While bringing in men and supplies herself, Britain took steps to cut the Boers’ supply line. The only route to the outside world available to the republics, the only route which did not lead through British colonies, was the railway line that ran from Pretoria to the port of Lourenço Marques on Delagoa Bay in Mozambique (Portuguese East Africa). In December 1899 and January 1900 the British adopted some high-handed methods, stationing men-of-war to blockade the bay and even boarding several foreign vessels and hauling them off to Durban to have their cargoes examined. As these tactics produced some unpleasant diplomatic reactions, the British switched to the simple expedient of stationing agents at Lourenço Marques to buy up the cargoes as they landed.
One of the ever present fears of the British—Milner was haunted by it—and one of the great hopes of the republican Boers was that the Afrikaners in Cape Colony, who in rural areas outnumbered colonists of British descent, would rise en masse in rebellion against their British masters. Had there been a rebellion in the Cape of major proportions the complexion of the war would certainly have changed; that it did not happen was due to the peculiar attitudes of the “Cape Dutch” and to the wisdom of Britain’s policy of self-government for all colonies capable of it.
There was certainly a considerable amount of sympathy on the part of the Afrikaners in the Cape for the republicans and their cause. They were united to the Boers in the north by language, religion, and culture. Until martial law was finally proclaimed in April 1901 seditious sentiments were openly expressed: republican flags and emblems were frequently displayed and young Afrikaner girls delighted in flaunting ribbons in the colours of the republics—red, white, and blue, plus orange for the Orange Free State and green for the Transvaal. Boer commandos invading from the Free State were invariably greeted with cheers and smothered in flowers. When J. H. Olivier rode into Aliwal North with a Free State commando there was a local celebration and a daughter of a former member of the Cape Parliament led the inhabitants in the singing of the Free State “Volkslied.” Many Cape Afrikaners, particularly the young men, were eager to join commandos, and it has been estimated that before the end of the war as many as 10,000 Cape rebels fought for the republics.
Still, strong as were the Cape Afrikaners’ sympathies for their republican neighbours and however content they might have been to live in an Afrikaner republic, they had no great grievance against the Imperial government, and the feelings of most did not extend to risking life and property in the republics’ cause; there was no spontaneous uprising such as the Boer leaders had hoped for.
Most of the Cape politicians were Afrikaners, and some had relatives fighting with the Boers. A crisis of conscience afflicted many, perhaps most. W. P. Schreiner, the prime minister of Cape Colony, was the brother of Olive Schreiner, one of the most fervent pro-Boer writers in the Empire, and his wife was the sister of Francis Reitz, state secretary of the Transvaal. Schreiner’s position was a difficult one—in fact, impossible. He had strongly opposed the policies of Milner and Chamberlain which had led to the war, and he was sympathetic to the cause of the republics; at the same time he felt a strong loyalty to the government he served and he could not countenance rebellion. He tried to prevent the imposition of martial law and he opposed drastic penalties for rebels while at the same time doing all in his power to prevent revolution. In the end he was damned by the British for doing too little to help them win the war and by the Afrikaners for doing too much.
Fear of the local inhabitants dominated Milner’s thoughts. He even feared rebellion in Cape Town itself and persuaded Admiral Sir Robert Harris to keep 500 bluejackets in readiness to land should this happen. On New Year’s Eve 1899 there was a rumour that Milner was to be kidnapped and that this would be the signal for a general rising. Guards were doubled and special precautions taken. Nothing happened.
During Roberts’s stay in Cape Town he was fully exposed to Milner’s anxiety complex, but he refused to be influenced by his apprehensions, and he all but drained the colony of troops for the development of his own strategy. However, only two weeks after he landed and before he could carry out his own scheme, Buller again took the offensive on the Tugela.
