i.—the transition.
from the capture of bloemfontein onwards, the nomenclature of mounted troops in south africa, except as a clue to their race, origin, and professional or unprofessional character, ceases to possess practical significance. there emerges a single military type—the mounted rifleman—the man, that is, who can ride and shoot. whether in reconnaissance, tactics, or strategy, in defence or offence, in any combination from a patrol to a commando, squadron, brigade, or division, or as a single scout; be he boer or briton, the better he can ride, and the better he can shoot, the better soldier he is.
in the british army this unity of type soon becomes definitely recognized in practice. textbook regulations as to the duties appropriate to different categories of mounted troops vanish like smoke under the irresistible logic of experience. there soon ceases to be any practical field distinction between regular cavalry and regular mounted infantry. both alike must do the same duties, alike relying on the union of firearm and the horse, and judged invariably by the same inexorable and unvarying tests. so with the numerous other categories of mounted corps, home and colonial, which from this time forward begin to exceed in number the horsemen drawn from professional sources. wide distinctions, indeed, are constantly visible, and are constantly recognized between 169the capacities of different corps according to their country of origin, social class, length of experience, and physical and moral characteristics, and, above all, according to the stamp of officer they possess. but these are distinctions of degree, not of kind. the ideal type never varies—that of the mounted rifleman.
but the practical recognition of an ideal is one thing, and its whole-hearted assimilation another. for the bulk of the mounted troops, given the will, the way was now plain. they had nothing positively to unlearn if they had an infinite amount to learn. the regular mounted infantry, indeed, and to a certain extent other classes, had still to rid their minds of an idea that they were a tactical appanage of cavalry, but the possession of a firearm superior to that of cavalry, and the absence of any other weapon to confuse their tactical ideas, made the path easy. the regular cavalry, on the other hand, had still something very substantial to unlearn, and that something was the immemorial tradition of their branch of the service, the theory and practice of the arme blanche. it would be idle to underrate the magnitude of the requisite revolution, which primarily was one of thought, rather than of action. still, five months of fighting had taught a lesson which could scarcely be mistaken, a lesson which at this period of the war would have amply justified, if it did not render imperative, the systematic and universal re-arming of the cavalry with the magazine rifle, and the return of all steel weapons to store. these changes could not have been imposed upon the cavalry from without, they must have proceeded from within by the initiative of cavalry leaders. french alone, perhaps, had the authority and prestige to secure their general adoption at this time; but in french the revolution of thought had not taken place, indeed, never wholly took place, even at a later period, when the necessary changes had been carried through. his very strength and vitality 170tend, as always, to obscure the issue. he continues to do much valuable and responsible work, and is always the keenest of the keen for ambitious enterprises. but he cannot impress the true cavalry stamp upon the british operations, in the broadest sense of the word “cavalry.” big strategical conceptions are useless without high combative capacity in the troops employed, and that treasured tradition of the arm had been weakened because it was not founded on the right weapon.
without any strong new lead from above, conservatism naturally exerted its full sway over the minds of the elder brigadiers and regimental officers. it was among some of the younger men, where habit was weaker and enthusiasm stronger, that the new régime was warmly and sincerely welcomed. these men were now finding their most fruitful sphere in the leadership of irregular corps, where there was no tradition to combat, and no weapon but the rifle.
the cavalry, in spite of their unsuitable armament, continued to conform to the new type—no other course was possible—but as a body they conformed reluctantly and with a lack of imaginative zeal, thereby gravely imperilling their chance of guiding and inspiring progressive mounted action. in common with all other corps they improved greatly as time went on, and always, as befitted their standing in the professional army, set a good example of the prime soldierly virtues. their staff work, too, was a model to the rest of the army. but when we consider the unique initial advantage they possessed in building on a broad and solid foundation of drill, discipline, and esprit de corps, we are bound to admit that the results are disappointing.
the need for vigorous mounted action, always urgent, was becoming daily more urgent. with the relief of ladysmith and the capture of bloemfontein, the march of conquest definitely begins. with it the elements of 171strength and weakness in the boer character and organization begin to assume clearer shape. two contrary streams of tendency declare themselves: on the one hand, a progressive decline in corporate strength; on the other, new and marked symptoms of individual vitality, erratic, spasmodic, ephemeral, but of incalculable significance in determining the nature and length of the struggle, the character of the conquest, and the future political relations of the two belligerent races.
of these two streams of tendency, the former, now and for six months to come, was the stronger and more rapid. it was hastened naturally by the overwhelming numerical superiority of the invaders at every threatened point. what to defend? where concentrate? was the distracted cry. under this strain the old national fabric crumbled visibly, and although, by a process which was scarcely perceptible to the superficial view, the corrupt and diseased elements of the old body politic perished with it, the immediate military results were fatal. it became increasingly difficult for the boers to maintain organized forces of any size in the field. only one so considerable even as cronje’s at magersfontein ever appeared again. the opposition to our central march up the railway to pretoria, to buller’s advance through natal, and to the other parallel movements, was made with miserably small forces. in the centre, before pretoria was reached, the free staters had parted from their comrades of the sister state, and taken to local warfare. in june the transvaalers rallied well at the battle of diamond hill outside pretoria; then there was a reaction; then a revival, ending, after a creditable display of resistance along the line of the delagoa railway, in the sudden and apparently compete dissolution of the organized burgher forces on the portuguese border in mid-september.
