THE GENERALS OF THE WAR
The names and deeds of the men who led thirty thousand of their
fellow-peasants against almost a quarter of a million of the trained
troops of the greatest empire in the world, and husbanded their men and
resources so that they were enabled to continue the unequal struggle for
the greater part of a year will live for ever in the history of the Dark
Continent. When racial hatred and the bitternesses of the war have been
forgotten, and South Africa has emerged from its long period of bloodshed
and disaster, then all Afrikanders will revere the memory of the valiant
deeds of Cronje, Joubert, Botha, Meyer, De Wet, and the others who fought
so gallantly in a cause which they considered just and holy. Such noble
examples of heroism as Cronje's stand at Paardeberg, Botha's defence of
the Tugela and the region east of Pretoria; De Wet's warfare in the Free
State, and Meyer's fighting in the Transvaal will shine in African history
as long as the Southern Cross illumes the path of civilised people in that
region. When future generations search the pages of history for deeds of
valour they will turn to the records of the Boer-British war of 1899-1900,
and find that the military leaders of the farmers of South Africa were not
less valorous than those of the untrained followers of Cromwell or William
of Orange, the peace-loving mountaineers of Switzerland, or the patriotic
countrymen of Washington.
The leaders of the Boer forces were not generals in the popular sense of
the word. Almost without exception, they were men who had no technical
knowledge of warfare; men who were utterly without military training of
any nature, and who would have been unable to pass an examination for the
rank of corporal in a European army. Among the entire list of generals who
fought in the armies of the two Republics there were not more than three
who had ever read military works, and Cronje was the only one who ever
studied the theory and practice of modern warfare, and made an attempt to
apply the principles of it to his army. Every one of the Boer generals was
a farmer who, before the war, paid more attention to his crops and cattle
than he did to evolving ideas for application in a campaign, and the
majority of them, in fact, never dreamed that they would be called upon to
be military leaders until they were nominated for the positions a short
time before hostilities were commenced. Joubert, Cronje, Ferreira, and
Meyer were about the only men in the two Republics who were certain that
they would be called upon to lead their countrymen, for all had had
experience in former wars; but men like Botha, De Wet, De la Rey, and
Snyman, who occupied responsible positions afterward, had no such
assurance, and naturally gave little or no attention to the study of
military matters. The men who became the Boer generals gained their
military knowledge in the wilds and on the veld of South Africa where they
were able to develop their natural genius in the hunting of lions and the
tracking of game. The Boer principle of hunting was precisely the same as
their method of warfare and consequently the man who, in times of peace,
was a successful leader of shooting expeditions was none the less adept
afterward as the leader of commandos.
When the Volksraad of the Transvaal determined to send an ultimatum to
Great Britain, it was with the knowledge that such an act would provoke
war, and consequently preparations for hostilities were immediately made.
One of the first acts was the appointment of five assistant
commandant-generals--Piet Cronje, Schalk Burgher, Lucas Meyer, Daniel
Erasmus, and Jan Kock--all of whom held high positions in the Government,
and were respected by the Boer people. After hostilities commenced, and it
became necessary to have more generals, six other names were added to the
list of assistants of Commandant-General Joubert--those chosen being Sarel
Du Toit, Hendrik Schoeman, John De la Rey, Hendrik Snyman, and Herman R.
Lemmer. The selections which were so promiscuously made were proved by
time to be wise, for almost without exception the men developed into
extraordinarily capable generals. In the early part of the campaign many
costly mistakes and errors of judgment were made by some of the
newly-appointed generals, but such misfortunes were only to be expected
from men who suddenly found themselves face to face with some of the
best-trained generals in the world. Later, when the campaign had been in
progress for several months, and the farmers had had opportunities of
learning the tactics of their opponents, they made no move unless they
were reasonably certain of the result.
One of the prime reasons for the great success which attended the Boer
army before the strength of the enemy's forces became overwhelming, was
the fact that the generals were allowed to operate in parts of the country
with which they were thoroughly acquainted. General Cronje operated along
the western frontiers of the Republics, where he knew the geographical
features of the country as well as he did those of his own farm. General
Meyer spent the greater part of his life in the neighbourhood of the
Biggarsberg and northern Natal, and there was hardly a rod of that
territory with which he was unfamiliar. General Botha was born near the
Tugela, and, in his boyhood days, pursued the buck where afterward he made
such a brave resistance against the forces of General Buller. General
Christian De Wet was a native of Dewetsdorp, and there was not a sluit or
donga in all the territory where he fought so valiantly that he had not
traversed scores of times before the war began. General De la Rey spent
the greater part of his life in Griqualand West, Cape Colony, and when he
was leading his men around Kimberley and the south-western part of the
Free State he was in familiar territory. General Snyman, who besieged
Mafeking, was a resident of the Marico district, and consequently was
acquainted with the formation of the country in the western part of the
Transvaal. In the majority of cases the generals did not need the services
of an intelligence department, except to determine the whereabouts of the
enemy, for no scouts or patrols could furnish a better account of the
nature of the country in which they were fighting than that which existed
in the minds of the leaders. Under these conditions there was not the
slightest chance for any of the generals falling into a trap laid by the
enemy, but there always were opportunities for leading the enemy into
ambush.
