PAARDEBERG AND POPLAR GROVE
FEBRUARY TO MARCH, 1900.
I.—KIMBERLEY TO PAARDEBERG.
The true factors of success in mounted warfare received the most
convincing illustration in the events immediately following the relief
of Kimberley.
The baneful influence of this town continued to react on British
strategy. French, in an ardent mood, and with some justification from
his original orders, resolved to pursue the investing commandos north
with three brigades, two of Cavalry, one of Mounted Infantry and
Colonials, and some of the Kimberley mounted troops, altogether
something over 4,000 men and five batteries. Ferreira, with most of the
Free Staters, had retreated east the night before, and was wholly out of
reach. There remained on the route due north, and with eleven miles
start, from 1,500 to 2,000 burghers under the Transvaaler, Du Toit, and
a heavy convoy. It soon became evident that, in the weak condition of
French’s horses, the capture of this convoy was the only feasible
object, and to this object French eventually confined himself. But an
extraordinary hitch arose. One small body of 150[29] Griqualand West
rebels, with one gun, instead of evacuating the lines of investment
during the night, had quietly remained at its post on the Dronfield
ridge, seven miles north of Kimberley, and now acted as a sort of
improvised rear-guard. One of the Cavalry brigades, about 1,200 strong,
with three batteries, in the course of a sweep north-west in order to
envelop the convoy from that side, stumbled upon the Griqualand men, and
wasted several hours in a vain endeavour to dislodge them by
fire-action. The delay destroyed whatever chance there had been of
succeeding against Du Toit, and the Brigadier was blamed for the delay.
But what followed? On his way back to Kimberley French attacked the
Lilliputian force, now separated by nine or ten miles from its nearest
supports, with all three brigades, several hundred Kimberley mounted
troops, and all five batteries. Still no result. French gave it up, and
under cover of a dust-storm the Griqualanders rode away safely,
abandoning their gun and some killed and wounded.
-----
Footnote 29:
_Times_ History gives “150–200”; “Official History,” “200”; German
History, “100.”
-----
This incident occurred on the day after the charge at Klip Drift, and it
shows how completely the real significance of that episode had been lost
upon the Cavalry. At Klip Drift there was no chance of testing weapons;
it was a case of riding through fire for an ulterior end. Here was a
real chance of testing the value of weapons. Where was the steel? Where,
more pregnant question still, was the horse? What is the tactical
purpose of a horse in attack if not to accelerate aggression and
precipitate a crisis, using mobility to overcome vulnerability? The
Boers, it is true, were entrenched, but from what we know now of the
physical factors in mounted attacks we can say with tolerable certainty
that even the single brigade in the morning, properly disposed and
extended, might have ridden, even at a moderate canter, into close
quarters with the enemy with less loss than that involved in a lengthy
dismounted attack. In the evening, with exhausted horses, but with a
thirty-to-one superiority in men and guns, the smallest exertion of
aggressive mobility would have made an end of the impertinent handful on
the ridge. Now, the Cavalry were as brave soldiers as ever stepped. What
they lacked was imagination to connect together the horse and the
firearm as joint constituents of aggressive mobility, a defect
aggravated by the possession of an inferior firearm, and by inexperience
in the use of it. The crack of a rifle transformed the action into what
their training-book called a “dismounted” action, and converted them
into indifferent Infantry. At whose compulsion? That of a few mounted
riflemen, acting in defence, dismounted, virtually as a rear-guard for
the main Boer force; but with their horses at hand, available for
escape, counted upon for escape (for otherwise their owners would not
have been there), and eventually used for escape.
Dronfield was an extreme case, and I do not wish to use it further than
as a peg on which to hang an argument. With infinite variation of
circumstance, the same root principles applied in every action of the
war. Let me make one more point clear before leaving the episode, and
passing to another equally interesting and far more creditable to the
Cavalry. When I suggest a more rapid mounted advance, I do not, of
course, mean that the horsemen should remain on horseback up to, during
and after contact. That was the old Cavalry view, based on the use of a
steel weapon, and its strength accounts for the extraordinary reluctance
of the Cavalry to contemplate any other form of aggressive mobility.
They could never get shock, because their adversaries willed otherwise,
and could always impose their will; without shock they themselves were
rightly conscious that a man on horseback with a sword or lance is not,
except under very rare conditions, a match for a man on foot with a
magazine rifle. But why, save for a valueless shibboleth, remain
persistently on horseback? At Dronfield, though the maps and narratives
do not warrant the supposition, the summit of the ridge may, for all I
know, have been unsuitable for rapid movement on a horse. But, as I
pointed out in Chapter II., physical contact is not necessary for a
charge by mounted riflemen. A charge is just as much a charge—in the
sense of a killing, winning advance—if its mounted phase ends within
point-blank, or even within “decisive” range of the enemy. Each and
every acceleration in the net rapidity of the whole movement makes it
nearer to being worthy of the name of charge. Finally, if actual contact
is both practicable and desirable, if the horsemen can ride right home,
they _must_ dismount when they get there. If they do not, they will lose
two-thirds of their killing power. Their horses for the moment will be
vulnerable encumbrances, but the men are better off dismounted than
mounted, because they can use their rifles. I am premature now in
discussing this point, but have thought it best to sketch the idea in
advance. Illustration will come later.
To continue. That same evening (February 16, 1900) French received
written orders from Roberts to march thirty miles to Koodoos Drift and
cut off Cronje’s retreat.
On the night of the 15th the old Boer General, alarmed by the news of
Klip Drift, had at last awakened to the fact that his 5,500 men and his
cumbrous laager were on the point of being surrounded by an army of
between 30,000 and 40,000 men. Resolving to retire along the Modder
towards Bloemfontein, he called up his men from the Magersfontein
trenches, and trekked in bright moonlight across the front of the sixth
division at Klip Drift without being discovered by the Mounted Infantry.
On the 16th, while French was riding north from Kimberley, Cronje held
the sixth division at bay, and secured his next strategic point east,
the passage of the Modder at Drieputs Drift. In the action of this day
we may note that the Mounted Infantry tried to do what the Cavalry had
done so successfully at Klip Drift—to ride in force through a fire-zone
in order to pierce the enemy’s line. Through no fault of their own, but
simply through lack of that drill and horsemanship which the Cavalry
possessed, they failed badly, and were thrown into great disorder. After
dusk, again unobserved, Cronje continued his retreat, and at 4.30 a.m.
on the 17th his main body and convoy were halted within a few miles of
Vendutie Drift, with an advance-guard as far east as Koodoos Drift.
It was at this moment that French, in accordance with orders, was
leaving Kimberley to head off Cronje. His division as a fighting unit
had practically ceased to exist. Horses had died in hundreds; whole
regiments were demobilized. Of the three brigades engaged in the
northward sweep from Kimberley, only one regiment—the Carabineers—was
fit to march. This and Broadwood’s brigade, which had not been engaged,
gave French 1,500 men and 12 guns. Ardent as ever, notwithstanding, he
started off, and in six hours reached Vendutie Drift in time to head off
Cronje. Midway he had passed within two or three miles of Ferreira’s
force, about his equal in strength. Ferreira, though he appears to have
been but dimly aware of the course of events, should undoubtedly have
thrown himself across the path of the Cavalry. He missed the
opportunity, and French rode on.
