank of the
enemy. Some of them, Le Gallais's mounted infantry and Davidson's
guns, had come from Bloemfontein during the night, and the horses were
exhausted by the long march, and by the absurd weight which the
British troop-horse is asked to carry. Tucker advanced his infantry
exactly as Kelly-Kenny had done at Driefontein, and with a precisely
similar result. The eight regiments going forward in echelon of
battalions imagined from the silence of the enemy that the position
had been abandoned.  They were undeceived by a cruel fire which beat
upon two companies of the Scottish Borderers from a range of two
hundred yards. They were driven back, but reformed in a donga. About
half-past two a Boer gun burst shrapnel over the Lincolnshires and
Scottish Borderers with some effect, for a single shell killed five of
the latter regiment.  Chermside's brigade was now all involved in the
fight, and Wavell's came up in support, but the ground was too open
and the position too strong to push the attack home. Fortunately,
about four o'clock, the horse batteries with French began to make
their presence felt from behind, and the Boers instantly quitted their
position and made off through the broad gap which still remained
between French and Le Gallais. The Brandfort plain appears to be ideal
ground for cavalry, but in spite of that the enemy with his guns got
safely away.  The loss of the infantry amounted to one hundred and
sixty killed and wounded, the larger share of the casualties and of
the honour falling to the Scottish Borderers and the East Lancashires.
The infantry was not well handled, the cavalry was slow, and the guns
were inefficient-altogether an inglorious day. Yet strategically it
was of importance, for the ridge captured was the last before one came
to the great plain which stretched, with a few intermissions, to the
north. From March 29th until May 2nd Karee remained the advanced post.

In the meanwhile there had been a series of operations in the east
which had ended in a serious disaster. Immediately after the
occupation of Bloemfontein (on March 18th) Lord Roberts despatched to
the east a small column consisting of the 10th Hussars, the composite
regiment, two batteries (Q and U) of the Horse Artillery, some mounted
infantry, Roberts's Horse, and Rimington's Guides. On the eastern
horizon forty miles from the capital, but in that clear atmosphere
looking only half the distance, there stands the impressive mountain
named Thabanchu (the black mountain). To all Boers it is an historical
spot, for it was at its base that the wagons of the Voortrekkers,
coming by devious ways from various parts, assembled. On the further
side of Thabanchu, to the north and east of it, lies the richest
grain-growing portion of the Free State, the centre of which is
Ladybrand. The forty miles which intervene between Bloemfontein and
Thabanchu are intersected midway by the Modder River. At this point
are the waterworks, erected recently with modern machinery, to take
the place of the insanitary wells on which the town had been
dependent. The force met with no resistance, and the small town of
Thabanchu was occupied.

Colonel Pilcher, the leader of the Douglas raid, was inclined to
explore a little further, and with three squadrons of mounted men he
rode on to the eastward. Two commandos, supposed to be Grobler's and
Olivier's, were seen by them, moving on a line which suggested that
they were going to join Steyn, who was known to be rallying his forces
at Kroonstad, his new seat of government in the north of the Free
State.  Pilcher, with great daring, pushed onwards until with his
little band on their tired horses he found himself in Ladybrand,
thirty miles from his nearest supports.  Entering the town he seized
the landdrost and the field-cornet, but found that strong bodies of
the enemy were moving upon him and that it was impossible for him to
hold the place. He retired, therefore, holding grimly on to his
prisoners, and got back with small loss to the place from which he
started.  It was a dashing piece of bluff, and, when taken with the
Douglas exploit, leads one to hope that Pilcher may have a chance of
showing what he can do witb larger means at his disposal.  Finding
that the enemy was following him in force, he pushed on the same night
for Thabanchu.  His horsemen must have covered between fifty and sixty
miles in the twenty-four hours.

Apparently the effect of Pilcher's exploit was to halt the march of
those commandos which had been seen trekking to the north-west, and to
cause them to swing round upon Thabanchu. Broadwood, a young cavalry
commander who had won a name in Egypt, considered that his position
was unnecessarily exposed and fell back upon Bloemfontein.  He halted
on the first night near the waterworks, halfway upon his journey.

The Boers are great masters in the ambuscade. Never has any race shown
such aptitude for this form of warfare -- a legacy from a long
succession of contests with cunning savages. But never also have they
done anything so clever and so audacious as De Wet's dispositions in
this action.  One cannot go over the ground without being amazed at
the ingenuity of their attack, and also at the luck which favoured
them, for the trap which they had laid for others might easily have
proved an absolutely fatal one for themselves.

The position beside the Modder at which the British camped had
numerous broken hills to the north and east of it.  A force of Boers,
supposed to number about two thousand men, came down in the night,
bringing with them several heavy guns, and with the early morning
opened a brisk fire upon the camp.  The surprise was complete.  But
the refinement of the Boer tactics lay in the fact that they had a
surprise within a surprise -- and it was the second which was the more
deadly.

The force which Broadwood had with him consisted of the 10th Hussars
and the composite regiment, Rimington's Scouts, Roberts's Horse, the
New Zealand and Burmah Mounted Infantry, with Q and U batteries of
Horse Artillery. With such a force, consisting entirely of mounted
men, he could not storm the hills upon which the Boer guns were
placed, and his twelve-pounders were unable to reach the heavier
cannon of the enemy. His best game was obviously to continue his march
to Bloemfontein. He sent on the considerable convoy of wagons and the
guns, while he with the cavalry covered the rear, upon which the
long-range pieces of the enemy kept up the usual well-directed but
harmless fire.

Broadwood's retreating column now found itself on a huge plain which
stretches all the way to Bloemfontein, broken only by two hills, both
of which were known to be in our possession.  The plain was one which
was continually traversed from end to end by our troops and convoys,
so that once out upon its surface all danger seemed at an
end. Broadwood had additional reasons for feeling secure, for he knew
that, in answer to his own wise request, Colvile's Division had been
sent out before daybreak that morning from Bloemfontein to meet him.
In a very few miles their vanguard and his must come together.  There
were obviously no Boers upon the plain, but if there were they would
find themselves between two fires. He gave no thought to his front
therefore, but rode behind, where the Boer guns were roaring, and
whence the Boer riflemen might ride.

But in spite of the obvious there WERE Boers upon the plain, so placed
that they must either bring off a remarkable surprise or be themselves
cut off to a man. Across the veldt, some miles from the waterworks,
there runs a deep donga or watercourse -- one of many, but the
largest. It cuts the rough road at right angles. Its depth and breadth
are such that a wagon would dip down the incline, and disappear for
about two minutes before it would become visible again at the crown of
the other side.  In appearance it was a huge curving ditch with a
stagnant stream at the bottom.  The sloping sides of the ditch were
fringed with Boers, who had ridden thither before dawn and were now
waiting for the unsuspecting column.  There were not more than three
hundred of them, and four times their number were approaching; but no
odds can represent the difference between the concealed man with the
magazine rifle and the man upon the plain.

There were two dangers, however, which the Boers ran, and, skilful as
their dispositions were, their luck was equally great, for the risks
were enormous.  One was that a force coming the other way (Colvile's
was only a few miles off) would arrive, and that they would be ground
between the upper and the lower millstone.  The other was that for
once the British scouts might give the alarm and that Broadwood's
mounted men would wheel swiftly to right and left and secure the ends
of the long donga.  Should that happen, not a man of them could
possibly escape.  But they took their chances like brave men, and
fortune was their friend.  The wagons came on without any scouts.
Behind them was U battery, then Q, with Roberts's Horse abreast of
them and the rest of the cavalry behind.

As the wagons, occupied for the most part only by unarmed sick
soldiers and black transport drivers, came down into the drift, the
Boers quickly but quietly took possession of them, and drove them on
up the further slope.  Thus the troops behind saw their wagons dip
down, reappear, and continue on their course.  The idea of an ambush
could not suggest itself.  Only one thing could avert an absolute
catastrophe, and that was the appearance of a hero who would accept
certain death in order to warn his comrades.  Such a man rode by the
wagons -- though, unhappily, in the stress and rush of the moment there
is no certainty as to his name or rank.  We only know that one was
found brave enough to fire his revolver in the face of certain death.
The outburst of firing which answered his shot was the sequel which
saved the column.  Not often is it given to a man to die so choice a
death as that of this nameless soldier.

But the detachment was already so placed that nothing could save it
from heavy loss.  The wagons had all passed but nine, and the leading
battery of artillery was at the very edge of the donga.  Nothing is so
helpless as a limbered-up battery.  In an instant the teams were shot
down and the gunners were made prisoners.  A terrific fire burst at
the same instant upon Roberts's Horse, who were abreast of the guns.
'Files a bout! gallop!' yelled Colonel Dawson, and by his exertions
and those of Major Pack-Beresford the corps was extricated and
reformed some hundreds of yards further off.  But the loss of horses
and men was heavy. Major Pack-Beresford and other officers were shot
down, and every unhorsed man remained necessarily as a prisoner under
the very muzzles of the riflemen in the donga.

As Roberts's Horse turned and galloped for dear life across the flat,
four out of the six guns [Footnote:Of the other two one overturned and
could not be righted, the other had the wheelers shot and could not be
extricated from the tumult.  It was officially stated that the guns of
Q battery were halted a thousand yards off the donga, but my
impression was, from examining the ground, that it was not more than
six hundred.] of Q battery and one gun (the rearmost) of U battery
swung round nd dashed frantically for a place of safety. At the same
instant every Boer along the line of the donga sprang up and emptied
his magazine into the mass of rushing, shouting soldiers, plunging
horses, and screaming Kaffirs. It was for a few moments a
SAUVE-QUI-PEUT. Serjeant-Major Martin of U, with a single driver on a
wheeler, got away the last gun of his battery.  The four guns which
were extricated of Q, under Major Phipps-Hornby, whirled across the
plain, pulled up, unlimbered, and opened a brisk fire of shrapnel from
about a thousand yards upon the donga. Had the battery gone on for
double the distance, its action would have been more effective, for it
would have been under a less deadly rifle fire, but in any case its
sudden change from flight to discipline and order steadied the whole
force. Roberts's men sprang from their horses, and with the Burmese
and New-Zealanders flung themselves down in a skirmish line.  The
cavalry moved to the left to find some drift by which the donga could
be passed, and out of chaos there came in a few minutes calm and a
settled purpose.

It was for Q battery to cover the retreat of the force, and most nobly
it did it. A fortnight later a pile of horses, visible many hundreds
of yards off across the plain, showed where the guns had stood. It was
the Colenso of the horse gunners.  In a devilish sleet of lead they
stood to their work, loading and firing while a man was left.  Some of
the guns were left with two men to work them, one was loaded and fired
by a single officer.  When at last the order for retirement came, only
ten men, several of them wounded, were left upon their feet. With
scratch teams from the limbers, driven by single gunners, the
twelve-pounders staggered out of action, and the skirmish line of
mounted infantry sprang to their feet amid the hail of bullets to
cheer them as they passed.

It was no slight task to extricate that sorely stricken force from the
close contact of an exultant enemy, and to lead it across that
terrible donga.  Yet, thanks to the coolness of Broadwood and the
steadiness of his rearguard, the thing was done. A practicable passage
had been found two miles to the south by Captain Chester-Master of
Rimington's.  This corps, with Roberts's, the New-Zealanders, and the
3rd Mounted Infantry, covered the withdrawal in turn.  It was one of
those actions in which the horseman who is trained to fight upon foot
did very much better than the regular cavalry. In two hours' time the
drift had been passed and the survivors of the force found themselves
in safety.

The losses in this disastrous but not dishonourable engagement were
severe.  About thirty officers and five hundred men were killed,
wounded, or missing. The prisoners came to more than three hundred.
They lost a hundred wagons, a considerable quantity of stores, and
seven twelve-pounder guns -- five from U battery and two from Q.  Of U
battery only Major Taylor and Sergeant-Major Martin seem to have
escaped, the rest being captured EN BLOC.  Of Q battery nearly every
man was killed or wounded.  Roberts's Horse, the New-Zealanders, and
the mounted infantry were the other corps which suffered most heavily.
Among many brave men who died, none was a greater loss to the service
than Major Booth of the Northumberland Fusiliers, serving in the
mounted infantry. With four comrades he held a position to cover the
retreat, and refused to leave it.  Such men are inspired by the
traditions of the past, and pass on the story of their own deaths to
inspire fresh heroes in the future.

Broadwood, the instant that he had disentangled himself, faced about,
and brought his guns into action. He was not strong enough, however,
nor were his men in a condition, to seriously attack the
enemy. Martyr's mounted infantry had come up, led by the
Queenslanders, and at the cost of some loss to themselves helped to
extricate the disordered force.  Colvile's Division was behind
Bushman's Kop, only a few miles off, and there were hopes that it
might push on and prevent the guns and wagons from being
removed. Colvile did make an advance, but slowly and in a flanking
direction instead of dashing swiftly forward to retrieve the
situation.  It must be acknowledged, however, that the problem which
faced this General was one of great difficulty.  It was almost certain
that before he could throw his men into the action the captured guns
would be beyond his reach, and it was possible that he might swell the
disaster. With all charity, however, one cannot but feel that his
return next morning, after a reinforcement during the night, without
any attempt to force the Boer position, was lacking in
enterprise.[Footnote: It may be urged in General Colvile's defence
that his division had already done a long march from Bloemfontein. A
division, however, which contains two such brigades as Macdonald's and
Smith-Dorrien's may safely be called upon for any exertions. The
gunner officers in Colvile's division heard their comrades' guns in
'section-fire' and knew it to be the sign of a desperate situation.]
The victory left the Boers in possession of the waterworks, and
Bloemfontein had to fall back upon her wells -- a change which reacted
most disastrously upon the enteric which was already decimating the
troops.

The effect of the Sanna's Post defeat was increased by the fact that
only four days later (on April 4th) a second even more deplorable
disaster befell our troops.  This was the surrender of five companies
of infantry, two of them mounted, at Reddersberg.  So many surrenders
of small bodies of troops had occurred during the course of the war
that the public, remembering how seldom the word 'surrender' had ever
been heard in our endless succession of European wars, had become very
restive upon the subject, and were sometimes inclined to question
whether this new and humiliating fact did not imply some deterioration
of our spirit.  The fear was natural, and yet nothing could be more
unjust to this the most splendid army which has ever marched under the
red-crossed flag.  The fact was new because the conditions were new,
and it was inherent in those conditions.  In that country of huge
distances small bodies must be detached, for the amount of space
covered by the large bodies was not sufficient for all military
purposes.  In reconnoitring, in distributing proclamations, in
collecting arms, in overawing outlying districts, weak columns must be
used.  Very often these columns must contain infantry soldiers, as the
demands upon the cavalry were excessive.  Such bodies, moving through
a hilly country with which they were unfamiliar, were always liable to
be surrounded by a mobile enemy.  Once surrounded the length of their
resistance was limited by three things: their cartridges, their water,
and their food.  When they had all three, as at Wepener or Mafeking,
they could hold out indefinitely. When one or other was wanting, as at
Reddersberg or Nicholson's Nek, their position was impossible.  They
could not break away, for how can men on foot break away from
horsemen? Hence those repeated humiliations, which did little or
nothing to impede the course of the war, and which were really to be
accepted as one of the inevitable prices which we had to pay for the
conditions under which the war was fought.  Numbers, discipline, and
resources were with us.  Mobility, distances, nature of the country,
insecurity of supplies, were with them.  We need not take it to heart
therefore if it happened, with all these forces acting against them,
that our soldiers found themselves sometimes in a position whence
neither wisdom nor valour could rescue them.  To travel through that
country, fashioned above all others for defensive warfare, with trench
and fort of superhuman size and strength, barring every path, one
marvels how it was that such incidents were not more frequent and more
serious.  It is deplorable that the white flag should ever have waved
over a company of British troops, but the man who is censorious upon
the subject has never travelled in South Africa.

In the disaster at Reddersberg three of the companies were of the
Irish Rifles, and two of the 2nd Northumberland Fusiliers -- the same
unfortunate regiments which had already been cut up at Stormberg.
They had been detached from Gatacre's 3rd Division, the headquarters
of which was at Springfontein.  On the abandonment of Thabanchu and
the disaster of Sanna's Post, it was obvious that we should draw in
our detached parties to the east; so the five companies were ordered
to leave Dewetsdorp, which they were garrisoning, and to get back to
the railway line.  Either the order was issued too late, or they were
too slow in obeying it, for they were only halfway upon their journey,
near the town of Reddersberg, when the enemy came down upon them with
five guns.  Without artillery they were powerless, but, having seized
a kopje, they took such shelter as they could find, and waited in the
hope of succour.  Their assailants seem to have been detached from De
Wet's force in the north, and contained among them many of the victors
of Sanna's Post.  The attack began at 11 A.M. of April 3rd, and all
day the men lay among the stones, subjected to the pelt of shell and
bullet.  The cover was good, however, and the casualties were not
heavy.  The total losses were under fifty killed and wounded.  More
serious than the enemy's fire was the absence of water, save a very
limited supply in a cart. A message was passed through of the dire
straits in which they found themselves, and by the late afternoon the
news had reached headquarters.  Lord Roberts instantly despatched the
Camerons, just arrived from Egypt, to Bethany, which is the nearest
point upon the line, and telegraphed to Gatacre at Springfontein to
take measures to save his compromised detachment. The telegram should
have reached Gatacre early on the evening of the 3rd, and he had
collected a force of fifteen hundred men, entrained it, journeyed
forty miles up the line, detrained it, and reached Reddersberg, which
is ten or twelve miles from the line, by 10.30 next morning.  Already,
however, it was too late, and the besieged force, unable to face a
second day without water under that burning sun, had laid down their
arms. No doubt the stress of thirst was dreadful, and yet one cannot
say that the defence rose to the highest point of resolution.  Knowing
that help could not be far off, the garrison should have held on while
they could lift a rifle.  If the ammunition was running low, it was
bad management which caused it to be shot away too fast. Captain
McWhinnie, who was in command, behaved with the utmost personal
gallantry.  Not only the troops but General Gatacre also was involved
in the disaster. Blame may have attached to him for leaving a
detachment at Dewetsdorp, and not having a supporting body at
Reddersberg upon which it might fall back; but it must be remembered
that his total foree was small and that he had to cover a long stretch
of the lines of communication.  As to General Gatacre's energy and
gallantry it is a by-word in the army; but coming after the Stormberg
disaster this fresh mishap to his force made the continuance of his
command impossible.  Much sympathy was felt with him in the army,
where he was universally liked and respected by officers and men.  He
returned to England, and his division was taken over by General
Chermside.

In a single week, at a time when the back of the war had seemed to be
broken, we had lost nearly twelve hundred men with seven guns.  The
men of the Free State -- for the fighting was mainly done by commandos
from the Ladybrand, Winburg, Bethlehem, and Harrismith districts --
deserve great credit for this fine effort, and their leader De Wet
confirmed the reputation which he had already gained as a dashing and
indefatigable leader. His force was so weak that when Lord Roberts was
able to really direct his own against it, he brushed it away before
him; but the manner in which De Wet took advantage of Roberts's
enforced immobility, and dared to get behind so mighty an enemy, was a
fine exhibition of courage and enterprise.  The public at home chafed
at this sudden and unexpected turn of affairs; but the General,
constant to his own fixed purpose, did not permit his strength to be
wasted, aud his cavalry to be again disorganised, by flying
excursions, but waited grimly until he should be strong enough to
strike straight at Pretoria.

In this short period of depression there came one gleam of light from
the west.  This was the capture of a commando of sixty Boers, or
rather of sixty foreigners fighting for the Boers, and the death of
the gallant Frenchman, De Villebois-Mareuil, who appears to have had
the ambition of playing Lafayette in South Africa to Kruger's
Washington.  From the time that Kimberley had been reoccupied the
British had been accumulating their force there so as to make a strong
movement which should coincide with that of Roberts from
Bloemfontein. Hunter's Division from Natal was being moved round to
Kimberley, and Methuen already commanded a considerable body of
troops, which included a number of the newly arrived Imperial
Yeomanry. With these Methuen pacified the surrounding country, and
extended his outposts to Barkly West on the one side, to Boshof on the
other, and to Warrenton upon the Vaal River in the centre.  On April
4th news reached Boshof that a Boer commando had been seen some ten
miles to the east of the town, and a force, consisting of Yeomanry,
Kimberley Light Horse, and half of Butcher's veteran 4th battery, was
sent to attack them.  They were found to have taken up their position
upon a kopje which, contrary to all Boer custom, had no other kopjes
to support it.  French generalship was certainly not so astute as Boer
cunning.  The kopje was instantly surrounded, and the small force upon
the summit being without artillery in the face of our guns found
itself in exactly the same position which our men had been in
twenty-four hours before at Reddersberg. Again was shown the advantage
which the mounted rifleman has over the cavalry, for the Yeomanry and
Light Horsemen left their horses and ascended the hill with the
bayonet. In three hours all was over and the Boers had laid down their
arms.  Villebois was shot with seven of his companions, and there were
nearly sixty prisoners. It speaks well for the skirmishing of the
Yeomanry and the way in which they were handled by Lord Chesham that
though they worked their way up the hill under fire they only lost
four killed and a few wounded. The affair was a small one, but it was
complete, and it came at a time when a success was very welcome.  One
bustling week had seen the expensive victory of Karee, the disasters
of Sanna's Post and Reddersberg, and the successful skirmish of
Boshof.  Another chapter must be devoted to the movement towards the
south of the Boer forces and the dispositions which Lord Roberts made
to meet it.


CHAPTER XXIII

THE CLEARING OF THE SOUTH-EAST

Lord Roberts never showed his self-command and fixed purpose more
clearly than during his six weeks' halt at Bloemfontein.  De Wet, the
most enterprising and aggressive of the Boer commanders, was attacking
his eastern posts and menacing his line of communications. A fussy or
nervous general would have harassed his men and worn out his horses by
endeavouring to pursue a number of will-of-the-wisp commandos.
Roberts contented himself by building up his strength at the capital,
and by spreading nearly twenty thousand men along his line of rail
from Bloemfontein to Bethulie. When the time came he would strike, but
until then he rested.  His army was not only being rehorsed and
reshod, but in some respects was being reorganised.  One powerful
weapon which was forged during those weeks was the collection of the
mounted infantry of the central army into one division, which was
placed under the command of Ian Hamilton, with Hutton and Ridley as
brigadiers. Hutton's brigade contained the Canadians, New South Wales
men, West Australians, Queenslanders, New-Zealanders, Victorians,
South Australians, and Tasmanians, with four battalions of Imperial
Mounted Infantry, and several light batteries. Ridley's brigade
contained the South African irregular regiments of cavalry, with some
imperial troops.  The strength of the whole division came to over ten
thousand rifles, and in its ranks there rode the hardiest and best
from every corner of the earth over which the old flag is flying.

A word as to the general distribution of the troops at this instant
while Roberts was gathering himself for his spring.  Eleven divisions
of infantry were in the field.  Of these the 1st (Methuen's) and half
the 10th (Hunter's) were at Kimberley, forming really the
hundred-mile-distant left wing of Lord Roberts's army. On that side
also was a considerable force of Yeomanry, as General Villebois
discovered.  In the centre with Roberts was the 6th division
(Kelly-Kenny's) at Bloemfontein, the 7th (Tucker's) at Karee, twenty
miles north, the 9th (Colvile's) and the 11th (Pole-Carew's) near
Bloemfontein.  French's cavalry division was also in the centre.  As
one descended the line towards the Cape one came on the 3rd division
(Chermside's, late Gatacre's), which had now moved up to Reddersberg,
and then, further south, the 8th (Rundle's), near Rouxville.  To the
south and east was the other half of Hunter's division (Hart's
brigade), and Brabant's Colonial division, half of which was shut up
in Wepener and the rest at Aliwal.  These were the troops operating in
the Free State, with the addition of the division of mounted infantry
in process of formation.

There remained the three divisions in Natal, the 2nd (Clery's), the
4th (Lyttelton's), and the 5th (Hildyard's, late Warren's), with the
cavalry brigades of Burn-Murdoch, Dundonald, and Brocklehurst.  These,
with numerous militia and unbrigaded regiments along the lines of
communication, formed the British army in South Africa.  At Mafeking
some 900 irregulars stood at bay, with another force about as large
under Plumer a little to the north, endeavouring to relieve them.  At
Beira, a Portuguese port through which we have treaty rights by which
we may pass troops, a curious mixed force of Australians,
New-Zealanders and others was being disembarked and pushed through to
Rhodesia, so as to cut off any trek which the Boers might make in tbat
direction.  Carrington, a fierce old soldier with a large experience
of South African warfare, was in command of this picturesque force,
which moved amid tropical forests over crocodile-haunted streams,
while their comrades were shivering in the cold southerly winds of a
Cape winter. Neither our Government, our people, nor the world
understood at the beginning of this campaign how grave was the task
which we had undertaken, but, having once realised it, it must be
acknowledged that it was carried through in no half-hearted way.  So
vast was the scene of operations that the Canadian might almost find
his native climate at one end of it and the Queenslander at the other.

To follow in close detail the movements of the Boers and the counter
movements of the British in the southeast portion of the Free State
during this period would tax the industry of the historian and the
patience of the reader.  Let it be told with as much general truth and
as little geographical detail as possible.  The narrative which is
interrupted by an eternal reference to the map is a narrative spoiled.

The main force of the Freestaters had assembled in the north-eastern
corner of their State, and from this they made their sally southwards,
attacking or avoiding at their pleasure the eastern line of British
outposts. Their first engagement, that of Sanna's Post, was a great
and deserved success.  Three days later they secured the five
companies at Reddersberg. Warned in time, the other small British
bodies closed in upon their supports, and the railway line, that
nourishing artery which was necessary for the very existence of the
army, was held too strongly for attack.  The Bethulie Bridge was a
particularly important point; but though the Boers approached it, and
even went the length of announcing officially that they had destroyed
it, it was not actually attacked.  At Wepener, however, on the
Basutoland border, they found an isolated force, and proceeded at
once, according to their custom, to hem it in and to bombard it, until
one of their three great allies, want of food, want of water, or want
of cartridges, should compel a surrender.

On this occasion, however, the Boers had undertaken a task which was
beyond their strength.  The troops at Wepener were one thousand seven
hundred in number, and formidable in quality.  The place had been
occupied by part of Brabant's Colonial division, consisting of hardy
irregulars, men of the stuff of the defenders of Mafeking. Such men
are too shrewd to be herded into an untenable position and too valiant
to surrender a tenable one.  The force was commanded by a dashing
soldier, Colonel Dalgety, of the Cape Mounted Rifles, as tough a
fighter as his famous namesake.  There were with him nearly a thousand
men of Brabant's Horse, four hundred of the Cape Mounted Rifles, four
hundred Kaffrarian Horse, with some scouts, and one hundred regulars,
including twenty invaluable Sappers.  They were strong in guns -- two
seven-pounders, two naval twelve-pounders, two fifteen-pounders and
several machine guns.  The position which they had taken up,
Jammersberg, three miles north of Wepener, was a very strong one, and
it would have taken a larger force than De Wet had at his disposal to
turn them out of it.  The defence had been arranged by Major Cedric
Maxwell, of the Sappers; and though the huge perimeter, nearly eight
miles, made its defence by so small a force a most difficult matter,
the result proved how good his dispositions were.

At the same time, the Boers came on with every confidence of victory,
for they had a superiority in guns and an immense superiority in men.
But after a day or two of fierce struggle their attack dwindled down
into a mere blockade.  On April 9th they attacked furiously, both by
day and by night, and on the 10th the pressure was equally severe.  In
these two days occurred the vast majority of the casualties.  But the
defenders took cover in a way to which British regulars have not yet
attained, and they outshot their opponents both with their rifles and
their cannon.  Captain Lukin's management of the artillery was
particularly skilful. The weather was vile and the hastily dug
trenches turned into ditches half full of water, but neither
discomfort nor danger shook the courage of the gallant colonials.
Assault after assault was repulsed, and the scourging of the cannon
was met with stolid endurance.  The Boers excelled all their previous
feats in the handling of artillery by dragging two guns up to the
summit of the lofty Jammersberg, whence they fired down upon the camp.
Nearly all the horses were killed and three hundred of the troopers
were hit, a number which is double that of the official return, for
the simple reason that the spirit of the force was so high that only
those who were very severely wounded reported themselves as wounded at
all. None but the serious cases ever reached the hands of
Dr. Faskally, who did admirable work with very slender resources.  How
many the enemy lost can never be certainly known, but as they pushed
home several attacks it is impossible to imagine that their losses
were less than those of the victorious defenders. At the end of
seventeen days of mud and blood the brave irregulars saw an empty
laager and abandoned trenches. Their own resistance and the advance of
Brabant to their rescue had caused a hasty retreat of the
enemy. Wepener, Mafeking, Kimberley, the taking of the first guns at
Ladysmith, the deeds of the Imperial Light Horse -- it cannot be
denied that our irregular South African forces have a brilliant record
for the war.  They are associated with many successes and with few
disasters.  Their fine record cannot, I think, be fairly ascribed to
any greater hardihood which one portion of our race has when compared
with another, for a South African must admit that in the best colonial
corps at least half the men were Britons of Britain.  In the Imperial
Light Horse the proportion was very much higher.  But what may fairly
be argued is that their exploits have proved, what the American war
proved long ago, that the German conception of discipline is an
obsolete fetish, and that the spirit of free men, whose individualism
has been encouraged rather than crushed, is equal to any feat of arms.
The clerks and miners and engineers who went up Elandslaagte Hill
without bayonets, shoulder to shoulder with the Gordons, and who,
according to Sir George White, saved Ladysmith on January 6th, have
shown for ever that with men of our race it is the spirit witbin, and
not the drill or the discipline, that makes a formidable soldier.  An
intligent appreciation of the fact might in the course of the next
few years save us as much money as would go far to pay for the war.

It may well be asked how for so long a period as seventeen days the
British could tolerate a force to the rear of them when with their
great superiority of numbers they could have readily sent an army to
drive it away. The answer must be that Lord Roberts had despatched his
trusty lieutenant, Kitchener, to Aliwal, whence he had been in
heliographic communication with Wepener, that he was sure that the
place could hold out, and that he was using it, as he did Kimberley,
to hold the enemy while he was making his plans for their
destruction. This was the bait to tempt them to their ruin. Had the
trap not been a little slow in closing, the war in the Free State
might have ended then and there. From the 9th to the 25th the Boers
were held in front of Wepener. Let us trace the movements of the other
British detachments during that time.

Brabant's force, with Hart's brigade, which had been diverted on its
way to Kimberley, where it was to form part of Hunter's division, was
moving on the south towards Wepener, advancing through Rouxville, but
going slowly for fear of scaring the Boers away before they were
sufficiently compromised. Chermside's 3rd division approached from the
north-west, moving out from the railway at Bethany, and passing
through Reddersberg towards Dewetsdorp, from which it would directly
threaten the Boer line of retreat.  The movement was made with
reassuring slowness and gentleness, as when the curved hand approaches
the unconscious fly. And then suddenly, on April 21st, Lord Roberts
let everything go.  Had the action of the agents been as swift and as
energetic as the mind of the planner, De Wet could not have escaped
us.

What held Lord Roberts's hand for some few days after he was ready to
strike was the abominable weather. Rain was falling in sheets, and
those who know South African roads, South African mud, and South
African drifts will understand how impossible swift military movements
are under those circumstances.  But with the first clearing of the
clouds the hills to the south and east of Bloemfontein were dotted
with our scouts.  Rundle with his 8th division was brought swiftly up
from. the south, united with Chermside to the east of Reddersberg, and
the whole force, numbering 13,000 rifles with thirty guns, advanced
upon Dewetsdorp, Rundle, as senior officer, being in command.  As they
marched the blue hills of Wepener lined the sky some twenty miles to
the south, eloquent to every man of the aim and object of their march.

On April 20th, Rundle as he advanced found a force with artillery
across his path to Dewetsdorp.  It is always difficult to calculate
the number of hidden men and lurking guns which go to make up a Boer
army, but with some knowledge of their total at Wepener it was certain
that the force opposed to him must be very inferior to his own.  At
Constantia Farm, where he found them in position, it is difficult to
imagine that there were more than three thousand men.  Their left
flank was their weak point, as a movement on that side would cut them
off from Wepener and drive them up towards our main force in the
north.  One would have thought that a containing force of three
thousand men, and a flanking movement from eight thousand, would have
turned them out, as it has turned them out so often before and since.
Yet a long-range action began on Friday, April 20th, and lasted the
whole of the 21st, the 22nd, and the 23rd, in which we sustained few
losses, but made no impression upon the enemy.  Thirty of the 1st
Worcesters wandered at night into the wrong line, and were made
prisoners, but with this exception the four days of noisy fighting
does not appear to have cost either side fifty casualties.  It is
probable that the deliberation with which the operations were
conducted was due to Rundle's instructions to wait until the other
forces were in position.  His subsequent movements showed that he was
not a General who feared to strike.

On Sunday night (April 22nd) Pole-Carew sallied out from Bloemfontein
on a line which would take him round the right flank of the Boers who
were facing Rundle.  The Boers had, however, occupied a strong
position at Leeuw Kop, which barred his path, so that the Dewetsdorp
Boers were covering the Wepener Boers, and being in turn covered by
the Boers of Leeuw Kop.  Before anything could be done, they must be
swept out of the way.  Pole-Carew is one of those finds which help to
compensate us for the war. Handsome, dashing, debonnaire, he
approaches a field of battle as a light-hearted schoolboy approaches a
football field.  On this occasion he acted with energy and discretion.
His cavalry threatened the flanks of the enemy, and Stephenson's
brigade carried the position in front at a small cost. On the same
evening General French arrived and took over the force, which
consisted now of Stephenson's and the Guards brigades (making up the
11th division), with two brigades of cavalry and one corps of mounted
infantry. The next day, the 23rd, the advance was resumed, the cavalry
bearing the brunt of the fighting.  That gallant corps, Roberts's
Horse, whose behaviour at Sanna's Post had been admirable, again
distinguished itself, losing among others its Colonel, Brazier
Creagh. On the 24th again it was to the horsemen that the honour and
the casualties fell.  The 9th Lancers, the regular cavalry regiment
which bears away the honours of the war, lost several men and
officers, and the 8th Hussars also suffered, but the Boers were driven
from their position, and lost more heavily in this skirmish than in
some of the larger battles of the campaign. The 'pom-poms,' which had
been supplied to us by the belated energy of the Ordnance Department,
were used with some effect in this engagement, and the Boers learned
for the first time how unnerving are those noisy but not particularly
deadly fireworks which they had so often crackled round the ears of
our gunners.

On the Wednesday morning Rundle, with the addition cf Pole-Carew's
division, was strong enough for any attack, while French was in a
position upon the flank.  Every requisite for a great victory was
there except the presence of an enemy.  The Wepener siege had been
raised and the force in front of Rundle had disappeared as only Boer
armies can disappear.  The combined movement was an admirable piece of
work on the part of the enemy.  Finding no force in front of them, the
combined troops of French, Rundle, and Chermside occupied Dewetsdorp,
where the latter remained, while the others pushed on to Thabanchu,
the storm centre from which all our troubles had begun nearly a month
before.  All the way they knew that De Wet's retreating army was just
in front of them, and they knew also that a force had been sent out
from Bloemfontein to Thabanchu to head off the Boers. Lord Roberts
might naturally suppose, when he had formed two cordons through which
De Wet must pass, that one or other must hold him.  But with
extraordinary skill and mobility De Wet, aided by the fact that every
inhabitant was a member of his intelligence department, slipped
through the double net which had been laid for him.  The first net was
not in its place in time, and the second was too small to hold him.

While Rundle and French had advanced on Dewets dorp as described, the
other force which was intended to head off De Wet had gone direct to
Thabanchu.  The advance began by a movement of Ian Hamilton on April
22nd with eight hundred mounted infantry upon the waterworks.  The
enemy, who held the hills beyond, allowed Hamilton's force to come
right down to the Modder before they opened fire from three guns.  The
mounted infantry fell back, and encamped for the night out of
range.[Footnote: This was a remarkable exhibition of the harmlessness
of shell-fire against troops in open formation.  I myself saw at least
forty shells, all of which burst, fall among the ranks of the mounted
infantry, who retired at a contemptuos walk.  There were no
casualties.]  Before morning they were reinforced by Smith-Dorrien's
brigade (Gordons, Canadians, and Shropshires -- the Cornwalls had been
left behind) and some more mounted Infantry.  With daylight a fine
advance was begun, the brigade moving up in very extended order and
the mounted men turning the right flank of the defence. By evening we
had regained the waterworks, a most important point for Bloemfontein,
and we held all the line of hills which command it.  This strong
position would not have been gained so easily if it had not been for
Pole-Carew's and French's actions two days before, on their way to
join Rundle, which enabled them to turn it from the south.

Ian Hamilton, who had already done good service in the war, having
commanded the infantry at Elandslaagte, and been one of the most
prominent leaders in the defence of Ladysmith, takes from this time
onwards a more important and a more independent position. A thin,
aquiline man, of soft voice and gentle manners, he had already proved
more than once during his adventurous career that he not only
possessed in a high degree the courage of the soldier, but also the
equanimity and decision of the born leader. A languid elegance in his
bearing covered a shrewd brain and a soul of fire. A distorted and
half-paralysed hand reminded the observer that Hamilton, as a young
lieutenant, had known at Majuba what it was to face the Boer
rifles. Now, in his forty-seventh year, he had returned, matured and
formidable, to reverse the results of that first deplorable campaign.
This was the man to whom Lord Roberts had entrusted the command of
that powerful flanking column which was eventually to form the right
wing of his main advance. Being reinforced upon the morning after the
capture of the Waterworks by the Highland Brigade, the Cornwalls, and
two heavy naval guns, his whole force amounted to not less than seven
thousand men. From these he detached a garrison for the Waterworks,
and with the rest he continued his march over the hilly country which
lies between them and Thabanchu.

One position, Israel's Poort, a nek between two hills, was held
against them on April 25th, but was gained without much trouble, the
Canadians losing one killed and two wonuded.  Colonel Otter, their
gallant leader, was one of the latter, while Marshall's Horse, a
colonial corps raised in Grahamstown, had no fewer than seven of their
officers and several men killed or wounded.  Next morning the town of
Thabanchu was seized, and Hamilton found himself upon the direct line
of the Boer retreat. He seized the pass which commands the road, and
all next day he waited eagerly, and the hearts of his men beat high
when at last they saw a long trail of dust winding up to them from the
south.  At last the wily De Wet had been headed off!  Deep and earnest
were the curses when out of the dust there emerged a khaki column of
horsemen, and it was realised that this was French's pursuing force,
closely followed by Rundle's infantry from Dewetsdorp.  The Boers had
slipped round and were already to the north of us.

It is impossible to withhold our admiration for the way in which the
boer force was manoeuvred thoughout this portion of the campaign. The
mixture of circumspection and audacity, the way in which French and
Rundle were hindered until the Wepener force had disengaged itself,
the manner in which these covering forces were then withdrawn, and
finally the clever way in which they all slipped past Hamilton, make a
brilliant bit of strategy. Louis Botha, the generalissimo, held all
the strings in his hand, and the way in which he pulled them showed
that his countrymen had chosen the right man for that high office, and
that his was a master spirit even among those fine natural warriors
who led the separate commandos.

Having got to the north of the British forces Botha made no effort to
get away, and refused to be hustled by a reconnaissance developing
into an attack, which French made upon April 27th.  In a skirmish the
night before Kitchener's Horse had lost fourteen men, and the action
of the 27th cost us about as many casualties.  It served to show that
the Boer force was a compact body some six or seven thousand strong,
which withdrew in a leisurely fashion, and took up a defensive
position at Houtnek, some miles further on. French remained at
Thabanchu, from which he afterwards joined Lord Roberts' advance,
while Hamilton now assumed complete command of the flanking column,
with which he proceeded to march north upon Winburg.

The Houtnek position is dominated upon the left of the advancing
British force by Thoba Mountain, and it was this point which was the
centre of Hamilton's attack. It was most gallantly seized by
Kitchener's Horse, who were quickly supported by Smith-Dorrien's men.
The mountain became the scene of a brisk action, and night fell before
the crest was cleared. At dawn upon May 1st the fighting was resumed,
and the position was carried by a determined advance of the
Shropshires, the Canadians, and the Gordons: the Boers escaping down
the reverse slope of the hill came under a heavy fire of our infantry,
and fifty of them were wounded or taken. It was in this action, during
the fighting on the hill, that Captain Towse, of the Gordons, though
shot through the eyes and totally blind, encouraged his men to charge
through a group of the enemy who had gathered round them. After this
victory Hamilton's men, who had fought for seven days out of ten,
halted for a rest at Jacobsrust, where they were joined by Broadwood's
cavalry and Bruce Hamilton's infantry brigade.  Ian Hamilton's column
now contained two infantry brigades (Smith.Dorrien's and Bruce
Hamilton's), Ridley's Mounted Infantry, Broadwood's Cavalry Brigade,
five batteries of artillery, two heavy guns, altogether 13,000
men. With this force in constant touch with Botha's rearguard, Ian
Hamilton pushed on once more on May 4th. On May 5th he fought a brisk
cavalry skirmish, in which Kitchener's Horse and the 12th Lancers
distinguished themselves, and on the same day he took possession of
Winburg, thus covering the right of Lord Roberts's great advance.

The distribution of the troops on the eastern side of the Free State
was, at the time of this the final advance of the main army, as
follows -- Ian Hamilton with his mounted infantry, Smith-Dorrien's
brigade, Macdonald's brigade, Bruce Hamilton's brigade, and
Broadwood's cavalry were at Winburg.  Rundle was at Thabanchu, and
Brabant's colonial division was moving up to the same point.
Chermside was at Dewetsdorp, and had detached a force under Lord
Castletown to garrison Wepener. Hart occupied Smithfield, whence he
and his brigade were shortly to be transferred to the Kimberley
force. Altogether there could not have been fewer than thirty thousand
men engaged in clearing and holding down this part of the
country. French's cavalry and Pole-Carew's division had returned to
take part in the central advance.

Before entering upon a description of that great and decisive
movement, one small action calls for comment. This was the cutting off
of twenty men of Lumsden's Horse in a reconnaissance at Karee.  The
small post under Lieutenant Crane found themselves by some
misunderstanding isolated in the midst of the enemy. Befusing to hoist
the flag of shame, they fought their way out, losing half their
number, while of the other half it is said that there was not one who
could not show bullet marks upon his clothes or person.  The men of
this corps, volunteer Anglo-Indians, had abandoned the ease and even
luxury of Eastern life for the hard fare and rough fighting of this
most trying campaign. In coming they had set the whole empire an
object-lesson in spirit, and now on their first field they set the
army an example of military virtue.  The proud traditions of Outram's
Volunteers have been upheld by the men of Lumsden's Horse.  Another
minor action which cannot be ignored is the defence of a convoy on
April 29th by the Derbyshire Yeomanry (Major Dugdale) and a company of
the Scots Guards. The wagons were on their way to Rundle when they
were attacked at a point about ten miles west of Thabanchu. The small
guard beat off their assailants in the most gallant fashion, and held
their own until relieved by Brabazon upon the following morning.

This phase of the war was marked by a certain change in the temper of
the British.  Nothing could have been milder than the original
intentions and proclamations of Lord Roberts, and he was most ably
seconded in his attempts at conciliation by General Pretyman, who had
been made civil administrator of the State.  There was evidence,
however, that this kindness had been construed as weakness by some of
the burghers, and during the Boer incursion to Wepener many who had
surrendered a worthless firearm reappeared with the Mauser which had
been concealed in some crafty hiding-place.  Troops were fired at from
farmhouses which flew the white flag, and the good housewife remained
behind to charge the 'rooinek' extortionate prices for milk and fodder
while her husband shot at him from the hills.  It was felt that the
burghers might have peace or might have war, but could not have both
simultaneously.  Some examples were made therefore of offending
farmhouses, and stock was confiscated where there was evidence of
double dealing upon the part of the owner.  In a country where
property is a more serious thing than life, these measures, together
with more stringent rules about the possession of horses and arms, did
much to stamp out the chances of an insurrection in our rear.  The
worst sort of peace is an enforced peace, but if that can be
established time and justice may do the rest.

The operations which have been here described may be finally summed up
in one short paragraph. A Boer army came south of the British line and
besieged a British garrison.  Three British forces, those of French,
Rundle, and Ian Hamilton, were despatched to cut it off. It
successfully threaded its way among them and escaped. It was followed
to the northward as far as the town of Winburg, which remained in the
British possession. Lord Roberts had failed in his plan of cutting off
De Wet's army, but, at the expense of many marches and skirmishes, the
south-east of the State was cleared of the enemy.


CHAPTER XXIV

THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING


This small place, which sprang in the course of a few weeks from
obscurity to fame, is situated upon the long line of railway which
connects Kimberley in the south with Rhodesia in the north.  In
character it resembles one of those western American townlets which
possess small present assets but immense aspirations.  In its litter
of corrugated-iron roofs, and in the church and the racecourse, which
are the first-fruits everywhere of Anglo-Celtic civilisation, one sees
the seeds of the great city of the future.  It is the obvious depôt
for the western Transvaal upon one side, and the starting-point for
all attempts upon the Kalahari Desert upon the other.  The Transvaal
border runs within a few miles.

It is not clear why the imperial authorities should desire to hold
this place, since it has no natural advantages to help the defence,
but lies exposed in a widespread plain.  A glance at the map must show
that the railway line would surely be cut both to the north and south
of the town, and the garrison isolated at a point some two hundred and
fifty miles from any reinforcements.  Considering that the Boers could
throw any strength of men or guns against the place, it seemed certain
that if they seriously desired to take possession of it they could do
so.  Under ordinary circumstances any force shut up there was doomed
to capture.  But what may have seemed short-sighted policy became the
highest wisdom, owing to the extraordinary tenacity and resource of
Baden-Powell, the officer in command. Through his exertions the town
acted as a bait to the Boers, and occupied a considerable force in a
useless siege at a time when their presence at other seats of war
might have proved disastrous to the British cause.

Colonel Baden-Powell is a soldier of a type which is exceedingly
popular with the British public. A skilled hunter and an expert at many
games, there was always something of the sportsman in his keen
appreciation of war.  In the Matabele campaign he had out-scouted the
savage scouts and found his pleasure in tracking them among their
native mountains, often alone and at night, trusting to his skill in
springing from rock to rock in his rubber-soled shoes to save him from
their pursuit.  There was a brain quality in his bravery which is rare
among our officers.  Full of veldt craft and resource, it was as
difficult to outwit as it was to outfight him.  But there was another
curious side to his complex nature.  The French have said of one of
their heroes, 'Il avait cette graine de folie dans sa bravoure que les
Francais aiment,' and the words might have been written of Powell.  An
impish humour broke out in him, and the mischievous schoolboy
alternated with the warrior and the administrator.  He met the Boer
commandos with chaff and jokes which were as disconcerting as his wire
entanglements and his rifle-pits The amazing variety of his personal
accomplishments was one of his most striking characteristics. From
drawing caricatures with both hands simultaneously, or skirt dancing
to leading a forlorn hope, nothing came amiss to him; and he had that
magnetic quality by which the leader imparts something of his virtues
to his men.  Such was the man who held Mafeking for the Queen.

In a very early stage, before the formal declaration of war, the enemy
had massed several commandos upon the western border, the men being
drawn from Zeerust, Rustenburg, and Lichtenburg. Baden-Powell, with
the aid of an excellent group of special officers, who included
Colonel Gould Adams, Lord Edward Cecil, the soldier son of England's
Premier, and Colonel Hore, had done all that was possible to put the
place into a state of defence. In this he had immense assistance from
Benjamin Weil, a well known South African contractor, who had shown
great energy in provisioning the town.  On the other hand, the South
African Government displayed the same stupidity or treason which had
been exhibited in the case of Kimberley, and had met all demands for
guns and reinforcements with foolish doubts as to the need of such
precautions.  In the endeavour to supply these pressing wants the
first small disaster of the campaign was encountered.  On October
12th, the day after the declaration of war, an armoured train
conveying two 7-pounders for the Mafeking defences was derailed and
captured by a Boer raiding party at Kraaipan, a place forty miles
south of their destination.  The enemy shelled the shattered train
until after five hours Captain Nesbitt, who was in command, and his
men, some twenty in number, surrendered.  It was a small affair, but
it derived importance from being the first blood shed and the first
tactical success of the war.

The garrison of the town, whose fame will certainly live in the
history of South Africa, contained no regular soldiers at all with the
exception of the small group of excellent officers.  They consisted of
irregular troops, three hundred and forty of the Protectorate
Regiment, one hundred and seventy Police, and two hundred volunteers,
made up of that singular mixture of adventurers, younger sons, broken
gentlemen, and irresponsible sportsmen who have always been the
voortrekkers of the British Empire.  These men were of the same stamp
as those other admirable bodies of natural fighters who did so well in
Rhodesia, in Natal, and in the Cape. With them there was associated in
the defence the Town Guard, who included the able-bodied shopkeepers,
business men, and residents, the whole amounting to about nine hundred
men.  Their artillery was feeble in the extreme, two 7-pounder toy
guns and six machine guns, but the spirit of the men and the resource
of their leaders made up for every disadvantage.  Colonel Vyvyan and
Major Panzera planned the defences, and the little trading town soon
began to take on the appearance of a fortress.

On October 13th the Boers appeared before Mafeking. On the same day
Colonel Baden-Powell sent two truckloads of dynamite out of the place.
They were fired into by the invaders, with the result that they
exploded.  On October 14th the pickets around the town were driven in
by the Boers.  On this the armoured train and a squadron of the
Protectorate Regiment went out to support the pickets and drove the
Boers before them. A body of the latter doubled back and interposed
between the British and Mafeking, but two fresh troops with a
7-pounder throwing shrapnel drove them off.  In this spirited little
action the garrison lost two killed and fourteen wounded, but they
inflicted considerable damage on the enemy. To Captain Williams,
Captain FitzClarence, and Lord Charles Bentinck great credit is due
for the way in which they handled their men; but the whole affair was
ill advised, for if a disaster had occurred Mafeking must have fallen,
being left without a garrison.  No possible results which could come
from such a sortie could justify the risk which was run.

On October 16th the siege began in earnest.  On that date the Boers
brought up two 12-pounder guns, and the first of that interminable
flight of shells fell into the town.  The enemy got possession of the
water supply, but the garrison had already dug wells. Before October
20th five thousand Boers, under the formidable Cronje, had gathered
round the town.  'Surrender to avoid bloodshed' was his message.
'When is the bloodshed going to begin?' asked Powell.  When the Boers
had been shelling the town for some weeks the lighthearted Colonel
sent out to say that if they went on any longer he should be compelled
to regard it as equivalent to a declaration of war. It is to be hoped
that Cronje also possessed some sense of humour, or else he must have
been as sorely puzzled by his eccentric opponent as the Spanish
generals were by the vagaries of Lord Peterborough.

Among the many difficulties which had to be met by the defenders of
the town the most serious was the fact that the position had a
circumference of five or six miles to be held by about one thousand
men against a force who at their own time and their own place could at
any moment attempt to gain a footing. An ingenious system of small
forts was devised to meet the situation. Each of these held from ten
to forty riflemen, and was furnished with bomb-proofs and covered
ways. The central bomb-proof was connected by telephone with all the
outlying ones, so as to save the use of orderlies.  A system of bells
was arranged by which each quarter of the town was warned when a shell
was coming in time to enable the inhabitants to scuttle off to
shelter. Every detail showed the ingenuity of the controlling mind.
The armoured train, painted green and tied round with scrub, stood
unperceived among the clumps of bushes which surrounded the town.

On October 24th a savage bombardment commenced, which lasted with
intermissions for seven months.  The Boers had brought an enormous gun
across from Pretoria, throwing a 96-lb. shell, and this, with many
smaller pieces, played upon the town.  The result was as futile as our
own artillery fire has so often been when directed against the Boers.

As the Mafeking guns were too weak to answer the enemy's fire, the
only possible reply lay in a sortie, and upon this Colonel Powell
decided. It was carried out with great gallantry on the evening of
October 27th, when about a hundred men under Captain FitzClarence
moved out against the Boer trenches with instructions to use the
bayonet only.  The position was carried with a rush, and many of the
Boers bayoneted before they could disengage themselves from the
tarpaulins which covered them.  The trenches behind fired wildly in
the darkness, and it is probable that as many of their own men as of
ours were hit by their rifle fire.  The total loss in this gallant
affair was six killed, eleven wounded, and two prisoners.  The loss of
the enemy, though shrouded as usual in darkness, was certainly very
much higher.

On October 31st the Boers ventured upon an attack on Cannon Kopje,
which is a small fort and eminence to the south of the town.  It was
defended by Colonel Walford, of the British South African Police, with
fifty-seven of his men and three small guns.  The attack was repelled
with heavy loss to the Boers. The British casualties were six killed
and five wounded.

Their experience in this attack seems to have determined the Boers to
make no further expensive attempts to rush the town, and for some
weeks the siege degenerated into a blockade.  Cronje had been recalled
for more important work, and Commandant Snyman had taken over the
uncompleted task.  From time to time the great gun tossed its huge
shells into the town, but boardwood walls and corrugated-iron roofs
minimise the dangers of a bombardment.  On November 3rd the garrison
rushed the Brickfields, which had been held by the enemy's
sharpshooters, and on the 7th another small sally kept the game going.
On the 18th Powell sent a message to Snyman that he could not take the
town by sitting and looking at it. At the same time he despatched a
message to the Boer forces generally, advising them to return to their
homes and their families.  Some of the commandos had gone south to
assist Cronje in his stand against Methuen, and the siege languished
more and more, until it was woken up by a desperate sortie on December
26th, which caused the greatest loss which the garrison had sustained.
Once more the lesson was to be enforced that with modern weapons and
equality of forces it is always long odds on the defence.

On this date a vigorous attack was made upon one of the Boer forts on
the north.  There seems to be little doubt that the enemy had some
inkling of our intention, as the fort was found to have been so
strengthened as to be impregnable without scaling ladders.  The
attacking force consisted of two squadrons of the Protectorate
Regiment and one of the Bechuanaland Rifles, backed up by three guns.
So desperate was the onslaught that of the actual attacking party -- a
forlorn hope, if ever there was one -- fifty-three out of eighty were
killed and wounded, twenty-five of the former and twenty-eight of the
latter.  Several of that gallant band of officers who had been the
soul of the defence were among the injured.  Captain FitzClarence was
wounded, Vernon, Sandford, and Paton were killed, all at the very
muzzles of the enemy's guns.  It must have been one of the bitterest
moments of Baden-Powell's life when he shut his field-glass and said,
'Let the ambulance go out!'

Even this heavy blow did not damp the spirits nor diminish the
energies of the defence, though it must have warned Baden-Powell that
he could not afford to drain his small force by any more expensive
attempts at the offensive, and that from then onwards he must content
himself by holding grimly on until Plumer from the north or Methuen
from the south should at last be able to stretch out to him a helping
hand.  Vigilant and indomitable, throwing away no possible point in
the game which he was playing, the new year found him and his hardy
garrison sternly determined to keep the flag flying.

January and February offer in their records that monotony of
excitement which is the fate of every besieged town.  On one day the
shelling was a little more, on another a little less.  Sometimes they
escaped scatheless, sometimes the garrison found itself the poorer by
the loss of Captain Girdwood or Trooper Webb or some other gallant
soldier.  Occasionally they had their little triumph when a too
curious Dutchman, peering for an instant from his cover to see the
effect of his shot, was carried back in the ambulance to the
laager. On Sunday a truce was usually observed, and the snipers who
had exchanged rifle-shots all the week met occasionally on that day
with good-humoured chaff.  Snyman, the Boer General, showed none of
that chivalry at Mafeking which distinguished the gallant old Joubert
at Ladysmith. Not only was there no neutral camp for women or sick,
but it is beyond all doubt or question that the Boer guns were
deliberately turned upon the women's quarters inside Mafeking in order
to bring pressure upon the inhabitants.  Many women and children were
sacrificed to this brutal policy, which must in fairness be set to the
account of the savage leader, and not of the rough but kindly folk
with whom we were fighting.  In every race there are individual
ruffians, and it would be a political mistake to allow our action to
be influenced or our feelings permanently embittered by their
crimes. It is from the man himself, and not from his country, that an
account should be exacted.

The garrison, in the face of increasing losses and decreasing food,
lost none of the high spirits which it reflected from its commander.
The programme of a single day of jubilee - Heaven only knows what they
had to hold jubilee over -- shows a cricket match in the morning,
sports in the afternoon, a concert in the evening, and a dance, given
by the bachelor officers, to wind up. Baden-Powell himself seems to
have descended from the eyrie from which, like a captain on the
bridge, he rang bells and telephoned orders, to bring the house down
with a comic song and a humorous recitation. The ball went admirably,
save that there was an interval to repel an attack which disarranged
the programme.  Sports were zealously cultivated, and the grimy
inhabitants of casemates and trenches were pitted against each other
at cricket or football.[Footnote: Sunday cricket so shocked Snyman
that he threatened to fire upon it if it were continued.] The monotony
was broken by the occasional visits of a postman, who appeared or
vanished from the vast barren lands to the west of the town, which
could not all be guarded by the besiegers.  Sometimes a few words from
home came to cheer the hearts of the exiles, and could be returned by
the same uncertain and expensive means. The documents which found
their way up were not always of an essential or even of a welcome
character. At least one man received an unpaid bill from an angry
tailor.

In one particular Mafeking had, with much smaller resources, rivalled
Kimberley.  An ordnance factory had been started, formed in the
railway workshops, and conducted by Connely and Cloughlan, of the
Locomotive Department. Daniels, of the police, supplemented their
efforts by making both powder and fuses.  The factory turned out
shells, and eventually constructed a 5·5-in. smooth-bore gun, which
threw a round shell with great accuracy to a considerable range.
April found the garrison, in spite of all losses, as efficient and as
resolute as it had been in October.  So close were the advanced
trenches upon either side that both parties had recourse to the
old-fashioned hand grenades, thrown by the Boers, and cast on a
fishing-line by ingenious Sergeant Page, of the Protectorate Regiment.
Sometimes the besiegers and the number of guns diminished, forces
being detached to prevent the advance of Plumer's relieving column
from the north; but as those who remained held their forts, which it
was beyond the power of the British to storm, the garrison was now
much the better for the alleviation. Putting Mafeking for Ladysmith
and Plumer for Buller, the situation was not unlike that which had
existed in Natal.

At this point some account might be given of the doings of that
northern force whose situation was so remote that even the ubiquitous
correspondent hardly appears to have reached it.  No doubt the book
will eventually make up for the neglect of the journal, but some short
facts may be given here of the Rhodesian column.  Their action did not
affect the course of the war, but they clung like bulldogs to a most
difficult task, and eventually, when strengthened by the relieving
column, made their way to Mafeking.

The force was originally raised for the purpose of defending Rhodesia,
and it consisted of fine material pioneers, farmers, and miners from
the great new land which had been added through the energy of
Mr. Rhodes to the British Empire.  Many of the men were veterans of
the native wars, and all were imbued with a hardy and adventurous
spirit.  On the other hand, the men of the northern and western
Transvaal, whom they were called upon to face, the burghers of
Watersberg and Zoutpansberg, were tough frontiersmen living in a land
where a dinner was shot, not bought.  Shaggy, hairy, half-savage men,
handling a rifle as a mediæval Englishman handled a bow, and skilled
in every wile of veldt craft, they were as formidable opponents as the
world could show.

On the war breaking out the first thought of the leaders in Rhodesia
was to save as much of the line which was their connection through
Mafeking with the south as was possible. For this purpose an armoured
train was despatched only three days after the expiration of the
ultimatum to the point four hundred miles south of Bulawayo, where the
frontiers of the Transvaal and of Bechuanaland join. Colonel
Holdsworth commanded the small British force.  The Boers, a thousand
or so in number, had descended upon the railway, and an action
followed in which the train appears to have had better luck than has
usually attended these ill-fated contrivances.  The Boer commando was
driven back and a number were killed. It was probably news of this
affair, and not anything which had occurred at Mafeking, which caused
those rumours of gloom at Pretoria very shortly after the outbreak of
hostilities.  An agency telegraphed that women were weeping in the
streets of the Boer capital. We had not then realised how soon and how
often we should see the same sight in Pall Mall.

The adventurous armoured train pressed on as far as Lobatsi, where it
found the bridges destroyed; so it returned to its original position,
having another brush with the Boer commandos, and again, in some
marvellous way, escaping its obvious fate.  From then until the new
year the line was kept open by an admirable system of patrolling to
within a hundred miles or so of Mafeking.  An aggressive spirit and a
power of dashing initiative were shown in the British operations at
this side of the scene of war such as have too often been absent
elsewhere.  At Sekwani, on November 24th, a considerable success was
gained by a surprise planned and carried out by Colonel Holdsworth.
The Boer laager was approached and attacked in the early morning by a
force of one hundred and twenty frontiersmen, and so effective was
their fire that the Boers estimated their numbers at several thousand.
Thirty Boers were killed or wounded, and the rest scattered.

While the railway line was held in this way there had been some
skirmishing also on the northern frontier of the Transvaal.  Shortly
after the outbreak of the war the gallant Blackburn, scouting with six
comrades in thick bush, found himself in the presence of a
considerable commando.  The British concealed themselves by the path,
but Blackburn's foot was seen by a keen-eyed Kaffir, who pointed it
out to his masters. A sudden volley riddled Blackburn with bullets;
but his men stayed by him and drove off the enemy.  Blackburn dictated
an official report of the action, and then died.

In the same region a small force under Captain Hare was cut off by a
body of Boers.  Of the twenty men most got away, but the chaplain
J. W. Leary, Lieutenant Haserick (who behaved with admirable
gallantry), and six men were taken.[Footnote: Mr. Leary was wounded in
the foot by a shell.  The German artillerist entered the hut in which
he lay. 'Here's a bit of your work!' said Leary good~humouredly.  'I
wish it had been woise,' said the amiable German gunner.] The commando
which attacked this party, and on the same day Colonel Spreckley's
force, was a powerful one, with several guns. No doubt it was
organised because there were fears among the Boers that they would be
invaded from the north. When it was understood that the British
intended no large aggressive movement in that quarter, these burghers
joined other commandos.  Sarel Eloff, who was one of the leaders of
this northern force, was afterwards taken at Mafeking.

Colonel Plumer had taken command of the small army which was now
operating from the north along the railway line with Mafeking for its
objective.  Plumer is an officer of considerable experience in African
warfare, a small, quiet, resolute man, with a knack of gently
enforcing discipline upon the very rough material with which he had to
deal.  With his weak force -- which never exceeded a thousand men, and
was usually from six to seven hundred - he had to keep the long line
behind him open, build up the ruined railway in front of him, and
gradually creep onwards in face of a formidable and enterprising
enemy.  For a long time Gaberones, which is eighty miles north of
Mafeking, remained his headquarters, and thence he kept up precarious
communications with the besieged garrison.  In the middle of March he
advanced as far south as Lobatsi, which is less than fifty miles from
Mafeking; but the enemy proved to be too strong, and Plumer had to
drop back again with some loss to his original position at
Gaberones. Sticking doggedly to his task, Plumer again came south, and
this time made his way as far as Ramathlabama, within a day's march of
Mafeking.  He had with him, however, only three hundred and fifty men,
and had he pushed through the effect mighit have been an addition of
hungry men to the garrison.  The relieving force was fiercely
attacked, however, by the Boers and driven back on to their camp with
a loss of twelve killed, twenty-six wounded, and fourteen
missing. Some of the British were dismounted men, and it says much for
Plumer's conduct of the fight that he was able to extricate these
safely from the midst of an aggressive mounted enemy.  Personally he
set an admirable example, sending away his own horse, and walking with
his rearmost soldiers.  Captain Crewe Robertson and Lieutenant
Milligan, the famous Yorkshire cricketer, were killed, and Rolt,
Jarvis, Maclaren, and Plumer himself were wounded.  The Rhodesian
force withdrew again to near Lobatsi, and collected itself for yet
another effort.

In the meantime Mafeking -- abandoned, as it seemed, to its fate --
was still as formidable as a wounded lion. Far from weakening in its
defence it became more aggressive, and so persistent and skilful were
its riflemen that the big Boer gun had again and again to be moved
further from the town.  Six months of trenches and rifle-pits had
turned every inhabitant into a veteran. Now and then words of praise
and encouragement came to them from without.  Once it was a special
message from the Queen, once a promise of relief from Lord Roberts.
But the rails which led to England were overgrown with grass, and
their brave hearts yearned for the sight of their countrymen and for
the sound of their voices.  'How long, 0 Lord, how long?' was the cry
which was wrung from them in their solitude.  But the flag was still
held high.