The Boer generals also had the advantage of having excellent maps of the
country in which they were fighting, and by means of these they were
enabled to explain proposed movements to the commandants and field-cornets
who were not familiar with the topography of the land. These maps were
made two years before the war by a corps of experts employed by the
Transvaal Government, and on them was a representation of every foot of
ground in the Transvaal, Free State, Natal, and Cape Colony. A small
elevation near Durban and a spruit near Cape Town were marked as plainly
as a kopje near Pretoria, while the British forts at Durban and Cape Town
were as accurately pictured as the roads that led to them. The Boers had a
map of the environs of Ladysmith which was a hundred times better than
that furnished by the British War Office, yet Ladysmith was the Natal base
of the British army for many years.
The greater part of the credit for the Boers' preparedness must be given
to the late Commandant-General Piet J. Joubert, who was the head of the
Transvaal War Department for many years. General Joubert, or "Old Piet,"
as he was called by the Boers, to distinguish him from the many other
Jouberts in the country, was undoubtedly a great military leader in his
younger days, but he was almost seventy years old when he was called upon
to lead his people against the army of Great Britain, and at that age very
few men are capable of great mental or physical exertion. There was no
greater patriot in the Transvaal than he, and no one who desired the
absolute independence of his country more sincerely than the old general;
yet his heart was not in the fighting. Like Kruger, he was a man of peace,
and to his dying day he believed that the war might have been avoided
easily. Unlike Kruger, he clung to the idea that the war, having been
forced upon them, should be ended as speedily as possible, and without
regard to the loss of national interests. Joubert valued the lives of the
burghers more highly than a clause in a treaty, and rather than see his
countrymen slain in battle he was willing to make concessions to those who
harassed his Government.
Joubert was one of the few public men in the Transvaal who firmly believed
that the differences between the two countries would be amicably adjusted,
and he constantly opposed the measures for arming the country which were
brought before him. The large armament was secured by him, it is true, but
the Volksraads compelled him to purchase the arms and ammunition. If
Joubert had been a man who loved war he would have secured three times as
great a quantity of war material as there was in the country when the war
was begun; but he was distinctly a man who loved peace. He constantly
allowed his sentiments to overrule his judgment of what was good for his
country, and the result of that line of action was that at the beginning
of hostilities there were more Boer guns in Europe and on the ocean than
there were in the Transvaal.
General Joubert was a grand old Boer in many respects, and no better, more
righteous, and more upright man ever lived. He worked long and faithfully
for his people, and he undoubtedly strove to do that which he believed to
be the best for his country, but he was incapable of performing the duties
of his office as a younger, more energetic, and a more warlike man would
have attended to them. Joubert was in his dotage, and none of his people
were aware of it until the crucial moment of the war was passed. When he
led the Boers at Majuba and Laing's Nek, in 1881, he was in the prime of
his life--energetic, resourceful, and undaunted by any reverses. In 1899,
when he followed the commandos into Natal, he was absolutely the
reverse--slow, wavering, and too timid to move from his tent. He
constantly remained many miles in the rear of the advance column, and only
once went into the danger zone, when he led a small commando south of the
Tugela. Then, instead of leading his victorious burghers against the
forces of the enemy, he retreated precipitately at the first sign of
danger, and established himself at Modderspruit, a day's journey from the
foremost commandos, where he remained with almost ten thousand of his men
for three months.
Joubert attempted to wage war without the shedding of blood, and he
failed. When General Meyer reported that about thirty Boers had been
killed and injured in the fight at Dundee, the Commandant-General censured
him harshly for making such a great sacrifice of blood, and forbade him
from following the fleeing enemy, as such a course would entail still
greater casualties. When Sir George White and his forces had been
imprisoned in Ladysmith, and there was almost a clear path to Durban,
Joubert held back and would not risk the lives of a few hundred burghers,
even when it was pointed out to him that the men themselves were eager to
assume the responsibility. He made only one effort to capture Ladysmith,
but the slight loss of life so appalled him that he would never sanction
another attack, although the town could easily have been taken on the
following day if an attempt had been made. Although he had a large army
round the besieged town he did not dig a yard of entrenchment in all the
time he was at Modderspruit, nor would he hearken to any plans for
capturing the starving garrison by means of progressive trenches. While
Generals Botha, Meyer, and Erasmus, with less than three thousand men,
were holding the enemy at the Tugela, Joubert, with three times that
number of men to guard impotent Ladysmith, declined to send any ammunition
for their big guns, voted to retreat, and finally fled northward to
Colenso, deserting the fighting men, destroying the bridges and railways
as he progressed, and even leaving his own tents and equipment behind.
There were extenuating circumstances in connection with Joubert's failure
in the campaign--his age, an illness, and an accident while he was in
laager--and it is but charitable to grant that these were fundamentally
responsible for his shortcomings, but it is undoubted that he was
primarily responsible for the failure of the Natal campaign. The army
which he commanded in Natal, although only twelve or thirteen thousand men
in strength, was the equal in fighting ability of seventy-five thousand
British troops, and the only thing it lacked was a man who would fight
with them and lead them after a fleeing enemy. If the Commandant-General
had pursued the British forces after all their defeats and had drawn the
burghers out of their laagers by the force of his own example, the major
part of the history of the Natal campaign would have been made near the
Indian Ocean instead of on the banks of the Tugela. The majority of the
Boers in Natal needed a commander-in-chief who would say to them "Come,"
but Joubert only said "Go."
