Chapter IX: Bloemfontein to Komati Poort (2)

These latter troops, now possessing an acknowledged and independent status of their own, and led by some able men like Hutton, Alderson, and De Lisle, did remarkably well in some instances, though poorly in others. The Australians and New Zealanders seem always to have shown the most tactical vigour. Hutton’s fight on May 5 to secure the passage of the Vet on the left of the main army was a good performance. The mounted riflemen did well also in the pursuit north of Johannesburg on May 30, in the fighting outside Pretoria on June 5, at Diamond Hill on June 12, and on several other occasions.

French’s operations outside Johannesburg on May 28 and 29, when, prior to the arrival of the Infantry, both classes of mounted troops were employed in unison, are interesting. French was in his best mood. There was no lack of vigorous will on the spot, but the turning movements by the Cavalry (except the last, which followed the Infantry assaults), and the frontal attacks by both classes, alike failed. There would seem on this occasion to have been a good opportunity for a rush through the centre on the lines of Klip Drift.

3. _Charges._—The only actual charge _upon a position_, to which I can find reference, is that of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles on May 24, at the passage of the Vaal (_Times_ History, vol. iv., p. 136, footnote).

Two small cases occur of charges in the open with the _arme blanche_—namely, at Diamond Hill, on June 11, where, in some indecisive fighting on the right, sixty men of the 12th Lancers made a gallant charge against some Boers who were threatening two of our guns, and at the same time the Household Cavalry endeavoured to ride down another detachment. The lance disposed of a few Boers in the former case, but the enemy retaliated as successfully with fire. In the latter case the Cavalry drove the Boers away, but caught only one, and lost twenty-one horses from rifle-fire, many burghers dropping down among the mealies and shooting at the troopers as they passed, in the manner recommended in our own handbook, “Infantry Training.” The two incidents were momentary episodes in two days of fire-action, and serve merely to emphasize the inferiority of a weapon with a range of two yards to a long-range firearm.

4. _Pursuits._—There were no really “general” pursuits. The best local pursuit was that of Hutton’s Australasians on May 30, at Klipfontein (“Official History,” vol. iii., p. 90), where a gun was captured. The Boer talent—not exactly for pursuit, but for pressing hard upon a rear-guard—was strikingly displayed in the course of Ian Hamilton’s evacuation of Lindley, whither he had been sent during the general halt at Kroonstad. We may call these guerilla tactics; but they have not a whit less real tactical interest on that account.

5. _Horse-wastage._—With full allowance for the poor quality of remounts, this was too extravagant. It seems to have been greatest among the Cavalry, whose average waste between May 19 and June 9 was over 30 per cent., than among the mounted riflemen, whose average, for the same period, was 18 per cent.[48] Apart from that difficult question of overloading, and from defective horse-management, which seems to have been universal among our mounted troops, this difference in loss of horses was probably the result of longer distances ridden by the Cavalry. In the whole of this question we have to recognize, in the case of all mounted troops, the close relation between horse-wastage and deficiency in aggressive tactical power, a deficiency which, as I pointed out above, was the real, though, perhaps, not the consciously thought-out reason for the immense encircling movements which were so often being attempted. It will be the same in future wars. The higher the direct tackling power, the lower the average horse-wastage.

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Footnote 48:

No complete figures exist. The “Official History” ignores the subject.
I take these figures from the _Times_ historian, who quotes from
calculations made by one of Roberts’s staff (see vol. iv., p. 162).

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By the middle of June, when Pretoria had fallen to the central armies and Diamond Hill had been fought, every other column composing the grand advance had, to all appearances, successfully accomplished its object. Buller had traversed Natal and entered the Transvaal. Methuen had traversed the Western Free State. Hunter had relieved Mafeking, and had occupied towns in the Western Transvaal as far north as the meridian of Pretoria. Warren, too, had disposed of the rebels in Griqualand West. Both Cape Colony and Natal were cleared of the enemy. The Free State had been annexed.

