Baden-Powell and the Siege of Mafeking
Mafeking is a dull, unimportant town in the veld with a history that
attracted the Boers to it.
They considered that, like Natal and Kimberley, it did not rightfully
belong to Great Britain. They were a community of trekking and
centrifugal atoms, especially in the direction of territories in the
possession of native tribes, and their own country, though sparsely
inhabited, was not spacious enough for them. The bucolic ambition of the
Boer, which is to dwell in a house from which he cannot see the smoke of
his nearest neighbour's chimney, can be satisfied in a flat country only
when the house stands in the midst of a farm many thousand _morgen_ in
extent.
For a generation or two before the war, the Transvaalers had been
encroaching upon Bechuanaland. A Baralong chief named Montsioa was
dispossessed of Mafeking and could obtain no redress from the British
Government, which at that time was in an intermediate frame of mind, and
did not necessarily act on the assumption that in every dispute between
white man and native the latter was in the right.
Thus encouraged, the Transvaalers annexed Bechuanaland in 1868, but
three years later it was taken away from them under the Keate award, in
an arbitration to determine the respective rights of Boer and native
over the debateable territory.
After the war of 1881, the Transvaalers supposed that the British
Government would be unlikely to assert itself, and two little impudent
republics of adventurers were set up in territory which the award had
declared to be within the British sphere of influence. Montsioa fought
for his rights, but the British Government lay torpid for some time.
Finally it was goaded into action by a proclamation issued by Kruger
annexing the territory to the Transvaal. He soon found it advisable to
cancel the proclamation, and in 1885 the Republics of Goshen at Mafeking
and of Stellaland at Vryburg were effaced by an expedition led by Sir
Charles Warren. Bechuanaland was again annexed by proclamation, but on
this occasion to the British Empire.
The resentment of the Transvaalers against Mafeking, which originated in
the conviction that they had been wrongfully deprived of it, was
aggravated by the fact that it was the starting place of the Jameson
Raid.
On October 13 nearly 7,000 burghers, with six guns, under P. Cronje, sat
down before it. He expected to have little difficulty in recovering it.
Appearances were encouraging; the town was open and defenceless, and he
was probably aware that it was held by a weak garrison. Why the British
should have occupied such an out-of-the-way place as part of their plan
of campaign, he could not understand, but there it was, inviting attack.
Of the half-hearted measures taken by the War and Colonial Offices in
1899, when a war with the Transvaal seemed to be more probable every
day, one of the most intelligent was the commissioning of R.
Baden-Powell, who had formerly served in Bechuanaland and had recently
commanded the 5th Dragoon Guards, to "organize the defence of the
Bechuanaland and Rhodesia frontiers." It would neither involve a great
expenditure of money, nor be likely to wound the susceptibilities of the
Transvaalers, who might be provoked by more vigorous and minatory
measures: and thus little harm would be done if after all it were found
to be an unnecessary precaution.
For these reasons it commended itself to Pall Mall, but its chief merit
was that it sent to South Africa a capable, versatile and zealous
soldier, whose mind did not run in the grooves. Yet if Baden-Powell had
been sent to Kimberley instead of to Mafeking, Kimberley would probably
have fallen--after an outbreak of civil war within the lines between him
and Rhodes. It would have been impossible to insulate the personal
electricity with which each of them was so highly charged, and short
circuiting must have occurred.
The object of the contemplated display upon the Bechuanaland and
Rhodesia frontiers was twofold. They ran through the indefinite border
belt which separated black from white territory, and activity on them
would not only be witnessed by the tribes and exert an impressive
influence on the native mind, but would also draw away the Boers and
prevent them concentrating their forces. The central position of
Mafeking on the Western line, and the stores and supplies which had been
collected in the town, attracted Baden-Powell to it. It was singularly
ill-adapted to hold defensively against an active enemy.
