The cannon on the southern hills became more active and their shells caused the landscape surrounding the waterworks to be filled with geysers of dust. Troops which were stationed near the white smoke-stack suddenly spurred their horses forward and dashed northward to seek safety behind a long undulation in the ground. The artillerymen in the hills followed their movements with shells, and the dust-fountains sprang up at the very heels of the troops. The cannon at the drift joined in the attack on the horsemen scattered over the slope, and the big guns at the waterworks continued to reply vigorously. The men in the spruit were watching the artillery duel intently as they sped up and down the bottom of the water-less stream, searching for points of vantage. A large number of them moved rapidly down the spruit towards its confluence with the Modder River in order to check the advance of the troops driven forward by the shell-fire, and another party rushed eastward to secure positions in the rear of the British cannon at the waterworks. The banks of the stream still concealed them, but they dared not fire lest the enemy should disturb their plans. On and on they dashed, over rocks and chasms, until they were within a few hundred yards of a part of the British force. Slowly they crept up the sides of the spruit, cautiously peered out over the edge of the bank and then opened fire on the men at the cannon and the troops passing down the slope. Little jets of dust arose where their bullets struck the ground, men fell around the cannon, and cavalrymen quickly turned and charged toward the spruit. The shells of the cannon at the drift and on the southern hills fell thicker and thicker among the troops and the air above them was heavy with the light blue smoke of bursting shrapnel. The patter of the Boer rifles at the spruit increased in intensity and the jets of brown dust became more numerous. The cavalrymen leaped from their horses and ran ahead to find protection behind a line of rocks. The intermittent, irregular firing of the Boers was punctuated by the regular, steady reports of British volleys. The brown dust-geysers increased among the rocks where the British lay, and soon the soldiers turned and ran for their horses. Burghers crept from rock to rock in pursuit of them, and their bullets urged the fleeing horsemen on. The British cannon spoke less frequently, and shells and bullets fell so thickly around them that bravery in such a situation seemed suicidal, and the last artilleryman fled. Boers ran up and turned the loaded guns upon the backs of those who had operated them a few moments before.

Down in the north-western part of the field a large force of troops was dashing over the veld toward the banks of the spruit. Officers, waving swords above their heads and shouting commands to their subordinates, led the way. A few shells exploding in the ranks scattered the force temporarily and caused horses to rear and plunge, but the gaps quickly disappeared, and the men moved on down the slope. Boers rode rapidly down the spruit and out upon the veld behind a low range of kopjes which lay in front of the British force. Horses were left in charge of native servants, and the burghers crept forward on hands and knees to the summit of the range. They carefully concealed themselves behind rocks and bushes and waited for the enemy to approach more closely. The cavalrymen spread out in skirmishing order as they proceeded, and, ignorant of the proximity of the Boers, drew their horses into a walk. The burghers in the kopje fired a few shots, and the troops turned quickly to the left and again broke into a gallop. The firing from the kopje increased in volume, the cannon from the hills again broke forth, the little dust-clouds rose out of the earth on all sides of the troopers, and shrapnel bursting in the air sent its bolts and balls of iron and steel; into the midst of the brown men and earth. Horses and riders fell, officers leaped to the ground and shouted encouragement to their soldiers, men sprang behind rocks and discharged their rifles. Minutes of agony passed. Officers gathered their men and attempted to lead them forward, but they had not progressed far when the Boers in the spruit in front of them swept the ground with the bullets of their rifles. Burghers crept around the edge of the kopjes and emptied their carbines into the backs of the cavalrymen, cannons poured shell upon them from three different directions, and these men on the open plain could not see even a brace of Boers to fire upon. Men and horses continued to fall, the wounded lay moaning in the grass, while shells and bullets sang their song of death more loudly every second to those who braved the storm. A tiny white cloth was raised, the firing ceased instantly, and the brave band threw down its arms to the burghers who sprang out from the spruit and rocky kopje.

In the east the low hills were dotted with men in brown. To the right and left of them, a thousand yards apart, were Boer horsemen circling around kopjes and seeking positions for attacking the already vanquished but stubborn enemy. Rifle fire had ceased and cannon sounded only at intervals of a few minutes. Women at the doors of the two farmhouses in the centre of the battlefield, and a man drawing water at a well near by, were not inharmonious with the quietness and calmness of the moment, but the epoch of peace was of short duration. The Boer horsemen stemmed the retreat of the men in brown, and compelled them to retrace their steps. Another body of burghers made a wide detour north-eastward from the spruit, and, jumping from their horses, crept along under the cover of an undulation in the ground for almost a half-mile to a point which overlooked the route of the British retreat.

The enemy was slow in coming, and a few of the Boers lay down to sleep. Others filled their pipes and lighted them, and one abstracted a pebble from his shoe. As the cavalrymen drew nearer to them the burghers crept forward several paces and sought the protection of rocks or piled stones together in the form of miniature forts. "Shall we fire now?" inquired a beardless Free State youth. "Wait until they come nearer," replied an older burgher close by. Silence was maintained for several minutes, when the youth again became uneasy. "I can hit the first one of those Lancers," he begged, as he pointed with his carbine to a cavalryman known to the Boers as a "Lancer," whether he carried a lance or not. The cannon in the south urged the cavalrymen forward with a few shells delivered a short distance behind them, and then the old burgher called to the youth, "See if you can hit him now."

The boy missed the rider but killed the horse, and the British force quickly dismounted and sought shelter in a small ravine. The reports of volley firing followed, and bullets cut the grass beside the burghers and flattened themselves against the rocks. Another volley, and a third, in rapid succession, and the burghers pressed more closely to the ground. An interval of a minute, and they glanced over their tiny stockades to find a British soldier. "They are coming up the kopje!" shouted a burgher, and their rifles swept the hillside with bullets. More volleys came from below and, while the leaden tongues sang above and around them, the burghers turned and lay on their backs to refill the magazines of their rifles. Another interval, and the attack was renewed. "They are running!" screamed a youth exultingly, and burghers rose and fired at the men in brown at the foot of the kopje. Marksmen had their opportunity then, and long aim was taken before a shot was fired. Men knelt on the one knee and rested an elbow on the other, while they held their rifles to their shoulders. Reports of carbines became less frequent as the troops progressed farther in an opposite direction, but increased again when the cavalrymen returned for a second attack upon the kopje. "Lend me a handful of cartridges, Jan," asked one man of his neighbour, as they watched the oncoming force.

"They must want this kopje," remarked another burgher jocularly, as he filled his pipe with tobacco and lighted it.

The British cannon in the east again became active, and the dust raised by their shells was blown over the heads of the burghers on the kopje. The reports of the big guns of the Boers reverberated among the hills, while the regular volleys of the British rifles seemed to be beating time to the minor notes and irregular reports of the Boer carbines. At a distance the troops moving over the brown field of battle resembled huge ants more than human beings; and the use of smokeless powder, causing the panorama to remain perfectly clear and distinct, allowed every movement to be closely followed by the observer. Cannon poured forth their tons of shells, but there was nothing except the sound of the explosion to denote where the guns were situated. Rifles cut down lines of men, but there was no smoke to indicate where they were being operated, and unless the burghers or soldiers displayed themselves to their enemy there was nothing to indicate their positions. Shrapnel bursting in the air, the reports of rifles and heavy guns and the little puffs of dust where shells and bullets struck the ground were the only evidences of the battle's progress. The hand-to-hand conflicts, the duels with bayonets and swords and the clouds of smoke were probably heroic and picturesque before the age of rapid-fire guns, modern rifles, and smokeless ammunition, but here the field of battle resembled a country fox-chase with an exaggerated number of hunters, more than a representation of a battle of twenty-five years ago.

On the summit of the kopje the burghers were firing leisurely but accurately. One man aimed steadily at a soldier for fully twenty seconds, then pressed the trigger, lowered his rifle and watched for the effect of the shot. Bullets were flying high over him, and the shrapnel of the enemy's guns exploded far behind him. There seemed to be no great danger, and he fired again. "I missed that time," he remarked to a burgher who lay behind another rock several yards distant. His neighbour then fired at the same soldier, and both cried simultaneously: "He is hit!" The enemy again disappeared in the little ravine, and the burghers ceased firing. Shells continued to tear through the air, but none exploded in the vicinity of the men, and they took advantage of the lull in the battle to light their pipes. A swarm of yellow locusts passed overhead, and exploding shrapnel tore them into myriads of pieces, their wings and limbs falling near the burghers. "I am glad I am not a locust," remarked a burgher farther to the left of the others, as he dropped a handful of torn fragments of the insects. Shells and bullets suddenly splashed everywhere around the burghers, and they crouched more closely behind the rocks. The enemy's guns had secured an accurate range, and the air was filled with the projectiles of iron and lead. Exploding shells splintered rocks into atoms and sent them tearing through the grass. Puffs of smoke and dirt were springing up from every square yard of ground, and a few men rose from their retreats and ran to the rear where the Basuto servants were holding their horses. More followed several minutes afterwards, and when those who remained on the summit of the kopje saw that ten times their number of soldiers were ascending the hill under cover of cannon fire they also fled to their horses.

