The Great Boer War
by Arthur Conan Doyle · English · Gutenberg #3069 · 1,307,606 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Great Boer War
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Release date: February 1, 2002 [eBook #3069]
Most recently updated: March 6, 2018
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3069
Credits: Produced by Robert Laing, Sue Asscher, and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT BOER WAR ***
Produced by Robert Laing, and Sue Asscher
THE GREAT BOER WAR
By Arthur Conan Doyle
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER 1. THE BOER NATIONS.
CHAPTER 2. THE CAUSE OF QUARREL.
CHAPTER 3. THE NEGOTIATIONS.
CHAPTER 4. THE EVE OF WAR.
CHAPTER 5. TALANA HILL.
CHAPTER 6. ELANDSLAAGTE AND RIETFONTEIN.
CHAPTER 7. THE BATTLE OF LADYSMITH.
CHAPTER 8. LORD METHUEN'S ADVANCE.
CHAPTER 9. BATTLE OF MAGERSFONTEIN.
CHAPTER 10. THE BATTLE OF STORMBERG.
CHAPTER 11. BATTLE OF COLENSO.
CHAPTER 12. THE DARK HOUR.
CHAPTER 13. THE SIEGE OF LADYSMITH.
CHAPTER 14. THE COLESBERG OPERATIONS.
CHAPTER 15. SPION KOP.
CHAPTER 16. VAALKRANZ.
CHAPTER 17. BULLER'S FINAL ADVANCE.
CHAPTER 18. THE SIEGE AND RELIEF OF KIMBERLEY.
CHAPTER 19. PAARDEBERG.
CHAPTER 20. ROBERTS'S ADVANCE ON BLOEMFONTEIN.
CHAPTER 21. STRATEGIC EFFECTS OF LORD ROBERTS'S MARCH.
CHAPTER 22. THE HALT AT BLOEMFONTEIN.
CHAPTER 23. THE CLEARING OF THE SOUTH-EAST.
CHAPTER 24. THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING.
CHAPTER 25. THE MARCH ON PRETORIA.
CHAPTER 26. DIAMOND HILL--RUNDLE'S OPERATIONS.
CHAPTER 27. THE LINES OF COMMUNICATION.
CHAPTER 28. THE HALT AT PRETORIA.
CHAPTER 29. THE ADVANCE TO KOMATIPOORT.
CHAPTER 30. THE CAMPAIGN OF DE WET.
CHAPTER 31. THE GUERILLA WARFARE IN THE TRANSVAAL: NOOITGEDACHT.
CHAPTER 32. THE SECOND INVASION OF CAPE COLONY.
CHAPTER 33. THE NORTHERN OPERATIONS FROM JANUARY TO APRIL, 1901.
CHAPTER 34. THE WINTER CAMPAIGN (APRIL TO SEPTEMBER, 1901).
CHAPTER 35. THE GUERILLA OPERATIONS IN CAPE COLONY.
CHAPTER 36. THE SPRING CAMPAIGN (SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER, 1901).
CHAPTER 37. THE CAMPAIGN OF JANUARY TO APRIL, 1902.
CHAPTER 38. DE LA REY'S CAMPAIGN OF 1902.
CHAPTER 39. THE END.
PREFACE TO THE FINAL EDITION.
During the course of the war some sixteen Editions of this work have
appeared, each of which was, I hope, a little more full and accurate
than that which preceded it. I may fairly claim, however, that the
absolute mistakes made have been few in number, and that I have never
had occasion to reverse, and seldom to modify, the judgments which I
have formed. In this final edition the early text has been carefully
revised and all fresh available knowledge has been added within the
limits of a single volume narrative. Of the various episodes in the
latter half of the war it is impossible to say that the material is
available for a complete and final chronicle. By the aid, however, of
the official dispatches, of the newspapers, and of many private letters,
I have done my best to give an intelligible and accurate account of
the matter. The treatment may occasionally seem too brief but some
proportion must be observed between the battles of 1899-1900 and the
skirmishes of 1901-1902.
My private informants are so numerous that it would be hardly possible,
even if it were desirable, that I should quote their names. Of the
correspondents upon whose work I have drawn for my materials, I would
acknowledge my obligations to Messrs. Burleigh, Nevinson, Battersby,
Stuart, Amery, Atkins, Baillie, Kinneir, Churchill, James, Ralph,
Barnes, Maxwell, Pearce, Hamilton, and others. Especially I would
mention the gentleman who represented the 'Standard' in the last year
of the war, whose accounts of Vlakfontein, Von Donop's Convoy, and
Tweebosch were the only reliable ones which reached the public.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Undershaw, Hindhead: September 1902.
CHAPTER 1. THE BOER NATIONS.
Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended
themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time when
Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with them a strain
of those inflexible French Huguenots who gave up home and fortune and
left their country for ever at the time of the revocation of the Edict
of Nantes. The product must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile,
unconquerable races ever seen upon earth. Take this formidable people
and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage
men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling could
survive, place them so that they acquire exceptional skill with weapons
and in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited to
the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman, and the rider. Then, finally,
put a finer temper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic
Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism. Combine
all these qualities and all these impulses in one individual, and you
have the modern Boer--the most formidable antagonist who ever crossed
the path of Imperial Britain. Our military history has largely consisted
in our conflicts with France, but Napoleon and all his veterans have
never treated us so roughly as these hard-bitten farmers with their
ancient theology and their inconveniently modern rifles.
Look at the map of South Africa, and there, in the very centre of the
British possessions, like the stone in a peach, lies the great stretch
of the two republics, a mighty domain for so small a people. How came
they there? Who are these Teutonic folk who have burrowed so deeply into
Africa? It is a twice-told tale, and yet it must be told once again if
this story is to have even the most superficial of introductions. No one
can know or appreciate the Boer who does not know his past, for he is
what his past has made him.
It was about the time when Oliver Cromwell was at his zenith--in 1652,
to be pedantically accurate--that the Dutch made their first lodgment at
the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese had been there before them, but,
repelled by the evil weather, and lured forwards by rumours of gold,
they had passed the true seat of empire and had voyaged further to
settle along the eastern coast. Some gold there was, but not much, and
the Portuguese settlements have never been sources of wealth to the
mother country, and never will be until the day when Great Britain
signs her huge cheque for Delagoa Bay. The coast upon which they settled
reeked with malaria. A hundred miles of poisonous marsh separated it
from the healthy inland plateau. For centuries these pioneers of South
African colonisation strove to obtain some further footing, but save
along the courses of the rivers they made little progress. Fierce
natives and an enervating climate barred their way.
But it was different with the Dutch. That very rudeness of climate
which had so impressed the Portuguese adventurer was the source of their
success. Cold and poverty and storm are the nurses of the qualities
which make for empire. It is the men from the bleak and barren lands who
master the children of the light and the heat. And so the Dutchmen at
the Cape prospered and grew stronger in that robust climate. They did
not penetrate far inland, for they were few in number and all they
wanted was to be found close at hand. But they built themselves houses,
and they supplied the Dutch East India Company with food and water,
gradually budding off little townlets, Wynberg, Stellenbosch, and
pushing their settlements up the long slopes which lead to that great
central plateau which extends for fifteen hundred miles from the edge
of the Karoo to the Valley of the Zambesi. Then came the additional
Huguenot emigrants--the best blood of France three hundred of them, a
handful of the choicest seed thrown in to give a touch of grace and soul
to the solid Teutonic strain. Again and again in the course of history,
with the Normans, the Huguenots, the Emigres, one can see the great hand
dipping into that storehouse and sprinkling the nations with the same
splendid seed. France has not founded other countries, like her great
rival, but she has made every other country the richer by the mixture
with her choicest and best. The Rouxs, Du Toits, Jouberts, Du Plessis,
Villiers, and a score of other French names are among the most familiar
in South Africa.
For a hundred more years the history of the colony was a record of the
gradual spreading of the Afrikaners over the huge expanse of veld which
lay to the north of them. Cattle raising became an industry, but in
a country where six acres can hardly support a sheep, large farms are
necessary for even small herds. Six thousand acres was the usual size,
and five pounds a year the rent payable to Government. The diseases
which follow the white man had in Africa, as in America and Australia,
been fatal to the natives, and an epidemic of smallpox cleared the
country for the newcomers. Further and further north they pushed,
founding little towns here and there, such as Graaf-Reinet and
Swellendam, where a Dutch Reformed Church and a store for the sale
of the bare necessaries of life formed a nucleus for a few scattered
dwellings. Already the settlers were showing that independence of
control and that detachment from Europe which has been their most
prominent characteristic. Even the sway of the Dutch Company (an older
but weaker brother of John Company in India) had caused them to revolt.
The local rising, however, was hardly noticed in the universal cataclysm
which followed the French Revolution. After twenty years, during which
the world was shaken by the Titanic struggle between England and France
in the final counting up of the game and paying of the stakes, the Cape
Colony was added in 1814 to the British Empire.
In all our vast collection of States there is probably not one the
title-deeds to which are more incontestable than to this one. We had it
by two rights, the right of conquest and the right of purchase. In 1806
our troops landed, defeated the local forces, and took possession of
Cape Town. In 1814 we paid the large sum of six million pounds to the
Stadholder for the transference of this and some South American land.
It was a bargain which was probably made rapidly and carelessly in that
general redistribution which was going on. As a house of call upon the
way to India the place was seen to be of value, but the country itself
was looked upon as unprofitable and desert. What would Castlereagh or
Liverpool have thought could they have seen the items which we were
buying for our six million pounds? The inventory would have been a mixed
one of good and of evil; nine fierce Kaffir wars, the greatest
diamond mines in the world, the wealthiest gold mines, two costly and
humiliating campaigns with men whom we respected even when we fought
with them, and now at last, we hope, a South Africa of peace and
prosperity, with equal rights and equal duties for all men. The future
should hold something very good for us in that land, for if we merely
count the past we should be compelled to say that we should have been
stronger, richer, and higher in the world's esteem had our possessions
there never passed beyond the range of the guns of our men-of-war. But
surely the most arduous is the most honourable, and, looking back from
the end of their journey, our descendants may see that our long record
of struggle, with its mixture of disaster and success, its outpouring
of blood and of treasure, has always tended to some great and enduring
goal.
The title-deeds to the estate are, as I have said, good ones, but there
is one singular and ominous flaw in their provisions. The ocean has
marked three boundaries to it, but the fourth is undefined. There is
no word of the 'Hinterland;' for neither the term nor the idea had
then been thought of. Had Great Britain bought those vast regions which
extended beyond the settlements? Or were the discontented Dutch at
liberty to pass onwards and found fresh nations to bar the path of the
Anglo-Celtic colonists? In that question lay the germ of all the trouble
to come. An American would realise the point at issue if he could
conceive that after the founding of the United States the Dutch
inhabitants of the State of New York had trekked to the westward and
established fresh communities under a new flag. Then, when the American
population overtook these western States, they would be face to face
with the problem which this country has had to solve. If they found
these new States fiercely anti-American and extremely unprogressive,
they would experience that aggravation of their difficulties with which
our statesmen have had to deal.
At the time of their transference to the British flag the
colonists--Dutch, French, and German--numbered some thirty thousand.
They were slaveholders, and the slaves were about as numerous as
themselves. The prospect of complete amalgamation between the British
and the original settlers would have seemed to be a good one, since
they were of much the same stock, and their creeds could only be
distinguished by their varying degrees of bigotry and intolerance. Five
thousand British emigrants were landed in 1820, settling on the Eastern
borders of the colony, and from that time onwards there was a slow but
steady influx of English speaking colonists. The Government had the
historical faults and the historical virtues of British rule. It was
mild, clean, honest, tactless, and inconsistent. On the whole, it might
have done very well had it been content to leave things as it found
them. But to change the habits of the most conservative of Teutonic
races was a dangerous venture, and one which has led to a long series
of complications, making up the troubled history of South Africa. The
Imperial Government has always taken an honourable and philanthropic
view of the rights of the native and the claim which he has to the
protection of the law. We hold and rightly, that British justice, if not
blind, should at least be colour-blind. The view is irreproachable in
theory and incontestable in argument, but it is apt to be irritating
when urged by a Boston moralist or a London philanthropist upon men
whose whole society has been built upon the assumption that the black
is the inferior race. Such a people like to find the higher morality
for themselves, not to have it imposed upon them by those who live under
entirely different conditions. They feel--and with some reason--that
it is a cheap form of virtue which, from the serenity of a well-ordered
household in Beacon Street or Belgrave Square, prescribes what the
relation shall be between a white employer and his half-savage,
half-childish retainers. Both branches of the Anglo-Celtic race have
grappled with the question, and in each it has led to trouble.
The British Government in South Africa has always played the unpopular
part of the friend and protector of the native servants. It was upon
this very point that the first friction appeared between the old
settlers and the new administration. A rising with bloodshed followed
the arrest of a Dutch farmer who had maltreated his slave. It was
suppressed, and five of the participants were hanged. This punishment
was unduly severe and exceedingly injudicious. A brave race can forget
the victims of the field of battle, but never those of the scaffold. The
making of political martyrs is the last insanity of statesmanship. It
is true that both the man who arrested and the judge who condemned the
prisoners were Dutch, and that the British Governor interfered on the
side of mercy; but all this was forgotten afterwards in the desire to
make racial capital out of the incident. It is typical of the enduring
resentment which was left behind that when, after the Jameson raid, it
seemed that the leaders of that ill-fated venture might be hanged,
the beam was actually brought from a farmhouse at Cookhouse Drift to
Pretoria, that the Englishmen might die as the Dutchmen had died in
1816. Slagter's Nek marked the dividing of the ways between the British
Government and the Afrikaners.
And the separation soon became more marked. There were injudicious
tamperings with the local government and the local ways, with a
substitution of English for Dutch in the law courts. With vicarious
generosity, the English Government gave very lenient terms to the Kaffir
tribes who in 1834 had raided the border farmers. And then, finally, in
this same year there came the emancipation of the slaves throughout the
British Empire, which fanned all smouldering discontents into an active
flame.
It must be confessed that on this occasion the British philanthropist
was willing to pay for what he thought was right. It was a noble
national action, and one the morality of which was in advance of its
time, that the British Parliament should vote the enormous sum of twenty
million pounds to pay compensation to the slaveholders, and so to remove
an evil with which the mother country had no immediate connection. It
was as well that the thing should have been done when it was, for had we
waited till the colonies affected had governments of their own it could
never have been done by constitutional methods. With many a grumble the
good British householder drew his purse from his fob, and he paid for
what he thought to be right. If any special grace attends the virtuous
action which brings nothing but tribulation in this world, then we may
hope for it over this emancipation. We spent our money, we ruined our
West Indian colonies, and we started a disaffection in South Africa, the
end of which we have not seen. Yet if it were to be done again we should
doubtless do it. The highest morality may prove also to be the highest
wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished.
But the details of the measure were less honourable than the principle.
It was carried out suddenly, so that the country had no time to adjust
itself to the new conditions. Three million pounds were ear-marked for
South Africa, which gives a price per slave of from sixty to seventy
pounds, a sum considerably below the current local rates. Finally, the
compensation was made payable in London, so that the farmers sold their
claims at reduced prices to middlemen. Indignation meetings were held in
every little townlet and cattle camp on the Karoo. The old Dutch spirit
was up--the spirit of the men who cut the dykes. Rebellion was useless.
But a vast untenanted land stretched to the north of them. The nomad
life was congenial to them, and in their huge ox-drawn wagons--like
those bullock-carts in which some of their old kinsmen came to
Gaul--they had vehicles and homes and forts all in one. One by one they
were loaded up, the huge teams were inspanned, the women were seated
inside, the men, with their long-barrelled guns, walked alongside,
and the great exodus was begun. Their herds and flocks accompanied the
migration, and the children helped to round them in and drive them. One
tattered little boy of ten cracked his sjambok whip behind the bullocks.
He was a small item in that singular crowd, but he was of interest to
us, for his name was Paul Stephanus Kruger.
It was a strange exodus, only comparable in modern times to the sallying
forth of the Mormons from Nauvoo upon their search for the promised land
of Utah. The country was known and sparsely settled as far north as the
Orange River, but beyond there was a great region which had never
been penetrated save by some daring hunter or adventurous pioneer. It
chanced--if there be indeed such an element as chance in the graver
affairs of man--that a Zulu conqueror had swept over this land and left
it untenanted, save by the dwarf bushmen, the hideous aborigines,
lowest of the human race. There were fine grazing and good soil for
the emigrants. They traveled in small detached parties, but their total
numbers were considerable, from six to ten thousand according to their
historian, or nearly a quarter of the whole population of the colony.
Some of the early bands perished miserably. A large number made a
trysting-place at a high peak to the east of Bloemfontein in what was
lately the Orange Free State. One party of the emigrants was cut off
by the formidable Matabeli, a branch of the great Zulu nation. The
survivors declared war upon them, and showed in this, their first
campaign, the extraordinary ingenuity in adapting their tactics to their
adversary which has been their greatest military characteristic. The
commando which rode out to do battle with the Matabeli numbered, it is
said, a hundred and thirty-five farmers. Their adversaries were twelve
thousand spearmen. They met at the Marico River, near Mafeking. The
Boers combined the use of their horses and of their rifles so cleverly
that they slaughtered a third of their antagonists without any loss to
themselves. Their tactics were to gallop up within range of the enemy,
to fire a volley, and then to ride away again before the spearmen could
reach them. When the savages pursued the Boers fled. When the pursuit
halted the Boers halted and the rifle fire began anew. The strategy was
simple but most effective. When one remembers how often since then our
own horsemen have been pitted against savages in all parts of the world,
one deplores that ignorance of all military traditions save our own
which is characteristic of our service.
This victory of the 'voortrekkers' cleared all the country between the
Orange River and the Limpopo, the sites of what has been known as the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In the meantime another body of
the emigrants had descended into what is now known as Natal, and had
defeated Dingaan, the great Chief of the Zulus. Being unable, owing to
the presence of their families, to employ the cavalry tactics which had
been so effective against the Matabeli, they again used their ingenuity
to meet this new situation, and received the Zulu warriors in a square
of laagered wagons, the men firing while the women loaded. Six burghers
were killed and three thousand Zulus. Had such a formation been used
forty years afterwards against these very Zulus, we should not have had
to mourn the disaster of Isandhlwana.
And now at the end of their great journey, after overcoming the
difficulties of distance, of nature, and of savage enemies, the Boers
saw at the end of their travels the very thing which they desired
least--that which they had come so far to avoid--the flag of Great
Britain. The Boers had occupied Natal from within, but England had
previously done the same by sea, and a small colony of Englishmen
had settled at Port Natal, now known as Durban. The home Government,
however, had acted in a vacillating way, and it was only the conquest of
Natal by the Boers which caused them to claim it as a British colony.
At the same time they asserted the unwelcome doctrine that a British
subject could not at will throw off his allegiance, and that, go where
they might, the wandering farmers were still only the pioneers of
British colonies. To emphasise the fact three companies of soldiers
were sent in 1842 to what is now Durban--the usual Corporal's guard with
which Great Britain starts a new empire. This handful of men was waylaid
by the Boers and cut up, as their successors have been so often since.
The survivors, however, fortified themselves, and held a defensive
position--as also their successors have done so many times since--until
reinforcements arrived and the farmers dispersed. It is singular how in
history the same factors will always give the same result. Here in this
first skirmish is an epitome of all our military relations with these
people. The blundering headstrong attack, the defeat, the powerlessness
of the farmer against the weakest fortifications--it is the same tale
over and over again in different scales of importance. Natal from this
time onward became a British colony, and the majority of the Boers
trekked north and east with bitter hearts to tell their wrongs to their
brethren of the Orange Free State and of the Transvaal.