In spite of recruiting difficulties raised by the Facing-both-Ways
Ministry at Capetown, which in a less tolerant and philosophic age would
at once have been swept away by a storm of indignation, he raised two
irregular regiments: the Rhodesian Regiment, which was sent into
Rhodesia under Plumer, and the Protectorate Regiment under Hore.
The Cape Ministry did what it could to prevent the Protectorate Regiment
going to Mafeking, and the corps was in fact mustered outside the Cape
Colony, and only entered the town a few days before war was declared. As
at Kimberley, so also at Mafeking, the Schreiner sect set itself
placidly to thwart the gentle and tentative early efforts of the British
Government to deal with the situation.
When P. Cronje appeared before Mafeking, Baden-Powell had a force of
less than 1,200 men, none of whom were regular soldiers and less than
half of whom were efficiently armed, with which to sustain the siege of
an open town by 7,000 Boers. He had also four small field guns of
obsolete pattern, to which were added later on a home-made howitzer and
an ancient man-of-war's smoothbore, which had left the foundry during
the Napoleonic wars. In its youth it had probably fought the French
through a porthole, and now having in the interval trekked across the
South African veld into the possession of a native tribe, was discovered
in a Baralong kraal, restored to active service, and, mounted on a Dutch
wagon, aided in the defence of a little settlement 400 miles away from
the sound of the sea.
In one respect only Baden-Powell had the advantage over Kekewich at
Kimberley. His burden was not increased by discord within the lines. The
civilians behaved with exemplary composure and put themselves
unreservedly into his hands.
An archaic but effective simplicity characterized the methods of the
defence. Baden-Powell eked out his slender stock of men and instruments
with tricks and devices that might have been employed at the siege of
Troy, but which none the less deceived and confounded the slow-witted
besiegers, whom he scandalized with gibes and taunting messages. When
asked to surrender to avoid further bloodshed, he replied that the only
blood hitherto shed was the blood of a chicken in a compound; and on
another occasion he reproved Cronje for inactivity. Many of the
incidents read like passages from the Iliad. The besiegers were allured
into determined attacks upon dummy trenches; deceived by bogus orders
shouted for their information through a megaphone; alarmed by the sudden
appearance of cavalry within the lines, for did they not see the glint
of lances? The lances were weapons that had been forged in the railway
workshops, and carried round, as it were in a parade before the
footlights by a body of supers making a gallant show upon the stage.
What should be done in a besieged place with such an embarrassing asset
as ten tons of dynamite? Buller would have handed them over to his
second in command for disposal, and then if any accident occurred would
have disclaimed responsibility for it. Gatacre would have taken the
chances, but would not have hesitated to pitch his tent if necessary
beside them. Colvile would have searched his orders for instructions.
Baden-Powell, not being able to rid himself of the explosive by firing
it, arranged that it should be fired by the enemy. He loaded it on
railway trucks, which he propelled a few miles out of the town and then
abandoned. There was no Laocoon to warn the Boers, and they rushed at
what they thought was an armoured train in trouble. In the skirmish the
dynamite exploded, and although no one was hurt the enemy was terribly
scared, and the resisting powers of the garrison virtually augmented.
Baden-Powell thoroughly understood the Boer temperament. Many
generations' isolation from the progressive European world had rendered
it peculiarly liable to be ensnared by simple expedients. It was not
wanting in "slimness," but it was the "slimness" or cunning of a
primitive race, and was easily gulled by wiles that might have been
employed against a tribe of Red Indians. Baden-Powell alone of all the
British leaders was aware of this, and he owed much of his success to
the knowledge. With but one man to defend each ten yards of his
perimeter of seven miles he hypnotized Cronje, a dull man bewildered by
a resourceful. His versatility instantly found a way out of each
difficulty that beset him. Before he sent out a party detailed for a
night attack that might easily go astray, he bethought himself of the
device by which a ship is often guided into her haven, and hung up two
lamps in the town as leading lights across the veld.
