On that night a general Boer retreat set in. Among the besiegers of Ladysmith, who had not fired a shot, something in the nature of a genuine panic reigned, but the great majority of these had a long start in respect both of time and distance. Botha’s commandos, too, gained fully twelve hours’ start, for, in spite of a strong appeal from Barton on Pieter’s Hill for a prompt advance by a flying column of all arms, Buller made no preparation for a swift movement by the mounted troops. On the morning of the 28th they were still behind the Tugela. A block on the pontoon-bridge delayed the irregular brigade under Dundonald till 8 a.m., and the regular Cavalry brigade under Burn-Murdoch till 9 a.m. Their orders were to work north-west and north-east respectively, not to “pursue.” Still, limited as their orders were, they experienced considerable difficulty in carrying them out. Botha had organized adequate rear-guards to protect his retreat. Dundonald was checked twice within two miles of Pieter’s Station, and, on the second occasion, had to send for the assistance of Burn-Murdoch, who, by a later order of Buller’s, and against his own repeated requests, had been kept inactive in the gorge between Pieter’s Hill and the Station. The combined brigades having eventually driven off this detachment of the enemy, Burn-Murdoch moved on to the north-east, but in his turn was brought to a complete standstill at the Klip River by the rifle and Artillery fire of another Boer rear-guard, which was covering the withdrawal of guns and waggons from Umbulwana Mountain. He held his ground till dusk, prevented the destruction of the wooden bridge which spanned the Klip at this point, and informed Buller that he intended to remain where he was for the night, and to pursue on the morrow. Buller, for inadequate reasons, recalled him. Dundonald, meanwhile, still meeting with sporadic opposition, pushed on slowly in the late afternoon towards Ladysmith, finally sending in two squadrons, whose arrival denoted the definite relief of the town.
Buller had now, definitely and finally, set his face against pursuit. Yet even on the morning of March 1 the chances of success, which had steadily diminished, were still considerable. Although most of the Free State forces and a substantial part of the Transvaal forces were out of danger, the plain east of Ladysmith was still thronged with waggons and guns, the last of which did not reach Elandslaagte till nightfall. Even as near as Modder Spruit Station siege-guns were entrained as late as 11 a.m. Despair reigned in the Boer army as a whole. A resolute pursuit must, we can fairly surmise, have led to the capture of a considerable quantity of material and many guns. But we are bound equally to affirm that here, as at every previous stage of these operations, and according to our invariable experience through nearly three years of war in South Africa, the measure of success would have been the measure of our ability to overcome defensive fire-tactics with yet more vigorous offensive fire-tactics. That Botha, who had effectually covered his retreat on the 28th with parties of the same men who had gone through the nerve-shattering experiences of the previous ten days, culminating in the desperate struggle overnight, would have subsequently allowed his transport and guns to be captured without an effort for their defence, is a tempting, but an altogether illusory, hypothesis. Analogy points the other way. It was one of the most striking characteristics of the war that, however great the depression of the undisciplined mass, there were always to be found a few indomitable spirits who were prepared to sell their lives dearly to avert disgrace. We saw this at Poplar Grove, when the opportunity for our mounted troops, if we consider the relative numbers engaged, while making full allowance for the relative condition of the horses, was far better than at Ladysmith. Botha himself, the ablest of all the Boer leaders, had again and again in the last few months proved his power to restore discipline and nerve among his burghers. His rear-guard tactics, whatever the strength he might have managed to raise, would in form have been those of Poplar Grove and of his own resistance to Burn-Murdoch and Dundonald on the 28th. Something more effective than French’s action at Poplar Grove, and more effective than the action of Dundonald and Burn-Murdoch on the 28th, would have been needed to secure results of really supreme importance. As for the arme blanche, we need not regard it seriously as a contingent factor. If it possessed any utility, it had in the course of the war innumerable opportunities of proving the fact—above all, in cases of pursuit against Boer rear-guards. We can scarcely draw negative evidence from occasions where the opportunity was denied.[[38]]
Buller has placed on record his reasons for not undertaking a pursuit.[[39]] The only one that need concern us is, curiously enough, his insistence on this very point—Boer skill in rear-guard actions—a skill which he considered it so futile to combat, that, on this occasion, he thought it not even advisable to try. And he bases his view on his own experience in the first Boer War, twenty years before. The admission throws much light on his handling of the mounted troops under his command during the South African campaign, and, in particular, on his dispositions during the battle of Pieter’s Hill. He had calculated rightly on a victory that day, and, departing from the usual practice, deliberately kept his mounted men fresh and concentrated in rear of the army, in order to complete the victory by a pursuit. But the kind of victory he hoped for was one which excluded the possibility of rear-guard actions. In other words, he was a prey to that antiquated habit of thought which was an inheritance from the days prior to the magazine rifle, and which took shape in dreams of massed Cavalry on fresh mounts, whirling, sabre in hand, at the psychological moment, through hordes of helpless fugitives. Even in 1866 this habit of mind was antiquated. It does not seem to have occurred to him, nor does it seem to occur to some of the present advocates of the arme blanche, that skill in rear-guard actions, often sneeringly alluded to as skill in “evasion,” and always spoken of as if it were some miraculous attribute of the Boers, was, in reality, the simple exercise, by the use of horse and rifle combined, of one of the most important of the functions of any corps of mounted troops, Cavalry included, especially in the case of the numerically weaker side; and that its counterpart—power to pierce a rear-guard, and drive home a victory, a power correspondingly dependent on the use of horse and rifle combined—is a no less crucial test of mounted efficiency. By these tests, among others, Cavalry in future wars will be judged.
