This small place, which sprang in the course of a few weeks from
obscurity to fame, is situated upon the long line of railway which
connects Kimberley in the south with Rhodesia in the north. In character
it resembles one of those western American townlets which possess small
present assets but immense aspirations. In its litter of corrugated-iron
roofs, and in the church and the racecourse, which are the first-fruits
everywhere of Anglo-Celtic civilisation, one sees the seeds of the great
city of the future. It is the obvious depot for the western Transvaal
upon one side, and the starting-point for all attempts upon the Kalahari
Desert upon the other. The Transvaal border runs within a few miles.
It is not clear why the imperial authorities should desire to hold this
place, since it has no natural advantages to help the defence, but lies
exposed in a widespread plain. A glance at the map must show that the
railway line would surely be cut both to the north and south of the
town, and the garrison isolated at a point some two hundred and fifty
miles from any reinforcements. Considering that the Boers could throw
any strength of men or guns against the place, it seemed certain that if
they seriously desired to take possession of it they could do so. Under
ordinary circumstances any force shut up there was doomed to capture.
But what may have seemed short-sighted policy became the highest wisdom,
owing to the extraordinary tenacity and resource of Baden-Powell, the
officer in command. Through his exertions the town acted as a bait to
the Boers, and occupied a considerable force in a useless siege at
a time when their presence at other seats of war might have proved
disastrous to the British cause.
Colonel Baden-Powell is a soldier of a type which is exceedingly popular
with the British public. A skilled hunter and an expert at many games,
there was always something of the sportsman in his keen appreciation of
war. In the Matabele campaign he had out-scouted the savage scouts and
found his pleasure in tracking them among their native mountains, often
alone and at night, trusting to his skill in springing from rock to rock
in his rubber-soled shoes to save him from their pursuit. There was a
brain quality in his bravery which is rare among our officers. Full
of veld craft and resource, it was as difficult to outwit as it was to
outfight him. But there was another curious side to his complex nature.
The French have said of one of their heroes, 'Il avait cette graine de
folie dans sa bravoure que les Francais aiment,' and the words might
have been written of Powell. An impish humour broke out in him, and the
mischievous schoolboy alternated with the warrior and the administrator.
He met the Boer commandos with chaff and jokes which were as
disconcerting as his wire entanglements and his rifle-pits. The amazing
variety of his personal accomplishments was one of his most
striking characteristics. From drawing caricatures with both hands
simultaneously, or skirt dancing to leading a forlorn hope, nothing
came amiss to him; and he had that magnetic quality by which the leader
imparts something of his virtues to his men. Such was the man who held
Mafeking for the Queen.
In a very early stage, before the formal declaration of war, the enemy
had massed several commandos upon the western border, the men being
drawn from Zeerust, Rustenburg, and Lichtenburg. Baden-Powell, with
the aid of an excellent group of special officers, who included Colonel
Gould Adams, Lord Edward Cecil, the soldier son of England's Premier,
and Colonel Hore, had done all that was possible to put the place into a
state of defence. In this he had immense assistance from Benjamin Weil,
a well known South African contractor, who had shown great energy in
provisioning the town. On the other hand, the South African Government
displayed the same stupidity or treason which had been exhibited in the
case of Kimberley, and had met all demands for guns and reinforcements
with foolish doubts as to the need of such precautions. In the endeavour
to supply these pressing wants the first small disaster of the campaign
was encountered. On October 12th, the day after the declaration of war,
an armoured train conveying two 7-pounders for the Mafeking defences was
derailed and captured by a Boer raiding party at Kraaipan, a place forty
miles south of their destination. The enemy shelled the shattered train
until after five hours Captain Nesbitt, who was in command, and his
men, some twenty in number, surrendered. It was a small affair, but
it derived importance from being the first blood shed and the first
tactical success of the war.
