South Africa
and the
Transvaal War

BY

LOUIS CRESWICKE

AUTHOR OF “ROXANE,” ETC.

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

IN SIX VOLUMES

VOL. III.—FROM THE BATTLE OF COLENSO, 15^TH DEC. 1899, TO LORD ROBERTS’S ADVANCE INTO THE FREE STATE, 12^TH FEB. 1900

EDINBURGH: T. C. & E. C. JACK

MANCHESTER: KENNETH MACLENNAN, 75 PICCADILLY

1900

CONTENTS—Vol. III.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS—Vol. III.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE—Vol. III.

3.—General French reinforced from De Aar. Boers being surrounded; fighting in the hills.

General Gatacre repulsed Boer attack on position commanding Molteno.

Colonel Pilcher, for “military reasons,” evacuated Douglas.

4.—General Gatacre occupied Molteno; Boers retreated to Stormberg with loss.

General French manœuvring to enclose Colesberg; further fighting.

5.—General Gatacre hotly engaged at Molteno by Boers from Stormberg; drove them off, inflicting heavy losses.

6.—Great battle at Ladysmith. Boers repulsed on every side with heavy loss.

General Buller made a demonstration in force to aid General White.

General French inflicted severe defeat on Boers at Colesberg. A Company of the 1st Suffolk Regiment captured.

9.—British troops invaded Free State territory near Jacobsdal. The Queensland and Canadian Volunteers cleared a large belt across the Free State border.

10.—Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener arrived at Cape Town.

Forward movement for the relief of Ladysmith from Chieveley and Frere.

11.—Sir Redvers Buller crossed the Little Tugela, and occupied the south bank of the Tugela at Potgieter’s Drift.

Lord Dundonald and Mounted Brigade crossed the Tugela at Potgieter’s Drift.

General Gatacre made a reconnaissance in force towards Stormberg.

13.—The City Imperial Volunteers left London for South Africa.

15.—Boers attacked General French and were repulsed at Colesberg.

16.—General Lyttleton and Mounted Brigade crossed the Tugela at Potgieter’s Drift.

17.—Sir Charles Warren crossed, with his Division, at Trichardt’s Drift.

Lord Dundonald had an action with the Boers near Acton Homes.

18.—Tugela bridged and crossed by a Brigade and battery.

20.—Sir Charles Warren moved towards Spion Kop.

Reconnaissance by Lord Dundonald.

21.—Heavy fighting by Clery’s force; they attacked the Boers and captured ridge after ridge for three miles.

22—Sir Charles Warren’s entire army engaged.

23.—Spion Kop captured by Sir Charles Warren; General Woodgate wounded.

25-27.—Abandonment of Spion Kop. Sir Charles Warren’s force withdrew to south of Tugela.

27.—Brigadier-General Brabant, commanding a Brigade of Colonial forces, joined General Gatacre.

28.—General Kelly-Kenny occupied Thebus.

30.—British force reoccupied Prieska.

FEBRUARY 1900.

3.—Telegraphic communication restored between Mafeking and Gaberones.

4.—General Macdonald occupied Koodoe’s Drift.

5.—General Buller crossed the Tugela at Manger’s Drift.

6.—General Buller captured Vaal Krantz Hill.

7.—Vaal Krantz Hill abandoned, and British force withdrew south of the Tugela.

9.—General Macdonald retired to Modder River.

Lord Roberts arrived at Modder River.

10.—Colonel Hannay’s force moved to Ramdam.

12.—General French with Cavalry Division, proceeding to the Relief of Kimberley, seized Dekiel’s Drift.

SOUTH AFRICA AND THE
TRANSVAAL WAR

CHAPTER I

THE SITUATION

A week of disaster had terminated woefully. Three British Generals in succession—Sir William Gatacre, Lord Methuen, and Sir Redvers Buller—had advanced against strongly fortified Boer positions and suffered repulse. The hearts of the miserable loyalists, who hung in dire suspense on the result of British action, sank in despair—their dismay and their grief were pitiful. Great Britain echoed their sentiment. Disappointment was universal. General Gatacre had failed through lack of caution and mischance; the other Generals had come to grief owing to the circumstances which forced them willy nilly to hurry to the assistance of beleaguered towns in the face of overwhelming disadvantages, notably the lack of cavalry and the inefficiency of the guns. Lord Methuen had been unable to bring home his early victories owing to the absence of mounted men. Sir Redvers Buller had failed to dislodge the enemy from his strong, naturally fortified positions owing to the weakness of his artillery in comparison to that of the enemy, who had Nordenfeldt and Hotchkiss quick-firing guns in every available position. He had made a glorious attempt—owned to be magnificent; but it was not war, and in his failure he recognised that it was not the game of derring-do, but the game of “slim” warfare as played by his brother Boer which must claim his attention. Now was verified the prophecy of the Polish apocalypse: “The war of the future will be a war of sieges and entrenched positions. In the war of the future the advantage will always rest with the defensive. In the war of the future, frontal attacks, without immense superiority in numbers, will be impossible.”

