South Africa and the Boer-British War Part 27

The object was to overrun South Africa, raising the Dutch in revolt, and driving all foes seaward, before the slender British garrisons could be reinforced from England. Thus the war began with surprises on both sides, for the outposts of the English met the onslaught of the Boer columns whose movements were extraordinarily rapid as they were nearly all mounted men, with a hearty appet.i.te for coming to blows.

The flood of Boer riflemen on horseback well supplied with artillery, largely living on the country that was to have swept the British into the towns by the sea to meet their incoming transports, was soon arrested. The centers of the cyclones of war were quickly defined.

The British were astonished to meet in the Boer armies evidences of well studied campaigning, thorough armament and generals.h.i.+p in the leaders, and in finding that what was understood to be irregular forces in thin lines of skirmishers were ma.s.ses of an army of 50,000 men. The British were still more thoroughly surprised on finding themselves hard pressed, than the Boers were that the momentum of the advance of the sweeping successes of which they had such broad expectations, had been suddenly stayed.

[Sidenote: Important Decisions to Be made]

If there had been no political considerations with respect to people of whose tendencies there were doubts to control the action of the British at the beginning of the war their military position would have been much bettered by yielding more ground in Natal, abandoning the positions that the Boers were abundantly able to surround and that were certain to need relief in a few weeks, a condition that would force the British armies to hasten advances on dangerous lines. The scenes of the first chapter of the war had been located by the establishment of a.r.s.enals and encampments that must be strenuously defended, if not destroyed, with losses irreparable for many days. The gravest consideration in the first weeks of the war were as to the choice between the better military and political positions. Naturally there was something of both given weight in the selections made. Rather than abandon additional Natal territory the British accepted the conditions in the midst of which they have repeatedly suffered severely, and their columns have been driven to accept the contingencies of extra hazardous operations and relief expeditions driven under the strain of perilous emergency. The British, as well as the Boers and Orange State armies underestimated the work they cut out for themselves. The mutual wonder has been that there was such hot work on both sides.

[Sidenote: Early Days of the War]

During the first weeks of the war the British were busy in securing transports and getting troops and supplies for the voyage of a month, and the news of the pa.s.sing days was of the scenes of parting at the ports whence the regiments ordered to join the African army of the British, sailed; and next was the announcement of the arrivals of the famous organizations at the ports to which they had been ordered,--speculations as to the time required to put in motion the several columns for the relief of the besieged garrisons, and the meantime the gallantry of the beleaguered British and their style of defending themselves with das.h.i.+ng sorties deeply moved the public, and gave edge and points to attention. The encounters at this time were decidedly educational. The combatants were taught to respect each other. Innumerable war incidents gave zest to the reading of the current literature in which the journals paraded the names of the troop s.h.i.+ps, the number of men with rifles, the names of the officers, speculations as to the days and hours the vessels would require to reach the seat of war, the places where the troops could be put ash.o.r.e to the greatest advantage, the roads they must follow to the front.

[Sidenote: Public Opinion]

This was a period of confidence on the part of the British, mitigated only by occasional furtive suggestions of misgiving. It was almost universally held throughout the British Empire that the divisions on the way would be equal to the demands upon them. The arrival of Sir Redvers Buller to take supreme command was to be a signal for the display of imperial power--the auspicious beginning of the speedy end.

It was reasonable that spectators not jealous of the British, and inclined to some form of hatefulness towards them, should accept the information and conclusions of the intelligence of the people of the dominant British Island. The general judgment of the world outside the British Empire--excepting the specialists in detailed knowledge who had made close studies of the s.h.i.+fting situation with growing apprehension of its seriousness, political as well as military--was that the war was to be charged to the account of the land greed of Englishmen, and their persecution of the religious and Republican Boers instead of to the fact that the Transvaal Republicans made up one barbary state, and the alleged Orange Free State another, in a lesser degree wanting in civility, and that these allies were resolute and aggressive in their determination to enslave both the original occupants of the soil and those who had within a few years developed its exceedingly great riches, and the worth to the world of the astounding revelation of the most precious stones and metals.

When we form the intimate acquaintance of the facts we find the friction between the strangely mixed races of the Transvaal was not caused by British expansionists, or occasioned by British aggression, but by the stolid abominable ambition of the Boer race--the same for whom Great Britain had broken the Zulu power in a war that was most expensive in blood and money. The trouble in Africa did not grow from the anxiety of the British for extensions of territory or of privileges. The Boers held all others to be according to the Gospel their inferiors, and the protestation of the British Government that there should be for the sake of peace a very moderate reform amounting to the insertion of an admixture of justice, according to all testimony denied disdainfully, in the administration of the laws, customs and habits of the caste of burghers.