The death of General Joubert in Pretoria, on March 26th, was sincerely
regretted by all South Africans, for he undoubtedly was one of the most
distinguished men in the country. During his long public career he made
many friends who held him in high honour for his sterling qualities, his
integrity, and his devotion to his country's cause. He made mistakes--and
there are few men who are invulnerable to them--but he died while striving
to do that which he regarded the best for his country and its cause. If
dying for one's country is patriotism, then Joubert's death was sweet.
When war-clouds were gathering and the storm was about to burst over the
Transvaal Piet Cronje sat on the stoep of his farmhouse in Potchefstroom,
evolving in his mind a system of tactics which he would follow when the
conflict began. He was certain that he would be chosen to lead his people,
for he had led them in numerous native wars, in the conflict in 1881, and
later when Jameson made his ill-starred entry into the Transvaal. Cronje
was a man who loved to be amid the quietude of his farm, but he was in the
cities often enough to realise that war was the only probable solution of
the differences between the Uitlanders and the Boers, and he made
preparations for the conflict. He studied foreign military methods and
their application to the Boer warfare; he evolved new ideas and improved
old ones; he planned battles and the evolutions necessary to win them; he
had a natural taste for things military.
Before all the world had heard the blast of the war-trumpet, Cronje had
deserted the peaceful stoep and was attacking the enemy on the veld at
Mafeking. A victory there, and he was riding at the head of his men toward
Kimberley. A skirmish here, a hard-fought battle there, and he had the
Diamond City in a state of siege. Victories urged him on, and he led the
way southward. A Magersfontein to his wreath, a Belmont and a Graspan--and
it seemed as if he were more than nominally the South African Napoleon. A
reverse, and Cronje was no longer the dashing, energetic leader of the
month before. Doggedly and determinedly he retraced his steps, but
advanced cautiously now and then to punish the enemy for its
over-confidence. Beaten back to Kimberley by the overpowering force of the
enemy, he endured defeat after defeat until finally he was compelled to
abandon the siege in order to escape the attacks of a second army sent
against him. The enemy's web had been spun around him, but he fought
bravely for freedom from entanglement. General French was on one side of
him, Lord Roberts on another, Lord Kitchener on a third--and against the
experience and troops of all these men was pitted the genius of the
Potchefstroom farmer. A fight with Roberts's Horse on Thursday, February
15th; a march of ten miles and a victorious rear-guard action with Lord
Kitchener on Friday; a repulse of the forces under Lords Roberts and
Kitchener on Saturday, and on Sunday morning the discovery that he and his
four thousand men in the river-bed at Paardeberg were surrounded by forty
thousand troops of the enemy--that was a four days' record which caused
the Lion of Potchefstroom merely to show his fangs to his enemy.
When General Cronje entered the river-bed on Saturday he was certain that
he could fight his way out on the following day. Scores of his burghers
appealed to him to trek eastward that night, and Commandant-General
Ferreira, of the Free State, asked him to trek north-east in order that
their two Boer forces might effect a junction, but Cronje was determined
to remain in the positions he then occupied until he could carry all his
transport-waggons safely away. In the evening Commandants De Beer and
Grobler urged the general to escape and explained to him that he would
certainly be surrounded the following day, but Cronje steadfastly
declined, and expressed his ability to fight a way through any force of
the enemy. Even late that night, while the British troops were welding the
chain which was to bind him hard and fast in the river-bed, many of
Cronje's men begged the general to desert the position, and when they saw
him so determined they deserted him and escaped to the eastward.
Cronje might have accepted the advice of his officers and men if he had
not believed that he could readily make his way to the east, where he did
not suspect the presence of any of Lord Roberts's troops. Not until the
following forenoon, when he saw the British advance-guard marching over
the hills on the south side of the river, did he realise that the enemy
had surrounded him and that he had erred when he determined to hold the
position. The grave mistake could not be rectified, and Cronje was in no
mood for penitence. He told his men that he expected reinforcements from
the east and counselled them to remain cool and fire with discretion until
assistance came to them. Later in the day the enemy attacked the camp from
all sides but the little army repulsed the onslaught and killed and
wounded more than a thousand British soldiers. When the Sabbath sun
descended and the four thousand Boers sang their psalms and hymns of
thanksgiving there was probably only one man who believed that the
burghers would ever be able to escape from the forces which surrounded
them, and that man was General Cronje. He realised the gravity of the
situation, but he was as calm as if he had been victorious in a battle. He
talked cheerily with his men, saying, "Let the English come on," and when
they heard their old commander speak in such a confident manner they
determined to fight until he himself announced a victory or a defeat.
On Monday morning it seemed as if the very blades of grass for miles
around the Boer laager were belching shot and shell over the dongas and
trenches where the burghers had sought shelter. Lyddite shells and
shrapnel burst over and around them; the bullets of rifles and
machine-guns swept close to their heads, and a few yards distant from them
were the heavy explosions of ammunition-waggons set on fire by the enemy's
shells. Burghers, horses and cattle fell under the storm of lead and iron,
and the mingled life-blood of man and beast flowed in rivulets to join the
waters of the river. The wounded lay groaning in the trenches; the dead
unburied outside, and the cannonading was so terrific that no one was able
to leave the trenches and dongas sufficiently long to give a drink of
water to a wounded companion. There was no medicine in the camp, all the
physicians were held in Jacobsdal by the enemy, and the condition of the
dead and dying was such that Cronje was compelled to ask for an
armistice. The reply from the British commander was "Fight or surrender,"
and Cronje chose to continue the fight. The bombardment of the laager was
resumed with increased vigour, and there was not a second's respite from
shells and bullets until after night descended, when the burghers were
enabled to emerge from their trenches and holes to exercise their limbs
and to secure food.
