Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended
themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time
when Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with them
a strain of those inflexible French Huguenots who gave up home and
fortune and left their country for ever at the time of the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously be
one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon
earth. Take this formidable people and train them for seven
generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious
beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling could survive,
place them so that they acquire exceptional skill with weapons and
in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited to
the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman, and the rider. Then,
finally, put a finer temper upon their military qualities by a dour
fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming
patriotism. Combine all these qualities and all these impulses in
one individual, and you have the modern Boer - the most formidable
antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain. Our
military history has largely consisted in our conflicts with
France, but Napoleon and all his veterans have never treated us so
roughly as these hard-bitten farmers with their ancient theology
and their inconveniently modern rifles.
Look at the map of South Africa, and there, in the very centre of
the British possessions, like the stone in a peach, lies the great
stretch of the two republics, a mighty domain for so small a
people.
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