At this magical lair, for a few days in late October, there gathered, snatched from the ether, so to speak, the leaders of both governments: General Louis Botha and President Steyn. Both men had trekked hundreds of miles, cutting a great arc through the northern bush veld, to avoid the British columns. De la Rey and Smuts played host. The absent guest was General De Wet. He was expected shortly. The newcomers must have enjoyed the respite. Each day they bathed in the pool close to the farm, and after a breakfast of fresh oranges and nartjes they would discuss plans.3 But their task was a heavy one. Roberts’s policy of large-scale farm burning had changed the war utterly: to the eyes of the guerrillas, it was both a curse and a blessing. They must now hammer out a joint offensive strategy to counter it. A strategy agreed by the allies; that was the key to success. How could they achieve it?
From the beginning of the war – indeed, shortly before its outbreak – relations between the two allies had been dangerously variable. In September 1899, the Transvaalers had been eager to rush Natal before White’s reinforcements arrived from India. The Free State had dragged its feet. But since then, the Free State had been setting the pace, and had virtually accused the Transvaal of cowardice. The two republics were, of course, fundamentally opposite kinds of state: a sheep-and-cow-republic compared with a gold-republic. Hence the divergent attitudes to war and peace. There was also the cleft of personalities, the clash of Steyn with Botha.
It was Steyn who had taken over from Kruger the role of the iron-willed prophet of the volk; and a prophet he looked – with his glittering dome of a head, flaming red beard and whiskers, and stern, upright carriage. How well the President suited the bleached red plains of the Free State!4 There were no mixed blessings there, no gold in those hills (this was half a century before the discovery that the Free State, too, had its own Rand near Kroonstad), no diamonds to muddy the veld with their slag-heaps, and so few Uitlanders that they were welcome. The wealth of their neighbours had imperceptibly and painlessly rubbed off on these sheep-farmers and cattle-ranchers; the railway profits paid more than half their taxes, and bought their guns and rifles.5 Unlike the volk of the other three states, they remained an unchallenged majority of the white population. Hence the purity of Steyn’s Afrikaner nationalism. Despite the wholesale surrenders of the burghers ever since the fall of Bloemfontein, Steyn and De Wet had never wavered in their denunciation of peace talks. They would fight to the bitter end to preserve their independence.6 They would keep their part of the map from being coloured red. It was a recipe for national suicide, an Afrikaner equivalent of ‘better-dead-than-red’. Yet, given that the Free State had virtually no economic attractions for new immigrants, Steyn had no potential political rivals to challenge his leadership of the volk to a glorious death.
How different, of course, was the position of all the Transvaal leaders. In a mixed white community – part-Boer, part-British, part-Jewish and cosmopolitan – politics led inevitably to compromise. Hence an extra dimension to that spasm of despair just before the fall of Pretoria, felt by even the most resolute Transvaalers: Kruger, Botha, De la Rey, and Smuts. What was the point of going on fighting, if their efforts were certain to come to an inglorious end, if there was no hope of any success in the field, and if the country would be devastated from end to end in the process? This was the cri de coeur of the Transvaal at the end of May. Botha had repeated it again in September, demoralized after the collapse of his army following Buller’s victories in August. Behind it was more than simply a difference of character (and Louis Botha was, by contrast to Steyn, a delightfully warm-hearted person). There was also a simple political calculation. Death and glory had less attraction for the volk in the Transvaal, when a hundred thousand Uitlanders were waiting to pick up the pieces.