An open plain half a mile wide lay between the point where the burghers mounted their horses, and another kopje in the north-east. The men lay closely on their horses' backs, plunged their spurs in the animals' sides, and dashed forward. The cavalrymen, who had gained the summit of the kopje meanwhile, opened fire on the fleeing Boers, and their bullets cut open the horses' sides and ploughed holes into the burgher's clothing. One horse, a magnificent grey who had been leading the others, fell dead as he was leaping over a small gully, and his rider was thrown headlong to the ground. Another horseman turned in his course, assisted the horseless rider to his own brown steed, and the two were borne rapidly through the storm of bullets towards the kopje. Another horse was killed when he had carried his rider almost to the goal of safety, and the Boer was compelled to traverse the remainder of the distance on foot. Apparently all the burghers had escaped across the plain, and their field-cornet was preparing to lead them to another position when a solitary horseman, a mere speck of black against a background of brown, lifeless grass, issued from a rocky ravine below the kopje occupied by the enemy, and plunged into the open space. Lee-Metfords cracked and cut open the ground around him, but the rider bent forward and seemed to become a part of his horse. Every rod of progress seemed to multiply the fountains of dust near him; every leap of his horse seemed necessarily his last. On, on he dashed, now using his stirrups, now beating his horse with his hands. It seemed as if he were making no progress, yet his horse's legs were moving so swiftly. "They will get him," sighed the field-cornet, looking through his glasses. "He has a chance," replied a burgher. Seconds dragged wearily, the firing increased in volume, and the dust of the horse's heels mingled with that raised by the bullets. The sound of the hoofs beating down on the solid earth came louder and louder over the veld, the firing slackened and then ceased, and a foaming, panting horse brought his burden to where the burghers stood. The exhausted rider sank to the ground, and men patted the neck and forehead of the quivering beast.

Down in the valley, near the spruit, the foreign military attaches in uniforms quite distinct were watching the effect of the British artillery on the saddle belonging to one of their number. "They will never hit it," volunteered one, as a shell exploded ten yards distant from the leathern mark.

"They must think it is a crowd of Boers," suggested another, when a dozen shells had fallen without injuring the saddle. Fifteen, twenty tongues of dust arose, but the leather remained unmarred by scratch or rent, and the attaches became the target of the heavy guns. "I am hit," groaned Lieutenant Nix, of the Netherlands-Indian army, and his companions caught him in their arms. Blood gushed from a wound in the shoulder, but the soldier spirit did not desert him. "Here, Demange!" he called to the French attache, "Hold my head. And you, Thompson and Allen, see if you cannot bind this shoulder." The Norwegian and Hollander bound the wound as well as they were able. "Reichman!" the injured man whispered, "I am going to die in a few minutes, and I wish you would write a letter to my wife." The American attache hastily procured paper and pencil, and while shells and shrapnel were bursting over and around them the wounded man dictated a letter to his wife in Holland. Blood flowed copiously from the wound and stained the grass upon which he lay. He was pale as the clouds above him, and the pain was agonising, but the dying man's letter was filled with nothing but expressions of love and tenderness.

In the south-eastern part of the field a large party of cavalrymen was speeding in the direction of Thaba N'Chu. On two sides of them, a thousand yards behind, small groups of horsemen were giving chase. At a distance, the riders appeared like ants slowly climbing the hillside. Now and then a Boer rider suddenly stopped his horse, leaped to the ground, and fired at the fleeing cavalrymen. A second afterwards he was on his horse again, bending to the chase. Shot followed shot, but the distance between the forces grew greater, and one by one the burghers turned their animals' heads and slowly retraced their steps. A startled buck bounded over the veld, two rifles were turned upon it, and its flight was ended.



The sound of firing had ceased, and the battle was concluded. Waggons with Red Cross flags fluttering from the tall staffs above them, issued from the mountains and rumbled through the valleys. Burghers dashed over the field in search of the wounded and dying. Men who a few moments before were straining every nerve to kill their fellow-beings became equally energetic to preserve lives. Wounded soldiers and burghers were lifted out of the grass and carried tenderly to the ambulance waggons. The dead were placed side by side, and the same cloth covered the bodies of Boer and Briton. Men with spades upturned the earth, and stood grimly by while a man in black prayed over the bodies of those who died for their country.

Boer officers, with pencils and paper in their hands, sped over the battlefield from a group of prisoners to a line of passing waggons, and made calculations concerning the result of the day's battle. Three Boers killed and nine wounded was one side of the account. On the credit sheet were marked four hundred and eight British soldiers, seven cannon, one hundred and fifty waggons, five hundred and fifty rifles, two thousand horses and cattle, and vast stores of ammunition and provisions captured during the day.

In among the north-eastern hills, where a farmer's daub-and-wattle cottage stood, were the prisoners of war, chatting and joking with their captors. The officers walked slowly back and forth, never raising their eyes from the ground. Dejection was written on their faces. Near them were the captured waggons, with groups of noisy soldiers climbing over them in search of their luggage. On the ground others were playing cards and matching coins. Young Boers walked amongst them and engaged them in conversation. Near the farmhouse stood a tall Cape Colony Boer talking with his former neighbour, who was a prisoner. Several Americans among the captured disputed the merits of the war with a Yankee burgher, who had readily distinguished his countrymen among the throng. Some one began to whistle a popular tune, others joined, and soon almost every one was participating. An officer gave the order for the prisoners to fall in line, and shortly afterward the men in brown tramped forward, while the burghers stepped aside and lined the path. A soldier commenced to sing another popular song, British and Boer caught the refrain, and the noise of tramping feet was drowned by the melody of the united voices of friend and foe singing—

"It's the soldiers of the Queen, my lads, Who've been, my lads—who've seen, my lads, * * * * * We'll proudly point to every one Of England's soldiers of the Queen."



CHAPTER VII

THE GENERALS OF THE WAR

The names and deeds of the men who led thirty thousand of their fellow-peasants against almost a quarter of a million of the trained troops of the greatest empire in the world, and husbanded their men and resources so that they were enabled to continue the unequal struggle for the greater part of a year will live for ever in the history of the Dark Continent. When racial hatred and the bitternesses of the war have been forgotten, and South Africa has emerged from its long period of bloodshed and disaster, then all Afrikanders will revere the memory of the valiant deeds of Cronje, Joubert, Botha, Meyer, De Wet, and the others who fought so gallantly in a cause which they considered just and holy. Such noble examples of heroism as Cronje's stand at Paardeberg, Botha's defence of the Tugela and the region east of Pretoria; De Wet's warfare in the Free State, and Meyer's fighting in the Transvaal will shine in African history as long as the Southern Cross illumes the path of civilised people in that region. When future generations search the pages of history for deeds of valour they will turn to the records of the Boer-British war of 1899-1900, and find that the military leaders of the farmers of South Africa were not less valorous than those of the untrained followers of Cromwell or William of Orange, the peace-loving mountaineers of Switzerland, or the patriotic countrymen of Washington.

The leaders of the Boer forces were not generals in the popular sense of the word. Almost without exception, they were men who had no technical knowledge of warfare; men who were utterly without military training of any nature, and who would have been unable to pass an examination for the rank of corporal in a European army. Among the entire list of generals who fought in the armies of the two Republics there were not more than three who had ever read military works, and Cronje was the only one who ever studied the theory and practice of modern warfare, and made an attempt to apply the principles of it to his army. Every one of the Boer generals was a farmer who, before the war, paid more attention to his crops and cattle than he did to evolving ideas for application in a campaign, and the majority of them, in fact, never dreamed that they would be called upon to be military leaders until they were nominated for the positions a short time before hostilities were commenced. Joubert, Cronje, Ferreira, and Meyer were about the only men in the two Republics who were certain that they would be called upon to lead their countrymen, for all had had experience in former wars; but men like Botha, De Wet, De la Rey, and Snyman, who occupied responsible positions afterward, had no such assurance, and naturally gave little or no attention to the study of military matters. The men who became the Boer generals gained their military knowledge in the wilds and on the veld of South Africa where they were able to develop their natural genius in the hunting of lions and the tracking of game. The Boer principle of hunting was precisely the same as their method of warfare and consequently the man who, in times of peace, was a successful leader of shooting expeditions was none the less adept afterward as the leader of commandos.