19
TABANYAMA: PRELUDE TO SPION KOP
On 15 November, in a minor action of the war, Winston Churchill had been captured during an attack on an armoured train near Estcourt. Only five days before he had written to General Evelyn Wood: “I think we ought to punish people who surrender troops under their command—and let us say at once—No exchange of Prisoners.”1 Less than two weeks later, a prisoner in Pretoria, his thinking had changed radically, and he was badgering his captors for permission to send home a press release urging prisoner exchange. Churchill did not wait to be exchanged, however; using an escape plan devised by Aylmer Haldane, he fled from Pretoria—although regrettably leaving Haldane behind—and he was now one of the few British heroes of the war. In a London music hall T. E. Dunville, a Lancashire comedian, warbled:
You’ve heard of Winston Churchill
This is all I have to say—
He’s the latest and the greatest
Correspondent of the day.
Churchill was not on hand to enjoy his celebrity, for he had rejoined Buller’s army, and in a dispatch to the Morning Post the “greatest correspondent of the day” alerted his readers that the next dramatic action of the war was about to take place: “The long interval between the acts has come to an end. The warning bell has rung. Take your seats, ladies and gentlemen.... The curtain is about to rise.”
It was about to rise on Buller’s second attempt to break though to Ladysmith. In spite of Roberts’s advice to remain on the defensive, Buller made plans for a new attack at a new location, and by the time Roberts landed in Cape Town he was ready to shift his army 20 miles west of Estcourt and establish a new base at Springfield. Buller reported his plan to Roberts, who, not being intimately acquainted with the situation in Natal and reluctant to order Buller to give up a scheme already begun, gave his consent. Although apprehensive about the operation, the only advice he offered was that Buller move quickly: “Rapidity of movement is everything against an enemy so skillful in strengthening defensive positions.”2 This sound counsel was ignored.
It would first appear that Buller’s plan was to make a flank attack—Roberts apparently thought this was what he had in mind—and had he moved with speed and vigour that is what it would have been. Moreover, it would surely have been successful, for the Boers would have been unable to throw up any effective opposition. But in fact he moved so slowly, in such a cumbersome fashion, that the Boers had ample opportunity to shift men and guns and to prepare new positions. Buller’s scheme, then, turned out to be only another frontal attack at a new location.
Buller had been receiving a steady flow of reinforcements and he now had 30,000 men in his field army; the Boer force, on the other hand, was somewhat diminished, for a number of burghers, bored or homesick, had left the front. There were now only about 16,000 fighting burghers in Natal, half of whom were sitting around Ladysmith keeping White and his 12,000 men bottled up, while Botha stretched the remainder along the Tugela to prevent Buller from relieving them.
Leaving Barton’s brigade to guard his base at Estcourt, Buller on 10 January 1900 moved out with 19,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry, and 60 guns, including six large howitzers capable of throwing 50-pound lyddite shells and ten long-range naval guns (two 4.7-inch guns and eight 12-pounders). It was a ponderous operation. Thousands of men, guns, horses, oxen, wagons, carts, and ambulances plodded and ploughed through a pouring rain towards the village of Springfield. John Atkins described the march for the Manchester Guardian:
The hills seemed to melt down like tallow under heat; the rain beat the earth into liquid, and the thick, earthy liquid ran down in terraced cascades.... From Estcourt to Frere the division waded, sliding, sucking, pumping, gurgling through the mud: the horses floundered or tobogganed with all four feet together.3
Du
ndonald’s mounted troops splashed ahead to make sure the town was secure, and then Dundonald, exceeding his orders, advanced towards the Tugela and seized a prominent height called Spearman’s Hill which overlooked the river and commanded a ford, Potgieter’s Drift, by which Buller’s army could cross. When the sun came out heliographic communication was established with Ladysmith; Lyttelton’s brigade and later one of the new brigades, Talbot Coke’s, occupied the hill and began to entrench. On the morning of 12 January Buller rode up and inexplicably ordered the entrenching to cease; it was “folly,” he said.