Had they any wrongs to tell? It is difficult to reach that height of
philosophic detachment which enables the historian to deal absolutely
impartially where his own country is a party to the quarrel. But
at least we may allow that there is a case for our adversary. Our
annexation of Natal had been by no means definite, and it was they and
not we who first broke that bloodthirsty Zulu power which threw its
shadow across the country. It was hard after such trials and such
exploits to turn their back upon the fertile land which they had
conquered, and to return to the bare pastures of the upland veld. They
carried out of Natal a heavy sense of injury, which has helped to
poison our relations with them ever since. It was, in a way, a momentous
episode, this little skirmish of soldiers and emigrants, for it was the
heading off of the Boer from the sea and the confinement of his ambition
to the land. Had it gone the other way, a new and possibly formidable
flag would have been added to the maritime nations.
The emigrants who had settled in the huge tract of country between
the Orange River in the south and the Limpopo in the north had been
recruited by newcomers from the Cape Colony until they numbered some
fifteen thousand souls. This population was scattered over a space
as large as Germany, and larger than Pennsylvania, New York, and New
England. Their form of government was individualistic and democratic to
the last degree compatible with any sort of cohesion. Their wars with
the Kaffirs and their fear and dislike of the British Government appear
to have been the only ties which held them together. They divided
and subdivided within their own borders, like a germinating egg.
The Transvaal was full of lusty little high-mettled communities,
who quarreled among themselves as fiercely as they had done with the
authorities at the Cape. Lydenburg, Zoutpansberg, and Potchefstroom were
on the point of turning their rifles against each other. In the south,
between the Orange River and the Vaal, there was no form of government
at all, but a welter of Dutch farmers, Basutos, Hottentots, and
halfbreeds living in a chronic state of turbulence, recognising neither
the British authority to the south of them nor the Transvaal republics
to the north. The chaos became at last unendurable, and in 1848 a
garrison was placed in Bloemfontein and the district incorporated in the
British Empire. The emigrants made a futile resistance at Boomplaats,
and after a single defeat allowed themselves to be drawn into the
settled order of civilised rule.
At this period the Transvaal, where most of the Boers had settled,
desired a formal acknowledgment of their independence, which the British
authorities determined once and for all to give them. The great barren
country, which produced little save marksmen, had no attractions for a
Colonial Office which was bent upon the limitation of its liabilities.
A Convention was concluded between the two parties, known as the Sand
River Convention, which is one of the fixed points in South African
history. By it the British Government guaranteed to the Boer farmers the
right to manage their own affairs, and to govern themselves by their
own laws without any interference upon the part of the British. It
stipulated that there should be no slavery, and with that single
reservation washed its hands finally, as it imagined, of the whole
question. So the South African Republic came formally into existence.
In the very year after the Sand River Convention a second republic, the
Orange Free State, was created by the deliberate withdrawal of Great
Britain from the territory which she had for eight years occupied. The
Eastern Question was already becoming acute, and the cloud of a great
war was drifting up, visible to all men. British statesmen felt that
their commitments were very heavy in every part of the world, and
the South African annexations had always been a doubtful value and an
undoubted trouble. Against the will of a large part of the inhabitants,
whether a majority or not it is impossible to say, we withdrew our
troops as amicably as the Romans withdrew from Britain, and the new
republic was left with absolute and unfettered independence. On a
petition being presented against the withdrawal, the Home Government
actually voted forty-eight thousand pounds to compensate those who had
suffered from the change. Whatever historical grievance the Transvaal
may have against Great Britain, we can at least, save perhaps in one
matter, claim to have a very clear conscience concerning our dealings
with the Orange Free State. Thus in 1852 and in 1854 were born those
sturdy States who were able for a time to hold at bay the united forces
of the empire.
In the meantime Cape Colony, in spite of these secessions, had prospered
exceedingly, and her population--English, German, and Dutch--had grown
by 1870 to over two hundred thousand souls, the Dutch still slightly
predominating. According to the Liberal colonial policy of Great
Britain, the time had come to cut the cord and let the young nation
conduct its own affairs. In 1872 complete self-government was given
to it, the Governor, as the representative of the Queen, retaining a
nominal unexercised veto upon legislation. According to this system
the Dutch majority of the colony could, and did, put their own
representatives into power and run the government upon Dutch lines.
Already Dutch law had been restored, and Dutch put on the same footing
as English as the official language of the country. The extreme
liberality of such measures, and the uncompromising way in which they
have been carried out, however distasteful the legislation might seem
to English ideas, are among the chief reasons which made the illiberal
treatment of British settlers in the Transvaal so keenly resented at the
Cape. A Dutch Government was ruling the British in a British colony,
at a moment when the Boers would not give an Englishman a vote upon a
municipal council in a city which he had built himself. Unfortunately,
however, 'the evil that men do lives after them,' and the ignorant Boer
farmer continued to imagine that his southern relatives were in bondage,
just as the descendant of the Irish emigrant still pictures an Ireland
of penal laws and an alien Church.
For twenty-five years after the Sand River Convention the burghers
of the South African Republic had pursued a strenuous and violent
existence, fighting incessantly with the natives and sometimes with
each other, with an occasional fling at the little Dutch republic to the
south. The semi-tropical sun was waking strange ferments in the placid
Friesland blood, and producing a race who added the turbulence and
restlessness of the south to the formidable tenacity of the north.
Strong vitality and violent ambitions produced feuds and rivalries
worthy of medieval Italy, and the story of the factious little
communities is like a chapter out of Guicciardini. Disorganisation
ensued. The burghers would not pay taxes and the treasury was empty. One
fierce Kaffir tribe threatened them from the north, and the Zulus on
the east. It is an exaggeration of English partisans to pretend that our
intervention saved the Boers, for no one can read their military history
without seeing that they were a match for Zulus and Sekukuni combined.
But certainly a formidable invasion was pending, and the scattered
farmhouses were as open to the Kaffirs as our farmers' homesteads were
in the American colonies when the Indians were on the warpath. Sir
Theophilus Shepstone, the British Commissioner, after an inquiry of
three months, solved all questions by the formal annexation of the
country. The fact that he took possession of it with a force of
some twenty-five men showed the honesty of his belief that no armed
resistance was to be feared. This, then, in 1877 was a complete reversal
of the Sand River Convention and the opening of a new chapter in the
history of South Africa.
There did not appear to be any strong feeling at the time against the
annexation. The people were depressed with their troubles and weary of
contention. Burgers, the President, put in a formal protest, and took
up his abode in Cape Colony, where he had a pension from the British
Government. A memorial against the measure received the signatures of a
majority of the Boer inhabitants, but there was a fair minority who took
the other view. Kruger himself accepted a paid office under Government.
There was every sign that the people, if judiciously handled, would
settle down under the British flag. It is even asserted that they would
themselves have petitioned for annexation had it been longer withheld.
With immediate constitutional government it is possible that even
the most recalcitrant of them might have been induced to lodge their
protests in the ballot boxes rather than in the bodies of our soldiers.
But the empire has always had poor luck in South Africa, and never
worse than on that occasion. Through no bad faith, but simply through
preoccupation and delay, the promises made were not instantly fulfilled.
Simple primitive men do not understand the ways of our circumlocution
offices, and they ascribe to duplicity what is really red tape and
stupidity. If the Transvaalers had waited they would have had their
Volksraad and all that they wanted. But the British Government had some
other local matters to set right, the rooting out of Sekukuni and the
breaking of the Zulus, before they would fulfill their pledges. The
delay was keenly resented. And we were unfortunate in our choice of
Governor. The burghers are a homely folk, and they like an occasional
cup of coffee with the anxious man who tries to rule them. The three
hundred pounds a year of coffee money allowed by the Transvaal to its
President is by no means a mere form. A wise administrator would fall
into the sociable and democratic habits of the people. Sir Theophilus
Shepstone did so. Sir Owen Lanyon did not. There was no Volksraad and
no coffee, and the popular discontent grew rapidly. In three years the
British had broken up the two savage hordes which had been threatening
the land. The finances, too, had been restored. The reasons which had
made so many favour the annexation were weakened by the very power which
had every interest in preserving them.
It cannot be too often pointed out that in this annexation, the
starting-point of our troubles, Great Britain, however mistaken she may
have been, had no obvious selfish interest in view. There were no Rand
mines in those days, nor was there anything in the country to tempt the
most covetous. An empty treasury and two native wars were the reversion
which we took over. It was honestly considered that the country was
in too distracted a state to govern itself, and had, by its weakness,
become a scandal and a danger to its neighbours. There was nothing
sordid in our action, though it may have been both injudicious and
high-handed.
In December 1880 the Boers rose. Every farmhouse sent out its riflemen,
and the trysting-place was the outside of the nearest British fort. All
through the country small detachments were surrounded and besieged
by the farmers. Standerton, Pretoria, Potchefstroom, Lydenburg,
Wakkerstroom, Rustenberg, and Marabastad were all invested and all
held out until the end of the war. In the open country we were less
fortunate. At Bronkhorst Spruit a small British force was taken by
surprise and shot down without harm to their antagonists. The surgeon
who treated them has left it on record that the average number of
wounds was five per man. At Laing's Nek an inferior force of British
endeavoured to rush a hill which was held by Boer riflemen. Half of our
men were killed and wounded. Ingogo may be called a drawn battle, though
our loss was more heavy than that of the enemy. Finally came the
defeat of Majuba Hill, where four hundred infantry upon a mountain were
defeated and driven off by a swarm of sharpshooters who advanced under
the cover of boulders. Of all these actions there was not one which
was more than a skirmish, and had they been followed by a final British
victory they would now be hardly remembered. It is the fact that they
were skirmishes which succeeded in their object which has given them
an importance which is exaggerated. At the same time they may mark the
beginning of a new military era, for they drove home the fact--only too
badly learned by us--that it is the rifle and not the drill which makes
the soldier. It is bewildering that after such an experience the
British military authorities continued to serve out only three hundred
cartridges a year for rifle practice, and that they still encouraged
that mechanical volley firing which destroys all individual aim. With
the experience of the first Boer war behind them, little was done,
either in tactics or in musketry, to prepare the soldier for the second.
The value of the mounted rifleman, the shooting with accuracy at unknown
ranges, the art of taking cover--all were equally neglected.
The defeat at Majuba Hill was followed by the complete surrender of the
Gladstonian Government, an act which was either the most pusillanimous
or the most magnanimous in recent history. It is hard for the big man
to draw away from the small before blows are struck but when the big man
has been knocked down three times it is harder still. An overwhelming
British force was in the field, and the General declared that he held
the enemy in the hollow of his hand. Our military calculations have been
falsified before now by these farmers, and it may be that the task
of Wood and Roberts would have been harder than they imagined; but on
paper, at least, it looked as if the enemy could be crushed without
difficulty. So the public thought, and yet they consented to the
upraised sword being stayed. With them, as apart from the politicians,
the motive was undoubtedly a moral and Christian one. They considered
that the annexation of the Transvaal had evidently been an injustice,
that the farmers had a right to the freedom for which they fought, and
that it was an unworthy thing for a great nation to continue an unjust
war for the sake of a military revenge. It was the height of idealism,
and the result has not been such as to encourage its repetition.
An armistice was concluded on March 5th, 1881, which led up to a peace
on the 23rd of the same month. The Government, after yielding to force
what it had repeatedly refused to friendly representations, made
a clumsy compromise in their settlement. A policy of idealism and
Christian morality should have been thorough if it were to be tried
at all. It was obvious that if the annexation were unjust, then the
Transvaal should have reverted to the condition in which it was before
the annexation, as defined by the Sand River Convention. But the
Government for some reason would not go so far as this. They niggled
and quibbled and bargained until the State was left as a curious hybrid
thing such as the world has never seen. It was a republic which was
part of the system of a monarchy, dealt with by the Colonial Office,
and included under the heading of 'Colonies' in the news columns of the
'Times.' It was autonomous, and yet subject to some vague suzerainty,
the limits of which no one has ever been able to define. Altogether, in
its provisions and in its omissions, the Convention of Pretoria appears
to prove that our political affairs were as badly conducted as our
military in this unfortunate year of 1881.
It was evident from the first that so illogical and contentious an
agreement could not possibly prove to be a final settlement, and indeed
the ink of the signatures was hardly dry before an agitation was on foot
for its revision. The Boers considered, and with justice, that if they
were to be left as undisputed victors in the war then they should have
the full fruits of victory. On the other hand, the English-speaking
colonies had their allegiance tested to the uttermost. The proud
Anglo-Celtic stock is not accustomed to be humbled, and yet they found
themselves through the action of the home Government converted into
members of a beaten race. It was very well for the citizen of London to
console his wounded pride by the thought that he had done a magnanimous
action, but it was different with the British colonist of Durban or Cape
Town, who by no act of his own, and without any voice in the settlement,
found himself humiliated before his Dutch neighbour. An ugly feeling of
resentment was left behind, which might perhaps have passed away had the
Transvaal accepted the settlement in the spirit in which it was meant,
but which grew more and more dangerous as during eighteen years our
people saw, or thought that they saw, that one concession led always
to a fresh demand, and that the Dutch republics aimed not merely at
equality, but at dominance in South Africa. Professor Bryce, a friendly
critic, after a personal examination of the country and the question,
has left it upon record that the Boers saw neither generosity nor
humanity in our conduct, but only fear. An outspoken race, they conveyed
their feelings to their neighbours. Can it be wondered at that South
Africa has been in a ferment ever since, and that the British Africander
has yearned with an intensity of feeling unknown in England for the hour
of revenge?
The Government of the Transvaal after the war was left in the hands of a
triumvirate, but after one year Kruger became President, an office which
he continued to hold for eighteen years. His career as ruler vindicates
the wisdom of that wise but unwritten provision of the American
Constitution by which there is a limit to the tenure of this office.
Continued rule for half a generation must turn a man into an autocrat.
The old President has said himself, in his homely but shrewd way, that
when one gets a good ox to lead the team it is a pity to change him.
If a good ox, however, is left to choose his own direction without
guidance, he may draw his wagon into trouble.
During three years the little State showed signs of a tumultuous
activity. Considering that it was as large as France and that the
population could not have been more than 50,000, one would have thought
that they might have found room without any inconvenient crowding.
But the burghers passed beyond their borders in every direction. The
President cried aloud that he had been shut up in a kraal, and he
proceeded to find ways out of it. A great trek was projected for the
north, but fortunately it miscarried. To the east they raided Zululand,
and succeeded, in defiance of the British settlement of that country,
in tearing away one third of it and adding it to the Transvaal. To
the west, with no regard to the three-year-old treaty, they invaded
Bechuanaland, and set up the two new republics of Goshen and Stellaland.
So outrageous were these proceedings that Great Britain was forced
to fit out in 1884 a new expedition under Sir Charles Warren for the
purpose of turning these freebooters out of the country. It may be
asked, why should these men be called freebooters if the founders of
Rhodesia were pioneers? The answer is that the Transvaal was limited
by treaty to certain boundaries which these men transgressed, while no
pledges were broken when the British power expanded to the north. The
upshot of these trespasses was the scene upon which every drama of South
Africa rings down. Once more the purse was drawn from the pocket of
the unhappy taxpayer, and a million or so was paid out to defray the
expenses of the police force necessary to keep these treaty-breakers in
order. Let this be borne in mind when we assess the moral and material
damage done to the Transvaal by that ill-conceived and foolish
enterprise, the Jameson Raid.
In 1884 a deputation from the Transvaal visited England, and at their
solicitation the clumsy Treaty of Pretoria was altered into the still
more clumsy Convention of London. The changes in the provisions were all
in favour of the Boers, and a second successful war could hardly have
given them more than Lord Derby handed them in time of peace. Their
style was altered from the Transvaal to the South African Republic, a
change which was ominously suggestive of expansion in the future. The
control of Great Britain over their foreign policy was also relaxed,
though a power of veto was retained. But the most important thing of
all, and the fruitful cause of future trouble, lay in an omission. A
suzerainty is a vague term, but in politics, as in theology, the more
nebulous a thing is the more does it excite the imagination and the
passions of men. This suzerainty was declared in the preamble of the
first treaty, and no mention of it was made in the second. Was it
thereby abrogated or was it not? The British contention was that only
the articles were changed, and that the preamble continued to hold good
for both treaties. They pointed out that not only the suzerainty, but
also the independence, of the Transvaal was proclaimed in that preamble,
and that if one lapsed the other must do so also. On the other hand,
the Boers pointed to the fact that there was actually a preamble to the
second Convention, which would seem, therefore, to have taken the place
of the first. The point is so technical that it appears to be eminently
one of those questions which might with propriety have been submitted to
the decision of a board of foreign jurists--or possibly to the Supreme
Court of the United States. If the decision had been given against Great
Britain, we might have accepted it in a chastened spirit as a fitting
punishment for the carelessness of the representative who failed to
make our meaning intelligible. Carlyle has said that a political mistake
always ends in a broken head for somebody. Unfortunately the somebody is
usually somebody else. We have read the story of the political mistakes.
Only too soon we shall come to the broken heads.
This, then, is a synopsis of what had occurred up to the signing of
the Convention, which finally established, or failed to establish, the
position of the South African Republic. We must now leave the larger
questions, and descend to the internal affairs of that small State, and
especially to that train of events which has stirred the mind of our
people more than anything since the Indian Mutiny.
CHAPTER 2. THE CAUSE OF QUARREL.
There might almost seem to be some subtle connection between the
barrenness and worthlessness of a surface and the value of the minerals
which lie beneath it. The craggy mountains of Western America, the arid
plains of West Australia, the ice-bound gorges of the Klondyke, and the
bare slopes of the Witwatersrand veld--these are the lids which cover
the great treasure chests of the world.
Gold had been known to exist in the Transvaal before, but it was only in
1886 that it was realised that the deposits which lie some thirty miles
south of the capital are of a very extraordinary and valuable nature.
The proportion of gold in the quartz is not particularly high, nor are
the veins of a remarkable thickness, but the peculiarity of the Rand
mines lies in the fact that throughout this 'banket' formation the metal
is so uniformly distributed that the enterprise can claim a certainty
which is not usually associated with the industry. It is quarrying
rather than mining. Add to this that the reefs which were originally
worked as outcrops have now been traced to enormous depths, and present
the same features as those at the surface. A conservative estimate of
the value of the gold has placed it at seven hundred millions of pounds.
Such a discovery produced the inevitable effect. A great number of
adventurers flocked into the country, some desirable and some very much
the reverse. There were circumstances, however, which kept away
the rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a newly opened
goldfield. It was not a class of mining which encouraged the individual
adventurer. There were none of those nuggets which gleamed through
the mud of the dollies at Ballarat, or recompensed the forty-niners in
California for all their travels and their toils. It was a field for
elaborate machinery, which could only be provided by capital. Managers,
engineers, miners, technical experts, and the tradesmen and middlemen
who live upon them, these were the Uitlanders, drawn from all the races
under the sun, but with the Anglo-Celtic vastly predominant. The best
engineers were American, the best miners were Cornish, the best managers
were English, the money to run the mines was largely subscribed in
England. As time went on, however, the German and French interests
became more extensive, until their joint holdings are now probably as
heavy as those of the British. Soon the population of the mining centres
became greater than that of the whole Boer community, and consisted
mainly of men in the prime of life--men, too, of exceptional
intelligence and energy.
The situation was an extraordinary one. I have already attempted to
bring the problem home to an American by suggesting that the Dutch
of New York had trekked west and founded an anti-American and highly
unprogressive State. To carry out the analogy we will now suppose that
that State was California, that the gold of that State attracted a
large inrush of American citizens, who came to outnumber the original
inhabitants, that these citizens were heavily taxed and badly used, and
that they deafened Washington with their outcry about their injuries.
