FROM ELANDSLAAGTE TO THE BLACK WEEK
OCTOBER TO DECEMBER, 1899.
In these two opening combats of the war the steel weapon had had its
first rebuff and its first success. What was to happen now?
Immediately after Elandslaagte, French’s force, having disposed of Koch,
was recalled by White to Ladysmith (October 22). On the same night the
Dundee force, now in a situation of great and growing peril from
Joubert’s united commandos, was forced to retreat hurriedly and secretly
to Ladysmith. White sent out 5,300 men to cover the last stage of the
retreat against any possible interruption from the 6,000 Free Staters
who were threatening Ladysmith from the west. Hence the action of
Rietfontein (October 24), a desultory fire-fight, for the most part at
very long ranges, against an invisible and intangible enemy; in its
proof of the mysterious, far-reaching potency of the rifle, a pregnant
contrast to the close encounters at Talana and Elandslaagte.
But it was six days later, at the battle of Ladysmith (or Lombard’s
Kop), that the most definite and substantial proof was given of the
superiority of the rifle over the steel. Joubert had closed on Ladysmith
with 12,000 men. White, also with 12,000 men, of whom 3,000 were
mounted, conceived a bold and elaborate plan of attack designed not
merely to drive the Boers back, but to inflict a crushing defeat. To his
two mounted brigades (each composed of two Cavalry regiments and a corps
of Colonial mounted riflemen) White assigned functions which were
typical of the military theory of that day. One was to co-operate with
the Infantry attack on the right, wheeling wide round the flank, and
getting behind the enemy’s left. The other, held in reserve behind our
left Infantry attack, was designed, when both attacks had succeeded, to
cut in upon the Boer line of retreat (which lay towards the left or
north), and pursue the beaten burghers. In order to facilitate the
scheme of pursuit, an Infantry force had been detached by night to seize
a pass—Nicholson’s Nek, of evil memory—which the Cavalry would have to
surmount before debouching upon the plain. Since the force so detached
suffered disaster, and the whole of White’s attack, here and elsewhere,
failed, the left mounted brigade had very little to do. The right
mounted brigade, whose work began with daylight, failed to effect the
purpose assigned to it. Fire-tactics were immediately imposed upon it by
the enemy’s mounted riflemen operating on rocky, bushy ground, and in
fire-tactics the Mauser, in the words of the “Official History,” at once
“dominated the carbine.” Advance was impossible; proper flank support to
the Infantry was scarcely less difficult; even the retreat at the end of
the day’s fighting was far from an able performance. French, who led the
brigade, was not the French of a fortnight later, when the horse and the
steel weapon were beginning to be dissociated after their long
traditional partnership. For the present the fact was painfully obvious
that the only professional troops endowed with the mobility of the Boers
were the least capable of grappling with the Boers in action.
But did mobility, backed by the rifle, inspire dash in the Boers? At
this period, except in isolated cases, no. The inertia, so
disproportionate to their tactical flexibility and brilliant skirmishing
skill, was never more apparent than at the close of this battle outside
Ladysmith, when White began his retreat. No such opportunity was ever to
present itself again for a really decisive victory. Joubert regarded the
action as a defensive action, and had issued general orders against a
pursuit. On the other hand, a simple burgher, Christian de Wet, had
inspired the one genuinely aggressive enterprise which distinguished the
Boer movements on this day—namely, the attack and capture of the
detached force at Nicholson’s Nek. This—like the capture of Majuba
nearly twenty years earlier—was a feat of stalking pure and simple, with
which the horse had little to do, save that it bore the riflemen rapidly
from a distant part of the field into the outermost fringe of the zone
of combat. The outermost fringe—that is the point to watch. Could horses
penetrate the inner fringe under rifle-fire and so precipitate the
decisive phase of a conflict? While waiting for the answer let us be
sensible and remember that after all the main thing is to win fights.
Galloping under fire is only a means to an end. Stalking under fire
requires nearly as much dash to be effective.
The long siege of Ladysmith now virtually began. By an error of judgment
all the mounted troops, including the Cavalry regiments, were retained
within the lines, and were thus practically demobilized for five months.
