september, 1900, to may, 1902.
note.—for actions and operations mentioned in this chapter (part of which covers ground not yet dealt with by our official historians), the reader is referred to the times history, vol. v.
so ended what is usually known as the “regular war.” in south africa the expression had no precise significance. regular war had been melting imperceptibly into guerilla war for some time past. the boers were not dependent, as thickly peopled industrial communities are dependent, on their railways, capitals, and principal towns. the vast majority lived on the land, and the land was theirs, very little ravaged as yet, and, as to vast areas, still even unvisited. the guerilla war may truly be said to have begun in the free state in march, 1900, after the capture of bloemfontein, and in the transvaal not later, at any rate, than july, when botha, from necessity rather than from choice, sent most of his burghers to their own districts. nor was the crash at komati poort followed by anything more than a partial lull in hostilities.
over both the newly annexed colonies we exercised no authority outside the range of our guns. in the greater part of the transvaal, it is true, there were two months during which the burghers, like wasps, stung rarely unless they were disturbed; but in the sister state, de wet’s return at the end of august, after the first “hunt,” had roused his countrymen to fresh offensive efforts. after some weeks of propaganda and reorganization 211he took the field on september 20, just when roberts was approaching komati poort. a month later he was laying formal, though unsuccessful, siege, to a fortified town in the transvaal—frederikstad—and in mid-november, undeterred by a sharp reverse at bothaville (november 6), he was marching south through the eastern free state, besieging and, this time, capturing another fortified town—dewetsdorp—and endeavouring to invade cape colony. by a great concerted effort, organized by kitchener, and known as the second “de wet hunt,” he was checked, but not before he had succeeded, early in december in throwing across the border bands under kritzinger and hertzog, which lit an inextinguishable flame of rebellion among the dutch colonists.
certain incidents in this period (september to november, 1900) call for special notice.
1. the march of 173 miles made by french’s cavalry division, about 3,000 strong, across the eastern transvaal in october, with the object of “clearing the country.” this march revealed with startling clearness both the nature of the campaign which was beginning, and the incapacity of the cavalry, armed and equipped as they were, to cope with it. bands, which never exceeded a third and rarely exceeded a fifth or sixth of french’s strength, harassed the column all the way with vicious little attacks, which were repelled, but which met with no punishment, nor with any adequate tactical retaliation. the expedition achieved nothing, encouraged the enemy, and was attended by enormous losses of oxen and horses. it is true that numbers of other columns (the majority composed mainly of infantry) were tramping about the country at this time with scarcely better results, and nearly all suffering from the disability imposed by heavy ox-transport. it is true also, that the country traversed by french presented peculiar difficulties in its remoteness from railways, and in the pugnacity of 212its burghers. but, with allowance for these considerations, the marked feature of the expedition, from the point of view of our inquiry, was the failure of the cavalry to reap advantage, tactically, from occasions when the enemy sought a conflict.
2. a more hopeful omen for the future was afforded at about the same time in the free state, by the action of bothaville[50] (november 6, 1900), at the end of a long chase of de wet by some columns of mounted riflemen under charles knox, after the boer leader’s retreat from frederikstad, and before his attempt to invade cape colony. his laager and guns were surprised and attacked at close range in brilliant style by a small advance-guard composed of only sixty-seven regular mounted infantry, who held their ground until reinforced, and brought about the capture of several guns, much transport, and 100 men, after a fiercely contested fight of some hours’ duration. this exploit was something wholly new. nothing exactly like it had been done by our mounted troops since the war began. some excellent work, too, though never quite good enough for the purpose, was done by the same and other mounted columns in the subsequent hunt of de wet, arising out of his attempted raid on cape colony (november 24 to december 13, 1900). co-operation was far better, and tackling power higher than in the “hunt” of the preceding august.
3. charges.—we note the boer mounted charge occurring—
(a) on at least one small occasion during the march of the cavalry division referred to above. i have no details, only a bare mention of the circumstance in the “official history” (vol. iii., p. 432). the movement was repelled.
(b) on november 6, at komati river, in the course of some operations under smith-dorrien, near the delagoa 213railway, where boers, firing from the saddle, charged clean through a rear-guard of canadian mounted troops (times history, vol. v., p. 51; “official history,” vol. iii., p. 442).
(c) in the second “de wet hunt.” this, i think, was the first example in the war, on the boer side, of what i may call the penetrating charge, after the klip drift pattern, that is, designed to pierce a screen for ulterior purposes, not to inflict immediate loss on the enemy. it occurred at the close of the hunt, when, at springhaan’s nek (december 14, 1900), the boers, accompanied by a mass of waggons, burst through the thabanchu line of fortified posts, which had been strengthened at the point attacked by small detachments of mounted riflemen. it is worth while, though i have not the space, to examine the incident side by side with the klip drift charge, noting relative numbers, size of target, ground, and the effect of fire upon men and animals in rapid movement (times history, vol. v., pp. 40–42. not mentioned in “official history”).
(d) a successful little charge, this time by britons, occurred on the same day in another part of the field, at victoria nek, where a detached boer force was attacked and very roughly handled by the welsh yeomanry and the 16th lancers. the “official history” makes no mention of the episode, and my own information is scanty. some of the yeomanry, it is said, used clubbed rifles. whether the lancers used their swords i do not know. as to clubbed rifles, contrast the boer plan of firing from the saddle (times history, vol. v., pp. 41–42).