The garrison of the town, whose fame will certainly live in the history
of South Africa, contained no regular soldiers at all with the exception
of the small group of excellent officers. They consisted of irregular
troops, three hundred and forty of the Protectorate Regiment, one
hundred and seventy Police, and two hundred volunteers, made up of that
singular mixture of adventurers, younger sons, broken gentlemen, and
irresponsible sportsmen who have always been the voortrekkers of
the British Empire. These men were of the same stamp as those other
admirable bodies of natural fighters who did so well in Rhodesia, in
Natal, and in the Cape. With them there was associated in the defence
the Town Guard, who included the able-bodied shopkeepers, businessmen,
and residents, the whole amounting to about nine hundred men. Their
artillery was feeble in the extreme, two 7-pounder toy guns and six
machine guns, but the spirit of the men and the resource of their
leaders made up for every disadvantage. Colonel Vyvyan and Major Panzera
planned the defences, and the little trading town soon began to take on
the appearance of a fortress.
On October 13th the Boers appeared before Mafeking. On the same day
Colonel Baden-Powell sent two truckloads of dynamite out of the
place. They were fired into by the invaders, with the result that they
exploded. On October 14th the pickets around the town were driven in by
the Boers. On this the armoured train and a squadron of the Protectorate
Regiment went out to support the pickets and drove the Boers before
them. A body of the latter doubled back and interposed between the
British and Mafeking, but two fresh troops with a 7-pounder throwing
shrapnel drove them off. In this spirited little action the garrison
lost two killed and fourteen wounded, but they inflicted considerable
damage on the enemy. To Captain Williams, Captain FitzClarence, and Lord
Charles Bentinck great credit is due for the way in which they handled
their men; but the whole affair was ill advised, for if a disaster had
occurred Mafeking must have fallen, being left without a garrison. No
possible results which could come from such a sortie could justify the
risk which was run.
On October 16th the siege began in earnest. On that date the Boers
brought up two 12-pounder guns, and the first of that interminable
flight of shells fell into the town. The enemy got possession of the
water supply, but the garrison had already dug wells. Before October
20th five thousand Boers, under the formidable Cronje, had gathered
round the town. 'Surrender to avoid bloodshed' was his message. 'When
is the bloodshed going to begin?' asked Powell. When the Boers had been
shelling the town for some weeks the lighthearted Colonel sent out to
say that if they went on any longer he should be compelled to regard
it as equivalent to a declaration of war. It is to be hoped that Cronje
also possessed some sense of humour, or else he must have been as sorely
puzzled by his eccentric opponent as the Spanish generals were by the
vagaries of Lord Peterborough.
Among the many difficulties which had to be met by the defenders of the
town the most serious was the fact that the position had a circumference
of five or six miles to be held by about one thousand men against a
force who at their own time and their own place could at any moment
attempt to gain a footing. An ingenious system of small forts was
devised to meet the situation. Each of these held from ten to forty
riflemen, and was furnished with bomb-proofs and covered ways. The
central bomb-proof was connected by telephone with all the outlying
ones, so as to save the use of orderlies. A system of bells was arranged
by which each quarter of the town was warned when a shell was coming in
time to enable the inhabitants to scuttle off to shelter. Every detail
showed the ingenuity of the controlling mind. The armoured train,
painted green and tied round with scrub, stood unperceived among the
clumps of bushes which surrounded the town.
On October 24th a savage bombardment commenced, which lasted with
intermissions for seven months. The Boers had brought an enormous gun
across from Pretoria, throwing a 96-pound shell, and this, with many
smaller pieces, played upon the town. The result was as futile as our
own artillery fire has so often been when directed against the Boers.
As the Mafeking guns were too weak to answer the enemy's fire, the only
possible reply lay in a sortie, and upon this Colonel Powell decided.
It was carried out with great gallantry on the evening of October 27th,
when about a hundred men under Captain FitzClarence moved out against
the Boer trenches with instructions to use the bayonet only. The
position was carried with a rush, and many of the Boers bayoneted before
they could disengage themselves from the tarpaulins which covered them.
The trenches behind fired wildly in the darkness, and it is probable
that as many of their own men as of ours were hit by their rifle fire.
The total loss in this gallant affair was six killed, eleven wounded,
and two prisoners. The loss of the enemy, though shrouded as usual in
darkness, was certainly very much higher.
