29: The Advance to Komatipoort
<< 28: The Halt at Pretoria || 30: The Campaign of De Wet >>
The time had now come for the great combined movement which was to
sweep the main Boer army off the line of the Delagoa railway, Cut its
source of supplies, and fllow it into that remote and mountainous
Lydenburg district which had always been proclaimed as the last refuge
of the burghers. Before entering upon this most difficult of all his
advances Lord Roberts waited until the cavalry and mounted infantry
were well mounted again. Then, when all was ready, the first step in
this last stage of the regular campaign was taken by General Buller,
who moved his army of Natal veterans off the railway line and advanced
to a position from which he could threaten the flank and rear of Botha
if he held his ground against Lord Roberts. Buller's cavalry had been
reinforced by the arrival of Strathcona's Horse, a fine body of
Canadian troopers, whose services had been presented to the nation by
the public-spirited nobleman whose name they bore. They were
distinguished by their fine physique, and by the lassoes, cowboy
stirrups, and large spurs of the North-Western plains.
It was in the first week of July that Clery joined hands with the
Heidelberg garrison, while Coke with the 10th Brigade cleared the
right flank of the railway by an expedition as far as Amersfoort. On
July 6th the Natal communications were restored, and on the 7th Buller
was able to come through to Pretoria and confer with the
Commander-in-Chief. A Boer force with heavy guns still hung about the
line, and several small skirmishes were fought between Vlakfontein and
Greylingstad in order to drive it away. By the middle of July the
immediate vicinity of the railway was clear save for some small
marauding parties who endeavoured to tamper with the rails and the
bridges. Up to the end of the month the whole of the Natal army
remained strung along the line of communications from Heidelberg to
Standerton, waiting for the collection of forage and transport to
enable them to march north against Botha's position.
On August 8th Buller's troops advanced to the northeast from
Paardekop, pushing a weak Boer force with five guns in front of
them. At the cost of twenty-five wounded, principally of the 60th
Rifles, the enemy was cleared off, and the town of Amersfoort was
occupied. On the 13th, moving on the same line, and meeting with very
slight opposition, Buller took possession of Ermelo. His advance was
having a good effect upon the district, for on the 12th the Standerton
commando, which numbered 182 men, surrendered to Clery. On the 15th,
st~l skirmishing, Buller's men were at Twyfelaar, and had taken
possession of Carolina. Here and there a distant horseman riding over
the olive-coloured hills showed how closely and incessan~y be was
watched; but, save for a little sniping upon his flanks, there was no
fighting. He was coming now within touch of French's cavalry,
operating from Middelburg, and on the 14th heliographic communication
was established with Gordon's Brigade.
Buller's column had come nearer to its friends, but it was also nearer
to the main body of Boers who were waiting in that very rugged piece
of country which lies between Belfast in the west and Machadodorp in
the east. From this rocky stronghold they had thrown out mobile bodies
to harass the British advance from the south, and every day brought
Buller into closer touch with these advance guards of the enemy. On
August 21st he had moved eight miles nearer to Belfast, French
operating upon his left flank. Here he found the Boers in
considerable numbers, but he pushed them northward with his cavalry,
mounted infantry, and artillery, losing between thirty and forty
killed and wounded, the greater part from the ranks of the 18th
Hussars and the Gordon Highlanders. This march brought him within
fifteen miles of Belfast, which lay due north of him. At the same time
Pole-Carew with the central column of Lord Roberts's force had
advanced along the railway line, and on August 24th he occupied
Belfast with little resistance. He found, however, that the enemy
were holding the formidable ridges which lie between that place and
Dalmanutha, and that they showed every sign of giving battle,
presenting a firm front to Buller on the south as well as to Roberts's
army on the west.