(e) on the british side again, bothaville (referred to above) was certainly on the border-line of charges. the advance-guard dismounted at something like point-blank range. so few in numbers, they would have gained little by riding home, and might have defeated their own 214object. as it was, they achieved their object, and that is all that matters, whether it is infantry, cavalry, or mounted riflemen who are charging.
my digression has run to greater length than i intended. there was no pause in the current of boer aggression. no sooner had de wet turned his back on the orange river than the long-prepared offensive revival in the transvaal was carried into effect. viljoen’s enterprises against the delagoa railway towards the end of november had heralded the storm, which, during the early part of december, broke with violence in the western district, where the buffelspoort convoy was destroyed (december 2, 1900), and de la rey defeated clements at nooitgedacht (december 13, 1900). the revival spread to the south-east, where several towns on the natal border were attacked, and culminated in the north-east, with viljoen’s capture of helvetia, on december 31, and botha’s simultaneous midnight attacks of january 5 upon the garrisons of the delagoa railway, one of which, that on belfast, came perilously near success.
kitchener, who had assumed the chief command in south africa on november 29, 1900, just when the free state revival was declining, and the transvaal outbreak was beginning, was faced with an extraordinarily difficult and complicated problem. he had to cope with a new national spirit among the boers, emanating from men who were wholly unconnected with the old kruger régime, and gathering strength from the elimination, by surrender or voluntary exile, of the supporters of that régime. the new national spirit took practical shape in a new military spirit, one of vigorous offence, conducted by men who represented what, beyond all question now, was the most formidable type of soldier in the world—the mounted rifleman—men who were equally at home in defending or assaulting entrenched positions, and in attack or defence in the open field.
215our own resources for dealing with the situation were manifestly inadequate. it was not only that there had been visible in some of the recent events disquieting signs of feebleness in defence, leading to unjustifiable surrenders. this evil was largely due to the lassitude and staleness which affected the army in general. the really grave feature was our inability to retaliate effectively against these aggressive enterprises, an inability strikingly illustrated by the long but futile operations which were set on foot in the western transvaal after nooitgedacht. the truth came like a flash, pitilessly illuminating past shortcomings, that all along we had been conquering the country, not the race, winning positions, not battles. psychological causes apart, our cardinal military weakness had always lain in the mounted arm, not in numbers, except at the very first, but in quality. unless we carry self-deception so far as either to eliminate from the calculation the great masses of infantry who had borne the main brunt of the regular campaign and had suffered far the heaviest losses, or, on the other hand, to count the enemy twice over, once as opponents of the infantry, and again as opponents of our mounted troops; unless we perpetrate one of these errors, we must candidly admit that we had had our full chance of securing decisive victories through the semi-independent agency of mounted men. the figures and facts to which i drew attention in sketching the main operations from paardeberg to komati poort prove this conclusively. we had missed our chance, and the consequences of missing it, obscured at the time by a long record of successful invasion and occupation, were now apparent. the war, obviously, was to be a mounted war. in the last resort nothing but efficiency in the same formidable type which the boers represented could enable us to conquer them. infantry would still perform the task of holding the ground won; they would also perform many valuable 216subsidiary duties in the field, but always of a defensive or semi-defensive character. for offence, whether for finding the enemy and forcing him to action, or for beating him when he sought action himself, mounted riflemen, good enough and numerous enough, were an indispensable necessity. in this respect, what were our prospects?
we had evolved our type of mounted rifleman, which, in essentials, followed the boer type, but in practice fell short of the ideal. the cavalry, who from the first should have inspired and furthered the educational process, were only just beginning to substitute the rifle for the carbine, a change which must, i imagine, have been finally prompted by the experience, alluded to above, of their divisional march across the eastern transvaal, in october, 1900. so far as i know, the first occasion on which any considerable force of cavalry carried rifles in the field was in the great driving operations which began in that same district, and again under french, at the end of january, 1901. the lance was already discarded, and eventually the sword also was discarded, but not until many months later. there seems to have been no simultaneous abandonment of swords by all cavalry regiments alike. the change was gradual. in dwelling once again upon the backwardness of cavalry training, i must explain once again, for fear of misunderstanding, that i am criticizing them by a standard special to themselves, the only standard appropriate to a professional force which had been in the field for more than a year. i need scarcely say that their record in the guerilla war, as in all the war, is honourable, and in many respects admirable; but by contrast with what they might have become without the arme blanche habit and training, it is comparatively negative and tame. with a few trifling exceptions they escape the reverses which so often befell their less disciplined and less experienced irregular comrades, but they do not stand out pre-eminent 217in that aggressive energy which was the great tradition of their arm. in the matter of leadership we find them supplying many excellent column commanders—men like byng, briggs, scobell, and rimington, to name only a few—but on the whole they can scarcely be said to have surpassed other arms of the service in the production of good leaders. needless to say, good leading never came from any other source than oblivion of steel methods and unreserved reliance on the rifle.