April was a trying month for the defence.  They knew that Methuen, who
had advanced as far as Fourteen Streams upon the Vaal River, had
retired again upon Kimberley.  They knew also that Plumer's force had
been weakened by the repulse at Ramathlabama, and that many of his men
were down with fever.  Six weary months had this village withstood the
pitiless pelt of rifle bullet and shell. Help seemed as far away from
them as ever.  But if troubles may be allayed by sympathy, then theirs
should have lain lightly.  The attention of the whole empire had
centred upon them, and even the advance of Roberts's army became
secondary to the fate of this gallant struggling handful of men who
had upheld the flag so long.  On the Continent also their resistance
attracted the utmost interest, and the numerous journals there who
find the imaginative writer cheaper than the war correspondent
announced their capture periodically as they had once done that of
Ladysmith.  From a mere tin-roofed village Mafeking had become a prize
of victory, a stake which should be the visible sign of the
predominating manhood of one or other of the great white races of
South Africa.  Unconscious of the keenness of the emotions which they
had aroused, the garrison manufactured brawn from horsehide, and
captured locusts as a relish for their luncheons, while in the
shot-torn billiard-room of the club an open tournament was started to
fill in their hours off duty.  But their vigilance, and that of the
hawk-eyed man up in the Conning Tower, never relaxed.  The besiegers
had increased in number, and their guns were more numerous than
before.  A less acute man than Baden-Powell might have reasoned that
at least one desperate effort would be made by them to carry the town
before relief could come.

On Saturday, May 12th, the attack was made at the favourite hour of
the Boer -- the first grey of the morning.  It was gallantly delivered
by about three hundred volunteers under the command of Eloff, who had
crept round to the west of the town -- the side furthest from the
lines of the besiegers.  At the first rush they penetrated into the
native quarter, which was at once set on fire by them.  The first
building of any size upon that side is the barracks of the
Protectorate Regiment, which was held by Colonel Hore and about twenty
of his officers and men.  This was carried by the enemy, who sent an
exultant message along the telephone to Baden-Powell to tell him that
they had got it.  Two other positions within the lines, one a stone
kraal and the other a hill, were held by the Boers, but their supports
were slow in coming on, and the movements of the defenders were so
prompt and energetic that all three found themselves isolated and cut
off from their own lines.  They had penetrated the town, but they were
as far as ever from having taken it.  All day the British forces drew
their cordon closer and closer round the Boer positions, making no
attempt to rush them, but ringing them round in such a way that there
could be no escape for them.  A few burghers slipped away in twos and
threes, but the main body found that they had rushed into a prison
from which the only egress was swept with rifle fire.  At seven
o'clock in the evening they recognised that their position was
hopeless, and Eloff with 117 men laid down their arms.  Their losses
had been ten killed and nineteen wounded. For some reason, either of
lethargy, cowardice, or treachery, Snyman had not brought up the
supports which might conceivably have altered the result.  It was a
gallant attack gallantly met, and for once the greater wiliness in
fight was shown by the British.  The end was characteristic.  'Good
evening, Commandant,' said Powell to Eloff; 'won't you come in and
have some dinner?' The prisoners -- burghers, Hollanders, Germans, and
Frenchmen -- were treated to as good a supper as the destitute larders
of the town could furnish.

So in a small blaze of glory ended the historic siege of Mafeking, for
Eloff's attack was the last, though by no means the worst of the
trials which the garrison had to face.  Six killed and ten wounded
were the British losses in this admirably managed affair. On May 17th,
five days after the fight, the relieving force arrived, the besiegers
were scattered, and the long-imprisoned garrison were free men once
more.  Many who had looked at their maps and saw this post isolated in
the very heart of Africa had despaired of ever reaching their heroic
fellow-countrymen, and now one universal outbreak of joybells and
bonfires from Toronto to Melbourne proclaimed that there is no spot so
inaccessible that the long arm of the empire cannot reach it when her
children are in peril.

Colonel Mahon, a young Irish officer who had made his reputation as a
cavalry leader in Egypt, had started early in May from Kimberley with
a small but mobile force consisting of the Imperial Light Horse
(brought round from Natal for the purpose), the Kimberley Mounted
Corps, the Diamond Fields Horse, some Imperial Yeomanry, a detachment
of the Cape Police, and 100 volunteers from the Fusilier brigade, with
M battery R.H.A. and pom-poms, twelve hundred men in all. Whilst
Hunter was fighting his action at Rooidam on May 4th, Mahon with his
men struck round the western flank of the Boers and moved rapidly to
the northwards.  On May 11th they bad left Vryburg, the halfway house,
behind them, having done one hundred and twenty miles in five days.
They pushed on, encountering no opposition save that of nature, though
they knew that they were being closely watched by the enemy.  At
Koodoosrand it was found that a Boer force was in position in front,
but Mahon avoided them by turning somewhat to the westward.  His
detour took him, however, into a bushy country, and here the enemy
headed him off, opening fire at short range upon the ubiquitous
Imperial Light Horse, who led the column.  A short engagement ensued,
in which the casualties amounted to thirty killed and wounded, but
which ended in the defeat and dispersal of the Boers, whose force was
certainly very much weaker than the British.  On May 15th the
relieving column arrived without further opposition at Masibi Stadt,
twenty miles to the west of Mafeking.

In the meantime Plumer's force upon the north had been strengthened by
the addition of C battery of four 12-pounder guns of the Canadian
Artillery under Major Eudon and a body of Queenslanders.  These forces
had been part of the small army which had come with General Carrington
through Beira, and after a detour of thousands of miles, through their
own wonderful energy they had arrived in time to form portion of the
relieving column.  Foreign military critics, whose experience of
warfare is to move troops across a frontier, should think of what the
Empire has to do before her men go into battle.  These contingents had
been assembled by long railway journeys, conveyed across thousands of
miles of ocean to Cape Town, brought round another two thousand or so
to Beira, transferred by a narrow-gauge railway to Bamboo Creek,
changed to a broader gauge to Marandellas, sent on in coaches for
hundreds of miles to Bulawayo, transferred to trains for another four
or five hundred miles to Ootsi, and had finally a forced march of a
hundred miles, which brought them up a few hours before their presence
was urgently needed upon the field.  Their advance, which averaged
twenty-five miles a day on foot for four consecutive days over
deplorable roads, was one of the finest performances of the war.  With
these high-spirited reinforcements and with his own hardy Rhodesians
Plumer pushed on, and the two columns reached the hamlet of Masibi
Stadt within an hour of each other. Their united strength was far
superior to anything which Snyman's force could place against them.

But the gallant and tenacious Boers would not abandon their prey
without a last effort.  As the little army advanced upon Mafeking they
found the enemy waiting in a strong position.  For some hours the
Boers gallantly held their ground, and their artillery fire was, as
usual, most accurate.  But our own guns were more numerous and equally
well served, and the position was soon made untenable.  The Boers
retired past Mafeking and took refuge in the trenches upon the eastern
side, but Baden-Powell with his war-hardened garrison sallied out,
and, supported by the artillery fire of the relieving column, drove
them from their shelter. With their usual admirable tactics their
larger guns had been removed, but one small cannon was secured as a
souvenir by the townsfolk, together with a number of wagons and a
considerable quantity of supplies. A long rolling trail of dust upon
the eastern horizon told that the famous siege of Mafeking had at last
come to an end.

So ended a singular incident, the defence of an open town which
contained no regular soldiers and a most inadequate artillery against
a numerous and enterprising enemy with very heavy guns. All honour to
the towns folk who bore their trial so long and so bravely -- and to
the indomitable men who lined the trenches for seven weary months.
Their constancy was of enormous value to the empire.  In the
all-important early month at least four or five thousand Boers were
detained by them when their presence elsewhere would have been fatal.
During all the rest of the war, two thousand men and eight guns
(including one of the four big Creusots) had been held there.  It
prevented the invasion of Rhodesia, and it gave a rallying-point for
loyal whites and natives in the huge stretch of country from Kimberley
to Bulawayo.  All this had, at a cost of two hundred lives, been done
by this one devoted band of men, who killed, wounded, or took no fewer
than one thousand of their opponents.  Critics may say that the
enthusiasm in the empire was excessive, but at least it was expended
over worthy men and a fine deed of arms.


CHAPTER XXV

THE MARCH ON PRETORIA


IN the early days of May, when the season of the rains was past and
the veldt was green, Lord Roberts's six weeks of enforced inaction
came to an end. He had gathered himself once more for one of those
tiger springs which should be as sure and as irresistible as that
which had brought him from Belmont to Bloemfontein, or that other in
olden days which had carried him from Cabul to Candahar. His army had
been decimated by sickness, and eight thousand men had passed into the
hospitals; but those who were with the colours were of high heart,
longing eagerly for action. Any change which would carry them away
from the pest-ridden, evils-melling capital which had revenged itself
so terribly upon the invader must be a change for the
better. Therefore it was with glad faces and brisk feet that the
centre column left Bloemfontein on May 1st, and streamed, with bands
playing, along the northern road.

On May 3rd the main force was assembled at Karee, twenty miles upon
their way. Two hundred and twenty separated them from Pretoria, but in
little more than a month from the day of starting, in spite of broken
railway, a succession of rivers, and the opposition of the enemy, this
army was marching into the main street of the Transvaal capital. Had
there been no enemy there at all, it would still have been a fine
performance, the more so when one remembers that the army was moving
upon a front of twenty miles or more, each part of which had to be
co-ordinated to the rest.  It is with the story of this great march
that the present chapter deals.

Roberts had prepared the way by clearing out the south-eastern corner
of the State, and at the moment of his advance his forces covered a
semicircular front of about forty miles, the right under Ian Hamilton
near Thabanchu, and the left at Karee.  This was the broad net which
was to be swept from south to north across the Free State, gradually
narrowing as it went.  The conception was admirable, and appears to
have been an adoption of the Boers' own strategy, which had in turn
been borrowed from the Zulus.  The solid centre could hold any force
which faced it, while the mobile flanks, Hutton upon the left and
Hamilton upon the right, could lap round and pin it, as Cronje was
pinned at Paardeberg.  It seems admirably simple when done upon a
small scale.  But when the scale is one of forty miles, since your
front must be broad enough to envelop the front which is opposed to
it, and when the scattered wings have to be fed with no railway line
to help, it takes such a master of administrative detail as Lord
Kitchener to bring the operations to complete success.

On May 3rd, the day of the advance from our most northern post, Karee,
the disposition uf Lord Roberts's army was briefly as follows.  On his
left was Hutton, with his mixed force of mounted infantry drawn from
every quarter of the empire.  This formidable and mobile body, with
some batteries of horse artillery and of pom-poms, kept a line a few
miles to the west of the railroad, moving northwards parallel with it.
Roberts's main column kept on the railroad, which was mended with
extraordinary speed by the Railway Pioneer regiment and the Engineers,
under Girouard and the ill-fated Seymour.  It was amazing to note the
shattered culverts as one passed, and yet to be overtaken by trains
within a day.  This main column consisted of Pole-Carew's 11th
Division, which contained the Guards, and Stephenson's Brigade
(Warwicks, Essex, Welsh, and Yorkshires).  With them were the 83rd,
84th, and 85th R.F.A., with the heavy guns, and a small force of
mounted infantry. Passing along the widespread British line one would
then, after an interval of seven or eight miles, come upon Tucker's
Division (the 7th), which consisted of Maxwell's Brigade (formerly
Chermside's -- the Norfoiks, Lincolns, Hampshires, and Scottish
Borderers) and Wavel's Brigade (North Staffords, Cheshires, East
Lancashires, South Wales Borderers).  To the right of these was
Ridley's mounted infantry. Beyond them, extending over very many miles
of country and with considerable spaces between, there came
Broadwood's cavalry, Bruce Hamilton's Brigade (Derbyshires, Sussex,
Camerons, and C.I.V.), and finally on the extreme right of all Ian
Hamilton's force of Highlanders, Canadians, Shropshires, and
Cornwalls, with cavalry and mounted infantry, starting forty miles
from Lord Roberts, but edging westwards all the way, to merge with the
troops next to it, and to occupy Winburg in the way already described.
This was the army, between forty and fifty thousand strong, with which
Lord Roberts advanced upon the Transvaal.

In the meantime he had anticipated that his mobile and enterprising
opponents would work round and strike at our rear.  Ample means had
been provided for dealing with any attempt of the kind.  Rundle with
the 8th Division aud Brabant's Colonial Division remained in rear of
the right flank to confront any force which might turn it. At
Bloemfontein were Kelly-Kenny's Division (the 6th) and Chermside's
(the 3rd), with a force of cavalry and guns.  Methuen, working from
Kimberley towards Boshof, formed the extreme left wing of the main
advance, though distant a hundred miles from it.  With excellent
judgment Lord Roberts saw that it was on our right flank that danger
was to be feared, and here it was that every precaution had been taken
to meet it.

The objective of the first day's march was the little town of
Brandfort, ten miles north of Karee.  The head of the main column
faced it, while the left arm swept round and drove the Boer force from
their position. Tucker's Division upon the right encountered some
opposition, but overbore it with artillery.  May 4th was a day of rest
for the infantry, but on the 5th they advanced, in the same order as
before, for twenty miles, and found themselves to the south of the Vet
River, where the enemy had prepared for an energetic resistance. A
vigorous artillery duel ensued, the British guns in the open as usual
against an invisible enemy. After three hours of a very hot fire the
mounted infantry got across the river upon the left and turned the
Boer flank, on which they hastily withdrew.  The first lodgment was
effected by two bodies of Canadians and New-Zealanders, who were
energetically supported by Captain Anley's 3rd Mounted Infantry.  The
rushing of a kopje by twenty-three West Australians was another
gallant incident which marked this engagement, in which our losses
were insignificant. A maxim and twenty or thirty prisoners were taken
by Hutton's men.  The next day (May 6th) the army moved across the
difficult drift of the Vet River, and halted that night at Smaldeel,
some five miles to the north of it. At the same time Ian Hamilton had
been able to advance to Winburg, so that the army had contracted its
front by about half, but had preserved its relative positions.
Hamilton, after his junction with his reinforcements at Jacobsrust,
had under him so powerful a force that he overbore all resistance.
His actions between Thabanchu and Winburg had cost the Boers heavy
loss, and in one action the German legion had been overthrown. The
informal warfare which was made upon us by citizens of many nations
without rebuke from their own Governments is a matter of which pride,
and possibly policy, have forbidden us to complain, but it will be
surprising if it does not prove that their laxity has established a
very dangerous precedent, and they will find it difficult to object
when, in the next little war in which either France or Germany is
engaged, they find a few hundred British adventurers carrying a rifle
against them.

The record of the army's advance is now rather geographical than
military, for it rolled northwards with never a check save that which
was caused by the construction of the railway diversions which atoned
for the destruction of the larger bridges.  The infantry now, as
always in the campaign, marched excellently; for though twenty miles
in the day may seem a moderate allowance to a healthy man upon an
English road, it is a considerable performance under an African sun
with a weight of between thirty and forty pounds to be carried. The
good humour of the men was admirable, and they eagerly longed to close
with the elusive enemy who flitted ever in front of them. Huge clouds
of smoke veiled the northern sky, for the Boers had set fire to the
dry grass, partly to cover their own retreat, and partly to show up
our khaki upon the blackened surface.  Far on the flanks the twinkling
heliographs revealed the position of the wide-spread wings.

On May 10th Lord Roberts's force, which had halted for three days at
Smaldeel, moved onwards to Welgelegen.  French's cavalry had come up
by road, and quickly strengthened the centre and left wing of the
army. On the morning of the 10th the invaders found themselves
confronted by a formidable position which the Boers had taken up on
the northern bank of the Sand River.  Their army extended over twenty
miles of country, the two Bothas were in command, and everything
pointed to a pitched battle.  Had the position been rushed from the
front, there was every material for a second Colenso, but the British
had learned that it was by brains rather than by blood that such
battles may be won.  French's cavalry turned the Boers on one side,
and Bruce Hamilton's infantry on the other. Theoretically we never
passed the Boer flanks, but practically their line was so over
extended that we were able to pierce it at any point.  There was never
any severe fighting, but rather a steady advance upon the British side
and a steady retirement upon that of the Boers.  On the left the
Sussex regiment distinguished itself by the dash with which it stormed
an important kopje.  The losses were slight, save among a detached
body of cavalry which found itself suddenly cut off by a strong force
of the enemy and lost Captain Elworthy killed, and Haig of the
Inniskillings, Wilkinson of the Australian Horse, and twenty men
prisoners.  We also secured forty or fifty prisoners, and the enemy's
casualties amounted to about as many more.  The whole straggling
action fought over a front as broad as from London to Woking cost the
British at the most a couple of hundred casualties, and carried their
army over the most formidable defensive position which they were to
encounter. The war in its later phases certainly has the pleasing
characteristic of being the most bloodless, considering the number of
men engaged and the amount of powder burned, that has been known in
history. It was at the expense of their boots and not of their lives
that the infantry won their way.

On May 11th Lord Roberts's army advanced twenty miles to Geneva
Siding, and every preparation was made for a battle next day, as it
was thought certain that the Boers would defend their new capital,
Kroonstad. It proved, however, that even here they would not make a
stand, and on May 12th, at one o'clock, Lord Roberts rode into the
town.  Steyn, Botha, and De Wet escaped, and it was announced that the
village of Lindley had become the new seat of government.  The British
had now accomplished half their journey to Pretoria, and it was
obvious that on the south side of the Vaal no serious resistance
awaited them. Burghers were freely surrendering themselves with their
arms, and returning to their farms. In the south-east Rundle and
Brabant were slowly advancing, while the Boers who faced them fell
back towards Lindley. On the west, Hunter had crossed the Vaal at
Windsorton, and Barton's Fusiller Brigade had fought a sharp action at
Rooidam, while Mahon's Mafeking relief column had slipped past their
flank, escaping the observation of the British public, but certainly
not that of the Boers. The casualties in the Rooidam action were nine
killed and thirty wounded, but the advance of the Fusiliers was
irresistible, and for once the Boer loss, as they were hustled from
kopje to kopje, appears to have been greater than that of the British.
The Yeomanry had an opportunity of showing once more that there are
few more high-mettled troops in South Africa than these good sportsmen
of the shires, who only showed a trace of their origin in their
irresistible inclination to burst into a 'tally-ho!' when ordered to
attack. The Boer forces fell back after the action along the line of
the Vaal, making for Christiana and Bloemhof.  Hunter entered into the
Transvaal in pursuit of them, being the first to cross the border,
with the exception of raiding Rhodesians early in the war. Methuen, in
the meanwhile, was following a course parallel to Hunter but south of
him, Hoopstad being his immediate objective.  The little union jacks
which were stuck in the war maps in so many British households were
now moving swiftly upwards.

Buller's force was also sweeping northwards, and the time had come
when the Ladysmith garrison, restored at last to health and strength,
should have a chance of striking back at those who had tormented them
so long. Many of the best troops had been drafted away to other
portions of the seat of war.  Hart's Brigade and Barton's Fusilier
Brigade had gone with Hunter to form the 10th Division upon the
Kimberley side, and the Imperial Light Horse had been brought over for
the relief of Mafeking.  There remained, however, a formidable force,
the regiments in which had been strengthened by the addition of drafts
and volunteers from home.  Not less than twenty thousand sabres and
bayonets were ready and eager for the passage of the Biggarsberg
mountains.

This line of rugged hills is pierced by only three passes, each of
which was held in strength by the enemy.  Considerable losses must
have ensued from any direct attempt to force them.  Buller, however,
with excellent judgment, demonstrated in front of them with Hildyard's
men, while the rest of the army, marching round, outflanked the line
of resistance, and on May 15th pounced upon Dundee.  Much had happened
since that October day when Penn Symons led his three gallant
regiments up Talana Hill, but now at last, after seven weary months,
the ground was reoccupied which he had gained. His old soldiers
visited his grave, and the national flag was raised over the remains
of as gallant a man as ever died for the sake of it.

The Boers, whose force did not exceed a few thousands, were now rolled
swiftly back through Northern Natal into their own country.  The long
strain at Ladysmith had told upon them, and the men whom we had to
meet were very different from the warriors of Spion Kop and
Nicholson's Nek.  They had done magnificently, but there is a limit to
human endurance, and no longer would these peasants face the bursting
lyddite and the bayonets of angry soldiers. There is little enough for
us to boast of in this.  Some pride might be taken in the campaign
when at a disadvantage we were facing superior numbers, but now we
could but deplore the situation in which these poor valiant burghers
found themselves, the victims of a rotten government and of their own
delusions.  Hofer's Tyrolese, Charette's Vendeans, or Bruce's
Scotchmen never fought a finer fight than these children of the veldt,
but in each case they combated a real and not an imaginary tyrant.  It
is heart-sickening to think of the butchery, the misery, the
irreparable losses, the blood of men, and the bitter tears of women,
all of which might have been spared had one obstinate and ignorant man
been persuaded to allow the State which he ruled to conform to the
customs of every other civilised State upon the earth.

Buller was now moving with a rapidity and decision which contrast
pleasantly with some of his earlier operations.  Although Dundee was
only occupied on May 15th, on May 18th his vanguard was in Newcastle,
fifty miles to the north.  In nine days he had covered 138 miles.  On
the 19th the army lay under the loom of that Majuba which had cast its
sinister shadow for so long over South African politics.  In front was
the historical Laing's Nek, the pass which leads from Natal into the
Transvaal, while through it runs the famous railway tunnel. Here the
Boers had taken up that position which had proved nineteen years
before to be too strong for British troops.  The Rooineks had come
back after many days to try again. A halt was called, for the ten
days' supplies which had been taken with the troops were exhausted,
and it was necessary to wait until the railway should be repaired.
This gave time for Hildyard's 5th Division and Lyttelton's 4th
Division to close up on Clery's 2nd Division, which with Dundonald's
cavalry had formed our vanguard throughout.  The only losses of any
consequence during this fine march fell upon a single squadron of
Bethune's mounted infantry, which being thrown out in the direction of
Vryheid, in order to make sure that our flank was clear, fell into an
ambuscade and was almost annihilated by a close-range fire.  Sixty-six
casualties, of which nearly half were killed, were the result of this
action, which seems to have depended, like most of our reverses, upon
defective scouting.  Buller, having called up his two remaining
divisions and having mended the railway behind him, proceeded now to
manoeuvre the Boers out of Laing's Nek exactly as he had manceuvred
them out of the Biggarsberg. At the end of May Hildyard and Lyttelton
were despatched in an eastern direction, as if there were an intention
of turning the pass from Utrecht.

It was on May 12th that Lord Roberts occupied Kroonstad, and he halted
there for eight days before he resumed his advance.  At the end of
that time his railway had been repaired, and enough supplies brought
up to enable him to advance again without anxiety. The country through
which he passed swarmed with herds and flocks, but, with as scrupulous
a regard for the rights of property as Wellington showed in the south
of France, no hungry soldier was allowed to take so much as a chicken
as he passed.  The punishment for looting was prompt and stern. It is
true that farms were burned occasionally and the stock confiscated,
but this was as a punishment for some particular offence and not part
of a system.  The limping Tommy looked askance at the fat geese which
covered the dam by the roadside, but it was as much as his life was
worth to allow his fingers to close round those tempting white necks.
On foul water and bully beef he tramped through a land of plenty.

Lord Roberts's eight days' halt was spent in consolidating the general
military situation.  We have already shown how Buller had crept
upwards to the Natal Border.  On the west Methuen reached Hoopstad and
Hunter Christiana, settling the country and collecting arms as they
went.  Rundle in the south-east took possession of the rich grain
lands, and on May 21st entered Ladybrand.  In front of him lay that
difilcult hilly country about Senekal, Ficksburg, and Bethlehem which
was to delay him so long.  Ian Hamilton was feeling his way northwards
to the right of the railway line, and for the moment cleared the
district between Lindley and Heilbron, passing through both towns and
causing Steyn to again change his capital, which became Vrede, in the
extreme north-east of the State. During these operations Hamilton had
the two formidable De Wet brothers in front of him, and suffered
nearly a hundred casualties in the continual skirmishing which
accompanied his advance.  His right flank and rear were continually
attacked, and these signs of forces outside our direct line of advance
were full of menace for the future.

On May 22nd the main army resumed its advance, moving forward fifteen
miles to Honing's Spruit. On the 23rd another march of twenty miles
over a fine roiling prairie brought them to Rhenoster River.  The
enemy had made some preparations for a stand, but Hamilton was near
Heilbron upon their left and French was upon their right flank.  The
river was crossed without opposition.  On the 24th the army was at
Vredefort Road, and on the 26th the vanguard crossed the Vaal River at
Viljoen's Drift, the whole army following on the 27th. Hamilton's
force had been cleverly swung across from the right to the left flank
of the British, so that the Boers were massed on the wrong side.

Preparations for resistance had been made on the line of the railway,
but the wide turning movements on the flanks by the indefatigable
French and Hamilton rendered all opposition of no avail.  The British
columns flowed over and onwards without a pause, tramping steadily
northwards to their destination. The bulk of the Free State forces
refused to leave their own country, and moved away to the eastern and
northern portion of the State, where the British Generals thought --
incorrectly, as the future was to prove -- that no further harm would
come from them. The State which they were in arms to defend had really
ceased to exist, for already it had been publicly proclaimed at
Bloemfontein in the Queen's name that the country had been annexed to
the Empire, and that its style henceforth was that of 'The Orange
River Colony.' Those who think this measure unduly harsh must remember
that every mile of land which the Freestaters had conquered in the
early part of the war had been solemnly annexed by them.  At the same
time, those Englishmen who knew the history of this State, which had
once been the model of all that a State should be, were saddened by
the thought that it should have deliberately committed suicide for the
sake of one of the most corrupt governments which have ever been
known. Had the Transvaal been governed as the Orange Free State was,
such an event as the second Boer war could never have occurred.

Lord Roberts's tremendous march was now drawing to a close.  On May
28th the troops advanced twenty miles, and passed Klip River without
fighting.  It was observed with surprise that the Transvaalers were
very much more careful of their own property than they had been of
that of their allies, and that the railway was not damaged at all by
the retreating forces.  The country had become more populous, and far
away upon the low curves of the hills were seen high chimneys and
gaunt iron pumps which struck the north of England soldier with a pang
of homesickness.  This long distant hill was the famous Rand, and
under its faded grasses lay such riches as Solomon never took from
Ophir.  It was the prize of victory; and yet the prize is not to the
victor, for the dust-grimed officers and men looked with little
personal interest at this treasure-house of the world.  Not one penny
the richer would they be for the fact that their blood and their
energy had brought justice and freedom to the gold fields.  They had
opened up an industry for the world, men of all nations would be the
better for their labours, the miner and the financier or the trader
would equally profit by them, but the men in khaki would tramp on,
unrewarded and uncomplaining, to India, to China, to any spot where
the needs of their worldwide empire called them.

The infantry, streaming up from the Vaal River to the famous ridge of
gold, had met with no resistance upon the way, but great mist banks of
cloud by day and huge twinkling areas of flame by night showed the
handiwork of the enemy.  Hamilton and French, moving upon the left
flank, found Boers thick upon the hills, but cleared them off in a
well-managed skirmish which cost us a dozen casualties. On May 29th,
pushing swiftly along, French found the enemy posted very strongly
with several guns at Doornkop, a point west of Klip River Berg.  The
cavalry leader had with him at this stage three horse batteries, four
pom-poms, and 3,000 mounted men. The position being too strong for him
to force, Hamilton's infantry (19th and 21st Brigades) were called up,
and the Boers were driven out. That splendid corps, the Gordons, lost
nearly a hundred men in their advance over the open, and the C.I.V.s
on the other flank fought like a regiment of veterans.  There had been
an inclination to smile at these citizen soldiers when they first came
out, but no one smiled now save the General who felt that he had them
at his back. Hamilton's attack was assisted by the menace rather than
the pressure of French's turning movement on the Boer right, but the
actual advance was as purely frontal as any of those which had been
carried through at the beginning of the war.  The open formation of
the troops, the powerful artillery behind them, and perhaps also the
lowered morale of the enemy combined to make such a movement less
dangerous than of old.  In any case it was inevitable, as the state of
Hamilton's commisariat rendered it necessary that at all hazards he
should force his way through.

Whilst this action of Doornkop was fought by the British left flank,
Henry's mounted infantry in the centre moved straight upon the
important junction of Germiston, which lies amid the huge white heaps
of tailings from the mines.  At this point, or near it, the lines from
Johannesburg and from Natal join the line to Pretoria.  Colonel
Henry's advance was an extremely daring one, for the infantry were
some distance behind; but after an irregular scrambling skirmish, in
which the Boer snipers had to be driven off the mine heaps and from
among the houses, the 8th mounted infantry got their grip of the
railway and held it.  The exploit was a very fine one, and stands out
the more brilliantly as the conduct of the campaign cannot be said to
afford many examples of that well-considered audacity which
deliberately runs the risk of the minor loss for the sake of the
greater gain.  Henry was much assisted by J battery R.H.A., which was
handled with energy and judgment.

French was now on the west of the town, Henry had cut the railway on
the east, and Roberts was coming up from the south. His infantry had
covered 130 miles in seven days, but the thought that every step
brought them nearer to Pretoria was as exhilarating as their fifes and
drums.  On May 30th the victorious troops camped outside the city
while Botha retired with his army, abandoning without a battle the
treasure-house of his country.  Inside the town were chaos and
confusion.  The richest mines in the world lay for a day or more at
the mercy of a lawless rabble drawn from all nations.  The Boer
officials were themselves divided in opinion, Krause standing for law
and order while Judge Koch advocated violence.  A spark would have set
the town blazing, and the worst was feared when a crowd of mercenaries
assembled in front of the Robinson mine with threats of violence.  By
the firmness and tact of Mr. Tucker, the manager, and by the strong
attitude of Commissioner Krause, the situation was saved and the
danger passed.  Upon May 31st, without violence to life or destruction
to property, that great town which British hands have done so much to
build found itself at last under the British flag.  May it wave there
so long as it covers just laws, honest officials, and clean-handed
administrators -- so long and no longer!

And now the last stage of the great journey had been reached.  Two
days were spent at Johannesburg while supplies were brought up, and
then a move was made upon Pretoria thirty miles to the north. Here was
the Boer capital, the seat of government, the home of Kruger, the
centre of all that was anti-British, crouching amid its hills, with
costly forts guarding every face of it.  Surely at last the place had
been found where that great battle should be fought which should
decide for all time whether it was with the Briton or with the
Dutchman that the future of South Africa lay.

On the last day of May two hundred Lancers under the command of Major
Hunter Weston, with Charles of the Sappers and. Burnham the scout, a
man who has played the part of a hero throughout the campaign, struck
off from the main army and endeavoured to descend upon the
Pretoria-Delagoa railway line with the intention of blowing up a bridge
and cutting the Boer line of retreat. It was a most dashing attempt;
but the small party had the misfortune to come into contact with a
strong Boer commando, who headed them off.  After a skirmish they were
compelled to make their way back with a loss of five killed and
fourteen wounded.

The cavalry under French had waited for the issue of this enterprise
at a point nine miles north of Johannesburg.  On June 2nd it began its
advance with orders to make a wide sweep round to the westward, and so
skirt the capital, cutting the Pietersburg railway to the north of it.
The country in the direct line between Johannesburg and Pretoria
consists of a series of rolling downs which are admirably adapted for
cavalry work, but the detour which French had to make carried him into
the wild and broken district which lies to the north of the Little
Crocodile River.  Here he was fiercely attacked on ground where his
troops could not deploy, but with extreme coolness and judgment beat
off the enemy.  To cover thirty-two miles in a day and fight a way out
of an ambuscade in the evening is an ordeal for any leader and for any
troops. Two killed and seven wounded were our trivial losses in a
situation which might have been a serious one.  The Boers appear to
have been the escort of a strong convoy which had passed along the
road some miles in front.  Next morning both convoy and opposition had
disappeared.  The cavalry rode on amid a country of orange groves, the
troopers standing up in their stirrups to pluck the golden fruit.
There was no further fighting, and on June 4th French had establisbed
himself upon the north of the town, where he learned that all
resistance had ceased.

Whilst the cavalry had performed this enveloping movement the main
army had moved swiftly upon its objective, leaving one brigade behind
to secure Johannesburg. Ian Hamilton advanced upon the left, while
Lord Roberts's column kept the line of the railway, Colonel Henry's
mounted infantry scouting in front. As the army topped the low curves
of the veldt they saw in front of them two well-marked hills, each
crowned by a low squat building.  They were the famous southern forts
of Pretoria. Between the hills was a narrow neck, and beyond the Boer
capital.

For a time it appeared that the entry was to be an absolutely
bloodless one, but the booming of cannon and the crash of Mauser fire
soon showed that the enemy was in force upon the ridge.  Botha had
left a strong rearguard to hold off the British while his own stores
and valuables were being withdrawn from the town. The silence of the
forts showed that the guns had been removed and that no prolonged
resistance was intended; but in the meanwhile fringes of determined
riflemen, supported by cannon, held the approaches, and must be driven
off before an entry could be effected. Each fresh corps as it came up
reinforced the firing line.  Henry's mounted infantrymen supported by
the horse-guns of J battery and the guns of Tucker's division began
the action. So hot was the answer, both from cannon and from rifle,
that it seemed for a time as if a real battle were at last about to
take place. The Guards' Brigade, Stephenson's Brigade, and Maxwell's
Brigade streamed up and waited until Hamilton, who was on the enemy's
right flank, should be able to make his presence felt.  The heavy guns
had also arrived, and a huge cloud of DEBRIS rising from the Pretorian
forts told the accuracy of their fire.

But either the burghers were half-hearted or there was no real
intention to make a stand. About half-past two their fire slackened
and Pole-Carew was directed to push on. That debonnaire soldier with
his two veteran brigades obeyed the order with alacrity, and the
infantry swept over the ridge, with some thirty or forty casualties,
the majority of which fell to the Warwicks. The position was taken,
and Hamilton, who came up late, was only able to send on De Lisle's
mounted infantry, chiefly Australians, who ran down one of the Boer
maxims in the open.  The action had cost us altogether about seventy
men.  Among the injured was the Duke of Norfolk, who had shown a high
sense of civic virtue in laying aside the duties and dignity of a
Cabinet Minister in order to serve as a simple captain of
volunteers. At the end of this one fight the capital lay at the mercy
of Lord Roberts. Consider the fight which they made for their chief
city, compare it with that which the British made for the village of
Mafeking, and say on which side is that stern spirit of self-sacrifice
and resolution which are the signs of the better cause.

In the early morning of June 5th, the Coldstream Guards were mounting
the hills which commanded the town.  Beneath them in the clear African
air lay the famous city, embowered in green, the fine central
buildings rising grandly out of the wide circle of villas. Through the
Nek part of the Guards' Brigade and Maxwell's Brigade had passed, and
had taken over the station, from which at least one train laden with
horses had steamed that morning.  Two others, both ready to start,
were only just stopped in time.

The first thought was for the British prisoners, and a small party
headed by the Duke of Marlborough rode to their rescue.  Let it be
said once for all that their treatment by the Boers was excellent and
that their appearance would alone have proved it. One hundred and
twenty-nine officers and thirty-nine soldiers were found in the Model
Schools, which had been converted into a prison.  A day later our
cavalry arrived at Waterval, which is fourteen miles to the north of
Pretoria. Here were confined three thousand soldiers, whose fare had
certainly been of the scantiest, though in other respects they appear
to have been well treated.[Footnote: Further information unfortunately
shows that in the case of the sick and of the Colonial prisoners the
treatment was by no meanu good.]  Nine hundred of their comrades had
been removed by the Boers, but Porter's cavalry was in time to release
the others, under a brisk shell fire from a Boer gun upon the ridge.
Many pieces of good luck we had in the campaign, but this recovery of
our prisoners, which left the enemy without a dangerous lever for
exacting conditions of peace, was the most fortunate of all.

In the centre of the town there is a wide square decorated or
disfigured by a bare pedestal upon which a statue of the President was
to have been placed. Hard by is the bleak barnlike church in which he
preached, and on either side are the Government offices and the Law
Courts, buildings which would grace any European capital.  Here, at
two o'clock on the afternoon of June 5th, Lord Roberts sat his horse
and saw pass in front of him the men who had followed him so far and
so faithfully -- the Guards, the Essex, the Welsh, the Yorks, the
Warwicks, the guns, the mounted infantry, the dashing irregulars, the
Gordons, the Canadians, the Shropshires, the Cornwalls, the Camerons,
the Derbys, the Sussex, and the London Volunteers. For over two hours
the khaki waves with their crests of steel went sweeping by.  High
above their heads from the summit of the Raad-saal the broad Union
Jack streamed for the first time. Through months of darkness we had
struggled onwards to the light.  Now at last the strange drama seemed
to be drawing to its close. The God of battles had given the
long-withheld verdict.  But of all the hearts which throbbed high at
that supreme moment there were few who felt one touch of bitterness
towards the brave men who had been overborne.  They had fought and
died for their ideal.  We had fought and died for ours.  The hope for
the future of South Africa is that they or their descendants may learn
that that banner which has come to wave above Pretoria means no racial
intolerance, no greed for gold, no paltering with injustice or
corruption, but that it means one law for all and one freedom for all,
as it does in every other continent in the whole broad earth. When
that is learned it may happen that even they will come to date a
happier life and a wider liberty from that 5th of June which saw the
symbol of their nation pass for ever from among the ensigns of the
world.

CHAPTER XXVI

DIAMOND HILL -- RUNDLE'S OPERATIONS


THE military situation at the time of the occupation of Pretoria was
roughly as follows.  Lord Roberts with some thirty thousand men was in
possession of the capital, but had left his long line of
communications very imperfectly guarded behind him.  On the flank of
this line of communications, in the eastern and northeastern corner of
the Free State, was an energetic force of unconquered Freestaters who
had rallied round President Steyn.  They were some eight or ten
thousand in number, well horsed, with a fair number of guns, under the
able leadership of De Wet, Prinsloo, and Olivier. Above all, they had
a splendid position, mountainous and broken, from which, as from a
fortress, they could make excursions to the south or west.  This army
included the commandos of Ficksburg, Senekal, and Harrismith, with all
the broken and desperate men from other districts who had left their
farms and fled to the mountains.  It was held in check as a united
force by Rundle's Division and the Colonial Division on the south,
while Colvile, and afterwards Methuen, endeavoured to pen them in on
the west. The task was a hard one, however, and though Rundle
succeeded in holding his line intact, it appeared to be impossible in
that wide country to coop up altogether an enemy so mobile. A strange
game of hide-and-seek ensued, in which De Wet, who led the Boer raids,
was able again and again to strike our line of rails and to get back
without serious loss.  The story of these instructive and humiliating
episodes will be told in their order.  The energy and skill of the
guerilla chief challenge our admiration, and the score of his
successes would be amusing were it not that the points of the game are
marked by the lives of British soldiers.

General Buller had spent the latter half of May in making his way from
Ladysmith to Laing's Nek, and the beginning of June found him with
twenty thousand men in front of that difficult position.  Some talk of
a surrender had arisen, and Christian Botha, who commanded the Boers,
succeeded in gaining several days' armistice, which ended in nothing.
The Transvaal forces at this point were not more than a few thousand
in number, but their position was so formidable that it was a serious
task to turn them out. Van Wyk's Hill, however, had been left
unguarded, and as its possession would give the British the command of
Botha's Pass, its unopposed capture by the South African Light Horse
was an event of great importance.  With guns upon this eminence the
infantry were able, on June 8th, to attack and to carry with little
loss the rest of the high ground, and so to get the Pass into their
complete possession. Botha fired the grass behind him, and withdrew
sullenly to the north. On the 9th and 10th the convoys were passed
over the Pass, and on the 11th the main body of the army followed
them.

The operations were now being conducted in that extremely acute angle
of Natal which runs up between the Transvaal and the Orange Free
State.  In crossing Botha's Pass the army had really entered what was
now the Orange River Colony. But it was only for a very short time, as
the object of the movement was to turn the Laing's Nek position, and
then come back into the Transvaal through Alleman's Pass.  The gallant
South African Light Horse led the way, and fought hard at one point to
clear a path for the army, losing six killed and eight wounded in a
sharp skirmish.  On the morning of the 12th the flanking movement was
far advanced, and it only remained for the army to force Alleman's
Nek, which would place it to the rear of Laing's Nek, and close to the
Transvaal town of Volksrust.

Had the Boers been the men of Colenso and of Spion Kop, this stonuing
of Alleman's Nek would have been a bloody business.  The position was
strong, the cover was slight, and there was no way round.  But the
infantry came on with the old dash without the old stubborn resolution
being opposed to them.  The guns prepared the way, and then the
Dorsets, the Dublins, the Middlesex, the Queen's, and the East Surrey
did the rest.  The door was open and the Transvaal lay before us.  The
next day Volksrust was in our hands.

The whole series of operations were excellently conceived and carried
out.  Putting Colenso on one side, it cannot be denied that General
Buller showed considerable power of manoeuvring large bodies of
troops. The withdrawal of the compromised army after Spion Kop, the
change of the line of attack at Pieter's Hill, and the flanking
marches in this campaign of Northern Natal, were all very workmanlike
achievements. In this case a position which the Boers had been
preparing for months, scored with trenches and topped by heavy
artillery, had been rendered untenable by a clever flank movement, the
total casualties in the whole affair being less than two hundred
killed and wounded. Natal was cleared of the invader, Buller's foot
was on the high plateau of the Transvaal, and Roberts could count on
twenty thousand good men coming up to him from the south-east.  More
important than all, the Natal railway was being brought up, and soon
the central British Army would depend upon Durban instead of Cape Town
for its supplies -- a saving of nearly two-thirds of the distance.
The fugitive Boers made northwards in the Middelburg direction, while
Buller advanced to Standerton, which town he continued to occupy until
Lord Roberts could send a force down through Heidelberg to join hands
with him.  Such was the position of the Natal Field Force at the end
of June. From the west and the south-west British forces were also
converging upon the capital.  The indomitable Baden-Powell sought for
rest and change of scene after his prolonged trial by harrying the
Boers out of Zeerust and Rustenburg.  The forces of Hunter and of
Mahon converged upon Potchefstroom, from which, after settling that
district, they could be conveyed by rail to Krugersdorp and
Johannesburg.

Before briefly recounting the series of events which took place upon
the line of communications, the narrative must return to Lord Roberts
at Pretoria, and describe the operations which followed his occupation
of that city. In leaving the undefeated forces of the Free State
behind him, the British General had unquestionably run a grave risk,
and was well aware that his railway communication was in danger of
being cut.  By the rapidity of his movements he succeeded in gaining
the enemy's capital before that which he had foreseen came to pass;
but if Botha had held him at Pretoria while De Wet struck at him
behind, the situation would have been a serious one. Having once
attained his main object, Roberts could receive with equanimity the
expected news that De Wet with a mobile force of less than two
thousand men had, on June 7th, cut the line at Roodeval to the north
of Kroonstad.  Both rail and telegraph were destroyed, and for a few
days the army was isolated. Fortunately there were enough supplies to
go on with, and immediate steps were taken to drive away the intruder,
though, like a mosquito, he was brushed from one place only to settle
upon another.

Leaving others to restore his broken communications, Lord Roberts
turned his attention once more to Botha, who still retained ten or
fifteen thousand men under his command.  The President had fled from
Pretoria with a large sum of money, estimated at over two millions
sterling, and was known to be living in a saloon railway carriage,
which had been transformed into a seat of government even more mobile
than that of President Steyn.  From Waterval-Boven, a point beyond
Middelburg, he was in a position either to continue his journey to
Delagoa Bay, and so escape out of the country, or to trave] north into
that wild Lydenburg country which had always been proclaimed as the
last ditch of the defence.  Here he remained with his gold-bags
waiting the turn of events.

Botha and his stalwarts had not gone far from the capital.  Fifteen
miles out to the east the railway line runs through a gap in the hills
called Pienaars Poort, and here was such a position as the Boer loves
to hold. It was very strong in front, and it had widely spread
formidable flanking hills to hamper those turning movements which had
so often been fatal to the Boer generals. Behind was the uncut railway
line along which the guns could in case of need be removed.  The whole
position was over fifteen miles from wing to wing, and it was well
known to the Boer general that Lord Roberts had no longer that
preponderance of force which would enable him to execute wide turning
movements, as he had done in his advance from the south. His army had
decreased seriously in numbers. The mounted men, the most essential
branch of all, were so ill horsed that brigades were not larger than
regiments.  One brigade of infantry (the 14th) had been left to
garrison Johannesburg, and another (the 18th) had been chosen for
special duty in Pretoria.  Smith-Dorrien's Brigade had been detached
for duty upon the line of communications. With all these deductions
and the wastage caused by wounds and disease, the force was in no
state to assume a vigorous offensive. So hard pressed were they for
men that the three thousand released prisoners from Waterval were
hurriedly armed with Boer weapons and sent down the line to help to
guard the more vital points.

Had Botha withdrawn to a safe distance, Lord Roberts would certainly
have halted, as he had done at Bloemfontein, and waited for remounts
and reinforcements. But the war could not be allowed to languish when
an active enemy lay only fifteen miles off, within striking distance
of two cities and of the line of rail.  Taking all the troops that he
could muster, the British General moved out once more on Monday, June
11th, to drive Botha from his position. He had with him Pole-Carew's
11th Division, which numbered about six thousand men with twenty guns,
Ian Hamilton's force, which included one infantry brigade (Bruce
Hamilton's), one cavalry brigade, and a corps of mounted infantry,
say, six thousand in all, with thirty guns.  There remained French's
Cavalry Division, with Hutton's Mounted Infantry, which could not have
exceeded two thousand sabres and rifles.  The total force was,
therefore, not more than sixteen or seventeen thousand men, with about
seventy guns. Their task was to carry a carefully prepared position
held by at least ten thousand burghers with a strong artillery.  Had
the Boer of June been the Boer of December, the odds would have been
against the British.

There had been some negotiations for peace between Lord Roberts and
Botha, but the news of De Wet's success from the south had hardened
the Boer general's heart, and on June 9th the cavalry had their orders
to advance.  Hamilton was to work round the left wing of the Boers,
and French round their right, while the infantry came up in the
centre.  So wide was the scene of action that the attack and the
resistance in each flank and in the centre constituted, on June 11th,
three separate actions.  Of these the latter was of least importance,
as it merely entailed the advance of the infantry to a spot whence
they could take advantage of the success of the flanking forces when
they had made their presence felt.  The centre did not on this as on
several other occasions in the campaign make the mistake of advancing
before the way had been prepared for it.

French with his attenuated force found so vigorous a resistance on
Monday and Tuesday that he was hard put to it to hold his own.
Fortunately he had with him three excellent Horse Artillery batteries,
G, 0, and T, who worked until, at the end of the engagement, they had
only twenty rounds in their limbers. The country was an impossible one
for cavalry, and the troopers fought dismounted, with intervals of
twenty or thirty paces between the men. Exposed all day to rifle and
shell fire, unable to advance and unwilling to retreat, it was only
owing to their open formation that they escaped with about thirty
casualties. With Boers on his front, his flank, and even on his rear,
French held grimly on, realising that a retreat upon his part would
mean a greater pressure at all other points of the British advance. At
night his weary men slept upon the ground which they had held.  All
Monday and all Tuesday French kept his grip at Kameelsdrift, stolidly
indifferent to the attempt of the enemy to cut his line of
communications. On Wednesday, Hamilton, upon the other flank, had
gained the upper hand, and the pressure was relaxed. French then
pushed forward, but the horses were so utterly beaten that no
effective pursuit was possible.

During the two days that French had been held up by the Boer right
wing Hamilton had also been seriously engaged upon the left -- so
seriously that at one time the action appeared to have gone against
him. The fight presented some distinctive features, which made it
welcome to soldiers who were weary of the invisible man with his
smokeless gun upon the eternal kopje.  It is true that man, gun, and
kopje were all present upon this occasion, but in the endeavours to
drive him off some new developments took place, which formed for one
brisk hour a reversion to picturesque warfare.  Perceiving a gap in
the enemy's line, Hamilton pushed up the famous Q battery -- the guns
which had plucked glory out of disaster at Sanna's Post.  For the
second time in one campaign they were exposed and in imminent danger
of capture. A body of mounted Boers with great dash and hardihood
galloped down within close range and opened fire.  Instantly the 12th
Lancers were let loose upon them.  How they must have longed for their
big-boned long-striding English troop horses as they strove to raise a
gallop out of their spiritless overworked Argentines!  For once,
however, the lance meant more than five pounds dead weight and an
encumbrance to the rider.  The guns were saved, the Boers fled, and a
dozen were left upon the ground. But a cavalry charge has to end in a
re-formation, and that is the instant of danger if any unbroken enemy
remains within range.  Now a sleet of bullets hissed through their
ranks as they retired, and the gallant Lord Airlie, as modest and
brave a soldier as ever drew sword, was struck through the heart.
'Pray moderate your language!' was his last characteristic remark,
made to a battle-drunken sergeant.  Two officers, seventeen men, and
thirty horses went down with their Colonel, the great majority only
slightly injured.  In the meantime the increasing pressure upon his
right caused Broadwood to order a second charge, of the Life Guards
this time, to drive off the assailants.  The appearance rather than
the swords of the Guards prevailed, and cavalry as cavalry had
vindicated their existence more than they had ever done during the
campaign.  The guns were saved, the flank attack was rolled back, but
one other danger had still to be met, for the Heidelberg commando -- a
corps D'ELITE of the Boers -- had made its way outside Hamilton's
flank and threatened to get past him.  With cool judgment the British
General detached a battalion and a section of a battery, which pushed
the Boers back into a less menacing position.  The rest of Bruce
Hamilton's Brigade were ordered to advance upon the hills in front,
and, aided by a heavy artillery fire, they had succeeded, before the
closing in of the winter night, in getting possession of this first
line of the enemy's defences.  Night fell upon an undecided fight,
which, after swaying this way and that, had finally inclined to the
side of the British.  The Sussex and the City Imperial Volunteers were
clinging to the enemy's left flank, while the 11th Division were
holding them in front.  All promised well for the morrow.

By order of Lord Roberts the Guards were sent round early on Tuesday,
the 12th, to support the flank attack of Bruce Hamilton's infantry. It
was afternoon before all was ready for the advance, and then the
Sussex, the London Volunteers, and the Derbyshires won a position upon
the ridge, followed later by the three regiments of Guards. But the
ridge was the edge of a considerable plateau, swept by Boer fire, and
no advance could be made over its bare expanse save at a considerable
loss.  The infantry clung in a long fringe to the edge of the
position, but for two hours no guns could be brought up to their
support, as the steepness of the slope was insurmountable.  It was all
that the stormers could do to hold their ground, as they were
enfiladed by a Vickers-Maxim, and exposed to showers of shrapnel as
well as to an incessant rifle fire.  Never were guns so welcome as
those of the 82nd battery, brought by Major Connolly into the firing
line.  The enemy's riflemen were only a thousand yards away, and the
action of the artillery might have seemed as foolhardy as that of Long
at Colenso. Ten horses went down on the instant, and a quarter of the
gunners were hit; but the guns roared one by one into action, and
their shrapnel soon decided the day.  Undoubtedly it is with Connolly
and his men that the honours lie.

At four o'clock, as the sun sank towards the west, the tide of fight
had set in favour of the attack.  Two more batteries had come up,
every rifle was thrown into the firing line, and the Boer reply was
decreasing in volume. The temptation to an assault was great, but even
now it might mean heavy loss of life, and Hamilton shrank from the
sacrifice.  In the morning his judgment was justified, for Botha had
abandoned the position, and his army was in full retreat.  The mounted
men followed as far as Elands River Station, which is twenty-five
miles from Pretoria, but the enemy was not overtaken, save by a small
party of De Lisle's Australians and Regular Mounted Infantry.  This
force, less than a hundred in number, gained a kopje which overlooked
a portion of the Boer army.  Had they been more numerous, the effect
would have been incalculable. As it was, the Australians fired every
cartridge which they possessed into the throng, and killed many horses
and men.  It would bear examination why it was that only this small
corps was present at so vital a point, and why, if they could push the
pursuit to such purpose, others should not be able to do the same.
Time was bringing some curious revenges. Already Paardeberg had come
upon Majuba Day. Buller's vietorious soldiers had taken Laing's Nek.
Now, the Spruit at which the retreating Boers were so mishandled by
the Australians was that same Bronkers Spruit at which, nineteen years
before, a regiment had been shot down.  Many might have prophesied
that the deed would be avenged; but who could ever have guessed the
men who would avenge it?

Such was the battle of Diamond Hill, as it was called from the name of
the ridge which was opposite to Hamilton's attack.  The prolonged two
days' struggle showed that there was still plenty of fight in the
burghers. Lord Roberts had not routed them, nor had he captured their
guns; but he had cleared the vicinity of the capital, he had inflicted
a loss upon them which was certainly as great as his own, and he had
again proved to them that it was vain for them to attempt to stand. A
long pause followed at Pretoria, broken by occasional small alarms and
excursions, which served no end save to keep the army from ENNUI. In
spite of occasional breaks in his line of communications, horses and
supplies were coming up rapidly, and, by the middle of July, Roberts
was ready for the field again. At the same time Hunter had come up
from Potchefstroom, and Hamilton had taken Heidelberg, and his force
was about to join hands with Buller at Standerton.  Sporadic warfare
broke out here and there in the west, and in the course of it Snyman
of Mafeking had reappeared, with two guns, which were promptly taken
from him by the Canadian Mounted Rifles.  On all sides it was felt
that if the redoubtable De Wet could be captured there was every hope
that the burghers might discontinue a struggle which was disagreeable
to the British and fatal to themselves.  As a point of honour it was
impossible for Botha to give in while his ally held out.  We will
turn, therefore, to this famous guerilla chief, and give some account
of his exploits.  To understand them some description must be given of
the general military situation in the Free State.

When Lord Roberts had swept past to the north he had brushed aside the
flower of the Orange Free State army, who occupied the considerable
quadrilateral which is formed by the north-east of that State.  The
function of Rundle's 8th Division and of Brabant's Colonial Division
was to separate the sheep from the goats by preventing the fighting
burghers from coming south and disturbing those districts which had
been settled. For this purpose Rundle formed a long line which should
serve as a cordon.  Moving up through Trommel and Clocolan, Ficksburg
was occupied on May 25th by the Colonial Division, while Rundle seized
Senekal, forty miles to the north-west.  A small force of forty
Yeomanry, who entered the town some time in advance of the main body,
was suddenly attacked by the Boers, and the gallant Dalbiac, famous
rider and sportsman, was killed, with four of his men. He was a
victim, as so many have been in this campaign, to his own proud
disregard of danger.

The Boers were in full retreat, but now, as always, they were
dangerous.  One cannot take them for granted, for the very moment of
defeat is that at which they are capable of some surprising effort.
Rundle, following them up from Senekal, found them in strong
possession of the kopjes at Biddulphsberg, and received a check in his
endeavour to drive them off. It was an action fought amid great grass
fires, where the possible fate of the wounded was horrible to
contemplate.  The 2nd Grenadiers, the Scots Guards, the East
Yorkshires, and the West Kents were all engaged, with the 2nd and 79th
Field Batteries and a force of Yeomanry.  Our losses incurred in the
open from unseen rifles were thirty killed and 130 wounded, including
Colonel Lloyd of the Grenadiers.  Two days later Rundle, from Seneka],
joined hands with Brabant from Ficksburg, and a defensive line was
formed between those two places, which was held unbroken for two
months, when the operations ended in the capture of the greater part
of the force opposed to him.  Clements's Brigade, consisting of the
1st Royal Irish, the 2nd Bedfords, the 2nd Worcesters, and the 2nd
Wiltshires, had come to strengthen Rundle, and altogether he may have
had as many as twelve thousand men under his orders.  It was not a
large force with which to hold a mobile adversary at least eight
thousand strong, who might attack him at any point of his extended
line.  So well, however, did he select his positions that every
attempt of the enemy, and there were many, ended in failure. Badly
supplied with food, he and his half-starved men held bravely to their
task, and no soldiers in all that great host deserve better of their
country.

At the end of May, then, the Colonial Division, Rundle's Division, and
Clements's Brigade held the Boers from Ficksburg on the Basuto border
to Senekal.  This prevented them from coming south.  But what was
there to prevent them from coming west, and falling upon the railway
line? There was the weak point of the British position.  Lord Methuen
had been brought across from Boshof, and was available with six
thousand men.  Colvile was on that side also, with the Highland
Brigade.  A few details were scattered up and down the line, waiting
to be gathered up by an enterprising enemy. Kroonstad was held by a
single militia battalion; each separate force had to be nourished by
convoys with weak escorts. Never was there such a field for a mobile
and competent guerilla leader. And, as luck would have it, such a man
was at hand, ready to take full advantage of his opportunities.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE LINES OF COMMUNICATION

Christian de Wet, the elder of two brothers of that name, was at this
time in the prime of life, a little over forty years of age. He was a
burly middle-sized bearded man, poorly educated, but endowed with much
energy and common-sense.  His military experience dated back to Majuba
Hill, and he had a large share of that curious race hatred which is
intelligible in the case of the Transvaal, but inexplicable in a
Freestater who has received no injury from the British Empire.  Some
weakness of his sight compels the use of tinted spectacles, and he had
now turned these, with a pair of particularly observant eyes behind
them, upon the scattered British forces and the long exposed line of
railway.

De Wet's force was an offshoot from the army of Freestaters under De
Villiers, Olivier, and Prinsloo, which lay in the mountainous
north-east of the State. To him were committed five guns, fifteen
hundred men, and the best of the horses.  Well armed, well mounted,
and operating in a country which consisted of rolling plains with
occasional fortress kopjes, his little force had everything in its
favour.  There were so many tempting objects of attack lying before
him that he must have had some difficulty in knowing where to begin.
The tinted spectacles were turned first upon the isolated town of
Lindley.

Colvile with the Highland Brigade had come up from Ventersburg with
instructions to move onward to Heilbron, pacifying the country as he
passed.  The country, however, refused to be pacified, and his march
from Ventersburg to Lindley was harassed by snipers every mile of the
way.  Finding that De Wet and his men were close upon him, he did not
linger at Lindley, but passed on to his destination, his entire march
of 126 miles costing him sixty-three casualties, of which nine were
fatal. It was a difficult and dangerous march, especially for the
handful of Eastern Province Horse, upon whom fell all the mounted
work.  By evil fortune a force of five hundred Yeomanry, the 18th
battalion, including the Duke of Cambridge's Own and the Irish
companies, had been sent from Kroonstad to join Colvile at Lindley.
Colonel Spragge was in command.  On May 27th this body of horsemen
reached their destination only to find that Colvile had already
abandoned it. They appear to have determined to halt for a day in
Lindley, and then follow Colvile to Heilbron.  Within a few hours of
their entering the town they were fiercely attacked by De Wet.

Colonel Spragge seems to have acted for the best. Under a heavy fire
he caused his troopers to fall back upon his transport, which had been
left at a point a few miles out upon the Kroonstad Road, where three
defensible kopjes sheltered a valley in which the cattle and horses
could be herded. A stream ran through it. There were all the materials
there for a stand which would have brought glory to the British
arms. The men were of peculiarly fine quality, many of them from the
public schools and from the universities, and if any would fight to
the death these with their sporting spirit and their high sense of
honour might have been expected to do so.

They had the stronger motive for holding out, as they had taken steps
to convey word of their difficulty to Colvile and to Methuen. The
former continued his march to Heilbron, and it is hard to blame him for
doing so, but Methuen on hearing the message, which was conveyed to
him at great personal peril by Corporal Hankey of the Yeomanry, pushed
on instantly with the utmost energy, though he arrived too late to
prevent, or even to repair, a disaster.  It must be remembered that
Colvile was under orders to reach Heilbron on a certain date, that he
was himself fighting his way, and that the force which he was asked to
relieve was much more mobile than his own.  His cavalry at that date
consisted of 100 men of the Eastern Province Horse.

Colonel Spragge's men had held their own for the first three days of
their investment, during which they had been simply exposed to a
long-range rifle fire which inflicted no very serious loss upon
them. Their principal defence consisted of a stone kraal about twenty
yards square, which sheltered them from rifle bullets, but must
obviously be a perfect death-trap in the not improbable event of the
Boers sending for artillery.  The spirit of the troopers was
admirable.  Several dashing sorties were carried out under the
leadership of Captain Humby and Lord Longford.  The latter was a
particularly dashing business, ending in a bayonet charge which
cleared a neighbouring ridge.  Early in the siege the gallant Keith
met his end.  On the fourth day the Boers brought up five guns. One
would have thought that during so long a time as three days it would
have been possible for the officer in command to make such
preparations against this obvious possibility as were so successfully
taken at a later stage of the war by the handful who garrisoned
Ladybrand.  Surely in this period, even without engineers, it would
not have been hard to construct such trenches as the Boers have again
and again opposed to our own artillery.  But the preparations which
were made proved to be quite inadequate. One of the two smaller kopjes
was carried, and the garrison fled to the other.  This also was
compelled to surrender, and finally the main kopje also hoisted the
white flag.  No blame can rest upon the men, for their presence there
at all is a sufficient proof of their public spirit and their
gallantry.  But the lessons of the war seem to have been imperfectly
learned, especially that very certain lesson that shell fire in a
close formation is insupportable, while in an open formation with a
little cover it can never compel surrender.  The casualty lists (80
killed and wounded out of a force of 470) show that the Yeomanry took
considerable punishment before surrendering, but do not permit us to
call the defence desperate or heroic.  It is only fair to add that
Colonel Spragge was acquitted of all blame by a court of inquiry,
which agreed, however, that the surrender was premature, and
attributed it to the unauthorised hoisting of a white flag upon one of
the detached kopjes. With regard to the subsequent controversy as to
whether General Colvile might have returned to the relief of the
Yeomanry, it is impossible to see how that General could have acted in
any other way than he did.

Some explanation is needed of Lord Methuen's appearance upon the
central scene of warfare, his division having, when last described,
been at Boshof, not far from Kimberley, where early in April he fought
the successful action which led to the death of Villebois. Thence he
proceeded along the Vaal and then south to Kroonstad, arriving there
on May 28th. He had with him the 9th Brigade (Douglas's), which
contained the troops which had started with him for the relief of
Kimberley six months before.  These were the Northumberland Fusiliers,
Loyal North Lancashires, Northamptons, and Yorkshire Light Infantry.
With him also were the Munsters, Lord Chesham's Yeomanry (five
companies), with the 4th and 37th batteries, two howitzers and two
pom-poms.  His total force was about 6,000 men.  On arriving at
Kroonstad he was given the task of relieving Heilbron, where Colvile,
with the Highland Brigade, some Colonial horse, Lovat's Scouts, two
naval guns, and the 5th battery, were short of food and ammunition.
The more urgent message from the Yeomen at Lindley, however, took him
on a fruitless journey to that town on June 1st.  So vigorous was the
pursuit of the Yeomanry that the leading squadrons, consisting of
South Notts Hussars and Sherwood Rangers, actually cut into the Boer
convoy and might have rescued the prisoners had they been supported.
As it was they were recalled, and had to fight their way back to
Lindley with some loss, including Colonel Rolleston, the commander,
who was badly wounded. A garrison was left under Paget, and the rest
of the force pursued its original mission to Heilbron, arriving there
on June 7th, when the Highlanders had been reduced to quarter
rations. 'The Salvation Army' was the nickname by which they expressed
their gratitude to the relieving force.

A previous convoy sent to the same destination had less good fortune.
On June 1st fifty-five wagons started from the railway line to reach
Heilbron.  The escort consisted of one hundred and sixty details
belonging to Highland regiments without any guns, Captain Corballis in
command.  But the gentleman with the tinted glasses was waiting on the
way.  'I have twelve hundred men and five guns.  Surrender at once!'
Such was the message which reached the escort, and in their
defenceless condition there was nothing for it but to comply.  Thus
one disaster leads to another, for, had the Yeomanry held out at
Lindley, De Wet would not on June 4th have laid hands upon our wagons;
and had he not recruited his supplies from our wagons it is doubtful
if he could have made his attack upon Roodeval.  This was the next
point upon which he turned his attention.