That would be a fair parallel to the relations between the Transvaal,
the Uitlanders, and the British Government.
That these Uitlanders had very real and pressing grievances no one could
possibly deny. To recount them all would be a formidable task, for their
whole lives were darkened by injustice. There was not a wrong which had
driven the Boer from Cape Colony which he did not now practise himself
upon others--and a wrong may be excusable in 1885 which is monstrous
in 1895. The primitive virtue which had characterised the farmers broke
down in the face of temptation. The country Boers were little affected,
some of them not at all, but the Pretoria Government became a most
corrupt oligarchy, venal and incompetent to the last degree. Officials
and imported Hollanders handled the stream of gold which came in from
the mines, while the unfortunate Uitlander who paid nine-tenths of the
taxation was fleeced at every turn, and met with laughter and taunts
when he endeavoured to win the franchise by which he might peaceably
set right the wrongs from which he suffered. He was not an unreasonable
person. On the contrary, he was patient to the verge of meekness,
as capital is likely to be when it is surrounded by rifles. But his
situation was intolerable, and after successive attempts at peaceful
agitation, and numerous humble petitions to the Volksraad, he began at
last to realise that he would never obtain redress unless he could find
some way of winning it for himself.
Without attempting to enumerate all the wrongs which embittered the
Uitlanders, the more serious of them may be summed up in this way.
1. That they were heavily taxed and provided about seven-eighths of the
revenue of the country. The revenue of the South African Republic--which
had been 154,000 pounds in 1886, when the gold fields were opened--had
grown in 1899 to four million pounds, and the country through the
industry of the newcomers had changed from one of the poorest to the
richest in the whole world (per head of population).
2. That in spite of this prosperity which they had brought, they, the
majority of the inhabitants of the country, were left without a vote,
and could by no means influence the disposal of the great sums which
they were providing. Such a case of taxation without representation has
never been known.
3. That they had no voice in the choice or payment of officials. Men of
the worst private character might be placed with complete authority over
valuable interests. Upon one occasion the Minister of Mines attempted
himself to jump a mine, having officially learned some flaw in its
title. The total official salaries had risen in 1899 to a sum sufficient
to pay 40 pounds per head to the entire male Boer population.
4. That they had no control over education. Mr. John Robinson, the
Director General of the Johannesburg Educational Council, has reckoned
the sum spent on Uitlander schools as 650 pounds out of 63,000 pounds
allotted for education, making one shilling and tenpence per head per
annum on Uitlander children, and eight pounds six shillings per head
on Boer children--the Uitlander, as always, paying seven-eighths of the
original sum.
5. No power of municipal government. Watercarts instead of pipes,
filthy buckets instead of drains, a corrupt and violent police, a high
death-rate in what should be a health resort--all this in a city which
they had built themselves.
6. Despotic government in the matter of the press and of the right of
public meeting.
7. Disability from service upon a jury.
8. Continual harassing of the mining interest by vexatious legislation.
Under this head came many grievances, some special to the mines and some
affecting all Uitlanders. The dynamite monopoly, by which the miners had
to pay 600,000 pounds extra per annum in order to get a worse quality
of dynamite; the liquor laws, by which one-third of the Kaffirs were
allowed to be habitually drunk; the incompetence and extortions of the
State-owned railway; the granting of concessions for numerous articles
of ordinary consumption to individuals, by which high prices were
maintained; the surrounding of Johannesburg by tolls from which the town
had no profit--these were among the economical grievances, some large,
some petty, which ramified through every transaction of life.
And outside and beyond all these definite wrongs imagine to a free born
progressive man, an American or a Briton, the constant irritation of
being absolutely ruled by a body of twenty-five men, twenty-one of
whom had in the case of the Selati Railway Company been publicly and
circumstantially accused of bribery, with full details of the bribes
received, while to their corruption they added such crass ignorance that
they argue in the published reports of the Volksraad debates that using
dynamite bombs to bring down rain was firing at God, that it is impious
to destroy locusts, that the word 'participate' should not be used
because it is not in the Bible, and that postal pillar boxes are
extravagant and effeminate. Such obiter dicta may be amusing at a
distance, but they are less entertaining when they come from an autocrat
who has complete power over the conditions of your life.
From the fact that they were a community extremely preoccupied by
their own business, it followed that the Uitlanders were not ardent
politicians, and that they desired to have a share in the government of
the State for the purpose of making the conditions of their own industry
and of their own daily lives more endurable. How far there was need of
such an interference may be judged by any fair-minded man who reads the
list of their complaints. A superficial view may recognise the Boers as
the champions of liberty, but a deeper insight must see that they (as
represented by their elected rulers) have in truth stood for all
that history has shown to be odious in the form of exclusiveness and
oppression. Their conception of liberty has been a selfish one, and they
have consistently inflicted upon others far heavier wrongs than those
against which they had themselves rebelled.
As the mines increased in importance and the miners in numbers, it
was found that these political disabilities affected some of that
cosmopolitan crowd far more than others, in proportion to the amount of
freedom to which their home institutions had made them accustomed. The
continental Uitlanders were more patient of that which was unendurable
to the American and the Briton. The Americans, however, were in so great
a minority that it was upon the British that the brunt of the struggle
for freedom fell. Apart from the fact that the British were more
numerous than all the other Uitlanders combined, there were special
reasons why they should feel their humiliating position more than the
members of any other race. In the first place, many of the British were
British South Africans, who knew that in the neighbouring countries
which gave them birth the most liberal possible institutions had been
given to the kinsmen of these very Boers who were refusing them the
management of their own drains and water supply. And again, every Briton
knew that Great Britain claimed to be the paramount power in South
Africa, and so he felt as if his own land, to which he might have looked
for protection, was conniving at and acquiescing in his ill treatment.
As citizens of the paramount power, it was peculiarly galling that they
should be held in political subjection. The British, therefore, were the
most persistent and energetic of the agitators.
But it is a poor cause which cannot bear to fairly state and honestly
consider the case of its opponents. The Boers had made, as has been
briefly shown, great efforts to establish a country of their own. They
had travelled far, worked hard, and fought bravely. After all their
efforts they were fated to see an influx of strangers into their
country, some of them men of questionable character, who outnumbered
the original inhabitants. If the franchise were granted to these,
there could be no doubt that though at first the Boers might control
a majority of the votes, it was only a question of time before the
newcomers would dominate the Raad and elect their own President, who
might adopt a policy abhorrent to the original owners of the land. Were
the Boers to lose by the ballot-box the victory which they had won by
their rifles? Was it fair to expect it? These newcomers came for gold.
They got their gold. Their companies paid a hundred per cent. Was not
that enough to satisfy them? If they did not like the country why did
they not leave it? No one compelled them to stay there. But if they
stayed, let them be thankful that they were tolerated at all, and not
presume to interfere with the laws of those by whose courtesy they were
allowed to enter the country.
That is a fair statement of the Boer position, and at first sight an
impartial man might say that there was a good deal to say for it; but
a closer examination would show that, though it might be tenable in
theory, it is unjust and impossible in practice.
In the present crowded state of the world a policy of Thibet may be
carried out in some obscure corner, but it cannot be done in a great
tract of country which lies right across the main line of industrial
progress. The position is too absolutely artificial. A handful of people
by the right of conquest take possession of an enormous country over
which they are dotted at such intervals that it is their boast that one
farmhouse cannot see the smoke of another, and yet, though their numbers
are so disproportionate to the area which they cover, they refuse to
admit any other people upon equal terms, but claim to be a privileged
class who shall dominate the newcomers completely. They are outnumbered
in their own land by immigrants who are far more highly educated and
progressive, and yet they hold them down in a way which exists nowhere
else upon earth. What is their right? The right of conquest. Then the
same right may be justly invoked to reverse so intolerable a situation.
This they would themselves acknowledge. 'Come on and fight! Come on!'
cried a member of the Volksraad when the franchise petition of the
Uitlanders was presented. 'Protest! Protest! What is the good of
protesting?' said Kruger to Mr. W. Y. Campbell; 'you have not got the
guns, I have.' There was always the final court of appeal. Judge Creusot
and Judge Mauser were always behind the President.
Again, the argument of the Boers would be more valid had they received
no benefit from these immigrants. If they had ignored them they might
fairly have stated that they did not desire their presence. But even
while they protested they grew rich at the Uitlander's expense. They
could not have it both ways. It would be consistent to discourage him
and not profit by him, or to make him comfortable and build the State
upon his money; but to ill-treat him and at the same time to grow strong
by his taxation must surely be an injustice.
And again, the whole argument is based upon the narrow racial
supposition that every naturalised citizen not of Boer extraction must
necessarily be unpatriotic. This is not borne out by the examples
of history. The newcomer soon becomes as proud of his country and
as jealous of her liberty as the old. Had President Kruger given the
franchise generously to the Uitlander, his pyramid would have been
firm upon its base and not balanced upon its apex. It is true that the
corrupt oligarchy would have vanished, and the spirit of a broader more
tolerant freedom influenced the counsels of the State. But the republic
would have become stronger and more permanent, with a population who,
if they differed in details, were united in essentials. Whether such a
solution would have been to the advantage of British interests in South
Africa is quite another question. In more ways than one President Kruger
has been a good friend to the empire.
So much upon the general question of the reason why the Uitlander should
agitate and why the Boer was obdurate. The details of the long struggle
between the seekers for the franchise and the refusers of it may be
quickly sketched, but they cannot be entirely ignored by any one who
desires to understand the inception of that great contest which was the
outcome of the dispute.
At the time of the Convention of Pretoria (1881) the rights of
burghership might be obtained by one year's residence. In 1882 it was
raised to five years, the reasonable limit which obtains both in Great
Britain and in the United States. Had it remained so, it is safe to say
that there would never have been either an Uitlander question or a great
Boer war. Grievances would have been righted from the inside without
external interference.
In 1890 the inrush of outsiders alarmed the Boers, and the franchise was
raised so as to be only attainable by those who had lived fourteen years
in the country. The Uitlanders, who were increasing rapidly in numbers
and were suffering from the formidable list of grievances already
enumerated, perceived that their wrongs were so numerous that it was
hopeless to have them set right seriatim, and that only by obtaining the
leverage of the franchise could they hope to move the heavy burden which
weighed them down. In 1893 a petition of 13,000 Uitlanders, couched
in most respectful terms, was submitted to the Raad, but met with
contemptuous neglect. Undeterred, however, by this failure, the National
Reform Union, an association which organised the agitation, came back to
the attack in 1894. They drew up a petition which was signed by 35,000
adult male Uitlanders, a greater number than the total Boer male
population of the country. A small liberal body in the Raad supported
this memorial and endeavoured in vain to obtain some justice for the
newcomers. Mr. Jeppe was the mouthpiece of this select band. 'They own
half the soil, they pay at least three quarters of the taxes,' said he.
'They are men who in capital, energy, and education are at least our
equals.
What will become of us or our children on that day when we may find
ourselves in a minority of one in twenty without a single friend among
the other nineteen, among those who will then tell us that they wished
to be brothers, but that we by our own act have made them strangers to
the republic?' Such reasonable and liberal sentiments were combated by
members who asserted that the signatures could not belong to law-abiding
citizens, since they were actually agitating against the law of the
franchise, and others whose intolerance was expressed by the defiance of
the member already quoted, who challenged the Uitlanders to come out and
fight. The champions of exclusiveness and racial hatred won the day. The
memorial was rejected by sixteen votes to eight, and the franchise law
was, on the initiative of the President, actually made more stringent
than ever, being framed in such a way that during the fourteen years of
probation the applicant should give up his previous nationality, so that
for that period he would really belong to no country at all. No hopes
were held out that any possible attitude upon the part of the Uitlanders
would soften the determination of the President and his burghers. One
who remonstrated was led outside the State buildings by the President,
who pointed up at the national flag. 'You see that flag?' said he. 'If I
grant the franchise, I may as well pull it down.' His animosity against
the immigrants was bitter. 'Burghers, friends, thieves, murderers,
newcomers, and others,' is the conciliatory opening of one of his public
addresses. Though Johannesburg is only thirty-two miles from Pretoria,
and though the State of which he was the head depended for its revenue
upon the gold fields, he paid it only three visits in nine years.
This settled animosity was deplorable, but not unnatural. A man imbued
with the idea of a chosen people, and unread in any book save the one
which cultivates this very idea, could not be expected to have learned
the historical lessons of the advantages which a State reaps from a
liberal policy. To him it was as if the Ammonites and Moabites had
demanded admission into the twelve tribes. He mistook an agitation
against the exclusive policy of the State for one against the existence
of the State itself. A wide franchise would have made his republic
firm-based and permanent. It was a small minority of the Uitlanders who
had any desire to come into the British system. They were a cosmopolitan
crowd, only united by the bond of a common injustice. But when every
other method had failed, and their petition for the rights of freemen
had been flung back at them, it was natural that their eyes should
turn to that flag which waved to the north, the west, and the south of
them--the flag which means purity of government with equal rights and
equal duties for all men. Constitutional agitation was laid aside, arms
were smuggled in, and everything prepared for an organised rising.
The events which followed at the beginning of 1896 have been so thrashed
out that there is, perhaps, nothing left to tell--except the truth. So
far as the Uitlanders themselves are concerned, their action was most
natural and justifiable, and they have no reason to exculpate themselves
for rising against such oppression as no men of our race have ever been
submitted to. Had they trusted only to themselves and the justice of
their cause, their moral and even their material position would have
been infinitely stronger. But unfortunately there were forces behind
them which were more questionable, the nature and extent of which have
never yet, in spite of two commissions of investigation, been properly
revealed. That there should have been any attempt at misleading inquiry,
or suppressing documents in order to shelter individuals, is deplorable,
for the impression left--I believe an entirely false one--must be that
the British Government connived at an expedition which was as immoral as
it was disastrous.
It had been arranged that the town was to rise upon a certain night,
that Pretoria should be attacked, the fort seized, and the rifles and
ammunition used to arm the Uitlanders. It was a feasible device, though
it must seem to us, who have had such an experience of the military
virtues of the burghers, a very desperate one. But it is conceivable
that the rebels might have held Johannesburg until the universal
sympathy which their cause excited throughout South Africa would have
caused Great Britain to intervene. Unfortunately they had complicated
matters by asking for outside help. Mr. Cecil Rhodes was Premier of the
Cape, a man of immense energy, and one who had rendered great services
to the empire. The motives of his action are obscure--certainly, we
may say that they were not sordid, for he has always been a man whose
thoughts were large and whose habits were simple. But whatever they may
have been--whether an ill-regulated desire to consolidate South Africa
under British rule, or a burning sympathy with the Uitlanders in their
fight against injustice--it is certain that he allowed his lieutenant,
Dr. Jameson, to assemble the mounted police of the Chartered Company, of
which Rhodes was founder and director, for the purpose of co-operating
with the rebels at Johannesburg. Moreover, when the revolt at
Johannesburg was postponed, on account of a disagreement as to which
flag they were to rise under, it appears that Jameson (with or without
the orders of Rhodes) forced the hand of the conspirators by invading
the country with a force absurdly inadequate to the work which he had
taken in hand. Five hundred policemen and three field guns made up the
forlorn hope who started from near Mafeking and crossed the Transvaal
border upon December 29th, 1895. On January 2nd they were surrounded by
the Boers amid the broken country near Dornkop, and after losing many
of their number killed and wounded, without food and with spent horses,
they were compelled to lay down their arms. Six burghers lost their
lives in the skirmish.
The Uitlanders have been severely criticised for not having sent out a
force to help Jameson in his difficulties, but it is impossible to see
how they could have acted in any other manner. They had done all they
could to prevent Jameson coming to their relief, and now it was rather
unreasonable to suppose that they should relieve their reliever. Indeed,
they had an entirely exaggerated idea of the strength of the force which
he was bringing, and received the news of his capture with incredulity.
When it became confirmed they rose, but in a halfhearted fashion
which was not due to want of courage, but to the difficulties of their
position. On the one hand, the British Government disowned Jameson
entirely, and did all it could to discourage the rising; on the other,
the President had the raiders in his keeping at Pretoria, and let it
be understood that their fate depended upon the behaviour of the
Uitlanders. They were led to believe that Jameson would be shot unless
they laid down their arms, though, as a matter of fact, Jameson and
his people had surrendered upon a promise of quarter. So skillfully did
Kruger use his hostages that he succeeded, with the help of the British
Commissioner, in getting the thousands of excited Johannesburgers to
lay down their arms without bloodshed. Completely out-manoeuvred by the
astute old President, the leaders of the reform movement used all their
influence in the direction of peace, thinking that a general amnesty
would follow; but the moment that they and their people were helpless
the detectives and armed burghers occupied the town, and sixty of their
number were hurried to Pretoria Gaol.
To the raiders themselves the President behaved with great generosity.
Perhaps he could not find it in his heart to be harsh to the men who
had managed to put him in the right and won for him the sympathy of the
world. His own illiberal and oppressive treatment of the newcomers was
forgotten in the face of this illegal inroad of filibusters. The true
issues were so obscured by this intrusion that it has taken years
to clear them, and perhaps they will never be wholly cleared. It was
forgotten that it was the bad government of the country which was the
real cause of the unfortunate raid. From then onwards the government
might grow worse and worse, but it was always possible to point to
the raid as justifying everything. Were the Uitlanders to have the
franchise? How could they expect it after the raid? Would Britain object
to the enormous importation of arms and obvious preparations for war?
They were only precautions against a second raid. For years the raid
stood in the way, not only of all progress, but of all remonstrance.
Through an action over which they had no control, and which they had
done their best to prevent, the British Government was left with a bad
case and a weakened moral authority.
The raiders were sent home, where the rank and file were very properly
released, and the chief officers were condemned to terms of imprisonment
which certainly did not err upon the side of severity. Cecil Rhodes was
left unpunished, he retained his place in the Privy Council, and his
Chartered Company continued to have a corporate existence. This was
illogical and inconclusive. As Kruger said, 'It is not the dog which
should be beaten, but the man who set him on to me.' Public opinion--in
spite of, or on account of, a crowd of witnesses--was ill informed upon
the exact bearings of the question, and it was obvious that as Dutch
sentiment at the Cape appeared already to be thoroughly hostile to us,
it would be dangerous to alienate the British Africanders also by
making a martyr of their favourite leader. But whatever arguments may be
founded upon expediency, it is clear that the Boers bitterly resented,
and with justice, the immunity of Rhodes.
In the meantime, both President Kruger and his burghers had shown a
greater severity to the political prisoners from Johannesburg than to
the armed followers of Jameson. The nationality of these prisoners is
interesting and suggestive. There were twenty-three Englishmen, sixteen
South Africans, nine Scotchmen, six Americans, two Welshmen, one
Irishman, one Australian, one Hollander, one Bavarian, one Canadian,
one Swiss, and one Turk. The prisoners were arrested in January, but the
trial did not take place until the end of April. All were found guilty
of high treason. Mr. Lionel Phillips, Colonel Rhodes (brother of Mr.
Cecil Rhodes), George Farrar, and Mr. Hammond, the American engineer,
were condemned to death, a sentence which was afterwards commuted to the
payment of an enormous fine. The other prisoners were condemned to two
years' imprisonment, with a fine of 2000 pounds each. The imprisonment
was of the most arduous and trying sort, and was embittered by the
harshness of the gaoler, Du Plessis. One of the unfortunate men cut
his throat, and several fell seriously ill, the diet and the sanitary
conditions being equally unhealthy. At last at the end of May all the
prisoners but six were released. Four of the six soon followed, two
stalwarts, Sampson and Davies, refusing to sign any petition and
remaining in prison until they were set free in 1897. Altogether the
Transvaal Government received in fines from the reform prisoners the
enormous sum of 212,000 pounds. A certain comic relief was immediately
afterwards given to so grave an episode by the presentation of a bill to
Great Britain for 1,677, 938 pounds 3 shillings and 3 pence--the greater
part of which was under the heading of moral and intellectual damage.
