The Boer War

by Martin Bossenbroek

  Churchill also told them about their adversary’s extraordinary ‘stubbornness and dash’. This was something he hadn’t seen in the past few weeks, not since Natal. The British troops gained ground on Hamilton’s flank and in the centre, where Botha was leading the Boers’ defence, but not enough to achieve a decisive victory. And French’s flank ran into serious problems with De la Rey’s commandos. After the first day anything could have happened. Things were no different on 12 June. De la Rey gained the upper hand and was preparing to mount a counterattack against French. But Botha was coming under increasing pressure from Hamilton and at the end of the afternoon he was unable to prevent a breakthrough. As a result, they were in danger of being surrounded. By evening he felt it was too big a risk. To De la Rey’s regret, he gave the command for a full withdrawal. Although it was a defeat, the battle at Diamond Hill gave the Boers fresh inspiration. They fled ‘encouraged and hopeful’ (‘vlug in vol moed’). The Transvaal commandos had followed the Freestaters’ example and shown that they could still put up a fight. They had incurred only 30 casualties, dead, wounded and captured. And all their artillery, including a Long Tom on a train truck, was still intact and going with them further east. It was just the kind of morale-booster Botha had hoped for.

  For Roberts, the morning of 13 June brought first the surprising news that the Boers had fled, and then the sobering realisation that the war still wasn’t over. The Transvalers had held out with unexpected determination. The casualties on his side came to 175 dead and wounded. Moreover, from the Boers’ orderly retreat it was clear that they had become more disciplined and better organised. They were already too far away, for instance, to warrant a pursuit. All in all, this meant that the battle had not yet been won. But so be it. At least the area around Pretoria had been cleared of commandos. Now it was time to do something about that nuisance Christiaan de Wet. This was another job for Ian Hamilton’s longsuffering brigades, except that now they would be marching off without their war correspondent. Churchill had decided to return to England. Just for the sake of it he had put his implausibly good luck to the test once again. He never wrote about it, but Hamilton took it upon himself to do so.

  In the battle at Diamond Hill, Churchill had again spurned his non-combatant status and ventured forward to a point directly under a Boer position. There he had tied his handkerchief to a stick and fearlessly signalled to draw Hamilton’s attention to an unexpected route by which he could advance. Hamilton described it as ‘an exhibition of conspicuous gallantry’, knowing these words could win Churchill a Victoria Cross. The VC couldn’t be awarded to a civilian, but it had been a courageous deed and Hamilton felt that Churchill deserved recognition. Neither Roberts nor Kitchener, however, was prepared to make a formal recommendation. That the commander-in-chief had even deigned to speak to the impertinent young reporter after Johannesburg was honour enough. Churchill never mentioned the incident, at least not publicly. His last paragraph in the Morning Post was a tribute to Hamilton and his ‘gallant column in whose good company I had marched so many miles and seen such successful fights . . . May they all come home safely.’103

  The day the British marched into Pretoria, 5 June 1900, Leyds was attending an important meeting in Nieuwe Doelenstraat in Amsterdam. There was a matter he had to deal with at the headquarters of Labouchère, Oyens & Co., the bankers who administered the South African Republic’s assets in Europe. A few days earlier they had given him the fright of his life. In future, they said, he would need special authorisation from the Transvaal government to access the account. The reason for this was Lord Roberts’s proclamation annexing the Orange Free State, followed by the fall of Johannesburg. It looked as if the Transvaal was about to be annexed as well. The bankers wanted some form of guarantee. Did Leyds still represent the rightful owners of the assets?

  Coming on top of all the distressing news from the Transvaal, this was an outright disaster. Of course Leyds had no formal authorisation. He had never needed it, and how could he get it now? They had known him for years. Labouchère, Oyens & Co. had always managed the Transvaal’s financial affairs in Europe. And now this. ‘To find myself without a cent to my name, in a manner of speaking, even for the day-to-day requirements of the many people who depend on me.’ It couldn’t be true. There was almost 800,000 guilders in the account. Without access to it he could do nothing, and ‘all our work in Europe and American was at risk’.

