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A HANDBOOK OF THE BOER WAR
With General Map of South Africa and 18 Sketch Maps and Plans
GALE AND POLDEN LIMITED
LONDON AND ALDERSHOT
1910
BUTLER & TANNER
THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS
FROME AND LONDON
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I PROLEGOMENA 1
I The Roundheads of South Africa 1
II Patriotism, Duty and Discipline 19
III War considered as a Branch of Sport 26
II THE NATAL WEDGE 36
III DEUS EX MACHINA NO. I 51
IV KIMBERLEY AND THE SIEGE OF RHODES 82
V A TRAGEDY OF ERRORS 96
VI MORE TUGELA TROUBLES 116
VII LADYSMITH AT BAY 138
VIII DEUS EX MACHINA NO. 2 156
IX ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS 193
X BADEN-POWELL AND THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING 212
XI BLOEMFONTEIN TO PRETORIA 229
XII THE NEW COLONY 247
XIII NEC CELER NEC AUDAX 262
XIV THE TAMING OF THE TRANSVAAL 273
XV THE RECURRENCES OF DE WET 294
XVI LORD KITCHENER AT WORK 311
XVII THE MECHANICAL PHASE 345
I Orange River Colony 345
II Eastern Transvaal 354
III Western Transvaal 357
IV Cape Colony 363
XVIII THE END 365
COMMANDERS OF DIVISIONS AND BRIGADES 368
INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES 369
SKETCH MAPS AND PLANS[1]
PAGE
Northern Natal 50
Modder River and Magersfontein 59
Stormberg 65
Colenso 70
Spion Kop and Vaalkrantz 98
Spion Kop 104
Final Advance on Ladysmith 128
Siege of Ladysmith 139
Riet and Modder Drifts 161
Paardeberg 172
Poplar Grove and Driefontein 185
Sannah's Post 199
Magaliesberg District 240
Diamond Hill 243
Brandwater Basin 257
Orange Free State 260
Southern Transvaal 292
Noitgedacht Nek 319
General Map of South Africa—at the beginning.
[Footnote 1: The thanks of the Author are due to the Army Council for permission to copy the maps and plans in the Official History of the War, and to L.S. Amery, Esq., for permission to copy the plans in the fifth volume of the Times History of the War.]
PREFATORY NOTE
The author has endeavoured in this Handbook to compile, for the use of students and others, a general account of the various phases of the Boer War of 1899-1902, in which he served for twenty-six months.
With some exceptions, every statement of fact relating to the military operations may be verified in one or more of the following publications—
The "Times" History of the War;
The War Office Official History of the War;
The Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the War.
To the two Histories, which have been but recently completed, the Author is much indebted. Other authorities have, however, been consulted.
The Sketch Maps and Plans of certain areas and battlefields are only intended to give, by means of a few hachures, contours, and form-lines, a general impression of topographical features.
The Author has from time to time in the course of the narrative indicated what he believes to have been the chief causes of the prolongation of the War:—
The inefficacy of modern Tactics as a means of dealing with partisan warfare;
The moral reinforcement derived from a confident belief in the justice of a cause, by which the enemy was continually encouraged to persevere;
The reluctance of the British leaders to fight costly battles;
The constitutional inability of the British Officer to take War seriously;
The waste of British horses due to inexpert Horsemastership.
May, 1910.
CHAPTER I
Prolegomena
I. THE ROUNDHEADS OF SOUTH AFRICA
History often reproduces without reference to nationality some particular human type or class which becomes active and predominant for a time, and fades away when its task is finished. It is, however, not utterly lost, for the germ of it lies dormant yet ready to re-appear when the exigencies of the moment recall it. The reserve forces of human nature are inexhaustible and inextinguishable.
It is probable that few of the Boers had ever heard of Oliver Cromwell, or that his life and times had ever been studied in the South African Republics, and had influenced the Boer action; yet the affinity of the South African burghers of the XIXth century with the Puritans and the Roundheads of the XVIIth is striking. It was not so much a parallelism of aims and hopes, for the struggle in England was political and not national as in South Africa, as of temperament, character, and method. There was hardly an individuity in the Boers of the War which might not have been found in the followers of Cromwell. Like these they were fanatically but sincerely religious, and their unabashed and fearless adherence to their beliefs and their open observance of the outward forms of religion exposed them to the same cruel and baseless charge of hypocrisy. Just as the aristocratic followers of Charles I had jeered at the Roundheads, so did every thoughtless officer and newspaper correspondent jeer at the psalm-singing and the prayer meetings in the laagers. The Boers had the courage of their religious opinions, and were not ashamed to proclaim them in the face of man. The Bible was the only book they knew, and they guided themselves according to their lights by its precepts. In opposing the English they believed that they were resisting the enemies of the Almighty. Like the Puritans they honestly thought that certain passages in the Holy Scriptures applied to them as the Chosen People, and that they were assured of Divine Protection; and if they erred in their exegesis their delusion at least deserves respect. Yet all the while the Old Testament was the volume they chiefly studied, and if they quoted the New Testament they sometimes modified the context to their own advantage.
Each Puritan movement has derived its strength not so much from its abstract merit as from the intense personal conviction felt by each unit engaged in it, that the righteousness of the cause was unassailable. The Puritan never wavered in philosophic doubt. No misgivings disturbed his soul, and he pursued his object with all the strength of his body.
The Puritan stir in the reign of Charles I was a revival, almost a continuation, of the half political, half religious activity which in the previous century had effected the Reformation. The Boer movement in South Africa, which sprang up after a germination lasting three generations, was brought about by a recrudescence of the spirit which made the Boers of the Netherlands rise against Alva and the Spanish domination in the XVIth century.
In the XVIIth century the Boers of the Netherlands, made a voluntary settlement in South Africa, and there under the Southern Cross they were joined by French Puritans, who had fought under Cond and who left their country after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and also by some persecuted sectaries from Piedmont. The two stocks, although one was of Teutonic and the other of Celtic origin, easily came together, and under the pressure of common interests and common dangers were consolidated and vulcanized: and if in the previous generation the English Pilgrim Fathers of the Mayflower had directed their course to the south instead of to the west, and had cast anchor off the shore of that distant region of Good Hope, it is probable that a mighty nation would have been founded in South Africa.
Cromwell as the military leader of the Commonwealth Boers is, at least in England where the military art has not been scientifically studied, one of the suppressed characters of history. His political achievements, as is perhaps natural in a community which courts the voter and despises the soldier, have put out of sight the means by which he mainly won them; namely his genius as a cavalry and partisan commander. An ungainly, narrow-minded, bigoted, bucolic squireen of Huntingdon, lacking in every quality which we are accustomed to associate with a cavalry officer, inaugurated an era in the history of Mounted Troops. His methods are studied on the Continent, and the German Staff has recently discovered that he was the first leader to use cavalry as a screen to hide the movements of the main body. Yet there is no evidence that he ever studied the military art, and he did not become a soldier until he had reached his fourth decade. In the Royalist Army opposed to him were soldiers by profession and experience; officers and men who had been under Gustavus Adolphus in the Thirty Years' War; for in the XVIIth century the services of aliens were in request on the Continent, and at one time no less than eighty-seven senior officers of British nationality were serving in the Swedish Army, then the most renowned in Europe. Yet Cromwell with his "Eastern Association," his Ironsides, his yeomen and raw levies, beat the Royalist Army, officered from the same class which is still believed to possess the monopoly of the aptitude for leading men in war, by exercising the homely qualities of energy, self-control, endurance, and practical common sense applied instantly to the occasion of the moment.
The lessons to be learnt from Cromwell's campaigns have been thus epitomized by General Baden-Powell:—"There is one thing that ought not to escape the attention of students, namely the success that attended Cromwell's method of rallying his troops whenever they got dispersed. When things looked bad, as they did on one or two occasions, when some of his cavalry were defeated and the rest scattered, he never lost heart and his men never lost heart; they knew they had to rally again and attack somewhere else. Very often the enemy were deceived by that, thinking that the Roundheads were scattered and broken up, and took no further notice of him until they suddenly found him attacking from quite a new direction. That was the secret of his success on many occasions, and one that has its lesson to-day, just as it had in those days—that when all seems pretty bad and you are scattered and broken, keep up a good heart and get together again and have another go." With scarcely the change of a word these remarks will account for the prolongation of the war for two years after the occupation of the Boer capitals.
