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[1899 A.D.]

sition from the fighting strength of the two little republics alone; the British had to face Dutch opposition in their own colonies, and it was only the apathy and caution of the South African Dutch, taken as a whole, which saved the empire from disaster. The total fighting strength of the Boer republics was probably never more than sixty thousand men, and of these it is doubtful if at any period of the war there were more than thirty-six thousand in the field at the same time.

But the fact that it was to a large extent a struggle with a nation in arms doubled the numbers of the force that the Transvaal executive was able to draw upon, while to this may be added the not insignificant total of ten thousand Uitlanders and foreigners, and fifteen thousand Kaffirs, employed in menial duties attendant upon military operations. Of this force only a microscopic proportion was permanent and disciplined. At the outbreak of war the disciplined forces in the Transvaal were the South African Republic police, about one hundred and forty strong, with twenty officers; the Swaziland police, four hundred strong; and the Staats artillery, which, when the reservists were called up in mobilisation for war, numbered about eight hundred men. The permanent forces of the Orange Free State simply consisted of an artillery corps, at the most four hundred strong. For the rest, the bulk of the Dutch levies were organised on the burgher system that is, each district was furnished with a commandant, who had under him field-cornets and assistant field-cornets, who administered the fighting capacity of the district. Each field-cornet, who, with the commandant, was a paid official of the state, was responsible for the arms, equipment, and attendance of his commando- the commando1 being the tactical as well as the administrative unit; any number of commandoes might be grouped under one commandant. The supreme military control was vested in the commandant-general.

THE ULTIMATUM

The plan of campaign which found favour with the Boers, when they determined to put their differences with Great Britain to the test by the ordeal of the sword, was to attack all the principal British towns adjacent to their own borders; at the same time to despatch a field army of the necessary dimensions to invade and reduce Natal, where the largest British garrison existed. It is not too much to suppose that the executive in Pretoria had calculated that the occupation of Durban would inspire the entire Dutch nation with a spirit of unanimity which would eventually wrest South Africa from the British. On paper the scheme had everything to recommend it, as the expedient most likely to bring about the desired end. But the departmental

['General De Wet in his Three Years' War thus explains the commando law as it existed in the Orange Free State in 1899: "It stipulated that every burgher between the ages of sixteen and sixty must be prepared to fight for his country at any moment; and that, if required for active service, he must provide himself with a riding-horse, saddle, and bridle, with a rifle and thirty cartridges, or if he were unable to obtain a rifle, he must bring with him thirty bullets, thirty caps, and half a pound of powder; in addition he must be provisioned for eight days. That there should have been an alternative to the rifle was due to the fact that the law was made at a time when only a few burghers possessed breech-loading rifles, achterlaaiers, as we call them. With reference to the provisions the law did not specify their quality or quantity, but there was an unwritten but strictly observed rule amongst the burghers that they should consist of meat cut in strips, salted, peppered, and dried, or else of sausages and 'Boer biscuits' -small loaves manufactured of flour, with fermented raisins instead of yeast, and twice baked. With regard to quantity, each burgher had to make his own estimate of the amount he would require for eight days."]

[1899 A.D.] executive could not push off the Natal invading force as early as had been anticipated, and it was not until October 9th that the ultimatum was presented to Mr. Cunyngham Green, the British agent at Pretoria. This ultimatum showed clearly that the Boer government had determined long before to put their differences to the final test of arms, and that the later negotiations had but served to cover the warlike preparations which were in hand. The scheduled demands were as follows:

"(1) That all points of mutual difference shall be regulated by the friendly course of arbitration, or by whatever amicable way may be agreed upon by the government with her majesty's government. (2) That the troops on the borders of this republic shall be instantly withdrawn. (3) That all reinforcements of troops which have arrived in South Africa since the 1st of June, 1899, shall be removed from South Africa within a reasonable time, to be agreed upon with this government, and with a mutual assurance and guarantee on the part of this government that no attack upon or hostilities against any portion of the possessions of the British government shall be made by the republic during further negotiations within a period of time to be subsequently agreed upon between the governments, and this government will, on compliance therewith, be prepared to withdraw the armed burghers of this republic from the borders. (4) That her majesty's troops now on the high seas shall not be landed in any part of South Africa."