On the 23rd some successes attended their efforts to check the advance
from the south. During the day Buller had advanced steadily, though
under incessant fire. The evening found him only six miles to the
south of Dalmanutha, the centre of the Boer position. By some
misfortune, however, after dark two companies of the Liverpool
Regiment found themselves isolated from their comrades and exposed to
a very heavy fire. They had pushed forward too far, and were very
near to being surrounded and destroyed. There were fifty-six
casualties in their ranks, and thirty-two, including their wounded
captain, were taken. The total losses in the day were 121.
On August 25th it was evident that important events were at hand, for
on that date Lord Roberts arrived at Belfast and held a conference
with Buller, French, and Pole-Carew. The general communicated his
plans to his three lieutenants, and on the 26th and following days the
fruits of the interview were seen in a succession of rapid manoeuvres
which drove the Boers out of this, the strongest position which they
had held since they left the banks of the Tugela.
The advance of Lord Roberts was made, as his wont is, with two
widespread wings, and a central body to connect them. Such a movement
leaves the enemy in doubt as to which flank will really be attacked,
while if he denudes his centre in order to strengthen both flanks
there is the chance of a frontal advance which might cut him in two.
French with two cavalry brigades formed the left advance, Pole-Carew
the centre, and Buller the right, the whole operations extending over
thirty miles of infamous country. It is probable that Lord Roberts
had reckoned that the Boer right was likely to be their strongest
position, since if it were turned it would cut off their retreat upon
Lydenburg, so his own main attack was directed upon their left. This
was carried out by General Buller on August 26th and 27th.
On the first day the movement upon Buller's part consisted in a very
deliberate reconnaissance of and closing in upon the enemy's position,
his troops bivouacking upon the ground which they had won. On the
second, finding that all further progress was barred by the strong
ridge of Bergendal, he prepared his attack carefully with artillery
and then let loose his infantry upon it. It was a gallant feat of arms
upon either side. The Boer position was held by a detachment of the
Johannesburg Police, who may have been bullies in peace, but were
certainly heroes in war. The fire of sixty guns was concentrated for
a couple of hours upon a position only a few hundred yards in
diameter. In this infernal fire, which left the rocks yellow with
lyddite, the survivors still waited grimly for the advance of the
infantry. No finer defence was made in the war. The attack was
carried out across an open glacis by the 2nd Rifle Brigade and by the
Inniskilling Fusiliers, the men of Pieter's Hill. Through a deadly
fire the gallant infantry swept over the position, though Metcalfe,
the brave colonel of the Rifles, with eight other officers, and
seventy men were killed or wounded. Lysley, Steward, and Campbell were
all killed in leading their companies, but they could not have met
their deaths upon an occasion more honourable to their battalion.
Great credit must also be given to A and B companies of the
Inniskilling Fusiliers, who were actually the first over the Boer
position. The cessation of the artillery fire was admirably timed.
It was sustained up to the last possible instant. "As it was," said
the captain of the leading company, "a 94-lb. shell burst about thirty
yards in front of the right of our lot. The smell of the lyddite was
awful." A pom-pom and twenty prisoners, including the commander of
the police, were the trophies of the day. An outwork of the Boer
position had been carried, and the rumour of defeat and disaster had
already spread through their ranks. Braver men than the burghers have
never lived, but they had reached the limits of human endurance, and a
long experience of defeat in the field had weakened their nerve and
lessened their morale. They were no longer men of the same fibre as
those who had crept up to the trenches of Spion Kop, or faced the lean
warriors of Ladysmith on that grim January morning at Caesar's Camp.
Dutch tenacity would not allow them to surrender, and yet they
realised how hopeless was the fight in which they were engaged.
Nearly fifteen thousand of their best men were prisoners, ten thousand
at the least had returned to their farms and taken the oath. Another
ten had been killed, wounded, or incapacitated. Most of the European
mercenaries had left; they held only the ultimate corner of their own
country, they had lost their grip upon the railway line, and their
supply of stores and of ammunition was dwindling. To such a pass had
eleven months of war reduced that formidable army who had so
confidently advanced to the conquest of South Africa.