the regular mounted infantry had made rapid strides in efficiency, in spite of the extraordinary difficulties with which they had to grapple—inexperience in riding and horse-management, dearth of officers, hurried organization, absence of common tradition and esprit de corps. but they had been worked with great severity, had shrunk greatly from the ordinary wastage of war, and could only be reinforced by the same unscientific and wasteful methods by which they had been raised—that is, by abstraction from infantry battalions, which, in their turn, lost in efficiency from the process.
the prospect was even worse with the irregulars, home and colonial. all had worked hard, and most had done exceedingly well, considering their inexperience and the faults inseparable from improvised unprofessional corps. in sheer fighting efficiency the best of the seasoned colonials, south african, australasian and canadian, had undoubtedly excelled all other mounted troops. like the self-made soldiers of the american civil war, they had seemed by intuition to grasp the possibilities of a union of the rifle with the horse. but the irregular mounted army was dissolving in kitchener’s hands. enlisted for limited terms, the various corps, yeomanry included, had reached, or were soon to reach, their limit. it was necessary to forego their accumulated experience, to issue fresh appeals for volunteers, and to reconstruct this part of the army from top to bottom. 218the thing was done, but the stamp of new men enlisted (for there were many re-enlistments), whether from home or the colonies, and in spite of higher pay, was never again so good as of old. this deterioration was especially noticeable in some of the minor south african corps, whether raised for general purposes, or for the special purpose of acting as a local militia for the defence of cape colony. there was one marked exception to the general rule. the south african constabulary, recruited from all parts of the empire, and designed to be a permanent force, obtained the cream of the recruits.
kitchener’s first reconstruction of the volunteer mounted army was not final. limited terms again ran out, as the war dragged on, and fresh contingents replaced time-expired men. but the sources never ran dry, and on balance the strength tended to increase.
the constant changes and fluctuations make it exceedingly difficult to obtain accurate numerical estimates of our total mounted strength (regular and irregular) at any given time during this period. but we may say with approximate accuracy that in june, 1901, when all the volunteer mounted troops first appealed for in december, 1900, were in the field, and when the professional element had been reinforced, the total mounted strength was about 80,000, of whom 14,000 were regular cavalry, and 12,000 regular mounted infantry (now divided into 27 battalions). the new contingent of yeomanry numbered about 16,000; the south african constabulary 7,500, and the australasian contingents 5,000. exclusive of the cape colony militia (district mounted troops and town guards), south africa itself provided about 24,000 men enrolled in active corps. these are the full nominal figures. the effective fighting strength of the same units, on june 19 (according to an official state), was, within a man or two, 60,000.
the total strength of the whole army at the same 219period was about 244,000; “effective fighting strength” (according to the same official state), 164,000.
during the last year of the war, from june, 1901, to june, 1902, the regular cavalry increased, in round numbers, to 16,000; the regular mounted infantry to 15,000; the australasian and canadian contingents to 13,000; and the south african constabulary to 9,500; while in the last five months a wholly new mounted corps, eventually 2,300 strong, was formed from the personnel of the royal artillery. by this time the second contingent of yeomanry had dwindled considerably, and a third was formed, 7,000 strong, most of whom did not arrive in time to fight. at the end of the war, with the active south african corps and the district mounted troops reckoned in, there must have been 100,000 mounted men in the field, without counting the boer levies, known as national scouts and orange river colony volunteers. the whole army numbered about a quarter of a million.
while this progressive increase went on in british strength, and predominantly in mounted strength, the boers steadily diminished. here, too, periodical estimates are extraordinarily difficult. within the two annexed states, not only enrolled burghers of fighting age, but every surviving male, except boys below, say, fourteen, and infirm old men, now had to be reckoned as potential enemies. the rebel element in cape colony was an indeterminate quantity. the foreign element gradually disappeared. if we accept the calculation of the official historians, that from first to last in the whole war, with the inclusion of rebels and foreigners, a grand total of 87,365 persons took arms against us at one time or another; if, at the other end of the scale, we bear in mind the number of men who laid down their arms at the conclusion of the war—namely, 21,256, and if we examine the intermediate statistics of surrenders, captures, and casualties, the rough conclusion 220may be drawn that at christmas, 1900, we had still about 55,000 potential enemies to reckon with, and in june, 1901, about 45,000. during the last year the average monthly reduction was about 2,000.
but, apart from estimates of potential strength, the numbers actually on a war-footing at any given moment were very small—rarely more than 15,000—and sometimes as low probably as 9,000. no single body of men larger than 3,000—and this figure was exceedingly rare—ever again took the field.
the reduction in total numbers was one of quantity, not of quality. the weakest, morally or physically, were weeded out. the fittest survived and became continuously more formidable. that is what gives such extraordinary interest to the mounted operations of the guerilla war. how the small nucleus of veterans with limited resources and without external help managed to hold out for a year and three-quarters after the crash at komati poort against an empire drawing upon inexhaustible resources of men, money, and material, and how, though losing their independence, they succeeded in obtaining terms which ensured to them in the near future political equality with their conquerors, is a story i have endeavoured elsewhere to take my share in telling. in these pages i have to confine myself, as closely as possible, to my own narrow issue. but it is necessary, once more, to say a few words on the larger aspects of the campaign.