The raid was past and the reform movement was past, but the causes which
produced them both remained. It is hardly conceivable that a statesman
who loved his country would have refrained from making some effort to
remove a state of things which had already caused such grave dangers,
and which must obviously become more serious with every year that
passed. But Paul Kruger had hardened his heart, and was not to be moved.
The grievances of the Uitlanders became heavier than ever. The one
power in the land to which they had been able to appeal for some sort
of redress amid their grievances was the law courts. Now it was decreed
that the courts should be dependent on the Volksraad. The Chief Justice
protested against such a degradation of his high office, and he was
dismissed in consequence without a pension. The judge who had condemned
the reformers was chosen to fill the vacancy, and the protection of a
fixed law was withdrawn from the Uitlanders.
A commission appointed by the State was sent to examine into the
condition of the mining industry and the grievances from which the
newcomers suffered. The chairman was Mr. Schalk Burger, one of the most
liberal of the Boers, and the proceedings were thorough and impartial.
The result was a report which amply vindicated the reformers, and
suggested remedies which would have gone a long way towards satisfying
the Uitlanders. With such enlightened legislation their motives for
seeking the franchise would have been less pressing. But the President
and his Raad would have none of the recommendations of the commission.
The rugged old autocrat declared that Schalk Burger was a traitor to
his country for having signed such a document, and a new reactionary
committee was chosen to report upon the report. Words and papers were
the only outcome of the affair. No amelioration came to the newcomers.
But at least they had again put their case publicly upon record, and it
had been endorsed by the most respected of the burghers. Gradually in
the press of the English-speaking countries the raid was ceasing to
obscure the issue. More and more clearly it was coming out that no
permanent settlement was possible where the majority of the population
was oppressed by the minority. They had tried peaceful means and failed.
They had tried warlike means and failed. What was there left for them
to do? Their own country, the paramount power of South Africa, had never
helped them. Perhaps if it were directly appealed to it might do so. It
could not, if only for the sake of its own imperial prestige, leave its
children for ever in a state of subjection. The Uitlanders determined
upon a petition to the Queen, and in doing so they brought their
grievances out of the limits of a local controversy into the broader
field of international politics. Great Britain must either protect them
or acknowledge that their protection was beyond her power. A direct
petition to the Queen praying for protection was signed in April 1899 by
twenty-one thousand Uitlanders. From that time events moved inevitably
towards the one end. Sometimes the surface was troubled and sometimes
smooth, but the stream always ran swiftly and the roar of the fall
sounded ever louder in the ears.
CHAPTER 3. THE NEGOTIATIONS.
The British Government and the British people do not desire any direct
authority in South Africa. Their one supreme interest is that the
various States there should live in concord and prosperity, and that
there should be no need for the presence of a British redcoat within the
whole great peninsula. Our foreign critics, with their misapprehension
of the British colonial system, can never realise that whether
the four-coloured flag of the Transvaal or the Union Jack of a
self-governing colony waved over the gold mines would not make the
difference of one shilling to the revenue of Great Britain. The
Transvaal as a British province would have its own legislature, its
own revenue, its own expenditure, and its own tariff against the mother
country, as well as against the rest of the world, and England be none
the richer for the change. This is so obvious to a Briton that he has
ceased to insist upon it, and it is for that reason perhaps that it is
so universally misunderstood abroad. On the other hand, while she is no
gainer by the change, most of the expense of it in blood and in money
falls upon the home country. On the face of it, therefore, Great Britain
had every reason to avoid so formidable a task as the conquest of the
South African Republic. At the best she had nothing to gain, and at the
worst she had an immense deal to lose. There was no room for ambition or
aggression. It was a case of shirking or fulfilling a most arduous duty.
There could be no question of a plot for the annexation of the
Transvaal. In a free country the Government cannot move in advance of
public opinion, and public opinion is influenced by and reflected in the
newspapers. One may examine the files of the press during all the months
of negotiations and never find one reputable opinion in favour of such a
course, nor did one in society ever meet an advocate of such a measure.
But a great wrong was being done, and all that was asked was the minimum
change which would set it right, and restore equality between the white
races in Africa. 'Let Kruger only be liberal in the extension of the
franchise,' said the paper which is most representative of the sanest
British opinion, 'and he will find that the power of the republic will
become not weaker, but infinitely more secure. Let him once give the
majority of the resident males of full age the full vote, and he will
have given the republic a stability and power which nothing else can. If
he rejects all pleas of this kind, and persists in his present policy,
he may possibly stave off the evil day, and preserve his cherished
oligarchy for another few years; but the end will be the same.'
The extract reflects the tone of all of the British press, with the
exception of one or two papers which considered that even the
persistent ill usage of our people, and the fact that we were peculiarly
responsible for them in this State, did not justify us in interfering
in the internal affairs of the republic. It cannot be denied that
the Jameson raid and the incomplete manner in which the circumstances
connected with it had been investigated had weakened the force of those
who wished to interfere energetically on behalf of British subjects.
There was a vague but widespread feeling that perhaps the capitalists
were engineering the situation for their own ends. It is difficult to
imagine how a state of unrest and insecurity, to say nothing of a
state of war, can ever be to the advantage of capital, and surely it
is obvious that if some arch-schemer were using the grievances of the
Uitlanders for his own ends the best way to checkmate him would be to
remove those grievances. The suspicion, however, did exist among those
who like to ignore the obvious and magnify the remote, and throughout
the negotiations the hand of Great Britain was weakened, as her
adversary had doubtless calculated that it would be, by an earnest
but fussy and faddy minority. Idealism and a morbid, restless
conscientiousness are two of the most dangerous evils from which a
modern progressive State has to suffer.
It was in April 1899 that the British Uitlanders sent their petition
praying for protection to their native country. Since the April previous
a correspondence had been going on between Dr. Leyds, Secretary of State
for the South African Republic, and Mr. Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary,
upon the existence or non-existence of the suzerainty. On the one
hand, it was contended that the substitution of a second convention
had entirely annulled the first; on the other, that the preamble of
the first applied also to the second. If the Transvaal contention were
correct it is clear that Great Britain had been tricked and jockeyed
into such a position, since she had received no quid pro quo in the
second convention, and even the most careless of Colonial Secretaries
could hardly have been expected to give away a very substantial
something for nothing. But the contention throws us back upon the
academic question of what a suzerainty is. The Transvaal admitted a
power of veto over their foreign policy, and this admission in itself,
unless they openly tore up the convention, must deprive them of the
position of a sovereign State. On the whole, the question must be
acknowledged to have been one which might very well have been referred
to trustworthy arbitration.
But now to this debate, which had so little of urgency in it that seven
months intervened between statement and reply, there came the bitterly
vital question of the wrongs and appeal of the Uitlanders. Sir Alfred
Milner, the British Commissioner in South Africa, a man of liberal
views who had been appointed by a Conservative Government, commanded the
respect and confidence of all parties. His record was that of an
able, clear-headed man, too just to be either guilty of or tolerant of
injustice. To him the matter was referred, and a conference was arranged
between President Kruger and him at Bloemfontein, the capital of the
Orange Free State. They met on May 30th. Kruger had declared that all
questions might be discussed except the independence of the Transvaal.
'All, all, all!' he cried emphatically. But in practice it was found
that the parties could not agree as to what did or what did not threaten
this independence. What was essential to one was inadmissible to the
other. Milner contended for a five years' retroactive franchise, with
provisions to secure adequate representation for the mining districts.
Kruger offered a seven years' franchise, coupled with numerous
conditions which whittled down its value very much, promised five
members out of thirty-one to represent a majority of the male
population, and added a provision that all differences should be subject
to arbitration by foreign powers, a condition which is incompatible with
any claim to suzerainty. The proposals of each were impossible to the
other, and early in June Sir Alfred Milner was back in Cape Town and
President Kruger in Pretoria, with nothing settled except the extreme
difficulty of a settlement. The current was running swift, and the roar
of the fall was already sounding louder in the ear.
On June 12th Sir Alfred Milner received a deputation at Cape Town and
reviewed the situation. 'The principle of equality of races was,' he
said, essential for South Africa. The one State where inequality existed
kept all the others in a fever. Our policy was one not of aggression,
but of singular patience, which could not, however, lapse into
indifference.' Two days later Kruger addressed the Raad. 'The other side
had not conceded one tittle, and I could not give more. God has always
stood by us. I do not want war, but I will not give more away. Although
our independence has once been taken away, God has restored it.' He
spoke with sincerity no doubt, but it is hard to hear God invoked with
such confidence for the system which encouraged the liquor traffic to
the natives, and bred the most corrupt set of officials that the modern
world has seen.
A dispatch from Sir Alfred Milner, giving his views upon the situation,
made the British public recognise, as nothing else had done, how serious
the position was, and how essential it was that an earnest national
effort should be made to set it right. In it he said:
'The case for intervention is overwhelming. The only attempted answer
is that things will right themselves if left alone. But, in fact, the
policy of leaving things alone has been tried for years, and it has led
to their going from bad to worse. It is not true that this is owing to
the raid. They were going from bad to worse before the raid. We were on
the verge of war before the raid, and the Transvaal was on the verge
of revolution. The effect of the raid has been to give the policy of
leaving things alone a new lease of life, and with the old consequences.
'The spectacle of thousands of British subjects kept permanently in the
position of helots, constantly chafing under undoubted grievances, and
calling vainly to her Majesty's Government for redress, does steadily
undermine the influence and reputation of Great Britain within the
Queen's dominions. A section of the press, not in the Transvaal only,
preaches openly and constantly the doctrine of a republic embracing all
South Africa, and supports it by menacing references to the armaments of
the Transvaal, its alliance with the Orange Free State, and the active
sympathy which, in case of war, it would receive from a section of her
Majesty's subjects. I regret to say that this doctrine, supported as it
is by a ceaseless stream of malignant lies about the intentions of her
Majesty's Government, is producing a great effect on a large number of
our Dutch fellow colonists. Language is frequently used which seems to
imply that the Dutch have some superior right, even in this colony,
to their fellow-citizens of British birth. Thousands of men peaceably
disposed, and if left alone perfectly satisfied with their position
as British subjects, are being drawn into disaffection, and there is a
corresponding exasperation upon the part of the British.
'I can see nothing which will put a stop to this mischievous propaganda
but some striking proof of the intention of her Majesty's Government not
to be ousted from its position in South Africa.'
Such were the grave and measured words with which the British pro-consul
warned his countrymen of what was to come. He saw the storm-cloud piling
in the north, but even his eyes had not yet discerned how near and how
terrible was the tempest.
Throughout the end of June and the early part of July much was hoped
from the mediation of the heads of the Afrikander Bond, the political
union of the Dutch Cape colonists. On the one hand, they were the
kinsmen of the Boers; on the other, they were British subjects, and
were enjoying the blessings of those liberal institutions which we were
anxious to see extended to the Transvaal. 'Only treat our folk as we
treat yours! Our whole contention was compressed into that prayer. But
nothing came of the mission, though a scheme endorsed by Mr. Hofmeyer
and Mr. Herholdt, of the Bond, with Mr. Fischer of the Free State, was
introduced into the Raad and applauded by Mr. Schreiner, the Africander
Premier of Cape Colony. In its original form the provisions were obscure
and complicated, the franchise varying from nine years to seven under
different conditions. In debate, however, the terms were amended until
the time was reduced to seven years, and the proposed representation of
the gold fields placed at five. The concession was not a great one,
nor could the representation, five out of thirty-one, be considered a
generous provision for the majority of the population; but the reduction
of the years of residence was eagerly hailed in England as a sign that a
compromise might be effected. A sigh of relief went up from the country.
'If,' said the Colonial Secretary, 'this report is confirmed, this
important change in the proposals of President Kruger, coupled with
previous amendments, leads Government to hope that the new law may prove
to be the basis of a settlement on the lines laid down by Sir Alfred
Milner in the Bloemfontein Conference.' He added that there were some
vexatious conditions attached, but concluded, 'Her Majesty's Government
feel assured that the President, having accepted the principle for which
they have contended, will be prepared to reconsider any detail of
his scheme which can be shown to be a possible hindrance to the full
accomplishment of the object in view, and that he will not allow them
to be nullified or reduced in value by any subsequent alterations of the
law or acts of administration.' At the same time, the 'Times' declared
the crisis to be at an end. 'If the Dutch statesmen of the Cape have
induced their brethren in the Transvaal to carry such a Bill, they will
have deserved the lasting gratitude, not only of their own countrymen
and of the English colonists in South Africa, but of the British Empire
and of the civilised world.'
But this fair prospect was soon destined to be overcast. Questions of
detail arose which, when closely examined, proved to be matters of very
essential importance. The Uitlanders and British South Africans, who had
experienced in the past how illusory the promises of the President might
be, insisted upon guarantees. The seven years offered were two years
more than that which Sir Alfred Milner had declared to be an irreducible
minimum. The difference of two years would not have hindered
their acceptance, even at the expense of some humiliation to our
representative. But there were conditions which excited distrust when
drawn up by so wily a diplomatist. One was that the alien who aspired to
burghership had to produce a certificate of continuous registration for
a certain time. But the law of registration had fallen into disuse in
the Transvaal, and consequently this provision might render the whole
Bill valueless. Since it was carefully retained, it was certainly meant
for use. The door had been opened, but a stone was placed to block it.
Again, the continued burghership of the newcomers was made to depend
upon the resolution of the first Raad, so that should the mining members
propose any measure of reform, not only their Bill but they also might
be swept out of the house by a Boer majority. What could an Opposition
do if a vote of the Government might at any moment unseat them all? It
was clear that a measure which contained such provisions must be very
carefully sifted before a British Government could accept it as a final
settlement and a complete concession of justice to its subjects. On the
other hand, it naturally felt loth to refuse those clauses which offered
some prospect of an amelioration in their condition. It took the course,
therefore, of suggesting that each Government should appoint delegates
to form a joint commission which should inquire into the working of
the proposed Bill before it was put into a final form. The proposal was
submitted to the Raad upon August 7th, with the addition that when
this was done Sir Alfred Milner was prepared to discuss anything else,
including arbitration without the interference of foreign powers.
The suggestion of this joint commission has been criticised as an
unwarrantable intrusion into the internal affairs of another country.
But then the whole question from the beginning was about the internal
affairs of another country, since the internal equality of the white
inhabitants was the condition upon which self-government was restored
to the Transvaal. It is futile to suggest analogies, and to imagine what
France would do if Germany were to interfere in a question of French
franchise. Supposing that France contained as many Germans as Frenchmen,
and that they were ill-treated, Germany would interfere quickly enough
and continue to do so until some fair modus vivendi was established.
The fact is that the case of the Transvaal stands alone, that such a
condition of things has never been known, and that no previous precedent
can apply to it, save the general rule that a minority of white men
cannot continue indefinitely to tax and govern a majority. Sentiment
inclines to the smaller nation, but reason and justice are all on the
side of England.
A long delay followed upon the proposal of the Secretary of the
Colonies. No reply was forthcoming from Pretoria. But on all sides there
came evidence that those preparations for war which had been quietly
going on even before the Jameson raid were now being hurriedly
perfected. For so small a State enormous sums were being spent upon
military equipment. Cases of rifles and boxes of cartridges streamed
into the arsenal, not only from Delagoa Bay, but even, to the
indignation of the English colonists, through Cape Town and Port
Elizabeth. Huge packing-cases, marked 'Agricultural Instruments' and
'Mining Machinery,' arrived from Germany and France, to find their
places in the forts of Johannesburg or Pretoria. Men of many nations
but of a similar type showed their martial faces in the Boer towns.
The condottieri of Europe were as ready as ever to sell their blood for
gold, and nobly in the end did they fulfill their share of the bargain.
For three weeks and more during which Mr. Kruger was silent these
eloquent preparations went on. But beyond them, and of infinitely more
importance, there was one fact which dominated the situation. A burgher
cannot go to war without his horse, his horse cannot move without grass,
grass will not come until after rain, and it was still some weeks before
the rain would be due. Negotiations, then, must not be unduly hurried
while the veld was a bare russet-coloured dust-swept plain. Mr.
Chamberlain and the British public waited week after week for their
answer. But there was a limit to their patience, and it was reached on
August 26th, when the Colonial Secretary showed, with a plainness of
speech which is as unusual as it is welcome in diplomacy, that the
question could not be hung up for ever. 'The sands are running down
in the glass,' said he. 'If they run out, we shall not hold ourselves
limited by that which we have already offered, but, having taken the
matter in hand, we will not let it go until we have secured conditions
which once for all shall establish which is the paramount power in
South Africa, and shall secure for our fellow-subjects there those equal
rights and equal privileges which were promised them by President Kruger
when the independence of the Transvaal was granted by the Queen, and
which is the least that in justice ought to be accorded them.' Lord
Salisbury, a little time before, had been equally emphatic. 'No one
in this country wishes to disturb the conventions so long as it is
recognised that while they guarantee the independence of the Transvaal
on the one side, they guarantee equal political and civil rights for
settlers of all nationalities upon the other. But these conventions are
not like the laws of the Medes and the Persians. They are mortal, they
can be destroyed...and once destroyed they can never be reconstructed
in the same shape.' The long-enduring patience of Great Britain was
beginning to show signs of giving way.
In the meantime a fresh dispatch had arrived from the Transvaal which
offered as an alternative proposal to the joint commission that the Boer
Government should grant the franchise proposals of Sir Alfred Milner
on condition that Great Britain withdrew or dropped her claim to a
suzerainty, agreed to arbitration, and promised never again to interfere
in the internal affairs of the republic. To this Great Britain answered
that she would agree to arbitration, that she hoped never again to have
occasion to interfere for the protection of her own subjects, but that
with the grant of the franchise all occasion for such interference would
pass away, and, finally, that she would never consent to abandon
her position as suzerain power. Mr. Chamberlain's dispatch ended by
reminding the Government of the Transvaal that there were other matters
of dispute open between the two Governments apart from the franchise,
and that it would be as well to have them settled at the same time. By
these he meant such questions as the position of the native races and
the treatment of Anglo-Indians.
On September 2nd the answer of the Transvaal Government was returned.
It was short and uncompromising. They withdrew their offer of the
franchise. They re-asserted the non-existence of the suzerainty. The
negotiations were at a deadlock. It was difficult to see how they could
be re-opened. In view of the arming of the burghers, the small garrison
of Natal had been taking up positions to cover the frontier. The
Transvaal asked for an explanation of their presence. Sir Alfred Milner
answered that they were guarding British interests, and preparing
against contingencies. The roar of the fall was sounding loud and near.
On September 8th there was held a Cabinet Council--one of the most
important in recent years. A message was sent to Pretoria, which even
the opponents of the Government have acknowledged to be temperate, and
offering the basis for a peaceful settlement. It begins by repudiating
emphatically the claim of the Transvaal to be a sovereign international
State in the same sense in which the Orange Free State is one. Any
proposal made conditional upon such an acknowledgment could not be
entertained.
The British Government, however, was prepared to accept the five years'
'franchise' as stated in the note of August 19th, assuming at the same
time that in the Raad each member might talk his own language.
'Acceptance of these terms by the South African Republic would at once
remove tension between the two Governments, and would in all probability
render unnecessary any future intervention to secure redress for
grievances which the Uitlanders themselves would be able to bring to the
notice of the Executive Council and the Volksraad.