The mission of the Cavalry was to hold Cronje until the main army should
come up and attack his rear. They performed this mission with skill,
tenacity, and complete success, using fire-tactics and bluff to impose
upon a force nearly four times their superior. Once more, in short, they
were doing what they and the Colonials had done so well in the Colesberg
operations two months earlier. Tactically, they stood in much the same
position as the 900 Boers at Klip Drift, and if Cronje had come to the
point even of contemplating the abandonment of his transport and
dismounted burghers, he would have had, theoretically, the opportunity
of bursting through the British containing line and making his point on
Bloemfontein, just as French had burst through the Boer line and gained
Kimberley. Knowing what we know now, we can see that this was what
Cronje should have done or tried to do, though we can understand why he
still declined to take this sort of action. His was not an independent
mounted force, backed by an army. Not only in his instinctive
perception, but in fact, it was an army in itself, the reverse of
mobile, badly horsed, but, on the other hand, supported by small
outlying detachments (under Ferreira, De Wet, etc.), from whom he
expected vigorous co-operation. His transport represented not only
public commissariat, but the private property of his burghers. Meanwhile
his men carried the same rifles which had wrought such terrible havoc at
Magersfontein. Slow-witted as he was, we must make allowance for this
point of view throughout the operations of which the climax was now
approaching, and indeed throughout the whole war. It was a standing
weakness of the Boer organization that their transport was as ponderous
as their fighting men were mobile. The ox governed net speed, not the
horse.
These considerations do not detract in any way from the credit due to
French and the Cavalry for their ride from Kimberley to the Drifts, and
for pinning Cronje to his ground at this critical moment. During the
night two Infantry divisions and the Mounted Infantry division, by dint
of severe forced marching, were placed within striking distance of
Cronje’s laager at Paardeberg. Then came the battle, the week’s
investment, the surrender.
Unquestionably this day—February 17, 1900—was the great day of the
Cavalry in the South African War. But, alas for the tyranny of names!
Here is the Official Historian’s comment: “Yet that night was a
memorable one for French’s troops; for they had accomplished the mission
assigned to them by Lord Roberts, and had demonstrated that the
conditions of modern fighting still permit Cavalry and Horse Artillery
to play a rôle of supreme importance in war.” Here is what I may call
the inverted moral over again. “Still permit!” What a pitifully cautious
conclusion! Is it for that that we maintain enormously expensive mounted
corps and entrust them with vitally important duties?
The real truth is that it was _in spite_ of being “Cavalry,” not
_because_ they were “Cavalry,” that French’s troops had succeeded in the
mission assigned to them by Roberts. Throughout the operations the
characteristics, inborn or acquired, which distinguished them from
mounted riflemen, had been their bane, not their blessing. Their steel
weapons had been so much dead weight, their carbines poor substitutes
for rifles, while faulty horsemastership, which we cannot dissociate
from the artificialities of their peace training, is admitted to have
been one of the causes of the appalling mortality in horses. French, as
a spirited leader of horsemen, not as a leader of steel-armed,
shock-trained horsemen, by pure force of will had overcome these
obstacles and performed his allotted rôle. But without these obstacles,
and leading a division of highly-trained mounted riflemen, what might he
have done? Unquestionably, his powerful division would have been
employed at the outset to aid in crushing by normal tactical means
Cronje’s small force where it originally stood. But, apart from that
fundamental difference, he might probably have dispensed with men
numerous enough and efficient enough to act as eyes for the main army, a
function which was in complete abeyance during these operations, with
disastrous results at Waterval Drift, where De Wet raided a supply
column. He might, perhaps, in the course of his independent rôle, have
ridden at, instead of through, the Boers at Klip Drift, with far more
demoralizing after-effects upon the enemy. He might have discovered and
snapped up in his stride, as it were, Cronje’s defenceless laager, then
lying so near to him, and still have obeyed his orders to reach
Kimberley that night. He might, perhaps, have converted the northerly
sweep from Kimberley into a fruitful operation, by eliminating the
absurd delay occasioned by the Dronfield detachment. Probably he would
have reached the Drifts with a larger and fresher force, able to regard
what had been achieved rather as a prelude to still greater things than
as the climax of a supreme effort. Climax, in fact, it was. When
Roberts, a week later, called upon the Cavalry for another divisional
enterprise, French was unable to respond. This sort of thing will not do
in any future war; let us be clear about that. We cannot afford to use
up Cavalry at this exorbitant rate. They are far too few and valuable,
and will have far more varied and difficult duties to perform than
French’s division performed.
There is no need, for our purpose, to describe the battle of Paardeberg
at any length, or to enter deeply into the controversy which has raged
around the question of storming versus investment. Time, I think, will
confirm the view expressed in the _Times_ and German Histories that
Kitchener, in spite of his ambiguous personal position on the
battle-field of the 18th, and in spite of his faulty and disjointed
tactical methods, was right in his endeavour to storm the laager at all
costs there and then, and that he should have received more
whole-hearted co-operation from the subordinate commanders. Time,
perhaps, may have already convinced Lord Roberts that the subsequent
policy of investment, with its far-reaching moral and material
consequences, was a mistake. But however this may be, the outstanding
technical lesson is the same—the extraordinary power possessed by
mounted riflemen, trained to entrench and shoot straight, even when they
have lost their mobility, even when they suffer from flagrant defects of
organization, morale, and discipline, in holding at bay vastly superior
regular forces of all arms.
Directly Cronje accepted envelopment, his force lost its last
resemblance to a mounted force. He was assailed mainly by Infantry and
Artillery. But two incidents, which have a strong mounted interest, if
the expression is permissible, deserve brief notice.
1. The pathetic little charge of Hannay and fifty or sixty of his
Mounted Infantry towards the end of the day. Kitchener, burning to get
into the laager in spite of many a bloody repulse, realizing that an
irruption even at one point in the front of two and a half miles would
lead to the collapse of the defence, and that such an irruption was
beyond the power of the slow-moving Infantry under the deadly Boer fire,
sent the following message to Hannay at 3.30 p.m.:
“The time has now come for a final effort. All troops have been warned
that the laager must be rushed at all costs. Try and carry
Stephenson’s brigade on with you. But if they cannot go, the Mounted
Infantry should do it. Gallop up, if necessary, and fire into the
laager.”
In the existing state of affairs it is difficult to defend the terms of
this message. All the troops had not been warned. There was no proper
provision for a supreme concerted assault. Stephenson, who was Hannay’s
senior, received no message till much later. The Mounted Infantry were
much scattered, and the spirit of breathless urgency conveyed by the
message was inconsistent with the delay involved in co-ordinating their
efforts with those of Stephenson’s brigade, which was two miles from
Hannay on the opposite side of the Modder.
Hannay’s mood at the moment was one of despairing exasperation, after
several previous failures to act up to what he considered the
unreasonable expectations of his Chief. He now sent some hasty messages
to outlying detachments of Mounted Infantry, and without wasting another
moment, collected fifty or sixty of the men with him, and, longing for
death, rode straight for the laager. He and many others were shot down,
and the little charge flickered out, though a few men actually got into
the laager. Nevertheless, even this tiny mounted effort had
disproportionately great results, for under its cover the main
firing-line dashed forward, and a part reached a good position within
350 yards of the Boer rifles. From this we can judge of the effects
which might have attended a coherent, well-planned charge on a
substantial scale. It was the old question of mobility versus
vulnerability, illustrated in a very pointed way. The Infantryman, a
small but a slow and steady target; the horseman, a large but a rapid
and unsteady target, necessitating the spasmodic resighting of rifles on
the part of the defence, and, by his very impetus, exercising a coercive
moral effect upon their minds. When to use the aggressive power residing
in the horse and rifle combined must be determined in every particular
case by local circumstances. No rules can be laid down. But few can
doubt that on this occasion, apart from executive methods, Kitchener’s
instinct was sound. “Gallop up if necessary, and fire into the laager.”