Two miles beyond Roodeval station there is a well-marked kopje by the
railway line, with other hills some distance to the right and the
left..  A militia regiment, the 4th Derbyshire, had been sent up to
occupy this post.  There were rumours of Boers on the line, and Major
Haig, who with one thousand details of various regiments commanded at
railhead, had been attacked on June 6th but had beaten off his
assailants.  De Wet, acting sometimes in company with, and sometimes
independcntly of, his lieutenant Nel, passed down the line looking fur
some easier prey, and on the night of June 7th came upon the militia
regiment, which was encamped in a position which could be complet~y
commanded by artillery.  It is not true that they had neglected to
occupy the kopje under which they lay, for two companies had been
posted upon it. But there seems to have been no thought of imminent
danger, and the regiment had pitched its tents and gone very
comfortably to sleep without a thought of the gentleman in the tinted
glasses.  In the middle of the night he was upon them with a hissing
sleet of bullets.  At the first dawn the guns opened and the shells
began to burst among them.  It was a horrible ordeal for raw
troops. The men were miners and agricultural labourers,who had never
seen more bloodshed than a cut finger in their lives.  They had been
four months in the country, but their life had been a picnic, as the
luxury of their baggage shows.  Now in an instant the picnic was
ended, and in the grey cold dawn war was upon them -- grim war with
the whine of bullets, the screams of pain, the crash of shell, the
horrible rending and riving of body and limb.  In desperate straits,
which would have tried the oldest soldiers, the brave miners did
well. They never from the beginning had a chance save to show how
gamely they could take punishment, but that at least they did.
Bullets were coming from all sides at once and yet no enemy was
visible.  They lined one side of the embankment, and they were shot in
the back.  They lined the other, and were again shot in the back.
Baird-Douglas, the Colonel, vowed to shoot the man who should raise
the white flag, and he fell dead himself before he saw the hated
emblem.  But it had to come.  A hundred and forty of the men were
down, many of them suffering from the horrible wounds which shell
inflicts.  The place was a shambles.  Then the flag went up and the
Boers at last became visible. Outnumbered, outgeneralled, and without
guns, there is no shadow of stain upon the good name of the one
militia regiment which was ever seriously engaged during the war.
Their position was hopeless from the first, and they came out of it
with death, mutilation, and honour.

Two miles south of the Rhenoster kopje stands Roodeval station, in
which, on that June morning, there stood a train containing the mails
for the army, a supply of great-coats, and a truck full of enormous
shells. A number of details of various sorts, a hundred or more, had
alighted from the train, twenty of them Post-office volunteers, some
of the Pioneer Railway corps, a few Shropshires, and other waifs and
strays. To them in the early morning came the gentleman with the
tinted glasses, his hands still red with the blood of the Derbies. 'I
have fourteen hundred men and four guns.  Surrender!' said the
messenger. But it is not in nature for a postman to give up his
postbag without a struggle.  'Never!' cried the valiant postmen. But
shell after shell battered the corrugated-iron buildings about their
ears, and it was not possible for them to answer the guns which were
smashing the life out of them.  There was no help for it but to
surrender. De Wet added samples of the British volunteer and of the
British regular to his bag of militia.  The station and train were
burned down, the great-coats looted, the big shells exploded, and the
mails burned.  The latter was the one unsportsmanlike action which can
up to that date be laid to De Wet's charge. Forty thousand men to the
north of him could forego their coats and their food, but they yearned
greatly for those home letters, charred fragments of which are still
blowing about the veldt. [Footnote: Fragments continually met the eye
which must have afforded curious reading for the victors. 'I hope you
have killed all those Boers by now,' was the beginning of one letter
which I could not help observing.]

For three days De Wet held the line, and during all that time he
worked his wicked will upon it. For miles and miles it was wrecked
with most scientific completeness.  The Rhenoster bridge was
destroyed. So, for the second time, was the Roodeval bridge. The rails
were blown upwards with dynamite until they looked like an unfinished
line to heaven.  De Wet's heavy hand was everywhere.  Not a
telegraph-post remained standing within ten miles.  His headquarters
continued to be the kopje at Roodeval.

On June 10th two British forces were converging upon the point of
danger.  One was Methuen's, from Heilbron.  The other was a small
force consisting of the Shropshires, the South Wales Borderers, and a
battery which had come south with Lord Kitchener. The energetic Chief
of the Staff was always sent by Lord Roberts to the point where a
strong man was needed, and it was seldom that he failed to justify his
mission.  Lord Methuen, however, was the first to arrive, and at once
attacked De Wet, who moved swiftly away to the eastward.  With a
tendency to exaggeration, which has been too common during the war,
the affair was described as a victory.  It was really a strategic and
almost bloodless move upon the part of the Boers.  It is not the
business of guerillas to fight pitched battles.  Methuen pushed for
the south, having been informed that Kroonstad had been
captured. Finding this to be untrue, he turned again to the eastward
in search of De Wet.

That wily and indefatigable man was not long out of our ken.  On June
14th he appeared once more at Rhenoster, where the construction
trains, under the famous Girouard, were working furiously at the
repair of the damage which he had already done.  This time the guard
was sufficient to beat him off, and he vanished again to the eastward.
He succeeded, however, in doing some harm, and very nearly captured
Lord Kitchener himself.  A permanent post had been established at
Rhenoster under the charge of Colonel Spens of the Shropshires, with
his own regiment and several guns. Smith-Dorrien, one of the youngest
and most energetic of the divisional commanders, had at the same time
undertaken the supervision and patrolling of the line.

An attack had at this period been made by a cormmando of some hundred
Boers at the Sand River to the south of Kroonstad, where there is a
most important bridge. The attempt was frustrated by the Royal
Lancaster regiment and the Railway Pioneer regiment, helped by some
mounted infantry and Yeomanry.  The fight was for a time a brisk one,
and the Pioneers, upon whom the brunt of it fell, behaved with great
steadiness. The skirmish is principally remarkable for the death of
Major Seymour of the Pioneers, a noble American, who gave his services
and at last his life for what, in the face of all slander and
misrepresentation, he knew to be the cause of justice and of liberty.

It was hoped now, after all these precautions, that the last had been
seen of the gentleman with the tinted glasses, but on June 21st he was
back in his old haunts once more.  Honing Spruit Station, about midway
between Kroonstad and Roodeval, was the scene of his new raid.  On
that date his men appeared suddenly as a train waited in the station,
and ripped up the rails on either side of it.  There were no guns at
this point, and the only available troops were three hundred of the
prisoners from Pretoria, armed with Martini-Henry rifles and obsolete
ammunition. A good man was in command, however -- the same Colonel
Bullock of the Devons who had distinguished himself at Colenso -- and
every tattered, half-starved wastrel was nerved by a recollection of
the humiliations which he had already endured. For seven hours they
lay helpless under the shell-fire, but their constancy was rewarded by
the arrival of Colonel Brookfield with 300 Yeomanry and four guns of
the 17th R.F.A., followed in the evening by a larger force from the
south.  The Boers fled, but left some of their number behind them;
while of the British, Major Hobbs and four men were killed and
nineteen wounded.  This defence of three hundred half-armed men
against seven hundred Boer riflemen, with three guns firing shell and
shrapnel, was a very good performance.  The same body of burghers
immediately afterwards attacked a post held by Colonel Evans with two
companies of the Shropshires and fifty Canadians. They were again
beaten back with loss, the Canadians under Inglis especially
distinguishing themselves by their desperate resistance in an exposed
position.

All these attacks, irritating and destructive as they were, were not
able to hinder the general progress of the war.  After the battle of
Diamond Hill the captured position was occupied by the mounted
infantry, while the rest of the forces returned to their camps round
Pretoria, there to await the much-needed remounts. At other parts of
the seat of war the British cordon was being drawn more tightly round
the Boer forces. Buller had come as far as Standerton, and Ian
Hamilton, in the last week of June, had occupied Heidelberg.  A week
afterwards the two forces were able to join hands, and so to
completely cut off the Free State from the Transvaal armies.  Hamilton
in these operations had the misfortune to break his collar-bone, and
for a time the command of his division passed to Hunter -- the one
man, perhaps, whom the army would regard as an adequate successor.

It was evident now to the British commanders that there would be no
peace and no safety for their communications while an undefeated army
of seven or eight thousand men, under such leaders as De Wet and
Olivier, was lurking amid the hills which flanked their railroad.  A
determined effort was made, therefore, to clear up that corner of the
country.  Having closed the only line of escape by the junction of Ian
Hamilton and of Buller, the attention of six separate bodies of troops
was concentrated upon the stalwart Freestaters. These were the
divisions of Rundle and of Brabant from the south, the brigade of
Clements on their extreme left, the garrison of Lindley under Paget,
the garrison of Heilbron under Macdonald, and, most formidable of all,
a detachment under Hunter which was moving from the north.  A crisis
was evidently approaching.

The nearest Free State town of importance still untaken was Bethlehem
-- a singular name to connect with the operations of war.  The country
on the south of it forbade an advance by Rundle or Brabant, but it was
more accessible from the west. The first operation of the British
consisted, therefore, in massing sufficient troops to be able to
advance from this side.  This was done by effecting a junction between
Clements from Senekal, and Paget who commanded at Lindley, which was
carried out upon July 1st near the latter place.  Clements encountered
some opposition, but besides his excellent infantry regiments, the
Royal Irish, Worcesters, Wiltshires, and Bedfords, he had with him the
2nd Brabant's Horse, with yeomanry, mounted infantry, two 5-in. guns,
and the 8th B.F.A.  Aided by a demonstration on the part of Grenfell
and of Brabant, he pushed his way through after three days of
continual skirmish.

On getting into touch with Clements, Paget sallied out from Lindley,
leaving the Buffs behind to garrison the town.  He had with him
Brookfield's mounted brigade one thousand strong, eight guns, and two
fine battalions of infantry, the Munster Fusiliers and the Yorkshire
Light Infantry.  On July 3rd he found near Leeuw Kop a considerable
force of Boers with three guns opposed to him, Clements being at that
time too far off upon the flank to assist him.  Four guns of the 38th
R.F.A. (Major Oldfield) and two belonging to the City Volunteers came
into action. The Royal Artillery guns appear to have been exposed to a
very severe fire, and the losses were so heavy that for a time they
could not be served.  The escort was inadequate, insufficiently
advanced, and badly handled, for the Boer riflemen were able, by
creeping up a donga, to get right into the 38th battery, and the
gallant major, with Lieutenant Belcher, was killed in the defence of
the guns.  Captain FitzGerald, the only other officer present, was
wounded in two places, and twenty men were struck down, with nearly
all the horses of one section.  Captain Marks, who was brigade-major
of Colonel Brookfield's Yeomanry, with the help of Lieut. Keevil Davis
and the 15th I.Y. came to the rescue of the disorganised and almost
annihilated section.  At the same time the C.I.V. guns were in
imminent danger, but were energetically covered by Captain Budworth,
adjutant of the battery.  Soon, however, the infantry, Munster
Fusiliers, and Yorkshire Light Infantry, which had been carrying out a
turning movement, came into action, and the position was taken.  The
force moved onwards, and on July 6th they were in front of Bethlehem.

The place is surrounded by hills, and the enemy was found strongly
posted. Clements's force was now on the left and Paget's on the right.
>From both sides an attempt was made to turn the Boer flanks, but they
were found to be very wide and strong.  All day a long-range action
was kept up while Clements felt his way in the hope of coming upon
some weak spot in the position, but in the evening a direct attack was
made by Paget's two infantry regiments upon the right, which gave the
British a footing on the Boer position.  The Munster Fusiliers and the
Yorkshire Light Infantry lost forty killed and wounded, including four
officers, in this gallant affair, the heavier loss and the greater
honour going to the men of Munster.

The centre of the position was still held, and on the morning of July
7th Clements gave instructions to the colonel of the Royal Irish to
storm it if the occasion should seem favourable.  Such an order to
such a regiment means that the occasion will seem favourable. Up they
went in three extended lines, dropping forty or fifty on the way, but
arriving breathless and enthusiastic upon the crest of the ridge.
Below them, upon the further side, lay the village of Bethlehem.  On
the slopes beyond hundreds of horsemen were retreating, and a gun was
being hurriedly dragged into the town.  For a moment it seemed as if
nothing had been left as a trophy, but suddenly a keen-eyed sergeant
raised a cheer, which was taken up again and again until it resounded
over the veldt.  Under the crest, lying on its side with a broken
wheel, was a gun -- one of the 15-pounders of Stormberg which it was a
point of honour to regain once more. Many a time had the gunners been
friends in need to the infantry.  Now it was the turn of the infantry
to do something in exchange.  That evening Clements had occupied
Bethlehem, and one more of their towns had passed out of the hands of
the Freestaters.

A word now as to that force under General Hunter which was closing in
from the north.  The gallant and energetic Hamilton, lean, aquiline,
and tireless, had, as already stated, broken his collar-bone at
Heidelberg, and it was as his lieutenant that Hunter was leading these
troops out of the Transvaal into the Orange River Colony. Most of his
infantry was left behind at Heidelberg, but he took with him
Broadwood's cavalry (two brigades) and Bruce Hamilton's 21st infantry
brigade, with Ridley's mounted infantry, some seven thousand men in
all.  On the 2nd of July this force reached Frankfort in the north of
the Free State without resistance, and on July 3rd they were joined
there by Macdonald's force from Heilbron, so that Hunter found himself
with over eleven thousand men under his command.  Here was an
instrument with which surely the COUP DE GRACE could be given to the
dying State.  Passing south, still without meeting serious resistance,
Hunter occupied Reitz, and finally sent on Broadwood's cavalry to
Bethlehem, where on July 8th they joined Paget and Clements.

The net was now in position, and about to be drawn tight, but at this
last moment the biggest fish of all dashed furiously out from it.
Leaving the main Free State force in a hopeless position behind him,
De Wet, with fifteen hundred well-mounted men and five guns, broke
through Slabbert's Nek between Bethlehem and Ficksburg, and made
swiftly for the north-west, closely followed by Paget's and
Broadwood's cavalry. It was on July 16th that he made his dash for
freedom.  On the 19th Little, with the 3rd Cavalry Brigade, had come
into touch with him near Lindley.  De Wet shook himself clear, and
with splendid audacity cut the railway once more to the north of
Honing Spruit, gathering up a train as he passed, and taking two
hundred details prisoners.  On July 22nd De Wet was at Vredefort,
still closely followed by Broadwood, Ridley, and Little, who gleaned
his wagons and his stragglers.  Thence he threw himself into the hilly
country some miles to the south of the Vaal River, where he lurked for
a week or more while Lord Kitchener came south to direct the
operations which would, as it was hoped, lead to a surrender.

Leaving the indomitable guerilla in his hiding-place, the narrative
must return to that drawing of the net which still continued in spite
of the escape of this one important fish.  On all sides the British
forces had drawn closer, and they were both more numerous and more
formidable in quality.  It was evident now that by a rapid advance
from Bethlehem in the direction of the Basuto border all Boers to the
north of Ficksburg would be hemmed in. On July 22nd the columns were
moving. On that date Paget moved out of Bethlehem, and Rundle took a
step forward from Ficksburg.  Bruce Hamilton had already, at the cost
of twenty Cameron Highlanders, got a grip upon a bastion of that rocky
country in which the enemy lurked.  On the 23rd Hunter's force was
held by the Boers at the strong pass of Retief's Nek, but on the 24th
they were compelled to abandon it, as the capture of Slabbert's Nek by
Clements threatened their rear.  This latter pass was fortified most
elaborately. It was attacked upon the 23rd by Brabant's Horse and the
Royal Irish without success.  Later in the day two companies of the
Wiltshire Regiment were also brought to a standstill, but retained a
position until nightfall within stone-throw of the Boer lines, though
a single company had lost 17 killed and wounded.  Part of the Royal
Irish remained also close to the enemy's trenches. Under cover of
darkness, Clements sent four companies of the Royal Irish and two of
the Wiltshires under Colonel Guinness to make a flanking movement
along the crest of the heights.  These six companies completely
surprised the enemy, and caused them to hurriedly evacuate the
position.  Their night march was performed under great difficulties,
the men crawling on hands and knees along a rocky path with a drop of
400 feet upon one side. But their exertions were greatly rewarded.
Upon the success of their turning movement depended the fall of
Slabbert's Nek.  Betief's Nek was untenable if we held Slabbert's Nek,
and if both were in our hands the retreat of Prinsloo was cut off.

At every opening of the hills the British guns were thundering, and
the heads of British columns were appearing on every height.  The
Highland Brigade had fairly established themselves over the Boer
position, though not without hard fighting, in which a hundred men of
the Highland Light Infantry had been killed and wounded.  The
Seaforths and the Sussex had also gripped the positions in front of
them, and taken some punishment in doing so.  The outworks of the
great mountain fortress were all taken, and on July 26th the British
columns were converging on Fouriesburg, while Naauwpoort on the line
of retreat was held by Macdonald. It was only a matter of time now
with the Boers.

On the 28th Clements was still advancing, and contracting still
further the space which was occupied by our stubborn foe.  He found
himself faced by the stiff position of Slaapkrantz, and a hot little
action was needed before the Boers could be dislodged.  The fighting
fell upon Brabant's Horse, the Royal Irish, and the Wiltshires.  Three
companies of the latter seized a farm upon the enemy's left, but lost
ten men in doing so, while their gallant colonel, Carter, was severely
wounded in two places.  The Wiltshires, who were excellently handled
by Captain Bolton, held on to the farm and were reinforced there by a
handful of the Scots Guards.  In the night the position was abandoned
by the Boers, and the advance swept onwards.  On all sides the
pressure was becoming unendurable.  The burghers in the valley below
could see all day the twinkle of British heliographs from every hill,
while at night the constant flash of signals told of the sleepless
vigilance which hemmed them in.  Upon July 29th, Prinsloo sent in a
request for an armistice, which was refused.  Later in the day he
despatched a messenger with the white flag to Hunter, with an
announcement of his unconditional surrender.

On July 30th the motley army which had held the British off so long
emerged from among the mountains. But it soon became evident that in
speaking for all Prinsloo had gone beyond his powers. Discipline was
low and individualism high in the Boer army. Every man might repudiate
the decision of his commandant, as every man might repudiate the white
flag of his comrade.  On the first day no more than eleven hundred men
of the Ficksburg and Ladybrand commandos, with fifteen hundred horses
and two guns, were surrendered. next day seven hundred and fifty more
men came in with eight hundred horses, and by August 6th the total of
the prisoners had mounted to four thousand one hundred and fifty with
three guns, two of which were our own.  But Olivier, with fifteen
hundred men and several guns, broke away from the captured force and
escaped through the hills.  Of this incident General Hunter, an
honourable soldier, remarks in his official report: 'I regard it as a
dishonourable breach of faith upon the part of General Olivier, for
which I hold him personally responsible. He admitted that he knew that
General Prinsloo had included him in the unconditional surrender.'  It
is strange that, on Olivier's capture shortly afterwards, he was not
court-martialled for this breach of the rules of war, but that
good-natured giant, the Empire, is quick -- too quick, perhaps -- to
let byegones be byegones.  On August 4th Harrismith surrendered to
Macdonald, and thus was secured the opening of the Van Reenen's Pass
and the end of the Natal system of railways.  This was of the very
first importance, as the utmost difficulty had been found in supplying
so large a body of troops so far from the Cape base.  In a day the
base was shifted to Durban, and the distance shortened by two-thirds,
while the army came to be on the railway instead of a hundred miles
from it. This great success assured Lord Roberts's communications from
serious attack, and was of the utmost importance in enabling him to
consolidate his position at Pretoria.


CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HALT AT PRETORIA


Lord Roberts had now been six weeks in the capital, and British troops
had overrun the greater part of the south and west of the Transvaal,
but in spite of this there was continued Boer resistance, which flared
suddenly up in places which had been nominally pacified and disarmed.
It was found, as has often been shown in history, that it is easier to
defeat a republican army than to conquer it.  From Klerksdorp, from
Ventersdorp, from Rustenburg, came news of risings against the newly
imposed British authority. The concealed Mauser and the bandolier were
dug up once more from the trampled corner of the cattle kraal, and the
farmer was a warrior once again.  Vague news of the exploits of De Wet
stimulated the fighting burghers and shamed those who had submitted.
A letter was intercepted from the guerilla chief to Cronje's son, who
had surrendered near Rustenburg. De Wet stated that he had gained two
great victories and had fifteen hundred captured rifles with which to
replace those which the burghers had given up.  Not only were the
outlying districts in a state of revolt, but even round Pretoria the
Boers were inclined to take the offensive, while both that town and
Johannesburg were filled with malcontents who were ready to fly to
their arms once more.

Already at the end of June there were signs that the Boers realised
how helpless Lord Roberts was until his remounts should arrive.  The
mosquitoes buzzed round the crippled lion.  On June 29th there was an
attack upon Springs near Johannesburg, which was easily beaten off by
the Canadians. Early in July some of the cavalry and mounted infantry
patrols were snapped up in the neighbourhood of the capital.  Lord
Roberts gave orders accordingly that Hutton and Mahon should sweep the
Boers back upon his right, and push them as far as Bronkhorst Spruit.
This was done on July 6th and 7th, the British advance meeting with
considerable resistance from artillery as well as rifles.  By this
movement the pressure upon the right was relieved, which might have
created a dangerous unrest in Johannesburg, and it was done at the
moderate cost of thirty-four killed and wounded, half of whom belonged
to the Imperial Light Horse.  This famous corps, which had come across
with Mahon from the relief of Mafeking, had, a few days before, ridden
with mixed feelings through the streets of Johannesburg and past, in
many instances, the deserted houses which had once been their
homes. Many weary months were to pass before the survivors might
occupy them.  On July 9th the Boers again attacked, but were again
pushed back to the eastward.

It is probable that all these demonstrations of the enemy upon the
right of Lord Roberts's extended position were really feints in order
to cover the far-reaching plans which Botha had in his mind.  The
disposition of the Boer forces at this time appears to have been as
follows: Botha with his army occupied a position along Delagoa railway
line, further east than Diamond Hill, whence he detached the bodies
which attacked Hutton upon the extreme right of the British position
to the south-east of Pretoria.  To the north of Pretoria a second
force was acting under Grobler, while a third under Delarey had been
despatched secretly across to the left wing of the British, north-west
of Pretoria.  While Botha engaged the attention of Lord Roberts by
energetic demonstrations on his right, Grobler and Delarey were to
make a sudden attack upon his centre and his left, each point being
twelve or fifteen miles from the other.  It was well devised and very
well carried out; but the inherent defect of it was that, when
subdivided in this way, the Boer force was no longer strong enough to
gain more than a mere success of outposts.

De la Rey's attack was delivered at break of day on July 11th at
Uitval's Nek, a post some eighteen miles west of the capital.  This
position could not be said to be part of Lord Roberts's line, but
rather to be a link to connect his army with Rustenburg.  It was
weakly held by three companies of the Lincolns with two others in
support, one squadron of the Scots Greys, and two guns of 0 battery
R.H.A.  The attack came with the first grey light of dawn, and for
many hours the small garrison bore up against a deadly fire, waiting
for the help which never came.  All day they held their assailants at
bay, and it was not until evening that their ammunition ran short and
they were forced to surrender. Nothing could have been better than the
behaviour of the men, both infantry, cavalry, and gunners, but their
position was a hopeless one.  The casualties amounted to eighty killed
and wounded. Nearly two hundred were made prisoners and the two guns
were taken.

On the same day that De la Rey made his COUP at Uitval's Nek, Grobler
had shown his presence on the north side of the town by treating very
roughly a couple of squadrons of the 7th Dragoon Guards which had
attacked him. By the help of a section of the ubiquitous 0 battery and
of the 14th Hussars, Colonel Lowe was able to disengage his cavalry
from the trap into which they had fallen, but it was at the cost of
between thirty and forty officers and men killed, wounded, or taken.
The old 'Black Horse' sustained their historical reputation, and
fought their way bravely out of an almost desperate situation, where
they were exposed to the fire of a thousand riflemen and four guns.

On this same day of skirmishes, July 11th, the Gordons had seen some
hot work twenty miles or so to the south of Uitval's Nek.  Orders had
been given to the 19th Brigade (Smith-Dorrien's) to proceed to
Krugersdorp, and thence to make their way north. The Scottish Yeomanry
and a section of the 78th B.F.A. accompanied them.  The idea seems to
have been that they would be able to drive north any Boers in that
district, who would then find the garrison of Uitval's Nek at their
rear.  The advance was checked, however, at a place called
Dolverkrantz, which was strongly held by Boer riflemen.  The two guns
were insufficiently protected, and the enemy got within short range of
them, killing or wounding many of the gunners.  The lieutenant in
charge, Mr. A. J. Turner, the famous Essex cricketer, worked the gun
with his own hands until he also fell wounded in three places.  The
situation was now very serious, and became more so when news was
flashed of the disaster at Uitval's Nek, and they were ordered to
retire.  They could not retire and abandon the guns, yet the fire was
so hot that it was impossible to remove them.  Gallant attempts were
made by volunteers from the Gordons -- Captain Younger and other brave
men throwing away their lives in the vain effort to reach and to
limber up the guns.  At last, under the cover of night, the teams were
harnessed and the two field-pieces successfully removed, while the
Boers who rushed in to seize them were scattered by a volley.  The
losses in the action were thirty-six and the gain nothing.  Decidedly
July 11th was not a lucky day for the British arms.

It was well known to Botha that every train from the south was
bringing horses for Lord Roberts's army, and that it had become
increasingly difficult for De Wet and his men to hinder their arrival.
The last horse must win, and the Empire had the world on which to
draw. Any movement which the Boers would make must be made at once,
for already both the cavalry and the mounted infantry were rapidly
coming back to their full strength once more.  This consideration must
have urged Botha to deliver an attack on July 16th, which had some
success at first, but was afterwards beaten off with heavy loss to the
enemy.  The fighting fell principally upon Pole-Carew and Hutton, the
corps chiefly engaged being the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the
New-Zealanders, the Shropshires, and the Canadian Mounted Infantry.
The enemy tried repeatedly to assault the position, but were beaten
back each time with a loss of nearly a hundred killed and wounded.
The British loss was about sixty, and included two gallant young
Canadian officers, Borden and Birch, the former being the only son of
the minister of militia.  So ended the last attempt made by Botha upon
the British positions round Pretoria.  The end of the war was not yet,
but already its futility was abundantly evident.  This had become more
apparent since the junction of Hamilton and of Buller had cut off the
Transvaal army from that of the Free State.  Unable to send their
prisoners away, and also unable to feed them, the Freestaters were
compelled to deliver up in Natal the prisoners whom they had taken at
Lindley and Roodeval. These men, a ragged and starving battalion,
emerged at Ladysmith, having made their way through Van Reenen's
Pass. It is a singular fact that no parole appears on these and
similar occasions to have been exacted by the Boers.

Lord Roberts, having remounted a large part of his cavalry, was ready
now to advance eastward and give Botha battle.  The first town of any
consequence along the Delagoa Railway is Middelburg, some seventy
miles from the capital.  This became the British objective, and the
forces of Mahon and Hamilton on the north, of. Pole-Carew in the
centre, and of French and Hutton to the south, all converged upon
There was no serious resistance, though the weather was abominable,
and on July 27th the town was in the hands of the invaders. From that
date until the final advance to the eastward French held this advanced
post, while Pole-Carew guarded the railway line.  Rumours of trouble
in the west had convinced Roberts that it was not yet time to push his
advantage to the east, and he recalled Ian Hamilton's force to act for
a time upon the other side of the seat of the war.  This excellent
little army, consisting of Mahon's and Pilcher's mounted infantry, M
battery R.H.A., the Elswick battery, two 5-in. and two 4.7 guns, with
the Berkshires, the Border Regiment, the Argyle and Sutherlands, and
the Scottish Borderers, put in as much hard work in marching and in
fighting as any body of troops in the whole campaign.

The renewal of the war in the west had begun some weeks before, but
was much accelerated by the transference of De la Rey and his burghers
to that side.  There is no district in the Transvaal which is better
worth fighting for, for it is a fair country side, studded with
farmhouses and green with orange-groves, with many clear streams
running through it.  The first sign of activity appears to have been
on July 7th, when a commando with guns appeared upon the hills above
Rustenburg.  Hanbury Tracy, commandant of Rustenburg, was suddenly
confronted with a summons to surrender. He had only 120 men and one
gun, but he showed a bold front.  Colonel Houldsworth, at the first
whisper of danger, had started from Zeerust with a small force of
Australian bushmen, and arrived at Rustenburg in time to drive the
enemy away in a very spirited action. On the evening of July 8th
Baden-Powell took over the command, the garrison being reinforced by
Plumer's command.

The Boer commando was still in existence, however, and it was
reinforced and reinvigorated by Delarey's success at Uitval's Nek.  On
July 18th they began to close in upon Rustenburg again, and a small
skirmish took place between them and the Australians. Methuen's
division, which had been doing very arduous service in the north of
the Free State during the last six weeks, now received orders to
proceed into the Transvaal and to pass northwards through the
disturbed districts en route for Rustenburg, which appeared to be the
storm centre.  The division was transported by train from Kroonstad to
Krugersdorp, and advanced on the evening of July 18th upon its
mission, through a bare and fire-blackened country.  On the 19th Lord
Methuen manoeuvred the Boers out of a strong position, with little
loss to either side.  On the 21st he forced his way through Olifant's
Nek, in the Magaliesberg range, and so established communication with
Baden-Powell, whose valiant bushmen, under Colonel Airey, had held
their own in a severe conflict near Magato Pass, in which they lost
six killed, nineteen wounded, and nearly two hundred horses.  The
fortunate arrival of Captain FitzClarence with the Protectorate
Regiment helped on this occasion to avert a disaster. The force, only
300 strong, without guns, had walked into an ugly ambuscade, and only
the tenacity and resource of the men enabled them ever to extricate
themselves.

Although Methuen came within reach of Rustenburg, he did not actually
join hands with Baden-Powell.  No doubt he saw and heard enough to
convince him that that astute soldier was very well able to take care
of himself.  Learning of the existence of a Boer force in his rear,
Methuen turned, and on July 29th he was back at Frederickstad on the
Potchefstroom-Krugersdorp railway.  The sudden change in his plans was
caused doubtless by the desire to head off De Wet in case he should
cross the Vaal River.  Lord Roberts was still anxious to clear the
neighbourhood of Rustenburg entirely of the enemy; and he therefore,
since Methuen was needed to complete the cordon round De Wet, recalled
Hamilton's force from the east and despatched it, as already
described, to the west of Pretoria.

Before going into the details of the great De Wet hunt, in which
Methuen's force was to be engaged, I shall follow Hamilton's division
across, and give some account of their services.  On August 1st he set
out from Pretoria for Rustenburg.  On that day and on the next he had
brisk skirmishes which brought him successfully through the
Magaliesberg range with a loss of forty wounded, mostly of the
Berkshires.  On the 5th of August he had made his way to Rustenburg
and drove off the investing force.  A smaller siege had been going on
to westward, where at Elands River another Mafeking man, Colonel Hore,
had been held up by the burghers.  For some days it was feared, and
even officially announced, that the garrison had surrendered. It was
known that an attempt by Carrington to relieve the place on August 5th
had been beaten back, and that the state of the country appeared so
threatening that he had been compelled, or had imagined himself to be
compelled, to retreat as far as Mafeking, evacuating Zeerust and
Otto's Hoop, abandoning the considerable stores which were collected
at those places.  In spite of all these sinister indications the
garrison was still holding its own, and on August 16th it was relieved
by Lord Kitchener.

This stand at Brakfontein on the Elands River appears to have been one
of the very finest deeds of arms of the war.  The Australians have
been so split up during the campaign, that though their valour and
efficiency were universally recognised, they had no single exploit
which they could call their own.  But now they can point to Elands
River as proudly as the Canadians can to Paardeberg.  They were 500 in
number, Victorians, New South Welshmen, and Queenslanders, the latter
the larger unit, with a corps of Rhodesians. Under Hore were Major
Hopper of the Rhodesians, and Major Toubridge of the Queenslanders.
Two thousand five hundred Boers surrounded them, and most favourable
terms of surrender were offered and scouted.  Six guns were trained
upon them, and during 11 days 1,800 shells fell within their
lines. The river was half a mile off, and every drop of water for man
or beast had to come from there.  Nearly all their horses and 75 of
the men were killed or wounded.  With extraordinary energy and
ingenuity the little band dug shelters which are said to have exceeded
in depth and efficiency any which the Boers have devised. Neither the
repulse of Carrington, nor the jamming of their only gun, nor the
death of the gallant Annett, was sufficient to dishearten them.  They
were sworn to die before the white flag should wave above them. And so
fortune yielded, as fortune will when brave men set their teeth, and
Broadwood's troopers, filled with wonder and admiration, rode into the
lines of the reduced and emaciated but indomitable garrison. When the
ballad-makers of Australia seek for a subject, let them turn to Elands
River, for there was no finer resistance in the war.  They will not
grudge a place in their record to the 130 gallant Rhodesians who
shared with them the honours and the dangers of the exploit.

On August 7th Ian Hamilton abandoned Rustenburg, taking Baden-Powell
and his men with him.  It was obviously unwise to scatter the British
forces too widely by attempting to garrison every single town.  For
the instant the whole interest of the war centred upon De Wet and his
dash into the Transvaal.  One or two minor events, however, which
cannot be fitted into any continuous narrative may be here introduced.

One of these was the action at Faber's Put, by which Sir Charles
Warren crushed the rebellion in Griqualand.  In that sparsely
inhabited country of vast distances it was a most difficult task to
bring the revolt to a decisive ending.  This Sir Charles Warren, with
his special local knowledge and interest, was able to do, aud the
success is doubly welcome as bringing additional honour to a man who,
whatever view one may take of his action at Spion Kop, has grown grey
in the service of the Empire.  With a column consisting mainly of
colonials and of yeomanry he had followed the rebels up to a point
within twelve miles of Douglas. Here at the end of May they turned
upon him and delivered a fierce night attack, so sudden and so
strongly pressed that much credit is due both to General and to troops
for having repelled it.  The camp was attacked on all sides in the
early dawn.  The greater part of the horses were stampeded by the
firing, and the enemy's riflemen were found to be at very close
quarters. For an hour the action was warm, but at the end of that time
the Boers fled, leaving a number of dead behind them. The troops
engaged in this very creditable action, which might have tried the
steadiness of veterans, were four hundred of the Duke of Edinburgh's
volunteers, some of Paget's horse and of the 8th Regiment Imperial
Yeomanry, four Canadian guns, and twenty-five of Warren's Scouts.
Their losses were eighteen killed and thirty wounded.  Colonel Spence,
of the volunteers, died at the head of his regiment. A few days
before, on May 27th, Colonel Adye had won a small engagement at Kheis,
some distance to the westward, and the effect of the two actions was
to put an end to open resistance. On June 20th De Villiers, the Boer
leader, finally surrendered to Sir Charles Warren, handing over two
hundred and twenty men with stores, rifles, and ammunition.  The last
sparks had for the time been stamped out in the colony.

There remain to be mentioned those attacks upon trains and upon the
railway which had spread from the Free State to the Transvaal.  On
July 19th a train was wrecked on the way from Potchefstroom to
Krugersdorp without serious injury to the passengers. On July 31st,
however, the same thing occurred with more murderous effect, the train
running at full speed off the metals.  Thirteen of the Shropshires
were killed and thirty-seven injured in this deplorable affair, which
cost us more than many an important engagement. On August 2nd a train
coming up from Bloemfontein was derailed by Sarel Theron and his gang
some miles south of Kroonstad.  Thirty-five trucks of stores were
burned, and six of the passengers (unarmed convalescent soldiers) were
killed or wounded.  A body of mounted infantry followed up the Boers,
who numbered eighty, and succeeded in killing and wounding several of
them.

On July 21st the Boers made a determined attack upon the railhead at a
point thirteen miles east of Heidelberg, where over a hundred Royal
Engineers were engaged upon a bridge.  They were protected by three
hundred Dublin Fusiliers under Major English. For some hours the
little party was hard pressed by the burghers, who had two
field-pieces and a pom-pom. They could make no impression, however,
upon the steady Irish infantry, and after some hours the arrival of
General Hart with reinforcements scattered the assailants, who
succeeded in getting their guns away in safety.

At the beginning of August it must be confessed that the general
situation in the Transvaal was not reassuring.  Springs near
Johannesburg had in some inexplicable way, without fighting, fallen
into the hands of the enemy.  Klerksdorp, an important place in the
south-west, had also been reoccupied, and a handful of men who
garrisoned it had been made prisoners without resistance.  Rustenburg
was about to be abandoned, and the British were known to be falling
back from Zeerust and Otto's Hoop, concentrating upon Mafeking.  The
sequel proved however, that there was no cause for uneasiness in all
this. Lord Roberts was concentrating his strength upon those objects
which were vital, and letting the others drift for a time.  At present
the two obviously important things were to hunt down De Wet and to
scatter the main Boer army under Botha. The latter enterprise must
wait upon the former, so for a fortnight all operations were in
abeyance while the flying columns of the British endeavoured to run
down their extremely active and energetic antagonist.

At the end of July De Wet had taken refuge in some exceedingly
difficult country near Reitzburg, seven miles south of the Vaal
River. The operations were proceeding vigorously at that time against
the main army at Fouriesberg, and sufficient troops could not be
spared to attack him, but he was closely observed by Kitchener and
Broadwood with a force of cavalry and mounted infantry. With the
surrender of Prinsloo a large army was disengaged, and it was obvious
that if De Wet remained where he was he must soon be surrounded.  On
the other hand, there was no place of refuge to the south of him.
With great audacity he determined to make a dash for the Transvaal, in
the hope of joining hands with De la Rey's force, or else of making
his way across the north of Pretoria, and so reaching Botha's army.
President Steyn went with him, and a most singular experience it must
have been for him to be harried like a mad dog through the country in
which he had once been an honoured guest.  De Wet's force was
exceedingly mobile, each man having a led horse, and the ammunition
being carried in light Cape carts.

In the first week of August the British began to thicken round his
lurking-place, and De Wet knew that it was time for him to go.  He
made a great show of fortifying a position, but it was only a ruse to
deceive those who watched him.  Travelling as lightly as possible, he
made a dash on August 7th at the drift which bears his own name, and
so won his way across the Vaal River, Kitchener thundering at his
heels with his cavalry and mounted infantry. Methuen's force was at
that time at Potchefstroom, and instant orders had been sent to him to
block the drifts upon the northern side. It was found as he
approached the river that the vanguard of the enemy was already across
and that it was holding the spurs of the hills which would cover the
crossing of their comrades.  By the dash of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers
and the exertions of the artillery ridge after ridge was carried, but
before evening De Wet with supreme skill had got his convoy across,
and had broken away, first to the eastward and then to the north.  On
the 9th Methuen was in touch with him again, and the two savage little
armies, Methuen worrying at the haunch, and De Wet snapping back over
his shoulder, swept northward over the huge plains. Wherever there was
ridge or kopje the Boer riflemen staved off the eager pursuers.  Where
the ground lay flat and clear the British guns thundered onwards and
fired into the lines of wagons.  Mile after mile the running fight was
sustained, but the other British columns, Broadwood's men and
Kitchener's men, had for some reason not come up.  Methuen alone was
numerically inferior to the men he was chasing, but he held on with
admirable energy and spirit.  The Boers were hustled off the kopjes
from which they tried to cover their rear.  Twenty men of the
Yorkshire Yeomanry carried one hill with the bayonet, though only
twelve of them were left to reach the top.

De Wet trekked onwards during the night of the 9th, shedding wagons
and stores as he went.  He was able to replace some .of his exhausted
beasts from the farmhouses which he passed.  Methuen on the morning of
the 10th struck away to the west, sending messages back to Broadwood
and Kitchener in the rear that they should bear to the east, and so
nurse the Boer column between them. At the same time he sent on a
messenger, who unfortunately never arrived, to warn Smith-Dorrien at
Bank Station to throw himself across De Wet's path. On the 11th it was
realised that De Wet had succeeded, in spite of great exertions upon
the part of Smith-Dorrien's infantry, in crossing the railway line,
and that he had left all his pursuers to the south of him. But across
his front lay the Magaliesberg range.  There are only three passes,
the Magato Pass, Olifant's Nek, and Commando Nek.  It was understood
that all three were held by British troops.  It was obvious,
therefore, that if Methuen could advance in such a way as to cut De
Wet off from slipping through to the west he would be unable to get
away. Broadwood and Kitchener would be behind him, and Pretoria, with
the main British army, to the east.

Methuen continued to act with great energy and judgment.  At three
A.M. on the 12th be started from Fredericstadt, and by 5 P.M. on
Tuesday he had done eighty miles in sixty hours. The force which
accompanied him was all mounted, 1,200 of the Colonial Division (1st
Brabant's, Cape Mounted Rifles, Kaifrarian Rifles, and Border Horse),
and the Yeomanry with ten guns. Douglas with the infantry was to
follow behind, and these brave fellows covered sixty-six miles in
seventy-six hours in their eagerness to be in time.  No men could have
made greater efforts than did those of Methuen, for there was not one
who did not appreciate the importance of the issue and long to come to
close quarters with the wily leader who had baffled us so long.

On the 12th Methuen's van again overtook De Wet's rear, and the old
game of rearguard riflemen on one side, and a pushing artillery on the
other, was once more resumed. All day the Boers streamed over the
veldt with the guns and the horsemen at their heels. A shot from the
78th battery struck one of De Wet's guns, which was abandoned and
captured.  Many stores were taken and much more, with the wagons which
contained them, burned by the Boers.  Fighting incessantly, both
armies traversed thirty-five miles of ground that day.

It was fully understood that Olifant's Nek was held by the British, so
Methuen felt that if he could block the Magato Pass all would be
well. He therefore left De Wet's direct track, knowing that other
British forces were behind him, and he continued his swift advance
until he had reached the desired position.  It really appeared that at
last the elusive raider was in a corner.  But, alas for fallen hopes,
and alas for the wasted efforts of gallant men!  Olifant's Nek had
been abandoned and De Wet had passed safely through it into the plains
beyond, where De la Rey's force was still in possession.  In vain
Methuen's weary column forced the Magato Pass and descended into
Rustenburg.  The enemy was in a safe country once more.  Whose the
fault, or whether there was a fault at all, it is for the future to
determine. At least unalloyed praise can be given to the Boer leader
for the admirable way in which he had extricated himself from so many
dangers. On the 17th,. moving along the northern side of the
mountains, he appeared at Commando Nek on the Little Crocodile River,
where he summoned Baden-Powell to surrender, and received some chaff
in reply from that light-hearted commander. Then, swinging to the
eastward, he endeavoured to cross to the north of Pretoria. On the
19th he was heard of at Hebron. Baden-Powell and Paget had, however,
already barred this path, and De Wet, having sent Steyn on with a
small escort, turned back to the Free State. On the 22nd it was
reported that, with only a handful of his followers, he had crossed
the Magaliesberg range by a bridlepath and was riding southwards.
Lord Roberts was at last free to turn his undivided attention upon
Botha.

Two Boer plots had been discovered during the first half of August,
the one in Pretoria and the other in Johannesburg, each having for its
object a rising against the British in the town. Of these the former,
which was the more serious, involving as it did the kidnapping of Lord
Roberts, was broken up by the arrest of the deviser, Hans Cordua, a
German lieutenant in the Transvaal Artillery. On its merits it is
unlikely that the crime would have been met by the extreme penalty,
especially as it was a question whether the AGENT PROVOCATEUR had not
played a part. But the repeated breaches of parole, by which our
prisoners of one day were in the field against us on the next, called
imperatively for an example, and it was probably rather for his broken
faith than for his hare-brained scheme that Cordua died. At the same
time it is impossible not to feel sorrow for this idealist of
twenty-three who died for a cause which was not his own.  He was shot
in the garden of Pretoria Gaol upon August 24th. A fresh and more
stringent proclamation from Lord Roberts showed that the British
Commander was losing his patience in the face of the wholesale return
of paroled men to the field, and announced that such perfidy would in
future be severely punished.  It was notorious that the same men had
been taken and released more than once.  One man killed in action was
found to have nine signed passes in his pocket.  It was against such
abuses that the extra severity of the British was aimed.


CHAPTER XXIX

THE ADVANCE TO KOMATIPOORT


The time had now come for the great combined movement which was to
sweep the main Boer army off the line of the Delagoa railway, Cut its
source of supplies, and fllow it into that remote and mountainous
Lydenburg district which had always been proclaimed as the last refuge
of the burghers. Before entering upon this most difficult of all his
advances Lord Roberts waited until the cavalry and mounted infantry
were well mounted again. Then, when all was ready, the first step in
this last stage of the regular campaign was taken by General Buller,
who moved his army of Natal veterans off the railway line and advanced
to a position from which he could threaten the flank and rear of Botha
if he held his ground against Lord Roberts. Buller's cavalry had been
reinforced by the arrival of Strathcona's Horse, a fine body of
Canadian troopers, whose services had been presented to the nation by
the public-spirited nobleman whose name they bore. They were
distinguished by their fine physique, and by the lassoes, cowboy
stirrups, and large spurs of the North-Western plains.

It was in the first week of July that Clery joined hands with the
Heidelberg garrison, while Coke with the 10th Brigade cleared the
right flank of the railway by an expedition as far as Amersfoort. On
July 6th the Natal communications were restored, and on the 7th Buller
was able to come through to Pretoria and confer with the
Commander-in-Chief.  A Boer force with heavy guns still hung about the
line, and several small skirmishes were fought between Vlakfontein and
Greylingstad in order to drive it away. By the middle of July the
immediate vicinity of the railway was clear save for some small
marauding parties who endeavoured to tamper with the rails and the
bridges.  Up to the end of the month the whole of the Natal army
remained strung along the line of communications from Heidelberg to
Standerton, waiting for the collection of forage and transport to
enable them to march north against Botha's position.

On August 8th Buller's troops advanced to the northeast from
Paardekop, pushing a weak Boer force with five guns in front of
them. At the cost of twenty-five wounded, principally of the 60th
Rifles, the enemy was cleared off, and the town of Amersfoort was
occupied. On the 13th, moving on the same line, and meeting with very
slight opposition, Buller took possession of Ermelo. His advance was
having a good effect upon the district, for on the 12th the Standerton
commando, which numbered 182 men, surrendered to Clery.  On the 15th,
st~l skirmishing, Buller's men were at Twyfelaar, and had taken
possession of Carolina.  Here and there a distant horseman riding over
the olive-coloured hills showed how closely and incessan~y be was
watched; but, save for a little sniping upon his flanks, there was no
fighting. He was coming now within touch of French's cavalry,
operating from Middelburg, and on the 14th heliographic communication
was established with Gordon's Brigade.

Buller's column had come nearer to its friends, but it was also nearer
to the main body of Boers who were waiting in that very rugged piece
of country which lies between Belfast in the west and Machadodorp in
the east. From this rocky stronghold they had thrown out mobile bodies
to harass the British advance from the south, and every day brought
Buller into closer touch with these advance guards of the enemy.  On
August 21st he had moved eight miles nearer to Belfast, French
operating upon his left flank.  Here he found the Boers in
considerable numbers, but he pushed them northward with his cavalry,
mounted infantry, and artillery, losing between thirty and forty
killed and wounded, the greater part from the ranks of the 18th
Hussars and the Gordon Highlanders.  This march brought him within
fifteen miles of Belfast, which lay due north of him. At the same time
Pole-Carew with the central column of Lord Roberts's force had
advanced along the railway line, and on August 24th he occupied
Belfast with little resistance.  He found, however, that the enemy
were holding the formidable ridges which lie between that place and
Dalmanutha, and that they showed every sign of giving battle,
presenting a firm front to Buller on the south as well as to Roberts's
army on the west.

On the 23rd some successes attended their efforts to check the advance
from the south.  During the day Buller had advanced steadily, though
under incessant fire.  The evening found him only six miles to the
south of Dalmanutha, the centre of the Boer position. By some
misfortune, however, after dark two companies of the Liverpool
Regiment found themselves isolated from their comrades and exposed to
a very heavy fire.  They had pushed forward too far, and were very
near to being surrounded and destroyed.  There were fifty-six
casualties in their ranks, and thirty-two, including their wounded
captain, were taken.  The total losses in the day were 121.

On August 25th it was evident that important events were at hand, for
on that date Lord Roberts arrived at Belfast and held a conference
with Buller, French, and Pole-Carew.  The general communicated his
plans to his three lieutenants, and on the 26th and following days the
fruits of the interview were seen in a succession of rapid manoeuvres
which drove the Boers out of this, the strongest position which they
had held since they left the banks of the Tugela.

The advance of Lord Roberts was made, as his wont is, with two
widespread wings, and a central body to connect them.  Such a movement
leaves the enemy in doubt as to which flank will really be attacked,
while if he denudes his centre in order to strengthen both flanks
there is the chance of a frontal advance which might cut him in two.
French with two cavalry brigades formed the left advance, Pole-Carew
the centre, and Buller the right, the whole operations extending over
thirty miles of infamous country.  It is probable that Lord Roberts
had reckoned that the Boer right was likely to be their strongest
position, since if it were turned it would cut off their retreat upon
Lydenburg, so his own main attack was directed upon their left. This
was carried out by General Buller on August 26th and 27th.

On the first day the movement upon Buller's part consisted in a very
deliberate reconnaissance of and closing in upon the enemy's position,
his troops bivouacking upon the ground which they had won.  On the
second, finding that all further progress was barred by the strong
ridge of Bergendal, he prepared his attack carefully with artillery
and then let loose his infantry upon it. It was a gallant feat of arms
upon either side.  The Boer position was held by a detachment of the
Johannesburg Police, who may have been bullies in peace, but were
certainly heroes in war.  The fire of sixty guns was concentrated for
a couple of hours upon a position only a few hundred yards in
diameter.  In this infernal fire, which left the rocks yellow with
lyddite, the survivors still waited grimly for the advance of the
infantry.  No finer defence was made in the war.  The attack was
carried out across an open glacis by the 2nd Rifle Brigade and by the
Inniskilling Fusiliers, the men of Pieter's Hill.  Through a deadly
fire the gallant infantry swept over the position, though Metcalfe,
the brave colonel of the Rifles, with eight other officers, and
seventy men were killed or wounded. Lysley, Steward, and Campbell were
all killed in leading their companies, but they could not have met
their deaths upon an occasion more honourable to their battalion.
Great credit must also be given to A and B companies of the
Inniskilling Fusiliers, who were actually the first over the Boer
position.  The cessation of the artillery fire was admirably timed.
It was sustained up to the last possible instant.  'As it was,' said
the captain of the leading company, 'a 94-lb. shell burst about thirty
yards in front of the right of our lot.  The smell of the lyddite was
awful.'  A pom-pom and twenty prisoners, including the commander of
the police, were the trophies of the day.  An outwork of the Boer
position had been carried, and the rumour of defeat and disaster had
already spread through their ranks. Braver men than the burghers have
never lived, but they had reached the limits of human endurance, and a
long experience of defeat in the field had weakened their nerve and
lessened their morale.  They were no longer men of the same fibre as
those who had crept up to the trenches of Spion Kop, or faced the lean
warriors of Ladysmith on that grim January morning at Caesar's Camp.
Dutch tenacity would not allow them to surrender, and yet they
realised how hopeless was the fight in which they were engaged.
Nearly fifteen thousand of their best men were prisoners, ten thousand
at the least had returned to their farms and taken the oath.  Another
ten had been killed, wounded, or incapacitated.  Most of the European
mercenaries had left; they held only the ultimate corner of their own
country, they had lost their grip upon the railway line, and their
supply of stores and of ammunition was dwindling.  To such a pass had
eleven months of war reduced that formidable army who had so
confidently advanced to the conquest of South Africa.

While Buller had established himself firmly upon the left of the Boer
position, Pole-Carew had moved forward to the north of the railway
line, and French had advanced as far as Swart Kopjes upon the Boer
right. These operations on August 26th and 27th were met with some
resistance, and entailed a loss of forty or fifty killed and wounded;
but it soon became evident that the punishment which they had received
at Bergendal had taken the fight out of the Boers, and that this
formidable position was to be abandoned as the others had been. On the
28th the burghers were retreating, and Machadodorp, where Kruger had
sat so long in his railway carriage, protesting that he would
eventually move west and not east, was occupied by Buller.  French,
moving on a more northerly route, entered Watervalonder with his
cavalry upon the same date, driving a small Boer force before
him. Amid rain and mist the British columns were pushing rapidly
forwards, but still the burghers held together, and still their
artillery was uncaptured.  The retirement was swift, but it was not
yet a rout.

On the 30th the British cavalry were within touch of Nooitgedacht, and
saw a glad sight in a long trail of ragged men who were hurrying in
their direction along the railway line.  They were the British
prisoners, eighteen hundred in number, half of whom had been brought
from Waterval when Pretoria was captured, while the other half
represented the men who had been sent from the south by De Wet, or
from the west by De la Rey.  Much allowance must be made for the
treatment of prisoners by a belligerent who is himself short of food,
but nothing can excuse the harshness which the Boers showed to the
Colonials who fell into their power, or the callous neglect of the
sick prisoners at Waterval. It is a humiliating but an interesting
fact that from first to last no fewer than seven thousand of our men
passed into their power, all of whom were now recovered save some
sixty officers, who had been carried off by them in their flight.

On September 1st Lord Roberts showed his sense of the decisive nature
of these recent operations by publishing the proclamation which had
been issued as early as July 4th, by which the Transvaal became a
portion of the British Empire.  On the same day General Buller, who
had ceased to advance to the east and retraced his steps as far as
Helvetia, began his northerly movement in the direction of Lydenburg,
which is nearly fifty miles to the north of the railway line.  On that
date his force made a march of fourteen miles, which brought them over
the Crocodile River to Badfontein. Here, on September 2nd, Buller
found that the indomitable Botha was still turning back upon him, for
he was faced by so heavy a shell fire, coming from so formidable a
position, that he had to be content to wait in front of it until some
other column should outflank it.  The days of unnecessary frontal
attacks were for ever over, and his force, though ready for anything
which might be asked of it, had gone through a good deal in the recent
operations.  Since August 21st they had been under fire almost every
day, and their losses, though never great on any one occasion,
amounted in the aggregate during that time to 365. They had crossed
the Tugela, they had relieved Ladysmith, they had forced Laing's Nek,
and now it was to them that the honour had fallen of following the
enemy into this last fastness.  Whatever criticism may be directed
against some episodes in the Natal campaign, it must never be
forgotten that to Buller and to his men have fallen some of the
hardest tasks of the war, and that these tasks have always in the end
been successfully carried out.  The controversy about the unfortunate
message to White, and the memory of the abandoned guns at Colenso,
must not lead us to the injustice of ignoring all that is to be set to
the credit account.

On September 3rd Lord Roberts, finding how strong a position faced
Buller, despatched Ian Hamilton with a force to turn it upon the
right.  Brocklehurst's brigade of cavalry joined Hamilton in his
advance.  On the 4th he was within signalling distance of Buller, and
on the right rear of the Boer position.  The occupation of a mountain
called Zwaggenhoek would establish Hamilton firmly, and the difficult
task of seizing it at night was committed to Colonel Douglas and his
fine regiment of Royal Scots.  It was Spion Kop over again, but with a
happier ending.  At break of day the Boers discovered that their
position had been rendered untenable and withdrew, leaving the road to
Lydenburg clear to Buller. Hamilton and he occupied the town upon the
6th.  The Boers had split into two parties, the larger one with the
guns falling back upon Kruger's Post, and the others retiring to
Pilgrim's Rest.  Amid cloud-girt peaks and hardly passable ravines the
two long-enduring armies still wrestled for the final mastery.

To the north-east of Lydenburg, between that town and Spitzkop, there
is a formidable ridge called the Mauchberg, and here again the enemy
were found to be standing at bay.  They were even better than their
word, for they had always said that they would make their last stand
at Lydenburg, and now they were making one beyond it.  But the
resistance was weakening.  Even this fine position could not be held
against the rush of the three regiments, the Devons, the Royal Irisb,
and the Royal Scots, who were let loose upon it.  The artillery
supported the attack admirably.  'They did nobly,' said one who led
the advance.  'It is impossible to overrate the value of their
support.  They ceased also exactly at the right moment.  One more
shell would have hit us.'  Mountain mists saved the defeated burghers
from a close pursuit, but the hills were carried.  The British losses
on this day, September 8th, were thirteen killed and twenty-five
wounded; but of these thirty-eight no less than half were accounted
for by one of those strange malignant freaks which can neither be
foreseen nor prevented. A shrapnel shell, fired at an incredible
distance, burst right over the Volunteer Company of the Gordons who
were marching in column. Nineteen men fell, but it is worth recording
that, smitten so suddenly and so terribly, the gallant Volunteers
continued to advance as steadily as before this misfortune befell
them.  On the 9th Buller was still pushing forward to Spitzkop, his
guns and the 1st Rifles overpowering a weak rearguard resistance of
the Boers.  On the 10th he had reached Klipgat, which is halfway
between the Mauchberg and Spitzkop.  So close was the pursuit that the
Boers, as they streamed through the passes, flung thirteen of their
ammunition wagons over the cliffs to prevent them from falling into
the hands of the British horsemen.  At one period it looked as if the
gallant Boer guns had waited too long in covering the retreat of the
burghers.  Strathcona's Horse pressed closely upon them.  The
situation was saved by the extreme coolness and audacity of the Boer
gunners.  'When the cavalry were barely half a mile behind the rear
gun' says an eye-witness 'and we regarded its capture as certain, the
LEADING Long Tom deliberately turned to bay and opened with case shot
at the pursuers streaming down the hill in single file over the head
of his brother gun. It was a magnificent coup, and perfectly
successful.  The cavalry had to retire, leaving a few men wounded, and
by the time our heavy guns had arrived both Long Toms had got clean
away.'  But the Boer riflemen would no longer stand. Demoralised after
their magnificent struggle of eleven months the burghers were now a
beaten and disorderly rabble flying wildly to the eastward, and only
held together by the knowledge that in their desperate situation there
was more comfort and safety in numbers. The war seemed to be swiftly
approaching its close. On the 15th Buller occupied Spitzkop in the
north, capturing a quantity of stores, while on the 14th French took
Barberton in the south, releasing all the remaining British prisoners
and taking possession of forty locomotives, which do not appear to
have been injured by the enemy.  Meanwhile Pole-Carew had worked along
the railway line, and had occupied Kaapmuiden, which was the junction
where the Barberton line joins that to Lourenço Marques.  Ian
Hamilton's force, after the taking of Lydenburg and the action which
followed, turned back, leaving Buller to go his own way, and reached
Komatipoort on September 24th, having marched since September 9th
without a halt through a most difficult country.

On September 11th an incident had occurred which must have shown the
most credulous believer in Boer prowess that their cause was indeed
lost.  On that date Paul Kruger, a refugee from the country which he
had ruined, arrived at Lourenço Marques, abandoning his beaten
commandos and his deluded burghers.  How much had happened since those
distant days when as a little herdsboy he had walked behind the
bullocks on the great northward trek. How piteous this ending to all
his strivings and his plottings!  A life which might have closed amid
the reverence of a nation and the admiration of the world was destined
to finish in exile, impotent and undignified.  Strange thoughts must
have come to him during those hours of flight, memories of his virile
and turbulent youth, of the first settlement of those great lands, of
wild wars where his hand was heavy upon the natives, of the triumphant
days of the war of independence, when England seemed to recoil from
the rifles of the burghers. And then the years of prosperity, the
years when the simple farmer found himself among the great ones of the
earth, his name a household word in Europe, his State rich and
powerful, his coffers filled with the spoil of the poor drudges who
worked so hard and paid taxes so readily. Those were his great days,
the days when he hardened his heart against their appeals for justice
and looked beyond his own borders to his kinsmen in the hope of a
South Africa which should be all his own. And now what had come of it
all? A handful of faithful attendants, and a fugitive old man,
clutching in his flight at his papers and his moneybags. The last of
the old-world Puritans, he departed poring over his well-thumbed
Bible, and proclaiming that the troubles of his country arose, not
from his own narrow and corrupt administration, but from some
departure on the part of his fellow burghers from the stricter tenets
of the dopper sect.  So Paul Kruger passed away from the country which
he had loved and ruined.

Whilst the main army of Botha had been hustled out of their position
at Machadodorp and scattered at Lydenburg and at Barberton, a number
of other isolated events had occurred at different points of the seat
of war, each of which deserves some mention.  The chief of these was a
sudden revival of the war in the Orange River Colony, where the band
of Olivier was still wandering in the north-eastern districts.
Hunter, moving northwards after the capitulation of Prinsloo at
Fouriesburg, came into contact on August 15th with this force near
Heilbron, and had forty casualties, mainly of the Highland Light
Infantry, in a brisk engagement. For a time the British seemed to have
completely lost touch with Olivier, who suddenly on August 24th struck
at a small detachment consisting almost entirely of Queenstown Rifle
Volunteers under Colonel Ridley, who were reconnoitring near
Winburg. The Colonial troopers made a gallant defence.  Throwing
themselves into the farmhouse of Helpmakaar, and occupying every post
of vantage around it, they held off more than a thousand assailants,
in spite of the three guns which the latter brought to bear upon them.
A hundred and thirty-two rounds were fired at the house, but the
garrison still refused to surrender.  Troopers who had been present at
Wepener declared that the smaller action was the warmer of the
two. Finally on the morning of the third day a relief force arrived
upon the scene, and the enemy dispersed.  The British losses were
thirty-two killed and wounded. Nothing daunted by his failure, Olivier
turned upon the town of Winburg and attempted to regain it, but was
defeated again and scattered, he and his three sons being taken.  The
result was due to the gallantry and craft of a handful of the
Queenstown Volunteers, who laid an ambuscade in a donga, and disarmed
the Boers as they passed, after the pattern of Sanna's Post.  By this
action one of the most daring and resourceful of the Dutch leaders
fell into the hands of the British.  It is a pity that his record is
stained by his dishonourable conduct in breaking the compact made on
the occasion of the capture of Prinsloo. But for British magnanimity a
drumhead court-martial should have taken the place of the hospitality
of the Ceylon planters.

On September 2nd another commando of Free State Boers under Fourie
emerged from the mountain country on the Basuto border, and fell upon
Ladybrand, which was held by a feeble garrison consisting of one
company of the Worcester regiment and forty-three men of the Wiltshire
Yeomanry.  The Boers, who had several guns with them, appear to have
been the same force which had been repulsed at Winburg.  Major White,
a gallant marine, whose fighting qualities do not seem to have
deteriorated with his distance from salt water, had arranged his
defences upon a hill, after the Wepener model, and held his own most
stoutly.  So great was the disparity of the forces that for days acute
anxiety was felt lest another of those humiliating surrenders should
interrupt the record of victories, and encourage the Boers to further
resistance.  The point was distant, and it was some time before relief
could reach them.  But the dusky chiefs, who from their native
mountains looked down on the military drama which was played so close
to their frontier, were again, as on the Jammersberg, to see the Boer
attack beaten back by the constancy of the British defence. The thin
line of soldiers, 150 of them covering a mile and a half of ground,
endured a heavy shell and rifle fire with unshaken resolution,
repulsed every attempt of the burghers, and held the flag flying until
relieved by the forces under White and Bruce Hamilton.  In this march
to the relief Hamilton's infantry covered eighty miles in four and a
half days.  Lean and hard, inured to warfare, and far from every
temptation of wine or women, the British troops at this stage of the
campaign were in such training, and marched so splendidly, that the
infantry was often very little slower than the cavalry. Methuen's fine
performance in pursuit of De Wet, where Douglas's infantry did
sixty-six miles in seventy-five hours, the City Imperial Volunteers
covering 224 miles in fourteen days, with a single forced march of
thirty miles in seventeen hours, the Shropshires forty-three miles in
thirty-two hours, the forty-five miles in twenty-five hours of the
Essex Regiment, Bruce Hamilton's march recorded above, and many other
fine efforts serve to show the spirit and endurance of the troops.

In spite of the defeat at Winburg and the repulse at Ladybrand, there
still remained a fair number of broken and desperate men in the Free
State who held out among the difficult country of the east. A party of
these came across in the middle of September and endeavoured to cut
the railway near Brandfort.  They were pursued and broken up by
Macdonald, who, much aided in his operations by the band of scouts
which Lord Lovat had brought with him from Scotland, took several
prisoners and a large number of wagons and of oxen.  A party of these
Boers attacked a small post of sixteen Yeomanry under Lieutenant
Slater at Buitfontein, but were held at bay until relief came from
Brandfort.

