The time had now come for the great combined movement which was to sweep
the main Boer army off the line of the Delagoa railway, cut its source
of supplies, and follow it into that remote and mountainous Lydenburg
district which had always been proclaimed as the last refuge of the
burghers. Before entering upon this most difficult of all his advances
Lord Roberts waited until the cavalry and mounted infantry were well
mounted again. Then, when all was ready, the first step in this last
stage of the regular campaign was taken by General Buller, who moved his
army of Natal veterans off the railway line and advanced to a position
from which he could threaten the flank and rear of Botha if he held his
ground against Lord Roberts. Buller's cavalry had been reinforced by the
arrival of Strathcona's Horse, a fine body of Canadian troopers,
whose services had been presented to the nation by the public-spirited
nobleman whose name they bore. They were distinguished by their fine
physique, and by the lassoes, cowboy stirrups, and large spurs of the
North-Western plains.
It was in the first week of July that Clery joined hands with the
Heidelberg garrison, while Coke with the 10th Brigade cleared the right
flank of the railway by an expedition as far as Amersfoort. On July 6th
the Natal communications were restored, and on the 7th Buller was able
to come through to Pretoria and confer with the Commander-in-Chief. A
Boer force with heavy guns still hung about the line, and several small
skirmishes were fought between Vlakfontein and Greylingstad in order
to drive it away. By the middle of July the immediate vicinity of the
railway was clear save for some small marauding parties who endeavoured
to tamper with the rails and the bridges. Up to the end of the month the
whole of the Natal army remained strung along the line of communications
from Heidelberg to Standerton, waiting for the collection of forage and
transport to enable them to march north against Botha's position.
On August 8th Buller's troops advanced to the north-east from Paardekop,
pushing a weak Boer force with five guns in front of them. At the cost
of twenty-five wounded, principally of the 60th Rifles, the enemy was
cleared off, and the town of Amersfoort was occupied. On the 13th,
moving on the same line, and meeting with very slight opposition, Buller
took possession of Ermelo. His advance was having a good effect upon the
district, for on the 12th the Standerton commando, which numbered 182
men, surrendered to Clery. On the 15th, still skirmishing, Buller's men
were at Twyfelaar, and had taken possession of Carolina. Here and there
a distant horseman riding over the olive-coloured hills showed how
closely and incessantly he was watched; but, save for a little sniping
upon his flanks, there was no fighting. He was coming now within
touch of French's cavalry, operating from Middelburg, and on the 14th
heliographic communication was established with Gordon's Brigade.
Buller's column had come nearer to its friends, but it was also nearer
to the main body of Boers who were waiting in that very rugged piece of
country which lies between Belfast in the west and Machadodorp in the
east. From this rocky stronghold they had thrown out mobile bodies to
harass the British advance from the south, and every day brought Buller
into closer touch with these advance guards of the enemy. On August 21st
he had moved eight miles nearer to Belfast, French operating upon his
left flank. Here he found the Boers in considerable numbers, but he
pushed them northward with his cavalry, mounted infantry, and artillery,
losing between thirty and forty killed and wounded, the greater part
from the ranks of the 18th Hussars and the Gordon Highlanders. This
march brought him within fifteen miles of Belfast, which lay due north
of him. At the same time Pole-Carew with the central column of Lord
Roberts's force had advanced along the railway line, and on August 24th
he occupied Belfast with little resistance. He found, however, that the
enemy were holding the formidable ridges which lie between that place
and Dalmanutha, and that they showed every sign of giving battle,
presenting a firm front to Buller on the south as well as to Roberts's
army on the west.
On the 23rd some successes attended their efforts to check the advance
from the south. During the day Buller had advanced steadily, though
under incessant fire. The evening found him only six miles to the south
of Dalmanutha, the centre of the Boer position. By some misfortune,
however, after dark two companies of the Liverpool Regiment found
themselves isolated from their comrades and exposed to a very heavy
fire. They had pushed forward too far, and were very near to being
surrounded and destroyed. There were fifty-six casualties in their
ranks, and thirty-two, including their wounded captain, were taken. The
total losses in the day were 121.
