CHAPTER I

THE WAY TO THE BOER COUNTRY

Immediately after war was declared between
Great Britain and the Boers of the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State, the two
South African republics became ostracised, in a
great measure, from the rest of the civilised world.
The cables and the great ocean steamship lines,
which connected South Africa with Europe and
America, were owned by British companies, and
naturally they were employed by the British
Government for its own purposes. Nothing
which might in any way benefit the Boers was
allowed to pass over these lines and, so far as it
was possible, the British Government attempted
to isolate the republics so that the outside world
could have no communication of any sort with
them. With the exception of a small strip of

[20]

coast-land on the Indian ocean, the two republics
were completely surrounded by British territory,
and consequently it was not a difficult matter
for the great Empire to curtail the liberties of the
Boers to as great an extent as it was pleasing to
the men who conducted the campaign. The
small strip of coast-land, however, was the
property of a neutral nation, and, therefore, could
not be used for British purposes of stifling the
Boer countries, but the nation which “rules the
waves” exhausted every means to make the
Boers’ air-hole as small as possible by placing
a number of warships outside the entrance of
Delagoa Bay, and by establishing a blockade of
the port of Lorenzo Marques.

Lorenzo Marques, in itself, was valueless to the
Boers, for it had always been nothing more than a
vampire feeding upon the Transvaal, but as an
outlet to the sea and as a haven for foreign ships
bearing men, arms, and encouragement it was
invaluable. In the hands of the Boers Delagoa
Bay would have been worse than useless, for the
warships could have taken possession of it and
sealed it tightly on the first day of the war, but
as a Portuguese possession it was the only

[21]

friend that the Boers were able to find during
their long period of need. Without it, the Boers
would have been unable to hold any intercourse
with foreign countries, no envoys could have been
despatched, no volunteers could have entered the
country, and they would have been ignorant of
the opinion of the world—a factor in the brave
resistance against their enemy which was by no
means infinitesimal. Delagoa Bay was the Boers’
one window through which they could look at
the world, and through which the world could
watch the brave struggle of the farmer-citizens of
the veld-republics.

The Portuguese authorities at Delagoa Bay long
ago established a reputation for adroitness in
extracting revenues whenever and wherever it
was possible to find a stranger within their gates,
but the war afforded them such excellent opportunities
as they had never enjoyed before. Being
the gate of the Boer country was a humanitarian
privilege, but it also was a remunerative business,
and never since Vasco de Gama discovered the
port were so many choice facilities afforded for
increasing the revenue of the colony. Nor was
the Latin’s mind wanting in concocting schemes

[22]

for filling the Portuguese coffers when the laws
were lax on the subject, for it was the simplest
arrangement to frame a regulation suitable for
every new condition that arose. The Portuguese
were willing to be the medium between the Boers
and the people of other parts of the earth, but they
asked for and received a large percentage of the
profits.

When the mines of the Johannesburg gold district
were closed down, and the Portuguese heard
that they would no longer receive a compulsory
contribution of four shillings from every native who
crossed the border to work in the mines, the officials
felt uneasy on account of the great decrease in the
amount of public revenues, but it did not worry
them for any great length of time. They met the
situation by imposing a tax of eight shillings
upon every one of the thousands of natives who
returned from the mines to their homes in Portuguese
territory. About the same time the
Uitlanders from the Transvaal reached Lorenzo
Marques, and, in order to calm the Portuguese
mind, every one of the thousands of men and
women who took part in that exodus was compelled
to pay a transit tax, ranging from eight

[23]

shillings to a sovereign, according to the size of
the tip tendered to the official.

When the van of the foreign volunteers reached
the port there was a new situation to be dealt
with, and again the principle of “When in doubt
impose a tax” was satisfactorily employed. Men
who had just arrived in steamers, and who had
never seen Portuguese territory, were obliged to
secure a certificate, indicating that they had not
been inhabitants of the local jail during the
preceding six months; a certificate from the
consular representative of their country, showing
that they possessed good characters; another
from the Governor-General to show that they did
not purpose going into the Transvaal to carry
arms; a fourth from the local Transvaal consul
to indicate that he held no objections to the
traveller’s desire to enter the Boer country; and
one or two other passports equally weighty in
their bearing on the subject were necessary before
a person was able to leave the town. Each one
of these certificates was to be secured only upon
the payment of a certain number of thousand reis
and at an additional expenditure of time and
nervous energy, for none of the officials could speak

[24]

a word of any language except Portuguese, and
all the applicants were men of other nationalities
and tongues. The expenditure in connection
with the certificates was more than a sovereign
for every person, and as there were thousands
of travellers into the Boer countries while the
war continued the revenues of the Government
were correspondingly great. To crown it all, the
Portuguese imposed the same tax upon all
travellers who came into the country from the
Transvaal with the intention of sailing to other
ports. The Government could not be charged
with favouritism in the matter of taxation, for
every man, woman, and child who stepped on
Portuguese soil was similarly treated. There was
no charge for entering the country, but the jail
yawned for him who refused to pay when
leaving it.

Not unlike the patriots in Cape Town and
Durban, the hotel and shopkeepers of Lorenzo
Marques took advantage of the presence of many
strangers and made extraordinary efforts to secure
the residue of the money which did not fall into
the coffers of the Government. At the Cardoza
Hotel, the only establishment worthy of the name,

[25]

a tax of a sovereign was levied for sleeping on a
bare floor; drivers of street cabs scorned any
amount less than a golden sovereign for carrying
one passenger to the consulates; lemonades were
two shillings each at the kiosks; and physicians
charged three pounds a call when travellers remained
in the town several days and contracted
the deadly coast-fever. At the Custom House
duties of ten shillings were levied upon foreign
flags, unless the officer was liberally tipped, in
which event it was not necessary to open the
luggage. It was a veritable harvest for every one
who chose to take advantage of the opportunities
offered, and there were but few who did not make
the foreigners their victims.

The blockade by the British warships placed a
premium upon dishonesty, and of those who
gained most by it the majority were British subjects.
The vessels which succeeded in passing
the blockading warships were invariably consigned
to Englishmen, and without exception these were
unpatriotic enough to sell the supplies to agents
employed by the Transvaal Government. Just
as Britons sold guns and ammunition to the Boers
before the war, these men of the same nation made

[26]

exorbitant profits on supplies which were necessary
to the burgher army. Lorenzo Marques was
filled with men who were taking advantage of
the state of affairs to grow wealthy by means
which were not legitimate, and the leaders in
almost every enterprise of that nature were British
subjects, although there were not a few Germans,
Americans, and Frenchmen who succeeded in
making the fortunes they deserved for remaining
in such a horrible pest-hole as Lorenzo Marques.

The railroad from Lorenzo Marques to Ressana
Garcia, at the Transvaal border, was interesting
only from the fact that it was more historical than
comfortable for travelling purposes. As the train
passed through the dry, dusty, and uninteresting
country, which was even too poor and unhealthy
for the blacks, the mind speculated upon the
proposition whether the Swiss judges who decided
the litigation concerning the road would have
spent ten years in making a decision if they had
been compelled to conduct their deliberation within
sight of the railway. The land adjoining the railroad
was level, well timbered and well watered,
and the vast tracts of fine grass give the impression
that it might be an excellent country for farming,

[27]

but it was in the belt known as the fever district,
and white men avoided it as they would a cholera-infested
city. Shortly before the train arrived at
the English river several lofty white-stone pyramids
on either side of the railway were passed, and the
Transvaal was reached. A long iron bridge spanning
the river was crossed, and the train reached
the first station in the Boer country, Koomatipoort.

Courteous Boer officials entered the train and
requested the passengers to disembark with all their
luggage, for the purpose of custom-examination.
No gratuities were accepted there, as at Lorenzo
Marques, and nothing escaped the vigilance of the
bearded inspectors. Trunks and luggage were
carefully scrutinised, letters read line by line and
word for word; revolvers and ammunition
promptly confiscated if not declared; and even
the clothing of the passengers was faithfully
examined. Passports were closely investigated,
and, when all appeared to be thoroughly satisfactory,
a white cross was chalked on the boots
of the passengers, and they were free to proceed
farther inland. The field-cornet of the district
was one of the few Boers at the station, and he
performed the duties of his office by introducing

[28]

himself to certain passengers whom he believed to
be foreign volunteers, and offering them gratuitous
railway tickets to Pretoria. No effort was made
to conceal the fact that the volunteers were welcome
in the country, and nothing was left undone
to make the foreigners realise that their presence
was appreciated.

After Koomatipoort was passed the train crept
slowly into the mountainous district, where huge
peaks pierced the clouds and gigantic boulders
overhung the tracks. Narrow defiles stretched
away in all directions and the sounds of cataracts
in the Crocodile River flowing alongside the
iron path drowned the roar of the train. Flowering,
vari-coloured plants, huge cacti, and thick
tropical vegetation lined the banks of the river,
and occasionally the thatched roof of a negro’s hut
peered out over the undergrowth, to indicate that
a few human beings chose that wild region for their
abode. Hour after hour the train crept along
narrow ledges up the mountains’ sides, then dashed
down declines and out upon small level plains
which, with their surrounding and towering eminences,
had the appearance of vast green bowls.
In that impregnable region lay the small town

[29]

of Machadodorp, which, later, became the capital
of the Transvaal. A few houses of corrugated
iron, a pretty railway-station, and much scenery,
serves as a worthy description of the town at the
junction of the purposed railway to the gold-fields
of Lydenberg.

After a journey of twelve hours through the
fever country the train reached the western limit
of that belt and rested for the night in a small,
green, cup-shaped valley bearing the descriptive
name of Waterval Onder—“under the waterfall.”
The weary passengers found more corrugated iron
buildings and the best hotel in South Africa. The
host, Monsieur Mathis, a French Boer, and his
excellent establishment came as a breath of fresh
air to a stifling traveller on the desert, and long
will they live in the memories of the thousands of
persons who journeyed over the railroad during
the war. After the monotonous fare of an east-coast
steamer and the mythical meals of a Lorenzo
Marques hotel, the roast venison, the fresh milk
and eggs of Mathis were as welcome as the odour
of the roses that filled the valley.

The beginning of the second day’s journey was
characterised by a ride up and along the sides of a

[30]

magnificent gorge through which the waters of the
Crocodile River rushed from the lofty plateau of
the high veld to the wildernesses of the fever
country and filled that miniature South African
Switzerland with myriads of rainbows. A long,
curved, and inclined tunnel near the top of the
mountain led to the undulating plains of the
Transvaal—a marvellously rapid transition from
a region filled with nature’s wildest panoramas
to one that contained not even a tree or rock or
cliff to relieve the monotony of the landscape.
On the one side of this natural boundary line
was an immense territory every square mile of
which contained mountain passes which a handful
of Boers could hold against an invading army;
on the other side there was hardly a rock behind
which a burgher rifleman could conceal himself.
Here herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, instead
of wild beasts, sped away from the roar of the
train; here there was the daub and wattle cottage
of the farmer instead of the thatched hut of the
native savage.

Small towns of corrugated iron and mud-brick
homes and shops appeared at long intervals on
the veld; grass-fires displayed the presence of the

[31]

Boer farmer with his herds, and the long ox-teams
slowly rolling over the plain signified that not all
the peaceful pursuits of a small people at war with
a great nation had been abandoned. The coal-mines
at Belfast, with their towering stacks and
clouds of smoke, gave the first evidence of the
country’s wondrous underground wealth, and then
farther on in the journey came the small city of
Middleburg with its slate-coloured corrugated iron
roofs in marked contrast to the green veld grass
surrounding it. There appeared armed and bandoliered
Boers, prepared to join their countrymen in
the field, with wounded friends and sad-faced
women to bid farewell to them. While the train
lay waiting at the station small commandos of
burghers came dashing through the dusty streets,
bustled their horses into trucks at the rear end of
the passenger train, and in a few moments they
were mingling with the foreign volunteers in the
coaches. Grey-haired Boers gravely bade adieu
to their wives and children, lovers embraced their
weeping sweethearts, and the train moved on
toward Pretoria and the battlefields where these
men were to risk their lives for the life of their
country.

[32]

Historic ground, where Briton and Boer had
fought before, came in view. Bronkhorst Spruit,
where a British commander led more than one
hundred of his men to death in 1880, lay to the
left of the road in a little wooded ravine. Farther
on toward Pretoria appeared rocky kopjes, where
afterwards the Boers, retreating from the capital
city, gathered their disheartened forces, and
resisted the advance of the enemy. Eerste
Fabriken was a hamlet hardly large enough to
make an impression upon the memory, but it
marked a battlefield where the burghers fought
desperately. Children were then gathering peaches
from the trees, whose roots drank the blood of
heroes months afterwards. Several miles farther
on were the hills on the outskirts of Pretoria,
where, in the war of 1881, the Boer laagers sent
forth men to encompass the city and to prevent
the British besieged in it from escaping. It was
ground hallowed in Boer history since the early
voortrekkers crossed the ridges of the Magaliesberg
and sought protection from the savage
hordes of Moselekatse in the fertile valley of
the Aapjes River.

Pretoria in war-time was most peaceful. In the

[33]

days before the commencement of hostilities it was
a city of peace as contrasted with the metropolis,
Johannesburg, and its warring citizens, but when
cannon were roaring on the frontier, Pretoria itself
seemed to escape even the echoes. After the first
commandos had departed the city streets were
deserted, and only women and children gathered
at the bulletin boards to learn the fate of the
burgher armies. The stoeps of houses and cottages
were deserted of the bearded yeomanry, and
the halls of the Government buildings resounded
only with the tread of those who were not old or
strong enough to bear arms. The long ox-waggons
which in former times were so common
in the streets were not so frequently to be seen,
but whenever one of them rolled toward the
market square, it was a Boer woman who cracked
the raw-hide whip over the heads of the oxen.
Pretoria was the same quaint city as of old, but it
lacked the men who were its most distinguishing
feature. The black-garbed Volksraad members,
the officials, and the old retired farmers, who were
wont to discuss politics on the stoeps of the
capitol and the Transvaal Hotel were absent.
Inquiries concerning them could be addressed

[34]

only to women and children, and the replies
invariably were: “They are on commando,” or,
“They were killed in battle.”

The scenes of activity in the city were few in
number, and they were chiefly in connection with
the arrival of foreign volunteers and the transit
of burgher commandos on the way to the field.
The Grand Hotel and the Transvaal Hotel, the
latter of which was conducted by the Government
for the temporary entertainment of the volunteers,
were constantly filled with throngs of foreigners,
comprising soldiers of fortune, Red Cross delegations,
visitors, correspondents, and contractors,
and almost every language except that of the
Boers could be heard in the corridors. Occasionally
a Boer burgher on leave of absence from the
front appeared at the hotels for a respite from
army rations, or to attend the funeral of a comrade
in arms, but the foreigners were always predominant.
Across the street, in the War Department,
there were busy scenes when the volunteers
applied for their equipments, and frequently there
were stormy actions when the European tastes of
the men were offended by the equipment offered
by the Department officials. Men who desired

[35]

swords and artistic paraphernalia for themselves
and their horses felt slighted when the scant but
serviceable equipment of a Boer burgher was
offered to them, but sulking could not remedy
the matter, and usually they were content to
accept whatever was given to them. Former
officers in European armies, noblemen and even
professional men were constantly arriving in the
city, and all seemed to be of the same opinion
that commissions in the Boer army could be had
for the asking. Some of these had their minds
disabused with good grace, and went to the field
as common burghers; others sulked for several
weeks, but finally joined a commando, and a
few returned to their homes without having heard
the report of a gun. For those who chose to
remain behind and enjoy the peacefulness of
Pretoria, there was always enough of novelty
and excitement among the foreigners to compensate
partly for missing the events in the
field.

The army contractors make their presence felt
in all countries which are engaged in war, and
Pretoria was filled with them. They were in the
railway trains running to and from Lorenzo

[36]

Marques; in the hotel corridors, in all the Government
departments, and everywhere in the city. A
few of the naturalised Boers, who were most denunciatory
of the British before the war and urged
their fellow-countrymen to resort to arms, succeeded
in evading the call to the field and were
most energetic in supplying bread and supplies
to the Government. Nor was their patriotism
dimmed by many reverses of the army, and they
selfishly demanded that the war should be continued
indefinitely. Europeans and Americans
who partook of the protection of the Government
in times of peace, were transformed by war into
grasping, insinuating contractors who revelled in
the country’s misfortune. Englishmen, unworthy
of the name, enriched themselves by furnishing
sinews of war to their country’s enemy, and in
order to secure greater wealth sought to prolong
the war by cheering disheartened Boers and
expressing faith in their final success. The
chambers of the Government building were filled
with men who had horses, waggons, flour, forage
and clothing to offer at exorbitant prices, and in
thousands of instances the embarrassed Government
was obliged to pay whatever sums were

[37]

demanded. Hand-in-hand with the contractors
were the speculators who were taking advantage
of the absence of the leading officials to secure
valuable concessions, mining claims, and even
gold mines. Before the war, when hordes of
speculators and concession-seekers thronged the
city, the scene was pathetic enough, but when all
shrewd Raad members were at the front and unable
to guard their country’s interests the picture
was dark and pitiful.

Pretoria seemed to have but one mood during
the war. It was never deeply despondent nor gay.
There was a sort of funereal atmosphere throughout
the city, whether its residents were rejoicing
over a Spion Kop or suffering from the dejection
of a Paardeberg. It was the same grim throng of
old men, women, and children who watched the
processions of prisoners of war and attended the
funerals at the quaint little Dutch church in the
centre of the city. The finest victories of the army
never changed the appearance of the city nor the
mood of its inhabitants. There were no parades
nor shouting when a victory was announced, and
there was the same stoical indifference when the
news of a bitter defeat was received. A victory

[38]

was celebrated in the Dutch church by the singing
of psalms, and a defeat by the offering of prayers
for the success of the army.

The thousands of British subjects who were
allowed to remain in the Transvaal, being of a less
phlegmatic race, were not so calm when a victory
of their nation’s army was announced, and when
the news of Cronje’s surrender reached them they
celebrated the event with almost as much gusto as
if they had not been in the enemy’s country. A
fancy dress ball was held in Johannesburg in
honour of the event, and a champagne dinner was
given within a few yards of the Government buildings
in Pretoria, but a few days later all the celebrants
were transported across the border by order
of the Government.

One of the pathetic features of Pretoria was
the Boers’ expression of faith in foreign mediation
or intervention. At the outset of hostilities
it seemed unreasonable that any European nation
or America would risk a war with Great Britain
for the purpose of assisting the Boers, yet there
was hardly one burgher who did not cling steadfastly
to the opinion that the war would be ended
in such a manner. The idea had evidently been

[39]

rooted in their mind that Russia would take
advantage of Great Britain’s entanglement in
South Africa to occupy Herat and Northern
India, and when a newspaper item to that effect
appeared it was gravely presumed to indicate the
beginning of the end. Some over-zealous Irishmen
assured the Boers that, in the event of a
South African war, their fellow-countrymen in the
United States would invade Canada and involve
Great Britain in an imbroglio over the Atlantic in
order to save British America. For a few weeks
the chimera buoyed up the Boers, but when nothing
more than an occasional newspaper rumour was
heard concerning it the rising in Ashanti was then
looked upon as being the hoped-for boon. The
departure of the three delegates to Europe and
America was an encouraging sign to them, and it
was firmly believed that they would be able to
induce France, Russia, or America to offer mediation
or intervention. The two Boer newspapers,
the Pretoria Volksstem and the Johannesburg
Standard and Diggers’ News, dwelt at length
upon every favourable token of foreign assistance,
however trifling, and attempted to strengthen
hopes which at hardly any time seemed capable

[40]

of realisation. It was not until after the war had
been in progress for more than six months that
the Boers saw the futility of placing faith in
foreign aid, and afterwards they fought like
stronger men.

The consuls who represented the foreign Governments
at Pretoria, and through whom the Boers
made representations for peace, were an exceptionally
able body of men, and their duties were
as varied as they were arduous. The French and
German consuls were busied with the care of the
vast mining interests of their countrymen, besides
the partial guardianship of the hundreds of French
and German volunteers in the Boer army. They
were called upon to entertain noblemen as well as
bankrupts; to bandage wounds and to bury the
dead; to find lost relatives and to care for widows
and orphans. In times of peace the duties of a
consul in Pretoria were not light, but during hostilities
they were tenfold heavier. To the American
consul, Adelbert S. Hay, and his associate, John G.
Coolidge, fell more work than to all the others combined.
Besides caring for the American interests
in the country, Consul Hay was charged with the
guardianship of the six thousand British prisoners

[41]

of war in the city as well as with the care of the
financial interests of British citizens. Every one of
the thousands of letters to and from the prisoners
was examined in the American Consulate so that
they might carry with them no breach of neutrality;
almost twenty thousand pounds, as well
as tons of luxuries, were distributed by him to
the prisoners; while the letters and cablegrams
concerning the health and whereabouts of soldiers
which reached him every week were far in excess
of the number of communications which arrived
at the Consulate in a year of peaceful times.
Consul Hay was in good favour with the Boer
Government notwithstanding his earnest efforts
to perform his duties with regard to the British
prisoners and interests, and of the many consuls
who have represented the United States in South
Africa none performed his duties more intelligently
or with more credit to his country.