From the summit of Spearman’s Hill Buller had a magnificent view of the landscape, the twisting Tugela and the hills beyond: highest of all was whale-backed Spion Kop (in Afrikaans: Spioenkop, “spy” or “lookout” hill); then, stretching westward, the 7-mile-long Tabanyama ridge with Bastion Hill, Sugar Loaf Hill, Three Tree Hill, and Green Hill at the ends of fingerlike projections pointing south towards the Tugela. In the distance was the beckoning twinkle of the Ladysmith heliograph, and in the hills between were the Boers. They had been slow to react to Buller’s shift of front, and although they were now entrenching madly, the number opposed to Buller was insignificant. He could have walked through to Ladysmith with very little opposition had he made the attempt. But, ignorant of the chance he had, he occupied himself with his long supply columns.
Lieutenant General Charles Warren had arrived on the scene at the end of December, and Buller had reorganized his army, dividing it into two parts between Clery and Warren. Then he had reorganized again and put nearly the whole of his army under Warren and assigned him the task of forcing the heights beyond the Tugela. How Warren came to command such a force and to receive a mission of such importance is an enigma. Among the many incompetent British generals in South Africa, Warren was perhaps the worst; certainly he was the most preposterous. Yet Buller, who personally disliked him, turned over to him almost his entire army.
The son of a major general, Sir Charles Warren (1840-1927) was educated at Woolwich and commissioned in the Royal Engineers at the age of seventeen. He had already acquired a monocle. He spent his first twenty years in the army surveying, teaching surveying, and doing archaeological excavations in Palestine. It was not until the Gaika War of 1877, when he commanded a locally raised unit, that he saw action for the first time. He was severely wounded in the battle of Perie Bush.
In 1886 he was appointed chief commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police. During the two years he spent in this post he quarrelled with the home secretary, was accused of “military high-handedness,” and was much criticised for his failure to track down Jack the Ripper. When he resigned he was named commander of troops in Singapore and spent five years quarrelling with the governor and bombarding the War Office with complaints. Buller, then adjutant general, finally wrote him: “All I want to say is for heaven’s sake leave us alone.”
Warren was fifty-nine years old and had been on the retired list for a year when he was unexpectedly and inexplicably given command of a division in South Africa and promoted lieutenant general. He was also given what was called a Dormant Commission, a secret document which entitled him to assume command of all the forces in South Africa should anything happen to Buller. When he arrived in Cape Town during Black Week he found waiting for him a telegram from the War Office ordering him to supersede Methuen. Wolseley thought that both Gatacre and Methuen should be removed from active commands at the front and given assignments on the lines of communication. Buller violently objected:
Battle of SPION KOP 24 January 1900
I cannot agree with the Commander-in-Chief and allow Methuen, who has done very well, to be superseded by Warren. Commander-in-Chief, comfortable at home, has no idea of the difficulties here. It would, I think, be a fatal policy to supersede every general who failed to succeed in every fight, but I offer no objection in my own case, if thought desirable.4
Buller was allowed to have his way, and Warren, by this time 500 miles north of Cape Town on his way to the Modder River, was stopped and ordered back; he was to follow his original instructions and assume command of a division in Natal.
When Warren joined Buller, he found his chief“rather reserved” and noted with surprise that he appeared to have “taken to heart his reverse at Colenso.” His suggestion that Buller should take a month’s rest was not kindly received. Neither was his expressed opinion that Hlangwane was the key to the problem of forcing the Boer positions on the Tugela. On the Norham Castle en route to South Africa he had occupied his time playing war games with his staff. At the mention of Hlangwane Buller turned on him and asked bluntly, “What do you know about it?” Warren’s answer was necessarily lame: “General knowledge and war games.” Buller ignored him.
Like Buller’s other generals, Warren came equipped with his own military theories. He had told Wolseley that he thought the Boers could be defeated “either by sweeping over them with very long lines of infantry attacking simultaneously” or “by pounding away at them with artillery till they quailed.”5 His most eccentric notion was that troops should be “introduced” to the enemy before allowing them to fight, that there should be what he called a “dress rehearsal.” He told his staff that he would no more take his men into battle without this rehearsal and introduction than “take a team of cricketers who had no experience of football to compete in a football match.”
