The Covenant

by James A. Michener

  Carefully Coenraad drew in the lines, making estimates to account for the lost generations. It was a spotty genealogy they constructed, detailed in the case of the Trianon Van Doorns, inaccurate regarding the trekkers.

  ‘But we are cousins,’ Coenraad said expansively. ‘That much we know.’ When Jakob tried again to bring up the question of volunteering during the forthcoming war, the wine-maker laughed easily and cut him off: ‘No one at Trianon wants war. We have no quarrel with the English.’ And when Jakob started to argue that no Afrikaner would ever be spiritually free till the English were subdued, Coenraad drew his children to his side of the table so that they could inspect the diagram of their family, and said firmly, ‘That’ll be your war, Jakob, not ours.’ And he would permit no further discussion.

  In September 1899 England began moving troops up to the Orange River and ordering home regiments and units from other colonies to reinforce the Cape and Natal garrisons. The two Boer republics loaded their arsenals also, importing Mausers from Krupp’s and long-range guns for the State Artillery, their only regular military organization. Late in the month the word went out to the commandos: ‘Opsaal, burghers!’ And when the Boers were told to saddle up, they knew that danger was at hand.

  One of the first to respond at Vrymeer was Micah Nxumalo: ‘Baas, the Kaffirs at Groenkop, they got ponies. You want me to see if they’re any good?’

  Jakob nodded. ‘What will those Kaffirs do in the war?’

  ‘Nothing, Baas. Sit in their kraals and talk.’

  The Groenkop blacks were a small group who occupied a valley far to the north; some of their people worked for Boers, but they had never entirely surrendered their tribal roots the way Nxumalo had done. They were, of course, part of the Boer republics, but no one took much notice of these pockets of blacks so long as they ‘behaved’ themselves. This would not be their war.

  ‘Will your older boy be riding with us?’ Van Doorn asked.

  ‘No. He stay with his mother. I go with you, Baas.’

  It never occurred to Micah that he had an option in this matter; if war came, he would naturally ride with the Venloo Commando. His affection for Van Doorn and his respect for the old general would dictate that.

  Next morning Paulus de Groot came over to Vrymeer; he and Sybilla had left their miserable house and would stay with the Van Doorns until decisions were reached. His only concern was whether the Venloo men would keep him as leader of their commando, and when Jakob said, ‘Of course they will. You were a general at Majuba,’ he replied with some anxiety, ‘With a commando, you never know. The burghers of Venloo will make up their own minds.’

  In each district a new commandant was elected every five years, and because of his heroics at Majuba, De Groot had won the post every time, but save for a few Kaffir raids and the rout of Dr. Jameson’s invaders, there had been eighteen years of peace, and there were a dozen young men claiming that they would be better at fighting the English.

  De Groot and Van Doorn rode in to Venloo to meet with two hundred and sixty-seven other men who comprised the commando. They were a tough lot, burghers mostly in their thirties, but anywhere between sixteen and sixty, with De Groot the oldest, ignoring his seven years past normal retirement. They met at the church, but not in it, for they were many and each wanted his say. Under the big trees, in the shade, these men of the Boer nation discussed the looming war.

  ‘We beat them at Majuba,’ De Groot said, eager to establish his credentials early, ‘and we’ll donder them again. With these!’ And he held up a Mauser. A wagonload of guns had arrived from Pretoria, and they were handed out.

  The new weapons caused much excitement, and there was so much free firing that the war almost ended for three burghers who got in the way of the fusillades. But the problem of who would lead remained unsettled, and this was of grave importance for a commando. Tonight it had two hundred and sixty-nine members; tomorrow it might have four hundred or, if things went poorly, it could relapse into a veldkornetcy with less than a hundred fighters. It all depended upon how the war was progressing, conditions in Venloo, and what the burghers thought of their leader.

  The law said that every male citizen had to serve when summoned, unless officially excused. The commandant-general, his assistant-generals and the combat commanders laid the regulations, but the Boers had lost none of their independent Voortrekker spirit, nor their disregard for meddlesome authority. They might be ordered to serve in a commando, and Oom Paul might have a law which said they would be thrown in jail if they refused, but once they were in the saddle, they would recognize their leader only as chief among equals.