At two other points the Boer and British forces were in contact during
these operations.  One was to the immediate north of Pretoria1 where
Grobler's commando was faced by Paget's brigade.  On August 18th the
Boers were forced with some loss out of Hornies Nek, which is ten
miles to the north of the capital.  On the 22nd a more important
skirmish took place at Pienaar's River, in the same direction, between
Baden-Powell's men, who had come thither in pursuit of De Wet, and
Grobler's band.  The advance guards of the two forces galloped into
each other, and for once Boer and Briton looked down the muzzles of
each other's rifles. The gallant Rhodesian Regiment, which had done
such splendid service during the war, suffered most heavily. Colonel
Spreckley and four others were killed, and six or seven wounded.  The
Boers were broken, however, and fled, leaving twenty-five prisoners to
the victors. Baden-Powell and Paget pushed forwards as far as
Nylstroom, but finding themselves in wild and profitless country they
returned towards Pretoria, and established the British northern posts
at a place called Warm Baths. Here Paget commanded, while Baden-Powell
shortly afterwards went down to Cape Town to make arrangements for
taking over the police force of the conquered countries, and to
receive the enthusiastic welcome of his colonial
fellow-countrymen. Plumer, with a small force operating from Warm
Baths, scattered a Boer cornmando on September 1st, capturing a few
prisoners and a considerable quantity of munitions of war.  On the 5th
there was another skirmish in the same neighbourhood, during which the
enemy attacked a kopje held by a company of Munster Fusiliers, and was
driven off with loss.  Many thousands of cattle were captured by the
British in this part of the field of operations, and were sent into
Pretoria, whence they helped to supply the army in the east.

There was still considerable effervescence in the western districts of
the Transvaal, and a mounted detachment met with fierce opposition at
the end of August on their journey from Zeerust to
Krugersdorp. Methuen, after his unsuccessful chase of De Wet, had gone
as far as Zeerust, and had then taken his force on to Mafeking to
refit.  Before leaving Zeerust, however, he had despatched Colonel
Little to Pretoria with a column which consisted of his own third
cavalry brigade, 1st Brabant's, the Kaffrarian Rifles, R battery of
Horse Artillery, and four Colonial guns.  They were acting as guard to
a very large convoy of 'returned empties.' The district which they had
to traverse is one of the most fertile in the Transvaal, a land of
clear streams and of orange groves. But the farmers are numerous and
aggressive, and the column, which was 900 strong, could clear all
resistance from its front, but found it impossible to brush off the
snipers upon its flanks and rear.  Shortly after their start the
column was deprived of the services of its gallant leader, Colonel
Little, who was shot while riding with his advance scouts.  Colonel
Dalgety took over the command.  Numerous desultory attacks culminated
in a fierce skirmish at Quaggafontein on August 31st, in which the
column had sixty casualties. The event might have been serious, as De
la Rey's main force appears to have been concentrated upon the British
detachment, the brunt of the action falling upon the Kaffrarian
Rifles.  By a rapid movement the column was able to extricate itself
and win its way safely to Krugersdorp, but it narrowly escaped out of
the wolf's jaws, and as it emerged into the open country De la Rey's
guns were seen galloping for the pass which they had just come
through. This force was sent south to Kroonstad to refit.

Lord Methuen's army, after its long marches and arduous work, arrived
at Mafeking on August 28th for the purpose of refitting. Since his
departure from Boshof on May 14th his men had been marching with
hardly a rest, and he had during that time fought fourteen
engagements. He was off upon the war-path once more, with fresh horses
and renewed energy, on September 8th, and on the 9th, with the
co-operation of General Douglas, he scattered a Boer force at Malopo,
capturing thirty prisoners and a great. quantity of stores.  On the
14th he ran down a convoy and regained one of the Colenso guns and
much ammunition. On the 20th he again made large captures. If in the
early phases of the war the Boers had given Paul Methuen some evil
hours, he was certainly getting his own back again.  At the same time
Clements was despatched from Pretoria with a small mobile force for
the purpose of clearing the Rustenburg and Krugersdorp districts,
which had always been storm centres. These two forces, of Methuen and
of Clements, moved through the country, sweeping the scattered Boer
bands before them, and hunting them down until they dispersed. At
Kekepoort and at Hekspoort Clements fought successful skirmishes,
losing at the latter action Lieutenant Stanley of the Yeomanry, the
Somersetshire cricketer, who showed, as so many have done, how close
is the connection between the good sportsman and the good soldier. On
the 12th Douglas took thirty-nine prisoners near Lichtenburg. On the
18th Rundle captured a gun at Bronkhorstfontein. Hart at
Potchefstroom, Hildyard in the Utrecht district, Macdonald in the
Orange River Colony, everywhere the British Generals were busily
stamping out the remaining embers of what had been so terrible a
conflagration.

Much trouble but no great damage was inflicted upon the British during
this last stage of the war by the incessant attacks upon the lines of
railway by roving bands of Boers.  The actual interruption of traffic
was of little consequence, for the assiduous Sappers with their gangs
of Basuto labourers were always at hand to repair the break. But the
loss of stores, and occasionally of lives, was more serious.  Hardly a
day passed that the stokers and drivers were not made targets of by
snipers among the kopjes,[Footnote: It is to be earnestly hoped that
those in authority will see that these men obtain the medal and any
other reward which can mark our sense of their faithful service. One
of them in the Orange River Colony, after narrating to me his many
hairbreadth escapes, prophesied bitterly that the memory of his
services would pass with the need for them.] and occasionally a train
was entirely destroyed.  Chief among these raiders was the wild
Theron, who led a band which contained men of all nations -- the same
gang who had already, as narrated, held up a train in the Orange River
Colony.  On August 31st he derailed another at Flip River to the south
of Johannesburg, blowing up the engine and burning thirteen
trucks. Almost at the same time a train was captured near Kroonstad,
which appeared to indicate that the great De Wet was back in his old
hunting-grounds.  On the same day the line was cut at Standerton. A
few days later, however, the impunity with which these feats had been
performed was broken, for in a similar venture near Krugersdorp the
dashing Theron and several of his associates lost their lives.

Two other small actions performed at this period of the war demand a
passing notice.  One was a smart engagement near Kraai Railway
Station, in which Major Broke of the Sappers with a hundred men
attacked a superior Boer force upon a kopje and drove them off with
loss -- a feat which it is safe to say he could not have accomplished
six months earlier. The other was the fine defence made by 125 of the
Canadian Mounted Rifles, who, while guarding the railway, were attacked
by a considerable Boer force with two guns.  They proved once more, as
Ladybrand and Elands River had shown, that with provisions,
cartridges, and brains, the smallest force can successfully hold its
own if it confines itself to the defensive.

And now the Boer cause appeared to be visibly tottering to its fall.
The flight of the President had accelerated that process of
disintegration which had already set in. Schalk Burger had assumed the
office of Vice-President, and the notorious Ben Viljoen bad become
first lieutenant of Louis Botha in maintaining the struggle. Lord
Roberts had issued an extremely judicious proclamation, in which he
pointed out the uselessness of further resistance, declared that
guerilla warfare would be ruthlessly suppressed, and informed the
burghers that no fewer than fifteen thousand of their
fellow-countrymen were in his hands as prisoners, and that none of
these could he released until the last rifle had been laid down.  From
all sides in the third week of September the British forces were
converging on Komatipoort, the frontier town. Already wild figures,
stained and tattered after nearly a year of warfare, were walking the
streets of Lourenço Marques, gazed at with wonder and some distrust by
the Portuguese inhabitants.  The exiled burghers moodily pacing the
streets saw their exiled President seated in his corner of the
Governor's verandah, the well-known curved pipe still dangling from
his mouth, the Bible by his chair.  Day by day the number of these
refugees increased.  On September 17th special trains were arriving
crammed with the homeless burghers, and with the mercenaries of many
nations -- French, German, Irish-American, and Russian -- all anxious
to make their way home.  By the 19th no fewer than seven hundred had
passed over.

At dawn on September 22nd a half-hearted attempt was made by the
commando of Erasmus to attack Elands River Station, but it was beaten
back by the garrison.  While it was going on Paget fell upon the camp
which Erasmus had left behind him, and captured his stores.  From all
over the country, from Plumer's Bushmen, from Barton at Krugersdorp,
from the Colonials at Heilbron, from Clements on the west, came the
same reports of dwindling resistance and of the abandoning of cattle,
arms, and ammunition.

On September 24th came the last chapter in this phase of the campaign
in the Eastern Transvaal, when at eight in the morning Pole-Carew and
his Guardsmen occupied Komatipoort.  They had made desperate marches,
one of them through thick bush, where they went for nineteen miles
without water, but nothing could shake the cheery gallantry of the
men.  To them fell the honour, an honour well deserved by their
splendid work throughout the whole campaign, of entering and occupying
the ultimate eastern point which the Boers could hold. Resistance had
been threatened and prepared for, but the grim silent advance of that
veteran infantry took the heart out of the defence.  With hardly a
shot fired the town was occupied.  The bridge which would enable the
troops to receive their supplies from Lourenço Marques was still
intact.  General Pienaar and the greater part of his force, amounting
to over two thousand men, had crossed the frontier and had been taken
down to Delagoa Bay, where they met the respect and attention which
brave men in misfortune deserve.  Small bands had slipped away to the
north and the south, but they were insignificant in numbers and
depressed in spirit. For the time it seemed that the campaign was
over, but the result showed that there was greater vitality in the
resistance of the burghers and less validity in their oaths than any
one had imagined.

One find of the utmost importance was made at Komatipoort, and at
Hector Spruit on the Crocodile River. That excellent artillery which
had fought so gallant a fight against our own more numerous guns, was
found destroyed and abandoned. Pole-Carew at Komatipoort got one Long
Tom (96 lb.) Creusot, and one smaller gun. Ian Hamilton at Hector
Spruit found the remains of many guns, which included two of our horse
artillery twelve-pounders, two large Creusot guns, two Krupps, one
Vickers-Maxim quick firer, two pompoms and four mountain guns.


CHAPTER XXX

THE CAMPAIGN OF DE WET


IT had been hoped that the dispersal of the main Boer army, the
capture of its guns and the expulsion of many both of the burghers and
of the foreign mercenaries, would have marked the end of the war.
These expectations were, however, disappointed, and South Africa was
destined to be afflicted and the British Empire disturbed by a useless
guerilla campaign. After the great and dramatic events which
characterised the earlier phases of the struggle between the Briton
and the Boer for the mastery of South Africa it is somewhat of the
nature of an anticlimax to turn one's attention to those scattered
operations which prolonged the resistance for a turbulent year at the
expense of the lives of many brave men on either side.  These raids
and skirmishes, which had their origin rather in the hope of vengeance
than of victory, inflicted much loss and misery upon the country, but,
although we may deplore the desperate resolution which bids brave men
prefer death to subjugation, it is not for us, the countrymen of
Hereward or Wallace, to condemn it.

In one important respect these numerous, though trivial, conflicts
differed from the battles in the earlier stages of the war.  The
British had learned their lesson so thoroughly that they often turned
the tables upon their instructors. Again and again the surprise was
effected, not by the nation of hunters, but by those roineks whose
want of cunning and of veldt-craft had for so long been a subject of
derision and merriment. A year of the kopje and the donga had altered
all that. And in the proportion of casualties another very marked
change had occurred.  Time was when in battle after battle a tenth
would have been a liberal estimate for the losses of the Boers
compared with those of the Briton. So it was at Stormberg; so it was
at Colenso; so it may have been at Magersfontein.  But in this last
stage of the war the balance was rather in favour of the British. It
may have been because they were now frequently acting on the
defensive, or it may have been from an improvement in their fire, or
it may have come from the more desperate mood of the burghers, but in
any case the fact remains that every encounter diminished the small
reserves of the Boers rather than the ample forces of their opponents.

One other change had come over the war, which caused more distress and
searchings of conscience among some of the people of Great Britain
than the darkest hours of their misfortunes.  This lay in the
increased bitterness of the struggle, and in those more strenuous
measures which the British commanders felt themselves entitled and
compelled to adopt. Nothing could exceed the lenity of Lord Roberts's
early proclainations in the Free State.  But, as the months went on
and the struggle still continued, the war assumed a harsher aspect.
Every farmhouse represented a possible fort, and a probable depôt for
the enemy.  The extreme measure of burning them down was only carried
out after a definite offence, such as affording cover for snipers, or
as a deterrent to railway wreckers, but in either case it is evident
tbat the women or children who were usually the sole occupants of the
farm could not by their own unaided exertions prevent the line from
being cut or the riflemen from firing. It is even probable that the
Boers may have committed these deeds in the vicinity of houses the
destruction of which they would least regret.  Thus, on humanitarian
grounds there were strong arguments against this policy of destruction
being pushed too far, and the political reasons were even stronger,
since a homeless man is necessarily the last man to settle down, and a
burned-out family the last to become contented British citizens. On
the other hand, the impatience of the army towards what they regarded
as the abuses of lenity was very great, and they argued that the war
would be endless if the women in the farm were allowed always to
supply the sniper on the kopje.  The irregular and brigand-like
fashion in which the struggle was carried out had exasperated the
soldiers, and though there were few cases of individual outrage or
unauthorised destruction, the general orders were applied with some
harshness, and repressive measures were taken which warfare may justify
but which civilisation must deplore.

After the dispersal of the main army at Komatipoort there remained a
considerable number of men in arms, some of them irreconcilable
burghers, some of them foreign adventurers, and some of them Cape
rebels, to whom British arms were less terrible than British law.
These men, who were still well armed and well mounted, spread
themselves over the country, and acted with such energy that they gave
the impression of a large force. They made their way into the settled
districts, and brought fresh hope and fresh disaster to many who had
imagined that the war had passed for ever away from them.  Under
compulsion from their irreconcilable countrymen, a large number of the
farmers broke their parole, mounted the horses which British leniency
had left with them, and threw themselves once more into the struggle,
adding their honour to the other sacrifices which they had made for
their country. In any account of the continual brushes between these
scattered bands and the British forces, there must be such a
similarity in procedure and result, that it would be hard for the
writer and intolerable for the reader if they were set forth in
detail. As a general statement it may be said that during the months
to come there was no British garrison in any one of the numerous posts
in the Transvaal, and in that portion of the Orange River Colony which
lies east of the railway, which was not surrounded by prowling
riflemen, there was no convoy sent to supply those garrisons which was
not liable to be attacked upon the road, and there was no train upon
any one of the three lines which might not find a rail up and a
hundred raiders covering it with their Mausers.  With some two
thousand miles of railroad to guard, so many garrisons to provide, and
an escort to be furnished to every convoy, there remained out of the
large body of British troops in the country only a moderate force who
were available for actual operations.  This force was distributed in
different districts scattered over a wide extent of country, and it
was evident that while each was strong enough to suppress local
resistance, still at any moment a concentration of the Boer scattered
forces upon a single British column might place the latter in a
serious position.  The distribution of the British in October and
November was roughly as follows.  Methuen was in the Rustenburg
district, Barton at Krugersdorp and operating down the line to
Klerksdorp, Settle was in the West, Paget at Pienaar's River, Clements
in the Magaliesberg, Hart at Potchefstroom, Lyttelton at Middelburg,
Smith-Dorrien at Belfast, W. Kitchener at Lydenburg, French in the
Eastern Transvaal, Hunter, Rundle, Brabant, and Bruce Hamilton in the
Orange River Colony. Each of these forces was occupied in the same
sort of work, breaking up small bodies of the enemy, hunting for arms,
bringing in refugees, collecting supplies, and rounding up
cattle. Some, however, were confronted with organised resistance and
some were not.  A short account may be given in turn of each separate
column.

I would treat first the operations of General Barton, because they
form the best introduction to that narrative of the doings of
Christian De Wet to which this chapter will be devoted.

The most severe operations during the month of October fell to the lot
of this British General, who, with some of the faithful fusiliers whom
he had led from the first days in Natal, was covering the line from
Krugersdorp to Klerksdorp.  It is a long stretch, and one which, as
the result shows, is as much within striking distance of the Orange
Free Staters as of the men of the Transvaal. Upon October 5th Barton
left Krugersdorp with a force which consisted of the Scots and Welsh
Fusiliers, five hundred mounted men, the 78th R.F.A., three pom-poms,
and a 4.7 naval gun. For a fortnight, as the small army moved slowly
down the line of the railroad, their progress was one continual
skirmish.  On October 6th they brushed the enemy aside in an action in
which the volunteer company of the Scots Fusiliers gained the applause
of their veteran comrades.  On the 8th and 9th there was sharp
skirmishing, the brunt of which on the latter date fell upon the Welsh
Fusiliers, who had three officers and eleven men injured.  The
commandos of Douthwaite, Liebenberg, and Van der Merve seem to have
been occupied in harassing the column during their progress through
the Gatsrand range.  On the 15th the desultory sniping freshened again
into a skirmish in which the honours and the victory belonged mainly
to the Welshmen and to that very keen and efficient body, the Scottish
Yeomanry.  Six Boers were left dead upon the ground. On October 17th
the column reached Frederickstad, where it halted.  On that date six
of Marshall's Horse were cut off while collecting supplies.  The same
evening three hundred of the Imperial Light Horse came in from
Krugersdorp.

Up to this date the Boer forces which dogged the column had been
annoying but not seriously aggressive. On the 19th, however, affairs
took an unexpected turn. The British scouts rode in to report a huge
dust cloud whirling swiftly northwards from the direction of the Vaal
River -- soon plainly visible to all, and showing as it drew nearer
the hazy outline of a long column of mounted men.  The dark coats of
the riders, and possibly the speed of their advance, showed tbat they
were Boers, and soon it was rumoured that it was no other than
Christian De Wet with his merry men, who, with characteristic
audacity, had ridden back into the Transvaal in the hope of
overwhelming Barton's column.

It is some time since we have seen anything of this energetic
gentleman with the tinted glasses, but as the narrative will be much
occupied with him in the future a few words are needed to connect him
with the past. It has been already told how he escaped through the net
which caught so many of his countrymen at the time of the surrender of
Prinsloo, and how he was chased at furious speed from the Vaal River
to the mountains of Magaliesberg.  Here he eluded his pursuers,
separated from Steyn, who desired to go east to confer with Kruger,
and by the end of August was back again in his favourite recruiting
ground in the north of the Orange River Colony.  Here for nearly two
months he had lain very quiet, refitting and reassembling his
scattered force, until now, ready for action once more, and fired by
the hope of cutting off an isolated British force, he rode swiftly
northwards with two thousand men under that rolling cloud which had
been spied by the watchers of Frederickstad.

The problem before him was a more serious one, however, than any which
he had ever undertaken, for this was no isolated regiment or
ill-manned post, but a complete little field force very ready to do
battle with him. De Wet's burghers, as they arrived, sprang from their
ponies and went into action in their usual invisible but effective
fashion, covered by the fire of several guns.  The soldiers had thrown
up lines of sangars, however, and were able, though exposed to a very
heavy fire coming from several directions, to hold their own until
nightfall, when the defences were made more secure.  On the 20th,
21st, 22nd, 23rd, and 24th the cordon of the attack was drawn
gradually closer, the Boers entirely surrounding the British force,
and it was evident that they were feeling round for a point at which
an assault might be delivered.

The position of the defenders upon the morning of October 25th was as
follows.  The Scots Fusiliers were holding a ridge to the
south. General Barton with the rest of his forces occupied a hill some
distance off. Between the two was a valley down which ran the line,
and also the spruit upon which the British depended for their water
supply.  On each side of the line were ditches, and at dawn on this
seventh day of the investment it was found that these had been
occupied by snipers during the night, and that it was impossible to
water the animals. One of two things must follow. Either the force
must shift its position or it must drive these men out of their cover.
No fire could do it, as they lay in perfect safety.  They must be
turned out at the point of the bayonet.

About noon several companies of Scots and Welsh Fusiliers advanced
from different directions in very extended order upon the
ditcbes. Captain Baillie's company of the former regiment first
attracted the fire of the burghers.  Wounded twice the brave officer
staggered on until a third bullet struck him dead.  Six of his men
were found lying beside him.  The other companies were exposed in
their turn to a severe fire, but rushing onwards they closed rapidly
in upon the ditches. There have been few finer infantry advances
during the war, for the veldt was perfectly flat and the fire
terrific. A mile of ground was crossed by the fusiliers.  Three
gallant officers -- Dick, Elliot, and Best -- went down; but the rush
of the men was irresistible. At the edge of the ditches the supports
overtook the firing line, and they all surged into the trenches
together.  Then it was seen how perilous was the situation of the Boer
snipers. They had placed themselves between the upper and the nether
millstone.  There was no escape for them save across the open.  It
says much for their courage that they took that perilous choice rather
than wave the white flag, which would have ensured their safety.

The scene which followed has not often been paralleled. About a
hundred and fifty burghers rushed out of the ditches, streaming across
the veldt upon foot to the spot where their horses had been
secreted. Rifles, pom-poms, and shrapnel played upon them during this
terrible race.  'A black running mob carrying coats, blankets, boots,
rifles, &c., was seen to rise as if from nowhere and rush as fast as
they could, dropping the various things they carried as they ran.'
One of their survivors has described how awful was that wild blind
flight, through a dust-cloud thrown up by the shells. For a mile the
veldt was dotted with those who had fallen. Thirty-six were found
dead, thirty were wounded, and thirty more gave themselves up as
prisoners.  Some were so demoralised that they rushed into the
hospital and surrendered to the British doctor.  The Imperial Light
Horse were for some reason slow to charge.  Had they done so at once,
many eye-witnesses agree that not a fugitive should have escaped.  On
the other hand, the officer in command may have feared that in doing
so he might mask the fire of the British guns.

One incident in the action caused some comment at he time.  A small
party of Imperial Light Horse, gallantly led by Captain Yockney of B
Squadron, came to close quarters with a group of Boers.  Five of the
enemy having held up their hands Yockney passed them and pushed on
against their comrades.  On this the prisoners seized their rifles
once more and fired upon their captors.  A fierce fight ensued with
only a few feet between the muzzles of the rifles.  Three Boers were
shot dead, five wounded, and eight taken.  Of these eight three were
shot next day by order of court-martial for having resumed their
weapons after surrender, while two others were acquitted.  The death
of these men in cold blood is to be deplored, but it is difficult to
see how any rules of civilised warfare can be maintained if a flagrant
breach of them is not promptly and sternly punished.

On receiving this severe blow De Wet promptly raised the investment
and hastencd to regain his favourite haunts. Considerable
reinforcements had reached Barton upon the same day, including the
Dublins, the Essex, Strathcona's Horse, and the Elswick Battery, with
some very welcome supplies of ammunition. As Barton had now more than
a thousand mounted men of most excellent quality it is difficult to
imagine why he did not pursue his defeated enemy. He seems to have
underrated the effect which he had produced, for instead of instantly
assuming the offensive he busied himself in strengthening his
defences. Yet the British losses in the whole operations had not
exceeded one hundred, so that there does not appear to have been any
reason why the force should be crippled. As Barton was in direct and
constant telegraphic communication with Pretoria, it is possible that
he was acting under superior orders in the course which he adopted.

It was not destined, however, that De Wet should be allowed to escape
with his usual impunity. On the 27th, two days after his retreat from
Frederickstad he was overtaken -- stumbled upon by pure chance
apparently -- by the mounted infantry and cavalry of Charles Knox and De
Lisle.  The Boers, a great disorganised cloud of horsemen, swept
swiftly along the northern bank of the Vaal, seeking for a place to
cross, while the British rode furiously after them, spraying them with
shrapnel at every opportunity.  Darkness and a violent storm gave De
Wet his opportunity to cross, but the closeness of the pursuit
compelled him to abandon two of his guns, one of them a Krupp and the
other one of the British twelve-pounders of Sanna's Post, which, to the
delight of the gunners, was regained by that very U battery to which
it belonged.

Once across the river and back in his own country De Wet, having
placed seventy miles between himself and his pursuers, took it for
granted that he was out of their reach, and halted near the village of
Bothaville to refit. But the British were hard upon his track, and for
once they were able to catch this indefatigable man unawares. Yet
their knowledge of his position seems to have been most hazy, and on
the very day before that on which they found him, General Charles
Knox, with the main body of the force, turned north, and was out of
the subsequent action. De Lisle's mounted troops also turned north,
but fortunately not entirely out of call.  To the third and smallest
body of mounted men, that under Le Gallais, fell the honour of the
action which I am about to describe.

It is possible that the move northwards of Charles Knox and of De
Lisle had the effect of a most elaborate stratagem, since it persuaded
the Boer scouts that the British were retiring.  So indeed they were,
save only the small force of Le Gallais, which seems to have taken one
last cast round to the south before giving up the pursuit.  In the
grey of the morning of November 6th, Major Lean with forty men of the
5th Mounted Infantry came upon three weary Boers sleeping upon the
veldt. Having secured the men, and realising that they were an
outpost, Lean pushed on, and topping a rise some hundreds of yards
further, he and his men saw a remarkable scene.  There before them
stretched the camp of the Boers, the men sleeping, the horses grazing,
the guns parked, and the wagons outspanned.

There was little time for consideration. The Kaffir drivers were
already afoot and strolling out for their horses, or lighting the
fires for their masters' coffee. With splendid decision, although he
had but forty men to oppose to over a thousand, Lean sent back for
reinforcements and opened fire upon the camp.  In an instant it was
buzzing like an overturned hive.  Up sprang the sleepers, rushed for
their horses, and galloped away across the veldt, leaving their guns
and wagons behind. A few stalwarts remained, however, and their
numbers were increased by those whose horses had stampeded, and who
were, therefore, unable to get away.  They occupied an enclosed kraal
and a farmhouse in front of the British, whence they opened a sharp
fire. At the same time a number of the Boers who had ridden away came
back again, having realised how weak their assailants were, and worked
round the British flanks upon either side.

Le Gallais, with his men, had come up, but the British force was still
far inferior to that which it was attacking.  A section of U battery
was able to unlimber, and open fire at four hundred yards from the
Boer position.  The British made no attempt to attack, but contented
themselves with holding on to the position from which they could
prevent the Boer guns from being removed.  The burghers tried
desperately to drive off the stubborn fringe of riflemen. A small
stone shed in the possession of the British was the centre of the Boer
fire, and it was within its walls that Ross of the Durhams was
horribly wounded by an explosive ball, and that the brave Jerseyman,
Le Gallais, was killed. Before his fall he had despatched his staff
officer, Major Hickie, to hurry up men from the rear,

On the fall of Ross and Le Gallais the command fell upon Major Taylor
of U battery.  The position at that time was sufficiently alarming.
The Boers were working round each flank in considerable numbers, and
they maintained a heavy fire from a stone enclosure in the centre.
The British forces actually engaged were insignificant, consisting of
forty men of the 5th Mounted Infantry, and two guns in the centre,
forty-six men of the 17th and 18th Imperial Yeomanry upon the right,
and 105 of the 8th Mounted Infantry on the left or 191 rifles in all.
The flanks of this tiny force had to extend to half a mile to hold off
the Boer flank attack, but they were heartened in their resistance by
the knowledge that their comrades were hastening to their assistance.
Taylor, realising that a great effort must be made to tide over the
crisis, sent a messenger back with orders that the convoy should be
parked, and every available man sent up to strengthen the right flank,
which was the weakest.  The enemy got close on to one of the guns, and
swept down the whole detachmcnt, but a handful of the Suffolk Mounted
Infantry under Lieutenant Peebles most galtantly held them off from
it.  For an hour the pressure was extreme.  Then two companies of the
7th Mounted Infantry came up, and were thrown on to each flank.
Shortly afterwards Major Welch, with two more companies of the same
corps, arrived, and the tide began slowly to turn. The Boers were
themselves outflanked by the extension of the British line and were
forced to fall back. At half-past eight De Lisle, whose force had
trotted and galloped for twelve miles, arrived with several companies
of Australians, and the success of the day was assured. The smoke of
the Prussian guns at Waterloo was not a more welcome sight than the
dust of De Lisle's horsemen. But the question now was whether the
Boers, who were in the walled inclosure and farm which formed their
centre, would manage to escape.  The place was shelled, but here, as
often before, it was found how useless a weapon is shrapnel against
buildings. There was nothing for it but to storm it, and a grim little
storming party of fifty men, half British, half Australian, was
actually waiting with fixed bayonets for the whistle which was to be
their signal, when the white flag flew out from the farm, and all was
over.  Warned by many a tragic experience the British still lay low in
spite of the flag.  'Come out! come out!' they shouted. Eighty-two
unwounded Boers filed out of the enclosure, and the total number of
prisoners came to 114, while between twenty and thirty Boers were
killed. Six guns, a pom-pom, and 1,000 head of cattle were the prizes
of the victors.

This excellent little action showed that the British mounted infantry
had reached a point of efficiency at which they were quite able to
match the Boers at their own game. For hours they held them with an
inferior force, and finally, when the numbers became equal, were able
to drive them off and capture their guns.  The credit is largely due
to Major Lean for his prompt initiative on discovering their laager,
and to Major Taylor for his handling of the force during a very
critical time. Above all, it was due to the dead leader, Le Gallais,
who had infected every man under him with his own spirit of reckless
daring.  'If I die, tell my mother that I die happy, as we got the
guns,' said he, with his failing breath.  The British total losses
were twelve killed (four officers) and thirty-three wounded (seven
officers).  Major Welch, a soldier of great promise, much beloved by
his men, was one of the slain. Following closely after the repulse at
Frederickstad this action was a heavy blow to De Wet.  At last, the
British were beginning to take something off the score which they owed
the bold raider, but there was to be many an item on either side
before the long reckoning should be closed.  The Boers, with De Wet,
fled south, where it was not long before they showed that they were
still a military force with which we had to reckon.

In defiance of chronology it may perhaps make a clearer narrative if I
continue at once with the movements of De Wet from the time that he
lost his guns at Bothaville, and then come back to the consideration
of the campaign in the Transvaal, and to a short account of those
scattered and disconnected actions which break the continuity of the
story. Before following De Wet, however, it is necessary to say
something of the general state of the Orange River Colony and of some
military developments which had occurred there.  Under the wise and
conciliatory rule of General Pretyman the farmers in the south and
west were settling down, and for the time it looked as if a large
district was finally pacified.  The mild taxation was cheerfully paid,
schools were reopened, and a peace party made itself apparent, with
Fraser and Piet de Wet, the brother of Christian, among its strongest
advocates.

Apart from the operations of De Wet there appeared to be no large
force in the field in the Orange River Colony, but early in October of
1900 a small but very mobile and efficient Boer force skirted the
eastern outposts of the British, struck the southern line of
communications, and then came up the western flank, attacking, where
an attack was possible, each of the isolated and weakly garrisoned
townlets to which it came, and recruiting its strength from a district
which had been hardly touched by the ravages of war, and which by its
prosperity alone might have proved the amenity of British military
rule.  This force seems to have skirted Wepener without attacking a
place of such evil omen to their cause.  Their subsequent movements
are readily traced by a sequence of military events.

On October 1st Rouxville was threatened.  On the 9th an outpost of the
Cheshire Militia was taken and the railway cut for a few hours in the
neighbourhood of Bethulie. A week later the Boer riders were dotting
the country round Phillipolis, Springfontein and Jagersfontein, the
latter town being occupied upon October 16th, while the garrison held
out upon the nearest kopje. The town was retaken from the enemy by
King Hall and his men, who were Seaforth Highlanders and police.
There was fierce fighting in the streets, and from twenty to thirty of
each side were killed or wounded.  Fauresmith was attacked on October
19th, but was also in the very safe hands of the Seaforths, who held
it against a severe assault.  Phillipolis was continually attacked
between the 18th and the 24th, but made a most notable defence, which
was conducted by Gostling, the resident magistrate, with forty
civilians. For a week this band of stalwarts held their own against
600 Boers, and were finally relieved by a force from the railway.  All
the operations were not, however, as successful as these three
defences.  On October 24th a party of cavalry details belonging to
many regiments were snapped up in an ambuscade.  On the next day
Jacobadal was attacked, with considerable loss to the British.  The
place was entered in the night, and the enemy occupied the houses
which surrounded the square. The garrison, consisting of about sixty
men of the Capetown Highlanders, bad encamped in the square, and were
helpless when fire was opened upon them in the morning.  There was
practically no resistance, and yet for hours a murderous fire was kept
up upon the tents in which they cowered, so that the affair seems not
to have been far removed from murder.  Two-thirds of the little force
were killed or wounded.  The number of the assailants does not appear
to have been great, and they vanished upon the appearance of a
relieving force from Modder River.

After the disaster at Jacobsdal the enemy appeared on November 1st
near Kimberley and captured a small convoy.  The country round was
disturbed, and Settle was sent south with a column to pacify it.  In
this way we can trace this small cyclone from its origin in the old
storm centre in the north-east of the Orange River Colony, sweeping
round the whole country, striking one post after another, and finally
blowing out at the corresponding point upon the other side of the seat
of war.

We have last seen De Wet upon November 6th, when he fled south from
Bothaville, leaving his guns but not his courage behind him. Trekking
across the line, and for a wonder gathering up no train as he passed,
he made for that part of the eastern Orange River Colony which had
been reoccupied by his countrymen. Here, in the neighbourhood of
Thabanchu, he was able to join other forces, probably the commandos of
Haasbroek and Fourie, which still retained some guns. At the head of a
considerable force he attacked the British garrison of Dewetsdorp, a
town some forty miles to the south-east of Bloemfontein.

It was on November 18th that De Wet assailed the place, and it fell
upon the 24th, after a defence which appears to have been a very
creditable one.  Several small British columns were moving in the
south-east of the Colony, but none of them arrived in time to avert
the disaster, which is the more inexplicable as the town is within one
day's ride of Bloemfontein.  The place is a village hemmed in upon its
western side by a semicircle of steep rocky hills broken in the centre
by a gully.  The position was a very extended one, and had the fatal
weakness that the loss of any portion of it meant the loss of it
all. The garrison consisted of one company of Highland Light Infantry
on the southern horn of the semicircle, three companies of the 2nd
Gloucester Regiment on the northern and central part, with two guns of
the 68th battery.  Some of the Royal Irish Mounted Infantry and a
handful of police made up the total of the defenders to something over
four hundred, Major Massy in command

The attack developed at that end of the ridge which was held by the
company of Highlanders. Every night the Boer riflemen drew in closer,
and every morning found the position more desperate.  On the 20th the
water supply of the garrison was cut, though a little was still
brought up by volunteers during the night.  The thirst in the sultry
trenches was terrible, but the garrison still, with black lips and
parched tongues, held on to their lines.  On the 22nd the attack had
made such progress that the post had by the Highlanders became
untenable, and had to be withdrawn. It was occupied next morning by
the Boers, and the whole ridge was at their mercy. Out of eighteen men
who served one of the British guns sixteen were killed or wounded, and
the last rounds were fired by the sergeant-farrier, who carried,
loaded, and fired all by himself.  All day the soldiers held out, but
the thirst was in itself enough to justify if not to compel a
surrender. At half-past five the garrison laid down their arms, having
lost about sixty killed or wounded. There does not, as far as one can
learn, seem to have been any attempt to injure the two guns which fell
into the hands of the enemy. De Wet himself was one of the first to
ride into the British trenches, and the prisoners gazed with interest
at the short strong figure, with the dark tail coat and the
square-topped bowler hat, of the most famous of the Boer leaders.

British columns were converging, however, from several quarters, and
De Wet had to be at once on the move. On the 26th Dewetsdorp was
reoccupied by General Charles Knox with fifteen hundred men. De Wet
had two days' start, but so swift was Knox that on the 27th he had run
him down at Vaalbank, where he shelled his camp.  De Wet broke away,
however, and trekking south for eighteen hours without a halt, shook
off the pursuit. He had with him at this time nearly 8,000 men with
several guns under Haasbroek, Fourie, Philip Botha, and Steyn. It was
his declared intention to invade Cape Colony with his train of weary
footsore prisoners, and the laurels of Dewetsdorp still green upon
him. He was much aided in all his plans by that mistaken leniency
which had refused to recognise that a borse is in that country as much
a weapon as a rifle, and had left great numbers upon the farms with
which he could replace his useless animals.  So numerous were they
that many of the Boers had two or three for their own use.  It is not
too much to say that our weak treatment of the question of horses will
come to be recognised as the one great blot upon the conduct of the
war, and that our undue and fantastic scruples have prolonged
hostilities for months, and cost the country many lives and many
millions of pounds.

De Wet's plan for the invasion of the Colony was not yet destined to
be realised, for a tenacious man had set himself to frustrate it.
Several small but mobile British columns, those of Pilcher, of Barker,
and of Herbert, under the supreme direction of Charles Knox, were
working desperately to head him off.  In torrents of rain which turned
every spruit into a river and every road into a quagmire, the British
horsemen stuck manfully to their work.  De Wet had hurried south,
crossed the Caledon River, and made for Odendaal's Drift. But Knox,
after the skirmish at Vaalbank, had trekked swiftly south to Bethulie,
and was now ready with three mobile columns and a network of scouts
and patrols to strike in any direction.  For a few days he had lost
touch, but his arrangements were such that he must recover it if the
Boers either crossed the railroad or approached the river. On December
2nd he had authentic information that De Wet was crossing the Caledon,
and in an instant the British columns were all off at full cry once
more, sweeping over the country with a front of fifteen miles.  On the
3rd and 4th, in spite of frightful weather, the two little armies of
horsemen struggled on, fetlock-deep in mud, with the rain lashing
their faces. At night without cover, drenched and bitterly cold, the
troopers threw themselves down on the sodden veldt to snatch a few
hours' sleep before renewing the interminable pursuit.  The drift over
the Caledon flowed deep and strong, but the Boer had passed and the
Briton must pass also.  Thirty guns took to the water, diving
completely under the coffee-coloured surface, to reappear glistening
upon the southern bank.  Everywhere there were signs of the passage of
the enemy. A litter of crippled or dying horses marked their track,
and a Krupp gun was found abandoned by the drift. The Dewetsdorp
prisoners, too, had been set loose, and began to stumble and stagger
back to their countrymen, their boots worn off, and their putties
wrapped round their bleeding feet.  It is painful to add that they had
been treated with a personal violence and a brutality in marked
contrast to the elaborate hospitality shown by the British Government
to its involuntary guests.

On December 6th De Wet had at last reached the Orange River a clear
day in front of his pursuers. But it was only to find that his labours
had been in vain. At Odendaal, where he had hoped to cross, the river
was in spate, the British flag waved from a post upon the further
side, and a strong force of expectant Guardsmen eagerly awaited him
there. Instantly recognising that the game was up, the Boer leader
doubled back for the north and safety.  At Rouxvilie he hesitated as
to whether he should snap up the small garrison, but the commandant,
Rundle, showed a bold face, and De Wet passed on to the Coomassie
Bridge over the Caledon. The small post there refused to be bluffed
into a surrender, and the Boers, still dropping their horses fast,
passed on, and got over the drift at Amsterdam, their rearguard being
hardly across before Knox had also reached the river.

On the 10th the British were in touch again near Helvetia, where there
was a rearguard skirmish. On the 11th both parties rode through
Reddersberg, a few hours separating them.  The Boers in their
cross-country trekking go, as one of their prisoners observed,
'slap-bang at everything,' and as they are past-masters in the art of
ox and mule driving, and have such a knowledge of the country that
they can trek as well by night as by day, it says much for the energy
of Knox and his men that he was able for a fortnight to keep in close
touch with them.

It became evident now that there was not much chance of overtaking the
main body of the burghers, and an attempt was therefore made to
interpose a fresh force who might head them off. A line of posts
existed between Thabanchu and Ladybrand, and Colonel Thorneycroft was
stationed there with a movable column.  It was Knox's plan therefore
to prevent the Boers from breaking to the west and to head them
towards the Basuto border. A small column under Parsons had been sent
by Hunter from Bloemfontein, and pushed in upon the flank of De Wet,
who had on the 12th got back to Dewetsdorp. Again the pursuit became
warm, but De Wet's time was not yet come.  He headed for Springhaan
Nek, about fifteen miles east of Thabanchu.  This pass is about four
miles broad, with a British fort upon either side of it.  There was
only one way to safety, for Knox's mounted infantrymen and lancers were
already dotting the southern skyline. Without hesitation the whole
Boer force, now some 2,500 strong, galloped at full speed in open
order through the Nek, braving the long range fire of riflemen and
guns. The tactics were those of French in his ride to Kimberley, and
the success was as complete. De Wet's force passed through the last
barrier which had been held against him, and vanished into the
mountainous country round Ficksburg, where it could safely rest and
refit.

The result then of these bustling operations had been that De Wet and
his force survived, but that he had failed in his purpose of invading
the Colony, and had dropped some five hundred horses, two guns, and
about a hundred of his men. Haasbroek's commando had been detached by
De Wet to make a feint at another pass while he made his way through
the Springhaan.  Parsons's force followed Haasbroek up and engaged
him, but under cover of night he was able to get away and to join his
leader to the north of Thabanchu. On December 13th, this, the second
great chase after De Wet, may be said to have closed.


CHAPTER XXXI

THE GUERILLA WARFARE IN THE TRANSVAAL:
NOOITGEDACHT

Leaving De Wet in the Ficksburg mountains, where he lurked until after
the opening of the New Year, the story of the scattered operations in
the Transvaal may now be carried down to the same point -- a story
comprising many skirmishes and one considerable engagement, but so
devoid of any central thread that it is difficult to know how to
approach it. From Lichtenburg to Komati, a distance of four hundred
miles, there was sporadic warfare everywhere, attacks upon scattered
posts, usually beaten off but occasionally successful, attacks upon
convoys, attacks upon railway trains, attacks upon anything and
everything which could harass the invaders. Each General in his own
district had his own work of repression to perform, and so we had best
trace the doings of each up to the end of the year 1900.

Lord Methuen after his pursuit of De Wet in August had gone to
Mafeking to refit.  From that point, with a force which contained a
large proportion of yeomanry and of Australian bushmen, he conducted a
long series of operations in the difficult and important district
which lies between Rustenburg, Lichtenburg, and Zeerust.  Several
strong and mobile Boer commandos with guns moved about in it, and an
energetic though not very deadly warfare raged between Lemmer, Snyman,
and De la Rey on the one side, and the troops of Methuen, Douglas,
Broadwood, and Lord Errol upon the other. Methuen moved about
incessantly through the broken country, winning small skirmishes and
suffering the indignity of continual sniping.  From time to time he
captured stores, wagons, and small bodies of prisoners. Early in
October he and Douglas had successes.  On the 15th Broadwood was
engaged.  On the 20th there was a convoy action.  On the 25th Methuen
had a success and twenty-eight prisoners.  On November 9th he
surprised Snyman and took thirty prisoners. On the 10th he got a
pom-pom.  Early in this month Douglas separated from Methuen, and
marched south from Zeerust through Ventersdorp to Klerksdorp, passing
over a country which had been hardly touched before, and arriving at
his goal with much cattle and some prisoners. Towards the end of the
month a considerable stock of provisions were conveyed to Zeerust, and
a garrison left to hold that town so as to release Methuen's column
for service elsewhere.

Hart's sphere of action was originaUy round Potchefstroom.  On
September 9th he made a fine forced march to surprise this town, which
bad been left some time before with an entirely inadequate garrison to
fall into the hands of the enemy. His infantry covered thirty-six and
his cavalry fifty-four miles in fifteen hours.  The operation was a
complete success, the town with eighty Boers falling into his hands
with little opposition.  On September 30th Hart returned to
Krugersdorp, where, save for one skirmish upon the Gatsrand on
November 22nd, he appears to have had no actual fighting to do during
the remainder of the year.

After the clearing of the eastern border of the Transvaal by the
movement of Pole-Carew along the railway line, and of Buller aided by
Ian Hamilton in the mountainous country to the north of it, there were
no operations of importance in this district.  A guard was kept upon
the frontier to prevent the return of refugees and the smuggling of
ammunition, while General Kitchener, the brother of the Sirdar, broke
up a few small Boer laagers in the neighbourhood of
Lydenburg. Smith-Dorrien guarded the line at Belfast, and on two
occasions, November 1st and November 6th, he made aggressive movements
against the enemy.  The first, which was a surprise executed in
concert with Colonel Spens of the Shropshires, was frustrated by a
severe blizzard, which prevented the troops from pushing home their
success.  The second was a two days' expedition, which met with a
spirited opposition, and demands a fuller notice.

This was made from Belfast, and the force, which consisted of about
fourteen hundred men, advanced south to the Komati River.  The
infantry were Suffolks and Shropshires, the cavalry Canadians and 5th
Lancers, with two Canadian guns and four of the 84th battery. All day
the Boer snipers clung to the column, as they had done to French's
cavalry in the same district. Mere route marches without a very
definite and adequate objective appear to be rather exasperating than
overawing, for so long as the column is moving onwards the most timid
farmer may be tempted into long-range fire from the flanks or rear.
The river was reached and the Boers driven from a position which they
had taken up, but their signal fires brought mounted riflemen from
every farm, and the retreat of the troops was pressed as they returned
to Belfast. There was all the material for a South African Lexington.
The most difficult of military operations, the covering of a
detachment from a numerous and aggressive enemy, was admirably carried
out by the Canadian gunners and dragoons under the command of Colonel
Lessard.  So severe was the pressure that sixteen of the latter were
for a time in the hands of the enemy, who attempted something in the
nature of a charge upon the steadfast rearguard.  The movement was
repulsed, and the total Boer loss would appear to have been
considerable, since two of their leaders, Commandant Henry Prinsloo
and General Joachim Fourie, were killed, while General Johann Grobler
was wounded.  If the rank and file suffered in proportion the losses
must have been severe. The British casualties in the two days amounted
to eight killed and thirty wounded, a small total when the arduous
nature of the service is considered.  The Canadians and the
Shropshires seem to have borne off the honours of these trying
operations.

In the second week of October, General French, with three brigades of
cavalry (Dickson's, Gordon's, and Mahon's), started for a
cross-country ride from Machadodorp.  Three brigades may seem an
imposing force, but the actual numbers did not exceed two strong
regiments, or about 1,500 sabres in all.  A wing of the Suffolk
Regiment went with them.  On October 13th Mahon's brigade met with a
sharp resistance, and lost ten killed and twenty-nine wounded.  On the
14th the force entered Carolina.  On the 16th they lost six killed and
twenty wounded, and from the day that they started until they reached
Heidelberg on the 27th there was never a day that they could shake
themselves clear of their attendant snipers.  The total losses of the
force were about ninety killed and wounded, but they brought in sixty
prisoners and a large quantity of cattle and stores. The march had at
least the effect of making it clear that the passage of a column of
troops encumbered with baggage through a hostile country is an
inefficient means for quelling a popular resistance. Light and mobile
parties acting from a central depôt were in future to be employed,
with greater hopes of success.

Some appreciable proportion of the British losses during this phase of
the war arose from railway accidents caused by the persistent
tampering with the lines.  In the first ten days of October there were
four such mishaps, in which two Sappers, twenty-three of the Guards
(Coldstreams), and eighteen of the 66th battery were killed or
wounded.  On the last occasion, which occurred on October 10th near
Vlakfontein, the reinforcements who came to aid the sufferers were
themselves waylaid, and lost twenty, mostly of the Rifle Brigade,
killed, wounded, or prisoners.  Hardly a day elapsed that the line was
not cut at some point.  The bringing of supplies was complicated by
the fact that the Boer women and children were coming more and more
into refugee camps, where they had to be fed by the British, and the
strange spectacle was frequently seen of Boer snipers killing or
wounding the drivers and stokers of the very trains which were
bringing up food upon which Boer families were dependent for their
lives. Considering that these tactics were continued for over a year,
and that they resulted in the death or mutilation of many hundreds of
British officers and men, it is really inexplicable that the British
authorities did not employ the means used by all armies under such
circumstances -- which is to place hostages upon the trains. A
truckload of Boers behind every engine would have stopped the practice
for ever.  Again and again in this war the British have fought with
the gloves when their opponents used their knuckles.

We will pass now to a consideration of the doings of General Paget,
who was operating to the north and north-east of Pretoria with a force
which consisted of two regiments of infantry, about a thousand
horsemen, and twelve guns. His mounted men were under the command of
Plumer.  In the early part of November this force had been withdrawn
from Warm Baths and had fllen back upon Pienaar's River, where it had
continual skirmishes with the enemy.  Towards the end of November,
news having reached Pretoria that the enemy under Erasmus and Viljoen
were present in force at a place called Rhenoster Kop, which is about
twenty miles north of the Delagoa Railway line and fifty miles
north-east of the capital, it was arranged that Paget should attack
them from the south, while Lyttelton from Middelburg should endeavour
to get behind them.  The force with which Paget started upon this
enterprise was not a very formidable one. He had for mounted troops
some Queensland, South Australian, New Zealand, and Tasmanian Bushmen,
together with the York, Montgomery, and Warwick Yeomanry.  His
infantry were the 1st West Riding regiment and four companies of the
Munsters. His guns were the 7th and 38th batteries, with two naval
quick-firing twelve-pounders and some smaller pieces.  The total could
not have exceeded some two thousand men.  Here, as at other times, it
is noticeable that in spite of the two hundred thousand soldiers whom
the British kept in the field, the lines of communication absorbed so
many that at the actual point of contact they were seldom superior and
often inferior in numbers to the enemy.  The opening of the Natal and
Delagoa lines though valuable in many ways, had been an additional
drain. Where every culvert needs its picket and every bridge its
company, the guardianship of many hundreds of miles of rail is no
light matter.

In the early morning of November 29th Paget's men came in contact with
the enemy, who were in some force upon an admirable position. A ridge
for their centre, a flanking kopje for their cross fire, and a grass
glacis for the approach-it was an ideal Boer battlefield. The
colonials and the yeomanry under Plumer on the left, and Hickman on
the right, pushed in upon them, until it was evident that they meant
to hold their ground.  Their advance being checked by a very severe
fire, the horsemen dismounted and took such cover as they could.
Paget's original idea had been a turning movement, but the Boers were
the more numerous body, and it was impossible for the smaller British
force to find their flanks, for they extended over at least seven
miles.  The infantry were moved up into the centre, therefore, between
the wings of dismounted horsemen, and the guns were brought up to
cover the advance. The country was ill-suited, however, to the use of
artillery, and it was only possible to use an indirect fire from under
a curve of the grass land.  The guns made good practice, however, one
section of the 38th battery being in action all day within 800 yards
of the Boer line, and putting themselves out of action after 300
rounds by the destruction of their own rifling. Once over the curve
every yard of the veldt was commanded by the hidden riflemen.  The
infantry advanced, but could make no headway against the deadly fire
which met them. By short rushes the attack managed to get within 300
yards of the enemy, and there it stuck.  On the right the Munsters
carried a detached kopje which was in front of them, but could do
little to aid the main attack.  Nothing could have exceeded the
tenacity of the Yorkshiremen and the New-Zealanders, who were
immediately to their left. Though unable to advance they refused to
retire, and indeed they were in a position from which a retirement
would have been a serious operation.  Colonel Lloyd of the West
Ridings was hit in three places and killed. Five out of six officers
of the New Zealand corps were struck down.  There were no reserves to
give a fresh impetus to the attack, and the thin scattered line,
behind bullet-spotted stones or anthills, could but hold its own while
the sun sank slowly upon a day which will not be forgotten by those
who endured it.  The Boers were reinforced in the afternoon, and the
pressure became so severe that the field guns were retired with much
difficulty.  Many of the infantry had shot away all their cartridges
and were helpless.  Just one year before British soldiers had lain
under similar circumstances on the plain which leads to Modder River,
and now on a smaller scale the very same drama was being enacted.
Gradually the violet haze of evening deepened into darkness, and the
incessant rattle of the rifle fire died away on either side. Again, as
at Modder River, the British infantry still lay in their position,
determined to take no backward step, and again the Boers stole away in
the night, leaving the ridge which they had defended so well.  A
hundred killed and wounded was the price paid by the British for that
line of rock studded hills -- a heavier proportion of losses than had
befallen Lord Methuen in the corresponding action.  Of the Boer losses
there was as usual no means of judging, but several grave.mounds,
newly dug, showed that they also had something to deplore.  Their
retreat, however, was not due to exhaustion, but to the demonstration
which Lyttelton had been able to make in their rear. The gunners and
the infantry had all done well in a most trying action, but by common
consent it was with the men from New Zealand that the honours lay. It
was no empty compliment when Sir Alfred Milner telegraphed to the
Premier of New Zealand his congratulations upon the distinguished
behaviour of his fellow countrymen.

>From this time onwards there was nothing of importance in this part of
the seat of war.

It is necessary now to turn from the north-east to the north-west of
Pretoria, where the presence of De la Rey and the cover afforded by
the Magaliesberg mountains had kept alive the Boer resistance. Very
rugged lines of hill, alternating with fertile valleys, afforded a
succession of forts and of granaries to the army which held them.  To
General Clements' column had been committed the task of clearing this
difficult piece of country. His force fluctuated in numbers, but does
not appear at any time to have consisted of more than three thousand
men, which comprised the Border Regiment, the Yorkshire Light
Infantry, the second Northumberland Fusiliers, mounted infantry,
yeomanry, the 8th R.F.A., P battery R.H.A., and one heavy gun. With
this small army he moved about the district, breaking up Boer bands,
capturing supplies, and bringing in refugees.  On November 13th he was
at Krugersdorp, the southern extremity of his beat.  On the 24th he
was moving north again, and found himself as he approached the hills
in the presence of a force of Boers with cannon.  This was the
redoubtable De la Rey, who sometimes operated in Methuen's country to
the north of the Magaliesberg, and sometimes to the south.  He had now
apparently fixed upon Clements as his definite opponent. De la Rey was
numerically inferior, and Clements had no difficulty in this first
encounter in forcing him back with some loss.  On November 26th
Clements was back at Krugersdorp again with cattle and prisoners. In
the early days of December he was moving northwards once more, where a
serious disaster awaited him.  Before narrating the circumstances
connected with the Battle of Nooitgedacht there is one incident which
occurred in this same region which should be recounted.

This consists of the determined attack made by a party of De la Rey's
men, upon December 3rd, on a convoy which was proceeding from Pretoria
to Rustenburg, and had got as far as Buffel's Hoek.  The convoy was a
very large one, consisting of 150 wagons, which covered about three
miles upon the march. It was guarded by two companies of the West
Yorkshires, two guns of the 75th battery, and a handful of the
Victoria Mounted Rifles. The escort appears entirely inadequate when
it is remembered that these stores, which were of great value, were
being taken through a country which was known to be infested by the
enemy. What might have been foreseen occurred.  Five hundred Boers
suddenly rode down upon the helpless line of wagons and took
possession of them. The escort rallied, however, upon a kopje, and,
though attacked all day, succeeded in holding their own until help
arrived.  They prevented the Boers from destroying or carrying off as
much of the convoy as was under their guns, but the rest was looted
and burned.  The incident was a most unfortunate one, as it supplied
the enemy with a large quantity of stores, of which they were badly in
need. It was the more irritating as it was freely rumoured that a Boer
attack was pending; and there is evidence that a remonstrance was
addressed from the convoy before it left Rietfontein to the General of
the district, pointing out the danger to which it was exposed. The
result was the loss of 120 wagons and of more than half the escort.
The severity of the little action and the hardihood of the defence are
indicated by the fact that the small body who held the kopje lost
fifteen killed and twenty-two wounded, the gunners losing nine out of
fifteen. A relieving force appeared at the close of the action, but no
vigorous pursuit was attempted, although the weather was wet and the
Boers had actually carried away sixty loaded wagons, which could only
go very slowly.  It must be confessed that from its feckless start to
its spiritless finish the story of the Buffel's Hoek convoy is not a
pleasant one to tell.

Clements, having made his way once more to the Magaliesberg range, had
pitched his camp at a place called Nooitgedacht -- not to be confused
with the post upon the Delagoa Railway at which the British prisoners
had been confined.  Here, in the very shadow of the mountain, he
halted for five days, during which, with the usual insouciance of
British commanders, he does not seem to have troubled himself with any
entrenching.  He knew, no doubt, that he was too strong for his
opponent De la Rey, but what he did not know, but might have feared,
was that a second Boer force might appear suddenly upon the scene and
join with De la Rey in order to crush him.  This second Boer force was
that of Commandant Beyers from Warm Baths. By a sudden and skilful
movement the two united, and fell like a thunderbolt upon the British
column, which was weakened by the absence of the Border Regiment.  The
result was such a reverse as the British bad not sustained since
Sanna's Post -- a reverse which showed that, though no regular Boer
army might exist, still a sudden coalition of scattered bands could at
any time produce a force which would be dangerous to any British
column which might be taken at a disadvantage.  We had thought that
the days of battles in this war were over, but an action which showed
a missing and casualty roll of 550 proved that in this, as in so many
other things, we were mistaken.

As already stated, the camp of Clements lay under a precipitous cliff,
upon the summit of which he had placed four companies of the 2nd
Northumberland Fusiliers. This strong post was a thousand feet higher
than the camp. Below lay the main body of the force, two more
companies of fusiliers, four of Yorkshire Light Infantry, the 2nd
Mounted Infantry, Kitchener's Horse, yeomanry, and the artillery. The
latter consisted of one heavy naval gun, four guns of the 8th R.F.A.,
and P battery R.H.A. The whole force amounted to about fifteen hundred
men.

It was just at the first break of dawn -- the hour of fate in South
African warfare -- that the battle began. The mounted infantry post
between the camp and the mountains were aware of moving figures in
front of them. In the dim light they could discern that they were
clothed in grey, and that they wore the broad-brimmed hats and
feathers of some of our own irregular corps. They challenged, and the
answer was a shattering volley, instantly returned by the survivors of
the picket.  So hot was the Boer attack that before help could come
every man save one of the picket was on the ground. The sole survivor,
Daley of the Dublins, took no backward step, but continued to steadily
load and fire until help came from the awakened camp.  There followed
a savage conflict at point blank-range.  The mounted infantry men,
rushing half clad to the support of their comrades, were confronted by
an ever-thickening swarm of Boer riflemen, who had already, by working
round on the flank, established their favourite cross fire. Legge, the
leader of the mounted infantry, a hard little Egyptian veteran, was
shot through the head, and his men lay thick around him. For some
minutes it was as hot a corner as any in the war. But Clements himself
had appeared upon the scene, and his cool gallantry turned the tide of
fight. An extension of the line checked the cross fire, and gave the
British in turn a flanking position.  Gradually the Boer riflemen were
pushed back, until at last they broke and fled for their horses in the
rear. A small body were cut off, many of whom were killed and wounded,
while a few were taken prisoners.

This stiff fight of an hour had ended in a complete repulse of the
attack, though at a considerable cost. Both Boers and British had lost
heavily. Nearly all the staff were killed or wounded, though General
Clements had come through untouched.  Fifty or sixty of both sides had
fallen.  But it was noted as an ominous fact that in spite of shell
fire the Boers still lingered upon the western flank.  Were they
coming on again? They showed no signs of it.  And yet they waited in
groups, and looked up towards the beetling crags above them. What were
they waiting for?  The sudden crash of a murderous Mauser fire upon
the summit, with the rolling volleys of the British infantry, supplied
the answer.

Only now must it have been clear to Clements that he was not dealing
merely with some spasmodic attack from his old enemy De la Rey, but
that this was a largely conceived movement, in which a force at least
double the strength of his own had suddenly been concentrated upon
him.  His camp was still menaced by the men whom he had repulsed, and
he could not weaken it by sending reinforcements up the hill. But the
roar of the musketry was rising louder and louder.  It was becoming
clearer that there was the main attack.  It was a Majuba-Hill action
up yonder, a thick swarm of skirmishers closing in from many sides
upon a central band of soldiers.  But the fusiliers were hopelessly
outnumbered, and this rock fighting is that above all others in which
the Boer has an advantage over the regular. A helio on the hill cried
for help.  The losses were heavy, it said, and the assailants
numerous.  The Boers closed swiftly in upon the flanks, and the
fusiliers were no match for their assailants.  Till the very climax
the helio still cried that they were being overpowered, and it is said
that even while working it the soldier in charge was hurled over the
cliff by the onrush of the victorious Boers.

The fight of the mounted infantry men had been at half-past four.  At
six the attack upon the hill had developed, and Clements in response
to those frantic flashes of light had sent up a hundred men of the
yeomanry, from the Fife and Devon squadrons, as a reinforcement.  To
climb a precipitous thousand feet with rifle, bandolier, and spurs, is
no easy feat, yet that roar of battle above them heartened them upon
their way.  But in spite of all their efforts they were only in time
to share the general disaster.  The head of the line of hard-breathing
yeomen reached the plateau just as the Boers, sweeping over the
remnants of the Northumberland Fusiliers, reached the brink of the
cliff. One by one the yeomen darted over the edge, and endeavoured to
find some cover in the face of an infernal point-blank fire. Captain
Mudie of the staff, who went first, was shot down. So was Purvis of
the Fifes, who followed him. The others, springing over their bodies,
rushed for a small trench, and tried to restore the fight. Lieutenant
Campbell, a gallant young fellow, was shot dead as he rallied his men.
Of twenty-seven of the Fifeshires upon the hill six were killed and
eleven wounded.  The statistics of the Devons are equally heroic.
Those yeomen who had not yet reached the crest were in a perfectly
impossible position, as the Boers were firing from complete cover
right down upon them. There was no alternative for them but surrender.
By seven o'clock every British soldier upon the hill, yeoman or
fusilier, had been killed, wounded, or taken.  It is not true that the
supply of csrtridges ran out, and the fusiliers, with the ill-luck
which has pursued the 2nd battalion, were outnumbered and outfought by
better skirmishers than themselves.

Seldom has a General found himself in a more trying position than
Clements, or extricated himself more honourably.  Not only had he lost
nearly half his force, but his camp was no longer tenable, and his
whole army was commanded by the fringe of deadly rifles upon the
cliff.  From the berg to the camp was from 800 to 1,000 yards, and a
sleet of bullets whistled down upon it.  How severe was the fire may
be gauged from the fact that the little pet monkey belonging to the
yeomanry -- a small enough object -- was hit three times, though he
lived to survive as a battle-scarred veteran.  Those wounded in the
early action found themselves in a terrible position, laid out in the
open under a withering fire, 'like helpless Aunt Sallies,' as one of
them described it.  'We must get a red flag up, or we shall be blown
off the face of the earth,' says the same correspondent, a corporal of
the Ceylon Mounted Infantry.  'We had a pillow-case, but no red paint.
Then we saw what would do instead, so they made the upright with my
blood, and the horizontal with Paul's.'  It is pleasant to add that
this grim flag was respected by the Boers.  Bullocks and mules fell in
heaps, and it was evident that the question was not whether the battle
could be restored, but whether the guns could be saved. Leaving a
fringe of yeomen, mounted infantry, and Kitchener's Horse to stave off
the Boers, who were already descending by the same steep kloof up
which the yeomen had climbed, the General bent all his efforts to
getting the big naval gun out of danger. Only six oxen were left out
of a team of forty, and so desperate did the situation appear that
twice dynamite was placed beneath the gun to destroy it. Each time,
however, the General intervened, and at last, under a stimulating rain
of pom-pom shells, the great cannon lurched slowly forward, quickening
its pace as the men pulled on the drag-ropes, and the six oxen broke
into a wheezy canter.  Its retreat was covered by the smaller guns
which rained shrapnel upon the crest of the hill, and upon the Boers
who were descending to the camp.  Once the big gun was out of danger,
the others limbered up and followed, their rear still covered by the
staunch mounted infantry, with whom rest all the honours of the
battle.  Cookson and Brooks with 250 men stood for hours between
Clements and absolute disaster.  The camp was abandoned as it stood,
and all the stores, four hundred picketed horses, and, most serious of
all, two wagons of ammunition, fell into the hands of the victors.  To
have saved all his guns, however, after the destruction of half his
force by an active enemy far superior to him in numbers and in
mobility, was a feat which goes far to condone the disaster, and to
increase rather than to impair the confidence which his troops feel in
General Clements. Having retreated for a couple of miles he turned his
big gun round upon the hill, which is called Yeomanry Hill, and opened
fire upon the camp, which was being looted by swarms of Boers.  So
bold a face did he present that he was able to remain with his
crippled force upon Yeomanry Hill from about nine until four in the
afternoon, and no attack was pressed home, though he lay under both
shell and rifle fire all day. At four in the afternoon he began his
retreat, which did not cease till he had reached Rietfontein, twenty
miles off, at six o'clock upon the following morning.  His weary men
had been working for twenty-six hours, and actually fighting for
fourteen, but the bitterness of defeat was alleviated by the feeling
that every man, from the General downwards, had done all that was
possible, and that there was every prospect of their having a chance
before long of getting their own back.

The British losses at the battle of Nooitgedacht amounted to 60
killed, 180 wounded, and 315 prisoners, all of whom were delivered up
a few days later at Rustenburg.  Of the Boer losses it is, as usual,
impossible to speak with confidence, but all the evidence points to
their actual casualties being as heavy as those of the British.  There
was the long struggle at the camp in which they were heavily punished,
the fight on the mountain, where they exposed themselves with unusual
recklessness, and the final shelling from shrapnel and from lyddite.
All accounts agree that their attack was more open than usual.  'They
were mowed down in twenties that day, but it had no effect.  They
stood like fanatics,' says one who fought against them.  From first to
last their conduct was most gallant, and great credit is due to their
leaders for the skilful sudden concentration by which they threw their
whole strength upon the exposed force. Some eighty miles separate Warm
Baths from Nooitgedacht, and it seems strange that our Intelligence
Department should have remained in ignorance of so large a movement.