On August 25th it was evident that important events were at hand, for
on that date Lord Roberts arrived at Belfast and held a conference with
Buller, French, and Pole-Carew. The general communicated his plans to
his three lieutenants, and on the 26th and following days the fruits of
the interview were seen in a succession of rapid manoeuvres which drove
the Boers out of this, the strongest position which they had held since
they left the banks of the Tugela.
The advance of Lord Roberts was made, as his wont is, with two
widespread wings, and a central body to connect them. Such a movement
leaves the enemy in doubt as to which flank will really be attacked,
while if he denudes his centre in order to strengthen both flanks there
is the chance of a frontal advance which might cut him in two. French
with two cavalry brigades formed the left advance, Pole-Carew the
centre, and Buller the right, the whole operations extending over thirty
miles of infamous country. It is probable that Lord Roberts had reckoned
that the Boer right was likely to be their strongest position, since if
it were turned it would cut off their retreat upon Lydenburg, so his
own main attack was directed upon their left. This was carried out by
General Buller on August 26th and 27th.
On the first day the movement upon Buller's part consisted in a very
deliberate reconnaissance of and closing in upon the enemy's position,
his troops bivouacking upon the ground which they had won. On the
second, finding that all further progress was barred by the strong ridge
of Bergendal, he prepared his attack carefully with artillery and then
let loose his infantry upon it. It was a gallant feat of arms upon
either side. The Boer position was held by a detachment of the
Johannesburg Police, who may have been bullies in peace, but were
certainly heroes in war. The fire of sixty guns was concentrated for a
couple of hours upon a position only a few hundred yards in diameter.
In this infernal fire, which left the rocks yellow with lyddite, the
survivors still waited grimly for the advance of the infantry. No finer
defence was made in the war. The attack was carried out across an open
glacis by the 2nd Rifle Brigade and by the Inniskilling Fusiliers, the
men of Pieter's Hill. Through a deadly fire the gallant infantry swept
over the position, though Metcalfe, the brave colonel of the Rifles,
with eight other officers, and seventy men were killed or wounded.
Lysley, Steward, and Campbell were all killed in leading their
companies, but they could not have met their deaths upon an occasion
more honourable to their battalion. Great credit must also be given to
A and B companies of the Inniskilling Fusiliers, who were actually the
first over the Boer position. The cessation of the artillery fire was
admirably timed. It was sustained up to the last possible instant. 'As
it was,' said the captain of the leading company, 'a 94-pound shell
burst about thirty yards in front of the right of our lot. The smell of
the lyddite was awful.' A pom-pom and twenty prisoners, including the
commander of the police, were the trophies of the day. An outwork of the
Boer position had been carried, and the rumour of defeat and disaster
had already spread through their ranks. Braver men than the burghers
have never lived, but they had reached the limits of human endurance,
and a long experience of defeat in the field had weakened their nerve
and lessened their morale. They were no longer men of the same fibre as
those who had crept up to the trenches of Spion Kop, or faced the lean
warriors of Ladysmith on that grim January morning at Caesar's Camp.
Dutch tenacity would not allow them to surrender, and yet they realised
how hopeless was the fight in which they were engaged. Nearly fifteen
thousand of their best men were prisoners, ten thousand at the least had
returned to their farms and taken the oath. Another ten had been killed,
wounded, or incapacitated. Most of the European mercenaries had left;
they held only the ultimate corner of their own country, they had lost
their grip upon the railway line, and their supply of stores and of
ammunition was dwindling. To such a pass had eleven months of war
reduced that formidable army who had so confidently advanced to the
conquest of South Africa.