The Transvaalers had now largely recovered their morale. Indeed, Smuts later claimed that they had all been converted unequivocally to Steyn’s way of thinking, by Steyn’s threat to go-it-alone. Botha, however, seems to have continued to oscillate between the emotional attractions of fighting on regardless, and the duty to save the volk from further sacrifices. No minutes of the conference at Cypherfontein have been preserved, but we can guess the main lines of discussion.7
The case for continuing the struggle rested on the proposition that guerrilla war was – at present – practicable. From the end of March, De Wet had proved this in the Free State: snatching up Broadwood’s guns at Sannah’s Post from under Roberts’s nose, snapping up the Irish Rifles at Reddersburg. From July, De la Rey had proved it in the Western Free State by his daring ambush of the Scots Greys at Zilikat’s Nek. Since then, the techniques of guerrilla war, and the areas that the guerrillas controlled, had been dramatically extended. But, however practicable, was a guerrilla war a ‘civilized war’? This was the question that obviously troubled the consciences of the Transvaal leaders, especially Botha, and explains why they clung so long to the strategy of regular warfare on the eastern front. Botha must have read enough military history – Smuts certainly had – to know what a guerrilla war inevitably entails for civilians. Sherman’s march through Georgia, the Prussian treatment of the French franc-tireurs; they cast ugly shadows on the veld, these international precedents. And a guerrilla war in South Africa, however gentlemanly the main combatants professed to be, threatened to have elements of savagery absent from warfare in more civilized states.8 Already the Derdeport ‘massacre’ – actually only two white civilians had been killed by Holdsworth’s and Linchwe’s Africans – had woken the spectre of a black peril, which, however exaggerated in Boer propaganda,9 was real enough at the back of every Boer’s mind: the ‘black care’, that rode with every commando.
In short, here was a daunting moral problem. Was it fair to the volk (women and children, as well as the menfolk) to involve them in such a savage kind of war? For the women and children it would be like a return to the dark pages of voortrekker history, when their grandparents had struggled against the Kaffirs: women and children pressed into service, each farm a commissary and an arsenal; their homes looted and burnt; then forced to choose between going as refugees to the cities, or following the laagers into battle.
This brutal pattern, inevitable in guerrilla war, had already begun to emerge on the western front. Whole areas had been ravaged; Linchwe’s Africans were said to be on the warpath once again. The veld was reverting to desert, the western border to anarchy.10
There were also doubts about the practical sides of the problem. How long would guerrilla war be possible, assuming that Roberts continued to ravage the countryside? Farm burning, as practised by Roberts, was a blessing of a sort, but only in the short term. To get the burghers back into the field, it had perhaps been essential. How else to persuade the law-abiding burgher that he was absolved from his oath of neutrality? How better to illustrate the point, than with a burnt and looted farmhouse, that this was the way Roberts honoured his side of the bargain, kept his promise to protect (or at least pay compensation for) the property of all burghers who surrendered? Drastic as the fiery medicine was, it did wonders for the morale of the burghers. But what of the long term? 11 Farm burning was designed to make guerrilla war impossible, and in certain areas it had already begun to achieve this. The Magalies valley was becoming a blackened desert, useless as a base for De la Rey’s guerrillas, so efficient were Clements’s columns at burning grain, seizing stock and trampling crops. Hence the retreat to the Kosters River valley. But where to next, when this retreat was denied them? In such an arid country as South Africa, once the commandos let themselves be squeezed off the farm land they would wither away.
So it was vital from both points of view – humanitarian and military – to find an answer to farm-burning. And the answer both republican governments gave was simple: invade Cape Colony and Natal, British territories where farm-burning would be politically impossible.12
This was the policy agreed by Botha and Steyn at Cypherfontein during the conference. Had it been carried into effect as a joint offensiv
e, it might possibly have changed the whole course of the war. But the divisions between the two allies ran too deep – and, anyway, luck was against them. After a few days, the telegraph wire behind the farm began to vibrate with secret British plans for raiding the Kosters valley. Forewarned, the various commandos – Botha, Steyn, De la Rey, Smuts and all – dispersed. De Wet thus never reached them; instead, Steyn joined him before he reached Cypherfontein, and they both recrossed the Vaal and rejoined De Wet’s men at Bothaville, on the Valsch River. All thought of concerted strategy was abandoned – indeed, Steyn and De Wet suffered a near-fatal disaster.
Their departure put paid to hopes of carrying out, first, another dramatic joint offensive: attacking the gold-mines of the Rand. The plan, proposed by Smuts, was a volte-face, perhaps as a reprisal for farm burning. Smuts, like Botha, had repudiated the idea of attacking the mines in May, before the British had seized Johannesburg. Now that the mines were politically controlled by Britain, Smuts thought it fair to try to destroy them. He also recognized that at the root of the war were the mine-owners: Beit, Wernher and the others. Threaten their money-bags, and they would lose their appetite for war.13 For Smuts, it was a curiously naive plan, even if De Wet and Steyn had been prepared to help.