first let us rid our minds of the fallacy that guerilla war is a wholly distinct thing in kind from regular war. it is nothing of the sort. war is a science whose fundamental principles are constant, however wide and numerous the variations of circumstance under which it is conducted. perhaps i may be allowed to quote what i wrote on this point in my preface to vol. v. of the times history:
221
“whether the enemy be based on rich and populous towns, linked by a network of railways, or on nomadic knots of waggons, filled from half-ravaged mealy fields, whether he draws ammunition from well-equipped arsenals, or gleans it from deserted camping-grounds, whether he man?uvres in armies 100,000 strong, or in commandos 500 strong, the problem of grappling with that enemy and forcing him to admit defeat is in essentials the same. moreover, it is the peculiar interest of guerilla war that it illuminates much that is obscure and difficult in regular war. just as the r?ntgen rays obliterate fleshy tissues, and reveal the bony structure, so in the incidents of guerilla war there may be seen, stripped of a mass of secondary detail, the few dominant factors which sway the issue of great battles and great campaigns. subjected to close analysis, one of kitchener’s combinations may be perceived to have succeeded or failed from the same causes which dictated the success or failure of marlborough’s combinations. it is equally true that in many of the short and sharp actions described in this volume there may be distinguished, following one another with kinematographic rapidity and vividness, the same phases through which long struggles on historic battle-fields have passed.”
i repeat these words here because, among the many perversions of history for which the arme blanche school is indirectly responsible, none is more widespread than the vague idea, for it cannot be called a reasoned opinion, that the guerilla war may be ignored for instructional purposes. this is only an insidious extension of the proposition that the whole war was so “peculiar” as to afford no condemnation of the arme blanche; but the guerilla war is supposed to lend itself especially well to the propagation of that fallacy. so mercurial and intangible was the enemy (the suggestion is), so incalculable and irresponsible his movements, so numerous and safe the lairs from which he could gather, and to which he could disperse, so complete his independence of bases and communications, that it is useless to look for 222strategical, much less for tactical and technical lessons. to speak plainly, all this is pernicious nonsense. every soldier knows in his heart that no success in action was ever gained on either side but by high individual efficiency in the men, by clever and spirited leading, and by putting into practice ordinary military principles. when we compare the boers, in the way of legitimate metaphor, to wasps or mosquitoes, do not let us vainly imagine that their tactical methods were no more highly developed than those of that class of insect. a fortiori let us reject mr. goldman’s strange delusion that they practised evasion so perpetually and successfully as not to give our cavalry—to say nothing of our mounted riflemen—a fair chance for the “discharge of cavalry duties.” neither sporadic sniping nor persistent evasion would have enabled the boers to maintain their long resistance. they needed victories, however small, not only to replenish their ammunition, but to sustain their spirit and they could only obtain them by careful preparation, bold execution, and disciplined tactical methods. in war you can get nothing for nothing. however familiar the ground to you, and however great the disabilities under which your enemy labours, if you are going to do damage of any consequence you must concentrate a disciplined force, however small; feed it when concentrated; make plans, often concerted plans needing accurate co-operation; scout boldly and intelligently; hold your force well in hand and in close order up to the limit of prudence; and when the hour for action comes, rely on the valour and skill of your men to execute a definite tactical scheme in a coherent, disciplined fashion. in this way only—a way old as war itself—were actions, small or great, won in south africa either by ourselves or by the boers.
as to the arme blanche, whatever opportunities, if any, the past had afforded, those opportunities still existed. 223if it had been possible to exert shock in the past, it was equally possible now. that the numbers engaged on either side in any given action were on the average smaller made no difference. nor did the boer way of fighting, though it improved greatly in vigour, change in any essential particular. they had always fought and still fought in such a way as to make the rifle absolute arbiter of tactics. the secondary characteristics which lend such peculiar difficulties to guerilla war had not the remotest bearing on this question of weapons for horsemen. what bearing could they conceivably have? the problem still was to thrash the enemy whether he sought action or declined action. if it was a case of finding and forcing to battle an evasive foe, the weapon which inspired most ardour and nerve in the search was the best weapon. if the foe chose to accept action, or himself forced an action, the weapon which decided the issue was the best weapon. combat is the one and only test, and combats were innmerable. whether the boers came to the scene of combat by train, or from some base-town, or whether they had been summoned suddenly from the farms of a certain limited district, was immaterial to the efficacy of weapons. in accepting combat, whether with little or great ardour, they accepted all the risks and penalties of combat. that is the only healthy way to look at the matter if we are to gain true instruction from the war, and not merely to drug our minds with the complacent thought that the difficulties were immense, and that on the whole we did as well as we could be expected to do.
the whole of the south african war, and the guerilla war in particular, was a superb school for mounted troops. it was an exceedingly hard school, but hard schools are the best. our soldiers, and above all our cavalrymen, ought to thank providence on their knees for having given them this unique and unrivalled opportunity for 224practice in their art within a ring-fence, so to speak, subject to no external disturbance, and against an enemy who, however formidable in quality, could never be reinforced, and were bound to dwindle in numbers.
did we tackle the guerilla war in such a way as to make the most our schooling? i am afraid we did not. i am not at all sure that, by the time we had reached that stage, we had the power to do so; but however that may be, when we are looking for lessons, let us ruthlessly eliminate bad or doubtful precedents, and fix our eyes on good precedents.