While Buller had established himself firmly upon the left of the Boer
position, Pole-Carew had moved forward to the north of the railway
line, and French had advanced as far as Swart Kopjes upon the Boer
right. These operations on August 26th and 27th were met with some
resistance, and entailed a loss of forty or fifty killed and wounded;
but it soon became evident that the punishment which they had received
at Bergendal had taken the fight out of the Boers, and that this
formidable position was to be abandoned as the others had been. On the
28th the burghers were retreating, and Machadodorp, where Kruger had
sat so long in his railway carriage, protesting that he would
eventually move west and not east, was occupied by Buller. French,
moving on a more northerly route, entered Watervalonder with his
cavalry upon the same date, driving a small Boer force before
him. Amid rain and mist the British columns were pushing rapidly
forwards, but still the burghers held together, and still their
artillery was uncaptured. The retirement was swift, but it was not
yet a rout.
On the 30th the British cavalry were within touch of Nooitgedacht, and
saw a glad sight in a long trail of ragged men who were hurrying in
their direction along the railway line. They were the British
prisoners, eighteen hundred in number, half of whom had been brought
from Waterval when Pretoria was captured, while the other half
represented the men who had been sent from the south by De Wet, or
from the west by De la Rey. Much allowance must be made for the
treatment of prisoners by a belligerent who is himself short of food,
but nothing can excuse the harshness which the Boers showed to the
Colonials who fell into their power, or the callous neglect of the
sick prisoners at Waterval. It is a humiliating but an interesting
fact that from first to last no fewer than seven thousand of our men
passed into their power, all of whom were now recovered save some
sixty officers, who had been carried off by them in their flight.
On September 1st Lord Roberts showed his sense of the decisive nature
of these recent operations by publishing the proclamation which had
been issued as early as July 4th, by which the Transvaal became a
portion of the British Empire. On the same day General Buller, who
had ceased to advance to the east and retraced his steps as far as
Helvetia, began his northerly movement in the direction of Lydenburg,
which is nearly fifty miles to the north of the railway line. On that
date his force made a march of fourteen miles, which brought them over
the Crocodile River to Badfontein. Here, on September 2nd, Buller
found that the indomitable Botha was still turning back upon him, for
he was faced by so heavy a shell fire, coming from so formidable a
position, that he had to be content to wait in front of it until some
other column should outflank it. The days of unnecessary frontal
attacks were for ever over, and his force, though ready for anything
which might be asked of it, had gone through a good deal in the recent
operations. Since August 21st they had been under fire almost every
day, and their losses, though never great on any one occasion,
amounted in the aggregate during that time to 365. They had crossed
the Tugela, they had relieved Ladysmith, they had forced Laing's Nek,
and now it was to them that the honour had fallen of following the
enemy into this last fastness. Whatever criticism may be directed
against some episodes in the Natal campaign, it must never be
forgotten that to Buller and to his men have fallen some of the
hardest tasks of the war, and that these tasks have always in the end
been successfully carried out. The controversy about the unfortunate
message to White, and the memory of the abandoned guns at Colenso,
must not lead us to the injustice of ignoring all that is to be set to
the credit account.
On September 3rd Lord Roberts, finding how strong a position faced
Buller, despatched Ian Hamilton with a force to turn it upon the
right. Brocklehurst's brigade of cavalry joined Hamilton in his
advance. On the 4th he was within signalling distance of Buller, and
on the right rear of the Boer position. The occupation of a mountain
called Zwaggenhoek would establish Hamilton firmly, and the difficult
task of seizing it at night was committed to Colonel Douglas and his
fine regiment of Royal Scots. It was Spion Kop over again, but with a
happier ending. At break of day the Boers discovered that their
position had been rendered untenable and withdrew, leaving the road to
Lydenburg clear to Buller. Hamilton and he occupied the town upon the
6th. The Boers had split into two parties, the larger one with the
guns falling back upon Kruger's Post, and the others retiring to
Pilgrim's Rest. Amid cloud-girt peaks and hardly passable ravines the
two long-enduring armies still wrestled for the final mastery.