Substitute some more general word for “laager,” and there you have
embodied in a few pregnant syllables the true spirit of the modern
mounted charge. Nobody on the field would have dreamed of giving the
same order to Cavalry, because of the manifest absurdity of demanding
this kind of work from troops whose charging efficiency was supposed to
depend on remaining in the saddle from first to last and wielding a
steel weapon. These limitations, if adhered to, especially with the
logical corollary of shock formation, albeit there was nothing to shock,
would have rendered the charge a fiasco. If not adhered to, the Cavalry
would have been in no better position than unskilled and ill-armed
mounted riflemen. That, in fact, is exactly what they were, technically,
plus the soldierly virtues and acquirements common to all professional
troops of their race. But the fact was not yet realized.
Neither was the converse realized, except intuitively by Kitchener, that
under modern conditions the real power to charge resides in well-armed
mounted riflemen, not in the troops conventionally known as Cavalry.
Circumstances had conspired to obscure this truth. The very name
“Mounted Infantry” was a source of error, and the corps so labelled was
a young corps, without a charging tradition, and only at the beginning
of its education in the efficient use of the horse.
2. The intervention, first, of Commandant Steyn, then of Christian de
Wet, with small mounted forces, coming from outside the battle area.
Steyn, with two guns and the Bethlehem commando “a few hundred” strong
(I can get no more specific details), represented the first of the
reinforcements which had been summoned away from Ladysmith to assist in
succouring Cronje. He came up at 9 a.m., occupied a hill in rear of our
eastern attack, delayed that attack for some two hours, and retained his
position during the day. How far he had ridden before entering the
action I do not know, but certainly a long distance.
Christian de Wet with a small force had, like French, been working
independently since the operations began. On the 15th, with 350 men, he
had attacked the army’s supply column at Waterval, and destroyed or
captured a third of it. On the 18th, having heard of Cronje’s peril, he
rode north from Koffyfontein to the Paardeberg battle-field, a distance
of thirty miles (just equal to French’s ride from Kimberley to the
Drifts), with 600 men and 2 guns, and at 5 p.m., by a rapid _coup de
main_, seized the cardinal point in our enveloping line—Kitchener’s
Kopje—overlooking the rear of our central attack. The hill, with its
neighbour Stinkfontein, also seized by De Wet, formed part of a chain,
running north and south, of which Steyn already held the northern part.
Firing in concert upon the batteries and troops below them, the two
leaders developed a counter-attack, which not only put an immediate end
to the British assaults upon the laager, but by the confusion which it
caused, brought about the abandonment at nightfall of hardly-won
positions. Whether, under any circumstances, Kitchener could have
induced the troops to rush the laager that evening is very doubtful, but
it is agreed on all hands that the immediate cause of failure was De
Wet’s masterly intervention at the right place and the right moment. The
indirect after-effects were still more important. Though a
disinclination to incur further heavy losses was, no doubt, the
determining factor in the decision of Lord Roberts not to renew the
assault, the marked change for the worse in the tactical situation must
have influenced his mind considerably. And if we follow the chain of
causation backward, we shall find, in the heavy blow struck at his
transport three days earlier by the same master-hand, an additional
reason for postponing what the strategical situation so urgently
needed—a rapid and uninterrupted advance on Bloemfontein, before Boer
reinforcements had time to arrive from other quarters of the theatre of
war. The Cavalry, for their part, were on starvation rations for two or
three days after the 18th, owing to the loss of forage-waggons.
Now let the reader compare the work done by French and De Wet
respectively in this third week of February, with a special view to the
controversy which this book deals with, remembering the relative size of
the armies for which each worked and the relative independent strength
with which each operated. The analogy in regard to work done is in many
respects close and obvious, the disparity in force equally striking.
Both men alike were actuated by the Cavalry spirit in its truly wide
sense of the mounted spirit: both were dashing leaders of Horse, linked
in sentiment by the horse. But what could De Wet have done if he, an
uneducated farmer, and his men, a rude militia, unaccustomed to drill
together except at rare intervals, had been burdened with the
disqualifications under which the Cavalry laboured?
There are no abnormalities here which in the least degree discount the
plain lesson for future wars. But, as usual, the official critics, in
discussing the Paardeberg campaign, resolutely ignore its plainest
lesson. Our own Official Historian pays ample tribute to De Wet’s skill
and dash, but refrains from any comparison of methods and armaments
which might raise the thorny issue. The German historian (vol. i., p.
187) introduces De Wet with the observation that he “arrived from the
south” with 500 men. How very simple it sounds to arrive from the south!
Later on (p. 227), the Boer General is criticized for not having done
more, the suggestion apparently being that he might have brought about
the rout, or partial rout, of the British forces on the south side of
the Modder, and have extricated Cronje there and then. I need not
investigate the grounds of this hypothesis, which I take to be
far-fetched, to say the least. Certainly, if De Wet had produced these
results, he would have performed one of the most extraordinary feats in
the history of war. My point is that the suggestion is complacently
advanced without a word of explanation, express or implied, as to why
such an exacting standard should be applied to Boer troops and such a
relatively mild standard to British troops. If the critic were to try
and equalize his standards, he would find himself writing of the
previous day’s operations, that French “arrived from the west” with
1,500 men, and blocked Cronje’s advance, but that if he had shown proper
resolution, he should have routed Cronje there and then. Or, to take an
example from the day of the battle itself: Gordon’s brigade of Cavalry,
something over 800 strong and 12 guns, arrived from Kimberley at about
the same time as De Wet from Koffyfontein, and did useful work in
seizing the Koodoos Heights to the north-east of the battle-field; but
why not suggest that it should have intervened with crushing effect in
the main battle, or that French himself, who, with Broadwood’s brigade
and the Carbineers, also performed useful work in watching Cronje’s line
of retreat, should have assisted actively in the assault?
To those who imagine that the relative merits of Cavalry and the pure
type of mounted riflemen have been judicially weighed, or even
consciously contrasted, by Germans, and that we can safely fortify
ourselves with their opinion in favour of the retention of the steel as
the superior weapon, I commend the study of these chapters on the
Kimberley and Paardeberg operations, and especially of the passage
dealing in detail with the work of the British Cavalry (pp. 163–165,
176–178). Abounding in wise and true criticism, containing scarcely a
sentence which can be challenged in any direct, positive way, they
constitute a perfect masterpiece in the art of begging the one really
fundamental question. What is the use of demonstrating that Roberts’s
strategy from the outset bore the character rather of an attempt to
manœuvre Cronje away from Kimberley than of an effort to defeat him
where he stood, and that it was mainly through Cronje’s own errors that
his envelopment was accomplished, if no clue is given as to the
underlying motives of the British General’s cautious policy? Political
motives apart, the dominating military fact was the extremely formidable
character of the Boers as mounted riflemen—a known, proved fact, which
rightly and naturally exercised a profound influence on Roberts’s plans.