While Buller had established himself firmly upon the left of the Boer
position, Pole-Carew had moved forward to the north of the railway line,
and French had advanced as far as Swart Kopjes upon the Boer right.
These operations on August 26th and 27th were met with some resistance,
and entailed a loss of forty or fifty killed and wounded; but it soon
became evident that the punishment which they had received at Bergendal
had taken the fight out of the Boers, and that this formidable position
was to be abandoned as the others had been. On the 28th the burghers
were retreating, and Machadodorp, where Kruger had sat so long in his
railway carriage, protesting that he would eventually move west and not
east, was occupied by Buller. French, moving on a more northerly route,
entered Watervalonder with his cavalry upon the same date, driving a
small Boer force before him. Amid rain and mist the British columns
were pushing rapidly forwards, but still the burghers held together, and
still their artillery was uncaptured. The retirement was swift, but it
was not yet a rout.
On the 30th the British cavalry were within touch of Nooitgedacht, and
saw a glad sight in a long trail of ragged men who were hurrying in
their direction along the railway line. They were the British prisoners,
eighteen hundred in number, half of whom had been brought from Waterval
when Pretoria was captured, while the other half represented the men who
had been sent from the south by De Wet, or from the west by De la
Rey. Much allowance must be made for the treatment of prisoners by a
belligerent who is himself short of food, but nothing can excuse the
harshness which the Boers showed to the Colonials who fell into their
power, or the callous neglect of the sick prisoners at Waterval. It is
a humiliating but an interesting fact that from first to last no fewer
than seven thousand of our men passed into their power, all of whom were
now recovered save some sixty officers, who had been carried off by them
in their flight.
On September 1st Lord Roberts showed his sense of the decisive nature
of these recent operations by publishing the proclamation which had been
issued as early as July 4th, by which the Transvaal became a portion of
the British Empire. On the same day General Buller, who had ceased to
advance to the east and retraced his steps as far as Helvetia, began his
northerly movement in the direction of Lydenburg, which is nearly fifty
miles to the north of the railway line. On that date his force made a
march of fourteen miles, which brought them over the Crocodile River to
Badfontein. Here, on September 2nd, Buller found that the indomitable
Botha was still turning back upon him, for he was faced by so heavy
a shell fire, coming from so formidable a position, that he had to be
content to wait in front of it until some other column should outflank
it. The days of unnecessary frontal attacks were for ever over, and his
force, though ready for anything which might be asked of it, had gone
through a good deal in the recent operations. Since August 21st they had
been under fire almost every day, and their losses, though never great
on any one occasion, amounted in the aggregate during that time to
365. They had crossed the Tugela, they had relieved Ladysmith, they had
forced Laing's Nek, and now it was to them that the honour had fallen of
following the enemy into this last fastness. Whatever criticism may be
directed against some episodes in the Natal campaign, it must never be
forgotten that to Buller and to his men have fallen some of the hardest
tasks of the war, and that these tasks have always in the end been
successfully carried out. The controversy about the unfortunate message
to White, and the memory of the abandoned guns at Colenso, must not
lead us to the injustice of ignoring all that is to be set to the credit
account.
On September 3rd Lord Roberts, finding how strong a position faced
Buller, despatched Ian Hamilton with a force to turn it upon the right.
Brocklehurst's brigade of cavalry joined Hamilton in his advance. On the
4th he was within signalling distance of Buller, and on the right rear
of the Boer position. The occupation of a mountain called Zwaggenhoek
would establish Hamilton firmly, and the difficult task of seizing it
at night was committed to Colonel Douglas and his fine regiment of Royal
Scots. It was Spion Kop over again, but with a happier ending. At
break of day the Boers discovered that their position had been rendered
untenable and withdrew, leaving the road to Lydenburg clear to Buller.
Hamilton and he occupied the town upon the 6th. The Boers had split into
two parties, the larger one with the guns falling back upon Kruger's
Post, and the others retiring to Pilgrim's Rest. Amid cloud-girt peaks
and hardly passable ravines the two long-enduring armies still wrestled
for the final mastery.
