By The End Of March French Had Moved
As Far South As Vryheid, His Troops Having Endured The Greatest
Hardships From The Continual Heavy Rains, And The Difficulty Of
Bringing Up Any Supplies.
On the 27th he reported seventeen more
Boer casualties and 140 surrenders, while on the last day of the
month he took another gun and two pom-poms.
The enemy at that date
were still retiring eastward, with Alderson and Dartnell pressing
upon their rear. On April 4th French announced the capture of the
last piece of artillery which the enemy possessed in that region.
The rest of the Boer forces doubled back at night between the
columns and escaped over the Zululand border, where 200 of them
surrendered. The total trophies of French's drive down the Eastern
Transvaal amounted to eleven hundred of the enemy killed, wounded,
or taken, the largest number in any operation since the surrender
of Prinsloo. There is no doubt that the movement would have been
even more successful had the weather been less boisterous, but this
considerable loss of men, together with the capture of all the guns
in that region, and of such enormous quantities of wagons,
munitions, and stock, inflicted a blow upon the Boers from which
they never wholly recovered. On April 20th French was back in
Johannesburg once more.
While French had run to earth the last Boer gun in the
south-eastern corner of the Transvaal, De la Rey, upon the western
side, had still managed to preserve a considerable artillery with
which he flitted about the passes of the Magaliesberg or took
refuge in the safe districts to the south-west of it.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 691 of 842
Words from 184922 to 185199
of 225456