Happily for our arms, however, French and his staff just succeeded in
leaving the town for the south before investment was complete. Happily,
too, the strenuous efforts to raise more volunteer mounted troops within
South Africa were now bearing fruit. Two fine but wholly raw regiments,
Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry and Bethune’s Mounted Infantry, were
able to strengthen the miserably scanty forces which, pending the
arrival of Buller and heavy reinforcements from England and the Cape,
stood between Southern Natal and invasion. Even so, there was nothing
during the first half of November to stop Joubert with the forces at his
disposal from a vigorous raid on Maritzburg, and even on Durban. But his
tactical inertia was exceeded by his strategical inertia. Egged on by
Louis Botha, he did indeed initiate a raid with a force of over 3,000
picked men on picked horses, but it degenerated into a leisurely foray
for loot and cattle. The time for action slipped by. British troops were
pouring into Natal to redress the strategical balance, and in the last
week of November the Boer force withdrew behind the Tugela, there, aided
by abstraction from the investing force, to begin their long and
desperate struggle to prevent the relief of Ladysmith.
Colenso, fought on December 15, was the first great event in this
historic conflict. From our point of view, like all the subsequent
fights in Natal, it needs very little comment. Buller, commanding a
force of 18,000 men, of whom 2,500 were mounted, made a frontal attack
with his Infantry and guns upon an immensely strong entrenched position
held by 6,000 Boers. He failed, inflicted only nominal loss on the
enemy, suffered 1,100 casualties himself, and lost ten guns. Two Cavalry
regiments formed the professional nucleus of the mounted brigade; the
rest were raw irregulars. There were Bethune’s and Thorneycroft’s
Mounted Infantry, who, in the fighting around Estcourt three weeks
earlier, had been just blooded and no more, a squadron of Imperial Light
Horse and some Natal volunteers who had had much the same experience,
and the newly enlisted South African Light Horse, who had not yet fired
a shot. Reconnaissance prior to the battle had been little more than
nominal. Pitted against the Boer outposts—expert shots all of them—our
scouts had rarely been able to get near the enemy’s lines. The Tugela
fords were not properly known; the enemy’s principal positions were but
dimly conjectured. Artillery fire was the substitute for reconnaissance,
and that produced no response from the crafty burghers.
In the battle itself the rifle from first to last governed tactics. The
aggressive task given to the mounted brigade was the attack upon
Hlwangwane Mountain, the great natural outwork upon which the Boer left
flank rested. The irregulars were chosen for this attack, and rightly
chosen, because rifles were absolutely essential. They made a plucky but
vain effort to carry a strong position strongly held, and extricated
themselves with some difficulty at the end of the day. The work of the
Cavalry was confined to covering their retreat. As at Ladysmith, there
was no opportunity for the steel, not from any chance causes, but
because the rifle saw to it that no such opportunity should be allowed
to occur.
Colenso was one of the three defeats in that sad week of mid-December,
when the nation first realized the magnitude of the enterprise it had
undertaken in South Africa. Let us carry events in other quarters of the
field of war up to the same point, with special emphasis on the use of
mounted troops.
Far up in the north the investment of Mafeking had begun immediately
after the declaration of war (October 12). In a week the whole of the
railway from Mafeking to Orange River was in Boer hands, and on the 23rd
Kimberley was definitely invested. On no portion of this line were there
any regular mounted troops, and of the local levies the only mobile
force outside a besieged town was the Rhodesian Regiment of mounted
riflemen, 450 strong, based on Tuli and commanded by Plumer, who, with
this little handful of men and his own nerve and resource, did
extraordinarily good work in threatening the Northern Transvaal, and at
a later period in aiding in the relief of Mafeking.
Meanwhile the Boer invasion of Southern Cape Colony hung fire for three
full weeks, and when it at last began, on November 1, the day Buller
landed in South Africa, it was dilatory and methodless. Still, the
strategical situation for ourselves was serious. White’s investment in
Ladysmith, and the consequent danger to Southern Natal, had dislocated
the entire scheme of British strategy, which was founded upon a resolve
to land a whole Army Corps in Cape Colony and advance straight upon
Bloemfontein and Pretoria. Buller’s decision, as we know, was to divert
the greater part of his Army Corps to Natal, take command there himself,
and make the relief of Ladysmith the primary British object. Probably
the decision was the best that could have been come to, but it involved
the dissolution of the Army Corps as an organized instrument of
conquest, and the reduction of the grand scheme of irruption upon the
enemy’s capital to a minor scheme of advance up the western railway line
for the relief of Kimberley. In the meantime, and until a fresh army
could be sent out from England, the vital portions of Cape Colony,
comprising the great ports and the system of communications radiating
therefrom, could only be protected against invasion by a mere
demonstration of force exercised in the midst of districts teeming with
disaffection.
