The point was clear and Leyds was persuaded to be more resolute about putting himself first, if it came to that. It did, in early November 1895. After the railway business he spent a few days’ holiday in Durban, where Louise had been since July, but his health didn’t improve. He sent two telegrams, one shortly after the other, to H. van Boeschoten, his deputy in Pretoria. In the first he asked the Executive Council for leave. ‘To my regret, my throat is worse instead of better and I must have treatment for my laryngitis immediately and go to Europe without delay.’ The second telegram was worded more strongly. ‘Doctor says postponement treatment irresponsible. Condition not life-threatening but could deprive use of throat permanently. Doctor says treatment in Africa possible but recommends specialised attention in Europe also better for rest, environment, etc. I hope President, etc. will approve.’ And finally, ‘If I don’t get leave, I’ll have to resign.’91
It never came to that. On 10 November 1895, he wrote to tell Moltzer that he had booked a passage on the Dunottar Castle, which would be sailing from Cape Town in two weeks’ time. He went alone. ‘You can imagine how much I would have liked to bring Louise with me, and how reluctant she was to let me go alone. But then the children and their governess would have had to come as well, and I can’t afford it. This unfortunate trip is already costing me enough. Well, as long as I get better.’
He was counting on Dr Fränkel, a famous specialist in Berlin. After a pleasant crossing and a brief stop in Amsterdam ‘to see the family’, he went on to Germany. His first visit to the physician, on 18 December, lifted his spirits. ‘Consultation favourable, recovery definite.’ He wrote to Moltzer a week later, on Christmas Day, to say the treatment was producing results. ‘And there I was, stuck with it in Africa, where no one was able to do a thing about it. It made life sour. The injections, ointments and electric therapy I’m getting now seem so simple’ that he wondered whether it had been necessary to go to so much expense in the first place. ‘When I see the palace that Fritz Fränkel lives in, I quake to think of my wallet.’ And he missed his family. ‘It’s lonely here. People are kind, but that doesn’t make up for being without my wife and children.’ He felt it most at the Christmas dinner he had been to that evening, which was ‘really a family occasion’ and which had left him feeling ‘like a fish out of water’.92
By New Year’s Eve the mood had passed. Melancholy had given way to full-blown panic. On 31 December 1895 Leyds received news that ‘the troops of the Chartered Co have taken Rustenburg’. A British invasion in the Transvaal—surely that was not possible? He immediately sent ‘cable after cable to Pretoria’, but no answer came back. ‘The British have probably intercepted my telegrams.’ Nothing to do but send a letter. Desperate for news, he wrote to Louise: ‘Where are you? What’s happening to you? . . . If only you and the children had come with me!’93
To arms
Berlin, January 1896
It would be ‘easier than Matabeleland’, Rhodes assured him. That was all the encouragement Jameson needed. Doctor Jim was always ready for a challenge, and two years had passed since the expedition against Lobengula. It was time for a new venture, now with a touch of chivalry. Countrymen in danger: ‘Thousands of unarmed men, women and children of our race . . . at the mercy of well-armed Boers.’ That’s what was said in the letter he had been given by the conspirators in Johannesburg. He would fill in the date when the time came. The melodramatic appeal spurred his men to action. Four hundred mounted police from Rhodesia, a hundred volunteers from the Cape Colony and another hundred coloured auxiliaries; six Maxim machine guns, three pieces of artillery. It was not an impressive force, but, according to Jameson, big enough. The Boers’ so-called military prowess was ‘the biggest bubble of the century’. On the night of Sunday 29 December 1895 Jameson gave the sign to proceed. The raiders struck camp in Pitsani in Bechuanaland and crossed the border—heading for one of the biggest fiascos in colonial history.
The Jameson Raid was badly planned and poorly executed. It was the brainchild of Sir Henry Loch. An Uitlander uprising in Johannesburg, an invading force coming to their aid, and the high commissioner, acting as mediator, to manoeuvre the Transvaal towards a general election in which the Uitlanders could vote. Exit Kruger. Rhodes developed the plan in the summer of 1895. His business partner Alfred Beit donated funds, Sir Hercules Robinson consented with quaking knees and Chamberlain obtained exactly the right amount of information to officially know nothing about it. The Times agreed to launch a propaganda campaign. The British South Africa Company was assigned a strip of land near the border in Bechuanaland to station a police force, which was passed off as security guards for the railway construction site. The uprising in Johannesburg would be organised by Charles Leonard, chairman of the Transvaal National Union, Lionel Phillips, Hermann Eckstein’s successor as president of the Chamber of Mines, the American engineer John Hays Hammond, the mine owner George Farrar and Rhodes’s brother Frank, a former cavalry officer. Weapons were smuggled into the city and hidden in the gold mines.