One of the most interesting and important events
in Pretoria before the British occupation of the
city was the meeting of the Volksraads on May 7th.
It was a gathering of the warriors who survived the
war which they themselves had brought about
seven months before, and, although the enemy to

[42]

whom they had thrown down the gauntlet was at
their gates, they were as resolute and determined
as on that October day when they voted to pit the
Boer farmer against the British lion. The seats of
many of those who took part in that memorable
meeting were filled with palms and evergreens to
mark the patriots’ deaths, but the vierkleur and
the cause remained to spur the living. Generals,
commandants, and burghers, no longer in the grimy
costumes of the battlefield, but in the black garb
of the legislator, filled the circles of chairs; bandoliered
burghers, consuls and military attachés in
spectacular uniform, business men, and women
with tear-stained cheeks filled the auditorium;
while on the official benches were the heads of
departments and the Executive Council, State
Secretary Reitz and General Schalk Burger. The
Chairman of the Raad, General Lucas Meyer, fresh
from the battlefield, attracted the attention of the
throng by announcing the arrival of the President.
Spectators, Raad members, officials, all rose to their
feet, and Paul Kruger, the Lion of Rustenberg,
the Afrikander captain, entered the Chamber and
occupied a seat of honour.

GENERAL LUCAS J. MEYER

[43]

Grave affairs occupied the attention of the
country and there were many pressing matters to
be adjusted, was the burden of the meeting, but
the most important work was the defence of the
country, and all the members were as a unit that
their proper places were to be found with the
burghers in the field. There was no talk of ending
the war, or of surrender; the President leading in
the proposition to continue hostilities until a conclusion
successful to the Boer cause was attained.
“Shall we lose courage?” he demanded. “Never!
Never!! Never!!!” and then added reverently:
“May the people and the officers, animated and
inspired by a Higher Power, realising their duty,
not only to those brave ones who have already
sacrificed their lives for their Fatherland, but also
to posterity that expects a free country, continue
and persevere in this war to the end.” With these
words of their aged chieftain engraved on their
hearts to strengthen their resolution the members
of the Volksraads doffed the garb of legislators
and returned to their commandos to inspire them
with new zeal and determination.

After that memorable meeting of the Volksraads
Pretoria again assumed the appearance of a city of
peace, but the rapid approach of the forces of the

[44]

enemy soon transformed it into a scene of desperation
and panic. Men with drawn faces dashed
through the city to assist their hard-pressed
countrymen in the field; tearful women with
children on their arms filled the churches with
their moans and prayers; deserters fleeing homeward
exaggerated fresh disasters and increased
the tension of the populace—tears and terror
prevailed almost everywhere. Railway stations
were filled with throngs intent on escaping from
the coming disaster, commandos of breathless and
blood-stained burghers entered the city, and soon
the voice of the conquerors’ cannon reverberated
among the hills and valleys of the capital. Above
the noise and din of the threatened city rose the
calm assurance of Paul Kruger: “Have good cheer,
God will be with our people in the end.”

CHAPTER II

FROM FARM TO BATTLEFIELD

In the olden days, before men with strange
languages and customs entered their country
and disturbed the serenity of their life, the Boers
were accustomed to make annual trips to the
north in search of game, and to exterminate the
lions which periodically attacked their flocks and
herds. It was customary for relatives to form
parties, and these trekked with their long ox-waggons
far into the northern Transvaal, and
oftentimes into the wilderness beyond the Zambesi.
Women and children accompanied the expeditions
and remained behind in the ox-waggons while the
men rode away into the bush to search for buck,
giraffe, and lion. Hardy men and women these
were who braved the dangers of wild beasts and
the terrors of the fever country, yet these treks

[46]

to the north were as certain annual functions as
the Nachtmaals in the churches. Men who went
into the wild bush to hunt for the lions, which had
been their only unconquerable enemy for years,
learned to know no fear, and with their wives and
children formed as hardy a race as virgin soil ever
produced. With these pioneers it was not a
matter of great pride to have shot a lion, but it
was considered a disgrace to have missed one.
To husband their sparse supplies of ammunition
was their chief object, and to waste a shot by
missing the target was to become the subject of
good-natured derision and ridicule. Fathers, sons,
and grandsons entered the bush together, and
when there was a lion or other wild beast to be
stalked the amateur hunter was initiated into the
mysteries of backwoodsmanship by his experienced
elders. Consequently the Boers became a nation
of proficient lion-hunters, and efficiently ridded
their country of the pest which continually
threatened their safety, the safety of their families
and that of their possessions of live-stock.

In later years, when the foreigner who bought
his farms and searched for the wealth hidden on
them became so numerous that the Boer appeared

[47]

to be an unwelcome guest in his own house, the
old-time lion-hunter had foundation for believing
that a new enemy had suddenly arisen. The Boer
attempted to placate the new enemy by means
which failed. Afterward a bold but unsuccessful
inroad was made into the country for the purpose
of relieving him of the necessity of ruling it.
Thereupon the old-time lion-fighting spirit arose
within the Boer, and he began to prepare for
future hunting expeditions. He stocked his
arsenals with the best guns and ammunition the
world produced, and he secured instructors to
teach him the most modern and approved
methods of fighting the new-style lion. He
erected forts and stockades in which he might
take refuge in the event that the lions should
prove too strong and numerous, and he made
laws and regulations so that there might be no
delay when the proper moment arrived for attacking
the enemy. While these matters were being
perfected further efforts were made to conciliate
the enemy, but they proved futile, and it became
evident that the farmer and the lion of 1899 were
as implacable enemies as the farmer and lion of
1850. The lion of 1899 believed his cause to be

[48]

as just as did the lion of half a century before,
while the farmer felt that the lion, having been
created by Nature, had a just claim upon Nature
and her works for support, but desired that sustenance
should be sought from other parts of
Nature’s stores. He insisted, moreover, if the lion
wished to remain on the plantation that he should
not question the farmer’s ownership nor assume
that the lion was an animal of a higher and finer
grade than the farmer.

A meeting between the representatives of the
lions and the farmers led to no better understanding;
in fact when, several days afterward,
all the farmers gathered at the historic Paardekraal
monument, they were unanimously of the
opinion that the lion should be driven out of the
country, or at least subdued to such an extent
that peace might come and remain. Not since
the days of 1877, when, at the same spot, each
Boer, holding a stone above his head, vowed to
shed his last drop of blood in defence of his
country, was the community of farmers so indignant
and excited. The aged President himself,
fresh from the conference with the lions, urged
his countrymen to prevent a conflict but to fight

[49]

valiantly for their independence and rights if the
necessity arose. Piet Joubert, who bore marks
of a former conflict with the enemy, wept as he
narrated the efforts which had been made to
pacify the lions, and finally expressed the belief
that every farmer in the country would yield his
life’s blood rather than surrender the rights for
which their fathers had bled and died. When
other leaders had spoken, the picturesque custom
of renewing the oath of fealty to the country’s
flag was observed, as it had been every fifth year
since the days of Majuba Hill. Ten thousand
farmers uncovered their heads, raised their eyes
toward the sky and repeated the Boer oath:—

“In the presence of God Almighty, who searcheth
the hearts of men, from our homes in the
Transvaal we have journeyed to meet again,
Free burghers, we ask His mercy and trust
in His grace and bind ourselves and our
children in a solemn oath to be faithful to
one another and to stand by one another
in repelling our enemy with our last drop
of life-blood. So truly help us, God
Almighty.”

[50]

Ten thousand voices then joined in singing the
national anthem and a psalm, and the memorable
meeting at this fount of patriotism was closed
with a prayer and a benediction.

After this meeting it was uncertain for some
months which should attack first; both were
preparing as rapidly as possible for the conflict,
and the advantage seemed to lie with the one
who would strike first. The leaders of the lions
seemed to have forgotten that they had lion-hunters
as their opponents, and the farmers
neglected to take into account the fact that the
lion tribe was exceedingly numerous and spread
over the whole earth. When the leading farmers
met in conclave at Pretoria and heard the demands
of the lions they laughed at them, sent an ultimatum
in reply, and started for the frontier to join
those of their countrymen who had gone there
days before to watch that no body of lions should
make another surreptitious attack upon their
country. Another community of farmers living
to the south, who had also been harassed by the
lions for many years and felt that their future
safety lay in the subjugation of the lion tribe,
joined their neighbours in arms and went forth

[51]

with them to the greatest lion-hunt that South
Africa has ever had.

The enemy and all other men called it war, but
to the Boers it was merely a hunt for lions such
as they had engaged in oftentimes before.

The old Boer farmer hardly needed the proclamation
from Pretoria to tell him that there was to
be a lion-hunt, and that he should prepare for it
immediately. He had known that the hunt was
inevitable long before October 11, 1899, and he
had made preparations for it months and even
years before. When the official notification from
the Commandant-General reached him through
the field-cornet of the district in which he lived, he
was prepared in a few minutes to start for the
frontier where the British lions were to be found.
The new Mauser rifle, which the Government had
given him a year or two before, was freshly oiled
and its working order inspected. The bandolier,
filled with bright new cartridges, was swung over
his shoulder, and then, after putting a Testament
into his coat pocket, he was ready to proceed.
He despised a uniform of any kind as smacking
of anti-republican ideas and likely to attract the
attention of the enemy. The same corduroy or

[52]

mole-skin trousers, dark coat, wide-brimmed hat,
and home-made shoes which he was accustomed
to wear in every-day life on the farm were good
enough for a hunting expedition, and he needed
and yearned for nothing better. A uniform would
have caused him to feel uneasy and out of place,
and when lions were the game he wanted to be
thoroughly comfortable so that his arm and aim
might be steady. His vrouw, who was filling a
linen sack with bread, biltong, and coffee to be
consumed on his journey to the hunting grounds,
may have taken the opportunity while he was
cleaning his rifle to sew a rosette of the vierkleur
of the Republic on his hat, or, remembering the
custom observed in the old-time wars against the
natives, may have found the fluffy brown tail of a
meerkatz and fixed it on the upturned brim of his
grimy hat. When these few preparations were
concluded the Kafir servant brought his master’s
horse and fixed to the front of the saddle a small
roll containing a blanket and a mackintosh. To
another part of the saddle he strapped a small
black kettle to be used for the preparation of the
lion-hunter’s only luxury, coffee, and then the list
of impedimenta was complete. The horseman who

[53]

brought the summons to go to the frontier had
hardly reached the neighbouring farmhouse when
the Boer lion-hunter, uniformed, outfitted, and
armed, was on his horse’s back and ready for any
duty at any place. With a rifle, bandolier, and a
horse the Boer felt as if he were among kindred
spirits, and nothing more was necessary to complete
his temporal happiness. The horse is a part
of the Boer hunter, and he might as well have
gone to the frontier without a rifle as to go in the
capacity of a foot soldier. The Boer is the modern
Centaur, and therein is found an explanation for
part of his success in hunting.

When once the Boer left his home he became an
army unto himself. He needed no one to care for
himself and his horse, nor were the leaders of the
army obliged to issue myriads of orders for his
guidance. He had learned long before that he
should meet the other hunters of his ward at a
certain spot in case there was a call to arms, and
thither he went as rapidly as his pony could carry
him. When he arrived at the meeting-place he
found all his neighbours and friends gathered in
groups and discussing the situation. Certain ones
of them had brought with them big white-tented

[54]

ox-waggons for conveying ammunition, commissariat
stores, and such extra luggage as some
might wish to carry; and these were sent ahead
as soon as the field-cornet, the military leader of
the ward, learned that all his men had arrived from
their homes. The individual hunters then formed
what was called a commando, whether it consisted
of fifteen or fifty men, and proceeded in a body to
a second pre-arranged meeting-place, where all the
ward-commandos of a certain district were asked
to congregate. When all these commandos had
arrived in one locality, they fell under the authority
of the commandant who had been elected to that
post by the burghers at the preceding election.
This official had received his orders directly from
the Commandant-General, and but little time was
consumed in disseminating them to the burghers
through the various field-cornets. After all the
ward-commandos had arrived, the district-commando
was set in motion toward that part of the
frontier where its services were required; and a
most unwarlike spectacle it presented as it rolled
along over the muddy, slippery veld. In the van
were the huge, lumbering waggons with hordes of
hullabalooing natives cracking their long raw-hide

[55]

whips and urging the sleek, long-horned oxen forward
through the mud. Following the waggon-train
came the cavalcade of armed lion-hunters, grim
and determined-looking enough from a distance,
but most peaceful and inoffensive when once they
understood the stranger’s motives. No order or
discipline was visible in the commando on the
march, and if the rifles and bandoliers had not
appeared so prominently it might readily have
been mistaken for a party of Nachtmaal celebrants
on the way to Pretoria. Now and then some
youths emerged from the crowd and indulged
in an impromptu horse-race, only to return and
receive a chiding from their elders for wasting
their horses’ strength unnecessarily. Occasionally
the keen eyes of a rider spied a buck in the distance,
and then several of the lion-hunters sped obliquely
off the track and replenished the commando larder
with much smaller game than was the object of
their expedition.

If the commando came from a district far from
the frontier, it proceeded to the railway station
nearest to the central meeting-place, and then
embarked for the front. No extraordinary preparations
were necessary for the embarking of a

[56]

large commando, nor was much time lost before
the hunters were speeding towards their destination.
Every man placed his own horse in a cattle-car,
his saddle, bridle, and haversack in the
passenger-coach, and then assisted in hoisting
the cumbersome ox-waggons on flat-top trucks.
There were no specially deputised men to entrain
the horses, others to load the waggons, and still
others to be subtracted from the fighting strength
of the nation by attending to such detail duties as
require the services of hundreds of men in other
armies.

After the burghers were entrained and the long
commando train was set in motion the most
fatiguing part of the campaign was before them.
To ride on a South African railway is a disagreeable
duty in times of peace, but in war-times, when
trains were long and overcrowded, and the rate of
progress never higher than fifteen miles an hour,
then all other campaigning duties were pleasurable
enjoyments. The majority of burghers, unaccustomed
to journeying in railway trains, relished the
innovation and managed to make merry even
though six of them, together with all their saddles
and personal luggage, were crowded into one

[57]

compartment. The singing of hymns occupied
much of their time on the journey, and when they
tired of this they played practical jokes upon one
another and amused themselves by leaning out of
the windows and jeering at the men who were
guarding the railway bridges and culverts. At
the stations they grasped their coffee-pots and
rushed to the locomotive to secure hot water with
which to prepare their beverage. It seldom
happened that any Boer going to the front
carried any liquor with him and, although the
delays and vexations of the journey were sufficiently
irritating to serve as an excuse, drunkenness
practically never occurred. Genuine good-fellowship
prevailed among them, and no quarrelling
was to be observed. It seemed as if every
one of them was striving to live the ideal life
portrayed in the Testament which they read
assiduously scores of times every day. Whether
a train was delayed an hour at a siding or whether
it stopped so suddenly that all were thrown from
their seats, there was no profane language, but
usually jesting and joking instead. Little discomforts
which would cause an ordinary American
or European soldier to use volumes of profanity

[58]

were passed by without notice or comment by
these psalm-singing Boers, and inconveniences of
greater moment, like the disarrangement of the
commissariat along the route, caused only slight
remonstrances from them. An angry man was as
rarely seen as one who cursed, and more rare than
either was an intoxicated one.

Few of the men were given to boasting of the
valour they would display in warfare or of their
abilities in marksmanship. They had no battle-cry
of revenge like “Remember the Maine!” or
“Avenge Majuba!” except it was the motto:
“For God, Country, and Independence!” which
many bore on the bands of their hats and on the
stocks of their rifles. Very occasionally one
boasted of the superiority of the Boer, and still
more rarely would one be heard to set three
months as the limit required to conquer the
British army. The name of Jameson, the raider,
was frequently heard, but always in a manner
which might have led one unacquainted with
recent Transvaal history to believe that he was
a patron-saint of the Republic. It was not a cry
of “Remember Jameson” for the wrongs he committed
but rather a plea to honour him for having

[59]

placed the Republic on its guard against the
dangers which they believed threatened it from
beyond its borders. It was frequently suggested,
when his name was mentioned, that after the war
a monument should be erected to him because
he had given them warning and that they had
profited by the warning to the extent that they
had armed themselves thoroughly. Seldom was
any boasting concerning the number of the enemy
that would fall to Boer bullets; instead there was
a tone of sorrow when they spoke of the soldiers
of the Queen who would die on the field of battle
while fighting for a cause concerning the justice or
injustice of which the British soldier could not
speak.

After the commando-train reached its destination
the burghers again took charge of their own
horses and conveyances, and in even less time than
it required to place them on the train they were
unloaded and ready to proceed to the point where
the generals needed their assistance. The Boer was
always considerate of his horse, and it became a
custom to delay for several hours after leaving the
train, in order that the animals might feed and
recover from the fatigues of the journey before

[60]

starting out on a trek over the veld. After the
horses had been given an opportunity to rest, the
order to “upsaddle” came from the commandant,
and then the procession, with the ox-waggons in
the van, was again formed. The regular army
order was then established, scouts were sent ahead
to determine the location of the enemy, and the
officers for the first time appeared to lead their
men in concerted action against the opposing
forces. To call the Boer force an army was to
add unwarranted elasticity to the word, for it had
but one quality in common with such armed forces
as Americans or Europeans are accustomed to call
by that name. The Boer army fought with guns
and gunpowder, but it had no discipline, no drills,
no forms, no standards, and not even a roll-call.
It was an enlarged edition of the hunting parties
which a quarter-century ago went into the Zoutpansberg
in search of game—it was a massive
aggregation of lion-hunters.

CHAPTER III

THE COMPOSITION OF THE BOER ARMY

A visitor in one of the laagers in Natal
once spoke of a Boer burgher as a “soldier.”
A Boer from the Wakkerstroom district interrupted
his speech and said there were no Boer
soldiers. “If you want us to understand concerning
whom you are talking,” he continued,
“you must call us burghers or farmers. Only
the English have soldiers.” It was so with all
the Boers; none understood the term soldier as
applying to anybody except their enemy, while
many considered it an insult to be called a soldier,
as it implied, to a certain extent, that they were
fighting for hire. In times of peace the citizen of
the Boer republics was called a burgher, and when
he took up arms and went to war he received no
special title to distinguish him from the man who

[62]

remained at home. “My burghers,” Paul Kruger
was wont to call them before the war, and when
they came forth from battle they were content
when he said, “My burghers are doing well.”
The Boers were proud of their citizenship, and
when their country was in danger they went forth
as private citizens and not as bold warriors to
protect it.

There was a law in the two republics which
made it incumbent upon all burghers between the
ages of sixteen and sixty to join a commando and
to go to war when it was necessary. There was no
law, however, which prevented a man, of whatever
youthfulness or age, to assist in the defence of his
country, and in consequence the Boer commandos
contained almost the entire male population between
the ages of thirteen and eighty years. In
peaceful times the Boer farmer rarely travelled
away from his home unless he was accompanied
by his family, and he would have felt the pangs
of homesickness if he had not been continually
surrounded by his wife and children. When the
war began it was not an easy matter for the
burgher to leave his home for an indefinite period,
and in order that he might not be lonely he took

[63]

with him all his sons who were strong enough to
carry rifles. The Boer youth develops into manhood
early in life in the mild South African
climate, and the boy of twelve and thirteen years
is the equal in physical development of the
American or European youth of sixteen or seventeen.
He was accustomed to live on the open
veld and hunting with his elders, and, when he
saw that all his former companions were going to
war, he begged for permission to accompany the
commando. The Boer boy of twelve does not wear
knickerbocker trousers as the youth of like age in
many other countries, but he is clothed exactly like
his father, and, being almost as tall, his youthful
appearance is not so noticeable when he is among a
large number of his countrymen. Scores of boys
not more than twelve years were in the laagers in
Natal, and hundreds of less age than the minimum
prescribed by the military law were in every
commando in the country. When Ladysmith was
still besieged one youth of eleven years was
conspicuous in the Standerton laager. He seemed
to be a mere child, yet he had the patriotism of
ten men. He followed his father everywhere,
whether into battle or to the spring for water.

BATTLEFIELD OF COLENSO, DECEMBER 15, 1899

1 GENERAL LOUIS BOTHA’S COMMANDO 2 BOKSBURG COMMANDO 3 COLENSO 4 KRUGERSDORP COMMANDO 5 WAKKERSTROM COMMANDO   6 ERMELO COMMANDO   7 SWAZILAND POLICE   8 ERMELO COMMANDO   9 BRITISH CAMP, CHIEVELY 10 TUGELA RIVER

[64]

“When my father is injured or killed, I will take
his rifle,” was his excuse for being away from
home. When General De Wet captured seven
cannon from the enemy at the battle of Sannaspost
two of the volunteers to operate them were boys
aged respectively fourteen and fifteen years. Pieter
J. Henning, of the Potchefstroom commando, who
was injured in the battle of Scholtznek on
December 11th, was less than fifteen years old, yet
his valour in battle was as conspicuous as that of
any of the burghers who took part in the engagement.
Teunis H.C. Mulder, of the Pretoria
commando, celebrated his sixteenth birthday only
a few days before he was twice wounded at
Ladysmith on November 9th, and Willem François
Joubert, a relative of the Commandant-General,
was only fifteen years old when he was wounded
at Ladysmith on October 30th. At the battle of
Koedoesrand, fifteen-year-old Pieter de Jager, of
the Bethlehem commando, was seriously injured
by a shell while he was conveying his injured
father from the field. With the army of General
Cronje captured at Paardeberg were no less than
a hundred burghers who had not reached the
sixteenth year, and among those who escaped

[65]

from the laager in the river-bed were two
Bloemfontein boys named Roux, aged twelve and
fourteen years. At Colenso a Wakkerstroom
youth of twelve years captured three English
scouts and compelled them to march ahead of him
to the commandant’s tent. During one of the
lulls in the fighting at Magersfontein a burgher of
fifteen years crept up to within twenty yards of
three British soldiers and shouted “Hands up!”
Thinking that there were other Boers in the
vicinity the men dropped their guns and became
prisoners of the boy, who took them to General De
la Rey’s tent. When the General asked the boy
how he secured the prisoners the lad replied,
nonchalantly, “Oh, I surrounded them.” These
youths who accompanied the commando were
known as the “Penkop Regiment”—a regiment
composed of school children—and in their
connection an amusing story has been current in
the Boer country ever since the war of 1881, when
large numbers of children less than fifteen years
old went with their fathers to battle. The story is
that after the fight at Majuba Hill, while the peace
negotiations were in progress, Sir Evelyn Wood,
the Commander of the British forces, asked

[66]

General Joubert to see the famous Penkop
Regiment. The Boer General gave an order that
the regiment should be drawn up in a line before
his tent, and when this had been done General
Joubert led General Wood into the open and
introduced him to the corps. Sir Evelyn was
sceptical for some time, and imagined that General
Joubert was joking, but when it was explained to
him that the youths really were the much-vaunted
Penkop Regiment he advised them to return to
their school-books.