When the Volksraad of the Transvaal determined to send an ultimatum to Great Britain, it was with the knowledge that such an act would provoke war, and consequently preparations for hostilities were immediately made. One of the first acts was the appointment of five assistant commandant-generals—Piet Cronje, Schalk Burgher, Lucas Meyer, Daniel Erasmus, and Jan Kock—all of whom held high positions in the Government, and were respected by the Boer people. After hostilities commenced, and it became necessary to have more generals, six other names were added to the list of assistants of Commandant-General Joubert—those chosen being Sarel Du Toit, Hendrik Schoeman, John De la Rey, Hendrik Snyman, and Herman R. Lemmer. The selections which were so promiscuously made were proved by time to be wise, for almost without exception the men developed into extraordinarily capable generals. In the early part of the campaign many costly mistakes and errors of judgment were made by some of the newly-appointed generals, but such misfortunes were only to be expected from men who suddenly found themselves face to face with some of the best-trained generals in the world. Later, when the campaign had been in progress for several months, and the farmers had had opportunities of learning the tactics of their opponents, they made no move unless they were reasonably certain of the result.

One of the prime reasons for the great success which attended the Boer army before the strength of the enemy's forces became overwhelming, was the fact that the generals were allowed to operate in parts of the country with which they were thoroughly acquainted. General Cronje operated along the western frontiers of the Republics, where he knew the geographical features of the country as well as he did those of his own farm. General Meyer spent the greater part of his life in the neighbourhood of the Biggarsberg and northern Natal, and there was hardly a rod of that territory with which he was unfamiliar. General Botha was born near the Tugela, and, in his boyhood days, pursued the buck where afterward he made such a brave resistance against the forces of General Buller. General Christian De Wet was a native of Dewetsdorp, and there was not a sluit or donga in all the territory where he fought so valiantly that he had not traversed scores of times before the war began. General De la Rey spent the greater part of his life in Griqualand West, Cape Colony, and when he was leading his men around Kimberley and the south-western part of the Free State he was in familiar territory. General Snyman, who besieged Mafeking, was a resident of the Marico district, and consequently was acquainted with the formation of the country in the western part of the Transvaal. In the majority of cases the generals did not need the services of an intelligence department, except to determine the whereabouts of the enemy, for no scouts or patrols could furnish a better account of the nature of the country in which they were fighting than that which existed in the minds of the leaders. Under these conditions there was not the slightest chance for any of the generals falling into a trap laid by the enemy, but there always were opportunities for leading the enemy into ambush.

The Boer generals also had the advantage of having excellent maps of the country in which they were fighting, and by means of these they were enabled to explain proposed movements to the commandants and field-cornets who were not familiar with the topography of the land. These maps were made two years before the war by a corps of experts employed by the Transvaal Government, and on them was a representation of every foot of ground in the Transvaal, Free State, Natal, and Cape Colony. A small elevation near Durban and a spruit near Cape Town were marked as plainly as a kopje near Pretoria, while the British forts at Durban and Cape Town were as accurately pictured as the roads that led to them. The Boers had a map of the environs of Ladysmith which was a hundred times better than that furnished by the British War Office, yet Ladysmith was the Natal base of the British army for many years.

The greater part of the credit for the Boers' preparedness must be given to the late Commandant-General Piet J. Joubert, who was the head of the Transvaal War Department for many years. General Joubert, or "Old Piet," as he was called by the Boers, to distinguish him from the many other Jouberts in the country, was undoubtedly a great military leader in his younger days, but he was almost seventy years old when he was called upon to lead his people against the army of Great Britain, and at that age very few men are capable of great mental or physical exertion. There was no greater patriot in the Transvaal than he, and no one who desired the absolute independence of his country more sincerely than the old general; yet his heart was not in the fighting. Like Kruger, he was a man of peace, and to his dying day he believed that the war might have been avoided easily. Unlike Kruger, he clung to the idea that the war, having been forced upon them, should be ended as speedily as possible, and without regard to the loss of national interests. Joubert valued the lives of the burghers more highly than a clause in a treaty, and rather than see his countrymen slain in battle he was willing to make concessions to those who harassed his Government.

Joubert was one of the few public men in the Transvaal who firmly believed that the differences between the two countries would be amicably adjusted, and he constantly opposed the measures for arming the country which were brought before him. The large armament was secured by him, it is true, but the Volksraads compelled him to purchase the arms and ammunition. If Joubert had been a man who loved war he would have secured three times as great a quantity of war material as there was in the country when the war was begun; but he was distinctly a man who loved peace. He constantly allowed his sentiments to overrule his judgment of what was good for his country, and the result of that line of action was that at the beginning of hostilities there were more Boer guns in Europe and on the ocean than there were in the Transvaal.

General Joubert was a grand old Boer in many respects, and no better, more righteous, and more upright man ever lived. He worked long and faithfully for his people, and he undoubtedly strove to do that which he believed to be the best for his country, but he was incapable of performing the duties of his office as a younger, more energetic, and a more warlike man would have attended to them. Joubert was in his dotage, and none of his people were aware of it until the crucial moment of the war was passed. When he led the Boers at Majuba and Laing's Nek, in 1881, he was in the prime of his life—energetic, resourceful, and undaunted by any reverses. In 1899, when he followed the commandos into Natal, he was absolutely the reverse—slow, wavering, and too timid to move from his tent. He constantly remained many miles in the rear of the advance column, and only once went into the danger zone, when he led a small commando south of the Tugela. Then, instead of leading his victorious burghers against the forces of the enemy, he retreated precipitately at the first sign of danger, and established himself at Modderspruit, a day's journey from the foremost commandos, where he remained with almost ten thousand of his men for three months.

Joubert attempted to wage war without the shedding of blood, and he failed. When General Meyer reported that about thirty Boers had been killed and injured in the fight at Dundee, the Commandant-General censured him harshly for making such a great sacrifice of blood, and forbade him from following the fleeing enemy, as such a course would entail still greater casualties. When Sir George White and his forces had been imprisoned in Ladysmith, and there was almost a clear path to Durban, Joubert held back and would not risk the lives of a few hundred burghers, even when it was pointed out to him that the men themselves were eager to assume the responsibility. He made only one effort to capture Ladysmith, but the slight loss of life so appalled him that he would never sanction another attack, although the town could easily have been taken on the following day if an attempt had been made. Although he had a large army round the besieged town he did not dig a yard of entrenchment in all the time he was at Modderspruit, nor would he hearken to any plans for capturing the starving garrison by means of progressive trenches. While Generals Botha, Meyer, and Erasmus, with less than three thousand men, were holding the enemy at the Tugela, Joubert, with three times that number of men to guard impotent Ladysmith, declined to send any ammunition for their big guns, voted to retreat, and finally fled northward to Colenso, deserting the fighting men, destroying the bridges and railways as he progressed, and even leaving his own tents and equipment behind.

There were extenuating circumstances in connection with Joubert's failure in the campaign—his age, an illness, and an accident while he was in laager—and it is but charitable to grant that these were fundamentally responsible for his shortcomings, but it is undoubted that he was primarily responsible for the failure of the Natal campaign. The army which he commanded in Natal, although only twelve or thirteen thousand men in strength, was the equal in fighting ability of seventy-five thousand British troops, and the only thing it lacked was a man who would fight with them and lead them after a fleeing enemy. If the Commandant-General had pursued the British forces after all their defeats and had drawn the burghers out of their laagers by the force of his own example, the major part of the history of the Natal campaign would have been made near the Indian Ocean instead of on the banks of the Tugela. The majority of the Boers in Natal needed a commander-in-chief who would say to them "Come," but Joubert only said "Go."

The death of General Joubert in Pretoria, on March 26th, was sincerely regretted by all South Africans, for he undoubtedly was one of the most distinguished men in the country. During his long public career he made many friends who held him in high honour for his sterling qualities, his integrity, and his devotion to his country's cause. He made mistakes—and there are few men who are invulnerable to them—but he died while striving to do that which he regarded the best for his country and its cause. If dying for one's country is patriotism, then Joubert's death was sweet.

When war-clouds were gathering and the storm was about to burst over the Transvaal Piet Cronje sat on the stoep of his farmhouse in Potchefstroom, evolving in his mind a system of tactics which he would follow when the conflict began. He was certain that he would be chosen to lead his people, for he had led them in numerous native wars, in the conflict in 1881, and later when Jameson made his ill-starred entry into the Transvaal. Cronje was a man who loved to be amid the quietude of his farm, but he was in the cities often enough to realise that war was the only probable solution of the differences between the Uitlanders and the Boers, and he made preparations for the conflict. He studied foreign military methods and their application to the Boer warfare; he evolved new ideas and improved old ones; he planned battles and the evolutions necessary to win them; he had a natural taste for things military.