General Broadwood's 2nd Cavalry Brigade had been stationed to the
north of Magaliesberg, some twelve miles westward of Clements, and
formed the next link in the long chain of British forces.  Broadwood
does not appear, however, to have appreciated the importance of the
engagement, and made no energetic movement to take part in it.  If
Colvile is open to the charge of having been slow to 'march upon the
cannon' at Sanna's Post, it might be urged that Broadwood in turn
showed some want of energy and judgment upon this occasion.  On the
morning of the 13th his force could hear the heavy firing to the
eastward, and could even see the shells bursting on the top of the
Magaliesberg.  It was but ten or twelve miles distant, and, as his
Elswick guns have a range of nearly five, a very small advance would
have enabled him to make a demonstration against the flank of the
Boers, and so to relieve the pressure upon Clements. It is true that
his force was not large, but it was exceptionally mobile. Whatever the
reasons, no effective advance was made by Broadwood.  On hearing the
result he fell back upon Rustenburg, the nearest British post, his
small force being dangerously isolated.

Those who expected that General Clements would get his own back had
not long to wait. In a few days he was in the field again.  The
remains of his former force had, however, been sent into Pretoria to
refit, and nothing remained of it save the 8th R.F.A. and the
indomitable cow-gun still pocked with the bullets of Nooitgedacht.  He
had also F battery R.H.A., the Inniskillings, the Border regiment, and
a force of mounted infantry under Alderson. More important than all,
however, was the co-operation of General French, who came out from
Pretoria to assist in the operations. On the 19th, only six days after
his defeat, Clements found himself on the very same spot fighting some
at least of the very same men.  This time, however, there was no
element of surprise, and the British were able to approach the task
with deliberation and method.  The result was that both upon the 19th
and 20th the Boers were shelled out of successive positions with
considerable loss, and driven altogether away from that part of the
Magaliesberg.  Shortly afterwards General Clements was recalled to
Pretoria, to take over the command of the 7th Division, General Tucker
having been appointed to the military command of Bloemfontein in the
place of the gallant Hunter, who, to the regret of the whole army, was
invalided home.  General Cunningham henceforward commanded the column
which Clements had led back to the Magaliesberg.

Upon November 13th the first of a series of attacks was made upon the
posts along the Delagoa Railway line.  These were the work of
Viljoen's commando, who, moving swiftly from the north, threw
themselves upon the small garrisons of Balmoral and of Wilge River,
stations which are about six miles apart. At the former was a
detachment of the Buffs, and at the latter of the Royal Fusiliers.
The attack was well delivered, but in each instance was beaten back
with heavy loss to the assailants. A picket of the Buffs was captured
at the first rush, and the detachment lost six killed and nine
wounded.  No impression was made upon the position, however, and the
double attack seems to have cost the Boers a large number of
casualties.

Another incident calling for some mention was the determined attack
made by the Boers upon the town of Vryheid, in the extreme south-east
of the Transvaal near the Natal border.  Throughout November this
district had been much disturbed, and the small British garrison had
evacuated the town and taken up a position on the adjacent hills.
Upon December 11th the Boers attempted to carry the trenches.  The
garrison of the town appears to have consisted of the 2nd Royal
Lancaster regiment, some five hundred strong, a party of the
Lancashire Fusiliers, 150 strong, and fifty men of the Royal Garrison
Artillery, with a small body of mounted infantry.  They held a hill
about half a mile north of the town, and commanding it.  The attack,
which was a surprise in the middle of the night, broke upon the
pickets of the British, who held their own in a way which may have
been injudicious but was certainly heroic.  Instead of falling back
when seriously attacked, the young officers in charge of these
outposts refused to move, and were speedily under such a fire that it
was impossible to reinforce them.  There were four outposts, under
Woodgate, Theobald, Lippert, and Mangles. The attack at 2.15 on a cold
dark morning began at the post held by Woodgate, the Boers coming
hand-to-hand before they were detected.  Woodgate, who was unarmed at
the instant, seized a hammer, and rushed at the nearest Boer, but was
struck by two bullets and killed.  His post was dispersed or taken.
Theobald and Lippert, warned by the firing, held on behind their
sangars, and were ready for the storm which burst over them. Lippert
was unhappily killed, and his ten men all hit or taken, but young
Theobald held his own under a heavy fire for twelve hours.  Mangles
also, the gallant son of a gallant father, held his post all day with
the utmost tenacity.  The troops in the trenches behind were never
seriously pressed, thanks to the desperate resistance of the outposts,
but Colonel Gawne of the Lancasters was unfortunately killed.  Towards
evening the Boers abandoned the attack, leaving fourteen of their
number dead upon the ground, from which it may be guessed that their
total casualties were not less than a hundred.  The British losses
were three officers and five men killed, twenty-two men wounded, and
thirty men with one officer missing -- the latter being the survivors
of those outposts which were overwhelmed by the Boer advance.

A few incidents stand out among the daily bulletins of snipings,
skirmishes, and endless marchings which make the dull chronicle of
these, the last months of the year 1900.  These must be enumerated
without any attempt at connecting them.  The first is the
longdrawn-out siege or investment of Schweizer-Renecke. This small
village stands upon the Harts River, on the western border of the
Transvaal.  It is not easy to understand why the one party should
desire to hold, or the other to attack, a position so insignificant.
>From August 19th onwards it was defended by a garrison of 250 men,
under the very capable command of Colonel Chamier, who handled a small
business in a way which marks him as a leader. The Boer force, which
varied in numbers from five hundred to a thousand, never ventured to
push home an attack, for Chamier, fresh from the experience of
Kimberley, had taken such precautions that his defences were
formidable, if not impregnable. Late in September a relieving force
under Colonel Settle threw fresh supplies into the town, but when he
passed on upon his endless march the enemy closed in once more, and
the siege was renewed.  It lasted for several months, until a column
withdrew the garrison and abandoned the position.

Of all the British detachments, the two which worked hardest and
marched furthest during this period of the war was the 21st Brigade
(Derbysbires, Sussex, and Camerons) under General Bruce Hamilton, and
the column under Settle, which operated down the western border of the
Orange River Colony, and worked round and round with such pertinacity
that it was familiarly known as Settle's Imperial Circus.  Much hard
and disagreeable work, far more repugnant to the soldier than the
actual dangers of war, fell to the lot of Bruce Hamilton and his men.
With Kroonstad as their centre they were continually working through
the dangerous Lindley and Heilbron districts, returning to the railway
line only to start again immediately upon a fresh quest. It was work
for mounted police, not for infantry soldiers, but what they were
given to do they did to the best of their ability. Settle's men had a
similar thankless task. From the neighbourhood of Kimberley he marched
in November with his small column down the border of the Orange River
Colony, capturing supplies and bringing in refugees.  He fought one
brisk action with Hertzog's commando at Kloof, and then, making his
way across the colony, struck the railway line again at Edenburg on
December 7th, with a train of prisoners and cattle.

Rundle also had put in much hard work in his efforts to control the
difficult district in the north-east of the Colony which had been
committed to his care. He traversed in November from north to south
the same country which he had already so painfully traversed from
south to north. With occasional small actions he moved about from
Vrede to Reitz, and so to Bethlehem and Harrismith.  On him, as on all
other commanders, the vicious system of placing small garrisons in the
various towns imposed a constant responsibility lest they should be
starved or overwhelmed.

The year and the century ended by a small reverse to the British arms
in the Transvaal.  This consisted in the capture of a post at Helvetia
defended by a detachment of the Liverpool Regiment and by a 4.7
gun. Lydenburg, being seventy miles off the railway line, had a chain
of posts connecting it with the junction at Machadodorp.  These posts
were seven in number, ten miles apart, each defended by 250 men.  Of
these Helvetia was the second.  The key of the position was a strongly
fortified hill about three-quarters of a mile from the headquarter
camp, and commanding it. This post was held by Captain Kirke with
forty garrison artillery to work the big gun, and seventy Liverpool
infantry.  In spite of the barbed-wire entanglements, the Boers most
gallantly rushed this position, and their advance was so rapid, or the
garrison so slow, that the place was carried with hardly a shot fired.
Major Cotton, who commanded the main lines, found himself deprived in
an instant of nearly half his force and fiercely attacked by a
victorious and exultant enemy. His position was much too extended for
the small force at his disposal, and the line of trenches was pierced
and enfiladed at many points.  It must be acknowledged that the
defences were badly devised -- little barbed wire, frail walls, large
loopholes, and the outposts so near the trenches that the assailants
could reach them as quickly as the supports.  With the dawn Cotton's
position was serious, if not desperate.  He was not only surrounded,
but was commanded from Gun Hill. Perhaps it would have been wiser if,
after being wounded, he had handed over the command to Jones, his
junior officer. A stricken man's judgement can never be so sound as
that of the hale. However that may be, he came to the conclusion that
the position w~s untenable, and that it was best to prevent further
loss of life. Fifty of the Liverpools were killed and wounded, 200
taken.  No ammunition of the gun was captured, but the Boers were able
to get safely away with this humiliating evidence of their victory.
One post, under Captain Wilkinson with forty men, held out with
success, and harassed the enemy in their retreat.  As at Dewetsdorp
and at Nooitgedacht. the Boers were unable to retain their prisoners,
so that the substantial fruits of their enterprise were small, but it
forms none the less one more of those incidents which may cause us to
respect our enemy and to be critical towards ourselves.[Footnote:
Considering that Major Stapelton Cotton was himself wounded in three
places during the action (one of these wounds being in the head), he
has had hard measure in being deprived of his commission by a
court-martial which sat eight months after the event. It is to be
earnestly hoped that there may be sowe revision of this severe
sentence.]

In the last few months of the year some of those corps which had
served their time or which were needed elsewhere were allowed to leave
the seat of war. By the middle of November the three different corps
of the City Imperial Volunteers, the two Canadian contingents,
Lumsden's Horse, the Composite Regiment of Guards, six hundred
Australians, A battery R.H.A., and the volunteer companies of the
regular regiments, were all homeward bound.  This loss of several
thousand veteran troops before the war was over was to be deplored,
and though unavoidable in the case of volunteer contingents, it is
difficult to explain where regular troops are concerned. Early in the
new year the Government was compelled to send out strong
reinforcements to take their place.

Early in December Lord Roberts also left the country, to take over the
duties of Commander-in-Chief. High as his reputation stood when, in
January, he landed at Cape Town, it is safe to say that it had been
immensely enhanced when, ten months later, he saw from the
quarter-deck of the 'Canada' the Table Mountain growing dimmer in the
distance.  He found a series of disconnected operations, in which we
were uniformly worsted.  He speedily converted them into a series of
connected operations in which we were almost uniformly successful.
Proceeding to the front at the beginiung of February, within a
fortnight he had relieved Kimberley, within a month he had destroyed
Cronje's force, and within six weeks he was in Bloemfontein.  Then,
after a six weeks' halt which could not possibly have been shortened,
he made another of his tiger leaps, and within a month had occupied
Johannesburg and Pretoria. From that moment the issue of the campaign
was finally settled, and though a third leap was needed, which carried
him to Komatipoort, and though brave and obstinate men might still
struggle against their destiny, he had done what was essential, and
the rest, however difficult, was only the detail of the campaign. A
kindly gentleman, as well as a great soldier, his nature revolted from
all harshness, and a worse man might. have been a better leader in the
last hopeless phases of the war.  He remembered, no doubt, how Grant
had given Lee's army their horses, but Lee at the time had been
thoroughly beaten, and his men had laid down their arms.  A similar
boon to the partially conquered Boers led to very different results,
and the prolongation of the war is largely due to this act of
clemency.  At the same time political and military considerations were
opposed to each other upon the point, and his moral position in the
use of harsher measures is the stronger since a policy of conciliation
had been tried and failed.  Lord Roberts returned to London with the
respect and love of his soldiers and of his fellow-countrymen.  A
passage from his farewell address to his troops may show the qualities
which endeared him to them

'The service which the South African Force has performed is, I venture
to think, unique in the annals of war, inasmuch as it has been
absolutely almost incessant for a whole year, in some cases for more
than a year. There has been no rest, no days off to recruit, no going
into winter quarters, as in other campaigns which have extended over a
long period. For months together, in fierce heat, in biting cold, in
pouring rain, you, my comrades, have marched and fought without halt,
and bivouacked without shelter from the elements. You frequently have
had to continue marching with your clothes in rags and your boots
without soles, time being of such consequence that it was impossible
for you to remain long enough in one place to refit. When not engaged
in actual battle you have been continually shot at from behind kopjes
by invisible enemies to whom every inch of the country was familiar,
and who, from the peculiar nature of the country, were able to inflict
severe punishment while perfectly safe themselves. You have forced
your way through dense jungles, over precipitous mountains, through
and over which with infinite manual labour you have had to drag heavy
guns and ox-wagons.  You have covered with almost incredible speed
enormous distances, and that often on very short supplies of food. You
have endured the sufferings inevitable in war to sick and wounded men
far from the base, without a murmur and even with cheerfulness.'

The words reflect honour both upon the troops addressed and upon the
man who addressed them. From the middle of December 1900 Lord
Kitchener took over the control of the campaign.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE SECOND INVASION OF CAPE COLONY

(DECEMBER 1900-APRIL 1901)


During the whole war the task of the British had been made very much
more difficult by the openly expressed sympathy with the Boers from
the political association known as the Afrikander Bond, which either
inspired or represented the views which prevailed among the great
majority of the Dutch inhabitants of Cape Colony.  How strong was this
rebel impulse may be gauged by the fact that in some of the border
districts no less than ninety per cent. of the voters joined the Boer
invaders upon the occasion of their first entrance into the Colony.
It is not pretended that these men suffered from any political
grievances whatever, and their action is to be ascribed partly to a
natural sympathy with their northern kinsmen, and partly to racial
ambition and to personal dislike to their British neighbours.  The
liberal British policy towards the natives had especially alienated
the Dutch, and had made as well-marked a line of cleavage in South
Africa as the slave question had done in the States of the Union.

With the turn of the war the discontent in Cape Colony became less
obtrusive, if not less acute, but in the later months of the year 1900
it increased to a degree which became dangerous.  The fact of the
farm-burning in the conquered countries, and the fiction of outrages
by the Brjtish troops, raised a storm of indignation.  The annexation
of the Republics, meaning the final disappearance of any Dutch flag
from South Africa, was a racial humiliation which was bitterly
resented.  The Dutch papers became very violent, and the farmers much
excited.  The agitation culminated in a conference at Worcester upon
December 6th, at which some thousands of delegates were present. It is
suggestive of the Imperial nature of the struggle that the assembly of
Dutch Afrikanders was carried out under the muzzles of Canadian
artillery, and closely watched by Australian cavalry.  Had violent
words transformed themselves into deeds, all was ready for the crisis.

Fortunately the good sense of the assembly prevailed, and the
agitation, though bitter, remained within those wide limits which a
British constitution permits. Three resolutions were passed, one
asking that the war be ended, a second that the independence of the
Republics be restored, and a third protesting against the actions of
Sir Alfred Milner.  A deputation which carried these to the Governor
received a courteous but an uncompromising reply.  Sir Alfred Milner
pointed out that the Home Government, all the great Colonies, and half
the Cape were unanimous in their policy, and that it was folly to
imagine that it could be reversed on account of a local agitation. All
were agreed in the desire to end the war, but the last way of bringing
this aboutwas by encouraging desperate men to go on fighting in a
hopeless cause. Such was the general nature of the Governor's reply,
which was, as might be expected, entirely endorsed by the British
Government and people.

Had De Wet, in the operations which have already been described,
evaded Charles Kiox and crossed the Orange River, his entrance into
the Colony would have been synchronous with the congress at Worcester,
and the situation would have become more acute.  This peril was
fortunately averted.  The agitation in the Colony suggested to the
Boer leaders, however, that here was an untouched recruiting ground,
and that small mobile invading parties might gather strength and
become formidable.  It was obvious, also, that by enlarging the field
of operations the difficulties of the British Commander-in-chief would
be very much increased, and the pressure upon the Boer guerillas in
the Republics relaxed.  Therefore, in spite of De Wet's failure to
penetrate the Colony, several smaller bands under less-known leaders
were despatched over the Orange River.  With the help of the
information and the supplies furnished by the local farmers, these
bands wandered for many months over the great expanse of the Colony,
taking refuge, when hard pressed, among the mountain ranges.  They
moved swiftly about, obtaining remounts from their friends, and
avoiding everything in the nature of an action, save when the odds
were overwhelmingly in their favour.  Numerous small posts or patrols
cut off, many skirmishes, and one or two railway smashes were the
fruits of this invasion, which lasted till the end of the war, and
kept the Colony in an extreme state of unrest during that period.  A
short account must be given here of the movement and exploits of these
hostile bands, avoiding, as far as possible, that catalogue of obscure
'fonteins' and 'kops' which mark their progress.

The invasion was conducted by two main bodies, which shed off numerous
small raiding parties.  Of these two, one operated on the western side
of the Colony, reaching the sea-coast in the Clanwilliam district, and
attaining a point which is less than a hundred miles from Cape Town.
The other penetrated even more deeply down the centre of the Colony,
reaching almost to the sea in the Mossel Bay direction. Yet the
incursion, although so far-reaching, had small effect, since the
invaders held nothing save the ground on which they stood, and won
their way, not by victory, but by the avoidance of danger.  Some
recruits were won to their cause, but they do not seem at that time to
have been more than a few hundreds in number, and to have been drawn
for the most part from the classes of the community which had least to
lose and least to offer.

The Western Boers were commanded by Judge Hertzog of the Free State,
having with him Brand, the son of the former president, and about
twelve hundred well-mounted men.  Crossing the Orange Biver at Sand
Drift, north of Colesberg, upon December 16th, they paused at
Kameelfontein to gather up a small post of thirty yeomen and guardsmen
under Lieutenant Fletcher, the wellknown oar. Meeting with a stout
resistance, and learning that British forces were already converging
upon them, they abandoned the attack, and turning away from Colesberg
they headed west, cutting the railway line twenty miles to the north
of De Aar.  On the 22nd they occupied Britstown, which is eighty miles
inside the border, and on the same day they captured a small body of
yeomanry who had been following them.  These prisoners were released
again some days later.  Taking a sweep round towards Prieska and
Strydenburg, they pushed south again.  At the end of the year
Hertzog's column was 150 miles deep in the Colony, sweeping through
the barren and thinly-inhabited western lands, heading apparently for
Fraserburg and Beaufort West.

The second column was commanded by Kritzinger, a burgher of Zastron,
in the Orange River Colony. His force was about 800 strong.  Crossing
the border at Rhenoster Hoek upon December 16th, they pushed for
Burghersdorp, but were headed off by a British column. Passing through
Venterstad, they made for Steynsberg, fighting two indecisive
skirmishes with small British forces.  The end of the year saw them
crossing the rail road at Sherburne, north of Rosmead Junction, where
they captured a train as they passed, containing some Colonial
troops. At this time they were a hundred miles inside the Colony, and
nearly three hundred from Hertzog's western column.

In the meantime Lord Kitchener, who had descended for a few days to De
Aar, had shown great energy in organising small mobile columns which
should follow and, if possible, destroy the invaders.  Martial law was
proclaimed in the parts of the Colony affected, and as the invaders
came further south the utmost enthusiasm was shown by the loyalists,
who formed themselves everywhere into town guards.  The existing
Colonial regiments, such as Brabant's, the Imperial and South African
Light Horse - Thorneycroft's, Rimington's, and the others -- had
already been brought up to strength again, and now two new regiments
were added, Kitchener's Bodyguard and Kitchener's Fighting Scouts, the
latter being raised by Johann Colenbrander, who had made a name for
himself in the Rhodesian wars.  At this period of the war between
twenty and thirty thousand Cape colonists were under arms.  Many of
these were untrained levies, but they possessed the martial spirit of
the race, and they set free more seasoned troops for other duties.

It will be most convenient and least obscure to follow the movements
of the western force (Hertzog's), and afterwards to consider those of
the eastern (Kritzinger's).  The opening of the year saw the mobile
column of Free Staters 150 miles over the border, pushing swiftly
south over the barren surface of the Karoo.  It is a country of
scattered farms and scanty population; desolate plains curving upwards
until they rise into still more desolate mountain ranges.  Moving in a
very loose formation over a wide front, the Boers swept southwards.
On or about January 4th they took possession of the small town of
Calvinia, which remained their headquarters for more than a
month. From this point their roving bands made their way as far as the
seacoast in the Clanwilliam direction, for they expected at Lanmbert's
Bay to meet with a vessel with mercenaries and guns from Europe.  They
pushed their outposts also as far as Sutherland and Beaufort West in
the south.  On January 15th strange horsemen were seen hovering about
the line at Touws River, and the citizens of Cape Town learned with
amazement that the war had been carried to within a hundred miles of
their own doors.

Whilst the Boers were making this daring raid a force consisting of
several mobile columns was being organised by General Settle to arrest
and finally to repel the western invasion.  The larger body was under
the command of Colonel De Lisle, an oficer who brought to the
operations of war the same energy and thoroughness with which he had
made the polo team of an infantry regiment the champions of the whole
British Army. His troops consisted of the 6th Mounted Infantry, the
New South Wales Mounted Infantry, the Irish Yeomanry, a section of R
battery R.H.A., and a pom-pom. With this small but mobile and hardy
force he threw himself in front of Hertzog's line of advance. On
January 13th be occupied Piquetburg, eighty miles south of the Boer
headquarters.  On the 23rd he was at Clanwilliam, fifty miles
south-~vest of them.  To his right were three other small British
columns under Bethune, Thorneycroft, and Henniker, the latter resting
upon the railway at Matjesfontein, and the whole line extending over
120 miles -- barring the southern path to the invaders.

Though Hertzog at Calvinia and De Lisle at Clanwilliam were only fifty
miles apart, the intervening country is among the most broken and
mountainous in South Africa.  Between the two points, and nearer to De
Lisle than to Hertzog, flows the Doorn River.  The Boers advancing
from Calvinia came into touch with the British scouts at this point,
and drove them in upon January 21st.  On the 28th De Lisle, having
been reinforced by Bethune's column, was able at last to take the
initiative. Bethune's force consisted mainly of Colonials, and
included Kitchener's Fighting Scouts, the Cape Mounted Police, Cape
Mounted Rifles, Brabant's Horse, and the Diamond Field Horse.  At the
end of January the united forces of Bethune and of De Lisle advanced
upon Calvinia.  The difficulties lay rather in the impassable country
than in the resistance of an enemy who was determined to refuse
battle. On February 6th, after a fine march, De Lisle and his men took
possession of Calvinia, which had been abandoned by the Boers. It is
painful to add that during the month that they had held the town they
appear to have behaved with great harshness, especially to the
kaffirs.  The flogging and shooting of a coloured man named Esan forms
one more incident in the dark story of the Boer and his relations to
the native.

The British were now sweeping north on a very extended front.
Colenbrander had occupied Van Rhyns Dorp, to the east of Calvinia,
while Bethune's force was operating to the west of it. De Lisle hardly
halted at Calvinia, but pushed onwards to Williston, covering
seventy-two miles of broken country in forty-eight hours, one of the
most amazing performances of the war. Quick as he was, the Boers were
quicker still, and during his northward march he does not appear to
have actually come into contact with them. Their line of retreat lay
through Carnarvon, and upon February 22nd they crossed the railway
line to the north of De Aar, and joined upon February 26th the new
invading force under De Wet, who had now crossed the Orange River. De
Lisle, who had passed over five hundred miles of barren country since
he advanced from Piquetburg, made for the railway at Victoria West,
and was despatched from that place on February 22nd to the scene of
action in the north. From all parts Boer and Briton were concentrating
in their effort to aid or to repel the inroad of the famous guerilla.

Before describing this attempt it would be well to trace the progress
of the eastern invasion (Kritzinger's), a movement which may be
treated rapidly, since it led to no particular military result at that
time, though it lasted long after Hertzog's force had been finally
dissipated.  Several small columns, those of Williams, Byng, Grenfell,
and Lowe, all under the direction of Haig, were organised to drive
back these commandos; but so nimble were the invaders, so vast the
distances and so broken the country, that it was seldom that the
forces came into contact. The operations were conducted over a portion
of the Colony which is strongly Dutch in sympathy, and the enemy,
though they do not appear to have obtained any large number of
recruits, were able to gather stores, horses, and information wherever
they went.

When last mentioned Kritzinger's men had crossed the railway north of
Rosmead on December 30th, and held up a train containing some Colonial
troops. From then onwards a part of them remained in the Middelburg
and Graaf-Reinet districts, while part moved towards the south.  On
January 11th there was a sharp skirmish near Murraysburg, in which
Byng's column was engaged, at the cost of twenty casualties, all of
Brabant's or the South African Light Horse.  On the 16th a very rapid
movement towards the south began. On that date Boers appeared at
Aberdeen, and on the 18th at Willowmore, having covered seventy miles
in two days.  Their long, thin line was shredded out over 150 miles,
and from Maraisburg, in the north, to Uniondale, which is only thirty
miles from the coast, there was rumour of their presence.  In this
wild district and in that of Oudtshoorn the Boer vanguard flitted in
and out of the hills, Haig's column striving hard to bring them to an
action.  So well-informed were the invaders that they were always able
to avoid the British concentrations, while if a British outpost or
patrol was left exposed it was fortunate if it escaped disaster.  On
February 6th a small body of twenty-five of the 7th King's Dragoon
Guards and of the West Australians, under Captain Oliver, were
overwhelmed at Klipplaat, after a very fine defence, in which they
held their own against 200 Boers for eight hours, and lost nearly
fifty per cent. of their number.  On the 12th a patrol of yeomanry was
surprised and taken near Willowmore.

The coming of De Wet had evidently been the signal for all the Boer
raiders to concentrate, for in the second week of February Kritzinger
also began to fall back, as Hertzog had done in the west, followed
closely by the British columns.  He did not, however, actually join De
Wet, and his evacuation of the country was never complete, as was the
case with Hertzog's force. On the 19th Kritzinger was at Bethesda,
with Gorringe and Lowe at his heels.  On the 23rd an important railway
bridge at Fish River, north of Cradock, was attacked, but the attempt
was foiled by the resistance of a handful of Cape Police and
Lancasters.  On March 6th a party of Boers occupied the village of
Pearston, capturing a few rifles and some ammunition.  On the same
date there was a skirmish between Colonel Parsons's column and a party
of the enemy to the north of Aberdeen. The main body of the invading
force appears to have been lurking in this neighbourhood, as they were
able upon April 7th to cut off a strong British patrol, consisting of
a hundred Lancers and Yeomanry, seventy-five of whom remained as
temporary prisoners in the hands of the enemy. With this success we
may for the time leave Kritzinger and his lieutenant, Scheepers, who
commanded that portion of his force which had penetrated to the south
of the Colony.

The two invasions which have been here described, that of Hertzog in
the west and of Kritzinger in the midlands, would appear in themselves
to be unimportant military operations, since they were carried out by
small bodies of men whose policy was rather to avoid than to overcome
resistance.  Their importance, however, is due to the fact that they
were really the forerunners of a more important incursion upon the
part of De Wet. The object of these two bands of raiders was to spy
out the land, so that on the arival of the main body all might be
ready for that general rising of their kinsmen in the Colony which was
the last chance, not of winning, but of prolonging the war.  It must
be confessed that, however much their reason might approve of the
Government under which they lived, the sentiment of the Cape Dutch had
been cruelly, though unavoidably, hurt in the course of the war.  The
appearance of so popular a leader as De Wet with a few thousand
veterans in the very heart of their country might have stretched their
patience to the breaking-point.  Inflamed, as they were, by that
racial hatred which had always smouldered, and had now been fanned
into a blaze by the speeches of their leaders and by the fictions of
their newspapers, they were ripe for mischief, while they had before
their eyes an object-lesson of the impotence of our military system in
those small bands who had kept the country in a ferment for so
long. All was propitious, therefore, for the attempt which Steyn and
De Wet were about to make to carry the war into the enemy's country.

We last saw De Wet when, after a long chase, he had been headed back
from the Orange River, and, winnining clear from Knox's pursuit, had
in the third week of December passed successfully through the British
cordon between Thabanchu and Ladybrand.  Thence he made his way to
Senekal, and proceeded, in spite of the shaking which he had had, to
recruit and recuperate in the amazing way which a Boer army has.
There is no force so easy to drive and so difficult to destroy.  The
British columns still kept in touch with De Wet, but found it
impossible to bring him to an action in the difficult district to
which he had withdrawn. His force had split up into numerous smaller
bodies, capable of reuniting at a signal from their leader.  These
scattered bodies, mobile as ever, vanished if seriously attacked,
while keenly on the alert to pounce upon any British force which might
be overpowered before assistance could arrive.  Such an opportunity
came to the commando led by Philip Botha, and the result was another
petty reverse to the British arms.

Upon January 3rd Colonel White's small column was pushing north, in
co-operation with those of Knox, Pilcher, and the others.  Upon that
date it had reached a point just north of Lindley, a district which
has never been a fortunate one for the invaders.  A patrol of
Kitchener' s newly raised bodyguard, under Colonel Laing, 120 strong,
was sent forward to reconnoitre upon the road from Lindley to Reitz.

The scouting appears to have been negligently done, there being only
two men out upon each flank. The little force walked into one of those
horse-shoe positions which the Boers love, and learned by a sudden
volley from a kraal upon their right that the enemy was present in
strength.  On attempting to withdraw it was instantly evident that the
Boers were on all sides and in the rear with a force which numbered at
least five to one.  The camp of the main column was only four miles
away, however, and the bodyguard, having sent messages of their
precarious position, did all they could to make a defence until help
could reach them. Colonel Laing had fallen, shot through the heart,
but found a gallant successor in young Nairne, the adjutant.  Part of
the force had thrown themselves, under Nairne and Milne, into a donga,
which gave some shelter from the sleet of bullets.  The others, under
Captain Butters, held on to a ruined kraal.  The Boers pushed the
attack very rapidly, however, and were soon able with their superior
numbers to send a raking fire down the donga, which made it a perfect
death-trap.  Still hoping that the laggard reinforcements would come
up, the survivors held desperately on; but both in the kraal and in
the donga their numbers were from minute to minute diminishing.  There
was no formal surrender and no white flag, for, when fifty per
cent. of the British were down, the Boers closed in swiftly and rushed
the position. Philip Botha, the brother of the commandant, who led the
Boers, behaved with courtesy and humanity to the survivors; but many
of the wounds were inflicted with those horrible explosive and
expansive missiles, the use of which among civilised combatants should
now and always be a capital offence.  To disable one's adversary is a
painful necessity of warfare, but nothing can excuse the wilful
mutilation and torture which is inflicted by these brutal devices.

'How many of you are there?' asked Botha.  'A hundred,' said an
officer.  'It is not true.  There are one hundred and twenty.  I
counted you as you came along.'  The answer of the Boer leader shows
how carefully the small force had been nursed until it was in an
impossible position.  The margin was a narrow one, however, for within
fifteen minutes of the disaster White's guns were at work.  There may
be some question as to whether the rescuing force could have come
sooner, but there can be none as to the resistance of the bodyguard.
They held out to the last cartridge. Colonel Laing and three officers
with sixteen men were killed, four officers and twenty-two men were
wounded. The high proportion of fatal casualties can only be explained
by the deadly character of the Boer bullets. Hardly a single horse of
the bodyguard was left unwounded, and the profit to the victors, since
they were unable to carry away their prisoners, lay entirely in the
captured rifles.  It is worthy of record that the British wounded were
despatched to Heilbron without guard through the Boer forces.  That
they arrived there unmolested is due to the forbearance of the enemy
and to the tact and energy of Surgeon-Captain Porter, who commanded
the convoy.

Encouraged by this small success, and stimulated by the news that
Hertzog and Kritzinger had succeeded in penetrating the Colony without
disaster, De Wet now prepared to follow them.  British scouts to the
north of Kroonstad reported horsemen riding south and east, sometimes
alone, sometimes in small parties They were recruits going to swell
the forces of De Wet. On January 23rd five hundred men crossed the
line, journeying in the same direction.  Before the end of the month,
having gathered together about 2,500 men with fresh horses at the
Doornberg, twenty miles north of Winburg, the Boer leader was ready
for one of his lightning treks once more.  On January 28th he broke
south through the British net, which appears to have had more meshes
than cord. Passing the Bloemfontein-Ladybrand line at Israel Poort he
swept southwards, with British columns still wearily trailing behind
him, like honest bulldogs panting after a greyhound.

Before following him upon this new venture it is necessary to say a
few words about that peace movement in the Boer States to which some
allusion has already been made. On December 20th Lord Kitchener had
issued a proclamation which was intended to have the effect of
affording protection to those burghers who desired to cease fighting,
but who were unable to do so without incurring the enmity of their
irreconcilable brethren.  'It is hereby notified,' said the document,
'to all burghers that if after this date they voluntarily surrender
they will be allowed to live with their families in Government laagers
until such time as the guerilla warfare now being carried on will
admit of their returning safely to their homes.  All stock and
property brought in at the time of the surrender of such burghers will
be respected and paid for if requisitioned.'  This wise and liberal
offer was sedulously concealed from their men by the leaders of the
fighting commandos, but was largely taken advantage of by those Boers
to whom it was conveyed.  Boer refugee camps were formed at Pretoria,
Johannesburg, Kroonstad, Bloemfontein, Warrenton; and other points, to
which by degrees the whole civil population came to be transferred.
It was the reconcentrado system of Cuba over again, with the essential
difference that the guests of the British Government were well fed and
well treated during their detention. Within a few months the camps had
50,000 inmates.

It was natural that some of these people, having experienced the
amenity of British rule, and being convinced of the hopelessness of
the struggle, should desire to convey their feelings to their friends
and relations in the field.  Both in the Transvaal and in the Orange
River Colony Peace Committees were formed, which endeavoured to
persuade their countrymen to bow to the inevitable.  A remarkable
letter was published from Piet de Wet, a man who had fought bravely
for the Boer cause, to his brother, the famous general. 'Which is
better for the Republics,' he asked, 'to continue the struggle and run
the risk of total ruin as a nation, or to submit?  Could we for a
moment think of taking back the country if it were offered to us, with
thousands of people to be supported by a Government which has not a
farthing?... Put passionate feeling aside for a moment and use
common-sense, and you will then agree with me that the best thing for
the people and the country is to give in, to be loyal to the new
government, and to get responsible government...  Should the war
continue a few months longer the nation will become so poor that they
will be the working class in the country, and disappear as a nation in
the future... The British are convinced that they have conquered the
land and its people, and consider the matter ended, and they only try
to treat magnanimously those who are continuing the struggle in order
to prevent unnecessary bloodshed.'

Such were the sentiments of those of the burghers who were in favour
of peace.  Their eyes had been opened and their bitterness was
transferred from the British Government to those individual Britons
who, partly from idealism and partly from party passion, had
encouraged them to their undoing. But their attempt to convey their
feelings to their countrymen in the field ended in tragedy. Two of
their number, Morgendaal and Wessels, who had journeyed to De Wet's
camp, were condemned to death by order of that leader.  In the case of
Morgendaal the execution actually took place, and seems to have been
attended by brutal circumstances, the man having been thrashed with a
sjambok before being put to death.  The circumstances are still
surrounded by such obscurity that it is impossible to say whether the
message of the peace envoys was to the General himself or to the men
under his command.  In the former case the man was murdered.  In the
latter the Boer leader was within his rights, though the rights may
have been harshly construed and brutally enforced.

On January 29th, in the act of breaking south, De Wet's force, or a
portion of it, had a sharp brush with a small British column (Crewe's)
at Tabaksberg, which lies about forty miles north-east of
Bloemfontein; This small force, seven hundred strong, found itself
suddenly in the presence of a very superior body of the enemy, and had
some difficulty in extricating itself. A pom-pom was lost in this
affair.  Crewe fell back upon Knox, and the combined columns made for
Bloemfontein, whence they could use the rails for their transport. De
Wet meanwhile moved south as far as Smithfield, and then, detaching
several small bodies to divert the attention of the British, he struck
due west, and crossed the track between Springfontein and
Jagersfontein road, capturing the usual supply train as he passed. On
February 9th he had reached Philippolis, well ahead of the British
pursuit, and spent a day or two in making his final arrangements
before carrying the war over the border. His force consisted at this
time of nearly 8,000 men, with two 15-pounders, one pom-pom, and one
maxim.  The garrisons of all the towns in the southwest of the Orange
River Colony had been removed in accordance with the policy of
concentration, so De Wet found himself for the moment in a friendly
country.

The British, realising how serious a situation might arise should De
Wet succeed in penetrating the Colony and in joining Hertzog and
Kritzinger, made every effort both to head him off and to bar his
return.  General Lyttelton at Naauwpoort directed the operations, and
the possession of the railway line enabled him to concentrate his
columns rapidly at the point of danger. On February 11th De Wet forded
the Orange River at Zand Drift, and found himself once more upon
British territory.  Lyttelton's plan of campaign appears to have been
to allow De Wet to come some distance south, and then to hold him in
front by De Lisle's force, while a number of small mobile columns
under Plumer, Crabbe, Henniker, Bethune, Haig, and Thorneycroft should
shepherd him behind.  On crossing, De Wet at once moved westwards,
where, upon February 12th, Plumer's column, consisting of the
Queensland Mounted Infantry, the Imperial Bushmen, and part of the
King's Dragoon Guards, came into touch with his rearguard. All day
upon the 13th and 14th, amid terrific rain, Plumer's hardy troopers
followed close upon the enemy, gleaning a few ammunition wagons, a
maxim, and some prisoners.  The invaders crossed the railway line near
Houtnek, to the north of De Aar, in the early hours of the 15th,
moving upon a front of six or eight miles.  Two armoured trains from
the north and the south closed in upon him as he passed, Plumer still
thundered in his rear, and a small column under Crabbe came pressing
from the south.  This sturdy Colonel of Grenadiers had already been
wounded four times in the war, so that he might be excused if he felt
some personal as well as patriotic reasons for pushing a relentless
pursuit.  On crossing the railroad De Wet turned furiously upon his
pursuers, and, taking an excellent position upon a line of kopjes
rising out of the huge expanse of the Karoo, he fought a stubborn
rearguard action in order to give time for his convoy to get ahead. He
was hustled off the hills, however, the Australian Bushmen with great
dash carrying the central kopje, and the guns driving the invaders to
the westward. Leaving all his wagons and his reserve ammunition behind
him, the guerilla chief struck north-west, moving with great
swiftness, but never succeeding in shaking off Plumer's pursuit.  The
weather continued, however, to be atrocious, rain and hail falling
with such violence that the horses could hardly be induced to face it.
For a week the two sodden, sleepless, mud-splashed little armies swept
onwards over the Karoo.  De Wet passed northwards through Strydenburg,
past Hopetown, and so to the Orange River, which was found to be too
swollen with the rains to permit of his crossing. Here upon the 23rd,
after a march of forty-five miles on end, Plumer ran into him once
more, and captured with very little fighting a fifteen-pounder, a
pom-pom, and close on to a hundred prisoners.  Slipping away to the
east, De Wet upon February 24th crossed the railroad again between
Krankuil and Orange River Station, with Thorneycroft's column hard
upon his heels.  The Boer leader was now more anxious to escape from
the Colony than ever he had been to enter it, and he rushed
distractedly from point to point, endeavouring to find a ford over the
great turbid river which cut him off from his own country. Here he was
joined by Hertzog's commando with a number of invaluable spare
horses. It is said also that he had been able to get remounts in the
Hopetown district, which had not been cleared -- an omission for
which, it is to be hoped, someone has been held responsible.  The Boer
ponies, used to the succulent grasses of the veldt, could make nothing
of the rank Karoo, and had so fallen away that an enormous advantage
should have rested with the pursuers had ill luck and bad management
not combined to enable the invaders to renew their mobility at the
very moment when Plumer's horses were dropping dead under their
riders.

The Boer force was now so scattered that, in spite of the advent of
Hertzog, De Wet had fewer men with him than when he entered the
Colony.  Several hundreds had been taken prisoners, many had deserted,
and a few had been killed.  It was hoped now that the whole force
might be captured, and Thorneycroft's, Crabbe's, Henniker's, and other
columns were closing swiftly in upon him, while the swollen river
still barred his retreat.  There was a sudden drop in the flood,
however; one ford became passable, and over it, upon the last day of
February, De Wet and his bedraggled, dispirited commando escaped to
their own country.  There was still a sting in his tail, however; for
upon that very day a portion of his force succeeded in capturing sixty
and killing or wounding twenty of Colenbrander's new regiment,
Kitchener's Fighting Scouts. On the other hand, De Wet was finally
relieved upon the same day of all care upon the score of his guns, as
the last of them was most gallantly captured by Captain Dallimore and
fifteen Victorians, who at the same time brought in thirty-three Boer
prisoners.  The net result of De Wet's invasion was that he gained
nothing, and that he lost about four thousand horses, all his guns,
all his convoy, and some three hundred of his men.

Once safely in his own country again, the guerilla chief pursued his
way northwards with his usual celerity and success.  The moment that
it was certain that De Wet had escaped, the indefatigable Plumer,
wiry, tenacious man, had been sent off by train to Springfontein,
while Bethune's column followed direct.  This latter force crossed the
Orange River bridge and marched upon Luckhoff and Fauresmith.  At the
latter town they overtook Plumer, who was again hard upon the heels of
De Wet. Together they ran him across the Riet River and north to
Petrusburg, until they gave it up as hopeless upon finding that, with
only fifty followers, he had crossed the Modder River at Abram's
Kraal. There they abandoned the chase and fell back upon Bloemfontein
to refit and prepare for a fresh effort to run down their elusive
enemy.

While Plumer and Bethune were following upon the track of De Wet until
he left them behind at the Modder, Lyttelton was using the numerous
columns which were ready to his hand in effecting a drive up the
south-eastern section of the Orange Biver Colony. It was disheartening
to remember that all this large stretch of country had from April to
November been as peaceful and almost as prosperous as Kent or
Yorkshire.  Now the intrusion of the guerilla bands, and the pressure
put by them upon the farmers, had raised the whole country once again,
and the work of pacification had to be set about once more, with
harsher measures than before. A continuous barrier of barbed-wire
fencing had been erected from Bloemfontein to the Basuto border, a
distance of eighty miles, and this was now strongly held by British
posts.  From the south Bruce Hamilton, Hickman, Thorneycroft, and Haig
swept upwards, stripping the country as they went in the same way that
French had done in the Eastern Transvaal, while Pilcher's column
waited to the north of the barbed-wire barrier.  It was known that
Fourie, with a considerable commando, was lurking in this district,
but he and his men slipped at night between the British columns and
escaped.  Pilcher, Bethune, and Byng were able, however, to send in
200 prisoners and very great numbers of cattle. On April 10th Monro,
with Bethune's Mounted Infantry, captured eighty fighting Boers near
Dewetsdorp, and sixty more were taken by a night attack at Boschberg.
There is no striking victory to record in these operations, but they
were an important part of that process of attrition which was wearing
the Boers out and helping to bring the war to an end.  Terrible it is
to see that barren countryside, and to think of the depths of misery
to which the once flourishing and happy Orange Free State had fallen,
through joining in a quarrel with a nation which bore it nothing but
sincere friendship and goodwill. With nothing to gain and everything
to lose, the part played by the Orange Free State in this South
African drama is one of the most inconceivable things in history.
Never has a nation so deliberately and so causelessly committed
suicide.


CHAPTER XXXIII

THE NORTHERN OPERATIONS FROM JANUARY TO APRIL, 1901

Three consecutive chapters have now given some account of the campaign
of De Wet, of the operations in the Transvaal up to the end of the
year 1900, and of the invasion of Cape Colony up to April 1901. The
present chapter will deal with the events in the Transvaal from the
beginning of the new century.  The military operations in that
country, though extending over a very large area, may be roughly
divided into two categories: the attacks by the Boers upon British
posts, and the aggressive sweeping movements of British columns.
Under the first heading come the attacks on Belfast, on Zuurfontein,
on Kaalfontein, on Zeerust, on Modderfontein, and on Lichtenburg,
besides many minor affairs. The latter comprises the operations of
Babington and of Cunningham to the west and south-west of Pretoria,
those of Methuen still further to the south-west, and the large
movement of French in the south-east.  In no direction did the British
forces in the field meet with much active resistance.  So long as they
moved the gnats did not settle; it was only when quiet that they
buzzed about and occasionally stung.

The early days of January 1901 were not fortunate for the British
arms, as the check in which Kitchener's Bodyguard was so roughly
handled, near Lindley, was closely followed by a brisk action at
Naauwpoort or Zandfontein, near the Magaliesberg, in which De la Rey
left his mark upon the Imperial Light Horse.  The Boer commandos,
having been driven into the mountains by French and Clements in the
latter part of December, were still on the look-out to strike a blow
at any British force which might expose itself. Several mounted
columns had been formed to scour the country, one under Kekewich, one
under Gordon, and one under Babington.  The two latter, meeting in a
mist upon the morning of January 5th, actually turned their rifles
upon each other, but fortunately without any casualties resulting. A
more deadly rencontre was, however, awaiting them.

A force of Boers were observed, as the mist cleared, making for a
ridge which would command the road along which the convoy and guns
were moving.  Two squadrons (B and C) of the Light Horse were
instantly detached to seize the point.  They do not appear to have
realised that they were in the immediate presence of the enemy, and
they imagined that the ground over which they were passing had been
already reconnoitred by a troop of the 14th Hussars. It is true that
four scouts were thrown forward, but as both squadrons were cantering
there was no time for these to get ahead. Presently C squadron, which
was behind, was ordered to close up upon the left of B squadron, and
the 150 horsemen in one long line swept over a low grassy ridge.  Some
hundreds of De la Rey's men were lying in the long grass upon the
further side, and their first volley, fired at a fifty-yard range,
emptied a score of saddles.  It would have been wiser, if less
gallant, to retire at once in the presence of a numerous and invisible
enemy, but the survivors were ordered to dismount and return the fire.
This was done, but the hail of bullets was terrific and the casualties
were numerous.  Captain Norman, of C squadron, then retired his men,
who withdrew in good order.  B squadron having lost Yockney, its brave
leader, heard no order, so they held their ground until few of them
had escaped the driving sleet of lead.  Many of the men were struck
three and four times.  There was no surrender, and the extermination
of B company added another laurel, even at a moment of defeat, to the
regiment whose reputation was so grimly upheld. The Boer victors
walked in among the litter of stricken men and horses. 'Practically
all of them were dressed in khaki and had the water-bottles and
haversacks of our soldiers.  One of them snatched a bayonet from a
dead man, and was about to despatch one of our wounded when he was
stopped in the nick of time by a man in a black suit, who, I
afterwards heard, was De la Rey himself... The feature of the action
was the incomparable heroism of our dear old Colonel Wools-Sampson.'
So wrote a survivor of B company, himself shot through the body.  It
was four hours before a fresh British advance reoccupied the ridge,
and by that time the Boers had disappeared.  Some seventy killed and
wounded, many of them terribly mutilated, were found on the scene of
the disaster. It is certainly a singular coincidence that at distant
points of the seat of war two of the crack irregular corps should have
suffered so severely within three days of each other.  In each case,
however, their prestige was enhanced rather than lowered by the
result.  These incidents tend, however, to shake the belief that
scouting is better performed in the Colonial than in the regular
forces.

Of the Boer attacks upon British posts to which allusion has been
made, that upon Belfast, in the early morning of January 7th, appears
to have been very gallantly and even desperately pushed.  On the same
date a number of smaller attacks, which may have been meant simply as
diversions, were made upon Wonderfontein, Nooitgedacht, Wildfontein,
Pan, Dalmanutha, and Machadodorp.  These seven separate attacks,
occurring simultaneously over sixty miles, show that the Boer forces
were still organised and under one effective control.  The general
object of the operations was undoubtedly to cut Lord Roberts's
communications upon that side and to destroy a considerable section of
the railway.

The town of Belfast was strongly held by Smith-Dorrien, with 1,750 men,
of which 1,300 were infantry belonging to the Royal Irish, the
Shropshires, and the Gordons. The perimeter of defence, however, was
fifteen miles, and each little fort too far from its neighbour for
mutual support, though connected with headquarters by telephone.  It
is probable that the leaders and burghers engaged in this very gallant
attack were in part the same as those concerned in the successful
attempt at Helvetia upon December 29th, for the assault was delivered
in the same way, at the same hour, and apparently with the same
primary object. This was to gain possession of the big 5-inch gun,
which is as helpless by night as it is formidable by day. At Helvetia
they attained their object and even succeeded not merely in
destroying, but in removing their gigantic trophy.  At Belfast they
would have performed the same feat had it not been for the foresight
of General Smith-Dorrien, who had the heavy gun trundled back into the
town every night.

The attack broke first upon Monument Hill, a post held by Captain
Fosbery with eighty-three Royal Irish. Chance or treason guided the
Boers to the weak point of the wire entanglement and they surged into
the fort, where the garrison fought desperately to hold its own. There
was thick mist and driving rain; and the rush of vague and shadowy
figures amid the gloom was the first warning of the onslaught.  The
Irishmen were overborne by a swarm of assailants, but they nobly
upheld their traditional reputation. Fosbery met his death like a
gallant gentleman, but not more heroically than Barry, the humble
private, who, surrounded by Boers, thought neither of himself nor of
them, but smashed at the maxim gun with a pickaxe until he fell
riddled with bullets.  Half the garrison were on the ground before the
post was carried.

A second post upon the other side of the town was defended by
Lieutenant Marshall with twenty men, mostly Shropshires.  For an hour
they held out until Marshall and nine out of his twelve Shropshires
had been hit.  Then this post also was carried.

The Gordon Highlanders held two posts to the southeast and to the
south-west of the town, and these also were vigorously attacked.
Here, however, the advance spent itself without result.  In vain the
Ermelo and Carolina commandos stormed up to the Gordon pickets. They
were blown back by the steady fire of the infantry. One small post
manned by twelve Highlanders was taken, but the rest defied all
attack.  Seeing therefore that his attempt at a COUP-DE-MAIN was
a failure, Viljoen withdrew his men before daybreak. The Boer
casualties have not been ascertained, but twenty-four of their dead
were actually picked up within the British lines.  The British lost
sixty killed and wounded, while about as many were taken
prisoners. Altogether the action was a brisk and a gallant one, of
which neither side has cause to be ashamed. The simultaneous attacks
upon six other stations were none of them pressed home, and were
demonstrations rather than assaults.

The attempts upon Kaalfontein and on Zuurfontein were both made in the
early morning of January 12th. These two places are small stations
upon the line between Johannesburg and Pretoria.  It is clear that the
Boers were very certain of their own superior mobility before they
ventured to intrude into the very heart of the British position, and
the result showed that they were right in supposing that even if their
attempt were repulsed, they would still be able to make good their
escape. Better horsed, better riders, with better intelligence and a
better knowledge of the country, their ventures were always attended
by a limited liability.

The attacks seem to have been delivered by a strong commando, said to
have been under the command of Beyers, upon its way to join the Boer
concentration in the Eastern Transvaal.  They had not the
satisfaction, however, of carrying the garrison of a British post with
them, for at each point they were met by a stout resistance and beaten
off.  Kaalfontein was garrisoned by 120 men of Cheshire under
Williams-Freeman, Zuurfontein by as many Norfolks and a small body of
Lincolns under Cordeaux and Atkinson.  For six hours the pressure was
considerable, the assailants of Kaalfontein keeping up a brisk shell
and rifle fire, while those of Zuurfontein were without artillery. At
the end of that time two armoured trains came up with reinforcements
and the enemy continued his trek to the eastward.  Knox 's 2nd cavalry
brigade followed them up, but without any very marked result.

Zeerust and Lichtenburg had each been garrisoned and provisioned by
Lord Methuen before he carried his column away to the south-west,
where much rough and useful work awaited him.  The two towns were at
once invested by the enemy, who made an attack upon each of them.
That upon Zeerust, on January 7th, was a small matter and easily
repulsed.  A more formidable one was made on Lichtenburg, on March
3rd.  The attack was delivered by De la Rey, Smuts, and Celliers, with
1,500 men, who galloped up to the pickets in the early morning.  The
defenders were 600 in number, consisting of Paget's Horse and three
companies of the 1st battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers, a
veteran regiment with a long record of foreign service, not to be
confused with that 2nd battalion which was so severely handled upon
several occasions.  It was well that it was so, for less sturdy
material might have been overborne by the vigour of the attack.  As it
was, the garrison were driven to their last trench, but held out under
a very heavy fire all day, and next morning the Boers abandoned the
attack.  Their losses appear to have been over fifty in number, and
included Commandant Celliers, who was badly wounded and afterwards
taken prisoner at Warm Baths. The brave garrison lost fourteen killed,
including two officers of the Northumberlands, and twenty wounded.

In each of these instances the attacks by the Boers upon British posts
had ended in a repulse to themselves. They were more fortunate,
however, in their attempt upon Modderfontein on the Gatsrand at the
end of January.  The post was held by 200 of the South Wales
Borderers, reinforced by the 59th Imperial Yeomanry, who had come in
as escort to a convoy from Krugersdorp. The attack, which lasted all
day, was carried out by a commando of 2,000 Boers under Smuts, who
rushed the position upon the following morning.  As usual, the Boers,
who were unable to retain their prisoners, had little to show for
their success. The British casualties, however, were between thirty
and forty, mostly wounded.

On January 22nd General Cunninghame left Oliphant's Nek with a small
force consisting of the Border and Worcester Regiments, the 6th
Mounted Infantry, Kitchener's Horse, 7th Imperial Yeomanry, 8th
R.F.A., and P battery R.H.A. It had instructions to move south upon
the enemy known to be gathering there.  By midday this force was
warmly engaged, and found itself surrounded by considerable bodies of
De la Rey's burghers.  That night they camped at Middelfontein, and
were strongly attacked in the early morning. So menacing was the Boer
attitude, and so formidable the position, that the force was in some
danger. Fortunately they were in heliographic communication with
Oliphant's Nek, and learned upon the 23rd that Babington had been
ordered to their relief. All day Cunninghame's men were under a
long-range fire, but on the 24th Babington appeared, and the British
force was successfully extricated, having seventy-five
casualties. This action of Middelfontein is interesting as having been
begun in Queen Victoria's reign, and ended in that of Edward VII.

Cunninghame's force moved on to Krugersdorp, and there, having heard
of the fall of the Modderfontein post as already described, a part of
his command moved out to the Gatsrand in pursuit of Smuts. It was
found, however, that the Boers had taken up a strong defensive
position, and the British were not numerous enough to push the
attack. On February 3rd Cunninghame endeavoured to outflank the enemy
with his small cavalry force while pushing his infantry up in front,
but in neither attempt did he succeed, the cavalry failing to find the
flank, while the infantry were met with a fire which made further
advance impossible. One company of the Border Regiment found itself in
such a position that the greater part of it was killed, wounded, or
taken. This check constituted the action of Modderfontein. On the 4th,
however, Cunningham, assisted by some of the South African
Constabulary, made his way round the flank, and dislodged the enemy,
who retreated to the south. A few days later some of Smuts's men made
an attempt upon the railway near Bank, but were driven off with
twenty-six casualties. It was after this that Smuts moved west and
joined De la Rey's commando to make the attack already described upon
Lichtenburg. These six attempts represent the chief aggressive
movements which the Boers made against British posts in the Transvaal
during these months.  Attacks upon trains were still common, and every
variety of sniping appears to have been rife, from the legitimate
ambuscade to something little removed from murder.

It has been described in a previous chapter how Lord Kitchener made an
offer to the burghers which amounted to an amnesty, and how a number
of those Boers who had come under the influence of the British formed
themselves into peace committees, and endeavoured to convey to the
fighting commandos some information as to the hopelessness of the
struggle, and the lenient mood of the British.  Unfortunately these
well-meant offers appear to have been mistaken for signs of weakness
by the Boer leaders, and encouraged them to harden their hearts.  Of
the delegates who conveyed the terms to their fellow countrymen two at
least were shot, several were condemned to death, and few returned
without ill-usage.  In no case did they bear back a favourable answer.
The only result of the proclamation was to burden the British
resources by an enormous crowd of women and children who were kept and
fed in refugee camps, while their fathers and husbands continued in
most cases to fight.

This allusion to the peace movement among the burghers may serve as an
introduction to the attempt made by Lord Kitchener, at the end of
February 1901, to bring the war to a close by negotiation. Throughout
its course the fortitude of Great Britain and of the Empire had never
for an instant weakened, but her conscience had always been sensitive
at the sight of the ruin which had befallen so large a portion of
South Africa, and any settlement would have been eagerly hailed which
would insure that the work done had not been wasted, and would not
need to be done again. A peace on any other terms would simply shift
upon the shoulders of our descendants those burdens which we were not
manly enough to bear ourselves.  There had arisen, as has been said, a
considerable peace movement among the burghers of the refugee camps
and also among the prisoners of war.  It was hoped that some
reflection of this might be found among the leaders of the people.  To
find out if this were so Lord Kitchener, at the end of February, sent
a verbal message to Louis Botha, and on the 27th of that month the
Boer general rode with an escort of Hussars into Middelburg.
'Sunburned, with a pleasant, fattish face of a German type, and
wearing an imperial,' says one who rode beside him. Judging from the
sounds of mirth heard by those without, the two leaders seem to have
soon got upon amiable terms, and there was hope that a definite
settlement might spring from their interview. From the beginning Lord
Kitchener explained that the continued independence of the two
republics was an impossibility.  But on every other point the British
Government was prepared to go great lengths in order to satisfy and
conciliate the burghers.

On March 7th Lord Kitchener wrote to Botha from Pretoria,
recapitulating the points which he had advanced.  The terms offered
were certainly as far as, and indeed rather further than, the general
sentiment of the Empire would have gone.  If the Boers laid down their
arms there was to be a complete amnesty, which was apparently to
extend to rebels also so long as they did not return to Cape Colony or
Natal.  Self-government was promised after a necessary interval,
during which the two States should be administered as Crown colonies.
Law courts should be independent of the Executive from the beginning,
and both languages be official.  A million pounds of compensation
would be paid to the burghers -- a most remarkable example of a war
indemnity being paid by the victors. Loans were promised to the
farmers to restart them in business, and a pledge was made that farms
should not be taxed. The Kaffirs were not to have the franchise, but
were to have the protection of law.  Such were the generous terms
offered by the British Government.  Public opinion at home, strong]y
supported by that of the colonies, and especially of the army, felt
that the extreme step had been taken in the direction of conciliation,
and that to do more would seem not to offer peace, but to implore it.
Unfortunately, however, the one thing which the British could not
offer was the one thing which the Boers would insist upon having, and
the leniency of the proposals in all other directions may have
suggested weakness to their minds.  On March 15th an answer was
returned by General Botha to the effect that nothing short of total
independence would satisfy them, and the negotiations were accordingiy
broken off.

There was a disposition, however, upon the Boer side to renew them,
and upon May 10th General Botha applied to Lord Kitchener for
permission to cable to President Kruger, and to take his advice as to
the making of peace.  The stern old man at The Hague was still,
however, in an unbending mood. His reply was to the effect that there
were great hopes of a successful issue of the war, and that he had
taken steps to make proper provision for the Boer prisoners and for
the refugee women.  These steps, and very efficient ones too, were to
leave them entirely to the generosity of that Government which he was
so fond of reviling.

On the same day upon which Botha applied for leave to use the British
cable, a letter was written by Reitz, State Secretary of the
Transvaal, to Steyn, in which the desperate condition of the Boers was
clearly set forth. This document explained that the burghers were
continually surrendering, that the ammunition was nearly exhausted,
the food running low, and the nation in danger of extinction. 'The
time has come to take the final step,' said the Secretary of
State. Steyn wrote back a reply in which, like his brother president,
he showed a dour resolution to continue the struggle, prompted by a
fatalist conviction that some outside interference would reverse the
result of his appeal to arms. His attitude and that of Kruger
determined the Boer leaders to hold out for a few more months, a
resolution which may have been injudicious, but was certainly heroic.
'It's a fight to a finish this time,' said the two combatants in the'
Punch' cartoon which marked the beginning of the war. It was indeed
so, as far as the Boers were concerned. As the victors we can afford
to acknowledge that no nation in history has ever made a more
desperate and prolonged resistance against a vastly superior
antagonist.  A Briton may well pray that his own people may be as
staunch when their hour of adversity comes round.

The British position at this stage of the war was strengthened by a
greater centralisation.  Garrisons of outlying towns were withdrawn so
that fewer convoys became necessary.  The population was removed also
and placed near the railway lines, where they could be more easily
fed. In this way the scene of action was cleared and the Boer and
British forces left face to face. Convinced of the failure of the
peace policy, and morally strengthened by having tried it, Lord
Kitchener set himself to finish the war by a series of vigorous
operations which should sweep the country from end to end.  For this
purpose mounted troops were essential, and an appeal from him for
reinforcements was most nobly answered.  Five thousand horsemen were
despatched from the colonies, and twenty thousand cavalry, mounted
infantry, and Yeomanry were sent from home.  Ten thousand mounted men
had already been raised in Great Britain, South Africa, and Canada for
the Constabulary force which was being organised by
Baden-Powell. Altogether the reinforcements of horsemen amounted to
more than thirty-five thousand men, all of whom had arrived in South
Africa before the end of April. With the remains of his old regiments
Lord Kitchener had under him at this final period of the war between
fifty and sixty thousand cavalry-such a force as no British General in
his happiest dream had ever thought of commanding, and no British war
minister in his darkest nightmare had ever imagined himself called
upon to supply.

Long before his reinforcements had come to hand, while his Yeomanry
was still gathering in long queues upon the London pavement to wait
their turn at the recruiting office, Lord Kitchener had dealt the
enemy several shrewd blows which materially weakened their resources
in men and material.  The chief of these was the great drive down the
Eastern Transvaal undertaken by seven columns under the command of
French. Before considering this, however, a few words must be devoted
to the doings of Methuen in the south-west.

This hard-working General, having garrisoned Zeerust and Lichtenburg,
had left his old district and journeyed with a force which consisted
largely of Bushmen and Yeomanry to the disturbed parts of Bechuanaland
which had been invaded by De Villiers.  Here he cleared the country as
far as Vryburg, which he had reached in the middle of January, working
round to Kuruman and thence to Taungs.  From Taungs his force crossed
the Transvaal border and made for Klerksdorp, working through an area
which had never been traversed and which contained the difficult
Masakani hills.  He left Taungs upon February 2nd, fighting skirmishes
at Uitval's Kop, Paardefontein and Lilliefontein, in each of which the
enemy was brushed aside. Passing through Wolmaranstad, Methuen turned
to the north, where at Haartebeestefontein, on February 19th, he
fought a brisk engagement with a considerable force of Boers under De
Villiers and Liebenberg. On the day before the fight he successfully
outwitted the Boers, for, learning that they had left their laager in
order to take up a position for battle, he pounced upon the laager and
captured 10,000 head of cattle, forty-three wagons, and forty
prisoners. Stimulated by this success, he attacked the Boers next day,
and after five hours of hard fighting forced the pass which they were
holding against him.  As Methuen had but 1,500 men, and was attacking
a force which was as large as his own in a formidable position, the
success was a very creditable one. The Yeomanry all did well,
especially the 5th and 10th battalions. So also did the Australians
and tho Loyal North Lancashires.  The British casualties amounted to
sixteen killed and thirty-four wounded, while the Boers left eighteen
of their dead upon the position which they had abandoned. Lord
Methuen's little force ret urnedto Klerksdorp, having deserved right
well of their country.  From Klerksdorp Methuen struck back westwards
to the south of his former route, and on March 14th he was reported at
Warrenton.  Here also in April came Erroll's small column, bringing
with it the garrison and inhabitants of Hoopstad, a post which it had
been determined, in accordance with Lord Kitchener's policy of
centralisation, to abandon.

In the month of January, 1901, there had been a considerable
concentration of the Transvaal Boers into that large triangle which is
bounded by the Delagoa railway line upon the north, the Natal railway
line upon the south, and the Swazi and Zulu frontiers upon the
east. The buschveldt is at this season of the year unhealthy both for
man and beast, so that for the sake of their herds, their families,
and themselves the burghers were constrained to descend into the open
veldt.  There seemed the less objection to their doing so since this
tract of country, though traversed once both by Buller and by French,
has still remained a stronghold of the Boers and a storehouse of
supplies.  Within its borders are to be found Carolina, Ermelo,
Vryheid, and other storm centres. Its possession offers peculiar
strategical advantages, as a force lying there can always attack
either railway, and might even make, as was indeed intended, a descent
into Natal.  For these mingled reasons of health and of strategy a
considerable number of burghers united in this district under the
command of the Bothas and of Smuts.