To the north-east of Lydenburg, between that town and Spitzkop, there is
a formidable ridge called the Mauchberg, and here again the enemy were
found to be standing at bay. They were even better than their word, for
they had always said that they would make their last stand at Lydenburg,
and now they were making one beyond it. But the resistance was
weakening. Even this fine position could not be held against the rush of
the three regiments, the Devons, the Royal Irish, and the Royal
Scots, who were let loose upon it. The artillery supported the attack
admirably. 'They did nobly,' said one who led the advance. 'It is
impossible to overrate the value of their support. They ceased also
exactly at the right moment. One more shell would have hit us.' Mountain
mists saved the defeated burghers from a close pursuit, but the hills
were carried. The British losses on this day, September 8th, were
thirteen killed and twenty-five wounded; but of these thirty-eight no
less than half were accounted for by one of those strange malignant
freaks which can neither be foreseen nor prevented. A shrapnel shell,
fired at an incredible distance, burst right over the Volunteer Company
of the Gordons who were marching in column. Nineteen men fell, but it is
worth recording that, smitten so suddenly and so terribly, the gallant
Volunteers continued to advance as steadily as before this misfortune
befell them. On the 9th Buller was still pushing forward to Spitzkop,
his guns and the 1st Rifles overpowering a weak rearguard resistance of
the Boers. On the 10th he had reached Klipgat, which is halfway between
the Mauchberg and Spitzkop. So close was the pursuit that the Boers,
as they streamed through the passes, flung thirteen of their ammunition
wagons over the cliffs to prevent them from falling into the hands of
the British horsemen. At one period it looked as if the gallant Boer
guns had waited too long in covering the retreat of the burghers.
Strathcona's Horse pressed closely upon them. The situation was saved by
the extreme coolness and audacity of the Boer gunners. 'When the cavalry
were barely half a mile behind the rear gun' says an eye-witness 'and
we regarded its capture as certain, the LEADING Long Tom deliberately
turned to bay and opened with case shot at the pursuers streaming down
the hill in single file over the head of his brother gun. It was a
magnificent coup, and perfectly successful. The cavalry had to retire,
leaving a few men wounded, and by the time our heavy guns had arrived
both Long Toms had got clean away.' But the Boer riflemen would no
longer stand. Demoralised after their magnificent struggle of eleven
months the burghers were now a beaten and disorderly rabble flying
wildly to the eastward, and only held together by the knowledge that in
their desperate situation there was more comfort and safety in numbers.
The war seemed to be swiftly approaching its close. On the 15th Buller
occupied Spitzkop in the north, capturing a quantity of stores, while on
the 14th French took Barberton in the south, releasing all the remaining
British prisoners and taking possession of forty locomotives, which do
not appear to have been injured by the enemy. Meanwhile Pole-Carew had
worked along the railway line, and had occupied Kaapmuiden, which was
the junction where the Barberton line joins that to Lourenco Marques.
Ian Hamilton's force, after the taking of Lydenburg and the action which
followed, turned back, leaving Buller to go his own way, and reached
Komatipoort on September 24th, having marched since September 9th
without a halt through a most difficult country.