Before all the world had heard the blast of the war-trumpet, Cronje had deserted the peaceful stoep and was attacking the enemy on the veld at Mafeking. A victory there, and he was riding at the head of his men toward Kimberley. A skirmish here, a hard-fought battle there, and he had the Diamond City in a state of siege. Victories urged him on, and he led the way southward. A Magersfontein to his wreath, a Belmont and a Graspan—and it seemed as if he were more than nominally the South African Napoleon. A reverse, and Cronje was no longer the dashing, energetic leader of the month before. Doggedly and determinedly he retraced his steps, but advanced cautiously now and then to punish the enemy for its over-confidence. Beaten back to Kimberley by the overpowering force of the enemy, he endured defeat after defeat until finally he was compelled to abandon the siege in order to escape the attacks of a second army sent against him. The enemy's web had been spun around him, but he fought bravely for freedom from entanglement. General French was on one side of him, Lord Roberts on another, Lord Kitchener on a third—and against the experience and troops of all these men was pitted the genius of the Potchefstroom farmer. A fight with Roberts's Horse on Thursday, February 15th; a march of ten miles and a victorious rear-guard action with Lord Kitchener on Friday; a repulse of the forces under Lords Roberts and Kitchener on Saturday, and on Sunday morning the discovery that he and his four thousand men in the river-bed at Paardeberg were surrounded by forty thousand troops of the enemy—that was a four days' record which caused the Lion of Potchefstroom merely to show his fangs to his enemy.

When General Cronje entered the river-bed on Saturday he was certain that he could fight his way out on the following day. Scores of his burghers appealed to him to trek eastward that night, and Commandant-General Ferreira, of the Free State, asked him to trek north-east in order that their two Boer forces might effect a junction, but Cronje was determined to remain in the positions he then occupied until he could carry all his transport-waggons safely away. In the evening Commandants De Beer and Grobler urged the general to escape and explained to him that he would certainly be surrounded the following day, but Cronje steadfastly declined, and expressed his ability to fight a way through any force of the enemy. Even late that night, while the British troops were welding the chain which was to bind him hard and fast in the river-bed, many of Cronje's men begged the general to desert the position, and when they saw him so determined they deserted him and escaped to the eastward.

Cronje might have accepted the advice of his officers and men if he had not believed that he could readily make his way to the east, where he did not suspect the presence of any of Lord Roberts's troops. Not until the following forenoon, when he saw the British advance-guard marching over the hills on the south side of the river, did he realise that the enemy had surrounded him and that he had erred when he determined to hold the position. The grave mistake could not be rectified, and Cronje was in no mood for penitence. He told his men that he expected reinforcements from the east and counselled them to remain cool and fire with discretion until assistance came to them. Later in the day the enemy attacked the camp from all sides but the little army repulsed the onslaught and killed and wounded more than a thousand British soldiers. When the Sabbath sun descended and the four thousand Boers sang their psalms and hymns of thanksgiving there was probably only one man who believed that the burghers would ever be able to escape from the forces which surrounded them, and that man was General Cronje. He realised the gravity of the situation, but he was as calm as if he had been victorious in a battle. He talked cheerily with his men, saying, "Let the English come on," and when they heard their old commander speak in such a confident manner they determined to fight until he himself announced a victory or a defeat.

On Monday morning it seemed as if the very blades of grass for miles around the Boer laager were belching shot and shell over the dongas and trenches where the burghers had sought shelter. Lyddite shells and shrapnel burst over and around them; the bullets of rifles and machine-guns swept close to their heads, and a few yards distant from them were the heavy explosions of ammunition-waggons set on fire by the enemy's shells. Burghers, horses and cattle fell under the storm of lead and iron, and the mingled life-blood of man and beast flowed in rivulets to join the waters of the river. The wounded lay groaning in the trenches; the dead unburied outside, and the cannonading was so terrific that no one was able to leave the trenches and dongas sufficiently long to give a drink of water to a wounded companion. There was no medicine in the camp, all the physicians were held in Jacobsdal by the enemy, and the condition of the dead and dying was such that Cronje was compelled to ask for an armistice. The reply from the British commander was "Fight or surrender," and Cronje chose to continue the fight. The bombardment of the laager was resumed with increased vigour, and there was not a second's respite from shells and bullets until after night descended, when the burghers were enabled to emerge from their trenches and holes to exercise their limbs and to secure food.

The Boers' cannon became defective on Tuesday morning, and thereafter they could reply to the continued bombardment with only their rifles. Hope rose in their breasts during the day when a heliograph message was received from Commandant Froneman; "I am here with Generals De Wet and Cronje," the message read; "Have good cheer. I am waiting for reinforcements. Tell the burghers to find courage in Psalm xxvii." The fact that reinforcements were near, even though the enemy was between, imbued the burghers with renewed faith in their ability to defeat the enemy and, when a concerted attack was made against the laager in the afternoon, a gallant resistance followed.

On Wednesday morning the British batteries again poured their shells on the miserable and exhausted Boers. Shortly before midday there was a lull in the storm, and the beleaguered burghers could hear the reports of the battle between the relieving force and the British troops. The sounds of the fight grew fainter and fainter, then subsided altogether. The bombardment of the laager was renewed, and the burghers realised that Froneman had been beaten back by the enemy. The disappointment was so great that one hundred and fifty Boers bade farewell to their general, and laid down their arms to their enemy. The following day was merely the repetition of the routine of former days, with the exception that the condition of the men and the laager was hourly becoming more miserable. The wounded clamouring for relief was in itself a misery to those who were compelled to hear it, but to allow such appeals to go unanswered was heartrending. To have the dead unburied seemed cruel enough, but to have the corpses before one's eyes day after day was torture. To know that the enemy was in ten times greater strength was disheartening, but to realise that there was no relief at hand was enough to dim the brightest courage. Yet Cronje was undaunted.

Friday and Saturday brought nothing but a message from Froneman, again encouraging them to resist until reinforcements could be brought from Bloemfontein. On Saturday evening Jan Theron, of Krugersdorp, succeeded in breaking through the British lines with despatches from General De Wet and Commandants Cronje and Froneman, urging General Cronje to fight a way through the lines whilst they would engage the enemy from their side. Cronje and his officers decided to make an attempt to escape, and on Sunday morning the burghers commenced the construction of a chain-bridge across the Modder to facilitate the crossing of the swollen river. Fortunately for the Boers the British batteries fired only one shot into the camp that day, and the burghers were able to complete the bridge before night by means of the ropes and chains from their ox-waggons. On Monday morning the British guns made a target of the bridge, and shelled it so unremittingly that no one was able to approach it, much less make an attempt to cross the river by means of it. The bombardment seemed to grow in intensity as the day progressed, and when two shells fell into a group of nine burghers, and left nothing but an arm and a leg to be found, the Krijgsraad decided to hoist a white flag on Tuesday morning. General Cronje and Commandant Schutte were the only officers who voted against surrendering. They begged the other officers to reconsider their decision, and to make an attempt to fight a way out, but the confidence of two men was too weak to change the opinions of the others.

In a position covering less than a square mile of territory, hemmed in on all sides by an army almost as great as that which defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, surrounded by a chain of fire from carbines, rapid-fire guns and heavy cannon, the target of thousands of the vaporous lyddite shells, his trenches enfiladed by a continuous shower of lead, his men half dead from lack of food, and stiff from the effect of their narrow quarters in the trenches, General Cronje chose to fight and to risk complete disaster by leading his four thousand men against the forty thousand of the enemy.

The will of the majority prevailed, and on February 27th, the anniversary of Majuba Hill, after ten days of fighting, the white flag was hoisted above the dilapidated laager. The bodies of ninety-seven burghers lay over the scene of the disaster, and two hundred and forty-five wounded men were left behind when General Cronje and his three thousand six hundred and seventy-nine burghers and women limped out of the river-bed and surrendered to Field-Marshal Lord Roberts.

In many respects General Cronje was the Boers' most brilliant leader, but he was responsible for many serious and costly reverses. At Magersfontein he defeated the enemy fairly, and he might have reaped the fruits of his victory if he had followed up the advantage there gained. Instead, he allowed his army to remain inactive for two months while the British established a camp and base at the river. General French's march to Kimberley might readily have been prevented or delayed if Cronje had placed a few thousand of his men on the low range of kopjes commanding French's route, but during the two days which were so fateful to him and his army General Cronje never stirred from his laager. At Magersfontein Cronje allowed thirty-six cannon, deserted by the British, to remain on several kopjes all of one night and until ten o'clock next morning, when they were taken away by the enemy. When he was asked why he did not send his men to secure the guns Cronje replied, "God has been so good to us that I did not have the heart to send my overworked men to fetch them."

Cronje was absolutely fearless, and in all the battles in which he took part he was always in the most exposed positions. He rarely used a rifle, as one of his eyes was affected, but the short, stoop-shouldered, grey-bearded man, with the long riding-whip, was always in the thick of a fight, encouraging his men and pointing out the positions for attack. He was a fatalist when in battle, if not in times of peace, and it is told of him that at Modder River he was warned by one of the burghers to seek a less exposed position. "If God has ordained me to be shot to-day," the grim old warrior replied, "I shall be shot, whether I sit here or in a well." Cronje was one of the strictest leaders in the Boer army, and that feature made him unpopular with the men who constantly applied to him for leaves-of-absence to return to their homes. They fought for him in the trenches at Paardeberg not because they loved him, but because they respected him as an able leader. He did not have the affection of his burghers like Botha, Meyer, De Wet, or De la Rey, but he held his men together by force of his superior military attainments—a sort of overawing authority which they could not disobey.

