[CHAPTER VII.]
THE BATTLE OF STORMBERG.
Mistakes of the Boer Generals—British withdraw from Naauwpoort and Stormberg—General Gatacre takes command—Advance of the Boers—Omnibus Horses for the Artillery—Conditions of successful attack—Gatacre moves upon Stormberg—The forces detrain at Molteno—The wrong road taken—The column surprised—The fight—Fatigue of the British troops—A gun abandoned—Order to retreat given—The dead and wounded left—Narrow escape of the armoured train—The return to Molteno—British losses—Disastrous results—The Boers seize Colesberg—British re-occupy Naauwpoort—Arrival of General French.
KAFFRARIAN RIFLES' CAMP AND MAXIM GUNS, BUSHMAN'S HOEK.
Mistakes of the Boer Generals.
During early November the operations of the Boers in the central field Nov. 1899.] The Boers Miss an Opportunity. of war, along the Cape Colony frontier from Aliwal North to Orange River Station, were languid in the extreme. Numerous small bodies of the enemy had appeared in this region, which, as we have seen, was denuded of all defence and open to any attack; but there was no energy or combination. Had the scattered commandos been united into one body and directed by one able brain, they might with little or no difficulty have pushed south into the very heart of Cape Colony. At Cradock and Graaff Reinet they had hundreds or thousands of sympathisers, who only waited for their coming to rise. Ensconced in this mountainous and difficult country, astride of the railway which runs northward from Port Elizabeth, and threatening on the one side the line from Capetown to De Aar, and on the other the railway from East London to Stormberg, they could have rendered any advance in Cape Colony impossible till they had been dislodged. The army assailing them would have been compelled to fight in a miniature Switzerland, where roads, towns and mountains were only very incorrectly depicted on existing maps. We can guess from General Buller's troubles in Natal during the advance on Ladysmith what would have been the issue of such a campaign. For the British Government, unlike the French or Italian, had never taken the trouble to prepare its Army for the special contingencies of mountain war. It seemed to expect that by a special dispensation of Heaven it would always find level ground upon which to fight.
[Photo by H. Nicholls, Johannesburg.]