On September 11th an incident had occurred which must have shown the
most credulous believer in Boer prowess that their cause was indeed
lost. On that date Paul Kruger, a refugee from the country which he had
ruined, arrived at Lourenco Marques, abandoning his beaten commandos
and his deluded burghers. How much had happened since those distant days
when as a little herdsboy he had walked behind the bullocks on the great
northward trek. How piteous this ending to all his strivings and his
plottings! A life which might have closed amid the reverence of a
nation and the admiration of the world was destined to finish in exile,
impotent and undignified. Strange thoughts must have come to him during
those hours of flight, memories of his virile and turbulent youth, of
the first settlement of those great lands, of wild wars where his
hand was heavy upon the natives, of the triumphant days of the war
of independence, when England seemed to recoil from the rifles of the
burghers. And then the years of prosperity, the years when the simple
farmer found himself among the great ones of the earth, his name a
household word in Europe, his State rich and powerful, his coffers
filled with the spoil of the poor drudges who worked so hard and paid
taxes so readily. Those were his great days, the days when he hardened
his heart against their appeals for justice and looked beyond his own
borders to his kinsmen in the hope of a South Africa which should be
all his own. And now what had come of it all? A handful of faithful
attendants, and a fugitive old man, clutching in his flight at his
papers and his moneybags. The last of the old-world Puritans, he
departed poring over his well-thumbed Bible, and proclaiming that the
troubles of his country arose, not from his own narrow and corrupt
administration, but from some departure on the part of his fellow
burghers from the stricter tenets of the dopper sect. So Paul Kruger
passed away from the country which he had loved and ruined.
Whilst the main army of Botha had been hustled out of their position
at Machadodorp and scattered at Lydenburg and at Barberton, a number of
other isolated events had occurred at different points of the seat
of war, each of which deserves some mention. The chief of these was a
sudden revival of the war in the Orange River Colony, where the band
of Olivier was still wandering in the north-eastern districts. Hunter,
moving northwards after the capitulation of Prinsloo at Fouriesburg,
came into contact on August 15th with this force near Heilbron, and
had forty casualties, mainly of the Highland Light Infantry, in a brisk
engagement. For a time the British seemed to have completely lost touch
with Olivier, who suddenly on August 24th struck at a small detachment
consisting almost entirely of Queenstown Rifle Volunteers under Colonel
Ridley, who were reconnoitring near Winburg. The Colonial troopers made
a gallant defence. Throwing themselves into the farmhouse of Helpmakaar,
and occupying every post of vantage around it, they held off more than a
thousand assailants, in spite of the three guns which the latter brought
to bear upon them. A hundred and thirty-two rounds were fired at the
house, but the garrison still refused to surrender. Troopers who had
been present at Wepener declared that the smaller action was the warmer
of the two. Finally on the morning of the third day a relief force
arrived upon the scene, and the enemy dispersed. The British losses were
thirty-two killed and wounded. Nothing daunted by his failure, Olivier
turned upon the town of Winburg and attempted to regain it, but was
defeated again and scattered, he and his three sons being taken. The
result was due to the gallantry and craft of a handful of the Queenstown
Volunteers, who laid an ambuscade in a donga, and disarmed the Boers as
they passed, after the pattern of Sanna's Post. By this action one of
the most daring and resourceful of the Dutch leaders fell into the
hands of the British. It is a pity that his record is stained by his
dishonourable conduct in breaking the compact made on the occasion
of the capture of Prinsloo. But for British magnanimity a drumhead
court-martial should have taken the place of the hospitality of the
Ceylon planters.
On September 2nd another commando of Free State Boers under Fourie
emerged from the mountain country on the Basuto border, and fell upon
Ladybrand, which was held by a feeble garrison consisting of one company
of the Worcester regiment and forty-three men of the Wiltshire Yeomanry.
