The Siege of Mafeking (1900)

by A. Hamilton

Mafeking, May 13th, 1900.

From time to time intelligence has reached us from native sources that the Boers were still anxious to make a final attempt to capture the town. We have had this story repeated to us so frequently that there were many in our midst who had altogether ceased to pay any attention to it; but that there was some sincerity in the desire to attack us has now been proved to be true, and it would seem that the obstacle which existed, and which prevented an earlier realisation of the enemy's plans, was the absence of any leader sufficiently capable and enterprising to attempt the execution of so hazardous a venture. However, when General Cronje delegated full command to General Snyman, President Kruger sent from Pretoria his youthful but gallant nephew, Commandant Eloff, who had not only frequently expressed his desire to capture the town, but brought with him from Pretoria men whose special knowledge of our fortifications had been gained when serving as troopers in the Protectorate Regiment. It was these men who were destined to conceive and carry to a successful conclusion the work of projecting a body of the Boers within our interior lines. Weeks have elapsed since Commandant Eloff arrived from Pretoria, but he has bided his time, studying carefully our system of defence, our outlying earthworks, and collecting all scraps of information which would convey to him a more intimate knowledge of our position. For a time his plans matured, but, as he conned them well over, he began to make his preparations, recognising that, if he allowed many more days to pass, the relief column from the south would be an additional and important factor in his scheme of operations. Upon May 10th the relief column had reached Vryburg, and Vryburg is only ninety-six miles from Mafeking. Upon May 12th this southern column had advanced to Setlagoli, a point only forty-five miles distant from the town, and the receipt of this intelligence, which was brought to Commandant Eloff by his scouts, revealed to him the urgency and absolute necessity of carrying out his attack upon the town. It was a well-considered scheme, whose eventual success was only nullified by the lack of cohesion and estranged relations which existed between General Snyman and Commandant Eloff. It was a glorious day for Mafeking; it was a day of honourable misfortune for the Boers. Mafeking fell heavily upon Eloff, recapturing the fort which the Boers had surprised and taken in the early morning, and thereby effecting the release of the thirty-two prisoners whom the Boers had caught, and causing known casualties among the Boers of killed, wounded, and taken prisoners, 139.

KILLING HORSES FOR THE NATIVES AND ENTIRE GARRISON.

Commandant Eloff had designed to pierce our western lines under cover of a well-organised feint upon the eastern front of the town. Upon the morning of May 12th and a little before 4 a.m., the bells sounded a general alarm and the bugles summoned a general assembly of available arms to all posts. As in the early days of the siege, I ran from my hotel to Musson's Fort, where, upon similar occasions, I have served as a volunteer. There was no sign of disturbance in the west, but very heavy firing was breaking over the town from the main position of the enemy in the east. Gradually this fire was extended until the flanking positions of the Boers north-east and south-east were also engaged. As we stood to our arms in the fort, it seemed that they were directing an attack upon the brickfields, when, just as it appeared to be the usual innocuous fusilade, streaks of fire were seen leaping to the sky towards the west; there was a lurid glow across the native stadt and dense clouds of smoke were drifting and piling heavily towards the north. There was instant commotion in the fort, everybody exclaiming at once that the stadt was ablaze. At that moment we did not realise that the conflagration which we saw was the deliberate work of the enemy, although there were many who, catching sight of the blaze, concluded that the attack upon our eastern front was the blind to a movement of much greater importance upon the west. Thoroughly aroused and anxious to learn the reasons of the fire, I returned to the hotel. By this time rifle fire had slackened upon the east of the town, but bullets were coming over from the west, the town being under this cross-fire. There were few people about the town, and, save for an occasional group of frightened women, one saw no one. My horse was already saddled, and, riding to the front of the town, I at once recognised that the Boers were in the stadt. Huts were burning in all directions, the separate fires blending into a sheet of flame; dense smoke overhung everything. There was the crackle of the burning huts, and showers of golden sparks tossed themselves into the air. It was still dark and the hour was about five; a lemon-coloured dawn, sheathed in the golden glory of the fire and obscured by the grey-black waves of smoke, was slowly breaking, following closely upon the heels of a flame-coloured night. It was the hour when confusion reigns supreme, when it is impossible to tell tree from man, an outcrop of stone from a recumbent beast. It was the very hour in which to attack, but the Boers secured an additional advantage from the dense and heavy smoke which filled the atmosphere, making the gloom more impenetrable than ever and screening effectually the rapidity of their progress. Heavy firing was proceeding from the direction of the stadt, and there was a confused babel of voices. Natives were running in all directions, and against the flames groups of figures were noticeable in silhouette.

