II.—Poplar Grove.
March 7, 1900.
I have now to record the progress of events up to the capture of Bloemfontein. The investment of Cronje’s laager lasted nine days. De Wet reinforced the key position at Kitchener’s Kopje, and implored Cronje to break out. Cronje could not induce his men, whose horses were gradually destroyed by Artillery fire, to try. De Wet, who was driven off his kopje by an enveloping movement in which the Cavalry took the principal part, tried to regain it two days later and failed. Meanwhile reinforcements from other parts of the theatre of war gradually brought the total of Boers outside the lines and between Paardeberg and Bloemfontein up to something between 5,000 and 6,000. Aware of the process of reinforcement, and fully alive to the ill-effects of delay, Roberts tried to arrange for a raid by the Cavalry on Bloemfontein. By the 24th transport had been collected, the brigades reorganized, and all was ready for a start. But at the last moment French was compelled reluctantly to state that the horses were not in a fit state for the expedition. De Wet might possibly have made some more effective diversion with the newly-arrived troops, had not the moral decay which made such havoc in the Boer forces after the date of Cronje’s capture begun even before that capture was consummated.
Cronje surrendered with 4,000 men on February 29. Vastly more important as the results might have been, had it been possible to storm the laager and accelerate the advance on the Free State capital, Paardeberg was, nevertheless, the turning-point in the war. Roberts’s broad scheme of strategy was signally justified. Many days before the actual surrender pressure had been relieved at every threatened point in the theatre of war, Mafeking alone excepted—at Kimberley, at Colesberg, Dordrecht, and other points along the frontier of Central Cape Colony, and at the Tugela heights and Ladysmith. Buller fought the successful battle of Pieter’s Hill on the day Cronje surrendered, and on the next day Ladysmith was relieved.
Another week’s delay followed Cronje’s surrender, a delay attributed by our Official Historian mainly to the need of still further recuperating the Cavalry and Artillery horses, partly also to the necessity of increasing the general supplies for the army, in view of the contemplated change of base to the Free State railway. Behind all we see the far-reaching effects of De Wet’s raid on the supply column on the 15th of the month.
Methuen’s division had been sent north by way of Kimberley. With the other three Infantry divisions, 4,900 mounted riflemen (including some recent additions), and 2,800 regular Cavalry, Roberts, on March 6, had an army with an effective strength in round numbers of 30,000 men and 116 guns. Facing him, on the Poplar Grove position, a few miles east, and barring the road to Bloemfontein, were between 5,000 and 6,000 Boers and 8 guns under De Wet. These are the figures supplied at the time by the Intelligence, and apparently accepted by the Official Historian, though Villebois de Mareuil is quoted as having estimated them at 9,000. But the Frenchman appears to have reckoned in the forces at Petrusberg and elsewhere, which did not take part in the coming battle. Roberts, giving the outside estimate of 14,000 men and 20 guns in his Instructions of March 6, evidently included, in order to be on the safe side, all the commandos which were known to have left Colesberg, Stormberg, and Ladysmith, but which the Intelligence mentioned as “not since located.”
The Boers occupied a crescent of heights no less than twenty-five miles in extent astride of the Modder River. The ford at Poplar Grove Drift formed the communicating link between the commandos on the left or southern bank, which were the most numerous, and the commandos on the right or northern bank. The natural line of retreat to Bloemfontein lay by roads on the left bank, and in particular by the road crossing the river at Poplar Grove Drift, and thence following its course closely eastward. The only alternative, or rather additional route, on this side of the river, that via Petrusberg, took a much more southerly sweep, and, since it skirted the extreme Boer left, which rested on the hills known as the Seven Kopjes, could only be regarded as a perilous flank line of retreat, which any threat of envelopment on the left would suffice instantly to close.
The plan of Lord Roberts was that French, with all the Cavalry, half the Mounted Infantry, and six batteries, should sweep round the Boer left by a détour of some seventeen miles, get in rear of their centre, and block their line of retreat by the Poplar Grove Road. To this road, and somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Drift, he foresaw that the greater part of the Boer force, threatened in front by three divisions of Infantry and 70 guns, and in rear by the mounted troops and 42 guns, must converge. Here, then, he hoped to bring about a second Paardeberg, once more in the bed of the Modder River.
