But what did Roberts have in mind? He was many kilometres ahead and they had neither a field telegraph nor a heliograph. So they knew nothing about the agreement Roberts and Krause had reached when discussing Johannesburg’s surrender that morning. Krause had agreed not to damage the mines provided the Boer commandos were given 24 hours to effect an orderly retreat. Otherwise there might be civilian casualties. Roberts saw no harm in it—something he would live to regret. He thought it was worth waiting a day to protect the City of Gold.
Hamilton was unaware of this agreement, just as Roberts had no idea how his generals to the west of the city were faring. Early that morning Hamilton had dispatched two couriers, but they had made a detour to the south to circumvent the retreating Boers. They wouldn’t reach Roberts before nightfall. Churchill, having recovered from his depression at lunchtime, wanted to send a telegram as well. As usual, he had written his report on the encounter at lightning speed. Now he wanted to get it to London as quickly as possible. He was a war reporter after all, and Doornkop was hot news. He needed to find a telegraph. The one at Roberts’s headquarters would be ideal. The shortest route there was through Johannesburg. But how safe was that?
Luck was on his side once again. Two cyclists arrived after lunch. They had come straight from Johannesburg, said one of them, a Frenchman, Monsieur Lautré, who worked at the Langlaagte mine. In any event there were no more Boers there, and probably none, he thought, in the city itself. If the Morning Post correspondent wanted to go there, Lautré would escort him with pleasure. Churchill needed no further encouragement. Lautré’s companion offered him the use of his bicycle. Hamilton was confident enough to entrust his dispatches for Roberts to the two couriers—well, to Lautré, actually, just to be on the safe side. Churchill changed into inconspicuous clothing, and off they went.
Lautré wanted to avoid the main roads. It meant pedalling harder, but it was safer. In three-quarters of an hour they were at the Langlaagte mine, where they heard that another Times correspondent had passed by earlier. A pity, but fortunately he was on horseback. The Boers would have arrested him, Lautré assumed. They continued on to the city. Much of the route was downhill and they arrived in the centre in the early evening, taking the side streets. How good was his French? ‘Good enough to deceive a Dutchman,’ Churchill replied. Perfect. ‘If they stop us, speak French,’ Lautré said. ‘The French are in good standing in these parts.’
There were a few anxious moments in the market square, at any rate for Churchill. Three armed Boers loomed up in front of them. Lautré remained calm and kept talking. The men passed by, taking no notice of the two cyclists. ‘Encore un Boer,’ Lautré said airily, and indeed another man approached from the rear and drew up alongside them. He slackened his horse’s pace to a walk. Trying to avoid his gaze would have looked suspicious. Churchill sized him up. He took in the rifle on his back and the three cartridge belts slung over his shoulder and fastened around his waist. Their eyes met. ‘He had a pale, almost ghastly visage, peering illfavoured and cruel from beneath a slouch hat with a large white feather.’ He shivered. Another of those phantom-like horsemen. The man spurred his horse and disappeared in the gathering dusk. Churchill sighed with relief. Lautré smiled.
They cycled on towards the suburbs on the south-east side of the city, where they expected to run into Roberts’s first units, or at least his sentries. But they were able to proceed unimpeded and suddenly found themselves in the middle of a British army encampment. Not Roberts’s, which was in Germiston, ten kilometres further on, a couple of officers told Churchill. They would have to cross an open field and at the end of it was a road where they would be able to cycle again. By this time it was pitch dark. Luckily, Lautré knew the area well. On arriving in Germiston, they dined in a hotel and reserved half the billiard table on which to spend the night, if necessary. Churchill sent his own dispatches from the telegraph office. The Times reporter hadn’t called in. They continued on to Roberts’s headquarters a short distance away, and handed Hamilton’s dispatches to an orderly. It was ten thirty. Mission accomplished.