our principal weakness was not a new one, though it assumed a new shape. we had always aimed too much at the positions and possessions of the enemy, and too little at his personnel. it was the same now. his new base henceforward was the land, and we made it one of our principal endeavours, if not our primary endeavour, to cut off that great and fruitful source of supply. roberts, as early as september, 1900, had enjoined the destruction of crops, and, under certain conditions, of farms, though comparatively little had been accomplished when he quitted the command. kitchener initiated a plan of systematic devastation, with its corollary, the systematic deportation of non-combatants to concentration camps. with the ethical and political aspects of this measure we are not now concerned. its military result was to retard the education and restrict the fighting efficacy of our mounted troops by setting before them two incompatible aims: that of grappling with the enemy, and that of destroying his crops and cattle and deporting his families. the latter aim, which was secondary, too often tended to become primary, simply because it was the easiest to put into practice, and human nature is prone to follow lines of least resistance.
another doubtful precedent, closely allied with the last, and only to be justified as a pis aller to meet an 225immensely difficult case, was the system of “drives”—the system, that is, of sweeping defined tracts of country with large groups of columns, according to formal plans worked out in a central staff department, and controlled in execution from that department. this, broadly speaking, was kitchener’s method of dealing with the guerilla war. he varied it with other methods, with concerted movements of a minor and less centralized character, with the night-raid system, the constabulary post system, and with the work of independent columns, while periodical eruptions of spontaneous boer activity often compelled him to retaliate with any rough-and-ready means that came to hand. a vast amount of good independent or semi-independent work was done in one way or another by enterprising british leaders, but on the whole it is true to say that the drive was our principal weapon. now, the spirit of the drive was diametrically opposed to the spirit which should actuate ardent mounted troops. it sacrificed dash to symmetry, and it gave no scope for surprise, the soul of mounted effort. designed to cope with evasion, it bred habits which reacted on enterprise just when enterprise had its best opportunities—that is, when the boers took the offensive. except in weeding out weak-kneed burghers and in facilitating devastation, it proved sterile until reinforced by its complement, the block-house system. this system added physical barriers to human barriers and provided a far-flung network of communications and supply centres, by the aid of which, in addition to the railways and base-towns, enormous numbers of men could be man?uvred in driving lines, fifty or sixty miles in length, with mathematical precision and speed. but the system was not ready for application in its complete form until february, 1902, after sixteen months of guerilla war, and even this huge and elaborate mechanism, although by a throttling, starving process it 226eventually brought the boers to their knees, failed to achieve the supreme object of war, the defeat of the enemy in the open field. to the last, veterans who still possessed horses and the will to escape, overleapt the strongest barriers, whether animate or inanimate, and to the last, wherever pressure was relaxed, dealt biting blows at isolated columns.
it is easy to point out the drawbacks of kitchener’s military policy. but it is difficult to see how, with his professional mounted troops still so backward, and with the raw levies which constituted so large a portion of his mounted army, he could have adopted any other policy. as it was, he took great risks and incurred substantial penalties in throwing prematurely into the field untrained troops. the fact, about which there can be no question, that during the last year of the war the enemy replenished his ammunition almost entirely from british sources, and at the end had largely re-armed himself with lee-enfield rifles, is proof enough by itself of the penalties incurred. the most we can say in criticism of kitchener is that he might have done more, as the troops gained confidence and efficiency—and they did gain both, rapidly and continuously—to temper the rigidity of his excessively centralized system. even here we are on debatable ground. his genius was for organization; his countrymen profited by that genius, and it ill becomes them to cavil at the defects which were its inevitable accompaniment. a weaker man, actuated by the theoretically higher aim of educating his mounted troops on ideal lines, at whatever cost, might very well have failed miserably. we can obtain a rough criterion of what this education meant by a study of the guerilla war in cape colony, where devastation and deportation were out of the question, where drives were barely feasible, though they were sometimes tried, and where the single object of finding and fighting the rebel bands stood out unobscured. 227with full allowance for the immense difficulties of the problem, the results cannot be regarded as satisfactory.
in summing up the whole matter we must remember that two great factors—one military, the other moral—exercised an influence upon events which kitchener, beyond a certain point, was powerless to modify. the military factor was simply the initial inferiority of our troops to the boers as mounted riflemen. at bottom, the excessive driving tendency was promoted by the same cause as the tendency during the regular war towards disproportionately wide turning movements, as opposed to direct aggressive tackling. the idea was to circumvent, not to attack; to trap, not to pierce. similarly with reconnaissance. this, by the time kitchener took the command, had become almost a lost art. to revive it, in the exacting conditions, was beyond the power of a commander-in-chief. we came to rely almost wholly on outside agencies—natives and boer spies—for our intelligence, and on central agencies for the diffusion of this intelligence. this was a fatal precedent for our cavalry in future wars. naturally, the effect was to favour centrally organized drives and to discourage that highest form of enterprise which inspires men who use their own eyes to secure opportunities for their own weapons. what is the weapon which not only decides the combat but aids the scout to use his eyes? everywhere and always, in manchuria as in south africa, the rifle.