When a man has reached the age of sixty it
may be assumed that he has outlived his usefulness
as a soldier; but not so with the Boer. There
was not one man, but hundreds, who had passed
the Biblical threescore years and ten but were
fighting valiantly in defence of their country.
Grey-haired men who, in another country, might
be expected to be found at their homes reading
the accounts of their grandsons’ deeds in the war,
went out on scouting duty and scaled hills with
almost as much alacrity as the burghers only half
their age. Men who could boast of being grandfathers
were innumerable, and in almost any
laager there could be seen father, sons, and grandsons,

[67]

all fighting with equal vigour and enthusiasm.
Paul Kruger is seventy-five years old,
but there were many of his burghers several years
older than he who went to the frontier with their
commandos and remained there for several months
at a time. A great-grandfather serving in the
capacity of a private soldier, may appear like a
mythical tale, but there were several such. Old
Jan van der Westhuizen, of the Middleberg laager,
was active and enthusiastic at eighty-two years,
and felt more than proud of four great-grand-children.
Piet Kruger, a relative of the President,
and four years his senior, was an active participant
in every battle in which the Rustenburg commando
was engaged while it was in Natal, and he
never once referred to the fact that he fought in
the 1881 war and in the attack upon Jameson’s
men. Four of Kruger’s sons shared the same tent
and fare with him, and ten of his grandsons were
burghers in different commandos. Jan C. ven
Tander, of Boshof, exceeded the maximum of the
military age by eight years, but he was early in
the field, and was seriously wounded at the battle
of Scholtznek on December 11th. General
Joubert himself was almost seventy years old

[68]

but as far as physical activity was concerned
there were a score of burghers in his commando,
each from five to ten years older, who exhibited
more energy in one battle than he did during the
entire Natal campaign. The hundreds of bridges
and culverts along the railway lines in the Transvaal,
the Orange Free State, and Upper Natal
were guarded day and night by Boers more than
sixty years old, who had volunteered to do the
work in order that younger men might be sent to
localities where their services might be more
necessary. Other old Boers and cripples attended
to the commissariat arrangements along the railways,
conducted commissariat waggons, gathered
forage for the horses at the front, and arranged
the thousands of details which are necessary to
the well-being and comfort of every army, however
simple its organisation.

Among the Boers were many burghers who had
assisted Great Britain in her former wars in South
Africa—men who had fought under the British
flag, but were now fighting against it. Colonel
Ignace Ferreira, a member of one of the oldest
Boer families, fought under Lord Wolseley in the
Zulu war, and had the Order of the Commander

[69]

of the Bath conferred upon him by the Queen.
Colonel Ferreira was at the head of a commando
at Mafeking. Paul Dietzch, the military secretary
of General Meyer, fought under the British flag in
the Gaika and several other native wars.

It was not only the extremely old and the
extremely young who went to war; it was a
transfer of the entire population of the two
Republics to the frontiers, and no condition or
position was sufficient excuse to remain behind.
The professional man of Pretoria and Johannesburg
was in a laager which was adjacent to a
laager of farthest-back veld-farmers. Lawyers
and physicians, photographers and grocers, speculators
and sextons, judges and schoolmasters,
schoolboys and barkeepers—all who were burghers
locked their desks and offices and journeyed to
the front. Even clergymen closed their houses
of worship in the towns and remained among the
commandos to pray and preach for those who
did the fighting. The members of the Volksraads,
who brought on the war by their ultimatum, were
among the first in the field, and foremost in
attacking the soldiers of their enemy. Students
in European universities, who hastened home when

[70]

war-clouds were gathering, went shoulder to
shoulder into battle with the backwoodsman, the
Boer takhaar. There was no pride among them;
no class distinction which prevented a farmer from
speaking to a millionaire. A graduate of Cambridge
had as his boon companion for five months
a farmer who thought the earth a square, and
imagined the United States to be a political division
of Australia.

BOERS WATCHING THE FIGHT AT DUNDEE

The Boer who was bred in a city or town good-naturedly
referred to his country cousin as a
“takhaar”—a man with grizzly beard and unkempt
hair. It was a good descriptive term, and the
takhaar was not offended when it was applied to
him. The takhaar was the modern type of the
old voortrekker Boer who, almost a hundred years
ago, trekked north from Cape Colony, and after
overcoming thousands of difficulties settled in the
present Boer country. He was a religious, big-hearted
countryman of the kind who would
suspect a stranger until he proved himself worthy
of trust. After that period was passed the takhaar
would walk the veld in order that you might ride
his horse. If he could not speak your language he
would repeat a dozen times such words as he

[71]

knew, meanwhile offering to you coffee, mutton,
bread, and all the best that his laager larder
afforded. He offered to exchange a pipe-load of
tobacco with you, and when that occurred you
could take it for granted that he was your friend
for life. The takhaar was the man who went to
the frontiers on his own responsibility weeks before
the ultimatum was sent, and watched day and
night lest the enemy might trample a rod beyond
the bounds. He was the man who stopped
Jameson, who climbed Majuba, and who fought
the natives. The takhaar was the Boer before
gold brought restlessness into the country, and he
was proud of his title. The fighting ability of the
takhaar is best illustrated by repeating an incident
which occurred after the battle of Dundee when a
large number of Hussars were captured. One of
the Hussar officers asked for the name of the
regiment he had been fighting against. A fun-loving
Boer replied that the Boers had no
regiments; that their men were divided into three
brigades—the Afrikanders, the Boers, and the
Takhaars—a distinction which carried with it but
a slight difference. “The Afrikander brigade,”
the Boer explained, “is fighting now. They fight

[72]

like demons. When they are killed, then the Boers
take the field. The Boers fight about twice as
well and hard as the Afrikanders. As soon as all
the Boers are killed, then come the takhaars, and
they would rather fight than eat.” The officer
remained silent for a moment, then sighed and
said, “Well, if that is correct, then our job is
bigger than I thought it was.”

The ideal Boer is a man with a bearded face
and a flowing moustache, and in order to appear
idyllic almost every Boer burgher, who was not
thus favoured before war was began, engaged in
the peaceful process of growing a beard. Young
men who, in times of peace, detested hirsute
adornments of the face allowed their beards and
moustaches to grow, and after a month or two it
was almost impossible to find one burgher who
was without a growth of hair on his face. The
wearing of a beard was almost equal to a badge
of Boer citizenship, and for the time being every
Boer was a takhaar in appearance if not in fact.
The adoption of beards was not so much fancy as
it was a matter of discretion. The Boer was aware
of the fact that few of the enemy wore beards, and
so it was thought quite ingenious for all burghers

[73]

to wear facial adornments of that kind in order
that friend and foe might be distinguished more
readily at a distance.

Notwithstanding their ability to fight when it is
necessary, it is doubtful whether twenty per cent
of the Boer burghers in the commandos would be
accepted for service in any continental or American
army. The rigid physical examinations of many
of the armies would debar thousands from becoming
regular soldiers. There were men in the
Boer forces who had only one arm, some with only
one leg, others with only one eye; some were
almost totally blind, while others would have felt
happy if they could have heard the reports of their
rifles. Men who were suffering from various kinds
of illnesses, and who should have been in a physician’s
care, were to be seen in every laager. Men
who wore spectacles were numerous, while those
who suffered from diseases which debar a man
from a regular army were without number. The
high percentage of men unfit for military duty
was not due to the Boer’s unhealthfulness, for he
is as healthy as farmers are in other parts of the
earth. Take the entire male population of any
district in Europe and America and compare the

[74]

individuals with the standard required by army
rules, and the result will not differ greatly from
the result of the Boer examination. If all the
youths and old men, the sick and maimed, could
have been eliminated from the Boer forces, eighty
per cent. would probably have been found to be a
low estimate of the number thus subtracted from
the total force. It would have been heartrending
to many a continental or American general to see
the unmilitary appearance of the Boer burgher,
and in what manner an army of children, great-grandfathers,
invalids, and blind men, with a
handful of good men to leaven it, could be of
any service whatever would have been quite
beyond his conception. It was such a mixed
force that a Russian officer, who at the outset
of the war entered the Transvaal to fight, became
disgusted with its unmilitary appearance and
returned to his own country.

The accoutrement of the Boer burgher was
none the less incongruous than the physical
appearance of the majority of them, although
no expensive uniform and trappings could have
been of more practical value. The men of the
Pretoria and Johannesburg commandos had the

[75]

unique honor of going to the war in uniforms
specially made for the purpose, but there was
no regulation or law which compelled them to
wear certain kinds of clothing. When these commandos
went to the frontier several days before
the actual warfare had begun they were clothed
in khaki-coloured cloth of almost the same description
as that worn by the soldiers whom they
intended to fight. These two commandos were
composed of town-folk who had absorbed many
of the customs and habits of the foreigners who
were in the country, and they felt that it would
be more warlike if they should wear uniforms
made specially for camp and field. The old Boers
of the towns and the takhaars looked askance at
the youth of Pretoria and Johannesburg in their
uniforms, and shook their heads at the innovation
as smacking too much of an anti-republican
spirit.

Like Cincinnatus, the majority of the old Boers
went directly from their farms to the battlefields,
and they wore the same clothing in the laagers
as they used when shearing their sheep or herding
their cattle. When they started for the frontier
the Boer farmers arranged matters so that they

[76]

might be comfortable while the campaign continued.
Many, it is true, dashed away from home
at the first call to arms and carried with them,
besides a rifle and bandolier, nothing but a mackintosh,
blanket, and haversack of food. The majority
of them, however, were solicitous of their future
comfort and loaded themselves down with all kinds
of luggage. Some went to the frontier with the
big, four-wheeled ox-waggons and in these they
conveyed cooking utensils, trunks, boxes with food
and flour, mattresses, and even stoves. The Rustenburg
farmers were specially solicitous about
their comfort, and those patriotic old takhaars
practically moved their families and household
furniture to the camps. Some of the burghers
took two or three horses each in order that there
might be no delay or annoyance in case of misfortune
by death or accident, and frequently a
burgher could be seen who had one horse for
himself, another for his camp utensils and extra
clothing, and a third and fourth for native servants
who cooked his meals and watched the horses
while they grazed.

Without his horse the Boer would be of little
account as a fighting man, and those magnificent

[77]

little ponies deserve almost as much credit for
such success as attended the campaign as their
riders. If some South African does not frame
a eulogy of the little beasts it will not be
because they do not deserve it. The horse was
half the Centaur and quite the life of him. Small
and wiry, he was able to jog along fifty and sixty
miles a day for several days in succession, and
when the occasion demanded it, he was able to
attain a rate of speed that equalled that of the
ordinary South African railway train which, however,
makes no claims to lightning-like velocity.
He bore all kinds of weather, was not liable to
sickness except in one season of the year, and he
was able to work two and even three days without
more than a blade of grass. He was able to
thrive on the grass of the veld, and when winter
killed that product he needed but a few bundles
of forage a day to keep him in good condition.
He climbed rocky mountain-sides as readily as a
buck, and never wandered from a path by darkest
night. He drank and apparently relished the
murky water of mud-pools and needed but little
attention with the currycomb and brush. He was
trained to obey the slightest turn of the reins, and

[78]

a slight whistle brought him to a full stop. When
his master left him and went forward into battle
the Boer pony remained in the exact position
where he was placed, and when perchance a shell
or bullet ended his existence, then the Boer paid
a tribute to the value of his dead servant by
refusing to continue the fight and by beating a
hasty retreat.

In the early part of the campaign in Natal the
laagers were filled with ox-waggons, and, in the
absence of tents which were sadly wanted during
that season of heavy rains, they stood in great
stead to the burghers. The rear half of the
waggons were tented with an arched roof, as all
the trek-waggons are, and under these shelters the
burghers lived. Many of the burghers who left
their ox-waggons at home took small, light, four-wheeled
carriages, locally called spiders, or the
huge two-wheelers or Cape-carts so serviceable
and common throughout the country. These were
readily transformed into tents, and made excellent
sleeping accommodations by night and transport-waggons
for the luggage when the commandos
moved from one place to another. When a rapid
march was contemplated all the heavy waggons

[79]

were left behind in charge of native servants with
which every burgher was provided.

It was quite in keeping with their other ideas of
personal comfort for many Boer burghers to carry
a coloured parasol or an umbrella to protect them
from the rays of the sun, and it was not considered
beneath their dignity to wear a woman’s shawl
around their shoulders or head when the morning
air was chilly. At first sight of these unique
spectacles the stranger in the Boer country felt
amused, but if he cared to smile at every unmilitary
scene he would have had little time for other
things. It was a republican army composed of
republicans, and anything that smacked of the
opposite was abhorred. There were no flags or
insignia of any kind to lead the burghers on.
What mottoes there were that expressed their
cause were embroidered on the bands of their
slouch-hats and cut on the stocks of their rifles.
“For God and Freedom,” “For Freedom, Land,
and People,” and “For God, Country, and Justice,”
were among the sentiments which some of the
burghers carried into battle on their hats and rifles.
Others had vierkleur ribbons as bands for their
hats, while many carried on the upturned brim of

[80]

their hats miniatures containing the photographs
of the Presidents.

Aside from the dangers arising from a contact
with the enemy and the heart-burns resulting from
a long absence from his home, the Boer burgher’s
experiences at the front were not arduous. First
and foremost he had a horse and rifle, and with
these he was always more or less happy. He had
fresh meat provided to him daily, and he had
native servants to prepare and serve his meals for
him. He was under no discipline whatever, and
he could be his own master at all times. He
generally had his sons or brothers with him in the
same laager, and to a Boer there was always much
joy in this. He could go on picket duty and have
a brush with the enemy whenever he felt inclined
to do so, or he could remain in his laager and never
have a glimpse of the enemy. Every two months
he was entitled to a ten days’ leave of absence to
visit his home, and at other times during the first
five months of the war, his wife and children were
allowed to visit him in his laager. If he was
stationed along the northern or western frontiers of
the Transvaal he was in the game country, and he
was able to go on buck-shooting expeditions as

[81]

frequently as he cared. He was not compelled to
rise at a certain hour in the morning, and he could
go to bed whenever he wished. There was no
drill, no roll-calls, nor any of the thousands of
petty details which the soldiers of even the
Portuguese army are compelled to perform. As a
result of a special law there was no work on
Sundays or Church-holidays unless the enemy
brought it about, and then, if he was a stickler for
the observance of the Sabbath, he was not compelled
to move a muscle. The Boer burgher could
eat, sleep, or fight whenever he wished, and
inasmuch as he was a law unto himself, there was
no one who could compel him to change his habits.
It was an ideal idle-man’s mode of living and the
foreign volunteers who had leaves of absence from
their own armies made the most of their holiday,
but in that respect they did not surpass their
companion, the Boer burgher.

The most conspicuous feature of the Boer forces
was the equality of the officers and the men, and
the entire absence of any assumption of superiority
by the leaders of the burghers. None of the
generals or commandants wore any uniform of a
distinctive type, and it was one of the most

[82]

difficult problems to distinguish an officer from
the burghers. All the officers, from the Commandant-General
down to the corporal, carried
rifles and bandoliers, and all wore the ordinary
garb of a civilian, so that there was nothing to
indicate the man’s military standing. The officers
associated with their men every hour of the day,
and, in most instances, were able to call the
majority of them by their Christian names. With
one or two exceptions, all the generals were farmers
before the war started, and consequently they were
unable to assume any great degree of superiority
over their farmer-burghers if they had wished to
do so. General Meyer pitched quoits with his
men, General Botha swapped tobacco with any
one of his burghers, and General Smuts and one of
his officers held the whist championship of their
laager. Rarely a burgher touched his hat before
speaking to an officer, but he invariably shook
hands with him at meeting and parting. It is a
Boer custom to shake hands with friends or
strangers, and whenever a general visited a laager
adjoining his own, the hand-shaking reminded one
of the President’s public reception days at Washington.
When General Joubert went from camp to

[83]

camp he greeted all the burghers who came near
him with a grasp of the hand, and it was the same
with all the other generals and officers. Whenever
Presidents Kruger and Steyn went to the commandos,
they held out their right hands to all the
burghers who approached them, and one might
have imagined that every Boer was personally
acquainted with every other one in the republics.
It was the same with strangers who visited the
laagers, and many a sore wrist testified to the
Boer’s republicanism. Some one called it the
“hand-shaking army,” and it was a most descriptive
title. Many of the burghers could not restrain
from exercising their habit, and shook hands with
British prisoners, much to the astonishment of the
captured.

Another striking feature of life in the Boer
laagers was the deep religious feeling which
manifested itself in a thousand different ways.
It is an easy matter for an irreligious person to
scoff at men who pass through a campaign with
prayer and hymn-singing, and it is just as easy to
laugh at the man who reads his Testament at
intervals of shooting at the enemy. The Boer
was a religious man always, and when he went

[84]

to war he placed as much faith in prayer and
in his Testament as in his rifle. He believed
that his cause was just, and that the Lord
would favour those fighting for a righteous
cause in a righteous spirit. On October 11th,
before the burghers crossed the frontier at Laing’s
Nek, a religious service was conducted. Every
burgher in the commandos knelt on the ground
and uttered a prayer for the success and the
speedy ending of the campaign. Hymns were
sung, and for a full hour the hills, whereon almost
twenty years before many of the same burghers
sang and prayed after the victory at Majuba, were
resounding with the religious and patriotic songs
of men going forward to kill and to be killed. In
their laagers the Boers had religious services at
daybreak and after sunset every day, whether they
were near to the enemy or far away. At first the
novelty of being awakened early in the morning
by the voices of a large commando of burghers
was not conducive to a religious feeling in the
mind of the stranger, but a short stay in the
laagers caused anger to turn to admiration. After
sunset the burghers again gathered in groups
around camp-fires, and made the countryside re-echo

[85]

with the sound of their deep, bass voices
united in Dutch hymns and psalms of praise and
thanksgiving.

Whether they ate a big meal from a well-equipped
table, or whether they leaped from their
horses to make a hasty meal of biltong and bread,
they reverently bowed their heads and asked a
blessing before and after eating. Before they went
into battle they gathered around their general and
were led in prayer by the man who afterwards led
them against the enemy. When the battle was
concluded, and whether the field was won or lost,
prayers were offered to the God of battles. In the
reports which generals and commandants made to
the war departments, victories and defeats were
invariably ascribed to the will of God, and such
phrases as “All the glory belongs to the Lord of
Hosts who led us,” and “God gave us the victory,”
and “Divine favour guided our footsteps,” were
frequent. When one is a stranger of the Boers
and unacquainted with the simple faith which they
place in Divine guidance, these religious manifestations
may appear inopportune in warfare, but it is
necessary to observe the Boer burgher in all his
various actions and emotions to know that he is

[86]

sincere in his religious beliefs and that he endeavours
to be a Christian in deed as well as in word.

The Boer army, like Cromwell’s troopers, could
fight as well as pray, but in reality it was not a
fighting organisation in the sense that warfare was
agreeable to the burghers. The Boer proved that
he could fight when there was a necessity for it,
but to the great majority of them it was heartrending
to slay their fellow human beings. The
Boer’s hand was better adapted to the stem of a
pipe than to the stock of an army rifle, and he
would rather have been engaged in the former
peaceful pursuit had he not believed that it was a
holy war in which he was engaged. That he was
not eager for fighting was displayed in a hundred
different ways. He loved his home more than the
laagers at the front, and he took advantage of
every opportunity to return to his home and family.
He lusted not for battle, and he seldom engaged
in one unless he firmly believed that success depended
partly upon his individual presence. He
did not go into battle because he had the lust of
blood, for he abhorred the slaughter of men, and it
was not an extraordinary spectacle to see a Boer
weeping beside the corpse of a British soldier. On

[87]

the field, after the Spion Kop battle, where Boer
guns did their greatest execution, there were scores
of bare-headed Boers who deplored the war, and
amidst ejaculations of “Poor Tommy,” and “This
useless slaughter,” brushed away the tears that
rolled down over their brown cheeks and beards.
Never a Boer was seen to exult over a victory.
They might say “That is good” when they heard
of a Spion Kop or a Magersfontein, but never a
shout or any other of the ordinary methods of
expressing joy. The foreigners in the army frequently
were beside themselves with joy after
victories, but the Boers looked stolidly on and
never took any part in the demonstrations.