The real reward was still to come. A few minutes later, the orderly came outside. ‘The Chief wanted to see the messengers.’ Churchill wasn’t easily impressed, but this was a moment he had long been waiting for. For the first time in this war he stood face to face with Roberts, in the presence of his entire staff. The commander-in-chief was exceptionally cordial. It seemed that all had been forgiven and forgotten. He was pleased with the good news from Hamilton and asked how Churchill and Lautré had managed to cross the centre of Johannesburg. Churchill was sold. ‘His eye twinkled. I have never seen a man before with such extraordinary eyes.’ They could spew fire, he knew, they could be cold and pitiless, but now they shone—merry, friendly, amused. ‘Tell me about the action,’ the field marshal said.100
Victory
Pretoria, 5 June 1900
Six months earlier, Churchill had slunk out of the Transvaal capital like a thief in the night. Now he was returning without fear or dishonour, as a knight, a liberator. Alongside his cousin, the Duke of Marlborough, he rode into Pretoria with the first British units and set off to find the officers who had been arrested as prisoners of war. They were no longer in the building from which he had escaped. They were said to have been transferred hundreds of kilometres to the east. Although the information wasn’t correct, the men had indeed been moved and were now in one of the suburbs, a kilometre away.
Just one more corner, over a stream, and there it was: a long building with a corrugated-iron roof and a barbed-wire fence around the perimeter. They spurred their horses and galloped ahead, Churchill whooping with delight and waving his hat. As they drew up to the fence his former fellow prisoners stared in disbelief. It’s Winston! The officers were overjoyed. Marlborough called on the camp commandant to surrender. The 50 armed guards were dumbstruck and meekly surrendered their weapons. An officer of the Dublin Fusiliers produced a British flag from nowhere—a patchwork Union Jack made from a Transvaal Vierkleur—and hoisted it amid cries of jubilation.
It was a quarter to nine on the morning of 5 June 1900. For Churchill this was a moment to remember. All those familiar faces, beaming with gratitude. Only Haldane and Brockie were missing. During the move to new premises they had managed to escape after all. Even that couldn’t diminish Churchill’s triumph. What a splendid return to Pretoria!
The rest of the day was uneventful and dull, especially for a war correspondent. The capital of the Transvaal came under British control with as little ceremony or fuss as Bloemfontein, Kroonstad or Johannesburg. There was no struggle worth mentioning, no shooting, no street fighting, no excitement at all. The Boers had simply handed over their most important cities. There was nothing to write home about, let alone report to his readers. The Boers had removed the artillery from their forts and taken it somewhere east of Pretoria. British troops entered the town quietly, paraded before their commander-in-chief in the main square of the town, lowered the Transvaal flag, raised the Union Jack—this one handmade in silk by Lady Roberts—and that was that. It would have been nice to get a picture of the old president, ‘seated on his stoep reading his Bible and smoking a sullen pipe’. But Kruger had left a few days earlier on the train going east to Machadodorp, halfway to the Mozambique border. It was now the capital and the rest of the Transvaal government was there.
It looked as if the Boers had done the same thing in Pretoria as in Johannesburg. They hadn’t defended themselves to the bitter end but had simply stalled for time to organise an orderly—and bountiful—retreat. Gold, money, arms, munitions, provisions, share certificates, government records, everything they wanted to keep out of British hands had been rescued in order to be whisked away by train. The Boers had been working towards this right up to the day the British arrived. In the early hours of the morning Churchill looked on in astonishment as two locomotives pulled out of the station. Behind them were ten trucks full of horses, plus one carrying heavily armed
Boers. A few British officers tried unsuccessfully to stop the train, though they did manage to intercept three more that were still waiting to leave.
Lord Roberts wasn’t bothered. He had now conquered the capital of the second Boer republic as well. In European terms, the war was over. They were just waiting for their adversaries to sign the official surrender. On his arrival in Johannesburg on 31 May he had issued his first proclamation, setting out the conditions on which citizens of the South African Republic could surrender. The terms were the same as those that had been applicable in the Orange Free State since 15 March. A second proclamation followed within days of the fall of Pretoria. Transvalers who swore neutrality would be able to take their cattle out to the winter pastures.
