A Handbook of the Boer War
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HANDBOOK OF THE BOER WAR ***
A HANDBOOK OF THE BOER WAR
With General Map of South Africa
and 18 Sketch Maps
and Plans
GALE AND POLDEN LIMITED
LONDON AND ALDERSHOT
1910
BUTLER & TANNER
THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS
FROME AND LONDON
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I PROLEGOMENA 1
I The Roundheads of South Africa 1
II Patriotism, Duty and Discipline 19
III War considered as a Branch of Sport 26
II THE NATAL WEDGE 36
III DEUS EX MACHINA NO. I 51
IV KIMBERLEY AND THE SIEGE OF RHODES 82
V A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS 96
VI MORE TUGELA TROUBLES 116
VII LADYSMITH AT BAY 138
VIII DEUS EX MACHINA NO. 2 156
IX ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS 193
X BADEN-POWELL AND THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING 212
XI BLOEMFONTEIN TO PRETORIA 229
XII THE NEW COLONY 247
XIII NEC CELER NEC AUDAX 262
XIV THE TAMING OF THE TRANSVAAL 273
XV THE RECURRENCES OF DE WET 294
XVI LORD KITCHENER AT WORK 311
XVII THE MECHANICAL PHASE 345
I Orange River Colony 345
II Eastern Transvaal 354
III Western Transvaal 357
IV Cape Colony 363
XVIII THE END 365
COMMANDERS OF DIVISIONS AND BRIGADES 368
INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES 369
SKETCH MAPS AND PLANS[1]
PAGE
Northern Natal 50
Modder River and Magersfontein 59
Stormberg 65
Colenso 70
Spion Kop and Vaalkrantz 98
Spion Kop 104
Final Advance on Ladysmith 128
Siege of Ladysmith 139
Riet and Modder Drifts 161
Paardeberg 172
Poplar Grove and Driefontein 185
Sannah's Post 199
Magaliesberg District 240
Diamond Hill 243
Brandwater Basin 257
Orange Free State 260
Southern Transvaal 292
Noitgedacht Nek 319
General Map of South Africa--at the beginning.
[Footnote 1: The thanks of the Author are due to the Army Council for
permission to copy the maps and plans in the Official History of the
War, and to L.S. Amery, Esq., for permission to copy the plans in the
fifth volume of the _Times_ History of the War.]
PREFATORY NOTE
The author has endeavoured in this Handbook to compile, for the use of
students and others, a general account of the various phases of the Boer
War of 1899-1902, in which he served for twenty-six months.
With some exceptions, every statement of fact relating to the military
operations may be verified in one or more of the following
publications--
The "Times" History of the War;
The War Office Official History of the War;
The Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commission of
Inquiry into the War.
To the two Histories, which have been but recently completed, the Author
is much indebted. Other authorities have, however, been consulted.
The Sketch Maps and Plans of certain areas and battlefields are only
intended to give, by means of a few hachures, contours, and form-lines,
a general impression of topographical features.
The Author has from time to time in the course of the narrative
indicated what he believes to have been the chief causes of the
prolongation of the War:--
The inefficacy of modern Tactics as a means of dealing with
partisan warfare;
The moral reinforcement derived from a confident belief in the
justice of a cause, by which the enemy was continually
encouraged to persevere;
The reluctance of the British leaders to fight costly battles;
The constitutional inability of the British Officer to take War
seriously;
The waste of British horses due to inexpert Horsemastership.
May, 1910.
CHAPTER I
Prolegomena
I. THE ROUNDHEADS OF SOUTH AFRICA
History often reproduces without reference to nationality some
particular human type or class which becomes active and predominant for
a time, and fades away when its task is finished. It is, however, not
utterly lost, for the germ of it lies dormant yet ready to re-appear
when the exigencies of the moment recall it. The reserve forces of human
nature are inexhaustible and inextinguishable.
It is probable that few of the Boers had ever heard of Oliver Cromwell,
or that his life and times had ever been studied in the South African
Republics, and had influenced the Boer action; yet the affinity of the
South African burghers of the XIXth century with the Puritans and the
Roundheads of the XVIIth is striking. It was not so much a parallelism
of aims and hopes, for the struggle in England was political and not
national as in South Africa, as of temperament, character, and method.
There was hardly an individuity in the Boers of the War which might not
have been found in the followers of Cromwell. Like these they were
fanatically but sincerely religious, and their unabashed and fearless
adherence to their beliefs and their open observance of the outward
forms of religion exposed them to the same cruel and baseless charge of
hypocrisy. Just as the aristocratic followers of Charles I had jeered at
the Roundheads, so did every thoughtless officer and newspaper
correspondent jeer at the psalm-singing and the prayer meetings in the
laagers. The Boers had the courage of their religious opinions, and were
not ashamed to proclaim them in the face of man. The Bible was the only
book they knew, and they guided themselves according to their lights by
its precepts. In opposing the English they believed that they were
resisting the enemies of the Almighty. Like the Puritans they honestly
thought that certain passages in the Holy Scriptures applied to them as
the Chosen People, and that they were assured of Divine Protection; and
if they erred in their exegesis their delusion at least deserves
respect. Yet all the while the Old Testament was the volume they chiefly
studied, and if they quoted the New Testament they sometimes modified
the context to their own advantage.
Each Puritan movement has derived its strength not so much from its
abstract merit as from the intense personal conviction felt by each unit
engaged in it, that the righteousness of the cause was unassailable. The
Puritan never wavered in philosophic doubt. No misgivings disturbed his
soul, and he pursued his object with all the strength of his body.
The Puritan stir in the reign of Charles I was a revival, almost a
continuation, of the half political, half religious activity which in
the previous century had effected the Reformation. The Boer movement in
South Africa, which sprang up after a germination lasting three
generations, was brought about by a recrudescence of the spirit which
made the Boers of the Netherlands rise against Alva and the Spanish
domination in the XVIth century.
In the XVIIth century the Boers of the Netherlands, made a voluntary
settlement in South Africa, and there under the Southern Cross they were
joined by French Puritans, who had fought under Condé and who left their
country after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and also by some
persecuted sectaries from Piedmont. The two stocks, although one was of
Teutonic and the other of Celtic origin, easily came together, and under
the pressure of common interests and common dangers were consolidated
and vulcanized: and if in the previous generation the English Pilgrim
Fathers of the _Mayflower_ had directed their course to the south
instead of to the west, and had cast anchor off the shore of that
distant region of Good Hope, it is probable that a mighty nation would
have been founded in South Africa.
Cromwell as the military leader of the Commonwealth Boers is, at least
in England where the military art has not been scientifically studied,
one of the suppressed characters of history. His political achievements,
as is perhaps natural in a community which courts the voter and despises
the soldier, have put out of sight the means by which he mainly won
them; namely his genius as a cavalry and partisan commander. An
ungainly, narrow-minded, bigoted, bucolic squireen of Huntingdon,
lacking in every quality which we are accustomed to associate with a
cavalry officer, inaugurated an era in the history of Mounted Troops.
His methods are studied on the Continent, and the German Staff has
recently discovered that he was the first leader to use cavalry as a
screen to hide the movements of the main body. Yet there is no evidence
that he ever studied the military art, and he did not become a soldier
until he had reached his fourth decade. In the Royalist Army opposed to
him were soldiers by profession and experience; officers and men who had
been under Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years' War; for in the XVIIth
century the services of aliens were in request on the Continent, and at
one time no less than eighty-seven senior officers of British
nationality were serving in the Swedish Army, then the most renowned in
Europe. Yet Cromwell with his "Eastern Association," his Ironsides, his
yeomen and raw levies, beat the Royalist Army, officered from the same
class which is still believed to possess the monopoly of the aptitude
for leading men in war, by exercising the homely qualities of energy,
self-control, endurance, and practical common sense applied instantly to
the occasion of the moment.
The lessons to be learnt from Cromwell's campaigns have been thus
epitomized by General Baden-Powell:--"There is one thing that ought not
to escape the attention of students, namely the success that attended
Cromwell's method of rallying his troops whenever they got dispersed.
When things looked bad, as they did on one or two occasions, when some
of his cavalry were defeated and the rest scattered, he never lost heart
and his men never lost heart; they knew they had to rally again and
attack somewhere else. Very often the enemy were deceived by that,
thinking that the Roundheads were scattered and broken up, and took no
further notice of him until they suddenly found him attacking from quite
a new direction. That was the secret of his success on many occasions,
and one that has its lesson to-day, just as it had in those days--that
when all seems pretty bad and you are scattered and broken, keep up a
good heart and get together again and have another go." With scarcely
the change of a word these remarks will account for the prolongation of
the war for two years after the occupation of the Boer capitals.
The Boer leaders, like their great prototype Cromwell, owed much of
their success to their novel and skilful use of mounted troops. The
European conception of the functions of mounted troops had been
stereotyped for some time; Cavalry screens an advancing army, prevents
the enemy observing its dispositions, acts as its eyes and ears; and so
forth. It is true that Great Britain had already for at least a
generation employed Mounted Infantry in colonial wars; but the
innovation had never been approved of on the Continent, where it was
regarded as a cheap and inefficient British substitute for Cavalry.
Yet the famous postscript "unmounted men preferred,"[2] which was
affixed to the acceptance of the help proffered by the Australian
Colonies, shows that at first the power of mounted troops acting not as
the eyes and ears of an army, but as a mobile and supple "mailed fist,"
was not understood. In ten weeks, however, the tune changed, and it was
"preference given to mounted contingents."
When the grand operations were over, the enemy's chief towns occupied,
and the lines of communication fairly secure, the necessity for mounted
troops became still more apparent. The Boers saw that it was useless for
them to campaign at large. They took to _guerilla_, and restricted
themselves generally to independent horse raids against which foot
troops were powerless. Gradually the proportion of horses to men in the
British columns rose, until practically all the combatants were mounted,
and at last the Cromwellian principle that the best military weapon is a
man on a horse was fully accepted.
The military qualities of the Boers, like those of Cromwell's men, were
useful but not showy. They came by instinct and not by acquisition, and
they cannot be sufficiently accounted for as the outcome of experience
in the pursuit of game on the veld. They were neutralized partially by
characteristics the reverse of military. The Boers were not remarkable
for personal courage. If there had been in the Boer Army a decoration
corresponding to the Victoria Cross it would have been rarely won or at
least rarely earned. There is scarcely an instance of an individual feat
of arms or act of devotion performed by a Burgher. On the few occasions
when the Boers were charged by cavalry they became paralysed with
terror. They were incapable of submitting themselves to discipline, and
difficult to command in large numbers. They could not be made to
understand that prompt action, which possibly might not be the best
under the circumstances, was preferable to wasting time in discussing a
better with the field cornets. They were subject to panics and, for the
time, easily disheartened: and their sense of duty was not conspicuous.
The principles of strategy were unknown to them, their tactics were
crude, and with the exception of a very few who had fought in 1881, they
were without experience of the realities of war.[3]
If in the month of September, 1899, an impartial military critic in a
foreign Ministry of War had been directed to draw up an appreciation of
the situation and to forecast the course of the impending struggle, he
would probably have expressed himself somewhat as follows:--
"An Army of 100,000 men is the utmost that Great Britain will be able to
place in the field in South Africa, for the Indian and Colonial drafts
must be provided for, and the Militia and other Auxiliary Forces, which
are not of much account, are tethered to the country; but it will be
sufficient for the purpose. Although the military system of Great
Britain is hopelessly behind the times, she has always done wonders with
her boomerangs, bows and arrows, and flint instruments. That Army will
be fairly well furnished with modern weapons and equipment, and the
excellent personality of the soldier will compensate to a great extent
for incapacity in the Staff and superior officers. With this Army she
will have to meet a brave but undisciplined opponent whose numbers
cannot be estimated. Even if the Free Staters are included it is
improbable that more than 100,000 men can be put into the field. These
have had no military training, their leaders will be unprofessional
officers who will be unable to make good use of the munitions of War
which the two Republics have been strangely allowed to import through
British ports and to accumulate in large quantities. If the burghers of
the Orange Free State throw in their lot with the Transvaalers, which is
improbable as they have no quarrel with Great Britain, the numbers
opposed to her will certainly be augmented, but the task before her will
be greatly simplified. Instead of having to send one portion of her Army
by way of Natal to effect a junction in the Transvaal, with the other
portion working northwards through Kimberley and Mafeking, a campaign
which would involve two long and vulnerable lines of communication, she
will be able to strike at once through the heart of the Free State and
will advance without much difficulty to Johannesburg and Pretoria. The
hardest part of her task will be the passage of the Vaal, where a great
battle will be fought, and the capture of Pretoria, which is reported to
be well fortified. With Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Pretoria and the
railways in the possession of Great Britain, the opposition will
collapse in a very few weeks, for no nation has ever been able to carry
on a struggle when its chief towns and means of communication are in the
enemy's possession."
This hypothetical appreciation probably represents the general opinion
current both at home and abroad during the period immediately preceding
the outbreak of the War; but it proved to be mistaken from the first.
The Free Staters joined the Transvaalers and the allied forces assumed
the offensive over a wide area without delay. Kimberley and Mafeking
were threatened on the west, and on the east the Boers poured into
Natal, upon which they had for sixty years looked with the aggrieved and
greedy eyes of a dog from whom a bone, to which he believes he is
entitled, has been recovered.
To Natal, in 1824, had come a handful of British pioneers. From Chaka,
the King of the Zulus, they obtained a grant of land upon the coast, and
after eleven years they endeavoured without success to induce the
British Government to recognize the settlement, which in course of time
became the City of Durban, as a Colony to which, in honour of the
Princess heiress presumptive to the Throne of Great Britain, they
proposed to give the name Victoria; and they were thus the first to
associate her with the Empire, which, in spite of reluctant politicians
who did their best to restrict it, was destined to expand marvellously
during her reign.
The Natal settlement was frowned on by the Imperial Government, who even
confiscated a little ship which the pioneers had toilfully fitted out
and which was bringing envoys from the King of the Zulus to the King of
England, on the plea that it was unregistered and that it came from a
foreign port. In 1828 Chaka, who was not unfavourably disposed towards
the Durban pioneers, was murdered by his brother Dingaan, who succeeded
him as King of the Zulus. It is said that his last words to Dingaan
were, "You think that you will rule the land when I am gone, but I see
the white men coming, and they will be your masters."
His words were prophetically true, but there were two races of white men
hovering over Natal; and the Great King of the Zulus, a tribe held in
little account before his time, but which had under his leadership
absorbed or exterminated almost every other tribe from Pondoland to
Delagoa Bay, was no longer with them to choose between the rivals to his
own ends and advantage; and Dingaan inherited the cruelty without the
ability or the statecraft of his brother, the Napoleon of South Africa.
Of all the races of Europe the Low Germans of Holland seemed the least
likely to contract the migratory habit. The Hollander of the present
day, popularly but incorrectly called a Dutchman, is home-staying and
home-loving. The compact, well-cared-for, well-ordered homestead,
village, and town communities of the Netherlands are inconsistent with a
roving disposition, and yet the Hollanders of South Africa furnished the
most conspicuous example of Nomadism in modern times.
It may have been that the ordeal of Alva and the subsequent disturbance
of the Thirty Years' War had constitutionally unsettled the Hollanders
to such a degree that their descendants, emancipated from European
ideas, became prone to restlessness, for in a generation or two they
began to trek; or perhaps the magic of the spacious veld, with its clear
sky and the mountains and flat-topped kopjes sharply defined on the
horizon, irresistibly lured them on. In the land they had quitted the
air was dense with moisture; scarcely a hill was to be seen; they were
hemmed in by sluggish rivers and by the sea, which leaned heavily
against the dykes and threw its spray angrily down on to the reclaimed
pastures which had been stolen from it.
The original Dutch settlement at the Cape was made by a Company of
Amsterdam merchants for the refreshment and refitting of their ships
engaged in trade with the East. The Company was a harsh and extortionate
master, who paid little attention to the needs and the welfare of the
settlement, which was regarded merely as a place of call. The
discontented colonists began to leave the seacoast and trekked inwards,
where the heavy hands of the cordially detested representatives of the
Company could not reach them. Its rule came to an end in 1795, when, at
the request of Holland, Great Britain took over the Colony in order to
prevent it falling into the hands of France. It was restored at the
Peace of Amiens, but in a few years again came into the possession of
Great Britain.
The Colonies of the Empire were at that time administered by a Branch of
the War Office which regarded the Cape settlement much in the same light
as it had been regarded by the Dutch Company, as a necessary but
troublesome depôt on the way to the East; and had the Overland Route and
the Suez Canal been available a generation earlier it would probably
have been abandoned.
The Boers hoped that their new masters, who at least were not an
association of Amsterdam merchants absorbed in their ledgers, would
treat them with more sympathy and consideration. But the only serious
colonial problem with which British politicians had up to that time been
called upon to deal was in North America, and they had disastrously
failed in their attempt to solve it. They were without experience in the
management of white plantations, they shirked the future and looked only
to the "ignorant present," and their policy in South Africa was based
upon two principles: that on no account must the boundaries of the
Empire be enlarged and new responsibilities incurred, and that in all
quarrels between white man and black man the presumption was that the
white man was in the wrong.
The Great Trek of 1836-7 was brought about by the emancipation of the
slaves and by the refusal or inability of the Government to protect the
farmers against the raids of the "Kaffir"[4] tribes on the border. There
is no doubt that enslaved Hottentots, Bushmen, and even Malays who had
been with the knowledge of the authorities imported from Madagascar and
Malacca, were often ill-treated by individual slave-owners; but the
Boers resented the charge of wholesale cruelty which was made against
them, and the favour and patronage bestowed upon native tribes.
Moreover, although the slave-owners were entitled to compensation for
the loss of their helots, the fund was administered in London, with the
result that a considerable proportion of the already inadequate sum was
retained in the hands of agents.
The object of the Great Trek was deliverance from the harsh and hostile
jurisdiction of the British Government, and the setting up of a new and
independent Boer community in Natal, which was reported to be a promised
land flowing with milk and honey. The Boers proposed to shake themselves
free from the Egyptian and to occupy Canaan.
The _voortrekkers_, among whom was the boy Paul Kruger, slowly passed
away towards the north and crossed the Orange River. Moshesh, the chief
of the Basutos, watched curiously from his mountains the trains of
wagons strung out on the veld, but refrained from molesting the
emigrants. Not so Moselekatse,[5] a chief who had formerly broken away
from Chaka and had set himself up beyond the Vaal, and who subsequently
founded the Matabele Kingdom in which he was succeeded by his son
Lobengula. He swooped down upon the advanced parties, who defended
themselves with success and afterwards chastised him in his own country,
in which, hidden from his eyes, lay the gold-bearing reefs of
Johannesburg.
Meanwhile the British Government had forged a useless and clumsy weapon
for the coercion of its "erring and misguided" subjects. It was held by
the lawyers that the trekkers could not at will and by the simple
process of migration throw off their allegiance to the Crown of England,
and a declaratory Act was passed under which all British subjects south
of Latitude 25, whether within or without the colony, could be arrested
and punished.
The Boer scouts discovered passes over the Drakensberg which gave them a
readier access than they had expected into Natal. It had not recovered
from the devastations of Chaka and was thinly inhabited. Settlements
were made near the banks of the Tugela, while Piet Retief, after a brief
visit to Durban, went on to negotiate with Dingaan at the royal kraal of
Umgungundhlovu in Zululand. He was received with some cordiality, but
accused of participating in a recent cattle raid. Retief, to show his
good faith, offered to catch the robber, a chief named Sikunyela, whose
kraal was a hundred miles away. He found Sikunyela, who greatly admired
the glistening rings of a pair of handcuffs shown him by the slim
Dutchman, and who was even persuaded that they would be a becoming
ornament to a native chief. He tried them on, but a more intimate
acquaintance with the use of handcuffs induced him to surrender the
cattle he had stolen from Dingaan, the King of the Zulus.