The Boers, who had several guns with them, appear to have been the same
force which had been repulsed at Winburg. Major White, a gallant marine,
whose fighting qualities do not seem to have deteriorated with his
distance from salt water, had arranged his defences upon a hill, after
the Wepener model, and held his own most stoutly. So great was the
disparity of the forces that for days acute anxiety was felt lest
another of those humiliating surrenders should interrupt the record of
victories, and encourage the Boers to further resistance. The point was
distant, and it was some time before relief could reach them. But
the dusky chiefs, who from their native mountains looked down on the
military drama which was played so close to their frontier, were
again, as on the Jammersberg, to see the Boer attack beaten back by the
constancy of the British defence. The thin line of soldiers, 150 of them
covering a mile and a half of ground, endured a heavy shell and rifle
fire with unshaken resolution, repulsed every attempt of the burghers,
and held the flag flying until relieved by the forces under White and
Bruce Hamilton. In this march to the relief Hamilton's infantry covered
eighty miles in four and a half days. Lean and hard, inured to warfare,
and far from every temptation of wine or women, the British troops
at this stage of the campaign were in such training, and marched so
splendidly, that the infantry was often very little slower than
the cavalry. Methuen's fine performance in pursuit of De Wet, where
Douglas's infantry did sixty-six miles in seventy-five hours, the City
Imperial Volunteers covering 224 miles in fourteen days, with a single
forced march of thirty miles in seventeen hours, the Shropshires
forty-three miles in thirty-two hours, the forty-five miles in
twenty-five hours of the Essex Regiment, Bruce Hamilton's march
recorded above, and many other fine efforts serve to show the spirit and
endurance of the troops.
In spite of the defeat at Winburg and the repulse at Ladybrand, there
still remained a fair number of broken and desperate men in the Free
State who held out among the difficult country of the east. A party of
these came across in the middle of September and endeavoured to cut the
railway near Brandfort. They were pursued and broken up by Macdonald,
who, much aided in his operations by the band of scouts which Lord Lovat
had brought with him from Scotland, took several prisoners and a large
number of wagons and of oxen. A party of these Boers attacked a small
post of sixteen Yeomanry under Lieutenant Slater at Bultfontein, but
were held at bay until relief came from Brandfort.
At two other points the Boer and British forces were in contact during
these operations. One was to the immediate north of Pretoria, where
Grobler's commando was faced by Paget's brigade. On August 18th the
Boers were forced with some loss out of Hornies Nek, which is ten miles
to the north of the capital. On the 22nd a more important skirmish took
place at Pienaar's River, in the same direction, between Baden-Powell's
men, who had come thither in pursuit of De Wet, and Grobler's band. The
advance guards of the two forces galloped into each other, and for once
Boer and Briton looked down the muzzles of each other's rifles. The
gallant Rhodesian Regiment, which had done such splendid service during
the war, suffered most heavily. Colonel Spreckley and four others were
killed, and six or seven wounded. The Boers were broken, however, and
fled, leaving twenty-five prisoners to the victors. Baden-Powell and
Paget pushed forwards as far as Nylstroom, but finding themselves
in wild and profitless country they returned towards Pretoria, and
established the British northern posts at a place called Warm Baths.
Here Paget commanded, while Baden-Powell shortly afterwards went down to
Cape Town to make arrangements for taking over the police force of the
conquered countries, and to receive the enthusiastic welcome of his
colonial fellow-countrymen. Plumer, with a small force operating from
Warm Baths, scattered a Boer commando on September 1st, capturing a few
prisoners and a considerable quantity of munitions of war. On the 5th
there was another skirmish in the same neighbourhood, during which the
enemy attacked a kopje held by a company of Munster Fusiliers, and was
driven off with loss. Many thousands of cattle were captured by the
British in this part of the field of operations, and were sent into
Pretoria, whence they helped to supply the army in the east.
There was still considerable effervescence in the western districts of
the Transvaal, and a mounted detachment met with fierce opposition at
the end of August on their journey from Zeerust to Krugersdorp. Methuen,
after his unsuccessful chase of De Wet, had gone as far as Zeerust,
and had then taken his force on to Mafeking to refit. Before leaving
Zeerust, however, he had despatched Colonel Little to Pretoria with a
column which consisted of his own third cavalry brigade, 1st Brabant's,
the Kaffrarian Rifles, R battery of Horse Artillery, and four Colonial
guns. They were acting as guard to a very large convoy of 'returned
empties.' The district which they had to traverse is one of the most
fertile in the Transvaal, a land of clear streams and of orange groves.
