Their Importance, However, Is Due To
The Fact That They Were Really The Forerunners Of A More Important
Incursion Upon The Part Of De Wet.
The object of these two bands of
raiders was to spy out the land, so that on the arrival of the main
body all might be ready for that general rising of their kinsmen in
the Colony which was the last chance, not of winning, but of
prolonging the war.
It must be confessed that, however much their
reason might approve of the Government under which they lived, the
sentiment of the Cape Dutch had been cruelly, though unavoidably,
hurt in the course of the war. The appearance of so popular a
leader as De Wet with a few thousand veterans in the very heart of
their country might have stretched their patience to the
breaking-point. Inflamed, as they were, by that racial hatred which
had always smouldered, and had now been fanned into a blaze by the
speeches of their leaders and by the fictions of their newspapers,
they were ripe for mischief, while they had before their eyes an
object-lesson of the impotence of our military system in those
small bands who had kept the country in a ferment for so long. All
was propitious, therefore, for the attempt which Steyn and De Wet
were about to make to carry the war into the enemy's country.
We last saw De Wet when, after a long chase, he had been headed
back from the Orange River, and, winning clear from Knox's pursuit,
had in the third week of December passed successfully through the
British cordon between Thabanchu and Ladybrand.
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