  He consulted his lawyers. His trusty advisers Moltzer and Asser also came to his help, and with the backing of this heavy legal artillery he managed to ward off the danger. During the meeting the bankers relented and gave Leyds access to the account. He immediately transferred the funds to several other banks, keeping only the relatively small sum of 25,000 guilders to cover his current costs.104

  ‘The Labouchere case has been dealt with,’ he telegraphed on 6 June to the delegation travelling through the United States. Fischer, Wessels and Wolmarans were relieved at the news. Their expenses were also paid from the Amsterdam account. And they too had more than enough to worry about. Their mission in the New World was as disappointing as that in the Netherlands. There was no lack of enthusiasm or solidarity, but even less political support than they had found in The Hague. In deference to public opinion they had presented themselves as ‘delegates’ rather than accredited envoys. Because of that, President McKinley and Secretary Hay had received them informally, but not given them an official reception. It was as cordial as could be, but the upshot was clear from the press conference afterwards. The president expressed an ‘earnest desire to see an end to the strife which has caused so much suffering’, but saw no option other than ‘to persist in the policy of impartial neutrality’.

  Diplomatic mission unaccomplished. What to do now? The delegation was divided on this point. On 8 June Leyds received two letters from Washington. In one, Fischer said he was optimistic about public opinion. ‘There is more support than I had expected. I believe 90% of the American people are behind us.’ If they were to ‘make their views known in resolutions, memorandums etc.’, McKinley would probably give way. It was an election year after all. The other letter was from Wolmarans. His thinking went in a different direction, or rather, jumped every which way. On the one hand, he asked Leyds to transfer £10,000 to Chicago to be used for propaganda. But at the same time, he urged him to offer protectorate rights over the two Boer republics to France or Russia or both. Leyds should contact the French and Russian envoys without delay.

  The two requests put Leyds in an embarrassing position. Firstly, because he had reason to believe that Wolmarans was acting alone. Secondly, because the idea was insane. Or in Leyds’s more discreet words, ‘His letter may not convey to all the full measure of his intelligence.’ Even so, Leyds felt he had no right to refuse the requests. He transferred the money and put the idea of a protectorate to the Russian and French agents in Brussels. ‘Not because I think anyone will do anything about it’—it would inevitably lead to war with Britain—but ‘only to please Mr Wolmarans’. The reply from St Petersburg and Paris came within a few days. On 12 June Leyds forwarded it to the United States. ‘Russia and France convey their sincere regrets, but decline the protectorate.’105

  Conscientious, that was Willem Leyds in a nutshell. The closer Roberts approached, the more uncertain Leyds was whether anyone was receiving his letters to the Transvaal government and, if so, who and when. But he kept sending them, always by way of Gerard Pott, the consul-general of the two Boer republics in Lourenço Marques. Leyds also kept up with another important task, organising secret arms exports. They were transported along the same route, with a transit stop in the French colony of Madagascar. In May 1900 he sent a substantial consignment comprising 10,000 Mauser cartridges ‘concealed in soap’; components for machinery to manufacture cartridges, plus two technicians on a fourmonth contract; brass cases and percussion caps for rapid-firing artillery ‘also packed in bars of soap’; devices to blow up trains, mirrors for electric searchlights,
kites for signalling, a field telephone, silk for balloons. He just kept sending it all in the hope that it would end up where it was supposed to.106

  He could only keep trying. That was the best thing to do. Perhaps he knew better, but he needed something to hold onto and keep his hopes alive. That was also why, on 11 June, he appeared before a Brussels court, to testify as a Crown witness in the Selati case. The affair dated back to 1891, when President Kruger and the Executive Council—against Leyds’s advice—concluded a deal with Baron Eugène Oppenheim regarding the construction of a railway line to the Selati goldfields. Over the years it had transpired that the company formed for that purpose was enmeshed in a web of shady financial deals. It had ended up in legal proceedings, including criminal charges against Baron Eugène, his brother Baron Robert and several other directors. Leyds knew more about the case than anyone else and felt obliged to attend the hearing.107 His effort paid off. Six weeks later, the defendants were sentenced to imprisonment and fines. But all the work it entailed had kept him from attending to another matter of great importance for the Transvaal, one he had been very much involved in.