The scheme in general character was what the situation demanded. After what had happened, and in view of the disparity of forces, there could have been no question here of manœuvring De Wet from his positions. The marvel was that he dared to risk (and there is no doubt that he intended to risk) a battle against such odds and in the existing moral condition of the burghers. To aim at his complete destruction was the only course worthy of Lord Roberts and his army. The tactical method proposed, that of using the bulk of the mounted troops as a distinct tactical unit, was equally sound. Numerically, our mounted troops exceeded the whole Boer army as estimated by the Intelligence. The force allotted to French—approximately 5,000 troopers and 42 guns—was five times superior in Artillery to the whole Boer force, not far short of equality in horsemen, and was certainly superior to the commandos on the south bank, with which he was specially concerned. This force, moreover, had the immense advantage of possessing complete independent mobility, whereas the Boers, if they wished to maintain the semblance of an organized army, had to preserve their heavy transport and conform their speed to it. I have often alluded to the importance of this governing factor, and at Poplar Grove, in particular, it must be borne in mind if we are to gain any instruction from what happened. For the rest, the function designed by Roberts for French was the same as that performed by him so admirably, albeit with a weak force, at the Drifts on February 17—that is, to contain the Boer force until the rest of our army should have time to come up and crush it.
I have only sketched the plan of operations, and I can only sketch what actually happened. I must assume that the reader has before him the map and the narratives of the Official and Times Histories.
There is no dispute as to the facts, and both accounts in this respect are substantially the same, but that of the Times, for a reason to which I shall have to refer later, is more lucid. There has been much controversy over the day’s work and over the cause which led to an almost painful fiasco. Some of this controversy is not strictly relevant to our inquiry, and I shall refer to it as briefly as possible. The point I have to make is absolutely simple and unmistakable.
Let the reader first read the Instructions issued by Roberts on March 6, and grasp their spirit. Their details are not, and could not have been, cut and dried. Battles never follow the course of cut-and-dried instructions. One point needs special notice, that Roberts expected the Cavalry to be well behind the Boer positions and somewhere near the Modder before the Infantry began direct attacks, and before the enemy began any general retreat. The sixth division, which was to follow the track of the Cavalry for several miles, and was then to capture Seven Kopjes, on which the Boer left rested, would find the enemy “shaken by the knowledge that the Cavalry had passed their rear.” The movements of the other three Infantry divisions were, it is implied, to conform to the course of events in this quarter. On the other hand, the Cavalry division is regarded as wholly independent of the other arms. It was to set the pace, so to speak, and govern the course of events.
Now, it is quite clear from the narrative that from the very first there was no chance of realizing the Commander-in-Chief’s idea in its fulness. To have done that it would have been necessary for French either to make so wide a détour as to pass outside the range of vision of the Boers on Seven Kopjes, or, describing a shorter curve, to circle unobserved round Seven Kopjes before daylight, and thence to make for the Modder. To be seen was to precipitate the Boer retreat. Roberts seems scarcely to have realized this, and I think he is fairly open to the criticism that he might have rested his whole plan more boldly on the specific Intelligence report that there were only 6,000 Boers opposed to him, who must, however good or bad their morale, begin an immediate retreat directly they realized that the road to Bloemfontein was threatened by so large and mobile a force as that of French. On this basis he would have altered the tone of his instructions to the Infantry, omitted references to preliminary bombardments, and enjoined speed as the all-important requisite.