The Boers' cannon became defective on Tuesday morning, and thereafter they
could reply to the continued bombardment with only their rifles. Hope rose
in their breasts during the day when a heliograph message was received
from Commandant Froneman; "I am here with Generals De Wet and Cronje," the
message read; "Have good cheer. I am waiting for reinforcements. Tell the
burghers to find courage in Psalm xxvii." The fact that reinforcements
were near, even though the enemy was between, imbued the burghers with
renewed faith in their ability to defeat the enemy and, when a concerted
attack was made against the laager in the afternoon, a gallant resistance
followed.
On Wednesday morning the British batteries again poured their shells on
the miserable and exhausted Boers. Shortly before midday there was a lull
in the storm, and the beleaguered burghers could hear the reports of the
battle between the relieving force and the British troops. The sounds of
the fight grew fainter and fainter, then subsided altogether. The
bombardment of the laager was renewed, and the burghers realised that
Froneman had been beaten back by the enemy. The disappointment was so
great that one hundred and fifty Boers bade farewell to their general, and
laid down their arms to their enemy. The following day was merely the
repetition of the routine of former days, with the exception that the
condition of the men and the laager was hourly becoming more
miserable. The wounded clamouring for relief was in itself a misery to
those who were compelled to hear it, but to allow such appeals to go
unanswered was heartrending. To have the dead unburied seemed cruel
enough, but to have the corpses before one's eyes day after day was
torture. To know that the enemy was in ten times greater strength was
disheartening, but to realise that there was no relief at hand was enough
to dim the brightest courage. Yet Cronje was undaunted.
Friday and Saturday brought nothing but a message from Froneman, again
encouraging them to resist until reinforcements could be brought from
Bloemfontein. On Saturday evening Jan Theron, of Krugersdorp, succeeded in
breaking through the British lines with despatches from General De Wet and
Commandants Cronje and Froneman, urging General Cronje to fight a way
through the lines whilst they would engage the enemy from their side.
Cronje and his officers decided to make an attempt to escape, and on
Sunday morning the burghers commenced the construction of a chain-bridge
across the Modder to facilitate the crossing of the swollen river.
Fortunately for the Boers the British batteries fired only one shot into
the camp that day, and the burghers were able to complete the bridge
before night by means of the ropes and chains from their ox-waggons. On
Monday morning the British guns made a target of the bridge, and shelled
it so unremittingly that no one was able to approach it, much less make an
attempt to cross the river by means of it. The bombardment seemed to grow
in intensity as the day progressed, and when two shells fell into a group
of nine burghers, and left nothing but an arm and a leg to be found, the
Krijgsraad decided to hoist a white flag on Tuesday morning. General
Cronje and Commandant Schutte were the only officers who voted against
surrendering. They begged the other officers to reconsider their decision,
and to make an attempt to fight a way out, but the confidence of two men
was too weak to change the opinions of the others.
In a position covering less than a square mile of territory, hemmed in on
all sides by an army almost as great as that which defeated Napoleon at
Waterloo, surrounded by a chain of fire from carbines, rapid-fire guns and
heavy cannon, the target of thousands of the vaporous lyddite shells, his
trenches enfiladed by a continuous shower of lead, his men half dead from
lack of food, and stiff from the effect of their narrow quarters in the
trenches, General Cronje chose to fight and to risk complete disaster by
leading his four thousand men against the forty thousand of the enemy.
The will of the majority prevailed, and on February 27th, the anniversary
of Majuba Hill, after ten days of fighting, the white flag was hoisted
above the dilapidated laager. The bodies of ninety-seven burghers lay over
the scene of the disaster, and two hundred and forty-five wounded men were
left behind when General Cronje and his three thousand six hundred and
seventy-nine burghers and women limped out of the river-bed and
surrendered to Field-Marshal Lord Roberts.
In many respects General Cronje was the Boers' most brilliant leader, but
he was responsible for many serious and costly reverses. At Magersfontein
he defeated the enemy fairly, and he might have reaped the fruits of his
victory if he had followed up the advantage there gained. Instead, he
allowed his army to remain inactive for two months while the British
established a camp and base at the river. General French's march to
Kimberley might readily have been prevented or delayed if Cronje had
placed a few thousand of his men on the low range of kopjes commanding
French's route, but during the two days which were so fateful to him and
his army General Cronje never stirred from his laager. At Magersfontein
Cronje allowed thirty-six cannon, deserted by the British, to remain on
several kopjes all of one night and until ten o'clock next morning, when
they were taken away by the enemy. When he was asked why he did not send
his men to secure the guns Cronje replied, "God has been so good to us
that I did not have the heart to send my overworked men to fetch them."