To the north-east of Lydenburg, between that town and Spitzkop, there
is a formidable ridge called the Mauchberg, and here again the enemy
were found to be standing at bay. They were even better than their
word, for they had always said that they would make their last stand
at Lydenburg, and now they were making one beyond it. But the
resistance was weakening. Even this fine position could not be held
against the rush of the three regiments, the Devons, the Royal Irisb,
and the Royal Scots, who were let loose upon it. The artillery
supported the attack admirably. "They did nobly," said one who led
the advance. "It is impossible to overrate the value of their
support. They ceased also exactly at the right moment. One more
shell would have hit us." Mountain mists saved the defeated burghers
from a close pursuit, but the hills were carried. The British losses
on this day, September 8th, were thirteen killed and twenty-five
wounded; but of these thirty-eight no less than half were accounted
for by one of those strange malignant freaks which can neither be
foreseen nor prevented. A shrapnel shell, fired at an incredible
distance, burst right over the Volunteer Company of the Gordons who
were marching in column. Nineteen men fell, but it is worth recording
that, smitten so suddenly and so terribly, the gallant Volunteers
continued to advance as steadily as before this misfortune befell
them. On the 9th Buller was still pushing forward to Spitzkop, his
guns and the 1st Rifles overpowering a weak rearguard resistance of
the Boers. On the 10th he had reached Klipgat, which is halfway
between the Mauchberg and Spitzkop. So close was the pursuit that the
Boers, as they streamed through the passes, flung thirteen of their
ammunition wagons over the cliffs to prevent them from falling into
the hands of the British horsemen. At one period it looked as if the
gallant Boer guns had waited too long in covering the retreat of the
burghers. Strathcona's Horse pressed closely upon them. The
situation was saved by the extreme coolness and audacity of the Boer
gunners. "When the cavalry were barely half a mile behind the rear
gun," says an eye-witness "and we regarded its capture as certain, the
LEADING Long Tom deliberately turned to bay and opened with case shot
at the pursuers streaming down the hill in single file over the head
of his brother gun. It was a magnificent coup, and perfectly
successful. The cavalry had to retire, leaving a few men wounded, and
by the time our heavy guns had arrived both Long Toms had got clean
away." But the Boer riflemen would no longer stand. Demoralised after
their magnificent struggle of eleven months the burghers were now a
beaten and disorderly rabble flying wildly to the eastward, and only
held together by the knowledge that in their desperate situation there
was more comfort and safety in numbers. The war seemed to be swiftly
approaching its close. On the 15th Buller occupied Spitzkop in the
north, capturing a quantity of stores, while on the 14th French took
Barberton in the south, releasing all the remaining British prisoners
and taking possession of forty locomotives, which do not appear to
have been injured by the enemy. Meanwhile Pole-Carew had worked along
the railway line, and had occupied Kaapmuiden, which was the junction
where the Barberton line joins that to Lourenço Marques. Ian
Hamilton's force, after the taking of Lydenburg and the action which
followed, turned back, leaving Buller to go his own way, and reached
Komatipoort on September 24th, having marched since September 9th
without a halt through a most difficult country.