But Roberts had his eye on one Transvaler in particular: the commandant-general, Louis Botha. He had tried by various means—letters, personal messengers, including Mrs Botha—to persuade him to enter into peace talks. The response he had been hoping for came on 7 June. The two men arranged to meet at Zwartkoppies two days later. On 9 June, Roberts was about to set off—he literally had his foot in the stirrup—when a message arrived from Botha. On second thoughts, the commandant-general of the Transvaal had decided to call the meeting off—unless Roberts had something new to offer. He hadn’t.101
It wasn’t just a ploy or an attempt to mislead anyone. The Transvaal leaders didn’t know which way to turn. Their defeat at Doornkop on 29 May had been the last straw. It had broken their men’s morale: they had lost hope and made off in spite of the heavy penalties for desertion. They just wanted to go home. Discipline had always been a problem among the Boer commandos, but now there was no stopping them—especially when they heard that Kruger and the rest of the government had fled that same day.
The vice-president, Schalk Burger, remained in Pretoria, but not for long. The state attorney, Jan Smuts, was the only official government representative left, and not everyone recognised his authority. The mayor of Pretoria, Piet Potgieter, appointed a Peace and Order Commission, but it failed to live up to its name. Its purpose was to protect the town, but control of public life slipped through its fingers. The townspeople took advantage of the absence of their regular police force—the police had been sent to the front—and on the evening of Wednesday 30 May, black as well as white looters broke into government warehouses and plundered them. The unrest continued in broad daylight. Only when Louis Botha arrived on the scene and imposed martial law was order finally restored.
But he couldn’t restore hope. Botha and the other Boer generals were at their wits’ end. How could they continue the struggle when their people refused to fight? They could raise 3000, maybe 4000 men against Roberts’s superior force, but no more. On 1 June Botha conferred with Koos de la Rey and a few other generals. Their decision was disappointing but they had made up their minds. Perhaps peace was the best option after all; perhaps they should reconcile themselves to surrender after the inevitable fall of Pretoria. This was what they proposed to the president.
They sent a telegram, because Kruger had been in Machadodorp for the previous two days. Being torn away from his familiar surroundings and his ailing wife, Gezina, had done his already battered confidence no good. He gritted his teeth and telegraphed his generals’ proposal to Steyn. By this time, Steyn was in his fourth capital, Bethlehem, in the eastern Free State. The Boer War might have ended there and then.
But Steyn was furious. He wasn’t interested in peace. He alerted his chief commandant, Christiaan de Wet, and gave Kruger a reply that must have sent sparks through the telegraph wires. What a bunch of cowards, those Transvalers. It was they who had drawn the Free Staters and the Cape Afrikaners into their struggle for independence. And to suggest giving up at this stage! The British army had barely crossed the Vaal. Steyn was speechless. The Orange Free State would fight to the bitter end, he assured Kruger, even if they had to do it alone.
De Wet also replied at once, more gently but just as firmly and with extraordinary sensitivity and tact. He sent Botha a reassuring telegram. ‘Brother, I understand Your Excellency’s anguish because I have been in the same predicament.’ In fact, it must be even worse for Botha, he suggested, now that even ‘a rock like President Kruger’ was crumbling. But he had no doubt that he could count on Botha, ‘in whom I have the greatest confidence . . . to fight to the last for our cherished independence, a cause which I believe is not hopeless at all’. De Wet knew what he was talking about. After the fall of Bloemfontein, ‘almost every one of our burghers went home’. And look at them now, six weeks later, those very same people ‘are full of confidence and have been fighting well for the past few days’.
Steyn’s brusque reproach and De Wet’s shrewd empathy worked like a charm—at any rate with Botha and Smuts, who were sent copies of Steyn’s reply. The Free Staters’ determination helped them make some difficult choices. The following morning, 2 June, a war council meeting was held in the Volksraad chambers. It was mostly the young commandants, Danie Theron in particular, who wanted to fight on. This, too, helped in deciding on a course of action. After intense talks, they opted to go along with the Orange Free State. No peace talks, no all-or-nothing defence of the capital, but resistance ‘to frustrate’ the enemy.
