The surrender of Spragge’s Irish yeomanry was to cause a ripple of mirth in nationalist circles in Ireland.101 In fact, there was a gallant Last Stand, made by the Irish Hunt Company. Lord Longford, blood streaming from wounds in the neck, face and wrist, ordered his men to fight to the end. ‘I knew it to be madness,’ said one of the gentlemen-troopers (son of the Irish Lord Chancellor), ‘and so did everyone else, I think, but not a man refused.’102 In general, raw Irish yeomen fought no worse than British regulars had fought in similar situations. A respectable total of eighty were killed or wounded before the white flags went up.
Piet De Wet’s bag totalled about 530, including Spragge, Lord Longford (seriously wounded), Lords Ennismore, Leitrim and Donoughmore (and the future Lord Craigavon) all captured, and the whisky baronet killed. The wounded were left at Lindley; the other prisoners were marched away northwards to the eastern Transvaal; their captors evaded the net of twenty thousand British troops trying to rescue them.103
The Lindley raid brought the total of the De Wet brothers’ captures, within one week, to over a thousand. How ironic that these victories should occur in the same week that had seen the release of three thousand British prisoners-of-war from the camps at Pretoria.104 Moreover, De Wet’s attacks on the main railway between Kroonstad and the Vaal caused panic along the line of Roberts’s communications. For a few days it was believed in Roberts’s HQ at Pretoria that Christiaan De Wet was in possession of Kroonstad itself. De Wet’s own men actually let slip through their hands a capture of the most sensational interest. They ambushed a British train; in the confusion, a single horseman galloped out of one of the horse wagons, and away into the night to safety. The horseman was Kitchener.105
By mid-June, De Wet had vanished again in the direction of Lindley. Roberts had counter-attacked by sending back across the Vaal lan Hamilton’s column.106 But the war would never be the same again. De Wet had now amply demonstrated that the guerrilla tactics he had so long urged on the Boer government could achieve strategic successes impossible in conventional warfare.
The ball was in Roberts’s court. The future of the main advance had now become of secondary importance to the task of hunting down the twin leaders and symbols of the Boer resistance, Steyn and De Wet.
CHAPTER 35
‘Practically Over
The Ex-republics,
8 July — September 1900
‘We sat down and had a nice song round the piano. Then we just piled up the furniture and set fire to the farm. All columns were doing it... The idea was to starve the Boojers out.’
Pte Bowers, tape recorded by the author in 1970, describing Roberts’s farm burning in October 1900
On 8 July, General Hunter’s two-thousand-strong column plodded into Bethlehem, in the east of the new-born ‘Orange River Colony’, hard against the Basuto frontier. Apart from a handful of Rimington’s Tigers, they were Scottish, like their general – the Black Watch, the Seaforth, the Highland Light Infantry, veteran battalions of the Highland Brigade led by Hector MacDonald, and the Lovat Scouts, two squadrons of Highland Yeomanry; and they had been tramping across the veld for weeks past. Now they saw something which made them rub their eyes, like sailors who sight land after weeks at sea.1
Mountains. The horizon was purple with them. Some were smooth and round and Scottish-looking enough to make the Highlanders and the Lovats feel homesick (the Lovat Scouts had been raised by Captain Lord Lovat from among the ghillies and stalkers on his Beaufort estate). The main ranges of mountains were unmistakably alien, the Wittebergen and the Roodebergen (‘White Mountains’ and ‘Red Mountains’): gaunt, bony terraces of red rock, streaked with fresh snow, even where they faced north to meet the slanting winter sun; a line of red and white battlements thirty miles wide. And who was to know what lay beyond them in that tangled void of purple gorges and black ravines, half-obscured by grass fires?2
Fine scenery, said an officer; bad business for Hunter’s column. Within this mountain fastness – down there, in the green basin of the Brandwater River – was De Wet’s latest refuge. What better country for Boer tactics? ‘We always serve out extra ammunition,’ explained the young officer of the Tigers, ‘when we come to a pretty bit of scenery.’3
Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Hunter was overall commander of all five columns converging on De Wet, and he, too, was anxious about the tactical difficulties of launching his columns at what looked to him like an almost impregnable mountain range. But he was still more anxious about the danger of not fighting there. The strategic task the Chief had given him was to bring De Wet to action and so force him to surrender. The method proposed was to corner him and the other eight thousand survivors of the Free State army within the Brandwater Basin – that is, to use this horseshoe of mountains (Roodebergen on the east, Wittebergen on the west) to pin De Wet against the Basuto frontier.4 It was like a chess move, forcing the king into a corner. Of course, De Wet might break the rules and cross into Basutoland. The frontier was the Caledon River, easy enough for horsemen to ford during the winter (though not for wagon columns). But Jonathan, the Basuto ruler, had been forbidden by the British Resident to give the Boers safe passage through their country; not that the Basutos had any wish to help their traditional enemies.5
The main problem for Hunter was to keep his own converging columns all in step, so to speak; the main anxiety, that De Wet’s columns would break back through the mountains and creep through the meshes of the net.