Every campaign, they say, has its lessons. This one we now find to be full of them, so full indeed that it has necessarily taken our Generals some time to become acquainted even with their grammar. When the war was forced upon us by the Pretoria oligarchy for the long-cherished purpose of ousting Great Britain from South Africa, many of the authorities were of opinion that a rabble of undisciplined farmers would be incapable of offering any formidable resistance to the superior military system of Great Britain. Not a hint of doubt as to the success of our arms and the effectiveness of our war apparatus was entertained. When Colonials in the summer of ’99 volunteered their services, the Government received the offers with a sniff. Later they accepted them with grateful thanks. It was never imagined that colonists could know anything of the art of war, or that they might teach a lesson or two even to that august institution the Staff College. Those who knew ventured to suggest that in South Africa the same cast-iron principles that existed in European warfare would be valueless, and that the lessons of Ingogo and Majuba in ’81 might be repeated in ’99 in all their dire and dismal reality. But these pessimists were scoffed at. They therefore waited, and hoped against hope. Now and then they feebly wondered by what process infantry, arriving two months late, when the enemy had had time to entrench the whole country at various naturally strong strategic points, would be able to overcome the disadvantages attendant on immobility. But they were silenced by a look. British pluck and endurance might be calculated upon to surmount everything and anything—some said! No one seemed to care to tackle the problem of how men on foot would be enabled to compete creditably, in anything like equal numbers, with a mounted enemy possessing more than ordinary mobility.

A mounted enemy has many advantages in his favour. He can select his own position, he can place all his force en masse into the fighting line, he can so pick his positions that one man on the defensive can make himself the equal of three men of the attacking force; and, besides, he can occupy a length of position which must extend his flanks far beyond those of the attackers on foot. These in consequence are either forced to extend to equal length, at almost certain risk of being unable to reinforce any weak point developed during the attack, and thereby cause the attack to be broken at points; or they have to “contain” only a portion of the enemy in position, and perhaps leave his wings—or one wing—free to execute an outflanking movement. It is impossible when a line extends for miles, and the enemy’s strength is not discoverable before the heat of the engagement, for infantry to come from a great distance to the assistance of weak points; and by reason of this immobility it is equally impossible for infantry in the heat of action, and when the front is extended for miles, to suddenly change a plan of attack in time to save a situation.

The task set before our Generals was, therefore, almost superhuman: they were expected to make up for want of mobility with superior strategical qualifications; but, as has been said, no committee of Generals could at this juncture have decided on a strategy applicable to the complicated situation. That the Boer was a born strategist, and had able advisers, was amply proved. The amalgam of Boer methods, with Zulu theories and modern German tactics, was sufficient to try the most ingenious intelligence. For instance, the Boers in early days selected positions on the sides and tops of kopjes, and at the commencement of the campaign, at Talana Hill and at Elandslaagte, they were so perched, in accordance with the primitive principles of their race. They ignored the fact that such positions were the worst they could select against artillery fire with percussion fuses. Even for their own rifle practice such positions were also the worst, as, firing down at an angle, their bullets as a rule ran the chance of ploughing the earth without ricocheting, and served only to hit the one man aimed at. They worked, and still work, on the old Zulu principle of putting their whole strength into the fighting line, acting on the Zulu axiom, “Let it thunder—and pass.” A sound principle this, no doubt, but one which our ponderous military machinery would not allow us to adopt. To these early methods, and to his native “slimness” and cunning, the Boer now added some German erudition. The influence of German officers and German tactics began to work changes curious and inexplicable. The Boers built scientific entrenchments, no longer on the kopjes alone but also below them, thus reducing the effect of hostile artillery, save that of howitzers, and permitting their sharpshooters to sweep the plain with a hurricane from their Mausers. In addition to this they built long castellated trenches, perfect underground avenues, to allow of the invisible massing of troops at any given point. They were also provided with ingenious gun-trenches, quite hidden, along which their Nordenfeldt gun, that pumped five shells in rapid succession, could be removed swiftly from one spot to another, and thereby defeat the efforts of the British gunners to locate it.

Thus it will be seen a new complexion was put upon Boer affairs. Novel and trying conditions were imposed on those who already had to cope with the problem of how to match in mobility a rival who brought to his support six legs, while the British only brought two. Whole armies consisting merely of mounted infantry and artillery had never before come into action, and it began to be understood that a war against bushwhackers, guerillas, and sharpshooters, plus the most expensive guns modernity could provide, was a matter more serious than any with which the nineteenth century had hitherto had to deal. We had to learn that sheer pluck, endurance, and brute force were unavailing, and that strategy of the hard and fast kind—the red-tape strategy of the Staff College—was about as unpractical as a knowledge of the classics to one who goes a-marketing. There is no finality in the art of war, and nations, be they ever so old and wise and important, must go on learning.

