These
Mercenaries Had Not The Instinct Which Teaches The Boer The Right
Instant For Flight, And They Held Their Position Too Long To Get
Away.
The British had left four hundred men on the track of that
gallant advance, but the vast majority of them were wounded - too
often by those explosive or expansive missiles which make war more
hideous.
Of the Boers we actually buried over a hundred on the
ridge, and their total casualties must have been considerably in
excess of ours.
The action was strategically well conceived; all that Lord Roberts
could do for complete success had been done; but tactically it was
a poor affair, considering his enormous preponderance in men and
guns. There was no glory in it, save for the four regiments who set
their faces against that sleet of lead. The artillery did not do
well, and were browbeaten by guns which they should have smothered
under their fire. The cavalry cannot be said to have done well
either. And yet, when all is said, the action is an important one,
for the enemy were badly shaken by the result. The Johannesburg
Police, who had been among their corps d'elite, had been badly
mauled, and the burghers were impressed by one more example of the
impossibility of standing in anything approaching to open country
against disciplined troops, Roberts had not captured the guns, but
the road had been cleared for him to Bloemfontein and, what is more
singular, to Pretoria; for though hundreds of miles intervene
between the field of Driefontein and the Transvaal capital, he
never again met a force which was willing to look his infantry in
the eyes in a pitched battle. Surprises and skirmishes were many,
but it was the last time, save only at Doornkop, that a chosen
position was ever held for an effective rifle fire - to say nothing
of the push of bayonet.
And now the army flowed swiftly onwards to the capital. The
indefatigable 6th Division, which had done march after march, one
more brilliant than another, since they had crossed the Riet River,
reached Asvogel Kop on the evening of Sunday, March 11th, the day
after the battle. On Monday the army was still pressing onwards,
disregarding all else and striking straight for the heart as
Blucher struck at Paris in 1814. At midday they halted at the farm
of Gregorowski, he who had tried the Reform prisoners after the
Raid. The cavalry pushed on down Kaal Spruit, and in the evening
crossed the Southern railway line which connects Bloemfontein with
the colony, cutting it at a point some five miles from the town. In
spite of some not very strenuous opposition from a Boer force a
hill was seized by a squadron of Greys with some mounted infantry
and Rimington's Guides, aided by U battery R.H.A., and was held by
them all that night.
On the same evening Major Hunter-Weston, an officer who had already
performed at least one brilliant feat in the war, was sent with
Lieutenant Charles and a handful of Mounted Sappers and Hussars to
cut the line to the north.
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