Happily the Boer leaders had no eye for aggressive strategy, nor indeed
any military organization on which to base aggressive strategy. Absorbed
by the prospect of capturing Mafeking and Kimberley, just as in Natal
they were absorbed by the prospect of capturing Ladysmith, they fell
naturally in both cases into an attitude of strategical defence—defence
against the relief of the towns they were investing. The same feebleness
which characterized the raid upon Southern Natal early in November
characterized the straggling invasion of Southern Cape Colony at the
same period. Nevertheless, it was no light task for us to conceal our
weakness in this quarter, and, with a thin containing line of troops
gathered from the fragments of the old Army Corps, to hold in play
greatly superior Boer forces. It was French who was called to undertake
this delicate and difficult duty. How he performed it I shall relate in
the next chapter. For the present, let us briefly review Methuen’s
advance from Orange River towards Kimberley.
Methuen started on November 20 with a total force of 10,000 men,
including 7,000 Infantry, 16 guns, and only 1,000 mounted men. The
professional mounted element was represented by one Cavalry regiment,
and three companies of regular Mounted Infantry; the irregular element
by Rimington’s Guides and a handful of New South Wales Lancers. Methuen,
therefore, was relatively weaker in mounted troops than any leader in
Natal, and his operations provide proportionately less material for
criticizing mounted tactics and the weapons suitable thereto. I say
“proportionately” less, because, as I pointed out in my preliminary
chapter upon the numbers and quality of the British and Boer mounted
troops, we cannot reckon the Boers twice over, once in their capacity as
dismounted riflemen holding positions against our Infantry, and a second
time as mobile riflemen available for mounted evolutions against our
Cavalry. Yet that strange error has been constantly made, and among
other cases in the case of Methuen’s first three battles—Belmont
(November 23), Graspan (November 25), and Modder River (November 28), in
the first two of which the total British force engaged outnumbered the
total Boer force engaged by nearly four to one, and in the third by more
than two to one, while the British mounted troops, reckoned
independently, amounted to half the Boer force and a quarter the Boer
force respectively. The enemy, with something over 2,000 men at Graspan
and Belmont, and with about 3,500 at Modder River, supported by
Artillery which never exceeded three guns and two pompoms, had to make
head against 7,000 British Infantry on the first two occasions, 6,800 on
the second, and 7,500 on the third, backed by Artillery which rose from
sixteen to twenty guns. The Infantry included the Brigade of Guards,
and, taken as a whole, were as fine a body of troops of their class as
could be found in any European country. These troops bore the brunt of
all three battles. They stormed the rocky heights at Belmont and Enslin,
and faced the yet more deadly fire which swept across the level plain
from the sunken beds of the Modder and the Riet. Whatever tactical
flexibility the Boers may have derived from their ponies in meeting
these attacks, nearly the whole of their small force was pinned to its
position until the crisis of each action, by the necessity of meeting
Infantry and Artillery attacks in superior force.
The British mounted troops, on a reasonable calculation of relative
strength, must be regarded as having been left approximately free for
supplementary independent action on the enemy’s flanks and rear. This is
how Methuen regarded them and endeavoured to use them. In the event,
though all worked their hardest, they had no appreciable effect on any
of the actions. The steel weapon was useless, although the terrain for
shock was ideal. The Cavalry were not adapted or properly trained for
fire-action, and the Mounted Infantry and irregulars, though trained and
adapted for it, were very backward in the art. Reconnaissance, too, was
inadequate. Methuen never knew with accuracy the strength and position
of the enemy, and at Modder River was totally at sea until his Infantry
was actually under heavy fire. The conditions no doubt were exacting. It
was not numbers, but a small quantity of picked scouts that was needed.
But Cavalry training had not encouraged that kind of individual merit.
The conventional comment upon all these actions has been that, owing to
the paucity and exhaustion of the mounted troops, we could not reap the
fruits of victory by sustained and destructive pursuit. There is truth,
of course, in the proposition, but only that sort of half-truth which
for instructional purposes is often more misleading than error.
As an example of this sort of mistaken criticism I will take the
Official Historian’s remarks upon Graspan, on which occasion Methuen
sent his mounted men in two bodies (one including two squadrons of
Lancers, the other one squadron) six miles to the rear of the enemy’s
main position with a view of surprising their laager and cutting off
their retreat. There were no Boer reserves here, save a small guard to
the laager, which, though sighted by the stronger British detachment,
was not attacked. The Boers ultimately dealt with were the same men who
had held the main position almost to the bayonet’s point against our
Infantry, and who retreated after their defeat at that point. So far
from intercepting or hampering the retreat, both bodies of mounted
troops, unable to effect a junction, were attacked in detail by the
fugitives, and put into dangerous positions, from which the fire-power
of their Mounted Infantry and mounted riflemen were the principal means
of extrication.