CHAPTER IV

THE ARMY ORGANISATION

When the Boer goes on a lion-hunting
expedition he must be thoroughly acquainted
with the game country; he must be
experienced in the use of the rifle, and he must
know how to protect himself against the attacks
of the enemy. When he is thus equipped and he
abandons lion-hunting for the more strenuous life
of war the Boer is a formidable enemy, for he has
combined in him the qualities of a general as well
as the powers of a private soldier. In lion-hunting
the harm of having too many men in authority is
not so fatal to the success of the expedition as it
is in real warfare, where the enemy may have less
generals but a larger force of men who will obey
their commands. All the successes of the Boer
army were the result of the fact that every

[89]

burgher was a general, and to the same cause
may be attributed almost every defeat. Whenever
this army of generals combined and agreed
to do a certain work it was successful, but it was
unsuccessful whenever the generals disagreed. If
the opportunity had given birth to a man who
would have been accepted as general of the
generals—a man was needed who could introduce
discipline and training into the rudimentary
military system of the country—the chances
of the Boer success would have been far
greater.

The leaders of the Boer army were elected by a
vote of the people in the same manner in which
they chose their presidents and civil officials. Age,
ability, and military experience did not have any
bearing on the subject except in so far as they influenced
the mind of the individual voter. Family
influences, party affiliations, and religion had a
strong bearing on the result of the elections, and,
as is frequently the case with civil authorities in
other countries, the men with the best military minds
and experience were not always chosen. It was
as a result of this system that General Joubert was
at the head of the army when a younger, more

[90]

energetic, and more warlike man should have been
Commandant-General. At the last election for
Commandant-General, Joubert, a Progressive, also
received the support of the Conservatives, so that
two years later he might not be a candidate for
the Presidency against Paul Kruger. In the same
manner the commandants of the districts and the
field-cornets of the wards were chosen, and in the
majority of the cases no thought was taken of
their military ability at the time of the election.
The voters of a ward, the lowest political division
in the country, elected their field-cornet more with
a view of having him administer the laws in times
of peace than with the idea of having him lead
them into a battle, and in like manner the election
of a commandant for a district, which generally
consisted of five wards, was more of a victory for
his popularity in peace than for his presumed
bravery in war. The Boer system of electing
military leaders by vote of the people may have
had certain advantages, but it had the negative
advantage of effacing all traces of authority
between officers and men. The burgher who
had assisted in electing his field-cornet felt that
that official owed him a certain amount of gratitude

[91]

for having voted for him, and obeyed his
orders or disobeyed them whenever he chose to
do so. The field-cornet represented authority
over his men, but of real authority there was
none. The commandants were presumed to have
authority over the field-cornets and the generals
over the commandants, but whether the authority
was of any value could not be ascertained until
after the will of those in lower rank was
discovered. By this extraordinary process it
happened that every burgher was a general and
that no general was greater than a burgher.

ELECTING A FIELD-CORNET

The military officers of the Boers, with the
exception of the Commandant-General, were the
same men who ruled the country in times of
peace. War suddenly transformed pruning-hooks
into swords, and conservators of peace into
leaders of armies. The head of the army was
the Commandant-General, who was invested
with full power to direct operations and lead
men.

Directly under his authority were the Assistant
Commandant-Generals, five of whom were appointed
by the Volksraad a short time before
the beginning of hostilities. Then in rank were

[92]

those who were called Vecht-Generals, or fighting
generals, in order to distinguish them from the
Assistant-Generals. Then followed the Commandants,
the leaders of the field-cornets of one
district, whose rank was about that of colonels.
The field-cornets, who were in command of the
men of a ward, were under the authority of a
commandant, and ranked on a par with majors.
The burghers of every ward were subdivided
into squads of about twenty-five men under the
authority of a corporal, whose rank was equal
to that of a lieutenant. There were no corps,
brigades, regiments, and companies to call for
hundreds of officers; it was merely a commando,
whether it had ten men or ten thousand, and
neither the subdivision nor the augmentation
of a force affected the list of officers in any way.
Nor would such a multiplication of officers weaken
the fighting strength of a force, for every officer,
from Commandant-General to corporal, carried
and used a rifle in every battle.

When the officers had their men on the field,
and desired to make a forward movement or an
attack on the enemy, it was necessary to hold a
Krijgsraad, or council of war, and this was conducted

[93]

in such a novel way that the most unmilitary
burgher’s voice bore almost as much
weight as that of the Commandant-General.
Every officer, from corporal to Commandant-General,
was a member of the Krijgsraad, and
when a plan was favoured by the majority of
those present at the council it became a law.
The result of a Krijgsraad meeting did not necessarily
imply that it was the plan favoured by the
best military minds at the council, for it was
possible and legal for the opinions of sixteen
corporals to be adopted although fifteen generals
and commandants opposed the plan with all their
might. That there ever was such a result is
problematical, but there were many Krijgsraads
at which the opinion of the best and most experienced
officers were cast aside by the votes
of field-cornets and corporals. It undoubtedly
was a representative way of adopting the will of
the people, but it frequently was exceedingly
costly. At the Krijgsraad in Natal which determined
to abandon the positions along the Tugela,
and retire north of Ladysmith the project was
bitterly opposed by the generals who had done
the bravest and best fighting in the colony, but

[94]

the votes of the corporals, field-cornets, and
commandants outnumbered theirs, and there was
nothing for the generals to do but to retire and
allow Ladysmith to be relieved. At Mafeking
scores of Krijgsraad were held for the purpose
of arriving at a determination to storm the town,
but invariably the field-cornets and corporals out-voted
the commandants and generals and refused
to risk the lives of their men in such a hazardous
attack. Even the oft-repeated commands of the
Commandant-General to storm Mafeking were
treated with contempt by the majority of the
Krijgsraad who constituted the highest military
authority in the country so far as they and their
actions were concerned. When there happened
to be a deadlock in the balloting at a Krijgsraad
it was more than once the case that the vote
of the Commandant-General counted for less than
the voice of a burgher. In one of the minor
Krijgsraads in Natal there was a tie in the voting,
which was ended when an old burgher called
his corporal aside and influenced him to change
his vote. The Commandant-General himself had
not been able to change the result of the voting,
but the old burgher who had no connection with

[95]

the council of war practically determined the
result of the meeting.

The Krijgsraad was the supreme military
authority in the country, and its resolutions were
the law, all its infractions being punishable by
fines. The minority of a Krijgsraad was obliged
to assist in executing the plans of the majority,
however impracticable or distasteful they might
have been to those whose opinions did not prevail.
There were innumerable instances where generals
and commandants attended a Krijgsraad and
afterward acted quite contrary to the resolution
adopted by the council. In any other army such
action would have been called disobedience of
orders, with the corresponding punishment, but in
the Boer army it amounted to little beyond personal
animosity. According to Boer military law
an officer offending in such a manner should have
been arraigned before the Krijgsraad and tried by
his fellow officers, but such occurrences were
extremely rare.

One of the few instances where a man was
arraigned before a Krijgsraad for dereliction of
duty was after the enemy succeeded in damaging
one of the “Long Tom’s” around Ladysmith.

[96]

The artillery officer who was in charge of the gun
when the dynamite was exploded in its muzzle
was convicted of neglect of duty and was disgraced
before the army. After the battle of
Belmont Vecht-General Jacob Prinsloo, of the
Free State, was court-martialled for cowardice
and was reduced to the rank of burgher. It was
Prinsloo’s first battle, and he was thoroughly
frightened. When some of his men came up to
him and asked him for directions to repel the
advancing British force Prinsloo trembled, rubbed
his hands, and replied: “God only knows; I
don’t,” and fled with all his men at his
heels.

Two instances where commandants acted contrary
to the decisions of Krijgsraad were the
costly disobedience of General Erasmus, at Dundee,
and the still more costly mistake of Commandant
Buis at Hlangwe. When the Boers invaded Natal
and determined to attack the British forces then
stationed at the town of Dundee, it was decided at
a Krijgsraad that General Lucas Meyer should
attack from the east and south, and General
Erasmus from the north. General Meyer occupied
Talana Hill, east of Dundee, and a kopje south of

[97]

the town, and attacked General Penn-Symons’s
forces at daybreak. General Erasmus and the
Pretoria commando, with field pieces and a “Long
Tom,” occupied Impati Mountain on the north,
but when the time arrived for him to assist in the
attack on the enemy several hundred yards below
him he would not allow one shot to be fired. As
a result of the miscarriage of plans General Meyer
was compelled to retire from Talana Hill in the
afternoon, while the British force was enabled to
escape southward into Ladysmith. If General
Erasmus had followed the decision of the Krijgsraad,
and had assisted in the attack, there is
hardly any doubt that the entire force of the
enemy would have been captured. Even more
disastrous was the disobedience of Commandant
Buis, of the Heidelberg commando, who was
ordered to occupy a certain point on the Boschrand,
called Hlangwe, about February 19th. The
British had tried for several weeks to drive the
Boers from the Boschrand, but all their attempts
proved fruitless. A certain commando had been
holding Hlangwe for a long time, and Commandant
Buis was ordered to take his commando
and relieve the others by night. Instead of going

[98]

to Hlangwe immediately that night he bivouacked
in a small nek near by, intending to occupy the
position early the following morning. During the
night the British discovered that the point was
unoccupied and placed a strong force there. In
this manner the British wedge was forced into the
Boschrand, and shortly afterwards the Boers were
obliged to retreat across the Tugela and secure
positions on the north bank of the stream. Of
less serious consequence was General De la Rey’s
refusal to carry out a decision he himself had
assisted in framing. It was at Brandfort, in the
Free State, several weeks after Bloemfontein was
occupied, and all the Boer generals in the vicinity
met in Krijgsraad and voted to make a concerted
attack upon the British force at Tafelkop, midway
between Bloemfontein and Brandfort. Generals
Smuts and Botha made a long night trek to the
positions from which they were to attack the
enemy at daybreak. It had been arranged that
General De la Rey’s commando should open the
attack from another point, and that no operations
should begin until after he had given a certain
signal. The signal was never given, and, after
waiting for it several hours, the other generals

[99]

returned to Brandfort only to find that General
De la Rey had not even moved from his laager.

When the lower ranks of officers—the field-cornets
and corporals—disobeyed the mandates
of the Krijgsraads, displayed cowardice or misbehaved
in any other manner, the burghers under
their command were able to impeach them and
elect other officers to fill the vacancies. The
corporals were elected by the burghers after war
was begun, and they held their posts only so long
as their behaviour met with the favour of those
who placed them in authority. During the first
three months of the war innumerable changes of
that nature were made, and not infrequently was
it the case that a corporal was unceremoniously
dismissed because he had offended one of his men
who happened to wield much influence over his
fellows in the commando. Personal popularity
had much to do with the tenure of office, but
personal bravery was not allowed to go unrewarded,
and it happened several times in the
laagers along the Tugela that a corporal resigned
his rank so that one of his friends who had
distinguished himself in a battle might have his
work recognised and appreciated.

[100]

However independent and irresponsible the
Boer officer may have been, he was a man in
irons compared with the Boer burgher. The
burgher was bound by no laws except such as
he made for himself. There was a State law
which compelled him to join a commando and
to accompany it to the front, or in default of that
law to pay a small fine. As soon as he was “on
commando,” as he called it, he became his own
master and could laugh at Mr. Atkins across the
way who was obliged to be constantly attending
to various camp duties when not actively engaged.
No general, no act of Volksraad could compel
him to do any duty if he felt uninclined to
perform it, and there was no power on earth
which could compel him to move out of his tent
if he did not desire to go. In the majority of
countries a man may volunteer to join the army
but when once he is a soldier he is compelled to
fight, but in the Boer country the man was
compelled to join the army, but he was not
obliged to fight unless he volunteered to do so.
There were hundreds of men in the Natal laagers
who never engaged in one battle and never fired
a shot in the first six months of the war. Again,

[101]

there were hundreds of men who took part in
almost every one of the battles, whether their
commando was engaged or not, but they joined
the fighting voluntarily and not because they
were compelled to do so.

When a Krijgsraad determined to make or
resist an attack it was decided by the officers
at the meeting how many men were needed
for the work. Immediately after the meeting
the officers returned to their commandos, and,
after explaining to their burghers the nature and
object of the expedition, asked for volunteers.
The officer could not call upon certain men and
order them to take part in the purposed proceedings;
he could only ask them to volunteer their
services. It happened at times that an entire
commando of several hundred men volunteered to
do the work asked of them, but just as often it
happened that only from one-tenth to one-twentieth
of the burghers expressed their willingness to
accompany the expedition. Several days after the
Spion Kop battle General Botha called for four
hundred volunteers to assist in resisting an attack
that it was feared would be made. There were
almost ten thousand men in the environs of Ladysmith

[102]

at that time, but it was with the utmost
difficulty that the four hundred men could be
gathered. Two hundred men came from one
commando, one hundred and fifty-three from
another, twenty-eight from a third, fifteen from
another, and five from another made a total of four
hundred and one men—one more than was called
for.

When Commandant-General Joubert, at his
Hoofd—or head-laager at Modderspruit, received
an urgent request for reinforcements he was not
able to order one of the commandos that was in
laager near him to go to the assistance of the
fighting burghers; he could only make a request
of the different commandants and field-cornets to
ask their men to volunteer for the service. If the
men refused to go, then naturally the reinforcements
could not be sent, and those who were in
dire need of assistance had the alternative of continuing
the struggle alone or of yielding a position
to the enemy. The relief of Ladysmith was due
to the fact that Generals Botha, Erasmus, and
Meyer could not receive reinforcements from
Commandant-General Joubert, who was north of
Ladysmith with almost ten thousand men. Botha,

[103]

Meyer, and Erasmus had been fighting for almost
a week without a day’s intermission, and their
two thousand men were utterly exhausted when
Joubert was asked to send reinforcements, or even
men enough to relieve those from fighting for a
day or two, but a Krijgsraad had decided that the
entire army should retreat to the Biggarsberg, and
Joubert could not, or at least would not, send any
burghers to the Tugela, with the result that Botha
was compelled to retreat and abandon positions
which could have been held indefinitely if there
had been military discipline in the commandos.
It was not always the case that commandants and
generals were obliged to go begging for volunteers,
and there were innumerable times when every man
of a commando did the work assigned to him
without a murmur.

During the Natal campaign the force was so
large, and the work seemed so comparatively
easy that the majority of the burghers never
went to the firing line, but when British
successes in the Free State placed the Boers
on the defensive it was not so easy to remain
behind in the laagers and allow others more willing
to engage in the fighting. General Cronje was able

[104]

to induce a much larger percentage of his men to
fight than Commandant-General Joubert, but the
reasons for this were that he was much firmer with
his men and that he moved from one place to
another more frequently than Joubert. Towards
the end of General Cronje’s campaign all his men
were willing to enter a battle, but that was because
they realised that they must fight, and in that there
was much that was lacking in the Natal army.
When a Boer realised that he must fight or lose his
life or a battle, he would fight as few other men
were able to fight, but when he imagined that his
presence at the firing line was not imperative he
chose to remain in laager.

KRIJGSRAAD, NEAR THABA N’CHU

There were hundreds of burghers who took part
in almost every battle in Natal, and these were the
individuals who understood the frame of mind of
some of their countrymen, and determined that
they must take upon themselves the responsibilities
of fighting and winning battles. Among those who
were most forward in fighting were the Johannesburg
police, the much-despised “Zarps” of peaceful
times; the Pretoria commando, and the younger
men of other commandos. There were many old
Boers who left their laagers whenever they heard

[105]

the report of a gun, but the ages of the great
majority of those who were killed or injured were
between seventeen and thirty years. After the
British captured Bloemfontein, and the memorable
Krijgsraad at Kroonstad determined that guerilla
warfare should be followed thereafter, it was not an
easy matter for a burgher to remain behind in the
laagers, for the majority of the ox-waggons and
other camp paraphernalia was sent home and
laager life was not so attractive as before. Commandos
remained at one place only a short time,
and there was almost a daily opportunity for a
brush with the enemy. The war had been going
on for six months, but many of the men had their
first taste of actual war as late as that, and, after
the first battle had been safely passed through, the
following ones were thought of little consequence.
When General Christian De Wet began his campaign
in the eastern part of the Free State there
were hardly enough men left in the laagers to guard
them properly when battles were in progress, and
in the battles at Sannaspost, Moester’s Hoek, and
Wepener probably ninety-nine per cent. of his men
took part in every battle. In Natal the real fighting
spirit was lacking from the majority of the men,

[106]

or Commandant-General Joubert might never have
been wiped aside from the path to Durban; but
months afterward, when the burgher learned that
his services were actually needed, and that, if he
did not fight, he was liable to be captured and sent
to St. Helena, he polished his Mauser and fought
as hard and well as he was able.

The same carelessness or indifference which
manifested itself throughout the early part of the
Natal campaign with regard to the necessity of
assisting in the fighting was evident in that all-important
part of an army’s work, the guarding of
the laagers. The Boers did not have sentries or outposts
as they are understood in trained armies, but
they had what was called a “Brandwacht,” or fire-guard,
which consisted of a hundred men or more
who were supposed to take positions at a certain
distance from the laagers, and remain there until
daybreak. These men were volunteers secured
by the corporal, who was responsible to his field-cornet
for a certain number of men every night.
It was never made compulsory upon any one
to go on Brandwacht, but the duty was not
considered irksome, and there were always as
many volunteers as were required for the work.

[107]

The men on Brandwacht carried with them
blankets, pipes, and kettles, and, after reaching the
point which they were to occupy during the
night, they tethered their horse to one of their
feet and made themselves comfortable with pipe
and coffee. When the enemy was known to be
near by the Brandwacht kept awake, as a matter
of personal safety, but when there seemed to be no
danger of attack he fastened his blankets around
his body and, using his saddle for a pillow, slept
until the sun rose. There was a mild punishment
for those who slept while on this duty, and
occasionally the burgher found in the morning
that some one had extracted the bolt of his
rifle during the night. When the corporal produced
the bolt as evidence against him in the
morning and sentenced him to carry a stone or
a box of biscuits on his head the burgher might
decline to be punished, and no one could say
aught against his determination.

The Boer scouts, or spies as they called them,
received their finest tribute from Sir George
White, the British Commander at Ladysmith. In
a speech which he delivered at Cape Town, Sir
George said—

[108]

“All through this campaign, from the first day
the Boers crossed the frontier to the relief of
Ladysmith, I and others who have been in
command near me, have been hampered by their
excellent system of intelligence, for which I give
them all credit. I wish to goodness that they
had neglected it, for I could not move a gun,
even if I did not give the order till midnight, but
they knew it by daylight next morning. And
they had their agents, who gave them their
intelligence through thick and thin. I locked up
everybody who I thought could go and tell, but
somehow or other the intelligence went on.”

The Boer was an effective scout because he
was familiar with the country, and because his
eyes were far better than those of any of the
men against whom he was pitted. The South
African atmosphere is extraordinarily clear, and
every person has a long range of vision, but the
Boer, who was accustomed to the climatic conditions,
could distinguish between Boer and Briton
where the stranger could barely see a moving
object. Field-glasses were almost valueless to
Boer scouts, and few of them were carried by
any one except the generals and commandants,

[109]

who secured them from the War Department
before the beginning of the war. There was no
distinct branch of the army whose exclusive duty
it was to scout, and there was even greater lack
of organisation in the matter of securing information
concerning the movements of the enemy than
in the other departments of the army’s work.
When a general or commandant felt that it was
necessary to secure accurate information concerning
the enemy’s strength and whereabouts he
asked for volunteers to do the work. Frequently,
during the Natal campaign, no scouting was done
for days, and the generals were absolutely ignorant
of everything in connection with the enemy.
Later in the campaign several scouting corps
composed of foreign volunteers were organised,
and thereafter the Boers depended wholly upon
the information they secured. There was no
regulation which forbade burghers from leaving
the laagers at any time, or from proceeding in
any direction, and much of the information that
reached the generals was obtained from these
rovers over the veld. It was extremely difficult
for a man who did not have the appearance of
a burgher to ride over the veld for more than a

[110]

mile without being hailed by a Boer who seemed
to have risen out of the earth unnoticed. “Where
are you going?” or “Where are you coming
from?” were his invariable salutations, and if the
stranger was unable to give a satisfactory reply
or show proper passports he was commanded,
“Hands up.” The burghers were constantly on
the alert when they were on the veld, whether
they were merely wandering about, leaving for
home, or returning to the laager, and as soon as
they secured any information which they believed
was valuable they dashed away to the nearest
telegraph or heliograph station, and reported it
to their general or commandant. In addition to
this valuable attribute the Boers had the advantage
of being among white and black friends who could
assist them in a hundred different ways in securing
information concerning the enemy, and all these
circumstances combined to warrant General White’s
estimate of the Boers’ intelligence department,
which, notwithstanding its efficiency, was more or
less chimerical.

In no department or branch of the army was
there any military discipline or system, except in
the two small bodies of men known as the State

[111]

Artillery of the Transvaal and the State Artillery
of the Free State. These organisations were in
existence many years before the war was begun,
and had regular drills and practice which were
maintained when they were at the front. The
Johannesburg Police also had a form of discipline
which, however, was not strict enough to prevent
the men from becoming mutinous when they
imagined that they had fought the whole war
themselves, and wanted to have a vacation in
order that they might visit their homes. The
only vestige of real military discipline that was
to be found in the entire Boer army was that
which was maintained by Field-Cornet A.L.
Thring, of the Kroonstad commando, who had a
roll-call and inspection of rifles every morning.
This extraordinary procedure was not relished by
the burghers, who made an indignant protest to
General Christian De Wet. The general upheld
the field-cornet’s action, and told the men that if
all the officers had instituted similar methods
more success might have attended the army’s
operations.