But the farmers are numerous and aggressive, and the column, which was
900 strong, could clear all resistance from its front, but found it
impossible to brush off the snipers upon its flanks and rear. Shortly
after their start the column was deprived of the services of its gallant
leader, Colonel Little, who was shot while riding with his advance
scouts. Colonel Dalgety took over the command. Numerous desultory
attacks culminated in a fierce skirmish at Quaggafontein on August 31st,
in which the column had sixty casualties. The event might have been
serious, as De la Rey's main force appears to have been concentrated
upon the British detachment, the brunt of the action falling upon the
Kaffrarian Rifles. By a rapid movement the column was able to extricate
itself and win its way safely to Krugersdorp, but it narrowly escaped
out of the wolf's jaws, and as it emerged into the open country De la
Rey's guns were seen galloping for the pass which they had just come
through. This force was sent south to Kroonstad to refit.
Lord Methuen's army, after its long marches and arduous work, arrived
at Mafeking on August 28th for the purpose of refitting. Since his
departure from Boshof on May 14th his men had been marching with hardly
a rest, and he had during that time fought fourteen engagements. He was
off upon the war-path once more, with fresh horses and renewed energy,
on September 8th, and on the 9th, with the co-operation of General
Douglas, he scattered a Boer force at Malopo, capturing thirty prisoners
and a great quantity of stores. On the 14th he ran down a convoy and
regained one of the Colenso guns and much ammunition. On the 20th he
again made large captures. If in the early phases of the war the Boers
had given Paul Methuen some evil hours, he was certainly getting his own
back again. At the same time Clements was despatched from Pretoria with
a small mobile force for the purpose of clearing the Rustenburg and
Krugersdorp districts, which had always been storm centres. These two
forces, of Methuen and of Clements, moved through the country, sweeping
the scattered Boer bands before them, and hunting them down until they
dispersed. At Kekepoort and at Hekspoort Clements fought successful
skirmishes, losing at the latter action Lieutenant Stanley of the
Yeomanry, the Somersetshire cricketer, who showed, as so many have done,
how close is the connection between the good sportsman and the
good soldier. On the 12th Douglas took thirty-nine prisoners near
Lichtenburg. On the 18th Rundle captured a gun at Bronkhorstfontein.
Hart at Potchefstroom, Hildyard in the Utrecht district, Macdonald in
the Orange River Colony, everywhere the British Generals were busily
stamping out the remaining embers of what had been so terrible a
conflagration.
Much trouble but no great damage was inflicted upon the British during
this last stage of the war by the incessant attacks upon the lines of
railway by roving bands of Boers. The actual interruption of traffic
was of little consequence, for the assiduous Sappers with their gangs of
Basuto labourers were always at hand to repair the break. But the loss
of stores, and occasionally of lives, was more serious. Hardly a day
passed that the stokers and drivers were not made targets of by snipers
among the kopjes, and occasionally a train was entirely destroyed.
[Footnote: It is to be earnestly hoped that those in authority will see
that these men obtain the medal and any other reward which can mark our
sense of their faithful service. One of them in the Orange River Colony,
after narrating to me his many hairbreadth escapes, prophesied bitterly
that the memory of his services would pass with the need for them.]
Chief among these raiders was the wild Theron, who led a band which
contained men of all nations--the same gang who had already, as
narrated, held up a train in the Orange River Colony. On August 31st he
derailed another at Flip River to the south of Johannesburg, blowing up
the engine and burning thirteen trucks. Almost at the same time a train
was captured near Kroonstad, which appeared to indicate that the great
De Wet was back in his old hunting-grounds. On the same day the line was
cut at Standerton. A few days later, however, the impunity with which
these feats had been performed was broken, for in a similar venture near
Krugersdorp the dashing Theron and several of his associates lost their
lives.
