The New Colony
[Sidenote: Map, p. 260.]
The Orange River Colony did not receive its incorporation into the
British Empire with a display of gratitude for the honour conferred upon
it.
The urgent message sent by Botha to De Wet on May 27 after the British
Army had crossed into the Transvaal was hardly necessary to incite that
free lance into action after his own heart, and he at once quitted
Frankfort for Lindley.
When Lord Roberts entered the Transvaal he left behind him a
considerable force to teach the New Colony its duties. Besides the
stationary troops at Bloemfontein and on the railway, the VIIIth and
Colonial Divisions under Rundle and Brabant were at Senekal and
Ficksburg; Colvile with the IXth Division, who had been taken off Ian
Hamilton's lead and allowed to run alone, was near Lindley; and Methuen
had come into Kroonstad from Bothaville, the line of his march, which
was originally towards the Transvaal, having been changed by orders from
Lord Roberts.
Such were the forces against which De Wet was ready to fling himself.
Early in June he was faced by another opponent. Lord Kitchener had come
down from the Transvaal with a strong column.
Lord Roberts, on leaving Bloemfontein for the north, instructed Rundle
to "exercise a vigilant control east of the railway." In co-operation
with Brabant, he worked up through the fertile district along the Basuto
border, slowly but steadily; his immediate object being to prevent the
enemy breaking back towards the south. No serious opposition was
encountered, and by the middle of the month the Divisions had advanced
to Clocolan and Winburg, where Rundle came in touch with the IXth
Division.
Colvile received orders to advance to Lindley and Heilbron. He was
instructed to reach Heilbron with the Highland Brigade on May 29, and
was informed that a force of Yeomanry under Spragge would on May 23 join
him at Ventersburg, which he would pass through on his march.
Spragge was unable to be at Ventersburg on the date fixed and was
ordered on to Kroonstad, where he received telegraphic instructions to
join Colvile at Lindley on May 26 at the latest. It has never been
ascertained by whom this fatal message was despatched. No British staff
officer has ever acknowledged himself the sender of it, and it has been
suggested that it was sent by a Boer sympathizer who was better informed
of Colvile's movements than the Intelligence Staff.
Colvile believed that his presence at Heilbron on May 29 was
imperatively required in connexion with the advance, and, although very
weak in mounted troops, he pushed on from Ventersburg without waiting
for Spragge. On May 26 he reached Lindley after some resistance outside
the town, and next day resumed his march to Heilbron, which, though
checked on the way, he reached on the appointed day.
Meanwhile, Spragge was doing his best to deliver himself to the IXth
Division, to which he was waybilled. He moved a few miles out of
Kroonstad on May 25, and next evening was in bivouac within eighteen
miles of Lindley. Next day he resumed his march on the town, about the
same time that Colvile was quitting it for Heilbron. The two commanders
were in entire ignorance of each other's movements.
At midday, Spragge reconnoitred the town, and finding it occupied,
withdrew to a position outside. Although Colvile had quitted it but a
few hours previously, and although the dust of his column could still be
seen on the Heilbron road, a commando under Michael Prinsloo, which he
had driven out, had promptly returned; and some burghers who had
surrendered to Spragge on May 26, and who, having given up their rifles,
had been "allowed to return to their farms," went to Lindley instead and
gave warning of the approach of the Yeomanry.
Spragge counted on being able to draw rations at Lindley when he joined
Colvile, and marched out of Kroonstad with two days' rations only, and
these, although eked out by a capture of sheep on the way, were almost
exhausted. There were three courses open to him: to retire to Kroonstad,
to follow Colvile, or to remain where he was. He chose the last.
He took up, and did his best to make defensible, a plateau and kopje
position two miles N.W. of the town. He had 500 men, but no guns, and he
reported the situation to Colvile, who was eighteen miles away when he
received the message next morning; and to Rundle, who was at Senekal.