The plan had two flaws. The first was the assumption that everyone involved had the same goal in mind, which wasn’t the case. The second was that an Uitlander uprising was bound to occur sooner or later. But things turned out differently.
Rhodes still had his vision of a single South African federation ultimately under British rule. But Chamberlain would settle for nothing less than the establishment of direct imperial control. And Johannesburg wasn’t the mutinous tinderbox that Rhodes and Jameson had thought it to be. There was a certain amount of dissatisfaction in the city, but no revolutionary fire flared up in the streets. According to the journalist Francis Younghusband, the people of Johannesburg weren’t the type. Their only concern, he said, was to make money. This was certainly true of some of the Randlords. J.B. Robinson, Barney Barnato and others, mainly of German extraction, were firmly on Kruger’s side. In the course of December 1895 even the conspirators were clawing their way back. They fell out with Rhodes over the flag, which was supposed to suggest something revolutionary, but they insisted on the Transvaal Vierkleur. They wanted reforms, nothing more. No British flag over Johannesburg, Hammond proclaimed in public.
At the end of December they informed Rhodes that ‘the polo tournament’—the code name for the uprising—would have to be postponed. At the same time Rhodes received a telegram from London urging him to act without delay. The British government was going to have its hands full with a confrontation with the United States—a border conflict between British Guiana and Venezuela had escalated. Chamberlain thought it best to go ahead right away; otherwise they would have to postpone everything for at least two years. Another factor was that a journalist from The Times, Flora Shaw, had heard that the Transvaal secretary of state, Willem Leyds, was in London, on his way to Berlin. She was an admirer of Rhodes, fully aware of the plot, and she decided to interview Leyds. The meeting confirmed her suspicions. There was nothing at all the matter with Leyds. It was just a bit too obvious, the way he was sucking those throat lozenges. She had figured him out. He was on his way to the Continent to conduct an ‘anti-Rhodes’ campaign. His throat complaint was a ‘diplomatic illness’. All the more reason to get moving.94
No one could accuse Cecil Rhodes of being indecisive, but this time he was at a loss to know how to handle the conflicting messages from London and Johannesburg. All he could come up with were a few half-hearted telegrams, which left Jameson enough scope to take the decision himself—as he did with reckless abandon. He had rustled up only 500 of the 1500 armed troops they had planned, but Doctor Jim wasn’t the kind to let anything stand in his way. Hadn’t he once bragged, ‘I could drive them out of the Transvaal with five hundred men armed with sjamboks’?
Four days later it was clear who was wielding the whip. Kruger had known about the raid by 30 December. Jameson’s men had cut the telegraph lines, but not those to Pretoria. Hundreds of Boers were armed and ready within a few hours. The uprising in Johannesburg didn’t
materialise. The Boer commandants were able to focus their attention on the invaders. On New Year’s Day 1896 they drove them back—in Krugersdorp, appropriately enough. A day later the raiders surrendered at Doornkop. Jameson’s ‘rescue mission’ landed him in a Pretoria jail.95
Leyds sighed with relief. The good news had reached Berlin that same day. He could stop worrying about his wife and children. He was still having trouble with his telegrams, but he knew from other sources ‘that Pretoria (which is probably where you are) has not been affected, that the British troops have been defeated and Jameson, White and Willoughby are in jail in Pretoria’.
As he was already in Berlin, he might be able to make himself useful. Not that Flora Shaw was right. Leyds had really come to Europe to save his voice. But Dr Fränkel’s treatment was working and this was a political windfall. Rhodes and Jameson had done the Boer republic a favour. ‘The entire continent is on our side,’ Leyds remarked. He would be a fool not to take advantage of it. ‘The whole of Germany is over the moon, rich and poor, powerful and lowly. The papers are full of it.’ It gave him new energy. ‘I’m doing all I can to turn the whole of Europe against Britain. I’m working like a dog . . . Yesterday I went to the Chancellor. The day before, the Duke of Mecklenburg came round to the hotel to congratulate me. And so forth.’