such, in a few words, is the main course of events. but in the vast and thinly-peopled rural areas which constitute 172the great bulk of the republican territories periodical disturbances delay the main british advance. amid the general wreck one boer institution survives in its integrity, the territorial military system, based on the obligation of every individual citizen to serve in arms when called upon as a member of his ward and commando. centralized forces melt, only to reappear as local bands inspired by a local patriotism, and summoned into sudden activity at the call of some trusted leader. through the chequered drama flits the restless figure of christian de wet, the first boer leader to teach his countrymen the real meaning and potency of aggressive mobility. behind him is the sombre, passionate steyn, and together these two men are the incarnation of that stubborn national purpose which often seemed to sleep, but which never died. all their efforts, nevertheless, are apparently unavailing. wherever bands, by accretion or coalition, exceed a certain size, they succumb to the law of decay. the great machine of invasion and occupation rolls slowly but irresistibly forward.
plainly, each fresh exhibition of weakness, and, a fortiori, each fresh spasm of activity, on the part of the defence, should have been an incentive to redoubled efforts on the part of the attack. i do not refer so much to our national efforts in the shape of reinforcements, horses, and the material of war; these flowed uninterruptedly and in enormous volume from the home country and the empire at large. i refer to field efforts, and here again not so much to the higher strategy, which was uniformly worthy of the great soldier who conceived and directed it, as to that tactical fire and energy which alone could give us really substantial victories over the men opposed to us, instead of such limited successes as resulted in the occupation of towns, positions, and railways, but left the heart and will of the foe daunted, indeed, and depressed, but unsubdued. these crushing blows we 173never succeeded in attaining. paardeberg, the nearest approach to such a victory, was robbed by the nine days’ investment of much of its moral value. prinsloo’s surrender in the brandwater basin in july of the same year produced as many prisoners as paardeberg, but was marred by the escape of de wet and steyn, with the most resolute elements of the boer forces present. reviewing the combats of the period, we see one pattern of action recurring again and again with monotonous regularity, although with innumerable variations of local circumstance and personal performance. a very inferior boer force defends an immensely extensive position; there are proportionately wide turning movements by our mounted troops, which fall short in vigour and completeness; frontal attacks by our infantry; an action more or less prolonged; a boer retreat covered by a small, but extraordinarily efficient, rear-guard; an ineffectual pursuit. the position is won, but the enemy has suffered physically very little. a time comes later when positions count for nothing, and men count for everything. then earlier shortcomings bear bitter fruit.
if i were to enter deeply into the psychological causes of this instinctive relaxation of effort—for it was not a conscious process traceable in orders and despatches—i should travel far beyond the limits of my subject. in absolute strictness the psychology of the war is not relevant to that subject. if the student were to observe an ideal sense of mental proportion, distinguishing between the ardour inspired by a particular weapon and the ardour inspired by racial and national ambitions, there would be no need to stray beyond the purely technical aspects of the subject with which i am dealing. i have recognized from the beginning, however, that there are three objections to taking this course: first, that the line in question is often exceedingly difficult to draw; second, that in tracing and illustrating the development of 174mounted tactics some reference to the deeper moral causes at work tends greatly to elucidation; third, and most decisive reason, that one of the most subtle and insidious methods of discrediting the rifle and investing the arme blanche with a kind of posthumous distinction, has been to smother plain technical issues under hazy moralization. “thought waves” are in fashion. now, let us insist by all means on the old napoleonic axiom that the moral forces in war count in the proportion of three to one to the physical; but when we see one weapon palpably outmatched by another let us recognize the fact as a fact. when we call the war “peculiar,” from the peculiar moral factors underlying it, let us not erase its technical lessons from our memory on the same ground. i remarked an example of this perverse tendency in the official comments on poplar grove, but mr. goldman is its most outspoken and sincere exponent. he has honestly convinced himself that the cavalry never had any real chance of grappling with the enemy, and, consequently, no chance of proving the pre-eminent value of the arme blanche.[42] the picture he suggests is one of the boers continually on the run, and running so fast that the exhausted troopers can never catch them. their oxen, it would seem, run equally fast, or else take the most unsportsmanlike course of beginning to retreat prematurely. these are rear-guard actions, it is true, but these do not count. in some mysterious way they “make pursuit all but impracticable.” the boers, in short, who “had no cavalry in the proper and technical sense of the word,” by their aggravating pusillanimity did not supply the “primary conditions” for the “discharge (that is, on our side) of cavalry duties.” that we had an enormous preponderance of force, and that it is the business of cavalry to take advantage both of numerical and moral weakness in the enemy, mr. goldman does not recognize. he altogether ignores, too, that 175counter-current of offensive boer activity which, throughout the war, supplies us with the most interesting and instructive examples of mounted tactics. but for the moment i need dwell no longer on this version of a war which lasted for two and a half years, cost us a heavy list of casualties and prisoners, and not a few very sad disasters. it is an unconscious insult, not merely to the army as a whole, but to the cavalry, who did much excellent work as mounted riflemen, and to the great body of irregular mounted troops, whose existence mr. goldman appears to forget, and the best of whom surpassed the cavalry in aggressive action. that a serious writer can commit to print, without qualification or reservation, the statement that the boers “invariably beat a hasty retreat when confronted by cavalry that could fight on horseback with carbine, lance, and sabre,” shows the fantastic lengths to which the arme blanche bias can carry those who submit to it.
faced, however, with the fact that such travesties are extant, a writer on the arme blanche is compelled to take at least a passing account of moral factors. i need not spend any more words in proving that there was, in fact, on our side a general mildness of effort. nearly all critics have agreed upon the fact. what were the causes?