On September 11th an incident had occurred which must have shown the
most credulous believer in Boer prowess that their cause was indeed
lost. On that date Paul Kruger, a refugee from the country which he
had ruined, arrived at Lourenço Marques, abandoning his beaten
commandos and his deluded burghers. How much had happened since those
distant days when as a little herdsboy he had walked behind the
bullocks on the great northward trek. How piteous this ending to all
his strivings and his plottings! A life which might have closed amid
the reverence of a nation and the admiration of the world was destined
to finish in exile, impotent and undignified. Strange thoughts must
have come to him during those hours of flight, memories of his virile
and turbulent youth, of the first settlement of those great lands, of
wild wars where his hand was heavy upon the natives, of the triumphant
days of the war of independence, when England seemed to recoil from
the rifles of the burghers. And then the years of prosperity, the
years when the simple farmer found himself among the great ones of the
earth, his name a household word in Europe, his State rich and
powerful, his coffers filled with the spoil of the poor drudges who
worked so hard and paid taxes so readily. Those were his great days,
the days when he hardened his heart against their appeals for justice
and looked beyond his own borders to his kinsmen in the hope of a
South Africa which should be all his own. And now what had come of it
all? A handful of faithful attendants, and a fugitive old man,
clutching in his flight at his papers and his moneybags. The last of
the old-world Puritans, he departed poring over his well-thumbed
Bible, and proclaiming that the troubles of his country arose, not
from his own narrow and corrupt administration, but from some
departure on the part of his fellow burghers from the stricter tenets
of the dopper sect. So Paul Kruger passed away from the country which
he had loved and ruined.
Whilst the main army of Botha had been hustled out of their position
at Machadodorp and scattered at Lydenburg and at Barberton, a number
of other isolated events had occurred at different points of the seat
of war, each of which deserves some mention. The chief of these was a
sudden revival of the war in the Orange River Colony, where the band
of Olivier was still wandering in the north-eastern districts.
Hunter, moving northwards after the capitulation of Prinsloo at
Fouriesburg, came into contact on August 15th with this force near
Heilbron, and had forty casualties, mainly of the Highland Light
Infantry, in a brisk engagement. For a time the British seemed to have
completely lost touch with Olivier, who suddenly on August 24th struck
at a small detachment consisting almost entirely of Queenstown Rifle
Volunteers under Colonel Ridley, who were reconnoitring near
Winburg. The Colonial troopers made a gallant defence. Throwing
themselves into the farmhouse of Helpmakaar, and occupying every post
of vantage around it, they held off more than a thousand assailants,
in spite of the three guns which the latter brought to bear upon them.
A hundred and thirty-two rounds were fired at the house, but the
garrison still refused to surrender. Troopers who had been present at
Wepener declared that the smaller action was the warmer of the
two. Finally on the morning of the third day a relief force arrived
upon the scene, and the enemy dispersed. The British losses were
thirty-two killed and wounded. Nothing daunted by his failure, Olivier
turned upon the town of Winburg and attempted to regain it, but was
defeated again and scattered, he and his three sons being taken. The
result was due to the gallantry and craft of a handful of the
Queenstown Volunteers, who laid an ambuscade in a donga, and disarmed
the Boers as they passed, after the pattern of Sanna's Post. By this
action one of the most daring and resourceful of the Dutch leaders
fell into the hands of the British. It is a pity that his record is
stained by his dishonourable conduct in breaking the compact made on
the occasion of the capture of Prinsloo. But for British magnanimity a
drumhead court-martial should have taken the place of the hospitality
of the Ceylon planters.
On September 2nd another commando of Free State Boers under Fourie
emerged from the mountain country on the Basuto border, and fell upon
Ladybrand, which was held by a feeble garrison consisting of one
company of the Worcester regiment and forty-three men of the Wiltshire
Yeomanry. The Boers, who had several guns with them, appear to have
been the same force which had been repulsed at Winburg. Major White,
a gallant marine, whose fighting qualities do not seem to have
deteriorated with his distance from salt water, had arranged his
defences upon a hill, after the Wepener model, and held his own most
stoutly. So great was the disparity of the forces that for days acute
anxiety was felt lest another of those humiliating surrenders should
interrupt the record of victories, and encourage the Boers to further
resistance. The point was distant, and it was some time before relief
could reach them. But the dusky chiefs, who from their native
mountains looked down on the military drama which was played so close
to their frontier, were again, as on the Jammersberg, to see the Boer
attack beaten back by the constancy of the British defence. The thin
line of soldiers, 150 of them covering a mile and a half of ground,
endured a heavy shell and rifle fire with unshaken resolution,
repulsed every attempt of the burghers, and held the flag flying until
relieved by the forces under White and Bruce Hamilton. In this march
to the relief Hamilton's infantry covered eighty miles in four and a
half days. Lean and hard, inured to warfare, and far from every
temptation of wine or women, the British troops at this stage of the
campaign were in such training, and marched so splendidly, that the
infantry was often very little slower than the cavalry. Methuen's fine
performance in pursuit of De Wet, where Douglas's infantry did
sixty-six miles in seventy-five hours, the City Imperial Volunteers
covering 224 miles in fourteen days, with a single forced march of
thirty miles in seventeen hours, the Shropshires forty-three miles in
thirty-two hours, the forty-five miles in twenty-five hours of the
Essex Regiment, Bruce Hamilton's march recorded above, and many other
fine efforts serve to show the spirit and endurance of the troops.