With the exception of the instances cited,
every man was a disciplinary law unto himself,

[112]

and when he transgressed that law no one
would punish him but his conscience. There were
laws on the subject of obedience in the army, and
each had penalties attached to it, but it was extremely
rare that a burgher was punished. When
he endured discipline he did it because he cared
to do so, and not because he feared those who had
authority over him. He was deeply religious, and
he felt that in being obedient he was finding favour
in the eyes of the Providence that favoured his
cause. It was as much his religion as his ability
to aim unerringly that made the Boer a good
soldier. If the Boer army had been composed of
an irreligious, undisciplined body of men, instead
of the psalm-singing farmers, it would have been
conquered by itself. The religion of the Boers
was their discipline.

CHAPTER V

THE BOER MILITARY SYSTEM

The disparity between the British and Boer
armies seemed to be so great at the time
the war was begun that the patriotic Englishman
could hardly be blamed for asserting that the
struggle would be of only a month’s duration.
On the one side was an army every branch of
which was highly developed and specialised and
kept in constant practice by many wars waged
under widely different conditions. Back of it was
a great nation, with millions of men and unlimited
resources to draw upon. At the head of the army
were men who had the theory and practice of
warfare as few leaders of other armies had had
the opportunities of securing them. Opposed
to this army was practically an aggregation of

[114]

farmers, hastily summoned together and utterly
without discipline or training. They were unable
to replace with another a single fallen burgher
and prevented from adding by importation to their
stock of ammunition a single rifle or a single
pound of powder. At the head were farmers who,
perhaps, did not know that there existed a theory
of warfare and much less knew how recent wars
were fought and won. The means by which thirty
thousand farmers of no military training were
enabled to withstand the opposition of several
hundred thousand well-trained soldiers for the
greater part of a year must be attributed to the
military system which gave such a marvellous
advantage. Such success as attended the Boer
army was undoubtedly the success of its system of
warfare against that of the British.

BOER COMMANDANTS READING MESSAGE FROM BRITISH OFFICERS AFTER THE BATTLE OF DUNDEE

The Boers themselves were not aware that
they had a military system; at least, none of
the generals or men acknowledged the existence
of such, and it was not an easy matter to find
evidences that battles were fought and movements
made according to certain established rules which
suggested a system. The Boers undoubtedly had
a military plan of their own which was naturally

[115]

developed in their many wars with natives and
with the British troops. It might not have been
a system, according to the correct definition of the
term—it might have been called an instinct for
fighting, or a common-sense way of attempting to
defeat an enemy—but it was a matter which
existed in the mind of every single citizen of the
two Republics. It was not to be learned from
books or teachers, nor could it be taught to those
who were not born in the country. Whatever that
system was, it was extremely rudimentary, and
was never developed to any extent by the discipline
and training which any system necessarily
requires in order to make it effective. There was a
natural system or manner used by the Boers when
hunting for lion or buck, and it was identically
the same which they applied against the British
army. Every Boer was expert in the use of his
rifle; he had an excellent eye for country and
cover; he was able to tell at a glance whether a
hill or an undulation in the ground was suitable
for fighting purposes, whether it could be defended
and whether it offered facilities for attack or
retreat. Just as every Boer was a general, so it
was that every burgher had in his mind a certain

[116]

military plan fashioned after the needs and opportunities
of the country, and this was their system—a
sort of national as well as natural military
system.

In the British army, as well as in the other
modern armies, the soldier is supposed to understand
nothing, know nothing, and do nothing but
give obedience to the commands of his officers.
The trained soldier learns little, and is supposed
to learn little, of anything except the evolutions
he is taught on the drill-grounds. It is presumed
that he is stupid, and the idea appears to be to
prevent him from being otherwise in order that he
may the better fulfil his part in the great machine
to which a trained army has been likened. The
soldier is regarded as an animal of low mental
grade, whose functions are merely to obey the
orders of the man who has been chosen by beings
of superior intelligence to lead him. When the
man who was chosen in times of peace to lead the
men in times of war meets the enemy and fails to
make a display of the military knowledge which it
was presumed he possessed, then the soldiers who
look to him for leadership are generally useless,
and oftentimes worse than useless, inasmuch as

[117]

their panic is likely to become infectious among
neighbouring bodies of soldiers who are equipped
with better leaders. In trained armies the value
of a soldier is a mere reflection of the value of the
officer who commands him, and the value of the
army is relatively as great as the ability of its
generals. In the Boer army the generals and
commandants were of much less importance, for
the reason that the Boer burgher acted almost
always on his own initiative. The generals were
of more service before the beginning of a battle
than while it was in progress. When a burgher
became aware of the presence of the enemy his
natural instincts, his innate military system, told
him the best manner in which to attack his
adversary as well as his general could have
informed him. The generals and other officers
were of prime importance in leading the burghers
to the point where the enemy was likely to be
found, but when that point was reached their
period of usefulness ended, for the burghers knew
how to wage the battle as well as they did.
Generally speaking, the most striking difference
between the Boer army and a trained army was
the difference in the distribution of intelligence.

[118]

All the intelligence of a trained army is centred
in the officers; in the Boer army there was much
practical military sense and alertness of mind
distributed throughout the entire force.

Mr. Disraeli once said: “Doubtless to think
with vigour, with clearness, and with depth in the
recess of a cabinet is a fine intellectual demonstration;
but to think with equal vigour, clearness,
and depth among bullets, appears the loftiest
exercise and the most complete triumph of the
human faculties.” Without attempting to insinuate
that every Boer burgher was a man of the high
mental attainments referred to by the eminent
British statesman, it must be acknowledged that
the fighting Boer was a man of more than ordinary
calibre.

In battle the Boer burgher was practically his
own general. He had an eye which quickly
grasped a situation, and he never waited for an
order from an officer to take advantage of it.
When he saw that he could with safety approach
the enemy more closely he did so on his own
responsibility, and when it became evident to him
that it would be advantageous to occupy a different
position in order that he might stem the advance

[119]

of the enemy he acted entirely on his own
initiative. He remained in one position just as
long as he considered it safe to do so, and if
conditions warranted he went forward, and if they
were adverse he retreated, whether there was an
order from an officer or not. When he saw that
the burghers in another part of the field were hard
pressed by the enemy he deserted his own position
and went to their assistance, and when his own
position became untenable, in his own opinion, he
simply vacated it and went to another spot where
bullets and shells were less thick. If he saw
a number of the enemy who were detached
from the main body of their own force, and
he believed that they could be taken prisoner,
he enlisted a number of the burghers who were
near him, and made an effort to capture them,
whether there was an officer close at hand or
a mile distant.

No one was surfeited with orders; in fact, the
lack of them was more noticeable, and it was well
that it was so, for the Boer burgher disliked to be
ordered, and he always did things with better grace
when he acted spontaneously. An illustration of
this fact was an incident at the fight of Modderspruit

[120]

where two young Boers saved an entire
commando from falling into the hands of the
enemy. Lieutenant Oelfse, of the State Artillery,
and Reginald Sheppard, of the Pretoria commando,
observed a strong force of the British advancing
towards a kopje where the Krugersdorp commando
was concealed. The two men saw that the
Krugersdorpers would be cut off in a short time
if they were not informed of the British advance,
so they determined to plunge across the open veld,
six hundred yards from the enemy’s guns, and tell
them of their danger. No officer could have compelled
the men to undertake such a hazardous
journey across a bullet-swept plain, but Oelfse and
Sheppard acted on their own responsibility,
succeeded in reaching the Krugersdorp commando
without being hit, and gave to the commandant
the information which undoubtedly saved him and
his men from being captured. Incidents of like
nature occurred in almost every battle of the campaign,
and occasionally the service rendered so
voluntarily by the burghers was of momentous
consequences, even if the act itself seemed trivial
at the time.

A second feature of the Boer army, and equally

[121]

as important as the freedom of action of its individuals,
was its mobility. Every burgher was
mounted on a fleet horse or pony, and consequently
his movements on the battlefield, whether in an
advance or in a retreat, were many times more
rapid that those of his enemy—an advantage
which was of inestimable value both during an
engagement and in the intervals between battles
when it was necessary to secure new positions.
During the progress of a battle the Boers were
able to desert a certain point for a time, mount
their horses and ride to another position, and
throw their full strength against the latter, yet
remaining in such close touch with the former that
it was possible to return and defend it in an
exceedingly short space of time. With the aid of
their horses they could make such a sudden rush
from one position to another that the infantry of
the enemy could be surrounded and cut off from
all communications with the body of its army
almost before it was known that any Boers were
in the vicinity, and it was due to that fact that the
Boers were able to make so many large numbers
of captives.

The fighting along the Tugela furnished many

[122]

magnificent examples of the Boers’ extreme
mobility. There it was a constant jump from
one position to another—one attack here yesterday,
another there to-day. It was an incessant
movement made necessary by the display of
energy by the British, whose thrice-larger forces
kept the Boers in a state of continued ferment.
On one side of the river, stretched out from the
south of Spion Kop, in the west, to almost
Helpmakaar, in the east, were thirty thousand
British troops watching for a weak point where
they might cross, and attacking whenever there
seemed to be the slightest opportunity of breaking
through; on the other side were between two and
three thousand mounted Boers, jumping from one
point to another in the long line of territory to be
guarded, and repelling the attacks whenever they
were made. The country was in their favour, it is
true, but it was not so favourable that a handful of
men could defend it against thousands, and it was
partly due to the great ease and rapidity with
which the Boers could move from one place
to another, that Ladysmith remained besieged
so long. The mobility of the Boers was
again well demonstrated by the retreat of the

[123]

burghers from the environs of Ladysmith. After
the Krijgsraad decided to withdraw the forces
into the Biggarsberg, it required only a few
hours for all the many commandos to leave the
positions they had held so long; to load their
impedimenta and to be well on the way to the
northward. The departure was so rapid that it
surprised even those who were in Ladysmith. One
day the Boers were shelling the town as usual and
all the commandos were observed in the same positions
which they had occupied for several months;
the following day not a single Boer was to be seen
anywhere. They had quietly mounted their horses
by night and before the sun rose in the morning
they were trekking north beyond Modderspruit and
Elandslaagte, on the way to Glencoe. General
Cronje’s flight from Magersfontein was also accomplished
with great haste and in good order, but
what probably was the finest example of the Boers’
mobility was the magnificent retreat along the
Basuto border of Generals Grobler, Olivier, and
Lemmer, with their six thousand men, when the
enemy was known to be in great strength within
several days’ march of them. After the capture of
Cronje at Paardeberg the three generals, who had

[124]

been conducting the campaign in the eastern provinces
of Cape Colony, were in a most dangerous
position, having the enemy in the rear, the left and
left front, the neutral Basuto land on the right
front, and only a small strip of territory along the
western border of the Basuto country apparently
free of the enemy. The British were in Bloemfontein
and in the surrounding country, and it
seemed almost impossible that the six thousand
men could ever extricate themselves from such a
position to join the Boer forces in the north. It
would have been a comparatively easy matter for
six thousand mounted men to make the journey if
they had not been loaded down with impedimenta,
but the three generals were obliged to carry with
them all their huge transport waggons and heavy
camping paraphernalia. The trek northward was
begun near Colesburg on March 12th, and when
all the different commandos had joined the main
column the six thousand horsemen, the seven
hundred and fifty transport-waggons, the two
thousand natives, and twelve thousand cattle
formed a line extending more than twenty-four
miles. The scouts, who were despatched westward
from the column to ascertain the whereabouts of

[125]

the enemy, reported large forces of British cavalry
sixty and seventy miles distant, but for some inexplicable
reason the British made no attempt to
cut off the retreat of the three generals, and on
March 28th they reached Kroonstad, having
traversed almost four hundred miles of territory
in the comparatively short time of sixteen days.
Sherman’s march to the sea was made under
extraordinary conditions, but the retreat of the
three generals was fraught with dangers and difficulties
much greater. Sherman passed through a
fertile country, and had an enemy which was disheartened.
The three generals had an enemy
flushed with its first victories, while the country
through which they passed was mountainous and
muddy. If the column had been captured so soon
after the Paardeberg disaster, the relief of Kimberley
and the relief of Ladysmith, it might have
been so disheartening to the remaining Boer commandos
that the war might have been ended at
that time. It was a magnificent retreat and well
worthy to be placed in the Boer’s scroll of honour
with Cronje’s noble stand at Paardeberg, with
Spion Kop and Magersfontein.

GENERAL GROBLER

The Boer army was capable of moving rapidly

[126]

under almost any conditions. The British army
demonstrated upon many occasions that it could
not move more than two or three miles an hour
when the column was hampered with transport
waggons and camping paraphernalia, and frequently
it was impossible to proceed at that pace for many
consecutive hours. A Boer commando easily
travelled six miles an hour and not infrequently,
when there was a necessity for rapid motion, seven
and even eight miles an hour were traversed.
When General Lucas Meyer moved his commandos
along the border at the outset of the war
and learned that General Penn-Symons was
located at Dundee he made a night march of
almost forty miles in six hours and occupied
Talana Hill, a mile distant from the enemy, who
was ignorant of the Boers’ proximity until the
camp was shelled at daybreak. When General
De Wet learned that Colonel Broadwood was
moving westward from Thaba N’Chu on March
30th, he was in laager several miles east of
Brandfort, but it required only several minutes for
all the burghers to be on their horses and ready
to proceed toward the enemy. The journey of
twenty-five miles to Sannaspost, or the Bloemfontein

[127]

waterworks, was made in the short time of five
hours, while Colonel Broadwood’s forces consumed
seven hours in making the ten miles’ journey from
Thaba N’Chu to the same place. The British
column was unable to move more rapidly on
account of its large convoy of waggons, but even
then the rate of progress was not as great as that
made by the trekking party of the three generals
who were similarly hampered. It was rarely the
case that the Boers attempted to trek for any
considerable distance with their heavy waggons
when they were aware of the presence of the
enemy in the vicinity. Ox-waggons were always
left behind, while only a small number of mule-waggons,
bearing provisions and ammunition, were
taken, and on that account they were able to
move with greater rapidity than their opponents.
Frequently they entered dangerous territory with
only a few days’ provisions and risked a famine of
food and ammunition rather than load themselves
down with many lumbering waggons which were
likely to retard their progress. After fighting the
battle at Moester’s Hoek, General De Wet had
hardly three days’ food and very little ammunition
with him, yet rather than delay his march and

[128]

send for more waggons, he proceeded to Wepener
where, after several days’ fighting, both his food
and ammunition became exhausted and he was
obliged to lie idle around the enemy and await the
arrival of the supplies which he might have carried
with him at the outset of the trek if he had cared
to risk such an impediment to his rapid movements.

One of the primary reasons why the Boer could
move more rapidly than the British was the difference
in the weight carried by their horses. The
Boer paid no attention to art when he went to
war, and consequently he carried nothing that was
not absolutely essential. His saddle was less than
half the weight of a British saddle, and that was
almost all the equipment he carried when on a
trek. The Boer rider and equipment, including
saddle, rifle, blankets, and a food-supply, rarely
weighed more than two hundred and fifty pounds,
which was not a heavy load for a horse to carry.
A British cavalryman and his equipment of heavy
saddle, sabre, carbine, and saddle-bags, rarely
weighed less than four hundred pounds—a burden
which soon tired a horse. Again, almost every
Boer had two horses, so that when one had been

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ridden for an hour or more he was relieved and
led, while the other was used. In this manner the
Boers were able to travel from twelve to fourteen
hours in a day when it was absolutely necessary
to reach a certain point at a given time. Six
miles an hour was the rate of progress ascribed
to horses in normal condition, and when a forced
march was attempted they could travel sixty and
seventy miles in a day, and be in good condition
the following morning to undertake another
journey of equal length. Small commandos often
covered sixty and seventy miles in a day, especially
during the fighting along the Tugela, while
after the battles of Poplar Grove and Abraham’s
Kraal, and the capture of Bloemfontein, it seemed
as if the entire army in the Free State were
moving northward at a rate of speed far exceeding
that of an express train. The mobility of the
Boer army was then on a par with that of the
British army after the battle of Dundee, and it
was difficult to determine which of the two
deserved the palm for the best display of accelerated
motion.

A feature of the Boer system of warfare which
was most striking was the manner in which each

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individual protected himself, as far as possible,
from danger. In lion-hunting it is an axiom that
the hunter must not pursue a wounded lion into
tall grass or underbrush lest the pursuer may be
attacked. In the Boer army it was a natural
instinct, common to all the burghers, which led
them to seek their own safety whenever danger
seemed to be near. Men who follow the most
peaceful pursuits of life value their lives highly.
They do not assume great risks even if great ends
are to be attained. The majority of the Boers
were farmers who saw no glory in attempting to
gain a great success, the attainment of which made
it necessary that they should risk their lives. It
seemed as if each man realised that his death
meant a great loss to the Boer army, already
small, and that he did not mean to diminish its
size if he could possibly prevent it. The Boer
was quick in noting when the proper time arrived
for retreat, and he was not slothful in acting
upon his observations. Retreating at the proper
time was one of the Boers’ characteristics, but
it could not be called an advantage, for frequently
many of the Boers misjudged the proper
time for retreating and left the field when a battle

[131]

was almost won. At Poplar Grove the Boers
might have won the day if the majority of the
burghers had remained and fought an hour or two
longer instead of retreating precipitately when the
individuals determined that safety was to be found
only in flight. At Elandslaagte the foreigners
under General Kock did not gauge the proper
moment for retreat, but continued with the
fighting and were almost annihilated by the
Lancers because of their lack of discretion in that
respect. The burghers of the Free State, in particular,
had the instinct of retreating abnormally
developed, and whenever a battle was in progress
large numbers of burghers could be observed
going in an opposite direction as rapidly as their
ponies could carry them over the veld. The lack
of discipline in the commandos made such practices
possible; in fact there was no rule or law by
which a burgher could be prevented from retreating
or deserting whenever he felt that he did not care
to participate in a battle. After the British occupation
of Bloemfontein there was a small skirmish
about eight miles north of that city at a place
called Tafelkop which sent the Free Staters
running in all directions. The veld seemed to be

[132]

filled with deserters, and at every farmhouse there
were from two to six able-bodied men who had
retreated when they believed themselves to be in
grave danger.

SPION KOP, WHERE BOERS CHARGED UP THE HILLSIDE

Foolish men attribute all the moral courage in
the world to the soldiers of their own country, but
nature made a wise distribution of that gift, and
not all the Boers were cowards. Boer generals
with only a few hundred men time and again
attacked thousands of British soldiers, and
frequently vanquished them. General Botha’s
twenty-five hundred men held out for a week
against General Buller’s thirty or forty thousand
men, and General Cronje with his four thousand
burghers succumbed to nothing less than forty
thousand men and a hundred and fifty heavy guns
under Field-Marshal Lord Roberts. Those two
examples of Boer bravery would suffice to prove
that the South African farmers had moral courage
of no mean order if there were not a thousand and
one other splendid records of bravery. The
burghers did not always lie behind their shelter
until the enemy had come within several hundred
yards and then bowl them over with deadly
accuracy. At the Platrand fight near Ladysmith,

[133]

on January 6th, the Boers charged and captured
British positions, drove the defenders out, and did
it so successfully that only a few Boers were
killed. The Spion Kop fight, a second Majuba
Hill, was won after one of the finest displays of
moral courage in the war. It requires bravery
of the highest type for a small body of men to
climb a steep hill in the face of the enemy which
is three times greater numerically and armed
with larger and more guns, yet that was the
case with the Boers at Spion Kop. There were
but few battles in the entire campaign that the
Boer forces were not vastly outnumbered by
the enemy, who usually had from twice to twenty
times their number of cannon, yet the burghers
were well aware of the fact and did not allow
it to interfere with their plans nor did they
display great temerity in battling with such
a foe. When Lord Roberts and his three
thousand cavalry entered Jacobsdal there were
less than one hundred armed Boers in the
town, but they made a determined stand against
the enemy, and in a street-fight a large percentage
of the burghers fell, and their blood mingled with
that of those they had slain. Large bodies of

[134]

Boers rarely attacked, and never resisted the
enemy on level stretches of veld, not because they
lacked courage to do so, but because they saw the
futility of such action. After the British drove
the Boers out of the kopjes east and north-east of
Bloemfontein the burghers had no broken country
suited to their particular style of warfare, and
they retreated to the Vaal without much effort
to stop the advance of the enemy. The Boer
generals knew that the British were equipped with
innumerable cannon, which could sweep the level
veld for several miles before them and make the
ground untenable for the riflemen—the mainstay
of the Boer army.

When they were on hills the Boers were able to
entrench themselves so thoroughly that the fire
of several hundred heavy guns made hardly any
impression on them, but as soon as they attempted
to apply those tactics on level ground the results
were most disastrous. At Colenso and Magersfontein
the burghers remained in their trenches on
the hills while thousands of shrapnel and other
shells exploded above and around them, but very
few men were injured, and when the British
infantry advanced under cover of the shell fire the

[135]

Boers merely remained in the trenches until the
enemy had approached to within several hundred
yards and then assailed them with rifle fire.
Trenches always afforded perfect safety from
shell fire, and on that account the Boers were able
to cope so long and well with the British in the
fighting along the Tugela and around Kimberley.
The Boers generally remained quietly in their
trenches and made no reply to the British cannon
fire, however hot it was. The British generals
several times mistook this silence as an indication
that the Boers had evacuated the trenches, and
sent forward bodies of infantry to occupy the
positions. When the infantry reached the Boer
zone of fire they usually met with a terrific Mauser
fire that could not be stemmed, however gallant
the attacks might have been. Hundreds of
British soldiers lost their lives while going forward
under shell fire to occupy a position which, it was
presumed by the generals, was unoccupied by
the Boers.

