To prevent the enemy escaping to the north or to the south, and to impale him upon the stakes of the Portuguese frontier, Lord Roberts pushed forward three columns; one under Pole-Carew to follow the railway towards Komati Poort, another under French to march towards Barberton, and a third under Buller to occupy the Lydenburg district; to which Botha had gone after the battle of Bergendal, and which if held by him would leave in the possession of the Boers the best line of retreat from the railway to the northern Transvaal.
Ian Hamilton, on his return from the west after the escape of De Wet, was lent to Buller for a few days. The occupation of Lydenburg on September 7, and of Spitz Kop four days later, drove Botha back to the line at Nelspruit. Buller's operations were carried out with success in a country more difficult than any that had yet been entered by the British Army in South Africa. South of the railway, French spread the net, casting it from Carolina to Barberton, which he entered on September 13, and where he not only captured a considerable amount of rolling stock and supplies which the Boers had shoved into the little branch line, but also released a final remnant of about a hundred British prisoners of war, most of whom were officers. He had advanced through a country almost as difficult as that in which Buller was engaged, and although the commandos opposing him had at first been drawn away to the south by the report that he was making for Ermelo, they returned in time to offer some resistance east of Carolina; but he entered Barberton without the discharge of a rifle. Botha had sounded the Cease Fire.
The Boers had found it necessary to consider the situation seriously. They had been driven into a relatively minute area, which was morally congested with a pair of Presidents and their parasites, remnants of Government offices, superfluous commandants, and commandos some of which were eager and some of which were not eager to continue the struggle; and physically by the accumulation of stores, supplies, guns, ammunition, and rolling stock which had been rammed down into the last section of the Delagoa Bay railway.
Kruger was induced to lighten the ship which he had so signally failed to keep on her course. He left Nelspruit on September 11 for Lorenzo Marques, where he was taken under the protection of the Portuguese Government, and where he remained until the eve of the first anniversary of the opening scene of the drama, the battle of Talana Hill. On October 19 another nation offered him asylum, and he sailed for Marseilles in the Guelderland, a cruiser of the Dutch Navy; thus symbolically repatriating the French and Dutch emigrants who had quitted Europe for South Africa in the seventeenth century.
The positions of Buller on the north of the railway, of French at Barberton, and of Pole-Carew ready to advance centrally, made immediate action imperative; but Botha was hampered by the presence of not a few unwilling and unmounted commandos. These he sent under Koetzee to Komati Poort and left to arrange their own destiny; and with the rest, which numbered 4,000 burghers, he broke away in two directions, himself with B. Viljoen leading the northward trek, while T. Smuts endeavoured to escape southward into Swaziland.
Thus when Pole-Carew, who had been joined by Ian Hamilton and whose advance had been delayed to allow French and Buller to get into position on his flanks, reached Komati Poort on September 24, he found himself hitting at vacancy with the wreckage of two lost republics around him, derelict railway stock, disabled guns, abandoned ammunition, and burning stores. Koetzee's men had disappeared, most of them into Portuguese territory, which they had been partly persuaded and partly compelled to enter by the Portuguese authorities, who, although they had regarded the Boer cause with a more than benevolent neutrality during the earlier stages of the war, now saw that a fight near the frontier would be a most embarrassing episode; and, while offering an asylum to the fugitives, threatened to allow Lord Roberts to land troops at Lorenzo Marques if it were not accepted. On the 28th Pole-Carew was engaged not in battle with the Boers, but in celebrating the birthday of the King of Portugal, a singular interlude between the acts of the war drama.
Botha in making for the north hoped to establish his remnant and cultivate the germs somewhere in the Leydsdorp or Pietersburg districts, which were the only portions of the Transvaal not occupied by British troops. Lord Roberts' expectations that they would be denied to the enemy by the Rhodesian Field Force under Carrington were not fulfilled, and he could not spare any of his own troops to occupy them.
Botha, preceded by a few days by Steyn, left the Delagoa Bay line on September 17, and succeeded in scraping past Buller without serious excoriation, but he was compelled to send the greater part of his force under B. Viljoen by a circuitous route through the unhealthy lower veld.
The enemy was now to all appearances chased to the ends of the earth, but throughout October and November roving bodies worried the railway and detained a considerable British force upon it.
Commandos that could not be accounted for by the British Intelligence Staff seemed to spring out of the ground. Trains were de-railed, raids and counter-raids north and south were the order of the day. Lydenburg was prowled upon. Botha and Viljoen, stirred by Steyn, hovered in the north, and Viljoen went south to co-ordinate the several activities. On November 19 he effected a temporary success at Balmoral, capturing a small post and cutting the railway, but it served him little and he soon retired.