Nec Celer nec Audax
[Sidenote: Map, p. 50.]
Lord Roberts had almost as much difficulty in bringing Buller out of
Ladysmith as he had had in putting him into it. The relieved garrison,
wasted and enfeebled by the rigours of the siege, was unfit to take the
field, but there does not seem to have been any good reason why the
relieving force, or at least a portion of it, should not have been
pushed forward boldly without delay. The inaction invited the retreating
enemy to halt and occupy the Biggarsberg Range; only a few days after
Buller had informed Lord Roberts that he did not expect that any stand
would be made south of Laing's Nek. Buller did indeed propose on March 3
to advance on Northern Natal, as well as to attack the Drakensberg
passes leading into the Free State; but Lord Roberts thought the scheme
premature and ordered him to remain on the defensive, to police the
country adjacent to the Harrismith railway with the greater part of his
available force, and to send one division round by way of East London to
join the central advance under Gatacre. Warren's Division therefore left
Ladysmith on March 6. White, to whom Lord Roberts had intended to give a
command in the Free State, was compelled by ill health to return to
England. The order to "remain strictly on the defensive" was afterwards
not unreasonably quoted by Buller in justification of two months of
inaction, which, however, Lord Roberts ascribed to other causes, as he
had agreed to subsequent proposals made by Buller for offensive action.
The Boers on the Biggarsberg at first numbered about 15,000, but by the
end of March many commandos had been attracted away by Lord Roberts'
advance to more strenuous fields. Some time passed without any definite
action having been agreed upon between Lord Roberts and Buller. The
latter objected to almost every proposal made by the former, and
sometimes even on reconsideration criticized his own proposals. He was
allowed to recall the Vth Division, which after a brief absence rejoined
his command; but even with it he protested against an advance on Van
Reenen's Pass, which he had himself proposed and which he was instructed
to make at the beginning of April, because Lord Roberts would consent to
the employment of one division only in it. Lord Roberts did not insist
on the movement, as Buller now said that it would endanger not only his
own force, but also Natal; and finding that Buller had far more troops
than he could usefully employ, ordered him to send the Xth Division
under Hunter round to Kimberley. Even after its departure Buller
outnumbered the enemy by more than five to one.
He was still haunted by the troubles of the Tugela, and was unable to
nerve himself for the risks that every leader must run. The Boers
bewildered him. He could plan no scheme without a conviction that
somehow their "knavish tricks" would frustrate it, and his inactivity
made him more prone than ever to brood over possible mischances. He
remained in Ladysmith because it was the only course open to him after
he had by a process of elimination considered and rejected all the
alternatives. Each of them had its disadvantages and its dangers,
therefore it were better to stay where he was. During a critical period
the Natal Army was of as little use to Lord Roberts as were the Spanish
contingents to Wellington in the Peninsula; and its laggard action
retarded the progress of the war. Lord Roberts laid his plans for the
advance on the assumption that it would be in operation on his right
flank when he reached Pretoria, and if L. Botha had found it pressing on
him when he was playing at peace-making in June, instead of engaged in
equally fruitless negotiations with his brother 180 miles away at
Laing's Nek, it is improbable that he would have continued the struggle.
On May 2 Lord Roberts informed Buller that he was ready to start from
Bloemfontein, and that he expected the Natal Army to co-operate with him
by attacking the Boers on the Biggarsberg, and then advancing towards
the Transvaal. For this movement Buller considered that his force, which
consisted of three divisions of infantry and three brigades of mounted
troops, in all about 45,000 men, was insufficient; but he proceeded to
carry it out. The Boers were in occupation of the whole line of the
Biggarsberg from Helpmakaar westwards, and commanded the roads as well
as the railway running through the range.
Buller on this occasion determined rightly upon a turning movement. All
his previous attacks had either been frontal or had been made so by the
enemy. His plan was to move eastwards with the IInd Division under
Clery, while the Vth Division under Hildyard, who succeeded Warren when
the latter was called away to Bechuanaland, advanced up the railway
against the Boer centre. The IVth Division under Lyttelton, composed of
the infantry which had been in Ladysmith during the siege, was kept in
reserve pending the development of the turning movement, which began on
May 11, and was skilfully conducted by Buller and was entirely
successful. Places and rivers which had not been named in the chronicle
of the war since October of the previous year now emerged from their
obscurity. Elandslaagte became the fulcrum of an aggressive operation.
Sunday's River and the Waschbank River after an interval of seven months
were again crossed by British troops, not, like Yule's force, in hasty
retreat, but in confident advance.
