His Force Was So Weak That
When Lord Roberts Was Able To Really Direct His Own Against It, He
Brushed
It away before him; but the manner in which De Wet took
advantage of Roberts's enforced immobility, and dared to
Get behind
so mighty an enemy, was a fine exhibition of courage and
enterprise. The public at home chafed at this sudden and unexpected
turn of affairs; but the General, constant to his own fixed
purpose, did not permit his strength to be wasted, and his cavalry
to be again disorganised, by flying excursions, but waited grimly
until he should be strong enough to strike straight at Pretoria.
In this short period of depression there came one gleam of light
from the west. This was the capture of a commando of sixty Boers,
or rather of sixty foreigners fighting for the Boers, and the death
of the gallant Frenchman, De Villebois-Mareuil, who appears to have
had the ambition of playing Lafayette in South Africa to Kruger's
Washington. From the time that Kimberley had been reoccupied the
British had been accumulating their force there so as to make a
strong movement which should coincide with that of Roberts from
Bloemfontein. Hunter's Division from Natal was being moved round to
Kimberley, and Methuen already commanded a considerable body of
troops, which included a number of the newly arrived Imperial
Yeomanry. With these Methuen pacified the surrounding country, and
extended his outposts to Barkly West on the one side, to Boshof on
the other, and to Warrenton upon the Vaal River in the centre.
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