For its part, the German government took advantage of Leyds’s presence. The foreign minister, Marshall von Bieberstein, asked Leyds ‘whether we would be able to do it alone and get the better of Jameson without help from outside’. Leyds’s affirmative reply resulted in the congratulatory telegram that Kaiser Wilhelm sent Kruger on 3 January 1896. The telegram was only one in a recent exchange of cordialities between the two heads of state. It caused a diplomatic stir because of the remark that the Boers had succeeded in repelling the attack ‘without requesting assistance from friendly powers’. Three days later Leyds was received in audience. In response to his thanks for the emperor’s unequivocal support, he was assured that ‘if things had gone differently, he would have ordered troops from the German frigate, which was in L.M. [Lourenço Marques] at the time, to “boot” Jameson out of the Transvaal’.His militant language was infectious. Leyds advised Pretoria not to be lenient towards the insurgents. ‘You have the sympathy and support of governments as well as the public, as long as you stand firm . . . At least one of the prisoners’ heads must roll.’96
Besides political backing, the Boers also had the approval of the business world in Germany. Leyds was particularly pleased with the spontaneous support of an old acquaintance. ‘The most committed of them all is Lippert. He and his wife have come specially from Hamburg and they’re staying here in the same hotel.’ All the trouble Leyds had been through with Lippert over dynamite and railway issues in recent years was forgotten. ‘It’s truly from the heart. It’s a matter of sentiment, not a calculated move.’ They had a lot to talk about. A Franco-German telegraph link with southern Africa to break the British monopoly. Their own mail service to Europe. And, of course, reinforcements for the Transvaal’s defences. The Boers needed modern weapons to defend themselves against any future attack. Lippert was the right person for that. He dealt in all kinds of explosives and had useful connections in the arms industry.97
Leyds left Germany in mid-February 1896 feeling satisfied. His throat had been treated successfully—it cost him 1000 marks in the end—he had received diplomatic support at the highest level and established business connections that might come in useful. The only disappointment was that he hadn’t managed to find support for the international conference he had proposed. Germany and Russia seemed to be in favour, but the Executive Council hadn’t backed him. Joubert and Chief Justice Kotzé thought it too risky, and Kruger was reluctant to force the issue. Leyds regretted ‘that Pretoria did not give me a free hand. The Great Powers were ready to guarantee the independence and neutrality of the Republic along the same lines as Belgium and Switzerland.’98
On the positive side, there was the immense personal gratification of meeting with Otto von Bismarck, 80 years old and leading a quiet life on his estate, Friedrichsruhe. ‘It was an interesting day for me, one of the highlights of my life,’ he wrote to Louise. ‘My first impression was very old. But he perked up as we went on, over breakfast and especially after a few glasses of champagne.’ And once he did, there was no stopping him. Leyds was surprised by the unusually high pitch of his voice, and by his lack of reserve. The empress and her ladies-in-waiting and German colonial politics were the main targets of his sharp tongue, but the British bore the real brunt of it. You couldn’t trust them further than you could throw them, the former chancellor warned. One could get along with an Englishman socially, but as soon as they went into politics they hung their conscience next to their umbrella on the coat rack. That was an intriguing characterisation from the architect of realpolitik. Leyds must have been mindful of it when he stopped off in London on his way home to pay a brief courtesy call on Joe Chamberlain.99
At the end of March 1896 Leyds was back in Pretoria. His wife and children were fine, apart from Louise’s and Louis’s usual health problems. All was well with the president too. He had kept his nerve during the raid and a sense of proportion afterwards. Though many Boers were clamouring for revenge, against the raiders, against the conspirators, against the whole of Johannesburg, Kruger relied on his shrewd political judgment. Strategic generosity was what was needed, he explained to the other Boer leaders. Extradite Jameson and his men to Britain and let them stand trial there, before the eyes of a sceptical world. He managed to persuade them, as he did about the best way to deal with the conspirators in Johannesburg.