French appears from the first to have treated the conception of getting round the Boer rear unobserved as hopeless, on the ground of time and the condition of his horses. He himself, with good reason, suggested starting overnight. Roberts rejected this proposal, and named the hour of 2 a.m. Owing to an unfortunate misunderstanding, French did not start till 3 a.m. He marched very slowly, halted at 5 a.m. expressly in order to “wait for daylight,” which came at 5.45, and reached the farm Kalkfontein, three miles south-east of Seven Kopjes, at about 6.45 a.m., having covered twelve miles in three and three-quarter hours. He had been observed and, at 6.30, fired at from Seven Kopjes, and so far from circling north-east round that hill in order to make for the Modder, he had inclined, after passing it, slightly to the south, and now, as the official map shows, could not be said to be thoroughly “in rear” even of Seven Kopjes. This inclination was made partly with the object of watering his horses at Kalkfontein dam, a step which he considered essential. The halt at the dam seems to have lasted about three-quarters of an hour for the bulk of the division, though detachments continued to push on north and north-east. In the meantime French rode out to reconnoitre.
Let us pause here for a minute. It must be clear that, whatever the justification, French’s action was altogether inconsistent with the idea of a rapid sweep of an independent mounted force round the enemy’s rear. He has been criticized for not furthering that idea, and the Official Historian, in the course of his rather rambling and obscure comments upon the day’s work, meets the point by replying that if French, owing to the condition of his horses, thought the task impossible, “it is safe to say that there is in the world no living authority who can pronounce a decision against him.” Let us accept that conclusion unreservedly, adding, however, that French, under the circumstances, should have frankly told his Chief that he could not attempt to carry out the full design, instead of leaving him and the whole army to understand that an effort, at any rate, would be made. Roberts would certainly have altered his plan, on the assumption that French, although he could turn the Boer left, could not within the time allotted him compass the complete half-circle which would bring him to the Modder before the enemy fully realized the threat to their communications.
Apart from that criticism, let us agree that French was free from blame in not being in a position to move in force from Kalkfontein before 7.30 a.m. or thereabouts. Was the game up? It had scarcely begun. The Cavalry advance had been a complete surprise to the Boers. Their gun-fire from Seven Kopjes at 6.30 appears to have coincided with their first discovery of the turning movement. At seven they realized that their position was turned, though not enveloped, and between seven and eight they began the only course open to them—a retreat, both from the Seven Kopjes and from Table Mountain, the next position northward, towards the Poplar Grove Road, just as Roberts had foreseen. French in person witnessed the beginning of this retreat, and reported it to Roberts in two successive messages, at 7.30 and 8 a.m., noting in the second instance the presence of a long line of waggons, and adding in both cases that he was “following the pursuit with Artillery fire.” But how was he to use his 5,000 horsemen? There were two alternatives: one, to make a direct pursuit; the other, to resume the thread of Roberts’s original idea, and endeavour to intercept the Boer retreat at the river. The first meant less distance for his horses and a strong offensive rôle over an ideal terrain on the lines traditionally reserved for Cavalry; the second meant a détour involving more strain to his horses, though on equally good terrain, and culminating in a semi-defensive containing rôle like that which he had played on February 17. French rejected the first alternative, because, in the words of his second message, the enemy were “too well protected by riflemen on neighbouring kopjes and positions to enable me to attack them, mounted or dismounted.” But, while rejecting this aim, he did not resolutely embrace the other,[[30]] which was still undoubtedly practicable, in view of the fact that the Boer retreat, though it was covered by mounted skirmishers, was maintained throughout at the rate of ox-waggons not of unhampered horsemen. The division was sent to the low ridge of Middlepunt, some five miles north-east of Kalkfontein, where one brigade at least was actually nearer to the river than a considerable part of the Boer retreating forces; but here, again, it was brought to a standstill by “small groups” of Boer riflemen. From this time (8.30 a.m.) until the evening, the story is one of impotence on the part of the division, in the face of mere handfuls, relatively, of these riflemen, who represented the only stout-hearted element in a thoroughly disorganized force. It was the story of Dronfield over again: the failure of Cavalry, armed and equipped as the Cavalry were, to develop offensive power against mounted riflemen.