Without a recognition of this fact the whole operations are
unintelligible. It is impossible to understand why it was necessary to
employ an Army Corps whose mounted troops alone exceeded the enemy’s
main force, and to use most of these mounted troops not tactically but
strategically. Nor can we understand why the operations ended so
successfully as they did, unless we realize that of the two constituents
of the Boer fighting strength, the horse and the rifle, Cronje,
encumbered by his precious waggons and by his helpless non-combatants,
persisted in relying almost wholly on the rifle, to the neglect of the
horse. On the other hand, a recognition of that dominant military fact
explains most of the minor shortcomings and errors upon which the German
critic comments adversely. One fault only it does not explain, the
imperfect system of command, but that was far worse in the Boer army
than in our own. It explains why Methuen’s division was not used for a
containing attack upon the Magersfontein trenches, so as to pin down
Cronje at an earlier stage; why the whole of the Cavalry were used for
the raid on Kimberley, to the neglect of other important duties; and it
throws into vivid light the detailed criticisms passed upon the Cavalry
themselves. As to these latter criticisms, one can only admire the
unerring dexterity with which the critic skates over the thinnest of
thin ice in avoiding even the most distant allusion to the
distinguishing features of Cavalry as the standard European arm. On
armament and equipment he is silent. No one could gather that the
Cavalry carried steel weapons and were equipped and trained primarily
for shock. In commenting on the destruction of horse-flesh (p. 176), he
notices several preventable causes, but associates none with the
conventional systems of peace training. He is severe on the failure in
reconnaissance, and attributes it principally to the effect of the
modern long-range rifle in keeping scouts and patrols at a distance, but
he does not suggest that the Cavalry carbine was an inadequate weapon,
or that the lack of individual skill and initiative was connected in any
way with the traditional training of Cavalry.
On the fire-action of Cavalry, as at the Drifts on February 17, he would
do well to study his compatriot Bernhardi. Like our own Official
Historian, he regards such action as an interesting and important modern
discovery, and descants sapiently on the additional value it will give
to Cavalry in future wars. No writer on any other arm but Cavalry would
dare to show such ignorance. As though, nearly forty years earlier and
five years before his own great war against the French, the American
Cavalry leaders had not in scores of similar combats proved the value of
fire-action! Surely he must have heard of Sheridan’s brilliant
interception of Lee’s army in April, 1865?
On Cavalry in offence he is enigmatically reticent. The strange comment
on the Klip Drift charge I have noticed. Equally strange are the
comments on subsequent actions. Much impressed, apparently (pp. 159 and
166), by the failure of French’s division to dislodge the little
Dronfield detachment on February 16, as compared with their success in
containing Cronje on the 17th, he seems to be on the very verge of
embracing the obvious rational conclusion. The two combats he describes
as being of “quite extraordinary value” for instructional purposes. We
wait breathlessly for the inference. But there is none, except, so far
as I understand him, the depressingly lame conclusion that no more _can_
be done by Cavalry than was done at Dronfield. And yet a few pages
earlier (p. 150) we find him accepting De Wet’s destructive attack on
the army’s supply column as the most natural thing in the world; while a
few pages later he is actually blaming the same leader for not
converting his intervention at Paardeberg (smart enough in itself, in
all conscience) into a decisive attack against immensely superior
forces.
The exasperating feature of all this is that for a controversialist like
myself, who is trying to make a point good, there is never anything
quite concrete enough to grapple with closely. It is not as if, in his
remarks on the Klip Drift charge, the critic ever even alluded to the
conventional function of Cavalry in offence, shock with the _arme
blanche_, and endeavoured to explain why it was in abeyance in all this
fighting against the Boers, and why we may expect that in future wars it
will resume its old sway. If he were to take that course, issue could be
joined frankly and fairly. But, as I have said, he is absolutely silent
on this crucial point, just as he is absolutely silent on the
comparative merits of the Boer type. The two themes, so patently and
intimately intertwined, are kept rigorously distinct, shut off from one
another by a kind of thought-tight bulkhead which divides his mind into
two hermetically-sealed compartments, in one of which, I suppose, is
enshrined the _arme blanche_ dogma, inviolate, inviolable, not to be
sullied by the least intrusion of polemical argument.
It is strange enough to find Germans accepting this class of criticism.
It is barely credible that we, whose war this was, should, in our turn,
accept it at second-hand from Germans and hail it as oracular. That
seems to be the situation. But the paradox does not end there. As I
shall show at the proper time, Bernhardi’s work, the bible of our own
Cavalry school, contains within itself the most crushing refutation of
the _arme blanche_ theory, simply because his special purpose and
special environment permitted him to descant more freely and
enthusiastically on the virtues of the rifle. He, too, kept the rifle
and the steel in carefully separated compartments, but the arrangement
is so transparent that it cannot deceive. Experience of his own in South
Africa, confirming in every particular those fire-lessons which he drew
from the American Civil War, would have saved him from many palpable
inconsistencies. However that may be, let the reader clearly understand
this, that what I have quoted from the official critic is the kind of
evidence on which German practice is founded. If he thinks it convincing
and satisfactory, well and good. But let him not be deluded into
thinking that the Germans have honestly assimilated and co-ordinated the
lessons of the South African War. The contrary can be proved to
demonstration out of their own mouths.
It must be added that, besides these comments on the Kimberley
operations, scarcely any attention is paid in the German Official
History to the mounted question. The war may be truly said to have been
studied by Germans from a purely Infantry standpoint. That the mounted
factor was dominant throughout is a fact they disregard, even if they
perceive it.
II.—POPLAR GROVE.
MARCH 7, 1900.
I have now to record the progress of events up to the capture of
Bloemfontein. The investment of Cronje’s laager lasted nine days. De Wet
reinforced the key position at Kitchener’s Kopje, and implored Cronje to
break out. Cronje could not induce his men, whose horses were gradually
destroyed by Artillery fire, to try. De Wet, who was driven off his
kopje by an enveloping movement in which the Cavalry took the principal
part, tried to regain it two days later and failed. Meanwhile
reinforcements from other parts of the theatre of war gradually brought
the total of Boers outside the lines and between Paardeberg and
Bloemfontein up to something between 5,000 and 6,000. Aware of the
process of reinforcement, and fully alive to the ill-effects of delay,
Roberts tried to arrange for a raid by the Cavalry on Bloemfontein. By
the 24th transport had been collected, the brigades reorganized, and all
was ready for a start. But at the last moment French was compelled
reluctantly to state that the horses were not in a fit state for the
expedition. De Wet might possibly have made some more effective
diversion with the newly-arrived troops, had not the moral decay which
made such havoc in the Boer forces after the date of Cronje’s capture
begun even before that capture was consummated.
Cronje surrendered with 4,000 men on February 29. Vastly more important
as the results might have been, had it been possible to storm the laager
and accelerate the advance on the Free State capital, Paardeberg was,
nevertheless, the turning-point in the war. Roberts’s broad scheme of
strategy was signally justified. Many days before the actual surrender
pressure had been relieved at every threatened point in the theatre of
war, Mafeking alone excepted—at Kimberley, at Colesberg, Dordrecht, and
other points along the frontier of Central Cape Colony, and at the
Tugela heights and Ladysmith. Buller fought the successful battle of
Pieter’s Hill on the day Cronje surrendered, and on the next day
Ladysmith was relieved.
Another week’s delay followed Cronje’s surrender, a delay attributed by
our Official Historian mainly to the need of still further recuperating
the Cavalry and Artillery horses, partly also to the necessity of
increasing the general supplies for the army, in view of the
contemplated change of base to the Free State railway. Behind all we see
the far-reaching effects of De Wet’s raid on the supply column on the
15th of the month.
