They Were Some
Eight Or Ten Thousand In Number, Well Horsed, With A Fair Number Of
Guns, Under The Able
Leadership of De Wet, Prinsloo, and Olivier.
Above all, they had a splendid position, mountainous and broken,
from which, as
From a fortress, they could make excursions to the
south or west. This army included the commandos of Ficksburg,
Senekal, and Harrismith, with all the broken and desperate men from
other districts who had left their farms and fled to the mountains.
It was held in check as a united force by Rundle's Division and the
Colonial Division on the south, while Colvile, and afterwards
Methuen, endeavoured to pen them in on the west. The task was a
hard one, however, and though Rundle succeeded in holding his line
intact, it appeared to be impossible in that wide country to coop
up altogether an enemy so mobile. A strange game of hide-and-seek
ensued, in which De Wet, who led the Boer raids, was able again and
again to strike our line of rails and to get back without serious
loss. The story of these instructive and humiliating episodes will
be told in their order. The energy and skill of the guerilla chief
challenge our admiration, and the score of his successes would be
amusing were it not that the points of the game are marked by the
lives of British soldiers.
General Buller had spent the latter half of May in making his way
from Ladysmith to Laing's Nek, and the beginning of June found him
with twenty thousand men in front of that difficult position. Some
talk of a surrender had arisen, and Christian Botha, who commanded
the Boers, succeeded in gaining several days' armistice, which
ended in nothing. The Transvaal forces at this point were not more
than a few thousand in number, but their position was so formidable
that it was a serious task to turn them out. Van Wyk's Hill,
however, had been left unguarded, and as its possession would give
the British the command of Botha's Pass, its unopposed capture by
the South African Light Horse was an event of great importance.
With guns upon this eminence the infantry were able, on June 8th,
to attack and to carry with little loss the rest of the high
ground, and so to get the Pass into their complete possession.
Botha fired the grass behind him, and withdrew sullenly to the
north. On the 9th and 10th the convoys were passed over the Pass,
and on the 11th the main body of the army followed them.
The operations were now being conducted in that extremely acute
angle of Natal which runs up between the Transvaal and the Orange
Free State. In crossing Botha's Pass the army had really entered
what was now the Orange River Colony. But it was only for a very
short time, as the object of the movement was to turn the Laing's
Nek position, and then come back into the Transvaal through
Alleman's Pass. The gallant South African Light Horse led the way,
and fought hard at one point to clear a path for the army, losing
six killed and eight wounded in a sharp skirmish. On the morning of
the 12th the flanking movement was far advanced, and it only
remained for the army to force Alleman's Nek, which would place it
to the rear of Laing's Nek, and close to the Transvaal town of
Volksrust.
Had the Boers been the men of Colenso and of Spion Kop, this
storming of Alleman's Nek would have been a bloody business. The
position was strong, the cover was slight, and there was no way
round. But the infantry came on with the old dash without the old
stubborn resolution being opposed to them. The guns prepared the
way, and then the Dorsets, the Dublins, the Middlesex, the Queen's,
and the East Surrey did the rest. The door was open and the
Transvaal lay before us. The next day Volksrust was in our hands.
The whole series of operations were excellently conceived and
carried out. Putting Colenso on one side, it cannot be denied that
General Buller showed considerable power of manoeuvring large
bodies of troops. The withdrawal of the compromised army after
Spion Kop, the change of the line of attack at Pieter's Hill, and
the flanking marches in this campaign of Northern Natal, were all
very workmanlike achievements. In this case a position which the
Boers had been preparing for months, scored with trenches and
topped by heavy artillery, had been rendered untenable by a clever
flank movement, the total casualties in the whole affair being less
than two hundred killed and wounded. Natal was cleared of the
invader, Buller's foot was on the high plateau of the Transvaal,
and Roberts could count on twenty thousand good men coming up to
him from the south-east. More important than all, the Natal railway
was being brought up, and soon the central British Army would
depend upon Durban instead of Cape Town for its supplies - a saving
of nearly two-thirds of the distance. The fugitive Boers made
northwards in the Middelburg direction, while Buller advanced to
Standerton, which town he continued to occupy until Lord Roberts
could send a force down through Heidelberg to join hands with him.
Such was the position of the Natal Field Force at the end of June.
From the west and the south-west British forces were also
converging upon the capital. The indomitable Baden-Powell sought
for rest and change of scene after his prolonged trial by harrying
the Boers out of Zeerust and Rustenburg. The forces of Hunter and
of Mahon converged upon Potchefstroom, from which, after settling
that district, they could be conveyed by rail to Krugersdorp and
Johannesburg.
Before briefly recounting the series of events which took place
upon the line of communications, the narrative must return to Lord
Roberts at Pretoria, and describe the operations which followed his
occupation of that city.
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