It was Hunter who had been the main prop of Ladysmith’s defence during the siege, a heart and a nerve that had never faltered, despite White’s feebleness. Since he had left Natal (he had taken the 10th Division off to the western front in April), he had proved himself one of Roberts’s few really able senior generals. His fine advance across the Vaal had made possible the relief of Mafeking. Then, after Diamond Hill, when Ian Hamilton had broken his collar-bone, he had been given Roberts’s main mobile force of three divisions to hunt out De Wet.6 The total seemed large: Lieutenant-General Sir Leslie Rundle’s 8th and Colonial divisions; four more infantry brigades – that is MacDonald’s Highland Brigade, Major-General R.A.P. Clements’s (12th), Major-General Arthur Paget’s (20th) and Bruce Hamilton’s (21st); and two mounted brigades, that is Broadwood’s (2nd) cavalry and Ridley’s MI. But many detachments had to be left behind to guard the convoy route. So he was aware that even this force was not large enough to do all that was required: ‘I am not strong enough,’ he telegraphed to Roberts, ‘to close Naauwpoort, [the pass at the north-east of the Roodebergen] ‘and to be in sufficient strength at essential points to prevent enemy breaking through, as well as attack and force passes....’7
Already, to Hunter’s chagrin, about a third of the enemy had escaped. On the night of 15 July, while he was still stuck at Bethlehem, waiting for ox convoys, one of the Boer columns had slipped through the central pass, Slabbert’s Nek. Broadwood’s and Ridley’s mounted brigades were sent hot-foot in pursuit; the Boers had swung round Bethlehem and doubled back north towards Lindley, threatening Hunter’s own ox convoys. Hunter reported the bad news to Roberts by telegraph; no doubt Roberts would take up the chase. But Hunter blamed himself. If only he could have set up a proper system of field intelligence; he could get nothing out of the Boer farmers in this country. And if only his own cavalry had been as mobile as the Boers. The Boers who had escaped were hampered by a great train of ox wagons; yet Broadwood’s cavalry could not keep up.8
Hunter might have blamed himself still more if he knew who were the leaders of the Boers who had escaped.
Despite this set-back, and his dry, Scottish manner, Hunter remained immensely popular with his men. He had that rare gift – Buller’s gift – of making ordinary people feel that he cared. ‘He has a way of looking at you,’ said one of the Tigers, ‘no matter who you are, Tommy or officer or what not, with a wonderfully kind expression, as if he felt the most friendly interest in you. And so he does; it is not a bit put on.’9
In one
respect, Hunter’s goodness of heart was not unlimited – not towards the Boers, at any rate. Perhaps he was irritated by their refusal to give him information. Anyway, there had been official changes in Roberts’s ‘kid-glove’ policy. Nothing was yet said publicly, neither in orders to the men nor in a new proclamation to the Boers. But as Roberts himself explained privately, ‘More stringent measures than hitherto are being taken as punishment for wrecking trains, destroying telegraph lines,’ etc.10 For long there had been little effective check on the natural tendency of an army to loot and destroy ‘enemy’ property. Now there came advice to the generals to burn certain selected farms. So, as Hunter’s columns had tramped on towards the Roodebergen, they left a new kind of signature in the sky behind them, a pillar of black smoke to add to the cloud of reddish dust that marked their progress.11
The burning of Boer farms, as a collective punishment, may not have worried a professional soldier like Hunter. It certainly shocked a sensitive young amateur like Lieutenant Phillipps, of the Tigers.