  The Transvaal Pavilion for the World Exhibition in Paris was officially opened on the afternoon of Saturday 9 June. The young Boer republic was being showcased internationally for the first time. Preparations had begun a year earlier, in peacetime. But now of course it was awkward to be exhibiting alongside another—ostentatiously present—participant, with which it was embroiled in a relentless war. And just after their capital had been occupied. The occasion was anything but festive. Pierson, the consul-general, received a few guests and showed them around.

  The exhibit was incongruous. The pavilion was divided into three sections. The Transvaal’s official presentation in the classicist main building included the usual assortment of photographs and drawings, a statistical display on education and other public services, stuffed animals, local produce and a miniature oxwagon. It all looked idyllic. Nothing alluded to the war. Then there was the grand salon on the first floor. In the centre stood a bust of President Kruger, ‘whose features’, according to Gustave Babin of the Journal des Débats, ‘betray an unwavering and buoyant confidence’. Placed in front of it on behalf of the Parisian proletariat was a bouquet of red, white and blue flowers with green ferns, ribbons in the same colours, and the words Vive les Boers!

  The theme of the second building was the Transvaal’s gold: the source of its prosperity, a socially divisive and destabilising force and, according to many, the cause of the war. But the war itself didn’t come into the picture. The display was mainly about gold as an industrial product. A stand had been built to give visitors an impression of the production process. It showed step by step how gold was extracted and processed, and then its spectacular yields and profits. In short, it conveyed an idea of the new, industrial Transvaal—which in reality had been under British control for the preceding ten days.

  The third building was different again. It told the story of the old, pastoral and still independent Transvaal, the Boers as people of the land. The exhibit was a faithful replica of a farmhouse, a simple structure with whitewashed walls and a thatched roof, narrow windows and low doors. Inside, it had the living room in the centre, the kitchen behind it, bedrooms and storerooms on either side. A table with a drab cloth, a loaf of bread. A riempie bench and a few old chairs. A couple of flower vases placed on a cabinet, photographs in marbled frames on the walls, a cuckoo clock and, as the centrepiece, a harmonium with a Bible bound in calf leather. In the main bedroom, to the left of the lounge, a bedstead with cotton drapes, a few garments and—the only allusion to the war—the farmer’s slouch hat and his rifle. Babin was surprised and impressed. ‘It is humble and moving. These, then, are the homes and hearths the brave Boers out there are defending.’108

  After eight months of war, Churchill still found himself baffled and intrigued by the Boers. Looking back, he reflected in the Morning Post that what they were doing was not humanly possible. By way of explanation, he likened the situation to the human body. Considered rationally, Roberts had subdued the enemy. ‘We had taken possession of the Rand’, the bowels, the source of gold and munitions. ‘We had seized the heart at Bloemfontein, the brain at Pretoria.’ Most of the rail network, ‘the veins and nerves’, was in British hands. In other words, the body—the Boers—had been mortally wounded. Yet still it shuddered, the heavily booted left leg in particular, which was still capable of delivering an unexpected and painful blow. Two operations were needed to put an end to it once and for all: one to incapacitate the dangerous limb and one ‘to place a strangling grip on the windpipe’, the supply route from Lourenço Marques.

  The right men for these assignments, he believed, were Ian Hamilton and Redvers Buller, the two generals whose troops he had accompanied for several months. But he wouldn’t be there to witness it. His resolve to return to England was firm. ‘Politics, Pamela, finances and books all need my attention,’ he wrote to his mother on 9 June. His stay in South Africa had been a wonderful experience for him personally. He had got out of it everything he had hoped for: a succession of adventures, fame and even glory, with or without a medal. On his own steam, and not just because of his father’s influence, he had made many new friends, some in high places, and managed reasonably well not to make too many enemies. He had firmly established his reputation as a writer. His reports for the Morning Post had attracted attention. The first series, from Natal, had been published in book form in early May as London to Ladysmith via Pretoria, and it was selling extremely well. As soon as possible he wanted to start editing the second volume, Ian Hamilton’s March, in order to have it in the shops before his extensive lecture tour through Britain and the United States. This would provide him with a nice little nest egg and allow him to pursue his dream of a career in politics. Hoping to benefit from the success of the war, Salisbury’s Conservative government had called elections for later that year. Churchill was going to make another bid for a seat in the House of Commons, once again in the Liberal bastion of Oldham, but this time as a distinguished war veteran.