Methuen’s division had been sent north by way of Kimberley. With the
other three Infantry divisions, 4,900 mounted riflemen (including some
recent additions), and 2,800 regular Cavalry, Roberts, on March 6, had
an army with an effective strength in round numbers of 30,000 men and
116 guns. Facing him, on the Poplar Grove position, a few miles east,
and barring the road to Bloemfontein, were between 5,000 and 6,000 Boers
and 8 guns under De Wet. These are the figures supplied at the time by
the Intelligence, and apparently accepted by the Official Historian,
though Villebois de Mareuil is quoted as having estimated them at 9,000.
But the Frenchman appears to have reckoned in the forces at Petrusberg
and elsewhere, which did not take part in the coming battle. Roberts,
giving the outside estimate of 14,000 men and 20 guns in his
Instructions of March 6, evidently included, in order to be on the safe
side, all the commandos which were known to have left Colesberg,
Stormberg, and Ladysmith, but which the Intelligence mentioned as “not
since located.”
The Boers occupied a crescent of heights no less than twenty-five miles
in extent astride of the Modder River. The ford at Poplar Grove Drift
formed the communicating link between the commandos on the left or
southern bank, which were the most numerous, and the commandos on the
right or northern bank. The natural line of retreat to Bloemfontein lay
by roads on the left bank, and in particular by the road crossing the
river at Poplar Grove Drift, and thence following its course closely
eastward. The only alternative, or rather additional route, on this side
of the river, that via Petrusberg, took a much more southerly sweep,
and, since it skirted the extreme Boer left, which rested on the hills
known as the Seven Kopjes, could only be regarded as a perilous flank
line of retreat, which any threat of envelopment on the left would
suffice instantly to close.
The plan of Lord Roberts was that French, with all the Cavalry, half the
Mounted Infantry, and six batteries, should sweep round the Boer left by
a détour of some seventeen miles, get in rear of their centre, and block
their line of retreat by the Poplar Grove Road. To this road, and
somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Drift, he foresaw that the greater
part of the Boer force, threatened in front by three divisions of
Infantry and 70 guns, and in rear by the mounted troops and 42 guns,
must converge. Here, then, he hoped to bring about a second Paardeberg,
once more in the bed of the Modder River.
The scheme in general character was what the situation demanded. After
what had happened, and in view of the disparity of forces, there could
have been no question here of manœuvring De Wet from his positions.
The marvel was that he dared to risk (and there is no doubt that he
intended to risk) a battle against such odds and in the existing moral
condition of the burghers. To aim at his complete destruction was the
only course worthy of Lord Roberts and his army. The tactical method
proposed, that of using the bulk of the mounted troops as a distinct
tactical unit, was equally sound. Numerically, our mounted troops
exceeded the whole Boer army as estimated by the Intelligence. The force
allotted to French—approximately 5,000 troopers and 42 guns—was five
times superior in Artillery to the whole Boer force, not far short of
equality in horsemen, and was certainly superior to the commandos on the
south bank, with which he was specially concerned. This force, moreover,
had the immense advantage of possessing complete independent mobility,
whereas the Boers, if they wished to maintain the semblance of an
organized army, had to preserve their heavy transport and conform their
speed to it. I have often alluded to the importance of this governing
factor, and at Poplar Grove, in particular, it must be borne in mind if
we are to gain any instruction from what happened. For the rest, the
function designed by Roberts for French was the same as that performed
by him so admirably, albeit with a weak force, at the Drifts on February
17—that is, to contain the Boer force until the rest of our army should
have time to come up and crush it.
I have only sketched the plan of operations, and I can only sketch what
actually happened. I must assume that the reader has before him the map
and the narratives of the Official and _Times_ Histories.
There is no dispute as to the facts, and both accounts in this respect
are substantially the same, but that of the _Times_, for a reason to
which I shall have to refer later, is more lucid. There has been much
controversy over the day’s work and over the cause which led to an
almost painful fiasco. Some of this controversy is not strictly relevant
to our inquiry, and I shall refer to it as briefly as possible. The
point I have to make is absolutely simple and unmistakable.
Let the reader first read the Instructions issued by Roberts on March 6,
and grasp their spirit. Their details are not, and could not have been,
cut and dried. Battles never follow the course of cut-and-dried
instructions. One point needs special notice, that Roberts expected the
Cavalry to be well _behind_ the Boer positions and somewhere near the
Modder before the Infantry began direct attacks, and before the enemy
began any general retreat. The sixth division, which was to follow the
track of the Cavalry for several miles, and was then to capture Seven
Kopjes, on which the Boer left rested, would find the enemy “shaken by
the knowledge that the Cavalry had passed their rear.” The movements of
the other three Infantry divisions were, it is implied, to conform to
the course of events in this quarter. On the other hand, the Cavalry
division is regarded as wholly independent of the other arms. It was to
set the pace, so to speak, and govern the course of events.
Now, it is quite clear from the narrative that from the very first there
was no chance of realizing the Commander-in-Chief’s idea in its fulness.
To have done that it would have been necessary for French either to make
so wide a détour as to pass outside the range of vision of the Boers on
Seven Kopjes, or, describing a shorter curve, to circle unobserved round
Seven Kopjes before daylight, and thence to make for the Modder. To be
seen was to precipitate the Boer retreat. Roberts seems scarcely to have
realized this, and I think he is fairly open to the criticism that he
might have rested his whole plan more boldly on the specific
Intelligence report that there were only 6,000 Boers opposed to him, who
must, however good or bad their _morale_, begin an immediate retreat
directly they realized that the road to Bloemfontein was threatened by
so large and mobile a force as that of French. On this basis he would
have altered the tone of his instructions to the Infantry, omitted
references to preliminary bombardments, and enjoined speed as the
all-important requisite.
French appears from the first to have treated the conception of getting
round the Boer rear _unobserved_ as hopeless, on the ground of time and
the condition of his horses. He himself, with good reason, suggested
starting overnight. Roberts rejected this proposal, and named the hour
of 2 a.m. Owing to an unfortunate misunderstanding, French did not start
till 3 a.m. He marched very slowly, halted at 5 a.m. expressly in order
to “wait for daylight,” which came at 5.45, and reached the farm
Kalkfontein, three miles south-east of Seven Kopjes, at about 6.45 a.m.,
having covered twelve miles in three and three-quarter hours. He had
been observed and, at 6.30, fired at from Seven Kopjes, and so far from
circling north-east round that hill in order to make for the Modder, he
had inclined, after passing it, slightly to the south, and now, as the
official map shows, could not be said to be thoroughly “in rear” even of
Seven Kopjes. This inclination was made partly with the object of
watering his horses at Kalkfontein dam, a step which he considered
essential. The halt at the dam seems to have lasted about three-quarters
of an hour for the bulk of the division, though detachments continued to
push on north and north-east. In the meantime French rode out to
reconnoitre.
Let us pause here for a minute. It must be clear that, whatever the
justification, French’s action was altogether inconsistent with the idea
of a rapid sweep of an independent mounted force round the enemy’s rear.