Colvile answered his appeal for assistance with a refusal, but suggested
a retirement on Kroonstad; but the message did not reach Spragge. Rundle
was too far away to help Spragge directly, but made a movement towards
Bethlehem, which he hoped would draw the enemy away from Lindley.
On May 28 the Boers took up positions which practically surrounded
Spragge, but he held his own that day and the next; and although the
enemy was reinforced on the 29th, he was not so closely invested that he
could not have broken out. Firing was heard in the S.E., and Spragge,
believing that it was Rundle in action, endeavoured without success to
communicate with him.
So long as the investing force was without guns, Spragge was confident
of being able to hold on. But on May 30 a further reinforcement came in.
Martin Prinsloo joined his brother with three guns and a strong
commando. The Prinsloos, who were acting under the orders of De Wet, had
originally been detailed to look after Colvile, but were drawn away by
the attraction of an easier prey at Lindley.
On May 30 a kopje on the west, from which the Boers were sniping into
the position, was captured by Spragge, but soon fell again into the
hands of the burghers. It was recovered next morning, but pressure
elsewhere squeezed it finally out of the grasp of the re-captors. The
Boers had brought their guns into action. The key of Spragge's position
was two kopjes on the S.E. of the defence. The outer kopje was rushed by
the enemy, the detachment occupying it being driven back towards the
inner kopje. A panic-stricken non-commissioned officer in the connecting
post between them raised the white flag without authority, and, it is
said, was immediately shot for having done so. The officer in command on
the inner kopje considered that he was bound by the act and recognized
it, and only hastened the inevitable end. There was a last wriggle or
two, and then Spragge, who was surrounded by 2,000 Boers with artillery,
gave in.
Nearly 500 yeomen were added to the panel of British prisoners of war by
the hawk-like swoop of De Wet and the brothers Prinsloo almost under the
eyes of three Divisions of the British Army. For not only were Colvile
and Rundle aware of Spragge's predicament, but as soon as it was
reported to Lord Roberts, Methuen was ordered to the rescue.
Methuen, who only arrived at Kroonstad from the west on May 28, was
already on the move to help Colvile, from whom a disquieting message had
been received at Head Quarters. Colvile's safe arrival at Heilbron next
day rendered assistance unnecessary, and Methuen, under instructions
from Lord Roberts, turned towards Lindley. He was, however, too late,
for as he approached the town the news of Spragge's surrender reached
him on June 1. He ran into the rear of the Boers hurrying away with
their prey, and even intercepted two guns and some wagons, but was
unable to retain them.
The Lindley affair sent Colvile back to England in the wake of Gatacre.
The responsibility of the surrender was fixed upon him and he was
deprived of his command. He had no doubt been in a false position during
the first fortnight of the advance from Bloemfontein when he was kept
trailing behind a junior officer, and this slight perhaps affected his
judgment, but he was constitutionally incapable of viewing a situation
synoptically and perspectively. As at Sannah's Post, so again at Lindley
the halation of a word or two in his orders fogged the image on his
retina. He doggedly stared at the words _Heilbron, May 29_, as if the
whole issue of the campaign depended upon them. There was nothing in the
context to show that they were more than the details of an itinerary
which he was expected to follow if circumstances permitted. He was
urgently in need of the very mounted troops with which he made no effort
to put himself in touch. _Bis peccare in bello non licet_. Lord Roberts
could forgive once, but Colvile was superseded for having twice shown a
"want of military capacity and initiative."[44]
Yet the disaster was not due to his default alone, although the
contributory defaults of others were rightly not permitted to excuse
him. He had good reason to think that a well-mounted force would be able
to take care of itself, and to believe that proper staff arrangements
had been made for Spragge's march; but in each of these warrantable
assumptions he was wrong. Lindley was the first of a series of disasters
which seemed to show that Lord Roberts had pushed on too hastily.