[Sidenote: Two Popular Illusions]

The world so far as it has admitted daylight to aid the inspection of South African affairs has parted with two illusions: First, that the English made the war, second, that they were ready for it, and menaced the liberties of South African peoples when they landed two regiments of regular troops at Durban. It is demonstrated the Boers were the war makers and ready for war, holding the British in contempt for peaceableness under the buffetings to which they had submitted, and for their reluctance to take up arms to defend themselves. It was the Boers who declared war and were first in the field. They had a fixed policy for a.s.serting themselves with increasing energy and ferocity, and they opened the grim game of war in logical accordance with their proceedings ever since England was so magnanimous after Majuba Hill.

Their astonishment as to the misapprehensions manifest in the course of warfare thus far, is as great as that of the English at their miscalculations that would seem humorous if they were not most grave.

CHAPTER VI

The First Bloodshed

[Sidenote: The First Battle of the War]

The first battle of the war was fought October 20th, eleven days after the ultimatum of the South African Republic. General White was at Ladysmith, where there was a large acc.u.mulation of stores, and General Symons at Dundee and Glencoe Junction. A Boer force under Lucas Meyers were in position on Talana Hill. General Symons attacked them. He was mortally wounded, 10 officers and 33 men killed and 200 wounded, but the Hill was carried, and though there has been much disputation as to the possession of the ground immediately after the conflict, and the comparative lists of casualties, British pride in the courage of their troops was justified, and the Boers realized they were confronted by soldiers who would not be satisfied for a day to act strictly on the defensive. The outlying position of General Symons was perhaps not worth the sacrifice of so many men to storm a hill that could not be held at the utmost more than a few days. It was necessary for the British to retire from the field of their dearly bought victory, and General Symons died in the hands of his enemies, while the wounded soldiers who could not be removed were captured. It is creditable to the Boers that they treated the dying General and the mangled men, with respect and kindness.

[Sidenote: Battle of Elandslaagte]

On the 21st of October, the day after the fight at Glencoe--Symon's fight--General French, second in command at Ladysmith, defeated the Boers, many from the Orange State, at Elandslaagte, a few miles north of Ladysmith. The losses were heavy, and a retreat from Glencoe, which was soon found to be inevitable, was made comparatively easy. The English forces that fought at Glencoe and Elandslaagte, united October 26th with the garrison at Ladysmith, and a week later were surrounded by a largely superior force under General Joubert, the better known of the Boer officers, whose movements were slowed down by the hard fighting he had found it necessary to do. It was the unity of the detachments that gained, in severe encounters, the first successes of the British, that justified the bloodshed where Generals Symons and French were conspicuously heroic. The garrison of Ladysmith was strengthened by the naval brigade that got in during the sortie of the 30th of October, and manned the guns of long range transported by railroad from the British cruiser, the "Powerful," which was at Durban.

Lieutenant Edgerton, of that cruiser, at first handled the guns, and wounded by a sh.e.l.l died after a few days.

[Sidenote: Hard Work on Both Sides]

The hard work the Boers had to do in the first days of their appearance before completing the investment of Ladysmith, obstructed their plan of campaign, which was to beat back the British at all points in Natal and lock them up in Durban and Pietermaritzburg. The storm centers in the latest days of October, after three weeks of war, were Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking; and the mobile ma.s.ses of the Boers were held in check as the transports loaded with soldiers from England drew nigh.

But the British were not the men to defend themselves in trenches only.

They were too fond of going out to find and develop their enemies, and had to pay dearly repeatedly for the spirit of adventure with which they made themselves acquainted with the country occupied by those who knew it well.

[Sidenote: General Buller Arrives]

News that was distressing reached England from the seat of war on the last day of October. A squadron of the 18th Hussars was "cut off" and taken prisoners when in pursuit of apparently fugitive Boers. This was near Dundee. There was a sortie from Ladysmith under Colonel Carlton, who was also "cut off" and forced to surrender. He had been sent out in the night to "flank the enemy," a phrase of wide construction, and a broad road leading to destruction, unless one is certain of the location of the flanks and the main body too, of the enemy. On this occasion there was a stampede of mules with "practically the whole of the gun equipment, and the greater part of the small arm ammunition."