The Boer leaders, like their great prototype Cromwell, owed much of their success to their novel and skilful use of mounted troops. The European conception of the functions of mounted troops had been stereotyped for some time; Cavalry screens an advancing army, prevents the enemy observing its dispositions, acts as its eyes and ears; and so forth. It is true that Great Britain had already for at least a generation employed Mounted Infantry in colonial wars; but the innovation had never been approved of on the Continent, where it was regarded as a cheap and inefficient British substitute for Cavalry.
Yet the famous postscript "unmounted men preferred,"[2] which was affixed to the acceptance of the help proffered by the Australian Colonies, shows that at first the power of mounted troops acting not as the eyes and ears of an army, but as a mobile and supple "mailed fist," was not understood. In ten weeks, however, the tune changed, and it was "preference given to mounted contingents."
When the grand operations were over, the enemy's chief towns occupied, and the lines of communication fairly secure, the necessity for mounted troops became still more apparent. The Boers saw that it was useless for them to campaign at large. They took to guerilla, and restricted themselves generally to independent horse raids against which foot troops were powerless. Gradually the proportion of horses to men in the British columns rose, until practically all the combatants were mounted, and at last the Cromwellian principle that the best military weapon is a man on a horse was fully accepted.
The military qualities of the Boers, like those of Cromwell's men, were useful but not showy. They came by instinct and not by acquisition, and they cannot be sufficiently accounted for as the outcome of experience in the pursuit of game on the veld. They were neutralized partially by characteristics the reverse of military. The Boers were not remarkable for personal courage. If there had been in the Boer Army a decoration corresponding to the Victoria Cross it would have been rarely won or at least rarely earned. There is scarcely an instance of an individual feat of arms or act of devotion performed by a Burgher. On the few occasions when the Boers were charged by cavalry they became paralysed with terror. They were incapable of submitting themselves to discipline, and difficult to command in large numbers. They could not be made to understand that prompt action, which possibly might not be the best under the circumstances, was preferable to wasting time in discussing a better with the field cornets. They were subject to panics and, for the time, easily disheartened: and their sense of duty was not conspicuous. The principles of strategy were unknown to them, their tactics were crude, and with the exception of a very few who had fought in 1881, they were without experience of the realities of war.[3]
If in the month of September, 1899, an impartial military critic in a foreign Ministry of War had been directed to draw up an appreciation of the situation and to forecast the course of the impending struggle, he would probably have expressed himself somewhat as follows:—
"An Army of 100,000 men is the utmost that Great Britain will be able to place in the field in South Africa, for the Indian and Colonial drafts must be provided for, and the Militia and other Auxiliary Forces, which are not of much account, are tethered to the country; but it will be sufficient for the purpose. Although the military system of Great Britain is hopelessly behind the times, she has always done wonders with her boomerangs, bows and arrows, and flint instruments. That Army will be fairly well furnished with modern weapons and equipment, and the excellent personality of the soldier will compensate to a great extent for incapacity in the Staff and superior officers. With this Army she will have to meet a brave but undisciplined opponent whose numbers cannot be estimated. Even if the Free Staters are included it is improbable that more than 100,000 men can be put into the field. These have had no military training, their leaders will be unprofessional officers who will be unable to make good use of the munitions of War which the two Republics have been strangely allowed to import through British ports and to accumulate in large quantities. If the burghers of the Orange Free State throw in their lot with the Transvaalers, which is improbable as they have no quarrel with Great Britain, the numbers opposed to her will certainly be augmented, but the task before her will be greatly simplified. Instead of having to send one portion of her Army by way of Natal to effect a junction in the Transvaal, with the other portion working northwards through Kimberley and Mafeking, a campaign which would involve two long and vulnerable lines of communication, she will be able to strike at once through the heart of the Free State and will advance without much difficulty to Johannesburg and Pretoria. The hardest part of her task will be the passage of the Vaal, where a great battle will be fought, and the capture of Pretoria, which is reported to be well fortified. With Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, Pretoria and the railways in the possession of Great Britain, the opposition will collapse in a very few weeks, for no nation has ever been able to carry on a struggle when its chief towns and means of communication are in the enemy's possession."
This hypothetical appreciation probably represents the general opinion current both at home and abroad during the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the War; but it proved to be mistaken from the first. The Free Staters joined the Transvaalers and the allied forces assumed the offensive over a wide area without delay. Kimberley and Mafeking were threatened on the west, and on the east the Boers poured into Natal, upon which they had for sixty years looked with the aggrieved and greedy eyes of a dog from whom a bone, to which he believes he is entitled, has been recovered.
To Natal, in 1824, had come a handful of British pioneers. From Chaka, the King of the Zulus, they obtained a grant of land upon the coast, and after eleven years they endeavoured without success to induce the British Government to recognize the settlement, which in course of time became the City of Durban, as a Colony to which, in honour of the Princess heiress presumptive to the Throne of Great Britain, they proposed to give the name Victoria; and they were thus the first to associate her with the Empire, which, in spite of reluctant politicians who did their best to restrict it, was destined to expand marvellously during her reign.
The Natal settlement was frowned on by the Imperial Government, who even confiscated a little ship which the pioneers had toilfully fitted out and which was bringing envoys from the King of the Zulus to the King of England, on the plea that it was unregistered and that it came from a foreign port. In 1828 Chaka, who was not unfavourably disposed towards the Durban pioneers, was murdered by his brother Dingaan, who succeeded him as King of the Zulus. It is said that his last words to Dingaan were, "You think that you will rule the land when I am gone, but I see the white men coming, and they will be your masters."
His words were prophetically true, but there were two races of white men hovering over Natal; and the Great King of the Zulus, a tribe held in little account before his time, but which had under his leadership absorbed or exterminated almost every other tribe from Pondoland to Delagoa Bay, was no longer with them to choose between the rivals to his own ends and advantage; and Dingaan inherited the cruelty without the ability or the statecraft of his brother, the Napoleon of South Africa.
Of all the races of Europe the Low Germans of Holland seemed the least likely to contract the migratory habit. The Hollander of the present day, popularly but incorrectly called a Dutchman, is home-staying and home-loving. The compact, well-cared-for, well-ordered homestead, village, and town communities of the Netherlands are inconsistent with a roving disposition, and yet the Hollanders of South Africa furnished the most conspicuous example of Nomadism in modern times.
It may have been that the ordeal of Alva and the subsequent disturbance of the Thirty Years' War had constitutionally unsettled the Hollanders to such a degree that their descendants, emancipated from European ideas, became prone to restlessness, for in a generation or two they began to trek; or perhaps the magic of the spacious veld, with its clear sky and the mountains and flat-topped kopjes sharply defined on the horizon, irresistibly lured them on. In the land they had quitted the air was dense with moisture; scarcely a hill was to be seen; they were hemmed in by sluggish rivers and by the sea, which leaned heavily against the dykes and threw its spray angrily down on to the reclaimed pastures which had been stolen from it.
The original Dutch settlement at the Cape was made by a Company of Amsterdam merchants for the refreshment and refitting of their ships engaged in trade with the East. The Company was a harsh and extortionate master, who paid little attention to the needs and the welfare of the settlement, which was regarded merely as a place of call. The discontented colonists began to leave the seacoast and trekked inwards, where the heavy hands of the cordially detested representatives of the Company could not reach them. Its rule came to an end in 1795, when, at the request of Holland, Great Britain took over the Colony in order to prevent it falling into the hands of France. It was restored at the Peace of Amiens, but in a few years again came into the possession of Great Britain.
The Colonies of the Empire were at that time administered by a Branch of the War Office which regarded the Cape settlement much in the same light as it had been regarded by the Dutch Company, as a necessary but troublesome dept on the way to the East; and had the Overland Route and the Suez Canal been available a generation earlier it would probably have been abandoned.
The Boers hoped that their new masters, who at least were not an association of Amsterdam merchants absorbed in their ledgers, would treat them with more sympathy and consideration. But the only serious colonial problem with which British politicians had up to that time been called upon to deal was in North America, and they had disastrously failed in their attempt to solve it. They were without experience in the management of white plantations, they shirked the future and looked only to the "ignorant present," and their policy in South Africa was based upon two principles: that on no account must the boundaries of the Empire be enlarged and new responsibilities incurred, and that in all quarrels between white man and black man the presumption was that the white man was in the wrong.