Their concentration had not escaped the notice of the British military
authorities, who welcomed any movement which might bring to a focus
that resistance which had been so nebulous and elusive. Lord Kitchener
having once seen the enemy fairly gathered into this huge cover,
undertook the difficult task of driving it from end to end.  For this
enterprise General French was given the chief command, and had under
his orders no fewer than seven columns, which started from different
points of the Delagoa and of the Natal railway lines, keeping in touch
with each other and all trending south and east.  A glance at the map
would show, however, that it was a very large field for seven guns,
and that it would need all their alertness to prevent the driven game
from breaking back.  Three columns started from the Delagoa line,
namely, Smith-Dorrien's from Wonderfontein (the most easterly),
Campbell's from Middelburg, and Alderson's from Eerstefabrieken, close
to Pretoria. Four columns came from the western railway line: General
Knox's from Kaalfontein, Major Allenby's from Zuurfontein (both
stations between Pretoria and Johannesburg), General Dartnell's from
Springs, close to Johannesburg, and finally General Colville (not to
be confused with Colvile) from Greylingstad in the south. The whole
movement resembled a huge drag net, of which Wonderfontein and
Greylingstad formed the ends, exactly one hundred miles apart.  On
January 27th the net began to be drawn.  Some thousands of Boers with
a considerable number of guns were known to be within the enclosure,
and it was hoped that even if their own extreme mobility enabled them
to escape it would be impossible for them to save their transport and
their cannon.

Each of the British columns was about 2,000 strong, making a total of
14,000 men with about fifty guns engaged in the operations.  A front
of not less than ten miles was to be maintained by each force.  The
first decided move was on the part of the extreme left wing,
Smith-Dorrien's column, which moved south on Carolina, and thence on
Bothwell near Lake Chrissie.  The arduous duty of passing supplies
down from the line fell mainly upon him, and his force was in
consequence larger than the others, consisting of 8,500 men with
thirteen guns.  On the arrival of Smith-Dorrien at Carolina the other
columns started, their centre of advance being Ermelo.  Over seventy
miles of veldt the gleam of the helio by day and the flash of the
signal lamps at night marked the steady flow of the British tide.
Here and there the columns came in touch with the enemy and swept him
before them.  French had a skirmish at Wilge River at the end of
January, and Campbell another south of Middelburg, in which he had
twenty casualties. On February 4th Smith-Dorrien was at Lake Chrissie;
French had passed through Bethel and the enemy was retiring on
Amsterdam.  The hundred-mile ends of the drag net were already
contracted to a third of that distance, and the game was still known
to be within it.  On the 5th Ermelo was occupied, and the fresh deep
ruts upon the veldt told the British horsemen of the huge Boer convoy
that was ahead of them.  For days enormous herds, endless flocks, and
lines of wagons which stretched from horizon to horizon had been
trekking eastward.  Cavalry and mounted infantry were all hot upon the
scent.

Botha, however, was a leader of spirit, not to be hustled with
impunity.  Having several thousand burghers with him, it was evident
that if he threw himself suddenly upon any part of the British line he
might hope for a time to make an equal fight, and possibly to
overwhelm it.  Were Smith-Dorrien out of the way there would be a
clear road of escape for his whole convoy to the north, while a defeat
of any of the other columns would not help him much. It was on
Smith-Dorrien, therefore, that he threw himself with great
impetuosity. That General's force was, however, formidable, consisting
of the Suffolks, West Yorks and Camerons, 5th Lancers, 2nd Imperial
Light Horse, and 3rd Mounted Infantry, with eight field guns and three
heavy pieces. Such a force could hardly be defeated in the open, but
no one can foresee the effect of a night surprise well pushed home,
and such was the attack delivered by Botha at 3 A.M. upon February
6th, when his opponent was encamped at Bothwell Farm.

The night was favourable to the attempt, as it was dark and
misty. Fortunately, however, the British commander had fortified
himself and was ready for an assault.  The Boer forlorn hope came on
with a gallant dash, driving a troop of loose horses in upon the
outposts, and charging forward into the camp.  The West Yorkshires,
however, who bore the brunt of the attack, were veterans of the
Tugela, who were no more to be flurried at three in the morning than
at three in the afternoon. The attack was blown backwards, and twenty
dead Boers, with their brave leader Spruyt, were left within the
British lines.  The main body of the Boers contented themselves with a
heavy fusillade out of the darkness, which was answered and crushed by
the return fire of the infantry. In the morning no trace, save their
dead, was to be seen of the enemy, but twenty killed and fifty wounded
in Smith-Dorrien's column showed how heavy had been the fire which had
swept through the sleeping camp. The Carolina attack, which was to
have co-operated with that of the Heidelbergers, was never delivered,
through difficulties of the ground, and considerable recriminations
ensued among the Boers in consequence.

Beyond a series of skirmishes and rearguard actions this attack of
Botha's was the one effort made to stay the course of French's
columns. It did not succeed, however, in arresting them for an
hour. From that day began a record of captures of men, herds, guns,
and wagons, as the fugitives were rounded up from the north, the west,
and the south.  The operation was a very thorough one, for the towns
and districts occupied were denuded of their inhabitants, who were
sent into the refugee camps while the country was laid waste to
prevent its furnishing the commandos with supplies in the
future. Still moving south-east, General French's columns made their
way to Piet Betief upon the Swazi frontier, pushing a disorganised
array which he computed at 5,000 in front of them. A party of the
enemy, including the Carolina commando, had broken back in the middle
of February and Louis Botha had got away at the same time, but so
successful were his main operations that French was able to report his
total results at the end of the month as being 292 Boers killed or
wounded, 500 surrendered, 3 guns and one maxim taken, with 600 rifles,
4,000 horses, 4,500 trek oxen, 1,300 wagons and carts, 24,000 cattle,
and 165,000 sheep. The whole vast expanse of the eastern veldt was
dotted with the broken and charred wagons of the enemy.

Tremendous rains were falling and the country was one huge quagmire,
which crippled although it did not entirely prevent the further
operations. All the columns continued to report captures. On March 3rd
Dartnell got a maxim and 50 prisoners, while French reported 50 more,
and Smith-Dorrien 80.  On March 6th French captured two more guns, and
on the 14th he reported 46 more Boer casualties and 146 surrenders,
with 500 more wagons, and another great haul of sheep and oxen.  By
the end of March French had moved as far south as Vryheid, his troops
having endured the greatest hardships from the continual heavy rains,
and the difficulty of bringing up any supplies.  On the 27th he
reported seventeen more Boer casualties and 140 surrenders, while on
the last day of the month he took another gun and two pom-poms.  The
enemy at that date were still retiring eastward, with Alderson and
Dartnell pressing upon their rear.  On April 4th French announced the
capture of the last piece of artillery which the enemy possessed in
that region.  The rest of the Boer forces doubled back at night
between the columns and escaped over the Zululand border, where 200 of
them surrendered.  The total trophies of French's drive down the
Eastern Transvaal amounted to eleven hundred of the enemy killed,
wounded, or taken, the largest number in any operation since the
surrender of Prinsloo. There is no doubt that the movement would have
been even more successful had the weather been less boisterous, but
this considerable loss of men, together with the capture of all the
guns in that region, and of such enormous quantities of wagons,
munitions, and stock, inflicted a blow upon the Boers from which they
never wholly recovered.  On April 20th French was back in Johannesburg
once more.

While French had run to earth the last Boer gun in the south.eastern
corner of the Transvaal, De la Rey, upon the western side, had still
managed to preserve a considerable artillery with which he flitted
about the passes of the Magaliesberg or took refuge in the safe
districts to the south-west of it.  This part of the country had been
several times traversed, but had never been subdued by British
columns.  The Boers, like their own veldt grass, need but a few sparks
to be left behind to ensure a conflagration breaking out again. It was
into this inflammable country that Babington moved in March with
Klerksdorp for his base. On March 21st he had reached
Haartebeestefontein, the scene not long before of a successful action
by Methuen.  Here he was joined by Shekleton's Mounted Infantry, and
his whole force consisted of these, with the 1st Imperial Light Horse,
the 6th Imperial Bushmen, the New-Zealanders, a squadron of the 14th
Hussars, a wing each of the Somerset Light Infantry and of the Welsh
Fusiliers, with Carter's guns and four pom-poms.  With this mobile and
formidable little force Babington pushed on in search of Smuts and De
la Rey, who were known to be in the immediate neighbourhood.

As a matter of fact the Boers were not only there, but were nearer and
in greater force than had been anticipated.  On the 22nd three
squadrons of the Imperial Light Horse under Major Briggs rode into
1,500 of them, and it was only by virtue of their steadiness and
gallantry that they succeeded in withdrawing themselves and their
pom-pom without a disaster.  With Boers in their front and Boers on
either flank they fought an admirable rearguard action. So hot was the
fire that A squadron alone had twenty-two casualties.  They faced it
out, however, until their gun had reached a place of safety, when they
made an orderly retirement towards Babington's camp, having inflicted
as heavy a loss as they had sustained.  With Elandslaagte, Waggon
Hill, the relief of Mafeking, Naauwpoort, and Haartebeestefontein upon
their standards, the Imperial Light Horse, should they take a
permanent place in the Army List, will start with a record of which
many older regiments might be proud.

If the Light Horse had a few bad hours on March 22nd at the hands of
the Boers, they and their colonial comrades were soon able to return
the same with interest. On March 23rd Babington moved forward through
Kafir Kraal, the enemy falling back before him.  Next morning the
British again advanced, and as the New-Zealanders and Bushmen, who
formed the vanguard under Colonel Gray, emerged from a pass they saw
upon the plain in front of them the Boer force with all its guns
moving towards them.  Whether this was done of set purpose or whether
the Boers imagined that the British had turned and were intending to
pursue them cannot now be determined, but whatever the cause it is
certain that for almost the first time in the campaign a considerable
force of each side found themselves in the open and face to face.

It was a glorious moment.  Setting spurs to their horses, officers and
men with a yell dashed forward at the enemy.  One of the Boer guns
unlimbered and attempted to open fire, but was overwhelmed by the wave
of horsemen.  The Boer riders broke and fled, leaving their artillery
to escape as best it might.  The guns dashed over the veldt in a mad
gallop, but wilder still was the rush of the fiery cavalry behind
them.  For once the brave and cool-headed Dutchmen were fairly
panic-stricken. Hardly a shot was fired at the pursuers, and the
riflemen seem to have been only too happy to save their own skins.
Two field guns, one pom-pom, six maxims, fifty-six wagons and 140
prisoners were the fruits of that one magnificent charge, while
fifty-four stricken Boers were picked up after the action.  The
pursuit was reluctantly abandoned when the spent horses could go no
farther.

While the vanguard had thus scattered the main body of the enemy a
detachment of riflemen had ridden round to attack the British rear and
convoy. A few volleys from the escort drove them off, however, with
some loss.  Altogether, what with the loss of nine guns and of at
least 200 men, the rout of Haartebeestefontein was a severe blow to
the Boer cause. A week or two later Sir H. Rawlinson's column, acting
with Babington, rushed Smuts's laager at daylight and effected a
further capture of two guns and thirty prisoners.  Taken in
conjunction with French's successes in the east and Plumer's in the
north, these successive blows might have seemed fatal to the Boer
cause, but the weary struggle was still destined to go on until it
seemed that it must be annihilation rather than incorporation which
would at last bring a tragic peace to those unhappy lands.

All over the country small British columns had been operating during
these months -- operations which were destined to increase in scope
and energy as the cold weather drew in.  The weekly tale of prisoners
and captures, though small for any one column, gave the aggregate
result of a considerable victory.  In these scattered and obscure
actions there was much good work which can have no reward save the
knowledge of duty done.  Among many successful raids and skirmishes
may be mentioned two by Colonel Park from Lydenburg, which resulted
between them in the capture of nearly 100 of the enemy, including Abel
Erasmus of sinister reputation.  Nor would any summary of these events
be complete without a reference to the very gallant defence of
Mahlabatini in Zululand, which was successfully held by a handful of
police and civilians against an irruption of the Boers.  With the
advent of winter and of reinforcements the British operations became
very energetic in every part of the country, and some account of them
will now be added.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE WINTER CAMPAIGN (APRIL-SEPTEMBER, 1901)


The African winter extends roughly from April to September, and as the
grass during that period would be withered on the veldt, the mobility
of the Boer commandos must be very much impaired. It was recognised
therefore that if the British would avoid another year of war it could
only be done by making good use of the months which lay before
them. For this reason Lord Kitchener had called for the considerable
reinforcements which have been already mentioned, but on the other
hand he was forced to lose many thousands of his veteran Yeomanry,
Australians, and Canadians, whose term of service was at an end. The
volunteer companies of the infantry returned also to England, and so
did nine militia battalions, whose place was taken however by an equal
number of new-comers.

The British position was very much strengthened during the winter by
the adoption of the block-house system. These were small square or
hexagonal buildings, made of stone up to nine feet with corrugated
iron above it. They were loopholed for musketry fire and held from six
to thirty men. These little forts were dotted along the railways at
points not more than 2,000 yards apart, and when supplemented by a
system of armoured trains they made it no easy matter for the Boers to
tamper with or to cross the lines. So effective did these prove that
their use was extended to the more dangerous portions of the country,
and lines were pushed through the Magaliesberg district to form a
chain of posts between Krugersdorp and Rustenburg.  In the Orange
River Colony and on the northern lines of the Cape Colony the same
system was extensively applied.  I will now attempt to describe the
more important operations of the winter, beginning with the incursion
of Plumer into the untrodden ground to the north.

At this period of the war the British forces had overrun, if they had
not subdued, the whole of the Orange River Colony and every part of
the Transvaal which is south of the Mafeking-Pretoria-Komati line.
Through this great tract of country there was not a vilage and hardly
a farmhouse which had not seen the invaders. But in the north there
remained a vast district, two hundred miles long and three hundred
broad, which had hardly been touched by the war.  It is a wild
country, scrub-covered, antelope-haunted plains rising into desolate
hills, but there are many kloofs and valleys with rich water meadows
and lush grazings, which formed natural granaries and depots for the
enemy.  Here the Boer government continued to exist, and here,
screened by their mountains, they were able to organise the
continuation of the struggle. It was evident that there could be no
end to the war until these last centres of resistance had been broken
up.

The british forces had advanced as far north as Rustenburg in the
west, Pienaar in the centre, and Lydenburg in the east, but here they
had halted, unwilling to go farther until their conquests had been
made good behind them. A General might well pause before plunging his
troops into that vast and rugged district, when an active foe and an
exposed line of communication lay for many hundreds of miles to the
south of them. But Lord Kitchener with characteristic patience waited
for the right hour to come, and then with equally characteristic
audacity played swiftly and boldly for his stake.  De Wet, impotent
for the moment, had been hunted back over the Orange River. French had
harried the burghers in the South-east Transvaal, and the main force
of the enemy was known to be on that side of the seat of war.  The
north was exposed, and with one long, straight lunge to the heart,
Pietersburg might be transfixed.

There could only be one direction for the advance, and that must be
along the Pretoria-Pietersburg railroad. This is the only line of
rails which leads to the north, and as it was known to be in working
order (the Boers were running a bi-weekly service from Pietersburg to
Warm Baths), it was hoped that a swift advance might seize it before
any extensive damage could be done. With this object a small but very
mobile force rapidly assembled at the end of March at Pienaar River,
which was the British rail-head forty miles north of Pretoria and a
hundred and thirty from Pietersburg.  This column consisted of the
Bushveldt Carbineers, the 4th Imperial Bushmen's Corps, and the 6th
New Zealand contingent.  With them were the 18th battery R.F.A., and
three pom-poms. A detachment of the invaluable mounted Sappers rode
with the force, and two infantry regiments, the 2nd Gordons and the
Northamptons, were detached to garrison the more vulnerable places
upon the line of advance.

Upon March 29th the untiring Plumer, called off from the chase of De
Wet, was loosed upon this fresh line, and broke swiftly away to the
north.  The complete success of his undertaking has obscured our
estimate of its danger, but it was no light task to advance so great a
distance into a bitterly hostile country with a fighting force of
2,000 rifles.  As an enterprise it was in many ways not unlike Mahon's
dash on Mafeking, but without any friendly force with which to join
hands at the end. However from the beginning all went well.  On the
30th the force had reached Warm Baths, where a great isolated hotel
already marks the site of what will be a rich and fashionable spa.  On
April 1st the Australian scouts rode into Nylstroom, fifty more miles
upon their way. There had been sufficient sniping to enliven the
journey, but nothing which could be caled an action.  Gleaning up
prisoners and refugees as they went, with the railway engineers
working like bees behind them, the force still swept unchecked upon
its way.  On April 5th Piet Potgeitersrust was entered, another
fifty-mile stage, and on the morning of the 8th the British vanguard
rode into Pietersburg.  Kitchener's judgment and Plumer's energy had
met with their reward.

The Boer commando had evacuated the town and no serious opposition was
made to the British entry. The most effective resistance came from a
single schoolmaster, who, in a moment of irrational frenzy or of
patriotic exaltation, shot down three of the invaders before he met
his own death.  Some rolling stock, one small gun, and something under
a hundred prisoners were the trophies of the capture, but the Boer
arsenal and the printing press were destroyed, and the Government sped
off in a couple of Cape carts in search of some new capital.
Pietersburg was principally valuable as a base from which a sweeping
movement might be made from the north at the same moment as one from
the south-east. A glance at the map will show that a force moving from
this point in conjunction with another from Lydenburg might form the
two crooked claws of a crab to enclose a great space of country, in
which smaller columns might collect whatever was to be found.  Without
an instant of unnecessary delay the dispositions were made, and no
fewer than eight columns slipped upon the chase.  It will be best to
continue to follow the movements of Plumer's force, and then to give
some account of the little armies which were operating from the south,
with the results of their enterprise.

It was known that Viljoen and a number of Boers were within the
district which lies north of the line in the Middelburg district.  An
impenetrable bush-veldt had offered them a shelter from which they
made their constant sallies to wreck a train or to attack a post. This
area was now to be systematically cleared up. The first thing was to
stop the northern line of retreat. The Oliphant River forms a loop in
that direction, and as it is a considerable stream, it would, if
securely held, prevent any escape upon that side. With this object
Plumer, on April 14th, the sixth day after his occupation of
Pietersburg, struck east from that town and trekked over the veldt,
through the formidable Chunies Pass, and so to the north bank of the
Oliphant, picking up thirty or forty Boer prisoners upom the way. His
route lay through a fertile country dotted with native kraals. Having
reached the river which marked the line which he was to hold, Plumer,
upon April 17th, spread his force over many miles, so as to block the
principal drifts.  The flashes of his helio were answered by flash
after flash from many points upon the southern horizon. What these
other forces were, and whence they came, must now be made clear to the
reader.

General Bindon Blood, a successful soldier, had confirmed in the
Transvaal a reputation which he had won on the northern frontier of
India.  He and General Elliot were two of the late comers who had been
spared from the great Eastern dependency to take the places of some of
those Generals who had returned to England for a well-earned rest.  He
had distinguished himself by his systematic and effective guardianship
of the Delagoa railway line, and he was now selected for the supreme
control of the columns which were to advance from the south and sweep
the Roos-Senekal district.  There were seven of them, which were
arranged as follows:

Two columns started from Middelburg under Beatson and Benson, which
might be called the left wings of the movement.  The object of
Beatson's column was to hold the drifts of the Crocodile River, while
Benson's was to seize the neighbouring hills called the
Bothasberg. This it was hoped would pin the Boers from the west, while
Kitchener from Lydenburg advanced from the east in three separate
columns. Pulteney and Douglas would move up from Belfast in the
centre, with Dulstoom for their objective.  It was the familiar drag
net of French, but facing north instead of south.

On April 13th the southern columns were started, but already the
British preparations had alarmed the Boers, and Botha, with his main
commandos, had slipped south across the line into that very district
from which he had been so recently driven. Viljoen's commando still
remained to the north, and the British troops, pouring in from every
side, converged rapidly upon it.  The success of the operations was
considerable, though not complete.  The Tantesberg, which had been the
rallying-point of the Boers, was occupied, and Roos-Senekal, their
latest capital, was taken, with their State papers and
treasure. Viljoen, with a number of followers, slipped through between
the columns, but the greater part of the burghers, dashing furiously
about like a shoal of fish when they become conscious of the net, were
taken by one or other of the columns. A hundred of the Boksburg
commando surrendered en masae, fifty more were taken at Roos-Senekal;
forty-one of the formidable Zarps with Schroeder, their leader, were
captured in the north by the gallantry and wit of a young Australian
officer named Reid; sixty more were hunted down by the indefatigable
Vialls, leader of the Bushmen. From all parts of the district came the
same story of captures and surrenders.

Knowing, however, that Botha and Viljoen had slipped through to the
south of the railway line, Lord Kitchener determined to rapidly
transfer the scene of the operations to that side. At the end of
April, after a fortnight's work, during which this large district was
cropped, but by no means shaved, the troops turned south again.  The
results of the operation had been eleven hundred prisoners, almost the
same number as French had taken in the south-east, together with a
broken Krupp, a pom-pom, and the remains of the big naval gun taken
from us at Helvetia.

It was determined that Plumer's advance upon Pietersburg should not be
a mere raid, but that steps should be taken to secure all that he had
gained, and to hold the lines of communication.  With this object the
2nd Gordon Highianders and the 2nd Wiltshires were pushed up along the
railroad, followed by Kitchener's Fighting Scouts.  These troops
garrisoned Pietersburg and took possession of Chunies Poort, and other
strategic positions.  They also furnished escorts for the convoys
which supplied Plumer on the Oliphant River, and they carried out some
spirited operations themselves in the neighbourhood of Pietersburg.
Grenfell, who commanded the force, broke up several laagers, and
captured a number of prisoners, operations in which he was much
assisted by Colenbrander and his men. Finally the last of the great
Creusot guns, the formidable Long Toms, was found mounted near
Haenertsburg. It was the same piece which had in succession scourged
Mafeking and Kimberley.  The huge gun, driven to bay, showed its
powers by opening an effective fire at ten thousand yards.  The
British galloped in upon it, the Boer riflemen were driven off, and
the gun was blown up by its faithful gunners.  So by suicide died the
last of that iron brood, the four sinister brothers who had wrought
much mischief in South Africa.  They and their lesson will live in the
history of modern artillery.

The sweeping of the Roos-Senekal district being over, Plumer left his
post upon the River of the Elephants, a name which, like Rhenoster,
Zeekoe, Kameelfontein, Leeuw Kop, Tigerfontein, Elands River, and so
many more, serves as a memorial to the great mammals which once
covered the land.  On April 28th the force turned south, and on May
4th they had reached the railroad at Eerstefabrieken close to
Pretoria. They had come in touch with a small Boer force upon the way,
and the indefatigable Vialls hounded them for eighty miles, and tore
away the tail of their convoy with thirty prisoners.  The main force
had left Pretoria on horseback on March 28th, and found themselves
back once again upon foot on May 5th.  They had something to show,
however, for the loss of their horses, since they had covered a
circular march of 400 miles, had captured some hundreds of the enemy,
and had broken up their last organised capital.  From first to last it
was a most useful and well-managed expedition.

It is the more to be regretted that General Blood was recalled from
his northern trek before it had attained its full results, because
those operations to which he turned did not offer him any great
opportunities for success.  Withdrawing from the north of the railway
with his columns, he at once started upon a sweep of that portion of
the country which forms an angle between the Delagoa line and the
Swazi frontier -- the Barberton district.  But again the two big fish,
Viljoen and Botha, had slipped away, and the usual collection of
sprats was left in the net.  The sprats count also, however, and every
week now telegrams were reaching England from Lord Kitchener which
showed that from three to five hundred more burghers had fallen into
our hands.  Although the public might begin to look upon the war as
interminable, it had become evident to the thoughtful observer that it
was now a mathematical question, and that a date could already be
predicted by which the whole Boer population would have passed into
the power of the British.

Among the numerous small British columns which were at work in
different parts of the country, in the latter half of May, there was
one under General Dixon which was operating in the neighbourhood of
the Magaliesberg Range.  This locality has never been a fortunate one
for the British arms.  The country is peculiarly mountainous and
broken, and it was held by the veteran De la Rey and a numerous body
of irreconcilable Boers.  Here in July we had encountered a check at
Uitval's Nek, in December Clements had met a more severe one at
Nooitgedacht, while shortly afterwards Cunningham had been repulsed at
Middelfontein, and the Light Horse cut up at Naauwpoort.  After such
experiences one would have thought that no column which was not of
overmastering strength would have been sent into this dangerous
region, but General Dixon had as a matter of fact by no means a strong
force with him.  With 1,600 men and a battery he was despatched upon a
quest after some hidden guns which were said to have been buried in
those parts.

On May 26th Dixon's force, consisting of Derbyshires, King's Own
Scottish Borderers, Imperial Yeomanry, Scottish Horse, and six guns
(four of 8th R.F.A. and two of 28th R.F.A.), broke camp at Naauwpoort
and moved to the west.  On the 28th they found themselves at a place
called Vlakfontein, immediately south of Oliphant's Nek.  On that day
there were indications that there were a good many Boers in the
neighbourhood.  Dixon left a guard over his canip and then sallied out
in search of the buried guns.  His force was divided into three parts,
the left column under Major Chance consisting of two guns of the 28th
R.F.A., 230 of the Yeomanry, and one company of the Derbys. The centre
comprised two guns (8th R.F.A.), one howitzer, two companies of the
Scottish Borderers and one of the Derbys; while the right was made up
of two guns (8th R.F.A.), 200 Scottish Horse, and two companies of
Borderers.  Having ascertained that the guns were not there, the force
about midday was returning to the camp, when the storm broke suddenly
and fiercely upon the rearguard.

There had been some sniping during the whole morning, but no
indications of the determined attack which was about to be delivered.
The force in retiring upon the camp had become divided, and the
rearguard consisted of the small column under Major Chance which had
originally formed the left wing. A veldt fire was raging on one flank
of this rearguard, and through the veil of smoke a body of five
hundred Boers charged suddenly home with magnificent gallantry upon
the guns.  We have few records of a more dashing or of a more
successful action in the whole course of the war. So rapid was it that
hardly any time elapsed between the glimpse of the first dark figures
galloping through the haze and the thunder of their hoofs as they
dashed in among the gunners. The Yeomanry were driven back and many of
them shot down.  The charge of the mounted Boers was supported by a
very heavy fire from a covermg party, and the gun-detachments were
killed or wounded almost to a man.  The lieutenant in charge and the
sergeant were both upon the ground.  So far as it is possible to
reconstruct the action from the confused accounts of excited
eye-witnesses and from the exceedingly obscure official report of
General Dixon, there was no longer any resistance round the guns,
which were at once turned by their captors upon the nearest British
detachment.

The company of infantry which had helped to escort the guns proved
however to be worthy representatives of that historic branch of the
British service.  They were northerners, men of Derbyshire and
Nottingham, the same counties which had furnished the brave militia
who had taken their punishment so gamely at Roodeval.  Though hustled
and broken they re-formed and clung doggedly to their task, firing at
the groups of Boers who surrounded the guns.  At the same time word
had been sent of their pressing need to the Scotch Borderers and the
Scottish Horse, who came swarming across the valley to the succour of
their comrades.  Dixon had brought two guns and a howitzer into
action, which subdued the fire of the two captured pieces, and the
infantry, Derbys and Borderers, swept over the position, retaking the
two guns and shooting down those of the enemy who tried to stand.  The
greater number vanished into the smoke, which veiled their retreat as
it had their advance.  Forty-one of them were left dead upon the
ground.  Six officers and fifty men killed with about a hundred and
twenty wounded made up the British losses, to which two guns would
certainly have been added but for the gallant counter-attack of the
infantry.  With Dargai and Vlakfontein to their credit the Derbys have
green laurels upon their war-worn colours.  They share them on this
occasion with the Scottish Borderers, whose volunteer company carried
itself as stoutly as the regulars.

How is such an action to be summed up? To Kemp, the young Boer leader,
and his men belongs the credit of the capture of the guns; to the
British that of their recapture and of the final possession of the
field. The British loss was probably somewhat higher than that of the
Boers, but upon the other hand there could be no question as to which
side could afford loss the better. The Briton could be replaced, but
there were no reserves behind the fighting line of the Boers.

There is one subject which cannot be ignored in discussing this
battle, however repugnant it may be.  That is the shooting of some of
the British wounded who lay round the guns.  There is no question at
all about the fact, which is attested by many independent witnesses.
There is reason to hope that some of the murderers paid for their
crimes with their lives before the battle was over.  It is pleasant to
add that there is at least one witness to the fact that Boer officers
interfered with threats to prevent some of these outrages. It is
unfair to tarnish the whole Boer nation and cause on account of a few
irresponsible villains, who would be disowned by their own decent
comrades.  Very many -- too many -- British soldiers have known by
experience what it is to fall into the hands of the enemy, and it must
be confessed that on the whole they have been dealt with in no
ungenerous spirit, while the British treatment of the Boers has been
unexampled in all military history for its generosity and
humanity. That so fair a tale should be darkened by such ruffianly
outrages is indeed deplorable, but the incident is too well
authenticated to be left unrecorded in any detailed account of the
campaign.  General Dixon, finding the Boers very numerous all round
him, and being hampered by his wounded, fell back upon Naauwpoort,
which he reached on June 1st.

In May, Sir Bindon Blood, having returned to the line to refit, made
yet another cast through that thrice-harried belt of country which
contains Ermelo, Bethel, and Carolina, in which Botha, Viljoen, and
the fighting Boers had now concentrated. Working over the blackened
veldt he swung round in the Barberton direction, and afterwards made a
westerly drive in conjunction with small columns commanded by Walter
Kitchener, Douglas, and Campbell of the Rifles, while Colville,
Garnett, and Bullock co-operated from the Natal line. Again the
results were disappointing when compared with the power of the
instrument employed.  On July 5th he reached Springs, near
Johannesburg, with a considerable amount of stock, but with no great
number of prisoners. The elusive Botha had slipped away to the south
and was reported upon the Zululand border, while Viljoen had succeeded
in crossing the Delagoa line and winning back to his old lair in the
district north of Middelburg, from which he had been evicted in
April. The commandos were like those pertinacious flies which buzz
upwards when a hand approaches them, but only to settle again in the
same place.  One could but try to make the place less attractive than
before.

Before Vujoen's force made its way over the line it had its revenge
for the long harrying it had undergone by a well-managed night attack,
in which it surprised and defeated a portion of Colonel Beatson's
column at a place called Wilmansrust, due south of Middelburg, and
between that town and Bethel. Beatson had divided his force, and this
section consisted of 850 of the 5th Victorian Mounted Rifles, with
thirty gunners and two pom-poms, the whole under the command of Major
Morris.  Viljoen's force trekking north towards the line came upon
this detachment upon June 12th.  The British were aware of the
presence of the enemy, but do not appear to have posted any extra
outposts or taken any special precautions.  Long months of commando
chasing had imbued them too much with the idea that these were
fugitive sheep, and not fierce and wily wolves, whom they were
endeavouring to catch. It is said that 700 yards separated the four
pickets. With that fine eye for detail which the Boer leaders possess,
they had started a veldt fire upon the west of the camp and then
attacked from the east, so that they were themselves invisible while
their enemies were silhouetted against the light.  Creeping up between
the pickets, the Boers were not seen until they opened fire at
point-blank range upon the sleeping men.  The rifles were stacked --
another noxious military tradition -- and many of the troopers were
shot down while they rushed for their weapons.  Surprised out of their
sleep and unable to distinguish their antagonists, the brave
Australians did as well as any troops could have done who were placed
in so impossible a position.  Captain Watson, the officer in charge of
the pom-poms, was shot down, and it proved to be impossible to bring
the guns into action. Within five minutes the Victorians had lost
twenty killed and forty wounded, when the survivors surrendered. It is
pleasant to add that they were very well treated by the victors, but
the high-spirited colonials felt their reverse most bitterly.  'It is
the worst thing that ever happened to Australia!' says one in the
letter in which he describes it.  The actual number of Boers who
rushed the camp was only 180, but 400 more had formed a cordon round
it.  To Viljoen and his lieutenant Muller great credit must be given
for this well-managed affair, which gave them a fresh supply of stores
and clothing at a time when they were hard pressed for both.  These
same Boer officers had led the attack upon Helvetia where the 4.7 gun
was taken. The victors succeeded in getting away with all their
trophies, and having temporarily taken one of the blockhouses on the
railway near Brugspruit, they crossed the line in safety and returned,
as already said, to their old quarters in the north, which had been
harried but not denuded by the operations of General Blood.

It would take a volume to catalogue, and a library to entirely
describe the movements and doings of the very large number of British
columns which operated over the Transvaal and the Orange River Colony
during this cold-weather campaign.  If the same columns and the same
leaders were consistently working in the same districts, some system
of narrative might enable the reader to follow their fortunes, but
they were, as a matter of fact, rapidly transferred from one side of
the field of action to another in accordance with the concentrations
of the enemy.  The total number of columns amounted to at least sixty,
which varied in number from two hundred to two thousand, and seldom
hunted alone.  Could their movements be marked in red upon a chart,
the whole of that huge district would be criss-crossed, from Taungs to
Komati and from Touws River to Pietersburg, with the track of our
weary but indomitable soldiers.

Without attempting to enter into details which would be unbecoming to
the modesty of a single volume, one may indicate what the other more
important groupings were during the course of these months, and which
were the columns that took part in them.  Of French's drive in the
south-east, and of Blood's incursion into the Roos-Senekal district
some account has been given, and of his subsequent sweeping of the
south. At the same period Babington, Dixon, and Rawlinson were
co-operating in the Klerksdorp district, though the former officer
transferred his services suddenly to Blood's combination, and
afterwards to Elliot's column in the north of Orange River Colony.
Williams and Fetherstonhaugh came later to strengthen this Klerksdorp
district, in which, after the clearing of the Magaliesberg, De la Rey
had united his forces to those of Smuts.  This very important work of
getting a firm hold upon the Magaliesberg was accomplished in July by
Barton, Allenby, Kekewich, and Lord Basing, who penetrated into the
wild country and established blockhouses and small forts in very much
the same way as Cumberland and Wade in 1746 held down the
Highlands. The British position was much strengthened by the firm grip
obtained of this formidable stronghold of the enemy, which was
dangerous not only on account of its extreme strength, but also of its
proximity to the centres of population and of wealth.

De la Rey, as already stated, had gone down to the Klerksdorp
district, whence, for a time at least, he seems to have passed over
into the north of the Orange River Colony. The British pressure at
Klerksdorp had become severe, and thither in May came the
indefatigable Methuen, whom we last traced to Warrenton.  From this
point on May 1st he railed his troops to Mafeking, whence he trekked
to Lichtenburg, and south as far as his old fighting ground of
Haartebeestefontein, having one skirmish upon the way and capturing a
Boer gun. Thence he returned to Mafeking, where he had to bid adieu to
those veteran Yeomanry who had been his comrades on so many a weary
march.  It was not their fortune to be present at any of the larger
battles of the war, but few bodies of troops have returned to England
with a finer record of hard and useful service.

No sooner, however, had Methuen laid down one weapon than he snatched
up another.  Having refitted his men and collected some of the more
efficient of the new Yeomanry, he was off once more for a three weeks'
circular tour in the direction of Zeerust. It is difficult to believe
that the oldest inhabitant could have known more of the western side
of the Transvaal, for there was hardly a track which he had not
traversed or a kopje from which he had not been sniped. Early in
August he had made a fresh start from Mafeking, dividing his force
into two columns, the command of the second being given to Von Donop.
Having joined hands with Fetherstonhaugh, he moved through the
south-west and finally halted at Klerksdorp.  The harried Boers moved
a hundred miles north to Rustenburg, followed by Methuen,
Fetherstonhaugh, Hamilton, Kekewich, and Allenby, who found the
commandos of De la Rey and Kemp to be scattering in front of them and
hiding in the kloofs and dongas, whence in the early days of September
no less than two hundred were extracted.  On September 6th and 8th
Methuen engaged the main body of De la Rey in the valley of the Great
Marico River which lies to the north-west of Rustenburg.  In these two
actions he pushed the Boers in front of him with a loss of eighteen
killed and forty-one prisoners, but the fighting was severe, and
fifteen of his men were killed and thirty wounded before the position
had been carried. The losses were almost entirely among the newly
raised Yeomanry, who had already shown on several occasions that,
having shed their weaker members and had some experience of the field,
they were now worthy to take their place beside their veteran
comrades.

The only other important operation undertaken by the British columns
in the Transvaal during this period was in the north, where Beyers and
his men were still harried by Grenfell, Colenbrander, and Wilson. A
considerable proportion of the prisoners which figured in the weekly
lists came from this quarter.  On May 30th there was a notable action,
the truth of which was much debated but finally established, in which
Kitchener's Scouts under Wilson surprised and defeated a Boer force
under Pretorius, killing and wounding several, and taking forty
prisoners.  On July 1st Grenfell took nearly a hundred of Beyers' men
with a considerable convoy. North, south, east, and west the tale was
ever the same, but so long as Botha, De la Rey, Steyn, and De Wet
remained uncaptured, the embers might still at any instant leap into a
flame.

It only remains to complete this synopsis of the movements of columns
within the Transvaal that I should add that after the conclusion of
Blood's movement in July, several of his columns continued to clear
the country and to harass Viljoen in the Lydenburg and Dulstroom
districts.  Park, Kitchener, Spens, Beatson, and Benson were all busy
at this work, never succeeding in forcing more than a skirmish, but
continually whittling away wagons, horses, and men from that nucleus
of resistance which the Boer leaders still held together.

Though much hampered by the want of forage for their horses, the Boers
were ever watchful for an opportunity to strike back, and the long
list of minor successes gained by the British was occasionally
interrupted by a petty reverse.  Such a one befell the small body of
South African Constabulary stationed near Vereeniging, who encountered
upon July 13th a strong force of Boers supposed to be the main
commando of De Wet. The Constabulary behaved with great gallantry but
were hopelessly outnumbered, and lost their seven-pounder gun, four
killed, six wounded, and twenty-four prisoners.  Another small reverse
occurred at a far distant point of the seat of war, for the irregular
corps known as Steinacker's Horse was driven from its position at
Bremersdorp in Swaziland upon July 24th, and had to fall back sixteen
miles, with a loss of ten casualties and thirty prisoners.  Thus in
the heart of a native state the two great white races of South Africa
were to be seen locked in a desperate conflict. However unavoidable,
the sight was certainly one to be deplored.

To the Boer credit, or discredit, are also to be placed those repeated
train wreckings, which cost the British during this campaign the lives
and limbs of many brave soldiers who were worthy of some less ignoble
fate.  It is true that the laws of war sanction such enterprises, but
there is something indiscriminate in the results which is repelent to
humanity, and which appears to justify the most energetic measures to
prevent them.  Women, children, and sick must all travel by these
trains and are exposed to a common danger, while the assailants enjoy
a safety which renders their exploit a peculiarly inglorious one. Two
Boers, Trichardt and Hindon, the one a youth of twenty-two, the other
a man of British birth, distinguished, or disgraced, themselves by
this unsavoury work upon the Delagoa line, but with the extension of
the blockhouse system the attempts became less successful.  There was
one, however, upon the northern line near Naboomspruit which cost the
lives of Lieutenant Best and eight Gordon Highlanders, while ten were
wounded.  The party of Gordons continued to resist after the smash,
and were killed or wounded to a man.  The painful incident is
brightened by such an example of military virtue, and by the naive
reply of the last survivor, who on being questioned why he continued
to fight until he was shot down, answered with fine simplicity,
'Because I am a Gordon Highlander.'

Another train disaster of an even more tragic character occurred near
Waterval, fifteen miles north of Pretoria, upon the last day of
August.  The explosion of a mine wrecked the train, and a hundred
Boers who lined the banks of the cutting opened fire upon the derailed
carriages.  Colonel Vandeleur, an officer of great promise, was killed
and twenty men, chiefly of the West Riding regiment, were shot.  Nurse
Page was also among the wounded.  It was after this fatal affair that
the regulation of carrying Boer hostages upon the trains was at last
carried out.

It has been already stated that part of Lord Kitchener's policy of
concentration lay in his scheme for gathering the civil population
into camps along the lines of communication.  The reasons for this,
both military and humanitarian, were overwhelming. Experience had
proved that the men if left at liberty were liable to be persuaded or
coerced by the fighting Boers into breaking their parole and rejoining
the commandos. As to the women and children, they could not be left
upon the farms in a denuded country.  That the Boers in the field had
no doubts as to the good treatment of these people was shown by the
fact that they repeatedly left their families in the way of the
columns so that they might be conveyed to the camps.  Some
consternation was caused in England by a report of Miss Hobhouse,
which called public attention to the very high rate of mortality in
some of these camps, but examination showed that this was not due to
anything insanitary in their situation or arrangement, but to a severe
epidemic of measles which had swept away a large number of the
children. A fund was started in London to give additional comforts to
these people, though there is reason to believe that their general
condition was superior to that of the Uitlander refugees, who still
waited permission to return to their homes.  By the end of July there
were no fewer than sixty thousand inmates of the camps in the
Transvaal alone, and half as many in the Orange River Colony. So great
was the difficulty in providing the supplies for so large a number
that it became more and more evident that some at least of the camps
must be moved down to the sea coast.

Passing to the Orange River Colony we find that during this winter
period the same British tactics had been met by the same constant
evasions on the part of the dwindling commandos.  The Colony had been
divided into four military districts: that of Bloemfontein, which was
given to Charles Knox, that of Lyttelton at Springfontein, that of
Rundle at Harrismith, and that of Elliot in the north.  The latter was
infinitely the most important, and Elliot, the warden of the northern
marches, had under him during the greater part of the winter a mobile
force of about 6,000 men, Commanded by such experienced officers as
Broadwood, De Lisle, and Bethune.  Later in the year Spens, Bullock,
Plumer, and Rimington were all sent into the Orange River Colony to
help to stamp out the resistance.  Numerous skirmishes and snipings
were reported from all parts of the country, but a constant stream of
prisoners and of surrenders assured the soldiers that, in spite of the
difficulty of the country and the obstinacy of the enemy, the term of
their labours was rapidly approaching.

In all the petty and yet necessary operations of these columns, two
incidents demand more than a mere mention.  The first was a
hard-fought skirmish in which some of Elliot's horsemen were engaged
upon June 6th.  His column had trekked during the month of May from
Kroonstad to Harrismith, and then turning north found itself upon that
date near the hamlet of Reitz.  Major Sladen with 200 Mounted
Infantry, when detached from the main body, came upon the track of a
Boer convoy and ran it down.  Over a hundred vehicles with forty-five
prisoners were the fruits of their enterprise.  Well satisfied with
his morning's work, the British leader despatched a party of his men
to convey the news to De Lisle, who was behind, while he established
himself with his loot and his prisoners in a convenient kraal.  Thence
they had an excellent view of a large body of horsemen approaching
them with scouts, flankers, and all military precautions.  One
warm-hearted officer seems actually to have sallied out to meet his
comrades, and it was not till his greeting of them took the extreme
form of handing over his rifle that the suspicion of danger entered
the heads of his companions.  But if there was some lack of wit there
was none of heart in Sladen and his men. With forty-five Boers to hold
down, and 500 under Fourie, De Wet, and De la Rey around them, the
little band made rapid preparation for a desperate resistance: the
prisoners were laid upon their faces, the men knocked loopholes in the
mud walls of the kraal, and a blunt soldierly answer was returned to
the demand for surrender.

But it was a desperate business. The attackers were five to one, and
the five were soldiers of De Wet, the hard-bitten veterans of a
hundred encounters.  The captured wagons in a long double row
stretched out over the plain, and under this cover the Dutchmen
swarmed up to the kraal.  But the men who faced them were veterans
also, and the defence made up for the disparity of numbers. With fine
courage the Boers made their way up to the village, and established
themselves in the outlying huts, but the Mounted Infantry clung
desperately to their position.  Out of the few officers present
Findlay was shot through the head, Moir and Cameron through the heart,
and Strong through the stomach.  It was a Waggon Hill upon a small
scale, two dour lines of skirmishers emptying their rifles into each
other at point-blank range.  Once more, as at Bothaville, the British
Mounted Infantry proved that when it came to a dogged pelting match
they could stand punishment longer than their enemy.  They suffered
terribly.  Fifty-one out of the little force were on the ground, and
the survivors were not much more numerous than their prisoners.  To
the 1st Gordons, the 2nd Bedfords, the South Australians, and the New
South Welsh men belongs the honour of this magnificent defence. For
four hours the fierce battle raged, until at last the parched and
powder-stained survivors breathed a prayer of thanks as they saw on
the southern horizon the vanguard of De Lisle riding furiously to the
rescue. For the last hour, since they had despaired of carrying the
kraal, the Boers had busied themselves in removing their convoy; but
now, for the second time in one day, the drivers found British rifles
pointed at their heads, and the oxen were turned once more and brought
back to those who had fought so hard to hold them.  Twenty-eight
killed and twenty-six wounded were the losses in this desperate
affair.  Of the Boers seventeen were left dead in front of the kraal,
and the forty-five had not escaped from the bulldog grip which held
them.  There seems for some reason to have been no effective pursuit
of the Boers, and the British column held on its way to Kroonstad.

The second incident which stands out amid the dreary chronicle of
hustlings and snipings is the surprise visit paid by Broadwood with a
small British column to the town of Reitz upon July 11th, which
resulted in the capture of nearly every member of the late government
of the Free State, save only the one man whom they particularly
wanted.  The column consisted of 200 yeomen, 200 of the 7th Dragoon
Guards, and two guns. Starting at 11 P.M., the raiders rode hard all
night and broke with the dawn upon the sleeping village.  Racing into
the main street, they secured the startled Boers as they rushed from
the houses.  It is easy to criticise such an operation from a
distance, and to overlook the practical difficulties in the way, but
on the face of it it seems a pity that the holes had not been stopped
before the ferret was sent in. A picket at the farther end of the
street would have barred Steyn's escape.  As it was, he flung himself
upon his horse and galloped half-clad out of the town.  Sergeant Cobb
of the Dragoons snapped a rifle at close quarters upon him, but the
cold of the night had frozen the oil on the striker and the Cartridge
hung fire.  On such trifles do the large events of history turn!  Two
Boer generals, two commandants, Steyn's brother, his secretary, and
several other officials were among the nine-and-twenty prisoners.  The
treasury was also captured, but it is feared that the Yeomen and
Dragoons will not be much the richer from their share of the contents.

Save these two incidents, the fight at Reitz and the capture of a
portion of Steyn's government at the same place, the winter's
campaign furnished little which was of importance, though a great deal
of very hard and very useful work was done by the various columns
under the direction of the governors of the four military
districts. In the south General Bruce Hamilton made two sweeps, one
from the railway line to the western frontier, and the second from the
south and east in the direction of Petrusburg.  The result of the two
operations was about 300 prisoners.  At the same time Monro and
Hickman re-cleared the already twice-cleared districts of Rouxville and
Smithfield.  The country in the east of the Colony was verging now upon
the state which Grant described in the Shenandoah Valley: 'A crow,'
said he, 'must carry his own rations when he flies across it.'

In the middle district General Charles Knox, with the columns of
Pine-Coffin, Thorneycroft, Pilcher, and Henry, were engaged in the
same sort of work with the same sort of results.

The most vigorous operations fell to the lot of Generak Elliot, who
worked over the northern and north-eastern district, which still
contained a large number of fighting burghers.  In May and June Elliot
moved across to Vrede and afterwards down the eastern frontier of the
Colony, joining hands at last with Rundle at Harrismith. He then
worked his way back to Kroonstad through Reitz and Lindley. It was on
this journey that Sladen's Mounted Infantry had the sharp experience
which has been already narrated.  Western's column, working
independently, co-operated with Elliot in this clearing of the
north-east.  In August there were very large captures by Broadwood's
force, which had attained considerable mobility, ninety miles being
covered by it on one occasion in two days.

Of General Rundle there is little to be said, as he was kept busy in
exploring the rough country in his own district -- the same district
which had been the scene of the operations against Prinsloo and the
Fouriesburg surrender.  Into this district Kritzinger and his men
trekked after they were driven from the Colony in July, and many small
skirmishes and snipings among the mountains showed that the Boer
resistance was still alive.

July and August were occupied in the Orange River Colony by energetic
operations of Spens' and Rimington's columns in the midland districts,
and by a considerable drive to the north-eastern corner, which was
shared by three columns under Elliot and two under Plumer, with one
under Henry and several smaller bodies. A considerable number of
prisoners and a large amount of stock were the result of the movement,
but it was very evident that there was a waste of energy in the
employment of such forces for such an end.  The time appeared to be
approaching when a strong force of military police stationed
permanently in each district might prove a more efficient
instrument. One interesting development of this phase of the war was
the enrolment of a burgher police among the Boers who had
surrendered. These men -- well paid, well mounted, and well armed --
were an efficient addition to the British forces.  The movement spread
until before the end of the war there were several thousand burghers
under such well-known officers as Celliers, Villonel, and young
Cronje, fighting against their own guerilla countrymen. Who, in 1899,
could have prophesied such a phenomenon as that!

Lord Kitchener's proclamation issued upon August 9th marked one more
turn in the screw upon the part of the British authorities. By it the
burghers were warned that those who had not laid down their arms by
September 15th would in the case of the leaders be banished, and in
the case of the burghers be compelled to support their families in the
refugee camps.  As many of the fighting burghers were men of no
substance, the latter threat did not affect them much, but the other,
though it had little result at the time, may be useful for the
exclusion of firebrands during the period of reconstruction.  Some
increase was noticeable in the number of surrenders after the
proclamation, but on the whole it had not the result which was
expected, and its expediency is very open to question.  This date may
be said to mark the conclusion of the winter campaign and the opening
of a new phase in the struggle.


CHAPTER XXXV
THE GUERILLA OPERATIONS IN CAPE COLONY

In the account which has been given in a preceding chapter of the
invasion of Cape Colony by the Boer forces, it was shown that the
Western bands were almost entirely expelled, or at least that they
withdrew, at the time when De Wet was driven across the Orange
River. This was at the beginning of March 1901.  It was also mentioned
that though the Boers evacuated the barren and unprofitable desert of
the Karoo, the Eastern bands which had come with Kritzinger did not
follow the same course, but continued to infest the mountainous
districts of the Central Colony, whence they struck again and again at
the railway ljiies, the small towns, British patrols, or any other
quarry which was within their reach and strength.  From the
surrounding country they gathered a fair number of recruits, and they
were able through the sympathy and help of the Dutch farmers to keep
themselves well mounted and supplied. In small wandering bands they
spread themselves over a vast extent of country, and there were few
isolated farmhouses from the Orange River to the Oudtshoorn Mountains,
and from the Cape Town railroad in the west to the Fish River in the
east, which were not visited by their active and enterprising scouts.
The object of the whole movement was, no doubt, to stimulate a general
revolt in the Colony; and it must be acknowledged that if the powder
did not all explode it was not for want of the match being thoroughly
applied.

It might at first sight seem the simplest of military operations to
hunt down these scattered and insignificant bands; but as a matter of
fact nothing could be more difficult.  Operating in a country which
was both vast and difficult, with excellent horses, the best of
information and supplies ready for them everywhere, it was impossible
for the slow-moving British columns with their guns and their wagons
to overtake them. Formidable even in flight, the Boers were always
ready to turn upon any force which exposed itself too rashly to
retaliation, and so amid the mountain passes the British chiefs had to
use an amount of caution which was incompatible with extreme speed.
Only when a commando was exactly localised so that two or three
converging British forces could be brought to bear upon it, was there
a reasonable chance of forcing a fight. Still, with all these heavy
odds against them, the various little columns continued month after
month to play hide-and-seek with the commandos, and the game was by no
means always on the one side.  The varied fortunes of this scrambling
campaign can only be briefly indicated in these pages.

It has already been shown that Kritzinger's original force broke into
many bands, which were recruited partly from the Cape rebels and
partly from fresh bodies which passed over from the Orange River
Colony. The more severe the pressure in the north, the greater reason
was there for a trek to this land of plenty.  The total number of
Boers who were wandering over the eastern and midland districts may
have been about two thousand, who were divided into bands which varied
from .fifty to three hundred.  The chief leaders of separate commandos
were Kritzinger, Scheepers, Malan, Myburgh, Fouché, Lotter, Smuts, Van
Reenen, Lategan, Maritz, and Conroy, the two latter operating on the
western side of the country.  To hunt down these numerous and active
bodies the British were compelled to put many similar detachments into
the field, known as the columns of Gorringe, Crabbe, Henniker,
Scobell, Doran, Kavanagh, Alexander, and others.  These two sets of
miniature armies performed an intricate devil's dance over the Colony,
the main lines of which are indicated by the red lines upon the map.
The Zuurberg mountains to the north of Steynsburg, the Sneeuwberg
range to the south of Middelburg, the Oudtshoorn Mountains in the
south, the Cradock district, the Murraysburg district, and the
Graaf-Reinet district-these were the chief centres of Boer activity.

In April Kritzinger made his way north to the Orange River Colony, for
the purpose of consulting with De Wet, but he returned with a
following of 200 men about the end of May.  Continual brushes
occurred during this month between the various columns, and much hard
marching was done upon either side, but there was nothing which could
be claimed as a positive success.

Early in May two passengers sailed for Europe, the journey of each
being in its way historical.  The first was the weary and overworked
Pro-Consul who had the foresight to distinguish the danger and the
courage to meet it.  Milner's worn face and prematurely grizzled hair
told of the crushing weight which had rested upon him during three
eventful years. A gentle scholar, he might have seemed more fitted for
a life of academic calm than for the stormy part which the discernment
of Mr. Chamberlain had assigned to him.  The fine flower of an English
university, low-voiced and urbane, it was difficult to imagine what
impression he would produce upon those rugged types of which
South. Africa is so peculiarly prolific. But behind the reserve of a
gentleman there lay within him a lofty sense of duty, a singular
clearness of vision, and a moral courage which would brace him to
follow whither his reason pointed.  His visit to England for three
months' rest was the occasion for a striking manifestation of loyalty
and regard from his fellow-countrymen. He returned in August as Lord
Milner to the scene of his labours, with the construction of a united
and loyal commonwealth of South Africa as the task of his life.

The second traveller who sailed within a few days of the Governor was
Mrs. Botha, the wife of the Boer General, who visited Europe for
private as well as political reasons.  She bore to Kruger an exact
account of the state of the country and of the desperate condition of
the burghers. Her mission had no immediate or visible effect, and the
weary war, exhausting for the British but fatal for the Boers, went
steadily on.

To continue the survey of the operations in the Cape, the first point
scored was by the invaders, for Malan's commando succeeded upon May
13th in overwhelming a strong patrol of the Midland Mounted Rifles,
the local colonial corps, to the south of Maraisburg.  Six killed,
eleven wounded, and forty~one prisoners were the fruits of his little
victory, which furnished him also with a fresh supply of rifles and
ammunition.  On May 21st Crabbe's column was in touch with Lotter and
with Lategan, but no very positive result came from the skirmish.

The end of May showed considerable Boer activity in the Cape Colony,
that date corresponding with the return of Kritzinger from the
north. Haig had for the moment driven Scheepers back from the extreme
southerly point which he had reached, and he was now in the
Graaf-Reinet district; but on the other side of the colony Conroy had
appeared near Kenhart, and upon May 23rd he fought a sharp skirmish
with a party of Border Scouts.  The main Boer force under Kritzinger
was in the midlands, however, and had concentrated to such an extent
in the Cradock district that it was clear that some larger enterprise
was on foot.  This soon took shape, for on June 2nd, after a long and
rapid march, the Boer leader threw himself upon Jamestown, overwhelmed
the sixty townsmen who formed the guard, and looted the town, from
which he drew some welcome supplies and 100 horses.  British columns
were full cry upon his heels, however, and the Boers after a few hours
left the gutted town and vanished into the hills once more.  On June
6th the British had a little luck at last, for on that date Scobell
and Lukin in the Barkly East district surprised a laager and took
twenty prisoners, 166 horses, and much of the Jamestown loot. On the
same day Windham treated Van Reenen in a similar rough fashion near
Steynsburg, and took twenty-two prisoners.

On June 8th the supreme command of the operations in Cape Colony was
undertaken by General French, who from this time forward manoeuvred
his numerous columns upon a connected plan with the main idea of
pushing the enemy northwards. It was some time, however, before his
disposition bore fruit, for the commandos were still better mounted
and lighter than their pursuers.  On Tune 13th the youthful and
dashing Scheepers, who commanded his own little force at an age when
he would have been a junior lieutenant of the British army, raided
Murraysburg and captured a patrol. On Tune 17th Monro with Lovat's
Scouts and Bethune's Mounted Infantry had some slight success near
Tarkastad, but three days later the ill-fated Midland Mounted Rifles
were surprised in the early morning by Kritzinger at Waterkloof, which
is thirty miles west of Cradock, and were badly mauled by him.  They
lost ten killed, eleven wounded, and sixty-six prisoners in this
unfort unate affair.  Again the myth that colonial alertness is
greater than that of regular troops seems to have been exposed.

At the end of Tune, Fouché, one of the most enterprising of the
guerilla chiefs, made a dash from Barkly East into the native reserves
of the Transkei in order to obtain horses and supplies. It was a
desperate measure, as it was vain to suppose that the warlike Kaffirs
would permit their property to be looted without resistance, and if
once the assegais were reddened no man could say how far the mischief
might go. With great loyalty the British Government, even in the
darkest days, had held back those martial races -- Zulus, Swazis, and
Basutos -- who all had old grudges against the Amaboon. Fouché's raid
was stopped, however, before it led to serious trouble. A handful of
Griqualand Mounted Rifles held it in front, while Dalgety and his
colonial veterans moving very swiftly drove him back northwards.

Though baulked, Fouché was still formidable, and on July 14th he made
a strong attack in the neighbourhood of Jamestown upon a column of
Connaught Rangers who were escorting a convoy.  Major Moore offered a
determined resistance, and eventually after some hours of fighting
drove the enemy away and captured their laager.  Seven killed and
seventeen wounded were the British losses in this spirited engagement.

On July 10th General French, surveying from a lofty mountain peak the
vast expanse of the field of operations, with his heliograph calling
up responsive twinkles over one hundred miles of country, gave the
order for the convergence of four columns upon the valley in which he
knew Scheepers to be lurking.  We have it from one of his own letters
that his commando at the time consisted of 240 men, of whom forty were
Free Staters and the rest colonial rebels.  Crewe, Windham, Doran, and
Scobell each answered to the call, but the young leader was a man of
resource, and a long kloof up the precipitous side of the hill gave
him a road to safety.  Yet the operations showed a new mobility in the
British columns, which shed their guns and their baggage in order to
travel faster.  The main commando escaped, but twenty-five laggards
were taken. The action took place among the hills thirty miles to the
west of Graaf-Reinet.

On July 21st Crabbe and Kritzinger had a skirmish in the mountains
near Cradock, in which the Boers were strong enough to hold their own;
but on the same date near Murraysburg, Lukin, the gallant colonial
gunner, with ninety men rode into 150 of Lategan's band and captured
ten of them, with a hundred horses.  On July 27th a small party of
twenty-one Imperial Yeomanry was captured, after a gallant resistance,
by a large force of Boers at the Doorn River on the other side of the
Colony.  The Kaffir scouts of the British were shot dead in cold blood
by their captors after the action.  There seems to be no possible
excuse for the repeated murders of coloured men by the Boers, as they
had themselves from the beginning of the war used their Kaffirs for
every purpose short of actually fighting.  The war had lost much of
the good humour which marked its outset. A fiercer feeling had been
engendered on both sides by the long strain, but the execution of
rebels by the British, though much to be deplored, is still recognised
as one of the rights of a belligerent. When one remembers the
condonation upon the part of the British of the use of their own
uniforms by the Boers, of the wholesale breaking of paroles, of the
continual use of expansive bullets, of the abuse of the pass system
and of the red cross, it is impossible to blame them for showing some
severity in the stamping out of armed rebellion within their own
Colony.  If stern measures were eventually adopted it was only after
extreme leniency had been tried and failed.  The loss of five years'
franchise as a penalty for firing upon their own flag is surely the
most gentle correction which an Empire ever laid upon a rebellious
people.

At the beginning of August the connected systematic work of French's
columns began to tell. In a huge semicircle the British were pushing
north, driving the guerillas in front of them.  Scheepers in his usual
wayward fashion had broken away to the south, but the others had been
unable to penetrate the cordon and were herded over the
Stormberg-Naauwport line.  The main body of the Boers was hustled
swiftly along from August 7th to August 10th, from Graaf-Reinet to
Thebus, and thrust over the railway line at that point with some loss
of men and a great shedding of horses. It was hoped that the
blockhouses on the railroad would have held the enemy, but they
slipped across by night and got into the Steynsburg district, where
Gorringe's colonials took up the running. On August 18th he followed
the commandos from Steynsburg to Venterstad, killing twenty of them
and taking several prisoners. On the 15th, Kritzinger with the main
body of the invaders passed the Orange River near Bethulie, and made
his way to the Wepener district of the Orange River Colony.
Scheepers, Lotter, Lategan, and a few small wandering bands were the
only Boers left in the Colony, and to these the British columns now
turned their attention, with the result that Lategan, towards the end
of the month, was also driven over the river. For the time, at least,
the situation seemed to have very much improved, but there was a drift
of Boers over the north-western frontier, and the long-continued
warfare at their own doors was undoubtedly having a dangerous effect
upon the Dutch farmers.  Small successes from time to time, such as
the taking of sixty of French's Scouts by Theron's commando on August
10th, served to keep them from despair.  Of the guerilla bands which
remained, the most important was that of Scheepers, which now numbered
300 men, well mounted and supplied.  He had broken back through the
cordon, and made for his old haunts in the south-west.  Theron, with a
smaller band, was also in the Uniondale and Willowmore district,
approaching close to the sea in the Mossel Bay direction, but being
headed off by Kavanagh.  Scheepers turned in the direction of Cape
Town, but swerved aside at Montagu, and moved northwards towards Touws
River.

So far the British had succeeded in driving and injuring, but never in
destroying, the Boer bands.  It was a new departure therefore when,
upon September 4th, the commando of Lotter was entirely destroyed by
the column of Scobell.  This column consisted of some of the Cape
Mounted Rifles and of the indefatigable 9th Lancers. It marked the
enemy down in a valley to the west of Cradock and attacked them in the
morning, after having secured all the approaches, The result was a
complete success.  The Boers threw themselves into a building and held
out valiantly, but their position was impossible, aud after enduring
considerable punishment they were forced to hoist the white
flag. Eleven had been killed, forty-six wounded, and fifty-six
surrendered -- figures which are in themselves a proof of the tenacity
of their defence.  Lotter was among the prisoners, 260 horses were
taken, and a good supply of ammunition, with some dynamite.  A few
days later, on September 10th, a similar blow, less final in its
character, was dealt by Colonel Crabbe to the commando of Van der
Merve, which was an offshoot of that of Scheepers. The action was
fought near Laingsburg, which is on the main line, just north of
Matjesfontein, and it ended in the scattering of the Boer band, the
death of their boy leader (he was only eighteen years of age), and the
capture of thirty-seven prisoners.  Seventy of the Beers escaped by a
hidden road.  To Colonials and Yeomanry belongs the honour of the
action, which cost the British force seven casualties.  Colonel Crabbe
pushed on after the success, and on September 14th he was in touch
with Scheepers's commando near Ladismith (not to he confused with the
historical town of Natal), and endured and inflicted some losses.  On
the 17th a patrol of Grenadier Guards was captured in the north of the
Colony, Rebow, the young lieutenant in charge of them, meeting with a
soldier's death.

On the same day a more serious engagement occurred near Tarkastad, a
place ~hich lies to the east of Cradock, a notorious centre of
disaffection in the midland &~stnct.  Smuts's commando, some hundreds
strong, was marked down in this part, and several forces converged
upon it.  One of the outlets, Elands River Poort, was guarded by a
single squadron of the 17th Lancers.  Upon this the Boers made a
sudden and very fierce attack, their approach being facilitated partly
by the mist and partly by the use of khaki, a trick which seems never
to have grown too stale for successful use. The result was that they
were able to ride up to the British camp before any preparations had
been made for resistance, and to shoot down a number of the Lancers
before they could reach their horses.  So terrible was the fire that
the single squadron lost thirty-four killed and thirty-six wounded.
But the regiment may console itself for the disaster by the fact that
the sorely stricken detachment remained true to the spirited motto of
the corps, and that no prisoners appear to have been lost.