Cronje soon found that Mafeking was not an easy prey. Although in all
probability he might at any time have overwhelmed it by sheer weight of
numbers, he refrained from making the attempt. It hit out so vigorously
and was believed to be so well protected by mines that he requisitioned
a big gun from Pretoria, which was mounted south of the town and came
into action on October 23. With a weapon throwing a shell more than
three times heavier than all the shells that could be fired in salvo by
the artillery of the defence, there was no doubt in his mind that the
place must fall before the end of the month.
The arrival of the gun quickened the attack for a time. The native
location S.W. of the town was made the object of a feint on October 25
to be immediately followed by a real attack elsewhere, but the
Baralongs, who had been armed, resisted so stoutly that the operation
failed. By the beginning of November the Boers had been cleared out of a
newly made advanced trench on the east side; and Cannon Kopje on the
south, the possession of which by them would have made a considerable
section of the defence works and perhaps even the town itself untenable,
was held under a converging fire of artillery by fifty troopers of the
British South African Police against a thousand Boers.
Five weeks of Baden-Powell were enough for Cronje, who on November 19
trekked away to the south, leaving Snyman and 3,000 burghers to continue
the siege. His self-esteem had been wounded because the walls had not
immediately fallen to the sound of the big gun, and by Baden-Powell's
refusal to take a serious view of the situation in the frequent
communications that passed between them. It may be said that Cronje was
"chaffed" away from Mafeking; the gibes put him out of conceit with
himself, and instead of stimulating him into activity only made him more
dull-spirited than he was by nature. He had none of the instinctive
military genius which showed itself so notably in most of his
colleagues, who, having turned their ploughshares into swords at a
moment's notice, were generally more than a match for the professional
soldiers against whom they were pitted. He had the misfortune of meeting
almost the only British leader then in South Africa capable of
instinctively assessing him on the spot at his true valuation; and like
a timid poker-player with a good hand, he allowed himself to be bluffed
by the flourishes of his opponent. He held good cards, but he feebly
threw them down. At Magersfontein he played his hand with skill, but
lost the deciding game at Paardeberg.
Baden-Powell was too zealous a soldier to conform to the schism that the
operations of war were akin to athletics or sport. Externally his
predilections were for the drama. He was a competent actor and manager,
and he rejoiced in Mafeking as in a stage play.
Many of his devices were as unsubstantial as stage scenery; the
besiegers were the villains of the piece who would meet with their
deserts before the curtain fell; there was comic by-play in his ways of
beguiling the tedium and the lassitude of the siege, in the bantering
messages he sent out to the besiegers, and now and then even in his
garrison orders. The little garrison was permeated by the exosmose
action of his cheery optimism and humour during seven weary months of
waiting; and while it might seem to some that he was treating the
serious situation with unbecoming levity, he wisely kept the tragedy of
it, of which he was fully conscious, in the background.
His methods were so far successful that in a few weeks he had driven
away two-thirds of the force originally opposed to him, and had firmly
gripped the place. The enemy's superiority in artillery was neutralized
by the construction of underground shelters and warrens in which the
women and children took refuge during the daytime, leaving an apparently
deserted town to be bombarded. Thus Baden-Powell was relieved from the
moral pressure which a large number of casualties among them would have
caused; and the garrison suffered but little in the redoubts and
trenches. Supplies were plentiful and the water supply secure.
What Cronje had failed to do, Snyman could hardly be expected to
accomplish with a considerably reduced force, and the attack became more
faint-hearted. He carried out the Cronje policy of comfortable,
lethargic squatting, doubting not that the place must fall into his
hands sooner or later. Friends and relations tripped over from
Johannesburg to admire and encourage his brave burghers at their posts,
and some were even allowed as a treat to fire a shot at the Khakis.
