THE LAST BOER WAR

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  AUTHOR'S NOTE.

It has been suggested that at this juncture some students of South African history might be glad to read an account of the Boer Rebellion of 1881, its causes and results. Accordingly, in the following pages are reprinted portions of a book which I wrote so long ago as 1882. It may be objected that such matter must be stale, but I venture to urge, on the contrary, that to this very fact it owes whatever value it may possess. This history was written at the time by one who took an active part in the sad and stirring events which it records, immediately after the issue of those events had driven him home to England. Of the original handful of individuals who were concerned in the annexation of the Transvaal by Sir Theophilus Shepstone in 1877, of whom I was one, not many now survive. When they have gone, any further accurate report made from an intimate personal knowledge of the incidents attendant on that act will be an impossibility; indeed it is already impossible, since after the lapse of twenty years men can scarcely trust to their memories for the details of intricate political occurrences, even should they be prompted to attempt their record. It is for this reason, when the melancholy results which its pages foretell have overtaken us, that I venture to lay them again before the public, so that any who are interested in the matter may read and find in the tale of 1881 the true causes of the war of 1899.

I have written "which its pages foretell." Here are one or two passages taken from them almost at hazard that may be thought to justify the words:

"It seems to me, however, to be a question worthy of the consideration of those who at present direct the destinies of the Empire, whether it would not be wise, as they have gone so far, to go a little farther, and favour a scheme for the total abandonment of South Africa, retaining only Table Bay. If they do not, it is now quite within the bounds of possibility that they may one day have to face a fresh Transvaal rebellion, only on a ten times larger scale, and might find it difficult to retain even Table Bay."

And again: "The curtain, so far as this country is concerned, is down for the moment on the South African stage; when it rises again, there is but too much reason to fear that it will reveal a state of confusion which, unless it is more wisely and consistently dealt with in the future than it has been in the past, may develop into chaos."

One more quotation. In speaking of the various problems of South Africa, I find that I said that "unless they are treated with more honest intelligence, and on a more settled plan than it has hitherto been thought necessary to apply to them, the British taxpayer will find that he has by no means heard the last of that country and its wars."

Perhaps in a year from the present date the British taxpayer will be in a position to admit the value of this prophecy.

Nearly two decades have gone by since these words were written. Put very briefly, what has happened in that time? In 1884, at the request of the Transvaal Government, the Ministry, of which the late Lord Derby was a member, consented to modify the Convention of 1881, and to substitute in its place what is known as the London Convention. This new agreement amended the terms of the former document in certain particulars. Notably all mention of the suzerainty of the Queen was omitted, from which circumstance the Boers and their impassioned advocates have argued that it was abrogated. There is nothing to show that this contention is correct. Mere silence does not destroy so important a stipulation, and it appears to be doubtful whether even a Lord Derby would have been prepared to nullify the imperial rights of his sovereign and his country in this negative and novel fashion. It is more probable to suppose that had such action been decided on, effect would have been given to it in direct and unmistakable language. But even if it could be proved that this view of the case is wrong, the general issue would scarcely be affected.

That issue, as I understand it, is as follows: The Convention of 1881 guaranteed to all inhabitants of the Transvaal equal rights—"Complete self-government subject to the suzerainty of her Majesty, her heirs and successors, will be accorded to the inhabitants of the Transvaal territory"—Mr. Kruger explaining verbally at a meeting of the conference, that the only difference would be that in the case of young persons who became resident in the Transvaal, there might be some slight delay in granting full burgher privileges, limited, it would appear, to one year's residence.[1] After that time, then, according to the terms of this solemn agreement, which in these particulars were not modified or even touched, by the supplementary and amending paper of 1884, any one who wished to claim the advantages of Transvaal citizenship might do so.

Some years later an event occurred fated profoundly to influence the destinies of South Africa, namely, the discovery of the Witwatersrand gold deposits, perhaps the richest and the most permanent in the whole world. Instantly adventurers, most of them of Anglo-Saxon origin, flocked in thousands to the place where countless wealth lay buried in the earth, and on the plains over which I have seen the wild game wandering, sprang up the city of Johannesburg with its motley and cosmopolitan population, its speculators, company promoters, traders, miners, and labouring men.

