The Boers were watching the progress of Mahon’s column, and on 12 May, not far north of Vryburg, they attacked it. Mahon drove them off, and three days later he joined Plumer with his 800 men 18 miles west of Mafeking. There was no further opposition, the besiegers withdrew, and finally, at seven o’clock on the evening of 16 May 1900, Major Karri Davies with a patrol of ten men of the Imperial Light Horse rode into Mafeking carrying a box of the Queen’s chocolate for Baden-Powell. Davies was astonished by the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the first people he encountered. One man to whom he identified himself said, “Oh, yes, I heard you were knocking about.”
The next day, when the main body of the relief force marched in and paraded with the garrison, an appropriate amount of enthusiasm was displayed. Neilly was perhaps somewhat carried away when he wrote: “I did not think it was possible for human joy to reach such a white-hot pitch.”26 The relief force was surprised to see how healthy and hearty were the besieged, at least the Europeans; only the Bantu looked emaciated. Many of those in the flying column, certainly those who had been pounding along the border with Plumer, had experienced a more exhausting seven months than had the garrison of Mafeking. The besieged town was able to supply Plumer and his men with luxuries they had not seen in months.
The defenders of Mafeking soon learned what heroes they were to the Empire. Thousands of letters and telegrams poured into the town. The Queen herself sent a message of congratulations, and Baden-Powell was rewarded by being made a major general; at forty-three he was the youngest general officer in the British army. Lady Sarah Wilson was awarded the Royal Red Cross.
The sieges of Kimberley, Ladysmith, and Mafeking, avidly followed while they were in progress, widely celebrated when they were raised, have been given their place in history. Rarely mentioned, however, is the siege of Schweizer Reneke, a small town in the western Transvaal which was invested on 19 August 1900 and was not relieved until 9 January 1901. No one remembers the name of George Chamier, the garrison’s commander. The gallant defenders of Schweizer Reneke had the misfortune to be besieged at a time when the people at home were bored with sieges; they had had enough; besides, there were no newspaper correspondents there. And the British public, which exhausted itself cheering for plucky B-P and the relief of Mafeking, raised not a single cheer for the relief of Schweizer Reneke.
31
PRETORIA
The sideshow of Mafeking over, attention again focussed on the two principal arenas of the war: the central Transvaal where Roberts was poised for his assault on Pretoria, and the area around Ladysmith where Buller, finally, at long last, began to move. Although one of his excuses for remaining inactive had been that he did not have enough mounted men, he left two regiments of cavalry sitting in Ladysmith. On 14 May, thanks to the energy of Dundonald and the poor generalship of Lucas Meyer, the Biggarsberg was forced. Two days later Dundee and Glencoe were occupied and on the 18th, Newcastle. Buller then advanced cautiously on the Drakensberg. He did not move far, but at least he was in motion. Roberts, never one to dally, moved quickly out of Johannesburg; leaving a garrison of 3,000 men there, he marched out with the bulk of his force on Sunday, 3 June 1900, to cover the remaining 40 miles to Pretoria.
On that same warm and bright winter Sunday James F. J. Archibald attended church in Pretoria:
In many a pew there was no father or brother, but only a sad-faced woman in sombre black.... There was not one in the whole church who was not weeping. Near me sat a young girl of twenty, who sobbed aloud during the entire service, as if her heart was broken beyond all comfort; and I afterwards learned that her father and four brothers were all dead, and that her one remaining brother was at St. Helena with Cronjé. In the pew in front of me sat an old grizzled burgher with a heavy gray beard; he needed no rifle to show that he had been for months on commando, for his face was burned by wind and sun. His arm was around his wife, whose head rested on his shoulder. She did not weep, but at frequent intervals she huddled closer to him and grasped his arm more firmly, as if afraid he would leave her. On his other side sat a little girl, who looked around with big, frightened eyes, wondering at the scene.1
That Sunday evening Deneys Reitz and his brother Hjalmar rode into the Pretoria suburb of Sunnyside and found their house there deserted. They knocked on the doors of several neighbors before a shrinking figure finally opened a door a crack and told them that their father, along with Kruger and the rest of the government, had fled. The door was then shut in their faces. The young men returned home, broke into their own house, built a fire, and for the first time in weeks slept in a real bed. “It was nevertheless a dismal homecoming,” said Deneys.