To these demands the Transvaal government required an answer within forty-eight hours. There could be only one reply, and on Wednesday, October 11th, 1899, at five o'clock P. M., a state of war existed between the British government and the two Boer republics. On the following day the Boer attack on an armoured train at Kraaipan, on the western frontier of the Transvaal, witnessed the first hostile shot of a bloody war, destined to plunge South Africa into strife for two years and a half.

STAGES OF THE WAR

For the purposes of history the South African campaign may be conveniently divided into five distinct periods. The first of these would be the successful Boer invasion of British territory, terminating with the relief of Ladysmith on February 28th; the second, the period of Boer-organised resistance, which may be said to have finished with Lord Roberts' formal annexation of the Transvaal on October 25th, 1900, and the flight of ex-President Kruger to Holland. The next period, the most unsatisfactory of the whole war, may be characterised as a period of transition; it marks the opening of earnest guerilla resistance on the part of the enemy, and uncertain casting about on the part of the British for a definite system with which to grapple with an unforeseen development. This phase may rightly be said to have continued until the abortive Middelburg negotiations were broken off on March 16th, 1901. The next stage was that which saw the slow building up of the blockhouse system and the institution of small punitive columns, and may be considered to have extended until the close of 1901. The fifth and last period — which, after all other expedients had failed, finally brought the residue of uncaptured and unsurrendered burghers to submission-was the final development of the blockhouse system, wedded to the institution of systematic "driving" of given areas, which operations were in force until May 31st, 1902, the date upon which a peace was ratified at Pretoria between Lord Kitchener and the representative Boer leaders.

[1899 A.D.]

THE WAR IN NATAL

The first of these periods saw the severest fighting of the campaign. It opened with the investment of Mafeking by a Transvaal force under A. P. Cronje, the envelopment of Kimberley by Free State commandoes under General Wessels, and on November 1st the complete isolation of the bulk of the Natal field force, in Ladysmith, by the main federal army under the Commandant-General Piet Joubert. The Natal field force, however, did not submit to investment without a struggle; and before the enemy finally cut the communication with the south, portions of Sir George White's force had fought four considerable actions with the invading army. The first two of these were of the nature of British successes. On October 20th the detached brigade at Talana drove back the Boer left under Lucas Meyer. But this superiority was bought at a price which nullified many of the results of victory. General Sir W. Penn Symons, the British officer in command, was mortally wounded, and after losing half its mounted men as prisoners and two hundred and twenty-six officers and men killed and wounded, the brigade only escaped being enveloped by beating a masterly retreat upon Ladysmith, where it arrived in a very exhausted state on October 26th. In the meantime Sir George White had taken the aggressive, and hearing on October 20th that an advance guard under General Kock had occupied Elandslaagte, and placed itself athwart the direct communications of General Symons' force, he detached a force of all arms under Major-General French, and defeated Kock after a sanguinary engagement on October 21st (British losses, two hundred and fifty-eight all ranks killed and wounded). Three days later Sir George White fought a second engagement against the enemy advancing from the north at Tintwa Inyoni, in order to cover the retirement of the Dundee force. It was an inconsequent action, which cost the Natal field force one hundred and eighteen casualties, the majority of which occurred in the Gloucestershire regiment. By October 29th Joubert's army had practically enveloped Ladysmith, and Sir George White determined to strike a blow in force which should be decisive in effect. The result of this decision was the battle of Lombard's Kop, outside Ladysmith, in which the whole of Sir George White's available garrison was engaged. The engagement was disastrous to the British, who had undertaken far too comprehensive an attack, and the Natal field force was obliged to fall back upon Ladysmith, with the loss of fifteen hundred men in casualties, including the headquarters of the Gloucestershire and Royal Irish fusiliers, which surrendered to the Free Staters and Johannesburg zarps at Nicholson's Nek. From that day the rôle of the Natal field force was changed from that of a hostile field army into the defence of a standard on a hill, and two days later it was completely isolated, but not before General French had succeeded in escaping south by train, and the naval authorities had been induced by Sir George White's urgent appeals to send into the town a naval brigade with a few guns of sufficient range and calibre to cope with the heavy position artillery which Joubert was now able to bring into action against the town.

