There is little that need detain us in the further advance to Bloemfontein. It began on March 10, in three parallel columns under French, Tucker, and the Commander-in-Chief, and ended in the occupation of the capital on the 13th. Demoralization turned to genuine despair in most of the burghers who fled from Poplar Grove. Whole commandos melted to a shadow through desertion. It was only through the agency of reinforcements brought up by De la Rey, notably the Transvaal Police (Zarps), that a show of resolute opposition could be organized by De Wet. At Abraham’s Kraal (or Driefontein), eighteen miles east, where, on March 10, the next stand was made, and where French commanded, the principal interest lies in the fine Infantry attack of the sixth division towards the evening, and the stubborn defence made by the small body of Zarps on the Driefontein Kopjes. An attempt by the Cavalry a little earlier in the day to turn the enemy’s left was unsuccessful, and the final pursuit came to nothing.
In the last stage of the march the Cavalry were handled vigorously and did well, though the opposition was slight. The best minor tactical stroke during the month’s operations was that delivered by Major Scobell’s squadron of the Scots Greys late in the evening of the 12th.[[34]] On the 13th Bloemfontein was occupied.
CHAPTER VIII
THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH
December, 1899, to March, 1900.
I interpose a chapter here in order to carry events in other parts of the theatre of war up to the date of the capture of Bloemfontein.
A sketch will suffice, since specifically mounted operations were few. No body, either of mixed mounted troops or of regular Cavalry reckoned separately, comparable in size to that formed by Roberts in the main theatre, existed anywhere else. The largest homogeneous mounted force outside this area was Brabant’s newly raised Colonial division, nominally 3,000 strong, which, in conjunction with Gatacre’s troops, had been deputed to push back the invaders of Eastern Cape Colony from Dordrecht and Stormberg, while Clements, succeeding French in the positions opposite Colesberg, checked the menace to Central Cape Colony. Brabant, however, seems not to have been able to muster an effective strength of more than 2,000 during the period under review. That fine permanent corps, the Cape Mounted Rifles, was a strong, stiffening element in an otherwise raw force of Cape Colony volunteers. Fortunately, the work before them was not severe, for the success of Roberts in the north threw the Boers into a strictly defensive attitude from the middle of February onwards, and in the early days of March caused a general retreat. A successful attack upon Labuschagne’s Nek, between Dordrecht and Jamestown, on March 4, gave the recruits confidence.
Clements had had a much harder task than Gatacre and Brabant. Stronger forces opposed him, and the Boer retreat set in later. Early in February all the regular Cavalry, save two squadrons of Inniskilling Dragoons, had been diverted to Roberts’s command. There remained, besides these squadrons, 500 Australian horsemen, together with Infantry and Artillery which made up the force to a total strength of about 5,000 men and 14 guns. Against Clements—if the official estimate is correct—the forces at one time were as great as 11,000. Clements, fighting stubbornly, was forced back south of Rensburg, and, in the course of the retreat, all his mounted troops, and particularly the Australians, did excellent service—fire-tactics, of course, being the universal rule. The danger was soon over. On February 21 Clements was reinforced with 900 mounted men and two batteries, and at about the same period the tide of invasion slackened. A week later, on the news of Paardeberg, the Boers were in full retreat for the north. By the middle of March—two days after the fall of Bloemfontein—Clements, Gatacre, and Brabant were all within the Free State borders.
We need not enter at any length either into the siege of Ladysmith or into the long series of operations which ended in its relief. The numerical facts, broadly speaking, were that White, with 13,000 men and 51 guns, was invested by a force under Joubert which originally numbered 23,000 men and 17 guns, but which dwindled gradually by abstractions to the Tugela, to Cronje, and to Colesberg, and finally fell to a strength of about 5,000; while, on the line of the Tugela, Buller, reinforced in the period following Colenso to a strength of 30,000 men and 73 guns, faced Louis Botha and Lukas Meyer with a strength which varied in round numbers from 7,000 to 9,000 men and about 18 guns.
As in the western theatre and in every other part of the field of war, the rifle, whether in the hands of mounted men or Infantry, was the decisive weapon. Artillery, as a mere statement of the relative strengths in that arm shows, was comparatively negligible. Sword and lance were out of court. Every responsible person at the time realized this fact. Short as we were of mounted troops, nobody would have dreamed of asking for more troops trained to shock on the ground that shock was either requisite or possible.
The most striking circumstance about the mounted troops in Natal—upwards of 5,000 in number—was the fact that rather more than half were locked up in Ladysmith during the whole four months of the sieges. Four Cavalry regiments, besides the Natal Carbineers, other Natal Volunteers, and the greater part of the Imperial Light Horse—2,800 men in all—were demobilized in this way. The mistake, no doubt, was serious, and White has been freely blamed for it. At the same time, it is only fair to White to put ourselves in his position, and recognize that the question of retaining or parting with his mounted troops was subsidiary to the much larger problem which originally faced him in deciding what was to be the rôle of the Natal army after the battle of Ladysmith on October 30, 1899. Had he possessed, in his force of professional mounted regiments, troops really capable, in conjunction with the volunteers, of tackling the Boer mounted riflemen, it is difficult to believe that, in spite of the moral and material value of Ladysmith, he would have accepted investment there as an alternative to the maintenance of his army as an active field-force. But the battle of the 30th, revealing a deficiency in the striking-power of the army as a whole, had revealed a weakness in the Cavalry which was in no way attributable to moral causes, but simply to armament and training. This circumstance must have influenced him powerfully in resolving to accept investment, a resolve which it is exceedingly difficult to impugn. A retreat to the Tugela, harassed by a greatly superior Boer force, whose temper was exhilarated by the success at Nicholson’s Nek, would have been a hazardous operation. It is no reflection on the regular Cavalry, but the simple truth, to say that they had not as yet shown the capacity to act as rear-guard for such a retreat.