The Official Historian says: “At Graspan, as at Belmont, the open plains
across which the enemy was compelled to retire were singularly
favourable to Cavalry action, and had a satisfactory mounted brigade
with a Horse Artillery battery been available, the Boers could not have
effected their escape without suffering very heavy losses. Not only were
the mounted troops at Lord Methuen’s disposal insufficient numerically,
but their horses were already worn out by the heavy reconnaissance duty
which had of necessity been carried out day after day without relief
under the adverse conditions of a sandy soil, great heat, and a scarcity
of water.”
There could be no better instance than this of the way in which the
_arme blanche_ faith is perpetuated from generation to generation, in
defiance of experience. Every schoolboy has been puzzled by that
reiterated comment upon most of the battles of history, that the
exhaustion, or insufficiency, or feeble handling of the Cavalry by the
victorious side prevented the full fruits of victory being garnered in.
Why does this phenomenon happen so very often? he wonders. The
historians rarely tell him two simple reasons—namely:
1. That troops armed even with a poor firearm are rarely so utterly and
universally demoralized, even after a severe defeat, as to be unable to
check the onset even of fresh Cavalry.
2. That Cavalry, who in all normally constituted armies form but a small
proportion of the combatant troops, if they have worked hard in
reconnaissance on previous days, not to speak of their action in prior
phases of the battle, rarely find their horses fresh enough for long
sustained gallops against a retreating army. (The reader will remember
that this freshness is one of the four great conditions for the
successful use of the steel.)
Both these limitations, which are cumulative, must be constantly borne
in mind when criticizing mounted action in the South African War or any
other war, and it must be noted that the second limitation applies to
mounted riflemen, as well as to Cavalry, with this important
reservation, that fire-action very often enables the former to dispense
with long gallops, while for the steel weapon nothing short of a
hand-to-hand _mêlée_, attained through the medium of the “charge,” is of
any use at all.
Now what moral does the Official Historian draw from Graspan? His
conclusion amounts to this, that if, in addition to our Infantry and
sixteen field and naval guns, and in addition to about 900 mounted
troops whose horses were worn out with reconnaissance, we had had a
“satisfactory” mounted brigade (and the context shows that he means a
brigade of Cavalry) and a battery of Horse Artillery, both fresh for
pursuit and with an ideal terrain over which to pursue, the Boers, 2,000
to 3,000 in number, many of them just as tired as our men by long rides
to the field and by reconnaissance, would not have effected their escape
without heavy losses. If we could only have everything always as we wish
it! Unfortunately, in most wars the kind of conditions imagined by the
critic are Utopian. If we count on obtaining anything like such a
superiority over any European foe, we are living in a fool’s paradise.
Instead of complaining of our bad luck in fighting against the Boers, we
ought to congratulate ourselves upon our advantages, and search coldly
and unflinchingly for the causes which enabled so small a people to
withstand a powerful Empire for so long.
In the light of common sense, what is the most striking feature of
Graspan and of all these other fights? Surely the power of a small
number of mounted riflemen, skilled in the management of the horse and
skilled in the use of the modern firearm, to withstand greatly superior
forces framed upon the European model, even allowing for cases where the
proportion of mounted troops did not reach the normal European standard.
The one thing emphatically that these fights in South Africa do _not_
prove is that we wanted more steel-armed horsemen. The only way of
proving that we did involves that _reductio ad absurdum_ of the steel
weapon which the Official Historian unconsciously finds himself drawn to
embrace. For that is what it comes to. Given a force of mounted troops
approximately equal to the whole Boer force, plus a threefold
superiority in Infantry and guns, and we should have turned defeat into
destruction. During an important part of the campaign, as I shall
afterwards show, we did actually obtain something like these very
conditions, but in only one instance were able to make destructive use
of them, and in that instance solely through the agency of the firearm.
Before leaving Graspan, let us note for future use that on two occasions
parties of Boers tried to ride down British mounted troops (both Cavalry
and Mounted Infantry) in the open. The attempts failed, but there was no
retort in kind. De la Rey was in command of the Boer force on this day.
It will be interesting to observe his use of the mounted charge at a
later period of the war.