No serious operation occurred until the end of the year. On the morrow
of Christmas Day, Baden-Powell made an unsuccessful attempt to carry a
fort on Game Tree Hill, which commanded the approach to the town from
the north. He was unaware of its strength, and the casualties amounted
to nearly one-fifth of the force engaged, a loss which he could ill
afford; but early in January he compelled the big gun, which could
neither face the shells of his little battery of 7-pounders nor the
rifles of his marksmen, to withdraw to a more distant emplacement east
of the town. Towards the end of the month an encouraging message was
received from Lord Roberts at Capetown.
The Boer line of circumvallation was in plan an irregular hexagon, of
which the north-east face was pushed inwards and a re-entrant angle
formed at the Brickfields; where a fort was built nearer to the town
than any other post of the attack, and the operations during February
and March were mainly a struggle for the possession of it. After several
weeks of sapping and counter sapping, the Boers, though supported by the
fire of the big gun in its new emplacement, were expelled from the
Brickfields on March 23.
April was marked by the final withdrawal of the big gun, which, after a
heavy bombardment on the 11th, was sent away to Pretoria; and by the
appearance of young Eloff, fresh from the capital, with instructions to
do what he could to stimulate the attack, for once in a way, into real
activity. More than a fortnight elapsed before he succeeded. Snyman gave
him little encouragement, but could not oppose a mandate from Kruger,
Eloff's grandfather.
The Molopo River, after passing south of the town, runs through the only
weak place in the defence, the native location, which during the first
few days of the siege had been attacked without result by Cronje.
Westward of it the steep banks of the river afford a covered way of
access to the thickly clustered huts lying within the perimeter of the
defence, which Eloff saw might be turned if he got a footing among them.
Early in the morning of May 12 a heavy fire was opened upon the town
from the east, but was soon discontinued; and then an alarm came from
the S.W. It was Eloff, who, with 300 burghers, had wriggled up the river
bed through the outposts and had set fire to the native huts: a signal
for the reinforcements which Snyman had promised in writing. It also
warned the garrison. The natives were too much terrified to offer
resistance, and Eloff, leaving the greater part of his force to hold the
location, advanced upon the town. The police building in the open was
surrounded and the detachment holding it taken prisoners. A pause was
now made to allow the promised reinforcements to come up.
Eloff's gallant thrust gave the garrison the opportunity for which it
had long been hoping. The troops of the western section of the defence
closed in and were manoeuvred by Baden-Powell through the telephone. The
door by which Eloff came in was shut, not only to a retreat but also to
the reinforcements which timidly knocked at it; the burghers holding the
location were overpowered, and Eloff's party was penned up in the police
building with its prisoners, whose condition was suddenly dramatically
reversed. Eloff, seeing that Snyman had failed him, surrendered to the
men he had captured a few hours before, within the walls of the prison
in which he had confined them.
The ordeal of Mafeking soon came to an end. On May 15 it was reported
that the relief column under Mahon, who on that day joined Plumer at
Massibi on the Molopo twenty miles from Mafeking, was approaching. The
combined forces, though vigorously opposed by Delarey, whom L. Botha had
sent when the news of the advance reached him, entered the town on May
17 and ended a siege of 213 days.
Mafeking, the last and most instructive of the sieges, proved that there
was hardly any disparity of numbers or preponderance of available
military resources that could not be neutralized by good leadership
opposed to bad. Baden-Powell had not only detained a considerable Boer
force on the edge of the storm, but with a body of irregular troops had
beaten the men of Magersfontein, Colenso, and Spion Kop.
The relief of Mafeking, however, did not vitally affect the general
situation. The capture of the town during Lord Robert's advance would no
doubt have caused annoyance and trouble, but if necessary it could have
been retaken without much difficulty. Nor would its fall have greatly
benefited the enemy, who probably would have been tempted by the success
to hold an unsound position and detain in it commandos urgently required
elsewhere.