1. about the deepest of all there is no dispute. long years of peace and civil prosperity had softened the national fibre. we were not only unprepared for war, but forgetful of the grim meaning of war. in a general reluctance to incur heavy losses the commanders only reflected the national and social sentiment behind them.
2. unfamiliar with wars in general, we were blind, above all, to the meaning of this particular war, whose object was not only to defeat, but to conquer, annex, and absorb a free white race. since we became a nation, we had never before attempted to achieve such an object, 176and we did not realize its inherent difficulties. signs of weakness in the enemy encouraged the delusion that the war was an ordinary war, whose events were to be estimated by ordinary standards. signs of strength were undervalued and misinterpreted. lord roberts, the soul of generosity and humanity, after the fall of bloemfontein, initiates an exceedingly indulgent civil policy which defeats its own end. he is compelled as time goes on to pass from the extreme of indulgence to the extreme of severity. but in spite of this disagreeable necessity he is always inclined to believe—and the whole army shares the feeling—that a collapse is imminent, and that no absolutely supreme and sustained efforts are required to hasten the end and seal the definitive triumph.
and what sort of triumph? the philosophic historian will discern that momentous problem already formulating itself, not merely in the minds of statesmen, but, dimly and inarticulately, in the minds of the army, which embodied in an extraordinarily representative manner the civic instincts of the british race. did we really in our hearts desire such crushing victories as would shatter the spirit of our opponents and lay the foundation for a racial ascendancy, as opposed to a racial fusion, in south africa? the question becomes of absorbing practical interest in later phases of the war, when the antagonistic schools of thought find expression in two equally able and determined men. for the present it is only a matter of conjecture how far a latent instinct of fraternity with our foes and future fellow-citizens, now that majuba was at last avenged by paardeberg and pieter’s hill, reacted on the vigour with which hostilities were pressed.
3. a more simple and prosaic motive for caution was the very well-founded respect entertained for the military capacity of the boers. the sense of some absolutely overwhelming necessity for decisive blows would, doubtless, have gone far to neutralize caution, but this conviction 177was not present. the reverses of the early months had left an impression both on the popular mind and on the leaders in the field which subsequent successes could not wholly obliterate. fresh reverses, on a smaller scale, were soon to mar the onward progress of success. from this time forward every action, however feebly or strongly contested, shows the boers still highly formidable. until the actual débacle on the portuguese frontier, there are no panics. retreats are orderly, transport and guns are preserved almost intact. however dispirited the majority, there invariably reappears that manful minority of stalwarts upon whose conduct, at one or another point, the difference between repulse and defeat hangs. numbers, indeed, almost cease to count; quality is everything.
this resisting power, with its offensive counterpart, was derived, on its military side, solely from skill and audacity in practice of the mounted rifleman’s art. and here we return again to the solid ground of our inquiry. giving their due weight and proportion to the broader moral factors which affected both sets of belligerents and, in our own army, all branches of the service alike, we can see our technical issue sharply and vividly defined in every phase and detail of hostilities.
against a mounted enemy, even if his strategical mobility is conditioned by heavy transport, in the last resort it is always to vigorous mounted action that we must look both for the power to give effect to the attacks of infantry and artillery and for retaliation against those stinging little raids and counter-strokes which so often at critical times turned the scale in the higher boer counsels. foot-riflemen will never develop their full aggressive power against mounted riflemen unless they are conscious that their efforts will lead to a decisive issue through the correspondingly indispensable agency of mounted riflemen.
178
ii.—the halt at bloemfontein.
there was a pause of seven weeks in the british advance after the capture of bloemfontein. reinforcements of all arms, remounts, transport, supplies, were collected in great volume. the supply system and hospital system were reformed, communications strengthened, garrisons organized. during a large part of this period the mounted troops in the central theatre were at little more than half their effective strength from lack of horses.
