Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Christine P. Travers and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected,
all other inconsistencies are as in the original.
Author's spelling has been maintained.
Page numbers are shown as {p.xxx}]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN ALFRED T. MAHAN, U.S.N.; D.C.L.]
STORY OF THE WAR
IN
SOUTH AFRICA
1899-1900
By
Captain A. T. Mahan, U.S.N.
_With Map and Portrait of the Author_
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
The Theatre of the War 1
CHAPTER II
The Opening Campaign in Natal to the Investment
of Ladysmith (October 11--November 2) 28
CHAPTER III
The Colonies and the Transports 71
CHAPTER IV
The Western Frontier to Magersfontein and
Stormberg. Operations of General French
about Colesberg 102
CHAPTER V
The Natal Campaign from the Investment of
Ladysmith through the Battle of Colenso 177
CHAPTER VI
The Natal Campaign. British Prepare for a
Flanking Attack upon the Boers' Right at
the Tugela. The Boer Assault on Ladysmith,
January 6th 233
CHAPTER VII
Natal Campaign. The Unsuccessful British
Attempts to Turn the Boers' Right Flank
at Spion Kop and at Vaal Krantz 249
CHAPTER VIII
The Relief of Kimberley and of Ladysmith,
and the Surrender of Cronje 266
THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR {p.001}
CHAPTER I
THE THEATRE OF THE WAR
The war in South Africa has been no exception to the general rule that
the origin of current events is to be sought in the history of the
past, and their present course to be understood by an appreciation of
existing conditions, which decisively control it. This is especially
true of the matter here before us; because the southern extreme of
Africa, like to that of the American continent, has heretofore lain
far outside of the common interest, and therefore of the accurate
knowledge, of mankind at large. The Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn,
in themselves remote, tempestuous, and comparatively unproductive
regions, for centuries derived importance merely {p.002} from the
fact that by those ways alone the European world found access to the
shores of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The application of steam to
ocean navigation, and the opening of the Suez Canal, have greatly
modified conditions, by diverting travel from the two Capes to the
Canal and to the Straits of Magellan. It is only within a very few
years that South Africa, thus diminished in consequence as a station
upon a leading commercial highway, has received compensation by the
discovery of great mineral wealth.
Thus separated from the rest of the world, by lack of intrinsic value
as a region producing materials necessary to the common good, the
isolation of South Africa was further increased by physical
conditions, which not only retarded colonisation and development, but
powerfully affected the character and the mutual relations of the
European settlers. Portuguese mariners, after more than half a century
of painful groping downward along the West African coast in search of
a sea route to India that vague tradition asserted could there be
found, in 1486 rounded the Cape of Good Hope, which then received the
despondent name of {p.003} the Cape of Storms from its first
discoverer, Bartholomew Diaz.
Vasco da Gama, following him in 1497, gave to it its present
auspicious title, which was to him of sound augury; for he then passed
on to explore the East coast and to find the long-desired Indies. It
was, however, the latter which constituted the Portuguese goal. Africa
was to them primarily the half-way house, where to refresh their ships
on the long voyage to Hindustan, which then took near a year to
complete. For this purpose they established themselves on the island
of Mozambique, and gradually took possession of the country to this
day known as Portuguese East Africa.
From that far back settlement, Delagoa Bay, near the southern border,
is now a thorn in the side of the British invasion; a port with which
they are not at war, and therefore cannot seize or blockade, but
which, through the supplies that thence reach the otherwise isolated
Transvaal, contributes powerfully to support the defence.
Upon the heels of the Portuguese followed the Dutch, aiming like them
at the Far East, more {p.004} especially at what were then
comprehensively called the Spice Islands--the Moluccas. They also felt
the need of a half-way station. For this the Cape of Good Hope, with
the adjacent bays--Table Bay and False Bay--presented advantages; for
though not perfectly safe anchorages at all seasons, the voyage to the
islands is more expeditiously and healthfully made by starting from,
and keeping in, a far southern latitude, than by proceeding along the
East African coast.