The worst moment is when you first come to the house. The people thought we had called for refreshments, and one of the women went to get milk. Then we had to tell them that we had to burn the place down. I simply didn’t know which way to look....
I gave the inmates, three women and some children, ten minutes to clear their clothes and things out of the house, and my men then fetched bundles of straw and we proceeded to burn it down. The old grandmother was very angry.... Most of them, however, were too miserable to curse. The women cried and the children stood by holding on to them looking with large frightened eyes at the burning house. They won’t forget that sight, I’ll bet a sovereign, not even when they grow up. We rode away and left them, a forlorn little group, standing among their household goods – beds, furniture, and gimcracks strewn about the veldt; the crackling of fire in their ears, and smoke and flames streaming overhead.12
The aim of farm burning was strictly military: to make an example of certain families, and so deter the others from aiding De Wet and the guerrillas. But was it practicable, even in military terms? Hunter’s column met many Boer women out in the veld, and good-naturedly helped remove their furniture, before burning their homes. The women’s ideas about the war seemed peculiar, for they believed the war was going well enough for them. ‘Of course we shall go on fighting,’ they said, surprised to be asked. ‘How long?’ Oh, as long as may be necessary. Till you go away.’ It struck the British as odd that the women and children should be so unanimous in their determination to fight on. Husbands and sons in the hills fighting. Homes in the valley blazing. And the women sitting there watching, with the same patience, the same absolute confidence in ultimate victory, as the guerrillas. Some of the more intelligent British officers were disturbed – and impressed. They had never seen anything before quite like this ‘big, primitive’ kind of patriotism.13 But most British officers were all for farm burning. They thought that Sister Boer was as stubborn and stupid, to put it no worse, as Brother Boer himself.14
After sending his two mounted brigades back northwards in pursuit of the escaped Boers, Hunter decided to halt a further week at Bethlehem before striking out for the mountains. Clements’s brigade, delayed by their supply convoy, could not be ready before the 20th. Hunter’s own supply convoy, the usual lumbering affair of ox wagons, did not reach him till the 19th, and the oxen were dead-beat after the sixty-mile journey from the railhead of Kroonstad; they would not be able to start again before the 21st.15
Meanwhile, he had at last begun to gather some idea of what was going on behind the screen of mountains. He had received daily reports from two British agents in Basutoland relayed to him by native runners;16 and he had imagined that the Boers were preparing to break out of the Brandwater Basin by Ficksburg and the road to the west. On the 19th, two of the Lovat Scouts had managed to slip across by Retief’s Nek and reported the grass burnt for miles, and no sign of Boers. Then, the same day, other Scouts reported that the eastern pass, Naauwpoort, was still held in force. Excellent news. The enemy were still intent on barricading themselves inside the basin. Their HQ was apparently Fouriesburg, the small town at the green heart of the valley where Steyn had set up his latest provisional government.17
So the plan of attack was finally settled. There were six wagon roads into and out of the mountains. Rundle and four battalions, with ten guns and sixteen hundred mounted troops, would block the two most westerly passes: Commando Nek and Witnek. Clements’s and Paget’s brigades would attack Slabbert’s Nek in the centre, while Hunter’s own force, three battalions of Highlanders, simultaneously attacked Retief’s Nek. Bruce Hamilton would take a battalion of Cameronians and five hundred MI and make for Naauwpoort. This left no troops to block the most easterly pass – Golden Gate – until reinforcements could be sent.18 But there it was. Hunter had a hunch, presumably based on the reports from Basutoland, that the enemy were not trying to break out to the east. And the hunch was right.