At Magersfontein, on December 10, Methuen’s enterprise for the relief of
Kimberley came to an abrupt end. Since the battle of Modder River,
twelve days earlier, both sides had been reinforced. The Boers, holding
a strong entrenched position under Cronje, were now some 7,000 in number
with 5 guns and some pompoms. Methuen had received a brigade of
Infantry, another Cavalry regiment, a fourth company of Mounted
Infantry, and a battery of Horse Artillery. Altogether he had 11,000
Infantry, 1,600 mounted troops, and 33 guns (not counting a large number
of machine guns)—that is to say, a total superiority of about two to
one, and in guns of about six to one. Between a third and a quarter of
the Boer force—representing their right—was not engaged in the battle.
About seven-eighths of our force was engaged.
It is scarcely necessary to recall the tragic catastrophe which befell
the Highland Brigade in their night attack upon the key of the Boer
position, Magersfontein Hill, where the enemy’s centre rested. The rest
of the battle, from the British point of view, resolved itself into a
successful effort to save this isolated brigade from total annihilation,
and an unsuccessful effort to break through the Boer left, which was
flung forward crescent-wise over undulating, bushy ground. The whole
battle was a fire-battle; the rifle supreme, the British guns of very
little aggressive killing value, though potentially of high defensive
value in preventing Boer counter-strokes. Horses on both sides were in
the background. With the exception of some irregulars on our extreme
left, all our mounted troops, including the Cavalry, fought on foot like
the Infantry. The two Lancer regiments, their equipment and habits
considered, did particularly well, but not, let it be remembered, in the
capacity for which they had undergone nineteen-twentieths of their
severe and elaborate training. I hope that here, as at Colenso, the
reader will mentally figure his European parallels, substituting
whatever categories of troops he pleases, in whatever relative strength,
and on whatever terrain. We may remark that the topography of
Magersfontein was in no sense peculiar. The position was not nearly as
strong as at Colenso, where a river divided the combatants. Nor was it
stronger than the averagely strong defensive position in Europe. The
height of Magersfontein Kopje had no significance; for, like shrewd
soldiers, the Boers had discovered that it is the forward and lowest
slopes of a hill which give the most deadly field of fire, and it was
these which they defended. The position was entrenched with peculiar
skill, and held by peculiarly steady and accurate marksmen—that was all.
These marksmen were mounted riflemen, many of whom had ridden to join
Cronje from distant points. If they had been shock-trained European
horsemen, they could neither have entrenched nor held the position.
Though they scarcely used their horses at all during the action, the
horses (like their cumbrous and bulky transport) were there, out of
range, in almost defenceless knots and groups, vulnerable to just the
sort of attack which Cavalry are supposed to be able to deliver.
Separation from their horses, it may be observed, did not perturb these
riflemen in the manner in which mounted riflemen are always, in Cavalry
theory, supposed to be perturbed. They sat in narrow ditches on nearly
level ground, from which retreat meant exposure to a withering storm of
gun and rifle fire. Nor on this occasion is it easy to impute lack of
aggressive dash to the Boers. Very few troops so situated and so
outmatched in numbers and Artillery could have launched counter-strokes,
whether mounted or on foot. That is a point which must be kept in mind
whenever we compare the action of a small force of high mobility against
a large force of low mobility. The defensive power of the former is far
greater in proportion than its offensive power.
While the Highland Brigade was moving “ghost-like to its doom” in the
dark morning hours of December 10, Gatacre’s force—200 miles away in
Cape Colony—was approaching an even worse fate at Stormberg. This
unhappy affair need not detain us long. It was a case of a mismanaged
night attack by 1,850 Infantry, 450 regular Mounted Infantry, and 12
guns, upon 1,700 Boers. Although the surprise was complete, ignorance of
the topography and the exhaustion of the troops involved our force in
disastrous failure. Our Mounted Infantry escorted the guns and covered
the final retreat, but took no part in the critical fighting. So far as
mounted lessons are concerned, the moral was against the Boers. Here,
certainly, they showed a marked lack of aggressive mobility. When total
destruction of the British force was well within their grasp, they were
content with a partial, if substantial, success. There was no real
pursuit, even by two fresh commandos which appeared on the flank of the
retreat. If the action stood alone, it might be plausibly conjectured
that the absence of a steel weapon was accountable for this slackness. A
review of the whole war disposes of the supposition.
Colenso, Magersfontein, Stormberg, three decided checks in three widely
distant areas of the theatre of war, constituted the “Black Week” of
mid-December, 1899. With the single exception of the charge at
Elandslaagte, on the second day of hostilities, the sword and lance had
effected nothing.