Again Retief with a hundred followers waited upon Dingaan at
Umgungundhlovu, and after military displays on each side received from
him a grant of the same land which Chaka had already given to the
British pioneers of Durban. Next day the Boers were received in farewell
audience by Dingaan, by whose orders they were treacherously surrounded
and led out to the place of execution, a hill of mimosas outside the
royal kraal, where they were put to death.
There remained the defenceless plantations on the Tugela. Before the
news of the massacre could reach them, and while they were hourly
expecting the return of Retief, Dingaan's impis swooped down upon them
from Zululand. At the cost of the lives of 600 men, women, and children,
the tribes were driven back, and the little town of Weenen, the "place
of weeping," remains to mark the spot.
Soon other parties of emigrants came in from beyond the Drakensberg, and
in 1838 an expedition under Potgieter failed to punish Dingaan for his
treachery. Nor did an attempt to help the emigrants made by the British
settlers at Durban meet with success. A small force of Natal natives
under an Englishman named Biggar was greatly out-numbered at the mouth
of the Tugela and perished almost to a man. Dingaan retaliated by
sending an impi to Durban, which he held for a few days; the settlers
taking refuge on board a ship in the Bay.
The Boers were disheartened and many of them trekked back to the veld
beyond the Drakensberg passes, which is now the Orange River Colony.
Their position in face of Dingaan seemed hopeless; but in November,
1838, there came out of the Cape Colony one Pretorius. He had heard of
their distress, and he organized a force of 500 men, with whom, on
December 16, he successfully encountered Dingaan's army and slew 3,000
of his warriors at the Blood River, an affluent of the Buffalo. Dingaan
fled and the column marched on to Umgungundhlovu, where Retief's
mouldering body was found on the hill of mimosas, and on it the deed of
grant of land at Durban. Pretorius was ambushed by Zulus disguised as
cattle, crawling on all fours and wearing ox hides; but he escaped with
slight loss, and returned to the Tugela. "Dingaan's Day," December 16,
is kept by the Boers as a festival of thanksgiving and rejoicing.
Soon a new complication beset the harassed emigrants. In December, 1838,
the British Government, anxious to stop the wars between the Boers and
the natives and to exclude the former from the sea, sent one hundred
soldiers to Durban and issued a proclamation in which the Boers were
declared to be British subjects who had unlawfully occupied Natal, and
who were morally responsible for all the blood that had been shed. They
protested against the imputation and against the military occupation of
Durban, but took no active steps to resent the affront.
When twelve months had passed without hostilities between Boer and
native, the British Government withdrew its hundred warriors from Durban
and tacitly handed over Natal to the emigrant Boers. Hardly had the
little transport _Vectis_ catted her anchor when the Republic of Natalia
was proclaimed and its flag run up on the staff of the forsaken British
Camp on Durban Bay.
But the dog-in-the-manger policy of neither incorporating Natal in the
British Empire nor frankly allowing the Boers to occupy it could not be
indefinitely maintained. Each present difficulty wriggled out of made
the future more embarrassing. Soon, as might have been anticipated, the
Boers were again in trouble with the natives. Panda, the father of
Cetchwayo, whose impis forty years after washed their spears in the
blood of 800 British soldiers at Isandhlwana, broke away from his
brother Dingaan, taking with him into Natal many thousand Zulus who were
awaiting an opportunity of shaking themselves free from the tyranny and
cruelty of Dingaan. Panda made overtures to the Boers and was gladly
received as an ally, and with his help Dingaan was finally crushed and
driven into Swaziland, where, in the hands of a hostile tribe, he
perished miserably by torture.
The emigrants were now favourably situated in Natal. They had
established an equitable if not a legal claim to it; Dingaan was out of
the way; and the British Government seemed indisposed to inter-meddle.
But the fatal and grotesque alliance with Panda, which culminated in his
installation as King of the Zulus by Pretorius in 1840, and which was
entirely inconsistent with the attitude hitherto assumed towards the
natives, was the undoing of the trekkers of 1836.
Panda's men as native auxiliaries eager to avenge themselves on the
common enemy Dingaan were all very well in their way. Most of them,
however, belonged to Natal and joined him in the hope of recovering the
tribal lands from which they had been evicted by Chaka and to which they
had a better right than the trekkers.
The Boers now began to reap the harvest of the Panda alliance. They
regarded the new arrivals as intruders, refused to acknowledge their
claims, and finally in August, 1841, decreed their expulsion from Natal.
The location chosen for their settlement was a district in Pondoland in
the possession of a chief under British protection, who already had had
occasion to lodge at Capetown a complaint against the Boers.
The British Government now found it necessary to intervene again in
Natal. A military occupation was announced by proclamation in December,
1841, and 240 men, under the command of an infantry captain named Smith,
were sent up to Durban to give effect to it.
When Smith, after a difficult march along the coast, reached his
destination on May 4, 1842, he pitched his camp on the flat which forms
the base of one of the promontories enclosing the Bay. He at once
lowered the Republican flag flying over the block-house at the Point,
and soon found that 1,500 Boers were occupying Congella on the shore of
the Bay. An attempt to surprise them by night failed disastrously;
Smith's force was reduced to half its strength, and the block-house was
captured by Pretorius.
Smith was now besieged in his camp, and the nearest help that could come
to him was at Grahamstown, five hundred miles away. Thither a gallant
civilian named King, who was one of the pioneers, rode in ten days; and
on June 25, when the little garrison was in extremity, it was relieved
by sea. Pretorius withdrew into the interior, and the Volksraad at
Pietermaritzburg, the capital of the Republic of Natalia, voted the
submission of the Boers. Pending a final settlement it was allowed to
remain in authority over the settlers, but the district around Durban
Bay was at once taken over as British territory. In May, 1843, a year
after the landing of Smith, the Republic of Natalia passed away and
Natal was proclaimed a British Colony.
The final settlement did not come for some time. The Volksraad was
abolished, but the claims of the Boers to the lands upon which they had
squatted were liberally considered. They were, however, dissatisfied
because the rights of Panda's men were also regarded, and many trekked
away across the Drakensberg. Those who remained protested that their
lives and property were insecure in the presence of the natives, and
Pretorius was deputed to go and lay their grievances before the British
Governor at the Cape.
The ill success of his mission provoked him to reprisals, and he
proceeded to stir up trouble in the Orange River Sovereignty, which had
recently been formally proclaimed British Territory. If not actively
loyal it was peaceably disposed until the arrival of Pretorius, who soon
drove out the British Resident and the little garrison of Bloemfontein
and set them on the run as far as Colesberg in the Cape Colony. He was
defeated at Boomplatz in August, 1848, by Sir Harry Smith, a veteran of
the Peninsular War, and British authority was for a time reestablished
over the Sovereignty. The Colonial Office soon however tired of the new
possession and gladly scuttled out in 1854 in order to avoid the task of
reaping the harvest of a clumsy and grotesque policy, which it had
formulated a few years before, of hemming in the _voortrekkers_, who had
settled north of the Orange River, with a barrier of native states set
up for the purpose on the east and west; and which now threatened to
involve it in a quarrel which naturally arose between Moshesh, the
Basuto chief, and the emigrants whom he had been appointed to restrain.
Pretorius retired across the Vaal where he joined Potgieter, who, after
the failure of his attack on Dingaan in 1838, had gone into
Moselekatse's country and had driven him beyond the Limpopo. A Republic
was set up beyond the Vaal which the British Government recognized as
independent in the Zand River Convention of 1852.
Such is in brief the story of the Boers' claim to Natal. They considered
it to be their lawful heritage out of which they had been jockeyed, and
in October, 1899, they seemed to have a chance of recovering it. They
boasted that they would not only win back Pietermaritzburg, which was
named after two leaders of the Great Trek, Pieter Retief and Gert
Maritz, but that they would establish themselves on the shores of the
Indian Ocean. It was not the vainglorious gasconade of a swashbuckler.
Four months after October 11, 1899, when the Boer ultimatum expired, the
British Army was still engaged in endeavouring to drive out the Boers
from British territory, and hardly a rifle had been discharged in the
enemy's country.
Napoleon was in the habit of impressing upon his officers the necessity
of studying past campaigns, both modern and ancient; but those who
anticipated confidently that the Boer War would soon be brought to a
successful close by the British Army were led into their error by the
history of past campaigns. There was, however, one campaign, the War of
Independence in North America, which the discerning might have
recognized as an analogous struggle; but it was overlooked, and the
history of the great European conflicts was established as the leading
authority. The occupation of the populous places and the control of the
means of access to them, which seemed to present few difficulties, meant
the end of the war and the subsequent negotiations as to the amount of
the indemnity or other penalty to be paid by the defeated.
But not only were the necessary preliminary successes deferred far
beyond the expected time of their accomplishment--Bloemfontein was not
occupied until five months, nor Pretoria until eight months had rolled
by since that October dawn when the Boers crossed the frontier into
Natal--but the prospect of the end of the War soon began to recede into
the perspective of infinity: and even now, after an interval of some
years since the peace of Vereeniging, when, like the proportions of some
huge edifice which can be truly comprehended only by the observer who
views it from a distance, the various incidents and phases of the War
begin to assume their relative importance, the difficulty of discovering
some guiding principle which shall reconcile the Great Boer War with
other wars is as great as ever.
Sometimes a cause can be found _a posteriori_ by groping in the dim and
deceptive light cast by an effect: or a process of exhaustion and
elimination may be set up in which the qualities common to each side are
cancelled and the result attributed to the credit balance which will
appear under one of the accounts. We saw for some months a gallant and
well equipped if somewhat amorphous British Army impotently
endeavouring, though in superior numbers, to make headway against an
aggregation of Boer commandos, and checked at various points on an arc
drawn wholly in British territory and extending in a circuit of over 500
miles from Ladysmith in Northern Natal through Stormberg and Colesberg
to Kimberley and Mafeking; and at each extremity of the arc was a
besieged city. Was the military art as taught in Europe founded upon
error, or had the British Army been negligently instructed in it?
Yet no European troops had had so much recent experience of active
service. We had lately fought in the Soudan, in East and West Africa, in
Burmah and on the North-West frontier of India; there was in fact hardly
a year in the preceding decade in which the portals of the temple of a
British Janus would have been closed. Moreover, our fighting had not
been against trained soldiers, but against enemies who like the Boers
were undisciplined, collectively if not individually brave men
patriotically defending their own country. We therefore entered the
arena with experience which no other European Army possessed.
II. PATRIOTISM, DUTY, AND DISCIPLINE.
Many hard things have been said of Patriotism.[6] Dr. Johnson's
definition is well known, and more recently it has been styled the
sublimest form of Selfishness. These, however, are not definitions but
rather criticisms of certain phases of Patriotism, which is closely
allied to Family Affection and, like that sentiment, originates in the
helplessness and the egotism of the Individual.
The weak infant clings to his mother for sustenance, comfort and
protection, and the tender care which is bestowed upon him while his
body and his mind are developing fosters the notion of the subjective
importance of the human unit. Human nature is so constituted that the
Individual is disposed to over-estimate his own consequence and to
regard his own surroundings as superior to the surroundings of all other
persons, and therefore more worthy of recognition, encouragement, and
admiration. As the Child grows in years this sentiment is gradually and
unconsciously modified, but it is never wholly eradicated. The inward
emotion aroused in his heart by parental solicitude becomes partially
altruistic and outward and is transmuted into Gratitude and Love.
The Child emerges into Youth and thence into Manhood, and the area of
his immediate environment is enlarged. He needs further succour and
assistance, and the Family Community to which he belongs and which
nurtured and watched over his early years can no longer supply his
requirements. He is in want of new fellowships and must strengthen
himself by joining various bodies and associations. With these he
incorporates himself more or less and his friendly attitude towards them
for his own good is a development of the primitive Family Affection. In
the case of a class, a social, or professional community the sentiment
is termed _Esprit de Corps_;[7] in view of recognized civil institutions
by which he perceives that he benefits, it is Loyalty; while with
respect to the Fatherland it is Patriotism, which denotes the adherence
of the helpless individual Ego to the Supreme Community. Patriotism,
like Family Affection, is a growth and culture of the idea of Self. It
is the expression of the Individual's thanks for the support,
countenance, protection, and other moral and material advantages claimed
by him from the Supreme Community, to which in return he readily attorns
with respect and admiration. He is, however, patriotic because with
unconscious egotism he regards his Country as part of himself rather
than himself as part of his Country. Even the act of a man who
sacrifices his life for the good of his country may not be wholly
unselfish, for some natures are so constituted that they can discount
the future and be gratified by the prospective award of posthumous
honour. There can, however, be no doubt that Patriotism, though possibly
of not very noble origin, is a sentiment beneficial both to the
community and the individual, and is therefore worthy of encouragement.
Happily, those cold heights of philosophy on which every man is loved as
a brother and every nationality held in equal honour and esteem are
unattainable by human nature; for without the stimulus of Patriotism
National Life would be impracticable.[8] It's chief defect is that like
most of the emotions it is sometimes hasty and unreasoning.
Such, it is believed, is briefly the history of Patriotism, and the
theory is supported by the fact that the British soldier is not
patriotic by nature. It is not his fault. The class from which he is
usually drawn has unhappily less reason for respecting and admiring the
Supreme Community than any other class, for it participates fully in the
distresses and meagerly in the successes and good fortune of the Nation,
from which, though not actually unpatriotic, it stands sullenly aloof.
It can hardly be denied that the power and prosperity of Great Britain
have favourably affected the position of the upper and middle classes to
a greater degree than they have ameliorated the condition of the lower
classes, and it is therefore not surprising that the latter seem to take
little or no pride in their nationality, and sometimes even act
perversely in opposition to its interests.
The private soldier has never been taught to think about his country.
The education which he may have received at the Board School is not
calculated to arouse in him a feeling of national pride which is
non-existent in his home life. The display of the National Flag, which
flutters over so many distant lands, is discouraged in the primary
schools of Great Britain as tending to "flag-worship." In the United
States, on the other hand, the Stars and Stripes are hoisted in every
school yard. No systematic effort is made to interest the children of
the operative classes in Greater Britain. India and the Colonies are
facts in geography troublesome to learn and easy to forget. The history
of the British Empire is sterilized before it is imparted to them. They
are not taught to realize that the happiness and prosperity of a large
proportion of the inhabitants of the world are dependent upon the moods
of the population of a small group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, and
that in the ballot-boxes of Great Britain are cast the fortunes of many
millions of their fellow-creatures.
Foreigners have remarked that the minstrelsy of Great Britain is
singularly devoid of patriotic songs. The British soldier has no
"Star-Spangled Banner" or "Wacht am Rhein" to sing on the line of march
or in the bivouac, but only the last comic or sentimental ditty which he
may have heard at the Garrison Music Hall before embarking on active
service. The National Anthem is not a patriotic song but a prayer for
Divine Protection for the Sovereign, to which have been appended some
inappropriate stanzas now rarely heard; while "Rule, Britannia!" might
have been composed for the gasconading swashbuckler of an extravaganza.
It would therefore be surprising if the recruit joined the Army with a
highly pitched conception of the work he has undertaken. Destitution; or
trouble about a woman, or with his own people, or with the police; or
the mysterious magnetism of an adventurous life rather than the desire
to serve his country, has induced him to enlist. An existing or
prospective War always keeps the recruiting sergeant busy, but the
object of a War is a matter of indifference to the recruit. Most of our
wars have been waged for political reasons which he cannot understand.
Apart from the difficulties of language and of unaccustomed
environments, he would as readily serve in any other Army in which the
pay was as liberal and the restraint of discipline not more irksome. How
is it, then, that lacking the stimulus of Patriotism through no fault of
his own and being, in fact, a mercenary, he becomes an excellent
soldier; perhaps, next to the Turk, the best in Europe?
The answer seems to be that he soon acquires a high sense of Duty. Duty
may be defined as the necessity to do something for one's own or for the
general good which is not naturally pleasurable or agreeable or
instinctively desired. In the trite proverb it is contrasted with and
takes precedence of Pleasure. As a motive for action it stands on a
higher plane than Patriotism.
The alchemic process by which the indifferent, unemotional, and
sometimes unintelligent recruit is transmuted into the precious metal of
the soldier who wins battles seems to be somewhat as follows: Of his own
volition he has taken on a certain job and his dogged pride or obstinacy
will not allow him to be beaten by it, however little enthusiasm it may
arouse in him and however distasteful it may be to him at first. He
offers no "ca' canny" service, but plods on and does his best in his own
way. The lack of the enthusiastic temperament does not seriously retard
the progress of his military education, and without much ado he becomes
a stolid dependable unit of the Army. He is not carried away by success
nor unduly depressed by failure. His instincts tell him that they are
the accidents of Duty.
It has been noticed that the word Glory and its derivatives[9] rarely
appear in the accounts of the action of the British Army on service,
except in a War Correspondent's letter or telegram. No reference is made
in reports, orders or despatches to the so-called "glorious" incidents
of a soldier's life in time of war. He is commended for his endurance,
his tenacity and his matter-of-fact acceptance of the vicissitudes of
war as "part of the day's work." The truest Glory is the conscientious
performance of Duty.
If through the incompetence or neglect of his leaders he is called upon
to sacrifice himself, he sacrifices himself without a murmur. If he is
compelled to keep himself alive on scanty rations of horseflesh and to
wet his parched lips with the trickle of a dwindled and tainted spruit,
he believes that his officers have done their best for him. He is
ordered to fall in upon the deck of a burning troopship and to stand at
attention while Death inspects the ranks. He is besieged in a hill fort
on the Indian frontier by a horde of fanatics eager to kill or to
mutilate him. He lies wounded on the field of battle from which, after
an indecisive engagement, each combatant has retired; and there,
scorched by the mid-day sun and starved by the cold of the night, and
perhaps also in danger of being burnt alive by a veld fire, he waits
without water for the armistice which shall bring up the ambulances. He
returns to his own land where he soon finds that he is not of much
account. After a great war there may be a period of evanescent
patronage; or a deed of Dargai, Rorke's Drift, or Balaklava may have
temporarily thrilled the audience into Music Hall enthusiasm; but he is
not greatly impressed, and stoically reflects that like the battle, the
starvation, and the Field Hospital it is "all in the day's work" and
will soon pass away.
There has probably never been a struggle in which the private soldier
more fully earned the gratitude of his country than in the South African
War. The most unfriendly critics in the foreign staff offices have paid
tribute to the excellence of the British soldier: sometimes, however,
sneering at him as a mercenary, whom, by a curious perversion of the
probabilities, they profess to think unlikely to be as efficient as
their own conscripts who are forced into military service; but they
never hold him responsible for the ill-success of the war. Throughout
their criticisms there lurks a feeling of pained astonishment that the
British "mercenary" proves himself to be as good or even a better
soldier than the continental conscript, coupled with a comfortable
conviction that Discipline is not well maintained in the British Army.
The final cause of Discipline is the efficient use of arms on the field
of battle. Discipline is the result of an irksome educational process by
which a man is taught to submit his wishes, his instincts, and, to a
great extent, his personal liberty to the control of one who may be his
inferior morally, mentally, and physically. It has also been cynically
defined as the art of making a man more afraid of his own officers than
of the enemy. Its function seems to be the formation of certain military
qualities which Patriotism and the Sense of Duty are by themselves
believed incapable of creating. It has always been considered an
essential part of a soldier's training; but this view, though probably
correct, is not confirmed by the South African War, in which an
undisciplined force held its own for some years against greatly superior
numbers of disciplined men.
The ideal Army, patriotic, full of the sense of Duty, and perfect in
discipline, would be invincible; but such an Army has never yet been
seen. A deficiency of one or two of these qualities may be made up for
by a fuller measure of the others. The history of each war will seem to
indicate for a time the proportions in which the qualities should be
blended, which is the essential, and whether any one of them can be
omitted; but the inferences thus drawn from one war will probably be
found misleading in the next war.