He has been criticized for not furthering that idea, and the Official
Historian, in the course of his rather rambling and obscure comments
upon the day’s work, meets the point by replying that if French, owing
to the condition of his horses, thought the task impossible, “it is safe
to say that there is in the world no living authority who can pronounce
a decision against him.” Let us accept that conclusion unreservedly,
adding, however, that French, under the circumstances, should have
frankly told his Chief that he could not attempt to carry out the full
design, instead of leaving him and the whole army to understand that an
effort, at any rate, would be made. Roberts would certainly have altered
his plan, on the assumption that French, although he could turn the Boer
left, could not within the time allotted him compass the complete
half-circle which would bring him to the Modder before the enemy fully
realized the threat to their communications.
Apart from that criticism, let us agree that French was free from blame
in not being in a position to move in force from Kalkfontein before 7.30
a.m. or thereabouts. Was the game up? It had scarcely begun. The Cavalry
advance had been a complete surprise to the Boers. Their gun-fire from
Seven Kopjes at 6.30 appears to have coincided with their first
discovery of the turning movement. At seven they realized that their
position was turned, though not enveloped, and between seven and eight
they began the only course open to them—a retreat, both from the Seven
Kopjes and from Table Mountain, the next position northward, towards the
Poplar Grove Road, just as Roberts had foreseen. French in person
witnessed the beginning of this retreat, and reported it to Roberts in
two successive messages, at 7.30 and 8 a.m., noting in the second
instance the presence of a long line of waggons, and adding in both
cases that he was “following the pursuit with Artillery fire.” But how
was he to use his 5,000 horsemen? There were two alternatives: one, to
make a direct pursuit; the other, to resume the thread of Roberts’s
original idea, and endeavour to intercept the Boer retreat at the river.
The first meant less distance for his horses and a strong offensive rôle
over an ideal terrain on the lines traditionally reserved for Cavalry;
the second meant a détour involving more strain to his horses, though on
equally good terrain, and culminating in a semi-defensive containing
rôle like that which he had played on February 17. French rejected the
first alternative, because, in the words of his second message, the
enemy were “too well protected by riflemen on neighbouring kopjes and
positions to enable me to attack them, mounted or dismounted.” But,
while rejecting this aim, he did not resolutely embrace the other,[30]
which was still undoubtedly practicable, in view of the fact that the
Boer retreat, though it was covered by mounted skirmishers, was
maintained throughout at the rate of ox-waggons not of unhampered
horsemen. The division was sent to the low ridge of Middlepunt, some
five miles north-east of Kalkfontein, where one brigade at least was
actually nearer to the river than a considerable part of the Boer
retreating forces; but here, again, it was brought to a standstill by
“small groups” of Boer riflemen. From this time (8.30 a.m.) until the
evening, the story is one of impotence on the part of the division, in
the face of mere handfuls, relatively, of these riflemen, who
represented the only stout-hearted element in a thoroughly disorganized
force. It was the story of Dronfield over again: the failure of Cavalry,
armed and equipped as the Cavalry were, to develop _offensive_ power
against mounted riflemen.
-----
Footnote 30:
I follow the account of French’s motives given by the “Official
History.” Both the _Times_ History and Mr. Goldman represent him as
having decided from the first against interception, and regard the
next move, to Middelpunt Ridge, as the first stage in an indirect or
semi-direct pursuit. The point is not material. It was either
irresolute interception or indirect pursuit.
-----
There need be no doubt as to the nature of the Boer retreat. The
“Official History,” indeed, speaks of “panic” (p. 201), and De Wet, when
he appeared on the scene, seems to have regarded the flight as a
disgraceful surrender to unreasoning fear. But the evidence does not
support this extreme view. De Wet was not present on the Boer left when
the Cavalry made its appearance, and did not realize that retreat was
imperative. The fact that every gun and waggon was eventually saved, and
that no prisoners were taken, is inconsistent with the full meaning of
the word “panic.” On the other hand, it is quite certain that the
greater part of the Boer force was thoroughly demoralized, determined
not to fight, and deaf to the entreaties and threats of Kruger, who met
them on the Poplar Grove Road, and that it was only by the valour and
self-sacrifice of a very small minority, spurred on by the fiery energy
of De Wet, that a thin rear-guard was formed and maintained throughout
the morning and afternoon. A resolute stroke would have broken down this
flimsy screen, and turned what was already a defeat into a rout.
In the efforts that have been made to explain the ineffective action of
the Cavalry, much stress is laid on the condition of the horses. But the
irony of the matter is that weak tactics brought their own punishment,
and produced far greater exhaustion in the horses than a policy of
strong offence. At 8.30, Broadwood’s brigade, on the extreme right of
the division, as it deployed on the Middelpunt ridge facing north, was
only seven miles from the river. French, however, contracting his front,
ordered Broadwood to close in westward. Immediately a party of Boers
seized some farm-buildings which Broadwood evacuated, and began to
enfilade our line. Broadwood was then sent back, with an additional
brigade of Mounted Infantry and a battery, and it took these troops two
hours (until 11.30) to dislodge the audacious Boer detachment. Broadwood
now asked for permission to pursue immediately, but French allowed
another hour to elapse.[31] Then an advance to the river was begun, and
even now such an advance offered great possibilities of success. But
again De Wet interposed a screen which checked the whole division.
-----
Footnote 31:
Broadwood’s request, and the delay, are not expressly noted in the
“Official History.” In fairness to Broadwood, I take them from the
_Times_ History. But it is quite clear from the official narrative
that there must have been a considerable delay.
-----
The principal opposition came from a group of only forty men (“Official
History,” p. 202) at Bosch Kopjes, on our extreme right. Broadwood was
sent back (about 2 p.m.) by a long détour to envelop this point, while
the batteries and a brigade of Mounted Infantry attacked it in front.
Two hours were spent in formally carrying the position. By this time (4
p.m.) all the commandos, with their guns and waggons, had escaped. A
last rear-guard was driven in at 5 p.m. by the Cavalry brigades of
Gordon and Porter. What the average distance covered by the division in
the course of the day amounted to it is difficult to say, but
Broadwood’s brigade, as the _Times_ History points out, must certainly
have covered at least forty miles, or nearly double the distance which
would have sufficed originally to place it astride the Modder. The
division had suffered some fifty casualties, and the loss of 213 horses.
These were almost the only casualties to the army during the day.
What of the Infantry? Here the original idea, deeply implanted on the
minds of all concerned, that the Cavalry would succeed at an early hour
in placing itself directly in rear of the Boer centre, produced strange
results. Nobody was prepared for a premature Boer flight, and few could
take it in. It will be remembered that movements were to conform to the
right, where the sixth division, acting in concert with the Cavalry, was
to storm Seven Kopjes. The halt of the Cavalry at Kalkfontein caused a
corresponding halt of the sixth division. Repeated messages from
headquarters (based on French’s reports) could not persuade the
divisional Commander that the position was untenanted. It was formally
attacked and occupied near noon, four hours after its evacuation.
Hesitation and delay were communicated all down the line, each brigade
waiting for the next.
All this indicates an atmosphere, common to the whole army, of excessive
caution. The _Times_ Historian suggests that a more resolute advance on
the part of the Infantry, and especially on the part of the sixth
division, might have turned the scale in promoting more vigorous action
by the Cavalry. No doubt it would have had this effect. But it is surely
a very poor compliment to the Cavalry arm to suggest, as Mr. Goldman
does, that it is not their business to push home an active pursuit
unless the enemy’s retreat has been originally brought about by Infantry
and guns. The fact is, of course, that the Cavalry controlled the course
of events. They had been expressly entrusted with this duty from the
first, and nothing could lighten the responsibility, least of all a
premature flight on the part of the enemy. They alone were in touch with
what was actually happening, and in them alone lay the power to infuse
vitality into the action.