Personally, Cronje was not an extraordinary character. He was urbane in manner and a pleasant conversationalist. Like the majority of the Boers he was deeply religious, and tried to introduce the precepts of his religion into his daily life. Although he was sixty-five years old when the war began he had the energy and spirit of a much younger man, and the terrors and anxieties of the ten days' siege at Paardeberg left but little marks on the face which has been described as Christlike. His patriotism was unbounded, and he held the independence of his country above everything. "Independence with peace, if possible, but independence at all costs," he was wont to say, and no one fought harder than he, to attain that end.

When the Vryheid commandos rode over the western border of their district and invaded Natal, Louis Botha, the successor of Commandant-General Joubert, was one of the many Volksraad members who went forth to war in the ranks of the common burghers. After the battle of Dundee, in which he distinguished himself by several daring deeds, Botha became Assistant-General to his lifelong friend and neighbour General Lucas Meyer. Several weeks later, when General Meyer fell ill, he gave his command to his compatriot, General Botha, and a short time afterward, when Commandant-General Joubert was incapacitated by illness, Botha was appointed to assume the responsibilities of the commander-in-chief. When Joubert was on his deathbed he requested that Botha should be his successor, and in that manner Louis Botha, burgher, became Louis Botha, Commandant-General, in less than six months.

It was remarkable, this chain of fortuitous circumstances which led to Botha's rapid advancement, but it was not entirely due to extraneous causes, for he was deserving of every step of his promotion. There is a man for every crisis, but rarely in history is found a record of a soldier who rose from the ranks to commander-in-chief of an army in one campaign. It was Meyer's misfortune when he became ill at a grave period of the war, but it was the country's good fortune to have a Botha ready at hand to fight a Colenso and a Spion Kop. When the burgher army along the Tugela was hard pressed by the enemy and both its old-time leaders, Joubert and Meyer, lay ill at the same time, it seemed little less than providential that a Botha should step out of the ranks and lead the men with as much discretion and valour as could have been expected from the experienced generals whose work he undertook to accomplish. It was a modern representation of the ploughman deserting his farm in order to lead in the salvation of Rome.

Thirty-five years before he was called upon to be Commandant-General of the army of his nation Louis Botha was born near the same spot where he was chosen for that office, and on the soil of the empire against whose forces he was pitting his strength and ability. In his youth he was wont to listen to the narratives of the battles in which his father and grandfather fought side by side against the hordes of natives who periodically dyed the waters of the Tugela crimson with the blood of massacred men and women. In early manhood Botha fought against the Zulus and assisted Lucas Meyer in establishing the New Republic, which afterward became his permanent home. Popularity, ability, and honesty brought him into the councils of the nation as a member of the First Volksraad, where he wielded great influence by reason of his conscientious devotion to duty and his deep interest in the welfare of his country. When public affairs did not require his presence in Pretoria, Botha was with his family on his farm in Vryheid, and there he found the only happiness which he considered worth having. The joys of a pastoral existence combined with the devotion and love of his family were the keystone of Botha's happiness, and no man had a finer realisation of his ambitions in that respect than he. Botha was a warrior, no doubt, but primarily he was a man who loved the peacefulness of a farm, the pleasures of a happy home-life, and the laughter of his four children more than the tramp of victorious troops or the roar of cannon.

There are a few men who have a certain magnetic power which attracts and holds the admiration of others. Louis Botha was a man of this class. Strangers who saw him for the first time loved him. There was an indescribable something about him which caused men looking at him for the first time to pledge their friendship for all time. The light in his blue eyes seemed to mesmerise men, to draw them, willing or unwilling, to him. It was not the quality which gained friends for Kruger nor that which made Joubert popular, but rather a mysterious, involuntary influence which he exerted over everybody with whom he came in contact. A man less handsome, of less commanding appearance than Botha might have possessed such a power, and been considered less extraordinary than he, but it was not wholly his personal appearance—for he was the handsomest man in the Boer army—which aroused the admiration of men. His voice, his eyes, his facial expression and his manner—all combined to strengthen the man's power over others. It may have been personal magnetism or a mysterious charm which he possessed—but it was the mark of a great man.

The early part of Botha's career as a general was fraught with many difficulties, the majority of which could be traced to his lack of years. The Boer mind could not grasp the fact that a man of thirty-five years could be a military leader, and for a long time the Boers treated the young commander with a certain amount of contempt. The old takhaars laughed at him when he asked them to perform any duties, and called him a boy. They were unable to understand for a long time why they should act upon the advice or orders of a man many years younger than they themselves, and it was not until Botha had fought Colenso and Spion Kop that the old burghers commenced to realise that ability was not always monopolised by men with hoary beards. Before they had these manifestations of Botha's military genius hundreds of the burghers absolutely refused to obey his commands, and even went to the length of protesting to the Government against his continued tenure of the important post.

The younger Boers, however, were quicker to discern the worth of the man, and almost without exception gave him their united support. There was one instance when a young Boer questioned Botha's authority, but the burgher's mind was quickly disabused, and thereafter he was one of the Commandant-General's staunchest supporters. It was at the battle of Pont Drift, when General Botha was busily engaged in directing the movements of his men and had little time to argue fine points of authority. The general asked two young Boers to carry ammunition to the top of a kopje which was being hard-shelled by the enemy. One of the Boers was willing immediately to obey the general, but the other man refused to undertake the hazardous journey. The general spoke kindly to the Boer, and acknowledged that he would be risking his life by ascending the hill, but insisted that he should go. The Boer finally declared he would not go, and added that Botha was too young to give orders to men. The Commandant-General did not lose his temper, but it did not require much time for him to decide that a rebuke of some sort was necessary, so he knocked the man to the ground with his fist. It was a good, solid blow, and the young Boer did not move for a minute, but when he rose he had fully decided that he would gladly carry the ammunition to the top of the kopje.

After General Botha demonstrated that he was a capable military leader he became the idol of all the Boers. His popularity was second only to that of President Kruger, and the hero-worshippers arranged for all sorts of honours to be accorded to him after the war. He was to be made President, first of all things; then his birthday anniversary was to be made the occasion of a national holiday; statues were to be erected for him, and nothing was to be left undone in order that his services to his country might be given the appreciation they deserved. The stoical Boers were never known to worship a man so idolatrously as they did in this case, and it was all the more noteworthy on account of the adverse criticism which was bestowed upon him several months before.

General Botha's reputation as a gallant and efficient leader was gained during the campaign in Natal, but it was not until after the relief of Ladysmith that his real hard work began. After the advance of Lord Roberts's large army from Bloemfontein was begun myriads of new duties devolved upon the Commandant-General, and thereafter he displayed a skill and ingenuity in dealing with grave situations which was marvellous, when it is taken into consideration that he was opposing a victorious army with a mere handful of disappointed and gloomy burghers. The situation would have been grave enough if he had had a trained and disciplined army under his command, but in addition to making plans for opposing the enemy's advance, General Botha was compelled to gather together the burghers with whom he desired to make the resistance. His work would have been comparatively easy if he could have remained at the spot where his presence was most necessary, but it was absolutely impossible for him to lead the defensive movements in the Free State without men, and in order to secure them he was obliged to desert that important post and go to the Biggarsberg, where many burghers were idle. Telegraph wires stretched from the Free State to Natal, but a command sent by such a route never caused a burgher to move an inch nearer to the Free State front, and consequently the Commandant-General was compelled to go personally to the Biggarsberg in search of volunteers to assist the burghers south of Kroonstad. When General Botha arrived in Natal in the first days of May he asked the Standerton commando to return with him to the Free State. They flatly refused to go unless they were first allowed to spend a week at their homes, but Botha finally, after much begging, cajoling, and threatening, induced the burghers to go immediately. The Commandant-General saw the men board a train, and then sped joyously northward toward Pretoria and the Free State in a special train. When he reached Pretoria Botha learned that the Standerton commando followed him as far as Standerton station, and then dispersed to their homes. His dismay was great; but he was not discouraged, and several hours later he was at Standerton, riding from farm to farm to gather the men. This work delayed his arrival in the Free State two days, but he secured the entire commando, and went with it to the front, where it served him valiantly.