Cronje was absolutely fearless, and in all the battles in which he took
part he was always in the most exposed positions. He rarely used a rifle,
as one of his eyes was affected, but the short, stoop-shouldered,
grey-bearded man, with the long riding-whip, was always in the thick of a
fight, encouraging his men and pointing out the positions for attack. He
was a fatalist when in battle, if not in times of peace, and it is told of
him that at Modder River he was warned by one of the burghers to seek a
less exposed position. "If God has ordained me to be shot to-day," the
grim old warrior replied, "I shall be shot, whether I sit here or in a
well." Cronje was one of the strictest leaders in the Boer army, and that
feature made him unpopular with the men who constantly applied to him for
leaves-of-absence to return to their homes. They fought for him in the
trenches at Paardeberg not because they loved him, but because they
respected him as an able leader. He did not have the affection of his
burghers like Botha, Meyer, De Wet, or De la Rey, but he held his men
together by force of his superior military attainments--a sort of
overawing authority which they could not disobey.
Personally, Cronje was not an extraordinary character. He was urbane in
manner and a pleasant conversationalist. Like the majority of the Boers he
was deeply religious, and tried to introduce the precepts of his religion
into his daily life. Although he was sixty-five years old when the war
began he had the energy and spirit of a much younger man, and the terrors
and anxieties of the ten days' siege at Paardeberg left but little marks
on the face which has been described as Christlike. His patriotism was
unbounded, and he held the independence of his country above
everything. "Independence with peace, if possible, but independence at all
costs," he was wont to say, and no one fought harder than he, to attain
that end.
When the Vryheid commandos rode over the western border of their district
and invaded Natal, Louis Botha, the successor of Commandant-General
Joubert, was one of the many Volksraad members who went forth to war in
the ranks of the common burghers. After the battle of Dundee, in which he
distinguished himself by several daring deeds, Botha became
Assistant-General to his lifelong friend and neighbour General Lucas
Meyer. Several weeks later, when General Meyer fell ill, he gave his
command to his compatriot, General Botha, and a short time afterward, when
Commandant-General Joubert was incapacitated by illness, Botha was
appointed to assume the responsibilities of the commander-in-chief. When
Joubert was on his deathbed he requested that Botha should be his
successor, and in that manner Louis Botha, burgher, became Louis Botha,
Commandant-General, in less than six months.
It was remarkable, this chain of fortuitous circumstances which led to
Botha's rapid advancement, but it was not entirely due to extraneous
causes, for he was deserving of every step of his promotion. There is a
man for every crisis, but rarely in history is found a record of a soldier
who rose from the ranks to commander-in-chief of an army in one campaign.
It was Meyer's misfortune when he became ill at a grave period of the war,
but it was the country's good fortune to have a Botha ready at hand to
fight a Colenso and a Spion Kop. When the burgher army along the Tugela
was hard pressed by the enemy and both its old-time leaders, Joubert and
Meyer, lay ill at the same time, it seemed little less than providential
that a Botha should step out of the ranks and lead the men with as much
discretion and valour as could have been expected from the experienced
generals whose work he undertook to accomplish. It was a modern
representation of the ploughman deserting his farm in order to lead in the
salvation of Rome.
Thirty-five years before he was called upon to be Commandant-General of
the army of his nation Louis Botha was born near the same spot where he
was chosen for that office, and on the soil of the empire against whose
forces he was pitting his strength and ability. In his youth he was wont
to listen to the narratives of the battles in which his father and
grandfather fought side by side against the hordes of natives who
periodically dyed the waters of the Tugela crimson with the blood of
massacred men and women. In early manhood Botha fought against the Zulus
and assisted Lucas Meyer in establishing the New Republic, which afterward
became his permanent home. Popularity, ability, and honesty brought him
into the councils of the nation as a member of the First Volksraad, where
he wielded great influence by reason of his conscientious devotion to duty
and his deep interest in the welfare of his country. When public affairs
did not require his presence in Pretoria, Botha was with his family on his
farm in Vryheid, and there he found the only happiness which he considered
worth having. The joys of a pastoral existence combined with the devotion
and love of his family were the keystone of Botha's happiness, and no man
had a finer realisation of his ambitions in that respect than he. Botha
was a warrior, no doubt, but primarily he was a man who loved the
peacefulness of a farm, the pleasures of a happy home-life, and the
laughter of his four children more than the tramp of victorious troops or
the roar of cannon.
There are a few men who have a certain magnetic power which attracts and
holds the admiration of others. Louis Botha was a man of this class.
Strangers who saw him for the first time loved him. There was an
indescribable something about him which caused men looking at him for the
first time to pledge their friendship for all time. The light in his blue
eyes seemed to mesmerise men, to draw them, willing or unwilling, to him.
It was not the quality which gained friends for Kruger nor that which made
Joubert popular, but rather a mysterious, involuntary influence which he
exerted over everybody with whom he came in contact. A man less handsome,
of less commanding appearance than Botha might have possessed such a
power, and been considered less extraordinary than he, but it was not
wholly his personal appearance--for he was the handsomest man in the Boer
army--which aroused the admiration of men. His voice, his eyes, his facial
expression and his manner--all combined to strengthen the man's power over
others. It may have been personal magnetism or a mysterious charm which he
possessed--but it was the mark of a great man.
The early part of Botha's career as a general was fraught with many
difficulties, the majority of which could be traced to his lack of years.