The Great Trek of 1836-7 was brought about by the emancipation of the slaves and by the refusal or inability of the Government to protect the farmers against the raids of the "Kaffir"[4] tribes on the border. There is no doubt that enslaved Hottentots, Bushmen, and even Malays who had been with the knowledge of the authorities imported from Madagascar and Malacca, were often ill-treated by individual slave-owners; but the Boers resented the charge of wholesale cruelty which was made against them, and the favour and patronage bestowed upon native tribes. Moreover, although the slave-owners were entitled to compensation for the loss of their helots, the fund was administered in London, with the result that a considerable proportion of the already inadequate sum was retained in the hands of agents.
The object of the Great Trek was deliverance from the harsh and hostile jurisdiction of the British Government, and the setting up of a new and independent Boer community in Natal, which was reported to be a promised land flowing with milk and honey. The Boers proposed to shake themselves free from the Egyptian and to occupy Canaan.
The voortrekkers, among whom was the boy Paul Kruger, slowly passed away towards the north and crossed the Orange River. Moshesh, the chief of the Basutos, watched curiously from his mountains the trains of wagons strung out on the veld, but refrained from molesting the emigrants. Not so Moselekatse,[5] a chief who had formerly broken away from Chaka and had set himself up beyond the Vaal, and who subsequently founded the Matabele Kingdom in which he was succeeded by his son Lobengula. He swooped down upon the advanced parties, who defended themselves with success and afterwards chastised him in his own country, in which, hidden from his eyes, lay the gold-bearing reefs of Johannesburg.
Meanwhile the British Government had forged a useless and clumsy weapon for the coercion of its "erring and misguided" subjects. It was held by the lawyers that the trekkers could not at will and by the simple process of migration throw off their allegiance to the Crown of England, and a declaratory Act was passed under which all British subjects south of Latitude 25, whether within or without the colony, could be arrested and punished.
The Boer scouts discovered passes over the Drakensberg which gave them a readier access than they had expected into Natal. It had not recovered from the devastations of Chaka and was thinly inhabited. Settlements were made near the banks of the Tugela, while Piet Retief, after a brief visit to Durban, went on to negotiate with Dingaan at the royal kraal of Umgungundhlovu in Zululand. He was received with some cordiality, but accused of participating in a recent cattle raid. Retief, to show his good faith, offered to catch the robber, a chief named Sikunyela, whose kraal was a hundred miles away. He found Sikunyela, who greatly admired the glistening rings of a pair of handcuffs shown him by the slim Dutchman, and who was even persuaded that they would be a becoming ornament to a native chief. He tried them on, but a more intimate acquaintance with the use of handcuffs induced him to surrender the cattle he had stolen from Dingaan, the King of the Zulus.
Again Retief with a hundred followers waited upon Dingaan at Umgungundhlovu, and after military displays on each side received from him a grant of the same land which Chaka had already given to the British pioneers of Durban. Next day the Boers were received in farewell audience by Dingaan, by whose orders they were treacherously surrounded and led out to the place of execution, a hill of mimosas outside the royal kraal, where they were put to death.
There remained the defenceless plantations on the Tugela. Before the news of the massacre could reach them, and while they were hourly expecting the return of Retief, Dingaan's impis swooped down upon them from Zululand. At the cost of the lives of 600 men, women, and children, the tribes were driven back, and the little town of Weenen, the "place of weeping," remains to mark the spot.
Soon other parties of emigrants came in from beyond the Drakensberg, and in 1838 an expedition under Potgieter failed to punish Dingaan for his treachery. Nor did an attempt to help the emigrants made by the British settlers at Durban meet with success. A small force of Natal natives under an Englishman named Biggar was greatly out-numbered at the mouth of the Tugela and perished almost to a man. Dingaan retaliated by sending an impi to Durban, which he held for a few days; the settlers taking refuge on board a ship in the Bay.
The Boers were disheartened and many of them trekked back to the veld beyond the Drakensberg passes, which is now the Orange River Colony. Their position in face of Dingaan seemed hopeless; but in November, 1838, there came out of the Cape Colony one Pretorius. He had heard of their distress, and he organized a force of 500 men, with whom, on December 16, he successfully encountered Dingaan's army and slew 3,000 of his warriors at the Blood River, an affluent of the Buffalo. Dingaan fled and the column marched on to Umgungundhlovu, where Retief's mouldering body was found on the hill of mimosas, and on it the deed of grant of land at Durban. Pretorius was ambushed by Zulus disguised as cattle, crawling on all fours and wearing ox hides; but he escaped with slight loss, and returned to the Tugela. "Dingaan's Day," December 16, is kept by the Boers as a festival of thanksgiving and rejoicing.
Soon a new complication beset the harassed emigrants. In December, 1838, the British Government, anxious to stop the wars between the Boers and the natives and to exclude the former from the sea, sent one hundred soldiers to Durban and issued a proclamation in which the Boers were declared to be British subjects who had unlawfully occupied Natal, and who were morally responsible for all the blood that had been shed. They protested against the imputation and against the military occupation of Durban, but took no active steps to resent the affront.
When twelve months had passed without hostilities between Boer and native, the British Government withdrew its hundred warriors from Durban and tacitly handed over Natal to the emigrant Boers. Hardly had the little transport Vectis catted her anchor when the Republic of Natalia was proclaimed and its flag run up on the staff of the forsaken British Camp on Durban Bay.
But the dog-in-the-manger policy of neither incorporating Natal in the British Empire nor frankly allowing the Boers to occupy it could not be indefinitely maintained. Each present difficulty wriggled out of made the future more embarrassing. Soon, as might have been anticipated, the Boers were again in trouble with the natives. Panda, the father of Cetchwayo, whose impis forty years after washed their spears in the blood of 800 British soldiers at Isandhlwana, broke away from his brother Dingaan, taking with him into Natal many thousand Zulus who were awaiting an opportunity of shaking themselves free from the tyranny and cruelty of Dingaan. Panda made overtures to the Boers and was gladly received as an ally, and with his help Dingaan was finally crushed and driven into Swaziland, where, in the hands of a hostile tribe, he perished miserably by torture.
The emigrants were now favourably situated in Natal. They had established an equitable if not a legal claim to it; Dingaan was out of the way; and the British Government seemed indisposed to inter-meddle. But the fatal and grotesque alliance with Panda, which culminated in his installation as King of the Zulus by Pretorius in 1840, and which was entirely inconsistent with the attitude hitherto assumed towards the natives, was the undoing of the trekkers of 1836.
Panda's men as native auxiliaries eager to avenge themselves on the common enemy Dingaan were all very well in their way. Most of them, however, belonged to Natal and joined him in the hope of recovering the tribal lands from which they had been evicted by Chaka and to which they had a better right than the trekkers.
The Boers now began to reap the harvest of the Panda alliance. They regarded the new arrivals as intruders, refused to acknowledge their claims, and finally in August, 1841, decreed their expulsion from Natal. The location chosen for their settlement was a district in Pondoland in the possession of a chief under British protection, who already had had occasion to lodge at Capetown a complaint against the Boers.
The British Government now found it necessary to intervene again in Natal. A military occupation was announced by proclamation in December, 1841, and 240 men, under the command of an infantry captain named Smith, were sent up to Durban to give effect to it.
When Smith, after a difficult march along the coast, reached his destination on May 4, 1842, he pitched his camp on the flat which forms the base of one of the promontories enclosing the Bay. He at once lowered the Republican flag flying over the block-house at the Point, and soon found that 1,500 Boers were occupying Congella on the shore of the Bay. An attempt to surprise them by night failed disastrously; Smith's force was reduced to half its strength, and the block-house was captured by Pretorius.
Smith was now besieged in his camp, and the nearest help that could come to him was at Grahamstown, five hundred miles away. Thither a gallant civilian named King, who was one of the pioneers, rode in ten days; and on June 25, when the little garrison was in extremity, it was relieved by sea. Pretorius withdrew into the interior, and the Volksraad at Pietermaritzburg, the capital of the Republic of Natalia, voted the submission of the Boers. Pending a final settlement it was allowed to remain in authority over the settlers, but the district around Durban Bay was at once taken over as British territory. In May, 1843, a year after the landing of Smith, the Republic of Natalia passed away and Natal was proclaimed a British Colony.
The final settlement did not come for some time. The Volksraad was abolished, but the claims of the Boers to the lands upon which they had squatted were liberally considered. They were, however, dissatisfied because the rights of Panda's men were also regarded, and many trekked away across the Drakensberg. Those who remained protested that their lives and property were insecure in the presence of the natives, and Pretorius was deputed to go and lay their grievances before the British Governor at the Cape.