'Her Majesty's Government are increasingly impressed with the danger of
further delay in relieving the strain which has already caused so much
injury to the interests of South Africa, and they earnestly press for an
immediate and definite reply to the present proposal. If it is acceded
to they will be ready to make immediate arrangements...to settle all
details of the proposed tribunal of arbitration...If, however, as they
most anxiously hope will not be the case, the reply of the South African
Republic should be negative or inconclusive, I am to state that her
Majesty's Government must reserve to themselves the right to reconsider
the situation de novo, and to formulate their own proposals for a final
settlement.'
Such was the message, and Great Britain waited with strained attention
for the answer. But again there was a delay, while the rain came and the
grass grew, and the veld was as a mounted rifleman would have it. The
burghers were in no humour for concessions. They knew their own power,
and they concluded with justice that they were for the time far the
strongest military power in South Africa. 'We have beaten England
before, but it is nothing to the licking we shall give her now,' cried
a prominent citizen, and he spoke for his country as he said it. So
the empire waited and debated, but the sounds of the bugle were already
breaking through the wrangles of the politicians, and calling the nation
to be tested once more by that hammer of war and adversity by which
Providence still fashions us to some nobler and higher end.
CHAPTER 4. THE EVE OF WAR.
The message sent from the Cabinet Council of September 8th was evidently
the precursor either of peace or of war. The cloud must burst or blow
over. As the nation waited in hushed expectancy for a reply it spent
some portion of its time in examining and speculating upon those
military preparations which might be needed. The War Office had for
some months been arranging for every contingency, and had made certain
dispositions which appeared to them to be adequate, but which our future
experience was to demonstrate to be far too small for the very serious
matter in hand.
It is curious in turning over the files of such a paper as the 'Times'
to observe how at first one or two small paragraphs of military
significance might appear in the endless columns of diplomatic and
political reports, how gradually they grew and grew, until at last the
eclipse was complete, and the diplomacy had been thrust into the tiny
paragraphs while the war filled the journal. Under July 7th comes the
first glint of arms amid the drab monotony of the state papers. On
that date it was announced that two companies of Royal Engineers and
departmental corps with reserves of supplies and ammunition were being
dispatched. Two companies of engineers! Who could have foreseen that
they were the vanguard of the greatest army which ever at any time of
the world's history has crossed an ocean, and far the greatest which a
British general has commanded in the field?
On August 15th, at a time when the negotiations had already assumed a
very serious phase, after the failure of the Bloemfontein conference and
the dispatch of Sir Alfred Milner, the British forces in South Africa
were absolutely and absurdly inadequate for the purpose of the defence
of our own frontier. Surely such a fact must open the eyes of those who,
in spite of all the evidence, persist that the war was forced on by the
British. A statesman who forces on a war usually prepares for a war, and
this is exactly what Mr. Kruger did and the British authorities did not.
The overbearing suzerain power had at that date, scattered over a huge
frontier, two cavalry regiments, three field batteries, and six and a
half infantry battalions--say six thousand men. The innocent pastoral
States could put in the field forty or fifty thousand mounted riflemen,
whose mobility doubled their numbers, and a most excellent artillery,
including the heaviest guns which have ever been seen upon a
battlefield. At this time it is most certain that the Boers could have
made their way easily either to Durban or to Cape Town. The British
force, condemned to act upon the defensive, could have been masked and
afterwards destroyed, while the main body of the invaders would have
encountered nothing but an irregular local resistance, which would have
been neutralised by the apathy or hostility of the Dutch colonists. It
is extraordinary that our authorities seem never to have contemplated
the possibility of the Boers taking the initiative, or to have
understood that in that case our belated reinforcements would certainly
have had to land under the fire of the republican guns.
In July Natal had taken alarm, and a strong representation had been
sent from the prime minister of the colony to the Governor, Sir W. Hely
Hutchinson, and so to the Colonial Office. It was notorious that the
Transvaal was armed to the teeth, that the Orange Free State was
likely to join her, and that there had been strong attempts made, both
privately and through the press, to alienate the loyalty of the Dutch
citizens of both the British colonies. Many sinister signs were observed
by those upon the spot. The veld had been burned unusually early to
ensure a speedy grass-crop after the first rains, there had been a
collecting of horses, a distribution of rifles and ammunition. The Free
State farmers, who graze their sheep and cattle upon Natal soil during
the winter, had driven them off to places of safety behind the line
of the Drakensberg. Everything pointed to approaching war, and Natal
refused to be satisfied even by the dispatch of another regiment. On
September 6th a second message was received at the Colonial Office,
which states the case with great clearness and precision.
'The Prime Minister desires me to urge upon you by the unanimous advice
of the Ministers that sufficient troops should be dispatched to Natal
immediately to enable the colony to be placed in a state of defence
against an attack from the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. I am
informed by the General Officer Commanding, Natal, that he will not have
enough troops, even when the Manchester Regiment arrives, to do more
than occupy Newcastle and at the same time protect the colony south of
it from raids, while Laing's Nek, Ingogo River and Zululand must be left
undefended. My Ministers know that every preparation has been made, both
in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, which would enable an attack
to be made on Natal at short notice. My Ministers believe that the Boers
have made up their minds that war will take place almost certainly, and
their best chance will be, when it seems unavoidable, to deliver a blow
before reinforcements have time to arrive. Information has been received
that raids in force will be made by way of Middle Drift and Greytown and
by way of Bond's Drift and Stangar, with a view to striking the railway
between Pietermaritzburg and Durban and cutting off communications of
troops and supplies. Nearly all the Orange Free State farmers in the
Klip River division, who stay in the colony usually till October at
least, have trekked, at great loss to themselves; their sheep are
lambing on the road, and the lambs die or are destroyed. Two at least of
the Entonjanani district farmers have trekked with all their belongings
into the Transvaal, in the first case attempting to take as hostages the
children of the natives on the farm. Reliable reports have been received
of attempts to tamper with loyal natives, and to set tribe against tribe
in order to create confusion and detail the defensive forces of the
colony. Both food and warlike stores in large quantities have been
accumulated at Volksrust, Vryheid and Standerton. Persons who are
believed to be spies have been seen examining the bridges on the Natal
Railway, and it is known that there are spies in all the principal
centres of the colony. In the opinion of Ministers, such a catastrophe
as the seizure of Laing's Nek and the destruction of the northern
portion of the railway, or a successful raid or invasion such as
they have reason to believe is contemplated, would produce a most
demoralising effect on the natives and on the loyal Europeans in the
colony, and would afford great encouragement to the Boers and to their
sympathisers in the colonies, who, although armed and prepared, will
probably keep quiet unless they receive some encouragement of the sort.
They concur in the policy of her Majesty's Government of exhausting all
peaceful means to obtain redress of the grievances of the Uitlanders and
authoritatively assert the supremacy of Great Britain before resorting
to war; but they state that this is a question of defensive precaution,
not of making war.'
In answer to these and other remonstrances the garrison of Natal was
gradually increased, partly by troops from Europe, and partly by the
dispatch of five thousand British troops from India. The 2nd Berkshires,
the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, the 1st Manchesters, and the 2nd Dublin
Fusiliers arrived in succession with reinforcements of artillery. The
5th Dragoon Guards, 9th Lancers, and 19th Hussars came from India, with
the 1st Devonshires, 1st Gloucesters, 2nd King's Royal Rifles and 2nd
Gordon Highlanders. These with the 21st, 42nd, and 53rd batteries of
Field Artillery made up the Indian Contingent. Their arrival late in
September raised the number of troops in South Africa to 22,000, a force
which was inadequate to a contest in the open field with the numerous,
mobile, and gallant enemy to whom they were to be opposed, but which
proved to be strong enough to stave off that overwhelming disaster
which, with our fuller knowledge, we can now see to have been impending.
As to the disposition of these troops a difference of opinion broke out
between the ruling powers in Natal and the military chiefs at the spot.
Prince Kraft has said, 'Both strategy and tactics may have to yield to
politics '; but the political necessity should be very grave and very
clear when it is the blood of soldiers which has to pay for it. Whether
it arose from our defective intelligence, or from that caste feeling
which makes it hard for the professional soldier to recognise (in spite
of deplorable past experiences) a serious adversary in the mounted
farmer, it is certain that even while our papers were proclaiming that
this time, at least, we would not underrate our enemy, we were most
seriously underrating him. The northern third of Natal is as vulnerable
a military position as a player of kriegspiel could wish to have
submitted to him. It runs up into a thin angle, culminating at the apex
in a difficult pass, the ill-omened Laing's Nek, dominated by the
even more sinister bulk of Majuba. Each side of this angle is open to
invasion, the one from the Transvaal and the other from the Orange Free
State. A force up at the apex is in a perfect trap, for the mobile
enemy can flood into the country to the south of them, cut the line
of supplies, and throw up a series of entrenchments which would make
retreat a very difficult matter. Further down the country, at such
positions as Ladysmith or Dundee, the danger, though not so imminent,
is still an obvious one, unless the defending force is strong enough to
hold its own in the open field and mobile enough to prevent a mounted
enemy from getting round its flanks. To us, who are endowed with that
profound military wisdom which only comes with a knowledge of the event,
it is obvious that with a defending force which could not place more
than 12,000 men in the fighting line, the true defensible frontier was
the line of the Tugela. As a matter of fact, Ladysmith was chosen, a
place almost indefensible itself, as it is dominated by high hills in at
least two directions.
Such an event as the siege of the town appears never to have been
contemplated, as no guns of position were asked for or sent. In spite
of this, an amount of stores, which is said to have been valued at
more than a million of pounds, was dumped down at this small railway
junction, so that the position could not be evacuated without a
crippling loss. The place was the point of bifurcation of the main line,
which divides at this little town into one branch running to Harrismith
in the Orange Free State, and the other leading through the Dundee coal
fields and Newcastle to the Laing's Nek tunnel and the Transvaal. An
importance, which appears now to have been an exaggerated one, was
attached by the Government of Natal to the possession of the coal
fields, and it was at their strong suggestion, but with the concurrence
of General Penn Symons, that the defending force was divided, and a
detachment of between three and four thousand sent to Dundee, about
forty miles from the main body, which remained under General Sir George
White at Ladysmith. General Symons underrated the power of the invaders,
but it is hard to criticise an error of judgment which has been so
nobly atoned and so tragically paid for. At the time, then, which our
political narrative has reached, the time of suspense which followed the
dispatch of the Cabinet message of September 8th, the military situation
had ceased to be desperate, but was still precarious. Twenty-two
thousand regular troops were on the spot who might hope to be reinforced
by some ten thousand colonials, but these forces had to cover a great
frontier, the attitude of Cape Colony was by no means whole-hearted and
might become hostile, while the black population might conceivably throw
in its weight against us. Only half the regulars could be spared to
defend Natal, and no reinforcements could reach them in less than a
month from the outbreak of hostilities. If Mr. Chamberlain was really
playing a game of bluff, it must be confessed that he was bluffing from
a very weak hand.
For purposes of comparison we may give some idea of the forces which
Mr. Kruger and Mr. Steyn could put in the field, for by this time it was
evident that the Orange Free State, with which we had had no shadow of
a dispute, was going, in a way which some would call wanton and some
chivalrous, to throw in its weight against us. The general press
estimate of the forces of the two republics varied from 25,000 to 35,000
men. Mr. J. B. Robinson, a personal friend of President Kruger's and
a man who had spent much of his life among the Boers, considered the
latter estimate to be too high. The calculation had no assured basis to
start from. A very scattered and isolated population, among whom large
families were the rule, is a most difficult thing to estimate. Some
reckoned from the supposed natural increase during eighteen years, but
the figure given at that date was itself an assumption. Others took
their calculation from the number of voters in the last presidential
election: but no one could tell how many abstentions there had been,
and the fighting age is five years earlier than the voting age in the
republics. We recognise now that all calculations were far below the
true figure. It is probable, however, that the information of the
British Intelligence Department was not far wrong. According to this
the fighting strength of the Transvaal alone was 32,000 men, and of the
Orange Free State 22,000. With mercenaries and rebels from the colonies
they would amount to 60, 000, while a considerable rising of the Cape
Dutch would bring them up to 100,000. In artillery they were known to
have about a hundred guns, many of them (and the fact will need much
explaining) more modern and powerful than any which we could bring
against them. Of the quality of this large force there is no need to
speak. The men were brave, hardy, and fired with a strange religious
enthusiasm. They were all of the seventeenth century, except their
rifles. Mounted upon their hardy little ponies, they possessed a
mobility which practically doubled their numbers and made it an
impossibility ever to outflank them. As marksmen they were supreme. Add
to this that they had the advantage of acting upon internal lines with
shorter and safer communications, and one gathers how formidable a
task lay before the soldiers of the empire. When we turn from such an
enumeration of their strength to contemplate the 12,000 men, split into
two detachments, who awaited them in Natal, we may recognise that, far
from bewailing our disasters, we should rather congratulate ourselves
upon our escape from losing that great province which, situated as it
is between Britain, India, and Australia, must be regarded as the very
keystone of the imperial arch.
At the risk of a tedious but very essential digression, something must
be said here as to the motives with which the Boers had for many years
been quietly preparing for war. That the Jameson raid was not the cause
is certain, though it probably, by putting the Boer Government into a
strong position, had a great effect in accelerating matters. What had
been done secretly and slowly could be done more swiftly and openly when
so plausible an excuse could be given for it. As a matter of fact, the
preparations were long antecedent to the raid. The building of the forts
at Pretoria and Johannesburg was begun nearly two years before that
wretched incursion, and the importation of arms was going on apace.
In that very year, 1895, a considerable sum was spent in military
equipment.
But if it was not the raid, and if the Boers had no reason to fear the
British Government, with whom the Transvaal might have been as friendly
as the Orange Free State had been for forty years, why then should they
arm? It was a difficult question, and one in answering which we find
ourselves in a region of conjecture and suspicion rather than of
ascertained fact. But the fairest and most unbiased of historians must
confess that there is a large body of evidence to show that into the
heads of some of the Dutch leaders, both in the northern republics
and in the Cape, there had entered the conception of a single Dutch
commonwealth, extending from Cape Town to the Zambesi, in which flag,
speech, and law should all be Dutch. It is in this aspiration that
many shrewd and well-informed judges see the true inner meaning of this
persistent arming, of the constant hostility, of the forming of ties
between the two republics (one of whom had been reconstituted and made
a sovereign independent State by our own act), and finally of that
intriguing which endeavoured to poison the affection and allegiance of
our own Dutch colonists, who had no political grievances whatever. They
all aimed at one end, and that end was the final expulsion of British
power from South Africa and the formation of a single great Dutch
republic. The large sum spent by the Transvaal in secret service
money--a larger sum, I believe, than that which is spent by the whole
British Empire--would give some idea of the subterranean influences at
work. An army of emissaries, agents, and spies, whatever their mission,
were certainly spread over the British colonies. Newspapers were
subsidised also, and considerable sums spent upon the press in France
and Germany.
In the very nature of things a huge conspiracy of this sort to
substitute Dutch for British rule in South Africa is not a matter which
can be easily and definitely proved. Such questions are not discussed
in public documents, and men are sounded before being taken into the
confidence of the conspirators. But there is plenty of evidence of
the individual ambition of prominent and representative men in this
direction, and it is hard to believe that what many wanted individually
was not striven for collectively, especially when we see how the course
of events did actually work towards the end which they indicated. Mr.
J.P. FitzPatrick, in 'The Transvaal from Within'--a book to which
all subsequent writers upon the subject must acknowledge their
obligations--narrates how in 1896 he was approached by Mr. D.P. Graaff,
formerly a member of the Cape Legislative Council and a very prominent
Afrikander Bondsman, with the proposition that Great Britain should be
pushed out of South Africa. The same politician made the same proposal
to Mr. Beit. Compare with this the following statement of Mr. Theodore
Schreiner, the brother of the Prime Minister of the Cape:
'I met Mr. Reitz, then a judge of the Orange Free State, in Bloemfontein
between seventeen and eighteen years ago, shortly after the retrocession
of the Transvaal, and when he was busy establishing the Afrikander Bond.
It must be patent to every one that at that time, at all events, England
and its Government had no intention of taking away the independence of
the Transvaal, for she had just “magnanimously” granted the same; no
intention of making war on the republics, for she had just made peace;
no intention to seize the Rand gold fields, for they were not yet
discovered. At that time, then, I met Mr. Reitz, and he did his best to
get me to become a member of his Afrikander Bond, but, after studying
its constitution and programme, I refused to do so, whereupon the
following colloquy in substance took place between us, which has been
indelibly imprinted on my mind ever since:
'REITZ: Why do you refuse? Is the object of getting the people to take
an interest in political matters not a good one?
'MYSELF: Yes, it is; but I seem to see plainly here between the lines of
this constitution much more ultimately aimed at than that.
'REITZ: What?
'MYSELF: I see quite clearly that the ultimate object aimed at is the
overthrow of the British power and the expulsion of the British flag
from South Africa.
'REITZ (with his pleasant conscious smile, as of one whose secret
thought and purpose had been discovered, and who was not altogether
displeased that such was the case): Well, what if it is so?
'MYSELF: You don't suppose, do you, that that flag is going to disappear
from South Africa without a tremendous struggle and fight?
'REITZ (with the same pleasant self-conscious, self satisfied, and yet
semi-apologetic smile): Well, I suppose not; but even so, what of that?
'MYSELF: Only this, that when that struggle takes place you and I will
be on opposite sides; and what is more, the God who was on the side of
the Transvaal in the late war, because it had right on its side will
be on the side of England, because He must view with abhorrence any
plotting and scheming to overthrow her power and position in South
Africa, which have been ordained by Him.
'REITZ: We'll see.
'Thus the conversation ended, but during the seventeen years that have
elapsed I have watched the propaganda for the overthrow of British power
in South Africa being ceaselessly spread by every possible means--the
press, the pulpit, the platform, the schools, the colleges, the
Legislature--until it has culminated in the present war, of which Mr.
Reitz and his co-workers are the origin and the cause. Believe me, the
day on which F.W. Reitz sat down to pen his ultimatum to Great Britain
was the proudest and happiest moment of his life, and one which had
for long years been looked forward to by him with eager longing and
expectation.'
Compare with these utterances of a Dutch politician of the Cape, and of
a Dutch politician of the Orange Free State, the following passage from
a speech delivered by Kruger at Bloemfontein in the year 1887:
'I think it too soon to speak of a United South Africa under one flag.
Which flag was it to be? The Queen of England would object to having
her flag hauled down, and we, the burghers of the Transvaal, object to
hauling ours down. What is to be done? We are now small and of little
importance, but we are growing, and are preparing the way to take our
place among the great nations of the world.'
'The dream of our life,' said another, 'is a union of the States of
South Africa, and this has to come from within, not from without. When
that is accomplished, South Africa will be great.'
Always the same theory from all quarters of Dutch thought, to be
followed by many signs that the idea was being prepared for in practice.
I repeat that the fairest and most unbiased historian cannot dismiss the
conspiracy as a myth.
And to this one may retort, why should they not conspire? Why should
they not have their own views as to the future of South Africa? Why
should they not endeavour to have one universal flag and one common
speech? Why should they not win over our colonists, if they can, and
push us into the sea? I see no reason why they should not. Let them try
if they will. And let us try to prevent them. But let us have an end
of talk about British aggression, of capitalist designs upon the gold
fields, of the wrongs of a pastoral people, and all the other veils
which have been used to cover the issue. Let those who talk about
British designs upon the republics turn their attention for a moment to
the evidence which there is for republican designs upon the colonies.
Let them reflect that in the one system all white men are equal, and
that on the other the minority of one race has persecuted the majority
of the other, and let them consider under which the truest freedom lies,
which stands for universal liberty and which for reaction and racial
hatred. Let them ponder and answer all this before they determine where
their sympathies lie.