One of the newer questions was, how far personal intelligence might be distributed among a body of men? The General as a head, the Staff Officers as nerves that convey volition to the different members, we had accepted, but how far individual acumen was needed to insure success now began to be argued. Certain it was that in this campaign we had opportunities for studying the comparative value of individual discretion versus “fighting to order.” The Boers, every one of them, were working for themselves, absolutely for hearth and home, though perhaps under a general plan which certainly served to harass and annoy and keep the British army in a dilemma; while we laboured on a consolidated system which, if not obsolete, was certainly inappropriate. However, as there was no use in bemoaning our reverses, we began to congratulate ourselves on having discovered the cause of them. It was decided that first there must be more troops sent out to meet the extended nature of our operations, and that these troops must be accompanied by a sufficient number of horses to insure the necessary mobility, without which even the brute force of our numbers would be useless.

Of the successful issue of future proceedings none had a doubt. All knew that the finest strategy in the world must be useless when tools were wanting, and all felt certain that the admirable abilities of our Generals, when once the means of playing their war game came to hand, were bound to rise to the prodigious task still in store.

But for the dire necessity of the three gallant towns—Mafeking, Kimberley, and Ladysmith—a waiting game would have been possible and wise. The Boer stores of food and ammunition would eventually have run out, and the guns gone the way of much-used guns. Trek-oxen, instead of dragging the waggons of their masters, would have had to go to feed the hungry commandoes, and the history of slow exhaustion would have had to be told. But—again there was the great But!—those three valiant towns were holding out their hands, they were crying for help, they were standing in their hourly peril hopeful and brave because they believed—they were certain—that we should never desert them!

At home the grievous news of the reverse was digested by the public with dumb, almost paralysed resignation. At first it was scarcely possible to believe that the great, the long-anticipated move for the relief of Ladysmith had proved a failure, and that the Boers were still masters of the situation, and moreover the richer by eleven of our much-needed guns. By degrees the terrible truth began to be accepted by us. By degrees the Government awakened to the fact that the fighting of the Dutchmen within the region of Natal meant more than the pitting of one Briton against two Boers, that it meant the dashing of a whole Army Corps against Nature’s strongholds, our own by right of purchase and blood, and captured from us merely by reason of neglect and delay!

To awake, however, was to act. In our misfortune it was pleasant to recall the words of Jomini, when speaking of Frederick the Great and his defeats in Silesia. “A series of fortunate events,” he said, “may dull the greatest minds, deprive them of their natural vigour, and level them with common beings. But adversity is a tonic capable of bringing back energy and elasticity to those who have lost it.” The tonic was sipped. Jomini’s theories were proved! Though Great Britain through a series of fortunate events—a long reign of comparative peace—had become lethargic and money-grubbing, she, at the first shock of adversity, regained all her elasticity, vigour, and natural spirit of chivalry. Promptly the entire nation nerved itself to prove that, as of old, it was equal to any struggle, any sacrifice. The whole country seemed with one consent to leap to arms.

The Militia, nine battalions of Infantry, was now permitted to volunteer for service in any part of the Queen’s dominions where such services might be wanted, while it was arranged that specially selected contingents of Yeomanry and Volunteers would start for the Front as soon as there were found ships sufficient to carry them.

Noble as amazing was the hurried response of the Volunteers to the intimation that their services would be accepted for the war. Hastily they pressed forward in crowds to enrol themselves. Their promptitude was goodly to look upon and to read of, for it showed that, in spite of the theories of Tolstoi and the influence of the spirit of modernity, patriotism is inherent and not a mere exotic or cultivated sentiment in the British race. We now found that though many traditions may be worn to rags, those of the British army had grown, like old tapestry, the more precious for the passage of time.