i touched on the moral factor in my last chapter. the boers had the highest possible moral stimulus—that of defending their homes and nationalities. we had no motive so stimulating. racial hatred would have been the only stimulus correspondingly strong, but we had none. the boers improved on acquaintance. we had taken up arms to secure the political equality of our countrymen, and we had already secured that object beyond question, and annexation as well. to go farther, 228and aim at so cowing the boer national spirit as to gain a permanent political ascendancy for ourselves was an object beyond our power or will to achieve, and beyond the power or will of any free democracy or confederation of free democracies of the british imperial type to achieve. peaceable political fusion under our own flag was the utmost we could secure. that meant a conditional boer surrender, on a promise of future autonomy. the unconditional surrender which lord milner was anxious to obtain, however long and bitter a struggle it entailed, could scarcely have led to peaceable fusion. the only other alternative, feasible possibly, but outside discussion or contemplation, was the permanent expatriation of all the most vigorous elements in the two boer races. kitchener grasped the truth as soon as he took command. that his own spontaneous instinct as a soldier was towards sharp, mercilessly decisive blows in the field he had shown clearly enough at paardeberg. but that opportunity and many others had been lost, never to return. from a soldier’s point of view he saw the insuperable difficulties at this hour of attempting, with the material now at his command, to deal blows sharp and heavy enough to destroy the boer national spirit. hence his rather mechanical military system, aiming at slow attrition rather than fierce aggression; hence his schemes for dealing with the civil population; and hence his political policy, which was to obtain at the earliest moment, but without the least relaxation of strong military effort—indeed, with a daily intensification of those efforts—a settlement on agreed terms. the boers, clinging desperately to their independence, held out against any settlement whatever, conditional or unconditional, until may, 1902. meanwhile the task of inducing them to recognize the inevitable was not one which evoked, or could be expected to evoke, any marked degree of military enthusiasm. there was a great deal of very natural 229caution among commanders in the field, increased by the ever-present impression that the war was on the point of ending and by a well-grounded reluctance to make a bold use of new troops against veterans. it was useless for kitchener to enjoin daring and enterprise if he could not get his subordinates to accept the necessary responsibility. there is no doubt that some of his genuine efforts in this direction met with inadequate reply. but, again, we cannot blink the fact that the responsibility, as events showed, was very heavy, and from purely military causes. the net result was that the strongest will in south africa exerted its full and legitimate influence, and produced a military system based mainly on organization and numbers, rather than on expert capacity in normal field operations.
raids.—it was natural, therefore, that during the guerilla war sound lessons for the future should come mainly from the boer side. in strategy—so far as the word is applicable to the guerilla war—they had little to teach us; but that little is not unimportant. beyond the simple policy of distracting our efforts and alleviating their own distress by outbreaks timed so as to relieve one harassed district at the expense of another less harassed, they had only one consistent strategical object—that, namely, of feeding the rebellion in cape colony by successive small invasions. the instinct was sound. infinite embarrassment came of it and a drain on our mounted troops, which was constant and severe. the principal raids by which this policy was carried out—(1) that of hertzog and kritzinger, december, 1900, to january, 1901; (2) that of christian de wet, january to march, 1901; (3) that of smuts, august to september, 1901—are well worth careful study as examples of what small numbers of determined mounted riflemen can do, even when burdened, as de wet was, with heavy transport, in traversing great tracts of country through hosts of 230enemies for a strategical purpose. no. 2 led to the third and greatest “de wet hunt”—an episode packed with excitement and dramatic interest from beginning to end. no. 3—the ride of smuts with 340 men from the gatsrand (west transvaal) to cape colony—merits even closer attention.
we must add to the list of raids botha’s attempted invasion of natal—september to october, 1901—which was also an instructive example for future wars, regular or irregular. botha failed in what from the first was a hopeless undertaking, but he showed audacity and nerve, not only in tactical aggression, but in extricating himself from envelopment by immensely superior forces on his return journey. both for making and checking such raids—and we must include under the same general heading the previous “hunts” and de wet’s early raids upon the railway—rifle-power is everything. in chapter xiv. i shall contrast the abject failure of the russian cavalry in similar enterprises owing to lack of rifle-power with the rare but brilliant japanese successes. kimberley and the american civil war drive home the same lesson.
night attacks.—these were numerous, and prove conclusively that in this class of enterprise small, thoroughly disciplined forces have good chances of success against troops who fall short in the slightest degree in vigilance and sound outpost work. we may divide the attacks roughly into two classes—those against mobile forces encamped for the night, and those against more or less permanently fortified posts or towns. of the former class, one of the most brilliant, because it was undertaken against the wariest of wary veterans, was that of colonel scobell upon lotter’s rebel commando at bouwer’s hoek (cape colony) on september 4, 1901. a cavalry regiment—the 9th lancers—and the cape mounted rifles shared in the assault, which led to the only complete 231and unqualified success we ever obtained in cape colony. another plucky exploit was that of major shea and a detachment of south australians, who attacked smuts at grootvlei on the night of august 1, 1901, just as that clever young leader (for once caught napping) was beginning his ride to cape colony.
the chief boer successes of the same type were at wilmansrust (june 12, 1901), quaggafontein (september 20, 1901), and tweefontein (december 24–25, 1901). careless outpost work by irregular troops was responsible for all three reverses. on the first two occasions camps on the level were rushed and overpowered instantaneously; but tweefontein, besides illustrating stratagem and stalking skill, is also suggestive of the risks taken by a force which attacks in the dark. de wet’s men scaled a precipitous cliff to storm the british camp, and, in doing so, overlooked a strong picket ensconced below the crest on the opposite side. it is possible that if reinforcements to the hill had come as promptly as they might have come, this picket, which was eventually discovered and overpowered, might have served as a useful point d’appui for a counter-stroke. at night, in the confusion of a sudden assault, the slightest stand made by a handful of determined men is likely to bewilder and daunt the enemy.