Buller had scarcely made any use of his six regiments of regular Cavalry, and had even left them at Ladysmith during the first phase of his advance over the Biggarsberg. His action was partly due, no doubt, to that old fatalistic prejudice against pursuits, which, in his mind, we must assume, were associated so closely with the _arme blanche_ that he did not think it worth while even to give the Cavalry a fair chance of developing other methods. The error was all the less justifiable in that the Natal army, nearly 45,000 strong, and the largest in the field of war, was disproportionately weak in mounted troops. The irregular mounted brigade, about 3,000 strong, under Dundonald, together with Bethune’s Mounted Infantry, about 600 strong, took a prominent part in all the actions, and did very well. Eight thousand Boers faced Buller originally on the Biggarsberg, but they must have dwindled to something like half that number in the later stages of the advance. No especial points of mounted interest, not alluded to already, arose in these operations, which, from a tactical standpoint, were often very cleverly and ably conducted, although from the strategical standpoint they were too slow and unenterprising. I need not enter into the long story of Buller’s two months’ inaction after the relief of Ladysmith, and of his repeated failures to rise to the height of the Commander-in-Chief’s conceptions for the strategic rôle of the powerful Natal army.

In the western sphere of advance, there are two principal points of interest:

1. The good behaviour of the new Yeomanry under both Methuen and Warren; for example, at Tweefontein (April 5), and, in defence, at Faber’s Put (May 29), though on the latter occasion we have to recognize an early instance of that lax and careless outpost work which so often characterized the Yeomanry and other irregular corps.

2. The relief of Mafeking. This, although not a dramatic, was none the less a very skilful and able performance, carried out by Colonel Mahon, with a small column of 900 mounted irregulars (Imperial Light Horse and Kimberley men), 100 picked Infantry, and 6 guns. Starting from Barkley West on May 4, Mahon marched 251 miles in 14 days (an average of 18 miles a day), through a badly-watered region, with two fairly hot engagements _en route_. Hunter, with his main body, rendered skilful support by distracting the attention of the Boers in the neighbourhood, and, in the final phase, Plumer, who for many months had been tirelessly worrying the besiegers, co-operated with Mahon. On the penultimate day of the march, May 16, De la Rey and Liebenberg managed to bar the road with 2,000 men, a force about equal to those of Mahon and Plumer together, but were driven off after a spirited action. In expense of horse-flesh, which was small, and in tackling power in proportion to numbers, the whole expedition compared favourably with the relief of Kimberley by the Cavalry. It must be remarked that, mobile as Mahon’s force was, it included 100 Infantry and 55 mule-waggons.

In the meantime the guerilla war—and by that expression I mean all hostilities which were not directly connected with the seizure on our side, and the defence on the Boers’ side, of railways, capitals, and large towns—had already begun in the Free State, and was eventually to spread to the Transvaal even before the final collapse of that State in September. Rundle, Colvile, and Brabant, acting on the right rear of the central armies, had had to cope with constant opposition in the Eastern Free State. Rundle met with a sharp check at the Biddulphsberg on May 29, and two days later a detached force of Yeomanry, 500 strong, surrendered to Piet de Wet near Lindley, after an investment of some days. This was the first serious reverse which befell a Yeomanry corps. The only moral we need draw from it is the vital importance of spirited leadership for mounted troops, especially for untried irregulars. On this occasion the true “Cavalry spirit” was lacking in the officer in command, who, with a substantial force of mounted men and travelling light, should never have allowed himself to be invested at all.

A few days later, Christian de Wet, with 1,200 men and 5 guns, again took the field, and continued the series of raids which he had initiated at Sannah’s Post and Reddersburg. This time he directed his efforts mainly against the weakest British point—the enormously lengthy line of railway communications which linked Roberts to his base. After snapping up a convoy near Heilbron on June 4, he attacked and captured simultaneously three posts on the railway between Kroonstad and Pretoria at daybreak on June 7, and a fortnight later, with varying success, carried out other raids upon the railway or upon convoys. Trivial as the direct military results of these exploits were, their moral effect was enormous, not only in awakening De Wet’s compatriots to a lasting sense of their own capacity, but in strengthening the higher Boer counsels at a very critical moment. Roberts and Botha had opened tentative negotiations for peace between June 5 and 11, after the capture of Pretoria. There can be no question that De Wet’s successes on June 4 and 7 inclined the scale in favour of war.