Defensive skill in the Boers suggests the allied question: Had they, in the course of the long struggle for Ladysmith, shown any new development of offensive power? That is a question we must always be asking, as we contrast the merits of the steel weapon and the firearm in war. As I have often before remarked, there can be no sharp distinction between defensive and offensive action: excellence in the one is wrapped up with excellence in the other. The British seizure of Spion Kop, for example, was an aggressive stroke; the Boer counter-attack was a measure of defensive necessity. Regarded in this light, Botha’s defence of the line of the Tugela merits the highest praise. Make what allowance we will for defects in British generalship, for the ever-present prejudice against incurring heavy loss of life, and for the extraordinary natural strength of the Tugela heights, the fact stands out plainly that no class of troops but mounted riflemen, experts in horse, rifle, and spade alike—and first-class men at that—could, with numbers comparatively so small, have held for so long a position whose extent for purposes of defence cannot be estimated at less than thirty miles. Neither European Cavalry nor European Infantry of that date could have held it for a week against a European force of all arms and of the given superiority—the former from lack of spade and rifle power, the latter from lack of mobility. But measuring the Boers by their own standard, did they fully develop their own offensive potentialities?
The answer must be, I think, in the negative. But we cannot in this case afford to be too sweeping or positive. We must remember, here as elsewhere, that the dead-weight of numerical superiority, especially in Artillery, gives a force of low mobility, like the British force, a defensive power disproportionately greater than its offensive power. Still, there were undoubtedly a few occasions when the Boers missed opportunities for counter-strokes. By common consent, I think, the best opportunity of all was on February 23 and 24, when the position of Buller’s army, huddled together in Hart’s Hollow and other parts of the Colenso basin, after the magnificent but unavailing assaults of the 23rd, was in the highest degree dangerous.[[40]] A casual outburst of Boer fire on the night of the 24th actually caused a partial panic among the troops in Hart’s Hollow. According to the German historian, who quotes a German officer present with Botha at the time, Botha’s reason for not ordering a counter-stroke on the 24th was that it would “cost too many lives.” If so, it was a costly error, an irreparable error. But there was much excuse for it. Moral administrative weaknesses, from which we were free, had sapped their strength from the first, and among these troops on the Tugela at this latter end of February, in spite of Botha’s untiring efforts, the tension was becoming unbearable. We have only to contrast the same man, leading tried veterans of the same commandos in latter phases of the war, to understand the full aggressive power that mounted riflemen can develop. Nevertheless, we must, as far as we can, disentangle technical from moral causes, and it remains true that up to this point the Boers had not brought into line the horse and the rifle as the twin factors of aggressive mobility.
The offensive honours rested with the British Infantry. I hope by this time that the reader is beginning to realize how indefinable is the border-line between mounted and dismounted attacks, both of which equally draw their power from that master of modern battle-fields, the rifle. Look at Wagon Hill, where soldiers classed as mounted riflemen were engaged against soldiers classed as Infantry, mounted riflemen, and Cavalry. Here is a case where one almost forgets which class had horses and which had not. When we read of the memorable charge of the Devons, we care very little whether they were Infantry or Mounted Infantry, recognizing, as we must, that, in the given conditions, such efforts are within the power of both classes alike. Our ambition should be to discover how and when the horse may be made to serve as an engine of still more formidable tactics. Look, too, at the Infantry charges on February 23 and at the battle of Pieter’s Hill. Watch the old problem of mobility versus vulnerability being worked out in terms of foot-soldiers, and, without rushing to the impracticable extreme of demanding that all riflemen should be provided with horses, observe how close is the analogy when the same problem is worked out in terms of horse-soldiers. Note how the German historian, from whom nothing will force any compromising allusion to shock as a function of Cavalry, lest the whole edifice of Cavalry theory should tumble about his ears, slips unconsciously into the deprecation of “shock” in Infantry, without sufficient fire-preparation.[[41]] But for those separate mental compartments, would not some glimmering of the analogy have occurred to him? Observe, on the other hand, the fundamental differences between the steel weapon of the foot-soldier and the steel weapon of the Cavalry, the efficacy of the former being conditional, not only on the vigour and skill of the previous fire-fight, but on being used at the climax of the fire-fight, still in association with the rifle, and still on foot; the efficacy of the latter a minus quantity, and, for the same reason, everywhere and always, because it was not only incompatible with, but by the habits of mind it engendered, and by the nature of equipment it involved, actively prejudicial to the vigorous offensive use of the firearm.
Grasp now the nature of the problem which confronted us in this war. Our foes were not only riflemen, but mounted riflemen, comparatively few in numbers, but able both to fight stoutly and to retreat safely when overcome in combat. Infantry, though they possess the power to overcome and eject mounted riflemen, have not the power to catch and destroy them, simply because Infantry move too slowly. The responsibility for securing complete victory lay with our mounted troops acting as mounted riflemen.
Widening our horizon to include the whole area of the war at this period, we perceive that the Cavalry theory, so far as it was based on the arme blanche, had collapsed. The only and not especially remarkable achievement of that weapon is the pursuit at Elandslaagte on the second day of hostilities. Everywhere else we have seen it directly or indirectly crippling the Cavalry, and the greater the numbers employed and the larger the measure of independence permitted, the more unmistakable is the cause. When the Cavalry succeed strategically, as in the ride to Kimberley and back to Paardeberg, they succeed in spite of disabilities traceable to arme blanche doctrine. When they succeed tactically, as in the Colesberg operations and in containing Cronje’s force on the eve of Paardeberg, they succeed through the carbine, in spite of its inferiority as a weapon of precision. In tactical offence, the paramount raison d’être of the arme blanche, and in reconnaissance, they show marked weakness.