The inference to be drawn from the South African War seems to be that
the value of those military qualities which are created by Discipline
and training has been over-rated, and that a passionate bigoted belief
in the justice of a cause is a more potent factor in the making of a
soldier. Even if every allowance be made for the strategical advantages
possessed by the Boers, of fighting in their own land on interior lines
in a sparsely populated country peculiarly adopted for _guerilla_, it is
difficult to account for their success if the tests by which the
efficiency of a European army is measured are applied to them. It may be
that war has hitherto been regarded too exclusively as a statical and
dynamical problem and that the moral element has been overlooked. It
certainly was overlooked in South Africa; for the war which Lord Roberts
in October, 1900, believed was practically at an end had in fact then
run little more than one-third of its course.
III. WAR CONSIDERED AS A BRANCH OF SPORT
The astonishment, distress, chagrin and bewilderment caused by want of
success, "regrettable incidents," and disasters, sometimes found
consolation during the South African War in the foolish remark--The
Germans would have done no better. What the German Army, which had not
been actively employed for twenty-eight years, might have accomplished
under the same conditions is a matter for sterile speculation which has
little bearing on the case. But the German Army certainly had not been
accustomed to look upon War as a branch of Sport or Athletics.
Owing in all probability to the happy fact in History that England has
not been invaded and over-run by a foreign army since the time of
William the Conqueror--an episode which had in the end an excellent
influence on the national life--she has never taken the military art
seriously. She alone, thanks to the protection of Providence, has never
been compelled to fight on her own fields for her existence as a nation;
she alone knows nothing even by tradition handed down from distant
generations of the appearance of an alien soldier on her shores.[10]
Some of her wars, as for example the successful struggle by which the
Napoleonic domination was broken up, have been fought for the purpose of
safe-guarding her independence, but they were not popular with the
people at large, whose short sight did not permit them to see that a
defensive war may have to be fought beyond the seas; and they had little
or no effect in evoking a patriotic military spirit. Napoleon's gibe
that the English were a nation of shopkeepers was not unasked for, and
is still seasonable.
On the other hand there are hundreds of thousands of persons on the
Continent of Europe who have seen, or who are the near descendants of
those who have seen, their fatherland ravaged; their homes destroyed;
their relations, friends, and neighbours slaughtered in the defence; the
tree of the national life maimed; and the full cup of the horrors of war
drained to its dregs.
To them the prospect of an invasion is not a remote contingency to be
considered and provided for at leisure after academical discussion, but
a real and instant danger from which only universal service, to which
fortunately for themselves they submit without much demur, as it could
not be enforced upon a reluctant community, can preserve them.
The possibility of invasion is the dominant anxiety of the land-frontier
nations.[11] Across the frontier they can see the conscripts drilling
who almost at a moment's notice may be marching in to attack them. Their
armies are not sent on interesting little expeditions to restrain a
too-militant tribe of hill-men or to patrol the distant marches of a
magnificent Empire, but must stand at attention generation after
generation, year after year, maintaining the featureless routine of
military life. None of the Romance of War that falls to the lot of the
British soldier--the service among strange Easterns in Asia, the
building up of a new imperial province in South Africa, the constant
change of scene along the posts which form a girdle round the world from
Hongkong to Jamaica--falls also to the lot of the continental conscript,
for whom there is only the dull waiting for the critical moment.
The land-frontier nations alone are aware of the reality of the Terror
of War; it is a Thing overshadowing and, apart from every other thing in
their world, which must not, cannot be expelled from their thoughts. The
objects that meet the eye on all sides speak of War; the railway
vehicles marked with the number of men and horses conveyable, the noble
war memorials, the officers constantly in uniform, the crowds of
soldiers in the streets, the military bearing and precision of even the
civilian servants of the State; while upon the ears falls the sound,
which is in most cases a lingering echo of the roar of war, of alien
tongues spoken within the frontier, or of the tongue of the Fatherland
spoken in exile without it.
On the other hand, Peace is believed to be permanently settled upon the
shore of the silver streak which encloses the British Isles. The war
monuments are scanty and not a few of them are grotesque; the soldier
and his work are thrust into the background, and his uniform is so often
a hindrance to him that on certain occasions he is permitted to appear
in plain clothes, that is to disguise himself as a civilian; and this
concession is officially termed a "privilege." The red tunic of the
soldier, like the red rays of the spectrum which cannot be brought into
focus with the other colours, fails to make a sharp impression upon the
British retina, but projects an ill-defined image seen through a medium
of doubt and indifference.
The nation looks upon the Army much as the individual looks upon the
Policeman, as a necessary institution, but one rather to be avoided and
kept in its place when its services are not actually in requisition.
Little interest is taken in its difficulties, its merits, and its
opportunities. It is regarded not as an indispensable protection, but
rather as an expensive result of possessions in all parts of the world,
and when the peace of these is in danger of being broken, the cry too
often belated goes up: Send for the Soldiers. Probably nothing less than
an actual landing of foreign troops or the scare of it so tremendous as
to drive the nation into the opposite and equally dangerous extreme of
consternation and panic will be necessary to shake its belief, that the
white cliffs of Albion are immune to an invasion in force.
The nightmare of Militarism by which so many worthy persons are
fanatically obsessed obscures the dangers against which Militarism is an
insurance. Now Militarism is not in itself a desirable thing, and the
developments and accidents of it upon the Continent of Europe are often
not only irksome and absurd but also irreconcilable with the existence
of a healthy feeling of self-respect in the non-military sections of the
community, who are taught to regard themselves as an inferior caste; but
with all its shortcomings it promotes the moral as well as the physical
strength of a nation. It calls up some of the nobler qualities of human
nature; self-control, self-reliance, endurance, and altruism or the
devotion of Self to the good of the community; and not the least of its
merits is that it corrects and restrains the dreary materialism of the
Labour and Socialist movements.
The shy and distant bearing of the British nation and its persistent
refusal to regard the Army as part of itself, in conjunction with the
growing national passion for Sport and Athletics, fostered the idea that
War itself must be a branch of them. From time immemorial the military
had been eyed with suspicion by the country, which professed to believe
that its liberties were in greater danger from its own soldiers than
from the soldiers of a foreign power, and which for a long time withheld
from its rulers the right of having a standing army. Gradually and with
great reluctance it was convinced of the necessity of a permanent force,
not so much for home defence as for the performance of the police duties
of an Empire. As the Empire grew year by year, these duties became more
onerous and responsible, but the Army itself was not taken seriously. It
was confessedly too weak to engage in a European campaign, and the Navy
was considered to be sufficient to protect the country against invasion.
The duties of the Army abroad were generally interesting and exciting
but they did not call for the exercise of the military art with great
precision, as the opponents which it was called upon to face were rarely
experts, and there was a comfortable belief that the bravery and
endurance of the British soldier would outweigh deficiencies in other
military qualities.[12]
The War-as-a-Sport idea was also encouraged by the opinion still stoutly
held by many persons that a good sportsman is necessarily a good
soldier, and that the qualities which ensure success in Athletics or
Sport make also for success in War: but this is true of certain of them
only. In so far as Athletics and Sport tend to manliness, self-reliance,
good comradeship, endurance of bodily hardship, and contempt of danger,
they are no doubt an excellent preparatory school for War. But there is
one quality without the possession of which no man is held to be a good
sportsman, and that is the acceptance of defeat or non-success with
equanimity and good-humour as "part of the game." Without this quality
Athletics and Sport would, in fact, become impossible.
In the soldier, however, this temperament is a dangerous gift. It led to
reverses, captures, loss of convoys and other "regrettable incidents"
being regarded with stoical composure as "part of the game"; and the
victims were condoled with on their "shocking bad luck." It would have
been difficult to discern from the bearing and demeanour of the typical
officer whether he was at the moment a prisoner of war in the Model
School at Pretoria, or had just taken part in the magnificent cavalry
charge by which Kimberley was relieved. The former plight did not
greatly depress him, nor did the latter phase of military life greatly
elate him. It is probable that the War would have been brought to a
successful close at a much earlier date if throughout the British Army
and especially among the officers hearty disgust and indignation at the
failures of the first few months had taken the place of a light-hearted
accommodation to circumstances. The companions of Ulysses may
With a frolic welcome take
The thunder and the sunshine,
but it is not War.
The British officer played at war in South Africa much in the same way
that he hunted or played cricket or polo at home. He enjoyed the sport
and the game, did his best for his own side, and rejoiced if he was
successful, but was not greatly disturbed when he lost. A dictum
attributed to the Duke of Wellington says that the Battle of Waterloo
was won upon the Playing Fields at Eton. It would not be so very far
from the truth to say that the guns at Sannah's Post were captured on
the polo-ground at Hurlingham; that Magersfontein was lost at Lord's;
that Spionkop was evacuated at Sandown; and that the war lingered on for
thirty-two months in the Quorn and Pytchley coverts.
The sporting view of War was recognized and confirmed in Army Orders and
official reports, in which the words "bag," "drive," "stop," and some
other sporting terms not infrequently appeared. No one would reasonably
object to the judicious and illuminating use of metaphor, but there are
metaphors which impair the dignity of a cause and degrade it in the eyes
of those whose duty is to maintain that cause. When the advance of a
British Division at a critical period in the operations is frivolously
termed a "drive," and when the men extended at ten paces' interval over
a wide front are called "beaters," it is natural that the leaders should
look upon their work as analogous to the duties of a gamekeeper; and
when an artillery officer is instructed to "pitch his shells well up,"
he is encouraged to regard failure as no worse than the loss of a
cricket-match.
It was at least to be expected that in the use, care, and management of
horses upon which the success of a campaign, in which mounted men formed
an unusually large proportion of the troops engaged, so much depended,
the sporting instincts of the British officer would have made him
particularly efficient; yet the evidence given by General officers
before the Royal Commission showed that it was otherwise. They are
practically unanimous in the opinion that all branches of the mounted
troops were inefficient, except the artillery, whose work so far as
horses are concerned is akin to that of the skilful but unsporting farm
teamster or wagoner.
A nation greatly addicted to Sport, Games, and Athletics is a nation
lacking in that earnestness of moral purpose which should be its chief
strength for War. Amusements are regarded not as "recreation" or means
of refreshing and re-invigorating the mind and body for the duties of
life by a temporary change of occupation, but as the main objective of
existence.
A retrospect into history will show that the most efficient armies were
those in which the sporting instinct was non-existent. The armies which
in modern times have most satisfactorily performed the duties for which
armies are raised were those of Gustavus Adolphus, Napoleon, Moltke, and
Oyama. Each of these was the most perfect military instrument of its
day, and their exploits have never been surpassed. Yet neither the
Swedes, the French, the Germans, nor the Japanese were addicted to
Athletics or Sport. Their manly instincts were exercised, to the great
advantage of their countries, in skill at arms and in the Military
Art.[13]
The cult of Sport and Athletics sets up false ideals and lowers the
intellectual standard. Thousands of loafers, idlers, and work skirkers
live upon the anticipations or recollections of out-door sports when not
actually present at them, and are ready to spend their last shilling at
the turnstile of the ground on which a handful of football gladiators
are at play: and are more exasperated by the defeat of the team which
they patronise in a Cup Tie match than they would be by the loss of a
battle by the British Army. There is this to be said for the working
classes, that in youth, if not longer, they in general endure a hard and
strenuous life, and at least in their school years they cannot indulge a
passion for amusement; whereas the class from which the officers of the
British Army are drawn is encouraged on the other hand to indulge it
from childhood. Owing to the prominence given in the Public Schools and
Universities to games and athletics and to the esteem in which
proficiency in these is held, youths of the upper middle and upper
classes are dumped upon the world not humbly but arrogantly ignorant of
almost everything necessary to qualify them to take their proper place
in the community. They have subsisted in a rarefied intellectual
atmosphere, and to fit themselves for any profession for which they may
have an inclination they have to be forced or "crammed" in a saturated
atmosphere by which they are congested. The result is that "young
officers now join the service with a very fair idea of cricket and
football, bridge, and even motor-driving; but with no education in
patriotism; no real acquaintance with the history or geography of their
own or other countries; unable to write English concisely, or even
grammatically;[14] unaccustomed to read general information for
themselves other than under the headings of the _Daily Mail_; unable to
talk a foreign language; and with no knowledge of the sciences which are
of military use."[15] To this may be added the fact that these young
dullards, the supply of whom is dwindling, are, on joining the service,
encouraged and accepted rather with reference to their sporting and
social qualities than to their military capacity.
England, as a sporting, athletic, and game-loving nation, has of late
years suffered many rebuffs. By the United States she has been taught
the scientific method of riding racehorses, and also of sailing yachts;
she has been defeated in polo by a Transatlantic team; her selected
representative horsemen are unsuccessful in the International Military
Tournaments; she cannot defeat Australia on the cricket field; a Belgian
crew holds its own at Henley. If these rebuffs tend to abate the mania
for watching the performances of a handsome but not particularly
intelligent quadruped, and for studying the various methods of imparting
motion to a Ball and to show the vanity of the passion for sports and
games when indulged to excess, they will have served their purpose. The
nation, disgusted at its want of success in its favourite pursuits, may
perhaps turn its manhood to the noblest pursuit of all, the defence of
the Fatherland; and then it will not be the betting and football news
that has to be blacked out of the daily papers in the free libraries,
but the bi-weekly military gazettes, the reports from the military
stations and the Special Correspondents' letters from Salisbury Plain
during the manoeuvres.
Notes:
[Footnote 2: In justice to the War Office it should be stated that this
was inserted at the instance of Sir Redvers Buller, who believed that he
would be able to raise in South Africa a sufficient force of mounted
troops.]
[Footnote 3: B. Viljoen in his "Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War"
frequently complains of the insubordination, the malingering, and the
cowardice of his followers, and of the incompetence of his superior
officers.]
[Footnote 4: "Kaffir" is an Arabic word meaning one who does not believe
in the religion of Mahomet. It was introduced into South Africa by the
Portuguese and subsequently applied to the tribes living on the N.E. of
the Cape Colony.]
[Footnote 5: Zilikat's Nek in the Magaliesberg is named after him.]
[Footnote 6: In its crudest and least admirable form Patriotism may be
expressed in the terms of an equation--
One Englishman=Two Aliens.]
[Footnote 7: _Esprit de Corps_ in the British Army is the predilection
of the individual for the unit in which he is serving. It creates a
healthy rivalry which, on the whole, makes for efficiency; but its
effects are sometimes unfortunate. A distinguished regiment was accused
of misbehaviour in one of the battles of the advance on Bloemfontein.
The charge was unfounded, but some of its hasty partisans, with the idea
of removing the reproach as far as possible from Self and forgetful that
the honour of the British Army is not contained in water-tight
compartments, endeavoured to transfer the imputation to another regiment
in the same brigade.]
[Footnote 8: The citizens of a Republic are usually more patriotic than
the subjects of a Monarchy. This may be accounted for by the fact that a
Republic is usually a new nation or a nation that has made a fresh start
and has not had time to get tired of itself.]
[Footnote 9: Lord Roberts once used the word "glorious."]
[Footnote 10: Except the French raid at Fishguard in 1797.]
[Footnote 11: The Franco-German War cost France £600,000,000 exclusive
of the loss from suspension of business and commerce.]
[Footnote 12: The attaché of a Great Power noticed in the South African
War an aversion to the tedious duties of outposts and reconnaissance,
and he remarks that "it is often openly stated by British officers that
it is better to get now and then into a really tight place by the
neglect of these duties than to have to endure the constant irksomeness
which they entail."]
[Footnote 13: Apart from the question of the relative importance of the
two services, it can hardly be denied that the British Naval Officer is
an asset more valuable to his country than his brother in the Army. The
social side of his character may be more rugged and less acceptable, but
as a rule he has had neither the time nor the inclination to fritter
away his manhood in sporting pursuits which do not make for proficiency
in his profession, and he therefore excels in it; in spite of trying
conditions which do not exist in any other calling, for with some
rhetorical exaggeration it may be said that in the lower ranks he is an
abject slave, in the higher an irresponsible despot.]
[Footnote 14: To the various courses, ranging from Balloons to
Economics, which are open to British Officers, might be added a course
in English Grammar and Composition, for the instruction of staff
officers and others who may have to formulate battle orders and despatch
important telegrams on active service. The art of composing a clear,
terse, and unambiguous order or telegraphic message is not studied in
the Army. Not a few telegrams of vital importance in the South African
War were composed by impressionist staff officers who lightly assumed
that what was present in their own minds must necessarily also be
present in the mind of the recipient. The author particularly remembers
a certain telegram from a staff officer of a column, in which it was
impossible to discover from the context whether the word "they" in the
concluding paragraph referred to British Columns or to Boer Commandos
previously mentioned.]
[Footnote 15: Major-General Baden-Powell, in _Cavalry Journal_, April.]
CHAPTER II
The Natal Wedge
[Sidenote: Map p. 50]
The northern section of Natal before the war[16] roughly assumed the
shape of a wedge driven in between the Transvaal and the Orange Free
State. The Drakensberg Range on the one side and the Buffalo River on
the other formed the cleaving surfaces, Majuba and Laing's Nek were the
cutting edge, and the base was the Tugela River.
In mechanics a wedge is an instrument which can be usefully employed
only under favourable circumstances. It has many disadvantages. It is
easily jammed. The driving power at the base must be considerable; much
of the force is absorbed by the friction on the surfaces; the progress
made is very slow; and if the surfaces encounter a more tenacious
material they will be perforated. A wedge is intended chiefly for
cleavage and disruption when less clumsy methods are not at hand.
The defects of a wedge as a mechanical power at once became apparent to
the British force which occupied Natal when war became inevitable. The
cutting edge was inaccessible and liable to injury which could not be
easily repaired; much trouble was anticipated from the presence of Boer
commandos in contact with the surfaces; the base did not appear to be
sufficiently well designed to receive the impact of the propelling
force; and there were grave doubts as to the soundness of the material
of which an important section of the wedge, namely Ladysmith, was
constructed.
It was therefore proposed by the military authorities that the Natal
wedge should not be used as an instrument in the war. To this the civil
government at Pietermaritzburg strongly objected on account of the evil
moral effect which the abandonment of a considerable proportion of the
Colony to the enemy would exercise upon the general situation in South
Africa, and of the loss of prestige which the evacuation would entail in
the minds of the natives, who numbered three-quarters of a million.
Under pressure from the Colonial Office, and against its own judgment,
the Army of Natal set itself to work upon the Wedge.
The mistake soon became manifest, although the artisans did their best.
The Wedge was not an effective instrument; its cutting edge was never in
operation; and in a very few weeks it was hewn into a mangled, cumbrous
and irregular mass, which could neither be advanced nor withdrawn and
which for nearly five months led a precarious and unhappy existence. Its
distress necessitated the recasting of the plan of the South African
campaign and a pernicious "moral effect" was not avoided. One British
Army besieged in an open town surrounded by heights, while another was
lying impotent upon the banks of the Tugela, eighteen miles distant, was
the result of a few weeks' work with the Natal Wedge, which had been
forced by the civilian strategists into the reluctant hands of the
troops.[17]
When Sir George White arrived in Natal on October 7 he found Sir W. Tenn
Symons carrying out the wedge policy of the Colonial Government. Part of
the latter's force was at Ladysmith and part was protecting the
collieries in the Dundee district. It was his intention to advance
northwards to Newcastle as soon as he was reinforced by the contingent
on its way from India, the full strength of which had not arrived at
Durban. The position at Dundee was strategically defective, as it was
exposed to a raid from the Transvaal border only twelve miles distant,
and it was actually further from the Orange Free State than Ladysmith.
Its defects as a tactical position were still more obvious as it was
commanded by hills.
Such, in a few words, was the situation with which White was called upon
to deal. He had two courses before turn; he could accommodate himself to
it or he could endeavour to modify it. He attempted the latter, and
failing he recurred to the former. He saw at once the insecurity of
Symons' detached force, but being unable to convince the Natal
Government of the necessity of withdrawing it he reluctantly allowed it
to remain.