On October 31st the Boers ventured upon an attack on Cannon Kopje, which
is a small fort and eminence to the south of the town. It was
defended by Colonel Walford, of the British South African Police, with
fifty-seven of his men and three small guns. The attack was repelled
with heavy loss to the Boers. The British casualties were six killed and
five wounded.
Their experience in this attack seems to have determined the Boers to
make no further expensive attempts to rush the town, and for some weeks
the siege degenerated into a blockade. Cronje had been recalled for more
important work, and Commandant Snyman had taken over the uncompleted
task. From time to time the great gun tossed its huge shells into the
town, but boardwood walls and corrugated-iron roofs minimise the dangers
of a bombardment. On November 3rd the garrison rushed the Brickfields,
which had been held by the enemy's sharpshooters, and on the 7th another
small sally kept the game going. On the 18th Powell sent a message to
Snyman that he could not take the town by sitting and looking at it.
At the same time he despatched a message to the Boer forces generally,
advising them to return to their homes and their families. Some of the
commandos had gone south to assist Cronje in his stand against Methuen,
and the siege languished more and more, until it was woken up by a
desperate sortie on December 26th, which caused the greatest loss which
the garrison had sustained. Once more the lesson was to be enforced that
with modern weapons and equality of forces it is always long odds on the
defence.
On this date a vigorous attack was made upon one of the Boer forts
on the north. There seems to be little doubt that the enemy had
some inkling of our intention, as the fort was found to have been so
strengthened as to be impregnable without scaling ladders. The attacking
force consisted of two squadrons of the Protectorate Regiment and one of
the Bechuanaland Rifles, backed up by three guns. So desperate was the
onslaught that of the actual attacking party--a forlorn hope, if ever
there was one--fifty-three out of eighty were killed and wounded,
twenty-five of the former and twenty-eight of the latter. Several of
that gallant band of officers who had been the soul of the defence were
among the injured. Captain FitzClarence was wounded, Vernon, Sandford,
and Paton were killed, all at the very muzzles of the enemy's guns. It
must have been one of the bitterest moments of Baden-Powell's life when
he shut his field-glass and said, 'Let the ambulance go out!'
Even this heavy blow did not damp the spirits nor diminish the energies
of the defence, though it must have warned Baden-Powell that he could
not afford to drain his small force by any more expensive attempts at
the offensive, and that from then onwards he must content himself by
holding grimly on until Plumer from the north or Methuen from the south
should at last be able to stretch out to him a helping hand. Vigilant
and indomitable, throwing away no possible point in the game which
he was playing, the new year found him and his hardy garrison sternly
determined to keep the flag flying.
January and February offer in their records that monotony of excitement
which is the fate of every besieged town. On one day the shelling was
a little more, on another a little less. Sometimes they escaped
scatheless, sometimes the garrison found itself the poorer by the loss
of Captain Girdwood or Trooper Webb or some other gallant soldier.
Occasionally they had their little triumph when a too curious Dutchman,
peering for an instant from his cover to see the effect of his shot,
was carried back in the ambulance to the laager. On Sunday a truce was
usually observed, and the snipers who had exchanged rifle-shots all the
week met occasionally on that day with good-humoured chaff. Snyman,
the Boer General, showed none of that chivalry at Mafeking which
distinguished the gallant old Joubert at Ladysmith. Not only was
there no neutral camp for women or sick, but it is beyond all doubt or
question that the Boer guns were deliberately turned upon the
women's quarters inside Mafeking in order to bring pressure upon the
inhabitants. Many women and children were sacrificed to this brutal
policy, which must in fairness be set to the account of the savage
leader, and not of the rough but kindly folk with whom we were fighting.
In every race there are individual ruffians, and it would be a political
mistake to allow our action to be influenced or our feelings permanently
embittered by their crimes. It is from the man himself, and not from his
country, that an account should be exacted.
The garrison, in the face of increasing losses and decreasing food,
lost none of the high spirits which it reflected from its commander. The
programme of a single day of jubilee--Heaven only knows what they had to
hold jubilee over--shows a cricket match in the morning, sports in the
afternoon, a concert in the evening, and a dance, given by the bachelor
officers, to wind up. Baden-Powell himself seems to have descended from
the eyrie from which, like a captain on the bridge, he rang bells and
telephoned orders, to bring the house down with a comic song and a
humorous recitation. The ball went admirably, save that there was an
interval to repel an attack which disarranged the programme. Sports
were zealously cultivated, and the grimy inhabitants of casemates
and trenches were pitted against each other at cricket or football.