To the Transvaal, at any rate in the beginning, the arrival of these wealth-engendering hordes was what the fall of copious rain is to the sun-parched veld. By this time the country was once more almost bankrupt, but now, as though by the waving of a magician's wand, money began to flow into its coffers. One of the characteristics of the Boer is his hatred of taxation; one of his notions of terrestrial bliss is to live in a land where the necessary expenses of administration are paid by somebody else, an advantage, I understand, that among all the civilised nations of the earth is enjoyed alone by the inhabitants of the Principality of Monaco. It is not usual, either in the instance of communities or individuals, that such ideals should be absolutely attained. Yet to the fortunate possessors of the South African Republic this happened. For quite a long period they lived at ease in their dorps and on their farms, while the dwellers at Johannesburg, delving like gnomes in the reefs of the Rand, provided them with magnificent and never-failing supplies of cash. Then questions began to arise, as they will do in this imperfect sphere. The Uitlanders, as the strangers were called, remembering the terms of the Conventions, drawn under a very different condition of affairs but still binding, hinted at a wish for burgher rights.

The Boers, who if they liked their money objected to the money-makers, instantly took alarm. If the vote were given to the Uitlanders it was obvious that very soon they would outnumber the original electors. Then in a natural, but to them terrifying, sequence would come a redistribution of the burdens of taxation, the abolition of monopolies, the punishment of corruption, the just treatment of the native races, the absolute purity of the courts, and all the other things and institutions, in their eyes abominable, which mark the advent of Anglo-Saxon rule. Behind these also loomed another danger, that of the ultimate reappearance of the English flag. So legislation was resorted to, and bit by bit the Uitlanders were stripped of the rights inherent to their position as "inhabitants of the Transvaal territory," till at last none were left to them at all. Indeed Press laws were passed and other enactments controlling the privilege of free speech and public meetings. Of course had the British Government put down its foot firmly and at once at the first symptom of a desire on the part of the Boers to whittle away such advantages as the Conventions secured to our fellow-subjects, the present sad situation need never have arisen. But British Governments are seldom fond of doing things at the right time, more especially if the issue is not sufficiently distinct to be appreciated by the masses of the electorate. Therefore matters were allowed to drift, and they drifted into that outrageous fiasco, the Jameson Raid of 1895.

Into the history of that event I do not propose to enter; it is sufficiently well known. Suffice it to say in this brief summary, that it was the result of a compact under which Dr. Jameson was to come to Johannesburg with a large armed force of Rhodesian police, with the view of assisting the Uitlanders to obtain by arms what was denied to their petitions.

The agreement is undoubted and admitted, but all the rest is chaos. Failure in a hundred shapes dogged the steps of these ineffective conspirators. Dr. Jameson, with 500 men instead of 1200, took the bit between his teeth and started at the wrong time. The Uitlanders did not sally forth to meet him, the wires were not cut, the railway line was not destroyed, the Boers were warned, and assembled in great numbers. Dr. Jameson, who apparently lost his way on the veld, was entrapped into a bad position, where, after a space of somewhat feeble combat, he and his whole force surrendered, their lives being guaranteed to them. The despatch-box of the raiders, with the ciphers and sundry incriminating documents, was allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy, and, on their own ammunition-waggons, the personnel of the Raid performed the journey to that city of Pretoria, which when reinforced by the Uitlanders they were to have entered in triumph. Thence they were in due course despatched to London for trial. The members of the Reform Committee were also seized and tried at Pretoria, several of them being condemned to death, a sentence which was not executed; the whole story, coming to its end to an accompaniment of the clash not of swords, but of gold; the fines inflicted upon the conspirators by the Transvaal Government amounting to a total of many tens of thousands of pounds.

