III.—The Advance to Pretoria.
When that advance began there were in round numbers 200,000 British troops in South Africa, of whom 50,000 were on the lines of communications. With a moderate allowance for absenteeism, there were 30,000 Boers in the field, including the 2,000 besiegers of Mafeking.
Our particular concern is with the British mounted troops, which had been remounted, reorganized, and largely increased in number. An additional regular Cavalry brigade joined the central army under Roberts; fresh battalions of regular Mounted Infantry, suffering from a serious scarcity of officers, were hastily formed, and fresh contingents of Colonial troops, both from overseas and within South Africa, continued to come into line. Half the Imperial Yeomanry—between 4,000 and 5,000 men, that is—were available at the beginning of May, and the whole force of 10,000 was before very long in the field.
For administrative purposes, Cavalry and mounted riflemen, hitherto associated together, were now separated. For the central army a division of four brigades of regular Cavalry, about 5,000 sabres strong (without counting Horse Artillery) was formed;[[43]] and at the same time the mounted riflemen were organized anew in one big division, 11,000 strong, divided into two brigades of four corps each, each corps being composed jointly of regular Mounted Infantry and Colonial mounted riflemen. Neither of these organizations proved to be permanent. The latter was from the first little more than nominal. In order to supply the mounted needs of the army at large, as time went on units had to be broken up and distributed where they were most required. The Yeomanry, similarly, were never employed as a divisional unit, but only in detachments.
Brabant’s Colonial Defence Force was now at its full strength of 3,000, and Buller, in Natal, though he had had to part with the Imperial Light Horse, who were sent round with Hunter’s Division to Kimberley, possessed, owing to the union of the Tugela and Ladysmith armies, between 5,000 and 6,000 mounted men, divided into three brigades, two of them homogeneous Cavalry units of three regiments apiece, the third composed of South African mounted riflemen.
In the far west of the theatre of war the Kimberley mounted troops were now available for active work, and in the north-west Plumer, with some 750 mounted Colonials, was still conducting his clever and plucky operations for the assistance of Mafeking and the security of the Rhodesian border. In the far north the Rhodesian Field Force, some 4,000 strong, mainly consisting of Australasian mounted riflemen and partly of Yeomanry, was on its way westward from Beira, under Carrington. Strathcona’s Horse, a new Canadian corps, 500 strong, had been detached on an abortive scheme for raiding the Delagoa Bay Railway via Lourenço Marques.
To sum up, if we compute the Yeomanry at their full strength, but exclude from the calculation the garrison of Mafeking and various small detachments doing duty on the communications or in process of formation into regiments, there were at this period in the field nearly 40,000 mounted men, of whom about 8,300 were Cavalry, still armed with carbine and lance or sword, and the rest, in the generic sense, mounted riflemen. Numerically, therefore, our mounted strength, viewed apart from the great masses of Infantry and Artillery, was greater by several thousand than the Boer strength actually in the field, even if we deduct half the Yeomanry as not yet fully available. But I need scarcely again warn the reader that such comparisons, for many obvious reasons, must be used with caution. In one quarter, however—the centre—our preponderance in mounted strength alone over the Boers opposed to us was very remarkable.
The Commander-in-Chief’s strategical scheme was of great simplicity and enormous magnitude. On a front of 300 miles, 109,000 men (I am using round numbers), with 350 guns, were to execute converging marches northward, with Pretoria as the central objective. On the extreme right, Buller, with 45,000 men, was to march through Natal; on the extreme left, Hunter, starting from Kimberley with 10,000 men, was to penetrate the Western Transvaal, and, incidentally, to relieve Mafeking. Methuen, starting with another 10,000 from the same point, was to march through the Western Free State. Lord Roberts, in the centre, with 25,000 men, was to move directly up the railway from Bloemfontein; while immediately on his right flank Ian Hamilton, with 14,500 men, supported by Colvile with 4,000 men, moved through the Eastern Free State.
Such was the plan of the grand advance. The principal subsidiary field-force was that of Rundle and Brabant, who were to follow slowly through the Eastern Free State, which was the most formidable region of all, sweeping up arrears, and making good the ground won. Warren, with 2,000 men, was to quell the rebellion in Bechuanaland; and Carrington was designed to co-operate from the far north, moving through Rhodesia upon the Northern Transvaal.