It was a sad and bitter time for the Boers. Since their retreat from the Modder and the Tugela there had been few victories to raise the hearts of the burghers. Jan Smuts summed up the situation and the feelings of his countrymen:
It was everlasting retreat; retreat—wearying, dispiriting retreat. At every stage of the retreat the Boer cause became more hopeless, the Boer army smaller in numbers, and the Boer resources more exhausted. Pretoria—that holy of holies of the Republic of South Africa—was generally expected to mark a decisive stage of the war; to the British commanders the expected final stand at Pretoria and its capture seemed to be the coup de grâce to the Republics; to the Boer rank and file it appeared in advance as the great Armageddon where the Boer force, concentrated from all points of the compass in defence of their central stronghold, would deliver the final united blow from which perhaps the British forces might be sent reeling back to the coast. Perhaps and perhaps not; at any rate the action there would be decisive and thousands of burghers stuck to their commandos in the course of this disastrous retreat simply because they believed that the decisive battle would be fought at Pretoria, and at that battle they were determined to be present.2
But this was not to be. On 29 May the Transvaal Executive Committee had met and decided that their capital could not be saved and that the government should be moved to Middelburg. The gold and the state archives were loaded on a train that night. Archibald was a witness:
Even cabs had been pressed into the service of transferring the treasure of the State from the mint to the train. Bars of the precious metal were thrown out of the cabs on wagons like so much rubbish.
There was bustle and activity, but no noise and no excitement....
It was an extraordinary sight, under the glare of the electric lights, to see this train being loaded with all that was left of the capital of the Republic. It was done decently and rapidly.3
President Kruger, somewhat deaf and suffering from an eye disease, was now almost at the nadir of his career. When it was decided to abandon Pretoria to the British, he boarded a train and turned his back on his capital, his home, and his ailing wife. He was never to see any of them again. This was certainly the saddest day of his life, but before he left Pretoria, in the midst of all the turmoil, the packing, the sad farewells, the anxiety and the worry, the old man took a few minutes to see a young boy who had come a very long way.
In the drawing room of Kruger’s Presidency was a large carved and painted eagle, a present from American admirers. In this room Kruger was introduced to James Francis Smith, a handsome fifteen-year-old messenger boy from New York. The American District Telegraph Company had sent him all the way to South Africa to deliver two packages to the president: one was a long scroll bound up in heavy silk containing a memorial signed by 15,000 schoolboys in New York, 10,000 in Philadelphia, and 4,000 in Boston; the second item was a specially made leather case containing cuttings from the Philadelphia North American, the newspaper which had promoted this scheme. Kruger, his mind on more important matters, was puzzled by these curious gifts, but he courteously thanked young Smith before hurrying off.
