Ladysmith at Bay
Eighty-seven years before the outbreak of the South African War, the
British Army was besieging the city of Badajoz, in Spain. When it was
taken by assault, a Spanish matron and her sister were molested and came
for protection to the British Camp, where they were received by Harry
Smith, a young Captain in the 95th Regiment, who when the Peninsular War
was over, married the girl fugitive, Juana Maria de los Dolores de Leon.
After a distinguished military career in the East Indies and elsewhere,
Sir Harry Smith went out to South Africa in 1848 as Governor of the Cape
Colony, and its dependencies; and in that year he proclaimed the country
between the Orange and the Vaal to be British Territory.
The Boers of the Great Trek resented the annexation, and one Pretorius
took the field, but was beaten on August 29 at the battle of Boomplatz
by Smith, who had under his command six companies of infantry and two
squadrons of cavalry; a force which strangely contrasts with the masses
of soldiery opposed to Pretorius' successors, Joubert, Botha, Cronje, De
Wet, and Delarey.
Harrismith, in the Free State, was named after him; his services in the
Sikh War were commemorated by an Aliwal on the Orange; while upon a new
township in Natal, she who was once Donna Juana Maria de los Dolores de
Leon of Badajoz on the Guadiana, bestowed the commonplace designation
for which she had exchanged her retinue of tuneful Spanish, and it was
called Ladysmith.
[Illustration: The siege of Ladysmith.]
After fifty years of obscurity, Ladysmith suddenly became the pivot upon
which the fortunes of the British Empire were poised. Its loss, at least
during the early weeks of the siege, would not only have thrown a
British Army into captivity, but would have left an encouraged and very
mobile enemy, replenished with the spoils of war, free to march
irresistibly towards the sea.
In November, Buller was prepared, if Ladysmith should fall, to abandon
the whole of Natal except Durban. He had private information that, if
the Boers reached the coast, a certain European power would intervene.
There was also the fear that another reverse would call out the
disaffected Dutch in the Cape Colony, and the danger lest the British
nation, treacherously harassed by the cries of the disaffected at home,
who sympathize with the misfortunes of every nation but their own, would
again write off South Africa as a bad debt, and offer peace on
ignominious terms. In India the news of the capture of White, a former
Commander in Chief, and of his removal as a prisoner of war, would have
seriously, if not fatally, impaired the British _raj_.
At a later period, when the reinforcements had arrived and the plan of
campaign had been altered to suit the situation in Natal, the loss of
Ladysmith would not have so vitally affected the position in South
Africa; and, in fact, Buller on December 16, authorized White to
surrender.
On November 1, the commanders of the allied forces, Joubert and A.P.
Cronje, decided to invest and bombard Ladysmith, confidently expecting
that the only obstacle in the way of the procession to the sea would
soon be removed by the fall of the intimidated town. They were even
urged by some of the subordinate leaders, who, as a rule, were never so
venturesome as when there was no immediate prospect of meeting the
enemy, to mask White and march at once upon Durban, but Joubert would
only sanction a minor effort in that direction which was postponed until
it was too late to be effective.
The last man to leave Ladysmith was French. He was ordered to Capetown
to meet Buller, who was persuaded by his report on the situation that
White's force was insufficient to keep Natal from being overrun, and
that the worst might be feared. The escape of French, by a margin of a
few minutes only, made him available for employment in an arena more
suited to his capacity than a besieged town; and his subsequent good
work in the Cape Colony, south of the Orange River, and during the
advance on Kimberley and Bloemfontein, showed how ill the fortune of war
served the Boers, when they just failed to capture the train which was
taking out of their clutches the soldier who was to relieve Kimberley
and head off Cronje at Paardeberg before the relief of Ladysmith was
effected.
White has been blamed for keeping the whole of his strong force of
cavalry in Ladysmith. He had with him four regiments of regular cavalry
besides five irregular colonial corps. For the space of three months the
action of the British Army was hampered by the absence of the mounted
troops interned in Ladysmith and engaged in garrison duties, until at
last the horses were either killed for food, or, when forage was
exhausted, turned out on the bare veld under the enemy's fire, to
support themselves as they could. White justified, or it may be,
excused, his retention of the cavalry, by its mobility, which virtually
increased the effective strength of the garrison, and enabled him to
reinforce rapidly any threatened section of the defence, as for example,
during the attack on Caesar's Camp. It is no doubt arguable that cavalry
was more useful within the lines of investment than it would have been,
if squandered over the whole area of the concurrent operations
elsewhere; and if so, the limits of its tactical employment have been
considerably extended.[31]
White's force, which numbered about 13,000 men, occupied a perimeter of
fourteen miles on the hills and kopjes nearest to the town, and was
enveloped by an outer perimeter of thirty six miles held by 23,000
Boers. The positions N.E. of the Klip River were occupied by the
Transvaalers, and the opposite semi-circle by the Free Staters.