Kimberley, Mafeking, and Wepener, more than the operations at large,
demonstrated the anomalous character of the war. Hitherto, invaders had
been accustomed to besiege the invaded, in South Africa the invaded
besieged the invaders. Such a reversal of the order of things military
had rarely before occurred. The sieges of the Peninsular War are not an
exception, for Wellington was from a military, though not from a
political point of view, as much an invader as the lieutenants of
Napoleon.
Baden-Powell is a suppressed personality whose merit was not fully
recognized. With scarcely an exception, no individual leader was more
self-reliant, or handled imperfect tools with greater skill. For seven
months he kept the flag flying over the lonely Baralong kraal in the
veld. His unconventional even theatrical methods were not to the taste
of his serious superiors, who underestimated his success. His only
reward was the Companionship of the Bath, which was also bestowed upon
the militia colonels, most of whom, from no fault or no want of zeal on
their part, but from lack of opportunity, never met the enemy except in
some casual paltry skirmish.
The junction of the two columns advancing to the relief of
Mafeking--Plumer's from the north and Mahon's from the south--was
effected at the right moment, for it is doubtful whether either of them
acting alone would have been able to deal with Delarey.
Plumer with the Rhodesian Regiment had been trekking here and there and
skirmishing with the enemy for seven months. On the eve of the war he
was sent by Baden-Powell to Tuli, a village in Rhodesia not far from the
right bank of the Limpopo, which is the northern boundary of the
Transvaal. His instructions were "to defend the border, to attract the
enemy away towards the north, and then in due time to co-operate with
the British force," which it was expected would soon be invading the
Transvaal from the south, and also to overawe the doubtful native tribes
between Tuli and Mafeking, a distance of 500 miles; and he had under his
immediate command at Tuli one irregular regiment 500 strong.
He remained for some weeks seeing to the drifts, which were now in his
possession and now in that of the enemy. A Boer raid into Rhodesia on
November 2 forced the outlying detachments back upon Tuli, which was
seriously threatened by some commandos under F.A. Grobler of Marico. The
Government of Pretoria, however, growing anxious at the presence of
British troops elsewhere, vetoed a promising enterprise and recalled
him. The raid of November 2 was answered a few weeks later by Plumer,
who, finding the drifts unoccupied, reconnoitred thirty miles towards
the south. Nearly six months elapsed before another British soldier set
foot in the Transvaal. A subsequent reconnaissance again found no trace
of the enemy on the left bank of the Limpopo, and showed that it was
unnecessary for him to remain on the river. He had the advantage of
being cut off from communication with superior officers ignorant of
local conditions, and was able to act freely upon his own
responsibility.
He soon heard news which clearly indicated the way he should go. The
railway from Buluwayo to Mafeking was held as far as possible towards
the south by patrols of police under Nicholson, and the Rhodesian
Volunteers under Holdsworth were also on the line. In the gap between
the railhead and Mafeking, a Boer commando, said to have been detached
from Mafeking by Cronje, was at Sekwani on the N.W. border of the
Transvaal and within striking distance of the Western line. It was face
to face with the border tribes and was soon in trouble with them.
Although they were not allowed to attack Sekwani independently, they
were permitted to co-operate as non-combatants in an attack which
Holdsworth was about to make on it, but only on the condition that they
did not cross the Transvaal border. This was a refinement of policy
which they could hardly be expected to understand, and they precipitated
Holdsworth's action by attacking the Boer laager, which lay but a mile
or two across the border, on their own account, and the operation had
therefore to be abandoned. To avenge this native attack, in which
several burghers had been killed, reinforcements were brought over by
the Boers from the Pietersburg line, and Holdsworth's position at
Mochudi on the Western line, whither he had retired after the Sekwani
failure, was endangered.