The Boers prepared for, and fully expected, a direct advance on Beith by
way of Van Tender's Pass, but Buller made for the extreme flank of the
range near Helpmakaar, which they held but lightly. It was rendered
untenable on May 13, and after dark they retired on Beith, setting fire
to the veld to mask the movement and hinder pursuit. At dawn Dundonald
pushed on through the flames and smoke with his mounted infantry, but
was checked by a body of Irish traitors who were acting as rearguard to
their flying employers, and was unable to come up with the burghers. On
the following night his patrols reported that Dundee was clear, and
Buller occupied the town and reached Newcastle on May 18. The success of
the turning movement was due in a great measure to a small force under
Bethune, which had been lying for some months lower down the Tugela, and
which Buller called up to threaten Helpmakaar from the south while he
advanced from the west. It had been originally detached to protect his
right flank during the advance on Ladysmith, and after long inaction as
a watching force was restored to the strenuous campaign.
Of the rest of Buller's troops, one portion only, namely Hildyard's
Division, was actively engaged in the movement. Its menace to the Boer
centre near Glencoe, through which passed the railway to the north,
attracted commandos away from the enemy's left flank at Helpmakaar and
facilitated the turning movement. Lyttelton's Division and two cavalry
brigades, which although Buller had informed Lord Roberts that he "was
short of his proper strength" for the advance he had left behind near
Ladysmith, took no part in it; and the absence of the cavalry allowed
the enemy to retreat without molestation. The advance of Hildyard's
Division was retarded, not by opposition, but by the duty which fell
upon it of repairing the railway along which it advanced, and it did not
reach Newcastle until May 27. On the 23rd Lytteltonand most of the
cavalry were ordered up from Ladysmith.
As soon as Buller reached Newcastle he sent on Dundonald to reconnoitre
the Laing's Nek position. On the west it was flanked by Majuba Hill, on
the east by Pougwana, and was found to be strongly held. He therefore
decided to make no further advance until he had concentrated his force
at Newcastle. The cutting edge of the reconstructed Natal wedge had not
as yet sufficient substance behind it to warrant its being put into
operation. Pending the assembly of the Army Buller prodded across the
Buffalo at Vryheid and Utrecht in order to safeguard his right flank.
The expedition against the former town was ambushed and compelled to
retire; while the two strong columns which were sent against Utrecht
were hardly more successful. The town did indeed profess to surrender,
but no garrison was left to enforce the submission, and on the
withdrawal of the troops the Boers hovering in the hills returned like
birds who have been temporarily scared out of their nests.
By the end of May, Buller's Army was concentrated in the northern corner
of Natal. Towering over his left front was the Drakensberg Range through
which Botha's Pass runs into the Orange Free State; on his right front
was the Buffalo River with a difficult country beyond; and on his front
was Majuba of ill-omened memory and Laing's Nek, over which the road to
Volksrust and the Transvaal passed.
Buller remained at Newcastle for eighteen days, of which three were an
armistice during negotiations for surrender with C. Botha, who was
unable to accept the terms offered. On June 5 the advance was resumed,
Laing's Nek being the immediate objective. At first Buller proposed to
attack it directly, but soon after reaching Newcastle he found that the
enemy was unassailably established on the position, and that it must be
turned either from the east or from the west. The former movement would
involve a wider detour through difficult country to the line of advance
which would be taken up after the Transvaal was entered, and the western
movement through Botha's Pass was therefore selected. Lord Roberts had
for some time been in favour of it, but he had intended that it should
be more than a mere turning operation. His advance from Bloemfontein had
driven many of the commandos into the N.E. corner of the Free State, and
he asked Buller to cross the Drakensberg and take them in rear by
passing into the Transvaal by way of Vrede; but Buller could not be
persuaded to remove himself so far from the railway. He had already
missed an opportunity of co-operating with the main advance by a
westward movement from Ladysmith to Van Reenen's Pass along the railway
to Harrismith, where the presence of a division of the Natal Army would
have been of the greatest use. The relations between Lord Roberts and
Buller during the Natal campaign were rather those of leaders commanding
the armies of allied nations than of superior officer and subordinate.
Thus the westward movement, instead of being a helpful operation at
large in support of the main advance, was whittled down to the turning
of Laing's Nek. Between Botha's Pass and Laing's Nek the dominant
contours roughly assume the outline of a sickle and its handle, the Pass
being at the end of the handle and the Nek near the point of the blade.
