Ian Hamilton's
Force, After The Taking Of Lydenburg And The Action Which Followed,
Turned Back, Leaving Buller To Go His Own Way, And Reached
Komatipoort On September 24th, Having Marched Since September 9th
Without A Halt Through A Most Difficult Country.
On September 11th an incident had occurred which must have shown
the most credulous believer in Boer prowess that their cause was
indeed lost.
On that date Paul Kruger, a refugee from the country
which he had ruined, arrived at Lourenco Marques, abandoning his
beaten commandos and his deluded burghers. How much had happened
since those distant days when as a little herdsboy he had walked
behind the bullocks on the great northward trek. How piteous this
ending to all his strivings and his plottings! A life which might
have closed amid the reverence of a nation and the admiration of
the world was destined to finish in exile, impotent and
undignified. Strange thoughts must have come to him during those
hours of flight, memories of his virile and turbulent youth, of the
first settlement of those great lands, of wild wars where his hand
was heavy upon the natives, of the triumphant days of the war of
independence, when England seemed to recoil from the rifles of the
burghers. And then the years of prosperity, the years when the
simple farmer found himself among the great ones of the earth, his
name a household word in Europe, his State rich and powerful, his
coffers filled with the spoil of the poor drudges who worked so
hard and paid taxes so readily.
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