[Footnote: Sunday cricket so shocked Snyman that he threatened to fire
upon it if it were continued.] The monotony was broken by the occasional
visits of a postman, who appeared or vanished from the vast barren
lands to the west of the town, which could not all be guarded by the
besiegers. Sometimes a few words from home came to cheer the hearts of
the exiles, and could be returned by the same uncertain and expensive
means. The documents which found their way up were not always of an
essential or even of a welcome character. At least one man received an
unpaid bill from an angry tailor.
In one particular Mafeking had, with much smaller resources, rivalled
Kimberley. An ordnance factory had been started, formed in the railway
workshops, and conducted by Connely and Cloughlan, of the Locomotive
Department. Daniels, of the police, supplemented their efforts by making
both powder and fuses. The factory turned out shells, and eventually
constructed a 5.5-inch smooth-bore gun, which threw a round shell with
great accuracy to a considerable range. April found the garrison, in
spite of all losses, as efficient and as resolute as it had been in
October. So close were the advanced trenches upon either side that both
parties had recourse to the old-fashioned hand grenades, thrown by the
Boers, and cast on a fishing-line by ingenious Sergeant Page, of the
Protectorate Regiment. Sometimes the besiegers and the number of guns
diminished, forces being detached to prevent the advance of Plumer's
relieving column from the north; but as those who remained held their
forts, which it was beyond the power of the British to storm, the
garrison was now much the better for the alleviation. Putting Mafeking
for Ladysmith and Plumer for Buller, the situation was not unlike that
which had existed in Natal.
At this point some account might be given of the doings of that
northern force whose situation was so remote that even the ubiquitous
correspondent hardly appears to have reached it. No doubt the book will
eventually make up for the neglect of the journal, but some short facts
may be given here of the Rhodesian column. Their action did not affect
the course of the war, but they clung like bulldogs to a most difficult
task, and eventually, when strengthened by the relieving column, made
their way to Mafeking.
The force was originally raised for the purpose of defending Rhodesia,
and it consisted of fine material pioneers, farmers, and miners from the
great new land which had been added through the energy of Mr. Rhodes to
the British Empire. Many of the men were veterans of the native wars,
and all were imbued with a hardy and adventurous spirit. On the other
hand, the men of the northern and western Transvaal, whom they were
called upon to face the burghers of Watersberg and Zoutpansberg, were
tough frontiersmen living in a land where a dinner was shot, not
bought. Shaggy, hairy, half-savage men, handling a rifle as a mediaeval
Englishman handled a bow, and skilled in every wile of veld craft, they
were as formidable opponents as the world could show.
On the war breaking out the first thought of the leaders in Rhodesia was
to save as much of the line which was their connection through Mafeking
with the south as was possible. For this purpose an armoured train was
despatched only three days after the expiration of the ultimatum to the
point four hundred miles south of Bulawayo, where the frontiers of the
Transvaal and of Bechuanaland join. Colonel Holdsworth commanded
the small British force. The Boers, a thousand or so in number, had
descended upon the railway, and an action followed in which the
train appears to have had better luck than has usually attended these
ill-fated contrivances. The Boer commando was driven back and a number
were killed. It was probably news of this affair, and not anything
which had occurred at Mafeking, which caused those rumours of gloom
at Pretoria very shortly after the outbreak of hostilities. An agency
telegraphed that women were weeping in the streets of the Boer capital.
We had not then realised how soon and how often we should see the same
sight in Pall Mall.
The adventurous armoured train pressed on as far as Lobatsi, where it
found the bridges destroyed; so it returned to its original position,
having another brush with the Boer commandos, and again, in some
marvellous way, escaping its obvious fate. From then until the new year
the line was kept open by an admirable system of patrolling to within
a hundred miles or so of Mafeking. An aggressive spirit and a power of
dashing initiative were shown in the British operations at this side
of the scene of war such as have too often been absent elsewhere.