With the departure of the government Pretoria turned into a place of confusion and unrest. The Reverend Henry James Batts, the English Baptist minister who had been allowed to remain, said: “Such a medley and riot
has never before been seen in the streets of Pretoria.... The confusion that prevailed was indescribable; nobody seemed to have power really to act.”4
Deneys and Hjalmar Reitz, riding through the streets after their cheerless night at home, found them “swarming with leaderless men, knowing less of the situation than ourselves.... All was utter confusion ... and a great deal of criticism of our leaders.”5 The roads were filled with horses, oxen, carts, and wagons, with agitated and anxious men and women, European and Bantu. Rumours flew about. There was talk of defending the town and rifles were passed out. The government warehouses were broken open, and there was a mad scramble as people fought to get into them and then struggled to make off with their booty in carts, wheelbarrows, children’s wagons, and even baby carriages. One large woman stood guard at a door and with her umbrella beat the heads of all Bantu who tried to enter. There were some who honestly believed that the government had given permission for the looting, but this was not so. Young Jan Smuts, the state attorney, had been left in charge, but his authority was challenged by other politicians, and he struggled unsuccessfully to maintain order. When through the town the weary dispirited burghers passed in retreat there was no one to cheer them. “They found scarcely anything to eat,” said Smuts bitterly, “and thousands passed with sad hearts and empty stomachs through the ungrateful capital.”6 Captain Reichmann wrote in his report: “The Boers were demoralized and absolutely worn out. Patriotism was still alive there, but the enthusiasm had burnt out, and the Boers were not held together with the cement of discipline which makes a formidable unit of so many harmless individuals and which holds men to their work in adversity.”7
In an attempt to shore up their crumbling spirits, Louis Botha rode into town and made a speech in front of the Raadzaal, reminding his listeners that the Americans had once surrendered their capital to the British but had still triumphed. Kruger sent a telegram, which was read aloud, adjuring them to fight on in the name of the Lord. Thus goaded, some made brave talk of making a stand, but when Lieutenant W. W. R. Watson rode into town under a white flag and demanded Pretoria’s unconditional surrender, it was given up without a shot being fired. Botha sadly said good-bye to his wife Annie, heaved himself into the saddle, and rode off behind his retreating burghers. Pretoria, capital of the Transvaal, lay at Lord Roberts’s feet.
Unlike Bloemfontein, Pretoria was a pretty little city with a population of 12,000; almost everyone who saw it was charmed by its appearance. Churchill described it as “a picturesque little town with red or blue roofs peeping out among masses of trees, and here and there an occasional spire or factory chimney.”8 Even Milner, seeing it a few weeks after its capture, had to admit that “Pretoria is a lovely little spot,” but, he told Lady Edward Cecil, it was “ruined by the most horrible vulgarities of the 10th rate continental villadom—German architecture of the Bismarckian era at its worst.”9 Prevost Battersby’s aesthetic sense was also affronted: “Alike in its squalor and its pretentiousness, the place is damned with the dregs of style. It is daubed with the decaying decoration of the Greek and the Goth, and plastered with every fatuity of a false Renaissance.”10
Beautiful or ugly, Pretoria represented Afrikaner civilisation on the veld. The houses were widely separated and a number of them were quite large, some having been built by wealthy uitlanders. As in Johannesburg, it was business as usual in spite of the war. Tilanus and Van Griethuysen sold champagne, whiskeys, brandies, and imported wines; C. Christopulo ran the American Candy Factory; and at Keinton House Restaurant, which prided itself on its “French kitchen,” one could sit down to dinner at the “best table in town” for five shillings. Hot and dusty farmers could come to the baths in Vermeulen Street and have a warm tub, a shower, or a swim in “as fine a bath as any in South Africa.” Still, the wide streets were unpaved, dusty in dry weather and seas of mud when it rained.
In the centre of town was Church Square, dominated by the Raadzaal and the Dutch Reformed Church where Kruger had often preached. It was an imposing structure but in no way a handsome one. On Church Street, the principal thoroughfare, was the modest house of President Kruger. It was here on 29 May that Kruger had said good-bye to his dying wife, leaving her to the care of their daughter (Mrs. F. C. Eloff), who lived next door, and to the British. Further down Church Street, west, near the race course, was the house of Captain J. W. “Koos” Bosman of the staatsartillerie. He was still with the fighting burghers, but his beautiful Scots wife Eva, nee Turnbull, and his three small daughters were still there. Unlike the loyal inhabitants of Bloemfontein, the citizens of Pretoria did not flee. Indeed, there now seemed no place for them to go. The wives of Botha, Lucas Meyer, Jan Smuts, and other Boer leaders remained in town.
Among the first soldiers to enter Pretoria were Winston Churchill and his cousin, the young Duke of Marlborough, who early in the morning on 5 June raced ahead of the troops to free the imprisoned officers. The Model School was no longer used as a prison. Richard Harding Davis, the American war correspondent, in an article for Scribners said it was because some of the officers had made rude remarks to women passing by, but more probably overcrowding and the need for tighter security prompted the move. Churchill and Marlborough were directed to a barbed wire enclosure on the edge of town. The prisoners called it “the bird cage.”