In 1652 the Dutch settled at the Cape, and gradually extended their
holding to the eastward as far as the Great Fish River. A generation
later, in 1686, the population received an accession of French
Protestant refugees, leaving their country upon the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. From these descended the late General Joubert,
Commander-in-Chief of the Transvaal forces at the opening of
hostilities. The administration of the colony by the Dutch East India
Company being both arbitrary and meddlesome, some of the more
independent spirits withdrew from the coast and moved inland, behind
the difficult {p.005} mountain ranges that separate the narrow strip
of sea-coast from the high table-lands of the interior.
In 1795 local dissatisfaction and the spread of French revolutionary
principles led to a revolt of the colonists, and Holland passing at
that time into alliance with France, the Cape was seized by a British
naval and military expedition. At the Peace of Amiens in 1802 it was
restored to Holland; but in the next war it was again taken by the
British, in 1806, and at the Peace of 1814 was confirmed in their
possession.
The population remained Dutch in blood and in tradition; but
subsequent accessions of English immigrants have established in Cape
Colony itself an approach to equilibrium between the two races, to
which has also contributed a series of emigrations to the interior by
the Dutch farmers, dissatisfied with various incidents of British
rule. Into the merits of these differences we have neither space nor
occasion to go.
In 1836, immediately prior to the largest of these movements, known as
the Great Trek, the British Government, by Act, extended its claim
{p.006} of control over all South Africa, south of 25°, the latitude
of Delagoa Bay; and the Boer emigrants were warned that in entering
that region they remained under British authority, unless they passed
on into the Portuguese dominion. From this Trek resulted directly, in
the course of years, the two Boer states, the Orange Free State and
the South African Republic (commonly called the Transvaal); and also,
indirectly, the easternmost British colony in South Africa, Natal, in
which the English element is decisively preponderant.
The mention of this migration leads naturally and immediately to a
summary of the physical conditions of the country, by which, as well
as by derivation of blood, the apartness of the two races has been
emphasized. Between the narrow margin of land belonging, as it were,
to the sea, and the high interior plateau, there runs from the extreme
west of the British dominions a chain of lofty mountains, parallel,
roughly, to the coastline, and terminating only when abreast of
Delagoa Bay. These reach an elevation of from six to eight thousand
feet, and in places on the border between {p.007} Natal and
Basutoland heights of eleven thousand are attained. On the side toward
the sea the ascent is comparatively rapid and difficult, though often
broken into precipitous terraces. Inland the descent is less, and more
regular, issuing in a plateau from three to five thousand feet above
the sea, and presenting almost throughout a comparatively level or
undulating surface that offers no serious difficulty to transit.
The territory of the Orange Free State and of the Transvaal lies
wholly within this table-land. In this region, and throughout Africa
south of 25°, there are river beds, but no navigable rivers. The
country is generally treeless, and there is a great deficiency of
steady natural water supply. During the rainy season, from October to
March, the naked ground fails to retard the running off of the waters,
which therefore escape rapidly by the rivers, swelling them to
momentary torrents that quickly and fruitlessly subside. During the
long dry season the exposed herbage dries to the roots.
From these conditions it results that not only is agriculture
generally impracticable, economically, but {p.008} that cattle and
sheep, the chief wealth of the Boer farmers, require an unusual
proportion of ground per head for pasture; and the mobility of bodies
of horsemen, expecting to subsist their beasts upon local pasturage,
is greatly affected by the seasons--an important military
consideration. The large holdings introduce large spaces between the
holders, who dwell therefore alone, each man with his family. So it
has come to pass that the descendants of one of the most mercantile
and gregarious of races, whose artists have won some of their chiefest
triumphs in depicting the joyous episodes of crowded social life,
have, through calling and environment, become lovers of solitude,
austere, self-dependent, disposed rather to repel than to seek their
kind.
The same conditions, unfavourable to the aggregation of people into
towns or villages, have interfered with the development of lines of
travel, roads and cross-roads, which not only facilitate but define
movement; and as the face of the country, readily traversable in all
directions, does not compel roads to take a particular direction to
avoid obstacles, it has come {p.009} to pass that the seat of war
within the territory of the two Boer states has, like the ocean, and
for the same reasons, few strategic points either natural or
artificial.