This affair is known as the disaster of Nicholson's Nek. These 870 officers and men, after fighting nearly an entire day and exhausting ammunition, were surrendered, and their presence in Pretoria attested a great victory by the Boers, and increased Afrikander expectations and enthusiasm. The organizations involved were four and a half companies of the Gloucesters, six companies of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, and the 10th Mountain Battery. The British successes at Glencoe and Elandslaagte were due to the excellence of the soldiers and the devotion of the officers. The successes of the Boers that speedily followed were results of what the London _Times_ calls "the humiliating truth--that in that difficult country of kopjes, our enemy more numerous, better informed and immeasurably more mobile, is able to act more swiftly than our forces in isolated attacks, as he is habitually able to choose better positions to defend."

General Buller arrived at Cape Town on the day of the Dundee disaster October 31st, and his conception of his first duty was the relief of Ladysmith. For that and collateral purposes there were three columns prepared for the advance. About 16,000 men were sent to Durban, where General Cleary soon had two whole divisions. General Gatacre was sent to Queenstown November 18th, to check a Free State incursion threatening Cape Colony, and Lord Methuen with the Guards and a Brigade of the line, and the Highland Brigade, moved on the way direct for Kimberley. It does not take scientific attainment in looking upon a map of the country to understand that the advantages of the position were remarkably with the Boers, and no one had any reason for surprise that all the British relief columns had "serious reverses."

[Sidenote: The Strategy of the Boers]

An English correspondent, evidently a trained observer, says of the strategy of the Boers: "Their plan has been simplicity itself.

Establish a laager in a convenient position, detach a sufficient force to hold and strengthen a kopje, and await a British attack coming from a given direction. If the attack succeeds the detachment falls back on the main laager, and the game is repeated. Such are the tactics of the Boers. Their acquaintance with lyddite sh.e.l.l is said to have induced them to place less confidence in the rocky crests of the kopjes and to resort to trenches on lower ground, but the principle remains the same.

So long as the campaign is waged in a country that provides an interminable series of defensible positions which are attacked in the way the Boers most ardently desire, while our troops are tethered to a railway, the game must apparently continue to be in the hands of the enemy."

[Sidenote: Confronted by Clouds and Darkness]

Sir Redvers Buller found clouds and darkness when he landed at Cape Town a week before his birthday, having made up his own staff irrespective of all suggestion of favoritism, and accepted all the responsibilities. There was before him the two Boer States, whose Presidents, and sympathizers in Natal, Cape Town and throughout Southern Africa, caused by the uncertainties of the British policy for many years, had made hopeful the schemes for the foundation of an Afrikander Nation. This would mean that all South Africa should be subjected to the mastery of the Boers, whose specific and especial policy would be to drive out Englishmen with all their capital, influences and improvements. The meaning of a great Boer nation could not fail to be a confederacy of inferior civilization, and to end the grand work the British have carried on, brightening the Dark Continent from the days of Moffat and Livingstone to those of Stanley and Rhodes.

Sir Redvers Buller found the Afrikander movement held in suspense by the Mafeking, Ladysmith and Kimberley defenders, who were fighting fiercely to stand their ground until the relief columns could be gathered, formed, put in motion and strike. On all sides there were embarra.s.sments of the gravest nature for the English.

[Sidenote: Difficulties in Mobilizing the Troops]

The public at large were occupied considerably in counting the number of soldiers that had sailed from England, computing the speed of the s.h.i.+ps and fixing the dates of their arrival at the ports for which they were destined, and the concern was not great as to the mobility of the troops, the confinement of the columns to railroad lines easily interrupted, and the immense impediment in the indispensable stores heaped at the points of debarkation, as in our attack upon the Spaniards in Cuba we were overwhelmed at the point of embarkation. The army with which the British Commander-in-Chief moved in the direction of Ladysmith was about the same size as that under Major-General Shafter that scrambled aboard s.h.i.+p at Tampa and landed at Santiago.

As Sir Redvers Buller marched to attempt the pa.s.sage of the Tugela River, he had to encounter the discouragements of the b.l.o.o.d.y repulses of both columns co-operating with him, and especially the depressing experience of Lord Methuen on the Modder River; and he had also at last to report as the others had done, a "serious reverse."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A NATIVE DISPATCH CARRIER OVERTAKEN BY THE BOERS]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL LORD METHUEN, British Commander, Battle of Modder River. GENERAL SIR GEORGE WHITE, V.C., Commander British Forces, Battle of Ladysmith.]