Botha deployed his remaining commandos to that end. At the very least they were to delay Roberts’s advance so as to give Smuts a chance to salvage as much as he could from Pretoria. They succeeded beyond their expectation. Smuts’s greatest accomplishment was retrieving all the government’s assets, almost half a million pounds in gold and cash, from the vaults of the National Bank and the Mint. The Mint cooperated in every possible way, but the governors of the bank were less forthcoming. Smuts only gained access to their holdings by resorting to threats of violence. On the afternoon of Monday 4 June he had everything transferred to a special train with an extra contingent of guards. With bombs exploding left and right, the gold train set off to the east. Its valuable cargo would enable the Boers to keep up the fight for a good while to come.
At least, financially. What Botha needed was something to boost his and his men’s morale. Roberts made every effort to inveigle him into negotiating. But for Botha—in any event, after the war council meeting of 2 June—this was no longer on the cards. In any case, Roberts’s attempts to manipulate him had raised his hackles. Using his wife, would you believe! As if she would compromise herself by trying to persuade him. But, never mind. He played along, all the while working on a plan to put his newfound confidence to good use.
Again, it was Christiaan de Wet who set the example, first by capturing a British convoy of 56 wagons near Swavelkrans on 4 June. The 160 men escorting the convoy surrendered without a word. Three days later De Wet demonstrated even more convincingly just how vulnerable the British supply lines were. With commandants Stoffel Froneman and Lucas Steenkamp he carried out three attacks on and around Roodewal railway station, 50 kilometres north of Kroonstad. The British had amassed large quantities of munitions, provisions, blankets and clothing, ready to be transported to Pretoria. Some of the goods had already been loaded onto a train. The entire consignment now fell into De Wet’s hands. It was far too much to take with them, especially now that they were travelling light in order to remain mobile. He took as much ammunition as he could and buried it on his farm, Roodepoort, a short distance away, for future use. He allowed his men to take whatever they wanted. And, of course, their British prisoners, almost 800 of them, had to be taken along as well. Whatever was left was blown up: the train, the station, the railway tracks, clothing, supplies and the remaining munitions. These made for a thunderous explosion, which left a crater of 30 metres by 18, and six metres deep. The spectacular fireworks could be seen all the way from Kroonstad.102
Lord Roberts couldn’t deny it: the capture of Pretoria hadn’t achieved what he’d expected. The Boers remained undefeated. Behind his back, in the Orange Free State, De Wet was attacking his supply lines. Under his nose, Botha was making a fool of him. If the Transva
al’s commandantgeneral had ever contemplated surrendering in the first place—Roberts had picked up one or two things through the grapevine—then he had obviously changed his mind. Calling off peace talks just like that could mean only one thing: he was going to carry on fighting. In fact, it looked as if Botha was aiming for a major confrontation. Once again, he had sent his remaining troops, about 4000 men with 30 guns, to the Magaliesberg, 25 kilometres east of Pretoria. They would take up their usual positions, forming a broad front on either side of the railway line. Roberts had four times as many troops and 80 guns at the ready. On 11 June he mounted an attack at Diamond Hill—the Boers called it Donkerhoek, ‘dark corner’—following the usual procedure: he himself with the infantry in the centre, the cavalry manoeuvring around the enemy on the flanks, French on the left, Hamilton on the right, artillery across the full breadth.
This second-last major confrontation of the Boer War had all the usual ups and downs: promising breakthroughs, imminent counterattacks, tactical shufflings of units and an abrupt ending. For the last time, Churchill—on Hamilton’s right of course—gave readers of the Morning Post a vivid description of the battlefield complete with colourful anecdotes and heroic exploits. There was Hamilton, who was struck in the left shoulder by shrapnel but fortunately managed to keep fighting; Broadwood, who had two horses shot from under him, one after the other, but ‘preserved his usual impassive composure’ nevertheless; the Earl of Airlie, who led a daring cavalry charge to relieve an artillery unit, and as a result took ‘a heavy bullet through the body, and died almost immediately’.
The Boer War Page 36