one small forward movement only was made: that to karee siding, twenty-seven miles north of bloemfontein, a movement deemed necessary for the purpose of safe-guarding the passage over the modder at glen. three thousand five hundred or 4,000 boers with 8 guns held a line of low hills astride of the railway, with a level plain behind them. french and tucker, who seem to have held a joint command, attacked with 9,000 men and 32 guns. of the mounted troops present, 650 were regular cavalry, 880 regular mounted infantry and colonials, numbers which should have been sufficient to turn and hold the enemy effectually enough to give the infantry their full chance. in principle the poplar grove tactics were employed, with variations of detail. the mounted troops, riding well in advance, were to turn both hostile flanks, and, when the infantry attacks had been driven home, cut in upon the retreat. the engagement was a dull example of the now too common type. both flanks were duly turned without opposition, and in good time (10 a.m.), by the mounted troops, but then a sort of paralysis set in. the cavalry brigade, which was now somewhat behind the boer right flank and within eight miles of the railway, was inactive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., though still unopposed, while the mounted infantry on the boer left were held up by a small outlying detachment. meanwhile the infantry attacks, spirited enough, 179though not very well directed, ran their course, the boers making a fairly steady stand, and yielding only between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. to threats of the bayonet. but there was nothing to intercept or hamper their retreat. both mounted corps had eventually begun to move on, but were checked by slight flank guards. our casualties were 189, almost entirely in the infantry; those of the enemy 34.
this was emphatically a case where the professional mounted arm, which was separately brigaded, should have set an example of vigour to the younger and improvised corps. there seems, from the official and other narratives, to have been no valid reason against attempting an interception, though we must make allowance for the division in the higher command which may have had ill-effects. such inaction was very unlike either french or tucker. the poor condition of the horses is no explanation.
from karee siding (march 29) we turn to its anti-type, sannah’s post (march 30). with the exception of de wet’s raid on the main army’s transport at waterval, this was the first genuine feat of independent aggression on the part of the boers which the war had as yet produced. the same leader was again the guiding spirit, and he began a career of aggression just when most of his countrymen were thinking more of surrender than resistance, and in several districts were actually handing in their arms.
de wet, with 1,500 men and 7 guns, made a swift and secret expedition against the waterworks, twenty-one miles due east of bloemfontein, and then in british hands. arriving within striking distance on the evening of march 29, he learnt that there was bigger game afoot, in the shape of an independent british force under broadwood, who was retiring westward before a greatly superior force of free staters under olivier and others. broadwood was safely ahead, however, and his pursuers do not come into the story. de wet resolved to ambush him and 180to that end posted 400 men in the bed of the korn spruit, which broadwood would have to cross, and the rest, under his brother piet, three miles away behind the british camp, on the high ground bordering the modder river.
broadwood’s was an exclusively mounted force, numbering 1,700, with 12 horse artillery guns. there were two regiments of regular cavalry, together only 330 strong, and alderson’s brigade of mounted riflemen, 850 strong, and composed of regular mounted infantry and colonial riflemen. in fact, it was a typical mixed force of all the various classes of mounted troops then in the field. the gist of the story is well known. breaking camp early on the 30th, without prior reconnaissance of the ground before them, the head of the transport and one of the two batteries marched into the ambush, and were captured. “q” battery managed to escape, with the loss of a gun and many men. piet de wet meanwhile began his attack upon the rear, though as yet only with stationary fire upon the troops holding the modder drifts. broadwood acted with coolness and resolution. while the greater part of alderson’s brigade kept piet de wet in check, the regular cavalry and two companies of mounted infantry were sent across the korn spruit to take the 400 boers who lined it in reverse. dangerous as broadwood’s own position was, the position of those boers was for some little time almost equally dangerous. they were separated by three miles and by the modder river from their main body, which, moreover, was being briskly engaged by the mounted infantry. cramped in their narrow gully, they were being attacked in front by the five guns of “q” battery, and threatened in flank and rear from rising ground which overlooked the spruit by the superior force of cavalry and mounted infantry. they had no guns, and were much weakened in numbers by the detachment of the necessary guards for the captured british guns and waggons.
181as the official historian remarks, everything depended on the execution of the cavalry turning movement. but again the paralysis sets in, as at dronfield, poplar grove, and karee siding—a paralysis not due in the remotest degree to moral weakness, and certainly not in this case to weak horseflesh. there is nothing that we need talk about with bated breath or tactful reticence: neither our men nor their officers were to blame—only the habits and disabilities imposed by an obsolete weapon. a party of riflemen thrown out by de wet from the spruit brought the attack to a standstill.
disappointed on this side, broadwood had no other course than to order a retreat of alderson’s mounted infantry and the guns from the other side of the spruit (10.30 a.m.). as in so many similar actions in south africa, everything hinged on the extrication of a badly crippled battery. the rescue of “q” by the heroism of its own gunners and its mounted escort forms a brilliant little episode by itself. when the guns were out of immediate danger, the general retreat began. piet de wet’s men instantly poured across the modder drifts and pursued hotly. the behaviour of alderson’s brigade—colonials and englishmen alike—in this their first defensive engagement was very steady, though they suffered greatly from inexperience in man?uvre and fire. the retirement, conducted by successive movements of units, was orderly and cool, new zealanders and englishmen in combination having the honour of constituting the ultimate rear-guard. eventually broadwood’s force was concentrated safely on the farther side of the spruit, having lost seven guns, most of its transport, and a third of its strength in casualties and prisoners.
broadwood should have received help from other forces in the neighbourhood, including some mounted infantry, who were very feebly handled; but there is no need to enter into that lengthy and controversial topic.
182we have to note certain points of interest:
1. the boer pursuit.—except for the stormberg case three months back, this was the first example of a boer mounted pursuit. all narratives agree in saying that it frequently took the form of charging on horseback up to close quarters, accompanied in some instances by a wholly new practice—fire from the saddle. sometimes the burghers dismounted, and, with the rein over the arm, fired. here we see the germ of important later developments. a year afterwards de la rey or kemp in similar circumstances would have used the same methods with more system and audacity.