There were innumerable instances, also, of
extraordinarily brave acts by individual burghers,
but it was extremely difficult to hear of them
owing to the Boers’ disinclination to discuss a

[136]

battle in its details. No Boer ever referred to
his exploits or those of his friends of his own
volition, and then only in the most indefinite
manner. He related the story of a battle in
much the same manner he told of the tilling of
his fields or the herding of his cattle, and when
there was any part of it pertaining to his
own actions he passed it over without comment.
It seemed as if every one was fighting, not for
his own glorification, but for the success of his
country’s army, and consequently there was
little hero-worship. Individual acts of bravery
entitled the fortunate person to have his name
mentioned in the Staats-Courant, the Government
gazette, but hardly any attention was paid to the
search for heroes, and only the names of a few
men were even chronicled in the columns of that
periodical. One of the bravest men in the Natal
campaign was a young Pretoria burgher named
Van Gas, who, in his youth, had an accident which
made it necessary that his right arm should be
amputated at the elbow. Later in life he was
injured in one of the native wars and the upper
arm was amputated, so that when he joined a
commando he had only the left arm. It was an

[137]

extraordinary spectacle to observe young Van
Gaz holding his carbine between his knees while
loading it with cartridges, and quite as strange to
see the energy with which he discharged his rifle
with one hand. He was in the van of the storming
party at Spion Kop, where a bullet passed completely
through his chest. He continued, however,
to work his rifle between his knees and to shoot
with his left arm, and was one of the first men to
reach the summit of the hill, where he snatched
the rifles from the hands of two British soldiers.
After the battle was won he was carried to a
hospital by several other burghers, but a month
afterwards he was again at the front at the Tugela,
going into exposed positions and shouting, “Come
on, fellows, here is a good chance!” His companions
desired to elect him as their field-cornet,
but he refused the honour.

Evert Le Roux and Herculaas Nel, of the
Swaziland Police, and two of the best scouts in
the Boer army, were constantly engaged in recklessly
daring enterprises, none of which, however,
was quite equal to their actions on April 21st,
when the vicinity of Ladysmith had been in
British hands for almost two months. The two
men went out on patrol and by night crept up

[138]

a kopje behind which about three hundred British
cavalrymen were bivouacking. The men were
twenty miles distant from their laagers at Dundee
and only a short distance from Ladysmith, but
they lay down and slept on the other side of the
kopje, less than a hundred yards from the cavalrymen.
In the morning the British cavalry was
divided into three squads, and all started for
Ladysmith. Le Roux and Nel swept down
toward the last squad, and called, “Hands up,”
to one of the men in the van. The cavalryman
promptly held up his hands and a minute afterward
surrendered his gun and himself, while the
remainder of the squad fled precipitately. The
two scouts, with their prisoner, quickly made a
détour of another kopje, and appeared in front
of the first squad, of whom they made a similar
demand. One of the cavalrymen, who was in
advance of the others, surrendered without attempting
to make any resistance, while the others
turned quickly to the right and rode headlong into
a deep sluit. Le Roux shot the horse of one of
the men before he reached the sluit, loaded the
unhorsed man on one of the other prisoner’s
horses, and then pursued the fleeing cavalrymen
almost to the city-limits of Ladysmith.

[139]

Major Albrecht, the head of the Free State-Artillery,
was one of the bravest men in General
Cronje’s commando, and his display of courage at
the battle of Magersfontein was not less extraordinary
than that which he made later in the
river bed at Paardeberg. At Magersfontein
Albrecht and two of his artillerymen operated the
cannon which were located behind schanzes twenty
feet apart. The British had more than thirty
cannon, which they turned upon the Boer cannon
whenever one of them was discharged. After a
short time the fire became so hot that Albrecht
sent his assistants to places of safety, and operated
the guns alone. For eight hours the intrepid Free
State artilleryman jumped from one cannon to
another, returning the fire whenever there was a
lull in the enemy’s attack and seeking safety
behind the schanze when shells were falling too
rapidly. It was an uneven contest, but the
bravery of the one man inspired the others, and
the end of the day saw the Boers nearer victory
than they were in the morning. At Tafelkop, on
March 30th, three burghers were caught napping
by three British soldiers, who suddenly appeared
before them and shouted, “Hands up!” While
the soldiers were advancing toward them the

[140]

three burghers succeeded in getting their rifles at
their captors’ heads, and turned the tables by
making prisoners of them. There were many
such instances of bravery, but one that is almost
incredible occurred at the place called Railway
Hill, near the Tugela, on February 24th. On that
day the Boers did not appear to know anything
concerning the position of the enemy, and James
Marks, a Rustenburg farmer, determined to go out
of the laager and reconnoitre on his own responsibility.
Marks was more than sixty-two years old,
and was somewhat decrepit, a circumstance which
did not prevent him from taking part in almost
every one of the Natal battles, however. The old
farmer had been absent from his laager less than
an hour when he saw a small body of British
soldiers at the foot of a kopje. He crept cautiously
around the kopje, and, when he was within a
hundred yards of the men, he shouted, “Hands
up!” The soldiers immediately lifted their arms,
and, in obedience to the orders of Marks, stacked
their guns on a rock and advanced toward him.
Marks placed the men in a line, saw that there
were twenty-three big, able-bodied soldiers, and
then marched them back into camp, to the great
astonishment of his generals and fellow burghers.

PLAN OF BATTLEFIELD OF SANNASPOST

CHAPTER VI

THE BOERS IN BATTLE

The battle of Sannaspost on March 31st was
one of the few engagements in the campaign
in which the forces of the Boers and the British
were almost numerically equal. There were two
or three small battles in which the Boers had more
men engaged than the British, but in the majority
of instances the Boers were vastly outnumbered
both in men and guns. At Elandslaagte the
Boers had exactly seven hundred and fifty
burghers pitted against the five or six thousand
British; Spion Kop was won from three thousand
British by three hundred and fifty Boers; at the
Tugela Botha with not more than twenty-six
hundred men fought for more than a week against
ten times that number of soldiers under General
Buller; while the greatest disparity between the

[142]

opposing forces was at Paardeberg, where Cronje
spent a week in trying to lead his four thousand
men through the encircling wall of forty or fifty
thousand British soldiers.

Sannaspost was not a decisive battle of the war,
since no point of great strategical importance was
at stake, but it was more in the nature of a demonstration
of what the Boers were able to do when
they were opposed to a force of equal strength.
It was a test which was equally fair to both contestants,
and neither of them could reasonably
claim to have possessed an advantage over the
other a day before the battle was fought. The
British commander, Colonel Broadwood, had
seventeen hundred men in his column, and General
De Wet was at the head of about two hundred and
fifty less than that number, but the strength of the
forces was equalised by the Boer general’s intimate
knowledge of the country. Colonel Broadwood
was experienced in Indian, Egyptian, and South
African warfare, and the majority of his soldiers
were seasoned in many battles. De Wet and his
men were fresh from Poplar Grove, Abraham’s
Kraal, and the fighting around Kimberley, but
they were not better nor worse than the average

[143]

of the Boer burghers. The British commander
was hampered by a large transport train, but he
possessed the advantage of more heavy guns than
his adversary. All in all, the two forces were
equally matched when they reached the battlefield.

The day before the battle General De Wet and
his men were in laager several miles east of
Brandfort, whither they had fled after the fall of
Bloemfontein. His scouts brought to him the
information that a small British column was
stationed in the village of Thaba N’Chu, forty
miles to the east, and he determined to march
thither and attack it. He gave the order, “Opzaal!”
and in less than eight minutes every one of
his burghers was on his horse, armed, provided
with two days’ rations of biltong, biscuit, coffee,
and sugar, and ready to proceed. De Wet himself
leaped into a light, ramshackle four-wheeler, and
led the advance over the dusty veld. Without
attempting to proceed with any semblance of
military order, the burghers followed in the course
of their leader, some riding rapidly, others walking
beside their horses, and a few skirmishing far
away on the veld for buck. The mule-teams

[144]

dragging the artillery and the ammunition waggons
were not permitted by their hullabalooing Basuto
drivers to lag far behind the general, and the dust
which was raised by this long cavalcade was not
unlike the clouds of locusts which were frequently
mistaken for the signs of a trekking commando.
Mile after mile was rapidly traversed, until darkness
came on, when a halt was made so that the
burghers might prepare a meal, and that the
general might hear from the scouts, who were far
in advance of the body. After the men and horses
had eaten, and the moon rose over the dark peak
of Thaba N’Chu mountain, the burghers lighted
their pipes and sang psalms and hymns until the
peaceful valley resounded with their voices.

VILLAGE AND MOUNTAIN OF THABA N’CHU

Panting horses brought to the little stone farmhouse,
where General De Wet was drinking milk,
the long-awaited scouts who carried the information
that the British force had evacuated Thaba N’Chu
late in the afternoon, and that it was moving
hurriedly toward Bloemfontein. Again the order:
“Opzaal,” and the mule train came into motion
and the burghers mounted their horses. A chill
night air arose, and shivering burghers wrapped
blankets around their shoulders. The humming of

[145]

hymns and the whistling ceased, and there was
nothing but the clatter of horses’ hoofs, the shouts
of the Basutos, and the noises of the guns and
waggons rumbling over the stones and gullies to
mark the nocturnal passage of the army. Lights
appeared at farmhouse windows, and at their gates
were women and children with bread and bowls
of milk and prayers for the burghers. Small walls
enclosing family burial plots where newly-dug
ground told its own story of the war seemed grim
in the moonlight; native huts with their inhabitants
standing like spectres before the doors appeared
like monstrous ant-heaps—all these were passed,
but the drooping eyes of the burghers saw nothing.
At midnight another halt was made, horses were
off-saddled and men lay down on the veld to
sleep. The generals and officers met in Krijgsraad,
and other scouts arriving told of the enemy’s
evident intention of spending the remainder of the
night at an old-time off-saddling station known as
Sannaspost. The news was highly important, and
the heads of the generals came closer together.
Maps were produced, pencil marks were made,
plans were formed, and then the sleeping burghers
were aroused. The trek was resumed, and shortly

[146]

afterward the column was divided into two parts;
the one consisting of nine hundred men under
General Peter De Wet, proceeding by a circuitous
route to the hills south of Sannaspost, and the
other of five hundred men commanded by General
Christian De Wet moving through a maze of kopjes
to a position west of the trekking station.

The burghers were not informed of the
imminence of a battle; but they required no such
announcement from their generals. The atmosphere
seemed to be surcharged with premonitions
of an engagement, and men rubbed sleep out of
their eyes and sat erect upon their horses. The
blacks even ceased to crack their whips so sharply,
and urged the mules forward in whispers instead of
shrieks. Burghers took their rifles from their
backs, tested the workings of the mechanism and
filled the magazine with cartridges. Artillerymen
leaped from their horses and led them while they
sat on the cannon and poured oil into the bearings.
Young men speculated on the number of prisoners
they would take; old men wrote their names on
their hats by the light of the moon. The lights of
Bloemfontein appeared in the distance, and grey-beards
looked longingly at them and sighed. But

[147]

the cavalcade passed on, grimly, silently, and
defiantly, into the haunts of the enemy.

After four hours of trekking over veld, kopje,
sluit, and donga, the two columns halted, the
burghers dismounted, and, weary from the long
journey and the lack of sleep, lay down on the
earth beside their horses. Commandants, field-cornets
and corporals, bustling about among the
burghers, horses and waggons, gave orders in
undertones; generals summoned their scouts and
asked for detailed information concerning the
whereabouts of the enemy; patrols were scurrying
hither and thither to secure accurate ideas of the
topography of the territory in front of them; all
who were in authority were busy, while the
burghers, who carried the strength of battle in
their bodies, lay sleeping and resting.

The first dim rays of the day came over the tops
of the eastern hills when the burghers were aroused
and asked to proceed to the positions chosen by
their leaders. The men under Peter De Wet, the
younger brother of the Commandant-General, were
led to an elevation about a mile and a half south
of Sannaspost, where they placed their cannon
into position and waited for the break of day.

[148]

Christian De Wet and his five hundred burghers
advanced noiselessly and occupied the dry bed of
Koorn Spruit, a stream which crossed the main
road running from Thaba N’Chu to Bloemfontein
at right angles about a mile from the station where
the British forces had begun their bivouac for the
night, two hours before. No signs of the enemy
could be seen; there were no pickets, no outposts,
and none of the usual safeguards of an army, and
for some time the Boers were led to believe that
the British force had been allowed to escape
unharmed.

The burghers under the leadership of Christian
De Wet were completely concealed in the spruit.
The high banks might have been held by the
forces of their enemy, but unless they crept to the
edge and looked down into the stream they would
not have been able to discover the presence of the
Boers. Where the road crossed the stream deep
approaches had been dug into the banks in order
to facilitate the passage of conveyances—a “drift”
it is called in South Africa—and on either side for
a distance of a mile, up and down the stream, the
burghers stood by their horses and waited for
the coming of the day. The concealment was

[149]

perfect; no specially constructed trenches could
have served the purposes of the Boers more advantageously.

Dawn lighted the flat-topped kopjes that lay in
a huge semicircle in the distance, and men clambered
up the sides of the spruit to ascertain the
camp of the enemy. The white smoke-stack of
the Bloemfontein waterworks appeared against the
black background of the hills in the east, but it
was still too dark to distinguish objects on the
ground beneath it. A group of burghers in the
spruit, absent-mindedly, began to sing a deep-toned
psalm, but the stern order of a commandant
quickly ended their matutinal song. A donkey in
an ammunition waggon brayed vociferously, and a
dozen men, fearful lest the enemy should hear the
noise, sprang upon him with clubs and whips, and
even attempted to close his mouth by force of
hands. It was the fateful moment before the
battle, and men acted strangely. Some walked
nervously up and down, others dropped on their
knees and prayed, a few lighted their pipes, many
sat on the ground and looked vacantly into space,
while some of the younger burghers joked and
laughed.

[150]

At the drift stood the generals, scanning the
hills and undulations with their glasses. Small
fires appeared in the east near the tall white
stack. “They are preparing their breakfast,”
some one suggested. “I see a few tents,” another
one reported excitedly. All eyes were turned in
the direction indicated. Some estimated the intervening
distance at a mile, others were positive
it was not more than a thousand yards—it was
not light enough to distinguish accurately. “Tell
the burghers that I will fire the first shot,” said
General De Wet to one of his staff. Immediately
the order was spread to the men in the spruit. “I
see men leading oxen to the waggons; they are
preparing to trek,” remarked a commandant.
“They are coming down this way,” announced
another, slapping his thigh joyfully.

A few minutes afterwards clouds of dust arose,
and at intervals the waggons in the van could be
seen coming down the slope toward the drift. The
few tents fell, and men in brown uniforms moved
hither and thither near the waterworks building.
Waggon after waggon joined in the procession;
drivers were shrieking and wielding their whips
over the heads of the oxen, and farther behind

[151]

were cavalrymen mounting their horses. It was
daylight then, although the sun was still below the
horizon, and the movements of the enemy could
be plainly discerned. The ox-teams came slowly
down the road—there seemed to be no limit to
their number—and the generals retreated down
the drift to the bottom of the spruit, so that their
presence should not be discerned by the enemy,
and to await the arrival of the waggons.

The shrieking natives drew nearer, the rumbling
of the waggons became more distinct, and soon the
first vehicle descended the drift. A few burghers
were sent forward to intercept it. As soon as it
reached the bottom of the spruit the men grasped
the bridles of the horses, and instantly there were
shrieks from the occupants of the vehicle. It was
filled with women and children, all pale with fright
on account of the unexpected appearance of the
Boers. The passengers were quickly and gently
taken from the waggon and sent to places of
safety in the spruit, while a burgher jumped into
the vehicle and drove the horses up the other drift
and out upon the open veld. The operation of
substituting drivers was done so quickly and
quietly that none of those approaching the drift

[152]

from the other side noticed anything extraordinary,
and proceeded into the spruit. Other
burghers stood prepared to receive them as they
descended the drift with their heavily laden
ammunition and provision waggons, and there
was little trouble in seizing the British drivers
and placing the whips into the hands of Boers.
Waggon after waggon was relieved of its drivers
and sent up to the other bank without creating a
suspicion in the minds of the others who were
coming down the slope from the waterworks.

After fifty or more waggons had crossed the
drift a solitary cavalry officer with the rank of
captain, riding leisurely along, followed one of
them. His coat had a rent in it and he was
holding the torn parts together, as if he were
planning the mending of it when he reached
Bloemfontein. A young Boer sprang toward him,
called “Hands up!” and projected the barrel of
his carbine toward him. The officer started out of
his reverie, involuntarily reached for his sword, but
repented almost instantly, and obeyed the order.
General De Wet approached the captain, touched
his hat in salute, and said, “Good morning, sir.”
The officer returned the complimentary greeting

[153]

and offered his sword to the Boer. De Wet
declined to receive the weapon and told the officer
to return to his men and ask them to surrender.
“We have a large force of men surrounding you,”
the general explained, “and you cannot escape.
In order to save many lives I ask you to surrender
your men without fighting.” The officer remained
silent for a moment, then looked squarely into the
eyes of the Boer general and said, “I will return to
my men and will order them to surrender.” De
Wet nodded his head in assent, and the captain
mounted his horse. “I will rely upon your
promise,” the general added, “if you break it I
will shoot you.”

General De Wet and several of his commandants
followed the cavalry officer up the drift and stood
on the bank while the horseman galloped slowly
toward the troops which were following the
waggons down the slope. The general raised
his carbine and held it in his arms. His eyes
were fixed on the officer, and he stood as firm as
a statue until the cavalryman reached his men.
There was a momentary pause while the captain
stood before his troops, then the horses were
wheeled about and their hoofs sent showers of

[154]

dust into the air as they carried their riders in
retreat. General De Wet stepped forward several
paces, raised his carbine to his shoulder, aimed
steadily for a second, then fired. The bullet
whistled menacingly over the heads of oxen and
drivers—it struck the officer, and he fell.¹

All along the banks of the spruit, for a mile on
either side of the ravine, and over on the hills
where Peter De Wet and his burghers lay, men had
been waiting patiently and expectantly for that
signal gun of Christian De Wet. They had been
watching the enemy toiling down the slope under
the very muzzles of their guns for almost an age,
it seemed, yet they dared not fire lest the plans of
the generals should be thwarted. Men had lain
flat on the ground with their rifles pointing minute
after minute at individuals in the advancing column,
but the words of their general, “I will fire the first
shot,” restrained them. The flight of the bullet

[155]

which entered the body of the cavalry officer
marked the ending of the long period of nervous
tension, and the burghers were free to use their
guns.

THE AUTHOR, AND A BASUTO PONY WHICH ASSISTED IN THE FIGHT AT SANNASPOST

Until the officer advised his men to retreat and
he himself fell from his horse the main body of
the British troops was ignorant of the presence of
the Boers, but the report of the rifle was a summons
to battle and instantly the field was filled with
myriads of stirring scenes. The lazy transport-train
suddenly became a thing of rapid motion;
the huge body of troops was quickly broken into
many parts; horses that had been idling along the
road plunged forward as if projected by catapults.
Officers with swords flashing in the sunlight
appeared leading their men into different positions,
cannon were hurriedly drawn upon commanding
elevations, and Red Cross waggons scattered to
places of safety. The peaceful transport-train
had suddenly been transformed into a formidable
engine of war by the report of a rifle, and the
contest for a sentiment and a bit of ground was
opened by shrieking cannon-shell and the piercing
cry of rifle-ball.

Down at the foot of the slope, where the drift

[156]

crossed the spruit, Boers were dragging cannon
into position, and in among the waggons which
had become congested in the road, burghers and
soldiers were engaging in fierce hand-to-hand
encounters. A stocky Briton wrestled with a
youthful Boer, and in the struggle both fell to
the ground; near by a cavalryman was firing his
revolver at a Boer armed with a rifle, and a hundred
paces away a burgher was fighting with a
British officer for the possession of a sword. Over
from the hills in the south came the dull roar of
Boer cannon, followed by the reports of the shells
exploding in the east near the waterworks.
British cannon opened fire from a position near
the white smoke-stack and scores of bursting
projectiles fell among the waggons at the spruit.
Oxen and horses were rent limb from limb, waggons
tumbled over on their sides; boxes of provisions
were thrown in all directions, and out of the cloud
of dust and smoke stumbled men with blood-stained
faces and lacerated bodies. Terrified and
bellowing oxen twisted and tugged at their yokes;
horses broke from their fastenings in the waggons
and dashed hither and thither, and weakling donkeys
strove in vain to free themselves from waggons

[157]

set on fire by the shells. Explosion followed
explosion, and with every one the mass became
more entangled. Dead horses fell upon living
oxen; wheels and axles were thrown on the
backs of donkeys, and plunging mules dragged
heavy waggons over great piles of débris.

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

[158]

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

[159]

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

[160]

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

[161]

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 détour north-eastward
from the spruit, and, jumping from their

[162]

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

[163]

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.

[164]

“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

[165]

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

[166]

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,

[167]

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

[168]

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 attachés 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.

[169]

“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 attachés
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 attaché, “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 attaché 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

[170]

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.

CALLING FOR VOLUNTEERS TO MAN CAPTURED CANNON AFTER SANNASPOST

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

[171]

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

[172]

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—

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,

[174]

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

[175]

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,

[176]

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

[177]

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

[178]

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

[179]

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

[180]

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

[181]

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

[182]

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

[183]

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

[184]

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

[185]

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

[186]

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

[187]

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

[188]

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

[189]

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

[190]

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

[191]

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

[192]

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

[193]

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

[194]

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

[195]

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

[196]

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

[197]

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.

