During the early days of October the Boers made more despairing efforts to be aggressive. The engine of a train conveying some men of the Naval Brigade and Coldstream Guardsmen was derailed on night of 5th near Balmoral by the explosion of a dynamite cartridge, but fortunately no casualties occurred.
Signs were not wanting that the Boers were sickening of the war, for General Kelly-Kenny reported that an armed Boer was brought in a prisoner by two of his former countrymen who were wise enough to see the futility of kicking against the pricks. Commandant Dirksen, who had been commanding a Boer band opposed to General Paget, also surrendered. He had been kept in ignorance of the real state of the political outlook, and was allowed to proceed to Komati Poort to learn the truth regarding Kruger’s flight for himself. He returned satisfied, and gave up his arms. Thus very slowly affairs were moving on, the Boer belligerents thinning, the work of pacification growing gradually less troublesome.
General Buller took his departure for home on the 6th, leaving General Lyttelton in command at Lydenburg. The farewell meeting between the Chief and the troops who for nearly a year had followed him confidently through blood and fire, disaster and success, was remarkably touching, a demonstration which—leaving the formula of red-tape and blue-books—may almost be termed affectionate. Certainly, whatever may have been the opinion of the arm-chair critics at home, that of the “do or die” soldiers of Natal was expressed in a lusty and spontaneous burst of enthusiasm, which left no room for doubt.
On the 7th Captain Bearcroft and the Naval Brigade left, having first received the thanks of the Chief for the able assistance they had afforded during the war. The Natal Volunteers had also left for their homes, with many compliments on the excellent services they had rendered. On the 8th Lord Roberts visited the camp of the Australians and Rhodesians at Daspoort, and thanked the men for their devotion and bravery, especially for their fine defence of Elands River.
A chapter of accidents took place on the 9th. During the night a train conveying men and animals was upset near Kaap Muiden; three men were killed and fifteen injured—Lieutenant Hawkes sustaining a fracture of the leg—while over forty animals were killed or maimed. In the morning, to inquire into the mischief, Captain Paget, with Lieutenants Stubbs and Sewell and eighteen men of the Vlakfontein Garrison, went on an engine and truck to the scene of the disaster. The Boers, of course, were waiting their happy chance, and promptly assailed the party. The fighting at this time was fast and furious. On hearing of the attack Captain Stewart (Rifle Brigade) with forty men hastened to the rescue, and there, fighting, fell. A private in the Rifle Brigade was also killed, and among the injured were Captain Paget and Lieutenant J. H. Stubbs. Five men attached to the Royal Engineers were also wounded. Lieutenant Sewell, Royal Engineers, and ten men of the Rifle Brigade were captured.
At this period there was a good deal of enteric fever in Pretoria, and among the invalids, whose condition caused considerable anxiety, was Major Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein.[14] Not that his state at the time was in the least critical, but interest hung around him because he was, first, the grandson of the Sovereign; second, because he was a gallant officer and a prince; and lastly, because he was before all things a delightful comrade, as popular as he was genial. His death, which did not occur till fighting had developed into guerilla warfare, was deplored by all who were acquainted with him; and also by the nation at large, who knew how to appreciate the devotion to duty of one who, though born in the purple, preferred to take his share of the country’s work, and fight shoulder to shoulder with her defenders. His last wish was characteristic of his noble nature—he desired no royal resting-place, but elected to be buried “by the side of his comrades.”
On the 19th, in the grey of the dawn, Mr. Kruger slunk from South Africa on board the Dutch man-of-war Gelderland. With the utmost secrecy he was smuggled to sea to evade, not his foes the British, but his dupes the Boers, the luckless refugees who lusted for revenge on the man who had ruined their country, deceived, robbed, and deserted themselves. When he departed his moneybags were full! Theirs—his beloved people’s—were empty! Rich, he fled to escape the consequence of his own inflated obstinancy; beggared, they remained to endure the brunt of it! Round the debased fugitive it was impossible to cast the smallest glamour of sentiment. The absence of all sense of honour and truth, the sordid ambition and personal greed of the man, exposed now to the full, deprived him of the sympathy of those who had formerly watched his remarkable career with interest and admiration. Hitherto, most people had been prone to believe that the President of the Transvaal was, as the patriarchs of old, narrow-minded and obstinate no doubt, but saved by a simplicity that was picturesque as it was primitive. The romantic were even wont to look on him as another Cromwell of the English—a new Hofer of the Tyrolese—a brawny moral giant, to wonder at and revere. But, gradually, the massive peasant became transformed into the pinchbeck potentate, a despot with never an inkling of statesmanship to redeem the unctious sophistries and hypocritical cant with which he attempted to blind the world and himself. Now, it was impossible for his admirers to ignore the clay feet of their idol, and his compatriots, many of them, were forced to realise that his character, like the bar gold he paid to his creditors, was little more than a delusive show of amalgam. His last evasion declared that he had received “six months’ leave of absence for the benefit of his health.” So let it remain—a crumbling rung on the long ladder of his duplicity. There was more truth in the fabrication than he recked of. He had gone from his native land for six months—and as many more as he cared to take—and, if his flight were not for the benefit of his personal health, it was assuredly for the health of the great mass of human beings whose lives in the Transvaal had hitherto been asphyxiated by the narrowness of his prejudices and the autocracy of his rule! So, good-bye to him!
SIMON’S TOWN, CAPE COLONY
Photo by Wilson, Aberdeen