This was the news which reached Plumer at the end of the year. His
original instructions were obsolescent and he readily adapted himself to
the altered situation. He saw that it was more important to clear the
railway north of Mafeking than to remain where he was on the chance of a
Boer invasion of Rhodesia, of which his reconnaissances south of the
Limpopo saw no sign. The nearest station on the Western line was
Palapye, and on December 27 he set out on his midsummer march of 170
miles to it. Within a fortnight, his little force of irregulars, which
three months before had been sent out into the South African wilderness
to perform duties that might have engrossed a division, passed away from
Tuli beyond the Limpopo on to the visible stage of war near Mochudi.
In the middle of January, 1900, he reached Gaberones. On his left flank
Sekwani was still occupied by the enemy, though in reduced numbers; in
front of him the Boers were not only strongly posted on the railway at
Crocodile Pools, but able to draw upon Mafeking for reinforcements, by
the help of which they successfully resisted an attack on February 11.
Plumer's force, though augmented by detachments he had picked up on the
line, was unequal to the task of advancing along it. He therefore
decided to diverge from the railway and advance by way of Kanya, a
native town lying twenty miles west of the line.
On March 6 he reached Lobatsi, where he was forty-five miles from
Mafeking. He found, however, that it was an awkward place to defend and
soon quitted it, as Baden-Powell seemed to be in no immediate need, and
was in fact averse to Plumer's small force throwing itself upon the
besiegers. With the greater part of his command, the rest being sent
back to hold the railway at Crocodile Pools, he withdrew to the base
which he had established at Kanya; afterwards advancing to Sefetili,
thirty miles from Mafeking, where he awaited the approach of Mahon's
relieving column from the south. Baden-Powell, rejoicing in his siege,
was not anxious that the game which he was playing so well should be
brought to a premature conclusion, and was more afraid for Plumer than
for himself.
Plumer filled in his two months at Kanya and Sefetili by occasional
raids in the direction of Mafeking and by an expedition towards Zeerust.
The column in the south, of whose movements many false reports reached
him from time to time, seemed to be tarrying by the way, and it was not
until May 12 that he received a message from Lord Roberts that it was
nearing its destination.
For some weeks after his entry into Bloemfontein, Lord Roberts was
unable to arrange for the direct relief of Mafeking by a column
specially detailed for the purpose. He had originally intended that this
should be done by Methuen, but subsequently ordered him to operate in
the Free State on the left flank of the advance on the Transvaal. He
hoped to apply his favourite method of an automatic relief, brought
about by external pressure elsewhere. At the end of April, however, when
it had become an urgent matter, he ordered Hunter, who had recently
arrived at Kimberley from Natal, to send out a mounted force under
Mahon, following it himself with the rest of the Xth Division.
He left Kimberley on May 3, and on the following day Mahon set out from
Barkly West on his 230 miles' march to Mafeking. Mahon advanced wide of
the railway up the Hart's River, which joins the Vaal at Barkly West,
his right flank being covered by Hunter, who kept close to the Vaal.
Mahon met with no serious resistance until he had covered 200 miles of
his journey, when he found a, force which had been sent down from
Mafeking across his path, and which diverted him to Massibi; where he
joined Plumer on May 15.
The advance of the main and less mobile body under Hunter was aided by
demonstrations made by Methuen from Boshof. With three columns claiming
their attention the bewildered Boers were unable to do more than offer a
stout but ineffectual resistance to Hunter on the Vaal on May 5. Two
days later he occupied Fourteen Streams and restored the railway
communication across the Vaal, having during his halt taken possession
of Christiana, a village in the Transvaal a few miles up the river. It
was now no longer necessary for him to hurry after Mahon, and his
advance northwards was made at leisure. Early in June he occupied
Lichtenburg, where Mahon rejoined him.
Mafeking as well as Kimberley were now in the hands of Lord Roberts, but
the Western line joining them to Capetown was not yet secure. The
districts of Cape Colony west of De Aar and Hopetown were remote and
backward, and sparsely inhabited by discontented and unprosperous Dutch
farmers. Nearly a year before, while the Cape Government was placidly
blinking under the shadow of Table Mountain and only taking action that
thwarted the attempts of the Imperial Government to prepare for war, and
like the unjust steward intriguing for reception in Boer houses if the
Empire should fail, arms had been sent into these districts by the Boers
of the Republics, and courses of instruction in the use of them were
actually being held.