Here more than 100 officers were housed in a long shed with a corrugated zinc roof, the interior decorated with pictures cut from illustrated British magazines of the Queen, Lord Roberts, and celebrated actresses. Living conditions were not as pleasant as they had been at the Model School, but books and magazines were allowed and the prisoners hectographed a little newspaper called the Gram which was edited by Lord Roslyn and “kopje-righted.” British interests in the Transvaal had been looked after by Adalbert S. Hay, the American consul general., and John Coolidge, the vice-consul. Hay had taken an interest in the welfare of the prisoners, both officers and men, and he had represented their grievances to the Transvaal government.
When Churchill and Marlborough rounded a corner and saw the “bird cage,” Churchill took off his hat and gave a cheer which was echoed by the prisoners who came tumbling out of their barracks into the enclosure. Marlborough found the commandant and demanded the surrender of the prison. The gate was opened, the guards were made prisoners, and Lieutenant Cecil Grimshaw of the Dublin Fusiliers produced a Union Jack he had made. It was hoisted in place of the Transvaal Vierkleur; the time, as Churchill carefully noted, was 8:47 A.M.
Early in the afternoon Roberts made a triumphal entry with his army: 25,531 officers and men, 6,971 horses, 116 guns, and 76 machine guns. Lord Roberts and his staff sat their horses in Church Square to review the troops. The released British officers lined the streets. As the troops came marching down Church Street the three little Bosman girls raced out to climb on their garden gate and watch them. Julie Hennie, the eldest (then about eight years old) remembered the awesome sight:
The road leading from the west in the main street (Church Street) leading to the square was full from side to side, probably the other main streets were just as full because they numbered thousands. Silent, with music at intervals, one could almost not realize they were humans. I could hear my own young voice singing, “Jesus Loves Me” where I sat on the gate....11
One of her sisters called out: “Where is our daddy?” A Highlander stopped before them, held out a penny to Julie Hennie, and patted the head of three-year-old Bessie, the youngest. “What a bonnie lassie,” he said.
The troops were tired, grimy, and footsore, but they felt that at last they had reached their final destination, the end of a very long road. Johanna (called Hansie) van Warmelo, an attractive twenty-two-year-old Boer girl, watched them. She had two brothers on commando and a third was a prisoner of war. Defiantly she wore a Vierkleur ribbon around her hat. At one rest halt a weary soldier sank down and groaned, “Thank God the war is over.” Hansie leaned over and hissed at him: “Tommy Atkins, the war has just begun!”
The soldier looked up at her, sighed, and closed his eyes.
“I do not like you,” one girl said to a trooper while patting his horse. “You have come to take away my country.”
“Bless you, miss,” he said cheerfully, “we’ve come to give it yer.”
In Church Square the Union Jack which had been made by Lady Roberts and flown over Bloemfontein and Johannesburg was raised by the Duke of Westminster, an officer on Roberts’s staff. The Reverend Batts watched the ceremony with emotion: “I saw a big Australian mop his eyes at the moment and I felt a lump in my throat.”12 Roberts gave Westminster an envelope addressed “To the officer who hoists the Union Jack (when that happy event takes place), Pretoria, South Africa.” Inside was a cigar and a note from a Mr. W. H. Knowles: “Thanks! Have a cigar!” Lady Roberts’s flag, having been ceremoniously raised, was then taken down and replaced with another Union Jack, 12 feet long: this one had been made by three women living near Cape Town who had given it to Roberts with the request that it fly over the capital of the Transvaal.
The Reverend Batts noted the delight with which the Bantu greeted the conquering British and that they “for a few days showed a disposition to be troublesome ... because they thought all the old laws as they affected them were suspended, and they could take liberties which were not allowed under Boer rule.” They were soon disillusioned, and “it was rather a surprise to them to discover that there was no alteration whatever in their conditions.”13
Great Boer War Page 43
