Footnote 50:[(return)]
Lord Roberts said that if he had been free to send Ian Hamilton into the Free State instead of to Rustenburg, De Wet must have been surrounded.
Footnote 51:[(return)]
After June, 1901, the classification of the South African Army in Divisions and Brigades disappeared from the Army List.
[CHAPTER XV]
The Recurrences of De Wet
In October, 1900, De Wet, with 1,000 men, again crossed into the Transvaal at Schoeman's Drift. His movement, which was preceded by constant raids on the railway throughout September, was not altogether voluntary, but was rather a withdrawal from columns pressing on him in the Free State.[52] Barton, who with the Fusilier Brigade had been sent down by Lord Roberts to meet him, took up a position at Fredrikstad, where he was surrounded by De Wet and Liebenberg on October 24. The situation was now so serious that Lord Roberts ordered a brigade under Knox to come up to Barton's assistance from the Free State, but it was not required, as the arrival of a column from the north broke the cordon, and De Wet returned to the Free State.
The new De Wet hunt was soon in cry. When Knox was set on the trail, he was in the Free State and De Wet was in the Transvaal. Two days later the positions were reversed, for they had crossed the river in opposite directions. The situation now developed itself favourably for De Wet's methods. For a purely military operation he had never shown much aptitude. He had failed against Barton at Fredrikstad, but he was not discouraged by the repulse, which he unjustly attributed to want of co-operation on the part of Liebenberg. He had put the Vaal between himself and Knox, who was on the right bank blindly nosing the drifts. He knew from recent experience that his pursuers, with their imperfect methods of acquiring information, would hunt by sight and not by scent, and he had the mobility of a hare as well as the instinct of a fox. He lay perdu for some days near the left bank of the Vaal, while a net with spacious meshes was being cast to ensnare him. Again he crossed and re-crossed the river in order to bring Steyn away from Ventersdorp, whom two months previously he had conducted into the Transvaal, and who had in the meantime worked round the British Army to Machadodorp and back; and who after conferences with Kruger and L. Botha, now returned with him unscathed into their own land with schemes for the future.
Pom-pom batteries and mounted infantry, the latest fashions of war, were sent after him by Knox. On November 6 he was surprised in laager near Bothaville, but escaped with Steyn and the greater portion of his command on the first alarm. The gallant Le Gallais was killed and the laager itself captured after a stout resistance some hours later, and with it all De Wet's field guns, wagons, a considerable quantity of ammunition and horse equipment, and more than 100 prisoners of war.