At Sekwani, on November 24th, a considerable success was gained by a
surprise planned and carried out by Colonel Holdsworth. The Boer laager
was approached and attacked in the early morning by a force of one
hundred and twenty frontiersmen, and so effective was their fire that
the Boers estimated their numbers at several thousand. Thirty Boers were
killed or wounded, and the rest scattered.
While the railway line was held in this way there had been some
skirmishing also on the northern frontier of the Transvaal. Shortly
after the outbreak of the war the gallant Blackburn, scouting with six
comrades in thick bush, found himself in the presence of a considerable
commando. The British concealed themselves by the path, but Blackburn's
foot was seen by a keen-eyed Kaffir, who pointed it out to his masters.
A sudden volley riddled Blackburn with bullets; but his men stayed by
him and drove off the enemy. Blackburn dictated an official report of
the action, and then died.
In the same region a small force under Captain Hare was cut off by a
body of Boers. Of the twenty men most got away, but the chaplain J.W.
Leary, Lieutenant Haserick (who behaved with admirable gallantry), and
six men were taken. [Footnote: Mr. Leary was wounded in the foot by a
shell. The German artillerist entered the hut in which he lay. 'Here's
a bit of your work!' said Leary good-humouredly. 'I wish it had been
worse,' said the amiable German gunner.] The commando which attacked
this party, and on the same day Colonel Spreckley's force, was a
powerful one, with several guns. No doubt it was organised because there
were fears among the Boers that they would be invaded from the north.
When it was understood that the British intended no large aggressive
movement in that quarter, these burghers joined other commandos. Sarel
Eloff, who was one of the leaders of this northern force, was afterwards
taken at Mafeking.
Colonel Plumer had taken command of the small army which was now
operating from the north along the railway line with Mafeking for its
objective. Plumer is an officer of considerable experience in African
warfare, a small, quiet, resolute man, with a knack of gently enforcing
discipline upon the very rough material with which he had to deal. With
his weak force--which never exceeded a thousand men, and was usually
from six to seven hundred--he had to keep the long line behind him open,
build up the ruined railway in front of him, and gradually creep
onwards in face of a formidable and enterprising enemy. For a long
time Gaberones, which is eighty miles north of Mafeking, remained his
headquarters, and thence he kept up precarious communications with the
besieged garrison. In the middle of March he advanced as far south as
Lobatsi, which is less than fifty miles from Mafeking; but the enemy
proved to be too strong, and Plumer had to drop back again with some
loss to his original position at Gaberones. Sticking doggedly to his
task, Plumer again came south, and this time made his way as far
as Ramathlabama, within a day's march of Mafeking. He had with him,
however, only three hundred and fifty men, and had he pushed through the
effect might have been an addition of hungry men to the garrison. The
relieving force was fiercely attacked, however, by the Boers and driven
back on to their camp with a loss of twelve killed, twenty-six wounded,
and fourteen missing. Some of the British were dismounted men, and
it says much for Plumer's conduct of the fight that he was able to
extricate these safely from the midst of an aggressive mounted enemy.
Personally he set an admirable example, sending away his own horse,
and walking with his rearmost soldiers. Captain Crewe Robertson and
Lieutenant Milligan, the famous Yorkshire cricketer, were killed, and
Rolt, Jarvis, Maclaren, and Plumer himself were wounded. The Rhodesian
force withdrew again to near Lobatsi, and collected itself for yet
another effort.
In the meantime Mafeking--abandoned, as it seemed, to its fate--was
still as formidable as a wounded lion. Far from weakening in its defence
it became more aggressive, and so persistent and skilful were its
riflemen that the big Boer gun had again and again to be moved further
from the town. Six months of trenches and rifle-pits had turned
every inhabitant into a veteran. Now and then words of praise and
encouragement came to them from without. Once it was a special message
from the Queen, once a promise of relief from Lord Roberts. But the
rails which led to England were overgrown with grass, and their brave
hearts yearned for the sight of their countrymen and for the sound of
their voices. 'How long, O Lord, how long?' was the cry which was wrung
from them in their solitude. But the flag was still held high.