At the beginning of the raid the conspirators had set up a Reform Committee with scores of others, in the hope of still achieving something by political means. Once again, this turned out to be a mistake. Virtually all of them were arrested and tried. One or two, such as Leonard, got away. The saddlebags belonging to Jameson and his raiders contained more than enough incriminating evidence to hang them: telegrams, codebooks and a copy of the dramatic letter. Five of the conspirators—Phillips, Hammond, Farrar, Frank Rhodes and the secretary of the Reform Committee, Percy FitzPatrick—were sentenced to death. Others received prison sentences and fines. The death sentences sparked off a heated debate in the Executive Council. Kruger argued in favour of making a grand gesture—good for public relations—towards the condemned men. Leyds, who had meanwhile joined in the discussion, was categorically against any remission. Just for once, he found his fiercest opponent, General Joubert, on his side. Kruger pushed the compromise through in stages. First, the death penalty was commuted to 15 years’ imprisonment and, after that, fines. All in all, the conspirators paid £200,000. They were reimbursed by Rhodes and Beit. The two super-rich financiers could easily afford it. In the end, the Jameson Raid cost them twice as much—each.100
It was an illuminating lesson in leadership from the 70-year-old Kruger. Relentless in battle, merciful in victory. Everyone took sides with Oom Paul. All the doubts about his judgment evaporated, the charges of nepotism and cronyism faded away. His boorishness became just one of those things. Only for a while, but the effect was startling. After the hearing, all the evidence was recorded in a Green Book, which identified Rhodes and Jameson as the main culprits and hinted at the complicity of the British government. The Boers were drawn together in resolute unanimity and a shared aversion to the British.
In shared adversity, too. In 1896, as if the devil had taken a hand, nature conspired against them as well: drought, locusts, famine and then rinderpest on top of it all. It looks like all the plagues of Egypt, Leyds wrote to the Duke of Mecklenburg in May. ‘It was the ancient Egyptians’ good fortune that there were no British in those days,’ he added. But the Boers remained stoical. Leyds could not have known at the time what devastation this first outbreak of African cattle plague would wreak. The epidemic wiped out about two and a half million head of cattle, an estimated 80 to 90 per cent of the entire herd
in the southern African subcontinent. Sheep, pigs and goats were also susceptible to the virus, as were gnu, kudu and antelope in the wild. The unmitigated suffering of the cattle farmers, black and white, was heartbreaking. The epidemic also had a calamitous impact on society as a whole. In spite of the new railway, the oxwagon was then still by far the most common form of transport.101
The one glimmer of light—in poignant contrast—was the flourishing state of the Republic’s finances. As if to widen the chasm between the pastoral and industrial worlds that coexisted in the Transvaal, business was booming on the Rand in 1896. No rinderpest tragedy, not so much as a scar after the botched coup d’état. Just fortunes being made from gold. The railway company and the Transvaal’s treasury were reaping huge profits. The railway company’s turnover soared from 20 to 36 million guilders and its profit from 4.5 to 10.5 million. This was thanks to the insatiable demand for coal and the flow of goods that came via the eastern and south-eastern lines, not instead of but as well as the southern line. By contract 85 per cent, nearly 9 million guilders of the 10.5 million guilders’ worth of profit went straight to the state. As a result, the Transvaal government’s revenue that year came to an unprecedented £3.9 million, or 47 million guilders.
Politicians and government employees benefited personally as well. Salaries in the civil service rose significantly. Leyds’s annual income, for instance—after an increase from £1200 to £1650 in 1889—went up to £2300 in one go.102
Forty-seven million Dutch guilders. That was an immense sum of money, equal to 80 million German marks or 100 million French francs. In Germany and France one could buy a whole lot of rifles and cannons for that. And that is exactly what the Transvaal government did. At the time of the Jameson Raid it transpired that many of the civilians who were called up for military service did not possess suitable weapons. Commandant-General Joubert had rushed off to order batches of rifles wherever he could find them. But these would not be enough for the inevitable ‘next time’. The Executive Council decided that, as a precaution, every ablebodied man should be equipped with a modern firearm at government expense. Huge supplies of rifles and ammunition were brought in within a few months; even duplicates. Money wasn’t a problem. First, 30,000 Martini-Henry rifles, because Joubert was accustomed to them. Then 37,000 Mausers and 20 million cartridges, when tests showed they were actually superior. Light, solid, easy to handle, suitable for rapid fire, good short-range performance, small lightweight bullets, smokeless powder: modern and state-of-the-art. A few years later this last feature proved its worth many times over.
The Boer War Page 13