The firebrand next appears in July, midway in the drama of the Brandwater Basin. Hunter’s envelopment of this, the great mountain fastness of the Eastern Free State, and his capture of over 4,000 men under Prinsloo on July 29, was the most extensive and the most ably conducted of all the subsidiary operations during the year 1900. “Subsidiary,” indeed, is the wrong term. It was capital, in the sense that it actually removed from the field a large body of fighting burghers, a result which no other operations, those of Paardeberg alone excepted, had achieved. The mounted interest, however, in the manœuvres which led to the surrender, is small. For us the chief interest lies in the eruption from the death-trap, on July 15, just before it closed, of De Wet, Steyn, and 2,600 of the best Boer troops, with 5 guns and an immense convoy.

Dashing away to the north, flinging off two Cavalry brigades, and capturing a train _en route_, De Wet reached the neighbourhood of Reitzburg, and lay there for twelve days (July 25 to August 6), occupying himself with little raids upon the railway. Roberts, who had just completed his eastward advance to Middelburg, determined to run to earth the irrepressible Boer leader, and for nine days all eyes in South Africa were turned upon the extraordinary spectacle presented by the first of the three great “hunts” with which De Wet’s name is associated.

Ten mobile columns, including large numbers of mounted men, took part, at one time or another, in the chase, and in all nearly 30,000 men were engaged directly or indirectly in the enveloping operations. Thrice the net was drawn so closely around the quarry that there seemed to be no hope of escape. But De Wet got through, dodging and doubling over the Vaal, across the Western Transvaal, and through the Magaliesberg Range to the district north of Pretoria, having achieved—with a loss of a gun and some waggons—the only specific object of all this desperate marching; that, namely, of escorting President Steyn to a point whence he could reach the Transvaal leaders, and concert fresh measures of defence with them.

Perhaps the most striking feature of this and many another similar feat of evasion was that it was performed throughout at the “net” speed of ox-waggons, of which a large number accompanied the Boer column, together with herds of cattle and sheep, an increasing number of dismounted burghers, and, until near the end, a considerable number of British prisoners. De Wet himself, from the beginning to the end of his career, was always dead against taking heavy convoys on independent expeditions of this sort, but his power over his burghers rarely reached the point of persuading them to adopt his view. With our vastly superior resources for forming advanced bases we should have been able to make our mounted troops far more independent, but we never succeeded in overcoming the transport difficulty. Our “net” speed was less than De Wet’s on this occasion. Mounted interest from the Boer standpoint is confined: (_a_) To their customary skill in handling small protective screens, so as to check pursuit, and compel us to waste time in the preparatory shelling of positions; (_b_) to the brilliant scouting of Theron’s corps of 200 picked scouts. Knowledge of the country had very little to do with the success of these scouts, a considerable proportion of whom were foreigners from Europe. Reconnaissance was our own weakest point. Touch was rarely kept for twenty-four hours together, and we find already growing up that insidious tendency to rely more on centralized intelligence for the blocking of all supposed outlets of escape to the pursued force than on local scouting, backed by universal co-operation in strenuous tackling energy, for running that force to earth wherever and whenever it could be found.

There was plenty of individual British energy displayed in the chase, but very little co-operative energy. Methuen’s column, which originally was a mixed force of all arms, bore almost the whole brunt of the direct pursuit, and performed marvels of endurance. During the last three days Methuen dropped his Infantry, and followed the trail with 600 Yeomanry, 600 Colonials, and 11 guns, and with these men on the 12th made the only effective attack in the course of the hunt, capturing a gun and sixteen waggons. The purely mounted columns, of which there were three, two of Cavalry and one of mounted riflemen, never gained fighting contact with the enemy at all.

For the rest, De Wet’s own native audacity and ingenuity were his salvation. We deceive ourselves if we imagine that we European peoples, with our “regular” armies and our authorized textbook regulations for “regular” war, can afford to ignore the very least of the elements of success in these feats of evasion. If they seem to be wholly defensive in character, we must remember that they could not have been otherwise. To stand and fight it out meant envelopment by overwhelming numbers, and the loss of men who could never be replaced. And defensive power is only the correlative of offensive power. I need scarcely add that the whole of the work done by both sides in this hunt, and in all similar hunts, was essentially Cavalry work. Every good quality shown by either party was a Cavalry quality.

IV.—THE ADVANCE TO KOMATI POORT.

President Steyn’s safe arrival in the north about the middle of August, after this perilous series of adventures, brings us somewhat prematurely to the last scene in the first great phase of the war. He came too late to be of use in averting the final dissolution of the Transvaal forces before the advance of Lord Roberts up the Delagoa Railway to the Portuguese frontier. But we must retrace our steps a little before we reach that point.

