Footnote 35:[(return)]
350,000 horses were used up during the campaign, in other words, the war strength of one cavalry regiment every other day. The removal of a cavalry officer from his command after the battle of Graspan, because he could not do with exhausted horses what was expected of him by an infantry officer, will perhaps account for a considerable portion of the wastage.
Footnote 36:[(return)]
It is stated on the authority of the United States Military attaché that Kitchener said next day that if he had known the power of the Mauser behind entrenchments, he would not have attempted to assault the laager.
Footnote 37:[(return)]
They were originally granted as a counterpoise to the irregularities of the system of promotion by purchase.
Footnote 38:[(return)]
See Colonel du Cane's translation of Vol. II. of the German Official Account, p. 52.
[CHAPTER IX]
Alarms and Excursions
The occupation of Bloemfontein by the British Army in March, 1900, ushered in the second or guerilla period of the war. Hitherto the struggle had been mainly, though not entirely, maintained against considerable bodies of Boers, who though widely dispersed acted more or less under a common direction; but after the capture of the Free State capital, a system of partisan and irregular warfare was adopted by the enemy.
The change was not suddenly effected. It was an instinctive, almost an imperceptible, development rendered necessary by circumstances. The reverses on the Modder, the failure at Ladysmith, the ill success which attended the attempts to raise the fiery cross in the northern districts of Cape Colony, indicated to the burghers the cause of the instability of their military machine. They discovered, in time, that its centre of gravity was too highly pitched and must be brought nearer the earth. For five months the war had been carried on under the orders of a federal syndicate composed of the two Presidents sitting with casual military assessors, scarcely one of whom was a strategist or capable of viewing the Boer cause synoptically. Cronje was gone into captivity; Joubert was suspected to be half-hearted; and Botha, who had begun so well in Natal, was a disappointment.
The Boers recognized that the British strategy had been astonishingly successful, and that they could not hope to compete with it. But they believed, not without justification, that in minor tactics and the smaller operations of war they were the equals of their enemy and in war-craft his superior. The power of a slender, well-led, and resolute force was shown at Nicholson's Nek, Waterval Drift, and elsewhere, and it began to dawn upon their lethargic minds that the individual efforts of handy commandos acting to a great extent independently offered them the best chance of resisting the invader.[39] The new method was almost immediately put on trial and, with certain notable exceptions, continued throughout the war, which mainly by its use was prolonged for twenty-six months against an enemy daily increasing in numbers. Not that the Boers were not at first greatly discouraged by the victories on the Modder, which admitted Lord Roberts to Bloemfontein, and by the tranquillity which suddenly brooded upon the arena of war. Even the Prieska rebellion, from which so much was hoped owing to its proximity to the line of communication with Capetown, was dying away under the vigorous hands of Kitchener, who had been detached from Head Quarters to deal with it.