The Boer mind could not grasp the fact that a man of thirty-five years
could be a military leader, and for a long time the Boers treated the
young commander with a certain amount of contempt. The old takhaars
laughed at him when he asked them to perform any duties, and called him a
boy. They were unable to understand for a long time why they should act
upon the advice or orders of a man many years younger than they
themselves, and it was not until Botha had fought Colenso and Spion Kop
that the old burghers commenced to realise that ability was not always
monopolised by men with hoary beards. Before they had these manifestations
of Botha's military genius hundreds of the burghers absolutely refused to
obey his commands, and even went to the length of protesting to the
Government against his continued tenure of the important post.
The younger Boers, however, were quicker to discern the worth of the man,
and almost without exception gave him their united support. There was one
instance when a young Boer questioned Botha's authority, but the burgher's
mind was quickly disabused, and thereafter he was one of the
Commandant-General's staunchest supporters. It was at the battle of Pont
Drift, when General Botha was busily engaged in directing the movements of
his men and had little time to argue fine points of authority. The general
asked two young Boers to carry ammunition to the top of a kopje which was
being hard-shelled by the enemy. One of the Boers was willing immediately
to obey the general, but the other man refused to undertake the hazardous
journey. The general spoke kindly to the Boer, and acknowledged that he
would be risking his life by ascending the hill, but insisted that he
should go. The Boer finally declared he would not go, and added that Botha
was too young to give orders to men. The Commandant-General did not lose
his temper, but it did not require much time for him to decide that a
rebuke of some sort was necessary, so he knocked the man to the ground
with his fist. It was a good, solid blow, and the young Boer did not move
for a minute, but when he rose he had fully decided that he would gladly
carry the ammunition to the top of the kopje.
After General Botha demonstrated that he was a capable military leader he
became the idol of all the Boers. His popularity was second only to that
of President Kruger, and the hero-worshippers arranged for all sorts of
honours to be accorded to him after the war. He was to be made President,
first of all things; then his birthday anniversary was to be made the
occasion of a national holiday; statues were to be erected for him, and
nothing was to be left undone in order that his services to his country
might be given the appreciation they deserved. The stoical Boers were
never known to worship a man so idolatrously as they did in this case, and
it was all the more noteworthy on account of the adverse criticism which
was bestowed upon him several months before.
General Botha's reputation as a gallant and efficient leader was gained
during the campaign in Natal, but it was not until after the relief of
Ladysmith that his real hard work began. After the advance of Lord
Roberts's large army from Bloemfontein was begun myriads of new duties
devolved upon the Commandant-General, and thereafter he displayed a skill
and ingenuity in dealing with grave situations which was marvellous, when
it is taken into consideration that he was opposing a victorious army with
a mere handful of disappointed and gloomy burghers. The situation would
have been grave enough if he had had a trained and disciplined army under
his command, but in addition to making plans for opposing the enemy's
advance, General Botha was compelled to gather together the burghers with
whom he desired to make the resistance. His work would have been
comparatively easy if he could have remained at the spot where his
presence was most necessary, but it was absolutely impossible for him to
lead the defensive movements in the Free State without men, and in order
to secure them he was obliged to desert that important post and go to the
Biggarsberg, where many burghers were idle. Telegraph wires stretched from
the Free State to Natal, but a command sent by such a route never caused a
burgher to move an inch nearer to the Free State front, and consequently
the Commandant-General was compelled to go personally to the Biggarsberg
in search of volunteers to assist the burghers south of Kroonstad. When
General Botha arrived in Natal in the first days of May he asked the
Standerton commando to return with him to the Free State. They flatly
refused to go unless they were first allowed to spend a week at their
homes, but Botha finally, after much begging, cajoling, and threatening,
induced the burghers to go immediately. The Commandant-General saw the men
board a train, and then sped joyously northward toward Pretoria and the
Free State in a special train. When he reached Pretoria Botha learned that
the Standerton commando followed him as far as Standerton station, and
then dispersed to their homes. His dismay was great; but he was not
discouraged, and several hours later he was at Standerton, riding from
farm to farm to gather the men. This work delayed his arrival in the Free
State two days, but he secured the entire commando, and went with it to
the front, where it served him valiantly.
The masterly retreat of the Boer forces northward along the railway and
across the Vaal River, and the many skirmishes and battles with which
Botha harassed the enemy's advance, were mere incidents in the
Commandant-General's work of those trying days. There were innumerable
instances not unlike that in connection with the Standerton commando, and,
in addition, there was the planning to prevent the large commandos in the
western part of the Transvaal, and Meyer's large force in the
south-eastern part, from being cut off from his own body of burghers. It
was a period of grave moment and responsibilities, but Botha was the man
for the occasion. Although the British succeeded in entering Pretoria, the
capital of the country, the Boers lost little in prestige or men, and
Botha and his burghers were as confident of the final success of their
cause as they were when they crossed the Natal border seven months before.
Even after all the successive defeats of his army, Commandant-General
Botha continued to say, "We will fight--fight until not a single British
soldier remains on South African soil." A general who can express such a
firm faith in his cause when he sees nothing but disaster surrounding him
is great even if he is not always victorious.