The determining natural military features in South Africa are the
seaports, upon possession of which depends Great Britain's landing her
forces, and the mountain ranges, the passes of which, as in all such
regions, are of the utmost strategic value. It has been said that the
Boers' original plan of campaign was to force the British out of
Natal, thus closing access by Durban from the sea, and at the same
time to seize the pass back of Cape Town known as Hex River. If
successful, the eastern flank of the Boer frontier would have been
secured against British landing by the occupation of Durban, while
advance from Cape Town, against the other extremity, would have
involved a front attack upon a strong position in a difficult mountain
defile.
These movements, accurate in conception, were probably in any case too
developed for the Boer numbers, and were definitively foiled by the
British grip upon Ladysmith and Kimberley. Advance was too hazardous,
leaving in {p.010} the rear such forces, unchecked, upon the flank of
the lines of communication.
To these two extremes, or flanks, of the Boer frontier, correspond on
the British side the ports of Cape Town and Durban, which may be said
to mark the western and eastern limits of the field of military
operations in the war. They are the chief seaports on the South
African coast, which by nature is singularly deficient in good and
safe anchorages. The advantages of these two, artificially improved,
and combined with the relatively open and productive region
immediately behind them, have made them the starting-points of the
principal railroad lines by which, through the sea, the interior is
linked to the outer world.
The general direction of these roads is determined, as always, by the
principal objects of traffic or other interests. Thus the line from
Cape Town, ascending by a winding course through the mountains in the
rear, pushes its way north to Kimberley, where are the great diamond
fields, and thence on, by way of Mafeking, to the territory of the
British South African Company--now known as {p.011} Rhodesia. This
lies north of the Transvaal, and, like it, is separated from the sea
by the Portuguese dominion, having, however, by treaty a right of
military way through the latter by the port of Beira; of which right
use is now being made.
In the northern part of its course, which at present ends at Buluwayo,
this road is as yet rather political than economical in its
importance, joining the British entrance at the sea to the as yet
little developed regions of the distant interior. At a point called De
Aar Junction, five hundred miles from Cape Town, a principal branch is
thrown off to the eastward to Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange
Free State, whence it continues on to Johannesburg, the great
industrial centre of the Gold Fields, and to Pretoria, the capital of
the Transvaal. A glance along this stretch of road will show that
between De Aar and Bloemfontein it receives three tributary routes
from three different points of the sea-coast--Port Elizabeth, Port
Alfred, and East London--the whole system concentrating some sixty
miles before Bloemfontein, at Springfontein, which thus becomes a
{p.012} central depot fed by four convergent, but, in their origin,
independent streams of supply; an administrative condition always
conducive to security and to convenience. This instance also
illustrates the capital importance--especially in a military point of
view--of a place where meet several roads from the permanent base of
operations, which in the case of the British interior campaign is the
sea. The fall of Springfontein would close every avenue of supply by
rail; but a blow at any one of the four lines which concentrate there
does not necessarily affect the others. Holding across-roads in fact
exemplifies the homely phrase of killing two birds with one stone.
Beyond Springfontein the straightness of the line sufficiently
testifies to the easy practicability of the country it traverses. Upon
this railroad system depend the supplies of the British army, which
presents in both men and animals a concentrated mass of life
heretofore unknown to the territory in which it is moving, and where,
from previous conditions of population and development, necessary
resources of every kind are deficient. This {p.013} system
constitutes the main chain of communications, as the term is
understood in war; by it chiefly, for much of the distance wholly,
must come all the ammunition, most of the food, and not improbably at
times a good deal of the water drunk during the dry season, which
fortunately, from this point of view, is also that of cooler weather.
The difficulty of reinforcing railway carriage by any other system of
road transportation is greatly increased by the local horse-sickness,
from which three-fourths of the horses exposed to it die. Reliance for
that purpose, therefore, must be upon the ox-wagon, which for this
reason, and owing to the open level character of the country, has in
the past played a leading part in the South African migrations.
The main and subsidiary railroads thus summarized should, from the
point of view of our subject, be considered as one, contributory to
the advance of the British army over a substantially even country,
which opposes few natural obstacles to such a movement, though here
and there "accidents of {p.014} the ground"--a range of hills, or a
dry river-bed, as at Paardeberg--may facilitate opposition by a
military force. The system receives no further support until
Johannesburg is reached. There the railroad from Durban comes in, and,
if its carrying capacity were adequate, which is doubtful, would
enable the chief base of operations and main line of communications to
be shifted to the nearer locality, retaining the Cape road only as
secondary.