Within the curve of the blade stands the high Inkwelo Mountain facing
Majuba Hill, and at the upper end of the handle is a mountain of less
elevation called Inkweloane. The Ingogo River, which rises near the
Pass, is flanked on its right bank by Van Wyk's Hill, which commands the
eastern approach to the Pass, and on its left bank by Spitz Kop, a
detached hill of the main range.
Inkwelo had been held for some days by a portion of Clery's Division.
The Boers occupied Spitz Kop and the ridge from Inkweloane to the Pass
and a short section beyond it, but their line was thin. The Vryheid and
Utrecht affairs had deceived them into the belief that an eastward
turning movement was in contemplation. On June 6 Van Wyk's Hill was
occupied by Hildyard and held against the enemy on Spitz Kop, who
attempted to dislodge him; and by the following morning artillery had
been brought up, and the Pass and the enemy's position on the adjacent
crestline were commanded. These on June 8 were carried by an infantry
movement in echelon with loss of two men killed. Spitz Kop offered no
resistance. A fusillade broke out on Inkweloane, but Dundonald's brigade
soon quenched it by a determined ascent up alpine slopes to the
crestline As at Helpmakaar the enemy set fire to the grass and passed
away behind a veil of smoke.
The capture of Botha's Pass was an affair which did credit to Buller. It
showed that since Colenso he had learnt how to use artillery, and his
disposition of his guns was admirable. They rendered the enemy's
position untenable and left little but hard climbing to the infantry. It
can hardly be termed a battle, it was rather an autumn manoeuvre
engagement, conducted on Lord Roberts' principles. A very important
position was won and the enemy driven back with scarcely the shedding of
a drop of blood on either side. Hildyard was in executive charge of the
operations.
Thus, after eight months' fighting, the main body of the Natal Army was
at last in bivouac in the enemy's country. Buller had taken Botha's Pass
with three infantry and two cavalry brigades; and with these he made for
his next objective, the town of Volksrust in the Transvaal, a few miles
north of Laing's Nek, which Clery at Ingogo was watching from the south.
Lyttelton was posted on the left bank of the Buffalo watching the right
flank of the advance.
Buller's operations in the Free State lasted two days only. On June 10
he engaged a small body of the retreating enemy and entered the
Transvaal. In front of him was the Versamelberg, a spur of the
Drakensberg, over which the road from Vrede to Volksrust passes at
Alleman's Nek, where 2,000 Boers with four guns had taken up a very
strong position. The road rises to the Nek between heights, and the
initial movements of the attack had to be made across two miles of open
veld. The burghers had not had the time, or did not think it necessary,
to strengthen the position artificially, but they were observed throwing
up some entrenchments when Buller approached.
His bivouac on June 10 was at the Gansvlei Spruit on the Transvaal-Free
State border, and next day at dawn he resumed his march on Volksrust. No
serious opposition was encountered until early in the afternoon, when
Dundonald, who was operating on the right front, came under artillery
fire from the Nek. The infantry, whose left flank was watched by
Brocklehurst with a cavalry brigade, was then ordered to advance, the
objective of the 2nd Brigade under E. Hamilton being the ridge on the
left of the Nek, and that of the 10th Brigade under Talbot Coke the
ridges on the right of it, the 11th Brigade under Wynne being kept in
reserve.
The advance was made under a heavy and worrying but not very effective
fire from each section of the ridge. The key of the position proved to
be a conical hill on the right of the road at the entrance to the Nek.
The Dorsets of Coke's brigade gallantly climbed the slopes, and aided by
artillery fire carried it with the bayonet. The fight, however, was far
from ended. The Boers beyond remained until the shells which had been
pouring on the conical hill followed them to the crestline. Then again
the Dorsets threw themselves upon the enemy, and by sunset the heights
on the right of the Nek were in possession of Coke. Almost
simultaneously E. Hamilton established himself on the left of it. The
resistance offered to Dundonald on the right flank was more effective;
and as between him and his immediate opponents the day waned upon an
uncertain issue. He had driven them out of successive positions though
not actually off the ridge; but the occupation of the Nek made further
opposition useless and they withdrew during the night.
The capture of Alleman's Nek rendered Laing's Nek untenable, and Clery
closing up from Ingogo next day found it abandoned. The enemy had
evacuated the whole of the Majuba-Laing's Nek-Pougwana position, leaving
scarcely so much as a wagon behind him, and was retreating northwards.