  He had started preparing for his return immediately after the Battle of Diamond Hill. Another surprise awaited him a few hours before his departure from Pretoria. He was busy packing his trunks in his suite at the Transvaal Hotel, when suddenly the manager appeared, with two women behind him. The hotel was full and the manager had a request. But Churchill was no longer listening. One of the women was none other than his aunt, Lady Sarah. What on earth was she doing here? There was no time for embarrassment. Their past differences were forgotten in the surprise of the moment. She embraced him warmly. She had just arrived from Mafeking. Churchill responded like a dutiful nephew, immediately offering to extend his stay for another day to show her around Pretoria. And it went without saying that they were welcome to share his suite.

  Of course, he showed her the camp where he and her other nephew, the Duke of Marlborough, had freed the prisoners. At the prison he told her the exciting story of his escape. In the evening he invited her to a farewell dinner with a group of officers. All in all, he made a far better impression on her than he had done in the past. He had changed for the better, she thought. ‘Winston . . . had been but a short time . . . with Lord Roberts’s force,’ but he had managed ‘to acquire influence and authority’. He turned out to be ‘most interesting to listen to, and a general favourite’. The following morning she saw him off at Pretoria station.

  The very last surprise came on the train journey to Cape Town. A short distance from Kroonstad, just before Koppies, the train stopped abruptly. Churchill got off to see what had happened. Just at that moment a bomb exploded nearby. It was a small one, but a bomb all the same. A hundred metres ahead, in front of the locomotive, the wooden railway bridge was on fire. The train was full of soldiers, all of whom were now emerging from their carriages. But there wasn’t an officer in sight. The scene was all too familiar to Churchill. Chieveley, the armoured train—this surely c
ouldn’t happen to him again. He sprinted to the locomotive, leapt in and barked orders to the driver. Return to Koppies. It’s only five kilometres away and there’s a British camp there. Reverse. Sound the steam whistle—while he stood on the running board and ordered the soldiers to return to their seats. Suddenly a few dark figures emerged from the dry riverbed. Boers! Churchill loaded his Mauser pistol. He was no longer a soldier or a war correspondent, and he certainly wasn’t going to be captured at the last minute. He fired six, seven shots. The train rumbled into motion, back to Koppies. All he had to do now was organise a carriage and horses.109

  PART III

  Death and destruction

  June 1900—May 1902

  Adrift

  Pretoria, June 1900

  The going was slow. Everyone was heading for Pretoria. The road leading out of Johannesburg was choked with refugees, with their belongings piled onto oxwagons or whatever transport they could find. Impatient Boer fighters on worn-out horses, recently returned from the front, threaded their way through the crowd. ‘Going home, the war is over,’ they called, for all the world to hear.1 British soldiers kept an eye on them from a distance and allowed them to proceed. They were all refugees and not worth bothering about.

  Deneys Reitz was among them, heading home on his Basuto pony. He picked his way nimbly through the crowd, keeping close to his eldest brother, Hjalmar. Charley, their African servant, followed them. Deneys had lost touch with his two other brothers. They had managed to get Arend on board a goods train in Johannesburg, in the care of a man who had promised to look after him. Deneys could only hope he would be all right. He was already delirious; it could well be typhoid fever. No one knew where Joubert was. It was said that a cavalry regiment had taken his unit by surprise at Koppie Alleen a fortnight earlier. That was the last Deneys had heard of him. He could be dead, for all he knew. All he wanted now was to get home. His father would know what to do. After all, he was the one who had started the war, literally, by signing the ultimatum to the British. Deneys felt miserable.