Clements's
Brigade, Consisting Of The 1st Royal Irish, The 2nd Bedfords, The
2nd Worcesters, And The 2nd Wiltshires, Had Come To Strengthen
Rundle, And Altogether He May Have Had As Many As Twelve Thousand
Men Under His Orders.
It was not a large force with which to hold a
mobile adversary at least eight thousand strong, who might attack
him at any point of his extended line.
So well, however, did he
select his positions that every attempt of the enemy, and there
were many, ended in failure. Badly supplied with food, he and his
half-starved men held bravely to their task, and no soldiers in all
that great host deserve better of their country.
At the end of May, then, the Colonial Division, Rundle's Division,
and Clements's Brigade held the Boers from Ficksburg on the Basuto
border to Senekal. This prevented them from coming south. But what
was there to prevent them from coming west, and falling upon the
railway line? There was the weak point of the British position.
Lord Methuen had been brought across from Boshof, and was available
with six thousand men. Colvile was on that side also, with the
Highland Brigade. A few details were scattered up and down the
line, waiting to be gathered up by an enterprising enemy. Kroonstad
was held by a single militia battalion; each separate force had to
be nourished by convoys with weak escorts. Never was there such a
field for a mobile and competent guerilla leader. And, as luck
would have it, such a man was at hand, ready to take full advantage
of his opportunities.
CHAPTER 27.
THE LINES OF COMMUNICATION.
Christian de Wet, the elder of two brothers of that name, was at
this time in the prime of life, a little over forty years of age.
He was a burly middle-sized bearded man, poorly educated, but
endowed with much energy and common-sense. His military experience
dated back to Majuba Hill, and he had a large share of that curious
race hatred which is intelligible in the case of the Transvaal, but
inexplicable in a Freestater who has received no injury from the
British Empire. Some weakness of his sight compels the use of
tinted spectacles, and he had now turned these, with a pair of
particularly observant eyes behind them, upon the scattered British
forces and the long exposed line of railway.
De Wet's force was an offshoot from the army of Freestaters under
De Villiers, Olivier, and Prinsloo, which lay in the mountainous
north-east of the State. To him were committed five guns, fifteen
hundred men, and the best of the horses. Well armed, well mounted,
and operating in a country which consisted of rolling plains with
occasional fortress kopjes, his little force had everything in its
favour. There were so many tempting objects of attack lying before
him that he must have had some difficulty in knowing where to
begin. The tinted spectacles were turned first upon the isolated
town of Lindley.
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