By order,
D. Haig, Lt.-Col.
Chief Staff Officer to Lt.-General French.
September 15, 1900.
The sniping stopped forthwith.
One of the first things that French did was to go and personally rescue his old enemy, Schoeman, from the local jail. That worthy, having surrendered, had come into bad odour with his fellow countrymen. In consequence he had been incarcerated at Barberton. For once the unfortunate Schoeman was glad to see the face of his old enemy again!
French rested his forces in Barberton for three weeks, leaving the town on October 3. The march back to Pretoria was, if anything, more trying than the adventurous dash to Barberton had been. Apart from the trying climb over the heights of the Kaapsche Hoop, and the eternal sniping of the Boers, the weather now brought new sufferings. The men were exhausted by days of heat, and soaked by nights of torrential rain. It was a thoroughly tired and jaded force which finally reached Pretoria on November 3.
One incident of that trying march shows how ably French dealt with Boer bluff. The enemy had made prisoner a captain of the R.A.M.C, and sent a message that they would shoot him unless General French pledged his word that he would burn no Boer farms. French replied that unless the captured medical officer were brought into the British camp next morning, he would burn the town of Bethel to the ground; and, if he were shot, ten Boer prisoners would be similarly put to death. The doctor was brought into camp next morning.
LORD ROBERTS' RETURN
In inspecting the cavalry on their return, Lord Roberts expressed his high appreciation of French's work and informed him that, while retaining his cavalry command, he had been appointed to the command of Johannesburg and district.
At the end of the month Lord Roberts returned to England to take command of the Home Forces; and several months elapsed before French was able actively to take up that long rounding-up of the Boers which Kitchener was now planning in such elaborate detail. During the early part of 1901 he was able to clear the Boers out of the central district of Cape Colony. On June 8 he took supreme command of the operations in that Colony, and by November he had confined the enemy to its north-eastern and south-western extremities.
Not until Midsummer, 1902, was French able to return home. Before that he had spent some time recruiting his health in Cape Town. Very eager were the loyal citizens to fête the most successful of all the British Generals. But French would have no banqueting on his account. The war, he characteristically explained, was not yet ended, and so long as it was in progress he was not inclined to accept any public hospitality.
Anything like show or ostentation is foreign to French's whole nature. If there are few stories of his exploits in South Africa, there lies the reason. He is far too modest a man to prepare bons mots or pretty jeux d'esprit for public consumption. Also he is by nature a silent man. His silence is not the detached, Olympian and rather ominous silence of Kitchener. It proceeds simply from a natural modesty and reticence, which reinforce his habitual tendency to "think things over." He is the type of man whom hostesses have to "draw out"; he never talks either on himself, the army or any other subject. To "do his job" better than anybody else in the world could do it is enough for French; chatter about it he leaves to less busy people.