On November 2, began the bombardment, which the enemy fondly hoped would
bring White on his knees within a week; the first death casualty during
the siege being a naval officer who had reached Ladysmith only a few
hours before the investment with a re-inforcement of long-range naval
guns from the fleet; and during the next two days it was continued from
Pepworth, Bulwana, and elsewhere, with such effect as to induce White to
ask, at the instigation of the civilian authorities, permission to send
away the women, children, and other non-combatants. This somewhat
_naive_ request was naturally disallowed by Joubert, who, however,
consented to the formation of a neutral camp for them and the sick and
wounded at Intombi, within the area of the siege, and dependent for its
supplies and maintenance upon the resources of the garrison. Joubert put
into Ladysmith 200 derelict Indian coolies from the Natal collieries, an
act which was perhaps justified by the code of war, which sanctions the
employment of any means by which the difficulties of a besieged town can
be increased; but a subsequent attempt made by Schalk Burger during
Joubert's advance on the raid towards the south, to saddle White with
the Indian refugees from the Transvaal was successfully resisted.
On November 9, the enemy was foiled in an attack on Observation Hill and
Wagon Hill which were not then held in force, and for eight weeks the
siege was carried on with so little vigour, and confronted with so much
skill, that the British casualties in killed and wounded during that
period numbered less than 250. When the Boers found that the walls of
Ladysmith did not at once fall to the sound of the artillery, they began
with equal confidence to rely upon the indirect casualties caused by
sickness and privation, and awaited the result without impatience in
their laagers. During the last fortnight of November a strong column
under Joubert was detached to raid into Southern Natal. It was prudently
but not enterprisingly led, did little harm, and returned with slight
loss.
Meanwhile the enemy's artillery had been considerably re-inforced, and
the British gun ammunition was beginning to run short. The capture of a
large herd of cattle by the Boers, who neatly drew the animals away from
the town by exploding shells behind them, entailed a reduced meat
ration. In order to co-operate with the relieving force under Clery, who
at the end of November was within signalling distance, White exercised a
part of the garrison as a striking column, which, when the time came, he
proposed to take out under his own command, and to clear the line of
approach from the South.
Three weeks after the abortive attack of November 9, Joubert returned
from his expedition to Estcourt. A council of war was held, and an
assault on the Platrand[32] was determined on for the 30th. On the
previous evening the commandos detailed as covering parties on the left
flank went into position on Rifleman's Ridge, and awaited the main
attack. Meanwhile much had happened in the laagers. The decisions of the
Boer Krijgsraad seem to have been subject to confirmation by a minor
convention composed of the subordinate officers. These took counsel
during the night, and resolved that "the plan was too dangerous to
attempt." When the covering parties opened fire at dawn there was no
assaulting column to cover.
The activity during December was confined to the defence. On the night
of the 7th a raid on Gun Hill, an underfeature of Lombard's Kop,
silenced--at least in Natal--two heavy guns which were worrying the
garrison. By the rules of the game the pieces were injured beyond repair
by the gun-cotton charges which the sappers had fired in the breeches
and muzzles; but the heavier gun was removed to Pretoria, where it was
made serviceable. It was eventually sent to Kimberley, and its arrival
greatly alarmed the timid and irresolute diamond men, whose life was
easy and almost luxurious when compared with the privations which the
steadfast garrison of Ladysmith endured for four months. On the same
night Limit Hill, which the enemy seized a few days after the
investment, was recovered.
A heavy gun was emplaced by the Boers to the front of the northward
section of the defence, on a hill in the angle between the Bell Spruit
and the railway to Harrismith. The approach to it was commanded by
Bell's Kopje and Thornhill's Kopje, but a Battalion of Rifles under
Metcalfe wriggled in between them at midnight on December 11, without
alarming the enemy, and almost reached the crest of the eminence which
was thereafter known as Surprise Hill, before the Boers opened fire. The
assaulters encircled the emplacement, but could not find the gun. In a
little time it was discovered outside the work, and disabled, but not
permanently. The Boers on the flanking kopjes were now on the alert; and
the battalion as it withdrew down the slope met in the darkness a small
but determined detachment which had formed up athwart the line of
retirement. The obstacle was rushed with the bayonet, and the expedition
returned to Ladysmith with a loss exceeding 12 per cent of its strength.