Such, except for mutual recriminations which still continue, was the end of Johannesburg's armed attempt to throw off the yoke of the Boer, and of the efforts of the ruling powers of Rhodesia to assist them in the task. Of course the upshot was that the poor Uitlanders fell into a still deeper pit of oppression and despair. Lord Rosmead, then Sir Hercules Robinson, never a proconsul remarkable for an iron will, it is true visited the Transvaal in a great flurry, and assured, or caused Sir Sidney Shippard and the British agent, a gentleman of the somewhat alien-sounding name of Sir Jacobus de Wet, in substance to assure the Uitlanders that if only they would disarm probably their wrongs must shortly be righted by a beneficent Boer president, assisted to the task by a Raad full of forgiveness and charity. Moreover, Sir Jacobus de Wet told them explicitly that the lives of Jameson and his men depended upon their laying down such weapons as they possessed, although of course those lives were already guaranteed by the terms of the surrender.

But this raid had wider issues of an imperial nature. Thus it provoked the famous telegram from the Emperor William II., which at one time threatened to bring about a war between Great Britain and Germany. Also, so far as these South African troubles were concerned, it put our country hopelessly in the wrong in the eyes of the civilised world, whom it proved difficult to persuade, although in fact this was the case, that such strange and tortuous developments of political and martial activity were purely local in their origin. Again it armed the Boer with a sword of wondrous power. If Providence had sent all the German legions to his aid it could scarcely have served him better. Now indeed he was able to point to his land violated by the foot of the invader, and to talk of raids as though such a wicked word had never defiled the innocence of his ears; as though in truth he had never heard of the plains of Stellaland, and of a certain expedition sent by the British Government under the command of Sir Charles Warren to preserve those territories to the peaceful enjoyment of their owners; nor of that stretch of country which once belonged to the Zulus, but is now called the New Republic; nor of the trek into Rhodesia that was "damped"; nor of the extension of authority over Swaziland in defiance of the provisions of the Convention, and of other kindred matters.

Also it enabled him to claim "moral and intellectual damages" to a considerable amount, although, so far as the public is aware, these have never been satisfied, and indeed caused Pharaoh to harden his heart, and while demanding from the new Israelites of Johannesburg an even heavier tale of bricks in the shape of direct and indirect taxation, to deprive them one by one of their last straws of freedom.

Thus things fell back into their former courses, the old abuses flourished like bay trees, the lucky holders of dynamite and other monopolies grew fabulously rich, and—so powerful is the love of gold—auri sacra fames—so much more do men value it than freedom and pure government—the population of Johannesburg still increased.

More than two years have gone by since Sir Alfred Milner was sent as High Commissioner to South Africa, during all which time, backed by her Majesty's present Government, he has been doing his best to secure redress for the Uitlanders, and to arrange various differences that have arisen between the Empire and the Transvaal Republic. At length these efforts resulted in the meeting between himself and President Kruger, known as the Bloemfontein Conference, which took place about four months ago. At that Conference Sir Alfred Milner advanced the request, modest enough seeing that they are entitled to nothing less than equal rights with the other "inhabitants of the Transvaal," that those Uitlanders who wished to adopt the country as their home should be entitled to the franchise after five years' residence. This was refused by President Kruger as endangering the independence of the State, and the Conference broke up. It was from this time forward that war came to be looked upon as probable. In reply to various despatches and representations of the Imperial Government, the President and Volksraad made certain offers of a franchise which, if they were ever seriously meant, were hampered with provisos, such as rendered them impossible for this country to accept. Thus the five years' offer of August 19 was coupled with the conditions that in the future there should be no interference in the internal affairs of the Republic, that her Majesty's Government would not further insist on the assertion of the suzerainty, and that the principle of arbitration in the event of future differences arising should be admitted.

Had the Government agreed to these terms it would have meant, of course, that the last shadow of the Queen's authority would have vanished from the Transvaal, and as they had bound themselves not to interfere in future, that they might be forced to look on while the franchise which was granted one year was repealed or rendered nugatory the next. Also, it must be remembered that this question of the franchise does not cover all the grounds of difference between the two parties; indeed, it seems that a great deal too much importance has been given to the matter. Even if a certain number of Uitlanders elected to become citizens of a Boer state, it is difficult to see, however advantageous that circumstance might prove to themselves, in what way it would directly assist the Imperial power on such a question, let us say, as the treatment of our Indian subjects settled in the Transvaal. To begin with, the new-born burghers might be indifferent to the needs and wishes of the country they had renounced. They might even consider that their oath of allegiance bound them to oppose those wishes. At the least, even if they had the power to help us, which could not be the case for many years, surely it would be neither wise nor dignified for the power to which they once belonged to trust solely to their good offices.