Rundle's endeavour to help Spragge by a demonstration in the direction
of Bethlehem soon came to an end. It is said that a telegram in which he
announced the movement to Brabant fell into the hands of the Boers, who
promptly utilized the information. On May 29 he was seriously checked at
the Biddulphsberg, where they had taken up a position. He failed in an
attack on what he believed was the Boers' flank but which was in reality
their front. During the engagement he received a telegram from Head
Quarters, dated three days previously, ordering him to join Brabant in
the Ficksburg district, and he withdrew from the action, having suffered
186 casualties, some of which were caused by a fire which broke out in
the long grass through which he had advanced, and in which helpless
wounded men were lying. A brigade of Tucker's Division under Clements
took his place at Senekal.
De Wet now set himself in person to execute the task entrusted to him by
Botha of getting behind the British force in the Transvaal and breaking
or interrupting the line of communication in the Free State. He had not
long to wait for opportunities. He left Frankfort with 800 men, and on
June 2 placed himself in observation near Heilbron, where Colvile was
awaiting a supply column from the railway at Roodeval. The convoy was
harassed from the first by mischances. Against Colvile's orders it was
despatched with but a small escort and without guns. When he heard that
sufficient protection could not be given, he counter-ordered the convoy,
but the message did not arrive until after it had started.
On the second day of the march a body of the enemy was found blocking
the road at Zwavel Kranz between Heilbron and Heilbron Road Station. It
was De Wet waiting for the convoy.
The news of its plight reached Heilbron Road Station,[45] and a
relieving column was sent out, which came within four miles of Zwavel
Kranz. No firing, however, was heard, and the officer in command,
hastily concluding that all was well, returned to the railway without
finding the convoy, which next morning surrendered, the victim of
easy-going indifference and neglect.
So far De Wet had done well, but he was only beginning his work. The
railway between Bloemfontein and Vereeniging was weakly held by
regiments of militia threaded like beads on a string in posts along the
line. At Roodeval supplies and stores in large quantities, urgently
needed by the Army in the Transvaal, were waiting until the bridge over
the Rhenoster River, which had been destroyed by the Boers retreating
before Lord Roberts, could be rebuilt. There was scarcely a post that
did not beckon to De Wet to come to it.
He was within reach of the railway at three vulnerable points, and he
divided the force to attack them simultaneously; himself taking command
of the raid on Roodeval, which was held by casual details of
departmental troops stiffened by a detachment of militia. Thus an
important link in the chain was unable to bear a comparatively slight
tension. No one was recognized as being definitely responsible for the
railway north of Bloemfontein. The charge of it had been given to an
officer who, unknown to the staff, was at the time in hospital and
unable to take over his command; detachments were moved promiscuously by
orders which came now from Pretoria and now from Bloemfontein; and in
the chaos De Wet wriggled in between Colvile and Methuen.
On June 7 Heilbron Road Station, Rhenoster River Bridge, and Roodeval
were captured in succession. At the Bridge the Derbyshire Militia fought
gallantly for several hours, but were overpowered in a hopeless
position, and soon afterwards Roodeval and its accumulated booty fell
into the hands of De Wet,[46] who on that day severed Bloemfontein from
Pretoria for a week and added nearly 500 men to the muster-roll of his
prisoners of war.
It was evident to Lord Roberts that things had taken a serious turn, and
that his position in the Transvaal was unsound. In framing his plans for
the advance from Bloemfontein, he had naturally expected that the Natal
railway would be available as an alternative line of communication soon
after he entered the Transvaal; but the movements of Buller were
deliberate, and nearly a third of it was still in the enemy's hands. It
is probable that Lord Roberts would have been less disinclined to the
"steam-rollering" policy if he could have foreseen that on the day he
entered Pretoria the Natal Army would be still south of Laing's Nek.
As a preliminary measure pending, the elaboration of a definite scheme
to put the Free State in order, Kitchener, who was always held in
readiness with steam up to proceed to districts in difficulties and
hustle local commandants and their staffs, was sent across the Vaal with
a column; and Methuen's Division was set in motion.