  If he made one serious mistake, half his troops might ride off in disgust, and even if he were continuously brilliant, his burghers still might go home if they grew sick of the war or apprehensive about its outcome. Also, every fighting man considered himself free to quit the commando he was in and transfer to another, if he liked its fighting style better or considered its leader more apt to win his battles.

  It was crucial, therefore, to select the right man at the beginning, and one burgher said, ‘Naturally, we would want you to carry on as commandant, De Groot, a former general and all. But you’re an old man now, and I doubt you could stand the chases.’

  ‘He can ride better than me,’ Jakob said.

  ‘We need someone who can think quickly,’ another said. ‘You know, the English are going to throw their best generals into this fight.’ It was uncertain whether this speaker was for old Paulus or against him, but before he could clarify his statement, another said warmly, ‘If De Groot did so well at Majuba, and when the Uitlander raiders came …’

  ‘I think he’s too old.’

  Without a vote having been taken, it seemed that sentiment ran something like 180–89 in favor of the old man, but one of the complainants said with some force, ‘This won’t be Majuba or untrained Uitlanders. We need someone young, with strength in the saddle.’

  The commando decided not to vote that night, but to think some more about the touchy problem; each burgher was convinced that war with England was only days away, that it would be demanding, and that they must have the best leader possible.

  Some of the men wished to consult with Jakob, since he had been to both Cape Town and Pretoria: ‘How does it look with the Boers at the Cape?’

  ‘I found three boys who’ll be cleaning their rifles tonight. But we can forget about real help from the south. They will not fight. Say they’ll win their war on the floor of their Parliament, and that we’re wasting our time with commandos.’

  ‘Verdomp! We’ll show them. God alone knows, we’ll show the whole damn world, too.’

  ‘Tell me, Van Doorn,’ a thoughtful burgher asked. ‘Who do you want as commandant?’

  ‘We already have one—Paulus. He’s a true leader.’

  They left it at that, and De Groot slept that night at the Van Doorns’; before going to bed he said fervently, ‘I would like to serve, Jakob. I have ideas about how to handle the English.’

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see. A lot of them think you’re too old.’

  ‘I am,’ De Groot conceded quickly. ‘But I’m the one with ideas.’

  Next morning the burghers resumed discussion, and sentiment swung strongly to a vigorous young man who farmed east of Vrymeer, but someone pointed out that he was always talking about how clever the Hollanders in Pretoria were and how the Boers could learn some culture from them. That finished him, for while most Boers supported Oom Paul in anything he did, they distrusted the Amsterdam clique around him, the hundreds who had been imported to serve in the Boer government. Some Venloo men said, ‘The damned Hollanders are almost as bad as the Uitlanders.’

  The vote was taken that afternoon, and old Paulus de Groot was retained as commandant, 201–68, grudgingly by some, who mumbled, ‘We wanted someone younger. But we’ll give you a chance.’ All he said was ‘Get your saddles ready.’

  At Vrymeer the old man gathered everyone in the farm
house kitchen, and with his hands resting on the ancient Van Doorn Bible, he said, ‘When God chooses a people to do His work, He places on that people many demands, but in our response He watches over us and always brings us victory. Sybilla, are you ready?’ The old woman, her hair drawn tight across her head, nodded. ‘Sara, will you guard the farm and the children?’ The younger woman nodded, bringing her young son closer to her side. ‘Girls, will you defend this home against the Englishmen, if they come?’

  ‘We will,’ the twins said gravely, but Johanna, the older girl, merely nodded.

  ‘Then your father and I can go to war with easy hearts. Let us pray,’ and in the farmhouse, so far removed from conflict, the eight farm people bowed their heads and clasped their hands:

  ‘Almighty God, we know that You have called us to this battle. We know that as Your chosen people we must obey the covenant You handed down to us. We are Your instrument in bringing Your kingdom into being on this earth, and we submit ourselves to Your care. Bring us the victory You gave us in the past.’