The distribution of mounted troops was as follows: Exclusive of Artillery corps, troops, etc., there were with Roberts and the central army four and a half corps, in all 3,600 strong, of mounted riflemen, and three brigades of Cavalry under French, also 3,600 strong. These three brigades, however, did not come into line until May 8, five days after the beginning of the advance. Having been employed almost continuously since the capture of Bloemfontein, and having received only small instalments of fresh horses, they had to spend the first days of May in a thorough refit. Their Horse Artillery had been wisely reduced to one battery for each brigade. The remaining brigade of Cavalry, under Broadwood, and the four remaining corps of mounted riflemen—1,400 and 4,300 strong respectively—were with Ian Hamilton. Buller’s mounted troops I have mentioned. Hunter’s were the Imperial Light Horse and the Kimberley corps. The Yeomanry were distributed between Methuen, Warren, Carrington, and Rundle, with the latter of whom Brabant’s Colonial division was acting.
There is no need, even if my space permitted, to follow with any closeness the fortunes of the grand advance. I have now reached a point in the war where it is necessary only to summarize events, to select from a vast number of operations conducted over a vast expanse of territory, typically interesting examples of mounted action, and along with the process of selection to trace the growth of principles.
The most interesting, naturally, of all the operations of that period were those of the two central columns under Roberts and Ian Hamilton, which from May 3 onwards[[44]] worked in close combination, and may be regarded as one force, nearly 40,000 strong, with 119 guns, exclusive of Colvile’s supporting column. It will have been noticed that they were far stronger in mounted troops than any other portion of the army. Indeed, at the lowest computation of their effective mounted strengths, and at the highest estimate of the Boer effectives from time to time opposed to them, it appears that Roberts and Hamilton together must at every stage in the advance have had a decisive superiority in mounted troops alone over the whole force of their opponents. Until May 8, when French’s three brigades of Cavalry came up, not more than 5,500 Boers in all opposed both columns, which at that time had 9,200 mounted men between them. At the Zand River fight on May 9 and 10 the Boers, reinforced by 3,000 Transvaalers under Botha, who thenceforth took over the supreme control from De la Rey, reached their highest numerical fighting strength of about 8,000. At the same moment, reinforced by French’s Cavalry, our own mounted strength also reached its highest point of nearly 13,000.[[45]] After this, and until the fall of Pretoria, the enemy never appear to have mustered more than 5,000 men in opposition to the combined columns; for the Free State forces withdrew altogether before crossing the Vaal, and betook themselves to local warfare. At Diamond Hill four fresh Transvaal commandos from Natal counterbalanced other defections, and enabled Botha to put 6,000 men into the field. Here, for the first time, our mounted strength in action (a little below 5,000) was below the total Boer strength. This was partly the result of wastage in horses. All along our mounted troops suffered heavily from this cause, and the same cause affected the Boers also, though not in anything like an equal degree. Botha, in his despatches at this time, used habitually to refer to his “Infantry,” meaning the burghers who had lost their mounts.[[46]]
I need not dwell on the significance of these figures. If we dismiss from our minds the existence of an irresistible backing of Infantry and Artillery on our side, it is quite possible, and from an instructional standpoint very interesting, to contemplate in vacuo the conflict of the two opposed mounted forces, supposing them, if we will, to have been the mounted screens of two great European armies. Even on that restricted plane the inquiry teems with absorbing practical interest for future wars, and abounds in illustration of the functions of the mounted arm. But I need not remind the reader that in actual fact here was no matter of screens. The Boer troops were small armies in themselves, depending on and limited strategically by the speed of heavy transport, for which they were the sole protection. Our own mounted troops—or, at least, the bulk of them—cannot be regarded otherwise than as an independent mobile weapon of high general utility, whose mission it was in concert with the other arms to secure the destruction, not merely the repulse, of the enemy.