Leaving these wider questions of politics, and dismissing for the
time those military considerations which were soon to be of such vital
moment, we may now return to the course of events in the diplomatic
struggle between the Government of the Transvaal and the Colonial
Office. On September 8th, as already narrated, a final message was sent
to Pretoria, which stated the minimum terms which the British Government
could accept as being a fair concession to her subjects in the
Transvaal. A definite answer was demanded, and the nation waited with
sombre patience for the reply.
There were few illusions in this country as to the difficulties of
a Transvaal war. It was clearly seen that little honour and immense
vexation were in store for us. The first Boer war still smarted in our
minds, and we knew the prowess of the indomitable burghers. But our
people, if gloomy, were none the less resolute, for that national
instinct which is beyond the wisdom of statesmen had borne it in upon
them that this was no local quarrel, but one upon which the whole
existence of the empire hung. The cohesion of that empire was to be
tested. Men had emptied their glasses to it in time of peace. Was it a
meaningless pouring of wine, or were they ready to pour their
hearts' blood also in time of war? Had we really founded a series of
disconnected nations, with no common sentiment or interest, or was
the empire an organic whole, as ready to thrill with one emotion or to
harden into one resolve as are the several States of the Union? That was
the question at issue, and much of the future history of the world was
at stake upon the answer.
Already there were indications that the colonies appreciated the fact
that the contention was no affair of the mother country alone, but that
she was upholding the rights of the empire as a whole, and might fairly
look to them to support her in any quarrel which might arise from it. As
early as July 11th, Queensland, the fiery and semitropical, had offered
a contingent of mounted infantry with machine guns; New Zealand, Western
Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia
followed in the order named. Canada, with the strong but more deliberate
spirit of the north, was the last to speak, but spoke the more firmly
for the delay. Her citizens were the least concerned of any, for
Australians were many in South Africa but Canadians few. None the less,
she cheerfully took her share of the common burden, and grew the readier
and the cheerier as that burden came to weigh more heavily. From all
the men of many hues who make up the British Empire, from Hindoo Rajahs,
from West African Houssas, from Malay police, from Western Indians,
there came offers of service. But this was to be a white man's war, and
if the British could not work out their own salvation then it were well
that empire should pass from such a race. The magnificent Indian army
of 150,000 soldiers, many of them seasoned veterans, was for the same
reason left untouched. England has claimed no credit or consideration
for such abstention, but an irresponsible writer may well ask how many
of those foreign critics whose respect for our public morality appears
to be as limited as their knowledge of our principles and history would
have advocated such self denial had their own countries been placed in
the same position.
On September 18th the official reply of the Boer Government to the
message sent from the Cabinet Council was published in London. In manner
it was unbending and unconciliatory; in substance, it was a complete
rejection of all the British demands. It refused to recommend or propose
to the Raad the five years' franchise and the other measures which had
been defined as the minimum which the Home Government could accept as a
fair measure of justice towards the Uitlanders. The suggestion that the
debates of the Raad should be bilingual, as they have been in the
Cape Colony and in Canada, was absolutely waived aside. The British
Government had stated in their last dispatch that if the reply should
be negative or inconclusive they reserved to themselves the right to
'reconsider the situation de novo and to formulate their own proposals
for a final settlement.' The reply had been both negative and
inconclusive, and on September 22nd a council met to determine what the
next message should be. It was short and firm, but so planned as not to
shut the door upon peace. Its purport was that the British Government
expressed deep regret at the rejection of the moderate proposals which
had been submitted in their last dispatch, and that now, in accordance
with their promise, they would shortly put forward their own plans for
a settlement. The message was not an ultimatum, but it foreshadowed an
ultimatum in the future.
In the meantime, upon September 21st the Raad of the Orange Free State
had met, and it became more and more evident that this republic, with
whom we had no possible quarrel, but, on the contrary, for whom we had a
great deal of friendship and admiration, intended to throw in its weight
against Great Britain. Some time before, an offensive and defensive
alliance had been concluded between the two States, which must, until
the secret history of these events comes to be written, appear to have
been a singularly rash and unprofitable bargain for the smaller one. She
had nothing to fear from Great Britain, since she had been voluntarily
turned into an independent republic by her and had lived in peace with
her for forty years. Her laws were as liberal as our own. But by this
suicidal treaty she agreed to share the fortunes of a State which was
deliberately courting war by its persistently unfriendly attitude, and
whose reactionary and narrow legislation would, one might imagine, have
alienated the sympathy of her progressive neighbour. There may have
been ambitions like those already quoted from the report of Dr. Reitz's
conversation, or there may have been a complete hallucination as to the
comparative strength of the two combatants and the probable future of
South Africa; but however that may be, the treaty was made, and the time
had come to test how far it would hold.
The tone of President Steyn at the meeting of the Raad, and the support
which he received from the majority of his burghers, showed unmistakably
that the two republics would act as one. In his opening speech Steyn
declared uncompromisingly against the British contention, and declared
that his State was bound to the Transvaal by everything which was near
and dear. Among the obvious military precautions which could no longer
be neglected by the British Government was the sending of some small
force to protect the long and exposed line of railway which lies just
outside the Transvaal border from Kimberley to Rhodesia. Sir Alfred
Milner communicated with President Steyn as to this movement of troops,
pointing out that it was in no way directed against the Free State. Sir
Alfred Milner added that the Imperial Government was still hopeful of
a friendly settlement with the Transvaal, but if this hope were
disappointed they looked to the Orange Free State to preserve strict
neutrality and to prevent military intervention by any of its citizens.
They undertook that in that case the integrity of the Free State
frontier would be strictly preserved. Finally, he stated that there was
absolutely no cause to disturb the good relations between the Free
State and Great Britain, since we were animated by the most friendly
intentions towards them. To this the President returned a somewhat
ungracious answer, to the effect that he disapproved of our action
towards the Transvaal, and that he regretted the movement of troops,
which would be considered a menace by the burghers. A subsequent
resolution of the Free State Raad, ending with the words, 'Come what
may, the Free State will honestly and faithfully fulfill its obligations
towards the Transvaal by virtue of the political alliance existing
between the two republics,' showed how impossible it was that this
country, formed by ourselves and without a shadow of a cause of quarrel
with us, could be saved from being drawn into the whirlpool. Everywhere,
from over both borders, came the news of martial preparations. Already
at the end of September troops and armed burghers were gathering
upon the frontier, and the most incredulous were beginning at last to
understand that the shadow of a great war was really falling across
them. Artillery, war munitions, and stores were being accumulated
at Volksrust upon the Natal border, showing where the storm might be
expected to break. On the last day of September, twenty-six military
trains were reported to have left Pretoria and Johannesburg for that
point. At the same time news came of a concentration at Malmani, upon
the Bechuanaland border, threatening the railway line and the British
town of Mafeking, a name destined before long to be familiar to the
world.
On October 3rd there occurred what was in truth an act of war, although
the British Government, patient to the verge of weakness, refused to
regard it as such, and continued to draw up their final state paper. The
mail train from the Transvaal to Cape Town was stopped at Vereeniging,
and the week's shipment of gold for England, amounting to about half a
million pounds, was taken by the Boer Government. In a debate at Cape
Town upon the same day the Africander Minister of the Interior admitted
that as many as 404 trucks had passed from the Government line over
the frontier and had not been returned. Taken in conjunction with
the passage of arms and cartridges through the Cape to Pretoria and
Bloemfontein, this incident aroused the deepest indignation among the
Colonial English and the British public, which was increased by the
reports of the difficulty which border towns, such as Kimberley and
Vryburg, had had in getting cannon for their own defence. The Raads had
been dissolved, and the old President's last words had been a statement
that war was certain, and a stern invocation of the Lord as final
arbiter. England was ready less obtrusively but no less heartily to
refer the quarrel to the same dread Judge.
On October 2nd President Steyn informed Sir Alfred Milner that he had
deemed it necessary to call out the Free State burghers--that is, to
mobilise his forces. Sir A. Milner wrote regretting these preparations,
and declaring that he did not yet despair of peace, for he was sure that
any reasonable proposal would be favourably considered by her Majesty's
Government. Steyn's reply was that there was no use in negotiating
unless the stream of British reinforcements ceased coming into South
Africa. As our forces were still in a great minority, it was impossible
to stop the reinforcements, so the correspondence led to nothing. On
October 7th the army reserves for the First Army Corps were called out
in Great Britain and other signs shown that it had been determined to
send a considerable force to South Africa. Parliament was also summoned
that the formal national assent might be gained for those grave measures
which were evidently pending.
It was on October 9th that the somewhat leisurely proceedings of the
British Colonial Office were brought to a head by the arrival of an
unexpected and audacious ultimatum from the Boer Government. In contests
of wit, as of arms, it must be confessed that the laugh has been usually
upon the side of our simple and pastoral South African neighbours. The
present instance was no exception to the rule. While our Government
was cautiously and patiently leading up to an ultimatum, our opponent
suddenly played the very card which we were preparing to lay upon the
table. The document was very firm and explicit, but the terms in which
it was drawn were so impossible that it was evidently framed with the
deliberate purpose of forcing an immediate war. It demanded that the
troops upon the borders of the republic should be instantly withdrawn,
that all reinforcements which had arrived within the last year should
leave South Africa, and that those who were now upon the sea should be
sent back without being landed. Failing a satisfactory answer within
forty-eight hours, 'the Transvaal Government will with great regret be
compelled to regard the action of her Majesty's Government as a formal
declaration of war, for the consequences of which it will not hold
itself responsible.' The audacious message was received throughout the
empire with a mixture of derision and anger. The answer was dispatched
next day through Sir Alfred Milner.
'10th October.--Her Majesty's Government have received with great regret
the peremptory demands of the Government of the South African Republic,
conveyed in your telegram of the 9th October. You will inform the
Government of the South African Republic in reply that the conditions
demanded by the Government of the South African Republic are such as her
Majesty's Government deem it impossible to discuss.'
And so we have come to the end of the long road, past the battle of the
pens and the wrangling of tongues, to the arbitration of the Lee-Metford
and the Mauser. It was pitiable that it should come to this. These
people were as near akin to us as any race which is not our own. They
were of the same Frisian stock which peopled our own shores. In habit
of mind, in religion, in respect for law, they were as ourselves. Brave,
too, they were, and hospitable, with those sporting instincts which are
dear to the Anglo-Celtic race. There was no people in the world who had
more qualities which we might admire, and not the least of them was
that love of independence which it is our proudest boast that we have
encouraged in others as well as exercised ourselves. And yet we had come
to this pass, that there was no room in all vast South Africa for both
of us. We cannot hold ourselves blameless in the matter. 'The evil that
men do lives after them,' and it has been told in this small superficial
sketch where we have erred in the past in South Africa. On our hands,
too, is the Jameson raid, carried out by Englishmen and led by
officers who held the Queen's Commission; to us, also, the blame of the
shuffling, half-hearted inquiry into that most unjustifiable business.
These are matches which helped to set the great blaze alight, and it is
we who held them. But the fagots which proved to be so inflammable,
they were not of our setting. They were the wrongs done to half the
community, the settled resolution of the minority to tax and vex the
majority, the determination of a people who had lived two generations in
a country to claim that country entirely for themselves. Behind them all
there may have been the Dutch ambition to dominate South Africa. It
was no petty object for which Britain fought. When a nation struggles
uncomplainingly through months of disaster she may claim to have proved
her conviction of the justice and necessity of the struggle. Should
Dutch ideas or English ideas of government prevail throughout that huge
country? The one means freedom for a single race, the other means equal
rights to all white men beneath one common law. What each means to
the coloured races let history declare. This was the main issue to
be determined from the instant that the clock struck five upon the
afternoon of Wednesday, October the eleventh, eighteen hundred and
ninety-nine. That moment marked the opening of a war destined to
determine the fate of South Africa, to work great changes in the
British Empire, to seriously affect the future history of the world, and
incidentally to alter many of our views as to the art of war. It is the
story of this war which, with limited material but with much aspiration
to care and candour, I shall now endeavour to tell.
CHAPTER 5. TALANA HILL.
It was on the morning of October 12th, amid cold and mist, that the Boer
camps at Sandspruit and Volksrust broke up, and the burghers rode to the
war. Some twelve thousand of them, all mounted, with two batteries of
eight Krupp guns each, were the invading force from the north, which
hoped later to be joined by the Freestaters and by a contingent of
Germans and Transvaalers who were to cross the Free State border. It
was an hour before dawn that the guns started, and the riflemen followed
close behind the last limber, so that the first light of day fell upon
the black sinuous line winding down between the hills. A spectator upon
the occasion says of them: 'Their faces were a study. For the most part
the expression worn was one of determination and bulldog pertinacity.
No sign of fear there, nor of wavering. Whatever else may be laid to the
charge of the Boer, it may never truthfully be said that he is a coward
or a man unworthy of the Briton's steel.' The words were written early
in the campaign, and the whole empire will endorse them to-day. Could we
have such men as willing fellow-citizens, they are worth more than all
the gold mines of their country.
This main Transvaal body consisted of the commando of Pretoria, which
comprised 1800 men, and those of Heidelberg, Middelburg, Krugersdorp,
Standerton, Wakkerstroom, and Ermelo, with the State Artillery, an
excellent and highly organised body who were provided with the best guns
that have ever been brought on to a battlefield. Besides their sixteen
Krupps, they dragged with them two heavy six-inch Creusot guns, which
were destined to have a very important effect in the earlier part of the
campaign. In addition to these native forces there were a certain number
of European auxiliaries. The greater part of the German corps were with
the Free State forces, but a few hundred came down from the north. There
was a Hollander corps of about two hundred and fifty and an Irish--or
perhaps more properly an Irish-American-corps of the same number, who
rode under the green flag and the harp.
The men might, by all accounts, be divided into two very different
types. There were the town Boers, smartened and perhaps a little
enervated by prosperity and civilisation, men of business and
professional men, more alert and quicker than their rustic comrades.
These men spoke English rather than Dutch, and indeed there were many
men of English descent among them. But the others, the most formidable
both in their numbers and in their primitive qualities, were the
back-veld Boers, the sunburned, tangle-haired, full-bearded farmers, the
men of the Bible and the rifle, imbued with the traditions of their own
guerrilla warfare. These were perhaps the finest natural warriors upon
earth, marksmen, hunters, accustomed to hard fare and a harder couch.
They were rough in their ways and speech, but, in spite of many
calumnies and some few unpleasant truths, they might compare with most
disciplined armies in their humanity and their desire to observe the
usages of war.
A few words here as to the man who led this singular host. Piet Joubert
was a Cape Colonist by birth--a fellow countryman, like Kruger himself,
of those whom the narrow laws of his new country persisted in regarding
as outside the pale. He came from that French Huguenot blood which has
strengthened and refined every race which it has touched, and from it
he derived a chivalry and generosity which made him respected and liked
even by his opponents. In many native broils and in the British campaign
of 1881 he had shown himself a capable leader. His record in standing
out for the independence of the Transvaal was a very consistent one, for
he had not accepted office under the British, as Kruger had done, but
had remained always an irreconcilable. Tall and burly, with hard grey
eyes and a grim mouth half hidden by his bushy beard, he was a fine type
of the men whom he led. He was now in his sixty-fifth year, and the fire
of his youth had, as some of the burghers urged, died down within him;
but he was experienced, crafty, and warwise, never dashing and never
brilliant, but slow, steady, solid, and inexorable.
Besides this northern army there were two other bodies of burghers
converging upon Natal. One, consisting of the commandoes from Utrecht
and the Swaziland districts, had gathered at Vryheid on the flank of the
British position at Dundee. The other, much larger, not less probably
than six or seven thousand men, were the contingent from the Free State
and a Transvaal corps, together with Schiel's Germans, who were making
their way through the various passes, the Tintwa Pass, and Van Reenen's
Pass, which lead through the grim range of the Drakensberg and open out
upon the more fertile plains of Western Natal. The total force may have
been something between twenty and thirty thousand men. By all accounts
they were of an astonishingly high heart, convinced that a path of easy
victory lay before them, and that nothing could bar their way to the
sea. If the British commanders underrated their opponents, there is
ample evidence that the mistake was reciprocal.
A few words now as to the disposition of the British forces, concerning
which it must be borne in mind that Sir George White, though in
actual command, had only been a few days in the country before war was
declared, so that the arrangements fell to General Penn Symons, aided
or hampered by the advice of the local political authorities. The main
position was at Ladysmith, but an advance post was strongly held at
Glencoe, which is five miles from the station of Dundee and forty from
Ladysmith. The reason for this dangerous division of force was to secure
each end of the Biggarsberg section of the railway, and also to cover
the important collieries of that district. The positions chosen seem in
each case to show that the British commander was not aware of the number
and power of the Boer guns, for each was equally defensible against
rifle fire and vulnerable to an artillery attack. In the case of Glencoe
it was particularly evident that guns upon the hills above would, as
they did, render the position untenable. This outlying post was held
by the 1st Leicester Regiment, the 2nd Dublin Fusiliers, and the first
battalion of Rifles, with the 18th Hussars, three companies of mounted
infantry, and three batteries of field artillery, the 13th, 67th, and
69th. The 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers were on their way to reinforce
it, and arrived before the first action. Altogether the Glencoe camp
contained some four thousand men.
The main body of the army remained at Ladysmith. These consisted of the
1st Devons, the 1st Liverpools, and the 2nd Gordon Highlanders, with the
1st Gloucesters, the 2nd King's Royal Rifles, and the 2nd Rifle Brigade,
reinforced later by the Manchesters. The cavalry included the 5th
Dragoon Guards, the 5th Lancers, a detachment of 19th Hussars, the Natal
Carabineers, the Natal Mounted Police, and the Border Mounted Rifles,
reinforced later by the Imperial Light Horse, a fine body of men raised
principally among the refugees from the Rand. For artillery there
were the 21st, 42nd, and 53rd batteries of field artillery, and No. 10
Mountain Battery, with the Natal Field Artillery, the guns of which were
too light to be of service, and the 23rd Company of Royal Engineers. The
whole force, some eight or nine thousand strong, was under the immediate
command of Sir George White, with Sir Archibald Hunter, fresh from the
Soudan, General French, and General Ian Hamilton as his lieutenants.
The first shock of the Boers, then, must fall upon 4000 men. If these
could be overwhelmed, there were 8000 more to be defeated or masked.
Then what was there between them and the sea? Some detachments of local
volunteers, the Durban Light Infantry at Colenso, and the Natal Royal
Rifles, with some naval volunteers at Estcourt. With the power of the
Boers and their mobility it is inexplicable how the colony was saved. We
are of the same blood, the Boers and we, and we show it in our failings.
Over-confidence on our part gave them the chance, and over-confidence
on theirs prevented them from instantly availing themselves of it. It
passed, never to come again.
The outbreak of war was upon October 11th. On the 12th the Boer forces
crossed the frontier both on the north and on the west. On the 13th they
occupied Charlestown at the top angle of Natal. On the 15th they had
reached Newcastle, a larger town some fifteen miles inside the border.
Watchers from the houses saw six miles of canvas-tilted bullock wagons
winding down the passes, and learned that this was not a raid but an
invasion. At the same date news reached the British headquarters of
an advance from the western passes, and of a movement from the
Buffalo River on the east. On the 13th Sir George White had made a
reconnaissance in force, but had not come in touch with the enemy. On
the 15th six of the Natal Police were surrounded and captured at one of
the drifts of the Buffalo River. On the 18th our cavalry patrols came
into touch with the Boer scouts at Acton Homes and Besters Station,
these being the voortrekkers of the Orange Free State force. On the 18th
also a detachment was reported from Hadders Spruit, seven miles north of
Glencoe Camp. The cloud was drifting up, and it could not be long before
it would burst.