There need be no doubt as to the nature of the Boer retreat. The “Official History,” indeed, speaks of “panic” (p. 201), and De Wet, when he appeared on the scene, seems to have regarded the flight as a disgraceful surrender to unreasoning fear. But the evidence does not support this extreme view. De Wet was not present on the Boer left when the Cavalry made its appearance, and did not realize that retreat was imperative. The fact that every gun and waggon was eventually saved, and that no prisoners were taken, is inconsistent with the full meaning of the word “panic.” On the other hand, it is quite certain that the greater part of the Boer force was thoroughly demoralized, determined not to fight, and deaf to the entreaties and threats of Kruger, who met them on the Poplar Grove Road, and that it was only by the valour and self-sacrifice of a very small minority, spurred on by the fiery energy of De Wet, that a thin rear-guard was formed and maintained throughout the morning and afternoon. A resolute stroke would have broken down this flimsy screen, and turned what was already a defeat into a rout.
In the efforts that have been made to explain the ineffective action of the Cavalry, much stress is laid on the condition of the horses. But the irony of the matter is that weak tactics brought their own punishment, and produced far greater exhaustion in the horses than a policy of strong offence. At 8.30, Broadwood’s brigade, on the extreme right of the division, as it deployed on the Middelpunt ridge facing north, was only seven miles from the river. French, however, contracting his front, ordered Broadwood to close in westward. Immediately a party of Boers seized some farm-buildings which Broadwood evacuated, and began to enfilade our line. Broadwood was then sent back, with an additional brigade of Mounted Infantry and a battery, and it took these troops two hours (until 11.30) to dislodge the audacious Boer detachment. Broadwood now asked for permission to pursue immediately, but French allowed another hour to elapse.[[31]] Then an advance to the river was begun, and even now such an advance offered great possibilities of success. But again De Wet interposed a screen which checked the whole division.
The principal opposition came from a group of only forty men (“Official History,” p. 202) at Bosch Kopjes, on our extreme right. Broadwood was sent back (about 2 p.m.) by a long détour to envelop this point, while the batteries and a brigade of Mounted Infantry attacked it in front. Two hours were spent in formally carrying the position. By this time (4 p.m.) all the commandos, with their guns and waggons, had escaped. A last rear-guard was driven in at 5 p.m. by the Cavalry brigades of Gordon and Porter. What the average distance covered by the division in the course of the day amounted to it is difficult to say, but Broadwood’s brigade, as the Times History points out, must certainly have covered at least forty miles, or nearly double the distance which would have sufficed originally to place it astride the Modder. The division had suffered some fifty casualties, and the loss of 213 horses. These were almost the only casualties to the army during the day.
What of the Infantry? Here the original idea, deeply implanted on the minds of all concerned, that the Cavalry would succeed at an early hour in placing itself directly in rear of the Boer centre, produced strange results. Nobody was prepared for a premature Boer flight, and few could take it in. It will be remembered that movements were to conform to the right, where the sixth division, acting in concert with the Cavalry, was to storm Seven Kopjes. The halt of the Cavalry at Kalkfontein caused a corresponding halt of the sixth division. Repeated messages from headquarters (based on French’s reports) could not persuade the divisional Commander that the position was untenanted. It was formally attacked and occupied near noon, four hours after its evacuation. Hesitation and delay were communicated all down the line, each brigade waiting for the next.
All this indicates an atmosphere, common to the whole army, of excessive caution. The Times Historian suggests that a more resolute advance on the part of the Infantry, and especially on the part of the sixth division, might have turned the scale in promoting more vigorous action by the Cavalry. No doubt it would have had this effect. But it is surely a very poor compliment to the Cavalry arm to suggest, as Mr. Goldman does, that it is not their business to push home an active pursuit unless the enemy’s retreat has been originally brought about by Infantry and guns. The fact is, of course, that the Cavalry controlled the course of events. They had been expressly entrusted with this duty from the first, and nothing could lighten the responsibility, least of all a premature flight on the part of the enemy. They alone were in touch with what was actually happening, and in them alone lay the power to infuse vitality into the action.