After this one sharp engagement there ensued several weeks during
which the absence of historical events, or the presence of the
military censor, caused a singular lull in the account of the
operations.  With so many small commandos and so many pursuing columns
it is extraordinary that there should not have been a constant
succession of actions.  That there was not must indicate a
sluggishness upon the part of the pursuers, and this sluggishness can
only be explained by the condition of their horses.  Every train of
thought brings the critic back always to the great horse question, and
encourages the conclusion that there, at all seasons of the war and in
all scenes of it, is to be found the most damning indictment against
British foresight, common-sense, and power of organisation.  That the
third year of the war should dawn without the British forces having
yet got the legs of the Boers, after having penetrated every portion
of their country and having the horses of the world on which to draw,
is the most amazingly inexplicable point in the whole of this strange
campaign. From the telegram 'Infantry preferred' addressed to a nation
of rough-riders, down to the failure to secure the excellent horses on
the spot, while importing them unfit for use from the ends of the
earth, there has been nothing but one long series of blunders in this,
the most vital question of all.  Even up to the end, in the Colony the
obvious lesson had not yet been learnt that it is better to give 1,000
men two horses each, and EO let them reach the enemy, than give 2,000
men one horse each, with which they can never attain their object. The
chase during two years of the man with two horses by the man with one
horse, has been a sight painful to ourselves and ludicrous to others.

In connection with this account of operations within the Colony, there
is one episode which occurred in the extreme north-west which will not
fit in with this connected narrative, but which will justify the
distraction of the reader's intelligence, for few finer deeds of arms
are recorded in the war.  This was the heroic defence of a convoy by
the 14th Company of Irish Imperial Yeomanry.  The convoy was taking
food to Griquatown, on the Kimberley side of the seat of war. The town
had been long invested by Conroy, and the inhabitants were in such
straits that it was highly necessary to relieve them.  To this end a
convoy, two miles long, was despatched under Major Humby of the Irish
Yeomanry.  The escort consisted of seventy-five Northumberland
Fusiliers, twenty-four local troops, and 100 of the 74th Irish
Yeomanry. Fifteen miles from Griquatown, at a place called Rooikopjes,
the convoy was attacked by the enemy several hundred in number. Two
companies of the Irishmen seized the ridge, however, which commanded
the wagons, and held it until they were almost exterminated.  The
position was covered with bush, and the two parties came to the
closest of quarters, the Yeomen refusing to take a backward step,
though it was clear that they were vastly outnumbered.  Encouraged by
the example of Madan and Ford, their gallant young leaders, they
deliberately sacrificed their lives in order to give time for the guns
to come up and for the convoy to pass.  Oliffe, Bonynge, and Maclean,
who had been children together, were shot side by side on the ridge,
and afterwards buried in one grave.  Of forty-three men in action,
fourteen were killed and twenty severely wounded.  Their sacrifice was
not in vain, however.  The Boers were beaten back, and the convoy, as
well as Griquatown, was saved. Some thirty or forty Boers were killed
or wounded in the skirmish, and Conroy, their leader, declared that it
was the stiffest fight of his life.

In the autumn and winter of 1901 General French had steadily pursued
the system of clearing certain districts, one at a time, and
endeavouring by his blockhouses and by the arrangement of his forces
to hold in strict quarantine those sections of the country which were
still infested by the commandos.  In this manner he succeeded by the
November of this year in confining the active forces of the enemy to
the extreme northeast and to the south-west of the peninsula.  It is
doubtful if the whole Boer force, three-quarters of whom were colonial
rebels, amounted to more than fifteen hundred men.  When we learn that
at this period of the war they were indifferently armed, and that many
of them were mounted upon donkeys, it is impossible, after making
every allowance for the passive assistance of the farmers, and the
difficulties of the country, to believe that the pursuit was always
pushed with the spirit and vigour which was needful.

In the north-east, Myburgh, Wessels, and the truculent Fouché were
allowed almost a free hand for some months, while the roving bands
were rounded up in the' midlands and driven along until they were west
of the main railroad.  Here, in the Calvinia district, several
commandos united in October 1901 under Maritz, Louw, Smit, and Theron.
Their united bands rode down into the rich grain-growing country round
Piquetberg and Malmesbury, pushing south until it seemed as if their
academic supporters at Paarl were actually to have a sight of the
rebellion which they had fanned to a flame. At one period their
patrols were within forty miles of Cape Town.  The movement was
checked, however, by a small force of Lancers and district troops, and
towards the end of October, Maritz, who was chief in this quarter,
turned northwards, and on the 29th captured a small British convoy
which crossed his line of march. Early in November he doubled back and
attacked Piquetberg, but was beaten off with some loss.  From that
time a steady pressure from the south and east drove these bands
farther and farther into the great barren lands of the west, until, in
the following April, they had got as far as Namaqualand, many hundred
miles away.

Upon October 9th, the second anniversary of the Ultimatum, the hands
of the military were strengthened by the proclamation of Cape Town and
all the seaport towns as being in a state of martial law. By this
means a possible source of supplies and recruits for the enemy was
effectually blocked.  That it had not been done two years before is a
proof of how far local political considerations can be allowed to
over-ride the essentials of Imperial policy. Meanwhile treason courts
were sitting, and sentences, increasing rapidly from the most trivial
to the most tragic, were teaching the rebel that his danger did not
end upon the field of battle. The execution of Lotter and his
lieutenants was a sign that the patience of a long-suffering Empire
had at last reached an end.

The young Boer leader, Scheepers, had long been a thorn in the side of
the British. He had infested the southern districts for some months,
and he had distinguished himself both by the activity of his movements
and by the ruthless vigour of some of his actions. Early in October a
serious illness and consequent confinement to his bed brought him at
last within the range of British mobility.  On his recovery he was
tried for repeated breaches of the laws of war, including the murder
of several natives.  He was condemned to death, and was executed in
December. Much sympathy was excited by his gallantry and his youth --
he was only twenty-three.  On the other hand, our word was pledged to
protect the natives, and if he whose hand had been so heavy upon them
escaped, all confidence would have been lost in our promises and our
justice.  That British vengeance was not indiscriminate was shown soon
afterwards in the case of a more irnportant commander, Kritzinger, who
was the chief leader of the Boers within Cape Colony.  Kritzinger was
wounded and captured while endeavouring to cross the line near Hanover
Road upon December 15th.  He was put upon his trial, and his fate
turned upon how far he was responsible for the misdeeds of some of his
subordinates.  It was clearly shown that he had endeavoured to hold
them within the bounds of civilised warfare, and with congratulations
and handshakings he was acquitted by the military court.

In the last two months of the year 1901, a new system was introduced
into the Cape Colony campaign by placing the Colonial and district
troops immediately under the command of Colonial officers and of the
Colonial Government.  It had long been felt that some devolution was
necessary, and the change was justified by the result.  Without any
dramatic incident, an inexorable process of attrition, caused by
continual pursuit and hardship, wore out the commandos. Large bands
had become small ones, and small ones had vanished. Only by the union
of several bodies could any enterprise higher than the looting of a
farmhouse be successfully attempted.

Such a union occurred, however, in the early days of February 1902,
when Smuts, Malan, and several other Boer leaders showed great
activity in the country round Calvinia.  Their commandos seem to have
included a proportion of veteran Republicans from the north, who were
more formidable fighting material than the raw Colonial rebels. It
happened that several dangerously weak British columns were operating
within reach at that time, and it was only owing to the really
admirable conduct of the troops that a serious disaster was averted.
Two separate actions, each of them severe, were fought on the same
date, and in each case the Boers were able to bring very superior
numbers into the field.

The first of these was the fight in which Colonel Doran's column
extricated itself with severe loss from a most perilous plight.  The
whole force under Doran consisted of 350 men with two guns, and this
handful was divided by an expedition which he, with 150 men, undertook
in order to search a distant farm.  The remaining two hundred men,
under Captain Saunders, were left upon February 5th with the guns and
the convoy at a place called Middlepost, which lies about fifty miles
south-west of Calvinia.  These men were of the 11th, 23rd, and 24th
Imperial Yeomanry, with a troop of Cape Police.  The Boer Intelligence
was excellent, as might be expected in a country which is dotted with
farms.  The weakened force at Middlepost was instantly attacked by
Smuts's commando. Saunders evacuated the camp and abandoned the
convoy, which was the only thing he could do, but he concentrated all
his efforts upon preserving his guns.  The night was illuminated by
the blazing wagons, and made hideous by the whoops of the drunken
rebels who caroused among the captured stores.  With the first light
of dawn the small British force was fiercely assailed on all sides,
but held its own in a manner which would have done credit to any
troops.  The much criticised Yeomen fought like veterans. A
considerable position had to be covered, and only a handful of men
were available at the most important points.  One ridge, from which
the guns would be enfiladed, was committed to the charge of
Lieutenants Tabor and Chichester with eleven men of the 11th Imperial
Yeomanry, their instructions being 'to hold it to the death.'  The
order was obeyed with the utmost heroism. After a desperate defence
the ridge was only taken by the Boers when both officers had been
killed and nine out of eleven men were on the ground.  In spite of the
loss of this position the fight was still sustained until shortly
after midday, when Doran with the patrol returned.  The position was
still most dangerous, the losses had been severe, and the Boers were
increasing in strength.  An immediate retreat was ordered, and the
small column, af~er ten days of hardship and anxiety, reached the
railway line in safety.  The wounded were left to the care of Smuts,
who behaved with chivalry and humanity.

At about the same date a convoy proceeding from Beaufort West to
Fraserburg was attacked by Malan's commando.  The escort, which
consisted of sixty Colonial Mounted Rifles and 100 of the West
Yorkshire militia, was overwhelmed after a good defence, in which
Major Crofton, their commander, was killed. The wagons were destroyed,
but the Boers were driven off by the arrival of Crabbe's column,
followed by those of Capper and Lund.  The total losses of the British
in these two actions amounted to twenty-three killed and sixty-five
wounded.

The re-establishment of settled law and order was becoming more marked
every week in those southwestern districts, which had long been most
disturbed. Colonel Crewe in this region, and Colonel Lukin upon the
other side of the line, acting entirely with Colonial troops, were
pushing back the rebels, and holding, by a well-devised system of
district defence, all that they had gained. By the end of February
there were none of the enemy south of the Beaufort West and
Clanwilliam line.  These results were not obtained without much hard
marching and a little hard fighting.  Small columns under Crabbe,
Capper, Wyndham, Nickall, and Lund, were continually on the move, with
little to show for it save an ever-widening area of settled country in
their rear.  In a skirmish on February 20th ludge Hugo, a well-known
Boer leader, was killed, and Vanheerden, a notorious rebel, was
captured. At the end of this month Fouché's tranquil occupation of the
north-east was at last disturbed, and he was driven out of it into the
midlands, where he took refuge with the remains of his commando in the
Camdeboo Mountains. Malan's men had already sought shelter in the same
natural fortresB.  Malan was wounded and taken in a skirmish near
Somerset East a few days before the general Boer surrender. Fouché
gave himself up at Cradock on June 2nd.

The last incident of this scattered, scrambling, unsatisfactory
campaign in the Cape peninsula was the raid made by Smuts, the
Transvaal leader, into the Port Nolloth district of Namaqualand, best
known for its copper mines. A small railroad has been constructed from
the coast at this point, the terminus being the township of Ookiep.
The length of the line is about seventy miles.  It is difficult to
imagine what the Boers expected to gain in this remote corner of the
seat of war, unless they had conceived the idea that they might
actually obtain possession of Port Nolloth itself, and so restore the
communications with their sympathisers and allies.  At the end of
March the Boer horsemen appeared suddenly out of the desert, drove in
the British outposts, and summoned Ookiep to surrender. Colonel
Shelton, who commanded the small garrison, sent an uncompromising
reply, but he was unable to protect the railway in his rear, which was
wrecked, together with some of the blockhouses which had been erected
to guard it.  The loyal population of the surrounding country had
flocked into Ookiep, and the Commandant found himself burdened with
the care of six thousand people.  The enemy had succeeded in taking
the small post of Springbok, and Concordia, the mining centre, was
surrendered into their hands without resistance, giving them welcome
suplies of arms, ammunition, and dynamite.  The latter was used by the
Boers in the shape of hand-bombs, and proved to be a very efficient
weapon when employed against blockhouses.  Several of the British
defences were wrecked by them, with considerable loss to the garrison;
but in the course of a month's siege, in spite of several attacks, the
Boers were never able to carry the frail works which guarded the town.
Once more, at the end of the war as at the beginning of it, there was
shown the impotence of the Dutch riflemen against a British defence.
A relief column, under Colonel Cooper, was quickly organised at Port
Nolloth, and advanced along the railway line, forcing Smuts to raise
the siege in the first week of May.  Immediately afterwards came the
news of the negotiations for peace, and the Boer general presented
himself at Port Nolloth, whence he was conveyed by ship to Cape Town,
and so north again to take part in the deliberations of his
fellow-countrymen. Throughout the war he had played a manly and
honourable part.  It may be hoped that with youth and remarkable
experience, both of diplomacy and of war, he may now find a long and
briliant career awaiting him in a wider arena than that for which he
strove.


CHAPTER XXXVI

THE SPRING CAMPAIGN (SEPT.-DEC. 1901)

The history of the war during the African winter of 1901 has now been
sketched, and some account given of the course of events in the
Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, and the Cape Colony.  The hope of
the British tbat they might stamp out resistance before the grass
should restore mobility to the larger bodies of Boers was destined to
be disappointed.  By the middle of September the veldt had turned from
drab to green, and the great drama was fated to last for one more act,
however anxious all the British and the majority of the Boers might be
to ring down the curtain.  Exasperating as this senseless prolongation
of a hopeless struggle might be, there was still some consolation in
the reflection that those who drank this bitter cup to the very lees
would be less likely to thirst for it again.

September 15th was the date which brought into force the British
Proclamation announcing the banishment of those Boer leaders who
continued in arms.  It must be confessed that this step may appear
harsh and unchivalrous to the impartial observer, so long as those
leaders were guilty of no practices which are foreign to the laws of
civilised warfare.  The imposition of personal penalties upon the
officers of an opposing army is a step for which it is difficult to
quote a precedent, nor is it wise to officially rule your enemy
outside the pale of ordinary warfare, since it is equally open to him
to take the same step against you.  The only justification for such a
course would be its complete success, as this would suggest that the
Intelligence Department were aware that the leaders desired some
strong excuse for coming in -- such an excuse as the Proclamation
would afford.  The result proved that nothing of the kind was needed,
and the whole proceeding must appear to be injudicious and
high-handed.  In honourable war you conquer your adversary by superior
courage, strength, or wit, but you do not terrorise him by particular
penalties aimed at individuals.  The burghers of the Transvaal and of
the late Orange Free State were legitimate belligerents, and to be
treated as such -- a statement which does not, of course, extend to
the Afrikander rebels who were their allies.

The tendency of the British had been to treat their antagonists as a
broken and disorganised banditti, but with the breaking of the spring
they were sharply reminded that the burghers were still capable of a
formidable and coherent effort.  The very date which put them beyond
the pale as belligerents was that which they seem to have chosen in
order to prove what active and valiant soldiers they still remained. A
quick succession of encounters occurred at various parts of the seat
of war, the general tendency of which was not entirely in favour of
the British arms, though the weekly export of prisoners reassured all
who noted it as to the sapping and decay of the Boer strength.  These
incidents must now be set down in the order of their occurrence, with
their relation to each other so far as it is possible to trace it.

General Louis Botha, with the double intention of making an offensive
move and of distracting the wavering burghers from a close examination
of Lord Kitchener's proclamation, assembled his forces in the second
week of September in the Ermelo district. Thence he moved them rapidly
towards Natal, with the result that the volunteers of that colony had
once more to grasp their rifles and hasten to the frontier.  The whole
situation bore for an instant an absurd resemblance to that of two
years before -- Botha playing the part of Joubert, and Lyttelton, who
commanded on the frontier, that of White.  It only remained, to make
the parallel complete, that some one should represent Penn Symons, and
this perilous role fell to a gallant officer, Major Gough, commanding
a detached force which thought itself strong enough to hold its own,
and only learned by actual experiment that it was not.

This officer, with a small force consisting of three companies of
Mounted Infantry with two guns of the 69th R.F.A., was operating in
the neighbourhood of Utrecht in the south-eastern corner of the
Transvaal, on the very path along which Botha must descend.  On
September 17th he had crossed De Jagers Drift on the Blood River, not
very far from Dundee, when he found himself in touch with the enemy.
His mission was to open a path for an empty convoy returning from
Vryheid, and in order to do so it was necessary that Blood River
Poort, where the Boers were now seen, should be cleared.  With
admirable zeal Gough pushed rapidly forward, supported by a force of
350 Johannesburg Mounted Rifles under Stewart.  Such a proceeding must
have seemed natural to any British officer at this stage of the war,
when a swift advance was the only chance of closing with the small
bodies of Boers; but it is strange that the Intelligence Department
had not warned the patrols upon the frontier tbat a considerable force
was coming down upon them, and that they should be careful to avoid
action against impossible odds.  If Gough had known that Botha's main
commando was coming down upon him, it is inconceivable that he would
have pushed his advance until he could neither extricate his men nor
his guns.  A small body of the enemy, said to have been the personal
escort of Louis Botha, led him on, until a large force was able to
ride down upon him from the flank and rear.  Surrounded at Scheepers
Nek by many hundreds of riflemen in a difficult country, there was no
alternative but a surrender, and so sharp and sudden was the Boer
advance that the whole action was over in a very short time.  The new
tactics of the Boers, already used at Vlakfontein, and afterwards to
be successful at Brakenlaagte and at Tweebosch, were put in force. A
large body of mounted men, galloping swiftly in open order and firing
from the saddle, rode into and over the British.  Such temerity should
in theory have met with severe punishment, but as a matter of fact the
losses of the enemy seem to have been very small.  The soldiers were
not able to return an effective fire from their horses, and had no
time to dismount. The sights and breech-blocks of the two guns are
said to have been destroyed, but the former statement seems more
credible than the latter. A Colt gun was also captured.  Of the small
force twenty were killed, forty wounded, and over two hundred taken.
Stewart's force was able to extricate itself with some difficulty, and
to fall back on the Drift.  Gough managed to escape that night and to
report that it was Botha himself, with over a thousand men, wJio had
eaten up his detachment. The prisoners and wounded were sent in a few
days later to Vryheid, a town which appeared to be in some danger of
capture had not Walter Kitchener hastened to carry reinforcements to
the garrison.  Bruce Hamilton was at the same time despatched to head
Botha off, and every step taken to prevent his southern advance.  So
many columns from all parts converged upon the danger spot that
Lyttelton, who commanded upon the Natal frontier, had over 20,000 men
under his orders.

Botha's plans appear to have been to work through Zululand and then
strike at Natal, an operation which would be the more easy as it would
be conducted a considerable distance from the railway line. Pushing on
a few days after his successful action with Gough, he crossed the Zulu
frontier, and had in front of him an almost unimpeded march as far as
the Tugela.  Crossing this far from the British base of power, his
force could raid the Greytown district and raise recruits among the
Dutch farmers, laying waste one of the few spots in South Africa which
had been untouched by the blight of war.  All this lay before him, and
in his path nothing save only two small British posts which might be
either disregarded or gathered up as he passed.  In an evil moment for
himself, tempted by the thought of the supplies which they might
contain, he stopped to gather them up, and the force of the wave of
invasion broke itself as upon two granite rocks.

These two so-called forts were posts of very modest strength, a chain
of which had been erected at the time of the old Zulu war.  Fort
Itala, the larger, was garrisoned by 300 men of the 5th Mounted
Infantry, drawn from the Dublin Fusiliers, Middlesex, Dorsets, South
Lancashires, and Lancashire Fusiliers -- most of them old soldiers of
many battles.  They had two guns of the 69th R.F.A., the same battery
which had lost a section the week before.  Major Chapman, of the
Dublins, was in command.

Upon September 25th the small garrison heard that the main force of
the Boers was sweeping towards them, and prepared to give them a
soldiers' welcome.  The fort is situated upon the flank of a hill, on
the summit of which, a mile from the main trenches, a strong outpost
was stationed.  It was upon this that the first force of the attack
broke at midnight of September 25th. The garrison, eighty strong, was
fiercely beset by several hundred Boers, and the post was eventually
carried after a sharp and bloody contest.  Kane, of the South
Lancashires, died with the words 'No surrender' upon his lips, and
Potgieter, a Boer leader, was pistolled by Kane's fellow officer,
Lefroy.  Twenty of the small garrison fell, and the remainder were
overpowered and taken.

With this vantage-ground in their possession the Boers settled down to
the task of overwhelming the main position.  They attacked upon three
sides, and until morning the force was raked from end to end by unseen
riflemen.  The two British guns were put out of action and the maxim
was made unserviceable by a bullet. At dawn there was a pause in the
attack, but it recommenced and continued without intermission until
sunset.  The span betwixt the rising of the sun and its last red glow
in the west is a long one for the man who spends it at his ease, but
how never-ending must have seemed the hours to this handful of men,
outnumbered, surrounded, pelted by bullets, parched with thirst, torn
with anxiety, holding desperately on with dwindling numbers to their
frail defences!  To them it may have seemed a hard thing to endure so
much for a tiny fort in a savage land. The larger view of its vital
importance could have scarcely come to console the regimental officer,
far less the private.  But duty carried them through, and they wrought
better than they knew, for the brave Dutchmen, exasperated by so
disproportionate a resistance, stormed up to the very trenches and
suffered as they had not suffered for many a long month.  There have
been battles with 10,000 British troops hotly engaged in which the
Boer losses have not been so great as in this obscure conflict against
an isolated post.  When at last, baffled and disheartened, they drew
off with the waning light, it is said that no fewer than a hundred of
their dead and two hundred of their wounded attested the severity of
the fight.  So strange are the conditions of South African warfare
that this loss, which would have hardly made a skirmish memorable in
the slogging days of the Peninsula, was one of the most severe blows
which the burghers had sustained in the course of a two years' warfare
against a large and aggressive army.  There is a conflict of evidence
as to the exact figures, but at least they were sufficient to beat the
Boer army back and to change their plan of campaign.

Whilst this prolonged contest had raged round Fort Itala, a similar
attack upon a smaller scale was being made upon Fort Prospect, some
fifteen miles to the eastward.  This small post was held by a handful
of Durham Artillery Militia and of Dorsets.  The attack was delivered
by Grobler with several hundred burghers, but it made no advance
although it was pushed with great vigour, and repeated many times in
the course of the day. Captain Rowley, who was in command, handled his
men with such judgment that one killed and eight wounded represented
his casualties during a long day's fighting.  Here again the Boer
losses were in proportion to the resolution of their attack, and are
said to have amounted to sixty killed and wounded.  Considering the
impossibility of replacing the men, and the fruitless waste of
valuable ammunition, September 26th was an evil day for the Boer
cause.  The British casualties amounted to seventy-three.

The water of the garrison of Fort Itala had been cut off early in the
attack, and their ammunition had run low by evening.  Chapman withdrew
his men and his guns therefore to Nkandhla, where the survivors of his
gallant garrison received the special thanks of Lord Kitchener.  The
country around was still swarming with Boers, and on the last day of
September a convoy from Melmoth fell into their hands and provided
them with some badly needed supplies.

But the check which he had received was sufficient to prevent any
important advance upon the part of Botha, while the swollen state of
the rivers put an additional obstacle in his way.  Already the British
commanders, delighted to have at last discovered a definite objective,
were hurrying to the scene of action.  Bruce Hamuton had reached Fort
Itala upon September 28th and Walter Kitchener had been despatched to
Vryheid. Two British forces, aided by smaller columns, were
endeavouring to surround the Boer leader.  On October 6th Botha had
fallen back to the north-east of Vryheid, whither the British forces
had followed him.  Like De Wet's invasion of the Cape, Botha's advance
upon Natal had ended in placing himself and his army in a critical
position.  On October 9th he had succeeded in crossing the Privaan
River, a branch of the Pongolo, and was pushing north in the direction
of Piet Retief, much helped by misty weather and incessant rain.  Some
of his force escaped between the British columns, and some remained in
the kloofs and forests of that difficult country.

Walter Kitchener, who had followed up the Boer retreat, had a brisk
engagement with the rearguard upon October 6th.  The Boers shook
themselves clear with some loss, both to themselves and to their
pursuers.  On the 10th those of the burghers who held together had
reached Luneburg, and shortly afterwards they had got completely away
from the British columns. The weather was atrocious, and the lumbering
wagons, axle-deep in mud, made it impossible for troops who were
attached to them to keep in touch with the light riders who sped
before them.  For some weeks there was no word of the main Boer force,
but at the end of that time they reappeared in a manner which showed
that both in numbers and in spirit they were still a formidable body.

Of all the sixty odd British columns which were traversing the Boer
states there was not one which had a better record than that commanded
by Colonel Benson. During seven months of continuous service this
small force, consisting at that time of the Argyle and Sutherland
Highlanders, the 2nd Scottish Horse, the 18th and 19th Mounted
Infantry, and two guns, had acted with great energy, and had reduced
its work to a complete and highly effective system.  Leaving the
infantry as a camp guard, Benson operated with mounted troops alone,
and no Boer laager within fifty miles was safe from his nocturnal
visits.  So skilful had he and his men become at these night attacks
in a strange, and often difficult country, that out of twenty-eight
attempts twenty-one resulted in complete success.  In each case the
rule was simply to gallop headlong into the Boer laager, and to go on
chasing as far as the horses could go. The furious and reckless pace
may be judged by the fact that the casualties of the force were far
greater from falls than from bullets.  In seven months forty-seven
Boers were killed and six hundred captured, to say nothing of enormous
quantities of munitions and stock.  The success of these operations
was due, not only to the energy of Benson and his men, but to the
untiring exertions of Colonel Wools-Sampson, who acted as intelligence
officer. If, during his long persecution by President Kruger,
Wools-Sampson in the bitterness of his heart had vowed a feud against
the Boer cause, it must be acknowledged that he has most amply
fulfilled it, for it would be difficult to point to any single man who
has from first to last done them greater harm.

In October Colonel Benson's force was reorganised, and it then
consisted of the 2nd Buffs, the 2nd Scottish Horse, the 3rd and 25th
Mounted Infantry, and four guns of the 84th battery. With this force,
numbering nineteen hundred men, he left Middelburg upon the Delagoa
line on October 20th and proceeded south, crossing the course along
which the Boers, who were retiring from their abortive raid into
Natal, might be expected to come.  For several days the column
performed its familiar work, and gathered up forty or fifty prisoners.
On the 26th came news that the Boer commandos under Grobler were
concentrating against it, and that an attack in force might be
expected. For two days there was continuous sniping, and the column as
it moved through the country saw Boer horsemen keeping pace with it on
the far flanks and in the rear.  The weather had been very bad, and it
was in a deluge of cold driving rain that the British set forth upon
October 30th, moving towards Brakenlaagte, which is a point about
forty mi~s due south of Middelburg. It was Benson's intention to
return to his base.

About midday the column, still escorted by large bodies of aggressive
Boers, came to a difficult spruit swollen by the rain.  Here the
wagons stuck, and it took some hours to get them all across.  The Boer
fire was continually becoming more severe, and had broken out at the
head of the column as well as the rear.  The situation was rendered
more difficult by the violence of the rain, which raised a thick steam
from the ground and made it impossible to see for any distance.  Major
Anley, in command of the rearguard, peering back, saw through a rift
of the clouds a large body of horsemen in extended order sweeping
after them.  'There's miles of them, begob! ' cried an excited Irish
trooper. Next instant the curtain had closed once more, but all who
had caught a glimpse of that vision knew that a stern struggle was at
hand.

At this moment two guns of the 84th battery under Major Guinness were
in action against Boer riflemen. As a rear screen on the farther side
of the guns was a body of the Scottish Horse and of the Yorkshire
Mounted Infantry.  Near the guns themselves were thirty men of the
Buffs.  The rest of the Buffs and of the Mounted Infantry were out
upon the flanks or else were with the advance guard, which was now
engaged, under the direction of Colonel Wools-Sampson, in parking the
convoy and in forming the camp.  These troops played a small part in
the day's fighting, the whole force of which broke with irresistible
violence upon the few hundred men who were in front of or around the
rear guns.  Colonel Benson seems to have just ridden back to the
danger point when the Boers delivered their furious attack.

Louis Botba with his commando is said to have ridden sixty miles in
order to join the forces of Grobler and Oppermann, and overwhelm the
British column. It may have been the presence of their commander or a
desire to have vengeance for the harrying which they had undergone
upon the Natal border, but whatever the reason, the Boer attack was
made with a spirit and dash which earned the enthusiastic applause of
every soldier who survived to describe it.  With the low roar of a
great torrent, several hundred horsemen burst through the curtain of
mist, riding at a furious pace for the British guns.  The rear screen
of Mounted Infantry fell back before this terrific rush, and the two
bodies of horsemen came pell-mell down upon the handful of Buffs and
the guns.  The infantry were ridden into and surrounded by the Boers,
who found nothing to stop them from galloping on to the low ridge upon
which the guns were stationed.  This ridge was held by eighty of the
Scottish Horse and forty of the Yorkshire M.I., with a few riflemen
from the 25th Mounted Infantry.  The latter were the escort of the
guns, but the former were the rear screen who had fallen back rapidly
because it was the game to do so, but who were in no way shaken, and
who instantly dismounted and formed when they reached a defensive
position.

These men had hardly time to take up their ground when the Boers were
on them.  With that extraordinary quickness to adapt their tactics to
circumstances which is the chief military virtue of the Boers, the
horsemen did not gallop over the crest, but lined the edge of it, and
poured a withering fire on to the guns and the men beside them.  The
heroic nature of the defence can be best shown by the plain figures of
the casualties.  No rhetoric is needed to adorn that simple record.
There were thirty-two gunners round the guns, and twenty-nine fell
where they stood.  Major Guinness was mortaly wounded while
endeavouring with his own hands to fire a round of case.  There were
sixty-two casualties out of eighty among the Scottish Horse, and the
Yorkshires were practically annihilated. Altogether 123 men fell, out
of about 160 on the ridge.  'Hard pounding, gentlemen,' as Wellington
remarked at Waterloo, and British troops seemed as ready as ever to
endure it.

The gunners were, as usual, magnificent.  Of the two little
bullet-pelted groups of men around the guns there was not one who did
not stand to his duty without flinching.  Corporal Atkin was shot down
with all his comrades, but still endeavoured with his failing strength
to twist the breech-block out of the gun.  Another bullet passed
through his upraised hands as he did it.  Sergant Hayes, badly
wounded, and the last survivor of the crew, seized the lanyard,
crawled up the trail, and fired a last round before he
fainted. Sergeant Mathews, with three bullets through him, kept
steadily to his duty. Five drivers tried to bring up a limber and
remove the gun, but all of them, with all the horses, were hit.  There
have been incidents in this war which have not increased our military
reputation, but you might search the classical records of valour and
fail to find anything finer than the consistent conduct of the British
artillery.

Colonel Benson was hit in the knee and again in the stomach, but
wounded as he was he despatched a message back to Wools-Sampson,
asking him to burst shrapnel over the ridge so as to prevent the Boers
from carrying off the guns.  The burghers had ridden in among the
litter of dead and wounded men which marked the British position, and
some of the baser of them, much against the will of their commanders,
handled the injured soldiers with great brutality.  The shell-fire
drove them back, however, and the two guns were left standing alone,
with no one near them save their prostrate gunners and escort.

There has been some misunderstanding as to the part played by the
Buffs in this action, and words have been used which seem to imply
that they had in some way failed their mounted companions.  It is due
to the honour of one of the finest regiments in the British army to
clear this up.  As a matter of fact, the greater part of the regiment
under Major Dauglish was engaged in defending the camp.  Near the guns
there were four separate small bodies of Buffs, none of which appears
to have been detailed as an escort.  One of these parties, consisting
of thirty men under Lieutenant Greatwood, was ridden over by the
horsemen, and the same fate befell a party of twenty who were far out
upon the flank. Another small body under Lieutenant Lynch was over
taken by the same charge, and was practically destroyed, losing
nineteen killed and wounded out of thirty. In the rear of the guns was
a larger body of Buffs, 130 in number, under Major Eales. When the
guns were taken this handful attempted a counter-attack, but Eales
soon saw that it was a hopeless effort, and he lost thirty of his men
before he could extricate himself. Had these men been with the others
on the gun ridge they might have restored the fight, but they had not
reached it when the position was taken, and to persevere in the
attempt to retake it would have led to certain disaster. The only just
criticism to which the regiment is open is that, having just come off
blockhouse duty, they were much out of condition, which caused the men
to straggle and the movements to be unduly slow.

It was fortunate that the command of the column devolved upon so
experienced and cool-headed a soldier as Wools-Sampson.  To attempt a
counter-attack for the purpose of recapturing the guns would, in case
of disaster, have risked the camp and the convoy. The latter was the
prize which the Boers had particularly in view, and to expose it would
be to play their game. Very wisely, therefore, Wools-Sampson held the
attacking Boers off with his guns and his riflemen, while every spare
pair of hands was set to work entrenching the position and making it
impregnable against attack. Outposts were stationed upon all those
surrounding points which might command the camp, and a summons to
surrender from the Boer leader was treated with contempt. All day a
long-range fire, occasionally very severe, rained upon the camp.
Colonel Benson was brought in by the ambulance, and used his dying
breath in exhorting his subordinate to hold out.  'No more night
marches' are said to have been the last words spoken by this gallant
soldier as he passed away in the early morning after the action.  On
October 31st the force remained on the defensive, but early on
November 1st the gleaming of two heliographs, one to the north-east
and one to the southwest, told that two British columns, those of De
Lisle and of Barter, were hastening to the rescue.  But the Boers had
passed as the storm does, and nothing but their swathe of destruction
was left to show where they had been.  They had taken away the guns
during the night, and were already beyond the reach of pursuit.

Such was the action at Brakenlaagte, which cost the British sixty men
killed and 170 wounded, together with two guns.  Colonel Benson,
Colonel Guinness, Captain Eyre Lloyd of the Guards, Major Murray and
Captain Lindsay of the Scottish Horse, with seven other officers were
among the dead, while sixteen officers were wounded.  The net result
of the action was that the British rear-guard had been annihilated,
but that the main body and the convoy, which was the chief object of
the attack, was saved.  The Boer loss was considerable, being about
one hundred and fifty.  In spite of the Boer success nothing could
suit the British better than hard fighting of the sort, since whatever
the immediate result of it might be, it must necessarily cause a
wastage among the enemy which could never be replaced.  The gallantry
of the Boer charge was only equalled by that of the resistance offered
round the guns, and it is an action to which both sides can look back
without shame or regret.  It was feared that the captured guns would
soon be used to break the blockhouse line, but nothing of the kind was
attempted, and within a few weeks they were both recovered by British
columns.

In order to make a consecutive and intelligible narrative, I will
continue with an account of the operations in this south-eastern
portion of the Transvaal from the action of Brakenlaagte down to the
end of the year 1901.  These were placed in the early part of
November. under the supreme command of General Bruce Hamilton, and
that energetic commander set in motion a number of small columns,
which effected numerous captures. He was much helped in his work by
the new lines of blockhouses, one of which extended from Standerton to
Ermelo, while another connected Brugspruit with Greylingstad.  The
huge country was thus cut into manageable districts, and the fruits
were soon seen by the large returns of prisoners which came from this
part of the seat of wvar.

Upon December 3rd Bruce Hamilton, who had the valuable assistance of
Wools-Sampson to direct his intelligcnce, struck swiftly out from
Ermelo and fell upon a Boer laager in the early morning, capturing
ninety-six prisoners.  On the 10th he overwhelmed the Bethel commando
by a similar march, kiling seven and capturing 131.  Williams and
Wing commanded separate columns in this operation, and their energy
may be judged from the fact that they covered fifty-one miles during
the twenty-four hours.  On the 12th Hamilton's columns were on the
war-path once more, and another commando was wiped out.  Sixteen
killed and seventy prisoners were the fruits of this expedition.  For
the second time in a week the columns had done their fifty miles a
day, and it was no surprise to hear from their commander that they
were in need of a rest.  Nearly four hundred prisoners had been taken
from the most warlike portion of the Transvaal in ten days by one
energetic commander, with a list of twenty-five casualties to
ourselves.  The thanks of the Secretary of War were specially sent to
him for his brilliant work.  From then until the end of the year 1901,
numbers of smaller captures continued to be reported from the same
region, where Plumer, Spens, Mackenzie, Rawlinson, and others were
working.  On the other hand there was one small setback which occurred
to a body of two hundred Mounted Infantry under Major Bridgford, who
had been detached from Spens's column to search some farmhouses at a
place called Holland, to the south of Ermelo.  The expedition set
forth upon the night of December 19th, and next morning surrounded and
examined the farms.

The British force became divided in doing this work, and were suddenly
attacked by several hundred of Britz's commando, who came to close
quarters through their khaki dress, which enabled them to pass as
Plumer's vanguard.  The brunt of the fight fell upon an outlying body
of fifty men, nearly all of whom were killed, wounded or taken.  A
second body of fifty men were overpowered in the same way, after a
creditable defence.  Fifteen of the British were killed and thirty
wounded, while Bridgford the commander was also taken.  Spens came up
shortly afterwards with the column, and the Boers were driven
off. There seems every reason to think that upon this occasion the
plans of the British had leaked out, and that a deliberate ambush had
been laid for them round the farms, but in such operations these are
chances against which it is not always possible to guard. Considering
the number of the Boers, and the cleverness of their dispositions, the
British were fortunate in being able to extricate their force without
greater loss, a feat which was largely due to the leading of
Lieutenant Sterling.

Leaving the Eastern Transvaal, the narrative must now return to
several incidents of importance which had occurred at various points
of the seat of war during the latter months of 1901.

On September 19th, two days after Gough's disaster, a misfortune
occurred near Bloemfontein by which two guns and a hundred and forty
men fell temporarily into the hands of the enemy. These guns,
belonging to U battery, were moving south under an escort of Mounted
Infantry, from that very Sanna's Post which had been so fatal to the
same battery eighteen months before. When fifteen miles south of the
Waterworks, at a place called Vlakfontein (another Vlakfontein from
that of General Dixon's engagement), the small force was surrounded
and captured by Ackermann'n commando. The gunner officer, Lieutenant
Barry, died beside his guns in the way that gunner officers have. Guns
and men were taken, however, the latter to be released, and the former
to be recovered a week or two later by the British columns. It is
certainly a credit to the Boers that the spring campaign should have
opened by four British guns falling into their hands, and it is
impossible to withhold our admiration for those gallant farmers who,
after two years of exhausting warfare, were still able to turn upon a
formidable and victorious enemy, and to renovate their supplies at his
expense.

Two days later, hard on the heels of Gough's mishap, of the
Vlakfontein incident, and of the annihilation of the squadron of
Lancers in the Cape, there was a serious affair at Elands Kloof, near
Zastron, in the extreme south of the Orange River Colony.  In this a
detachment of the Highland Scouts raised by the public spirit of Lord
Lovat was surprised at night and very severely handled by Kritzinger's
commando.  The loss of Colonel Murray, their commander, of the
adjutant of the same name, and of forty-two out of eighty of the
Scouts, shows how fell was the attack, which broke as sudden and as
strong as a South African thunderstorm upon the unconscious camp. The
Boers appear to have eluded the outposts and crept right among the
sleeping troops, as they did in the case of the Victorians at
Wilmansrust. Twelve gunners were also hit, and the only field gun
taken.  The retiring Boers were swiftly followed up by Thorneycroft's
column, however, and the gun was retaken, together with twenty of
Kritzinger's men.  It must be confessed that there seems some irony in
the fact that, within five days of the British ruling by which the
Boers were no longer a military force, these non-belligerents had
inflicted a loss of nearly six hundred men killed, wounded, or taken.
Two small commandos, that of Koch in the Orange River Colony, and that
of Carolina, had been captured by Williams and Benson.  Combined they
only numbered a hundred and nine men, but here, as always, they were
men who could never be replaced.

Those who had followed the war with care, and had speculated upon the
future, were prepared on hearing of Botha's movement upon Natal to
learn that De la Rey had also made some energetic attack in the
western quarter of the Transvaal.  Those who had formed this
expectation were not disappointed, for upon the last day of September
the Boer chief struck fiercely at Kekewich's column in a vigorous
night attack, which led to as stern an encounter as any in the
campaign. This was the action at Moedwill, near Magato Nek, in the
Magaliesberg.

When last mentioned De la Rey was in the Marico district, near
Zeerust, where he fought two actions with Methuen in the early part of
September.  Thence he made his way to Rustenburg and into the
Magaliesberg country, where he joined Kemp.  The Boer force was
followed up by two British columns under Kekewich and Fetherstonhaugh.
The former commander had camped upon the night of Sunday, September
30th, at the farm of Moedwill, in a strong position within a triangle
formed by the Selous River on the west, a donga on the east, and the
Zeerust-Rustenburg road as a base.  The apex of the triangle pointed
north, with a ridge on the farther side of the river.

The men with Kekewich were for the most part the same as those who had
fought in the Vlakfontein engagement -- the Derbys, the 1st Scottish
Horse, the Yeomanry, and the 28th R.F.A. Every precaution appears to
have been taken by the leader, and his pickets were thrown out so far
that ample warning was assured of an attack.  The Boer onslaught came
so suddenly and fiercely, however, in the early morning, that the
posts upon the river bank were driven in or destroyed and the riflemen
from the ridge on the farther side were able to sweep the camp with
their fire.  In numbers the two forces were not unequal, but the Boers
had already obtained the tactical advantage, and were playing a game
in which they are the schoolmasters of the world. Never has the
British spirit flamed up more fiercely, and from the commander to the
latest yeoman recruit there was not a man who flinched from a
difficult and almost a desperate task.  The Boers must at all hazard
be driven from the position which enabled them to command the camp.
No retreat was possible without such an abandonment of stores as would
amount to a disaster.  In the confusion and the uncertain light of
early dawn there was no chance of a concerted movement, though
Kekewich made such dispositions as were possible with admirable
coolness and promptness. Squadrons and companies closed in upon the
river bank with the one thought of coming to close quarters and
driving the enemy from their commanding position. Already more than
half the horses and a very large number of officers and men had gone
down before the pelting bullets.  Scottish Horse, Yeomanry, and Derbys
pushed on, the young soldiers of the two former corps keeping pace
with the veteran regiment.  'All the men bebaved simply splendidly,'
said a spectator, 'taking what little cover there was and advancing
yard by yard. An order was given to try and saddle up a squadron, with
the idea of getting round their flank.  I had the saddle almost on one
of my ponies when he was hit in two places.  Two men trying to saddle
alongside of me were both shot dead, and Lieutenant Wortley was shot
through the knee. I ran back to where I had been firing from and found
the Colonel slightly hit, the Adjutant wounded and dying, and men dead
and wounded all round.'  But the counter-attack soon began to make
way. At first the advance was slow, but soon it quickened into a
magnificent rush, the wounded Kekewich whooping on his men, and the
guns coming into action as the enemy began to fall back before the
fierce charge of the British riflemen. At six o'clock De la Rey's
burghers had seen that their attempt was hopeless, and were in full
retreat -- a retreat which could not be harassed by the victors, whose
cavalry had been converted by that hail of bullets into footmen.  The
repulse had been absolute and complete, for not a man or a cartridge
had been taken from the British, but the price paid in killed and
wounded was a heavy one.  No fewer than 161 had been hit, including
the gallant leader, whose hurt did not prevent him from resuming his
duties within a few days.  The heaviest losses fell upon the Scottish
Horse, and upon the Derbys; but the Yeomanry also proved on this, as
on some other occasions, how ungenerous were the criticisms to which
they had been exposed.  There are few actions in the war which appear
to have been more creditable to the troops engaged.

Though repulsed at Moedwill, De la Rey, the grim, long-bearded
fighting man, was by no means discouraged. From the earliest days of
the campaign, when he first faced Methuen upon the road to Kimberley,
he had shown that he was a most dangerous antagonist, tenacious,
ingenious, and indomitable. With him were a body of irreconcilable
burghers, who were the veterans of many engagements, and in Kemp he
had an excellent fighting subordinate. His command extended over a
wide stretch of populous country, and at any time he could bring
considerable reinforcements to his aid, who would separate again to
their farms and hiding-places when their venture was accomplished. For
some weeks after the fight at Moedwill the Boer forces remained quiet
in that district.  Two British columns had left Zeerust on October
17th, under Methuen and Von Donop, in order to sweep the surrounding
country, the one working in the direction of Elands River and the
other in that of Rustenburg. They returned to Zeerust twelve days
later, after a successful foray, which had been attended with much
sniping and skirmishing, but only one action which is worthy of
record.

This was fought on October 24th at a spot near Kleinfontein, upon the
Great Marico River, which runs to the north-east of Zeerust. Von
Donop's column was straggling through very broken and bush-covered
country when it was furiously charged in the flank and rear by two
separate bodies of burghers.  Kemp, who commanded the flank attack,
cut into the line of wagons and destroyed eight of them, killing many
of the Kaffir drivers, before he could be driven off. De la Rey and
Steenkamp, who rushed the rear-guard, had a more desperate contest.
The Boer horsemen got among the two guns of the 4th R.F.A., and held
temporary possession of them, but the small escort were veterans of
the 'Fighting Fifth,' who lived up to the traditions of their famous
north-country regiment. Of the gun crews of the section, amounting to
about twenty-six men, the young officer, Hill, and sixteen men were
hit. Of the escort of Northumberland Fusiliers hardly a man was left
standing, and forty-one of the supporting Yeomanry were killed and
wounded. It was for some little time a fierce and concentrated
struggle at the shortest of ranges.  The British horsemen came
galloping to the rescue, however, and the attack was finally driven
back into tbat broken country from which it had come. Forty dead Boers
upon the ground, with their brave chieftain, Ouisterhuisen, amongst
them, showed how manfully the attack had been driven home. The British
losses were twenty-eight killed and fifty-six wounded.  Somewhat
mauled, and with eight missing wagons, the small column made its way
back to Zeerust.

>From this incident until the end of the year nothing of importance
occurred in this part of the seat of war, save for a sharp and
well-managed action at Beestekraal upon October 29th, in which
seventy~nine Boers were surrounded and captured by Kekewich's
horsemen. The process of attrition went very steadily forwards, and
each of the British columns returned its constant tale of prisoners.
The blockhouse system had now been extended to such an extent that the
Magaliesberg was securely held, and a line had been pushed through
from Klerksdorp and Fredericstad to Ventersdorp. One of Colonel
Hickie's Yeomanry patrols was roughly handled near Brakspruit upon
November 13th, but with this exception the points scored were all upon
one side. Methuen and Kekewich came across early in November from
Zeerust to Klerksdorp, and operated from the railway line.  The end of
the year saw them both in the Wolmaranstad district, where they were
gathering up prisoners and clearing the country.

Of the events in the other parts of the Transvaal, during the last
three months of the year 1901, there is not much to be said.  In all
parts the lines of blockhouses and of constabulary posts were
neutralising the Boer mobility, and bringing them more and more within
reach of the British.  The only fighting forces left in the Transvaal
were those under Botha in the south-east and those under De la Rey in
the west.  The others attempted nothing save to escape from their
pursuers, and when overtaken they usually gave in without serious
opposition.  Among the larger hauls may be mentioned that of Dawkins
in the Nylstrom district (seventy-six prisoners), Kekewich
(seventy-eight), Colenbrander in the north (fifty-seven), Dawkins and
Colenbrander (104), Colenbrander (sixty-two); but the great majority
of the captures were in smaller bodies, gleaned from the caves, the
kloofs, and the farmhouses.

Only two small actions during these months appear to call for any
separate notice.  The first was an attack made by Buys' commando, upon
November 20th, on the Railway Pioneers when at work near Villiersdorp,
in the extreme north-east of the Orange River Colony.  This corps,
consisting mainly of miners from Johannesburg, had done invaluable
service during the war.  On this occasion a working party of them was
suddenly attacked, and most of them taken prisoners.  Major Fisher,
who commanded the pioneers, was killed, and three other officers with
several men were wounded.  Colonel Rimington's column appeared upon
the scene, however, and drove off the Boers, who left their leader,
Buys, a wounded prisoner in our hands.

The second action was a sharp attack delivered by Muller's Boers upon
Colonel Park's column on the night of December 19th, at Elandspruit.
The fight was sharp while it lasted, but it ended in the repulse of
the assailants.  The British casualties were six killed and
twenty-four wounded.  The Boers, who left eight dead behind them,
suffered probably to about the same extent.

Already the most striking and pleasing feature in the Transvaal was
the tranquillity of its central provinces, and the way in which the
population was settling down to its old avocations.  Pretoria had
resumed its normal quiet life, while its larger and more energetic
neighbour was rapidly recovering from its two years of
paralysis. Every week more stamps were dropped in the mines, and from
month to month a steady increase in the output showed that the great
staple industry of the place would soon be as vigorous as ever.  Most
pleasing of all was the restoration of safety upon the railway lines,
which, save for some precautions at night, had resumed their normal
traffic. When the observer took his eyes from the dark clouds which
shadowed every horizon, he could not but rejoice at the ever-widening
central stretch of peaceful blue which told that the storm was nearing
its end.

Having now dealt with the campaign in the Transvaal down to the end of
1901, it only remains to bring the chronicle of the events in the
Orange River Colony down to the same date.  Reference has already been
made to two small British reverses which occurred in September, the
loss of two guns to the south of the Waterworks near Bloemfontein, and
the surprise of the camp of Lord Lovat's Scouts.  There were some
indications at this time that a movement had been planned through the
passes of the Drakensberg by a small Free State force which should aid
Louis Botha's invasion of Natal.  The main movement was checked,
however, and the demonstration in aid of it came to nothing.

The blockhouse system had been developed to a very complete extent in
the Orange River Colony, and the small bands of Boers found it
increasingly difficult to escape from the British columns who were for
ever at their heels.  The southern portion of the country had been cut
off from the northern by a line which extended through Bloemfontein on
the east to the Basuto frontier, and on the west to Jacobsdal. To the
south of this line the Boer resistance had practically ceased,
althougb several columns moved continually through it, and gleaned up
the broken fragments of the commandos. The north-west had also settled
down to a large extent, and during the last three months of 1901 no
action of importance occurred in that region.  Even in the turbulent
north-east, which had always been the centre of resistance, there was
little opposition to the British columns, which continued every week
to send in their tale of prisoners.  Of the column commanders,
Williams, Damant, Du Moulin, Lowry Cole, and Wilson were the most
successful.  In their operations they were much aided by the South
African Constabulary.  One young officer of this force, Major
Pack-Beresford, especially distinguished himself by his gallantry and
ability. His premature death from enteric was a grave loss to the
British army.  Save for one skirmish of Colonel Wilson's early in
October, and another of Byng's on November 14th, there can hardly be
said to have been any actual fighting until the events late in
December which I am about to describe.

In the meanwhile the peaceful organisation of the country was being
pushed forward as rapidly as in the Transvaal, although here the
problems presented were of a different order, and the population an
exclusively Dutch one.  The schools already showed a higher attendance
than in the days before the war, while a continual stream of burghers
presented themselves to take the oath of allegiance, and even to join
the ranks against their own irreconcilable countrymen, whom they
looked upon with justice as the real authors of their troubles.

Towards the end of November there were signs that the word had gone
forth for a fresh concentration of the fighting Boers in their old
haunts in the Heilbron district, and early in December it was known
that the indefatigable De Wet was again in the field.  He had remained
quiet so long that there bad been persistent rumours of his injury and
even of his death, but he was soon to show that he was as alive as
ever.  President Steyn was ill of a most serious complaint, caused
possibly by the mental and physical sufferings which he had undergone;
but with an indomitable resolution which makes one forget and forgive
the fatuous policy which brought him and his State to such a pass, be
still appeared in his Cape cart at the laager of the faithful remnant
of his commandos.  To those who remembered how widespread was our
conviction of the half-heartedness of the Free Staters at the outbreak
of the war, it was indeed a revelation to see them after two years
still making a stand against the forces which had crushed them.

It had been long evident that the present British tactics of scouring
the country and capturing the isolated burghers must in time bring the
war to a conclusion. From the Boer point of view the only hope, or at
least the only glory, lay in reassembling once more in larger bodies
and trying conclusions with some of the British columns.  It was with
this purpose that De Wet early in December assembled Wessels, Manie
Botha, and others of his lieutenants, together with a force of about
two thousand men, in the Heilbron district.  Small as this force was,
it was admirably mobile, and every man in it was a veteran, toughened
and seasoned by two years of constant fighting.  De Wet's first
operations were directed against an isolated column of Colonel
Wilson's, which was surrounded within twenty miles of Heilbron.
Rimington, in response to a heliographic call for assistance, hurried
with admirable promptitude to the scene of action, and joined hands
with Wilson. De Wet's men were as numerous, however, as the two
columns combined, and they harassed the return march into Heilbron.  A
determined attack was made on the convoy and on the rearguard, but it
was beaten off. That night Rimington's camp was fired into by a large
body of Boers, but he had cleverly moved his men away from the fires,
so that no harm was done.  The losses in these operations were small,
but with troops which bad not been trained in this method of fighting
the situation would have been a serious one. For a fortnight or more
after this the burghers contented themselves by skirmishing with
British columns and avoiding a drive which Elliot's forces made
against them.  On December 18th they took the offensive, however, and
within a week fought three actions, two of which ended in their
favour.

News had come to British headquarters that Kaffir's Kop, to the
north-west of Bethlehem, was a centre of Boer activity.  Three columns
were therefore turned in that direction, Elliot's, Barker's, and
Dartnell's. Some desultory skirmishing ensued, which was only
remarkable for the death of Haasbroek, a well-known Boer leader.  As
the columns separated again, unable to find an objective, De Wet
suddenly showed one of them that their failure was not due to his
absence. Dartnell bad retraced his steps nearly as far as Eland's River
Bridge, when the Boer leader sprang out of his lair in the Langberg
and threw himself upon him. The burghers attempted to ride in, as they
had successfully done at Brakenlaagte, but they were opposed by the
steady old troopers of the two regiments of Imperial Horse, and by a
General who was familiar with every Boer ruse. The horsemen never got
nearer than 150 yards to the British line, and were beaten back by the
steady fire which met them. Finding that he made no headway, and
learning that Campbell's column was coming up from Bethlehem, De Wet
withdrew his men after four hours' fighting.  Fifteen were hit upon
the British side, and the Boer loss seems to have been certainly as
great or greater.

De Wet's general aim in his operations seems to have been to check the
British blockhouse building. With his main force in the Langberg he
could threaten the line which was now being erected between Bethlehem
and Harrismith, a line against which his main commando was destined,
only two months later, to beat itself in vain.  Sixty miles to the
north a second line was being run across country from Frankfort to
Standerton, and had reached a place called Tafelkop. A covering party
of East Lancashires and Yeomanry watched over the workers, but De Wet
had left a portion of his force in that neighbourhood, and they
harassed the blockhouse builders to such an extent that General
Hamilton, who was in command, found it necessary to send in to
Frankfort for support. The British columns there had just returned
exhausted from a drive, but three bodies under Damant, Rimington, and
Wilson were at once despatched to clear away the enemy.

The weather was so atrocious that the veldt resembled an inland sea,
with the kopjes as islands rising out of it.  By this stage of the war
the troops were hardened to all weathers, and they pushed swiftly on
to the scene of action.  As they approached the spot where the Boers
had been reported, the line had been extended over many miles, with
the result that it had become very attenuated and dangerously weak in
the centre. At this point Colonel Damant and his small staff were
alone with the two guns and the maxim, save for a handful of Imperial
Yeomanry (91st), who acted as escort to the guns. Across the face of
this small force there rode a body of men in khaki uniforms, keeping
British formation, and actually firing bogus volleys from time to time
in the direction of some distant Boers.  Damant and his staff seem to
have taken it for granted that these were Rimington's men, and the
clever ruse succeeded to perfection.  Nearer and nearer came the
strangers, and suddenly throwing off all disguise, they made a dash
for the guns.  Four rounds of case failed to stop them, and in a few
minutes they were over the kopje on which the guns stood and had
ridden among the gunners, supported in their attack by a flank fire
from a number of dismounted riflemen.

The instant that the danger was realised Damant, his staff, and the
forty Yeomen who formed the escort dashed for the crest in the hope of
anticipating the Boers. So rapid was the charge of the others that
they had overwhelmed the gunners before the supports could reach the
hill, and the latter found themselves under the deadly fire of the
Boer rifles from above.  Damant was hit in four places, all of his
staff were wounded, and hardly a man of the small body of Yeomanry was
left standing. Nothing could exceed their gallantry. Gaussen their
captain fell at their head.  On the ridge the men about the guns were
nearly all killed or wounded.  Of the gun detachment only two men
remained, both of them hit, and Jeffcoat their dyLng captain
bequeathed them fifty pounds each in a will drawn upon the spot. In
half an hour the centre of the British line had been absolutely
annihilated.  Modern warfare is on the whole much less bloody than of
old, but when one party has gained the tactical mastery it is a choice
between speedy surrender and total destruction.

The wide-spread British wings had begun to understand that there was
something amiss, and to ride in towards the centre.  An officer on the
far right peering through his glasses saw those tell-tale puffs at the
very muzzles of the British guns, which showed that they were firing
case at close quarters.  He turned his squadron inwards and soon
gathered up Scott's squadron of Damant's Horse, and both rode for the
kopje.  Rimington's men were appearing on the other side, and the
Boers rode off.  They were unable to remove the guns which they had
taken, because all the horses had perished. 'I actually thought,' says
one officer who saw them ride away, 'that I had made a mistake and
been fighting our own men.  They were dressed in our uniforms and some
of them wore the tiger-skin, the badge of Damant's Horse, round their
hats.'  The same officer gives an account of the scene on the
gun-kopje.  'The result when we got to the guns was this, gunners all
killed except two (both wounded), pom-pom officers and men all killed,
maxim all killed, 91st (the gun escort) one officer and one man not
hit, all the rest killed or wounded; staff, every officer hit.'  That
is what it means to those who are caught in the vortex of the cyclone.
The total loss was about seventy-five.

In this action the Boers, who were under the command of Wessels,
delivered their attack with a cleverness and dash which deserved
success.  Their stratagem, however, depending as it did upon the use
of British uniforms and methods, was illegitimate by all the laws of
war, and one can but marvel at the long-suffering patience of officers
and men who endured such things without any attempt at retaliation.
There is too much reason to believe also, that considerable brutality
was shown by those Boers who carried the kopje, and the very high
proportion of killed to wounded among the British who lay there
corroborates the statement of the survivors that several were shot at
close quarters after all resistance had ceased.

This rough encounter of Tafelkop was followed only four days later by
a very much more serious one at Tweefontein, which proved that even
after two years of experience we had not yet sufficiently understood
the courage and the cunning of our antagonist.  The blockhouse line
was being gradually extended from Harrismith to Bethlehem, so as to
hold down this turbulent portion of the country.  The Harrismith
section had been pushed as far as Tweefontein, which is nine miles
west of Elands River Bridge, and here a small force was stationed to
cover the workers.  This column consisted of four squadrons of the 4th
Imperial Yeomanry, one gun of the 79th battery, and one pom-pom, the
whole under the temporary command of Major Williams of the South
Staffords, Colonel Firmin being absent.

Knowing that De Wet and his men were in the neighbourhood, the camp of
the Yeomen had been pitched in a position which seemed to secure it
against attack.  A solitary kopje presented a long slope to the north,
while the southern end was precipitous. The outposts were pushed well
out upon the plain, and a line of sentries was placed along the
crest. The only precaution which seems to have been neglected was to
have other outposts at the base of the southern declivity.  It appears
to have been taken for granted, however, that no attack was to be
apprehended from that side, and that in any esse it would be
impossible to evade the vigilance of the sentries upon the top.

Of all the daring and skilful attacks delivered by the Boers during
the war there is certainly none more remarkable than this one.  At two
o'clock in the morning of a moonlight night De Wet's forlorn hope
assembled at the base of the hill and clambered up to the summit. The
fact that it was Christmas Eve may conceivably have had something to
do with the want of vigilance upon the part of the sentries. In a
season of good will and conviviality the rigour of military discipline
may insensibly relax.  Little did the sleeping Yeomen in the tents, or
the drowsy outposts upon the crest, think of the terrible Christmas
visitors who were creeping on to them, or of the grim morning gift
which Santa Claus was bearing.

The Boers, stealing up in their stockinged feet, poured under the
crest until they were numerous enough to make a rush.  It is almost
inconceivable how they could have got so far without their presence
being suspected by the sentries -- but so it was. At last, feeling
strong enough to advance, they sprang over the crest and fired into
the pickets, and past them into the sleeping camp. The top of the hill
being once gained, there was nothing to prevent their comrades from
swarming up, and in a very few minutes nearly a thousand Boers were in
a position to command the camp. The British were not only completely
outnumbered, but were hurried from their sleep into the fight without
any clear idea as to the danger or how to meet it, while the hissing
sleet of bullets struck many of them down as they rushed out of their
tents. Considering how terrible the ordeal was to which they were
exposed, these untried Yeomen seem to have behaved very well. 'Some
brave gentlemen ran away at the first shot, but I am thankful to say
they were not many,' says one of their number.  The most veteran
troops would have been tried very high had they been placed in such a
position. 'The noise and the clamour,' says one spectator, 'were
awful. The yells of the Dutch, the screams and shrieks of dying men
and horses, the cries of natives, howls of dogs, the firing, the
galloping of horses, the whistling of bullets, and the whirr volleys
make in the air, made up such a compound of awful and diabolical
sounds as I never heard before nor hope to hear again. In the
confusion some of the men killed each other and some killed
themselves. Two Boers who put on helmets were killed by their own
people. The men were given no time to rally or to collect their
thoughts, for the gallant Boers barged right into them, shooting them
down, and occasionally being shot down, at a range of a few
yards. Harwich and Watney, who had charge of the maxim, died nobly
with all the men of their gun section round them. Reed, the
sergeant-major, rushed at the enemy with his clubbed rifle, but was
riddled with bullets. Major Williams, the commander, was shot through
the stomach as he rallied his men. The gunners had time to fire two
rounds before they were overpowered and shot down to a man. For half
an hour the resistance was maintained, but at the end of that time the
Boers had the whole camp in their possession, and were already
hastening to get their prisoners away before the morning should bring
a rescue.

The casualties are in themselves enough to show how creditable was the
resistance of the Yeomanry.  Out of a force of under four hundred men
they bad six officers and fifty-one men killed, eight officers and
eighty men wounded. There have been very few surrenders during the war
in which there has been such evidence as this of a determined
stand. Nor was it a bloodless victory upon the part of the Boers, for
there was evidence that their losses, though less than those of the
British, were still severe.

The prisoners, over two hundred in number, were hurried away by the
Boers, who seemed under the immediate eye of De Wet to have behaved
with exemplary humanity to the wounded. The captives were taken by
forced marches to the Basuto border, where they were turned adrift,
half clad and without food. By devious ways and after many adventures,
they all made their way back again to the British lines. It was well
for De Wet that he had shown such promptness in getting away, for
within three hours of the end of the action the two regiments of
Imperial Horse appeared upon the scene, having travelled seventeen
miles in the time. Already, however, the rearguard of the Boers was
disappearing into the fastness of the Langberg, where all pursuit was
vain.

Such was the short but vigorous campaign of De Wet in the last part of
December of the year 1901. It had been a briliant one, but none the
less his bolt was shot, and Tweefontein was the last encounter in
which British troops should feel his heavy hand. His operations, bold
as they had been, had not delayed by a day the building of that iron
cage which was gradually enclosing him. Already it was nearly
completed, and in a few more weeks he was destined to find himself and
his commando struggling against bars.

CHAPTER XXXVII

THE CAMPAIGN OF JANUARY-APRIL, 1902


At the opening of the year 1902 it was evident to every observer that
the Boer resistance, spirited as it was, must be nearing its close.
By a long succession of captures their forces were much reduced in
numbers. They were isolated from the world, and had no means save
precarious smuggling of renewing their supplies of ammunition.  It was
known also that their mobility, which had been their great strength,
was decreasing, and that in spite of their admirable horsemastership
their supply of remounts was becoming exhausted.  An increasing number
of the burghers were volunteering for service against their own
people, and it was found that all fears as to this delicate experiment
were misplaced, and that in the whole army there were no keener and
more loyal soldiers.

