But did mobility, backed by the rifle, inspire dash in the Boers? At this period, except in isolated cases, no. The inertia, so disproportionate to their tactical flexibility and brilliant skirmishing skill, was never more apparent than at the close of this battle outside Ladysmith, when White began his retreat. No such opportunity was ever to present itself again for a really decisive victory. Joubert regarded the action as a defensive action, and had issued general orders against a pursuit. On the other hand, a simple burgher, Christian de Wet, had inspired the one genuinely aggressive enterprise which distinguished the Boer movements on this day—namely, the attack and capture of the detached force at Nicholson’s Nek. This—like the capture of Majuba nearly twenty years earlier—was a feat of stalking pure and simple, with which the horse had little to do, save that it bore the riflemen rapidly from a distant part of the field into the outermost fringe of the zone of combat. The outermost fringe—that is the point to watch. Could horses penetrate the inner fringe under rifle-fire and so precipitate the decisive phase of a conflict? While waiting for the answer let us be sensible and remember that after all the main thing is to win fights. Galloping under fire is only a means to an end. Stalking under fire requires nearly as much dash to be effective.
The long siege of Ladysmith now virtually began. By an error of judgment all the mounted troops, including the Cavalry regiments, were retained within the lines, and were thus practically demobilized for five months. Happily for our arms, however, French and his staff just succeeded in leaving the town for the south before investment was complete. Happily, too, the strenuous efforts to raise more volunteer mounted troops within South Africa were now bearing fruit. Two fine but wholly raw regiments, Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry and Bethune’s Mounted Infantry, were able to strengthen the miserably scanty forces which, pending the arrival of Buller and heavy reinforcements from England and the Cape, stood between Southern Natal and invasion. Even so, there was nothing during the first half of November to stop Joubert with the forces at his disposal from a vigorous raid on Maritzburg, and even on Durban. But his tactical inertia was exceeded by his strategical inertia. Egged on by Louis Botha, he did indeed initiate a raid with a force of over 3,000 picked men on picked horses, but it degenerated into a leisurely foray for loot and cattle. The time for action slipped by. British troops were pouring into Natal to redress the strategical balance, and in the last week of November the Boer force withdrew behind the Tugela, there, aided by abstraction from the investing force, to begin their long and desperate struggle to prevent the relief of Ladysmith.
Colenso, fought on December 15, was the first great event in this historic conflict. From our point of view, like all the subsequent fights in Natal, it needs very little comment. Buller, commanding a force of 18,000 men, of whom 2,500 were mounted, made a frontal attack with his Infantry and guns upon an immensely strong entrenched position held by 6,000 Boers. He failed, inflicted only nominal loss on the enemy, suffered 1,100 casualties himself, and lost ten guns. Two Cavalry regiments formed the professional nucleus of the mounted brigade; the rest were raw irregulars. There were Bethune’s and Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, who, in the fighting around Estcourt three weeks earlier, had been just blooded and no more, a squadron of Imperial Light Horse and some Natal volunteers who had had much the same experience, and the newly enlisted South African Light Horse, who had not yet fired a shot. Reconnaissance prior to the battle had been little more than nominal. Pitted against the Boer outposts—expert shots all of them—our scouts had rarely been able to get near the enemy’s lines. The Tugela fords were not properly known; the enemy’s principal positions were but dimly conjectured. Artillery fire was the substitute for reconnaissance, and that produced no response from the crafty burghers.
In the battle itself the rifle from first to last governed tactics. The aggressive task given to the mounted brigade was the attack upon Hlwangwane Mountain, the great natural outwork upon which the Boer left flank rested. The irregulars were chosen for this attack, and rightly chosen, because rifles were absolutely essential. They made a plucky but vain effort to carry a strong position strongly held, and extricated themselves with some difficulty at the end of the day. The work of the Cavalry was confined to covering their retreat. As at Ladysmith, there was no opportunity for the steel, not from any chance causes, but because the rifle saw to it that no such opportunity should be allowed to occur.
Colenso was one of the three defeats in that sad week of mid-December, when the nation first realized the magnitude of the enterprise it had undertaken in South Africa. Let us carry events in other quarters of the field of war up to the same point, with special emphasis on the use of mounted troops.
Far up in the north the investment of Mafeking had begun immediately after the declaration of war (October 12). In a week the whole of the railway from Mafeking to Orange River was in Boer hands, and on the 23rd Kimberley was definitely invested. On no portion of this line were there any regular mounted troops, and of the local levies the only mobile force outside a besieged town was the Rhodesian Regiment of mounted riflemen, 450 strong, based on Tuli and commanded by Plumer, who, with this little handful of men and his own nerve and resource, did extraordinarily good work in threatening the Northern Transvaal, and at a later period in aiding in the relief of Mafeking.