In the newspapers and elsewhere Johannesburg and its Uitlanders are spoken of continually as though they made up the sum of the situation. It is the common cry of Liberal Forwards and of those gentlemen who might perhaps be called Radical Backwards, that this war is to be waged for the Uitlander and the millionaire. Of course this is not in the least true. The Uitlander, with his woes, is only the blister that has brought the sore of Transvaal misrule and Dutch ambitions in South Africa to so proud a head, that at last the South African Republic has come to describe itself as "a Sovereign independent State." That he and his "Magnates," as Rand millionaires are called, will profit enormously from a successful war waged by the Imperial Power is admitted; but because the effect of such a struggle will be ultimately to put a number of annual millions into certain pockets, it does not follow that the war is fought for that purpose. Indeed the veriest "jingo" could scarcely show himself self-sacrificing and altruistic. This is no local but an Imperial question to be decided in the interests of the Empire.

To return to the course of the negotiations. Offers, withdrawals, stipulations, palliative clauses, proposals for further conferences followed each other in bewildering variety, till at length, worn out, Mr. Chamberlain, on September 22, intimated to the Government of the South African Republic, through Sir Alfred Milner, that it was "useless to further pursue a discussion on the lines hitherto followed, and her Majesty's Government are now compelled to consider the situation afresh, and to formulate their own proposals for a final settlement of the issues which have been created in South Africa by the policy constantly followed for many years by the Government of the South African Republic. They will communicate to you the result of their deliberations in a later despatch."

It is rumoured that this later despatch has been delivered at Pretoria, but has as yet received no reply. Three days later, however, namely, on September 25, that industrious body, the Liberal Forwards, was honoured with a telegram from the State Secretary of the Transvaal, which runs as follows:—

When, however, it is remembered that the Convention did allow equal rights to all the "inhabitants of the Transvaal," it will be admitted that this cable is about the strangest of the remarkable series of State documents which of late have emanated from Pretoria. Very aptly it crystallises the spirit of Boer diplomacy—a bold disregard of inconvenient facts.

Meanwhile in South Africa various events of importance have happened. The Orange Free State has openly thrown in its lot with the Transvaal. The Uitlanders have fled by thousands from Johannesburg. The Boers have massed their commandos at various points on the Natal and other British borders, presumably for offensive purposes, since at present they can expect no invasion of their territory. The first of these occurrences reveals the hidden purpose of the Dutch party in South Africa, as at night a sudden flash of lightning reveals the face of the veld. We have never threatened the Orange Free State; it has no grievance, no cause of quarrel, yet suddenly it appears in arms against us. Why? Because its citizens believe that the time has come to translate into action the old dream of the Boers, which so long as five-and-twenty years ago was familiar to the late President Burgers when he spoke of the coming Dutch Republic, with its eight millions of inhabitants ruling supreme in the vast territories between the Zambezi and the Cape. Now the great conspiracy that it has proved so hard to persuade the British public, or a blind section of it, to credit stands unveiled, and it has for object nothing less than the expulsion of the English power from Southern Africa—a vain thing fondly imagined, but still a thing with which we must reckon, and it is to be feared by the last stern expedient of arms, since here soft words and diplomacy are of no avail.

Difficult as it is to make the fact understood among a proportion of the home electorate and publicists, it cannot be stated too often or too clearly that this war, which is to come, is a war that was forced upon us by the Boers in their blind ignorance and conceit. The mass of them believe, because they defeated our troops in various small affairs in 1881, that they are a match for the British Empire. Their leaders are better instructed. They trust not so much, perhaps, to the rifles of their compatriots as to the prowess of certain party captains in England, and to the enthusiasm of their advocates among the English Press and public. They remember that the activity of these forces eighteen years ago was followed by a miserable surrender on the part of the English Government, and not understanding how greatly opinion has changed in this country, they hope that history may repeat itself, and that England, wearying of an unpopular struggle, will soon cede to them all they ask. They are mistaken, but such is their faith. They hope also, perchance with better reason, that other complications may force us to stay our hand. If no more telegrams can be extracted from the German Emperor, still there is a German regiment fighting on their side who will take with them the sympathies of the Fatherland, and they know that the hearts of the great Powers of Europe will go out towards any people who try to strike a blow at the root of the ever-growing tree of the might of the British Empire. Buoyed up by bubbles such as these they have determined to tempt the stern arbitrament of battle.[2]

