"We are now," they said, "surrounded on all sides. Resistance and escape are equally impossible for us."
Never during the whole course of the war were President Steyn and I so full of care and anxiety as at this time. With Buller across our frontier, and the enemy within the walls of Johannesburg and Pretoria, it was as much as we could do to continue the contest at all. However brave and determined many of our burghers and officers might be, and, in fact, were, our numerical weakness was a fact that was not to be got over, and might prove an insuperable obstacle to our success. Moreover, the same thing was now going on in the Transvaal after the capture of Pretoria, as we had witnessed in the Free State after the fall of Bloemfontein—nearly all the burghers were leaving their commandos and going back to their farms. Plenty of officers, but no troops! This was the pass to which we were come.
It was only the remembrance of how the tide had turned in the Free State that gave us the strength to hold out any longer.
President Steyn and I sent telegram after telegram to the Government and to the chief officers, encouraging them to stand fast. Meanwhile the two Generals, De la Rey and Louis Botha, were giving us all a splendid example of fortitude. Gazing into the future unmoved, and facing it as it were with clenched teeth, they prosecuted the war with invincible determination.
That the reader may the better appreciate the actual condition of our affairs at this time, I think it well to make a short statement as to the various districts of the Orange Free State, and the number of men in each on whom we could still rely!
The burghers of Philippolis and Kaapstad had surrendered en masse to the English. In the first named of these districts, only Gordon Fraser and Norval, in the second only Cornelius du Preez and another, whose name has escaped my memory, remained loyal to our cause. I mention these men here, because their faithfulness redounds to their everlasting honour.
In the district of Boshof, we could still reckon on Veldtcornet Badenhorst,[43] and twenty-seven men.
Jacobsdal was represented by Commandant Pretorius (who had succeeded Commandant Lubbe, after the latter had been wounded and taken prisoner at Tabaksberg), and forty men.
In the district of Fauresmith, Commandant Visser and some seventy men had remained faithful.