Two days later, on the early morning of October 20th, the forces came
at last into collision. At half-past three in the morning, well before
daylight, the mounted infantry picket at the junction of the roads from
Landmans and Vants Drifts was fired into by the Doornberg commando, and
retired upon its supports. Two companies of the Dublin Fusiliers were
sent out, and at five o'clock on a fine but misty morning the whole of
Symons's force was under arms with the knowledge that the Boers were
pushing boldly towards them. The khaki-clad lines of fighting men stood
in their long thin ranks staring up at the curves of the saddle-back
hills to the north and east of them, and straining their eyes to catch a
glimpse of the enemy. Why these same saddle-back hills were not occupied
by our own people is, it must be confessed, an insoluble mystery. In a
hollow on one flank were the 18th Hussars and the mounted infantry. On
the other were the eighteen motionless guns, limbered up and ready, the
horses fidgeting and stamping in the raw morning air.
And then suddenly--could that be they? An officer with a telescope
stared intently and pointed. Another and another turned a steady field
glass towards the same place. And then the men could see also, and a
little murmur of interest ran down the ranks.
A long sloping hill--Talana Hill--olive-green in hue, was stretching
away in front of them. At the summit it rose into a rounded crest. The
mist was clearing, and the curve was hard-outlined against the limpid
blue of the morning sky. On this, some two and a half miles or three
miles off, a little group of black dots had appeared. The clear edge of
the skyline had become serrated with moving figures. They clustered into
a knot, then opened again, and then--
There had been no smoke, but there came a long crescendo hoot, rising
into a shrill wail. The shell hummed over the soldiers like a great
bee, and sloshed into soft earth behind them. Then another--and yet
another--and yet another. But there was no time to heed them, for there
was the hillside and there the enemy. So at it again with the good old
murderous obsolete heroic tactics of the British tradition! There are
times when, in spite of science and book-lore, the best plan is the
boldest plan, and it is well to fly straight at your enemy's throat,
facing the chance that your strength may fail before you can grasp it.
The cavalry moved off round the enemy's left flank. The guns dashed to
the front, unlimbered, and opened fire. The infantry were moved round in
the direction of Sandspruit, passing through the little town of Dundee,
where the women and children came to the doors and windows to cheer
them. It was thought that the hill was more accessible from that side.
The Leicesters and one field battery--the 67th--were left behind to
protect the camp and to watch the Newcastle Road upon the west. At seven
in the morning all was ready for the assault.
Two military facts of importance had already been disclosed. One was
that the Boer percussion-shells were useless in soft ground, as hardly
any of them exploded; the other that the Boer guns could outrange our
ordinary fifteen-pounder field gun, which had been the one thing perhaps
in the whole British equipment upon which we were prepared to pin our
faith. The two batteries, the 13th and the 69th, were moved nearer,
first to 3000, and then at last to 2300 yards, at which range they
quickly dominated the guns upon the hill. Other guns had opened from
another crest to the east of Talana, but these also were mastered by the
fire of the 13th Battery. At 7.30 the infantry were ordered to advance,
which they did in open order, extended to ten paces. The Dublin
Fusiliers formed the first line, the Rifles the second, and the Irish
Fusiliers the third.
The first thousand yards of the advance were over open grassland, where
the range was long, and the yellow brown of the khaki blended with the
withered veld. There were few casualties until the wood was reached,
which lay halfway up the long slope of the hill. It was a plantation of
larches, some hundreds of yards across and nearly as many deep. On
the left side of this wood--that is, the left side to the advancing
troops--there stretched a long nullah or hollow, which ran
perpendicularly to the hill, and served rather as a conductor of bullets
than as a cover. So severe was the fire at this point that both in the
wood and in the nullah the troops lay down to avoid it. An officer of
Irish Fusiliers has narrated how in trying to cut the straps from a
fallen private a razor lent him for that purpose by a wounded sergeant
was instantly shot out of his hand. The gallant Symons, who had refused
to dismount, was shot through the stomach and fell from his horse
mortally wounded. With an excessive gallantry, he had not only attracted
the enemy's fire by retaining his horse, but he had been accompanied
throughout the action by an orderly bearing a red pennon. 'Have they got
the hill? Have they got the hill?' was his one eternal question as they
carried him dripping to the rear. It was at the edge of the wood that
Colonel Sherston met his end.
From now onwards it was as much a soldiers' battle as Inkermann. In the
shelter of the wood the more eager of the three battalions had pressed
to the front until the fringe of the trees was lined by men from all of
them. The difficulty of distinguishing particular regiments where all
were clad alike made it impossible in the heat of action to keep any
sort of formation. So hot was the fire that for the time the advance
was brought to a standstill, but the 69th battery, firing shrapnel at a
range of 1400 yards, subdued the rifle fire, and about half-past eleven
the infantry were able to push on once more.
Above the wood there was an open space some hundreds of yards across,
bounded by a rough stone wall built for herding cattle. A second wall
ran at right angles to this down towards the wood. An enfilading rifle
fire had been sweeping across this open space, but the wall in front
does not appear to have been occupied by the enemy, who held the kopje
above it. To avoid the cross fire the soldiers ran in single file under
the shelter of the wall, which covered them to the right, and so reached
the other wall across their front. Here there was a second long delay,
the men dribbling up from below, and firing over the top of the wall and
between the chinks of the stones. The Dublin Fusiliers, through being in
a more difficult position, had been unable to get up as quickly as the
others, and most of the hard-breathing excited men who crowded under the
wall were of the Rifles and of the Irish Fusiliers. The air was so full
of bullets that it seemed impossible to live upon the other side of this
shelter. Two hundred yards intervened between the wall and the crest of
the kopje. And yet the kopje had to be cleared if the battle were to be
won.
Out of the huddled line of crouching men an officer sprang shouting, and
a score of soldiers vaulted over the wall and followed at his heels. It
was Captain Connor, of the Irish Fusiliers, but his personal magnetism
carried up with him some of the Rifles as well as men of his own
command. He and half his little forlorn hope were struck down--he, alas!
to die the same night--but there were other leaders as brave to take his
place. 'Forrard away, men, forrard away!' cried Nugent, of the Rifles.
Three bullets struck him, but he continued to drag himself up the
boulder-studded hill. Others followed, and others, from all sides
they came running, the crouching, yelling, khaki-clad figures, and the
supports rushed up from the rear. For a time they were beaten down by
their own shrapnel striking into them from behind, which is an amazing
thing when one considers that the range was under 2000 yards. It was
here, between the wall and the summit, that Colonel Gunning, of the
Rifles, and many other brave men met their end, some by our own bullets
and some by those of the enemy; but the Boers thinned away in front
of them, and the anxious onlookers from the plain below saw the waving
helmets on the crest, and learned at last that all was well.
But it was, it must be confessed, a Pyrrhic victory. We had our hill,
but what else had we? The guns which had been silenced by our fire had
been removed from the kopje. The commando which seized the hill was that
of Lucas Meyer, and it is computed that he had with him about 4000
men. This figure includes those under the command of Erasmus, who made
halfhearted demonstrations against the British flank. If the shirkers
be eliminated, it is probable that there were not more than a thousand
actual combatants upon the hill. Of this number about fifty were killed
and a hundred wounded. The British loss at Talana Hill itself was 41
killed and 180 wounded, but among the killed were many whom the army
could ill spare. The gallant but optimistic Symons, Gunning of the
Rifles, Sherston, Connor, Hambro, and many other brave men died that
day. The loss of officers was out of all proportion to that of the men.
An incident which occurred immediately after the action did much to rob
the British of the fruits of the victory. Artillery had pushed up the
moment that the hill was carried, and had unlimbered on Smith's Nek
between the two hills, from which the enemy, in broken groups of 50
and 100, could be seen streaming away. A fairer chance for the use of
shrapnel has never been. But at this instant there ran from an old iron
church on the reverse side of the hill, which had been used all day as
a Boer hospital, a man with a white flag. It is probable that the action
was in good faith, and that it was simply intended to claim a protection
for the ambulance party which followed him. But the too confiding gunner
in command appears to have thought that an armistice had been declared,
and held his hand during those precious minutes which might have turned
a defeat into a rout. The chance passed, never to return. The double
error of firing into our own advance and of failing to fire into the
enemy's retreat makes the battle one which cannot be looked back to with
satisfaction by our gunners.
In the meantime some miles away another train of events had led to a
complete disaster to our small cavalry force--a disaster which robbed
our dearly bought infantry victory of much of its importance. That
action alone was undoubtedly a victorious one, but the net result of the
day's fighting cannot be said to have been certainly in our favour.
It was Wellington who asserted that his cavalry always got him into
scrapes, and the whole of British military history might furnish
examples of what he meant. Here again our cavalry got into trouble.
Suffice it for the civilian to chronicle the fact, and leave it to the
military critic to portion out the blame.
One company of mounted infantry (that of the Rifles) had been told off
to form an escort for the guns. The rest of the mounted infantry with
part of the 18th Hussars (Colonel Moller) had moved round the right
flank until they reached the right rear of the enemy. Such a movement,
had Lucas Meyer been the only opponent, would have been above criticism;
but knowing, as we did, that there were several commandoes converging
upon Glencoe it was obviously taking a very grave and certain risk
to allow the cavalry to wander too far from support. They were soon
entangled in broken country and attacked by superior numbers of the
Boers. There was a time when they might have exerted an important
influence upon the action by attacking the Boer ponies behind the hills,
but the opportunity was allowed to pass. An attempt was made to get back
to the army, and a series of defensive positions were held to cover
the retreat, but the enemy's fire became too hot to allow them to be
retained. Every route save one appeared to be blocked, so the horsemen
took this, which led them into the heart of a second commando of the
enemy. Finding no way through, the force took up a defensive position,
part of them in a farm and part on a kopje which overlooked it.
The party consisted of two troops of Hussars, one company of mounted
infantry of the Dublin Fusiliers, and one section of the mounted
infantry of the Rifles--about two hundred men in all. They were
subjected to a hot fire for some hours, many being killed and wounded.
Guns were brought up, and fired shell into the farmhouse. At 4.30 the
force, being in a perfectly hopeless position, laid down their arms.
Their ammunition was gone, many of their horses had stampeded, and they
were hemmed in by very superior numbers, so that no slightest slur can
rest upon the survivors for their decision to surrender, though the
movements which brought them to such a pass are more open to criticism.
They were the vanguard of that considerable body of humiliated and
bitter-hearted men who were to assemble at the capital of our brave and
crafty enemy. The remainder of the 18th Hussars, who under Major Knox
had been detached from the main force and sent across the Boer rear,
underwent a somewhat similar experience, but succeeded in extricating
themselves with a loss of six killed and ten wounded. Their efforts were
by no means lost, as they engaged the attention of a considerable body
of Boers during the day and were able to bring some prisoners back with
them.
The battle of Talana Hill was a tactical victory but a strategic defeat.
It was a crude frontal attack without any attempt at even a feint of
flanking, but the valour of the troops, from general to private, carried
it through. The force was in a position so radically false that the only
use which they could make of a victory was to cover their own retreat.
From all points Boer commandoes were converging upon it, and already
it was understood that the guns at their command were heavier than any
which could be placed against them. This was made more clear on October
21st, the day after the battle, when the force, having withdrawn
overnight from the useless hill which they had captured, moved across
to a fresh position on the far side of the railway. At four in the
afternoon a very heavy gun opened from a distant hill, altogether beyond
the extreme range of our artillery, and plumped shell after shell into
our camp. It was the first appearance of the great Creusot. An officer
with several men of the Leicesters, and some of our few remaining
cavalry, were bit. The position was clearly impossible, so at two in the
morning of the 22nd the whole force was moved to a point to the south
of the town of Dundee. On the same day a reconnaissance was made in the
direction of Glencoe Station, but the passes were found to be strongly
occupied, and the little army marched back again to its original
position. The command had fallen to Colonel Yule, who justly considered
that his men were dangerously and uselessly exposed, and that his
correct strategy was to fall back, if it were still possible, and join
the main body at Ladysmith, even at the cost of abandoning the two
hundred sick and wounded who lay with General Symons in the hospital at
Dundee. It was a painful necessity, but no one who studies the situation
can have any doubt of its wisdom. The retreat was no easy task, a march
by road of some sixty or seventy miles through a very rough country with
an enemy pressing on every side. Its successful completion without any
loss or any demoralisation of the troops is perhaps as fine a military
exploit as any of our early victories. Through the energetic and loyal
co-operation of Sir George White, who fought the actions of Elandslaagte
and of Rietfontein in order to keep the way open for them, and owing
mainly to the skillful guidance of Colonel Dartnell, of the Natal
Police, they succeeded in their critical manoeuvre. On October 23rd they
were at Beith, on the 24th at Waselibank Spruit, on the 25th at Sunday
River, and next morning they marched, sodden with rain, plastered with
mud, dog-tired, but in the best of spirits, into Ladysmith amid the
cheers of their comrades. A battle, six days without settled sleep, four
days without a proper meal, winding up with a single march of thirty-two
miles over heavy ground and through a pelting rain storm--that was the
record of the Dundee column. They had fought and won, they had striven
and toiled to the utmost capacity of manhood, and the end of it all was
that they had reached the spot which they should never have left. But
their endurance could not be lost--no worthy deed is ever lost. Like the
light division, when they marched their fifty odd unbroken miles to
be present at Talavera, they leave a memory and a standard behind them
which is more important than success. It is by the tradition of such
sufferings and such endurance that others in other days are nerved to do
the like.
CHAPTER 6. ELANDSLAAGTE AND RIETFONTEIN.
While the Glencoe force had struck furiously at the army of Lucas Meyer,
and had afterwards by hard marching disengaged itself from the numerous
dangers which threatened it, its comrades at Ladysmith had loyally
co-operated in drawing off the attention of the enemy and keeping the
line of retreat open.
On October 20th--the same day as the Battle of Talana Hill--the line was
cut by the Boers at a point nearly midway between Dundee and Ladysmith.
A small body of horsemen were the forerunners of a considerable
commando, composed of Freestaters, Transvaalers, and Germans, who had
advanced into Natal through Botha's Pass under the command of General
Koch. They had with them the two Maxim-Nordenfelds which had been
captured from the Jameson raiders, and were now destined to return
once more to British hands. Colonel Schiel, the German artillerist, had
charge of these guns.
On the evening of that day General French, with a strong reconnoitering
party, including the Natal Carabineers, the 5th Lancers, and the 21st
battery, had defined the enemy's position. Next morning (the 21st) he
returned, but either the enemy had been reinforced during the night or
he had underrated them the day before, for the force which he took with
him was too weak for any serious attack. He had one battery of the Natal
artillery, with their little seven-pounder popguns, five squadrons
of the Imperial Horse, and, in the train which slowly accompanied his
advance, half a battalion of the Manchester Regiment. Elated by the news
of Talana Hill, and anxious to emulate their brothers of Dundee, the
little force moved out of Ladysmith in the early morning.
Some at least of the men were animated by feelings such as seldom find a
place in the breast of the British soldier as he marches into battle.
A sense of duty, a belief in the justice of his cause, a love for his
regiment and for his country, these are the common incentives of every
soldier. But to the men of the Imperial Light Horse, recruited as they
were from among the British refugees of the Rand, there was added a
burning sense of injustice, and in many cases a bitter hatred against
the men whose rule had weighed so heavily upon them. In this singular
corps the ranks were full of wealthy men and men of education, who,
driven from their peaceful vocations in Johannesburg, were bent upon
fighting their way back to them again. A most unmerited slur had been
cast upon their courage in connection with the Jameson raid--a slur
which they and other similar corps have washed out for ever in their own
blood and that of their enemy. Chisholm, a fiery little Lancer, was in
command, with Karri Davis and Wools-Sampson, the two stalwarts who had
preferred Pretoria Gaol to the favours of Kruger, as his majors. The
troopers were on fire at the news that a cartel had arrived in Ladysmith
the night before, purporting to come from the Johannesburg Boers and
Hollanders, asking what uniform the Light Horse wore, as they were
anxious to meet them in battle. These men were fellow townsmen and knew
each other well. They need not have troubled about the uniform, for
before evening the Light Horse were near enough for them to know their
faces.
It was about eight o'clock on a bright summer morning that the small
force came in contact with a few scattered Boer outposts, who retired,
firing, before the advance of the Imperial Light Horse. As they fell
back the green and white tents of the invaders came into view upon the
russet-coloured hillside of Elandslaagte. Down at the red brick railway
station the Boers could be seen swarming out of the buildings in which
they had spent the night. The little Natal guns, firing with obsolete
black powder, threw a few shells into the station, one of which, it
is said, penetrated a Boer ambulance which could not be seen by the
gunners. The accident was to be regretted, but as no patients could have
been in the ambulance the mischance was not a serious one.
But the busy, smoky little seven-pounder guns were soon to meet their
master. Away up on the distant hillside, a long thousand yards beyond
their own furthest range, there was a sudden bright flash. No smoke,
only the throb of flame, and then the long sibilant scream of the shell,
and the thud as it buried itself in the ground under a limber. Such
judgment of range would have delighted the most martinet of inspectors
at Okehampton. Bang came another, and another, and another, right
into the heart of the battery. The six little guns lay back at their
extremest angle, and all barked together in impotent fury. Another shell
pitched over them, and the officer in command lowered his field-glass in
despair as he saw his own shells bursting far short upon the hillside.
Jameson's defeat does not seem to have been due to any defect in his
artillery. French, peering and pondering, soon came to the
conclusion that there were too many Boers for him, and that if those
fifteen-pounders desired target practice they should find some other
mark than the Natal Field Artillery. A few curt orders, and his whole
force was making its way to the rear. There, out of range of those
perilous guns, they halted, the telegraph wire was cut, a telephone
attachment was made, and French whispered his troubles into the
sympathetic ear of Ladysmith. He did not whisper in vain. What he had
to say was that where he had expected a few hundred riflemen he found
something like two thousand, and that where he expected no guns he found
two very excellent ones. The reply was that by road and by rail as many
men as could be spared were on their way to join him.
Soon they began to drop in, those useful reinforcements--first the
Devons, quiet, business-like, reliable; then the Gordons, dashing,
fiery, brilliant. Two squadrons of the 5th Lancers, the 42nd R.F.A., the
21st R.F.A., another squadron of Lancers, a squadron of the 5th Dragoon
Guards--French began to feel that he was strong enough for the task in
front of him. He had a decided superiority of numbers and of guns. But
the others were on their favourite defensive on a hill. It would be a
fair fight and a deadly one.
It was late after noon before the advance began. It was hard, among
those billowing hills, to make out the exact limits of the enemy's
position. All that was certain was that they were there, and that
we meant having them out if it were humanly possible. 'The enemy are
there,' said Ian Hamilton to his infantry; 'I hope you will shift
them out before sunset--in fact I know you will.' The men cheered and
laughed. In long open lines they advanced across the veld, while the
thunder of the two batteries behind them told the Boer gunners that it
was their turn now to know what it was to be outmatched.
The idea was to take the position by a front and a flank attack, but
there seems to have been some difficulty in determining which was the
front and which the flank. In fact, it was only by trying that one
could know. General White with his staff had arrived from Ladysmith,
but refused to take the command out of French's hands. It is typical of
White's chivalrous spirit that within ten days he refused to identify
himself with a victory when it was within his right to do so, and took
the whole responsibility for a disaster at which he was not present.
Now he rode amid the shells and watched the able dispositions of his
lieutenant.