  On the morning of October 7 word reached Venloo that their commando was to depart immediately for the Natal border, but not to cross it until formal commencement of hostilities: ‘You can stand with the forefeet of your ponies touching enemy territory.’ So the Venloo Commando formed up, and rode south.

  This commando consisted of two hundred and sixty-nine Boers, each mounted on a sturdy pony which he supplied. Since each man dressed in whatever clothes he deemed appropriate for an extended stay in the field, the file looked more like a rabble than an army company. Some men wore heavy brown corduroys, some black, a few white. Most wore vests, unbuttoned, and about half had heavy coats of a wild variety. They wore veldskoen, heavy homemade field shoes of softened leather. The only item of clothing or equipment in which there was the slightest standardization was the hat: most of the men preferred the slouching Boer hat, which made them look like disgruntled sheepdogs. But even hats weren’t uniform, for some men chose bowlers, tweed caps or almost any other available headgear. Behind them came some forty blacks, all mounted, leading twenty or thirty spare ponies.

  What made the Venloo Commando unforgettable were the units front and rear. Ahead of his troops rode General Paulus de Groot, sixty-seven years old, big, hefty in chest and belly, bearded, wearing the uniform that had distinguished him at Majuba: a formal frock coat with silver buttons and a tall black top hat. The side of this hat was decorated with a small republican flag embroidered by Sybilla with the words: VIR GOD! VIR LAND! VIR JUSTISIE! His official rank was Commandant, but no one addressed him as anything but General.

  At the rear, behind the blacks and the remounts, came the wagons containing the sixteen wives who would accompany their men to the front. Undisputed leader among them was Sybilla de Groot, sixty-four years old, who said, ‘I must go with my man in his war against that woman across the sea.’

  This was typical of the Boer army, little disciplined, less organized, paid not at all, but well able to live off the land it fought for, with a Mauser and six legs for each man, because everyone was mounted. Its task: to defeat the combined armies of the British Empire.

  Ostensible blame for launching the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 was visible for all the world to see. At five o’clock on the afternoon of October 9 the Boer republics drafted an ultimatum which threw into the face of the British government demands of such an uncompromising nature that no self-respecting major power could possibly have accepted them.

  Early in the morning of 10 October 1899 these demands were presented officially to the British cabinet, who reacted with surprise and delight: ‘They’ve done it! They’ve given us a cast-iron case. They stand before the world as the aggressors.’ That night the British government rejected the ultimatum, and when news of this reaction reached Pretoria on the afternoon of October 11, war officially began, and troops from both sides swung into action. A handful of rural Boers had brazenly challenged the might of an empire.

  But the real cause of the war was much more complex than an exchange of cablegrams over demands for arbitration and troop withdrawals. It involved the same forces that had caused General de Groot’s storming of Majuba in 1881, and those which had urged Cecil Rhodes to support the invasion of the Transvaal in 1895. The English wanted to control all of southern Africa in one grand union of states and peoples; the Boers wanted the freedom to conduct their own governments off to one side without interference from London. The English took up the case of the Uitlanders on the Golden Reef. The Boers saw these fortune-seekers as a threat to their way of life. These interests conflicted, aroused animosities, and inevitably goaded the two nations into combat.

  If the Boers had not declared war on October 11, the English would probably have done so within a few days. The sanest judgment that can be passed on the genesis of this terrible war between two groups of friends is that it was the result of imperiousness on the English side and intransigence on the Boer.

  Like rivulets wandering across a plain, coalescing at last to form a river, the various commandos heading toward Natal came together to create a Boer army. In time it contained some seventeen thousand men, and when they were assembled for the drive into English territory, old Commandant-General Joubert, in charge, decided to hold a review in honor of Oom Paul’s birthday to inspirit the troops and put them in a military frame of mind, so while he sat astride his horse to take the salute, the commandos galloped past, each man executing what he called a salute in the distinctive style he favored. Some doffed their big hats; some merely touched the brim with a finger; some yelled Boer fighting words; some nodded; a few shook their own hands and grinned; and some made no other gesture than a wink. But each man signified that he was ready.