What are we to conclude? First, that French, apart altogether from the capacity of his men, was below his usual form on this day, otherwise he would have risked more and tried harder, even against his own judgment, for a more energetic officer never lived. Second, that his men, in training and armament, were unequal to their work, and that at the bottom of his heart he knew it. I speak with especial reference to the regular Cavalry. The half-trained Mounted Infantry who worked with them had been brought up to believe that they lacked that highest sort of offensive power which was held to reside in Cavalry. Who can fail to detect the paralyzing influence of the arme blanche at Poplar Grove? When I suggest that French himself must have felt it, I only make the plain inference from his message to Roberts at 8 a.m. Who were these “riflemen” whose protective action forbade a direct pursuit, mounted or dismounted? Cavalry under another name, performing one of the elementary functions of Cavalry—the shielding of a retreat. Assuredly, if the steel weapon had any merit at all, then was the time to show it. Where is the “future war” against a white race, in which, all the circumstances considered, better opportunities are going to present themselves? No such war can be conceived unless, indeed, accepting the reductio ad absurdum in its entirety, we reckon arme blanche training as a disadvantage, and count on meeting mounted troops destitute of the very qualities which enabled the scanty Boer rear-guard to stave off destruction from its main body.
The Official commentary upon Poplar Grove is not well-conceived. It is difficult to reconcile with the plain narrative of facts, which is evidently written by a different hand, and in lucidity suffers only from not being constructed with a view to the obvious conclusions and from the absence of a map showing times and movements. The map shows none of the original Boer positions on the south bank—only some arrows marked “Boers retreating.” The British dispositions are those at 11.30 a.m. As a guide to the action, the map is useless, and the Times map, though topographically less perfect, must be consulted. In the text there is no practical instruction—not a hint that there was anything wrong with the equipment, armament, or tactics of the Cavalry. Overlaid with irrelevant invectives against the British public for expecting too much of its troops, and with vague moralization on the psychology of the war, we find two definite propositions recurring: that the initial failure of the Cavalry to work round the enemy’s rear before the Boers took alarm necessarily and immediately involved the failure of the whole operation, and that the root-cause lay in the condition of the Cavalry horses, which is written of here and elsewhere as though it were a circumstance attributable to an “act of God” wholly out of control of the Cavalry themselves. The narrative itself refutes both propositions.[[32]] They are unfair to everybody concerned—to Lord Roberts in particular, to the Infantry, to the Cavalry themselves, and to French. It is difficult to believe that brave men find any satisfaction in hearing themselves defended in this fashion. That is the vice of worshipping a fetish. A purely technical question is converted into a question personal to a branch of the service. And he who attacks the fetish is forced to risk the odious imputation of attacking persons and regiments.
I allude with some reluctance to Mr. Goldman’s commentary on Poplar Grove. His enthusiasm for the fetish, always in excess of his discretion, here leads him into confusions and contradictions which, to an unbiassed mind, effectually destroy the case he is endeavouring to build up. His narrative, unintentionally, is not always accurate. At page 132 he represents French, soon after 7.30 a.m., when he first saw the Boer retreat, as “straining every nerve to overtake” a disorganised enemy only three miles ahead, but “crippled by broken-down animals,” failing “to bring his brigades up in time to throw them on the close ranks of the enemy.” No such scene took place. French, as his own messages and the known facts show, refrained from this sort of direct pursuit on the express ground that the enemy’s skirmishers were too strong. In any case, the suggestion is untenable. The Boer retreat was regulated by the speed of their transport. The horses, unquestionably, were in bad condition, but to paint them as too “crippled” to overtake waggons, is not only exaggerated but inconsistent with what followed. To do Mr. Goldman justice, it is also inconsistent with his own subsequent commentary; for on page 137 he restates the facts, without any criticism, but correctly.