Meanwhile, Smuts and De la Rey lay low beyond the Magaliesberg, carrying out the main task of a guerrilla movement: to survive. Their time would come.
The near-fatal disaster to Steyn’s and De Wet’s Free State Commando at Bothaville on the Valsch River happened soon after dawn on 6 November. What it proved was that even De Wet could be caught napping. Only the speed of their own flight, the heroism of their rearguard, and the slowness of the main British column, commanded by Major-General Charles Knox, saved both De Wet and Steyn from death or capture. As it was, De Wet lost his entire artillery: his four last Krupp field-guns, a pom-pom, and trophies from both Colenso and Sannah’s Post (a 15-pounder from Colonel Long’s 14th Battery and a 12-pounder from Broadwood’s Q Battery). Still worse, the Khakis trapped the rearguard: 155 men, 25 of whom were killed and 30 wounded. And of those who escaped, others, too, were wounded. It was the most shattering defeat De Wet had yet suffered himself. What made it doubly humiliating was that the British had exchanged roles with the Boers. The men of De Wet’s main outpost had simply gone to sleep (despite those threats of the ant-heap punishment), and then the small British advance guard – only six hundred, compared to De Wet’s eight hundred – routed the burghers.
It was the totally unexpected appearance of the British, in full daylight, that precipitated the disaster. De Wet himself had that moment received a report from a corporal sent to watch the British camp. ‘Yes,’ said the corporal, ‘we saw the smoke rising from General Knox’s camp-fires on the other bank of the Valsch.’ This was about seven miles off. A moment later, De Wet heard rifle fire. Was someone shooting cattle for food? But it was the Khakis, on a hill three hundred yards away. ‘The scene which ensued,’ De Wet confessed later, ‘was unlike anything I had ever witnessed before.’ Many burghers were lying asleep, for it was only twenty minutes after dawn, rolled up in their blankets. Now there was pandemonium. Some people threw their saddles on to their horses and galloped away, leaving everything; others did not even try to up-saddle, but galloped away bare-back. ‘Don’t run away! Come back and storm the position!’ roared De Wet. No use. He galloped after them (using his sjambok freely, no doubt). Still no use. As De Wet grabbed one group of terrified burghers, another group slipped through his hands. And so it went on, De Wet dodging from group to group, as they fled in a wild, panic-stricken rout that only ended when the burghers were out of range of the guns.14 The one great blessing was the safety of the most precious thing entrusted to the Commando: the life of President Steyn. Steyn’s Adjutant, Du Preez, had kept his horse, Scot, ready saddled and tied to a food wagon. Steyn galloped off, leaving Du Preez to give covering fire. Steyn lost nothing except his cuff-links.15
Meanwhile, a small rearguard – burghers who could not find their horses — began to return the enemy’s fire from some white farm buildings across the road from the laager, not only to help De Wet’s retreat but to save the Krupp field-guns parked in a kraal. In turn, the British advance guard (actually, Lieutenant-Colonel P. W. J. Le Gallais, with the 5th and 8th MI) galloped forward and seized a red farmhouse, only about two hundred yards away. A four-hour duel followed, a duel between about 150 men on either side, firing field-guns at a range almost close enough to throw a stone. The heroism displayed on both sides made it one of the most ferocious and gruesome little actions of the war.