The ill success of his mission provoked him to reprisals, and he proceeded to stir up trouble in the Orange River Sovereignty, which had recently been formally proclaimed British Territory. If not actively loyal it was peaceably disposed until the arrival of Pretorius, who soon drove out the British Resident and the little garrison of Bloemfontein and set them on the run as far as Colesberg in the Cape Colony. He was defeated at Boomplatz in August, 1848, by Sir Harry Smith, a veteran of the Peninsular War, and British authority was for a time reestablished over the Sovereignty. The Colonial Office soon however tired of the new possession and gladly scuttled out in 1854 in order to avoid the task of reaping the harvest of a clumsy and grotesque policy, which it had formulated a few years before, of hemming in the voortrekkers, who had settled north of the Orange River, with a barrier of native states set up for the purpose on the east and west; and which now threatened to involve it in a quarrel which naturally arose between Moshesh, the Basuto chief, and the emigrants whom he had been appointed to restrain.
Pretorius retired across the Vaal where he joined Potgieter, who, after the failure of his attack on Dingaan in 1838, had gone into Moselekatse's country and had driven him beyond the Limpopo. A Republic was set up beyond the Vaal which the British Government recognized as independent in the Zand River Convention of 1852.
Such is in brief the story of the Boers' claim to Natal. They considered it to be their lawful heritage out of which they had been jockeyed, and in October, 1899, they seemed to have a chance of recovering it. They boasted that they would not only win back Pietermaritzburg, which was named after two leaders of the Great Trek, Pieter Retief and Gert Maritz, but that they would establish themselves on the shores of the Indian Ocean. It was not the vainglorious gasconade of a swashbuckler. Four months after October 11, 1899, when the Boer ultimatum expired, the British Army was still engaged in endeavouring to drive out the Boers from British territory, and hardly a rifle had been discharged in the enemy's country.
Napoleon was in the habit of impressing upon his officers the necessity of studying past campaigns, both modern and ancient; but those who anticipated confidently that the Boer War would soon be brought to a successful close by the British Army were led into their error by the history of past campaigns. There was, however, one campaign, the War of Independence in North America, which the discerning might have recognized as an analogous struggle; but it was overlooked, and the history of the great European conflicts was established as the leading authority. The occupation of the populous places and the control of the means of access to them, which seemed to present few difficulties, meant the end of the war and the subsequent negotiations as to the amount of the indemnity or other penalty to be paid by the defeated.
But not only were the necessary preliminary successes deferred far beyond the expected time of their accomplishment—Bloemfontein was not occupied until five months, nor Pretoria until eight months had rolled by since that October dawn when the Boers crossed the frontier into Natal—but the prospect of the end of the War soon began to recede into the perspective of infinity: and even now, after an interval of some years since the peace of Vereeniging, when, like the proportions of some huge edifice which can be truly comprehended only by the observer who views it from a distance, the various incidents and phases of the War begin to assume their relative importance, the difficulty of discovering some guiding principle which shall reconcile the Great Boer War with other wars is as great as ever.
Sometimes a cause can be found a posteriori by groping in the dim and deceptive light cast by an effect: or a process of exhaustion and elimination may be set up in which the qualities common to each side are cancelled and the result attributed to the credit balance which will appear under one of the accounts. We saw for some months a gallant and well equipped if somewhat amorphous British Army impotently endeavouring, though in superior numbers, to make headway against an aggregation of Boer commandos, and checked at various points on an arc drawn wholly in British territory and extending in a circuit of over 500 miles from Ladysmith in Northern Natal through Stormberg and Colesberg to Kimberley and Mafeking; and at each extremity of the arc was a besieged city. Was the military art as taught in Europe founded upon error, or had the British Army been negligently instructed in it?
Yet no European troops had had so much recent experience of active service. We had lately fought in the Soudan, in East and West Africa, in Burmah and on the North-West frontier of India; there was in fact hardly a year in the preceding decade in which the portals of the temple of a British Janus would have been closed. Moreover, our fighting had not been against trained soldiers, but against enemies who like the Boers were undisciplined, collectively if not individually brave men patriotically defending their own country. We therefore entered the arena with experience which no other European Army possessed.
II. PATRIOTISM, DUTY, AND DISCIPLINE.
Many hard things have been said of Patriotism.[6] Dr. Johnson's definition is well known, and more recently it has been styled the sublimest form of Selfishness. These, however, are not definitions but rather criticisms of certain phases of Patriotism, which is closely allied to Family Affection and, like that sentiment, originates in the helplessness and the egotism of the Individual.
The weak infant clings to his mother for sustenance, comfort and protection, and the tender care which is bestowed upon him while his body and his mind are developing fosters the notion of the subjective importance of the human unit. Human nature is so constituted that the Individual is disposed to over-estimate his own consequence and to regard his own surroundings as superior to the surroundings of all other persons, and therefore more worthy of recognition, encouragement, and admiration. As the Child grows in years this sentiment is gradually and unconsciously modified, but it is never wholly eradicated. The inward emotion aroused in his heart by parental solicitude becomes partially altruistic and outward and is transmuted into Gratitude and Love.
The Child emerges into Youth and thence into Manhood, and the area of his immediate environment is enlarged. He needs further succour and assistance, and the Family Community to which he belongs and which nurtured and watched over his early years can no longer supply his requirements. He is in want of new fellowships and must strengthen himself by joining various bodies and associations. With these he incorporates himself more or less and his friendly attitude towards them for his own good is a development of the primitive Family Affection. In the case of a class, a social, or professional community the sentiment is termed Esprit de Corps;[7] in view of recognized civil institutions by which he perceives that he benefits, it is Loyalty; while with respect to the Fatherland it is Patriotism, which denotes the adherence of the helpless individual Ego to the Supreme Community. Patriotism, like Family Affection, is a growth and culture of the idea of Self. It is the expression of the Individual's thanks for the support, countenance, protection, and other moral and material advantages claimed by him from the Supreme Community, to which in return he readily attorns with respect and admiration. He is, however, patriotic because with unconscious egotism he regards his Country as part of himself rather than himself as part of his Country. Even the act of a man who sacrifices his life for the good of his country may not be wholly unselfish, for some natures are so constituted that they can discount the future and be gratified by the prospective award of posthumous honour. There can, however, be no doubt that Patriotism, though possibly of not very noble origin, is a sentiment beneficial both to the community and the individual, and is therefore worthy of encouragement. Happily, those cold heights of philosophy on which every man is loved as a brother and every nationality held in equal honour and esteem are unattainable by human nature; for without the stimulus of Patriotism National Life would be impracticable.[8] It's chief defect is that like most of the emotions it is sometimes hasty and unreasoning.
Such, it is believed, is briefly the history of Patriotism, and the theory is supported by the fact that the British soldier is not patriotic by nature. It is not his fault. The class from which he is usually drawn has unhappily less reason for respecting and admiring the Supreme Community than any other class, for it participates fully in the distresses and meagerly in the successes and good fortune of the Nation, from which, though not actually unpatriotic, it stands sullenly aloof. It can hardly be denied that the power and prosperity of Great Britain have favourably affected the position of the upper and middle classes to a greater degree than they have ameliorated the condition of the lower classes, and it is therefore not surprising that the latter seem to take little or no pride in their nationality, and sometimes even act perversely in opposition to its interests.
The private soldier has never been taught to think about his country. The education which he may have received at the Board School is not calculated to arouse in him a feeling of national pride which is non-existent in his home life. The display of the National Flag, which flutters over so many distant lands, is discouraged in the primary schools of Great Britain as tending to "flag-worship." In the United States, on the other hand, the Stars and Stripes are hoisted in every school yard. No systematic effort is made to interest the children of the operative classes in Greater Britain. India and the Colonies are facts in geography troublesome to learn and easy to forget. The history of the British Empire is sterilized before it is imparted to them. They are not taught to realize that the happiness and prosperity of a large proportion of the inhabitants of the world are dependent upon the moods of the population of a small group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, and that in the ballot-boxes of Great Britain are cast the fortunes of many millions of their fellow-creatures.
Foreigners have remarked that the minstrelsy of Great Britain is singularly devoid of patriotic songs. The British soldier has no "Star-Spangled Banner" or "Wacht am Rhein" to sing on the line of march or in the bivouac, but only the last comic or sentimental ditty which he may have heard at the Garrison Music Hall before embarking on active service. The National Anthem is not a patriotic song but a prayer for Divine Protection for the Sovereign, to which have been appended some inappropriate stanzas now rarely heard; while "Rule, Britannia!" might have been composed for the gasconading swashbuckler of an extravaganza.