Soon the Boer plan of campaign, which aimed at the isolation of the
British Troops in the wedge, began to unroll itself. Fourteen thousand
Transvaalers under Joubert, who had first tested the cutting edge by
sending a coal truck through the tunnel at Laing's Nek and who suspected
an ambush when he found it clear, were moving south on Newcastle, while
six thousand Free Staters under Martin Prinsloo were pouring through the
Drakensberg passes west of Ladysmith. The Natal Government now began to
feel uneasy about the safety of the colonial capital and even of Durban;
and informed White that undue importance had been attached to the
occupation of Dundee and that its retention was no longer desirable.
Thus in little more than a week White's original objection was
reconsidered and upheld. But again he allowed his better judgment to be
over-borne. Symons, whom he instructed to withdraw southwards unless he
felt his position to be absolutely secure, was at his own urgent request
allowed to remain. Next day, October 19, Elandslaagte, on the railway
between Ladysmith and Dundee, was occupied by a Boer commando, and it
was reported that 4,000 burghers were ready to cross the Buffalo River
at Jager's Drift during the night.
Symons' camp was pitched about a mile west of Dundee which lay between
it and Talana and Lennox Hills, which commanded the town from the east.
Some hours before sunrise on October 20 a British picket on Talana was
attacked. The incident was reported to Head Quarters, where it was not
deemed to be of much importance and the routine duties of the morning
were not interrupted. The artillery horses had been taken down as usual
to water, and some companies had even fallen in for skirmishing drill,
when the curtain of the morning mist upon the higher ground was raised
to the first scene in the Natal drama. The eastward hills, looming up
darkly into the brightening sky, were seen to be occupied in force by
the enemy under L. Meyer, and soon his shells were falling among the
tents.
The troops in camp, though taken by surprise, pulled themselves together
with admirable promptitude. The Boer guns were soon silenced, the
figures of men silhouetted along the sky line vanished, and the infantry
was ordered out to clear the hill. It was a formidable and dangerous
task, but it was facilitated by some of the features of the ground.
There was a dry river bed in which the troops could be formed up for
attack, and, half a mile beyond, a farmhouse and a plantation afforded
some cover; while a donga on the left at right angles to the river bed
apparently offered a covered way up the hill to the crest. In the
plantation occurred the first calamity of the war. Symons, who had come
up impatiently from the lower ground to hurry up the assault, which he
thought was being unnecessarily delayed, was mortally wounded. Three
days later he paid with his life for his adherence to a forward policy
in tactics as well as in strategy; and the command devolved upon Yule.
The donga on the left was found to be useless, as it led nowhere; and
the advance was made directly from the plantation towards a wall running
along the foot of the hill. Here a long halt was made in order to
reorganize the attack, and when the word was given the men pressed
forward and threw-themselves upon the rough front of the acclivity after
a rush across an open slope. The crest was attained and carried without
much difficulty; for all but a few stalwarts had quitted it when they
saw the British bayonets pricking upwards towards their hold.
It seemed now that the victory was won, but an unfortunate mistake
postponed it. The two field batteries on the plain, which had ceased
fire before the final infantry rush, changed position and came under a
heavy fire from the Boers who were still in possession of a section of
the Talana ridge. The light was bad and the guns re-opened upon the
crest line in the belief that the whole of it was still occupied by the
enemy. The practice was excellent, and in a brief space both sides were
driven off the hill by the shrapnel. A subsequent attempt to take it was
successful. The result of the battle, which lasted from sunrise until 2
p.m., might have been reversed but for the inaction of the main Boer
force posted on Lennox Hill under L. Meyer, and of another force on
Impati under Erasmus, who, though he could hear the noise of battle
pealing through the mist which lay upon the hill, abstained from
intervening.
The whole Boer force was now in full retreat along the line by which it
had advanced so silently the night before, and Yule ordered the two
field batteries up to the nek between Talana and Lennox to pound the
retreating burghers as they slowly trekked towards the Buffalo River;
but again an unfortunate misapprehension intervened. The officer in
command, being under the impression that an armistice asked for by Meyer
two hours before had been granted, refrained from opening fire and the
Boers escaped untouched. A serious misadventure marred the success of
the day. The 18th Hussars, who at the commencement of the action
received orders to hold themselves in readiness to advance when occasion
offers, soon appeared to the restless general to be losing their
opportunity, and were hustled into activity. They charged in various
directions and even made some prisoners; but one squadron lost its way
and was captured in an attempt to ride round Impati by a detachment of
Erasmus' force at a farm where it had taken refuge.
The fight for Talana Hill encouraged each belligerent. In England it was
received as an indication of the early and successful termination of the
struggle. The Boers regarded it as a reconnaissance in force from which
they had returned with slight loss, and they could boast that they had
reaped the first fruits of the harvest of war; a squadron of British
cavalry which, with the commanding officer of the regiment, was at once
dispatched into captivity at Pretoria, where its arrival was accepted as
a proof of a great Boer victory in Natal.
Talana Hill regarded as an isolated event in the Natal campaign was a
distinctly successful encounter, the credit of which is due entirely to
the infantry engaged in it. Twice the artillery blundered, and the
cavalry was inoperative. The extent of the loss suffered by the Natal
Field Force in the death of Symons must always be a matter for
speculation. But it is at least probable that if he had survived to take
part in the subsequent operations, his ardent, impetuous, Prince Rupert
like temperament would have beneficially impregnated with greater
audacity the stolid and ponderous tactics and strategy of the Natal
campaign.
The unreality of the Talana Hill victory soon became apparent. The
threat of Erasmus sitting on Impati still impended, and Yule moved his
camp next day to a site which he believed to be out of range. But in the
meantime Erasmus awoke from his trance and, on the afternoon of October
21, opened fire with a six-inch gun,[18] and again Yule was compelled to
shift his camp. He had already asked for reinforcements, but White was
unable to spare them, and recommended him to fall back upon Ladysmith.
Next day Yule was encouraged by the news of a British success at
Elandslaagte; and with the object of intercepting the Boers who were
reported to be retreating on Newcastle, he endeavoured to seize Glencoe,
but Erasmus on Impati forbade the movement.
Shortly before midnight on October 19, Kock, a Free Stater who commanded
a force chiefly composed of foreign auxiliaries and who was working
southwards from Newcastle, sent on an advanced party to swoop down upon
the railway between Ladysmith and Glencoe, and Elandslaagte station was
seized. Early next morning Kock came in with his main body. White at
first made no serious attempt to clear the line beyond sending out a
reconnoitring force which he soon recalled, as he was reluctant to
employ troops away from the immediate neighbourhood of Ladysmith, which
had been already threatened on the N.W. by Free State commandos.
The news however of Yule's success at Talana changed the situation and
seemed to justify a more forward policy; and early in the morning of
October 21 French was sent out to re-occupy Elandslaagte and repair the
line. Although he succeeded in driving the enemy out of the railway
station and in holding it for a very brief period, he found himself
outclassed in artillery and too weak to stand up to the Boers, and
withdrew a few miles southward; at the same time asking White to
reinforce him. It was reported that Kock expected shortly to be
reinforced.
The main Boer position was on the northern limb of a horseshoe
arrangement of kopjes which develops close to the railway station and
swings round southwards and westwards, at an elevation generally about
300 feet above the normal level of the ground. Two posts were also held
north of the railway. The southern limb of the horseshoe was lightly
held, and against it French, without waiting for the arrival of all his
reinforcements, moved with his mounted troops, and easily cleared it.
Here he was joined by the Manchester Regiment, one of the battalions of
the brigade of infantry sent out by White under the command of Ian
Hamilton, and established himself on the left flank of the Boer position
on the two kopjes on the northern limb of the horseshoe.
The other two battalions, the Devonshire Regiment and the Gordon
Highlanders, simultaneously came into position, the former for a frontal
attack, and the latter as a reserve acting in the interval between the
Manchesters and the Devons; while the artillery advanced between the two
limbs and shelled the enemy's position on the kopjes. The artillery
preparation enjoined by the regulations had, however, to be curtailed
owing to the approach of night, but not before the two Boer guns on the
southern kopje were silenced; and then the main attack was delivered.
The Boers on the kopjes were reinforced by a body of German auxiliaries
under Schiel, who had been driven out of a position north of the railway
by the cavalry acting on the left and who circled round to the main
position, but the reinforcement did not avail them. Hardly pressed on
their left, they were unable to withstand the frontal charge of the
Devons led by Hamilton in person. The guns were captured and the
position occupied at sunset. By this time most of the Boers were in
retreat and their tracks were made devious by the cavalry, which so long
as light remained harried them hither and thither.
Suddenly a white flag was seen fluttering near the laager between the
kopjes. There is no reason to believe that it was treacherously raised,
but it compelled Hamilton to order the Cease Fire. Yet at once half a
hundred Boers started up and rushed as a forlorn hope upon the crest: a
remnant of stalwarts, who even succeeded in firing a round or two from
the guns which had just been taken from them. There was a moment or two
of doubt and bewilderment, but Hamilton with the help of a few junior
officers rallied the waverers, and earned the Victoria Cross, which on
account of his high military rank was withheld from him; the guns were
recovered, the laager rushed, and the tactical victory was complete.
Elandslaagte was as unreal a victory as Talana. The troops had not
rested many hours in their bivouacs on the ridge before they received
orders to return without delay to Ladysmith, which was still threatened
from the west by the Free State commandos; and by noon on October 22 not
only had Elandslaagte been hurriedly evacuated, but stores, ammunition
and even some prisoners had been left behind in the scuttle. Next day it
passed without effort into the possession of a small body of Free
Staters, who were astonished to find it abandoned.
Meanwhile Yule after the failure of his movement on Glencoe found his
position insecure and reluctantly resolved to retire on Ladysmith,
although it entailed leaving not only his supplies and ammunition but
also his wounded behind him. The victory of Talana had indeed been won
but the victors were exhausted by it and unfit to stand up to Erasmus on
Impati. It became necessary for Yule to disappear immediately and
stealthily.
On October 23 soon after midnight the maimed and harassed force slipped
quietly away and trudged wearily to the south. When the mist rolling
aside next morning disclosed the evacuation the Transvaalers on Impati
occupied the town almost simultaneously with the reoccupation of
Elandslaagte by their allies the Free Staters; and thus the battlefields
of two British victories were redeemed by the defeated. It is no
reproach to Yule that military necessity compelled him to leave behind
the wounded of Talana Hill. The death of Symons on October 23 was a
pathetic episode of the Natal Campaign. He passed away of his mortal
wound while the Boers were looting the camp in which he was lying and
wondering, in the rare intervals of conscious thought, why the troops
whom he had led so gallantly had been taken from him; and for half a
year his grave lay lonely in the enemy's country before another British
soldier could stand beside it.
The retreat of Yule's force was effected without more trouble than that
which was caused by the nature of the country and the alternations of
the climate. Van Tonder's Pass--a difficult defile which would have been
impassable under opposition--was crossed, and a sudden spate on the
Waschbank river only temporarily checked the retirement. A column was
sent out from Ladysmith by White to check the Free Staters who had
re-occupied Elandslaagte and to prevent them falling on Yule, and on
October 24 they were engaged with success at Rietfontein. The sound of
the artillery in this action was audible to Yule on the Waschbank, but
he was unable to account for it.
On the afternoon of October 25 Yule was within one day's march of
Ladysmith. He proposed to halt for the night; but suddenly a patrol from
a column sent out by White to help him in appeared, and he received
orders to press forward to Ladysmith.
The exhausted men resumed their march, and the misery of that night's
journey was probably never exceeded during any subsequent movement in
the war. Sodden, hungry, weary, disheartened; men and transport animals
inextricably intermingled; the column plodded onwards in the rain and
the night. A halt at daylight next morning brought in some of the
stragglers and gave a little rest to those who were still in the ranks;
and by mid-day the men of Talana Hill had trudged into Ladysmith.
The urgency of the immediate resumption of the march had arisen from
White's anxiety for the safety of Yule's force. Rietfontein had indeed,
like Talana and Elandslaagte, been a tactically successful engagement
and had similarly been followed by a retreat; but Yule was exposed to an
attack by Erasmus, to whom he had given the slip at Dundee during the
night of October 22 and who was known to be endeavouring to overtake
him. Erasmus was believed to be acting from the direction of
Elandslaagte; but fortunately for Yule his movements were not
judiciously directed and his information was imperfect.
[Sidenote: Map, p. 139.]
All the detached members of the Natal Wedge had now been driven in and
the reconnaissances sent out by White on October 27 and the following
days showed that the Boers had lost no time in pressing on to Ladysmith.
The Transvaalers were apparently in force N.E. of the town on a section
of the arc in which Lombard's Kop, Long Hill, and Pepworth Hill were the
chief physical features; the Free Staters were approaching from the N.W.
and a small force of them under A.P. Cronje was already in touch with
the Transvaalers; their main body, however, seemed to be making for the
Tugela in order to isolate Ladysmith from the south. On October 29 White
assumed the offensive with the greater part of his command, and
endeavoured to cut through the still unconsolidated investing line and
to thwart the co-operation of the allies.
The general idea was that an infantry brigade, supported on its right
flank by cavalry acting towards Lombard's Kop, should attack the enemy,
who was presumed to be in force on Long Hill and Pepworth Hill. On the
left flank of the attack a column would endeavour to pass through the
Boer line, and having seized Nicholson's Nek due north of Ladysmith
would either close it against the retreating enemy or hold it as a post
through which a mounted force could debouch in pursuit on to the more
practicable ground beyond.
Some difficulty in drawing and loading up ammunition delayed the start
of the column, which under the command of Carleton was to secure the
left flank of the operations; and fearing that daylight on October 30
would find his vulnerable force still on the march he determined soon
after midnight to halt short of Nicholson's Nek, from which he was then
two miles distant. He had succeeded in passing through the enemy's
picket line, and was perhaps not justified in discontinuing his advance,
although his instructions were to take Nicholson's Nek only "if
possible." But an error of judgment made by a commanding officer on a
dark night in a strange country acting under instructions which left him
a free hand must not be judged severely, and had it not been for a
disaster which could not be foreseen, he would probably have been
commended for his prudence.
Kainguba Hill, which rises on the left of the road to Nicholson's Nek,
seemed to offer a suitable stage on the journey and towards it the
column was diverted. While the men were climbing the steep and stony
hillside a panic suddenly seized the transport mules. It may have been a
spontaneous emotion, or it may have originated in an alarm raised by the
Boers who were holding the crest. The animals stampeded down the slope,
and carrying with them not only the reserve ammunition but also the
signalling equipment, the water carts, and the component parts of the
mountain artillery, charged through the rear of the column. The timely
exertions of the officers checked the general scare that was imminent;
and with the exception of a few score of infantry men and gunners the
column reached the summit before daybreak, having lost almost everything
needed for a successful occupation of it.
Misfortune continued relentlessly to pursue the column. A position was
taken up on the hill on the supposition that it could only be attacked
from the south, but at daylight C. de Wet, who here came upon the stage
which afterwards he often filled so effectively, threatened it from the
north with a Free State commando. A gesture made by an officer in order
to attract attention was interpreted as a signal to retire; another
officer thinking that his company was left alone on the summit, though
it was in fact within seventy yards of an occupied sangar, raised the
white flag; and almost at the same moment a bugle sounded the Cease
Fire. Neither the white flag nor the bugle call was authorized by
Carleton; but a glance at the situation showed him that they could not
be repudiated and after a gallant struggle to maintain an indefensible
position he surrendered. Nearly a thousand men were led away into
captivity.
The main infantry attack was made by a force of five battalions with six
field batteries under the command of Grimwood. He marched out of
Ladysmith soon after midnight, but had not covered half the distance to
the point of attack when an unfortunate incident deprived him of all his
artillery and of two of his battalions. The guns marching in the centre
of the column and acting under orders which were not communicated to
Grimwood, diverged to the right and were followed by the two battalions
in rear; and the absence of nearly half the force was not discovered by
him until daybreak, and after he had taken up the position assigned
south of Long Hill. Daybreak also revealed the fact that Long Hill which
was assumed to be the Boer left was not occupied, and that Long Tom from
Impati had been emplaced on Pepworth Hill. The cavalry brigade under
French upon whom Grimwood relied to protect his right flank was two
miles away in his rear; and finding himself attacked on that flank
instead of from the front he was compelled to swing round and almost
reverse his front. Thus far the general scheme of attack had signally
failed. Carleton on the left had not reached Nicholson's Nek and was in
trouble; Grimwood with nearly half of his command gone astray, and
having discovered that the enemy's left was not on Long Hill but on
Lombard's Kop, had to improvise a scheme of his own; while French
instead of conforming to Grimwood was compelling Grimwood to conform to
him. At 8 a.m. Grimwood was suffering severely from artillery fire, and
French whose cavalry now prolonged Grimwood's line southwards was with
difficulty holding his own. The enemy, whom the general idea destined to
be outflanked and rolled up towards the north and pursued by mounted
troops issuing from Nicholson's Nek, was instead attacking vigorously
from Lombard's Kop on the east and seemed likely to outflank White; the
infantry reserves under Ian Hamilton were almost expended; and the
British artillery was unable to silence the Boer guns.
All through the forenoon Ladysmith and the little garrison left behind
for its defence was the target of Long Tom on Pepworth Hill. The
fugitives from Kainguba brought in disheartening reports and the Boers
seemed to be threatening from the north. W. Knox, a Horse Artillery
officer who had been left in command, anticipated an attack which he had
little chance of meeting successfully with the scanty force at his
disposal and sent an urgent message to White, who at noon ordered the
battle to be broken off and the troops to retire to Ladysmith.
The retreat was effected in confusion. Grimwood's force was the first to
be withdrawn and was saved from disaster by the gallant stand made by
two field batteries as it crossed the level ground. The cavalry
scampered home in Grimwood's track. A dramatic episode brought the
battle of Lombard's Kop to a close. Just as the baffled troops were
entering Ladysmith a battery of naval guns, which had arrived from
Durban that morning and had gone immediately into action, succeeded in
silencing Long Tom and some other guns on Pepworth Hill, nearly four
miles distant. In the evening Joubert sent in a flag of truce to White
to announce Carleton's surrender.
The Natal Wedge disappeared in the smoke of the battle of Lombard's Kop
and was never again heard of as an instrument in the Natal campaign. The
Boers filled the gaps in the investing line without difficulty, and on
November 2 the Siege of Ladysmith began. The last man to leave the town
was French, who went forth to win honour on distant fields.
Notes:
[Footnote 16: In 1902 the Vryheid and Utrecht districts of the Transvaal
were annexed to Natal and the wedge disappeared.]
[Footnote 17: They were indeed authorized as early as October 18 to
throw it aside but by that time they were committed to its use.]
[Footnote 18: "Long Tom," which was afterwards sent to Ladysmith and
subsequently to bombard Rhodes in Kimberley.]
[Illustration: Sketch map of Northern Natal.]
CHAPTER III
Deus Ex Machina No. I
The arrival of Sir Redvers Buller at Cape Town on October 31, 1899, the
morrow of the battle of Lombard's Kop, encouraged the despondent at home
and in Cape Colony.[19] Twenty years previously he had distinguished
himself in the command of a Boer contingent which served with the
British Army during the Zulu campaign; and it was doubtless from the
experience then gained that he formed the opinion that the war which he
was now called upon to direct, could be brought to a successful
conclusion only "by the actual conquest of every man in the field: a
task doubly difficult owing to the extreme mobility of the enemy."
In his first telegram to Lord Lansdowne he described the situation as
one of "extreme gravity."
White, with five-sixths of the British Troops in South Africa, was shut
up in Ladysmith; a month at least must elapse before the Expeditionary
Force, which the British Government had on September 22 decided to send
out, would be able to take the field; Mafeking was besieged; the diamond
men of Kimberley, like a passionate child interned in a dark room, were
screaming for release; Sir Alfred Milner was pleading that the defence
of the Cape Peninsula, an area of a few thousand square miles as far
removed from the front as Marseilles is from Berlin, must be first
attended to; President Steyn had overcome his scruples and was sending
Free State commandos across the Orange River into the Cape Colony at
Bethulie and Norval's Pont; the disaffected colonials were restive; and
the fall of Ladysmith, which seemed probable, would lay Natal open from
the Tugela to the Indian Ocean.
