On The Other Hand, Their Guns Were Served With Skill And
Audacity.
They consisted of commandos from Bethulie, Rouxville, and
Smithfield, under the orders of Olivier, with those colonials whom
they had seduced from their allegiance.
This defeat of General Gatacre's, occurring, as it did, in a
disaffected district and one of great strategic importance, might
have produced the worst consequences.
Fortunately no very evil result followed. No doubt the recruiting
of rebels was helped, but there was no forward movement and Molteno
remained in our hands. In the meanwhile Gatacre's force was
reinforced by a fresh battery, the 79th, and by a strong regiment,
the Derbyshires, so that with the 1st Royal Scots and the wing of
the Berkshires he was strong enough to hold his own until the time
for a general advance should come. So in the Stormberg district, as
at the Modder River, the same humiliating and absurd position of
stalemate was established.
CHAPTER 11.
BATTLE OF COLENSO.
Two serious defeats had within the week been inflicted upon the
British forces in South Africa. Cronje, lurking behind his trenches
and his barbed wire entanglements barred Methuen's road to
Kimberley, while in the northern part of Cape Colony Gatacre's
wearied troops had been defeated and driven by a force which
consisted largely of British subjects. But the public at home
steeled their hearts and fixed their eyes steadily upon Natal.
There was their senior General and there the main body of their
troops. As brigade after brigade and battery after battery touched
at Cape Town, and were sent on instantly to Durban, it was evident
that it was in this quarter that the supreme effort was to be made,
and that there the light might at last break. In club, and dining
room, and railway car - wherever men met and talked - the same words
might be heard: 'Wait until Buller moves.' The hopes of a great
empire lay in the phrase.
It was upon October 30th that Sir George White had been thrust back
into Ladysmith. On November 2nd telegraphic communication with the
town was interrupted. On November 3rd the railway line was cut. On
November 10th the Boers held Colenso and the line of the Tugela. On
the 14th was the affair of the armoured train. On the 18th the
enemy were near Estcourt. On the 21st they had reached the Mooi
River. On the 23rd Hildyard attacked them at Willow Grange. All
these actions will be treated elsewhere. This last one marks the
turn of the tide. From then onwards Sir Redvers Buller was massing
his troops at Chieveley in preparation for a great effort to cross
the river and to relieve Ladysmith, the guns of which, calling from
behind the line of northern hills, told their constant tale of
restless attack and stubborn defence.
But the task was as severe a one as the most fighting General could
ask for. On the southern side the banks formed a long slope which
could be shaved as with a razor by the rifle fire of the enemy. How
to advance across that broad open zone was indeed a problem. It was
one of many occasions in this war in which one wondered why, if a
bullet-proof shield capable of sheltering a lying man could be
constructed, a trial should not be given to it. Alternate rushes of
companies with a safe rest after each rush would save the troops
from the continued tension of that deadly never ending fire.
However, it is idle to discuss what might have been done to
mitigate their trials. The open ground had to be passed, and then
they came to - not the enemy, but a broad and deep river, with a
single bridge, probably undermined, and a single ford, which was
found not to exist in practice. Beyond the river was tier after
tier of hills, crowned with stone walls and seamed with trenches,
defended by thousands of the best marksmen in the world, supported
by an admirable artillery. If, in spite of the advance over the
open and in spite of the passage of the river, a ridge could still
be carried, it was only to be commanded by the next; and so, one
behind the other, like the billows of the ocean, a series of hills
and hollows rolled northwards to Ladysmith. All attacks must be in
the open. All defence was from under cover. Add to this, that the
young and energetic Louis Botha was in command of the Boers. It was
a desperate task, and yet honour forbade that the garrison should
be left to its fate. The venture must be made.
The most obvious criticism upon the operation is that if the attack
must be made it should not be made under the enemy's conditions. We
seem almost to have gone out of our way to make every obstacle - the
glacislike approach, the river, the trenches - as difficult as
possible. Future operations were to prove that it was not so
difficult to deceive Boer vigilance and by rapid movements to cross
the Tugela. A military authority has stated, I know not with what
truth, that there is no instance in history of a determined army
being stopped by the line of a river, and from Wellington at the
Douro to the Russians on the Danube many examples of the ease with
which they may be passed will occur to the reader. But Buller had
some exceptional difficulties with which to contend. He was weak in
mounted troops, and was opposed to an enemy of exceptional mobility
who might attack his flank and rear if he exposed them. He had not
that great preponderance of numbers which came to him later, and
which enabled him to attempt a wide turning movement. One advantage
he had, the possession of a more powerful artillery, but his
heaviest guns were naturally his least mobile, and the more direct
his advance the more effective would his guns be.
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