It would therefore be surprising if the recruit joined the Army with a highly pitched conception of the work he has undertaken. Destitution; or trouble about a woman, or with his own people, or with the police; or the mysterious magnetism of an adventurous life rather than the desire to serve his country, has induced him to enlist. An existing or prospective War always keeps the recruiting sergeant busy, but the object of a War is a matter of indifference to the recruit. Most of our wars have been waged for political reasons which he cannot understand. Apart from the difficulties of language and of unaccustomed environments, he would as readily serve in any other Army in which the pay was as liberal and the restraint of discipline not more irksome. How is it, then, that lacking the stimulus of Patriotism through no fault of his own and being, in fact, a mercenary, he becomes an excellent soldier; perhaps, next to the Turk, the best in Europe?
The answer seems to be that he soon acquires a high sense of Duty. Duty may be defined as the necessity to do something for one's own or for the general good which is not naturally pleasurable or agreeable or instinctively desired. In the trite proverb it is contrasted with and takes precedence of Pleasure. As a motive for action it stands on a higher plane than Patriotism.
The alchemic process by which the indifferent, unemotional, and sometimes unintelligent recruit is transmuted into the precious metal of the soldier who wins battles seems to be somewhat as follows: Of his own volition he has taken on a certain job and his dogged pride or obstinacy will not allow him to be beaten by it, however little enthusiasm it may arouse in him and however distasteful it may be to him at first. He offers no "ca' canny" service, but plods on and does his best in his own way. The lack of the enthusiastic temperament does not seriously retard the progress of his military education, and without much ado he becomes a stolid dependable unit of the Army. He is not carried away by success nor unduly depressed by failure. His instincts tell him that they are the accidents of Duty.
It has been noticed that the word Glory and its derivatives[9] rarely appear in the accounts of the action of the British Army on service, except in a War Correspondent's letter or telegram. No reference is made in reports, orders or despatches to the so-called "glorious" incidents of a soldier's life in time of war. He is commended for his endurance, his tenacity and his matter-of-fact acceptance of the vicissitudes of war as "part of the day's work." The truest Glory is the conscientious performance of Duty.
If through the incompetence or neglect of his leaders he is called upon to sacrifice himself, he sacrifices himself without a murmur. If he is compelled to keep himself alive on scanty rations of horseflesh and to wet his parched lips with the trickle of a dwindled and tainted spruit, he believes that his officers have done their best for him. He is ordered to fall in upon the deck of a burning troopship and to stand at attention while Death inspects the ranks. He is besieged in a hill fort on the Indian frontier by a horde of fanatics eager to kill or to mutilate him. He lies wounded on the field of battle from which, after an indecisive engagement, each combatant has retired; and there, scorched by the mid-day sun and starved by the cold of the night, and perhaps also in danger of being burnt alive by a veld fire, he waits without water for the armistice which shall bring up the ambulances. He returns to his own land where he soon finds that he is not of much account. After a great war there may be a period of evanescent patronage; or a deed of Dargai, Rorke's Drift, or Balaklava may have temporarily thrilled the audience into Music Hall enthusiasm; but he is not greatly impressed, and stoically reflects that like the battle, the starvation, and the Field Hospital it is "all in the day's work" and will soon pass away.
There has probably never been a struggle in which the private soldier more fully earned the gratitude of his country than in the South African War. The most unfriendly critics in the foreign staff offices have paid tribute to the excellence of the British soldier: sometimes, however, sneering at him as a mercenary, whom, by a curious perversion of the probabilities, they profess to think unlikely to be as efficient as their own conscripts who are forced into military service; but they never hold him responsible for the ill-success of the war. Throughout their criticisms there lurks a feeling of pained astonishment that the British "mercenary" proves himself to be as good or even a better soldier than the continental conscript, coupled with a comfortable conviction that Discipline is not well maintained in the British Army.
The final cause of Discipline is the efficient use of arms on the field of battle. Discipline is the result of an irksome educational process by which a man is taught to submit his wishes, his instincts, and, to a great extent, his personal liberty to the control of one who may be his inferior morally, mentally, and physically. It has also been cynically defined as the art of making a man more afraid of his own officers than of the enemy. Its function seems to be the formation of certain military qualities which Patriotism and the Sense of Duty are by themselves believed incapable of creating. It has always been considered an essential part of a soldier's training; but this view, though probably correct, is not confirmed by the South African War, in which an undisciplined force held its own for some years against greatly superior numbers of disciplined men.
The ideal Army, patriotic, full of the sense of Duty, and perfect in discipline, would be invincible; but such an Army has never yet been seen. A deficiency of one or two of these qualities may be made up for by a fuller measure of the others. The history of each war will seem to indicate for a time the proportions in which the qualities should be blended, which is the essential, and whether any one of them can be omitted; but the inferences thus drawn from one war will probably be found misleading in the next war.
The inference to be drawn from the South African War seems to be that the value of those military qualities which are created by Discipline and training has been over-rated, and that a passionate bigoted belief in the justice of a cause is a more potent factor in the making of a soldier. Even if every allowance be made for the strategical advantages possessed by the Boers, of fighting in their own land on interior lines in a sparsely populated country peculiarly adopted for guerilla, it is difficult to account for their success if the tests by which the efficiency of a European army is measured are applied to them. It may be that war has hitherto been regarded too exclusively as a statical and dynamical problem and that the moral element has been overlooked. It certainly was overlooked in South Africa; for the war which Lord Roberts in October, 1900, believed was practically at an end had in fact then run little more than one-third of its course.
III. WAR CONSIDERED AS A BRANCH OF SPORT
The astonishment, distress, chagrin and bewilderment caused by want of success, "regrettable incidents," and disasters, sometimes found consolation during the South African War in the foolish remark—The Germans would have done no better. What the German Army, which had not been actively employed for twenty-eight years, might have accomplished under the same conditions is a matter for sterile speculation which has little bearing on the case. But the German Army certainly had not been accustomed to look upon War as a branch of Sport or Athletics.
Owing in all probability to the happy fact in History that England has not been invaded and over-run by a foreign army since the time of William the Conqueror—an episode which had in the end an excellent influence on the national life—she has never taken the military art seriously. She alone, thanks to the protection of Providence, has never been compelled to fight on her own fields for her existence as a nation; she alone knows nothing even by tradition handed down from distant generations of the appearance of an alien soldier on her shores.[10] Some of her wars, as for example the successful struggle by which the Napoleonic domination was broken up, have been fought for the purpose of safe-guarding her independence, but they were not popular with the people at large, whose short sight did not permit them to see that a defensive war may have to be fought beyond the seas; and they had little or no effect in evoking a patriotic military spirit. Napoleon's gibe that the English were a nation of shopkeepers was not unasked for, and is still seasonable.
On the other hand there are hundreds of thousands of persons on the Continent of Europe who have seen, or who are the near descendants of those who have seen, their fatherland ravaged; their homes destroyed; their relations, friends, and neighbours slaughtered in the defence; the tree of the national life maimed; and the full cup of the horrors of war drained to its dregs.
To them the prospect of an invasion is not a remote contingency to be considered and provided for at leisure after academical discussion, but a real and instant danger from which only universal service, to which fortunately for themselves they submit without much demur, as it could not be enforced upon a reluctant community, can preserve them.
The possibility of invasion is the dominant anxiety of the land-frontier nations.[11] Across the frontier they can see the conscripts drilling who almost at a moment's notice may be marching in to attack them. Their armies are not sent on interesting little expeditions to restrain a too-militant tribe of hill-men or to patrol the distant marches of a magnificent Empire, but must stand at attention generation after generation, year after year, maintaining the featureless routine of military life. None of the Romance of War that falls to the lot of the British soldier—the service among strange Easterns in Asia, the building up of a new imperial province in South Africa, the constant change of scene along the posts which form a girdle round the world from Hongkong to Jamaica—falls also to the lot of the continental conscript, for whom there is only the dull waiting for the critical moment.