No eye-witness accounts survive from the Boer side, but one can picture the scene: Lee •303 bullets hammering on the stone walls of the garden, where the burghers were huddled in the early morning sunshine; three snipers hiding in the pig-sty out in the open (for hours they led a charmed life, then they were spotted, and vanished in a cloud of red dust and shrapnel); four more took refuge in a white farmhouse, where there were some women and children; all four men were killed by a shell, but the women and children were miraculously spared.16
From the British side there is one vibrant description of that terrifying ordeal. Major William Hickie, staff officer to Le Gallais, had been sent back to heliograph for reinforcements. It was not till eight o’clock that General Knox finally appeared on the scene. ‘The General is an old woman,’ said Hickie bitterly, ‘and now he had better go home. … If Knox had had the same dash as Le Gallais we should have taken the whole lot, bagged the whole crowd.’ As it was, Le Gallais was left beleaguered for hours in the red farmhouse, and Hickie himself had to set off to organize reinforcements as best he could. He then plunged back into the whirlpool of bullets, losing his horse, shot in five places.
He found the red farmhouse had become a butcher’s shop. Through the open doorway, the Boers had picked off the officers: the chief himself, Le Gallais, with a ghastly wound in the body; Lieutenant-Colonel Wally Ross, the CO of the 8th MI, with the lower part of his jaw shot away; Major Williams, Ross’s staff officer, with six bullets in him – altogether, eight men, with ghastly wounds.
Hickie took charge, but for the next two hours he lay there, unable to stir. ‘It was a terrible two hours,’ he confessed later. The British 12-pounders were bursting case and shrapnel on the kraal only forty yards away; and the Boers were using explosive (that is, hollow-nosed or soft-nosed) bullets which smashed to pieces the walls of the farmhouse above his head. Eventually, Knox’s main force began to arrive; so Major Hickie and Major Lean, who had forty men of the 5th MI, gave the orders to their men: fix bayonets and charge. The Boers were too quick for them. At the white farmhouse, up went the white flag, and out came the Boers with their hands up.17
After such an ordeal the British soldiers were in no mood for gallantry. In Hickie’s words: ‘Our men were all wild as nearly all our casualties were from explosive bullets ‘ (contrary to the unsigned Hague convention). ‘I had all the prisoners searched for explosive bullets and found 2 with them in their pockets. These I ordered to be shot in half an hour. Unfortunately I met the general [Knox] & told him – he said “All right, I leave it to you.” Ten minutes afterwards he sent to me that he would have them tried first. Result that now we have cooled down, we won’t shoot a man in cold blood.’ But the incident only increased his men’s bitterness towards that ‘old woman’ the General and his ‘brilliant’ staff of red-tabbed officers, whose only interest in the battle seemed to concern the equitable disposal of De Wet’s laager. (Official orders: “The wagons on the left hand side of the Road are for De Lisle’s force to loot, and those on the right for Le Gallais.’) Hickie was too busy to loot. There were dead comrades everywhere; dying men to attend to; Le Gallais himself, perhaps the most gallant leader of mounted men in the whole British army, died the same evening.18
Characteristically, General Knox made little attempt to follow up Le Gallais’s victory, and De Wet’s men recovered their self-confidence. Within a few days, De Wet was back to his ol
d form, plundering and burning garrisons with apparent impunity. On 23 November he captured De Wetsdorp (the small town named after his father).
The golden chance, for which Generals Smuts and De la Rey had been waiting so long, presented itself a fortnight before Christmas in the great gorge at Nooitgedacht.
For three months, ever since General Clements had first stormed up the Moot (the nickname for this once fertile valley of the Magalies), breathing smoke and flames, the burghers had been forced on to the defensive. Smuts himself bore the brunt of the campaign, wearing both his official hats: member of Kruger’s old government (he was still, technically, the State Attorney) and newly created Assistant Commandant-General, making him De la Rey’s right-hand man. The double task had proved mainly concerned with administration, political as well as military, but was anything but dull. Smuts had to regroup and revitalize the commandos of the Western Transvaal. This meant appointing new leaders, expelling the burghers whose loyalty was suspect (almost as brutal a business as Clements’s rampage up the Moot), even condemning and executing those found guilty of treason. For political commissar’s work of this kind, Smuts’s legal training and cool brain admirably suited him. To the tactical demands of the guerrilla war, an endless series of humiliating retreats, he was less well suited. Hence his delight in early December, when the British, grown careless after weeks when the guerrillas had lain low, gave Smuts and De la Rey their first small chance to seize the initiative.19
The Boer War Page 75