Can it still be avoided? It would seem that except by our surrender, which is out of the question, for that means the loss not only of South Africa, but of our prestige throughout the world, this is not in any way possible. Already acts of war have taken place, such as the seizure of the gold from the mines, and the commandeering of goods belonging to British subjects, and perhaps days before these lines can appear in print the guns will have begun their reasoning.[3]

After the rebellion of 1881 a Boer jury, to whom the case was committed by the tender mercies of Mr. Gladstone's Government, with the murdered man's bullet-riddled skull lying before them upon the table of the Court, acquitted the brutal slaughterers of Captain Elliot, not because they had not done the deed with every circumstance of horrible treachery and premeditation, but because to find them guilty was against their brethren's wish. In much the same way, with all the facts staring them in the face, there are men in England, some of them of high position and character, who urge the righteousness of the Boer cause, and with tongue and pen paint our national iniquity in hues black as ink and red as blood. They write of the "Objects of the War," which they do not hesitate to describe as self-seeking and infamous, so far of course as the English people are concerned, for according to the same authorities, the Boer objects are uniformly pure and noble. Would it not be better if they looked back a little and tried to discover the causes of the war? I think that if they could have witnessed a certain scene upon the market-square at Newcastle, at which it was my misfortune to be present, on that night of the year 1881 when the news of the base betrayal of the loyalists by England became known, they would win a better understanding of the question. In the spectacle of that maddened crowd of three or four thousand ruined and deserted men, English, Boer, and Kaffir, raving, weeping, and blaspheming in the despair of their shame and bitterness, they might have found enlightenment. Even now a study of the following forgotten letter written by Mr. White, the chairman of the Committee of Loyal Inhabitants, to Mr. Gladstone, might give to some a food for thought:—

"If, sir, you had seen, as I have seen, promising young citizens of Pretoria dying of wounds received for their country, and if you had had the painful duty, as I have had, of bringing to their friends at home the last mementoes of the departed; if you had seen the privations and discomforts which delicate women and children bore without murmuring for upwards of three months; if you had seen strong men crying like children at the cruel and undeserved desertion of England; if you had seen the long strings of half-desperate loyalists, shaking the dust off their feet as they left the country, as I saw on my way to Newcastle; and if you yourself had invested your all on the strength of the word of England, and now saw yourself in a fair way of being beggared by the acts of the country in whom you trusted, you would, sir, I think, be 'pronounced,' and England would ring with eloquent entreaties and threats which would compel a hearing…. We claim, sir, at least as much justice as the Boers. We are faithful subjects of England, and have suffered and are suffering for our fidelity. Surely we, the friends of our country, who stood by her in the time of trial, have as much right to consideration as rebels who fought against her. We rely on her word. We rely on the frequently repeated pledges and promises of her ministers in which we have trusted. We rely on her sense of moral right not to do us the grievous wrong which this miserable peace contemplates. We rely on her fidelity to obligations, and on her ancient reputation for honour and honesty. We rely on the material consequences which will follow on a breach of faith to us. England cannot afford to desert us after having solemnly pledged herself to us."

"England cannot afford to desert us!" but England, or her rulers, could and did afford itself this luxury. In vain did such men as the late Lord Beaconsfield, the late Lord Cairns, and Lord Salisbury protest and point out dangers. In vain did agonised loyalists flourish their own words and promises in the face of her Majesty's Government; the spirit of party, or the promptings of a newly acquired conscience proved too strong. Her Majesty's loyal subjects were sneered at, insulted, and abandoned, and the Boer, who had butchered them, was bid to go on and prosper.

Now, nearly twenty years afterwards, England is called upon to pay the bill of what is in effect, whatever may have been its motives, one of the most infamous acts that stains the pages of her history. From the moment that the Convention of 1881 was signed it became as certain as anything human can be, that one of two things would happen—either that the Imperial Power must in practice be driven out of South Africa, or that a time would come when it must be forced to assert its dominion even at the price of war.