[198]

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

[199]

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

[200]

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

[201]

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

[202]

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

[203]

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.

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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

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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

[206]

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

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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.

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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

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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

[210]

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

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burghers north over the Biggarsberg mountains,
where provisions could be secured.

COMMANDANT-GENERAL CHRISTIAN H. DE WET

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

[212]

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

[213]

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

[214]

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 PETER DE WET

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

[215]

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

[216]

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

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

[217]

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,

[218]

military attachés, 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

[220]

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,

[221]

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

[222]

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.

PRESIDENT KRUGER ADDRESSING AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS

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

[223]

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

[224]

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

[225]

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

[226]

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

[227]

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

[228]

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

[229]

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

[230]

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

[231]

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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;

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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.”

Early in his life Kruger formed an idea that the
Boers were under the direct control of Providence,
and it displeased him greatly to learn that many
petty thefts were committed by some of the
burghers at the front. In many of the speeches to
the burghers he referred to the shortcomings of
some of them, and tried to impress on their minds,
that they could never expect the Lord to took with
favour on their cause if they did not mend their
ways. He made a strong reference to those sins in
the oration he delivered over Joubert’s body, and
never neglected to tell the foreign volunteers that
they had come into the country for fighting and
not for looting. When an American corps of about
fifty volunteers arrived in Pretoria in April he requested
that they should call at his residence before
leaving for the front, and the men were greatly

[238]

pleased to receive and accept the invitation. The
President walked to the sidewalk in front of his
house to receive the Americans, and then addressed
them in this characteristically blunt speech: “I am
very glad you have come here to assist us. I want
you to look after your horses and rifles. Do not
allow any one to steal them from you. Do not
steal anybody else’s gun or horse. Trust in God,
and fight as hard as you can.”

Undoubtedly one of the most pathetic incidents
in Kruger’s life was his departure from Pretoria
when the British army was only a short distance
south of that city. It was bitter enough to him to
witness the conquest of the veld district, the farms
and the plantations, but when the conquerors were
about to possess the capital of the country which
he himself had seen growing out of the barren veld
into a beautiful city of brick and stone, it was indeed
a grave epoch for an old man to pass through.
It hurt him little to see Johannesburg fall to the
enemy, for that city was ever in his enemy’s hands,
but when Pretoria, distinctly the Boer city, was
about to become British, perhaps for ever, the old
man might have been expected to display signs of
the great sorrow which he undoubtedly felt in his

[239]

heart. At the threshold of such a great calamity
to his cause it might have been anticipated that he
would acknowledge defeat and ask for mercy from
a magnanimous foe. It was not dreamt of that
a man of almost four score years would desert
his home and family, his farms and flocks, the
result of a lifetime’s labour, and endure the discomforts
of the field merely because he believed
in a cause which, it seemed, was about to be
extinguished by force of arms. But adversity
caused no changes in the President’s demeanour.
When he bade farewell to his good old wife—perhaps
it was a final farewell—he cheered and
comforted her, and when the weeping citizens
and friends of many years gathered at his little
cottage to bid him goodbye he chided them for
their lack of faith in the cause, and encouraged
them to believe that victory would crown the
Boers’ efforts. Seven months before, Kruger stood
on the verandah of his residence, and, doffing his
hat to the first British prisoners that arrived in the
city, asked his burghers not to rejoice unseemingly;
in May the old man, about to flee before the
enemy, inspired his people to take new courage,
and ridiculed their ideas that all was lost.

[240]

Whether the Boers were in the first flush of
victory or in the depths of despair Paul Kruger
was ever the same to them—patriot, adviser, encourager,
leader, and friend.

It was an easy matter to see the President when
he was at his residence at Pretoria, and he
appeared to be deeply interested in learning the
opinions of the many foreigners who arrived in his
country. The little verandah of the Executive
Mansion—a pompous name for the small, one-storey
cottage—was the President’s favourite resting
and working place during the day. Just as in
the days of peace he sat there in a big armchair,
discussing politics with groups of his countrymen,
so while the war was in progress he was seated
there pondering the grave subjects of the time.
The countrymen who could always be observed
with him at almost any time of the day were missing.
They were at the front. Occasionally two
or three old Boers could be seen chatting with him
behind Barnato’s marble lions, but invariably they
had bandoliers around their bodies and rifles across
their knees. Few of the old Boers who knew the
President intimately returned from the front on
leaves-of-absence unless they called on him to

[241]

explain to him the tide and progress of the
war.

According to his own declaration his health was
as good as it ever was, although the war added
many burdens to his life. Although he was
seventy-five years old he declared he was as
sprightly as he was twenty years before, and he
seemed to have the energy and vitality of a man
of forty. The reports that his mind was affected
were cruel hoaxes which had not the slightest
foundation of fact. The only matter concerning
which he worried was his eyesight, which had been
growing weaker steadily for five years. That misfortune
alone prevented him from accompanying
his burghers to the front and sharing their burdens
with them, and he frequently expressed his disappointment
that he was unable to engage more
actively in the defence of his country. When
Pretoria fell into British hands Kruger again
sacrificed his own interests for the welfare of his
Government and moved the capital into the fever-districts,
the low-veld of the eastern part of the
Transvaal. The deadly fever which permeates the
atmosphere of that territory seemed to have no
more terrors for him than did the British bullets at

[242]

Poplar Grove, and he chose to remain in that
dangerous locality in order that he might be in
constant communication with his burghers and the
outside world rather than to go farther into the
isolated interior where he would have assumed no
such great risks to his health.

Mr. Kruger was not a bitter enemy of the
British nation, as might have been supposed. He
was always an admirer of Britons and British
institutions, and the war did not cause him to
alter his convictions. He despised only the men
whom he charged with being responsible for the
war, and he never thought to hide the identity of
those men. He blamed Mr. Rhodes, primarily,
for instigating the war, and held Mr. Chamberlain
and Sir Alfred Milner equally responsible for
bringing it about. Against these three men he
was extremely bitter, and he took advantage of
every opportunity for expressing his opinions of
them and their work. In February he stated that
the real reason of the war between the Boers and
the British was Rhodes’s desire for glory. “He
wants to be known as the maker of the South
African empire,” he said, “and the empire is not
complete so long as there are two Republics in
the centre of the country.”

[243]

Whatever were the causes of the war, it is certain
that President Kruger did not make it in order
to gain political supremacy in the country. The
Dutch of Cape Colony, President Steyn of the
Free State, and Secretary Reitz of the Transvaal,
may have had visions of Dutch supremacy, but
President Kruger had no such hopes. He
invariably and strenuously denied that he had
any aspirations other than the independence of his
country, and all his words and works emphasised
his statement to that effect. Several days before
Commandant-General Joubert died, that intimate
friend of the President declared solemnly that
Kruger had never dreamt of expelling the British
Government from South Africa and much less had
made any agreement with the Dutch in other parts
of the country with a view to such a result. It
was a difficult matter to find a Transvaal Boer or
a Boer from the northern part of the Free State
who cared whether the British or the Dutch were
paramount in South Africa so long as the Republics
were left unharmed, but it was less difficult to meet
Cape Colonists and Boers from the southern part
of the Free State who desired that Great Britain’s
power in the country should be broken. If there

[244]

was any real spirit against Great Britain it was
born on British soil in Cape Colony and blown
northward to where courage to fight was more
abundant. Its source certainly was not in the
north, and more certainly not with Paul Kruger,
the man of peace.

President Steyn, of the Orange Free State,
occupied even a more responsible position than
his friend President Kruger, of the Transvaal.
At the beginning of hostilities, Steyn found that
hundreds of the British-born citizens of his State
refused to fight with his army, and consequently
he was obliged to join the Transvaal with a much
smaller force than he had reckoned upon. He
was handicapped by the lack of generals of any
experience, and he did not have a sufficient
number of burghers to guard the borders of his
own State. His Government had made but few
preparations for war, and there was a lack of guns,
ammunition, and equipment. The mobilisation of
his burghers was extremely difficult and required
much more time than was anticipated, and everything
seemed to be awry at a time when every
detail should have been carefully planned and
executed. As the responsible head of the

[245]

Government and the veritable head of the army
Steyn passed a crisis with a remarkable display of
energy, ingenuity, and ability. After the army
was in the field he gave his personal attention to
the work of the departments whose heads were at
the front and attended to many of the details of
the commissariat work in Bloemfontein. He
frequently visited the burghers in the field and
gave to them such encouragement as only the
presence and praise of the leader of a nation can
give to a people. In February he went to the
Republican lines at Ladysmith and made an
address in which he stated that Sir Alfred Milner’s
declaration that the power of Afrikanderism must
be broken had caused the war. Several days later
he was with his burghers at Kimberley, praising
their valour and infusing them with renewed
courage. A day or two afterward he was again in
Bloemfontein, arranging for the comfort of his men
and caring for the wives and children who were
left behind. His duties were increased a hundred-fold
as the campaign progressed, and when the
first reverses came he alone of the Free Staters
was able to imbue the men with new zeal. After
Bloemfontein was captured by the British he

[246]

transferred the capital to Kroonstad, and there,
with the assistance of President Kruger, re-established
the fighting spirit of the burgher army.
He induced the skulking burghers to return to
their compatriots at the front, and formed the
plans for future resistance against the invading
army. When Lord Roberts’s hosts advanced from
Bloemfontein, President Steyn again moved the
capital and established it at Heilbron. Thereafter
the capital was constantly transferred from one
place to another, but through all those vicissitudes
the President clung nobly to his people and
country.

CHAPTER IX

FOREIGNERS IN THE WAR

In every war there are men who are not citizens
of the country with whose army they are
fighting, and the “soldier-of-fortune” is as much a
recognised adjunct of modern armies as he was in
the days of knight-errantry. In the American
revolutionary war both the colonial and British
forces were assisted by many foreigners, and in
every great and small war since then the contending
armies have had foreigners in their service. In
the Franco-Prussian war there was a great number
of foreigners, among them having been one of the
British generals who took a leading part in the
Natal campaign. The brief Græco-Turkish war
gave many foreign officers an opportunity of
securing experience, while the Spaniards in the
Hispano-American war had the assistance of a

[248]

small number of European officers. Even the
Filipinos have had the aid of a corps of foreigners,
the leader of whom, however, deserted Aguinaldo
and joined the Boer forces.

There is a fascination in civilised warfare which
attracts men of certain descriptions, and to them a
well-fought battle is the highest form of exciting
amusement. All the world is interested in warfare
among human beings, and there are men who
delight in fighting battles in order that their own
and public interest may be gratified. It may
suggest a morbid or bloodthirsty spirit, this love
of warfare, but no spectacle is finer, more magnificent,
than a hard-fought game in which human
lives are staked against a strip of ground—a
position. It is not hard to understand why many
men should become fascinated with warfare and
travel to the ends of the earth in order to take part
in it, but a soldier of fortune needs to make no
apologies. The Boer army was augmented by
many of these men who delighted in war for
fighting’s sake, but a larger number joined the
forces because they believed the Republics were
fighting in a just cause.

The Boer was jealous of his own powers of

[249]

generalship, and when large numbers of foreigners
volunteered to lead their commandos the farmers
gave a decidedly negative reply. Scores of foreign
officers arrived in the country shortly after the
beginning of hostilities and, intent on securing fame
and experience, asked to be placed in command,
but no request of that kind was granted. The
Boers felt that their system of warfare was the
perfect one, and they scoffed at the suggestion
that European officers might teach them anything
in the military line. Every foreign officer was
welcomed in Pretoria and in the laagers, but he
was asked to enlist as a private, or ordinary
burgher. Commissions in the Boer army were
not to be had for the asking, as was anticipated,
and many of the foreign officers were deeply
disappointed in consequence. The Boers felt that
the foreigners were unacquainted with the country,
the burgher mode of warfare, and lacked adroitness
with the rifle, and consequently refused to place
lives and battles in the hands of incompetent men.
There were a few foreigners in the service of the
Boers at the beginning of the war, but their
number was so small as to have been without
significance. Several European officers had been

[250]

employed by the Governments of the Republics to
instruct young Boers in artillery work—-and their
instruction was invaluable—but the oft-repeated
assertion that every commando was in charge of a
foreign officer was as ridiculous as that of the
Cape Times which stated that the British retired
from Spion Kop because no water was found on
its summit.

The influx of foreigners into the country began
simultaneously with the war, and it continued thereafter
at the rate of about four hundred men a month.
The volunteers, as they were called by the burghers,
consisted of the professional soldier, the man in
search of loot, the man who fights for love of
justice, and the adventurer. The professional
soldier was of much service to the burghers so long
as he was content to remain under a Boer leader,
but as soon as he attempted to operate on his own
responsibility he became not only an impediment
to the Boers, but also a positive danger. In the
early stages of the war the few foreign legions that
existed met with disaster at Elandslaagte, and
thereafter all the foreign volunteers were obliged
to join a commando. After several months had
passed the foreigners, eager to have responsible

[251]

command, prevailed upon the generals to allow the
formation of foreign legions to operate independently.
The Legion of France, the American
Scouts, the Russian Scouts, the German Corps,
and several other organisations were formed, and
for a month after the investment of Bloemfontein
these legions alone enlivened the situation by their
frolicsome reports of attacks on the enemy’s outposts.
During those weeks the entire British army
must have been put to flight scores of times at the
very least, if the reports of the foreign legions may
be believed, and the British casualty list must have
amounted to thrice the number of English soldiers
in the country. The free-rein given to the foreign
legionaries was withdrawn shortly after Villebois-Mareuil
and his small band of Frenchmen met
with disaster at Boshof, and thereafter all the
foreigners were placed under the direct command
of General De la Rey.

The man in search of the spoils of war was not
so numerous, but he made his presence felt by
stealing whatever was portable and saleable.
When he became surfeited with looting houses
in conquered territory and stealing horses, luggage,
and goods of lesser value in the laagers he returned

[252]

to Johannesburg and Pretoria and assisted in
emptying residences and stores of their contents.
This style of soldier-of-fortune never went into a
battle of his own accord, and when he found himself
precipitated into the midst of one he lost little
time in reaching a place of safety. Almost on a
par with the looter was the adventurer, whose chief
object of life seemed to be to tell of the battles he
had assisted in winning. He was constantly in the
laagers when there was no fighting in progress, but
as soon as the report of a gun was heard the adventurer
felt the necessity of going on urgent business
to Pretoria. After the fighting he could always be
depended upon to relate the wildest personal
experiences that camp-fires ever heard. He could
tell of amazing experiences in the wilds of South
America, on the steppes of Siberia, and other ends
of the earth, and after each narrative he would
make a request for a “loan.” The only adventures
he had during the war were those which he encountered
while attempting to escape from battles, and
the only service he did to the Boer army was to
assist in causing the disappearance of commissariat
supplies.

The men who fought with the Boers because

[253]

they were deeply in sympathy with the Republican
cause were in far greater numbers than those
with other motives, and their services were of
much value to the federal forces. The majority
of these were in the country when the war was
begun, and were accepted as citizens of the
country. They joined commandos and remained
under Boer leaders during the entire campaign.
In the same class were the volunteers who entered
the Republics from Natal and Cape Colony, for
the purpose of assisting their co-religionists and
kinsmen. Of these there were about six thousand
at the beginning of hostilities, but there were
constant desertions, so that after the first six
months of the war perhaps less than one-third of
them remained. The Afrikanders of Natal and
Cape Colony were not inferior in any respect to
the Boers whose forces they joined, but when
the tide of war changed and it became evident
that the Boers would not triumph, they returned
to their homes and farms in the colonies, in order
to save them from confiscation. Taking into
consideration the fact that four-fifths of the white
population of the two colonies was of the same
race and religion as the Boers, six thousand was

[254]

not a large number of volunteers to join the
federal forces.

The artillery fire of the Boer was so remarkably
good that the delusion was cherished by the
British commanders that foreign artillerists were
in charge of all their guns. It was not believed
that the Boers had any knowledge of arms other
than rifles, but it was not an easy matter to find
a foreigner at a cannon or a rapid-fire gun. The
field batteries of the State Artillery of the Transvaal
had two German officers of low rank, who
were in the country long before the war began,
but almost all the other men who assisted with
the field guns were young Boers. The heavy
artillery in Natal was directed by MM. Grunberg
and Leon, representatives of Creusot, who
manufactured the guns. M. Leon’s ability as an
engineer and gunner pleased Commandant-General
Joubert so greatly that he gave him
full authority over the artillery. Major Albrecht,
the director of the Free State Artillery, was
a foreigner by birth, but he became a citizen
of the Free State long before the war, and did
sterling service to his country until he was
captured with Cronje at Paardeberg. Otto von

[255]

Lossberg, a German-American who had seen
service in the armies of Germany and the United
States, arrived in the country in March, and was
thereafter in charge of a small number of heavy
guns, but the majority of them were manned by
Boer officers.

None of the foreigners who served in the Boer
army received any compensation. They were
supplied with horses and equipment, at a cost to
the Boer Governments of about £35 for each
volunteer, and they received better food than
the burghers, but no wages were paid to them.
Before a foreign volunteer was allowed to join
a commando, and before he received his equipment,
he was obliged to take an oath of allegiance
to the Republic. Only a few men who declined
to take the oath were allowed to join the army.
The oath of allegiance was an adaptation of the
one which caused so much difficulty between Great
Britain and the Transvaal before the war. A
translation of it reads—

“I hereby make an oath of solemn allegiance
to the people of the South African
Republic, and I declare my willingness to

[256]

assist, with all my power, the burghers of
this Republic in the war in which they are
engaged. I further promise to obey the
orders of those placed in authority according
to law, and that I will work for nothing
but the prosperity, the welfare, and the
independence of the land and people of
this Republic, so truly help me, God
Almighty.”

BATTLEFIELD OF ELANDSLAAGTE

No army lists were ever to be found at Pretoria
or at the front, and it was as monumental a task
to secure a fair estimate of the Boer force as it
was to obtain an estimate of the number of the
foreigners who assisted them. The Boers had no
men whom they could spare to detail to statistical
work, and, in consequence, no correct figures can
ever be obtained. The numerical strength of the
various organisations of foreigners could readily
be obtained from their commanders, but many
of the foreigners were in Boer commandos, and
their strength is only problematical. An estimate
which was prepared by the British and American
correspondents, who had good opportunities of
forming as nearly a correct idea as any one,

[257]

resulted in this list, which gives the numbers of
those in the various organisations, as well as those
in the commandos:—

The French legionaries were undoubtedly of
more actual service to the Boers than the volunteers
of any other nationality, inasmuch as they
were given the opportunities of doing valuable
work. Before the war one of the large forts at
Pretoria was erected by French engineers, and
when the war was begun Frenchmen of military
experience were much favoured by General
Joubert, who was proud of his French extraction.
The greater quantity of artillery had been purchased
from French firms, and the Commandant-General

[258]

wisely placed guns in the hands of the
men who knew how to operate them well. MM.
Grunberg and Leon were of incalculable assistance
in transporting the heavy artillery over the
mountains of Natal, and in securing such positions
for them where the fire of the enemy’s guns
could not harm them. The work of the heavy
guns, the famous “Long Toms” which the besieged
in Ladysmith will remember as long as
the siege itself remains in their memory, was
almost entirely the result of French hands and
brains, while all the havoc caused by the heavy
artillery in the Natal battles was due to the
engineering and gunnery of Leon, Grunberg,
and their Boer assistants. After remaining in
Natal until after the middle of January the two
Frenchmen joined the Free State forces, to whom
they rendered valuable assistance. Leon was
wounded at Kimberley on February 12th, and,
after assisting in establishing the ammunition
works at Pretoria and Johannesburg, returned
to France. Viscount Villebois-Mareuil was one
of the many foreigners who joined the Boer
army and lost their lives while fighting with the
Republican forces. While ranking as colonel on

[259]

the General Staff of the French army, and when
about to be promoted to the rank of general, he
resigned from the service on account of the
Dreyfus affair. A month after the commencement
of the war Villebois-Mareuil arrived in the
Transvaal and went to the Natal front, where his
military experience enabled him to give advice
to the Boer generals. In January the Colonel
attached himself to General Cronje’s forces, with
whom he took part in many engagements. He
was one of the few who escaped from the disastrous
fight at Paardeberg, and shortly afterwards,
at the war council at Kroonstad, the French
officer was created a brigadier-general—the first
and only one in the Boer army—and all the
foreign legions were placed in his charge. It
was purposed that he should harass the enemy
by attacks on their lines of communication, and
it was while he was at the outset of the first of
these expeditions that he and twelve of his small
force of sixty men were killed at Boshof, in the
north-western part of the Free State, early in
April. Villebois-Mareuil was a firm believer in
the final success of the Boer arms, and he received
the credit of planning two battles—second Colenso

[260]

and Magersfontein—which gave the Boers at least
temporary success. The Viscount was a writer
for the Revue des Deux Mondes, the Correspondant,
and La Liberté, the latter of which referred to him
as the latter-day Lafayette. Colonel Villebois-Mareuil
was an exceptionally brave man, a fine
soldier, and a gentleman whose friendship was
prized.

Lieutenant Gallopaud was another Frenchman
who did sterling service to the Boers while he
was subordinate to Colonel Villebois-Mareuil. At
Colenso Gallopaud led his men in an attack which
met with extraordinary success, and later in the
Free State campaign he distinguished himself by
creditable deeds in several battles. Gallopaud
went to the Transvaal for experience, and he
secured both that and fame. After the death of
Villebois-Mareuil, Gallopaud was elected commandant
of the French Legion, and before he
joined De la Rey’s army he had the novel pleasure
of subduing a mutiny among some of his men.
An Algerian named Mahomed Ben Naseur, who
had not been favoured with the sight of blood for
several weeks, threatened to shoot Gallopaud with
a Mauser, but there was a cessation of hostilities

[261]

on the part of the Algerian shortly after big,
powerful Gallopaud went into action.