In spite of the defeat at Winburg and the repulse at Ladybrand, there
still remained a fair number of broken and desperate men in the Free
State who held out among the difficult country of the east. A party of
these came across in the middle of September and endeavoured to cut
the railway near Brandfort. They were pursued and broken up by
Macdonald, who, much aided in his operations by the band of scouts
which Lord Lovat had brought with him from Scotland, took several
prisoners and a large number of wagons and of oxen. A party of these
Boers attacked a small post of sixteen Yeomanry under Lieutenant
Slater at Buitfontein, but were held at bay until relief came from
Brandfort.
At two other points the Boer and British forces were in contact during
these operations. One was to the immediate north of Pretoria1 where
Grobler's commando was faced by Paget's brigade. On August 18th the
Boers were forced with some loss out of Hornies Nek, which is ten
miles to the north of the capital. On the 22nd a more important
skirmish took place at Pienaar's River, in the same direction, between
Baden-Powell's men, who had come thither in pursuit of De Wet, and
Grobler's band. The advance guards of the two forces galloped into
each other, and for once Boer and Briton looked down the muzzles of
each other's rifles. The gallant Rhodesian Regiment, which had done
such splendid service during the war, suffered most heavily. Colonel
Spreckley and four others were killed, and six or seven wounded. The
Boers were broken, however, and fled, leaving twenty-five prisoners to
the victors. Baden-Powell and Paget pushed forwards as far as
Nylstroom, but finding themselves in wild and profitless country they
returned towards Pretoria, and established the British northern posts
at a place called Warm Baths. Here Paget commanded, while Baden-Powell
shortly afterwards went down to Cape Town to make arrangements for
taking over the police force of the conquered countries, and to
receive the enthusiastic welcome of his colonial
fellow-countrymen. Plumer, with a small force operating from Warm
Baths, scattered a Boer cornmando on September 1st, capturing a few
prisoners and a considerable quantity of munitions of war. On the 5th
there was another skirmish in the same neighbourhood, during which the
enemy attacked a kopje held by a company of Munster Fusiliers, and was
driven off with loss. Many thousands of cattle were captured by the
British in this part of the field of operations, and were sent into
Pretoria, whence they helped to supply the army in the east.