Still the military position was pregnant with anxieties. A horse that is left at the post may perhaps win in the end, but his chances of success are remote. An army that lands in driblets three months after time is scarcely calculated to succeed against a rival army which has spent that interval in equipping itself for the fray. We were forced to remember that at the onset our officers were placed in the most dangerous positions, with inadequate support and no prospect of reinforcement, until their energies, mental and physical, had been sapped by undue and prolonged strain. On the north Tuli had but a handful of troops to resist an enormous and powerful enemy; Mafeking was surrounded, isolated, and able only to resist to the death the persistent attacks of shot and shell; Vryburg was allowed to be treacherously given away to the enemy; and Kimberley was left in the lurch as it were, to fight or fall according to the pluck of those who were ready to exhaust their vitality in loyalty to the Queen. On the Natal side things were still worse. The country, every inch of which is familiar to the Boer, had almost invited invasion. The whole strength of Boers and Free Staters was permitted to launch itself against an army which was entirely without reserves, and which could not be reinforced under a month. That brave and unfortunate soldier, Sir George Colley, had a theory that small, well-organised troops were worth as much again as large and desultory ones; but he took no account of peculiar facilities which are almost inherent to armies fighting on their own soil, as it were, and habits of warfare which have, so to speak, become ancestral with the Boer. From old time the Dutchman has employed his mountain fastnesses, his boulders, and his tambookie grass as screens and shelters, till in war the “tricks of the trade” have become a second nature to him, and serve in place of more complicated European methods. The small Natal army was, on Sir George Colley’s principle, allowed to pit itself against a fighting mass, dense and desultory it may be, but a fighting mass of enormous dimensions, which, whatever their failings, had weight, equipment, courage, obstinacy, and intimacy with their surroundings entirely in their favour. That the enemy was first in the field they had to thank the original promoters of war, the Peace party—the humanitarian persons who so long hampered reason by loud outcries against the shedding of blood that their own countrymen in the Transvaal were condemned to all the tortures of suspense, to be aggravated later by all the agonies of famine and disease. Their own countrywomen and their babes were saved from shot and shell to be sent defenceless and homeless to wander the world till the charity of strangers or the relief of death should overtake them, while the loyal natives were left in a state of trepidation and suspense, without protection, yet forbidden to raise a hand in their own defence.

Reason now had its way. But remedies cannot be applied in a moment, and the public, which is always wise after the event, vented its anguish and its feelings of suspense by indulging in criticism, or in asking questions which, of course, could not be answered till the principal persons concerned were able to take part in the catechism. For instance, some of the riddles buzzed about in club and railway carriage were: Why did Sir Redvers Buller make a frontal attack across an open plain against an enemy admirably entrenched, and posted in a position not only made strong by art but by nature? Why was it that the Government, in spite of the warnings given by Sir Alfred Milner while he was in England in May ’99, neglected to take such precautions as would have prevented the enemy from being entirely in advance of us in the matter of time? Why, also, were the Boers permitted to arm themselves with the most expensive modern weapons, to be used against us, under the very eye of our representative in Pretoria, without our being warned of the inferior quality of our own guns, and of the impossibility of making ourselves a match for the enemy so long as the cheese-paring policy of the authorities at home was countenanced? Why, with an Intelligence Department in working order, was it never discovered that united Free State and Transvaal Dutchmen would vastly outnumber all the troops we were prepared—or, rather, unprepared—to put in the field, the troops we strove to make sufficient till the strain of reverse forced from us the acceptance of help from the Colonies, the Militia, and the Volunteers?

The great question of reinforcements filled all minds. Nothing indeed could be looked for till they should reach the Cape. Fifteen huge transports were due to arrive between the end of December and the beginning of January, bringing on the scene some 15,000 troops of all arms. The Fifth Division, under Sir Charles Warren, consisting of eight battalions of Infantry and its complement of Artillery and Engineers was expected, also the Household Cavalry Composite Regiment, the 14th Hussars, a siege train, a draft of Marines, and various odd branches of the service. Later on more troops would follow, but pending the arrival of the warrior cargoes it was impossible for our Generals to do more than act on the defensive, and consider themselves fortunate if they could prevent the further advance of the enemy to the south.

But the most momentous move of the closing year was the departure of Lord Roberts for the seat of war. Here was this gallant officer, whose life had been devoted to the service of his country, and who was at an age when many other men would have elected to stay by hearth and home, suddenly called on to act in the most difficult and trying crisis. And, in the very hour that he was asked to rouse himself to meet the call of Queen and country, he was dealt a crushing blow. His gallant son, the only one, and one well worthy to have worn the laurels of his noble father, besides adding to them by his own splendid acts, was carried off, a victim to the severe wound he received at Colenso. Here was a supreme trial, so supreme indeed that none dared touch it. All, even Lord Roberts’s sincerest friends, shrunk from dwelling on the agony of mind that must have been endured by this great hero when at the same moment the voice of duty and the cry of domestic love jarred in conflict. On the one side he was called upon to brace himself to meet a political situation fraught with all manner of indescribable complications, while on the other, human nature with a thousand clinging tendrils drew him towards the numbness of mute woe or the consolation of private tears. But, like the great warrior he is, he got into harness and started off, leaving his misery in the hands of the great British people, who held it as their own. The “send off” they gave him at Waterloo Station was one of the most remarkable outbursts of public feeling on record, and this was not only due to admiration for the conqueror of Kandahar, but to profound sympathy for the man and the father who was thus laying aside his private self and placing all his magnificent ability at the service of the Empire.

DOINGS AT CHIEVELEY