lake chrissie (february 5, 1901) and moedwil (september 30, 1901) were finely conceived and finely executed night attacks by botha and de la rey respectively against columns under smith-dorrien in the one case and kekewich in the other. both were repelled in the most spirited fashion, but in both there were moments of extreme danger. at langerwacht (february 23, 1902) there was a very dramatic and exciting night combat, when de wet, to avoid envelopment in one of our great drives of the latest model type, burst through the cordon of entrenched pickets with a horde of waggons, carts, 232cattle, and non-combatants. there were several other episodes of the same type at that period.
nooitgedacht (december 13, 1900) may also be placed in the category of night attacks. de la rey’s first and unsuccessful attack was delivered in pitch darkness; the subsequent assault of beyers in the grey of early dawn.
all the above night attacks were upon the camps of mobile forces, but there were many others upon fortified posts and towns. helvetia (december 29, 1900) and the small post at modderfontein (january 30, 1901) were stormed in darkness. at vryheid (december 11, 1900) an outlying post and the mounted infantry camp were rushed under the same circumstances, though the main position held out gallantly. belfast (january 7, 1901) had a similar, but a more dangerous, experience, losing a strongly held outlying post and two entrenched posts, all defended with great tenacity, shortly after midnight and in misty weather. but the mist and darkness eventually favoured the defence. viljoen and botha, in endeavouring to unite their forces against the inner defences, lost their way, and had to retire baffled. the six other attacks on the garrisons of a section of railway forty miles in extent, made simultaneously on this same night, were carried out with marvellous punctuality, but were all gallantly repulsed. in the western transvaal, at a later date, de la rey’s unsuccessful attack on lichtenburg (march 2, 1901) was begun and carried on for several hours in the dark.
one of the most thrilling episodes of this class was at itala (september 25, 1901), the frontier post under colonel chapman, which botha struck at when he was trying to raid natal. an outlying post on the peak of itala mountain was taken by a sudden coup de main at midnight, and the fight, fiercely contested on both sides, raged round the central position until dawn and throughout the following day. at nightfall there was a lull, 233during which each side concluded that the other was irresistible, and both retired! prospect, a neighbouring frontier fort, was also attacked on the night of the 25th, but held its own with ease.
columns on the march were very rarely attacked in complete darkness. the only case i know of is that of yzer spruit (february 24, 1902), where de la rey ambushed a convoy, beginning his attack before the dawn. attacks in twilight were common.
scrutinizing these incidents with a view to our special inquiry, let us note three points:
1. this is of general application—that is, to day or night attacks. all mounted troops should, in the art of entrenchment, be as nearly as possible the equals of infantry. though regular cavalry were not, i think, concerned in any of the above incidents, the kind of work involved, whether in attack or defence, was work which normally falls to cavalry in all modern war. troops who cannot make entrenchments will never be able to storm them.[51]
at this moment the regular cavalry are supposed to be able both to attack and defend entrenched positions. “there are certain difficulties in modern war,” admits “cavalry training” on page 186, “which cannot be overcome by mounted action”—that is, by shock action. this action, it is explained, “is precluded against an enemy posted behind entrenchments or occupying intersected or broken ground,” or “an extended position,” etc. in other words, the cavalry are expected to be able to do the same offensive work as infantry. can they do it? how far could they do it in south africa? similarly in defence. they are “to deny important points to the 234enemy” by fire-action (and presumably to deny them effectively), and on page 215 (“the defence”) they are “often to be called upon to occupy localities for defence, especially in small bodies.... whenever time and means permit, the position should be put into a state of defence; the preparations, however, should be limited to those of the simplest kind.” the italics are mine. it is thus that, after south africa and manchuria, we persist in ruinous error. one thinks of majuba, of spion kop, of nicholson’s nek, dewetsdorp, nooitgedacht, and only too many other examples of the nemesis which attends “defences of the simplest kind,” no matter by what class of troops they are made and used. the compilers of the section entitled “dismounted action” should have taken to heart the lesson of zilikat’s nek (july 11, 1900), where regular cavalry were concerned, both in defence and in attack. of course, behind all the compromise which pervades the section there lies the fatal obsession that openings for shock action must at all costs be allowed for, and that, in defence, entrenchments should not be so good as to encourage cavalry to rely on them, to the prejudice of “mounted action,” which in cavalry language means shock. this is to disregard the facts of war. why did not the cavalry execute shock charges at or after the boer assaults on wagon hill? they were there, fighting bravely enough on foot in defence, but the counter-charges were made by infantry and irregular horsemen acting dismounted.
2. nothing, not even the strongest entrenchments, can replace vigilance. here the cavalry showed an excellent example to their irregular comrades. cavalry outposts were rarely surprised, and, i think, there was only one case of any consequence of a homogeneous cavalry force being completely surprised in daylight.
