Therefore It Was With Glad Faces And Brisk Feet
That The Centre Column Left Bloemfontein On May 1st, And Streamed,
With Bands Playing, Along The Northern Road.
On May 3rd the main force was assembled at Karee, twenty miles upon
their way.
Two hundred and twenty separated them from Pretoria, but
in little more than a month from the day of starting, in spite of
broken railway, a succession of rivers, and the opposition of the
enemy, this army was marching into the main street of the Transvaal
capital. Had there been no enemy there at all, it would still have
been a fine performance, the more so when one remembers that the
army was moving upon a front of twenty miles or more, each part of
which had to be co-ordinated to the rest. It is with the story of
this great march that the present chapter deals.
Roberts had prepared the way by clearing out the south-eastern
corner of the State, and at the moment of his advance his forces
covered a semicircular front of about forty miles, the right under
Ian Hamilton near Thabanchu, and the left at Karee. This was the
broad net which was to be swept from south to north across the Free
State, gradually narrowing as it went. The conception was
admirable, and appears to have been an adoption of the Boers' own
strategy, which had in turn been borrowed from the Zulus. The solid
centre could hold any force which faced it, while the mobile
flanks, Hutton upon the left and Hamilton upon the right, could lap
round and pin it, as Cronje was pinned at Paardeberg.
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