The advantage to the British of the line of invasion from Cape Town is
that it crosses the mountains, which separate the coast district from
the inland plateau, at such a distance from the enemy's frontier that
it is impossible for the latter to offer serious resistance before the
comparatively easy rolling country has been reached. It was for this
reason that the decision of the Orange Free State to join in the war,
while it added to the numerical resistance to be encountered by the
British, had for them the compensating advantage that it removed the
necessity of forcing their way over the difficult mountain ranges
which separate Natal from the Transvaal.
With the power of Great Britain to bring into {p.015} the field a
great superiority of numbers, it is at least open to argument that the
Free State, by ceasing to be neutral, relieved the enemy of a
difficulty greater than that which its hostility introduced. It was
for these reasons that the original British plan, as generally
understood, was to make the main invasion along this line. The danger
of Ladysmith, it is commonly and with probability believed, caused the
momentary abandonment of this purpose. Whether the change was at the
moment correct in principle or not, it is evident that Lord Roberts
has reverted to the first intention; a course which enforces its
accuracy with all the weight of his well-earned great renown.
The other railroad system of direct importance to the military
operations of the present war is the single Natal line, from Durban to
Johannesburg and Pretoria, which at Ladysmith throws off a branch to
the westward, crossing the mountains to Bethlehem in the Free State,
and there ends, over sixty miles from the road between Bloemfontein
and Pretoria. The Natal road, having been opened as lately as 1895,
may be considered the {p.016} child of the Gold Fields; prior to the
discovery of which, indeed, there were in the Transvaal neither
products nor consumers enough to give commercial value to a railroad.
The Cape Town line reached Pretoria only in 1892, and it is still
characteristic of all the lines that there is but little local
traffic, either freight or passenger; the roads exist as means whereby
the function of communication, so far discharged by the sea, is
prolonged from the coast to the interior of the continent.
It is not the least noteworthy in the incidents of commercial and
mechanical energy, by which foreign hands have developed the Transvaal
from a poor to a wealthy state, that "all the heavy machinery, the
timber, the corrugated iron with which the works and men's houses are
constructed, and nearly every requirement of work and life, had to be
brought for over three hundred miles upon ox-wagons, the country
itself supplying scarcely anything, and even to this day (1897) wheat
being brought from Australia."[1]
[Footnote 1: Younghusband's "South Africa of
To-day." Second Edition, 1899.]
Regarded {p.017} as a source of supply, especially of military supply,
the demands of which are more urgent than those of common life, as its
needs and dangers are more imminent, the Natal railroad, though much
shorter in distance to the probable scenes of operations, labours
under two disadvantages. The port of Durban is not under all
circumstances safe for large vessels to enter, and there is therefore
in the facilities for landing goods an inferiority to Cape Town. The
country, too, is more difficult, the obstacles to movement, which also
favour defence, increasing as the frontier is approached, and
culminating on the borders of the Free State and the Transvaal. Being
thus nearer, the latter are here better able to concentrate and
sustain opposition than they are on the western flank.
"The mountains which on the edge of Basutoland rise to a height of ten
thousand feet," writes Mr. Bryce, "break down toward Natal in
tremendous precipices. Near Ladysmith the frontier of the Orange Free
State coincides with a high watershed, crossed by only a few
passes."[2] Where this boundary between {p.018} Natal and the Free
State ends, that of the Transvaal begins, and soon after turns sharply
to the southward, the new direction forming with the old a very acute
angle, with apex to the north. Here, just within the territory of
Natal, is Majuba Hill, whose name has been in the mouths of all men,
and Laing's Nek, less familiarly known. The narrow neck of rugged
country embraced between the legs of this angle is about sixty miles
long, from Majuba to Glencoe. Recent events have familiarised to us
many of the names along this line of rail--Glencoe, Dundee (the
terminus of a short branch), Colenso, Estcourt, and Ladysmith itself;
while the winding character of the track, as mapped, compared with the
Free State road, sufficiently indicates the character of the country,
in which obstacles have to be circumvented as well as overcome. The
grade is in places as high as one in thirty, though that is being
reduced; but one in forty is common. Pietermaritzburg, the capital,
fifty miles from Durban in a straight line, is 2,200 feet above the
sea. Three hundred miles from its starting-point the road {p.019}
reaches an elevation of over five thousand feet, at Laing's Nek,
through which it passes by a tunnel.