On the difficult march in the rain to Springfield Warren was in his element. “I knew all about the details of putting on extra spans of oxen and hauling on ropes,” he said. “I was the only general intimately acquainted with these matters.” Warren was now in command of more troops than he had ever seen in one place before, but instead of supervising them he “turned out in my old capacity as leader or ganger and helped manually.” A preoccupation with oxen was to be revealed as one of Warren’s defects as a general.
Other ranks always enjoy watching officers pitching in, shovelling dirt and hauling on ropes instead of tending to their business, so the sight of their monocled lieutenant general messing about with ox teams no doubt pleased them. Warren’s bathing arrangements were a diversion too. One blistering hot day he was scrubbing himself in his mackintosh bath filled with steaming water and set up outside his tent, his men crowding round to watch, when Buller and his staff rode up. Warren draped a towel around his waist to greet his chief and then dressed. “I felt that I had done what I could for the day to amuse the troops,” he said. Whatever his impressions on the men, Warren failed to impress most of his officers, one of whom was heard to refer to him as “this dug-out policeman.”
Buller, after some indecision as to where to cross the river, ordered Warren to take 36 field guns, three brigades, and 1,500 mounted men, cross the river at Trichardt’s Drift, and attack the Boer positions on the long Tabanyama ridge. Intelligence reported that the Boers had two long-range guns there, and Warren asked for the use of the naval guns, but Buller did not believe the intelligence reports and he refused. Warren persisted and tempers rose. If he could not have the naval guns he would have to capture Spion Kop, Warren argued; Buller said that would not be necessary.
On the evening of 16 January Warren’s troops moved out of their camp near Springfield towards the Tugela. Although it was called a flaying column, Warren’s force, with its thousands of oxen and its laden wagons, was about as dashing as a centipede. Nevertheless it was an impressively martial sight. Lieutenant G. Burne of the Naval Brigade wrote that “the men in their greatcoats marching along with the horses and guns mixed up with them reminded me strongly of scenes in pictures of Napoleon’s wars.”6
Shortly after midnight the head of Warren’s column reached Trichardt’s Drift. In the hills opposite them there were at this moment not more than 500 Boers. Instead of crossing at once—infantry and cavalry could have crossed without a bridge—Warren contented himself with assembling his force on the south bank of the river, and not until morning did he order his engineers to construct a pontoon bridge. He then began a
leisurely crossing of his men and guns and supplies. Buller rode over in the morning and sat all day with him watching the oxen and wagons, men, horses, and guns crossing the river. On the following day, 19 January, Warren occupied himself in moving his cattle and wagons 3 miles west of the drift to Venter’s Spruit. There was no opposition, but by now the Boers could clearly see where they would be attacked and they were rushing up reinforcements and strengthening their defensive works under the eyes of Louis Botha, who had arrived only the day before. Still, Warren was in no hurry. He wanted to have his dress rehearsal and “to introduce Mr. Thomas Atkins to Mr. Boer and bid them come together.”
Meanwhile, the dashing Dundonald, whose orders were to guard Warren’s left flank, had already began to probe the Boers’ far right. With only 700 troopers (to his intense indignation he had been compelled to give up 500 mounted men to guard oxen) he made a wide flanking movement west and then north towards Acton Homes, where, on a road that led from Ladysmith into the Orange Free State, he ambushed a 300-man commando. The Boers lost 20 men killed or wounded, and Dundonald took two dozen prisoners. He then threw himself into some kopjes along the road and sent word to Warren that he needed some artillery and the return of his cavalry. Never imagining that Warren would spend three days watching his oxen cross a river, he innocently assumed that infantry would follow in his wake and exploit his success.
Great Boer War Page 23