The gun raids were almost the only offensive action taken by the defence
during the siege, and though successful as far as they went, they did
not greatly reduce the strength of the enemy's artillery and were not
continued. He had still more than a score of pieces with which he daily
bombarded the town; but no attempt to assault it by a moving force was
made for some weeks. His confidence in the final issue was unimpaired;
he had but to squat in his trenches worrying the garrison with shell
fire, and the inevitable surrender must come.
His complacent view of the situation was manifested by his use of the
besieging force as a depot which was from time to time called upon to
furnish drafts for service elsewhere. Joubert's absence on the raid
towards the south did not sensibly diminish the retaining power of the
attack, and although the loss of several thousand Free State burghers
who were transferred to Cronje's command on the Modder or to Delarey's
at Colesberg was in part made up by a reinforcement of Transvaalers, the
force sitting round Ladysmith had to assist in the defence of the line
of the Tugela against Duller; yet, albeit weakened by that necessity, it
was still able without much effort to pin White down to the banks of the
Klip River. The inactivity of the garrison, as well as the daily
increasing hospital camp at Intombi under the shadow of Bulwana and the
mournful processions to the cemetery hard by, showed that sickness, the
waning physical and moral strength of those who were still on duty, and
the expenditure of stores, supplies, and ammunition, were slowly
impairing White's power of resistance; and that the numbers of the
besieging force, which later on Buller believed did not exceed 2,000
men, could be safely reduced.
The Boers believed that "their strength was to sit still," and they were
not far wrong. Early in the New Year, however, external pressure
emanating from Pretoria and Bloemfontein was brought to bear upon
Joubert, and he sanctioned another assault on the Platrand, which was
from the first considered to be the key to Ladysmith. It is a series of
plateaux, about two miles long and varying in breadth from half a mile
to a few hundred yards. Its chief features are Caesar's Camp and Wagon
Hill. A mile north of the centre of the position is Maiden's Castle. The
contours on Caesar's Camp and Wagon Hill are pinched in in three places
and divide the Platrand into four positions of unequal area, the
smallest being Wagon Point, an underfeature on the extreme right of
Wagon Hill. The latter is joined by a nek to Caesar's Camp, the plan of
which owing to the contraction of the contours somewhat resembles the
outline of a dumb-bell. The highest point of the position is a knoll on
Wagon Hill, and the front slopes southwards down to Bester's Valley and
Fourie's Spruit. On each flank were hills occupied by the enemy's
artillery.
The strength of the assaulting column as detailed was composed of
approximately equal numbers of Free Staters and Transvaalers and
amounted to upwards of 4,000 burghers. To the former Wagon Hill was
assigned as their objective, to the latter Caesar's Camp, which was held
in greater strength. Early on the morning of January 6, the sentry of
the picket posted on the nek between Wagon Hill and Wagon Point, became
aware of movement on the slope and gave the alarm. Soon after, a party
of Engineers and Infantry preparing gun positions on Wagon Point in view
of a contemplated operation in support of Buller's expected advance by
way of Potgieter's Drift, were fired on at short range by a body of Free
Staters, who had succeeded in climbing to the nek, and who then
threatened a redoubt in the western shoulder of the knoll on Wagon Hill,
which commanded Wagon Point. The first rush was checked by the Natal
Volunteers, who opened with a Hotchkiss gun from the knoll at a range of
less than 100 yards, and threw the leading ranks of the enemy into
confusion. The working parties were thus given time to take up their
rifles, and to organize themselves more effectively for defence.
A counter-attack was made from the adjacent post on the eastern
shoulder, but it failed to dislodge the enemy, a small party of whom
diverged towards their left, and circled round Wagon Point to the rear
of the position between Wagon Hill and Maiden's Castle. Here they
lighted upon the heavy gun at the foot of the northward slope for which
an emplacement had just been made on Wagon Point, and although the gun
was successfully defended by the escort, the insecurity of the Platrand
position was shown by the attempt.