On the Bloemfontein side, Kelly-Kenny took temporary charge of all the
troops south of Kroonstad, whither a brigade under C. Knox was sent to
protect the stores and supplies; and Winburg was strengthened. While C.
De Wet was engaged upon his own work his brother P. De Wet, whom he
threatened to shoot if he gave in, was discussing terms of surrender
with Methuen at Lindley, but as in the contemporaneous negotiations
between C. Botha and Buller at Laing's Nek, and between L. Botha and
Lord Roberts in the Transvaal, no terms of settlement were arranged; and
Methuen quitted a pacificatory colloquy with one brother to encounter
the other in arms, and joined Kitchener at Heilbron Road Station on June
10.
De Wet was elbowed away westwards from the railway, but he soon circled
back, recrossing it at Lieuw Spruit between Rhenoster River Bridge and
Heilbron Road Station, where he not only took fifty prisoners, but
almost captured Kitchener, who chanced to be passing through at the
time.
It is interesting to speculate briefly on the effect which such a
notable capture might have had upon the general situation. The Boers
themselves would hardly have realized its importance. They were unaware
of the position held by Kitchener in the British Army, and his name was
unfamiliar to them. He had been here and there like many another
commander whom they had met in the field. Still, they had never yet
captured an unwounded general officer, and they would no doubt have made
a great effort to prevent his services being again available against
them.[47] It is, however, unlikely that De Wet would have been able to
retain his prisoner for more than a few weeks at most. But no one can
say what De Wet could not do. At home it is probable that a disastrous
reaction would have followed the news of the railway broken, of Lord
Roberts insolated in the Transvaal, and of Lord Kitchener of Khartoum a
prisoner of war and possibly a hostage. It is very doubtful whether the
nation, entangled by fresh difficulties and deafened by pro-Boer yells
growing shriller and shriller every hour, would have remained firm of
purpose. It is hardly too much to say that June 12, 1900, was one of the
most critical dates in the history of the war.
During the next fortnight, attacks on a convoy for Colvile at Heilbron,
on the railway a few miles north of Kroonstad, a threat on Lindley which
almost became a siege, and a raid on Virginia Siding by a commando under
Roux, which sprang out of the Senekal district, maintained the mutiny,
and again showed that however tightly the Boers might seem to be grasped
in the hand, some of them were sure to wriggle through the fingers.
It was soon apparent that the Free State would not be brought into
subjection by haphazard divagations of brigades and columns; and about
the middle of June Lord Roberts planned a systematic and simple
campaign. The towns and strategical points were to be strongly held
while flying columns shepherded De Wet and his commandos and endeavoured
to enfold them. Buller, who arrived at Standerton on June 23, would bar
the way should they attempt to retreat into the Transvaal, and a retreat
southwards would throw them on to Rundle and Brabant. The four flying
columns were based on the line of garrisons which extended from
Heidelberg in the Transvaal to Winburg and Senekal in the Free State.
The command of the Heidelberg column, which was strong in mounted
troops, was given to Ian Hamilton, but an accident compelled him to hand
it over to Hunter, who had come up into the Transvaal after the relief
of Mafeking. The Heilbron column was the Highland Brigade of the late
IXth Division, which was broken up when Colvile returned to England. At
Rhenoster River was Methuen to prevent a break out towards the west.
When the Winburg district was cleared by a strong column under Clements,
who, a few weeks before, had relieved Rundle at Senekal, he would
advance on Bethlehem, Paget at Lindley co-operating with him. As soon as
Hunter, who was put in general charge of all the troops engaged, entered
the Free State, Macdonald was ordered to join him with the Highland
Brigade. Methuen's force at Rhenoster River was soon found to be
unnecessary, as the enemy was retreating in the opposite direction, and
it was sent into the Transvaal.