Then he proceeds. Admitting that the occasion was one for the Cavalry arm to “turn a defeat into a rout, and capture guns and waggons,” he nevertheless fathers on French (without any authority that I can discover) the idea that such action should rightly be preceded by the enemy’s defeat at the hands of Infantry and guns. Then, combating the suggestion that the Cavalry should have charged through the enemy’s screen at Middelpunt, as they charged at Klip Drift, he reminds us that the Klip Drift charge was “mainly through flank-fire, while here the Boers were in front,” and a charge must have meant “certain destruction and probable annihilation.” After reading the Official and Times narratives, one can afford to smile at this hysterical exaggeration, but that is a small matter. What does this comment, as a whole, imply? Once more, a crushing condemnation of the steel weapon. The Boers were just as much “Cavalry,” in the broad sense of armed horsemen, as French’s troops themselves. Can a frontal charge never be made by Cavalry, in the narrow sense, upon mounted riflemen? Here, if ever, was the opportunity. It is the old reductio ad absurdum—an unconscious but unreserved admission that the rifle dictates mounted tactics, not the steel. For, of course, Mr. Goldman means by “charge” a charge with the steel weapon. No other charge is recognized by him, and I hope the reader will note the tardy but instructive sidelight on the Klip Drift episode, where, as I showed, the steel weapon was not in question at all.
Still, Mr. Goldman is always candid, and, in spite of his hypothesis of “certain destruction,” we find him admitting in the next breath that French was unduly delayed by a small number of audacious skirmishers. Immediately after he is qualifying this admission by attributing failure mainly to the condition of the horses. Finally, he concludes that “failure was clearly attributable, not in any degree to defects in executive operations on the field, but to the details of the plan as a whole not having been evolved in the first instance with sufficient preciseness of calculation.” Of all lessons to be drawn from Poplar Grove this is the least helpful, and, if only Mr. Goldman knew it, the most damaging to the arm whose interests he has so warmly and genuinely at heart. Of all arms in the service it least becomes the Cavalry to complain of lack of precision in a Commander-in-Chief’s calculations. Their mobility invests them with the duty and privilege of correcting and turning to advantage errors in calculation, especially when the error arises in the first instance from an overestimate of the strength and morale of the enemy.
Before leaving Poplar Grove, I wish to make an additional reference to two points:
1. Condition of Horses.—It must strike any impartial student of these operations that the argument from the condition of French’s horses, weak as they certainly were from unpreventable causes, is subjected to an intolerable strain. I do not wish to lay any undue stress on horse management, though we miss the acknowledgment that the horse is a possession whose good condition is one of the supreme tests of regimental efficiency. Gunners, from the Colonel to the driver, hold it a point of honour not to blame their horses as long as there is anything else left to blame, and the Cavalry have the same high ideal. It is only when the arme blanche is in danger of discredit that we find its advocates, official and unofficial, laying excessive stress on the condition of the horses, without even a suggestion that the Cavalry may have been partly to blame for it. But I want the reader to go beyond these operations, and inquire, What standard of speed and endurance have advocates of the arme blanche in mind when they represent the arm as tactically unfit? It must be inferred that the standard consists in ability at any moment to gallop a considerable distance at high speed—"everlastingly to gallop," as Count Wrangel, the Austrian authority, frankly puts it.[[33]] This standard is the logical result of the shock theory of which Wrangel is an uncompromising exponent; for, as I have pointed out, one of the four indispensable conditions of shock is capacity to gallop fast, partly because of the highly vulnerable target presented by mounted troops in mass, and partly because heavy impact is the essence of shock. If, as in our own present peace training, we reduce the standard of speed, in contradiction of our own Manual, we compromise fatally on shock. In South Africa, shock being already obsolete, the steel weapon was in reality obsolete too. This the Cavalry could not make up their minds to recognize, and, among other hampering associations, the idea of capacity for high speed as an ever-present essential for strong tactical offence lived on in a good many minds. We find it in correspondence and despatches; we can trace it constantly in field-tactics, and it was probably in the back of French’s mind during the whole of the Poplar Grove action, though it must have been clear that in order to overcome the sporadic opposition of the Boer rear-guard no such efforts were necessary. There is no question that the Boer horses were far fresher and stouter than ours. If the Boers to a man had fled from the field, we could not have caught them. But we should have captured their guns and transport.