This is how Lord Roberts had always regarded his mounted troops. Ever since the middle of February he had called upon them, and particularly upon the Cavalry, for decisive efforts, but only once with decisive results. Disillusioned gradually, he continued, nevertheless, to pursue the same policy wherever, during the long march to Pretoria, opportunity offered. He inculcated the right spirit. So did Ian Hamilton, so did French; and both these Generals were endowed with a large measure of independence. The trouble was that in actual contact on the field the superiority in fighting power of the individual Boer to the individual Britisher invariably caused the best-laid plans to fall short of the desired achievement. A continual instigation of more dashing, if more costly, tactics might have schooled the troops rapidly to higher efficiency, but, as I indicated in dealing with the moral issue, the supreme stimulus to such a policy was wanting. Victory in the medium degree was only too easy, thanks to weight of numbers. Roberts himself appears gradually to have expected less and asked less of his mounted force.
Let us first of all summarize what happened. Starting on May 3, Roberts took Pretoria on June 5. He had marched 300 miles in thirty-four days, sixteen of which (for the central column) were marching days. Hamilton, who midway made a détour to the east, marched a good deal farther. Let us not forget that, whatever its shortcomings, this march, regarded as a military feat, was a very remarkable and memorable performance, especially for the Infantry. At Brandfort and the Vet River (May 3 to 5) the Boers made but a very slight stand; at Zand River (May 9 to 10) they offered battle, and were out-manœuvred into retreat. At Kroonstad, which was not defended, Roberts halted for ten days (May 12 to 22). The Vaal was crossed without opposition on the 24th, and from May 27 to 29 Botha made his most resolute stand on the hills covering Johannesburg—namely, the Klipriviersberg and Doornkop. Here on the 29th there was something in the nature of a pitched battle, Doornkop being finally stormed by Infantry. Hitherto this arm had come into action only at Zand River. On the 30th Johannesburg fell, and Pretoria, which was not seriously defended, shared the same fate on June 5.
To this record we must add the battle of Diamond Hill, fought sixteen miles from Pretoria on June 11 and 12, with the object of finally driving Botha away from the neighbourhood of the capital. It was a genuine pitched battle, in which Roberts achieved his object, though he inflicted no loss of any consequence upon the enemy, and suffered little himself.
The Boers had lost their capital and railway, but their losses in men and material were negligible.
Now let us look for mounted lessons.
The first and clearest is that it is useless for a superior force to confine itself to combating the wide extensions of an inferior force by still wider extensions. This is what was constantly happening. The Boer fronts, in proportion to the numbers employed to defend them, were, as usual, enormously extensive. At Brandfort, for example, De la Rey occupied a front of some fifteen miles with 2,500 men; at Zand River Botha stood on a front of twenty-five miles—half the distance from London to Brighton—with 8,000 men; at the fighting outside Johannesburg he held eighteen miles of hilly country with about 4,000 men. Outside Pretoria an equally extensive front was held, though very weakly. Finally, at Diamond Hill, Botha held thirty miles with only 6,000 men during two days of continuous fighting. Here, however, the position was unusually strong. Let us note in passing:
(1) The proof afforded by these greatly extended positions of the revolutionary effect of the modern rifle upon mounted tactics, for it was only by the close union of the rifle and the horse that such dispositions were possible.
(2) That, given this close union, no ordinary skill is required to choose the cardinal points of defence, and maintain the field discipline and field intelligence requisite for the elastic and orderly handling of detachments so widely dispersed. No narrative that I have seen does full justice to the Boers for their efficiency in these particulars. In the whole course of these operations, and in the whole course of the subsequent advance from Pretoria to Komati Poort, only one small detachment was cut off and overwhelmed.
(3) That the Boer system admitted of no reserves. Practically every man was in the front fighting-line.
Now, how were these tactics to be met? Roberts nearly always endeavoured to meet them by still wider extensions, designed to overlap the enemy’s front. He planned to throw substantial bodies of mounted troops right round one or both of the hostile flanks, with the view (as at Poplar Grove) of intercepting the enemy’s retreat. These movements never led to interception, though they were generally successful as turning movements which led to the enemy’s retreat—a very minor object. On the other hand, they were exhausting to horses and men alike, reducing offensive power when, after long riding, it was at last called for, to a point below the normal, and the normal was not nearly high enough.