At the end of June the columns began to move. Each of them was, as it
were, the head of a spear prodding the mob of commandos towards the pen
which had been assigned to them. With them, union was not strength, but
weakness: the more they were agglomerated the less were they to be
feared.
[Illustration: Brandwater Basin.]
Clements herded Roux, whose commando was the only body known to be at
large, towards the kraal, and advanced with Paget to Bethlehem, which
was occupied on July 7. The Boers opposed with delaying actions only,
capturing but being unable to retain two of Paget's guns, and outside
Bethlehem they brought into action and lost a field gun which had been
taken from Gatacre at Stormberg, and which now, after half a year's
exile _in partibus inimicorum_, was restored to the British Service. Two
days after Clement's entry into Bethlehem, he was joined by Hunter, who
had crossed the Vaal on June 29 and had picked up Macdonald at
Frankfort.
The Brandwater Basin, into which the Boers had retreated from Bethlehem,
taking with them Steyn and the Free State Government, which was set up
at Fouriesburg, is a semicircle formed by the Witteberg and Roodeberg at
the head-waters of two tributaries of the Caledon, the Little Caledon
and the Brandwater; the Caledon being the diameter and the mountains the
circumference of the area. The river section of the perimeter lies on
the Basuto border, and the mountain section is wild and difficult, there
being but four wagon roads into it in nearly seventy-five miles: at
Commando, Slabbert's, Retief's, and Naauwpoort Neks. The passes at
Witnek, Nelspoort, and the Golden Gate are scarcely better than rough
bridle-paths.
The strength of the enemy holding the Basin and the Neks was about
7,000. The Boers had indeed established themselves in an apparently
strong defensive position, but they had not been there many days before
they began to ask each other what was the good of it to them. They had
taken it up against the advice of De Wet, who saw that it was playing
the game of Lord Roberts. They had deprived themselves of their mobility
and were confined in a house of detention, where they could do no
mischief except to each other. They realized too late that De Wet was
right. The commandants were at variance and there was indiscipline in
the laagers.
De Wet saw that the Brandwater Basin was no place for him. He was
beating his wings in a vacuum, and he resolved to get out of it as soon
as possible. After a Council of War orders to decamp were issued. The
general idea was that a column under De Wet should break out through
Slabbert's Nek and make for Kroonstad, and that Roux should take out
another column and march on Bloemfontein, a portion of the force being
left behind to guard the passes.
On the night of July 15 De Wet, accompanied by Steyn, who went out to
establish yet another seat of government, pulled his column, which
included 2,600 burghers and 460 vehicles and was nearly three miles
long, out of the Basin through Slabbert's Nek. He met with no
opposition, and successfully carried out the first episode of the
programme.
Hunter at Bethlehem was standing sentry over the northward passes, but
want of supplies and deficiency of ammunition prevented him advancing at
once on the Basin: and of the range before him he had no accurate maps
and knew less about its topography than an astronomer knows of the
Mountains of the Moon. While formulating a scheme for blocking the
passes, De Wet's sudden outbreak took him by surprise, and he was unable
to head the Free State leader, who passed northwards between Bethlehem
and Senekal, pursued by Broadwood's cavalry. The hounds were on the
scent of the first De Wet hunt.
Rundle, who for two months had been painfully, but not with unnecessary
deliberation, pushing his force up the right bank of the Caledon, was at
first ordered by Hunter to watch Slabbert's Nek, but on a report that
the Boers were about to come out through Commando Nek, he was sent back.
The movement, though justified on the assumption that the report, which
came on good authority, was correct, was unfortunate, as it left the key
of the gate at Slabbert's Nek in the enemy's hands, and allowed De Wet
to escape.