2. conversely, and again with the exception of stormberg, this was the first example of a really critical rear-guard action for british mounted troops. we note remarkable proofs of improvement in general efficiency, together with several faults: indifferent marksmanship; lack of adroitness in the handling of led horses; lack of judgment in deciding upon the right moment to retire (several detachments were cut off through holding on too long); and a general insufficiency of that individual skirmishing capacity which enabled the boers in similar predicaments to make one skilled man go as far as five unskilled men.
3. the contrast between the arme blanche and the rifle is unusually marked. nomenclature is immaterial. all the work on the field was cavalry work, not only in the broad sense of the term, but by the regular cavalry’s standards. in essence, de wet’s intercepting ambush in the korn spruit was the same kind of work as that done by the cavalry themselves on the day before paardeberg, and the same as that which they should have tried to do at karee siding. the projected, but abortive, counter-stroke upon the ambuscaders was cavalry work. piet de wet’s rear attack and pursuit, and alderson’s resistance to them, were both cavalry work. the terrain was open.
183we may add that de wet’s whole enterprise and the rapidity, secrecy, and nerve with which he carried it out were a good example of the true cavalry spirit. whether we call de wet a “partisan” or not makes no difference. if his good qualities constitute partisanship, every cavalry officer, from the highest to the lowest, should be a partisan.
4. the absence of reconnaissance on the morning of the battle needs no comment. there were some exceptional reasons, which i need not go into, for a relaxation of normal precautions, but no valid excuse.
de wet, in his characteristically impulsive style, wasted no time after his victory, but dashed off south, and on april 4 snapped up a post of 600 men at reddersburg. then, instead of raiding the communications of the main army, which would undoubtedly have been his best course, he succumbed to the boer craving for sieges, and wasted more than a fortnight in investing wepener with a force which increased to more than 7,000 men. wepener, defended by 1,900 men, who were mainly mounted troops belonging to brabant’s colonial force, made an excellent and successful defence until relieved by hart and brabant himself.
de wet’s activity, however, had changed the whole military situation. the south-eastern free staters were up in arms to the estimated number of 10,000, and roberts was compelled before proceeding farther to clear this flank. his design, however, was not merely to clear it, but to make the relief of wepener the starting-point for an enveloping movement of great magnitude, and with overwhelming force. three infantry divisions joined directly or indirectly in the operations and large numbers of mounted men of all classes. first came some ill-knit and overcautious preliminary operations, which i need not describe; then french, with an infantry division and two cavalry brigades immediately under his hand, 184assumed general control over the british forces from april 22 onwards.
the critical day was april 24, when he endeavoured to surround and crush a force of 6,000 boers posted near dewetsdorp. the scheme on that day, as french planned it, was in general form a repetition of the poplar grove and karee siding schemes, and was made to hinge on the intercepting action of the two cavalry brigades upon the boer line of retreat. inevitably, and from the same unvarying cause, the intercepting movement came to nothing, the cavalry being easily checked by small boer parties. again and again, in reading of such incidents, we feel how unfair it was to brave men to have given them an armament and training which prevented them from showing their best qualities.
in the course of the earlier operations detachments of the newly-raised yeomanry, brigaded under rundle, were for the first time in action. they did tolerably well, considering their rawness and inexperience, and i think it is generally agreed that rundle, in his original attack upon dewetsdorp on april 20, with a greatly superior force, might have relied somewhat more on their aid, in association with his other mounted troops.
de wet now ordered a general retreat north of all the south-eastern free staters. by the end of april that portion of the country was wholly in british hands, and on may 3 roberts was able to begin the grand advance for which he had been so long preparing.
iii.—the advance to pretoria.
when that advance began there were in round numbers 200,000 british troops in south africa, of whom 50,000 were on the lines of communications. with a moderate allowance for absenteeism, there were 30,000 boers in the field, including the 2,000 besiegers of mafeking.
185our particular concern is with the british mounted troops, which had been remounted, reorganized, and largely increased in number. an additional regular cavalry brigade joined the central army under roberts; fresh battalions of regular mounted infantry, suffering from a serious scarcity of officers, were hastily formed, and fresh contingents of colonial troops, both from overseas and within south africa, continued to come into line. half the imperial yeomanry—between 4,000 and 5,000 men, that is—were available at the beginning of may, and the whole force of 10,000 was before very long in the field.
for administrative purposes, cavalry and mounted riflemen, hitherto associated together, were now separated. for the central army a division of four brigades of regular cavalry, about 5,000 sabres strong (without counting horse artillery) was formed;[43] and at the same time the mounted riflemen were organized anew in one big division, 11,000 strong, divided into two brigades of four corps each, each corps being composed jointly of regular mounted infantry and colonial mounted riflemen. neither of these organizations proved to be permanent. the latter was from the first little more than nominal. in order to supply the mounted needs of the army at large, as time went on units had to be broken up and distributed where they were most required. the yeomanry, similarly, were never employed as a divisional unit, but only in detachments.