Zand River (May 9 and 10) illustrates this class of action. There, 4,000 mounted men under French and Hutton on the left, and 3,000 under Broadwood and De Lisle on the right, were deputed to get round both flanks of a front of twenty-five miles, held by 8,000 Boers. French, having passed six miles outside the last Boer post on the 9th, got well round to the rear on the 10th, with his Cavalry leading and his mounted riflemen in support, but was then held up for several hours by small detachments, and suffered considerable loss. He covered thirty miles on the 10th, and could not, owing to the condition of his horses, respond on the same night to a suggestion by Roberts for raiding Kroonstad. Broadwood’s turning movement was abortive, partly through an accidental withdrawal of his horse battery, but mainly through the circumstance that the Boer left (wide as Hamilton’s extension was) still overlapped our right, and that the overlapping portion, not content to remain on the defensive, endeavoured during the morning to envelop our extreme right. Botha effected an orderly retreat, his centre maintaining a good show of resistance against the Infantry and Artillery attacks. With our main body there was a brigade of Cavalry and considerable numbers of mounted riflemen.
Diamond Hill, where Botha defended thirty miles of hills, was a still more extreme instance of the same method. French, with 1,400 Cavalry and mounted riflemen, was designed to ride right round the enemy’s right, and cut the railway in his rear—a ride of at least thirty-five miles, without any allowance for interruptions or détours. Broadwood, with 3,000 men, was to turn the enemy’s left and support our right attack. The centre was to be withheld until one or both of these movements should succeed. Botha had anticipated these tactics and had strengthened his flanks accordingly. Both mounted columns were held up, and stood for a time in considerable danger of envelopment. On the second day the centre was forced by Infantry, aided, and very effectively aided, by mounted riflemen.
It must be remarked that our total strength at Diamond Hill was unusually small—14,000 men in all, of whom 4,800 were mounted, and 64 guns. The Boers had 6,000 men and 20 guns.
Now, there is but one way of looking at situations of this sort. If we are seeking instruction for further wars, we must recognize that the only sound method of combating such prodigiously wide extensions of a numerically weak enemy is to force his line instead of turning it. To devote the major effort to turning it is to play into his hands, to permit him by sheer bluff to impose exhausting tactics which neutralize your own numerical superiority.[[47]] The difficulty was to apply forcing tactics against so formidable a foe as the Boers. Our crying need all along was tackling power with the horse and rifle combined—high, mobile tackling power, based on surprise and speed, and taking the form, where need be, of mounted charges into or through the enemy, on the lines afterwards taught us by the Boers, and already exhibited by them at Sannah’s Post. Again and again, in reviewing the South African combats, we look back to the Klip Drift charge of February 15, 1900, with profound regret that its true lessons were not laid to heart and its false lessons discarded. There was the germ of success. Add operative tackling power to the nerve required to ride through fire, eliminate the arme blanche and every last vestige of tactical theory connected with it; eliminate as far as possible Artillery preparation and support; be content with a reasonable superiority of strength, and there you have for future wars the true tactics of mounted offence.
It is impossible to blame Roberts for over-reliance on wide turning tactics. In the last resort, whatever the scheme employed, whether we rode wide or rode through, success depended on sheer fighting capacity in the ultimate fire-fight. Nothing could replace that. Roberts could only endeavour to make the best of the material to hand. His frequent attempts to encircle far-flung fronts were an instinctive recognition of inadequate aggressive power in his mounted troops. The prejudice, so general in South Africa, against “frontal attacks” by Infantry was often a reflection of the same instinct, that is, of an instinct to avoid heavy losses which could not, unaided, lead to a decisive result. In point of fact, all attacks eventually become frontal, in the local sense. And, in the case of mounted troops, it was of no avail to send round a large body of men to take the enemy in flank or rear, unless they were able to burst through frontally the detachments sent against them.
Still less tenable is the suggestion that the right course for Roberts was to have projected still vaster and more circuitous mounted operations, designed to cut the enemy’s communications far in rear of the zone of immediate hostilities. French is said to have favoured this course more than once, but did he realize what it involved? If the requisite speed were sustained, the horses, already tried to the limit of endurance, would have suffered from that very over-exhaustion of which there had been so much complaint in the past. But, in fact, such raids, on the scale of those made by Stuart, Wilson, and the Civil War leaders, entailed complete independence of the main army, an object never attained in South Africa without transport arrangements which reduced speed to too low a level. The question, of course, was not peculiarly a “Cavalry” question—for raids, American, South African, or Manchurian, turned exclusively on fire-action. I shall be compelled, nevertheless, to argue the matter again, in Chapter XII., on a “Cavalry” basis, taking Zand River once more as an illustration.