There was still considerable effervescence in the western districts of
the Transvaal, and a mounted detachment met with fierce opposition at
the end of August on their journey from Zeerust to
Krugersdorp. Methuen, after his unsuccessful chase of De Wet, had gone
as far as Zeerust, and had then taken his force on to Mafeking to
refit. Before leaving Zeerust, however, he had despatched Colonel
Little to Pretoria with a column which consisted of his own third
cavalry brigade, 1st Brabant's, the Kaffrarian Rifles, R battery of
Horse Artillery, and four Colonial guns. They were acting as guard to
a very large convoy of returned empties. The district which they had
to traverse is one of the most fertile in the Transvaal, a land of
clear streams and of orange groves. But the farmers are numerous and
aggressive, and the column, which was 900 strong, could clear all
resistance from its front, but found it impossible to brush off the
snipers upon its flanks and rear. Shortly after their start the
column was deprived of the services of its gallant leader, Colonel
Little, who was shot while riding with his advance scouts. Colonel
Dalgety took over the command. Numerous desultory attacks culminated
in a fierce skirmish at Quaggafontein on August 31st, in which the
column had sixty casualties. The event might have been serious, as De
la Rey's main force appears to have been concentrated upon the British
detachment, the brunt of the action falling upon the Kaffrarian
Rifles. By a rapid movement the column was able to extricate itself
and win its way safely to Krugersdorp, but it narrowly escaped out of
the wolf's jaws, and as it emerged into the open country De la Rey's
guns were seen galloping for the pass which they had just come
through. This force was sent south to Kroonstad to refit.
Lord Methuen's army, after its long marches and arduous work, arrived
at Mafeking on August 28th for the purpose of refitting. Since his
departure from Boshof on May 14th his men had been marching with
hardly a rest, and he had during that time fought fourteen
engagements. He was off upon the war-path once more, with fresh horses
and renewed energy, on September 8th, and on the 9th, with the
co-operation of General Douglas, he scattered a Boer force at Malopo,
capturing thirty prisoners and a great. quantity of stores. On the
14th he ran down a convoy and regained one of the Colenso guns and
much ammunition. On the 20th he again made large captures. If in the
early phases of the war the Boers had given Paul Methuen some evil
hours, he was certainly getting his own back again. At the same time
Clements was despatched from Pretoria with a small mobile force for
the purpose of clearing the Rustenburg and Krugersdorp districts,
which had always been storm centres. These two forces, of Methuen and
of Clements, moved through the country, sweeping the scattered Boer
bands before them, and hunting them down until they dispersed. At
Kekepoort and at Hekspoort Clements fought successful skirmishes,
losing at the latter action Lieutenant Stanley of the Yeomanry, the
Somersetshire cricketer, who showed, as so many have done, how close
is the connection between the good sportsman and the good soldier. On
the 12th Douglas took thirty-nine prisoners near Lichtenburg. On the
18th Rundle captured a gun at Bronkhorstfontein. Hart at
Potchefstroom, Hildyard in the Utrecht district, Macdonald in the
Orange River Colony, everywhere the British Generals were busily
stamping out the remaining embers of what had been so terrible a
conflagration.
Much trouble but no great damage was inflicted upon the British during
this last stage of the war by the incessant attacks upon the lines of
railway by roving bands of Boers. The actual interruption of traffic
was of little consequence, for the assiduous Sappers with their gangs
of Basuto labourers were always at hand to repair the break. But the
loss of stores, and occasionally of lives, was more serious. Hardly a
day passed that the stokers and drivers were not made targets of by
snipers among the kopjes,[Footnote: It is to be earnestly hoped that
those in authority will see that these men obtain the medal and any
other reward which can mark our sense of their faithful service. One
of them in the Orange River Colony, after narrating to me his many
hairbreadth escapes, prophesied bitterly that the memory of his
services would pass with the need for them.] and occasionally a train
was entirely destroyed. Chief among these raiders was the wild
Theron, who led a band which contained men of all nations—the same
gang who had already, as narrated, held up a train in the Orange River
Colony. On August 31st he derailed another at Flip River to the south
of Johannesburg, blowing up the engine and burning thirteen
trucks. Almost at the same time a train was captured near Kroonstad,
which appeared to indicate that the great De Wet was back in his old
hunting-grounds. On the same day the line was cut at Standerton. A
few days later, however, the impunity with which these feats had been
performed was broken, for in a similar venture near Krugersdorp the
dashing Theron and several of his associates lost their lives.