GENERAL BULLER'S ARRIVAL

General Sir Redvers Buller, who had been given the supreme command in South Africa as soon as it was perceived that war was the only solution to the South African trouble-his force being an army corps in three divisions, the divisional generals being Lord Methuen, Sir W. Gatacre, and Sir W. Clery

H. W.-VOL. XXII. X

1899 A.D.]

arrived in Cape Town, ahead of his troops, on the day following the final bid of Sir George White's army. The situation which presented itself was delicate in the extreme. In Natal practically the whole of the available defence force was swallowed up by the steady success of the invasion; on the western frontier two important British towns were isolated and besieged; and federal commandoes were on the point of invading Cape Colony, which, as far as its Dutch population was concerned, seemed in peril of rebellion. The army corps, which had been mobolised for war, was about to arrive in South Africa; but it was evident that the exigencies of the situation, and the widely divided areas of invasion, would for the time being place in abeyance the original plan which had been formulated for an invasion of the Orange Free State from Cape Colony on three parallel lines.

The first duty was to effect the relief of the British forces which had been rendered immobile, and to do this Sir Redvers Buller had no choice but to disintegrate the army corps. Hildyard's and Barton's brigades were sent to Natal, Sir William Gatacre, with a brigade instead of a division, was despatched to Queenstown, Cape Colony; while Lord Methuen, with a division, was sent off at breathless pace to relieve Kimberley. As November wore on, the situation did not improve. Cape Colony was invaded in earnest; while in Natal a flying column of Boers, pushing down from the Tugela, not only captured an armoured train, but for a short time isolated Hildyard's forces concentrating at Estcourt. The situation in Natal seemed so serious that on November 22nd Sir Redvers Buller suddenly disappeared from Cape Town, to arrive in Natal three days later.

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LORD METHUEN'S ADVANCE

In the meantime Lord Methuen, with characteristic energy, had commenced his march to the relief of Kimberley! He encountered the Boers first at Belmont on the 23rd, in much inferior numbers to the British, to be sure, but strongly intrenched behind a ridge of rugged, crag-topped kopjes. Against this position in the early morning the British advanced to the attack. They were in a fierce humour," writes Conan Doyle," "for they had not breakfasted, and military history from Agincourt to Talavera shows that want of food makes a dangerous spirit in British troops. A Northumberland fusilier exploded into words that expressed the gruffness of his comrades. As a too energetic staff officer pranced before their line he roared in his rough North-country tongue, 'Damn thee! Get thee to hell, and let me fire!' In the face of a withering fire the troops advanced, carrying kopje after kopje at the point of the bayonet. The victory was an expensive one for Lord Methuen, for the Boers easily withdrew and the British had no cavalry with which to follow up their advantage.

"The next opposition to the British advance was met with at Enslin two days later, when, as at Belmont, the Boers had posted themselves behind a line of formidable kopjes. The story of Belmont was repeated. The key to the position was a large hill in the centre which was gallantly carried by the naval brigade but with terrific loss of life-reaching a total of almost fifty per cent. of the force engaged. Beyond the fact that the way had been cleared for another stage toward Kimberley, it is hard to see the advantage the British won from this second expensive victory."

By the night of the 27th Lord Methuen's columns had almost reached the Modder river. They were started in motion early the next morning with the promise that they could have their breakfast as soon as they reached the river

[graphic][subsumed]

THE CAVALRY CHARGE AT THE BATTLE OF ELANDSLAAGTE (From the painting by H. Fleury)

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