The masterly retreat of the Boer forces northward along the railway and across the Vaal River, and the many skirmishes and battles with which Botha harassed the enemy's advance, were mere incidents in the Commandant-General's work of those trying days. There were innumerable instances not unlike that in connection with the Standerton commando, and, in addition, there was the planning to prevent the large commandos in the western part of the Transvaal, and Meyer's large force in the south-eastern part, from being cut off from his own body of burghers. It was a period of grave moment and responsibilities, but Botha was the man for the occasion. Although the British succeeded in entering Pretoria, the capital of the country, the Boers lost little in prestige or men, and Botha and his burghers were as confident of the final success of their cause as they were when they crossed the Natal border seven months before. Even after all the successive defeats of his army, Commandant-General Botha continued to say, "We will fight—fight until not a single British soldier remains on South African soil." A general who can express such a firm faith in his cause when he sees nothing but disaster surrounding him is great even if he is not always victorious.

The military godfather of Commandant-General Botha was General Lucas Meyer, one of the best leaders in the Boer army. The work of the two men was cast in almost the same lines during the greater part of the campaign, and many of the Commandant-General's burdens were shared by his old-time tutor and neighbour in the Vryheid district. Botha seldom undertook a project unless he first consulted with Meyer, and the two constantly worked hand-in-hand. Their friends frequently referred to them as Damon and Pythias, and the parallel was most appropriate, for they were as nearly the counterparts of those old Grecian warriors as modern limitations would allow. Botha attained the post of Commandant-General through the illness of Meyer, who would undoubtedly have been Joubert's successor if he had not fallen ill at an important period of the campaign, but the fact that the pupil became the superior officer of the instructor never strained the amicable relations of the two men.

General Meyer received his fundamental military education from the famous Zulu chieftain, Dinizulu, in 1884, when he and eight hundred other Boers assisted the natives in a war against the chieftains of other tribes. In a battle at Labombo mountain, June 6th of that year, Meyer and Dinizulu vanquished the enemy, and as payment for their services the Boers each received a large farm in the district now known as Vryheid. A Government named the New Republic was organised by the farmers, and Meyer was elected President, a post which he held for four years, when the Transvaal annexed the republic to its own territory. In the war of 1881 Meyer took part in several battles, and at Ingogo he was struck on the head by a piece of shell, which caused him to be unconscious for forty-two days. In the later days of the republic General Meyer held various military and civil positions in the Vryheid district, where his large farm, "Anhouwen," is located, and was the chairman of the Volksraad which decided to send the ultimatum to Great Britain.

When war was actually declared, General Meyer, with his commandos, was on the Transvaal border near his farm, and he opened hostilities by making a bold dash into Natal and attacking the British army encamped at Dundee. The battle was carefully planned by Meyer, and it would undoubtedly have ended with the capture of the entire British force if General Erasmus, who was to co-operate with him, had fulfilled the part assigned to him. Although many British soldiers were killed and captured, and great stores of ammunition and equipment taken, the forces under General Yule were allowed to escape to the south. General Meyer followed the fleeing enemy as rapidly as the muddy roads could be traversed, and engaged them at Modderspruit. There he gained a decisive victory, and compelled the survivors to enter Ladysmith, where they were immediately besieged. Meyer was extremely ill before the battle began, but he insisted upon directing his men, and continued to do so until the field was won, when he fell from his horse, and was seriously ill for a month. He returned to the front, against the advice of his physicians, on December 24th, and took part in the fighting at Pont Drift, Boschrand, and in the thirteen days' battle around Pieter's Hill. In the battle of Pont Drift a bullet struck the General's field-glasses, flattened itself, and dropped into one of his coat pockets, to make a souvenir brooch for Mrs. Meyer, who frequently visited him when no important movements were in progress.

When General Joubert and his Krijgsraad determined to retreat from the Tugela and allow Ladysmith to be relieved, General Meyer was one of those who protested against such a course, and when the decision was made Meyer returned to the Tugela, and remained there with his friend Louis Botha during the long and heroic fight against General Buller's column. Meyer and Botha were among the last persons to leave the positions which they had defended so long, and on their journey northward the two generals decided to return and renew the fight as soon as they could reach Modderspruit and secure food for their men and horses. When they arrived at Modderspruit they found that Joubert and his entire army had fled northward, and had carried with them every ounce of food. It was a bitter disappointment to the two generals, but there was nothing to be done except to travel in the direction of the scent of food, and the journey led the dejected, disappointed, starved generals and burghers north over the Biggarsberg mountains, where provisions could be secured.

During the long period in March and April when neither Boers nor British seemed to be doing anything, General Meyer arranged a magnificent series of entrenchments in the Biggarsberg mountains which made an advance of the enemy practically impossible. Foreign military experts pronounced the defence impregnable and expressed the greatest astonishment when they learned that Meyer formulated the plans of the entrenchments without ever having read a book on the subject or without having had the benefit of any instruction. The entrenchments began at a point a few miles east of the British outposts and continued for miles and miles north-east and north-west to the very apex of the Biggarsberg. Spruits and rivers were connected by means of trenches so that a large Boer force could travel many miles without being observed by the enemy, and the series of entrenchments was fashioned in such a manner that the Boers could retreat to the highest point of the mountains and remain meanwhile in perfect concealment. Near the top of the mountain long schanzes or walls were built to offer a place of security for the burghers, while on the top were miles of walls to attract and to inveigle the enemy to approach the lower wall more closely. The plan was magnificent, but the British forces evaded the Biggarsberg in their advance movements, and the entrenchments were never bathed in human blood.



When the Boers in the Free State were unable to stem the advance of the British, General Meyer was compelled to retreat northward to ensure his own safety, but he did it so slowly and systematically that he lost only a few men and was able, now and then, to make bold dashes at the enemy's flying columns with remarkable success. The retreat northward through the Transvaal was fraught with many harassments, but General Meyer joined forces with General Botha east of Pretoria and thereafter the teacher and pupil again fought hand in hand in a common cause.

The Free State was not as prolific of generals as the Transvaal, but in Christian De Wet she had one of the ablest as well as one of the most fearless leaders in the Republican ranks. Before he was enlisted to fight for his country De Wet was a farmer, who had a penchant for dealing in potatoes, and his only military training was secured when he was one of the sixty Boer volunteers who ascended the slopes of Majuba Hill in 1881. There was nothing of the military in his appearance; in fact, Christian De Wet, Commandant-General of the Orange Free State in 1900, was not a whit unlike Christian De Wet, butcher of Barberton of 1879, and men who knew him in the gold-rush days of that mining town declared that he was more martial in appearance then as a licensed slayer of oxen than later as a licensed slayer of men. He himself prided himself on his unmilitary exterior, and it was not a little source of satisfaction to him to say that his fighting regalia was the same suit of clothing which he wore on his farm on the day that he left it to fight as a soldier in his country's army.

Before the war, De Wet's chief claim to notoriety lay in the fact that he attempted to purchase the entire supply of potatoes in South Africa for the purpose of effecting a "corner" of that product on the Johannesburg market. Unfortunately for himself, he held his potatoes until the new crop was harvested, and he became a bankrupt in consequence. Later he appeared as a potato farmer near Kroonstad, and still later, at Nicholson's Nek in Natal, he captured twelve hundred British prisoners and, incidentally, a large stock of British potatoes, which seemed to please him almost as greatly as the human captives. Although the vegetable strain was frequently predominant in De Wet's constitution, he was not over-zealous to return to his former pastoral pursuits, and continued to lead his commandos over the hills of the eastern Free State long after that territory was christened the Orange River Colony.



General De Wet was at the head of a number of the Free State commandos which crossed into Natal at the outbreak of the war, and he took part in several of the battles around Ladysmith; but his services were soon required in the vicinity of Kimberley, and there he made an heroic effort to effect a junction with the besieged Cronje. It was not until after the British occupation of Bloemfontein that De Wet really began his brilliant career as a daring commander, but thereafter he was continually harassing the enemy. He led with three big battles in one week, with a total result of a thousand prisoners of war, seven cannon, and almost half a million pounds' worth of supplies. At Sannaspost, on March 31st, he swept down upon Colonel Broadwood's column and captured one-fourth of the men and all their vast supplies almost before the British officer was aware of the presence of the enemy. The echoes of that battle had hardly subsided when he fell upon another British column at Moester's Hoek with results almost as great as at Sannaspost, and two days later he was besieging a third British column in his own native heath of Wepener. Column after column was sent to drive him away, but he clung fast to his prey for almost two weeks, when he eluded the great force on his capture bent, and moved northward to take an active part in opposing the advance of Lord Roberts. He led his small force of burghers as far as the northern border of the Free State, while the enemy advanced, and then turned eastward, carrying President Steyn and the capital of the Republic with him to places of safety. Whenever there was an opportunity he sent small detachments to attack the British lines of communications and harassed the enemy continually. In almost all his operations the Commandant-General was assisted by his brother, General Peter De Wet, who was none the less daring in his operations. Christian De Wet was responsible for more British losses than any of the other generals. In his operations in Natal and the Free State he captured more than three thousand prisoners, thousands of cattle and horses, and stores and ammunition valued at more than a million pounds. The number of British soldiers killed and wounded in battles with De Wet is a matter for conjecture, but it is not limited by the one thousand mark.