The land-frontier nations alone are aware of the reality of the Terror of War; it is a Thing overshadowing and, apart from every other thing in their world, which must not, cannot be expelled from their thoughts. The objects that meet the eye on all sides speak of War; the railway vehicles marked with the number of men and horses conveyable, the noble war memorials, the officers constantly in uniform, the crowds of soldiers in the streets, the military bearing and precision of even the civilian servants of the State; while upon the ears falls the sound, which is in most cases a lingering echo of the roar of war, of alien tongues spoken within the frontier, or of the tongue of the Fatherland spoken in exile without it.
On the other hand, Peace is believed to be permanently settled upon the shore of the silver streak which encloses the British Isles. The war monuments are scanty and not a few of them are grotesque; the soldier and his work are thrust into the background, and his uniform is so often a hindrance to him that on certain occasions he is permitted to appear in plain clothes, that is to disguise himself as a civilian; and this concession is officially termed a "privilege." The red tunic of the soldier, like the red rays of the spectrum which cannot be brought into focus with the other colours, fails to make a sharp impression upon the British retina, but projects an ill-defined image seen through a medium of doubt and indifference.
The nation looks upon the Army much as the individual looks upon the Policeman, as a necessary institution, but one rather to be avoided and kept in its place when its services are not actually in requisition. Little interest is taken in its difficulties, its merits, and its opportunities. It is regarded not as an indispensable protection, but rather as an expensive result of possessions in all parts of the world, and when the peace of these is in danger of being broken, the cry too often belated goes up: Send for the Soldiers. Probably nothing less than an actual landing of foreign troops or the scare of it so tremendous as to drive the nation into the opposite and equally dangerous extreme of consternation and panic will be necessary to shake its belief, that the white cliffs of Albion are immune to an invasion in force.
The nightmare of Militarism by which so many worthy persons are fanatically obsessed obscures the dangers against which Militarism is an insurance. Now Militarism is not in itself a desirable thing, and the developments and accidents of it upon the Continent of Europe are often not only irksome and absurd but also irreconcilable with the existence of a healthy feeling of self-respect in the non-military sections of the community, who are taught to regard themselves as an inferior caste; but with all its shortcomings it promotes the moral as well as the physical strength of a nation. It calls up some of the nobler qualities of human nature; self-control, self-reliance, endurance, and altruism or the devotion of Self to the good of the community; and not the least of its merits is that it corrects and restrains the dreary materialism of the Labour and Socialist movements.
The shy and distant bearing of the British nation and its persistent refusal to regard the Army as part of itself, in conjunction with the growing national passion for Sport and Athletics, fostered the idea that War itself must be a branch of them. From time immemorial the military had been eyed with suspicion by the country, which professed to believe that its liberties were in greater danger from its own soldiers than from the soldiers of a foreign power, and which for a long time withheld from its rulers the right of having a standing army. Gradually and with great reluctance it was convinced of the necessity of a permanent force, not so much for home defence as for the performance of the police duties of an Empire. As the Empire grew year by year, these duties became more onerous and responsible, but the Army itself was not taken seriously. It was confessedly too weak to engage in a European campaign, and the Navy was considered to be sufficient to protect the country against invasion.
The duties of the Army abroad were generally interesting and exciting but they did not call for the exercise of the military art with great precision, as the opponents which it was called upon to face were rarely experts, and there was a comfortable belief that the bravery and endurance of the British soldier would outweigh deficiencies in other military qualities.[12]
The War-as-a-Sport idea was also encouraged by the opinion still stoutly held by many persons that a good sportsman is necessarily a good soldier, and that the qualities which ensure success in Athletics or Sport make also for success in War: but this is true of certain of them only. In so far as Athletics and Sport tend to manliness, self-reliance, good comradeship, endurance of bodily hardship, and contempt of danger, they are no doubt an excellent preparatory school for War. But there is one quality without the possession of which no man is held to be a good sportsman, and that is the acceptance of defeat or non-success with equanimity and good-humour as "part of the game." Without this quality Athletics and Sport would, in fact, become impossible.
In the soldier, however, this temperament is a dangerous gift. It led to reverses, captures, loss of convoys and other "regrettable incidents" being regarded with stoical composure as "part of the game"; and the victims were condoled with on their "shocking bad luck." It would have been difficult to discern from the bearing and demeanour of the typical officer whether he was at the moment a prisoner of war in the Model School at Pretoria, or had just taken part in the magnificent cavalry charge by which Kimberley was relieved. The former plight did not greatly depress him, nor did the latter phase of military life greatly elate him. It is probable that the War would have been brought to a successful close at a much earlier date if throughout the British Army and especially among the officers hearty disgust and indignation at the failures of the first few months had taken the place of a light-hearted accommodation to circumstances. The companions of Ulysses may
With a frolic welcome take The thunder and the sunshine,
but it is not War.
The British officer played at war in South Africa much in the same way that he hunted or played cricket or polo at home. He enjoyed the sport and the game, did his best for his own side, and rejoiced if he was successful, but was not greatly disturbed when he lost. A dictum attributed to the Duke of Wellington says that the Battle of Waterloo was won upon the Playing Fields at Eton. It would not be so very far from the truth to say that the guns at Sannah's Post were captured on the polo-ground at Hurlingham; that Magersfontein was lost at Lord's; that Spionkop was evacuated at Sandown; and that the war lingered on for thirty-two months in the Quorn and Pytchley coverts.
The sporting view of War was recognized and confirmed in Army Orders and official reports, in which the words "bag," "drive," "stop," and some other sporting terms not infrequently appeared. No one would reasonably object to the judicious and illuminating use of metaphor, but there are metaphors which impair the dignity of a cause and degrade it in the eyes of those whose duty is to maintain that cause. When the advance of a British Division at a critical period in the operations is frivolously termed a "drive," and when the men extended at ten paces' interval over a wide front are called "beaters," it is natural that the leaders should look upon their work as analogous to the duties of a gamekeeper; and when an artillery officer is instructed to "pitch his shells well up," he is encouraged to regard failure as no worse than the loss of a cricket-match.
It was at least to be expected that in the use, care, and management of horses upon which the success of a campaign, in which mounted men formed an unusually large proportion of the troops engaged, so much depended, the sporting instincts of the British officer would have made him particularly efficient; yet the evidence given by General officers before the Royal Commission showed that it was otherwise. They are practically unanimous in the opinion that all branches of the mounted troops were inefficient, except the artillery, whose work so far as horses are concerned is akin to that of the skilful but unsporting farm teamster or wagoner.
A nation greatly addicted to Sport, Games, and Athletics is a nation lacking in that earnestness of moral purpose which should be its chief strength for War. Amusements are regarded not as "recreation" or means of refreshing and re-invigorating the mind and body for the duties of life by a temporary change of occupation, but as the main objective of existence.
A retrospect into history will show that the most efficient armies were those in which the sporting instinct was non-existent. The armies which in modern times have most satisfactorily performed the duties for which armies are raised were those of Gustavus Adolphus, Napoleon, Moltke, and Oyama. Each of these was the most perfect military instrument of its day, and their exploits have never been surpassed. Yet neither the Swedes, the French, the Germans, nor the Japanese were addicted to Athletics or Sport. Their manly instincts were exercised, to the great advantage of their countries, in skill at arms and in the Military Art.[13]
The cult of Sport and Athletics sets up false ideals and lowers the intellectual standard. Thousands of loafers, idlers, and work skirkers live upon the anticipations or recollections of out-door sports when not actually present at them, and are ready to spend their last shilling at the turnstile of the ground on which a handful of football gladiators are at play: and are more exasperated by the defeat of the team which they patronise in a Cup Tie match than they would be by the loss of a battle by the British Army. There is this to be said for the working classes, that in youth, if not longer, they in general endure a hard and strenuous life, and at least in their school years they cannot indulge a passion for amusement; whereas the class from which the officers of the British Army are drawn is encouraged on the other hand to indulge it from childhood. Owing to the prominence given in the Public Schools and Universities to games and athletics and to the esteem in which proficiency in these is held, youths of the upper middle and upper classes are dumped upon the world not humbly but arrogantly ignorant of almost everything necessary to qualify them to take their proper place in the community. They have subsisted in a rarefied intellectual atmosphere, and to fit themselves for any profession for which they may have an inclination they have to be forced or "crammed" in a saturated atmosphere by which they are congested. The result is that "young officers now join the service with a very fair idea of cricket and football, bridge, and even motor-driving; but with no education in patriotism; no real acquaintance with the history or geography of their own or other countries; unable to write English concisely, or even grammatically;[14] unaccustomed to read general information for themselves other than under the headings of the Daily Mail; unable to talk a foreign language; and with no knowledge of the sciences which are of military use."[15] To this may be added the fact that these young dullards, the supply of whom is dwindling, are, on joining the service, encouraged and accepted rather with reference to their sporting and social qualities than to their military capacity.