[Sidenote: The Boers Selected Their Time Judiciously]

There is to be remarked a strong family likeness in all the combats unfortunate for the British--the desperate storming of fortified hills, the half blind flank movements, seemingly seeking to get into ambuscades--the columns by companies charging into zones of rifle fire, Mausers in the hands of marksmen; the vain hammering with artillery not all of the latest pattern and longest range--the certain, fatal, frontal advance, because there was no other way, as the ground lay, for the work required to be done; and there were, more than all, rivers booming between rugged banks, rocks serving the Boers for shelter and rests for their rifles, and a perfect exposure of the ma.s.ses of the British to the searching fire of the expert riflemen. The Boers had selected their time for beginning the war, and judiciously placed it when the open country was green with gra.s.s for their ponies, and their forces were wafted about almost as swiftly as the winds,--while the British were fettered to lines of rails readily obstructed, and repeated misfortunes taught the limits of usefulness of armored trains, perils from the mad panic of green drivers with greener mules; the fact slowly learned by old soldiers that the rifles in hand often outranged the artillery, the next to impossible fording of rivers in the face of rifle fire, making the attempts an invitation to slaughter, no matter what the merits of the troops even if the best the world ever saw; and all the while the pressure of the bitter necessity of groping gallantly along the gloomy paths that, as we read in Gray's Elegy, "lead but to the grave," though they s.h.i.+ne with glory.

CHAPTER VII

The Magersfontein Battle.

[Sidenote: Heavy Losses on Both Sides]

Lord Methuen moved from the Orange River, November 23d. The objective point of his undertaking was the relief of Kimberley, the city of diamond mines. He had at the start a success that was described in glowing terms. Though the result has appeared in the study of the course of the combat, which gave him so much distinction, and caused an amount of applause that was at least disproportionate to that which was accomplished, was that the British lost 225 men, killed and wounded--a casualty list that would have meant a b.l.o.o.d.y skirmish in a war of very considerable proportions. The fighting was fierce on both sides, and heavy losses were considered matters of course. Napoleon's observation that one had to break eggs to make an omelette was much quoted as the correct philosophy of warfare.

The second stroke by his Lords.h.i.+p, in the course of this campaign, was at Graspan, and the sobering effect of it, though the claim of the British was that they had won a victory, did not pa.s.s away upon reading this telegram, dated at Cape Town, December 15th, giving mature information: "A visit to Simons Town hospital confirms the reports of the extraordinary gallantry of the marines at Graspan. They have 92 casualties out of a total of 183 in the fight. Many have three wounds and some four. Sixty per cent. of the officers and sargeants were hit." All the officers of the naval detachment but two were wounded.

The correspondents wrote that they were on the way to Kimberley "fighting invisible foes," but moving on slowly and surely. It was plain that though the foe was invisible, they made themselves felt.

The number of Boers in action at Graspan was estimated at 3,000, and by the time the slow movement reached Modder River the force of Boers was believed to be 8,000, showing the mobility of the fighters against the relief of Kimberley. They hastened from place to place and knew how and where to concentrate to be of efficiency in obstructing the British advance. The following week the numbers of the Boers at Magersfontein was believed to be possibly 16,000.

[Sidenote: The Hottest Fight of the British Army]

The British General described the fight of November 28th as one of the hottest and most trying in the annals of the British Army. He was careful not to claim a decisive victory, and his moderate language was the more impressive for the absence of rea.s.suring a.s.sertion overdone.

He said: "After Desperate hard fighting, lasting ten hours, the men without water or food under a burning sun, made the enemy quit their position." The London _Times_ correspondent wrote: "The fire was the hottest recorded, and the results would revolutionize existing theories. It was effective up to 1,600 yards, but the casualties among the troops lying down were trifling, their losses being only thirty, though they were in an exposed position. It was found impossible to bring the ammunition reserve to the firing line." Much in these words is significant, and they should have conveyed a warning as to what revolutionary experience ought to teach; but the commander of the column did not seem to be teachable. He held on to existing theories.

If it was impossible to bring the ammunition reserve to the firing line, it was an acknowledgment that no matter what the attacking force might be in front of an enemy armed with long range rifles, the attack must utterly fail upon the consumption of the cartridges the men were able to carry into action. This, of course, if an established proposition, would limit rigidly the force of an a.s.sault.