Since Diamond Hill (June 12) the Transvaal leaders had gradually abandoned all serious intention of defending the Delagoa line to extremities. Botha soon seems to have resigned himself to the eventual necessity of guerilla warfare, and during June sent off most of his commandos to their own districts, there to fight for their own homes, reserving for the defence of the Delagoa Railway only those burghers through whose districts it passed, together with the Police and most of his Artillery. For a month he held the Tigerpoort range of hills, fifteen to twenty miles east of Pretoria. Meanwhile the south-eastern men opposed Buller’s advance from the Natal border to Heidelberg, the northern men prepared to defend the Pietersburg Railway, and De la Rey organized the first of many formidable offensive revivals in his own district, the Western Transvaal, culminating on July 11 in the capture of the post at Zilikat’s Nek, in other small attacks, and in a general threat to Pretoria from the west. Botha, who had just been driven off the Tigerpoort range by a well-managed movement of mounted troops under Hutton and French (July 5 to 11), now saw a chance of an effective combination with De la Rey by a counter-attack upon the position just lost. Viljoen, with 2,000 men (against about 4,000 on our side), carried out this enterprise with considerable spirit on July 16, and came dangerously near success on our left at Witpoort. The situation was saved in this quarter by what the Official and _Times_ narratives call a “charge” of the Canadian Mounted Rifles, though how near it came to being a mounted charge I am unable to discover.

These events, together with De Wet’s escape from the Brandwater Basin, further delayed the eastward British advance, which was eventually begun on July 23. Middelburg was captured with little difficulty on July 27, and then there was a halt of another three weeks, rendered necessary by the hunt of De Wet and many other minor elements of disturbance. During this period French, with several thousand mounted troops (his own Cavalry and Hutton’s mounted riflemen), held a semicircular outpost line fifty miles in extent to the eastward of Middelburg, and showed the same kind of skill and activity as he had exhibited at Colesberg in sparring with the Boer forces in front of him.

Buller, in the meantime, was marching northward from the Natal border with 9,000 men (including two mounted brigades) and 42 guns, and effected a junction with French on August 15. Belfast fell to the joint forces a few days later, and on the 27th, reinforced by an Infantry division to a total strength of nearly 19,000 men (of whom 4,800 were mounted), Roberts fought the last pitched battle of the regular war at Bergendal. Strange and characteristic climax it was! Exceeding all previous records in extension, Botha, with about 7,000 men, on an extreme estimate, and 20 guns, held a line of difficult mountainous country no less than fifty miles in extent from end to end, reaching from the approaches to Lydenburg on the north to the approaches to Barberton on the south. No more than twenty miles of this front, however, held at the most by 5,000 men, was concerned in the action.

Upon the extreme right of this position French, with two Cavalry brigades, together about 1,600 strong, made the normal wide turning movement against strong but lightly-held positions, and made it very vigorously and successfully; but it took him all day, so that he could not make the further projected sweep round the Boer rear.[49] Buller meanwhile assaulted the key to the Boer position—Bergendal Hill, on the left centre. This was a truly extraordinary episode in its proof of the terrific power of the modern rifle in the hands of disciplined men. The summit of the hill, about 200 yards by 100 yards in extent, was crowned with boulders, which made it a natural fort. It was bombarded with lyddite and shrapnel for three hours by thirty-eight guns, including heavy naval pieces and howitzers, until, as an historian puts it, it looked like Vesuvius in eruption. Then it was assaulted in the most intrepid style by a brigade of Infantry (1st Inniskilling Fusiliers and 2nd Rifle Brigade), who, before storming the crest, lost 120 officers and men, mainly, but not wholly, from the fire of the Bergendal burghers; for two or three other small detachments co-operated at long-range from neighbouring hill-tops. When all was over, it was found that the hill had been held by seventy-four men of the Johannesburg Police—mounted riflemen, be it noted. Thirty got away on their horses, twenty were captured alive, and the rest were killed or wounded. As an example of the truth that defensive and offensive power are correlatives of one another, it may be remarked that these same “Zarps,” under at least one of the same leaders (Pohlmann), had taken a leading part in the assault and capture of Nicholson’s Nek ten months earlier. The Police, we must remember, were the only regular disciplined force (gunners excepted) which the Boers possessed.