General John De la Rey, who operated in the Free State with considerable success, was one of the most enthusiastic leaders in the army, and his confidence in the Boers' fighting ability was not less than his faith in the eventual success of their arms. De la Rey was born on British soil, but he had a supreme contempt for the British soldier, and frequently asserted that one burgher was able to defeat ten soldiers at any time or place. He was the only one of the generals who was unable to speak the English language, but he understood it well enough to capture a spy whom he overheard in a Free State hotel. De la Rey was a Transvaal general, and when the retreat from Bloemfontein was made he harassed the enemy greatly, but was finally compelled to cross the Vaal into his own country, where he continued to fight under Commandant-General Botha.

Among the other Boer generals who took active part in the campaign in other parts of the Republics were J. Du P. De Beer, a Raad member, who defended the northern border of the Transvaal; Sarel Du Toit, whose defence at Fourteen Streams was admirably conducted; Snyman, the old Marico farmer, who besieged Mafeking; Hendrik Schoeman, who operated in Cape Colony; Jan Kock, killed at the Elandslaagte battle early in the campaign; and the three generals, Lemmer, Grobler, and Olivier, whose greatest success was their retreat from Cape Colony.

The Boer generals and officers, almost without exception, were admirable men, personally. Some of them were rough, hardy men, who would have felt ill at ease in a drawing-room, but they had much of the milk of human kindness in them, and there was none who loved to see or partake of bloodshed. There may have been instances when white or Red Cross flags were fired upon, but when such a breach of the rules of war occurred it was not intentional. The foreigners who accompanied the various Boer armies—the correspondents, military attaches, and the volunteers—will testify that the officers, from Commandant-General Botha down to the corporals, were always zealous in their endeavours to conduct an honourable warfare, and that the farmer-generals were as gentlemanly as they were valorous.



CHAPTER VIII

THE WAR PRESIDENTS

The real leader of the Boers of the two Republics was Paul Kruger, their man of peace. His opinions on the momentous questions that agitated the country and his long political supremacy caused him many and bitter enemies, but the war healed all animosities and he was the one man in the Republics who had the respect, love, and admiration of all the burghers. Wherever one might be, whether in the houses on the veld or in the battlefield's trenches, every one spoke of "Oom Paul" in a manner which indicated that he was the Boer of all Boers. There was not one burgher who would not declare that Kruger was a greater man than he was before he despatched his famous ultimatum to Great Britain. His old-time friends supported him even more faithfully than before hostilities began, and his political energies of other days became the might of his right arm. Those who opposed him most bitterly and unremittingly when it was a campaign between the Progressive and Conservative parties were most eager to listen to his counsels and to stand by his side when their country's hour of darkness had arrived. Not a word of censure for him was heard anywhere; on the contrary, every one praised him for opposing Great Britain so firmly, and prayed that his life might be spared until their dream of absolute independence was realised.

Sir Charles Dilke once related a conversation he had with Bismarck concerning Paul Kruger. "Cavour was much smarter, more clever, more diplomatically gifted than I," said the Prince, "but there is a much stronger, much abler man than Cavour or I, and that man is President Kruger. He has no gigantic army behind him, no great empire to support him. He stands alone with a small peasant people, and is a match for us by mere force of genius. I spoke to him—he drove me into a corner." Kruger's great ability, as delineated by Bismarck, was indisputable, and a man with less of it might have been President and might have avoided the war, but only at a loss to national interests. The President had one aim and one goal, his country's independence, and all the force of his genius was directed toward the attainment of that end. He tried to secure his country's total independence by peaceable means, but he had planted the seed of that desire so deeply in the minds of his countrymen that when it sprouted they overwhelmed him and he was driven into war against his will. Kruger would not have displaced diplomacy with the sword, but his burghers felt that peaceful methods of securing their independence were of no avail, and he was powerless to resist their wishes. He did not lead the Boers into war; they insisted that only war would give to them the relief they desired, and he followed under their leadership. When the meetings of the Volksraad immediately preceding the war were held, it was not Paul Kruger who called for war; it was the representatives of the burghers, who had been instructed by their constituents to act in such a manner. When the President saw that his people had determined to have war, he was leader enough to make plans which might bring the conflict to a successful conclusion, and he chose a moment for making a declaration that he considered opportune. The ultimatum was decided upon eleven days before it was actually despatched, but it was delayed eight days on account of the Free State's unpreparedness. Kruger realised the importance of striking the first blow at an enemy which was not prepared to resist it, and the Free State's tardiness at such a grave crisis was decidedly unpleasant to him. Then, when the Free State was ready to mobilise, the President secured another delay of three days in order that diplomacy might have one more chance. His genius had not enabled him to realise the dream of his life without a recourse to war, and when the ultimatum was delivered into the hands of the British the old man wept.



When the multitudinous executive duties to which he attended in peaceful times were suddenly ended by the declaration, the President busied himself with matters pertaining to the conduct of the war. He worked as hard as any man in the country, despite his age, and on many occasions he displayed the energy of a man many years younger. The war caused his daily routine of work and rest to be changed completely. He continued to rise at four o'clock in the morning, a habit which he contracted in early youth and followed ever after. After his morning devotions he listened to the reading of the despatches from the generals at the front, and dictated replies in the shape of suggestions, censure, or praise. He slept for an hour after breakfast, and then went to the Government Buildings, arriving there punctually every morning as the clock on the dome struck nine. He remained in consultation with the other members of the Executive Council and the few Government officials, who had remained in the city, for an hour or more. After luncheon he again worked over despatches, received burghers on leave of absence from the front and foreigners who sympathised with his people's cause. He never allowed himself to be idle, and, in fact, there was no opportunity for him to be unemployed, inasmuch as almost all the leading Government officials were at the front, while many of their duties remained behind to be attended to by some one. Kruger himself supervised the work of all the departments whose heads were absent, and the labour was great. His capacity for hard labour was never better demonstrated than during the war, when he bore the weight of his own duties and those of other Government officials, as well as the work of guiding the Boer emissaries in foreign countries. Added to all these grave responsibilities, when the reverses of the army grew more serious, was the great worry and the constant dread of new disasters which beset a man who occupies a position such as he occupied.

No man had greater influence over the Boers than Kruger, and his counsel was always sought and his advice generally followed. When the first commandos went to the front it was considered almost absolutely necessary for them to stop at Pretoria and see "Oom Paul" before going to battle, and it seemed to affect the old man strangely when he addressed them and bade them God-speed in the accomplishment of their task. It was in the midst of one of these addresses that the President, while standing in the centre of a group of burghers, broke down and wept as he referred to the many men who would lose their lives in the war. When the Boer army was having its greatest successes Kruger constantly sent messages to his burghers, thanking them for their good work, and reminding them not to neglect thanking their God for His favours. One of the most characteristic messages of this nature was sent to the generals, commandants, officers, and burghers on January 8th, and was a most unique ebullition to come from a President of a Republic. The message was composed by himself, and, as literally translated, read:—

"For your own and the war-officers' information, I wish to state that, through the blessing of our Lord, our great cause has at present been carried to such a point that, by dint of great energy, we may expect to bring it to a successful issue on our behalf.

"In order that such an end be attained, it is, however, strictly necessary that all energy be used, that all burghers able to do active service go forward to the battlefield, and that those who are on furlough claim no undue extension thereof, but return as soon as possible, every one to the place where his war-officers may be stationed.

"Brothers! I pray you to act herein with all possible promptitude and zeal, and to keep your eyes fixed on that Providence who has miraculously led our people through the whole of South Africa. Read Psalm 33, from verse 7 to the end.

"The enemy have fixed their faith in Psalm 83, where it is said that this people shall not exist and its name must be annihilated; but the Lord says: 'It shall exist' Read also Psalm 89, the 13th and 14th verses, where the Lord saith that the children of Christ, if they depart from His words, shall be chastised with bitter reverses, but His favour and goodness shall have no end and never fail. What He has said remains strong and firm. For, see, the Lord purifieth His children, even unto gold, proven by fire.

"I need not draw your attention to all the destructiveness of the enemy's works, for you know it, and I again point to the attack of the Devil on Christ and His Church. This has been the attack from the beginning, and God will not countenance the destruction of His Church. You know that our cause is a just one, and there cannot be any doubt, for it is with the contents of just this Psalm that they commenced with us in their wickedness, and I am still searching the entire Bible, and find no other way which can be followed than that which has been followed by us, and we must continue to fight in the name of the Lord.

"Please notify all the officers of war and the entire public of your district of the contents of this telegram, and imbue them with a full earnestness of the cause."