It was a dismal outlook; but Buller, after a few days' review of the
situation, was able to report that in his opinion the opposition would
probably collapse when Kimberley and Ladysmith were relieved. His
optimism at Capetown was destined soon to be superseded by pessimism on
the Tugela. He compared himself to a man who, having a busy day before
him, has overslept himself. The original plan of campaign, a march on
Pretoria through the Free State, had necessarily to be postponed; and
the important railway junctions at Naauwpoort and Stormberg were too
weakly held and too liable to investment by the Free State commandos
which had crossed the Orange to justify their retention, and the little
garrisons were withdrawn. To Gatacre and French, who had just escaped
from Ladysmith, was assigned the duty of holding the centre, while Lord
Methuen advanced to the relief of Kimberley.
It was, however, the situation in Natal which gave the most anxiety to
Buller. The Free State commandos which had been seen passing Ladysmith
shortly before the investment were now at Colenso, having driven back to
Estcourt the small British force which was all that was left to stem the
tide of an invasion. The Free Staters, fortunately, were not active and
delayed to avail themselves of the opportunity. When at length, after
eleven days of inertia, L. Botha persuaded Joubert to undertake an
offensive movement south of the Tugela, it had passed away, as Estcourt
had in the meantime been reinforced by troops from England under the
command of Hildyard.
Encouraged by the capture of an armoured train at Chieveley, Joubert
advanced south in two bodies, one on each side of Estcourt, and seized
the railway at Highlands, thus cutting off Hildyard's communication with
Pietermaritzburg; and Hildyard having no cavalry was unable to touch
him. The raid, which for a time seemed dangerous, was however soon
checked by troops coming up from the south under Barton, and Joubert
found himself pressed between two forces each as strong as his own.
After an action at Willow Grange, which each side claimed as a victory,
Joubert, fearing lest he should be cut off, retired unpursued, against
the wishes of the more pushful and energetic Botha, who was in favour of
an advance on Pietermaritzburg.
The alarms and excursions of October and November were the cause of the
dissolution of a military apparatus which had been put together at home
with much care and thought, and which had never yet been seen in
warfare. Its designers and constructors were proud of it and they looked
forward with confidence to its successful working. The apparatus was the
British Army Corps. It was taken to pieces as soon as it reached South
Africa; but fortunately the ties, ligaments, and braces which held it
together yielded to slight pressure and little difficulty was
experienced in resolving it into its constituent elements. The more
important of these were despatched to Natal and the rest were
distributed over the western and central commands.
Buller, perhaps leaving the pessimistic atmosphere of Capetown with
relief, went by sea to Durban, the defence of which was entrusted to the
Royal Navy, and reached Pietermaritzburg on November 25. By this time
the situation had improved all along the line, and it seemed that it
might still be possible to resume the original plan of a central advance
on Bloemfontein and Pretoria as soon as Ladysmith was relieved. The Boer
raid towards southern Natal which caused so much consternation had been
easily foiled and British troops were now at Frere.
Buller, soon after his arrival in Natal, found himself in command of a
force of 19,000 men with whom to tackle about 21,000 Boers under the
command of L. Botha. Joubert was invalided after the unsuccessful
Estcourt raid, and the change was, from the enemy's point of view, for
the better. The new Head Commandant was a more strenuous and active
leader than his predecessor.
Little was known of the topography of the country in which Buller was
about to operate. It had never been systematically surveyed, and the
existing maps had been constructed for agricultural rather than for
campaigning purposes, and could not be trusted. The Tugela formed the
ditch of a natural fortress covering Ladysmith. On its left bank rose an
almost continuous ridge or rampart from which the easy open ground on
the right bank could be watched for miles, and reconnaissances kept at a
distance.
Reconnaissances were, however, not needed to prove to Buller that
Colenso, where the railway passed up into the Tugela ridge, was immune
to a frontal attack, and that Ladysmith must be relieved by a turning
movement. Two alternatives offered themselves. The advance might be made
through Weenen and across the Tugela some distance below Colenso, and
thence to Elandslaagte, where the Boer line of communication with the
Transvaal might be cut; but to Ladysmith this was a circuitous route. It
also would necessitate the traversing of a rough bush country, into
which Buller was reluctant to throw raw troops just off the transports
who had not yet heard the sounds of war.
He therefore decided upon a westerly flank march by way of Potgieter's
Drift, twenty miles west of Colenso; and once on the left bank of the
Tugela he would be within a day's march of Ladysmith and the railway
into the Free State. White was heliographically consulted, and all the
arrangements for an advance on December 11 were made. The force had even
been set in motion when certain disturbing news came out of the west.
Gatacre had suffered a reverse at Stormberg, and simultaneously Methuen
had been roughly handled at Magersfontein, and was unable to continue
his march on Kimberley.
The strategic timidity of Buller and his curious habit of allowing
himself to be influenced by psychological probabilities were at once
apparent. The anticipated moral effect of these successes upon the enemy
swayed him back to the plan which a day or two previously he had
rejected as impracticable. The plan of a flank march by way of
Potgieter's Drift was thrown aside. It might have been justifiable in
the presence of a dispirited enemy; but now the burghers on the Tugela
had been suddenly encouraged by news of victories won on two widely
separated scenes of action and were no doubt anxious to rival the
exploits of their comrades far away.[20] The flank march would expose
the army to the danger of being cut off by a quickened and revived foe,
and Buller determined not to run the risk. On December 12 he ordered an
advance on Colenso.
The course of the war in the western and central scenes of action up to
the time of the two defeats which caused Buller to revise the plan of
campaign for Natal must now be traced.
[Sidenote: Map p. 260.]
The force of nearly 10,000 men under Lord Methuen detailed by Buller for
the relief of Kimberley, advanced from De Aar and Orange River Bridge
along the railway. At Belmont a body of Free Staters under Jacob
Prinsloo was found strongly posted on the heights east of the line, and
although reinforced by Delarey from Kimberley, it was unable to hold to
its positions, and was compelled to retreat eastwards on November 23.
Prinsloo withdrew with his Free Staters across the border, but was
persuaded by Delarey, who had fallen back on Graspan about eight miles
N.E. of Belmont, to rejoin him; and a favourable position was occupied
on a group of kopjes astride the railway, where on November 25 another
battle was fought, in which the Naval Brigade suffered a loss of nearly
half its strength. The enemy, though driven back, retreated in good
order, as at Belmont two days previously, there being no cavalry
available for effective pursuit. Methuen pushed on to Witkoplaagte.
The Boers were greatly discouraged by Belmont and Graspan, where, as at
Talana and Elandslaagte, they had been ejected from strong kopje
positions chosen by themselves. The moral was not lost upon Delarey, who
determined to try whether a better stand could not be made in a river
position, and selected the junction of the Modder and the Riet for the
experiment. His idea was not so much to dispute the passage of the river
as to use the deep channels as covered ways and as natural trenches from
which the plain could be grazed by rifle fire. The Modder after
approaching the Riet changes its direction abruptly three tunes above
the junction, enclosing a diamond-shaped area which provided the Boers
with a ready-made perimeter camp.
[Sidenote: Map. p. 59.]
Methuen, thinking that the enemy would as before select the good kopje
position which offered itself on Spytfontein halfway to Kimberley,
determined to diverge from the railway with the greater part of his army
and circling through Jacobsdaal, Brown's Drift and Abon's Dam to attack
Spytfontein in flank, where he had little doubt that he would find the
Boers in position; but Modder River, which he was inclined to believe
was only held as an advanced post, must first be taken. Delarey had been
joined by P. Cronje, who unperceived by Methuen's cavalry came in with a
body of Transvaalers from Mafeking, and was in occupation of the loop
between the rivers.
At sunrise on November 28 Methuen advanced from his camp at Witkoplaagte
six miles south of the river. The fight began under misapprehensions on
each side. Methuen believed that only the river bank above the railway
bridge was held in force; while he was credited by his opponents with
the intention of crossing the Riet River by Bosnian's Drift of which he
did not know the existence.
Everything promised well for Delarey and Cronje, but they made little
use of their opportunities. Methuen fought in the dark, and whenever the
Fog of War lifted, found that the situation had changed. He attacked the
Modder as the opening move of his flank march on a mythical position on
Spytfontein and suddenly discovered before him, not a mere advanced post
to be checked or masked, but an enemy holding a well-entrenched and
defended front several miles in length. The maps at his disposal did not
shew the extraordinary windings of the two rivers over part of the area
on which he was engaged, and some of the reaches were only discovered
when they tripped up the advancing troops. The result of a hard day's
work, in which Methuen was wounded, was the capture of Rosmead, a
village on the right bank below the railway bridge. The troops of the
right attack did not succeed in crossing the river, and an attempt to
work up the right bank from Rosmead failed. What effect the battle would
have upon the situation, and whether on the whole it had been a success
for Methuen, were not apparent at nightfall. The question was answered
next morning when it was found that the Boers had retired to Jacobsdaal.
Next day the British troops took up a position north of the river.
So far, the Kimberley relief force had done its work well. The obstacles
in its way at Belmont, Graspan, and Modder River had been thrust aside,
and it was now within two easy marches of its destination. It seemed
therefore that in three days at the most, allowing one day for another
battle, it would be reported to Buller as having finished its task: and
had the necessity been urgent the relief could no doubt have been
effected within that time. Kimberley, however, appeared able to take
care of itself for a few weeks, and Methuen halted for twelve days at
Modder River in order to receive supplies and reinforcements, and to
strengthen his slender and vulnerable line of communication with the
south. He still believed that the Boers would make their next stand at
Spytfontein.
The Boers remained but a few days at Jacobsdaal. After a council of war
at which Cronje declared himself in favour of remaining there as a
menace to the British line of communication which would attract Methuen
to the town, a movement which Methuen himself had had in mind; while
Delarey advocated the taking up of a position between the Modder River
and Kimberley; the plan of the latter was adopted and the Boer forces
trekked northwards to Spytfontein. They found, however, that between
Spytfontein and the river, the Magersfontein group of kopjes would
afford excellent positions to Methuen from which Spytfontein could be
attacked.
During Methuen's halt at Modder River Delarey and Cronje received
considerable reinforcements. From Natal, from the Basuto border, and
from Kimberley, commandos were summoned to Spytfontein. That position
was, however, for the reason just stated, insecure; and on the December
4 the Magersfontein position was taken up and prepared for defence by
Delarey. A low arc stretching from the position towards the Modder was
discovered, from which a flanking fire could be poured in upon a frontal
attack.
With an unerring instinct which was more useful to him than most of the
knowledge he could have acquired in a European Staff College, and with
an originality which if it had been displayed by a young British officer
in an examination for promotion would probably have injured that
officer's prospects, Delarey dug his trenches not at the foot of the
hill but in sinuous lines some little way in advance of it, by which he
gained the power of meeting an attack with grazing or skimming fire, and
which also removed the firing line from physical features on which the
British guns could be laid. It is said that he manned the works on the
slope with burghers firing black powder so as to draw the enemy's fire
away from the trenches in which only smokeless powder was used.
[Illustration: Modder River and Magersfontein.]
Methuen obtained little information during his halt at Modder River. The
country was so much intersected by the wire fences of the farms that
cavalry scouting was difficult. He decided to make a direct frontal
attack upon Magersfontein on December 11 after a bombardment on the
previous evening; and here, as at Colenso, the text-book preliminary
shrapnel practice put the enemy on the alert and did no harm. It greatly
encouraged the burghers in their trenches. Only three men were touched
by the projectiles hurled by the naval, howitzer, field, and horse
batteries; and an impending infantry advance was clearly indicated. To
the Highland Brigade under Wauchope, who had joined the command since
the Modder River battle, was entrusted the execution of the night
attack. He does not appear to have altogether approved of Methuen's
scheme; but with the same dogged valour which he displayed many years
before when he threw himself upon the Gladstonian political
Magersfontein in Midlothian, he incorporated himself in it.
At 1 a.m. on December 12 in a storm of rain and thunder the Brigade in
mass of quarter-columns marched out of its bivouac, guided by a staff
officer's compass which the lightning and the rain soon made unreliable.
The objective point was the southern edge of the Magersfontein Ridge,
about three miles distant. The progress made over the rough and
encumbered veld was slow, and it was difficult to judge in the darkness
how much ground had really been covered. Wauchope either underestimated
the distance made good or, as is more probable, did not expect to find
the enemy entrenched in advance of the foot of the hill, and the error
cost him his life and the lives of many other gallant Highlanders.
Afraid lest dawn should find his Brigade too far away from the position
to rush it, he hesitated to deploy, and when at last he was about to
give the order, a further delay was caused by a line of thorn bushes.
The Brigade passed through or avoided the obstruction and was at the
halt on the point of changing formation when the Boers in the advanced
trenches, which had been so stealthily excavated that no one in the
British Army seems to have been aware of their existence, received the
alarm and opened fire. Possibly the situation might have been saved if
an order to charge had been given at once, and the Highlanders had heard
the skirl of the pipes; but Wauchope had at the first shot rushed
forward impetuously towards the flashing Mausers. With his life he
measured the unknown distance to the trenches, and at the supreme moment
his Highlanders lost their leader and knew not whom to follow.
The sudden stroke of the impact falling upon men of dissimilar
temperament reacted on them diversely. The majority absorbed it by
throwing themselves upon the ground on which they stood; others recoiled
mechanically upon the companies in rear; while to not a few it was a
stimulus which projected them into the jaws of death gaping before them
in the dim light. A mixed body, hardly exceeding the strength of three
companies, pushed on in obedience to the last words that fell from
Wauchope's lips, to reinforce the right; and succeeded in wriggling
round the eastward flank of the enemy's advanced trenches and in
shattering a foreign contingent in the Boer service which was holding
the gap of level ground between the low arc and the Magersfontein Ridge.
The little force of progressives came under the fire of the British guns
which opened upon the ridge at daybreak, but a remnant under Wilson
drove a keen-edged but slender wedge into the curve of the Boer
position, and was favourably placed to storm the ridge. A few score of
Highlanders were now fingering the key with which it seemed possible to
unlock the sluice gates and allow the flood waters of war to overwhelm
the foe. But War is a game of chance. The key was snatched away and the
issue of the day reversed by a man who had lost his way.
In the absence of Delarey, who was absent at Kimberley, P. Cronje was in
chief command of the Boer forces. His Head-Quarters were at Brown's
Drift on the Modder, six miles from the key of the position on
Magersfontein. The sound of the bombardment notified him that an
infantry attack was imminent, and he hurried off to make the final
arrangements for meeting it. These he seems to have completed to his
satisfaction, and he rested for an hour or two, rising soon after
midnight. In the darkness and rain he lost his way on the unfamiliar
ground. But chance found him at daybreak close to the gap which Wilson's
little band of Highlanders had hewn in his line, and their promising
advance was effectually repressed, as they were simultaneously fired on
by Cronje's escort on their front and by a commando which had come up on
their right rear.
Daylight found the shattered and dismembered Highland Brigade lying in
patches upon the veld, with their leader dead before their eyes;
themselves unable to advance or retreat, conspicuous, hungry, thirsty,
and soon to be scorched by the midsummer sun at the zenith; and there
they lay for eight hours. Only the shells of the artillery, which from
daylight onwards played upon the trenches and partially mastered the
fire from them, saved the Highland Brigade from destruction.
The Guards' Brigade under Colvile was in the first instance detailed as
the reserve of the Highland Brigade, but the repulse of the latter and
the probability that it would sooner or later be compelled to retreat
gave the former a definite objective, the low arc held by the left of
the Boer line. In marching on this the wire fence which was the boundary
between British territory and the Orange Free State was crossed, and the
Guards' Brigade had the honour of being the first body of troops to go
into action in the enemy's country. Colvile held his own, but although
he was unable to occupy the arc he screened the right flank of the
Highlanders. On their left a weak Brigade under Pole-Carew was drawn up
astride the railway, and thus apparently the firing line, which had been
so hardly pressed during so many weary hours, was secure on either
flank. But Pole-Carew was paralysed by the variety of the duties which
had been assigned to him, and was unable to operate offensively on the
enemy's right. His original orders were to act as camp guard and to
demonstrate northwards in support of the Highland Brigade; and
subsequently he seems to have been instructed to hold himself in
readiness to cross over to support the Guards' attack on the enemy's
left, with the result that his Brigade was never seriously engaged.
The interval between the Highlanders' right facing the trenches and the
Guards' left had never been effectively closed and early in the
afternoon the Boers renewed their attacks upon it, and threatened to
enfilade the line. Hughes-Hallett, who after the death of Wauchope
succeeded to the command of the Highland Brigade and to whom Methuen had
sent orders to hold on until nightfall, asked Colvile in vain to support
him and at last was compelled to throw back his right. Methuen's orders
were unfortunately known only to Hughes-Hallett and the movement was
interpreted as an order from the brigadier for a general retirement. The
wave of retreat beginning on the right passed rapidly down the line, and
soon all but a few score of men who held on gallantly as long as there
was light were streaming back in confusion to the field batteries in
rear. Even the shelter of the guns did not wholly avail them for
protection, for they were shelled while rallying by the Boer guns which
had been strangely silent during the battle; and the retreat was
continued to the bivouac ground which so many more of them, now lying on
the veld, had quitted seventeen hours before. The battle was lost.
It is probable that if the work had been more evenly distributed the
result might have been, at least, less disastrous. An intolerable strain
was put upon one Brigade which it was unable to bear. The Highlanders
were blundered into action, then abandoned to their fate for many hours,
and finally withdrawn by a misunderstanding. The inequality of the tasks
set to the various columns is strikingly shown in the return of
casualties. To the total of 948 killed and wounded the Highland Brigade
contributed no less than 752. Two of its battalions lost 37 per cent of
their strength; while the losses of the Division were but 7 per cent.
Methuen's expectations that as at Modder River after the fight of
November 28 so also at Magersfontein the Boers would evacuate their
positions during the night were not realized. Next day he retired to the
Modder River Camp, where he received orders from Buller either to attack
Cronje again or to fall back upon the Orange River; but at the instance
of Forestier-Walker, who was in command of the Lines of Communication,
the orders were cancelled and Methuen was allowed to remain.
Magersfontein of itself would probably have sufficed to disarrange the
plans of Duller in Natal, but coming a few hours after a serious rebuff
in the centre, of which the story must now be told, it loomed fearfully
on his near horizon. Soon after he landed at Capetown he ordered the
weak and vulnerable detachments at Naauwpoort and Stormberg to be
withdrawn to De Aar and Queenstown. The movement opened to the enemy the
gates of access to a district in the Cape Colony teeming with Dutch
disaffection. The Free Staters, however, did not avail themselves of the
opportunity with alacrity, as they were more or less committed to
defensive action within their own territory; and a fortnight elapsed
before Colesberg was occupied by a force under the command of a
Transvaaler named Schoeman, who on November 1 had crossed the Orange
River at Norval's Pont. A few days later the Colesberg district was
formally annexed by proclamation to the Orange Free State and the
transfer of allegiance was enthusiastically approved by a public meeting
held at Colesberg on November 14. This action not only brought the
inhabitants under the commando law of the adjacent Republic by which a
form of conscription was enforced, but also overcame the scruples of the
Free Staters who could still maintain that they were only engaged in
defending their own territory. Simultaneously Du Plooy with a commando
which had crossed at Bethulie annexed the Burghersdorp district; while
Olivier with a force mainly composed of colonial rebels took over on
behalf of the Free State all that remained of the border districts of
Cape Colony as far as Basutoland. By the end of November the easy
process of annexation by proclamation had augmented the territory of the
Orange Free State by about 7,000 square miles; and then almost as an
afterthought the burghers occupied the important strategic post of
Stormberg Junction.