April was a trying month for the defence. They knew that Methuen, who
had advanced as far as Fourteen Streams upon the Vaal River, had retired
again upon Kimberley. They knew also that Plumer's force had been
weakened by the repulse at Ramathlabama, and that many of his men
were down with fever. Six weary months had this village withstood the
pitiless pelt of rifle bullet and shell. Help seemed as far away from
them as ever. But if troubles may be allayed by sympathy, then theirs
should have lain lightly. The attention of the whole empire had centred
upon them, and even the advance of Roberts's army became secondary to
the fate of this gallant struggling handful of men who had upheld the
flag so long. On the Continent also their resistance attracted
the utmost interest, and the numerous journals there who find the
imaginative writer cheaper than the war correspondent announced their
capture periodically as they had once done that of Ladysmith. From a
mere tin-roofed village Mafeking had become a prize of victory, a stake
which should be the visible sign of the predominating manhood of one
or other of the great white races of South Africa. Unconscious of
the keenness of the emotions which they had aroused, the garrison
manufactured brawn from horsehide, and captured locusts as a relish for
their luncheons, while in the shot-torn billiard-room of the club an
open tournament was started to fill in their hours off duty. But their
vigilance, and that of the hawk-eyed man up in the Conning Tower, never
relaxed. The besiegers had increased in number, and their guns were
more numerous than before. A less acute man than Baden-Powell might have
reasoned that at least one desperate effort would be made by them to
carry the town before relief could come.
On Saturday, May 12th, the attack was made at the favourite hour of the
Boer--the first grey of the morning. It was gallantly delivered by about
three hundred volunteers under the command of Eloff, who had crept
round to the west of the town--the side furthest from the lines of the
besiegers. At the first rush they penetrated into the native quarter,
which was at once set on fire by them. The first building of any size
upon that side is the barracks of the Protectorate Regiment, which was
held by Colonel Hore and about twenty of his officers and men. This was
carried by the enemy, who sent an exultant message along the telephone
to Baden-Powell to tell him that they had got it. Two other positions
within the lines, one a stone kraal and the other a hill, were held by
the Boers, but their supports were slow in coming on, and the movements
of the defenders were so prompt and energetic that all three found
themselves isolated and cut off from their own lines. They had
penetrated the town, but they were as far as ever from having taken it.
All day the British forces drew their cordon closer and closer round the
Boer positions, making no attempt to rush them, but ringing them round
in such a way that there could be no escape for them. A few burghers
slipped away in twos and threes, but the main body found that they had
rushed into a prison from which the only egress was swept with rifle
fire. At seven o'clock in the evening they recognised that their
position was hopeless, and Eloff with 117 men laid down their arms.
Their losses had been ten killed and nineteen wounded. For some reason,
either of lethargy, cowardice, or treachery, Snyman had not brought up
the supports which might conceivably have altered the result. It was a
gallant attack gallantly met, and for once the greater wiliness in fight
was shown by the British. The end was characteristic. 'Good evening,
Commandant,' said Powell to Eloff; 'won't you come in and have
some dinner?' The prisoners--burghers, Hollanders, Germans, and
Frenchmen--were treated to as good a supper as the destitute larders of
the town could furnish.
So in a small blaze of glory ended the historic siege of Mafeking, for
Eloff's attack was the last, though by no means the worst of the trials
which the garrison had to face. Six killed and ten wounded were the
British losses in this admirably managed affair. On May 17th, five
days after the fight, the relieving force arrived, the besiegers were
scattered, and the long-imprisoned garrison were free men once more.
Many who had looked at their maps and saw this post isolated in the
very heart of Africa had despaired of ever reaching their heroic
fellow-countrymen, and now one universal outbreak of joybells and
bonfires from Toronto to Melbourne proclaimed that there is no spot so
inaccessible that the long arm of the empire cannot reach it when her
children are in peril.
