South Africa and the Boer-British War, Volume I / Comprising a History of South Africa and its people, including the war of 1899 and 1900

by J. Castell Hopkins; Murat Halstead

When we form the intimate acquaintance of the facts we find the friction between the strangely mixed races of the Transvaal was not caused by British expansionists, or occasioned by British aggression, but by the stolid abominable ambition of the Boer race—the same for whom Great Britain had broken the Zulu power in a war that was most expensive in blood and money. The trouble in Africa did not grow from the anxiety of the British for extensions of territory or of privileges. The Boers held all others to be according to the Gospel their inferiors, and the protestation of the British Government that there should be for the sake of peace a very moderate reform amounting to the insertion of an admixture of justice, according to all testimony denied disdainfully, in the administration of the laws, customs and habits of the caste of burghers.

Two Popular Illusions

The world so far as it has admitted daylight to aid the inspection of South African affairs has parted with two illusions: First, that the English made the war, second, that they were ready for it, and menaced the liberties of South African peoples when they landed two regiments of regular troops at Durban. It is demonstrated the Boers were the war makers and ready for war, holding the British in contempt for peaceableness under the buffetings to which they had submitted, and for their reluctance to take up arms to defend themselves. It was the Boers who declared war and were first in the field. They had a fixed policy for asserting themselves with increasing energy and ferocity, and they opened the grim game of war in logical accordance with their proceedings ever since England was so magnanimous after Majuba Hill. Their astonishment as to the misapprehensions manifest in the course of warfare thus far, is as great as that of the English at their miscalculations that would seem humorous if they were not most grave.

CHAPTER VI

The First Bloodshed

The First Battle of the War

The first battle of the war was fought October 20th, eleven days after the ultimatum of the South African Republic. General White was at Ladysmith, where there was a large accumulation of stores, and General Symons at Dundee and Glencoe Junction. A Boer force under Lucas Meyers were in position on Talana Hill. General Symons attacked them. He was mortally wounded, 10 officers and 33 men killed and 200 wounded, but the Hill was carried, and though there has been much disputation as to the possession of the ground immediately after the conflict, and the comparative lists of casualties, British pride in the courage of their troops was justified, and the Boers realized they were confronted by soldiers who would not be satisfied for a day to act strictly on the defensive. The outlying position of General Symons was perhaps not worth the sacrifice of so many men to storm a hill that could not be held at the utmost more than a few days. It was necessary for the British to retire from the field of their dearly bought victory, and General Symons died in the hands of his enemies, while the wounded soldiers who could not be removed were captured. It is creditable to the Boers that they treated the dying General and the mangled men, with respect and kindness.

Battle of Elandslaagte

On the 21st of October, the day after the fight at Glencoe—Symon's fight—General French, second in command at Ladysmith, defeated the Boers, many from the Orange State, at Elandslaagte, a few miles north of Ladysmith. The losses were heavy, and a retreat from Glencoe, which was soon found to be inevitable, was made comparatively easy. The English forces that fought at Glencoe and Elandslaagte, united October 26th with the garrison at Ladysmith, and a week later were surrounded by a largely superior force under General Joubert, the better known of the Boer officers, whose movements were slowed down by the hard fighting he had found it necessary to do. It was the unity of the detachments that gained, in severe encounters, the first successes of the British, that justified the bloodshed where Generals Symons and French were conspicuously heroic. The garrison of Ladysmith was strengthened by the naval brigade that got in during the sortie of the 30th of October, and manned the guns of long range transported by railroad from the British cruiser, the "Powerful," which was at Durban. Lieutenant Edgerton, of that cruiser, at first handled the guns, and wounded by a shell died after a few days.