2. It must not be supposed that frontal or semi-frontal attacks were not tried by the mounted troops. Local circumstances often brought them about. Generally, however, they tended, even locally, to take a too circuitous form, the tendency, inevitably, being more noticeable among the Cavalry, with their inferior firearm, than among the mounted riflemen.
These latter troops, now possessing an acknowledged and independent status of their own, and led by some able men like Hutton, Alderson, and De Lisle, did remarkably well in some instances, though poorly in others. The Australians and New Zealanders seem always to have shown the most tactical vigour. Hutton’s fight on May 5 to secure the passage of the Vet on the left of the main army was a good performance. The mounted riflemen did well also in the pursuit north of Johannesburg on May 30, in the fighting outside Pretoria on June 5, at Diamond Hill on June 12, and on several other occasions.
French’s operations outside Johannesburg on May 28 and 29, when, prior to the arrival of the Infantry, both classes of mounted troops were employed in unison, are interesting. French was in his best mood. There was no lack of vigorous will on the spot, but the turning movements by the Cavalry (except the last, which followed the Infantry assaults), and the frontal attacks by both classes, alike failed. There would seem on this occasion to have been a good opportunity for a rush through the centre on the lines of Klip Drift.
3. Charges.—The only actual charge upon a position, to which I can find reference, is that of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles on May 24, at the passage of the Vaal (Times History, vol. iv., p. 136, footnote).
Two small cases occur of charges in the open with the arme blanche—namely, at Diamond Hill, on June 11, where, in some indecisive fighting on the right, sixty men of the 12th Lancers made a gallant charge against some Boers who were threatening two of our guns, and at the same time the Household Cavalry endeavoured to ride down another detachment. The lance disposed of a few Boers in the former case, but the enemy retaliated as successfully with fire. In the latter case the Cavalry drove the Boers away, but caught only one, and lost twenty-one horses from rifle-fire, many burghers dropping down among the mealies and shooting at the troopers as they passed, in the manner recommended in our own handbook, “Infantry Training.” The two incidents were momentary episodes in two days of fire-action, and serve merely to emphasize the inferiority of a weapon with a range of two yards to a long-range firearm.
4. Pursuits.—There were no really “general” pursuits. The best local pursuit was that of Hutton’s Australasians on May 30, at Klipfontein (“Official History,” vol. iii., p. 90), where a gun was captured. The Boer talent—not exactly for pursuit, but for pressing hard upon a rear-guard—was strikingly displayed in the course of Ian Hamilton’s evacuation of Lindley, whither he had been sent during the general halt at Kroonstad. We may call these guerilla tactics; but they have not a whit less real tactical interest on that account.
5. Horse-wastage.—With full allowance for the poor quality of remounts, this was too extravagant. It seems to have been greatest among the Cavalry, whose average waste between May 19 and June 9 was over 30 per cent., than among the mounted riflemen, whose average, for the same period, was 18 per cent.[[48]] Apart from that difficult question of overloading, and from defective horse-management, which seems to have been universal among our mounted troops, this difference in loss of horses was probably the result of longer distances ridden by the Cavalry. In the whole of this question we have to recognize, in the case of all mounted troops, the close relation between horse-wastage and deficiency in aggressive tactical power, a deficiency which, as I pointed out above, was the real, though, perhaps, not the consciously thought-out reason for the immense encircling movements which were so often being attempted. It will be the same in future wars. The higher the direct tackling power, the lower the average horse-wastage.
By the middle of June, when Pretoria had fallen to the central armies and Diamond Hill had been fought, every other column composing the grand advance had, to all appearances, successfully accomplished its object. Buller had traversed Natal and entered the Transvaal. Methuen had traversed the Western Free State. Hunter had relieved Mafeking, and had occupied towns in the Western Transvaal as far north as the meridian of Pretoria. Warren, too, had disposed of the rebels in Griqualand West. Both Cape Colony and Natal were cleared of the enemy. The Free State had been annexed.