There seemed little doubt that the situation at this moment was grave in the extreme. The Boers in the stadt, dividing rapidly, had advanced upon the British South Africa Police Fort, in which from the beginning of the siege the regimental headquarters of the Protectorate Regiment have been installed. At this moment Colonel Hore and the officers and men attached to the regimental headquarters staff, including four belonging to the British South Africa Police, numbered some twenty-three. Preparing to resist the invasion, Colonel Hore had already manned the earthwork, which from the days of the Warren expedition has been designated as a fort. The distance between the stadt and the fort is about four hundred yards, and around the regimental headquarters lie scattered numerous outbuildings. It is an impossible place to hold with a small number of men, while the outbuildings are so situated as to afford very excellent cover to any troops which may be advancing with the intention of surrounding the main buildings; and it was this manœuvre which Commandant Eloff was endeavouring to carry to a successful issue. Scattering quickly, and under the cover of the different houses, he advanced within a very short distance of the fort. In the dim light, obscured by smoke, and in part concealed by the native refugees, it was impossible to tell whether these men were the van of a Boer force or our own outposts in process of retirement upon Colonel Hore. Under the guidance of Trooper Hayes, a deserter from the Protectorate Regiment, seven hundred Boers had rushed the interior lines of the outposts, making their way along the bed of the Molopo and through Hidden Hollow into the stadt. The movement had been noticed by the outposts, who, unable to do anything against such overwhelming odds, had given the alarm and fallen back upon either flank, delivering a flanking fire when the Boers were discovered. Arriving in the stadt, Commandant Eloff had ignited the huts in various directions, in this manner giving to the main body of the Boers their signal to advance. Before the rush of Commandant Eloff's men the Baralongs separated, reforming behind the enemy, in order to co-operate with our advanced outposts in repelling the progress of the main body. From the moment that this was accomplished the Boers outside our lines and those who were within the stadt were cut off from one another; but, leaving half his force in the stadt, Commandant Eloff, with whom were Captain Von Weiss and Captain de Fremont, prepared to assault the fort, and, advancing rapidly upon it, had surrounded it with but little difficulty. When the little band of men saw the Boers emerging from stadt, fire was at once opened upon them, but, as they claimed to be friends, and as it was understood that they were our own outposts, the fire from the fort ceased until the enemy were within sixty yards of its front face, being at the same time, unknown to the inmates of the fort, in occupation of the buildings upon either flank and in the rear.

This, then, was the situation which had come to pass within three hundred yards of the railway and about seven hundred yards from the town. In the town itself the Town Guard, the Bechuanaland Rifles, and the entire strength of the Railway Division had been ordered at once to man the railway line. The men from the Hospital Redan and the establishment from Early's Corner Fort were detailed to the line in addition to the Bechuanaland Volunteers, while the Railway Division, screening their movements behind the corrugated iron fencing which encloses the railway yards, and perforating rifle holes in the sheeting of the fence, were given charge of the railway yards. Lieutenant Feltham and his troop of C Squadron supported Major Panzera and the artillery at the railway bridge, while, under orders from Colonel Baden-Powell, Lieutenant Montcrieff advanced a section of the Town Guard to occupy a house a little removed from the new line of defences which had been already taken up. The town itself, agog with excitement, had been reinforced by the Cape Police from the brickfields and the British South Africa Police from the kopje, and with these forces opposing them, the Boers at the fort found their further advance cut off, while, unless General Snyman forced the passage of the outposts and brought up his artillery, the entire body would be hemmed in.

In the meantime Commandant Eloff demanded the unconditional surrender of the twenty-three men who were established at the fort, an order which, had Colonel Hore refused, implied that every man with him would be shot. Then, in that moment, it was known that the cheering which had been heard in Hidden Hollow a few moments before was the triumphant chortle of the Boers as they stepped within the inmost lines of our defences. Around the fort there was silence—there was a terrible silence; there was a man who was weighing in his hand and in his heart the lives of twenty-two others, who was considering in a fleeting moment of time the flight of an honourable career which had brought to him a string of six medals, and who saw in one of two steps instant death for his little band and irrevocable and almost irretrievable ruin in the other. The pause was indeed death-like; there was the hallowed uncertainty of a future existence, but there was the moral certainty that no living future would fall to the lot of any of the twenty-three men upon whose ears the cry had fallen of surrender. The position was hopeless. With the Boers behind them, with the Boers flanking them, with the Boers in front of them, with three hundred of the enemy within a circumference of seventy yards, what more could an honourable man and a gallant officer do than accept the responsibility of his situation and save the lives of his men by complying unconditionally with the demand of the enemy? Thus did Colonel Hore surrender. It was impossible to withdraw to the town. Such a movement would have meant retirement over seven hundred yards of open, level ground without a particle of cover and with a force of three hundred of the enemy immediately in the rear; moreover the situation imperatively demanded this action in consequence of events over which he had no control. It was, perhaps, a moment as pathetic and great as any in his career. The surrender was effected at 5.25 a.m., and was not without incident, for with the garrison holding up their hands, their arms laid down, with five Boers within a few yards of the Colonel with their rifles at his breast, there was one man who went to his death. "I'll see you damned, you God forgotten——" said Trooper Maltuschek, and he went to his Maker the next moment. The news of such a catastrophe did not tend to relieve the gravity of the situation. With the Boers in the fort and in occupation of the stadt, it was necessary so to arrange our operations that any junction between the stadt and the fort would be impossible; at the same time we were compelled to prevent those Boers who were in the stadt from cutting their way through to the main body of the enemy. The situation was indeed complex, and throughout the remainder of the day the skirmishing in the stadt and the repulse of the feints of the enemy's main body, delivered in different directions against the outposts, were altogether apart from the siege, which we were conducting within our own investment. From the town very heavy rifle fire was directed upon the fort, which the Boers in that quarter returned with spirit and determination. But the position in the stadt had become acute, since, behind our outposts and our inner chain of forts, which are situated upon its exterior border, were a rollicking, roving band of four hundred Boers, who, for the time being, were indulging in pillage and destruction wherever it was possible.