Meanwhile the Boer invasion of Southern Cape Colony hung fire for three full weeks, and when it at last began, on November 1, the day Buller landed in South Africa, it was dilatory and methodless. Still, the strategical situation for ourselves was serious. White’s investment in Ladysmith, and the consequent danger to Southern Natal, had dislocated the entire scheme of British strategy, which was founded upon a resolve to land a whole Army Corps in Cape Colony and advance straight upon Bloemfontein and Pretoria. Buller’s decision, as we know, was to divert the greater part of his Army Corps to Natal, take command there himself, and make the relief of Ladysmith the primary British object. Probably the decision was the best that could have been come to, but it involved the dissolution of the Army Corps as an organized instrument of conquest, and the reduction of the grand scheme of irruption upon the enemy’s capital to a minor scheme of advance up the western railway line for the relief of Kimberley. In the meantime, and until a fresh army could be sent out from England, the vital portions of Cape Colony, comprising the great ports and the system of communications radiating therefrom, could only be protected against invasion by a mere demonstration of force exercised in the midst of districts teeming with disaffection.
Happily the Boer[Boer] leaders had no eye for aggressive strategy, nor indeed any military organization on which to base aggressive strategy. Absorbed by the prospect of capturing Mafeking and Kimberley, just as in Natal they were absorbed by the prospect of capturing Ladysmith, they fell naturally in both cases into an attitude of strategical defence—defence against the relief of the towns they were investing. The same feebleness which characterized the raid upon Southern Natal early in November characterized the straggling invasion of Southern Cape Colony at the same period. Nevertheless, it was no light task for us to conceal our weakness in this quarter, and, with a thin containing line of troops gathered from the fragments of the old Army Corps, to hold in play greatly superior Boer forces. It was French who was called to undertake this delicate and difficult duty. How he performed it I shall relate in the next chapter. For the present, let us briefly review Methuen’s advance from Orange River towards Kimberley.
Methuen started on November 20 with a total force of 10,000 men, including 7,000 Infantry, 16 guns, and only 1,000 mounted men. The professional mounted element was represented by one Cavalry regiment, and three companies of regular Mounted Infantry; the irregular element by Rimington’s Guides and a handful of New South Wales Lancers. Methuen, therefore, was relatively weaker in mounted troops than any leader in Natal, and his operations provide proportionately less material for criticizing mounted tactics and the weapons suitable thereto. I say “proportionately” less, because, as I pointed out in my preliminary chapter upon the numbers and quality of the British and Boer mounted troops, we cannot reckon the Boers twice over, once in their capacity as dismounted riflemen holding positions against our Infantry, and a second time as mobile riflemen available for mounted evolutions against our Cavalry. Yet that strange error has been constantly made, and among other cases in the case of Methuen’s first three battles—Belmont (November 23), Graspan (November 25), and Modder River (November 28), in the first two of which the total British force engaged outnumbered the total Boer force engaged by nearly four to one, and in the third by more than two to one, while the British mounted troops, reckoned independently, amounted to half the Boer force and a quarter the Boer force respectively. The enemy, with something over 2,000 men at Graspan and Belmont, and with about 3,500 at Modder River, supported by Artillery which never exceeded three guns and two pompoms, had to make head against 7,000 British Infantry on the first two occasions, 6,800 on the second, and 7,500 on the third, backed by Artillery which rose from sixteen to twenty guns. The Infantry included the Brigade of Guards, and, taken as a whole, were as fine a body of troops of their class as could be found in any European country. These troops bore the brunt of all three battles. They stormed the rocky heights at Belmont and Enslin, and faced the yet more deadly fire which swept across the level plain from the sunken beds of the Modder and the Riet. Whatever tactical flexibility the Boers may have derived from their ponies in meeting these attacks, nearly the whole of their small force was pinned to its position until the crisis of each action, by the necessity of meeting Infantry and Artillery attacks in superior force.
The British mounted troops, on a reasonable calculation of relative strength, must be regarded as having been left approximately free for supplementary independent action on the enemy’s flanks and rear. This is how Methuen regarded them and endeavoured to use them. In the event, though all worked their hardest, they had no appreciable effect on any of the actions. The steel weapon was useless, although the terrain for shock was ideal. The Cavalry were not adapted or properly trained for fire-action, and the Mounted Infantry and irregulars, though trained and adapted for it, were very backward in the art. Reconnaissance, too, was inadequate. Methuen never knew with accuracy the strength and position of the enemy, and at Modder River was totally at sea until his Infantry was actually under heavy fire. The conditions no doubt were exacting. It was not numbers, but a small quantity of picked scouts that was needed. But Cavalry training had not encouraged that kind of individual merit.