With General Hertzog things went even better. He had soon twelve hundred men under arms. General Fourie had not succeeded in getting together an equally large force in his division, because many burghers from these districts had been taken prisoner at the time of the surrender of Prinsloo. General Hertzog also fought more than one battle at Jagersfontein and Fauresmith.
I ought to add that after I had crossed the Magaliesberg I had sent Veldtcornet C.C. Badenhorst, with twenty-seven men, on a similar errand to the districts of Boshof and Hoopstad. I promoted him to the rank of commandant, and he soon had a thousand troops under him, so that he was able to engage the enemy on several occasions. He had not been long occupied in this way, before I appointed him Vice-Commander-in-Chief. The reader who has followed me throughout this narrative, may very naturally ask here how it could be justifiable for nearly three thousand burghers thus to take up arms again, and break their oath of neutrality? I will answer this question by another—who first broke the terms of this oath?—the burghers or the English military authorities? The military authorities without any doubt; what other answer can one give?
Lord Roberts had issued a proclamation saying that, if the burghers took an oath of neutrality, and remained quietly on their farms, he would give them protection for their persons and property. But what happened? He himself ordered them to report to the British military authorities, should any Boer scout or commandos come to their farms, and threatened them with punishment if they did not do so. Old people also who had never stirred one step from their farms were fined hundreds of pounds when the railway or telegraph lines in their neighbourhood were wrecked. Besides, instead of protection being given to the burghers, their cattle were taken from them by the military, at prices they would never have thought of accepting, and often by force. Yes; and from widows, who had not even sons on commando, everything was taken away. If then the English, on their part, had broken the contract, were not the burghers perfectly justified in considering themselves no longer bound by the conditions which the oath laid on them?
And then if one goes further into the matter, and remembers that the English had been employing such people as the National Scouts, and had thus been arming men who had taken the oath of neutrality, how can one think that the Boer was still under the obligation of keeping his oath?
There is also the obligation which every one is under to his own Government; for what Government could ever acknowledge an oath which their citizens had no right to take?
No! taking everything into consideration, no right-minded burgher could have acted otherwise than to take his weapons up again, not only in order to be faithful to his duty as a citizen, but also in order not to be branded as a coward, as a man who in the future could never again look any one in the face.
I arranged various matters at Doornspruit, in the district of Kroonstad, on the 23rd of September, 1900, and then went from there in the direction of Rietfontein, in order to meet the commando which I had ordered to be at Heilbron on the 25th.