About half-past three the action had fairly begun. In front of the
advancing British there lay a rolling hill, topped by a further one. The
lower hill was not defended, and the infantry, breaking from column of
companies into open order, advanced over it. Beyond was a broad grassy
valley which led up to the main position, a long kopje flanked by a
small sugar-loaf one Behind the green slope which led to the ridge of
death an ominous and terrible cloud was driving up, casting its black
shadow over the combatants. There was the stillness which goes before
some great convulsion of nature. The men pressed on in silence, the soft
thudding of their feet and the rattle of their sidearms filling the air
with a low and continuous murmur. An additional solemnity was given to
the attack by that huge black cloud which hung before them.
The British guns had opened at a range of 4400 yards, and now against
the swarthy background there came the quick smokeless twinkle of the
Boer reply. It was an unequal fight, but gallantly sustained. A shot and
another to find the range; then a wreath of smoke from a bursting
shell exactly where the guns had been, followed by another and another.
Overmatched, the two Boer pieces relapsed into a sulky silence,
broken now and again by short spurts of frenzied activity. The British
batteries turned their attention away from them, and began to search the
ridge with shrapnel and prepare the way for the advancing infantry.
The scheme was that the Devonshires should hold the enemy in front while
the main attack from the left flank was carried out by the Gordons,
the Manchesters, and the Imperial Light Horse. The words 'front' and
'flank,' however, cease to have any meaning with so mobile and elastic
a force, and the attack which was intended to come from the left became
really a frontal one, while the Devons found themselves upon the right
flank of the Boers. At the moment of the final advance the great black
cloud had burst, and a torrent of rain lashed into the faces of the men.
Slipping and sliding upon the wet grass, they advanced to the assault.
And now amid the hissing of the rain there came the fuller, more
menacing whine of the Mauser bullets, and the ridge rattled from end to
end with the rifle fire. Men fell fast, but their comrades pressed
hotly on. There was a long way to go, for the summit of the position was
nearly 800 feet above the level of the railway. The hillside, which had
appeared to be one slope, was really a succession of undulations, so
that the advancing infantry alternately dipped into shelter and emerged
into a hail of bullets. The line of advance was dotted with khaki-clad
figures, some still in death, some writhing in their agony. Amid the
litter of bodies a major of the Gordons, shot through the leg, sat
philosophically smoking his pipe. Plucky little Chisholm, Colonel of the
Imperials, had fallen with two mortal wounds as he dashed forward waving
a coloured sash in the air. So long was the advance and so trying the
hill that the men sank panting upon the ground, and took their breath
before making another rush. As at Talana Hill, regimental formation was
largely gone, and men of the Manchesters, Gordons, and Imperial Light
Horse surged upwards in one long ragged fringe, Scotchman, Englishman,
and British Africander keeping pace in that race of death. And now at
last they began to see their enemy. Here and there among the boulders
in front of them there was the glimpse of a slouched hat, or a peep at
a flushed bearded face which drooped over a rifle barrel. There was a
pause, and then with a fresh impulse the wave of men gathered themselves
together and flung themselves forward. Dark figures sprang up from the
rocks in front. Some held up their rifles in token of surrender. Some
ran with heads sunk between their shoulders, jumping and ducking among
the rocks. The panting breathless climbers were on the edge of the
plateau. There were the two guns which had flashed so brightly, silenced
now, with a litter of dead gunners around them and one wounded officer
standing by a trail. A small body of the Boers still resisted. Their
appearance horrified some of our men. 'They were dressed in black
frock coats and looked like a lot of rather seedy business men,' said a
spectator. 'It seemed like murder to kill them.' Some surrendered, and
some fought to the death where they stood. Their leader Koch, an old
gentleman with a white beard, lay amidst the rocks, wounded in three
places. He was treated with all courtesy and attention, but died in
Ladysmith Hospital some days afterwards.
In the meanwhile the Devonshire Regiment had waited until the attack
had developed and had then charged the hill upon the flank, while
the artillery moved up until it was within 2000 yards of the enemy's
position. The Devons met with a less fierce resistance than the others,
and swept up to the summit in time to head off some of the fugitives.
The whole of our infantry were now upon the ridge.
But even so these dour fighters were not beaten. They clung desperately
to the further edges of the plateau, firing from behind the rocks.
There had been a race for the nearest gun between an officer of the
Manchesters and a drummer sergeant of the Gordons. The officer won, and
sprang in triumph on to the piece. Men of all regiments swarmed round
yelling and cheering, when upon their astonished ears there sounded the
'Cease fire' and then the 'Retire.' It was incredible, and yet it pealed
out again, unmistakable in its urgency. With the instinct of discipline
the men were slowly falling back. And then the truth of it came upon
the minds of some of them. The crafty enemy had learned our bugle calls.
'Retire be damned! shrieked a little bugler, and blew the 'Advance' with
all the breath that the hillside had left him. The men, who had retired
a hundred yards and uncovered the guns, flooded back over the plateau,
and in the Boer camp which lay beneath it a white flag showed that
the game was up. A squadron of the 5th Lancers and of the 5th Dragoon
Guards, under Colonel Gore of the latter regiment, had prowled round
the base of the hill, and in the fading light they charged through and
through the retreating Boers, killing several, and making from twenty to
thirty prisoners. It was one of the very few occasions in the war where
the mounted Briton overtook the mounted Boer.
'What price Majuba?' was the cry raised by some of the infantry as they
dashed up to the enemy's position, and the action may indeed be said to
have been in some respects the converse of that famous fight. It is true
that there were many more British at Elandslaagte than Boers at Majuba,
but then the defending force was much more numerous also, and the
British had no guns there. It is true, also, that Majuba is very much
more precipitous than Elandslaagte, but then every practical soldier
knows that it is easier to defend a moderate glacis than an abrupt
slope, which gives cover under its boulders to the attacker while the
defender has to crane his head over the edge to look down. On the whole,
this brilliant little action may be said to have restored things to
their true proportion, and to have shown that, brave as the Boers
undoubtedly are, there is no military feat within their power which
is not equally possible to the British soldier. Talana Hill and
Elandslaagte, fought on successive days, were each of them as gallant an
exploit as Majuba.
We had more to show for our victory than for the previous one at Dundee.
Two Maxim-Nordenfeld guns, whose efficiency had been painfully evident
during the action, were a welcome addition to our artillery. Two hundred
and fifty Boers were killed and wounded and about two hundred taken
prisoners, the loss falling most heavily upon the Johannesburgers, the
Germans, and the Hollanders. General Koch, Dr. Coster, Colonel Schiel,
Pretorius, and other well-known Transvaalers fell into our hands. Our
own casualty list consisted of 41 killed and 220 wounded, much the same
number as at Talana Hill, the heaviest losses falling upon the Gordon
Highlanders and the Imperial Light Horse.
In the hollow where the Boer tents had stood, amid the laagered wagons
of the vanquished, under a murky sky and a constant drizzle of rain, the
victors spent the night. Sleep was out of the question, for all night
the fatigue parties were searching the hillside and the wounded were
being carried in. Camp-fires were lit and soldiers and prisoners crowded
round them, and it is pleasant to recall that the warmest corner and the
best of their rude fare were always reserved for the downcast Dutchmen,
while words of rude praise and sympathy softened the pain of defeat. It
is the memory of such things which may in happier days be more potent
than all the wisdom of statesmen in welding our two races into one.
Having cleared the Boer force from the line of the railway, it is
evident that General White could not continue to garrison the point, as
he was aware that considerable forces were moving from the north,
and his first duty was the security of Ladysmith. Early next morning
(October 22nd), therefore, his weary but victorious troops returned
to the town. Once there he learned, no doubt, that General Yule had
no intention of using the broken railway for his retreat, but that he
intended to come in a circuitous fashion by road. White's problem was
to hold tight to the town and at the same time to strike hard at any
northern force so as to prevent them from interfering with Yule's
retreat. It was in the furtherance of this scheme that he fought upon
October 24th the action of Rietfontein, an engagement slight in itself,
but important on account of the clear road which was secured for the
weary forces retiring from Dundee.
The army from the Free State, of which the commando vanquished at
Elandslaagte was the vanguard, had been slowly and steadily debouching
from the passes, and working south and eastwards to cut the line between
Dundee and Ladysmith. It was White's intention to prevent them from
crossing the Newcastle Road, and for this purpose he sallied out of
Ladysmith on Tuesday the 24th, having with him two regiments of cavalry,
the 5th Lancers and the 19th Hussars, the 42nd and 53rd field batteries
with the 10th mountain battery, four infantry regiments, the Devons,
Liverpools, Gloucesters, and 2nd King's Royal Rifles, the Imperial Light
Horse, and the Natal Volunteers--some four thousand men in all.
The enemy were found to be in possession of a line of hills within
seven miles of Ladysmith, the most conspicuous of which is called Tinta
Inyoni. It was no part of General White's plan to attempt to drive him
from this position--it is not wise generalship to fight always upon
ground of the enemy's choosing--but it was important to hold him where
he was, and to engage his attention during this last day of the march
of the retreating column. For this purpose, since no direct attack was
intended, the guns were of more importance than the infantry--and indeed
the infantry should, one might imagine, have been used solely as an
escort for the artillery. A desultory and inconclusive action ensued
which continued from nine in the morning until half-past one in the
afternoon. A well-directed fire of the Boer guns from the hills was
dominated and controlled by our field artillery, while the advance of
their riflemen was restrained by shrapnel. The enemy's guns were more
easily marked down than at Elandslaagte, as they used black powder. The
ranges varied from three to four thousand yards. Our losses in the
whole action would have been insignificant had it not happened that the
Gloucester Regiment advanced somewhat incautiously into the open and was
caught in a cross fire of musketry which struck down Colonel Wilford and
fifty of his officers and men. Within four days Colonel Dick-Cunyngham,
of the Gordons, Colonel Chisholm, of the Light Horse, Colonel Gunning,
of the Rifles, and now Colonel Wilford, of the Gloucesters, had all
fallen at the head of their regiments. In the afternoon General White,
having accomplished his purpose and secured the safety of the Dundee
column while traversing the dangerous Biggarsberg passes, withdrew his
force to Ladysmith. We have no means of ascertaining the losses of the
Boers, but they were probably slight. On our side we lost 109 killed and
wounded, of which only 13 cases were fatal. Of this total 64 belonged
to the Gloucesters and 25 to the troops raised in Natal. Next day, as
already narrated, the whole British army was re-assembled once more at
Ladysmith, and the campaign was to enter upon a new phase.
At the end of this first vigorous week of hostilities it is interesting
to sum up the net result. The strategical advantage had lain with the
Boers. They had made our position at Dundee untenable and had driven us
back to Ladysmith. They had the country and the railway for the northern
quarter of the colony in their possession. They had killed and wounded
between six and seven hundred of our men, and they had captured some two
hundred of our cavalry, while we had been compelled at Dundee to leave
considerable stores and our wounded, including General Penn Symons, who
actually died while a prisoner in their hands. On the other hand, the
tactical advantages lay with us. We had twice driven them from their
positions, and captured two of their guns. We had taken two hundred
prisoners, and had probably killed and wounded as many as we had lost.
On the whole, the honours of that week's fighting in Natal may be said
to have been fairly equal--which is more than we could claim for many a
weary week to come.
CHAPTER 7. THE BATTLE OF LADYSMITH.
Sir George White had now reunited his force, and found himself in
command of a formidable little army some twelve thousand in number. His
cavalry included the 5th Lancers, the 5th Dragoons, part of the 18th and
the whole of the 19th Hussars, the Natal Carabineers, the Border Rifles,
some mounted infantry, and the Imperial Light Horse. Among his infantry
were the Royal Irish Fusiliers, the Dublin Fusiliers, and the King's
Royal Rifles, fresh from the ascent of Talana Hill, the Gordons, the
Manchesters, and the Devons who had been blooded at Elandslaagte,
the Leicesters, the Liverpools, the 2nd battalion of the King's Royal
Rifles, the 2nd Rifle Brigade, and the Gloucesters, who had been so
roughly treated at Rietfontein. He had six batteries of excellent field
artillery--the 13th, 21st, 42nd, 53rd, 67th, 69th, and No. 10 Mountain
Battery of screw guns. No general could have asked for a more compact
and workmanlike little force.
It had been recognised by the British General from the beginning that
his tactics must be defensive, since he was largely outnumbered and
since also any considerable mishap to his force would expose the
whole colony of Natal to destruction. The actions of Elandslaagte and
Rietfontein were forced upon him in order to disengage his compromised
detachment, but now there was no longer any reason why he should
assume the offensive. He knew that away out on the Atlantic a trail of
transports which already extended from the Channel to Cape de Verde
were hourly drawing nearer to him with the army corps from England. In a
fortnight or less the first of them would be at Durban. It was his game,
therefore, to keep his army intact, and to let those throbbing engines
and whirling propellers do the work of the empire. Had he entrenched
himself up to his nose and waited, it would have paid him best in the
end.
But so tame and inglorious a policy is impossible to a fighting soldier.
He could not with his splendid force permit himself to be shut in
without an action. What policy demands honour may forbid. On October
27th there were already Boers and rumours of Boers on every side of
him. Joubert with his main body was moving across from Dundee. The
Freestaters were to the north and west. Their combined numbers were
uncertain, but at least it was already proved that they were far more
numerous and also more formidable than had been anticipated. We had had
a taste of their artillery also, and the pleasant delusion that it would
be a mere useless encumbrance to a Boer force had vanished for ever.
It was a grave thing to leave the town in order to give battle, for
the mobile enemy might swing round and seize it behind us. Nevertheless
White determined to make the venture.
On the 29th the enemy were visibly converging upon the town. From a high
hill within rifleshot of the houses a watcher could see no fewer than
six Boer camps to the east and north. French, with his cavalry, pushed
out feelers, and coasted along the edge of the advancing host. His
report warned White that if he would strike before all the scattered
bands were united he must do so at once. The wounded were sent down to
Pietermaritzburg, and it would bear explanation why the non-combatants
did not accompany them. On the evening of the same day Joubert in person
was said to be only six miles off, and a party of his men cut the water
supply of the town. The Klip, however, a fair-sized river, runs through
Ladysmith, so that there was no danger of thirst. The British had
inflated and sent up a balloon, to the amazement of the back-veld Boers;
its report confirmed the fact that the enemy was in force in front of
and around them.
On the night of the 29th General White detached two of his best
regiments, the Irish Fusiliers and the Gloucesters, with No. 10 Mountain
Battery, to advance under cover of the darkness and to seize and hold
a long ridge called Nicholson's Nek, which lay about six miles to the
north of Ladysmith. Having determined to give battle on the next day,
his object was to protect his left wing against those Freestaters who
were still moving from the north and west, and also to keep a pass
open by which his cavalry might pursue the Boer fugitives in case of a
British victory. This small detached column numbered about a thousand
men--whose fate will be afterwards narrated.
At five o'clock on the morning of the 30th the Boers, who had already
developed a perfect genius for hauling heavy cannon up the most
difficult heights, opened fire from one of the hills which lie to the
north of the town. Before the shot was fired, the forces of the British
had already streamed out of Ladysmith to test the strength of the
invaders.
White's army was divided into three columns. On the extreme left, quite
isolated from the others, was the small Nicholson's Nek detachment under
the command of Colonel Carleton of the Fusiliers (one of three gallant
brothers each of whom commands a British regiment). With him was Major
Adye of the staff. On the right British flank Colonel Grimwood commanded
a brigade composed of the 1st and 2nd battalions of the King's Royal
Rifles, the Leicesters, the Liverpools, and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.
In the centre Colonel Ian Hamilton commanded the Devons, the Gordons,
the Manchesters, and the 2nd battalion of the Rifle Brigade, which
marched direct into the battle from the train which had brought them
from Durban. Six batteries of artillery were massed in the centre under
Colonel Downing. French with the cavalry and mounted infantry was on the
extreme right, but found little opportunity for the use of the mounted
arm that day.
The Boer position, so far as it could be seen, was a formidable one.
Their centre lay upon one of the spurs of Signal Hill, about three miles
from the town. Here they had two forty-pounders and three other lighter
guns, but their artillery strength developed both in numbers and in
weight of metal as the day wore on. Of their dispositions little could
be seen. An observer looking westward might discern with his glass
sprays of mounted riflemen galloping here and there over the downs,
and possibly small groups where the gunners stood by their guns, or the
leaders gazed down at that town which they were destined to have in view
for such a weary while. On the dun-coloured plains before the town, the
long thin lines, with an occasional shifting sparkle of steel, showed
where Hamilton's and Grimwood's infantry were advancing. In the clear
cold air of an African morning every detail could be seen, down to the
distant smoke of a train toiling up the heavy grades which lead from
Frere over the Colenso Bridge to Ladysmith.
The scrambling, inconsequential, unsatisfactory action which ensued is
as difficult to describe as it must have been to direct. The Boer
front covered some seven or eight miles, with kopjes, like chains of
fortresses, between. They formed a huge semicircle of which our advance
was the chord, and they were able from this position to pour in
a converging artillery fire which grew steadily hotter as the day
advanced. In the early part of the day our forty-two guns, working
furiously, though with a want of accuracy which may be due to those
errors of refraction which are said to be common in the limpid air of
the veld, preserved their superiority. There appears to have been a want
of concentration about our fire, and at some periods of the action
each particular battery was firing at some different point of the Boer
half-circle. Sometimes for an hour on end the Boer reply would die
away altogether, only to break out with augmented violence, and with
an accuracy which increased our respect for their training. Huge
shells--the largest that ever burst upon a battlefield--hurled from
distances which were unattainable by our fifteen-pounders, enveloped our
batteries in smoke and flame. One enormous Creusot gun on Pepworth Hill
threw a 96-pound shell a distance of four miles, and several 40-pound
howitzers outweighted our field guns. And on the same day on which we
were so roughly taught how large the guns were which labour and good
will could haul on to the field of battle, we learned also that our
enemy--to the disgrace of our Board of Ordnance be it recorded--was more
in touch with modern invention than we were, and could show us not only
the largest, but also the smallest, shell which had yet been used. Would
that it had been our officials instead of our gunners who heard the
devilish little one-pound shells of the Vickers-Maxim automatic gun,
exploding with a continuous string of crackings and bangings, like a
huge cracker, in their faces and about their ears!
Up to seven o'clock our infantry had shown no disposition to press the
attack, for with so huge a position in front of them, and so many hills
which were held by the enemy, it was difficult to know what line of
advance should be taken, or whether the attack should not be converted
into a mere reconnaissance. Shortly after that hour, however, the Boers
decided the question by themselves developing a vigorous movement upon
Grimwood and the right flank. With field guns, Maxims, and rifle fire,
they closed rapidly in upon him. The centre column was drafted off,
regiment by regiment, to reinforce the right. The Gordons, Devons,
Manchesters, and three batteries were sent over to Grimwood's relief,
and the 5th Lancers, acting as infantry, assisted him to hold on.
At nine o'clock there was a lull, but it was evident that fresh
commandoes and fresh guns were continually streaming into the firing
line. The engagement opened again with redoubled violence, and
Grimwood's three advanced battalions fell back, abandoning the ridge
which they had held for five hours. The reason for this withdrawal was
not that they could not continue to hold their position, but it was
that a message had just reached Sir George White from Colonel Knox,
commanding in Ladysmith, to the effect that it looked as if the enemy
was about to rush the town from the other side. Crossing the open in
some disorder, they lost heavily, and would have done so more had not
the 13th Field Battery, followed after an interval by the 53rd, dashed
forward, firing shrapnel at short ranges, in order to cover the retreat
of the infantry. Amid the bursting of the huge 96-pound shells, and the
snapping of the vicious little automatic one-pounders, with a cross-fire
of rifles as well, Abdy's and Dawkins' gallant batteries swung round
their muzzles, and hit back right and left, flashing and blazing, amid
their litter of dead horses and men. So severe was the fire that the
guns were obscured by the dust knocked up by the little shells of the
automatic gun. Then, when their work was done and the retiring infantry
had stragg
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