The galloping idea in its extreme form is wholly foreign to the tactical action of mounted riflemen, for whom the “charge” is a relative term, denoting the climax of aggressive mobility, not an isolated exotic flowering in the midst of a dull waste known as “dismounted action.” If we consider mere physical effects, which are all that matter, the few mounted riflemen who snapped at Broadwood’s flanks as he marched towards the Modder, and afterwards held up two brigades and twelve guns for two hours, did just as much for their side as the Scots Greys at Waterloo, and, when they first made their attack, “charged” in as real and substantial a sense as the Cavalry at Klip Drift.
It is tolerably certain that the exaggerated claim for speed as a tactical sine qua non at all moments will do more in future wars to eliminate shock, and enthrone the rifle in its true position, than any other factor, even although the opposing Cavalries enter the war with the fixed conviction that they must join issue in terms of shock. The side which first breaks that compact will win. In future wars Cavalry will have far harder work to do than they have ever had before. In the thick of a hard-fought war the galloping horse will be a rarity, the regiment of galloping horses still rarer, the brigade or division a nine days’ wonder. Any unit whose power to deal decisive strokes in action can be exercised only by means of really high speed will be of little service. Manchurian evidence confirms this truth.
2. Horse Artillery acting with Cavalry.—This is a new point in our discussion, and I ask the reader to watch it carefully throughout the war. He will have been struck already by the large number of guns which accompanied the Cavalry in these operations, and the disproportionately small results which ensued. French had forty-two guns at Poplar Grove, and was never opposed by more than two at a time, and altogether, I think, by six. The question is, To what extent should mounted troops, acting independently, rely on the support of Artillery? The war proves, I think, that they should rely as little as possible on that form of aid. When, for strategical purposes, high mobility is required, the strain on the gun-teams is great, and may—though this rarely happened in South Africa—limit the strategical mobility of the mounted troops. But I am thinking more of field-tactics. Here the ill-effects of excessive reliance on Artillery were often visible, particularly in offence. The preliminary bombardment, a serious drag upon all offensive action in South Africa, was the curse of mounted action. Generally ineffective in its physical and moral results upon the enemy, it weakened the spirit of offence by weakening surprise, which, in one form or another, is the soul of aggressive mounted action. As events turned out, French would have done better, I believe, at Poplar Drift if he had had no guns at all. The problem which confronted him when he first sighted the Boer retreat could not then have been solved by a compromise in which a “pursuit with Artillery fire” figured as a prominent element. Such pursuits are useless; the Artillery fire during the whole day caused, I suppose, scarcely a dozen casualties, while a whole brigade of Mounted Infantry had to be told off as escort to the seven batteries. At every turn the possession of guns was a temptation to employ slow, formal methods, where rude, overmastering vigour was requisite. At Dronfield we can detect the same source of weakness. And at Klip Drift, would French have charged at all without the support of an enormous weight of Artillery?
The Boers, always weak in Artillery, do not seem at any time to have placed much moral reliance on guns as a support for aggressive action. Their weakness in aggression came from other causes. It was only when they had lost all their Artillery that they carried aggressive mounted action to its highest point.
It is true that in defence guns are often valuable to mounted troops. Since leaving Ramdam, the one occasion on which French’s guns were useful to him was on February 17, when he headed and contained Cronje, pending the arrival of the Infantry. The two batteries which he had succeeded in bringing with him, besides assisting to repel attacks on the Cavalry, covered the drift which Cronje’s transport had to pass, and made the crossing impossible. Later experience, however, proved with increasing force that, even in defence, guns, however well fought—and they were always magnificently fought—were often productive of more embarrassment than advantage to a mounted force. For the moment I am speaking of offence and defence as though they were distinct functions. Of course, they are not. They melt into one another, and may alternate half a dozen times in one day. The best defence is always tinged by offence. An independent mounted force must be equipped to meet all contingencies. Nevertheless, all things considered, I suggest that the mounted troops who rely least on Artillery at any rate, when they are given a distinctly aggressive task, will achieve most.
The reason, I think, is this: that their mobility and the surprise which is its fruit make the personal factor paramount. The rifle is eminently a personal weapon, the gun essentially an impersonal weapon. In that respect, let us note in passing, the gun bears a distant analogy to the sword. For the denser the mass of swordsmen and the greater the shock sought to be produced, the less personal is the weapon.