Buller had scarcely made any use of his six regiments of regular Cavalry, and had even left them at Ladysmith during the first phase of his advance over the Biggarsberg. His action was partly due, no doubt, to that old fatalistic prejudice against pursuits, which, in his mind, we must assume, were associated so closely with the arme blanche that he did not think it worth while even to give the Cavalry a fair chance of developing other methods. The error was all the less justifiable in that the Natal army, nearly 45,000 strong, and the largest in the field of war, was disproportionately weak in mounted troops. The irregular mounted brigade, about 3,000 strong, under Dundonald, together with Bethune’s Mounted Infantry, about 600 strong, took a prominent part in all the actions, and did very well. Eight thousand Boers faced Buller originally on the Biggarsberg, but they must have dwindled to something like half that number in the later stages of the advance. No especial points of mounted interest, not alluded to already, arose in these operations, which, from a tactical standpoint, were often very cleverly and ably conducted, although from the strategical standpoint they were too slow and unenterprising. I need not enter into the long story of Buller’s two months’ inaction after the relief of Ladysmith, and of his repeated failures to rise to the height of the Commander-in-Chief’s conceptions for the strategic rôle of the powerful Natal army.
In the western sphere of advance, there are two principal points of interest:
1. The good behaviour of the new Yeomanry under both Methuen and Warren; for example, at Tweefontein (April 5), and, in defence, at Faber’s Put (May 29), though on the latter occasion we have to recognize an early instance of that lax and careless outpost work which so often characterized the Yeomanry and other irregular corps.
2. The relief of Mafeking. This, although not a dramatic, was none the less a very skilful and able performance, carried out by Colonel Mahon, with a small column of 900 mounted irregulars (Imperial Light Horse and Kimberley men), 100 picked Infantry, and 6 guns. Starting from Barkley West on May 4, Mahon marched 251 miles in 14 days (an average of 18 miles a day), through a badly-watered region, with two fairly hot engagements en route. Hunter, with his main body, rendered skilful support by distracting the attention of the Boers in the neighbourhood, and, in the final phase, Plumer, who for many months had been tirelessly worrying the besiegers, co-operated with Mahon. On the penultimate day of the march, May 16, De la Rey and Liebenberg managed to bar the road with 2,000 men, a force about equal to those of Mahon and Plumer together, but were driven off after a spirited action. In expense of horse-flesh, which was small, and in tackling power in proportion to numbers, the whole expedition compared favourably with the relief of Kimberley by the Cavalry. It must be remarked that, mobile as Mahon’s force was, it included 100 Infantry and 55 mule-waggons.
In the meantime the guerilla war—and by that expression I mean all hostilities which were not directly connected with the seizure on our side, and the defence on the Boers’ side, of railways, capitals, and large towns—had already begun in the Free State, and was eventually to spread to the Transvaal even before the final collapse of that State in September. Rundle, Colvile, and Brabant, acting on the right rear of the central armies, had had to cope with constant opposition in the Eastern Free State. Rundle met with a sharp check at the Biddulphsberg on May 29, and two days later a detached force of Yeomanry, 500 strong, surrendered to Piet de Wet near Lindley, after an investment of some days. This was the first serious reverse which befell a Yeomanry corps. The only moral we need draw from it is the vital importance of spirited leadership for mounted troops, especially for untried irregulars. On this occasion the true “Cavalry spirit” was lacking in the officer in command, who, with a substantial force of mounted men and travelling light, should never have allowed himself to be invested at all.
A few days later, Christian de Wet, with 1,200 men and 5 guns, again took the field, and continued the series of raids which he had initiated at Sannah’s Post and Reddersburg. This time he directed his efforts mainly against the weakest British point—the enormously lengthy line of railway communications which linked Roberts to his base. After snapping up a convoy near Heilbron on June 4, he attacked and captured simultaneously three posts on the railway between Kroonstad and Pretoria at daybreak on June 7, and a fortnight later, with varying success, carried out other raids upon the railway or upon convoys. Trivial as the direct military results of these exploits were, their moral effect was enormous, not only in awakening De Wet’s compatriots to a lasting sense of their own capacity, but in strengthening the higher Boer counsels at a very critical moment. Roberts and Botha had opened tentative negotiations for peace between June 5 and 11, after the capture of Pretoria. There can be no question that De Wet’s successes on June 4 and 7 inclined the scale in favour of war.