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Footnote 49:

I have no space for details, but I ask the reader to study either the
_Times_ or the Official narratives; and I suggest that it was not
worth while to make so great a circuit in order to turn out 500 Boers
from distant flank posts. If French, leaving a small containing force,
had advanced direct upon Lakenvlei by the road the Infantry took, he
would have been in a position to act upon the Boer rear at an early
hour.

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This cardinal success in the centre brought the battle—if battle it may be called—to an end. French could not pursue, and the pursuit of Buller’s Cavalry was ineffective.

This was Botha’s last resolute stand. His own and Steyn’s efforts together could not prevent the subsequent disintegration. Indeed, it is a remarkable proof of their ability and moral courage that during the next fortnight, with the help of some minor leaders like Kemp and Viljoen, and with the support of the most sturdy and patriotic burghers, they were able to present a decent show of resistance on the immense front from Lydenburg to Barberton and onwards; to avert anything in the nature of a decisive defeat in the field; and finally, when the crash came on the Portuguese frontier, to concentrate, and by perilous and exhausting flank marches to save from the wreckage, not only the acting executive Governments of both Republics, but substantial bodies of resolute men—the nucleus, in short, for nearly two more years of strenuous resistance.

It was here that the now inveterate habit on our part of overrating the importance of winning positions and of underrating the importance of defeating the Boers in person led to its most unfortunate results. The Portuguese frontier was the “touch-line.” Short of incarceration (and a large number of horseless and destitute men chose this course), there was no alternative but a wide flank march to the north across the British front, at first over the fever-stricken “low veld,” then over precipitous mountains whose spurs for a long distance were already held by our troops. Steyn, travelling light with 250 men, and starting on September 11, got through with ease. Botha and Viljoen, with 2,500 men, starting on the 17th, only just rounded Buller’s extreme left flank at a point thirty miles from the railway on September 26. All eventually arrived at Pietersburg, which became henceforth a workshop, a recruiting-ground, and an administrative centre whence plans for future hostilities were hatched. One of the young leaders present—Kemp of Krugersdorp—was in later days the first to put in systematic use those formidable charging tactics which did so much to prolong the war.

It is one of the ironies of the campaign that, with all the elaborate and extensive flank movements of mounted troops—often far too extensive and elaborate—which had characterized our operations in the past, we had not ready at this crisis, when its presence was of vital consequence, a compact, independent mounted force for the interception of these important Boer detachments.

But, in truth, in spite of a week’s explicit warning of Botha’s intended march, his escape and that of Steyn passed almost unnoticed. All eyes were fixed on a spectacle of seemingly irreparable ruin; of abandoned guns, stores, and rolling-stock; of burghers flying into foreign territory; of Kruger and his officials flying to Europe. The army, from Roberts downwards, and the whole outside world, seems to have interpreted these phenomena as signs that the war was practically over. At the time this was very natural, and this we should not forget when criticizing the error of judgment by the light of after-events.

Nor would it have been easy, even had the warning of our political agents received full attention, to arrange for the interception of Botha in addition to the other pre-occupations of the time. Buller had two Cavalry brigades on the northern flank, but they were scattered over a long series of posts. A few hundred mounted riflemen were with the central Infantry column on the railway; but most of the remaining mounted troops, in two columns composed of 1,000 mounted riflemen under Hutton, and 3,000 Cavalry and mounted riflemen under French, both well supplied with guns and auxiliary troops, had been employed since the 8th in marching on parallel routes through the mountains on the southern flank in order to clear this side for the central advance of the Infantry up the railway. On September 13 both arrived at their respective goals—Hutton at Kaapsche Hoop, French at Barberton, the terminus of a small branch railway. Both these marches, but especially the southernmost—that of French—though they met with slight opposition, merit high praise, and were a worthy culmination of the efforts of the mounted troops during the regular war. It is true that they scarcely raise our special issue, or raise it only to afford us new evidence against the _arme blanche_, for the terrain—steep, wild, and intricate mountains—was as unsuitable for the exercise of that weapon as the hedge-bound plains of England. But we can afford for a moment to forget our immediate issue in admiring the staunch endurance of all the troops alike, the nerve, energy, and self-reliance of French, and the admirable staff-work which, by assuring supplies and communications, enabled him to give full rein to his soldierly instincts.