To meet and if possible to thrust back these intrusions French was sent
to the Naauwpoort and Gatacre to the Stormberg district. Buller soon
found it necessary to order Naauwpoort to be re-occupied, as that town
would have afforded a useful base to the enemy from which the main line
of railway could be raided in the neighbourhood of De Aar. French
arrived at Naauwpoort on November 20 and was for some weeks engaged in
protecting the lines and in checking rebellion.
[Illustration: Stormberg.]
The little force of half a battalion of infantry which evacuated
Stormberg withdrew to Queenstown, where Gatacre arrived on November 18.
He intended to march on Stormberg as soon as he had collected a
sufficient force; his own Division, which he had brought out from
England, having been diverted to Natal. He soon advanced to Putterskraal
near Sterkstroom and about thirty miles from Stormberg, the occupation
of which by the enemy on November 25 prevented co-operation between him
and French at Naauwpoort.
Meanwhile rebellion was spreading, and owing to the dilatory
proclamation of Martial Law by the Cape Government, always reluctant to
take action which might wound the susceptibilities of the Dutch
population, it had assumed a formidable aspect. Buller was uneasy, and
although at first he had cautioned Gatacre to be careful he now
suggested his closing with the enemy.
On December 7, by which time considerable reinforcements had come in,
Gatacre felt himself strong enough to tackle Olivier at Stormberg. His
plan was to take his column by train as far as Molteno, whence a night
march of about eight miles would bring it into position for attacking
the Boer laager. The use of the railway would not only enable him to
strike more suddenly and with a greater chance of taking Olivier by
surprise but would also economise the strength of his force, a portion
of which having left the transports only a few days previously was not
yet in hard condition. The force with which he proposed to take
Stormberg amounted to 2,600 men, who detrained at Molteno soon after
sunset on December 9. Gatacre calculated that after a march of about six
hours he would be able to rush the position before dawn.
The Boers, to the number of 1,700 men, were in occupation of the
Kissieberg ridge, and of a nek which runs westward from its southern end
towards a higher hill overhanging Stormberg Junction called Rooi Kop.
Gatacre had originally intended to attack the Boer position frontally,
but the reports which he received on arrival at Molteno determined him
to turn it. The change of plan was not made known to all the troops,
with the result that the ambulance and ammunition wagons left the town
by the Stormberg road instead of by the Steynsburg road, along which the
rest of the column was marching to the new objective. No trustworthy
maps were available, and the enterprise was dependent for its success
upon the knowledge and fidelity of a sergeant of police and a few native
constables who acted as guides and who professed to know "every inch of
the way."
Soon after midnight, however, Gatacre's suspicions were aroused by the
sudden appearance of a railway which ought not to have been there, and
it was discovered that the guides had a mile or two back missed a path
on which the column should have diverged to the right. They assured him,
however, that they had chosen a better road and that he was now less
than 3,000 yards from the Boer position. He therefore halted the column
for an hour's rest, and hoped for the best.
When the march was resumed another railway was almost immediately
encountered. It was in fact the colliery line which had been crossed
before the halt and which here curves almost to the extent of a
semicircle; but Gatacre believed that he had come upon the main line to
Steynsburg and judged that he was now N.W. of the Boer position; while
many of the officers in the rear of the column, unaware of the change of
plan, imagined that they were approaching it from the S.E. along the
Stormberg road originally selected for the advance on which the
ambulance and ammunition wagons had already gone astray.
The direction of the march was now almost reversed, owing to Gatacre's
misapprehension of his position; and at dawn the column unknown to
itself reached certain cross roads on Van Zyl's farm which had been
fixed upon as the point from which the attack should be delivered; but
the locality was not recognized by the staff, and the guides, who seem
to have misunderstood the object of the march, conducted the column
still deeper into the valley beneath the Kissieberg ridge.
Suddenly a shot from the heights startled the errant and plodding
column. The Boers had indeed been taken by surprise, but were at once on
the alert and the crest line was soon occupied. The column marching in
fours halted and turned to the right and, except the leading companies
of Irish Rifles, which were formed to the front in order to seize a
detached hill at the end of the ridge, sprang up the slope, but were
soon baffled by the irregular tiers of krantzes or rock walls on the
hill side. The artillery diverged to the left, losing one gun in the
donga which ran down the valley, and took post on the detached hill from
which the Kissieberg ridge could be shelled. The companies of Irish
Rifles, after seizing this hill, passed along the nek which joined it to
the ridge and almost won the crest line.
Meanwhile the Northumberland Fusiliers and the remaining companies of
the Irish Rifles found the task of mounting the encumbered slope beyond
their powers, and were soon ordered to fall back into the valley. The
artillery noticed the movement, and in order to cover the retreat opened
upon Kissieberg; not perceiving in the eastern dazzle of the sun about
to rise above the sky line that some of the infantry who had not heard
the order to retire were still clinging to the darkened westward
hillside, and these were shelled by their own guns.
Gatacre, confident of an easy success, had thrown all his infantry into
the firing line, and had no reserves to fall back upon to support the
companies of the Irish Rifles which were still holding their own on the
left flank of the attack. As soon as the troops had crossed the valley
to reform on the opposite ridge a new entanglement beset them.
A commando under E.R. Grobler and Steenkamp, chiefly composed of rebels,
which had been sent by Olivier on the previous day to stir up trouble in
the district, was halted for the night a few miles out on the Steynsburg
road. The sound of the firing quickly called it to attention, and a
position which seriously threatened Gatacre's line of retreat was
quickly seized. The commando, however, was handled with little judgment
or energy, and was soon checked by the field guns which had been
withdrawn from the detached hill near the Kissieberg ridge to cover the
retreat of the infantry; and which at one time were firing trail to
trail, some still engaging Olivier on Kissieberg while others were
shelling Grobler.
The raid on Stormberg had manifestly failed and Gatacre ordered a
retreat to Molteno. Thither the weary, dispirited column trudged all
through the forenoon of December 10. A gun was abandoned on the way, and
even the wagon in which the breech block had been secreted fell also
into the enemy's hands. But this was a comparatively insignificant loss.
It was soon discovered that nearly a third of the infantry was absent.
When the troops were withdrawn from the attack on Kissieberg not a few
of them remained in the donga or under the krantzes on the hill side,
while others appear to have held on to the ridge. By some extraordinary
neglect or default nearly 600 men were left to their fate. No one seems
to have missed them at the time and they were made prisoners of war
without an effort to extricate them.
In less than two hours all the fighting except the little affair with
Grobler was over. On neither side were the casualties of killed and
wounded heavy. No British officer was killed and of the eight who were
wounded four had been struck by shells not fired by the enemy.
* * * * *
Stonmberg on December 10, followed by Magersfontein on December 13,
brought about Colenso on December 15. The latter was Buller's attempt to
retrieve the former mishaps.
A naturally strong position on the left bank of the Tugela had by the
efforts of the Boers during the previous three weeks been almost
perfectly secured. They showed, however, some hesitation with regard to
Hlangwhane, a detached hill on the right bank from which the Tugela line
could be enfiladed. It was a somewhat precarious position as it was
accessible from the left bank only by two bridle drifts. It had been
originally held by the Boers, but the garrison was withdrawn when
Barton's Brigade appeared at Chieveley; and now all Botha's persistence,
and even a reference to Kruger and Joubert at Pretoria, were required to
induce the burghers to re-occupy it on December 15. From the south
Hlangwhane, though separated from the Colenso kopjes by the river,
appears to be an integral continuation of them.
[Illustration: Colenso Battlefield.]
The enemy's general idea was a defensive occupation of the Colenso
position, although Botha, with characteristic spirit, proposed to send a
commando across the river to face the British on the open. The
initiative, always a disadvantage when attacking an enemy strongly
posted and entrenched, was thus imposed upon Buller. It was not doubted
that he would be compelled to make a frontal attack on Colenso and in
this the Boers showed the more correct appreciation of the situation.
Botha hoped to lure Buller on and was prepared even to allow him to
cross the river; and having crushed him to act upon the British flanks,
an operation which the wide extension of Botha's front from Hlangwhane
to Robinson's farm, a distance of seven miles, gave him a good chance of
being able to carry out. If necessary, reinforcements could be drawn
from the investing circle around Ladysmith, which seemed to be detaining
more burghers than were necessary for the maintenance of the siege.
Buller proclaimed his intention of attacking Botha by a preliminary
bombardment of the Colenso kopjes on December 13 and 14; but the
burghers lay low and gave so little indication of their presence that it
almost seemed that they had abandoned the line of the Tugela. The
British Army was encamped near Chieveley four miles south of Colenso.
On the evening of December 14 the scheme of attack was delivered to the
Brigadiers. The leading idea of it was a frontal attack to be delivered
from the village of Colenso, where the Tugela is crossed by an iron
railway bridge as well as by an iron wagon bridge. The latter had been
left intact by the enemy, possibly in order to entice the British troops
across the river. Buller appears to have been unaware how far the Boer
trenches extended towards the west, and to have assumed that only the
kopjes immediately opposite Colenso were occupied. Hildyard's Brigade
was ordered to march in the direction of the "iron bridge,"[21] to cross
at that point, and then to "seize the kopjes north of the iron bridge."
The attack on the enemy's right, which was believed to be weak, was
assigned to Hart's Irish Brigade. He was instructed to cross the Tugela
at a bridle drift about two miles west of Colenso and work down the left
bank towards the occupied kopjes. Two infantry Brigades were retained as
reserves to be used when required; and the mounted Brigade was ordered
to move towards Hlangwhane and occupy it, if possible, and cover the
right flank; but the weakness of the Boer position on that hill, which
was cut off by the river from the main line of defence, does not seem to
have been realized. A few batteries were sent with Hart, but the bulk of
the artillery was ordered east of the railway to support Hildyard.
Buller's scheme has been severely criticized ever since its failure, but
Clery who was in nominal command of the Natal force, and in whose name
the battle orders were issued, as well as the other general officers,
acquiesced in it. But in fact hardly any scheme could have been devised
more likely to play into Botha's hands. Buller hoped to get a footing on
the left bank and Botha hoped that he would succeed in doing so. Botha's
special idea was to allure the troops of the frontal attack to his own
side, where he could easily pound them from his kopjes and carry out his
general idea of netting the British flanks.
Buller had not then been in action with the Boers and he probably
underrated their tactical capacity; but already he seems to have
contemplated the possibility of the loss of Ladysmith, for in his
despatch of December 13 to Lord Lansdowne, in which he justified his
sudden change of the plan of campaign, he said that "it would be better
to lose Ladysmith than to leave Natal open to the enemy."
Nor did the Boers enter into the contest with much confidence. They had
not yet tried Buller's mettle and his name was to them a tradition of
courage handed down from the Zulu war, in which some of the older
burghers now opposing him on the Tugela had served under him. The
curious omission to inform White in Ladysmith that an attack on Colenso
was to be made on December 15 may have arisen from Buller's doubts as to
its issue, or from reluctance to heliograph a message in a cipher of
which the enemy might have the key.
The story of the Battle of Colenso is mainly the narrative of the action
of two important components of the Army of Natal. Each of these was led
by a dangerously brave man, whose impetuosity crippled the tactical
scheme and whose method of working his command was, at least, unusual.
If in Hart and Long, who commanded the Artillery, the quality of
personal courage had been less prominent it is probable that Colenso
would not have filled up the cup of Stormberg and Magersfontein in that
dark midsummer December week.
The naval guns on the west of the railway had the honour of opening the
battle, and shelled Fort Wyllie for some time without eliciting any
response. Long joined Hildyard with another naval battery and two field
batteries. He was not only an impetuous man but he also belonged to the
short range school of artillerists;[22] and he soon outpaced his
infantry escort and came into action with his field batteries in the
open a little in advance of a shallow intersecting donga, and within
1,100 yards of the Boer entrenchments across the river. The naval
battery had been compelled by the flight of the Kaffir ox drivers to
outspan astride a deeper donga about a quarter of a mile in rear, to
which Long had sent back his gun teams. A terrific rifle and shrapnel
fire, which the infantry escort which soon came up was powerless to
subdue, was now opened upon the guns, and for an hour the batteries were
beaten on until the casualties left but four men to each gun, and
ammunition was running short. Long, who was one of the first to be
wounded, withdrew the dwindled gun detachments to the shallow donga and
sent back for a fresh supply of ammunition, intending to resume fire as
soon as the general attack developed.
All the while the batteries had been unsupported except by the escorting
companies, which were not under Long's orders, and no attempt was made
by Hildyard's or Barton's brigade in rear to relieve or divert the
pressure on the guns, which had succeeded in silencing temporarily some
of the Boer artillery and in checking the rifle fire.
Earlier in the action Buller had been informed that the guns were "all
right and comfortable," but later reports gave him the impression that
this cheery optimism was delusive, and that owing to loss of men and
exhaustion of ammunition the artillery told off to support Hildyard was
now permanently out of action. The rest of the artillery was engaged in
assisting Hart, who was in trouble, and Buller came to the conclusion
that the attack on the Colenso kopjes must be withdrawn.
Hart's Brigade was ordered to march "towards the Bridle Drift at the
junction of the Doornkop Spruit and the Tugela, and to cross at that
point." Here was yet another ambiguity. As there were two "Iron Bridges"
so also were there two "Bridle Drifts," one on each side of the isthmus
of the river loop, and yet another at the head of it. The West Drift was
unfordable on the morning of December 15, and a hasty sketch which had
probably been filled in from hearsay evidence and which was Hart's only
map, showed the Doornkop Spruit as entering the Tugela below that Drift
instead of just above the East Drift.[23] The sketch also duplicated the
loop.
In dense formation, although the enemy was reported to be in force on
his front, Hart crossed the Doornkop Spruit without recognizing it and
advanced to the West Drift guided by a Kaffir who lived close by. The
native seems either to have had misgivings as to the fordability of the
Drift or to have been carelessly instructed, for as the column
approached the river he pointed to a Drift which was not the East Drift,
but the Drift at the head of the loop near his own kraal; and Hart was
induced to change direction and lead the Brigade into the loop.
At 6 a.m. against the orders of Botha, who wished to lure on his foe,
the Boer guns commanding Hart's loop suddenly opened on the dense
battalions, and the trenches on the left bank took up the firing. The
Kaffir guide disappeared in terror. But Hart still believed that there
was a drift to be found somewhere or other and pushed his Brigade, like
a shoal of herrings driven into a purse net, up the loop; and some
companies even reached the kraal near the head of it. Without
artillery--for Hart had not brought up the field batteries assigned to
him--and exposed to a concentrated fire from front, left, and right, the
unhappy Irish Brigade, which suffered 400 casualties in less than three
quarters of an hour, was helpless. Hart began to deploy, but Buller who
from Naval Gun Hill was watching, possibly with astonishment, the
entanglement in the loop ordered him to withdraw, at the same time
sending two battalions to dig him out of his hole. It was not an easy
task and it was made more difficult by the gallant reluctance of the
Irishmen to retreat before the enemy. Thus Hart and Long, the former
with his Hibernian zeal to move in the line of the greatest resistance,
the latter with his rash generalization that entrenched Boers could be
coerced as if they were Omdurman dervishes in the open, brought about
the reverse at Colenso.
By this time it was evident to Buller that his scheme must fail. He had
already arranged the extrication of Hart and now the extrication of Long
called for immediate action. He therefore rode across to the deep donga
east of the railway; on his way informing Hildyard, whose brigade was
awaiting an opportunity to carry out its orders, that the attack was
abandoned and that the brigade must cover the withdrawal of the field
batteries. He ordered the naval battery to retire, and sent back the
ammunition wagons, which after long delay were on their way to the field
guns: and acknowledged that he was baffled.
Hildyard occupied Colenso but was unable to prevent the Boers re-opening
fire from Fort Wyllie on the desolate batteries lying on the veld. No
troops could move across the open; and only individual efforts could now
save the guns. Not a few officers and men offered for the forlorn hope,
and at the first attempt two guns were rescued. A later attempt was not
successful, and at 11 a.m. Buller ordered a general retirement and the
abandonment of the guns. The main naval battery remained in position
west of the railway for some hours, and in its presence the Boers were
afraid to cross the river and take possession of the derelict but not
disabled guns; which were not captured until all the British troops had
left the field except a few gunners and infantry details who had taken
refuge in the deep donga and whom the order to retreat had not reached;
and these were made prisoners of war.
The mounted Brigade under Lord Dundonald acting on the right flank with
orders to take Hlangwhane, if possible, was too weak to support the main
attack effectively. Assistance was refused at first by Barton and
afterwards by Buller, who thought that Hlangwhane would be of little use
to him without the possession of the Colenso kopjes; yet these could
have been enfiladed from it. As the Brigade retired it passed within
striking distance of the field guns and their captors; but nothing could
be done as ambulances and groups of prisoners were bemingled in the
throng. Dundonald seems to have been alone in his recognition of the
value of the Hlangwhane position.
A retirement to Chieveley and Frere completed the triad of December
disasters. Buller, of whom so much was expected, had failed in his first
attempt to measure swords with the burghers. His 19,000 men and
forty-two guns fighting for six hours inflicted on the enemy a loss of
less than two score. His casualties exceeded 1,100, he lost ten guns,
and he then returned to the place from which he came. He thought that he
had fought a battle, but in reality he had only made a reconnaissance in
force, a dangerous operation only justifiable by urgent necessity.[24]
Possibly if Buller, who was practically without a staff, had allowed a
freer hand to Clery, that authority on Minor Tactics might have done
better. It has been said that the defeat was due to insufficient
reconnaissance; and this is to a certain extent true, for a more
accurate knowledge of the terrain and the dispositions of the enemy
would have clearly demonstrated the hopelessness of a frontal attack on
the Colenso Kopjes, and the attempt would never have been made. Again,
as at Magersfontein four days before, a considerable portion of the
troops was not seriously engaged; and the total casualties in eight
battalions were but 120.
The loss of the guns is the chief fact in the story of Colenso. What
were Buller's intentions with regard to the Naval battery and the two
Field batteries which he sent to "a point from which they could prepare
the crossing for Hildyard's Brigade," and how did Long understand and
carry out his orders.
The battle orders had been orally anticipated by Buller, who before they
were issued, explained his intentions personally to Long: and, as often
happens in conferences, the impression retained by one conferent
differed from that intended to be conveyed by the other. Long believed
that he was instructed to shell the Kopjes and entrenched positions
behind Fort Wyllie, which he did not at first know was held by the
enemy, and he opened at a range of a mile; and Buller's statement that
he was ordered to open fire with the long-range naval guns only, the
position not being within reach of the field batteries, is contradicted;
while Buller complained that Long had taken up a position within 1,200
yards of a fortified hill and less than a quarter of a mile from cover
occupied by the enemy. There is, indeed, a small area of low trees and
scrub near the right bank of the Tugela a few hundred yards on the right
front of the line of guns, but there is no evidence that the Boers had
ever crossed the river to hold it.
When the field guns, after firing nearly 100 rounds each, became silent,
Buller, who was already perturbed by Hart's discomfiture, jumped to the
conclusion that they were exterminated, and that it would be useless to
proceed with the attack without them; but the gunners were only waiting
for more ammunition. Not until the following day did he know that men
enough to fight the guns were still untouched. If the whole of his force
had been seriously engaged he would perhaps have been justified in his
decision not to hold on to Colenso with exhausted and parched troops in
the burning heat of the South African midsummer in the hope of rescuing
the guns at night; but several battalions had been doing little more
than watching the fight during the morning, and he might have left them
on the field; and it is clear from a telegram sent by Botha early in the
afternoon that if the Naval battery had remained with an effective
infantry support no attempt would have been made by the Boers to cross
the river, and that the guns would not have been lost.
