The Molopo River, after passing south of the town, runs through the only weak place in the defence, the native location, which during the first few days of the siege had been attacked without result by Cronje. Westward of it the steep banks of the river afford a covered way of access to the thickly clustered huts lying within the perimeter of the defence, which Eloff saw might be turned if he got a footing among them.
Early in the morning of May 12 a heavy fire was opened upon the town from the east, but was soon discontinued; and then an alarm came from the S.W. It was Eloff, who, with 300 burghers, had wriggled up the river bed through the outposts and had set fire to the native huts: a signal for the reinforcements which Snyman had promised in writing. It also warned the garrison. The natives were too much terrified to offer resistance, and Eloff, leaving the greater part of his force to hold the location, advanced upon the town. The police building in the open was surrounded and the detachment holding it taken prisoners. A pause was now made to allow the promised reinforcements to come up.
Eloff's gallant thrust gave the garrison the opportunity for which it had long been hoping. The troops of the western section of the defence closed in and were manoeuvred by Baden-Powell through the telephone. The door by which Eloff came in was shut, not only to a retreat but also to the reinforcements which timidly knocked at it; the burghers holding the location were overpowered, and Eloff's party was penned up in the police building with its prisoners, whose condition was suddenly dramatically reversed. Eloff, seeing that Snyman had failed him, surrendered to the men he had captured a few hours before, within the walls of the prison in which he had confined them.
The ordeal of Mafeking soon came to an end. On May 15 it was reported that the relief column under Mahon, who on that day joined Plumer at Massibi on the Molopo twenty miles from Mafeking, was approaching. The combined forces, though vigorously opposed by Delarey, whom L. Botha had sent when the news of the advance reached him, entered the town on May 17 and ended a siege of 213 days.
Mafeking, the last and most instructive of the sieges, proved that there was hardly any disparity of numbers or preponderance of available military resources that could not be neutralized by good leadership opposed to bad. Baden-Powell had not only detained a considerable Boer force on the edge of the storm, but with a body of irregular troops had beaten the men of Magersfontein, Colenso, and Spion Kop.
The relief of Mafeking, however, did not vitally affect the general situation. The capture of the town during Lord Robert's advance would no doubt have caused annoyance and trouble, but if necessary it could have been retaken without much difficulty. Nor would its fall have greatly benefited the enemy, who probably would have been tempted by the success to hold an unsound position and detain in it commandos urgently required elsewhere.
Kimberley, Mafeking, and Wepener, more than the operations at large, demonstrated the anomalous character of the war. Hitherto, invaders had been accustomed to besiege the invaded, in South Africa the invaded besieged the invaders. Such a reversal of the order of things military had rarely before occurred. The sieges of the Peninsular War are not an exception, for Wellington was from a military, though not from a political point of view, as much an invader as the lieutenants of Napoleon.
Baden-Powell is a suppressed personality whose merit was not fully recognized. With scarcely an exception, no individual leader was more self-reliant, or handled imperfect tools with greater skill. For seven months he kept the flag flying over the lonely Baralong kraal in the veld. His unconventional even theatrical methods were not to the taste of his serious superiors, who underestimated his success. His only reward was the Companionship of the Bath, which was also bestowed upon the militia colonels, most of whom, from no fault or no want of zeal on their part, but from lack of opportunity, never met the enemy except in some casual paltry skirmish.
The junction of the two columns advancing to the relief of Mafeking—Plumer's from the north and Mahon's from the south—was effected at the right moment, for it is doubtful whether either of them acting alone would have been able to deal with Delarey.
Plumer with the Rhodesian Regiment had been trekking here and there and skirmishing with the enemy for seven months. On the eve of the war he was sent by Baden-Powell to Tuli, a village in Rhodesia not far from the right bank of the Limpopo, which is the northern boundary of the Transvaal. His instructions were "to defend the border, to attract the enemy away towards the north, and then in due time to co-operate with the British force," which it was expected would soon be invading the Transvaal from the south, and also to overawe the doubtful native tribes between Tuli and Mafeking, a distance of 500 miles; and he had under his immediate command at Tuli one irregular regiment 500 strong.