The military godfather of Commandant-General Botha was General Lucas
Meyer, one of the best leaders in the Boer army. The work of the two men
was cast in almost the same lines during the greater part of the campaign,
and many of the Commandant-General's burdens were shared by his old-time
tutor and neighbour in the Vryheid district. Botha seldom undertook a
project unless he first consulted with Meyer, and the two constantly
worked hand-in-hand. Their friends frequently referred to them as Damon
and Pythias, and the parallel was most appropriate, for they were as
nearly the counterparts of those old Grecian warriors as modern
limitations would allow. Botha attained the post of Commandant-General
through the illness of Meyer, who would undoubtedly have been Joubert's
successor if he had not fallen ill at an important period of the campaign,
but the fact that the pupil became the superior officer of the instructor
never strained the amicable relations of the two men.
General Meyer received his fundamental military education from the famous
Zulu chieftain, Dinizulu, in 1884, when he and eight hundred other Boers
assisted the natives in a war against the chieftains of other tribes. In a
battle at Labombo mountain, June 6th of that year, Meyer and Dinizulu
vanquished the enemy, and as payment for their services the Boers each
received a large farm in the district now known as Vryheid. A Government
named the New Republic was organised by the farmers, and Meyer was elected
President, a post which he held for four years, when the Transvaal annexed
the republic to its own territory. In the war of 1881 Meyer took part in
several battles, and at Ingogo he was struck on the head by a piece of
shell, which caused him to be unconscious for forty-two days. In the later
days of the republic General Meyer held various military and civil
positions in the Vryheid district, where his large farm, "Anhouwen," is
located, and was the chairman of the Volksraad which decided to send the
ultimatum to Great Britain.
When war was actually declared, General Meyer, with his commandos, was on
the Transvaal border near his farm, and he opened hostilities by making a
bold dash into Natal and attacking the British army encamped at
Dundee. The battle was carefully planned by Meyer, and it would
undoubtedly have ended with the capture of the entire British force if
General Erasmus, who was to co-operate with him, had fulfilled the part
assigned to him. Although many British soldiers were killed and captured,
and great stores of ammunition and equipment taken, the forces under
General Yule were allowed to escape to the south. General Meyer followed
the fleeing enemy as rapidly as the muddy roads could be traversed, and
engaged them at Modderspruit. There he gained a decisive victory, and
compelled the survivors to enter Ladysmith, where they were immediately
besieged. Meyer was extremely ill before the battle began, but he insisted
upon directing his men, and continued to do so until the field was won,
when he fell from his horse, and was seriously ill for a month. He
returned to the front, against the advice of his physicians, on December
24th, and took part in the fighting at Pont Drift, Boschrand, and in the
thirteen days' battle around Pieter's Hill. In the battle of Pont Drift a
bullet struck the General's field-glasses, flattened itself, and dropped
into one of his coat pockets, to make a souvenir brooch for Mrs. Meyer,
who frequently visited him when no important movements were in progress.
When General Joubert and his Krijgsraad determined to retreat from the
Tugela and allow Ladysmith to be relieved, General Meyer was one of those
who protested against such a course, and when the decision was made Meyer
returned to the Tugela, and remained there with his friend Louis Botha
during the long and heroic fight against General Buller's column. Meyer
and Botha were among the last persons to leave the positions which they
had defended so long, and on their journey northward the two generals
decided to return and renew the fight as soon as they could reach
Modderspruit and secure food for their men and horses. When they arrived
at Modderspruit they found that Joubert and his entire army had fled
northward, and had carried with them every ounce of food. It was a bitter
disappointment to the two generals, but there was nothing to be done
except to travel in the direction of the scent of food, and the journey
led the dejected, disappointed, starved generals and burghers north over
the Biggarsberg mountains, where provisions could be secured.
During the long period in March and April when neither Boers nor British
seemed to be doing anything, General Meyer arranged a magnificent series
of entrenchments in the Biggarsberg mountains which made an advance of the
enemy practically impossible. Foreign military experts pronounced the
defence impregnable and expressed the greatest astonishment when they
learned that Meyer formulated the plans of the entrenchments without ever
having read a book on the subject or without having had the benefit of any
instruction. The entrenchments began at a point a few miles east of the
British outposts and continued for miles and miles north-east and
north-west to the very apex of the Biggarsberg. Spruits and rivers were
connected by means of trenches so that a large Boer force could travel
many miles without being observed by the enemy, and the series of
entrenchments was fashioned in such a manner that the Boers could retreat
to the highest point of the mountains and remain meanwhile in perfect
concealment. Near the top of the mountain long schanzes or walls were
built to offer a place of security for the burghers, while on the top were
miles of walls to attract and to inveigle the enemy to approach the lower
wall more closely. The plan was magnificent, but the British forces evaded
the Biggarsberg in their advance movements, and the entrenchments were
never bathed in human blood.
[Illustration: COMMANDANT-GENERAL CHRISTIAN H. DE WET]
When the Boers in the Free State were unable to stem the advance of the
British, General Meyer was compelled to retreat northward to ensure his
own safety, but he did it so slowly and systematically that he lost only a
few men and was able, now and then, to make bold dashes at the enemy's
flying columns with remarkable success. The retreat northward through the
Transvaal was fraught with many harassments, but General Meyer joined
forces with General Botha east of Pretoria and thereafter the teacher and
pupil again fought hand in hand in a common cause.