What are we to conclude? First, that French, apart altogether from the
capacity of his men, was below his usual form on this day, otherwise he
would have risked more and tried harder, even against his own judgment,
for a more energetic officer never lived. Second, that his men, in
training and armament, were unequal to their work, and that at the
bottom of his heart he knew it. I speak with especial reference to the
regular Cavalry. The half-trained Mounted Infantry who worked with them
had been brought up to believe that they lacked that highest sort of
offensive power which was held to reside in Cavalry. Who can fail to
detect the paralyzing influence of the _arme blanche_ at Poplar Grove?
When I suggest that French himself must have felt it, I only make the
plain inference from his message to Roberts at 8 a.m. Who were these
“riflemen” whose protective action forbade a direct pursuit, mounted or
dismounted? Cavalry under another name, performing one of the elementary
functions of Cavalry—the shielding of a retreat. Assuredly, if the steel
weapon had any merit at all, then was the time to show it. Where is the
“future war” against a white race, in which, all the circumstances
considered, better opportunities are going to present themselves? No
such war can be conceived unless, indeed, accepting the _reductio ad
absurdum_ in its entirety, we reckon _arme blanche_ training as a
disadvantage, and count on meeting mounted troops destitute of the very
qualities which enabled the scanty Boer rear-guard to stave off
destruction from its main body.
The Official commentary upon Poplar Grove is not well-conceived. It is
difficult to reconcile with the plain narrative of facts, which is
evidently written by a different hand, and in lucidity suffers only from
not being constructed with a view to the obvious conclusions and from
the absence of a map showing times and movements. The map shows none of
the original Boer positions on the south bank—only some arrows marked
“Boers retreating.” The British dispositions are those at 11.30 a.m. As
a guide to the action, the map is useless, and the _Times_ map, though
topographically less perfect, must be consulted. In the text there is no
practical instruction—not a hint that there was anything wrong with the
equipment, armament, or tactics of the Cavalry. Overlaid with irrelevant
invectives against the British public for expecting too much of its
troops, and with vague moralization on the psychology of the war, we
find two definite propositions recurring: that the initial failure of
the Cavalry to work round the enemy’s rear before the Boers took alarm
necessarily and immediately involved the failure of the whole operation,
and that the root-cause lay in the condition of the Cavalry horses,
which is written of here and elsewhere as though it were a circumstance
attributable to an “act of God” wholly out of control of the Cavalry
themselves. The narrative itself refutes both propositions.[32] They are
unfair to everybody concerned—to Lord Roberts in particular, to the
Infantry, to the Cavalry themselves, and to French. It is difficult to
believe that brave men find any satisfaction in hearing themselves
defended in this fashion. That is the vice of worshipping a fetish. A
purely technical question is converted into a question personal to a
branch of the service. And he who attacks the fetish is forced to risk
the odious imputation of attacking persons and regiments.
-----
Footnote 32:
See p. 201, line 22, where the Cavalry narrative, broken off at p.
197, is resumed (8 or 8.30 a.m.) “On the left” (_i.e._, on the south
of the Modder) “disaster was only warded off by the gallantry of small
groups of the bolder burghers,” etc., down to p. 203.
-----
I allude with some reluctance to Mr. Goldman’s commentary on Poplar
Grove. His enthusiasm for the fetish, always in excess of his
discretion, here leads him into confusions and contradictions which, to
an unbiassed mind, effectually destroy the case he is endeavouring to
build up. His narrative, unintentionally, is not always accurate. At
page 132 he represents French, soon after 7.30 a.m., when he first saw
the Boer retreat, as “straining every nerve to overtake” a disorganised
enemy only three miles ahead, but “crippled by broken-down animals,”
failing “to bring his brigades up in time to throw them on the close
ranks of the enemy.” No such scene took place. French, as his own
messages and the known facts show, refrained from this sort of direct
pursuit on the express ground that the enemy’s skirmishers were too
strong. In any case, the suggestion is untenable. The Boer retreat was
regulated by the speed of their transport. The horses, unquestionably,
were in bad condition, but to paint them as too “crippled” to overtake
waggons, is not only exaggerated but inconsistent with what followed. To
do Mr. Goldman justice, it is also inconsistent with his own subsequent
commentary; for on page 137 he restates the facts, without any
criticism, but correctly.
Then he proceeds. Admitting that the occasion was one for the Cavalry
arm to “turn a defeat into a rout, and capture guns and waggons,” he
nevertheless fathers on French (without any authority that I can
discover) the idea that such action should rightly be preceded by the
enemy’s defeat at the hands of Infantry and guns. Then, combating the
suggestion that the Cavalry should have charged through the enemy’s
screen at Middelpunt, as they charged at Klip Drift, he reminds us that
the Klip Drift charge was “mainly through flank-fire, while here the
Boers were in front,” and a charge must have meant “certain destruction
and probable annihilation.” After reading the Official and _Times_
narratives, one can afford to smile at this hysterical exaggeration, but
that is a small matter. What does this comment, as a whole, imply? Once
more, a crushing condemnation of the steel weapon. The Boers were just
as much “Cavalry,” in the broad sense of armed horsemen, as French’s
troops themselves. Can a frontal charge never be made by Cavalry, in the
narrow sense, upon mounted riflemen? Here, if ever, was the opportunity.
It is the old _reductio ad absurdum_—an unconscious but unreserved
admission that the rifle dictates mounted tactics, not the steel. For,
of course, Mr. Goldman means by “charge” a charge with the steel weapon.
No other charge is recognized by him, and I hope the reader will note
the tardy but instructive sidelight on the Klip Drift episode, where, as
I showed, the steel weapon was not in question at all.
Still, Mr. Goldman is always candid, and, in spite of his hypothesis of
“certain destruction,” we find him admitting in the next breath that
French was unduly delayed by a small number of audacious skirmishers.
Immediately after he is qualifying this admission by attributing failure
mainly to the condition of the horses. Finally, he concludes that
“failure was clearly attributable, not in any degree to defects in
executive operations on the field, but to the details of the plan as a
whole not having been evolved in the first instance with sufficient
preciseness of calculation.” Of all lessons to be drawn from Poplar
Grove this is the least helpful, and, if only Mr. Goldman knew it, the
most damaging to the arm whose interests he has so warmly and genuinely
at heart. Of all arms in the service it least becomes the Cavalry to
complain of lack of precision in a Commander-in-Chief’s calculations.
Their mobility invests them with the duty and privilege of correcting
and turning to advantage errors in calculation, especially when the
error arises in the first instance from an overestimate of the strength
and morale of the enemy.