brabant’s colonial defence force was now at its full strength of 3,000, and buller, in natal, though he had had to part with the imperial light horse, who were sent round with hunter’s division to kimberley, possessed, owing to the union of the tugela and ladysmith armies, between 5,000 and 6,000 mounted men, divided into three brigades, two of them homogeneous cavalry units of 186three regiments apiece, the third composed of south african mounted riflemen.
in the far west of the theatre of war the kimberley mounted troops were now available for active work, and in the north-west plumer, with some 750 mounted colonials, was still conducting his clever and plucky operations for the assistance of mafeking and the security of the rhodesian border. in the far north the rhodesian field force, some 4,000 strong, mainly consisting of australasian mounted riflemen and partly of yeomanry, was on its way westward from beira, under carrington. strathcona’s horse, a new canadian corps, 500 strong, had been detached on an abortive scheme for raiding the delagoa bay railway via louren?o marques.
to sum up, if we compute the yeomanry at their full strength, but exclude from the calculation the garrison of mafeking and various small detachments doing duty on the communications or in process of formation into regiments, there were at this period in the field nearly 40,000 mounted men, of whom about 8,300 were cavalry, still armed with carbine and lance or sword, and the rest, in the generic sense, mounted riflemen. numerically, therefore, our mounted strength, viewed apart from the great masses of infantry and artillery, was greater by several thousand than the boer strength actually in the field, even if we deduct half the yeomanry as not yet fully available. but i need scarcely again warn the reader that such comparisons, for many obvious reasons, must be used with caution. in one quarter, however—the centre—our preponderance in mounted strength alone over the boers opposed to us was very remarkable.
the commander-in-chief’s strategical scheme was of great simplicity and enormous magnitude. on a front of 300 miles, 109,000 men (i am using round numbers), with 350 guns, were to execute converging marches northward, 187with pretoria as the central objective. on the extreme right, buller, with 45,000 men, was to march through natal; on the extreme left, hunter, starting from kimberley with 10,000 men, was to penetrate the western transvaal, and, incidentally, to relieve mafeking. methuen, starting with another 10,000 from the same point, was to march through the western free state. lord roberts, in the centre, with 25,000 men, was to move directly up the railway from bloemfontein; while immediately on his right flank ian hamilton, with 14,500 men, supported by colvile with 4,000 men, moved through the eastern free state.
such was the plan of the grand advance. the principal subsidiary field-force was that of rundle and brabant, who were to follow slowly through the eastern free state, which was the most formidable region of all, sweeping up arrears, and making good the ground won. warren, with 2,000 men, was to quell the rebellion in bechuanaland; and carrington was designed to co-operate from the far north, moving through rhodesia upon the northern transvaal.
the distribution of mounted troops was as follows: exclusive of artillery corps, troops, etc., there were with roberts and the central army four and a half corps, in all 3,600 strong, of mounted riflemen, and three brigades of cavalry under french, also 3,600 strong. these three brigades, however, did not come into line until may 8, five days after the beginning of the advance. having been employed almost continuously since the capture of bloemfontein, and having received only small instalments of fresh horses, they had to spend the first days of may in a thorough refit. their horse artillery had been wisely reduced to one battery for each brigade. the remaining brigade of cavalry, under broadwood, and the four remaining corps of mounted riflemen—1,400 and 4,300 strong respectively—were with 188ian hamilton. buller’s mounted troops i have mentioned. hunter’s were the imperial light horse and the kimberley corps. the yeomanry were distributed between methuen, warren, carrington, and rundle, with the latter of whom brabant’s colonial division was acting.
there is no need, even if my space permitted, to follow with any closeness the fortunes of the grand advance. i have now reached a point in the war where it is necessary only to summarize events, to select from a vast number of operations conducted over a vast expanse of territory, typically interesting examples of mounted action, and along with the process of selection to trace the growth of principles.
the most interesting, naturally, of all the operations of that period were those of the two central columns under roberts and ian hamilton, which from may 3 onwards[44] worked in close combination, and may be regarded as one force, nearly 40,000 strong, with 119 guns, exclusive of colvile’s supporting column. it will have been noticed that they were far stronger in mounted troops than any other portion of the army. indeed, at the lowest computation of their effective mounted strengths, and at the highest estimate of the boer effectives from time to time opposed to them, it appears that roberts and hamilton together must at every stage in the advance have had a decisive superiority in mounted troops alone over the whole force of their opponents. until may 8, when french’s three brigades of cavalry came up, not more than 5,500 boers in all opposed both columns, which at that time had 9,200 mounted men between them. at the zand river fight on may 9 and 10 the boers, reinforced by 3,000 transvaalers under botha, who thenceforth took over the supreme control from de 189la rey, reached their highest numerical fighting strength of about 8,000. at the same moment, reinforced by french’s cavalry, our own mounted strength also reached its highest point of nearly 13,000.[45] after this, and until the fall of pretoria, the enemy never appear to have mustered more than 5,000 men in opposition to the combined columns; for the free state forces withdrew altogether before crossing the vaal, and betook themselves to local warfare. at diamond hill four fresh transvaal commandos from natal counterbalanced other defections, and enabled botha to put 6,000 men into the field. here, for the first time, our mounted strength in action (a little below 5,000) was below the total boer strength. this was partly the result of wastage in horses. all along our mounted troops suffered heavily from this cause, and the same cause affected the boers also, though not in anything like an equal degree. botha, in his despatches at this time, used habitually to refer to his “infantry,” meaning the burghers who had lost their mounts.[46]
i need not dwell on the significance of these figures. if we dismiss from our minds the existence of an irresistible backing of infantry and artillery on our side, it is quite possible, and from an instructional standpoint very interesting, to contemplate in vacuo the conflict of the two opposed mounted forces, supposing them, if we will, to have been the mounted screens of two great european armies. even on that restricted plane the inquiry teems with absorbing practical interest for future wars, and abounds in illustration of the functions of the mounted arm. but i need not remind the reader that in 190actual fact here was no matter of screens. the boer troops were small armies in themselves, depending on and limited strategically by the speed of heavy transport, for which they were the sole protection. our own mounted troops—or, at least, the bulk of them—cannot be regarded otherwise than as an independent mobile weapon of high general utility, whose mission it was in concert with the other arms to secure the destruction, not merely the repulse, of the enemy.