The chief factor, however, in bringing the Boers to their knees was
the elaborate and wonderful blockhouse system, which had been strung
across the whole of the enemy's country.  The original blockhouses had
been far apart, and were a hindrance and an annoyance rather than an
absolute barrier to the burghers.  The new models, however, were only
six hundred yards apart, and were connected by such impenetrable
strands of wire that a Boer pithily described it by saying that if
one's hat blew over the line anywhere between Ermelo and Standerton
one had to walk round Ermelo to fetch it. Use was made of such
barriers by the Spaniards in Cuba, but an application of them on such
a scale over such an enormous tract of country is one of the
curiosities of warfare, and will remain one of several novelties which
will make the South African campaign for ever interesting to students
of military history.

The spines of this great system were always the railway lines, which
were guarded on either side, and down which, as down a road, went
flocks, herds, pedestrians, and everything which wished to travel in
safety. From these long central cords the lines branched out to right
and left, cutting up the great country into manageable districts.  A
category of them would but weary the reader, but suffice it that by
the beginning of the year the south-east of the Transvaal and the
north-east of the Orange River Colony, the haunts of Botha and De Wet,
bad been so intersected that it was obvious that the situation must
soon be impossible for both of them. Only on the west of the Transvaal
was there a clear run for De la Rey and Kemp. Hence it was expected,
as actualy occurred, that in this quarter the most stirring events of
the close of the campaign would happen.

General Bruce Hamilton in the Eastern Transvaal had continued the
energetic tactics which had given such good results in the past. With
the new year his number of prisoners fell, but he had taken so many,
and had hustled the remainder to such an extent, that the fight seemed
to have gone out of the Boers in this district. On January 1st be
presented the first-fruits of the year in the shape of.twenty-two of
Grobler's burghers.  On the 3rd he captured forty-nine, while Wing,
co-operating with him, took twenty more. Among these was General
Erasmus, who had helped, or failed to help, General Lucas Meyer at
Talana Hill.  On the 10th Colonel Wing's column, which was part of
Hamilton's force, struck out again and took forty-two prisoners,
including the two Wolmarans.  Only two days later Hamilton returned to
the same spot, and was rewarded with thirty-two more captures.  On the
18th he took twenty-seven, on the 24th twelve, and on the 26th no
fewer than ninety. So severe were these blows, and so difficult was it
for the Boers to know how to get away from an antagonist who was ready
to ride thirty miles in a night in order to fall upon their laager,
that the enemy became much scattered and too demoralised for offensive
operations. Finding that they had grown too shy in this much shot over
district, Hamilton moved farther south, and early in March took a cast
round the Vryheid district, where he made some captures, notably
General Cherry Emmett, a descendant of the famous Irish rebel, and
brother-in-law of Louis Botha. For all these repeated successes it was
to the Intelligence Department, so admirably controlled by Colonel
Wools-Sampson, that thanks are mainly due.

Whilst Bruce Hamilton was operating so successfully in the Ermelo
district, several British columns under Plumer, Spens, and Colville
were stationed some fifty miles south to prevent the fugitives from
getting away into the mountainous country which lies to the north of
Wakkerstroom.  On January 3rd a small force of Plumer's New-Zealanders
had a brisk skirmish with a party of Boers, whose cattle they
captured, though at some loss to themselves.  These Boers were
strongly reinforced, however, and when on the following day Major
Vallentin pursued them with fifty men he found himself at Onverwacht
in the presence of several hundred of the enemy, led by Oppermann and
Christian Botha. Vallentin was killed and almost all of his small
force were hit before British reinforcements, under Colonel Pulteney,
drove the Boers off.  Nineteen killed and twenty-three wounded were
our losses in this most sanguinary little skirmish.  Nine dead Boers,
with Oppermaun himself, were left upon the field of battle. His loss
was a serious one to the enemy, as he was one of their most
experienced Generals.

>From that time until the end these columns, together with Mackenzie's
column to the north of Ermelo, continued to break up all combinations,
and to send in their share of prisoners to swell Lord Kitchener's
weekly list. A final drive, organised on April 11th against the
Standerton line, resulted in 134 prisoners.

In spite of the very large army in South Africa, so many men were
absorbed by the huge lines of communications and the blockhouse system
that the number available for active operations was never more than
forty or fifty thousand men.  With another fifty thousand there is no
doubt that at least six months would have been taken from the duration
of the war.  On account of this shorthandedness Lord Kitchener had to
leave certain districts alone, while he directed his attention to
those which were more essential.  Thus to the north of the Delagoa
Railway line there was only one town, Lydenburg, which was occupied by
the British.  They had, however, an energetic commander in Park of the
Devons. This leader, striking out from his stronghold among the
mountains, and aided by Urmston from Belfast, kept the commando of Ben
Viljoen and the peripatetic Government of Schalk Burger continually
upon the move.  As already narrated, Park fought a sharp night action
upon December 19th, after which, in combination with Urmston, he
occupied Dulstroom, only missing the government by a few hours. In
January Park and Urmston were again upon the war-path, though the
incessant winds, fogs, and rains of that most inclement portion of the
Transvaal seriously hampered their operations. Several skirmishes with
the commandos of Muller and Trichardt gave no very decisive result,
but a piece of luck befell the British on January 25th in the capture
of General Viljoen by an ambuscade cleverly arranged by Major Orr in
the neighbourhood of Lydenburg. Though a great firebrand before the
war, Viljoen had fought bravely and honourably throughout the contest,
and he had won the respect and esteem of his enemy.

Colonel Park had had no great success in his last two expeditions, but
on February 20th he made an admirable march, and fell upon a Boer
laager which lay in placid security in the heart of the hills.  One
hundred and sixty-four prisoners, including many Boer officers, were
the fruits of this success, in which the National Scouts, or 'tame
Boers,' as they were familiarly called, played a prominent part.  This
commando was that of Middelburg, which was acting as escort to the
government, who again escaped dissolution.  Early in March Park was
again out on trek, upon one occasion covering seventy miles in a
single day.  Nothing further of importance came from this portion of
the seat of war until March 23rd, when the news reached England that
Schalk Burger, Reitz, Lucas Meyer, and others of the Transvaal
Government had come into Middelburg, and that they were anxious to
proceed to Pretoria to treat. On the Eastern horizon had appeared the
first golden gleam of the dawning peace.

Having indicated the course of events in the Eastern Transvaal, north
and south of the railway line, I will now treat one or two incidents
which occurred in the more central and northern portions of the
country. I will then give some account of De Wet's doings in the
Orange River Colony, and finally describe that brilliant effort of
De la Rey's in the west which shed a last glory upon the Boer arms.

In the latter days of December, Colenbrander and Dawkins operating
together had put in a great deal of useful work in the northern
district, and from Nylstrom to Pietersburg the burghers were
continually harried by the activity of these leaders. Late in the
month Dawkins was sent down into the Orange River Colony in order to
reinforce the troops who were opposed to De Wet.  Colenbrander alone,
with his hardy colonial forces, swept through the Magaliesburg, and
had the double satisfaction of capturing a number of the enemy and of
heading off and sending back a war party of Linchwe's Kaffirs who,
incensed by a cattle raid of Kemp's, were moving down in a direction
which would have brought them dangerously near to the Dutch women and
children.  This instance and several similar ones in the campaign show
how vile are the lies which have been told of the use, save under
certain well-defined conditions, of armed natives by the British
during the war.  It would have been a perfectly easy thing at any time
for the Government to have raised all the fighting native races of
South Africa, but it is not probable that we, who held back our
admirable and highly disciplined Sikhs and Ghoorkas, would break our
self-imposed restrictions in order to enrol the inferior but more
savage races of Africa.  Yet no charge has been more often repeated
and has caused more piteous protests among the soft-hearted and
soft-headed editors of Continental journals.

The absence of Colenbrander in the Rustenburg country gave Beyers a
chance of which he was not slow to avail himself.  On January 24th, in
the early morning, he delivered an attack upon Pietersburg itself, but
he was easily driven off by the small garrison. It is probable,
however, that the attack was a mere feint in order to enable a number
of the inmates of the refugee camp to escape. About a hundred and
fifty made off, and rejoined the commandos.  There were three thousand
Boers in all in this camp, which was shortly afterwards moved down to
Natal in order to avoid the recurrence of such an incident.

Colenbrander, having returned to Pietersburg once more, determined to
return Beyers's visit, and upon April 8th he moved out with a small
force to surprise the Boer laager.  The Inniskilling Fusiliers seized
the ground which commanded the enemy's position. The latter retreated,
but were followed up, and altogether about one hundred and fifty were
killed, wounded, and taken.  On May 3rd a fresh operation against
Beyers was undertaken, and resulted in about the same loss to the
Boers.  On the other hand, the Boers had a small success against
Kitchener's Scouts, killing eighteen and taking thirty prisoners.

There is one incident, however, in connection with the war in this
region which one would desire to pass over in silence if such a course
were permissible. Some eighty miles to the east of Pietersburg is a
wild part of the country called the Spelonken.  In this region an
irregular corps, named the Bushveld Carbineers, had been operating.
It was raised in South Africa, but contained both Colonials and
British in its ranks. Its wild duties, its mixed composition, and its
isolated situation must have all militated against discipline and
restraint, and it appears to have degenerated into a band not unlike
those Southern 'bush-whackers' in the American war to whom the
Federals showed little mercy.  They had given short shrift to tho Boer
prisoners who had fallen into their hands, the excuse offered for
their barbarous conduct being that an officer who had served in the
corps had himself been murdered by the Boers.  Such a reason, even if
it were true, could of course offer no justification for
indiscriminate revenge.  The crimes were committed in July and August
1901, but it was not until January 1902 that five of the officers were
put upon their trial and were found to be guilty as principals or
accessories of twelve murders.  The corps was disbanded, and three of
the accused officers, Handcock, Wilton, and Morant, were sentenced to
death, while another, Picton, was cashiered.  Handcock and Morant were
actually executed.  This stern measure shows more clearly than volumes
of argument could do how high was the standard of discipline in the
British Army, and how heavy was the punishment, and how vain all
excuses, where it had been infringed.  In the face of this actual
outrage and its prompt punishment how absurd becomes that crusade
against imaginary outrages preached by an ignorant press abroad, and
by renegade Englishmen at home.

To the south of Johannesburg, half-way between that town and the
frontier, there is a range of hills called the Zuikerboschrand, which
extends across from one railway system to the other. A number of Boers
were known to have sought refuge in this country, so upon February
12th a small British force left Klip River Post in order to clear them
out.  There were 320 men in all, composing the 28th Mounted Infantry,
drawn from the Lancashire Fusiliers, Warwicks, and Derbys, most of
whom had just arrived from Malta, which one would certainly imagine to
be the last place where mounted infantry could be effectively
trained. Major Dowell was in command.  An advance was made into the
hilly country, but it was found that the enemy was in much greater
force than had been imagined. The familiar Boer tactics were used with
the customary success.  The British line was held by a sharp fire in
front, while strong flanking parties galloped round each of the wings.
It was with great difficulty that any of the British extricated
themselves from their perilous position, and the safety of a portion
of the force was only secured by the devotion of a handful of officers
and men, who gave their lives in order to gain time for their comrades
to get away.  Twelve killed and fifty wounded were our losses in this
unfortunate skirmish, and about one hundred prisoners supplied the
victors with a useful addition to their rifles and ammunition. A
stronger British force came up next day, and the enemy were driven out
of the hills.

A week later, upon February 18th, there occurred another skirmish at
Klippan, near Springs, between a squadron of the Scots Greys and a
party of Boers who had broken into this central reserve which Lord
Kitchener had long kept clear of the enemy.  In this action the
cavalry were treated as roughly as the mounted infantry had been the
week before, losing three officers killed, eight men killed or
wounded, and forty-six taken. They had formed a flanking party to
General Gilbert Hamilton's column, but were attacked and overwhelmed
so rapidly that the blow had fallen before their comrades could come
to their assistance.

One of the consequences of the successful drives about to be described
in the Orange River Colony wns that a number of the Free Staters came
north of the Vaal in order to get away from the extreme pressure upon
the south.  At the end of March a considerable number had reinforced
the local commandos in that district to the east of Springs, no very
great distance from Johannesburg, which had always been a storm
centre. A cavalry force was stationed at this spot which consisted at
that time of the 2nd Queen's Bays, the 7th Hussars, and some National
Scouts, all under Colonel Lawley of the Hussars. After a series of
minor engagements east of Springs, Lawley had possessed himself of
Boschman's Kop, eighteen miles from that town, close to the district
which was the chief scene of Boer activity.  From this base he
despatched upon the morningg of April 1st three squadrons of the Bays
under Colonel Fanshawe, for the purpose of surprising a small force of
the enemy which was reported at one of the farms.  Fanshawe's strength
was about three hundred men.

The British cavalry found themselves, however, in the position of the
hunter who, when he is out for a snipe, puts up a tiger. All went well
with the expedition as far as Holspruit, the farm which they had
started to search.  Commandant Pretorius, to whom it belonged, was
taken by the energy of Major Vaughan, who pursued and overtook his
Cape cart.  It was found, however, that Alberts's commando was camped
at the farm, and that the Bays were in the presence of a very superior
force of the enemy.  The night was dark, and when firing began it was
almost muzzle to muzzle, with the greatest possible difficulty in
telling friend from foe. The three squadrons fell back upon some
rising ground, keeping admirable order under most difficult
circumstances.  In spite of the darkness the attack was pressed
fiercely home, and with their favourite tactics the burghers rapidly
outflanked the position taken up by the cavalry.  The British moved by
alternate squadrons on to a higher rocky kopje on the east, which
could be vaguely distinguished looming in the darkness against the
skyline. B squadron, the last to retire, was actually charged and
ridden through by the brave assailants, firing from their saddles as
they broke through the ranks.  The British had hardly time to reach
the kopje and to dismount and line its edge when the Boers, yelling
loudly, charged with their horses up the steep flanks.  Twice they
were beaten back, but the third time they seized one corner of the
hill and opened a hot fire upon the rear of the line of men who were
defending the other side.  Dawn was now breaking, and the situation
most serious, for the Boers were in very superior numbers and were
pushing their pursuit with the utmost vigour and determination. A
small party of officers and men whose horses had been shot covered the
retreat of their comrades, and continued to fire until all of them,
two officers and twenty-three men, were killed or wounded, the whole
of their desperate defence being conducted within from thirty to fifty
yards of the enemy. The remainder of the regiment was now retired to
successive ridges, each of which was rapidly outflanked by the Boers,
whose whole method of conducting their attack was extraordinarily
skilful. Nothing but the excellent discipline of the overmatched
troopers prevented the retreat from becoming a rout. Fortunately,
before the pressure became intolerable the 7th Hussars with some
artillery came to the rescue, and turned the tide.  The Hussars
galloped in with such dash that some of them actually got among the
Boers with their swords, but the enemy rapidly fell back and
disappeared.

In this very sharp and sanguinary cavalry skirmish the Bays lost
eighty killed and wounded out of a total force of 270.  To stand such
losses under such circumstances, and to preserve absolute discipline
and order, is a fine test of soldierly virtue. The adjutant, the
squadron leaders, and six out of ten officers were killed or
wounded. The Boers lost equally heavily. Two Prinsloos, one of them a
commandant, and three field-cornets were among the slain, with seventy
other casualties. The force under General Alberts was a considerable
one, not fewer than six hundred rifles, so that the action at
Holspruit is one which adds another name of honour to the battle-roll
of the Bays.  It is pleasing to add that in this and the other actions
which were fought at the end of the war our wounded met with kindness
and consideration from the enemy.

We may now descend to the Orange River Colony and trace the course of
those operations which were destined to break the power of De Wet's
commando. On these we may concentrate our attention, for the marchings
and gleanings and snipings of the numerous small columns in the other
portions of the colony, although they involved much arduous and useful
work, do not claim a particular account.

After the heavy blow which he dealt Firmin's Yeomanry, De Wet retired,
as has been told, into the Langberg, whence he afterwards retreated
towards Reitz.  There he was energetically pushed by Elliot's columns,
which had attained such mobility that 150 miles were performed in
three days within a single week.  Our rough schoolmasters had taught
us our lesson, and the soldiering which accomplished the marches of
Bruce Hamilton, Elliot, Rimington, and the other leaders of the end of
the war was very far removed from that which is associated with
ox-wagons and harmoniums.

Moving rapidly, and covering himself by a succession of rearguard
skirmishes, De Wet danced like a will-o'the-wisp in front of and round
the British columns. De Lisle, Fanshawe, Byng, Rimington, Dawkins, and
Rawlinson were all snatching at him and finding him just beyond their
finger-tips.  The master-mind at Pretoria had, however, thought out a
scheme which was worthy of De Wet himself in its ingenuity. A glance
at the map will show that the little branch from Heilbron to Wolvehoek
forms an acute angle with the main line. Both these railways were
strongly blockhoused and barbed-wired, so that any force which was
driven into the angle, and held in it by a force behind it, would be
in a perilous position.  To attempt to round De Wet's mobile burghers
into this obvious pen would have been to show one's hand too clearly.
In vain is the net laid in sight of the bird.  The drive was therefore
made away from this point, with the confident expectation that the
guerilla chief would break back through the columns, and that they
might then pivot round upon him and hustle him so rapidly into the
desired position that he would not realise his danger until it was too
late. Byng's column was left behind the driving line to be ready for
the expected backward break.

All came off exactly as expected.  De Wet doubled back through the
columns, and one of his commandos stumbled upon Byng's men, who were
waiting on the Vlei River to the west of Reitz.  The Boers seem to
have taken it for granted that, having passed the British driving
line, they were out of danger, and for once it was they who were
surprised.  The South African Light Horse, the New-Zealanders, and the
Queensland Bushmen all rode in upon them.  A fifteen-pounder, the one
taken at Tweefontein, and two pom-poms were captured, with thirty
prisoners and a considerable quantity of stores.

This successful skirmish was a small matter, however, compared to the
importance of being in close touch with De Wet and having a definite
objective for the drive. The columns behind expanded suddenly into a
spray of mounted men forming a continuous line for over sixty miles.
On February 5th the line was advancing, and on the 6th it was known
that De Wet was actually within the angle, the mouth of which was
spanned by the British line.  Hope ran high in Pretoria.  The space
into which the burgher chief had been driven was bounded by sixty-six
miles of blockhouse and wire on one side and thirty on the other,
while the third side of the triangle was crossed by fifty-five miles
of British horsemen, flanked by a blockhouse line between Kroonstad
and Lindley.  The tension along the lines of defence was extreme.
Infantry guarded every yard of them, and armoured trains patrolled
them, while at night searchlights at regular intervals shed their
vivid rays over the black expanse of the veldt and illuminated the
mounted figures who flitted from time to time across their narrow
belts of light.

On the 6th De Wet realised his position, and with characteristic
audacity and promptness he took means to clear the formidable toils
which had been woven round him. The greater part of his command
scattered, with orders to make their way as best they might out of the
danger.  Working in their own country, where every crease and fold of
the ground was familiar to them, it is not surprising that most of
them managed to make their way through gaps in the attenuated line of
horsemen behind them.  A few were killed, and a considerable number
taken, 270 being the respectable total of the prisoners.  Three or
four slipped through, however, for every one who stuck in the meshes.
De Wet himself was reported to have made his escape by driving cattle
against the wire fences which enclosed him.  It seems, however, to
have been nothing more romantic than a wire-cutter which cleared his
path, though cattle no doubt made their way through the gap which he
left.  With a loss of only three of his immediate followers be Wet won
his way out of the most dangerous position which even his adventurous
career had ever known. Lord Kitchener had descended to Wolvehoek to be
present at the climax of the operations, but it was not fated that he
was to receive the submission of the most energetic of his opponents,
and he returned to Pretoria to weave a fresh mesh around him.

This was not hard to do, as the Boer General had simply escaped from
one pen into another, though a larger one. After a short rest to
restore the columns, the whole pack were full cry upon his heels once
more. An acute angle is formed by the Wilge Biver on one side and the
line of blockhouses between Harrismith and Van Reenen upon the other.
This was strongly manned by troops and five columns; those of
Rawlinson, Nixon, Byng, Rimington, and Keir herded the broken
cornmandos into the trap.  From February 20th the troops swept in an
enormous skirmish line across the country, ascending hills, exploring
kloofs, searching river banks, and always keeping the enemy in front
of them.  At last, when the pressure was severely felt, there came the
usual breakback, which took the form of a most determined night attack
upon the British line.  This was delivered shortly after midnight on
February 23rd. It struck the British cordon at the point of juncture
between Byng's column and that of Rimington.  So huge were the
distances which had to be covered, and so attenuated was the force
which covered them, that the historical thin red line was a massive
formation compared to its khaki equivalent.  The chain was frail and
the links were not all carefully joined, but each particular link was
good metal, and the Boer impact came upon one of the best.  This was
the 7th New Zealand Contingent, who proved themselves to be worthy
comrades to their six gallant predecessors.  Their patrols were broken
by the rush of wild, yelling, firing horsemen, but the troopers made a
most gallant resistance. Having pierced the line the Boers, who were
led in their fiery rush by Manie Botha, turned to their flank, and,
charging down the line of weak patrols, overwhelmed one after another
and threatened to roll up the whole line.  They had cleared a gap of
half a mile, and it seemed as if the whole Boer force would certainly
escape through so long a gap in the defences. The desperate defence of
the New-Zealanders gave time, however, for the further patrols, which
consisted of Cox's New South Wales Mounted Infantry, to fall back
almost at right angles so as to present a fresh face to the attack.
The pivot of the resistance was a maxim gun, most gallantly handled by
Captain Begbie and his men.  The fight at this point was almost muzzle
to muzzle, fifty or sixty New-Zealanders and Australians with the
British gunners holding off a force of several hundred of the best
fighting men of the Boer forces.  In this desperate duel many dropped
on both sides. Begbie died beside his gun, which fired eighty rounds
before it jammed.  It was run back by its crew in order to save it
from capture.  But reinforcements were coming up, and the Boer attack
was beaten back. A number of them had escaped, however, through the
opening which they had cleared, and it was conjectured that the
wonderful De Wet was among them. How fierce was the storm which had
broken on the New-Zealanders may be shown by their roll of twenty
killed and forty wounded, while thirty dead Boers were picked up in
front of their picket line.  Of eight New Zealand officers seven are
reported to have been hit, an even higher proportion than that which
the same gallant race endured at the battle of Rhenoster Kop more than
a year before.

It was feared at first that the greater part of the Boers migbt have
escaped upon this night of the 23rd, when Manie Botha's storming party
burst through the ranks of the New-Zealanders.  It was soon discovered
that this was not so, and the columns as they closed in had evidence
from the numerous horsemen who scampered aimlessly over the hills in
front of them that the main body of the enemy was still in the toils.
The advance was in tempestuous weather and over rugged country, but
the men were filled with eagerness, and no precaution was neglected to
keep the line intact.

This time their efforts were crowned with considerable success. A
second attempt was made by the corraled burghers to break out on the
night of February 26th, but it was easily repulsed by Nixon.  The task
of the troopers as the cordon drew south was more and more difficult,
and there were places traversed upon the Natal border where an alpen
stock would have been a more useful adjunct than a horse.  At six
o'clock on the morning of the 27th came the end.  Two Boers appeared
in front of the advancing line of the Imperial Light Horse and held up
a flag.  They proved to be Truter and De Jager, ready to make terms
for their commando.  The only terms offered were absolute surrender
within the hour.  The Boers had been swept into a very confined space,
which was closely hemmed in by troops, so that any resistance must
have ended in a tragedy. Fortunately there was no reason for desperate
councils in their case, since they did not fight as Lotter had done,
with the shadow of judgment hanging over him.  The burghers piled
arms, and all was over.

The total number captured in this important drive was 780 men,
including several leaders, one of whom was De Wet's own son.  It was
found that De Wet himself had been among those who had got away
through the picket lines on the night of the 23rd. Most of the
commando were Transvaalers, and it was typical of the wide sweep of
the net that many of them were the men who had been engaged against
the 28th Mounted Infantry in the district south of Johannesburg upon
the 12th of the same month.  The loss of 2,000 horses and 50,000
cartridges meant as much as that of the men to the Boer army. It was
evident that a few more such blows would clear the Orange River Colony
altogether.

The wearied troopers were allowed little rest, for in a couple of days
after their rendezvous at Harrismith they were sweeping back again to
pick up all that they had missed.  This drive, which was over the same
ground, but sweeping backwards towards the Heilbron-Wolvehoek line,
ended in the total capture of 147 of the enemy, who were picked out of
holes, retrieved from amid the reeds of the river, called down out of
trees, or otherwise collected.  So thorough were the operations that
it is recorded that the angle which formed the apex of the drive was
one drove of game upon the last day, all the many types of antelope,
which form one of the characteristics and charms of the country,
having been herded into it.

More important even than the results of the drive was the discovery of
one of De Wet's arsenals in a cave in the Vrede district.  Half-way
down a precipitous krantz, with its mouth covered by creepers, no
writer of romance could have imagined a more fitting headquarters for
a guerilla chief.  The find was made by Ross's Canadian Scouts, who
celebrated Dominion Day by this most useful achievement.  Forty
wagon-loads of ammunition and supplies were taken out of the cave De
Wet was known to have left the north-east district, and to have got
across the railway, travelling towards the Vaal as if it were his
intention to join De la Rey in the Transvaal.  The Boer resistance had
suddenly become exceedingly energetic in that part, and several
important actions had been fought, to which we will presently turn.

Before doing so it would be as well to bring the chronicle of events
in the Orange River Colony down to the conclusion of peace. There were
still a great number of wandering Boers in the northern districts and
in the frontier mountains, who were assiduously, but not always
successfully, hunted down by the British troops.  Much arduous and
useful work was done by several small columns, the Colonial Horse and
the Artillery Mounted Rifles especially distinguishing themselves.
The latter corps, formed from the gunners whose field-pieces were no
longer needed, proved themselves to be a most useful body of men; and
the British gunner, when he took to carrying his gun, vindicated the
reputation which he had won when his gun had carried him.

>From the 1st to the 4th of May a successful drive was conducted by
many columns in the often harried but never deserted Lindley-Kroonstad
district.  The result was propitious, as no fewer than 321 prisoners
were brought in.  Of these, 150 under Mentz were captured in one body
as they attempted to break through the encircling cordon.

Amid many small drives and many skirmishes, one stands out for its
severity. It is remarkable as being the last action of any importance
in the campaign. This was the fight at Moolman's Spruit, near
Ficksburg, upon April 20th, 1902.  A force of about one hundred
Yeomanry and forty Mounted Infantry (South Staffords) was despatched
by night to attack an isolated farm in which a small body of Boers was
supposed to be sleeping.  Colonel Perceval was in command.  The farm
was reached after a difficult march, but the enemy were found to have
been forewarned, and to be in much greater strength than was
anticipated. A furious fire was opened on the advancing troops, who
were clearly visible ill the light of a full moon.  Sir Thomas Fowler
was killed and several men of the Yeomanry were hit. The British
charged up to the very walls, but were unable to effect an entrance,
as the place was barricaded and loopholed.  Captain Blackwood, of the
Staffords, was killed in the attack. Finding that the place was
impregnable, and that the enemy outnumbered him, Colonel Perceval gave
the order to retire, a movement which was only successfully carried
out because the greater part of the Boer horses had been shot.  By
morning the small British force had extricated itself, from its
perilous position with a total loss of six killed, nineteen wounded,
and six missing.  The whole affair was undoubtedly a cleverly planned
Boer ambush, and the small force was most fortunate in escaping
destruction.

One other isolated incident may be mentioned here, though it occurred
far away in the Vryheid district of the Transvaal.  This was the
unfortunate encounter between Zulus and Boers by which the latter lost
over fifty of their numbers under deplorable circumstances. This
portion of the Transvaal has only recently been annexed, and is
inhabited by warlike Zulus, who are very different from the debased
Kaffirs of the rest of the country.  These men had a blood-feud
against the Boers, which was embittered by the fact that they had lost
heavily through Boer depredations. Knowing that a party of fifty-nine
men were sleeping in a farmhouse, the Zulus crept on to it and
slaughtered every man of the inmates.  Such an incident is much to be
regretted, and yet, looking back upon the long course of the war, and
remembering the turbulent tribes who surrounded the combatants --
Swazis, Basutos, and Zulus -- we may well congratulate ourselves that
we have been able to restrain those black warriors, and to escape the
brutalities and the bitter memories of a barbarian invasion.



CHAPTER XXXVIII

DE LA REY'S CAMPAIGN OF 1902


IT will be remembered that at the close of 1901 Lord Methuen and
Colonel Kekewich had both come across to the eastern side of their
district and made their base at the railway line in the Klerksdorp
section.  Their position was strengthened by the fact that a
blockhouse cordon now ran from Klerksdorp to Ventersdorp, and from
Ventersdorp to Potchefstroom, so that this triangle could be
effectively controlled.  There remained, however, a huge tract of
difficult country which was practically in the occupation of the
enemy.  Several thousand stalwarts were known to be riding with De la
Rey and his energetic lieutenant Kemp.  The strenuous operations of
the British in the Eastern Transvaal and in the Orauge River Colony
had caused this district to be comparatively neglected, and so
everything was in favour of an aggressive movement of the Boers.
There was a long lull after the unsuccessful attack upon Kekewich's
camp at Moedwill, but close observers of the war distrusted this
ominous calm and expected a storm to follow.

The new year found the British connecting Ventersdorp with Tafelkop by
a blockhouse line.  The latter place had been a centre of Boer
activity.  Colonel Hickie's column covered this operation.  Meanwhile
Methuen had struck across through Wolmaranstad as far as Vryburg.
In these operations, which resulted in constant small captures, he was
assisted by a column under Major Paris working from Kimberley. From
Vryburg Lord Methuen made his way in the middle of January to
Lichtenburg, meeting with a small rebuff in the neighbourhood of that
town, for a detachment of Yeomanry was overwhelmed by General
Celliers, who killed eight, wounded fifteen, and captured forty. From
Lichtenburg Lord Methuen continued his enormous trek, and arrived on
February 1st at Klerksdorp once more.  Little rest was given to his
hard-worked troops, and they were sent off again within the week under
the command of Von Donop, with the result that on February 8th, near
Wolmaranstad, they captured Potgieter's laager with forty Boer
prisoners. Von Donop remained at Wolmaranstad until late in FebruaTy;
On the 23rd he despatched an empty convoy back to Klerksdorp, the fate
of which will be afterwards narrated.

Kekewich and Hickie had combined their forces at the beginning of
February.  On February 4th an attempt was made by them to surprise
General De la Rey.  The mounted troops who were despatched under Major
Leader failed in this enterprise, but they found and overwhelmed the
laager of Sarel Alberts, capturing 132 prisoners.  By stampeding the
horses the Boer retreat was cut off, and the attack was so furiously
driven home, especialy by the admirable Scottish Horse, that few of
the enemy got away.  Alberts himself with all his officers were among
the prisoners.  From this time until the end of February this column
was not seriously engaged.

It has been stated above that on February 23rd Von Donop sent in an
empty convoy from Wolmaranstad to Klerksdorp, a distance of about
fifty miles.  Nothing bad been heard for some time of De la Rey, but he
had called together his men and was waiting to bring off some coup.
The convoy gave him the very opportunity for which he sought.

The escort of the convoy consisted of the 5th Imperial Yeomanry, sixty
of Paget's Horse, three companies of the ubiquitous Northumberland
Fusiliers, two guns of the 4th R.F.A., and a pom-pom, amounting in all
to 630 men.  Colonel Anderson was in command. On the morning of
Tuesday, February 25th, the convoy was within ten miles of its
destination, and the sentries on the kopjes round the town could see
the gleam of the long line of white-tilted wagons. Their hazardous
voyage was nearly over, and yet they were destined to most complete
and fatal wreck within sight of port.  So confident were they that the
detachment of Paget's Horse was permitted to ride on the night before
into the town.  It was as well, for such a handful would have shared
and could not have averted the disaster.

The night had been dark and wet, and the Boers under cover of it had
crept between the sleeping convoy and the town.  Some bushes which
afford excellent cover lie within a few hundred yards of the road, and
here the main ambush was laid. In the first grey of the morning the
long line of the convoy, 130 wagons in all, came trailing past-guns
and Yeomanry in front, Fusiliers upon the flanks and rear.  Suddenly
the black bank of scrub was outlined in flame, and a furious rifle
fire was opened upon the head of the column. The troops behaved
admirably under most difficult circumstances. A counter-attack by the
Fusiliers and some of the Yeomanry, under cover of shrapnel from the
guns, drove the enemy out of the scrub and silenced his fire at this
point.  It was evident, however, that he was present in force, for
firing soon broke out along the whole left flank, and the rearguard
found itself as warmly attacked as the van. Again, bowever, the
assailants were driven off.  It was now broad daylight, and the
wagons, which had got into great confusion in the first turmoil of
battle, had been remarshalled and arranged. It was Colonel Anderson's
hope that he might be able to send them on into safety while he with
the escort covered their retreat.  His plan was certainly the best
one, and if it did not succeed it was due to nothing which he could
avert, but to the nature of the ground and the gallantry of the enemy.

The physical obstacle consisted in a very deep and difficult spruit,
the Jagd Spruit, which forms an ugly passage in times of peace, but
which when crowded and choked with stampeding mules and splintering
wagons, under their terrified conductors, soon became impassable. Here
the head of the column was clubbed and the whole line came to a stand.
Meanwhile the enemy, adopting their new tactics, came galloping in on
the left flank I and on the rear.  The first attack was repelled by
the steady fire of the Fusiliers, but on the second occasion the
horsemen got up to the wagons, and galloping down them were able to
overwhelm in detail the little knots of soldiers who were scattered
along the flank.  The British, who were outnumbered by at least three
to one, made a stout resistance, and it was not until seven o'clock
that the last shot was fired.  The result was a complete success to
the burghers, but one which leaves no shadow of discredit on any
officer or man among those who were engaged. Eleven officers and 176
men fell out of about 550 actually engaged.  The Boers, so the teams
were shot and the wagons burned before they withdrew.  The prisoners
too, they were unable to retain, and their sole permanent trophies
consisted of the two guns, the rifles, and the ammunition. Their own
losses amounted to about fifty killed and wounded.

A small force sallied out from Klerksdorp in the hope of helping
Anderson, but on reaching the Jagd Drift it was found that the
fighting was over and that the field was in possession of the
Boers. De la Rey was seen in person among the burghers, and it is
pleasant to add that he made himself conspicuous by his humanity to
the wounded. His force drew off in the course of the morning, and was
soon out of reach of immediate pursuit, though this was attempted by
Kekewich, Von Donop, and Grenfell.  It was important to regain the
guns if possible, as they were always a menace to the blockhouse
system, and for this purpose Grenfell with sixteen hundred horsemen
was despatched to a point south of Lichtenburg, which was conjectured
to be upon the Boer line of retreat.  At the same time Lord Methuen
was ordered up from Vryburg in order to cooperate in this movement,
and to join his forces to those of Grenfell.  It was obvious that with
an energetic and resolute adversary like De la Rey there was great
danger of these two forces being taken in detail, but it was hoped
that each was strong enough to hold its own until the other could come
to its aid.  The result was to show that the danger was real and the
hope fallacious.

It was on March 2nd that Methuen left Vryburg. The column was not his
old one, consisting of veterans of the trek, but was the Kimberley
column under Major Paris, a body of men who bad seen much less service
and were in every way less reliable.  It included a curious mixture of
units, the most solid of which were four guns (two of the 4th, and two
of the 38th R.F.A.), 200 Northumberland Fusiliers, and 100 Loyal North
Lancashires.  The mounted men included 5th Imperial Yeomanry (184),
Cape Police (233), Cullinan's Horse (64), 86th Imperial Yeomanry
(110), Diamond Fields Horse (92), Dennison' s Scouts (58), Ashburner's
Horse (126), and British South African Police (24).  Such a collection
of samples would be more in place, one would imagine, in a London
procession than in an operation which called for discipline and
cohesion.  In warfare the half is often greater than the whole, and
the presence of a proportion of halfhearted and inexperienced men may
be a positive danger to their more capable companions.

Upon March 6th Methuen, marching east towards Lichtenburg, came in
touch near Leeuwspruit with Van Zyl's commando, and learned in the
small skirmish which ensued that some of his Yeomanry were unreliable
and ill-instructed.  Having driven the enemy off by his artillery
fire, Methuen moved to Tweebosch, where he laagered until next
morning.  At 3 A.M. of the 7th the ox-convoy was sent on, under escort
of half of his little force.  The other half followed at 4.20, 50 as
to give the slow-moving oxen a chance of keeping ahead.  It was
evident, however, immediately after the column had got started that
the enemy were all round in great numbers, and that an attack in force
was to be expected.  Lord Methuen gave orders therefore that the
ox-wagons should be halted and that the mule-transport should close
upon them so as to form one solid block, instead of a straggling line.
At the same time he reinforced his rearguard with mounted men and with
two guns, for it was in that quarter that the enemy appeared to be
most numerous and aggressive.  An attack was also developing upon the
right flank, which was held off by the infantry and by the second
section of the guns.

It has been said that Methuen's horsemen were for the most part
inexperienced irregulars.  Such men become in time excellent soldiers,
as all this campaign bears witness, but it is too much to expose them
to a severe ordeal in the open field when they are still raw and
untrained.  As it happened, this particular ordeal was exceedingly
severe, but nothing can excuse the absolute failure of the troops
concerned to rise to the occasion.  Had Methuen's rearguard consisted
of Imperial Light Horse, or Scottish Horse, it is safe to say that the
battle of Tweebosch would have had a very different ending.

What happened was that a large body of Boers formed up in five lines
and charged straight home at the rear screen and rearguard, firing
from their saddles as they had done at Brakenlaagte.  The sight of
those wide-flung lines of determined men galloping over the plain
seems to have been too much for the nerves of the unseasoned troopers.
A panic spread through their ranks, and in an instant they had turned
their horses' heads and were thundering to their rear, leaving the two
guns uncovered and streaming in wild confusion past the left flank of
the jeering infantry who were lying round the wagons.  The limit of
their flight seems to have been the wind of their horses, and most of
them never drew rein until they had placed many miles between
themselves and the comrades whom they had deserted.  ' It was
pitiable,' says an eye-witness, 'to see the grand old General begging
them to stop, but they would not; a large body of them arrived in
Kraaipan without firing a shot,' It was a South African 'Battle of the
Spurs,'

By this defection of the greater portion of the force the handful of
brave men who remained were left in a hopeless position.  The two guns
of the 38th battery were overwhelmed and ridden over by the Boer
horsemen, every man being killed or wounded, including Lieutenant
Nesham, who acted up to the highest traditions of his corps.

The battle, however, was not yet over.  The infantry were few in
number, but they were experienced troops, and they maintained the
struggle for some hours in the face of overwhelming numbers.  Two
hundred of the Northumberland Fusiliers lay round the wagons and held
the Boers off from their prey. With them were the two remaining guns,
which were a mark for a thousand Boer riflemen.  It was while
encouraging by his presence and example the much-tried gunners of this
section that the gallant Methuen was wounded by a bullet which broke
the bone of his thigh.  Lieutenant Venning and all the detachment fell
with their General round the guns.

An attempt had been made to rally some of the flying troopers at a
neighbouring kraal, and a small body of Cape Police and Yeomanry under
the command of Major Paris held out there for some hours.  A hundred
of the Lancashire Infantry aided them in their stout defence.  But the
guns taken by the Boers from Von Donop's convoy had free play now that
the British guns were out of action, and they were brought to bear
with crushing effect upon both the kraal and the wagons. Further
resistance meant a useless slaughter, and orders were given for a
surrender.  Convoy, ammunition, guns, horses -- nothing was saved
except the honour of the infantry and the gunners.  The losses, 68
killed and 121 wounded, fell chiefly upon these two branches of the
service.  There were 205 unwounded prisoners.

This, the last Boer victory in the war, reflected equal credit upon
their valour and humanity, qualities which had not always gone hand in
hand in our experience of them.  Courtesy and attention were extended
to the British wounded, and Lord Methuen was sent under charge of his
chief medical officer, Colonel Townsend (the doctor as severely
wounded as the patient), into Klerksdorp.  In De la Rey we have always
found an opponent who was as chivalrous as he was formidable. The
remainder of the force reached the Kimberley-Mafeking railway line in
the direction of Kraaipan, the spot where the first bloodshed of the
war had occurred some twenty-nine months before.

On Lord Methuen himself no blame can rest for this unsuccessful
action.  If the workman's tool snaps in his hand he cannot be held
responsible for the failure of his task.  The troops who misbehaved
were none of his training.  'If you hear anyone slang him,' says one
of his men, 'you are to tell them that he is the finest General and
the truest gentleman that ever fought in this war.'  Such was the tone
of his own troopers, and such also that of the spokesmen of the nation
when they commented upon the disaster in the Houses of Parliament.  It
was a fine example of British justice and sense of fair play, even in
that bitter moment, that to hear his eulogy one would have thought
that the occasion had been one when thanks were being returned for a
victory.  It is a generous public with fine instincts, and Paul
Methuen, wounded and broken, still remained in their eyes the heroic
soldier and the chivalrous man of honour.

The De Wet country had been pretty well cleared by the series of
drives which have already been described, and Louis Botha's force in
the Eastern Transvaal had been much diminished by the tactics of Bruce
Hamilton and Wools-Sampson.  Lord Kitchener was able, therefore, to
concentrate his troops and his attention upon that wide-spread western
area in which General De la Rey had dealt two such shrewd blows within
a few weeks of each other.  Troops were rapidly concentrated at
Klerksdorp.  Kekewich, Walter Kitchener, Rawlinson, and Rochfort, with
a number of small columns, were ready in the third week of March to
endeavour to avenge Lord Methuen.

The problem with which Lord Kitchener was confronted was a very
difficult one, and he has never shown more originality and audacity
than in the fashion in which he handled it.  De la Rey's force was
scattered over a long tract of country, capable of rapidly
concentrating for a blow, but otherwise as intangible and elusive as a
phantom army.  Were Lord Kitchener simply to launch ten thousand
horsemen at him, the result would be a weary ride over illimitable
plains without sight of a Boer, unless it were a distant scout upon
the extreme horizon.  Delarey and his men would have slipped away to
his northern hiding-places beyond the Marico River.  There was no
solid obstacle here, as in the Orange River Colony, against which the
flying enemy could be rounded up.  One line of blockhouses there was,
it is true -- the one called the Schoonspruit cordon, which flanked
the De la Rey country.  It flanked it, however, upon the same side as
that on which the troops were assembled.  If the troops were only on
the other side, and De la Rey was between them and the blockhouse
line, then, indeed, something might be done.  But to place the troops
there, and then bring them instantly back again, was to put such a
strain upon men and horses as had never yet been done upon a large
scale in the course of the war.  Yet Lord Kitchener knew the mettle of
the men whom he commanded, and he was aware that there were no
exertions of which the human frame is capable which he might not
confidently demand.

The precise location of the Boer laagers does not appear to have been
known, but it was certain that a considerable number of them were
scattered about thirty miles or so to the west of Klerksdorp and the
Shoonspruit line.  The plan was to march a British force right through
them, then spread out into a wide line and come straight back, driving
the burghers on to the cordon of blockhouses, which had been
strengthened by the arrival of three regiments of Highlanders.  But to
get to the o~her side of the Boers it was necessary to march the
columns through by night.  It was a hazardous operation, but the
secret was well kept, and the movement was so well carried out that
the enemy had no time to check it.  On the night of Sunday, March
23rd, the British horsemen passed stealthily in column through the
Delarey country, and then, spreading out into a line, which from the
left wing at Lichtenburg to the right wing at Commando Drift measured
a good eighty miles, they proceeded to sweep back upon their traces.
In order to reach their positions the columns had, of course, started
at different points of the British blockhouse line, and some had a
good deal farther to go than others, while the southern extension of
the line was formed by Bochfort's troops, who had moved up from the
Vaal.  Above him from south to north came Walter Kitchener, Rawlinson,
and Kekewich in the order named.


On the morning of Monday, March 24th, a line of eighty miles of
horsemen, without guns or transport, was sweeping back towards the
blockhouses, while the country between was filled with scattered
parties of Boers who were seeking for gaps by which to escape. It was
soon learned from the first prisoners that De la Rey was not within
the cordon.  His laager had been some distance farther west.  But the
sight of fugitive horsemen rising and dipping over the rolling veldt
assured the British that they had something within their net. The
catch was, however, by no means as complete as might have been
desired. Three hundred men in khaki slipped through between the two
columns in the early morning. Another large party escaped to the south
wards.  Some of the Boers adopted extraordinary devices in order to
escape from the ever-narrowing cordon.  'Three, in charge of some
cattle, buried themselves, and left a small hole to breathe through
with a tube.  Some men began to probe with bayonets in the new.turned
earth and got immediate and vociferous subterranean yells.  Another
man tried the same game and a horse stepped on him.  He writhed and
reared the horse, and practically the horse found the prisoner for
us.'  But the operations achieved one result, which must have lifted a
load of anxiety from Lord Kitchener's mind. Three fifteen-pounders,
two pom-poms, and a large amount of ammunition were taken.  To
Kekewich and the Scottish Horse fell the honour of the capture,
Colonel Wools-Sampson and Captain Rice heading the charge and pursuit.
By this means the constant menace to the blockhouses was lessened, if
not entirely removed. One hundred and seventy-five Boers were disposed
of, nearly all as prisoners, and a considerable quantity of transport
was captured.  In this operation the troops had averaged from seventy
to eighty miles in twenty-six hours without change of horses.  To such
a point had the slow-moving ponderous British Army attained after two
years' training of that stern drill-master, necessity.

The operations had attained some success, but nothing commensurate
with the daring of the plan or the exertions of the soldiers.  Without
an instant's delay, however, Lord Kitchener struck a second blow at
his enemy.  Before the end of March Kekewich, Rawlinson, and Walter
Kitchener were all upon the trek once more.  Their operations were
pushed farther to the west than in the last drive, since it was known
that on that occasion De la Rey and his main commando had been outside
the cordon.

It was to one of Walter Kitchener's lieutenants that the honour fell
to come in direct contact with the main force of the burghers.  This
General had moved out to a point about forty miles west of Klerksdorp.
Forming his laager there, he despatched Cookson on March 30th with
seventeen hundred men to work further westward in the direction of the
Harts River.  Under Cookson's immediate command were the 2nd Canadian
Mounted Infantry, Damant's Horse, and four guns of the 7th R.F.A.  His
lieutenant, Keir, commanded the 28th Mounted Infantry, the Artillery
Mounted Rifles, and 2nd Kitchener's Fighting Scouts.  The force was
well mounted, and carried the minimum of baggage.

It was not long before this mobile force found itself within touch of
the enemy.  The broad weal made by the passing of a convoy set them
off at full cry, and they were soon encouraged by the distant cloud of
dust which shrouded the Boer wagons.  The advance guard of the column
galloped at the top of their speed for eight miles, and closed in upon
the convoy, but found themselves faced by an escort of five hundred
Boers, who fought a clever rearguard action, and covered their charge
with great skill.  At the same time Cookson closed in upon his mounted
infantry, while on the other side Delarey's main force fell back in
order to reinforce the escort.  British and Boers were both riding
furiously to help their own comrades. The two forces were fairly face
to face.

Perceiving that he was in front of the whole Boer army, and knowing
that he might expect reinforcements, Cookson decided to act upon the
defensive. A position was rapidly taken up along the Brakspruit, and
preparations made to resist the impending attack.  The line of defence
was roughly the line of the spruit, but for some reason, probably to
establish a cross fire, one advanced position was occupied upon either
flank.  On the left flank was a farmhouse, which was held by two
hundred men of the Artillery Rifles.  On the extreme right was another
outpost of twenty-four Canadians and forty-five Mounted Infantry.
They occupied no defensible position, and their situation was
evidently a most dangerous one, only to be justified by some strong
military reason which is not explained by any account of the action.

The Boer guns had opened fire, and considerable bodies of the enemy
appeared upon the flanks and in front.  Their first efforts were
devoted towards getting possession of the farmhouse, which would give
them a POINT D'APPUI from which they could turn the whole line.  Some
five hundred of them charged on horseback, but.were met by a very
steady fire from the Artillery Rifles, while the guns raked them with
shrapnel.  They reached a point within five hundred yards of the
building, but the fire was too hot, and they wheeled round in rapid
retreat. Dismounting in a mealie-patch they skirmished up towards the
farmhouse once more, but they were again checked by the fire of the
defenders and by a pompom which Colonel Keir had brought up. No
progress whatever was made by the attack in this quarter.

In the meantime the fate which might have been foretold had befallen
the isolated detachment of Canadians and 28th Mounted Infantry upon
the extreme right.  Bruce Carruthers, the Canadian officer in command,
behaved with the utmost gallantry, and was splendidly seconded by his
men. Overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers, amid a perfect hail of
bullets they fought like heroes to the end.  'There have been few
finer instances of heroism in the course of the campaign,' says the
reticent Kitchener in his official despatch.  Of the Canadians
eighteen were hit out of twenty-one, and the Mounted Infantry hard by
lost thirty out of forty-five before they surrendered.

This advantage gained upon the right flank was of no assistance to the
Boers in breaking the British line. The fact that it was so makes it
the more difficult to understand why this outpost was so exposed.  The
burghers had practically surrounded Cookson's force, and De la Rey and
Kemp urged on the attack; buL~ their artillery fire was dominated by
the British guns, and no weak point could be found in the defence. At
1 o'clock the attack had been begun, and at 5.30 it was finally
abandoned, and Delarey was in full retreat. That he was in no sense
routed is shown by the fact that Cookson did not attempt to follow him
up or to capture his guns; but at least he had failed in his purpose,
and had lost more heavily than in any engagement which he had yet
fought. The moral effect of his previous victories had also been
weakened, and his burghers had learned, if they had illusions upon the
subject, that the men who fled at Tweebosch were not typical troopers
of the British Army.  Altogether, it was a well-fought and useful
action, though it cost the British force some two hundred casualties,
of which thirty-five were fatal.  Cookson's force stood to arms all
night mitil the arrival of Walter Kitchener's men in the morning.

General Ian Hamilton, who had acted for some time as Chief of the
Staff to Lord Kitchener, had arrived on April 8th at Klerksdorp to
take supreme command of the whole operations against De la Rey.  Early
in April the three main British columns had made a rapid cast round
without success.  To the very end the better intelligence and the
higher mobility seem to have remained upon the side of the Boers, who
could always force a fight when Lhey wished and escape when they
wished.  Occasionally, however, they forced one at the wrong time, as
in the instance which I am about to describe.

Hamilton had planned a drive to cover the southern portion of
Delarey's country, and for this purpose, with Hartebeestefontein for
his centre, he was manoeuvring his columns so as to swing them into
line and then sweep back towards Klerksdorp.  Kekewich, Rawlinson, and
Walter Kitchener were all manoeuvring for this purpose.  The Boers,
however, game to the last, although they were aware that their leaders
had gone in to treat, and that peace was probably due within a few
days, determined to have one last gallant fall with a British column.
The forces of Kekewich were the farthest to the westward, and also, as
the burghers thought, the most isolated, and it was upon them,
accordingly, that the attack was made.  In the morning of April 11th,
at a place called Rooiwal, the enemy, who had moved up from
Wolmaranstad, nineteen hundred strong, under Kemp and Vermaas, fell
with the utmost impetuosity upon the British column.  There was no
preliminary skirmishing, and a single gallant charge by 1,500 Boers
both opened and ended the engagement.  'I was just saying to the staff
officer that there were no Boers within twenty miles,' says one who
was present, 'when we heard a roar of musketry and saw a lot of men
galloping down on us.'  The British were surprised but not shaken by
this unexpected apparition.  'I never saw a more splendid attack.
They kept a distinct line,' says the eye-witness.  Another spectator
says, 'They came on in one long line four deep and knee to knee.' It
was an old-fashioned cavalry charge, and the fact that it got as far
as it did shows that we have over rated the stopping power of modern
rifles.  They came for a good five hundred yards under direct fire,
and were only turned within a hundred of the British line.  The
Yeomanry, the Scottish Horse, and the Constabulary poured a steady
fire upon the advancing wave of horsemen, and the guns opened with
case at two hundred yards.  The Boers were stopped, staggered, and
turned. Their fire, or rather the covering fire of those who had not
joined in the charge, had caused some fifty casualties, but their own
losses were very much more severe. The fierce Potgieter fell just in
front of the British guns. 'Thank goodness he is dead! ' cried one of
his wounded burghers, 'for he sjamboked me into the firing line this
morning.'  Fifty dead and a great number of wounded were left upon the
field of battle.  Rawlinson's column came up on Kekewich's left, and
the Boer flight became a rout, for they were chased for twenty miles,
and their two guns were captured.  It was a brisk and decisive little
engagement, and it closed the Western campaign, leaving the last
trick, as well as the game, to the credit of the British.  From this
time until the end there was a gleaning of prisoners but little
fighting in De la Rey's country, the most noteworthy event being a
surprise visit to Schweizer-Renecke by Rochfort, by which some sixty
prisoners were taken, and afterwards the drive of Ian Hamilton's
forces against the Mafeking railway line by which no fewer than 364
prisoners were secured. In this difficult and well-managed operation
the gaps between the British columns were concealed by the lighting of
long veldt-fires and the discharge of rifles by scattered scouts. The
newly arrived Australian Commonwealth Regiments gave a brilliant start
to the military history of their united country by the energy of their
marching and the thoroughness of their entrenching.

Upon May 29th, only two days before the final declaration of peace, a
raid was made by a few Boers upon the native cattle reserves near
Fredericstad. A handful of horsemen pursued them, and were ambushed by
a considerable body of the enemy in some hilly country ten miles from
the British lines.  Most of the pursuers got away in safety, but young
Sutherland, second lieutenant of the Seaforths, and only a few months
from Eton, found himself separated from his horse and in a hopeless
position.  Scorning to surrender, the lad actually fought his way upon
foot for over a mile before he was shot down by the horsemen who
circled round him. Well might the Boer commander declare that in the
whole course of the war he had seen no finer example of British
courage.  It is indeed sad that at this last instant a young life
should be thrown away, but Sutherland died in a noble fashion for a
noble cause, and many inglorious years would be a poor substitute for
the example and tradition which such a death will leave behind.

CHAPTER XXXIX
THE END


It only remains in one short chapter to narrate the progress of the
peace negotiations, the ultimate settlement, and the final
consequences of this long-drawn war. However disheartening the
successive incidents may have been in which the Boers were able to
inflict heavy losses upon us and to renew their supplies of arms and
ammunition, it was none the less certain that their numbers were
waning and that the inevitable end was steadily approaching. With
mathematical precision the scientific soldier in Pretoria, with his
web of barbed wire radiating out over the whole country, was week by
week wearing them steadily down.  And yet after the recent victory of
De la Rey and various braggadocio pronouncements from the refugees at
The Hague, it was somewhat of a surprise to the British public when it
was announced upon March 22nd that the acting Government of the
Transvaal, consisting of Messrs. Schalk Burger, Lucas Meyer, Reitz,
Jacoby, Krogh, and Van Velden had come into Middelburg and requested
to be forwarded by train to Pretoria for the purpose of discussing
terms of peace with Lord Kitchener.  A thrill of hope ran through the
Empire at the news, but so doubtful did the issue seem that none of
the preparations were relaxed which would ensure a vigorous campaign
in the immediate future.  In the South African as in the Peninsular
and in the Crimean wars, it may truly be said that Great Britain was
never so ready to fight as at the dawning of peace.  At least two
years of failure and experience are needed to turn a civilian and
commercial nation into a military power.

In spite of the optimistic pronouncements of Mr. Fischer and the
absurd forecasts of Dr. Leyds the power of the Boers was really
broken, and they had come in with the genuine intention of surrender.
In a race with such individuality.it was not enough that the
government should form its conclusion.  It was necessary for them to
persuade their burghers that the game was really up, and that they had
no choice but to throw down their well-worn rifles and their
ill-filled bandoliers. For this purpose a long series of negotiations
had to be entered into which put a strain upon the complacency of the
authorities in South Africa and upon the patience of the attentive
public at home.  Their ultimate success shows that this complacency
and this patience were eminantly the right attitude to adopt.

On March 23rd the Transvaal representatives were despatched to
Kroonstad for the purpose of opening up the matter with Steyn and De
Wet.  Messengers were sent to communicate with these two leaders, but
had they been British columns instead of fellow-countrymen they could
not have found greater difficulty in running them to earth.  At last,
however, at the end of the month the message was conveyed, and
resulted in the appearance of De Wet, De la Rey, and Steyn at the
British outposts at Klerksdorp.  The other delegates had come north
again from Kroonstad, and all were united in the same small town,
which, by a whimsical fate, had suddenly become the centre both for
the making of peace and for the prosecution of the war, with the eyes
of the whole world fixed upon its insignificant litter of houses.  On
April 11th, after repeated conferences, both parties moved on to
Pretoria, and the most sceptical observers began to confess that there
was something in the negotiations after all. After conferring with
Lord Kitchener the Boer leaders upon April 18th left Pretoria again
and rode out to the commandos to explain the situation to them.  The
result of this mission was that two delegates were chosen from each
body in the field, who assembled at Vereeniging upon May 15th for the
purpose of settling the question by vote.  Never was a high matter of
state decided in so democratic a fashion.

Up to that period the Boer leaders had made a succession of tentative
suggestions, each of which had been put aside by the British
Government.  Their first had been that they should merely concede
those points which had been at issue at the beginning of the war. This
was set aside.  The second was that they should be allowed to consult
their friends in Europe.  This also was refused.  The next was that an
armistice should be granted, but again Lord Kitchener was obdurate.  A
definite period was suggested within which the burghers should make
their final choice between surrender and a war which must finally
exterminate them as a people.  It was tacitly understood, if not
definitely promised, that the conditions which the British Government
would be prepared to grant would not differ much in essentials from
those which had been refused by the Boers a twelvemonth before, after
the Middelburg interview.

On May 15th the Boer conference opened at Vereeniging.  Sixty-four
delegates from the commandos met with the military and political
chiefs of the late republics, the whole amounting to 150 persons.  A
more singular gathering has not met in our time.  There was Botha, the
young lawyer, who had found himself by a strange turn of fate
commanding a victorious army in a great war.  De Wet was there, with
his grim mouth and sun-browned face; De la Rey, also, with the
grizzled beard and the strong aquiline features.  There, too, were the
politicians, the grey-bearded, genial Reitz, a little graver than when
he looked upon 'the whole matter as an immense joke,' and the
unfortunate Steyn, stumbling and groping, a broken and ruined man.
The burly Lucas Meyer, smart young Smuts fresh from the siege of
Ookiep, Beyers from the north, Kemp the dashing cavalry leader, Muller
the hero of many fights -- all these with many others of their
sun-blackened, gaunt, hard-featured comrades were grouped within the
great tent of Vereeniging.  The discussions were heated and
prolonged. But the logic of facts was inexorable, and the cold still
voice of common-sense had more power than all the ravings of
enthusiasts.  The vote showed that the great majority of the delegates
were in favour of surrender upon the terms offered by the British
Government.  On May 81st this resolution was notified to Lord
Kitchener, and at half-past ten of the same night the delegates
arrived at Pretoria and set their names to the treaty of peace.  After
two years seven and a half months of hostilities the Dutch republics
had acquiesced in their own destruction, and the whole of South
Africa, from Cape Town to the Zambesi, had been added to the British
Empire.  The great struggle had cost us twenty thousand lives and a
hundred thousand stricken men, with two hundred millions of money;
but, apart from a peaceful South Africa, it had won for us a national
resuscitation of spirit and a closer union with our great Colonies
which could in no other way have been attained. We had hoped that we
were a solid empire when we engaged in the struggle, hut we knew that
we were when we emerged from it. In that change lies an ample
recompense for all the blood and treasure spent.

The following were in brief the terms of surrender

1.      That the burghers lay down their arms and acknowledge themselves
        subjects of Edward VII.
2.	That all prisoners taking the oath of allegiance be returned.
3.	That their liberty and property be inviolate.
4.	That an amnesty be granted-save in special cases.
5.	That the Dutch language be allowed in schools and law-courts.
6.	That rifles be ~lowed if registered.
7.	That self-government be granted as soon as possible.
8.	That no fr~nchise be granted for natives until after self-governinent.
9.	That no special ~nd tax be levied.
10.	That the people be helped to reoccupy the farms.
11.	That £3,000,000 be given to help the farmers.
12.     That the rebels be disfranchised and their leaders tried, on
        condition that no death penalty be inflicted.

These terms were practically the same as those which had been refused
by Botha in March 1901. Thirteen months of useless warfare had left
the situation as it was.

It had been a war of surprises, but the surprises have unhappily been
hitherto invariably unpleasant ones.  Now at last the balance swung
the other way, for in all the long paradoxical history of South
African strife there is nothing more wonderful than the way in which
these two sturdy and unemotional races clasped hands the instant that
the fight was done. The fact is in itself a final answer to the
ill-natured critics of the Continent. Men do not so easily grasp a
hand which is reddened with the blood of women and children. From all
parts as the commandos. came in there was welcome news of the
fraternisation between them and the soldiers; while the Boer leaders,
as loyal to their new ties as they had been to their old ones, exerted
themselves to promote good feeling among their people.  A few weeks
seemed to do more to lessen racial bitterness than some of us had
hoped for in as many years.  One can but pray that it will last.

The surrenders amounted in all to twenty thousand men, and showed that
in all parts of the seat of war the enemy had more men in the field
than we had imagined, a fact which may take the sting out of several
of our later mishaps. About twelve thousand surrendered in the
Transvaal, six thousand in the Orange River Colony, and about two
thousand in the Cape olony, showing that the movement in the rebel
districts had always been more vexatious than formidable.  A
computation of the prisoners of war, the surrenders, the mercenaries,
and the casualties, shows that the total forces to which we were
opposed were certainly not fewer than seventy-five thousand well-armed
mounted men, while they may have considerably exceeded that number.
No wonder that the Boer leaders showed great confidence at the outset
of the war.

That the heavy losses caused us by the war were borne without a murmur
is surely evidence enough how deep was the conviction of the nation
that the war was not only just but essential -- that the possession of
South Africa and the unity of the Empire were at stake. Could it be
shown, or were it even remotely possible, that ministers had incurred
so immense a responsibility and entailed such tremendous sacrifices
upon their people without adequate cause, is it not certain that, the
task once done, an explosion of rage from the deceived and the
bereaved would have driven them for ever from public life? Among high
and low, in England, in Scotland, in Ireland, in the great Colonies,
how many high hopes had been crushed, how often the soldier son had
gone forth and never returned, or come back maimed and stricken in the
pride of his youth. Everywhere was the voice of pity and sorrow, but
nowhere that of reproach.  The deepest instincts of the nation told it
that it must fight and win, or for ever abdicate its position in the
world.  Through dark days which brought out the virtues of our race as
nothing has done in our generation, we struggled grimly on until the
light had fully broken once again.  And of all gifts that God has
given to Britain there is none to compare with those days of sorrow,
for it was in them that the nation was assured of its unity, and
learned for all time that blood is stronger to bind than salt water is
to part.  The only difference in the point of view of the Briton from
Britain and the Briton from the ends of the earth, was that the latter
with the energy of youth was more whole-souled in the Imperial cause.
Who has seen that Army and can forget it -- its spirit, its
picturesqueness -- above all, what it stands for in the future history
of the world? Cowboys from the vast plains of the North-West,
gentlemen who ride hard with the Quorn or the Belvoir, gillies from
the Sutherland deer-forests, bushmen from the back blocks of
Australia, exquisites of the Raleigh Club or the Bachelor's, hard men
from Ontario, dandy sportsmen from India and Ceylon, the horsemen of
New Zealand, the wiry South African irregulars -- these are the
Reserves whose existence was chronicled in no Blue-book, and whose
appearance came as a shock to the pedant soldiers of the Continent who
had sneered so long at our little Army, since long years of peace have
caused them to forget its exploits.  On the plains of South Africa, in
common danger and in common privation, the blood brotherhood of the
Empire was sealed.

So much for the Empire.  But what of South Africa?  There in the end
we must reap as we sow. If we are worthy of the trust, it will be left
to us.  If we are unworthy of it, it will be taken away. Kruger's
downfall should teach us that it is not rifles but Justice which is
the title-deed of a nation.  The British flag under our best
administrators will mean clean government, honest laws, liberty and
equality to all men.  So long as it continues to do so, we shall hold
South Africa. When, out of fear or out or greed, we fall from that
ideal, we may know that we are stricken with that disease which has
killed every great empire before us.





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