To stir up the discontented and set the veld on fire, a party of
Transvaalers swooped down from Vryburg before the war was many days old.
Rebel commandos were raised, and most of the districts lying between the
Orange and the Molopo were involved, some of them being annexed by
proclamation to the Republics. For several months the trouble was
confined to the right bank of the Orange, but during February it passed
over to the left bank.
In pursuance of his policy of striking swiftly and strongly at the
centres of population, and not from neglect, Lord Roberts had left the
rebellious and disaffected districts more or less to themselves, in the
belief that indirect action would retrieve the situation and that his
advance would take the heart out of the rebels and deter them from
crossing the river; and for some months there had been no British troops
south of the Orange except at De Aar and Hopetown.
Now, however, the railway, which until his arrival at Bloemfontein was
his only line of communication, was threatened. The Prieska and Herbert
districts on the left bank of the Orange, and even the remote Gordonia
district lying in the angle between the Orange and the Molopo, which was
too far away to be included in the first batch of proclamations, were
annexed by the Boers. There was much danger of the advancing army not
only finding its communications broken, but also a formidable rebellion
springing up behind it.
The troops on the line were insufficient to deal with the situation, and
Lord Roberts was obliged to draw upon Clements, who was acting in the
other disturbed districts of the Cape Colony south of the Free State.
Lord Kitchener, who chanced to be passing through De Aar on his way back
from Naauwpoort, where he had been sent to look after the central
advance, made arrangements for the Prieska operations and rejoined Lord
Roberts at Kimberley; but his presence was soon required again at De
Aar. Three columns had started westward from the line, but the centre
column, which was composed of the troops withdrawn from Clement's
command, met with opposition in the Prieska district, and was compelled
to retire on March 6. When the news reached Lord Roberts he sent
Kitchener to take charge of the operations, which from that time was
successful. The rebellion south of the Orange was suppressed; the
leaders disappeared; and by the end of the month Kitchener was free to
return to Head Quarters at Bloemfontein.
Not many weeks, however, elapsed before there was trouble in Griqualand,
a considerable portion of which was in the hands of rebel descendants of
the burghers of the Great Trek, who were joined by rebels expelled from
the districts south of the Orange during the late operations. A column
had been sent out against them from Kimberley by Methuen in March, but
Lord Roberts disapproved of the expedition and it was recalled. At the
request of Sir A. Milner, who from the first had been of the opinion
that the British hold on South Africa was in greater danger from
rebellion in the Colony than from the commandos of the two Republics,
Lord Roberts consented to send a force into Griqualand under the command
of Warren, who was brought round from Natal, and returned to the country
through which he had worked in the Bechuanaland Expedition of 1885. In
the middle of May, Warren set out from Belmont. The only regular troops
in his column were a few Irish mounted infantry. Douglas was easily
taken on May 21, and on his way to Campbell he was compelled by supply
and transport difficulties to halt at Faber's Put, where at dawn on May
30 he was surprised by the rebels, who, knowing that they had not to
face regular troops, anticipated an easy victory. They succeeded in
almost surrounding the camp before the alarm was given, but after a
brief struggle were driven off.
Early in June Campbell and Griquatown were occupied; and on the 24th
Kuruman, which had been in the hands of the rebels for nearly six
months, was recovered. Near Khies, lower down the Orange, the force
which had been left to watch the banks after the suppression of the
Prieska rebellion, some of the fugitives from which had returned to the
river under the leadership of a Jew, attacked and carried their laager.
This and the Faber's Put affair were the only serious fights in the
clearing of the Colony north of the Orange.
Thus by the end of June Lord Roberts had secured the railway from
Mafeking and Kimberley to the south.