[Footnote 2: "Impressions of South Africa." Third
Edition, p. 291.]
A topographical map of the country shows upon examination that the
mountain range, which forms the western boundary of Natal toward
Basutoland and the Orange Free State, and has a general north and
south direction parallel to the railroad, throws off to the eastward
spurs which, to repeat Mr. Bryce's expression, "break down in
tremendous precipices," forming a succession of terraces. The gorges
between these determine the direction of the river-beds whereby the
rainfall pours down to the sea; and the general easterly course thus
imparted is maintained and continued by the lie of the valleys,
separating the successive hills through which the territory of Natal
gradually rises to the northward. These various streams find their way
sooner or later to the Tugela, itself one of the many, but which
carries its own name until it reaches the Indian Ocean, some fifty
miles north-east of Durban.
Of these watercourses, the Tugela, which the road crosses at Colenso,
and the Mooi, some {p.020} fifty miles south, have been most often
mentioned. Another tributary called the Klip flows through the camp at
Ladysmith. The channels which these streams have cut for themselves in
time of torrent are both steep-banked and deep. They are therefore
among those accidents of the ground which, duly improved, can
seriously affect military operations. The destruction of a bridge
impedes the transport of troops and supplies; a sudden freshet,
occurring in the midst of an extensive movement, may imperil an army
by sundering its forces; while of the utility of such natural trenches
to the purposes of shelter and of defence, of awaiting attack, or
resisting an advance, both the Tugela and Paardeberg have given recent
striking illustration.
As a general rule such conditions favour the defence relatively to the
offence; the former, remaining comparatively motionless, is shielded
by obstacles, to surmount which the assailant must expose himself in
the open. Thus they compensate for inferior numbers, which is usually
the condition of the defence; and they conduce to delay, ever a
leading object in defensive warfare. Consequently, in the {p.021}
present hostilities they have helped the Boers. It may be added that
their influence is most felt when the armies are face to face, or at
least in touch. Hence their existence near the scene of probable
conflict, as in Natal, is a matter of more concern to the invader than
when, as upon the Cape extreme of the scene of war, they are found
beyond the range to which the defendant can safely extend his
operations.
These successive watercourses indicate natural lines of defence,
stronger or weaker according to their individual distinctive features.
As the railroad, in its progress north, draws near the mountains in
the neck of Natal, the streams show smaller volume and less developed
channels. This comes from their having there a shorter course and
descending from heights which, though still considerable, are
decidedly lower. But, while the streams become less conspicuous as
obstacles, the ground toward the northward frontier is more broken and
irregular, presenting numerous scattered hills, sometimes isolated,
sometimes in small ranges or groups, which to a trained military skill
afford positions too {p.022} threatening to be disregarded, and yet
which cannot be carried without heavy loss. This characteristic is
observable in the neighbourhood of Glencoe, Dundee, and Ladysmith,
and, as will be seen, exercised a determinative influence upon the
fighting.
In the extreme north a similar condition is emphasized conspicuously
at Majuba Hill and the surrounding country, which, however, and
perhaps for that very reason, seem unlikely to play much of a part in
the war now current.
Before proceeding to the narrative of the hostilities which, so far as
events of decisive interest are concerned, began in Natal, it is
desirable to note one broad topographical feature distinguishing the
region to which, in its eastern development, the war has been
confined. From the capital, Pietermaritzburg, the railroad ascends
rapidly, so that in twenty-five miles it has risen from 2,200 to 4,800
feet, after which it begins again to go down, till fifty miles
further, at Estcourt--the most southern of the stations prominently
named in the narratives of the war--the elevation is 3,800 feet.
Thence, till near Glencoe and Dundee, {p.023} there is an extensive
area of comparative depression, rarely itself higher than 3,500 feet,
but on the western side skirted by the precipitous spurs of the border
mountains, close to which the railroad passes.