Two other small actions performed at this period of the war demand a
passing notice. One was a smart engagement near Kraai Railway Station,
in which Major Broke of the Sappers with a hundred men attacked a
superior Boer force upon a kopje and drove them off with loss--a feat
which it is safe to say he could not have accomplished six months
earlier. The other was the fine defence made by 125 of the Canadian
Mounted Rifles, who, while guarding the railway, were attacked by
a considerable Boer force with two guns. They proved once more, as
Ladybrand and Elands River had shown, that with provisions, cartridges,
and brains, the smallest force can successfully hold its own if it
confines itself to the defensive.
And now the Boer cause appeared to be visibly tottering to its fall. The
flight of the President had accelerated that process of disintegration
which had already set in. Schalk Burger had assumed the office
of Vice-President, and the notorious Ben Viljoen had become first
lieutenant of Louis Botha in maintaining the struggle. Lord Roberts had
issued an extremely judicious proclamation, in which he pointed out the
uselessness of further resistance, declared that guerilla warfare would
be ruthlessly suppressed, and informed the burghers that no fewer
than fifteen thousand of their fellow-countrymen were in his hands as
prisoners, and that none of these could be released until the last rifle
had been laid down. From all sides in the third week of September
the British forces were converging on Komatipoort, the frontier town.
Already wild figures, stained and tattered after nearly a year of
warfare, were walking the streets of Lourenco Marques, gazed at with
wonder and some distrust by the Portuguese inhabitants. The exiled
burghers moodily pacing the streets saw their exiled President seated in
his corner of the Governor's verandah, the well-known curved pipe still
dangling from his mouth, the Bible by his chair. Day by day the number
of these refugees increased. On September 17th special trains were
arriving crammed with the homeless burghers, and with the mercenaries of
many nations--French, German, Irish-American, and Russian--all anxious
to make their way home. By the 19th no fewer than seven hundred had
passed over.
At dawn on September 22nd a half-hearted attempt was made by the
commando of Erasmus to attack Elands River Station, but it was beaten
back by the garrison. While it was going on Paget fell upon the camp
which Erasmus had left behind him, and captured his stores. From all
over the country, from Plumer's Bushmen, from Barton at Krugersdorp,
from the Colonials at Heilbron, from Clements on the west, came the same
reports of dwindling resistance and of the abandoning of cattle, arms,
and ammunition.
On September 24th came the last chapter in this phase of the campaign in
the Eastern Transvaal, when at eight in the morning Pole-Carew and his
Guardsmen occupied Komatipoort. They had made desperate marches, one
of them through thick bush, where they went for nineteen miles without
water, but nothing could shake the cheery gallantry of the men. To
them fell the honour, an honour well deserved by their splendid work
throughout the whole campaign, of entering and occupying the ultimate
eastern point which the Boers could hold. Resistance had been threatened
and prepared for, but the grim silent advance of that veteran infantry
took the heart out of the defence. With hardly a shot fired the town
was occupied. The bridge which would enable the troops to receive their
supplies from Lourenco Marques was still intact. General Pienaar and
the greater part of his force, amounting to over two thousand men, had
crossed the frontier and had been taken down to Delagoa Bay, where they
met the respect and attention which brave men in misfortune deserve.
Small bands had slipped away to the north and the south, but they were
insignificant in numbers and depressed in spirit. For the time it seemed
that the campaign was over, but the result showed that there was greater
vitality in the resistance of the burghers and less validity in their
oaths than any one had imagined.
One find of the utmost importance was made at Komatipoort, and at Hector
Spruit on the Crocodile River. That excellent artillery which had
fought so gallant a fight against our own more numerous guns, was found
destroyed and abandoned. Pole-Carew at Komatipoort got one Long Tom
(96-pound) Creusot, and one smaller gun. Ian Hamilton at Hector
Spruit found the remains of many guns, which included two of our horse
artillery twelve-pounders, two large Creusot guns, two Krupps, one
Vickers-Maxim quick firer, two pompoms and four mountain guns.