Now that miserable hour is with us, and we are called upon to suppress by arms a small, but sullen and obstinate people, whom we have taught to believe themselves our equals, if not our superiors. Unless they will yield at the last moment, which seems impossible seeing that the war is of their own choosing, the new settlement of South Africa must be celebrated by a mighty sacrifice of their blood and our blood. Not to dwell upon other griefs and dangers, when, I ask, will the smoke and the smell of it depart from the eyes and nostrils of the dwellers in that unhappy land? As they troop back merrily to their mines and workshops the money-spinners of Johannesburg may forget a past of which, in many instances at least, their chief impression will be that it was unpleasant and unprofitable. But after the Rand is worked out, when the stamps cease to fall heavily by day and night, when the great heaps of tailings no longer increase from month to month, when the broker's voice is quiet in the Exchange, and the promoter inhabits some new city, still the Boer women in the farmhouses will tell their children how the "damned English soldiers" shot their grandfathers and took the land. In South Africa new Irelands will arise, and from the dragon's teeth that we are forced to sow the harvest of hate will spring, and spring again. Thus must we eat of the bitter bread which we have baked, and thus the ill fowl that we reared have come home to roost, bringing their broods with them.

Again and again we have blundered in our treatment of the Dutch. For instance, with kinder and fairer management they would never have trekked from the Cape sixty years ago. Also, had the promises which were made to them at the annexation in 1877 been kept, and had not Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who grew up amongst them and to whom they were attached, been removed in favour of a military martinet, there would have been no rebellion, let the Cape wire-pullers working under a cloak of loyalty to the Crown strive as they might. But the rebellion came and the defeats, and after these that surrender whereof this country is called upon to pluck the fruit to-day, which, by the Boers, is attributed to those defeats with the fear of their prowess and to nothing else.

And now, in due season, the war comes; an inevitable war which cannot be escaped, and must be fought out to the end. There is only room for one paramount power in Southern Africa!

How all these things happened is told briefly, but I trust clearly, in the following pages. My excuse for reprinting them must be the desire which, it is said, exists among some readers to become better acquainted with the facts that engendered the present fateful crisis.

H. RIDER HAGGARD.

9th October 1899.

CONTENTS.

THE TRANSVAAL.

  CHAPTER I.

ITS INHABITANTS, LAWS, AND CUSTOMS.

The Transvaal is a country without a history. Its very existence was hardly known of until about fifty years ago. Of its past we know nothing. The generations who peopled its great plains have passed utterly out of the memory and even the tradition of man, leaving no monument to mark that they have existed, not even a tomb.

During the reign of Chaka, 1813-1828, whose history has been sketched in a previous chapter, one of his most famous generals, Mosilikatze, surnamed the Lion, seceded from him with a large number of his soldiers, and striking up in a north-westerly direction, settled in or about what is now the Morico district of the Transvaal. The country through which Mosilikatze passed was at that time thickly populated with natives of the Basuto or Macatee race, whom the Zulus look upon with great contempt. Mosilikatze expressed the feelings of his tribe in a practical manner, by massacring every living soul of them that came within his reach. That the numbers slaughtered were very great, the numerous ruins of Basuto kraals all over the country testify.

It was Chaka's intention to follow up Mosilikatze and destroy him, but he was himself assassinated before he could do so. Dingaan, his successor, however, carried out his brother's design, and despatched a large force to punish him. This army, after marching over 300 miles, burst upon Mosilikatze, drove him back with slaughter, and returned home triumphant. The invasion is important, because the Zulus claim the greater part of the Transvaal territory by virtue of it.

About the time that Mosilikatze was conquered, 1835-1840, the discontented Boers were leaving the Cape Colony exasperated at the emancipation of the slaves by the Imperial authorities. First they made their way to Natal, but being followed thither by the English flag they travelled further inland over the Vaal River and founded the town of Mooi River Dorp or Potchefstroom. Here they were joined by other malcontents from the Orange Sovereignty, which, though afterwards abandoned, was at that time a British possession. Acting upon