3. mark the skill and confidence with which the boers arranged for the disposal of their led horses in their night 235attacks, whether on columns or posts. of the cases i have quoted, in no instance that i can discover did they suffer any appreciable loss in horses, or fail, if repulsed, to get away safely on horseback. one of the many fallacies dissipated by the south african war is the idea that mounted riflemen can never have full confidence in attack, because, if they dismount, they perpetually think too much about the line of retreat to their horses. in darkness, one would think, this feeling, if it existed, would be particularly strong. but whether by day or night, this was neither a boer nor a british weakness.
night raids.—these were a british speciality, and must come under a separate heading, for they were not strictly night attacks, but long nocturnal expeditions designed to culminate in a surprise attack at dawn upon a boer laager. fond themselves of night enterprises, the boers were also very sensitive to attack while in laager. this weakness began to be exploited by some of our mounted leaders in the early part of 1901. the first noteworthy night raid was on april 13 of that year at goedvooruitzicht, where sir henry rawlinson surprised the laager of wolmarans at dawn, and captured his transport and a gun, though it is true that the boers retaliated with some effect later on in the day. other small raids followed in various quarters, and in august and september colonel benson, r.a., with the assistance of colonel woolls-sampson, operating with a single column in the eastern transvaal, brought the system to high perfection. after his death in the unhappy reverse of bakenlaagte, general bruce hamilton successfully carried on the same system in the same district, though with very much larger forces.
these raids supply most valuable instruction as to the best way to transport a mounted force with speed and secrecy over long distances of hostile country at night. 236immense distances were sometimes covered with unerring exactitude of direction. nerve in leadership and the highest standard of discipline among all ranks were required, both for the march across country and for the deployment at dawn for attack. ability to imitate these marches would be invaluable in any sort of war. but there are reservations to be made. accurate information and skilled guides were absolutely essential to success. both, in the case of these raids, came from extraneous sources—namely, boer spies and native scouts. these are luxuries which we are not likely to get in future wars. we shall have to rely mainly, if not solely, on our own eyes and wits. nor were the material results of the raids commensurate with the efforts put forth—at any rate, in the later period when very large forces were used. much transport was captured, but most of the prisoners taken were horseless men, who formed a proportion of every commando in the field. there was rarely any fighting. if a thorough surprise was effected, all who could fly fled; but it was noticeable that all through the raiding period, and in the raided district, the boers were a match for us in ordinary daylight actions. on the other hand, the nervous worry and exhaustion caused by the raids had a very powerful moral effect upon the burghers.
artillery with mounted troops.—i pointed out in chapter vii. the disadvantages of allowing mounted troops of any class, acting independently, to rely too much on the support of artillery. guns weaken surprise, which is the soul of mounted effort. this truth came out with increasing clearness during the guerilla war. the boers, having exhausted all their ammunition and resources for repair and upkeep, learnt, perforce, to do without guns altogether, with immense advantage to their tactics. when they obtained them by capture, they soon abandoned them. we ourselves, in offence, obtained little, if any, value from guns, and were apt to 237lose in vigour by the ever-present temptation of shelling before attacking. in defence they were often useful, but often, magnificently efficient as the gunners were, a source of tactical embarrassment. how vulnerable guns are to the assaults of bold mounted riflemen the record of losses in south africa shows with painful clearness. the truth is, that the conditions created by the smokeless magazine rifle are highly unfavourable to the use of artillery in exclusively mounted warfare. when both sides are mounted, and acting freely, the game should be “loose” and “fast,” to borrow football metaphors. the battery has no target worth speaking of, and is itself a very substantial and a highly sensitive target, whose mobility is liable to be destroyed in a few moments by rifle-fire. the team is the vital point, and the team alone, in the vulnerable surface it presents, is six times more extensive than a single troop-horse, and twenty times more extensive than a rifleman skirmishing on foot.
as i have already suggested, the gun, while it calls for the skilled co-operation of a number of individuals, is essentially an impersonal weapon. no amount of courage and dexterity in its handling can compensate for this inherent defect. when used with independent mounted troops it should be as small, light, in a word, as “personal” as possible. the bearing of these observations on the arme blanche question is obvious. no superficial peculiarities of the guerilla war in any way lessen the force of the physical and moral principles involved. if mounted men, in defiance of physical facts and the inexorable laws of the modern game, use shock formations—and shock is the fundamental condition for the use of the steel—they reduce the personal factor to its lowest point, and play into the hands of the hostile gunners. as a matter of fact, the steel-charge upon guns was never tried in any form, dense or loose, in south africa, and that, surely, is a sufficiently conclusive circumstance 238in itself, when we recollect the numerous cases in which guns were successfully attacked by mounted riflemen. if most of these exploits were performed by the boers, and if they afford undoubted proof of the superior efficiency of the boers as mounted riflemen, we must, none the less, bear in mind the fact that our men had not the same chance of performing them. the boers, as they lost both their faith in artillery and their resources for maintaining it, grew callous to its loss, and were wont to abandon guns without a qualm. with ourselves it is always a point of honour to defend guns à outrance. that is an admirable rule, but it carries with it the obligation on the one hand of using artillery only in strict accordance with its positive tactical utility, and on the other of making sure that its escort is absolutely efficient.
attack on guns brings me naturally to the consideration of mounted charges, and to that important topic i must devote a separate chapter.