  They galloped into Natal, prepared to sweep gloriously down to the Indian Ocean, capture Durban at the end of their ride, and deprive the English of a port through which to bring the reinforcements already on their way from London. General de Groot, with his Venloo Commando, tried to keep near the front of the advance, for he wished to lead the gallop down to the sea.

  Two heavily garrisoned towns obstructed the path of the Boers as they entered Natal—Dundee and Ladysmith—and it was De Groot’s urgent advice that they be by-passed: ‘Give me a handful of commandos, well dash direct to Durban.’ Had he been allowed to do this, he would have prevented English ships from landing reinforcements, and then, as he growled, ‘Without supplies, the garrisons will wither up here and we can pluck them when we will.’

  But the commandant-general felt that orderliness required that he capture these two strong points: ‘We can’t have thousands of English troops in our rear, can we?’ De Groot insisted that his charging raid to the seaport might win the war, but he was silenced with a stern command: ‘Take your burghers toward Ladysmith. You’ll do your fighting there.’

  So while thousands of Boers peeled off for the attack on Dundee, where the English commanding general was to be mortally wounded while his troops fled south, the Venloo Commando had to swing west, abandon the brilliant concept of a dash to the sea, and make for the hills overlooking Ladysmith.

  The town acquired this remarkable name because of the exploits of a dashing young officer, Sir Harry Smith, who made his historic ride from Cape Town to the defense of Grahamstown back in 1835. He captivated the imagination of the local population. Later he returned to Cape Town as governor, and was enthusiastically welcomed by ‘my children,’ as he called the Boers and blacks. But just in case the Xhosa had any dream of recreating the troubles they had caused him, he summoned two thousand to meet him, with their chiefs. Mounted on his horse Aliwal, he held in his right hand a brass-headed wand signifying peace, and in his left, a sergeant’s stick representing war.

  The chiefs were ordered to step forward and touch the wand or the stick, indicating the course they wished to follow. Peace was the victor, but at a price: ‘Now, to show that you submit to me and my Great White Queen, you will kiss my foot.’ They did, whereupon Sir Harry shook their ha
nds and reported: ‘We have secured permanent peace.’ Alas, only three years later his Xhosa children invaded the frontier yet again, and once more he had to repulse them.

  Sir Harry also had his troubles with the Voortrekkers who crossed the Orange River, but the dashing governor and his lovely Spanish wife continued to enjoy such adulation that the people named a series of towns after them: Harrismith; Aliwal, honoring his victory over the Sikhs at that place in India; and two different towns named Ladysmith, one of which Paulus de Groot and his Boers were about to invest.

  Late on the second afternoon of the ride toward Ladysmith, a violent thunderstorm broke, making De Groot’s drenched burghers curse as they pushed through the torrent. He rode up front with Van Doorn, head pulled in toward chest, a bitter anger darkening his face. ‘Every step this horse takes,’ he grumbled, ‘we’re farther away from the route to the sea. Damnit, Jakob! Even if we do reach Ladysmith in good order, we’ll have to wait for the rest to catch up before we can attack.’ Then he voiced his real complaint: ‘We’re missing the battles.’

  He was mistaken. Two Boer scouts raced back and cried through the pelting rain, ‘Die Engelese! They’re fighting our men just beyond those gullies.’

  ‘We join them!’ De Groot shouted as he spurred his horse. The commando plunged into the eroded rift in the veld, ponies slipping and sliding in the quagmire, then struggling up the opposite side. They came out on the edge of a vast plain, but the rain cut visibility; through a small telescope De Groot could barely discern a company of Boers, far distant. To his dismay, they seemed to be retreating: ‘Where in hell are they going? To the Transvaal?’ Without waiting for an answer, he headed directly toward the fighting.

  The Venloo burghers were thus projected into an experience which would go far in determining General de Groot’s future actions. To begin with, their scouting had been inadequate: the two young fellows sent forward miscalculated the capacity of the enemy force, encouraging the Boer contingent to advance too rapidly, ill-prepared for the shock the English were about to deliver. Boer losses had already been heavy and the retreat was general.