The majority of the Hollanders who fought
with the Boers were in the country when the war
was begun, and they made a practical demonstration
of their belief in the Boer cause by going into
the field with the first commandos. The Dutch
corps was under the command of Commandant
Smoronberg, the former drill-master of the Johannesburg
Police. Among the volunteers were many
young Hollanders who had been employed by
the Government in Pretoria and Johannesburg
establishments, and by the Netherlands railways.
In the first engagement, at Elandslaagte, in
November, the corps was practically annihilated
and General Kock, the leader of the Uitlander
brigade, himself received his death wounds. Afterward
the surviving members of the corps joined
Boer commandos where stray train-loads of
officers’ wines, such as were found the day before
the battle of Elandslaagte, were not allowed to
interfere with the sobriety of the burghers. The
Russian corps, under Commandant Alexis de
Ganetzky and Colonel Prince Baratrion-Morgaff,
was formed after all the men had been campaigning

[262]

under Boer officers in Natal for several months.
The majority of the men were Johannesburgers
without military experience who joined the army
because there was nothing else to do.

The German corps was as short-lived as the
Hollander organisation, it having been part of the
force which met with disaster at Elandslaagte.
Colonel Schiel, a German-Boer of brief military
experience, led the organisation, but was unable to
display his abilities to any extent before he was
made a prisoner of war. Captain Count Harran
von Zephir was killed in the fight at Spion Kop,
and Herr von Brusenitz was killed and Colonel
von Brown was captured at the Tugela. The
corps was afterward reorganised and, under the
leadership of Commandant Otto Krantz of
Pretoria, it fought valiantly in several battles in
the Free State. Among the many German
volunteers who entered the country after the
beginning of hostilities was Major Baron von
Reitzenstein, the winner of the renowned long-distance
horseback race from Berlin to Vienna.
Major von Reitzenstein was a participant in
battles at Colesburg and in Natal, and was eager
to remain with the Boer forces until the end of

the war, but was recalled by his Government,
which had granted him a leave of absence from
the German army. Three of the forts at Pretoria
were erected by Germans, and the large fort at
Johannesburg was built by Colonel Schiel at an
expense of less than £5,000.

COLONEL JOHN E. BLAKE, OF THE IRISH BRIGADE

[263]

The Americans in South Africa who elected to
fight under the Boer flags did not promise to win
the war single-handed, and consequently the Boers
were not disappointed in the achievements of the
volunteers from the sister-republic across the
Atlantic. In proportion to their numbers the
Americans did as well as the best volunteer
foreigners, and caused the Government less trouble
and expense than any of the Uitlanders’ organisations.
The majority of the Americans spent the
first months of the war in Boer commandos, and
made no effort to establish an organisation of their
own, although they were of sufficient numerical
strength. A score or more of them joined the
Irish Brigade organised by Colonel J.E. Blake,
a graduate of West Point Military Academy and
a former officer in the American army, and accompanied
the Brigade through the first seven months
of the Natal campaign. After the exciting days

[264]

of the Natal campaign John A. Hassell, an
American who had been with the Vryheid commando,
organised the American Scouts and succeeded
in gathering what probably was the
strangest body of men in the war. Captain Hassell
himself was born in New Jersey, and was well educated
in American public schools and the schools of
experience. He spent the five years before the
war in prospecting and with shooting expeditions
in various parts of South Africa, and had a better
idea of the geological features of the country than
any of the commandants of the foreign legions.
While he was with the Vryheid commando Hassell
was twice wounded, once in the attack on Caesar’s
Hill and again at Estcourt, where he received
a bayonet thrust which disabled him for several
weeks and deprived him of the brief honour of
being General Botha’s adjutant.

The one American whose exploits will long
remain in the Boer mind was John N. King, of
Reading, Pennsylvania, who vowed that he would
allow his hair to grow until the British had been
driven from federal soil. King began his career
of usefulness to society at the time of the Johnstown
flood, where he and some companions

[265]

lynched an Italian who had been robbing the
dead. Shortly afterward he gained a deep insight
into matters journalistic by being the boon companion
of a newspaper man. The newspaper man
was in jail on a charge of larceny; King for
murder. When war was begun King was employed
on a Johannesburg mine, and when his
best friend determined to join the British forces
he decided to enlist in the Boer army. Before
parting the two made an agreement that neither
should make the other prisoner in case they met.
At Spion Kop, King captured his friend unawares
and, after a brief conversation and a farewell grasp
of the hand, King shot him dead. King took part
in almost every one of the Natal battles, and when
there was no fighting to do he passed the time
away by such reckless exploits as going within
the British firing-line at Ladysmith to capture pigs
and chickens. He bore a striking resemblance
to Napoleon I., and loved blood as much as the
little Corsican. When the Scouts went out from
Brandfort in April and killed several of the British
scouts, King wept because he had remained in
camp that day and had missed the opportunity
of having a part in the engagement.

[266]

The lieutenant of the Scouts was John Shea,
a grey-haired man who might have had grand-children
old enough to fight. Shea fought with
the Boers because he thought they had a righteous
cause, and not because he loved the smell of
gunpowder, although he had learned to know what
that was in the Spanish-American war. Shea
endeavoured to introduce the American army
system into the Boer army, but failed signally, and
then fought side by side with old takhaars all
during the Natal campaign. He was the guardian
of the mascot of the scouts, William Young, a
thirteen-year-old American, who was acquainted
with every detail of the preliminaries of the war.
William witnessed all but two of the Natal battles,
and several of those in the Free State, and could
relate all the stirring incidents in connection with
each, but he could tell nothing more concerning
his birthplace than that it was “near the shore in
America,” both his parents having died when he
was quite young. Then there was Able-Bodied
Seaman William Thompson, who was in the
Wabash of the United States Navy, and served
under MacCuen in the Chinese-Japanese war.
Thompson and two others tried to steal a piece

[267]

of British heavy artillery while it was in action
at Ladysmith, but were themselves captured by
some Boers who did not believe in modern
miracles. Of newspaper men, there were half a
dozen who laid aside the pen for the sword. George
Parsons, a Collier’s Weekly man, who was once left
on a desert island on the east end of Cuba to deliver
a message to Gomez, several hundred miles away;
J.B. Clarke, of Webberville, Michigan, who was
correspondent for a Pittsburg newspaper whenever
some one could commandeer the necessary stamps;
and four or five correspondents of country weeklies
in Western States. Starfield and Hiley were two
Texans, of American army experience, who fought
with the Boers because they had faith in their
cause. Starfield claimed the honour of having
been pursued for half a day by two hundred British
cavalryman, while Hiley, the finest marksman in
the corps, had the distinction of killing Lieutenant
Carron, an American, in Lord Loch’s Horse, in a
fierce duel behind ant-heaps at Modder River on
April 21st. Later in the campaign many of the
Americans who entered the country for the purpose
of fighting joined Hassell’s Scouts, and added to
the cosmopolitan character of the organisation.

[268]

One came from Paget Sound in a sailing vessel.
Another arrival boldly claimed to be the American
military attaché at the Paris Exposition, and then
requested every one to keep the matter a secret
for fear the War Department should hear of his
presence in South Africa and recall him. On the
way to Africa he had a marvellous midnight experience
on board ship with a masked man who
shot him through one of his hands. Later the
same wound was displayed as having been received
at Magersfontein, Colenso, and Spion Kop. This
industrious youth became adjutant to Colonel
Blake, and assisted that picturesque Irish-American
in securing the services of the half-hundred
Red Cross men who entered the country
in April.

Of the many Americans who fought in Boer
commandos none did better service nor was
considered more highly by the Boers than Otto
von Lossberg, of New Orleans, Louisana.
Lossberg was born in Germany, and received
his first military training in the army of his
native country. He afterwards became an
American citizen, and was with General Miles’
army in the Porto-Rico campaign. Lossberg

[269]

arrived in the Transvaal in March, and on the
last day of that month was in charge of the
artillery which assisted in defeating Colonel
Broadwood’s column at Sannaspost. Two days
later, in the fight between General Christian De
Wet and McQueenies’ Irish Fusiliers, Lossberg
was severely wounded in the head, but a month
later he was again at the front. With him continually
was Baron Ernst von Wrangel, a grandson
of the famous Marshal Wrangle, and who was a
corporal in the American army during the Cuban
war.

When one of the four sons of State Secretary
Reitz who were fighting with the Boer army
asked his father for permission to join the Irish
Brigade, the Secretary gave an excellent description
of the organisation: “The members of the
Irish Brigade do their work well, and they fight
remarkably well, but, my son, they are not gentle
in their manner.” Blake and his men were among
the first to cross the Natal frontier, and their
achievements were notable even if the men lacked
gentility of manner. The brigade took part in
almost every one of the Natal engagements
and when General Botha retreated from the

[270]

Tugela Colonel Blake and seventy-five of his men
bravely attacked and drove back into Ladysmith
a squadron of cavalry which intended to cut off
the retreat of Botha’s starving and exhausted
burghers. Blake and his men were guarding a
battery on Lombard Kop, a short distance east
of Ladysmith, when he learned that Joubert was
leading the retreat northward, and allowing Botha,
with his two thousand men, to continue their ten
days’ fighting without reinforcements. Instead of
retreating with the other commandos, Blake and
seventy-five of his men stationed themselves on
the main road between Ladysmith and Colenso
and awaited the coming of Botha. A force of
cavalry was observed coming out of the besieged
city, and it was apparent that they could readily
cut off Botha from the other Boers. Blake determined
to make a bold bluff by scattering his small
force over the hills and attacking the enemy from
different directions. The men were ordered to
fire as rapidly as possible in order to impress the
British cavalry with a false idea of the size of the
force. The seventy-five Irishmen and Americans
made as much noise with their guns as a Boer
commando of a thousand men usually did, and

[271]

the result was that the cavalry wheeled about and
returned into Ladysmith. Botha and his men,
dropping out of their saddles from sheer exhaustion
and hunger, came up from Colenso a short
time after the cavalry had been driven back and
made their memorable journey to Joubert’s new
headquarters at Glencoe. It was one of the few
instances where the foreigners were of any really
great assistance to the Boers.

After the relief of Ladysmith the Irish Brigade
was sent to Helpmakaar Pass, and remained there
for six weeks, until Colonel Blake succeeded in
inducing the War Department to send them to
the Free State, where these “sons of the ould
sod” might make a display of their valour to the
world, and more especially to Michael Davitt,
who was then visiting in the country. When the
Brigade was formed it was not necessary to show
an Irish birth certificate in order to become a
member of the organisation, and consequently
there were Swedes, Russians, Germans, and
Italians marching under the green flag. A half-dozen
of the Brigade claimed to be Irish enough
for themselves and for those who could not lay
claim to such extraction, and consequently a fair

[272]

mean was maintained. A second Irish Brigade
was formed in April by Arthur Lynch, an Irish-Australian,
who was the former Paris correspondent
of a London daily newspaper. Colonel
Lynch and his men were in several battles in
Natal and received warm praise from the Boer
generals.

The Italian Legion was commanded by a man
who loved war and warfare. Camillo Richiardi
and General Louis Botha were probably the two
handsomest men in the army, and both were the
idols of their men. Captain Richiardi had his
first experience of war in Abyssinia, when he
fought with the Italian army. When the Philippine
war began he joined the fortunes of Aguinaldo,
and became the leader of the foreign legion.
For seven months he fought against the American
soldiers, not because he hated the Americans, but
because he loved fighting more. When the Boer
war seemed to promise more exciting work
Richiardi left Aguinaldo’s forces and joined a
Boer commando as a burgher. After studying
Boer methods for several months he formed an
organisation of scouts which was of great service
to the army. Before the relief of Ladysmith the

[273]

Italian Scouts was the ablest organisation of the
kind in the Republics.

The Scandinavian corps joined Cronje’s army
after the outbreak of war, and took part in the
battle of Magersfontein on December 11th. The
corps occupied one of the most exposed positions
during that battle and lost forty-five of the fifty-two
men engaged. Commandant Flygare was
shot in the abdomen and was being carried off
the field by Captain Barendsen when a bullet
struck the captain in the head and killed him
instantly. Flygare extricated himself from beneath
Barendsen’s body, rose, and led his men
in a charge. When he had proceeded about
twenty yards a bullet passed through his head,
and his men leapt over his corpse only to meet
a similar fate a few minutes later.

CHAPTER X

BOER WOMEN IN THE WAR

One of the most glorious pages in the history
of the Boer nation relates to the work of
the women who fought side by side with their
husbands against the hordes of murderous Zulus
in the days of the early Voortrekkers. It is the
story of hardy Boer women, encompassed by
thousands of bloodthirsty natives, fighting over
the lifeless bodies of their husbands and sons, and
repelling the attacks of the savages with a spirit
and strength not surpassed by the valiant burghers
themselves. The magnificent heritage which these
mothers of the latter-day Boer nation left to their
children was not unworthily borne by the women
of the end of the century, and the work which they
accomplished in the war of 1899-1900 was none
the less valuable, even though it was less hazardous

and romantic, than that of their ancestors whose
blood mingled with that of the savages on the
grassy slopes of the Natal mountains.

MRS. GENERAL LUCAS J. MEYER

[275]

The conspicuous part played in the war by the
Boer women was but a sequence to that which
they took in the political affairs of the country
before the commencement of hostilities, and both
were excellent demonstrations of their great
patriotism and their deep loyalty to the Republics
which they loved. Some one has said that real
patriotism is bred only on the farms and plains of
a country, and no better exemplification of the
truth of the saying was necessary than that which
was afforded by the wives and mothers of the
burghers of the two South African Republics.
Many months before the first shot of the war
was fired the patriotic Boer women commenced to
take an active interest in the discussion of the
grave affairs of State, and it increased with such
amazing rapidity and volume that they were prepared
for hostilities long before the men. Women
urged their husbands, fathers, and brothers to end
the long period of political strife and uncertainty
by shouldering arms and fighting for their independence.
Even sooner than the men, the Boer

[276]

women realised that peace must be broken sometime
in order to secure real tranquillity in the
country, and she who lived on the veld and was
patriotic was anxious to have the storm come and
pass as quickly as possible. So enthusiastic were
the women before the war that it was a common
saying among them that if the men were too
timorous to fight for their liberty the daughters
and grand-daughters of the heroines who fought
against the Zulus at Weenen and Doornkop would
take up arms.

Even before the formal declaration of war was
made, many of the Boer women prevailed upon
their husbands, brothers, and sons to leave their
homes and go to the borders of the Boer country
to guard against any raids that might be attempted
by the enemy, and in many instances women
accompanied the men to prepare their meals and
give them comfort. These manifestations of warlike
spirit were not caused by the women’s love of
war, for they were even more peace-loving than
the men, but they were the natural result of a
desire to serve their country at a time when they
considered it to be in great peril. The women
knew that war would mean much bloodshed and

[277]

the death of many of those whom they loved, but
all those selfish considerations were laid aside
when they believed that the life of their country
was at stake.

For weeks preceding the commencement of
hostilities farmers’ wives on the veld busied
themselves with making serviceable corduroy
clothing, knapsacks, and bread-bags for their male
relatives who were certain to go on commando;
and when it became known that an ultimatum
would be sent to Great Britain the women prepared
the burghers’ outfits, so that there would be
no delay in the men’s departure for the front as
soon as the declaration of war should be made.

No greater or harder work was done by the
women during the entire war than that which fell
to their lot immediately following the formal
declaration of war by the authorities. In the
excitement of the occasion the Government had
neglected to make any satisfactory arrangements
for supplying the burghers with food while on the
journey to the front and afterward, and consequently
there was much suffering from lack of
provisions and supplies. At this juncture the
women came to the rescue, and in a trice they

[278]

had remedied the great defect. Every farmhouse
and every city residence became a bakery, and for
almost two months all the bread consumed by the
burgher army was prepared by the Boer women.
Organisations were formed for this purpose in
every city and town in the country, and by means
of a well-planned division of labour this improvised
commissariat department was as effective as that
which was afterward organised by the Government.
Certain women baked the bread, prepared sandwiches,
and boiled coffee; others procured the
supplies, and others distributed the food at the
various railway stations through which the commando-trains
passed, or carried it directly to the
laagers. One of the women who was tireless in
her efforts to feed the burghers and make them
comfortable as they passed through Pretoria on
the railway was Mrs. F.W. Reitz, the wife of the
Transvaal State Secretary, and never a commando-train
passed through the capital that she was not
there to distribute sandwiches, coffee, and milk.

When the first battles of the campaign had
been fought and the wounded were being brought
from the front the women again volunteered to
relieve an embarrassed Government, and no nobler,

[279]

more energetic efforts to relieve suffering were ever
made than those of the patriotic daughters of the
Transvaal and Orange Free State. Women from
the farms assisted in the hospitals; wives who
directed the herding of cattle during the absence
of their husbands went to the towns and to the
laager hospitals; young school girls deserted their
books and assisted in giving relief to the burghers
who were bullet-maimed or in the delirium of
fever. No station in life was unrepresented in
the humanitarian work. Two daughters of the
former President of the Transvaal, the Rev.
Thomas François Burgers, were nurses in the
Burke hospital in Pretoria, which was established
and maintained by a Boer burgher. Miss Martha
Meyer, a daughter of General Lucas Meyer,
devoted herself assiduously to the relief of the
wounded in the same hospitals, and in the
institution which Barney Barnato established in
Johannesburg there were scores of young women
nurses who cared for British and Boer wounded
with unprejudiced attention. In every laager at
the front were young Boer vrouwen who, under
the protection of the Red Cross, and indifferent,
to the creed, caste, or country of the wounded and

[280]

dying, assuaged the suffering of those who were
entrusted to their care. In the hospital-trains
which carried the wounded from the battlefields
to the hospitals in Pretoria and Johannesburg
were Boer women who considered themselves
particularly fortunate in having been able to
secure posts where they could be of service,
while at the stations where the trains halted
were Boer women bearing baskets of fruit and
bottles of milk for the unfortunate burghers and
soldiers in the carriages.

When the war began and all the large mines
on the Witwatersrand and all the big industries
and stores in Johannesburg and Pretoria were
obliged to cease operations, much distress prevailed
among the poorer classes of foreigners
who were left behind when the great exodus
was concluded, and after a few months their
poverty became most acute. Again the Boer
women shouldered the burden, and in a thousand
different ways relieved the suffering of those who
were the innocent victims of the war. Subscription
lists were opened and the wealthy Boers
contributed liberally to the fund for the distressed.
Depôts where the needy could secure food and

[281]

clothing were established, while a soup-kitchen
where Mrs. Peter Maritz Botha, one of the
wealthiest women in the Republics, stood behind
a table and distributed food to starving men
and women, was a veritable blessing to hundreds
of needy foreigners. In Johannesburg, Boer
women searched through the poorest quarters
of the city for families in need of food or
medicine and never a needy individual was
neglected. Among the few thousand British
subjects who remained behind there were many
who were in dire straits, but Boer women
made no distinctions between friend and
enemy when there was an opportunity for
performing a charitable deed. Nor was their
charity limited to civilians and those who were
neutral in their sentiments with regard to the war.
When the British prisoners of war were confined
in the racecourse at Pretoria the Boer women sent
many a waggon-load of fruit, luxuries, and reading
matter to the soldiers who had been sent against
them to deprive them of that which they esteemed
most—the independence of their country. The
spirit which animated the women was never better
exemplified than by the action of a little Boer girl

[282]

of about ten years who approached a British
prisoner on the platform of the station at Kroonstaad
and gave him a bottle of milk which she had
kept carefully concealed under her apron. The
soldier hardly had time to thank her for her gift
before she turned and ran away from him as
rapidly as she had the strength. It seemed as
if she loved him as a man in distress, but feared
him as a soldier, and hated him as the enemy of
her country.

Besides assisting in the care of the wounded, the
baking of bread for the burghers, and giving aid
to the destitute, the women of the farms were
obliged to attend to the flocks and herds which
were left in their charge when the fathers, husbands,
and brothers went to the front to fight.
All the laborious duties of the farm were performed
by the women, and it was common to
witness a woman at work in the fields or driving
a long ox-waggon along the roads. When the
tide of war changed and the enemy drove the
burghers to the soil of the Republics the work
of the women became even more laborious and
diversified. The widely-separated farmhouses
then became typical lunch stations for the

[283]

burghers, and the women willingly were the
proprietresses. Boers journeying from one commando
to another, or scouts and patrols on active
duty, stopped at the farmhouses for food for themselves
and their horses, and the women gladly
prepared the finest feasts their larder afforded.
No remuneration was ever accepted, and the
realisation that they were giving even indirect
assistance to their country’s cause was deemed
sufficient payment for any work performed.
Certain farmhouses which were situated near
frequently travelled roads became the well-known
rendezvous of the burghers, and thither all the
women in the neighbourhood wended their way
to assist in preparing meals for them. Midway
between Smaldeel and Brandfort was one of that
class of farmhouses, and never a meal-time passed
that Mrs. Barnard did not entertain from ten to
fifty burghers. Near Thaba N’Chu was the residence
of John Steyl, a member of the Free State
Raad, whose wife frequently had more than one
hundred burgher guests at one meal. When the
battle of Sannaspost was being fought a short
distance from her house, Mrs. Steyl was on one
of the hills overlooking the battlefield, interspersing