General Paget, with Colonels Plumer and Hickman, with Queenslanders, New Zealanders, and Tasmanian Bushmen, York, Warwick, and Montgomery Yeomanry, some companies of West Riding and Munster Regiments, the 7th and 38th Batteries, two “pom-poms,” one Colt, one Maxim, and two naval quick-firing 12-pounders, moved from the region north-east of Bronker’s Spruit on the 29th with a view to giving battle to the enemy, the plan being for General Lyttelton to co-operate by sweeping up from Middelburg on the enemy’s rear. The synchronal arrangements were imperfect, and the projected attacks did not proceed as intended. The enemy’s lines were longer than those of the British, and General Paget’s attempt to turn them was a failure, the enemy, some 2000 of them, being screened by boulders as big as houses, behind which they were completely safe. To left and right went Plumer and Hickman respectively, pushing on in a leaden blast from the hidden foe, while on Hickman’s right the gallant West Ridings, led by their splendid Colonel—Colonel Lloyd—pressed to the attack.
So close they came that the voices of the Dutchmen were to be heard in conversation, but these with Mausers and four guns and friendly boulders made themselves unassailable. Over seventeen hours of fighting cost the West Riding their colonel, and the brilliant New Zealanders some thirty killed and wounded, all the officers save one being hit. The wounded officers were: Lieutenants Townsend and Oakes, Captain Acworth and Lieutenant Harman, all of West Riding Regiment; Lieutenant Challis, Royal Army Medical Corps, severely, being hit in three places while gallantly attending wounded men under a heavy fire; Captain Crawshaw and Lieutenants Montgomerie, Somerville, and Tucker, and Surgeon-Captain Godfray, all of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles. The total loss was eighteen killed and fifty-eight wounded. At night the guns of General Lyttelton came to work, and by morning the Boers had disappeared.
THE HARBOUR, BUFFALO RIVER, EAST LONDON
Photo by Wilson, Aberdeen
By this time Lord Kitchener, with the local rank of General, had assumed command of the troops in South Africa, Lord Roberts having started for England in complete confidence that his successor would accomplish the pacification of the country in due time. His work was most complicated, for besides being impoverished by the scarcity of troops (the Volunteers and Colonials having many of them left on the expiration of their year of service), the lack of horses put a perpetual stopper on the flow of military operations. Clausewitz has said that when cavalry is deficient, “La riche moisson de la victoire ne se coupe pas plus alors à la faux, mais à la faucille” (The rich harvest of victory is not cut with scythe but with the sickle.) And never was the truth of his aphorism more keenly felt than at this moment. The harvest of splendid victories that had been achieved was being reaped with the sickle, and the reaping operations were taking months, which, had mounts been available, would have taken moments!
December opened with animation. General C. Knox, near the Bethulie-Smithfield Road, on the 2nd harassed the Boers with a convoy and succeeded in capturing seven prisoners. General Paget’s mounted men skirmished successfully around Lieufontein, and near Utrecht some of the garrison engaged 200 of the foe for two and a half hours and put them to flight, leaving six Dutchmen hors de combat.
In the Cape Colony the members of the Bond were preparing for a Congress, and sundry chameleon complexioned gentlemen indulged in speeches regarding the question of loyalty and future settlement, which were sufficiently ambiguous to have served as examples in the art of blowing hot and cold with the same mouth, but fortunately the eagle eye of Kitchener was upon them and the result of their verbosity was a careful readjustment of such forces as were at the Commander-in-Chief’s disposal, to advert any general rising among those who had previously been pacified.
The Congress eventually took place at Worcester, and the freedom of speech indulged in at the meeting was said to be responsible for the aggressions of the Boers which subsequently took place. Mr. Cronwright Schreiner declared that the British people had grossly failed in their duty toward the people of Cape Colony, their attitude since the Raid being one of dishonesty and cowardice. “British statesmen,” he said, “had been the tools of Capitalists. Their attitude had been to force war on South Africa. Great Britain is now forcing British soldiers to wage war with an inhumanity and barbarism that is astonishing the civilised world.” He dilated on the alleged wrong done to women and children (already disproved to the satisfaction of every one), and proceeded to harrow his audience by describing details. In conclusion he stormed, “We Africanders will never acquiesce in Britain taking away the independence of the Republics.” In the end it was decided that an African mission to Great Britain should demand: First, the termination of the war raging with untold misery and sorrow—such as the burning of houses and the devastation of the country, the extermination of the white nationality, and the treatment to which women and children were subjected which would leave a lasting heritage of bitterness and hatred, while endangering further relations between civilisation and barbarism in South Africa. Second, the retention by the Republics of their independence, whereby the peace of South Africa can be maintained.
Meanwhile, Great Britain was taking her own steps for the maintenance of lasting peace in South Africa. Parliament reassembled to vote a continuance of the current of men, horses, weapons, and supplies, without which the generals who were striving to bring guerilla-raiding to a summary conclusion, would remain paralysed and resourceless.
The Boers achieved something of a success on the 3rd as they came across a convoy of 140 waggons three miles long, proceeding in two sections from Pretoria to Rustenburg, and succeeded in destroying the first section (escorted by two companies of West Yorks, and two squadrons of the Victoria Mounted Rifles, with two guns of the 75th Battery). Delarey, hiding in a donga with 700 of his gang, waited till the convoy and men got within effective range, and sent a shower of bullets into their midst. The troops made a grand defence, set the guns trail to trail, and blazed back at the approaching hordes who were now endeavouring to surround them, with the result that the marauders failing to capture the convoy satisfied themselves by setting fire to the waggons and retiring, thus leaving the second section (escorted by two companies of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders) unharmed. Our loss was fifteen killed and twenty-three wounded, among the latter Lieutenant Baker, R.F.A.