this is how lord roberts had always regarded his mounted troops. ever since the middle of february he had called upon them, and particularly upon the cavalry, for decisive efforts, but only once with decisive results. disillusioned gradually, he continued, nevertheless, to pursue the same policy wherever, during the long march to pretoria, opportunity offered. he inculcated the right spirit. so did ian hamilton, so did french; and both these generals were endowed with a large measure of independence. the trouble was that in actual contact on the field the superiority in fighting power of the individual boer to the individual britisher invariably caused the best-laid plans to fall short of the desired achievement. a continual instigation of more dashing, if more costly, tactics might have schooled the troops rapidly to higher efficiency, but, as i indicated in dealing with the moral issue, the supreme stimulus to such a policy was wanting. victory in the medium degree was only too easy, thanks to weight of numbers. roberts himself appears gradually to have expected less and asked less of his mounted force.
let us first of all summarize what happened. starting on may 3, roberts took pretoria on june 5. he had marched 300 miles in thirty-four days, sixteen of which (for the central column) were marching days. hamilton, who midway made a détour to the east, marched a good deal farther. let us not forget that, whatever its shortcomings, 191this march, regarded as a military feat, was a very remarkable and memorable performance, especially for the infantry. at brandfort and the vet river (may 3 to 5) the boers made but a very slight stand; at zand river (may 9 to 10) they offered battle, and were out-man?uvred into retreat. at kroonstad, which was not defended, roberts halted for ten days (may 12 to 22). the vaal was crossed without opposition on the 24th, and from may 27 to 29 botha made his most resolute stand on the hills covering johannesburg—namely, the klipriviersberg and doornkop. here on the 29th there was something in the nature of a pitched battle, doornkop being finally stormed by infantry. hitherto this arm had come into action only at zand river. on the 30th johannesburg fell, and pretoria, which was not seriously defended, shared the same fate on june 5.
to this record we must add the battle of diamond hill, fought sixteen miles from pretoria on june 11 and 12, with the object of finally driving botha away from the neighbourhood of the capital. it was a genuine pitched battle, in which roberts achieved his object, though he inflicted no loss of any consequence upon the enemy, and suffered little himself.
the boers had lost their capital and railway, but their losses in men and material were negligible.
now let us look for mounted lessons.
the first and clearest is that it is useless for a superior force to confine itself to combating the wide extensions of an inferior force by still wider extensions. this is what was constantly happening. the boer fronts, in proportion to the numbers employed to defend them, were, as usual, enormously extensive. at brandfort, for example, de la rey occupied a front of some fifteen miles with 2,500 men; at zand river botha stood on a front of twenty-five miles—half the distance from london to brighton—with 8,000 men; at the fighting outside johannesburg 192he held eighteen miles of hilly country with about 4,000 men. outside pretoria an equally extensive front was held, though very weakly. finally, at diamond hill, botha held thirty miles with only 6,000 men during two days of continuous fighting. here, however, the position was unusually strong. let us note in passing:
(1) the proof afforded by these greatly extended positions of the revolutionary effect of the modern rifle upon mounted tactics, for it was only by the close union of the rifle and the horse that such dispositions were possible.
(2) that, given this close union, no ordinary skill is required to choose the cardinal points of defence, and maintain the field discipline and field intelligence requisite for the elastic and orderly handling of detachments so widely dispersed. no narrative that i have seen does full justice to the boers for their efficiency in these particulars. in the whole course of these operations, and in the whole course of the subsequent advance from pretoria to komati poort, only one small detachment was cut off and overwhelmed.
(3) that the boer system admitted of no reserves. practically every man was in the front fighting-line.
now, how were these tactics to be met? roberts nearly always endeavoured to meet them by still wider extensions, designed to overlap the enemy’s front. he planned to throw substantial bodies of mounted troops right round one or both of the hostile flanks, with the view (as at poplar grove) of intercepting the enemy’s retreat. these movements never led to interception, though they were generally successful as turning movements which led to the enemy’s retreat—a very minor object. on the other hand, they were exhausting to horses and men alike, reducing offensive power when, after long riding, it was at last called for, to a point below the normal, and the normal was not nearly high enough.