England, as a sporting, athletic, and game-loving nation, has of late years suffered many rebuffs. By the United States she has been taught the scientific method of riding racehorses, and also of sailing yachts; she has been defeated in polo by a Transatlantic team; her selected representative horsemen are unsuccessful in the International Military Tournaments; she cannot defeat Australia on the cricket field; a Belgian crew holds its own at Henley. If these rebuffs tend to abate the mania for watching the performances of a handsome but not particularly intelligent quadruped, and for studying the various methods of imparting motion to a Ball and to show the vanity of the passion for sports and games when indulged to excess, they will have served their purpose. The nation, disgusted at its want of success in its favourite pursuits, may perhaps turn its manhood to the noblest pursuit of all, the defence of the Fatherland; and then it will not be the betting and football news that has to be blacked out of the daily papers in the free libraries, but the bi-weekly military gazettes, the reports from the military stations and the Special Correspondents' letters from Salisbury Plain during the manoeuvres.
Notes:
[Footnote 2: In justice to the War Office it should be stated that this was inserted at the instance of Sir Redvers Buller, who believed that he would be able to raise in South Africa a sufficient force of mounted troops.]
[Footnote 3: B. Viljoen in his "Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War" frequently complains of the insubordination, the malingering, and the cowardice of his followers, and of the incompetence of his superior officers.]
[Footnote 4: "Kaffir" is an Arabic word meaning one who does not believe in the religion of Mahomet. It was introduced into South Africa by the Portuguese and subsequently applied to the tribes living on the N.E. of the Cape Colony.]
[Footnote 5: Zilikat's Nek in the Magaliesberg is named after him.]
[Footnote 6: In its crudest and least admirable form Patriotism may be expressed in the terms of an equation—
One Englishman=Two Aliens.]
[Footnote 7: Esprit de Corps in the British Army is the predilection of the individual for the unit in which he is serving. It creates a healthy rivalry which, on the whole, makes for efficiency; but its effects are sometimes unfortunate. A distinguished regiment was accused of misbehaviour in one of the battles of the advance on Bloemfontein. The charge was unfounded, but some of its hasty partisans, with the idea of removing the reproach as far as possible from Self and forgetful that the honour of the British Army is not contained in water-tight compartments, endeavoured to transfer the imputation to another regiment in the same brigade.]
[Footnote 8: The citizens of a Republic are usually more patriotic than the subjects of a Monarchy. This may be accounted for by the fact that a Republic is usually a new nation or a nation that has made a fresh start and has not had time to get tired of itself.]
[Footnote 9: Lord Roberts once used the word "glorious."]
[Footnote 10: Except the French raid at Fishguard in 1797.]
[Footnote 11: The Franco-German War cost France 600,000,000 exclusive of the loss from suspension of business and commerce.]
[Footnote 12: The attach of a Great Power noticed in the South African War an aversion to the tedious duties of outposts and reconnaissance, and he remarks that "it is often openly stated by British officers that it is better to get now and then into a really tight place by the neglect of these duties than to have to endure the constant irksomeness which they entail."]
[Footnote 13: Apart from the question of the relative importance of the two services, it can hardly be denied that the British Naval Officer is an asset more valuable to his country than his brother in the Army. The social side of his character may be more rugged and less acceptable, but as a rule he has had neither the time nor the inclination to fritter away his manhood in sporting pursuits which do not make for proficiency in his profession, and he therefore excels in it; in spite of trying conditions which do not exist in any other calling, for with some rhetorical exaggeration it may be said that in the lower ranks he is an abject slave, in the higher an irresponsible despot.]
[Footnote 14: To the various courses, ranging from Balloons to Economics, which are open to British Officers, might be added a course in English Grammar and Composition, for the instruction of staff officers and others who may have to formulate battle orders and despatch important telegrams on active service. The art of composing a clear, terse, and unambiguous order or telegraphic message is not studied in the Army. Not a few telegrams of vital importance in the South African War were composed by impressionist staff officers who lightly assumed that what was present in their own minds must necessarily also be present in the mind of the recipient. The author particularly remembers a certain telegram from a staff officer of a column, in which it was impossible to discover from the context whether the word "they" in the concluding paragraph referred to British Columns or to Boer Commandos previously mentioned.]
[Footnote 15: Major-General Baden-Powell, in Cavalry Journal, April.]
CHAPTER II
The Natal Wedge
[Sidenote: Map p. 50]
The northern section of Natal before the war[16] roughly assumed the shape of a wedge driven in between the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The Drakensberg Range on the one side and the Buffalo River on the other formed the cleaving surfaces, Majuba and Laing's Nek were the cutting edge, and the base was the Tugela River.
In mechanics a wedge is an instrument which can be usefully employed only under favourable circumstances. It has many disadvantages. It is easily jammed. The driving power at the base must be considerable; much of the force is absorbed by the friction on the surfaces; the progress made is very slow; and if the surfaces encounter a more tenacious material they will be perforated. A wedge is intended chiefly for cleavage and disruption when less clumsy methods are not at hand.
The defects of a wedge as a mechanical power at once became apparent to the British force which occupied Natal when war became inevitable. The cutting edge was inaccessible and liable to injury which could not be easily repaired; much trouble was anticipated from the presence of Boer commandos in contact with the surfaces; the base did not appear to be sufficiently well designed to receive the impact of the propelling force; and there were grave doubts as to the soundness of the material of which an important section of the wedge, namely Ladysmith, was constructed.
It was therefore proposed by the military authorities that the Natal wedge should not be used as an instrument in the war. To this the civil government at Pietermaritzburg strongly objected on account of the evil moral effect which the abandonment of a considerable proportion of the Colony to the enemy would exercise upon the general situation in South Africa, and of the loss of prestige which the evacuation would entail in the minds of the natives, who numbered three-quarters of a million. Under pressure from the Colonial Office, and against its own judgment, the Army of Natal set itself to work upon the Wedge.
The mistake soon became manifest, although the artisans did their best. The Wedge was not an effective instrument; its cutting edge was never in operation; and in a very few weeks it was hewn into a mangled, cumbrous and irregular mass, which could neither be advanced nor withdrawn and which for nearly five months led a precarious and unhappy existence. Its distress necessitated the recasting of the plan of the South African campaign and a pernicious "moral effect" was not avoided. One British Army besieged in an open town surrounded by heights, while another was lying impotent upon the banks of the Tugela, eighteen miles distant, was the result of a few weeks' work with the Natal Wedge, which had been forced by the civilian strategists into the reluctant hands of the troops.[17]
When Sir George White arrived in Natal on October 7 he found Sir W. Tenn Symons carrying out the wedge policy of the Colonial Government. Part of the latter's force was at Ladysmith and part was protecting the collieries in the Dundee district. It was his intention to advance northwards to Newcastle as soon as he was reinforced by the contingent on its way from India, the full strength of which had not arrived at Durban. The position at Dundee was strategically defective, as it was exposed to a raid from the Transvaal border only twelve miles distant, and it was actually further from the Orange Free State than Ladysmith. Its defects as a tactical position were still more obvious as it was commanded by hills.
Such, in a few words, was the situation with which White was called upon to deal. He had two courses before turn; he could accommodate himself to it or he could endeavour to modify it. He attempted the latter, and failing he recurred to the former. He saw at once the insecurity of Symons' detached force, but being unable to convince the Natal Government of the necessity of withdrawing it he reluctantly allowed it to remain.
Soon the Boer plan of campaign, which aimed at the isolation of the British Troops in the wedge, began to unroll itself. Fourteen thousand Transvaalers under Joubert, who had first tested the cutting edge by sending a coal truck through the tunnel at Laing's Nek and who suspected an ambush when he found it clear, were moving south on Newcastle, while six thousand Free Staters under Martin Prinsloo were pouring through the Drakensberg passes west of Ladysmith. The Natal Government now began to feel uneasy about the safety of the colonial capital and even of Durban; and informed White that undue importance had been attached to the occupation of Dundee and that its retention was no longer desirable. Thus in little more than a week White's original objection was reconsidered and upheld. But again he allowed his better judgment to be over-borne. Symons, whom he instructed to withdraw southwards unless he felt his position to be absolutely secure, was at his own urgent request allowed to remain. Next day, October 19, Elandslaagte, on the railway between Ladysmith and Dundee, was occupied by a Boer commando, and it was reported that 4,000 burghers were ready to cross the Buffalo River at Jager's Drift during the night.
