I am not going into the details of this nine days' fight, but will give the main features and the result. Here was a common, ordinary farmer, without any military training or education, in command of a little more than 4,000 equally untrained farmers, and four or five old Krupp guns. With him were a great number of refugee Boer women and children, who had come to him for protection against the insults and outrages of the British soldiery. Sad to relate, this is the actual truth, yet we still hear Anglo-Americans speaking of the civilized English. Opposed to him was the very flower of the English Empire. There were Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener, General Kelly-Kenny, that able commander, Hector MacDonald, General French and many other stars of the British army. Altogether they had some 50,000 men around General Cronje. These men were all tried military men, trained and educated. Besides, Lord Roberts had 120 cannon, field guns and lyddite guns. The British may tell you that there were mountains there higher than Mount Everest, but believe me, there are no mountains there whatever. General Cronje and his little band of patriots were on the banks of the Modder River, where infantry, cavalry and artillery could manoeuvre without any difficulty. It was, I think, on the 18th of February that Roberts began with all his guns to bombard Cronje. Almost continually for nine days, 120 cannon were busy trying to destroy that little band of patriots. Once Lord Kitchener thought he would play a Khartoum act. He recalled the time when he charged upon and murdered some 10,000 to 15,000 unarmed negroes at Khartoum, and saw no reason why he could not do the same thing with 4,000 Boers. He forgot that the negroes were armed only with sticks, while the Boers had mausers. He advanced boldly, had hundreds and hundreds of his men slaughtered, and then fled as rapidly as he could. After the battle had been raging for two or three days, General Cronje asked for an armistice to bury his dead. Lord Roberts positively refused. During the whole war the Boers never once denied the English an armistice for that purpose, although they knew that the English, in every instance, took advantage of it to strengthen their position. There is a wide difference between a Boer savage and a civilized Englishman. Give me the former, but deliver me from the latter!
As Roberts had captured Cronje's ambulance wagons and would not allow any doctor to go and attend to his wounded, and as he was not permitted to bury his dead, of course, the condition of the camp became such that the women and children could not endure it; and the Boers too were suffering on account of it, so Cronje's commandants and veldcornets forced him to hoist the white flag on February 27th. The battle was over and Lord Roberts had Cronje and his 4,000 men as prisoners of war. No doubt General Cronje would have been shot had there not been about 750 British officers and 4,000 soldiers as prisoners of war in Pretoria. This alone saved the old patriot's life, and we all know it.
On receiving the first news of the capture of the great Cronje and his army by the wonderful Lord Roberts, Commander-in-Chief, A.B.C.D.E., etc., all London took a holiday, went crazy mad, and the papers put out their posters showing that Cronje with 15,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 "dirty" Boers had been captured. When they finally learned that Cronje had only 4,000 men against Lord Robert's big army, all slunk their heads and retired to their homes. What Lord Roberts considered his greatest victory the world at large considered his greatest defeat.
What the English losses were we do not know, and I know that the English people do not know either, for Mr. Chamberlain says that the death lists are not yet completed. If the complete returns are ever made known, I think we shall see that Roberts had as many men put out of action as Cronje had in his command. General Cronje had about seventy men killed and about three times that number wounded.
I will now go to Stormberg and Aliwal North, the two really most important points on the Free State border, for here was the easy and natural way for the English to reach Bloemfontein.
At the beginning of the war the English occupied and well fortified Stormberg, and this was the only sensible thing they did. After a few weeks occupation, they, for some reason unknown to me, abandoned this position and fell back to Molteno. Of course the Boers lost no time in taking possession of the good work the English had done and abandoned. Generals Olivier and Grobler were there, and old General Hendrik Schoeman was near at hand. Schoeman was a fraud and afterwards joined the English to be blown up by a supposed empty lyddite shell in his home in Pretoria while engaged in a plot with others against his people. That empty shell had a little lyddite caked in the bottom, and Schoeman, having struck a match and lighted his pipe, threw the still burning match into the empty shell. An explosion followed, tearing out the side of the building, killing Schoeman, another traitor by the name of Van Der Merwe, and Schoeman's daughter, and seriously wounding old man Viljoen. This proves that it is a good thing for traitors to make useful souvenirs of empty lyddite shells. It was a source of regret to all, however, that Miss Schoeman should have entered the room just as the explosion took place, and lost her life.
Both Grobler and Olivier were good officers and did good work. The total Boer force was less than a thousand with which they had to oppose General Gatacre and 3,000 men. Besides, Gatacre had six or eight cannon, as well as several maxims. Few shots were fired by either side until the 10th of December, when General Gatacre attacked. The fighting was very hot while it lasted, but it did not continue long before Gatacre saw his little army cut into pieces, and in a rapid and disorderly retreat to Molteno. In addition to his severe loss in dead and wounded, two cannon and over 600 of his men were taken. Before this battle all the English and Colonial papers were full of the wonderful deeds and the great capacity of this distinguished soldier, General Gatacre, and it was certain that he would make a skip to Stormberg and then a jump and land in Bloemfontein, leaving nothing but dead Boers behind him. The British officer is a wonderful genius on paper, but a very weak sister on the battlefield. General Gatacre did a great deal in this district towards the ultimate independence of South Africa; for the number of men he arrested, charged as spies and then shot, is very great, and all their names are dearly cherished in the hearts of the Africanders. This battle finished the great Gatacre; at any rate, we never heard of him again during the war.
DE WET LOOMS UP.