The march to Pretoria.
The second period of the war had now arrived, in which the British could take the offensive. They had by this time a vast superiority of force, having 200,000 men in South Africa, while the Cape rebels had mostly surrendered, and many even of the burghers of the two republics had retired to their homes in despair. Lord Roberts brought the regular fighting to an end in two campaigns: during the first (April-May, 1900) he fought his way to Johannesburg and Pretoria, and captured both places. After a short rest he marched against the main Boer army, which had rallied in the Eastern Transvaal, and forced it to disperse or to retire over the Portuguese frontier (August-September, 1900). President Kruger fled to Europe with the state-chest of the republic, and devoted himself to the task of stirring up public opinion on the Continent against Great Britain—a task in which he had only too much success.
Guerilla warfare.
It had been hoped that when the regular resistance of the Boers ceased, the war would come to a speedy end. After Lord Roberts returned to England, the impression was strengthened almost to certainty. But a bitter disappointment awaited the British cabinet and nation. Instead of surrendering, the enemy broke up into guerilla bands, which rode through the country cutting railways, capturing convoys, and destroying isolated detachments and small garrisons. There were still 40,000 of them in arms, and such a force ranging over a country as large as France and Germany put together, was most difficult to deal with. They maintained their desperate struggle for no less than nineteen months (October, 1900-April, 1902). Lord Kitchener finally had to subdue them by the "method of attrition." It was only by constant "drives," in which large numbers of mounted troops scoured the countryside to catch the bands, and by the building of lines of block-houses across their favourite spheres of action, that the burghers were finally worn down. They displayed an enterprise and a reckless courage in these last months of the war which they had been far from showing at its commencement. But at last even their stubborn spirits were humbled to the idea of surrender: after more than half of them had been captured or slain, and when all their families had been removed to "concentration camps," they opened negotiations (May, 1902), and finally laid down their arms to the number of 21,000 men.
Under a wise and conciliatory government there seems no reason to doubt that they may ultimately become useful and trustworthy citizens of the British empire. But it will try all the wisdom of the able administrator who now presides over all South Africa, from Cape Town to the Zambesi, to settle the multifarious problems which the war has left behind it. Meanwhile Britain is quit of the most dangerous war which she has waged since Waterloo, a war which brought to light many faults in her military system, and much incompetence among her generals, but which also revealed that the heart of her people was sound and the unity of her empire solid. It was a most reassuring sign that the nation paid no attention to the desperate attempts made to exploit the early disasters of the war for party purposes, and to get up an agitation against the Government. The movement fell flat, and at the General Election, which occurred in the middle of the war, the Salisbury cabinet was replaced in power with a very large majority. Still more notable was the splendid loyalty with which the colonies rallied round the mother-country in her day of need, and poured in their best fighting men for an imperial war, in which it might have been pleaded that they were not directly concerned. Not even the blindest observer can fail to see that it is futile to doubt any longer the existence of the "imperial sentiment."
Death of Queen Victoria.
It was a source of regret to every loyal inhabitant of the British dominions that the aged sovereign under whom the war began did not survive to see its victorious termination, and to close her eyes on a world at peace. But Queen Victoria, whose powers had been slowly failing for the last year of her life, only just lived to see the new century, and expired on the 22nd of January, 1901. She was followed to the grave by the regrets of a people who realized fully what they owed to one who had been the model of constitutional sovereigns, and had set so high the standard of public as well of domestic duty. Personally she had done more to secure the perpetuation of the British monarchy than even the most sanguine observer could have hoped, when she came to the throne, an unexperienced girl of eighteen, in the year 1837. Surveying her eventful reign of sixty-four years—the longest in English history—with all its progress and endeavour, we trust that our descendants may look upon the "Victorian Age" as not the least glorious period in our country's annals.
FOOTNOTES:
See p. [713].