The repulse at Colenso staggered Buller's humanity. He was a brave man
on the right of whose many war medals hung the Victoria Cross which he
had won not far away from the field on which he was now fighting; but he
was lacking in bull-dog tenacity, and in the ascetic temperament which
is quickened rather than disheartened by failure. He returned to his
tent, wrung his hands, and announced to those whom it might concern that
all was lost. In the telegram in which he reported his defeat to Lord
Lansdowne and of which the frankness, the candour, and the copious yet
not egotistical use of the first personal pronoun were in curious
contrast to the formal and sterilized paragraphs of an official account,
he confessed that with the force at his disposal he had little hope of
relieving Ladysmith and he proposed that he should let it go. He ordered
the staff to select a defensive line eastward from Estcourt which his
army might occupy until the end of the hot season.
His message to White in Ladysmith was still more pessimistic, and with
an intention that was chivalrous but was not war he "spatchcocked"[25]
into it a suggestion that White should surrender, and even indicated how
the gain to the enemy could be minimised. The magnanimity of Buller was
manifest: he desired to give White the opportunity of surrendering
without incurring the full responsibility for the act, but the lack of
military instinct in Buller's mind was likewise manifest. To this
message, which was suspected in Ladysmith to have originated in the Boer
laagers, White replied that he had no intention of surrendering.
Nor did Buller's pessimism turn the Home Government from its purpose. He
was ordered to hold on, and on December 17 Lord Roberts accepted the
chief command in South Africa. In announcing the appointment, the War
Office explained that Buller was superseded because it was advisable to
relieve him of responsibility for the operations outside Natal, which he
could not effectively control from his detached position on the right
flank. The Vth Division under Sir C. Warren which had been ordered at
his request a month before, and which he found was available for service
on the Natal side, was on the point of landing in South Africa; the VIth
Division was embarking at home; the components of a VIIth Division were
being assembled, and he became less despondent.
The War Office thought that the Magersfontein mishap called for the
supersession of Methuen, and when Warren reached Capetown with the Vth
Division he found orders from home directing him to assume command of
the force at Modder River. It would probably have been better for Buller
if he had freely acquiesced in the idea of Pall Mall and had allowed
Warren, but not necessarily the Vth Division, to operate in a country
with which he had become acquainted twenty years before in the
Bechuanaland Expedition, but he could not foresee Spion Kop; and Warren
while moving towards the Orange was suddenly recalled to Capetown and
ordered to reinforce the Army of Natal with the Vth Division; and
Methuen was allowed to retain his command at Modder River.
The transfer of the Vth Division to Natal was undoubtedly called for;
but the position in the districts of Cape Colony bordering on the Free
State was alarming. A belt extending from Barkly East near the Basuto
border westwards and northwards as far as the Molopo River, and
interrupted only near the Orange and Modder Rivers, had been annexed by
the Boers and was more or less effectively occupied by them; and had
they acted with enterprise and concurrence during the period of Lord
Roberts' journey from England, the task before the new
Commander-in-Chief would have been still more formidable. In rear of
French and Gatacre was an indefinite area through which ran the British
lines of communication, and which, if not indeed actually under arms,
was ready to spring up whenever a favourable opportunity presented
itself.
Of the four Generals set to stem the tide of war until the arrival of
Lord Roberts, French alone did not restrict himself to restraining its
flow. A policy of "worry without risk" had been recommended to him by
Buller, and he carried it out with good effect. He thrust Schoeman out
of Arundel and Rensburg, and occupied a commanding position outside
Colesberg, which he maintained until he was summoned on January 29 to
confer with Lord Roberts at Capetown, where he was confidentially
informed of the plan of campaign. Clements, who a few weeks before had
reinforced him with a brigade of the recently landed VIth Division under
Kelly-Kenny, took over the command of the troops before Colesberg. But
the force which he had to his hand had been considerably reduced by the
withdrawal of the cavalry and nearly half the infantry to serve
elsewhere, while Schoeman and Delarey, who had come from Magersfontein,
had been strongly reinforced.
The Boers doubted not that the positions taken up by Gatacre and French
indicated that the impending advance of the British Army into the Free
State would be by way of Bethulie and Norval's Pont, and were
accordingly disposing all their available men, one commando even being
sent to Colesberg from Natal; but fortunately they were at first unaware
that Clements had been almost simultaneously weakened. He soon found
that he was not strong enough to hold on to the Colesberg positions and
on February 14 retired to Arundel; losing on the way two companies of
infantry which had been mislaid and forgotten and which after a gallant
running fight of three miles were captured.
But now ominous reports of Lord Roberts' movements in the West began to
come in, and the Boers realized that they had misinterpreted the signs
which had been so ostentatiously displayed. They hesitated and wavered,
and on February 20 hurried away from Colesberg to succour Cronje and the
threatened capital of the Free State.
Notes:
[Footnote 19: Buller aroused a "now-we-shan't-be-long" feeling. He would
certainly be in Pretoria by Christmas. It is said that a large number of
plum-puddings intended for the soldiers' dinners on December 25 were
addressed to Pretoria "to await arrival," by their good friends at
home.]
[Footnote 20: The history of the war showed, however, that generally the
Boers fought more strenuously and effectively when the tide was against
them than when it was flowing with them.]
[Footnote 21: The two chief authorities on the events of the day are not
in agreement as to which of the iron bridges was meant; and in the
absence of information of what was in the mind of the staff officer who
drew up the battle orders the question cannot be answered. The context
and certain expressions in other paragraphs seem to show that the
railway bridge was indicated. It was, indeed, broken but there were
drifts used by the natives above and below it. Probably the river had
not been carefully reconnoitred and the two bridges were confused, or
one only was believed to exist.]
[Footnote 22: At the battle of Omdurman he had put short range
principles successfully into practice against dervishes.]
[Footnote 23: The mistake in Hart's map is shown by a broken line in the
sketch map. It is, curiously enough, reproduced in the Colenso map not
only of the _Times_ History, but also of the German Official Report on
the War.]
[Footnote 24: See _Combined Training_, 1905, p. 109.]
[Footnote 25: _Sic_ in his speech of October 10, 1901, but he probably
meant "sandwiched."]
CHAPTER IV
Kimberley and the Siege of Rhodes
More than thirty years before the outbreak of the Second Boer War a
Dutch child in the Hopetown District of Cape Colony found, while playing
carelessly near the left bank of the Orange, a pretty pebble that was
destined to mould the History of South Africa.
He took the bagatelle home to his father's farm, where a neighbour, one
Van Niekirk, saw it and was struck by its brilliancy. It chanced that
the Irishman O'Reilly was passing that way and to him it was entrusted
to take to Colesberg for expert opinion upon its value. Here certain
Jews declared that it was but a white topaz not worth one shilling and
it was disdainfully cast out into the road, from which it was with
difficulty recovered by O'Reilly, whose belief in it though shaken was
not wholly abandoned. Through a mutual friend, Lorenzo Boyes, Acting
Civil Commissioner of the District, the pebble came to the notice of an
expert mineralogist named Atherstone at Grahamstown, but it was held so
lightly in esteem by the sender that it reached Atherstone as an
enclosure in an ordinary unregistered letter. Atherstone examined it,
and when it had not only spoilt all the jeweller's files in the town but
had also passed an examination by polarized light, pronounced that it
was a diamond worth £500. His certificate to its character, which had
been so ignorantly disparaged, was the origin of the Diamond industry of
South Africa. Another diamond was soon picked up near Hopetown which
without difficulty or misadventure rose to its own plane in mineralogy.
Its career was short and its destiny happy. It was purchased by the
first Earl of Dudley for the adornment of his second wife.
When it was noised abroad with the customary exaggeration that the
monopoly of Golconda and the Brazils was at an end and that diamonds
grew wild on the South African veld, a wide extent of country was
explored and the precious crystallized carbon was found in districts
separated by many hundreds of miles. In certain places, one of which
became known as the town of Kimberley, it was ascertained to recur in a
constant proportion of the contents of the "pipes" or volcanic tubes
which rose through the surface strata.
The pioneers of Kimberley took possession of the diamondiferous grounds
without ascertaining to whom they belonged, and when their value became
positive the question of ownership arose. The boundaries of the
districts administered by the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, and
the Transvaal respectively were, as regards territory, supposed to be of
little account, vague, ill-defined, and unsurveyed; and the districts
themselves were occupied by native tribes of nomad habits. About the
middle of the XIXth century a Hottentot chief named Waterboer came up
out of the West and squatted in the districts lying between the Orange
and the Vaal. His rights, such as they were, were assumed or acquired by
the Cape Government, which soon became involved in controversy with the
Orange Free State as to their extent and nature. Finally the British
Empire secured a good title to the estate by the payment of £90,000. But
the Orange Free State not unnaturally, when the value of the Diamond
Fields increased day by day, soon began to think that it had parted with
a profitable possession for an inadequate return. The feeling rankled;
and the confident expectation of recovering Kimberley sold for a song
tempted Bloemfontein into the fatal alliance with Pretoria.
In 1871 a sickly youth named Cecil Rhodes came from England to South
Africa in search of health, which after a short sojourn in Natal he
found at Kimberley. The prospects of the place favourably impressed him,
and he soon laid in it the foundations of his fortune; but six years
later the future of Kimberley was still precarious and the discovery of
gold in a remote district of the Transvaal sucked thither the greater
proportion of the citizens, who, however, found that they had not
bettered themselves by the change and returned to the pipes: and soon
nearly a hundred companies, syndicates, and private adventurers were
groping for diamonds over an area of less than two hundred acres. The
waste of energy was manifest to Rhodes, who in 1888 completed, with the
help of the Rothschilds, the task upon which he had been engaged for
some years, the amalgamation of the conflicting and overlapping diamond
interests under the name of the De Beers Consolidated Mines. It was soon
found that the new industry was insufficiently protected by the existing
criminal law and a new felony was created by the Illicit Diamond Buying
Act.
It has been for several centuries the practice of Great Britain to
entrust to private companies the imperial responsibilities which she is
reluctant to assume and to let out to contractors, who can be repudiated
if they fail and expropriated if they succeed, the job of expanding an
Empire. Of this policy the most prominent instance is the East India
Company, a commercial venture which obtained from Queen Elizabeth a
charter empowering it to trade with the East and which, though connected
with Great Britain only by the slender thread of an ocean track of
12,000 miles, maintained itself for two centuries and a half with ever
increasing territory and authority until it became a great military
Empire. Other examples of lower degree are the Hudson's Bay Company and
the Borneo Company. The De Beers Company provided out of its abundance
large sums for exploration and settlement in South Africa and for the
furtherance of the Imperial idea, and it is said that Rhodes spent the
whole of one night in arguing with some of the materialistic magnates of
Kimberley, before he could induce them to consent to the employment of
the resources of the Company in the advancement of his schemes of
Empire. He found, however, that these could not be satisfactorily
promoted by a Company whose primary interests were commercial rather
than imperial; and in 1888 he obtained a charter for the British South
Africa Company, an offshoot of the De Beers Company, formed for the
purpose of extending the British Empire towards the Equator.
The question of the defences of Kimberley engaged the attention of the
De Beers Company some years before the outbreak of the war. Its
vulnerability to attack from the Orange Free State, the border of which
ran close to the town, was obvious; and in 1896 a depot of arms and
ammunition was formed. A military plan of the place was sent to the
Imperial authorities and a defence force was also organized. This,
however, had in 1899 ceased to exist owing chiefly to the action of Mr.
Schreiner, at that time the Premier of the Cape Colony, who in June
refused, with complacent optimism, to furnish it with arms, saying that,
"there is no reason for apprehending that Kimberley is in danger of
attack," and that "the fears of the citizens are groundless and their
anticipations without foundation." A battery of artillery was, however,
surreptitiously brought up from King Williamstown.
The policy of Schreiner during the months preceding the war is obscure.
While refusing help to Kimberley he was allowing munitions of war, which
were way billed as pianos and hardware, to pass through the Cape Colony
to the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. He does not appear to have
been actively disloyal to the Imperial Government and in his own way he
probably did his best to keep the peace. His mind was cast in a mould
which is not uncommon in the British Empire but which is rarely found
outside it. He was more anxious to stand well with its enemies, and like
the Unjust Steward to have a claim to a place in their houses, if they
were successful, than to work for its security. It was with great
difficulty that Sir A. Milner as late as September 18 obtained his
consent to the dispatch of a few regulars to Kimberley to form the
backbone of a defensive force. He seems to have retained almost to the
end, in spite of all indications to the contrary, the belief that the
war would be averted or at least that the Orange Free State would not
join in it. Yet in this he erred in good company. Mr. Balfour said that
if on September 28 he had been asked whether war with the Orange Free
State was a probable contingency he would have replied that war with
Switzerland was one equally probable; and Lord Lansdowne declined before
September 23 to discuss with Lord Roberts the question of operations in
the Free State. Buller, with surer insight, had foreseen the alliance as
far back as 1881.
The War Office, however, was to a certain extent on the alert and
distrusted the optimism of Schreiner and of a high military official who
had been for some years in South Africa. Officers were sent to Kimberley
to organize a scheme of defence, but having regard to the susceptibility
of the Capetown Government it was done secretly and confidentially and
Schreiner was outwitted. By October 7 the town, which was under the
command of Colonel Kekewich, was secure against a _coup de main_ though
not against a vigorous and sustained siege. Little more than an eighth
of the garrison was composed of regular troops; the artillery was out of
date; rifles and ammunition were deficient. On October 13 Rhodes threw
himself into Kimberley and became for better or worse a power in the
town. As soon as the siege began the relative value of the chief
products of the mines was inverted: water, the most generous gift of
nature and hitherto an embarrassment in the workings, became for the
time being more valuable than the diamonds.
On October 12 the curtain of the great drama was raised and the first
scene presented. It showed the capture of an armoured train on the
railway between Kimberley and Mafeking. Kimberley under any
circumstances was a prize worth winning. But Kimberley taken with Rhodes
as a prisoner of war, the man who had curbed and checked on every side
the expansion of the Republics, who had taken Matabeleland on the north
and Bechuanaland on the west into the fold of the British Empire, would
be more than a prize, would be a triumph. Rhodes metaphorically in
chains, and actually paraded as a captive in the streets of Bloemfontein
and Pretoria was an alluring prospect.
Great, however, as were the advantages to be gained by the early capture
of Kimberley, the object was not pursued with energy and determination.
When the siege began on November 6 the situation was in favour of the
attack. The Boers were in possession of the railway from Orange River
Station to Mafeking: Kimberley was ill-supplied with the munitions and
weapons of war and was defended by a force mainly composed of
irregulars; it was encumbered with a large native population; and the
civil and military authorities were not working in harmony.
The defence throughout was more active than the attack. Reconnaissances
and raids against the enemy's positions were made with effect; and the
bombardment which followed a rejected summons to surrender did little
harm. Communication with the outer world was not seriously impeded.
Cattle grazed almost with impunity inside the line of investment and
several thousands of the natives escaped.
But the difficulties of Kekewich, who had been in command since
September 20, were not confined to those created by the military
situation. He was thrown into close association with the man who was one
of the indirect causes of the war, and who had little confidence in
military men, or sympathy with their ideas and methods. Rhodes had come
into his own Kimberley and for the first time he was not master in it.
He found himself a sterilized dictator acting in an atmosphere too
tenuous to support his vitality but sufficient to preserve it from
extinction. He was subject to the authority of the military commandant,
a galling position for a distinguished statesman who had not a high
opinion of the professional capacity of the British officer. From the
age of eighteen he had been his own master except during the intervals
which he had spared from South Africa and spent at Oxford, when he was
temporarily subject to the lax discipline of a University. While his
contemporaries were amusing themselves at college, or performing routine
duties in the Army or the Civil Service, or preparing to enter a
profession, Rhodes was spending the critical years of his life in
outlining the future and scheming for a South African Empire to be
erected on the foundation of the Kimberley Mines.
It was inevitable from the nature of the case and from his intimate
concern in the fortunes of Kimberley that he could not see South African
affairs at large in their true perspective. The sparkle of his diamonds
made him curiously colour-blind and out of this defect in his mental
vision sprang the mischief. Kimberley, for the time being at least,
stood so closely in the foreground that other objects were thrown out of
focus. Nor did the disturbing influence of the glare and halation of
Kimberley only affect the vision of the diamond men within the town. It
closed the eyes of the besiegers without it to a great strategical
opportunity which soon passed away.
The figure of Rhodes in Kimberley was the magnet which attracted and
detained commandos which could have been more usefully employed
elsewhere, and his presence, so far as it had this effect, was of great
service to the perilously weak British force during the first few weeks
of the war. If the commandos squatting before Kimberley had instead been
sent to raid southwards towards the Karroo, and to inflame the Dutch
districts in the Cape Colony, they would have met with little
resistance, and advancing with daily increasing numbers would have had
little difficulty in planting themselves firmly in the heart of the
enemy's country. For the moment the war in the west was waged not
against Great Britain but against the Man of Kimberley.
The diamond men, with Rhodes at their head, forgetting that the object
of the war was the redress of the Outlanders' wrongs in the Transvaal,
began to bellow for relief even before the Boers had completed the
investment of the town. Telegrams couched in extravagant and almost
hysterical language and betraying the egotism and the want of
self-control of the senders were repeatedly despatched. One of these, in
which on October 19 the De Beers directors asked for information as to
the plans of the military authorities at Capetown, "so as to enable us
to take our own steps in case relief is refused," was thought not
unnaturally by Buller to hint at surrender; and although this was not
the intention of the senders it is probable that they did not regret the
interpretation that was put upon it.
Fortunately, however, Kekewich was a cool-headed man who did not suffer
himself to be hustled. While preserving amicable personal relations with
Rhodes, he was careful to let Capetown know that the situation in
Kimberley was by no means desperate and that it would be able to hold
out for several weeks.
The impetuous and childish letters and telegrams sent out by the diamond
men induced Buller, who said afterwards that "although I had every
confidence in Colonel Kekewich's military capacity I did not trust the
other powers within the city," to send Lord Methuen northwards on
November 10 with instructions to help Kimberley by removing unnecessary
non-combatants and natives, and "to let the people understand that you
have not come to undertake its defence, but to afford it better means of
maintaining its defence."
The news of Methuen's approach did not allay the excitement of the
townsmen. His movement was not an essential part of the general plan of
campaign but only a raid in force with the object of putting men and
supplies into Kimberley and enable it to hold on until pressure
elsewhere upon the Boers should raise the siege automatically.
The dignity and the self-respect of the diamond men was affronted. Like
the Syrian captain Naaman, when offered relief of his leprosy by the
prophet Elisha, they resented the simple process by which their own
relief was to be effected. They had looked to an Army Corps at least
marching on Kimberley with all the pomp of war and speedily enabling it
to resume its normal occupation of diamond grubbing; and now they found
that the town was not considered of much account in the scheme of the
military, who regarded it as a mere besieged place of little strategical
importance; which, after some assistance, was to be left dependent for
its safety upon its own exertions while the main army advanced through
the Free State.
On December 4 Kekewich was instructed to make arrangements for the
deportation of a large proportion of the white and coloured population,
Methuen hinting that Rhodes himself might be included. Although Rhodes
had a few weeks before complained of the difficulties caused by the
presence of non-combatants and had even endeavoured to send them away,
he now vehemently opposed their removal. His reasons for so doing are
not very clear, but they appear to be part of the systematic obstruction
which he offered to every proposition of the military authorities which
tended to restrict the output of diamonds. His objections were
transmitted to Buller, who speedily put the question in its proper light
by telegraphing to Kekewich that "what we have to do is to keep the
Union Jack flying over South Africa without favour to any particular set
of capitalists," and Methuen met his protest with the answer that
"Rhodes has no voice in the matter." After the defeat at Magersfontein
the plan of deportation had necessarily to be given up.
In his own proper sphere of a civilian working with civilians Rhodes was
usefully active and his services were great. He employed the persons
thrown out of work by the closing of the mines in labour for the general
benefit of the town, and did much to relieve the distress among the
poorer inhabitants.