While the Free Staters were assaulting Wagon Hill and Wagon Point, the
Transvaalers obtained a footing on the edge of the Caesar's Camp
position; but their supports failed them. A considerable proportion of
the burghers detailed for the attack on Caesar's Camp, most of them
Transvaalers, again either refused, as on November 9, to take part in
it, or shirked during the advance. But at dawn, after a struggle in the
dark at such close quarters that the face of each combatant was often
for the first time revealed by the flash of his adversary's rifle, the
enemy had his finger on the key to Ladysmith; and was clinging, like
swallows on the eaves, to the whole length of the Platrand from Wagon
Point along a sinuous contour line which curved round the eastern
shoulder of Caesar's Camp, and awaiting the supporting bombardment
which, as soon as there was light enough for the alignment of the
sights, would be opened upon the position from the flanking guns on
Bulwana and Rifleman's Ridge, and from Middle Hill on the front.
The normal garrison of the Platrand, which, since the attack on November
9 had been entirely included in the perimeter of the defence, numbered
not more than about 1,000 men, but it was under the command of Ian
Hamilton.
When the firing began he was in his bivouac near Caesar's Camp. He
quickly collected what troops he could lay his hands on, and went to
Wagon Hill, where he found the situation so serious that he asked White
to re-inforce him. At daybreak the Boer artillery opened upon the
position, and it is probable that it would have been lost, but for the
action of two field batteries which, at a critical moment, came out of
Ladysmith and diverged so as to protect each flank.
Already on the Wagon Point flank, the enemy had worked round and had
threatened the heavy gun, and on the other flank he was holding the
eastern shoulder of Caesar's Camp. Wagon Point was saved from a turning
movement by one battery, while the other, though itself under artillery
fire from Bulwana, opened on the Boers clinging on to the eastern
shoulder, and by checking the advance of their supports, caused them to
withdraw the hook with which they were grappling that flank. But more
than this the British guns could not do, and the Boers holding on to the
front crest could not be touched by shrapnel, and were maintaining
themselves against the defenders of Caesar's Camp; while a combat of
even greater intensity was being waged on Wagon Hill.
Here an attempt made by a few companies of Highlanders to outflank the
Boer line on the crest by working round the shoulder of Wagon Point, had
failed, as the men were exposed to an irresistible fire as they turned
the corner. On Wagon Hill the enemy was holding on to the front of the
redoubt on the knoll and each attempt to dislodge him was unsuccessful.
Towards noon there was a lull in the storm. After nine hours' fighting,
the combatants were face to face on the plateau and the advantage lay
apparently with the attacking Boers, who, in spite of the strong
re-inforcements which had been sent up by White, were still clinging to
the southern crest of Caesar's Camp, and who on their left had won a
footing close to the knoll on Wagon Hill, and were effectively checking
the details on Wagon Point. White having used up all the infantry which
he could safely spare from the other positions on the perimeter, now
sent the cavalry to the rescue.
The pause in the fight, which seems to have been occasioned by the
exhaustion and discouragement of the enemy, and which, perforce, had to
be acquiesced in by the defence, led White to report to Buller soon
after noon, that the Boers had been beaten off for the time being, but
that a renewal of the attack was probable. It came at the moment when he
was sending the despatch from his Head Quarters on Convent Hill, and
when Ian Hamilton was preparing a counter-attack round the shoulder of
Wagon Point. A small body of Free Staters rushed the summit of Wagon
Point, and by their impact drove many of the defenders down the reverse
slope. But those who remained were resolute. After a hand to hand fight
between Boer commandants and British officers around the emplacement
which had been prepared for the heavy gun, the position was recovered
and a reinforcement of dismounted Hussars came up in time to secure it.
On Wagon Hill also the struggle was renewed, and here also the defence
was strengthened by some dismounted cavalry which had been waiting in
support in rear of Caesar's Camp. It was evident that if the enemy were
not dislodged from Wagon Hill during daylight, he would be able to
establish himself irremovably after dark, when all the waverers would
come up under the protection of the night. At 3 in the afternoon White
reported to Buller that the attack had been renewed and that he was
"very hard pressed." He called the Devons to his aid from their post on
the northern section of the perimeter, and in a storm of rain and
thunder, themselves a resistless tempest, they cleared Wagon Hill with
magazine and bayonet.
On Caesar's Camp the enemy had already wavered, and the crest was in
possession of the defence; and now all along the line from Wagon Point
to the eastern shoulder the Boers were scuttling down the slopes toward
the flooded dongas below under a hail of rifle fire. The battle, which
had begun soon after midnight, was continued until near sunset and
resulted in the discomfiture of the only serious attempt made by the
Boers to capture Ladysmith by offensive action. The success was due
primarily to the determination of an enfeebled garrison, which had
already undergone a siege of nine weeks; and secondarily to the tactical
mistakes of the enemy, who had allowed troops to concentrate upon the
Platrand which should have been contained and pinned to their posts at
other sections of the perimeter of defence. Not a few of the commandos
detailed for the assault on the Platrand flinched, yet it almost
succeeded; and if these had been distributed to positions elsewhere,
they would not have incurred great danger, and their presence would
probably have prevented the transfer of the Devons and of the mounted
troops to Wagon Hill at the critical moment.