The westward turning movement was tactically a success but strategically
a failure. With three brigades of mounted troops under his orders,
including some regiments of regular cavalry which were lying idle at
Ladysmith and elsewhere, Buller made no attempt to cut off the
retreating Boers. A daring raid, such as had been twice made by French
on the Modder four months before, concurrently with the Botha's Pass
operations would have had a good chance of crushing C. Botha; and
Brockleburst's cavalry, which during the attack on the Nek was working
somewhat widely on the left flank, might well have been sent to bar the
way. The ponderous movements of Buller were in strange contrast to the
activity of his ally Lord Roberts. The Natal Army made its way through
the country like an elephant trampling through a sugar-cane plantation.
On June 13 Buller entered Volksrust and next day established his Head
Quarters at Laing's Nek. Wakkerstroom, a town which threatened his right
flank, surrendered _pro formâ_ to Lyttelton on June 13, and again to
Hildyard four days later; and no doubt would have been equally ready to
accommodate itself to the wishes of any other column sent to it, but
after each surrender it reasserted itself, and Buller was obliged to
leave it in charge of the commandos.
With the occupation of Laing's Nek the Natal campaign, which had lasted
eight months, came to an end, and Buller, having left a strong force
under Lyttelton in charge of Natal, passed up the railway to Heidelberg;
where on July 4 he for the first time came into physical touch with the
main Army under Lord Roberts. By a curious coincidence he here met
Hart's Brigade of the Xth Division, which had left his command three
months previously at Ladysmith, and which had in the meantime marched up
from Kimberley.
[Sidenote: Map, p. 292.]
Lord Roberts' plan for the Natal Army was that it should march across
the veld to the Delagoa Bay railway and co-operate in his movement to
clear the Eastern Transvaal. The Brandwater Basin surrender relieved the
railway in Natal from immediate danger and allowed the ample force
holding it to be reduced. At the end of July Buller was instructed to
lead 11,000 of his men across a sparsely populated country where no
railway was. It was for him a novel phase of warfare. Hitherto he had
hardly dared trust himself out of sight of a culvert. But he was a man
from whom the terror of the unknown very soon passed away when he had no
choice but to face it. In Natal he would have stood aghast at a
suggestion that he should cut away his moorings and be wafted by the
winds of war for ten days or more across a strange ocean. If hitherto he
had been _nec celer nec audax_ now he became at least _audax_. Lord
Roberts had imbued him with the progressive spirit. He raised no
difficulties of his own, and he encountered those arising out of the
situation resolutely and successfully. His army was strung out upon the
railway from Ladysmith to Heidelberg; his transport was still organized
regimentally, a system which had hampered Lord Roberts' movements and
was soon abolished in the main body; and oxen, mules, and wagons were
scarce. For infantry he chose the IVth Division under Lyttelton, and for
cavalry the brigades under Brocklehurst and Dundonald.
On August 7 Buller's column quitted the Natal line;[48] its destination
being Belfast on the Delagoa Bay line, along which Lord Roberts was now
advancing.
Its progress may be compared to the course of a steamer across an
unquiet ocean. The waves raised by a fresh gale on the starboard bow
were cleft by the stem, only to reunite behind the churn of the
propeller. They were powerless to abridge the day's run by many miles,
but they could still swing forwards to the shore. On one occasion the
ship was slowed down to a standstill by a fog.
The waves were the commandos of the district, most of which had retired
under C. Botha from the Laing's Nek positions. Buller had not much
difficulty in dealing with them as obstructions to his advance, and in
succession he occupied Amersfort, Ermelo, and Carolina; but they soon
returned to their stations. His own inclinations would probably have
persuaded him to halt and smash them, but he was marching against time
between two widely separated bases. Near Carolina on August 14 he came
in touch with French, who was acting with Lord Roberts' eastward
movement from Pretoria, and from that date the operations of the Natal
Army were merged in those of the main Army, and came under the immediate
direction of the Commander-in-Chief.
A scheme proposed by French and sanctioned in substance by Lord Roberts,
for an immediate cavalry turning movement round the left flank of the
enemy, who was strongly posted astride the railway near Belfast; in
conjunction with a central infantry advance to be made by Buller and
Pole-Carew, whose Division was within reach, was discountenanced by
Buller, and a simple frontal movement was substituted for it. Its
practicability was doubtful owing to the marshy character of the ground.
On August 25 Buller, French, and Pole-Carew entered Belfast, where they
were joined by Lord Roberts.
Notes:
[Footnote 48: i.e. the section of the railway from Johannesburg to Natal
which is in the Transvaal.]