This district may be called the valley of the Tugela; for all the
streams tend to the latter, which finds its own bed in a broad belt of
ground, trending to the eastward, where the surface sinks to less than
3,000 feet. Ladysmith itself, important not only as a railroad
crossing and military depot, but now also historically, on account of
the operations centring around it, is at a height of 3,300. Beyond it
the country, though often rough in detail, is gently rolling in
general contour till near Glencoe, where the road climbs eight hundred
feet in ten miles. From Glencoe a branch runs five miles east to
Dundee, the site of extensive collieries, upon which Natal largely
depends for fuel.
The railroad from Ladysmith to Glencoe passes therefore through a
district the nature of which is favourable to rapid advance or retreat
of mounted men, as the Boer forces chiefly are, and which at the same
time is marked {p.024} by frequent and steep detached elevations,
adapted for defensive positions hastily assumed. These conditions,
with the nearness of the declivities of the western mountains, and the
proximity of the enemy's frontier, behind which movements of troops
would be "curtained"--to use a graphic military metaphor--gave the
Boers particular facilities for striking unexpectedly the railroad
between Ladysmith and Glencoe, upon which, in defect of other
transportation, the two British posts must depend for communication
between themselves, and with their base on the sea.
Further to the south, movements of the same kind would be decisively
more difficult. Not only would the Boers there be further from their
base, and the British nearer theirs, but the country is less
favourable to rapid horse movements, the line of the rail is
contracted by lofty and continuous ranges of hills, the space between
which gives but a narrow front to be covered by a defence, and the
river beds, as already said, are broader and deeper; notably, of
course, the Tugela. Moreover, not only are the mountains on the
western frontier higher and more difficult as one {p.025} goes south,
they are also more remote; and, south of Colenso, form the boundary of
Basutoland, upon which the Boers could not intrude without arousing
armed resistance by the blacks. All these conditions are more
favourable to a pure defensive attitude, which was that imposed at the
outset upon the British, because they were then numerically the weaker
party.
And here at once must be made a distinction, which for intelligent
comprehension it is essential to keep in mind. Putting entirely to one
side all question of the merits of the quarrel--of its right or its
wrong--it must be steadily remembered that, although the comparative
aggregate strength of the two parties placed the Boers from the first
on the defensive in the general sense, they were at the beginning of
hostilities decisively superior in local force, and would so remain
until sufficient reinforcements from Great Britain should arrive to
turn the scale. Under such circumstances, correct military
principle--and the Boers have had good advisers--imperatively dictates
that the belligerent so situated must at once assume an active
{p.026} offensive. By rapid and energetic movement, while the
opponent's forces are still separated, every advantage must be seized
to destroy hostile detachments within reach, and to establish one's
own front as far in advance of the great national interests, as it can
be reasonably hoped to maintain it with communications unbroken. The
line thus occupied must rest upon positions so chosen that by their
strength, natural and developed, it shall be possible, when offence
has to be exchanged for defensive warfare, to impose to the utmost
upon the invader both delay and loss; for delay and loss mean
lessening power, and only by causing such diminution, greater
relatively than his own, can the weaker hope eventually to reverse the
odds and win the game.
To this end, therefore, the Boers with sound military judgment at once
devoted themselves; and it is very likely that the surmise before
quoted was correct--in naming the Hex River Pass and Durban as their
ultimate objectives, to be reached by a swift advance. The latter was
certainly not an unreasonable hope, and it is possible that with
{p.027} more precise accuracy of combination, and an offensive more
resolutely sustained, they might have attained their purpose, through
the mistaken primary dispositions of the British, who, though
recognizing themselves to be for the time on the defensive,
nevertheless, for political reasons, advanced their front of
operations to a point with which, as it proved, they could not secure
their communications. From the worst consequences of this error they
were saved by the gallantry and skill with which advantage was taken
of the defective co-operation that marked the opening of the campaign
by the Boers; and there can be also little question that the wholesome
respect for their fighting qualities, thus established at the
beginning of hostilities, had a most beneficial effect for them, in
discouraging attack by an enemy, who, though brave and active,
constitutionally prefers a waiting game to an assault. Thus the
ultimate fate of Ladysmith was settled in the fortnight of operations
that preceded the investment.