The manufacture of a heavy gun, to which the name of Long Cecil was
given, in the De Beers engineering establishment, was soon countered by
the Boers, who brought into action a gun throwing a much heavier shell
which had been disabled by the Naval Battery at Ladysmith, repaired at
Pretoria, and was now mounted before Kimberley. The appearance of Long
Tom, supervening on a reduction on the daily rations, caused a panic
among the civilians. On February 9 Rhodes threatened to call a public
meeting to consider the situation unless he was informed of the plans
for the relief of the town: but Kekewich was authorized by Lord Roberts
not only to forbid the holding of the meeting, but even if necessary to
arrest Rhodes. A private meeting was then held at which a remonstrance
was drawn up for transmission to Lord Roberts through Kekewich; and for
the second time a communication from the Kimberley men was interpreted
as a threat to surrender. It was probably sent with that intent in order
to elicit information as to Lord Roberts' plans.
Kekewich meanwhile was finding his position almost intolerable, and his
representations convinced Lord Roberts of the necessity of raising the
siege of Rhodes without delay and at any cost. It was effected on
February 15 by French's brilliant cavalry movement; but at the cost of
the convoy of 170 wagons which were snapped up by De Wet at Waterval
Drift, and of an Army compelled to march and to fight for nearly four
weeks on reduced rations. But the harvesting of the crop of diamonds was
resumed, and as far as Kimberley was concerned the war was at an end.
Although the siege lasted for more than three months the casualties were
few, only 40 persons being killed and 123 wounded by acts of war. The
privations suffered by the inhabitants, especially during the last few
weeks, were no doubt great, but certainly not greater than the
privations which unhappily are endured by the unemployed in Great
Britain during a hard winter. The siege was conducted without much
vigour and determination, and the most important operation on the side
of the defence was a sortie on November 29 after the news had come in of
Methuen's approach.
The relief of Kimberley closed the public career of the most conspicuous
figure in the British Empire; and with great dignity and self-restraint,
which might well have been imitated by other persons whose conduct
during the war was impugned, Rhodes refrained from publishing a
Kimberley book.
If the Siege of Kimberley brought out the weak side of his character,
his egotism and impatience, his lack of power to adapt himself even
temporarily to unaccustomed conditions, it will be remembered that these
defects were inherent and that his marvellous success in life had
accentuated them. The acts of a public man are so variously regarded by
his opponents and his admirers, are seen by them in such different
lights, that there can rarely be any general agreement on the question
of the ratio between his merits and his failings; but the chief phases
of his life afford the raw material out of which each man for himself
can form an estimate of his character.
Like many men who have afterwards become famous in the secular world,
Cecil Rhodes was intended for the Church. His health suffered from the
rigours of the East Anglian climate and he was sent out to South Africa.
His brother's farm in Natal, to which he was consigned, he found
derelict on his arrival, but he was soon growing cotton on it, against
the advice of the local experts, but with eventual success. At the age
of 18 he was prospecting for diamonds at Kimberley, and forming the
opinion during a visit to the Transvaal that an insufficient proportion
of the South African Continent belonged to the British Empire. In 1872,
being then 19 years of age, he went to Oxford, but in a few months his
health broke down and another voyage to the Cape became necessary. In
1876 he returned to the University and remained there for two years when
South Africa recalled him. As soon as he could be spared he went back to
his college and, eight years after matriculation, completed his
undergraduate course. It was a high compliment to the value of a Pass
Degree at Oxford, where, however, he formed the opinion, which was not
publicly divulged until his will was opened twenty-one years later, that
Oxford Dons were "children in finance."
His election to the Cape Parliament in 1881 as Member for Kimberley
placed him in a favourable position to advance his schemes for the
northward extension of the British Empire. When the trespasses and
encroachments of the Transvaal Boers beyond the limits assigned to them
under the Convention of 1884 made it advisable to incorporate
Bechuanaland he was unable to persuade the Cape Government to undertake
that responsibility, but with the assistance of Sir Hercules Robinson
and the support of Mr. Chamberlain he induced the Imperial Government to
take action. President Kruger had connived at the establishment on
native territory under British protection of two little republics of
raiders, to which the names of Goshen and Stellaland were assigned; and
a costly expedition under Sir C. Warren was needed to bring him to his
senses. In 1885 Bechuanaland became an integral part of the British
Empire.
In 1888 he again opened the flood gates of Imperialism, and secured by
means of a treaty with Lobengula the reversion of the native territory
north of the Transvaal, at which two European nations were nibbling, and
which in his honour received the name of Rhodesia.
He became Premier of the Cape Colony in 1890 by the help of the Dutch
vote and from that time gradually sank from the zenith of his success.
His good fortune left him when he attained his ambition. The Jameson
Raid, for which he was not personally, though he confessed himself
morally, responsible, ended his political career. His last good service
to the Empire was given during the Matabele rising. He accompanied the
troops sent to suppress the rebellion; and when the operations seemed
likely to be indefinitely prolonged, he brought it to an end by going
fearlessly and almost unattended among the natives, whose confidence he
won by meeting them trustfully in council and listening to their
grievances.
His physical vitality, always inadequate, was seriously impaired by the
strain of the siege. He never fully recovered his strength and he died
on March 26, 1902, two months before the Second Boer war was brought to
a close by the Vereeniging Treaty.
He was a rich but honest man, and the great wealth which he amassed
never led him to attach undue importance to the possession of it. He
valued it not for his own advantage, but for its help in advancing his
political and imperial schemes. He employed it creditably and without
ostentation, and spent none of it in social display in London. By his
will he left the greater portion of it to the University of Oxford for
the establishment of an amiable if somewhat quixotic system of bringing
the various branches of the Anglo-Saxon race into association at a
centre of learning and athletics, where they were to be leavened by a
Teutonic admixture.
The vision of posthumous reputation allured him, and he delighted in the
hope that the name of his own Rhodesia, like the cities which still bear
the name of Alexander, would be on the lips of men of generations as far
distant from his own as his own was from the days of the Great
Macedonian.
He presented a pair of sculptured lions to President Kruger. Almost on
the eve of the war he asserted confidently that Kruger would not fight.
It is probable that this was not his belief, but that it was said in
order to provoke the President into rejecting the overtures of the
British Government, and to make inevitable the war which he foresaw was
the only way of settling the South African question.
Not a few incidents in his life are difficult to explain. The donation
of £10,000 to the funds of the Parnellite Party by an ardent English
Imperialist who had never expressed any particular enthusiasm for Home
Rule may have been a _douceur_ to prevent the Irish members from
attacking him in the British Parliament. He had not forgotten that
Parnell inaugurated the policy of obstruction carried to the length of
all-night sittings upon the occasion of the discussion of a Cape
Colonial question in the House of Commons. Possibly Rhodes was a Home
Ruler not in spite of his Imperialism but because of it. Home rule was
necessary to it. The function of the Imperial Parliament was the general
control of the affairs of the Empire, leaving local politics to be dealt
with by local legislatures.
The strong and dominant personality of Cecil Rhodes came to the front at
a time when the British Empire was beginning to show signs of lassitude
and appeared to be growing tired of itself. Patriotism was being slowly
transmuted into a limp and sickly cosmopolitan altruism. He checked this
decadence, at least for the time being, but passed away before he was
able to subdue it.
CHAPTER V
A Tragedy of Errors
The lassitude induced by the battle of Colenso affected each combatant
on the Tugela. The Boers put the finishing touches to their works on the
left bank, and at their leisure continued the position across the river
eastwards from Hlangwhane. They did not seem to have been withdrawn in
force[26] to assist the besiegers of Ladysmith in the great assault on
Wagon Hill and Caesar's Camp on January 6, for a demonstration ordered
by Buller at White's request during the crisis showed that the Tugela
front was as strongly held as ever.
On January 8, Buller, whose Head Quarters were at Frere, was reinforced
by the Vth Division under Warren, and he now resumed his original plan,
out of which he had been scared by Magersfontein, of advancing on
Ladysmith by way of Potgieter's Drift, rejecting an alternative plan
proposed by Warren, which differed little from that by which the relief
of Ladysmith was effected six weeks later, of a direct advance by way of
Hlangwhane and Pieter's Hill. Between Buller's army and Ladysmith lay
not only the tortuous and difficult Tugela, but also a barrier of
heights and ridges through which there were but four or five possible
ways of access, one of which had already been tried without success, to
the beleaguered city lying on a plain considerably above the level of
the open ground on the right bank of the Tugela.
Buller, having selected the route which seemed at the time to be the
line of least resistance, began on January 9 to transfer the bulk of his
force from Frere to Springfield, a distance of sixteen miles, but owing
to difficulties of transport and the necessity of accumulating a large
stock of supplies at the new base, it was six days before the
concentration was effected. One brigade was left at Chieveley to watch
the Boer front at Colenso.
In Orders issued at Frere on January 9, Buller announced that he
"proposed to effect the passage of the Tugela in the neighbourhood of
Potgieter's Drift, with a view to the relief of Ladysmith." His scheme
was based upon imperfect information and misleading maps, and was in
fact not so much a surprise flank attack, as all his movements had to be
made in full view of the enemy, as an attack from a position higher up
the river that must be frontal, because the enemy would have ample time
to make it so: and herein lay its weakness. When, however, he personally
surveyed the situation from Mount Alice, which overlooks Potgieter's
Drift, the aspect of the curving amphitheatre showed the danger of
attempting to force the river at that point. On the N.E. was Vaalkrantz
and Doornkop, and the high ridge of Brakfontein, which the enemy had
already begun to entrench, and over which passed the road by which he
proposed to reach Ladysmith, everywhere commanded by the heights, filled
the quadrant towards Spion Kop on the N.W.
On January 13, Buller reported to the War Office that, having found the
Potgieter's Drift scheme impracticable, he proposed as "the only
possible chance for Ladysmith" to send Warren across at Trickhardt's
Drift, five miles higher up the river. The new scheme was based upon a
theory which had been evolved out of the experiences of autumn manoeuvre
battles collated on the office desks of Pall Mall, that the easiest
method of defeating the enemy with a small casualty list was to contain
his front and attack one or both of his flanks; and General Officers had
come to regard this as the regulation opening to which they were bound
to conform.
[Illustration: Spion Kop and Vaal Krantz positions. _Stanford's Geog'l:
Estab't._]
Buller divided his force into two unequal portions. Warren with the
stronger portion was to attack the Boer right which Buller believed to
be weak, while Lyttelton with the remainder demonstrated at Potgieter's
Drift. To himself Buller reserved the part of the Chorus in a Greek
play, taking a general interest in the action, yet not personally
concerned in it; and in that capacity he issued a stirring appeal to the
relieving force.
On January 15 "secret instructions" were given to Warren. He was
recommended, after crossing the Tugela at Trickhardt's Drift, to proceed
west of Spion Kop, and to pivot his right and swing round on to the open
plain in rear of the Boer position facing Potgieter's Drift.
Warren, who was not of opinion that the Boer right was weak, marched out
of Springfield on the evening of January 16. Lyttelton had already
started, and during the night occupied a position on the north side of
the river near Potgieter's Drift.
The task before Warren was hard. In order to carry out Buller's plan he
must cross an unbridged river and struggle through a country of which
little was known. Next day two bridges were thrown over the Tugela above
Trickhardt's Drift, which recent rains had made dangerous, and Hart's
and Woodgate's Brigades were transferred to the left bank to cover the
crossing: but it was not until sunset on January 18 that the entire
force with its tedious transport was established on the north side of
the river.
The mounted troops under Dundonald were sent out at mid-day to
reconnoitre towards the N.W. and in the course of the afternoon his
advanced squadrons came upon a Boer commando which was easily dealt
with, but before the issue was decided, he had reported that he was
engaged near Acton Holmes, and asked for help. Warren assumed that the
mounted troops, which he had sent out to reconnoitre, had wilfully and
prematurely forced on an action, and were now in trouble; and it was not
until the next morning, after an infantry brigade had been moved out to
support them, that Warren heard from Dundonald, whose previous messages
had not clearly described the situation, that he was able to take care
of himself. Dundonald had at first expected that the main body would
follow him, and his reports seem to show that he had hoped to induce
Warren to move towards Acton Holmes. He was rebuked for assuming, not
unnaturally, that the objective of the operations was Ladysmith, and
instructed that the objective was a junction with the other portion of
Buller's force. He was summoned to Warren's headquarters and ordered to
abstain from further attempts to ride round the enemy's right. Thus, as
before at Hlangwhane, a promising cavalry movement by Dundonald was
thrown away.
The deliberate march of the British Army from Frere and the delay at the
Drifts gave the Boers ample time to prepare for the attack. On January
19, on which day Warren moved to Venter's Spruit three miles from
Trickhardt's Drift, they were in occupation of the whole line from
Vaalkrantz to the Rangeworthy Heights. Fourie was in command of the
left, Schalk Burger of the centre, which included the important features
of Green Hill, Spion Kop, and the Twin Peaks; and L. Botha of the right,
in which was Bastion Hill.
There were two roads by which Warren could advance; one running by
Fairview northwards from Trickhardt's Drift between Green Hill and Three
Tree Hill, and the other eight miles longer by Acton Holmes. The length
of the latter and a report from White that several commandos were on
their way to Acton Holmes from Ladysmith, led Warren to adopt the former
route.
He informed Buller of his decision, adding that certain "special
arrangements" which he had made would oblige him to remain near
Trickhardt's Drift, and that he must therefore have further supplies.
The "special arrangements" were in fact the steps which every general
would take before attacking a strong position not immediately
accessible; namely to acquire ground from which it could be threatened
and shelled. Clery was ordered to direct the operation, which Warren
believed would entail "comparatively little loss of life."
Early on January 20 Clery with one brigade and artillery advanced up the
re-entrant which springs from the river towards the east end of the
Rangeworthy Heights, and posted his guns half way up the valley on Three
Tree Hill. Hart, with a brigade of five battalions, was sent to occupy
the irregular southern crest of the heights running from Three Tree Hill
towards Bastion Hill. He drove the Boers out of their advanced trenches,
but found that the northern and higher crest to which they had retired,
could only be won by a frontal advance across open ground. He and his
brave Irishmen were as ready as ever to push on in the line of the
greatest resistance, but he was ordered by Clery to forbear. Meanwhile
Dundonald, not deterred by the damping of his trek on the 18th, and
while obeying an order from Warren to come to heel, seized Bastion Hill,
thereby securing Hart's left flank on the crest. So far as they went,
the operations of January 20 were successful. Warren's pivot movement
was in train, the whole of his force was now threatening the Boer right
which was widely extended but deficient in depth; and the day's
casualties were few. Following the example of Buller, who delegated his
authority to Warren, the latter entrusted the conduct of the day's
operations to Clery, who in succession ordered the chief movement to be
carried out by Hart. Next day the mounted troops on Bastion Hill were
relieved by infantry.
Buller was aware that the Ladysmith garrison, weakened by sickness and
privation, could give him little or no help; but at least during the
earlier phase of the Trickhardt's Drift operations he was confident. On
January 17 he told White that "somehow he thought he was going to be
successful this time," and that he hoped to be within touch of Ladysmith
in six days. His Head Quarters were at Spearman's Camp, a few miles
south of Mount Alice, whence he rode over daily to note and criticize
the tactics.
It now occurred to Warren that he might have been mistaken as to the
significance of the position occupied by the enemy on the Rangeworthy
Heights, and that it might be in reality a screen to hide a trek of the
Free Staters back to their own country; and on this supposition, which
was founded upon reports that the Siege of Ladysmith had been raised and
that some wagons had been seen on trek westwards towards the Drakensberg
passes, he applied for reinforcements to enable him to block the way.
Buller sent him Talbot Coke's brigade with some howitzers; and came over
to consult with him on January 22. The situation was not satisfactory.
Time was being wasted, Warren's "special arrangements" had done little,
and now he had a new idea. Buller still advocated an attack on the
enemy's right, while Warren wished to persevere with his advance by the
Fairview Road; but he pointed out that Spion Kop, which his reading of
the "secret instructions" had led him to regard as out of bounds, must
first be taken. No definite action seems to have been decided on, and
Warren was left to act within certain limits on his own responsibility.
Finally, with the approval of the four infantry generals, he resolved to
seize Spion Kop that night. The attack, however, was postponed until the
following night, to give time for the position to be reconnoitred.
Spion Kop is a ridge of which the chief features are a pair of high
peaks joined by a nek to a plateau, from which a spur, ending in a kopje
called Conical Hill, juts out at right angles to the nek, which becomes
a spur of the plateau at a Little Knoll east of the summit. Its tactical
importance was derived from its height, as the summit, though not the
peaks, is higher than any of the ground held by the enemy; and from its
position, as it was on the obtuse angle formed by the meeting of Botha's
line on the Boer right with Schalk Burger's on the centre, and enfiladed
each of them. It was accessible from the British front by a slope which
rises from the lower ground to another spur running S.W. from the
plateau.
On the morning of January 23, Buller saw Warren, and again pressed him
to make an attack on the Boer right; but finding that the orders for the
assault on Spion Kop had already been issued, he refrained from vetoing
it. He threatened, however, that if immediate action in some direction
were not taken, Warren's force would be withdrawn to the south of the
Tugela.
On the previous day Warren, betraying the Engineer officer unused to
handling large bodies of men, and unfamiliar with the military unities,
rearranged his command with a straight edge, and distributed it in one
way for tactical, and in another for administrative purposes. All the
troops lying west of an imaginary line became the left attack under
Clery, while those east of it became the right attack. The latter, under
Talbot Coke, were ordered to seize the Spion Kop position by night, and
entrench it before daybreak, the actual assault being made by Woodgate
with two battalions, some mounted infantry on foot, and a few Engineers.
At sunset on January 23, the curtain fell upon the first act of the
Tragedy of Spion Kop.
On the night of the January 23 Spion Kop was held as an observation post
by a party of seventy burghers. When Buller first appeared at
Potgieter's Drift, it was on the right of the Boer line, but now it was
only the right of the centre under Schalk Burger. Little was known of
its features and tactical value, beyond the information obtainable by a
telescopic reconnaissance. It was a prominent object in the Boer
position, and it seemed to be within the grasp of a night adventure.
Woodgate left his rendezvous at 9 p.m., but it is doubtful whether he
would have reached the summit before daybreak but for Thorneycroft, who
was in command of the mounted infantry which bore his name, and who had
before nightfall picked out and noted the recognizable objects on the
slope. A staff officer from Head Quarters, who accompanied the column to
direct the march, had had no opportunity of making himself acquainted
with the way of access to Spion Kop, and Thorneycroft was ordered to act
as guide.
[Illustration: Sketch Plan of Spion Kop.]
The summit, but fortunately little more than the summit, was veiled in
mist, and the crest was reached. Bayonets were fixed before the Boer
picket was alarmed and opened fire, but the ammunition was spent without
effect, as Thorneycroft's men had by order thrown themselves on the
ground as soon as they were discovered. A charge into the mist drove
back the picket and scared the main body off the summit. Thus before
dawn on January 24, Warren was in possession of the hill which was
believed to be the key of the Boer position, and the chief obstacle in
the way of his advance seemed to be thrust aside: but the mist on Spion
Kop was the forecast of the Fog of War which was soon to envelope him.
Woodgate, having the men, the tools and the ground, at once began
impulsively to dig, without endeavouring to inform himself of the
features of the position he had so easily won. A sort of a trench had
been scratched on the summit by the weary men, when the mist rolling
away for a little while disclosed the startling topography of the
position. The surface of the plateau sloped gently at first, and then
abruptly fell away, and the trench was found to be of little use. The
enemy could approach on dead ground to within two hundred yards of it.
Woodgate, seeing that the real defensible line was not the highest part
of the summit, but the edge lower down, where the steep descent began,
sent working parties to the front, but they at once came under fire.
Soon the mist again enveloped the hill, and having disposed his force,
he reported to Warren that he had established himself on Spion Kop.
The Boer outpost which had been driven from the summit belonged to
Schalk Burger's command. With Botha's co-operation a storming force was
soon brought tog
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