When the President learned that Commandant-General Joubert had determined to retreat from the neighbourhood of Ladysmith he sent a long telegram to his old friend, imploring him not to take such a step, and entreating him to retain his forces at the Tugela. The old General led his forces northward to Glencoe, notwithstanding the President's protest, and a day afterward Kruger arrived on the scene. The President was warrior enough to know that a great mistake had been made, and he did not hesitate to show his displeasure. He and Joubert had had many disagreements in their long experiences with one another, but those who were present in the General's tent at that Glencoe interview said that they had never seen the President so angry. When he had finished giving his opinion of the General's action the President shook Joubert's hand, and thereafter they discussed matters calmly and as if there had been no quarrel. To the other men who were partly responsible for the retreat he showed his resentment of their actions by declining to shake hands with them, a method of showing disapprobation that is most cutting to the Boers.

"If I were five years younger, or if my eyesight were better," he growled at the recalcitrants, "I would take a rifle and bandolier and show you what we old Boers were accustomed to do. We had courage; you seem to have none."

After the President had encouraged the officers, and had secured their promises to continue the resistance against their enemy he wandered about in the laagers, shaking hands with and infusing new spirit into the burghers who had flocked together to see their revered leader. When several thousand of the Boers had gathered around him and were trying to have a word with him the President bared his head and asked his friends to join him in prayer. Instantly every head was bared, and Kruger's voice spread out over the vast concourse in a grand appeal to the God of Battles to grant His blessing to the burgher army. The grey-haired old man was conspicuous in a small circle which was formed by the burghers withdrawing several paces when he began the prayer. On all sides there spread out a mass of black-garbed, battle-begrimed Boers with eyes turned to the ground. Here and there a white tent raised its head above the assemblage; at other points men stood on waggons and cannon. Farther on, burghers dismounted from their horses and joined the crowd. In the distance were Talana Hill, where the first battle of the campaign was fought; the lofty Drakensberg where more than fifty years before the early Boer Voortrekkers had their first glimpses of fair Natal, while to the south were the hills of Ladysmith of sombre history. There in the midst of bloody battlefields, and among several thousand men who sought the blood of the enemy, Kruger, the man of peace, implored Almighty God to give strength to his burghers. It was a magnificent spectacle.

He had been at Glencoe only a short time when the news reached him that the burghers in the Free State had lost their courage, and were retreating rapidly towards Bloemfontein. He abbreviated his visit, hastened to the Free State, and met the fleeing Boers at Poplar Grove. He exhorted them to make a stand against the enemy, and, by his magnetic power over them, succeeded in inducing the majority to remain and oppose the British advance. His own fearlessness encouraged them, and when they saw their old leader standing in the midst of shell fire as immobile as if he were watching a holiday parade, they had not the heart to run. While he was watching the battle a shell fell within a short distance of where he stood, and all his companions fled from the spot. He walked slowly away, and when the men returned to him he chided them, and made a witty remark concerning the shell, naming it one of "the Queen's pills." While the battle continued, Kruger followed one of the commandos and urged the men to fight. At one stage of the battle the commando which he was following was in imminent danger of being cut off and captured by the British forces, but the burghers fought valiantly before their President, and finally conveyed him to a place of safety, although the path was shell and bullet swept.

He returned to Bloemfontein, and in conjunction with President Steyn, addressed an appeal to Lord Salisbury to end the war. They asked that the republics should be allowed to retain their independence, and firmly believed that the appeal would end hostilities, inasmuch as the honours of war were then about equally divided between the two armies. To those who watched the proceedings it seemed ridiculous to ask for a cessation of hostilities at that time, but Kruger sincerely believed that his appeal would not be in vain, and he was greatly surprised, but not discomfited, when a distinct refusal was received in reply.

Several weeks after the memorable trip to the Free State, President Kruger made another journey to the sister-republic, and met President Steyn and all the Boer generals at the famous Krijgsraad at Kroonstad. No one who heard the President when he addressed the burghers who gathered there to see him, will ever forget the intensity of Kruger's patriotism. Kroonstad, then the temporary capital of the Free State, was not favoured with any large public hall where a meeting might be held, so a small butcher's stand in the market-square was chosen for the site of the meeting. After President Steyn, Commandant-General Joubert, and several other leading Boers had addressed the large crowd of burghers standing in the rain outside the tradesman's pavilion, Kruger stepped on one of the long tables, and exhorted the burghers to renewed efforts, to fight for freedom and not to be disconsolate because Bloemfontein had fallen into the hands of the enemy. When the President concluded his address the burghers raised a great cheer, and then returned to their laagers with their minds filled with a new spirit, and with renewed determination to oppose the enemy—a determination which displayed itself later in the fighting at Sannaspost, Moester's Hoek, and Wepener. Kruger found the burghers in the Free State in the depths of despair; when he departed they were as confident of ultimate victory as they were on the day war was begun. The old man had the faculty of leading men as it is rarely found. In times of peace he led men by force of argument as much as by reason of personal magnetism. In war-time he led men by mere words sent over telegraph wires, by his presence at the front, and by his display of manly dignity, firm resolution and devotion to his country. He was like the kings and rulers of ancient times, who led their cohorts into battle, and wielded the sword when there was a necessity for such action.

During the war President Kruger suffered many disappointments, endured many griefs, and withstood many trials and tribulations; but none affected him so deeply as the death of his intimate friend, Commandant-General Joubert. Kruger and Joubert were the two leading men of the country for many years. They were among those who assisted in the settlement of the Transvaal and in the many wars which were coincident with it. They had indelibly inscribed their names on the scroll of the South African history of a half-century, and in doing so they had become as intimate as two brothers. For more than two score years Kruger had been considered the Boers' leader in peaceful times, while Joubert was the Boers' warrior. The ambition of both was the independence of their country, and, while they differed radically on the methods by which it was to be attained, neither surpassed the other in strenuous efforts to secure it without a recourse to war. The death of Joubert was as saddening to Kruger, consequently, as the Demise of his most dearly-beloved brother could have been, and in the funeral-oration which the President delivered over the bier of the General, he expressed that sense of sorrow most aptly. This oration, delivered upon an occasion when the country was mourning the death of a revered leader and struggling under the weight of recent defeats, was one of the most remarkable utterances ever made by a man at the head of a nation.

"Brothers, sisters, burghers, and friends," he began,—"Only a few words can I say to you to-day, for the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. We have lost our brother, our friend, our Commandant-General. I have lost my right hand, not of yesterday, but my right hand since we were boys together, many long years ago. To-night I alone seem to have been spared of the old people of our cherished land, of the men who lived and struggled together for our country. He has gone to heaven whilst fighting for liberty, which God has told us to defend; for the freedom for which he and I have struggled together for so many years, and so often, to maintain. Brothers, what shall I say to you in this our greatest day of sorrow, in this hour of national gloom? The struggle we are engaged in is for the principles of justice and righteousness, which our Lord Has taught us is the broad road to heaven and blessedness. It is our sacred duty to keep on that path, if we desire a happy ending. Our dear dead brother has gone on that road to his eternal life. What can I say of his personality? It is only a few short weeks ago that I saw him at the fighting front, humbly and modestly taking his share of the privations and the rough work of the campaign like the poorest burgher, a true general, a true Christian—an example to his people. And he spoke to me then and even more recently; and, let me tell you, that the days are dark. We are suffering reverses on account of wickedness rampant in our land. No success will come, no blessings be given to our great cause unless you remove the bad elements from among us; and then you may look forward to attaining the crowning point, the reward of righteousness and noble demeanour. We have in our distinguished departed brother an example. Chosen, as he was, by the nation, time after time, to his honourable position, he had their trust to such an extent that everything was left in his hands; and he did his work well. He died, as he has lived, in the path of duty and honour. Let the world rage around us, let the enemy decry us, I say, Follow his example. The Lord will stand by you against the ruthless hand of the foe, and at the moment when He deems it right for interference peace will come once more. Why is the sympathy of the whole world with us in this struggle for freedom? Why are the strangers pouring in from Europe to assist to the maintenance of our beloved flag, to aid us in the just defence of our independence? Is it not God's hand? I feel it in my heart. I declare to you again, the end of our struggle will be satisfactory. Our small nation exists by the aid of the Almighty, and will continue to do so. The prophets say the closed books shall be opened, the dead shall arise, darkness be turned into light; nothing be concealed. Every one will face God's judgment throne. You will listen to His voice, and your eyes shall be open for the truth of everything. Think of the costly lives given by us for our cause, and you will rally to the fight for justice to the end. Brothers, to the deeply bereaved widow of our Commandant-General, to his family, to you all, I say trust more than ever in the Almighty; go to Him for condolence; think and be trustful in the thought that our brother's body has gone from amongst us to rise again in a beautiful and eternal home. Let us follow his example. Weep not, the Lord will support you; the hour of all our relief is near; and let us pray that we may enter heaven, and be guided to eternity in the same way as he whom we mourn so deeply. Amen."