The Free State was not as prolific of generals as the Transvaal, but in
Christian De Wet she had one of the ablest as well as one of the most
fearless leaders in the Republican ranks. Before he was enlisted to fight
for his country De Wet was a farmer, who had a penchant for dealing in
potatoes, and his only military training was secured when he was one of
the sixty Boer volunteers who ascended the slopes of Majuba Hill in
1881. There was nothing of the military in his appearance; in fact,
Christian De Wet, Commandant-General of the Orange Free State in 1900, was
not a whit unlike Christian De Wet, butcher of Barberton of 1879, and men
who knew him in the gold-rush days of that mining town declared that he
was more martial in appearance then as a licensed slayer of oxen than
later as a licensed slayer of men. He himself prided himself on his
unmilitary exterior, and it was not a little source of satisfaction to him
to say that his fighting regalia was the same suit of clothing which he
wore on his farm on the day that he left it to fight as a soldier in his
country's army.
Before the war, De Wet's chief claim to notoriety lay in the fact that he
attempted to purchase the entire supply of potatoes in South Africa for
the purpose of effecting a "corner" of that product on the Johannesburg
market. Unfortunately for himself, he held his potatoes until the new crop
was harvested, and he became a bankrupt in consequence. Later he appeared
as a potato farmer near Kroonstad, and still later, at Nicholson's Nek in
Natal, he captured twelve hundred British prisoners and, incidentally, a
large stock of British potatoes, which seemed to please him almost as
greatly as the human captives. Although the vegetable strain was
frequently predominant in De Wet's constitution, he was not over-zealous
to return to his former pastoral pursuits, and continued to lead his
commandos over the hills of the eastern Free State long after that
territory was christened the Orange River Colony.
[Illustration: GENERAL PETER DE WET]
General De Wet was at the head of a number of the Free State commandos
which crossed into Natal at the outbreak of the war, and he took part in
several of the battles around Ladysmith; but his services were soon
required in the vicinity of Kimberley, and there he made an heroic effort
to effect a junction with the besieged Cronje. It was not until after the
British occupation of Bloemfontein that De Wet really began his brilliant
career as a daring commander, but thereafter he was continually harassing
the enemy. He led with three big battles in one week, with a total result
of a thousand prisoners of war, seven cannon, and almost half a million
pounds' worth of supplies. At Sannaspost, on March 31st, he swept down
upon Colonel Broadwood's column and captured one-fourth of the men and all
their vast supplies almost before the British officer was aware of the
presence of the enemy. The echoes of that battle had hardly subsided when
he fell upon another British column at Moester's Hoek with results almost
as great as at Sannaspost, and two days later he was besieging a third
British column in his own native heath of Wepener. Column after column was
sent to drive him away, but he clung fast to his prey for almost two
weeks, when he eluded the great force on his capture bent, and moved
northward to take an active part in opposing the advance of Lord
Roberts. He led his small force of burghers as far as the northern border
of the Free State, while the enemy advanced, and then turned eastward,
carrying President Steyn and the capital of the Republic with him to
places of safety. Whenever there was an opportunity he sent small
detachments to attack the British lines of communications and harassed the
enemy continually. In almost all his operations the Commandant-General was
assisted by his brother, General Peter De Wet, who was none the less
daring in his operations. Christian De Wet was responsible for more
British losses than any of the other generals. In his operations in Natal
and the Free State he captured more than three thousand prisoners,
thousands of cattle and horses, and stores and ammunition valued at more
than a million pounds. The number of British soldiers killed and wounded
in battles with De Wet is a matter for conjecture, but it is not limited
by the one thousand mark.
[Illustration: GENERAL JOHN DE LA REY]
General John De la Rey, who operated in the Free State with considerable
success, was one of the most enthusiastic leaders in the army, and his
confidence in the Boers' fighting ability was not less than his faith in
the eventual success of their arms. De la Rey was born on British soil,
but he had a supreme contempt for the British soldier, and frequently
asserted that one burgher was able to defeat ten soldiers at any time or
place. He was the only one of the generals who was unable to speak the
English language, but he understood it well enough to capture a spy whom
he overheard in a Free State hotel. De la Rey was a Transvaal general, and
when the retreat from Bloemfontein was made he harassed the enemy greatly,
but was finally compelled to cross the Vaal into his own country, where he
continued to fight under Commandant-General Botha.
Among the other Boer generals who took active part in the campaign in
other parts of the Republics were J. Du P. De Beer, a Raad member, who
defended the northern border of the Transvaal; Sarel Du Toit, whose
defence at Fourteen Streams was admirably conducted; Snyman, the old
Marico farmer, who besieged Mafeking; Hendrik Schoeman, who operated in
Cape Colony; Jan Kock, killed at the Elandslaagte battle early in the
campaign; and the three generals, Lemmer, Grobler, and Olivier, whose
greatest success was their retreat from Cape Colony.
The Boer generals and officers, almost without exception, were admirable
men, personally. Some of them were rough, hardy men, who would have felt
ill at ease in a drawing-room, but they had much of the milk of human
kindness in them, and there was none who loved to see or partake of
bloodshed. There may have been instances when white or Red Cross flags
were fired upon, but when such a breach of the rules of war occurred it
was not intentional. The foreigners who accompanied the various Boer
armies--the correspondents, military attachés, and the volunteers--will
testify that the officers, from Commandant-General Botha down to the
corporals, were always zealous in their endeavours to conduct an
honourable warfare, and that the farmer-generals were as gentlemanly as
they were valorous.