The battle casualties of January 6 outnumbered in the proportion of 6 to
4 the entire losses due to the acts of the enemy during the whole four
months' investment before and after that date. Twice Wagon Point was
occupied only by the wounded and the dead. Much of the fighting was
either hand to hand or at such short range that the effect of the bullet
could be almost read in the expression on the face of the stricken
opponent; now of anguish, despair, or hatred, now of a gentle sinking to
sleep after toil. The homely name of Wagon Hill, far away from the
fatherland under the southern sun, will abide for all time in the
chronicles of the deeds of the British private soldier. It was his own
battle, by which he saved Ladysmith. Next day a message from home
reached White.
"Heartily congratulate you and all under your command for your brilliant
success. Greatly admire conduct of Devonshire Regiment." The Sender was
Queen Victoria.
The failure of the attack on the Platrand deterred the Boers from
further attempts to break into Ladysmith, which was left like Paris
thirty years before to "stew in its own juice." An ingenious but
impracticable method of bringing the place to its senses by damming the
Klip River below the town in the hope of isolating it by flood was put
in hand, and some alarm was created, but the loyal stream refused to
rise. The garrison was too much weakened by disease and famine to be
able to assist effectively Buller's promised advance by way of
Potgieter's Drift, and in fact he never came near enough to Ladysmith to
make co-operation possible. A mobile column was for the second time
organized by White, but it is doubtful whether it could have taken the
field.
Perhaps some poet of a future generation may follow the example of the
Homeric syndicate and select the Siege of Ladysmith as the theme of a
great Epic, romantically but unhistorically interwoven with the legend
of Juana Maria of Badajoz. On the Boer side the struggle was carried on
with much of the simplicity of Homeric times and the Siege of Troy. The
debates in the war councils; the doubts of the subordinate commanders;
the devices and stratagems, such as the attempt to dam the Klip River,
and the proposal to disguise an assaulting commando in the helmets and
accoutrements of the slain opponents; the abstinence of some of the
leaders from the fray; the single combats on Wagon Point; the democratic
organization of the Boer forces; the difficulty of keeping the burghers
to their duty when the attraction of a domestic and pastoral life
presented themselves in an alluring form; were not of these days nor
even of the Puritan period, but belonged to a remoter age when every man
was a soldier or a shepherd according to the exigences of the moment.
Many a Boer leader, like Ajax, defied the lightning--when it was not
playing directly upon him. Not one of them comes prominently into the
foreground in the great South African siege.
De Wet's brief service in Natal came to an end before the investment,
and in the light of his exploits elsewhere, it is interesting to
speculate upon what might have happened if he had been in command of the
attack on January 6. In all probability it would have succeeded. The
Boers rarely failed when commanded by a resolute leader who knew his own
mind and was able to impose his own will upon them. In isolated
enterprises daringly conducted, they were usually efficient, and
sometimes irresistible, but like most primitive communities in which the
military instinct is individual rather than collective, they were
incapable of forming themselves into a coherent and unified Army for
action in mass. De Wet, in his _Three Years' War_, protests against the
British theory that the burghers were only fit to engage in _guerilla_,
which, possibly from ignorance of the meaning of the word, he seems to
regard as an unworthy term of reproach; but the theory was in reality a
grudging recognition of a suppressed factor in the problem of the war
which the professors had overlooked. His own exploits go far to prove
its soundness.
Like mariners adrift upon the ocean in an open boat, their food and
their water dwindling hour by hour, who eagerly watch a white topsail or
a faint wreath of smoke which seems for a time to be approaching, yet
soon sinks beneath the horizon and leaves them alone upon the waste; the
garrison of Ladysmith was cruelly tantalized by Buller's fitful
appearances on the Tugela. Again and again the boom of his guns growing
clearer and clearer and his heliographs sparkling more distinctly
deluded the defenders with the hope that the day of their deliverance
was at hand. During the Spion Kop affair, the confidence was so great
that for a day or two full rations were issued. The summit could be seen
crowded with people on January 25 who surely must be Buller's men. Not
so; they were the Boers who, to their astonishment, had found the summit
unoccupied, and were burying the dead and collecting the wounded. The
roar of war died away; was heard again from Vaalkrantz, soon to sink
into silence on February 7, when Buller announced that the enemy was too
strong for him. It was renewed at Hlangwhane, Monte Cristo, and Pieter's
Hill, but former disappointments had made the garrison insensible to
hope and it fell upon apathetic ears. When at last Dundonald's little
band was seen approaching, the chilled and dazed soldiers of the
garrison could scarcely realize that they were saved.