De Wet had assigned to himself the initial movement of the withdrawal,
and left the rest of the programme to develop itself without him. Roux
was put in charge of the Brandwater Basin. De Wet was an unpopular
leader. His attempts to leaven the commandos with a little of the
military spirit were resented. He had from the first, with only partial
success, set his face against the incumbrance of wagons which marched
with every commando. On the way to Sannah's Post he had cashiered a
commandant named Vilonel for disobeying his orders with regard to
transport. His nomination of Roux did not give satisfaction. The
partisans of other leaders protested, and it was determined to settle by
election the question of the Chief Command. In the meantime, the
management was in the hands of a triumvirate composed of Roux, Olivier,
and Martin Prinsloo.
In the chaos, the commandos which De Wet had arranged should break out
remained in the trap and simplified Hunter's task. In succession,
Retief's Nek, Slabbert's Nek, and Commando Nek were taken, the latter by
Rundle, who on July 28 joined Hunter at Fouriesburg. Witnek had been
abandoned by the Boers, who now had only Naauwpoort Nek and the scarcely
practicable Golden Gate open to them.
The Nek was closed by Hunter on July 27, and a position outside the
Golden Gate, but not the Gate itself, was occupied. The greater part of
the Boer force was now practically sealed up in the Basin.
A Council of War was held to elect a new chief commandant. Had the vote
been taken ten days earlier the situation might possibly have been
saved, but the belated proceedings which displayed the weakness of a
democratically organized army, and which, in the absence of
representatives of the commandos not on the spot, were of doubtful
validity, only added to the existing confusion. Prinsloo, however, seems
to have been informally chosen.
His first act was to endeavour to obtain an armistice from Hunter, who
naturally refused it. A few hours later Prinsloo agreed to surrender,
and on July 30 the main body of the Boers in the Basin laid down their
arms at Slapkranz. Roux, the rival candidate for the Chief Command,
protested against the surrender, not only to Prinsloo, but also in
person to Hunter, to whom he pleaded, that as Prinsloo had not been duly
elected, the act was unauthorized and therefore was not binding on him.
Hunter refused to listen to such quibbles. On several occasions during
the war the Boers had profited by the honourable reluctance of the
British commanders to repudiate an unauthorized raising of the white
flag, lest they should be accused of having laid a trap to lure on the
enemy. Hunter rightly held that Roux's plea for local option was
inadmissible, and that the surrender must apply to the whole force. Roux
then yielded.
A large number of burghers, however, as soon as they heard that Prinsloo
had agreed to surrender, hurried away under Haasbroek, and scraped
through the Golden Gate and joined Olivier and Hattingh outside the
Basin. They were successful in evading the capitulation, for Olivier,
when informed of it officially under a flag of truce, also declined to
be bound by Prinsloo's act, and Hunter was unable to insist upon it. He
trekked away towards Harrismith unmolested by the troops watching the
Golden Gate, and he baffled for four weeks the columns sent in pursuit
by Hunter, who, however, prevented him joining De Wet. He was taken
prisoner near Winburg on August 27.
The tangible result of the Brandwater Basin operations was the capture
of more than 4,000 Boers and of three guns, two of which had been lost
at Sannah's Post. The mountains in which the burghers had taken refuge
became a prison, from which they were taken when Hunter came on circuit
for the gaol delivery, and on conviction they were sent beyond the seas.
Yet subsequent events showed that Lord Roberts would have made a good
bargain if he could have exchanged all the burghers and the guns, and
all the loot of horses, cattle, and sheep, for one man who had slipped
through Slabbert's Nek on July 15, 1900.
Notes:
[Footnote 44: Napoleon said that "a military order must not be passively
obeyed except when it is given by a superior who is on the spot at the
moment the order is given, knows the state of things, and can hear
objections and give full explanations to the officer charged with
executing the order."]
[Footnote 45: Also called Vredefort Road Station.]
[Footnote 46: 660,000 rounds of Lee-Metford ammunition were buried by
him for future use.]
[Footnote 47: In the Russian War the Japanese gave orders that a Russian
admiral, who was a wounded prisoner of war on board a Japanese torpedo
boat, was to be shot if any attempt was made by the Russians to capture
it.]