Colonel Mahon, a young Irish officer who had made his reputation as a
cavalry leader in Egypt, had started early in May from Kimberley with a
small but mobile force consisting of the Imperial Light Horse (brought
round from Natal for the purpose), the Kimberley Mounted Corps, the
Diamond Fields Horse, some Imperial Yeomanry, a detachment of the Cape
Police, and 100 volunteers from the Fusilier brigade, with M battery
R.H.A. and pom-poms, twelve hundred men in all. Whilst Hunter was
fighting his action at Rooidam on May 4th, Mahon with his men
struck round the western flank of the Boers and moved rapidly to the
northwards. On May 11th they had left Vryburg, the halfway house, behind
them, having done one hundred and twenty miles in five days. They pushed
on, encountering no opposition save that of nature, though they knew
that they were being closely watched by the enemy. At Koodoosrand it was
found that a Boer force was in position in front, but Mahon avoided them
by turning somewhat to the westward. His detour took him, however, into
a bushy country, and here the enemy headed him off, opening fire at
short range upon the ubiquitous Imperial Light Horse, who led the
column. A short engagement ensued, in which the casualties amounted to
thirty killed and wounded, but which ended in the defeat and dispersal
of the Boers, whose force was certainly very much weaker than the
British. On May 15th the relieving column arrived without further
opposition at Masibi Stadt, twenty miles to the west of Mafeking.
In the meantime Plumer's force upon the north had been strengthened
by the addition of C battery of four 12-pounder guns of the Canadian
Artillery under Major Eudon and a body of Queenslanders. These forces
had been part of the small army which had come with General Carrington
through Beira, and after a detour of thousands of miles, through their
own wonderful energy they had arrived in time to form portion of the
relieving column. Foreign military critics, whose experience of warfare
is to move troops across a frontier, should think of what the Empire
has to do before her men go into battle. These contingents had been
assembled by long railway journeys, conveyed across thousands of miles
of ocean to Cape Town, brought round another two thousand or so to
Beira, transferred by a narrow-gauge railway to Bamboo Creek, changed to
a broader gauge to Marandellas, sent on in coaches for hundreds of miles
to Bulawayo, transferred to trains for another four or five hundred
miles to Ootsi, and had finally a forced march of a hundred miles, which
brought them up a few hours before their presence was urgently needed
upon the field. Their advance, which averaged twenty-five miles a day
on foot for four consecutive days over deplorable roads, was one of the
finest performances of the war. With these high-spirited reinforcements
and with his own hardy Rhodesians Plumer pushed on, and the two columns
reached the hamlet of Masibi Stadt within an hour of each other. Their
united strength was far superior to anything which Snyman's force could
place against them.
But the gallant and tenacious Boers would not abandon their prey without
a last effort. As the little army advanced upon Mafeking they found the
enemy waiting in a strong position. For some hours the Boers gallantly
held their ground, and their artillery fire was, as usual, most
accurate. But our own guns were more numerous and equally well served,
and the position was soon made untenable. The Boers retired past
Mafeking and took refuge in the trenches upon the eastern side, but
Baden-Powell with his war-hardened garrison sallied out, and, supported
by the artillery fire of the relieving column, drove them from their
shelter. With their usual admirable tactics their larger guns had
been removed, but one small cannon was secured as a souvenir by the
townsfolk, together with a number of wagons and a considerable quantity
of supplies. A long rolling trail of dust upon the eastern horizon told
that the famous siege of Mafeking had at last come to an end.
So ended a singular incident, the defence of an open town which
contained no regular soldiers and a most inadequate artillery against a
numerous and enterprising enemy with very heavy guns. All honour to
the towns folk who bore their trial so long and so bravely--and to the
indomitable men who lined the trenches for seven weary months. Their
constancy was of enormous value to the empire. In the all-important
early month at least four or five thousand Boers were detained by them
when their presence elsewhere would have been fatal. During all the rest
of the war, two thousand men and eight guns (including one of the
four big Creusots) had been held there. It prevented the invasion of
Rhodesia, and it gave a rallying-point for loyal whites and natives in
the huge stretch of country from Kimberley to Bulawayo. All this had, at
a cost of two hundred lives, been done by this one devoted band of
men, who killed, wounded, or took no fewer than one thousand of their
opponents. Critics may say that the enthusiasm in the empire was
excessive, but at least it was expended over worthy men and a fine deed
of arms.