After January 6 the increasing sickness and the deficiency of food
became the chief facts of the Siege. More than three-score horses were
sacrificed daily to provide a meat ration for the garrison. The men
slaked their thirst with the turbid water of the Klip River, and munched
a makeshift biscuit made of Indian corn and starch. "Chevril" soup and
potted horse were luxuries. At Intombi nearly 2,000 sick and wounded
were lying without hospital diet or comforts.
On January 27 the situation was so grave that White, when he heard from
Buller that the attempt on Spion Kop had failed, proposed as a last and
desperate resource, but one which, at least, would not involve the moral
effect of a surrender, to abandon Ladysmith, his sick and wounded, and
his heavy guns, and with about 7,000 men and 36 field guns to endeavour
to join Buller. Even if another Buller failure did not sooner doom the
garrison he could only hold out until the end of February.
With this proposal Buller temporized and communicated it to Lord
Roberts, who sent an encouraging message to White, in which he asked the
garrison to accept his congratulations for its heroic defence and
expressed his regret at the delay of the relief and his hope that the
term would not be the limit of possible endurance; though he fully
expected that his own operations in the Free State would before its
expiration relieve the pressure on Ladysmith. Buller doubted Lord
Roberts' forecast and preferred to "play his hand alone," and nothing
came of the proposed break out of Ladysmith. White in his acknowledgment
of Lord Roberts' message said that by sacrificing most of his horses, he
could hold out for six weeks.
There was good reason to believe that by this time the besieging force
numbered not more than 4,000 men, who, however, could be reinforced in a
few hours from the 16,000 burghers standing up to Buller on the Tugela.
The enfeebled garrison was, however, not in a condition to act against
the attenuated cordon from which a constant bombardment was maintained.
As the month of February wore on, the news of Lord Roberts' entry into
the Orange Free State infused more hope into the garrison than the too
familiar sound of Buller once more in action on the Tugela, and so
little was expected of Buller that the lull in the fire during the
Sunday armistice on February 25 was interpreted as another repulse; and
the rations which had been increased, when a message came that he would
be in Ladysmith on February 22--which he soon found was a too confident
expectation--were again reduced. The darkness before the dawn was very
black. The news of Paardeberg reached Ladysmith on the afternoon of the
27th; towards sunset next day Dundonald marched in. White endeavoured to
organize a column to pursue the commandos retreating before Buller, but
found that the toll of war had been paid so heavily by the Natal Field
Force that little more than the strength of one company in each
battalion was fit for service.
Not the least of the trials undergone by the Ladysmith staff were the
heliograms from the Tugela and the constant surprises of the
_déchiffrage_. Sometimes pessimistic, sometimes the reverse and
frequently trivial, there was scarcely an occasion on which they were
helpful. The troubles of the relieving force figured largely in them.
The sequel to the Colenso disaster was a suggestion that White after
burning his ciphers[33]--a precaution which he naturally would take--and
firing away his ammunition, should negotiate with the enemy for the
surrender of the town. To this White made the manly and dignified reply
that there was no thought of surrender; and to his own men he issued a
soldier-like order of the day, in which he told them that they must not
expect relief as early as had been anticipated, and expressed his
confidence that the defence would be continued in the same spirited
manner in which it had hitherto been conducted; and dutifully he applied
himself to his task.
A few days later he was bidden by Buller to "boil all his water." From
Potgieter's Drift, Buller heliographed that "somehow he thought he was
going to be successful this time"; that it was "quite pleasant to see
how keen the men were"; that he hoped to be "knocking at Lancer's Hill"
in six days' time; but after Spion Kop it was, "we had awful luck on the
25th."
Notes:
[Footnote 31: As the officer in command of the Naval Brigade neatly put
it: "the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The cavalry soldiers did
excellent service in the lines--and we ate their horses."]
[Footnote 32: The Boer name for Caesar's Camp--Wagon Hill Position.]
[Footnote 33: This instruction was not included in the original
heliogram, but was annexed to it as an afterthought in a supplementary
message.]