They Were No Longer Men Of The Same Fibre As
Those Who Had Crept Up To The Trenches Of Spion Kop, Or Faced The
Lean Warriors Of Ladysmith On That Grim January Morning At Caesar's
Camp.
Dutch tenacity would not allow them to surrender, and yet
they realised how hopeless was the fight in which they were
engaged.
Nearly fifteen thousand of their best men were prisoners,
ten thousand at the least had returned to their farms and taken the
oath. Another ten had been killed, wounded, or incapacitated. Most
of the European mercenaries had left; they held only the ultimate
corner of their own country, they had lost their grip upon the
railway line, and their supply of stores and of ammunition was
dwindling. To such a pass had eleven months of war reduced that
formidable army who had so confidently advanced to the conquest of
South Africa.
While Buller had established himself firmly upon the left of the
Boer position, Pole-Carew had moved forward to the north of the
railway line, and French had advanced as far as Swart Kopjes upon
the Boer right. These operations on August 26th and 27th were met
with some resistance, and entailed a loss of forty or fifty killed
and wounded; but it soon became evident that the punishment which
they had received at Bergendal had taken the fight out of the
Boers, and that this formidable position was to be abandoned as the
others had been. On the 28th the burghers were retreating, and
Machadodorp, where Kruger had sat so long in his railway carriage,
protesting that he would eventually move west and not east, was
occupied by Buller.
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