He Was
Fortunate In The Troops Whom He Commanded - Half Of Them Old
Soldiers From India - [Footnote:
An officer in high command in
Ladysmith has told me, as an illustration of the nerve and
discipline of
The troops, that though false alarms in the Boer
trenches were matters of continual occurrence from the beginning to
the end of the siege, there was not one single occasion when the
British outposts made a mistake.] - and exceedingly fortunate in his
officers, French (in the operations before the siege), Archibald
Hunter, Ian Hamilton, Hedworth Lambton, Dick-Cunyngham, Knox, De
Courcy Hamilton, and all the other good men and true who stood (as
long as they could stand) by his side. Above all, he was fortunate
in his commissariat officers, and it was in the offices of Colonels
Ward and Stoneman as much as in the trenches and sangars of
Caesar's Camp that the siege was won.
Buller, like White, had to take the situation as he found it. It is
well known that his own belief was that the line of the Tugela was
the true defence of Natal. When he reached Africa, Ladysmith was
already beleaguered, and he, with his troops, had to abandon the
scheme of direct invasion and to hurry to extricate White's
division. Whether they might not have been more rapidly extricated
by keeping to the original plan is a question which will long
furnish an excellent subject for military debate. Had Buller in
November known that Ladysmith was capable of holding out until
March, is it conceivable that he, with his whole army corps and as
many more troops as he cared to summon from England, would not have
made such an advance in four months through the Free State as would
necessitate the abandonment of the sieges both of Kimberley and of
Ladysmith? If the Boers persisted in these sieges they could not
possibly place more than 20,000 men on the Orange River to face 60,
000 whom Buller could have had there by the first week in December.
Methuen's force, French's force, Gatacre's force, and the Natal
force, with the exception of garrisons for Pietermaritzburg and
Durban, would have assembled, with a reserve of another sixty
thousand men in the colony or on the sea ready to fill the gaps in
his advance. Moving over a flat country with plenty of flanking
room, it is probable that he would have been in Bloemfontein by
Christmas and at the Vaal River late in January. What could the
Boers do then? They might remain before Ladysmith, and learn that
their capital and their gold mines had been taken in their absence.
Or they might abandon the siege and trek back to defend their own
homes. This, as it appears to a civilian critic, would have been
the least expensive means of fighting them; but after all the
strain had to come somewhere, and the long struggle of Ladysmith
may have meant a more certain and complete collapse in the future.
At least, by the plan actually adopted we saved Natal from total
devastation, and that must count against a great deal.
Having taken his line, Buller set about his task in a slow,
deliberate, but pertinacious fashion. It cannot be denied, however,
that the pertinacity was largely due to the stiffening counsel of
Roberts and the soldierly firmness of White who refused to
acquiesce in the suggestion of surrender. Let it be acknowledged
that Buller's was the hardest problem of the war, and that he
solved it. The mere acknowledgment goes far to soften criticism.
But the singular thing is that in his proceedings he showed
qualities which had not been generally attributed to him, and was
wanting in those very points which the public had imagined to be
characteristic of him. He had gone out with the reputation of a
downright John Bull fighter, who would take punishment or give it,
but slog his way through without wincing. There was no reason for
attributing any particular strategical ability to him. But as a
matter of fact, setting the Colenso attempt aside, the crossing for
the Spion Kop enterprise, the withdrawal of the compromised army,
the Vaalkranz crossing with the clever feint upon Brakfontein, the
final operations, and especially the complete change of front after
the third day of Pieters, were strategical movements largely
conceived and admirably carried out. On the other hand, a
hesitation in pushing onwards, and a disinclination to take a risk
or to endure heavy punishment, even in the case of temporary
failure, were consistent characteristics of his generalship. The
Vaalkranz operations are particularly difficult to defend from the
charge of having been needlessly slow and half-hearted. This
'saturnine fighter,' as he had been called, proved to be
exceedingly sensitive about the lives of his men - an admirable
quality in itself, but there are occasions when to spare them
to-day is to needlessly imperil them tomorrow. The victory was his,
and yet in the very moment of it he displayed the qualities which
marred him. With two cavalry brigades in hand he did not push the
pursuit of the routed Boers with their guns and endless streams of
wagons. It is true that he might have lost heavily, but it is true
also that a success might have ended the Boer invasion of Natal,
and the lives of our troopers would be well spent in such a
venture. If cavalry is not to be used in pursuing a retiring enemy
encumbered with much baggage, then its day is indeed past.
The relief of Ladysmith stirred the people of the Empire as
nothing, save perhaps the subsequent relief of Mafeking, has done
during our generation. Even sober unemotional London found its soul
for once and fluttered with joy. Men, women, and children, rich and
poor, clubman and cabman, joined in the universal delight. The
thought of our garrison, of their privations, of our impotence to
relieve them, of the impending humiliation to them and to us, had
lain dark for many months across our spirits.
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