The firebrand next appears in July, midway in the drama of the Brandwater Basin. Hunter’s envelopment of this, the great mountain fastness of the Eastern Free State, and his capture of over 4,000 men under Prinsloo on July 29, was the most extensive and the most ably conducted of all the subsidiary operations during the year 1900. “Subsidiary,” indeed, is the wrong term. It was capital, in the sense that it actually removed from the field a large body of fighting burghers, a result which no other operations, those of Paardeberg alone excepted, had achieved. The mounted interest, however, in the manœuvres which led to the surrender, is small. For us the chief interest lies in the eruption from the death-trap, on July 15, just before it closed, of De Wet, Steyn, and 2,600 of the best Boer troops, with 5 guns and an immense convoy.
Dashing away to the north, flinging off two Cavalry brigades, and capturing a train en route, De Wet reached the neighbourhood of Reitzburg, and lay there for twelve days (July 25 to August 6), occupying himself with little raids upon the railway. Roberts, who had just completed his eastward advance to Middelburg, determined to run to earth the irrepressible Boer leader, and for nine days all eyes in South Africa were turned upon the extraordinary spectacle presented by the first of the three great “hunts” with which De Wet’s name is associated.
Ten mobile columns, including large numbers of mounted men, took part, at one time or another, in the chase, and in all nearly 30,000 men were engaged directly or indirectly in the enveloping operations. Thrice the net was drawn so closely around the quarry that there seemed to be no hope of escape. But De Wet got through, dodging and doubling over the Vaal, across the Western Transvaal, and through the Magaliesberg Range to the district north of Pretoria, having achieved—with a loss of a gun and some waggons—the only specific object of all this desperate marching; that, namely, of escorting President Steyn to a point whence he could reach the Transvaal leaders, and concert fresh measures of defence with them.
Perhaps the most striking feature of this and many another similar feat of evasion was that it was performed throughout at the “net” speed of ox-waggons, of which a large number accompanied the Boer column, together with herds of cattle and sheep, an increasing number of dismounted burghers, and, until near the end, a considerable number of British prisoners. De Wet himself, from the beginning to the end of his career, was always dead against taking heavy convoys on independent expeditions of this sort, but his power over his burghers rarely reached the point of persuading them to adopt his view. With our vastly superior resources for forming advanced bases we should have been able to make our mounted troops far more independent, but we never succeeded in overcoming the transport difficulty. Our “net” speed was less than De Wet’s on this occasion. Mounted interest from the Boer standpoint is confined: (a) To their customary skill in handling small protective screens, so as to check pursuit, and compel us to waste time in the preparatory shelling of positions; (b) to the brilliant scouting of Theron’s corps of 200 picked scouts. Knowledge of the country had very little to do with the success of these scouts, a considerable proportion of whom were foreigners from Europe. Reconnaissance was our own weakest point. Touch was rarely kept for twenty-four hours together, and we find already growing up that insidious tendency to rely more on centralized intelligence for the blocking of all supposed outlets of escape to the pursued force than on local scouting, backed by universal co-operation in strenuous tackling energy, for running that force to earth wherever and whenever it could be found.
There was plenty of individual British energy displayed in the chase, but very little co-operative energy. Methuen’s column, which originally was a mixed force of all arms, bore almost the whole brunt of the direct pursuit, and performed marvels of endurance. During the last three days Methuen dropped his Infantry, and followed the trail with 600 Yeomanry, 600 Colonials, and 11 guns, and with these men on the 12th made the only effective attack in the course of the hunt, capturing a gun and sixteen waggons. The purely mounted columns, of which there were three, two of Cavalry and one of mounted riflemen, never gained fighting contact with the enemy at all.
For the rest, De Wet’s own native audacity and ingenuity were his salvation. We deceive ourselves if we imagine that we European peoples, with our “regular” armies and our authorized textbook regulations for “regular” war, can afford to ignore the very least of the elements of success in these feats of evasion. If they seem to be wholly defensive in character, we must remember that they could not have been otherwise. To stand and fight it out meant envelopment by overwhelming numbers, and the loss of men who could never be replaced. And defensive power is only the correlative of offensive power. I need scarcely add that the whole of the work done by both sides in this hunt, and in all similar hunts, was essentially Cavalry work. Every good quality shown by either party was a Cavalry quality.