Before leaving Poplar Grove, I wish to make an additional reference to
two points:
1. _Condition of Horses._—It must strike any impartial student of these
operations that the argument from the condition of French’s horses, weak
as they certainly were from unpreventable causes, is subjected to an
intolerable strain. I do not wish to lay any undue stress on horse
management, though we miss the acknowledgment that the horse is a
possession whose good condition is one of the supreme tests of
regimental efficiency. Gunners, from the Colonel to the driver, hold it
a point of honour not to blame their horses as long as there is anything
else left to blame, and the Cavalry have the same high ideal. It is only
when the _arme blanche_ is in danger of discredit that we find its
advocates, official and unofficial, laying excessive stress on the
condition of the horses, without even a suggestion that the Cavalry may
have been partly to blame for it. But I want the reader to go beyond
these operations, and inquire, What standard of speed and endurance have
advocates of the _arme blanche_ in mind when they represent the arm as
tactically unfit? It must be inferred that the standard consists in
ability _at any moment_ to gallop a considerable distance at high
speed—"everlastingly to gallop," as Count Wrangel, the Austrian
authority, frankly puts it.[33] This standard is the logical result of
the shock theory of which Wrangel is an uncompromising exponent; for, as
I have pointed out, one of the four indispensable conditions of shock is
capacity to gallop fast, partly because of the highly vulnerable target
presented by mounted troops in mass, and partly because heavy impact is
the essence of shock. If, as in our own present peace training, we
reduce the standard of speed, in contradiction of our own Manual, we
compromise fatally on shock. In South Africa, shock being already
obsolete, the steel weapon was in reality obsolete too. This the Cavalry
could not make up their minds to recognize, and, among other hampering
associations, the idea of capacity for high speed as an ever-present
essential for strong tactical offence lived on in a good many minds. We
find it in correspondence and despatches; we can trace it constantly in
field-tactics, and it was probably in the back of French’s mind during
the whole of the Poplar Grove action, though it must have been clear
that in order to overcome the sporadic opposition of the Boer rear-guard
no such efforts were necessary. There is no question that the Boer
horses were far fresher and stouter than ours. If the Boers to a man had
fled from the field, we could not have caught them. But we should have
captured their guns and transport.
-----
Footnote 33:
“Cavalry in the Russo-Japanese War,” Eng. Translation, p. 32.
-----
The galloping idea in its extreme form is wholly foreign to the tactical
action of mounted riflemen, for whom the “charge” is a relative term,
denoting the climax of aggressive mobility, not an isolated exotic
flowering in the midst of a dull waste known as “dismounted action.” If
we consider mere physical effects, which are all that matter, the few
mounted riflemen who snapped at Broadwood’s flanks as he marched towards
the Modder, and afterwards held up two brigades and twelve guns for two
hours, did just as much for their side as the Scots Greys at Waterloo,
and, when they first made their attack, “charged” in as real and
substantial a sense as the Cavalry at Klip Drift.
It is tolerably certain that the exaggerated claim for speed as a
tactical _sine qua non_ at all moments will do more in future wars to
eliminate shock, and enthrone the rifle in its true position, than any
other factor, even although the opposing Cavalries enter the war with
the fixed conviction that they must join issue in terms of shock. The
side which first breaks that compact will win. In future wars Cavalry
will have far harder work to do than they have ever had before. In the
thick of a hard-fought war the galloping horse will be a rarity, the
regiment of galloping horses still rarer, the brigade or division a nine
days’ wonder. Any unit whose power to deal decisive strokes in action
can be exercised only by means of really high speed will be of little
service. Manchurian evidence confirms this truth.
2. _Horse Artillery acting with Cavalry._—This is a new point in our
discussion, and I ask the reader to watch it carefully throughout the
war. He will have been struck already by the large number of guns which
accompanied the Cavalry in these operations, and the disproportionately
small results which ensued. French had forty-two guns at Poplar Grove,
and was never opposed by more than two at a time, and altogether, I
think, by six. The question is, To what extent should mounted troops,
acting independently, rely on the support of Artillery? The war proves,
I think, that they should rely as little as possible on that form of
aid. When, for strategical purposes, high mobility is required, the
strain on the gun-teams is great, and may—though this rarely happened in
South Africa—limit the strategical mobility of the mounted troops. But I
am thinking more of field-tactics. Here the ill-effects of excessive
reliance on Artillery were often visible, particularly in offence. The
preliminary bombardment, a serious drag upon all offensive action in
South Africa, was the curse of mounted action. Generally ineffective in
its physical and moral results upon the enemy, it weakened the spirit of
offence by weakening surprise, which, in one form or another, is the
soul of aggressive mounted action. As events turned out, French would
have done better, I believe, at Poplar Drift if he had had no guns at
all. The problem which confronted him when he first sighted the Boer
retreat could not then have been solved by a compromise in which a
“pursuit with Artillery fire” figured as a prominent element. Such
pursuits are useless; the Artillery fire during the whole day caused, I
suppose, scarcely a dozen casualties, while a whole brigade of Mounted
Infantry had to be told off as escort to the seven batteries. At every
turn the possession of guns was a temptation to employ slow, formal
methods, where rude, overmastering vigour was requisite. At Dronfield we
can detect the same source of weakness. And at Klip Drift, would French
have charged at all without the support of an enormous weight of
Artillery?
The Boers, always weak in Artillery, do not seem at any time to have
placed much moral reliance on guns as a support for aggressive action.
Their weakness in aggression came from other causes. It was only when
they had lost all their Artillery that they carried aggressive mounted
action to its highest point.
It is true that in defence guns are often valuable to mounted troops.
Since leaving Ramdam, the one occasion on which French’s guns were
useful to him was on February 17, when he headed and contained Cronje,
pending the arrival of the Infantry. The two batteries which he had
succeeded in bringing with him, besides assisting to repel attacks on
the Cavalry, covered the drift which Cronje’s transport had to pass, and
made the crossing impossible. Later experience, however, proved with
increasing force that, even in defence, guns, however well fought—and
they were always magnificently fought—were often productive of more
embarrassment than advantage to a mounted force. For the moment I am
speaking of offence and defence as though they were distinct functions.
Of course, they are not. They melt into one another, and may alternate
half a dozen times in one day. The best defence is always tinged by
offence. An independent mounted force must be equipped to meet all
contingencies. Nevertheless, all things considered, I suggest that the
mounted troops who rely least on Artillery at any rate, when they are
given a distinctly aggressive task, will achieve most.
The reason, I think, is this: that their mobility and the surprise which
is its fruit make the personal factor paramount. The rifle is eminently
a personal weapon, the gun essentially an impersonal weapon. In that
respect, let us note in passing, the gun bears a distant analogy to the
sword. For the denser the mass of swordsmen and the greater the shock
sought to be produced, the less personal is the weapon.
III.—THE FINAL ADVANCE TO BLOEMFONTEIN.
MARCH 10 TO 13, 1900.
There is little that need detain us in the further advance to
Bloemfontein. It began on March 10, in three parallel columns under
French, Tucker, and the Commander-in-Chief, and ended in the occupation
of the capital on the 13th. Demoralization turned to genuine despair in
most of the burghers who fled from Poplar Grove. Whole commandos melted
to a shadow through desertion. It was only through the agency of
reinforcements brought up by De la Rey, notably the Transvaal Police
(Zarps), that a show of resolute opposition could be organized by De
Wet. At Abraham’s Kraal (or Driefontein), eighteen miles east, where, on
March 10, the next stand was made, and where French commanded, the
principal interest lies in the fine Infantry attack of the sixth
division towards the evening, and the stubborn defence made by the small
body of Zarps on the Driefontein Kopjes. An attempt by the Cavalry a
little earlier in the day to turn the enemy’s left was unsuccessful, and
the final pursuit came to nothing.
In the last stage of the march the Cavalry were handled vigorously and
did well, though the opposition was slight. The best minor tactical
stroke during the month’s operations was that delivered by Major
Scobell’s squadron of the Scots Greys late in the evening of the
12th.[34] On the 13th Bloemfontein was occupied.
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Footnote 34:
“Official History,” vol. ii., p. 235; _Times_ History, vol. iii, p.
588. There was no question of using the _arme blanche_.
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