Symons' camp was pitched about a mile west of Dundee which lay between it and Talana and Lennox Hills, which commanded the town from the east. Some hours before sunrise on October 20 a British picket on Talana was attacked. The incident was reported to Head Quarters, where it was not deemed to be of much importance and the routine duties of the morning were not interrupted. The artillery horses had been taken down as usual to water, and some companies had even fallen in for skirmishing drill, when the curtain of the morning mist upon the higher ground was raised to the first scene in the Natal drama. The eastward hills, looming up darkly into the brightening sky, were seen to be occupied in force by the enemy under L. Meyer, and soon his shells were falling among the tents.
The troops in camp, though taken by surprise, pulled themselves together with admirable promptitude. The Boer guns were soon silenced, the figures of men silhouetted along the sky line vanished, and the infantry was ordered out to clear the hill. It was a formidable and dangerous task, but it was facilitated by some of the features of the ground. There was a dry river bed in which the troops could be formed up for attack, and, half a mile beyond, a farmhouse and a plantation afforded some cover; while a donga on the left at right angles to the river bed apparently offered a covered way up the hill to the crest. In the plantation occurred the first calamity of the war. Symons, who had come up impatiently from the lower ground to hurry up the assault, which he thought was being unnecessarily delayed, was mortally wounded. Three days later he paid with his life for his adherence to a forward policy in tactics as well as in strategy; and the command devolved upon Yule.
The donga on the left was found to be useless, as it led nowhere; and the advance was made directly from the plantation towards a wall running along the foot of the hill. Here a long halt was made in order to reorganize the attack, and when the word was given the men pressed forward and threw-themselves upon the rough front of the acclivity after a rush across an open slope. The crest was attained and carried without much difficulty; for all but a few stalwarts had quitted it when they saw the British bayonets pricking upwards towards their hold.
It seemed now that the victory was won, but an unfortunate mistake postponed it. The two field batteries on the plain, which had ceased fire before the final infantry rush, changed position and came under a heavy fire from the Boers who were still in possession of a section of the Talana ridge. The light was bad and the guns re-opened upon the crest line in the belief that the whole of it was still occupied by the enemy. The practice was excellent, and in a brief space both sides were driven off the hill by the shrapnel. A subsequent attempt to take it was successful. The result of the battle, which lasted from sunrise until 2 p.m., might have been reversed but for the inaction of the main Boer force posted on Lennox Hill under L. Meyer, and of another force on Impati under Erasmus, who, though he could hear the noise of battle pealing through the mist which lay upon the hill, abstained from intervening.
The whole Boer force was now in full retreat along the line by which it had advanced so silently the night before, and Yule ordered the two field batteries up to the nek between Talana and Lennox to pound the retreating burghers as they slowly trekked towards the Buffalo River; but again an unfortunate misapprehension intervened. The officer in command, being under the impression that an armistice asked for by Meyer two hours before had been granted, refrained from opening fire and the Boers escaped untouched. A serious misadventure marred the success of the day. The 18th Hussars, who at the commencement of the action received orders to hold themselves in readiness to advance when occasion offers, soon appeared to the restless general to be losing their opportunity, and were hustled into activity. They charged in various directions and even made some prisoners; but one squadron lost its way and was captured in an attempt to ride round Impati by a detachment of Erasmus' force at a farm where it had taken refuge.
The fight for Talana Hill encouraged each belligerent. In England it was received as an indication of the early and successful termination of the struggle. The Boers regarded it as a reconnaissance in force from which they had returned with slight loss, and they could boast that they had reaped the first fruits of the harvest of war; a squadron of British cavalry which, with the commanding officer of the regiment, was at once dispatched into captivity at Pretoria, where its arrival was accepted as a proof of a great Boer victory in Natal.
Talana Hill regarded as an isolated event in the Natal campaign was a distinctly successful encounter, the credit of which is due entirely to the infantry engaged in it. Twice the artillery blundered, and the cavalry was inoperative. The extent of the loss suffered by the Natal Field Force in the death of Symons must always be a matter for speculation. But it is at least probable that if he had survived to take part in the subsequent operations, his ardent, impetuous, Prince Rupert like temperament would have beneficially impregnated with greater audacity the stolid and ponderous tactics and strategy of the Natal campaign.
The unreality of the Talana Hill victory soon became apparent. The threat of Erasmus sitting on Impati still impended, and Yule moved his camp next day to a site which he believed to be out of range. But in the meantime Erasmus awoke from his trance and, on the afternoon of October 21, opened fire with a six-inch gun,[18] and again Yule was compelled to shift his camp. He had already asked for reinforcements, but White was unable to spare them, and recommended him to fall back upon Ladysmith. Next day Yule was encouraged by the news of a British success at Elandslaagte; and with the object of intercepting the Boers who were reported to be retreating on Newcastle, he endeavoured to seize Glencoe, but Erasmus on Impati forbade the movement.
Shortly before midnight on October 19, Kock, a Free Stater who commanded a force chiefly composed of foreign auxiliaries and who was working southwards from Newcastle, sent on an advanced party to swoop down upon the railway between Ladysmith and Glencoe, and Elandslaagte station was seized. Early next morning Kock came in with his main body. White at first made no serious attempt to clear the line beyond sending out a reconnoitring force which he soon recalled, as he was reluctant to employ troops away from the immediate neighbourhood of Ladysmith, which had been already threatened on the N.W. by Free State commandos.
The news however of Yule's success at Talana changed the situation and seemed to justify a more forward policy; and early in the morning of October 21 French was sent out to re-occupy Elandslaagte and repair the line. Although he succeeded in driving the enemy out of the railway station and in holding it for a very brief period, he found himself outclassed in artillery and too weak to stand up to the Boers, and withdrew a few miles southward; at the same time asking White to reinforce him. It was reported that Kock expected shortly to be reinforced.
The main Boer position was on the northern limb of a horseshoe arrangement of kopjes which develops close to the railway station and swings round southwards and westwards, at an elevation generally about 300 feet above the normal level of the ground. Two posts were also held north of the railway. The southern limb of the horseshoe was lightly held, and against it French, without waiting for the arrival of all his reinforcements, moved with his mounted troops, and easily cleared it. Here he was joined by the Manchester Regiment, one of the battalions of the brigade of infantry sent out by White under the command of Ian Hamilton, and established himself on the left flank of the Boer position on the two kopjes on the northern limb of the horseshoe.
The other two battalions, the Devonshire Regiment and the Gordon Highlanders, simultaneously came into position, the former for a frontal attack, and the latter as a reserve acting in the interval between the Manchesters and the Devons; while the artillery advanced between the two limbs and shelled the enemy's position on the kopjes. The artillery preparation enjoined by the regulations had, however, to be curtailed owing to the approach of night, but not before the two Boer guns on the southern kopje were silenced; and then the main attack was delivered.
The Boers on the kopjes were reinforced by a body of German auxiliaries under Schiel, who had been driven out of a position north of the railway by the cavalry acting on the left and who circled round to the main position, but the reinforcement did not avail them. Hardly pressed on their left, they were unable to withstand the frontal charge of the Devons led by Hamilton in person. The guns were captured and the position occupied at sunset. By this time most of the Boers were in retreat and their tracks were made devious by the cavalry, which so long as light remained harried them hither and thither.
Suddenly a white flag was seen fluttering near the laager between the kopjes. There is no reason to believe that it was treacherously raised, but it compelled Hamilton to order the Cease Fire. Yet at once half a hundred Boers started up and rushed as a forlorn hope upon the crest: a remnant of stalwarts, who even succeeded in firing a round or two from the guns which had just been taken from them. There was a moment or two of doubt and bewilderment, but Hamilton with the help of a few junior officers rallied the waverers, and earned the Victoria Cross, which on account of his high military rank was withheld from him; the guns were recovered, the laager rushed, and the tactical victory was complete.
Elandslaagte was as unreal a victory as Talana. The troops had not rested many hours in their bivouacs on the ridge before they received orders to return without delay to Ladysmith, which was still threatened from the west by the Free State commandos; and by noon on October 22 not only had Elandslaagte been hurriedly evacuated, but stores, ammunition and even some prisoners had been left behind in the scuttle. Next day it passed without effort into the possession of a small body of Free Staters, who were astonished to find it abandoned. |
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