This Excellent Little Action Showed That The British Mounted
Infantry Had Reached A Point Of Efficiency At Which They Were Quite
Able To Match The Boers At Their Own Game.
For hours they held them
with an inferior force, and finally, when the numbers became equal,
were able to drive them off and capture their guns.
The credit is
largely due to Major Lean for his prompt initiative on discovering
their laager, and to Major Taylor for his handling of the force
during a very critical time. Above all, it was due to the dead
leader, Le Gallais, who had infected every man under him with his
own spirit of reckless daring. 'If I die, tell my mother that I die
happy, as we got the guns,' said he, with his failing breath. The
British total losses were twelve killed (four officers) and
thirty-three wounded (seven officers). Major Welch, a soldier of
great promise, much beloved by his men, was one of the slain.
Following closely after the repulse at Frederickstad this action
was a heavy blow to De Wet. At last, the British were beginning to
take something off the score which they owed the bold raider, but
there was to be many an item on either side before the long
reckoning should be closed. The Boers, with De Wet, fled south,
where it was not long before they showed that they were still a
military force with which we had to reckon.
In defiance of chronology it may perhaps make a clearer narrative
if I continue at once with the movements of De Wet from the time
that he lost his guns at Bothaville, and then come back to the
consideration of the campaign in the Transvaal, and to a short
account of those scattered and disconnected actions which break the
continuity of the story. Before following De Wet, however, it is
necessary to say something of the general state of the Orange River
Colony and of some military developments which had occurred there.
Under the wise and conciliatory rule of General Pretyman the
farmers in the south and west were settling down, and for the time
it looked as if a large district was finally pacified. The mild
taxation was cheerfully paid, schools were reopened, and a peace
party made itself apparent, with Fraser and Piet de Wet, the
brother of Christian, among its strongest advocates.
Apart from the operations of De Wet there appeared to be no large
force in the field in the Orange River Colony, but early in October
of 1900 a small but very mobile and efficient Boer force skirted
the eastern outposts of the British, struck the southern line of
communications, and then came up the western flank, attacking,
where an attack was possible, each of the isolated and weakly
garrisoned townlets to which it came, and recruiting its strength
from a district which had been hardly touched by the ravages of
war, and which by its prosperity alone might have proved the
amenity of British military rule.
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