Two other small actions performed at this period of the war demand a
passing notice. One was a smart engagement near Kraai Railway
Station, in which Major Broke of the Sappers with a hundred men
attacked a superior Boer force upon a kopje and drove them off with
loss—a feat which it is safe to say he could not have accomplished
six months earlier. The other was the fine defence made by 125 of the
Canadian Mounted Rifles, who, while guarding the railway, were attacked
by a considerable Boer force with two guns. They proved once more, as
Ladybrand and Elands River had shown, that with provisions,
cartridges, and brains, the smallest force can successfully hold its
own if it confines itself to the defensive.
And now the Boer cause appeared to be visibly tottering to its fall.
The flight of the President had accelerated that process of
disintegration which had already set in. Schalk Burger had assumed the
office of Vice-President, and the notorious Ben Viljoen bad become
first lieutenant of Louis Botha in maintaining the struggle. Lord
Roberts had issued an extremely judicious proclamation, in which he
pointed out the uselessness of further resistance, declared that
guerilla warfare would be ruthlessly suppressed, and informed the
burghers that no fewer than fifteen thousand of their
fellow-countrymen were in his hands as prisoners, and that none of
these could he released until the last rifle had been laid down. From
all sides in the third week of September the British forces were
converging on Komatipoort, the frontier town. Already wild figures,
stained and tattered after nearly a year of warfare, were walking the
streets of Lourenço Marques, gazed at with wonder and some distrust by
the Portuguese inhabitants. The exiled burghers moodily pacing the
streets saw their exiled President seated in his corner of the
Governor's verandah, the well-known curved pipe still dangling from
his mouth, the Bible by his chair. Day by day the number of these
refugees increased. On September 17th special trains were arriving
crammed with the homeless burghers, and with the mercenaries of many
nations—French, German, Irish-American, and Russian—all anxious
to make their way home. By the 19th no fewer than seven hundred had
passed over.
At dawn on September 22nd a half-hearted attempt was made by the
commando of Erasmus to attack Elands River Station, but it was beaten
back by the garrison. While it was going on Paget fell upon the camp
which Erasmus had left behind him, and captured his stores. From all
over the country, from Plumer's Bushmen, from Barton at Krugersdorp,
from the Colonials at Heilbron, from Clements on the west, came the
same reports of dwindling resistance and of the abandoning of cattle,
arms, and ammunition.
On September 24th came the last chapter in this phase of the campaign
in the Eastern Transvaal, when at eight in the morning Pole-Carew and
his Guardsmen occupied Komatipoort. They had made desperate marches,
one of them through thick bush, where they went for nineteen miles
without water, but nothing could shake the cheery gallantry of the
men. To them fell the honour, an honour well deserved by their
splendid work throughout the whole campaign, of entering and occupying
the ultimate eastern point which the Boers could hold. Resistance had
been threatened and prepared for, but the grim silent advance of that
veteran infantry took the heart out of the defence. With hardly a
shot fired the town was occupied. The bridge which would enable the
troops to receive their supplies from Lourenço Marques was still
intact. General Pienaar and the greater part of his force, amounting
to over two thousand men, had crossed the frontier and had been taken
down to Delagoa Bay, where they met the respect and attention which
brave men in misfortune deserve. Small bands had slipped away to the
north and the south, but they were insignificant in numbers and
depressed in spirit. For the time it seemed that the campaign was
over, but the result showed that there was greater vitality in the
resistance of the burghers and less validity in their oaths than any
one had imagined.
One find of the utmost importance was made at Komatipoort, and at
Hector Spruit on the Crocodile River. That excellent artillery which
had fought so gallant a fight against our own more numerous guns, was
found destroyed and abandoned. Pole-Carew at Komatipoort got one Long
Tom (96 lb.) Creusot, and one smaller gun. Ian Hamilton at Hector
Spruit found the remains of many guns, which included two of our horse
artillery twelve-pounders, two large Creusot guns, two Krupps, one
Vickers-Maxim quick firer, two pompoms and four mountain guns.
<< 28: The Halt at Pretoria || 30: The Campaign of De Wet >>