The concerted attacks on the two northern passes were launched a few hours after dawn on 23 July. On the summit of Slabbert’s Nek, the wagon road passed close to an African kraal, and among the huts the Boers had dug a well concealed series of rifle pits. But the pits were empty.19 As the first lines of scouts advanced (some raw Imperial Yeomanry, commanded by Captain Bromley-Davenport, MP), the Boers raced for cover, and so did the yeomanry. The yeomanry got there first. ‘The position is enormously strong,’ said the Captain later, ‘and against any troops in the world except Boers we should have had hardly any chance of taking it.’ After a couple of hours, two infantry companies – they were the Royal Irish – joined the yeomanry. They were ordered to advance with the bayonet. ‘Why not?’ said the fellow lying next to the Captain. He got up, and walked calmly forward. Within fifty yards, the Royal Irish had lost four killed and twelve wounded. But the two companies had carried an almost impregnable position.20
At Retief’s Nek, the Boers had more fight in them, and there was a battle of a sort. It had been a cold and miserable night for the Lovat Scouts: icy rain in the valley; snow on the mountains – Scottish weather, indeed. The scouts found dense masses of cloud blocking the passes, but there was no sign of the enemy. A few of the Tigers were sent forward into the foothills to poke them out (it reminded Lieutenant March Phillipps of tufting for deer on Exmoor). Then the overture of the battle began: scattered Mauser notes to left and right, dull and muffled in the swirling mist. Next moment, Captain Damant and the Tigers stumbled on the Boers’ main position in a rocky hollow, where green tufts of grass poked through the snow. It was lucky they first heard the challenge, ‘Wie gaat daar?’ and caught an alarming glimpse of the heads and shoulders, cuddling down behind the rocks. There they were; no mistake. The Tigers rode for their lives, as the bullets crackled and whistled about them. One of the ponies went broadside into a barbed-wire fence, and was caught there, struggling like a fly in a web: horse and rider a mark for every rifle; the rider sitting on the horse’s tail, bush-hat in his hand, both stirrups dangling, as the bullets splashed round. Then the man (it was March Phillipps) somehow wrenched the pony free. And in a few seconds he was away over the hill and out of shot.21
That dangerous little hollow, high up under the precipitous, bald buttresses of the nek itself, kept the whole of Hunter’s column occupied for the next day and a half. Two battalions – Black Watch and Seaforths – lost eighty-six men, despite their overwhelming superiority in artillery. Then the Boers melted away into the mist. Once across Retief’s Nek, Hunter’s column joined hands with Clements’s and Paget’s brigades, who had crossed by Slabbert’s Nek. Hunter sent the Highland Brigade marching off ahead, with two 5-inch guns, to back up Bruce Hamilton in blocking the eastern exits: Naauwpoort Nek and the Golden Gate. The main body halted to wait for Rundle, then plodded on down the valley, giving time for the trap to be closed.22
They marched slowly, sauntering, so to speak, down to Fouriesburg. Everyone was on tenterhooks, laying bets on the amount
of the catch. But were the eels still in the eel-trap? Had Bruce Hamilton succeeded? It seemed too good to be true, to catch most of the Free State army in this miraculous fashion. Roberts had failed so often in the last year to inflict a really decisive defeat on the enemy. Now, after only a few skirmishes, the enemy lay at their feet, cornered between the mountains and the Caledon River. Or were they?
By dawn on the morning of 29 July, Hunter’s vanguard had pushed the Boers to Slaap Kranz, midway between Fouriesburg and the Golden Gate. About seven, they heard a sound that was music to their ears: the deep baying of a very heavy gun in the distance. That was one of Bruce Hamilton’s 5-inch ‘cow-guns’. The way was blocked. In terms of the chess-board, mate next move.23
* * * * * *
The main body of some five thousand Free Staters prepared to meet their fate with an odd sense of resignation. For a whole week they had dithered: ever since the boom of Hunter’s 5-inch guns had first echoed down the valley towards Fouriesburg. The wagon road by way of Golden Gate had remained open till the 28th. Even now, if they were prepared to abandon their covered wagons, and set out on horseback across the numerous Kaffir tracks over the mountains, they could have made good their escape. But what then? They could make their way to Harrismith, on the borders of Natal; but Natal was now a British stronghold. They had been hunted and harried long enough. A sense of hopelessness came over them when they contemplated the prospects of an extended guerrilla war. ‘Huis toe’ had been intermittently heard ever since the capture of Bloemfontein. Now it became the cri de coeur of the volk. All they wanted was to be allowed to take their wagons and go home.24
The Boer War Page 70