193zand river (may 9 and 10) illustrates this class of action. there, 4,000 mounted men under french and hutton on the left, and 3,000 under broadwood and de lisle on the right, were deputed to get round both flanks of a front of twenty-five miles, held by 8,000 boers. french, having passed six miles outside the last boer post on the 9th, got well round to the rear on the 10th, with his cavalry leading and his mounted riflemen in support, but was then held up for several hours by small detachments, and suffered considerable loss. he covered thirty miles on the 10th, and could not, owing to the condition of his horses, respond on the same night to a suggestion by roberts for raiding kroonstad. broadwood’s turning movement was abortive, partly through an accidental withdrawal of his horse battery, but mainly through the circumstance that the boer left (wide as hamilton’s extension was) still overlapped our right, and that the overlapping portion, not content to remain on the defensive, endeavoured during the morning to envelop our extreme right. botha effected an orderly retreat, his centre maintaining a good show of resistance against the infantry and artillery attacks. with our main body there was a brigade of cavalry and considerable numbers of mounted riflemen.
diamond hill, where botha defended thirty miles of hills, was a still more extreme instance of the same method. french, with 1,400 cavalry and mounted riflemen, was designed to ride right round the enemy’s right, and cut the railway in his rear—a ride of at least thirty-five miles, without any allowance for interruptions or détours. broadwood, with 3,000 men, was to turn the enemy’s left and support our right attack. the centre was to be withheld until one or both of these movements should succeed. botha had anticipated these tactics and had strengthened his flanks accordingly. both mounted columns were held up, and stood for a time in considerable 194danger of envelopment. on the second day the centre was forced by infantry, aided, and very effectively aided, by mounted riflemen.
it must be remarked that our total strength at diamond hill was unusually small—14,000 men in all, of whom 4,800 were mounted, and 64 guns. the boers had 6,000 men and 20 guns.
now, there is but one way of looking at situations of this sort. if we are seeking instruction for further wars, we must recognize that the only sound method of combating such prodigiously wide extensions of a numerically weak enemy is to force his line instead of turning it. to devote the major effort to turning it is to play into his hands, to permit him by sheer bluff to impose exhausting tactics which neutralize your own numerical superiority.[47] the difficulty was to apply forcing tactics against so formidable a foe as the boers. our crying need all along was tackling power with the horse and rifle combined—high, mobile tackling power, based on surprise and speed, and taking the form, where need be, of mounted charges into or through the enemy, on the lines afterwards taught us by the boers, and already exhibited by them at sannah’s post. again and again, in reviewing the south african combats, we look back to the klip drift charge of february 15, 1900, with profound regret that its true lessons were not laid to heart and its false lessons discarded. there was the germ of success. add operative tackling power to the nerve required to ride through fire, eliminate the arme blanche and every last vestige of tactical theory connected with it; eliminate as far as possible artillery preparation and support; be content with a 195reasonable superiority of strength, and there you have for future wars the true tactics of mounted offence.
it is impossible to blame roberts for over-reliance on wide turning tactics. in the last resort, whatever the scheme employed, whether we rode wide or rode through, success depended on sheer fighting capacity in the ultimate fire-fight. nothing could replace that. roberts could only endeavour to make the best of the material to hand. his frequent attempts to encircle far-flung fronts were an instinctive recognition of inadequate aggressive power in his mounted troops. the prejudice, so general in south africa, against “frontal attacks” by infantry was often a reflection of the same instinct, that is, of an instinct to avoid heavy losses which could not, unaided, lead to a decisive result. in point of fact, all attacks eventually become frontal, in the local sense. and, in the case of mounted troops, it was of no avail to send round a large body of men to take the enemy in flank or rear, unless they were able to burst through frontally the detachments sent against them.
still less tenable is the suggestion that the right course for roberts was to have projected still vaster and more circuitous mounted operations, designed to cut the enemy’s communications far in rear of the zone of immediate hostilities. french is said to have favoured this course more than once, but did he realize what it involved? if the requisite speed were sustained, the horses, already tried to the limit of endurance, would have suffered from that very over-exhaustion of which there had been so much complaint in the past. but, in fact, such raids, on the scale of those made by stuart, wilson, and the civil war leaders, entailed complete independence of the main army, an object never attained in south africa without transport arrangements which reduced speed to too low a level. the question, of course, was not peculiarly a “cavalry” question—for raids, american, 196south african, or manchurian, turned exclusively on fire-action. i shall be compelled, nevertheless, to argue the matter again, in chapter xii., on a “cavalry” basis, taking zand river once more as an illustration.
2. it must not be supposed that frontal or semi-frontal attacks were not tried by the mounted troops. local circumstances often brought them about. generally, however, they tended, even locally, to take a too circuitous form, the tendency, inevitably, being more noticeable among the cavalry, with their inferior firearm, than among the mounted riflemen.
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).
197two 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 198difficult 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.
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 199dundonald, 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 r?le 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 200the 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 201against 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 man?uvres 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 202days (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 203was 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 204seem 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 205the 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 206records 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 207johannesburg 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.
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 208chose 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 209our 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.
