As most historical figures of note, Roberts had a complicated and even contradictory personality, and this had a bearing on his career. He was intelligent and a man of great charisma; he was friendly in his manners, courteous and renowned for his hospitality. He had many friends, had great influence on almost all who came into contact with him, was a team player and those who knew him well, in most instances, sincerely liked him.8 He was a skilled organiser, a strict disciplinarian and had the reputation that he got things done. He led by example, especially on the battlefield. He also endeared himself to ordinary soldiers, because of his efforts to improve their social conditions.
Roberts liked parties, but was a teetotaller. Fred and Nora Roberts had a high social standing, and were regarded as charming hosts.9 They and their children formed a close-knit family. They suffered the loss of four of their six children: three died in infancy and young Freddy after Colenso. Lady Roberts was in her own right a formidable and forceful woman, and it has been alleged that she had excessive influence over her husband, also with regard to military, personnel and other matters. Consequently, she was nicknamed ‘Lady Jobs’, and there were rumours of a ‘petticoat government’.10 Notwithstanding the fact that Queen Victoria disapproved of officers’ wives going to the war zone with their husbands, and Roberts’s reluctance to allow it, his own wife and daughters joined him in Bloemfontein in mid-April 1900, and later in Pretoria. They looked after the old field marshal, but the rumours persisted: some believed that Lady Roberts had something to do with the hardening policy towards the civilian Boer population, and also with regard to ‘Endless stories, probably many of which are untrue, [that] reach the Queen respecting Lady Roberts’ interference and her influence even exerted on the careers of officers in high command in South Africa.’11 According to Roberts, his wife was a great help to him with regard to visits in hospitals: ‘She can discover a great deal more than I can in my periodical visits of inspection.’12
Of course, there was also a less attractive side to Bobs’s personality. Wolseley regarded him as a dreadful snob;13 people like the Duke of Cambridge distrusted Roberts, and regarded him as an intriguer and an unscrupulous opportunist.14 He was indeed shamelessly ambitious, and as a consequence could be manipulative, even devious, and did not shy away from self-advertisement or intrigue. Since the Jameson Raid of 1895–96, Roberts had been hoping that if war broke out in South Africa, he would be placed in command, but Buller was sent out. Roberts was undeterred. In the light of the fact that ‘accidents happen’, he wrote to Lansdowne, then Secretary of State for War, that if either Buller or Sir George White ‘should be incapacitated, I hope you will send me to South Africa’.15 He openly expressed his misgivings about Buller’s ability to defeat the Boers, and in a rather arrogant letter to Lansdowne a week before the Colenso debacle, placed his ‘services and … experience at the disposal of the Government’. But then he went further to make it clear that ‘if it is accepted, I must necessarily be placed in supreme command’ because ‘the country cannot afford to run any unavoidable risk of failure. A serious reverse in South Africa would endanger the Empire.’ The letter was ostensibly private, ‘unless, after reading it, you [Lansdowne] think my proposal worthy of consideration, then you are welcome to show it to the Prime Minister, and if you wish, Mr. Chamberlain’.16
Having chosen soldiering as a career, Roberts loved war, although he would probably have admitted that essentially war was a terrible thing. He had compassion for the ordinary troops, but if necessary, he would drive his soldiers hard and ordered them to attack an enemy that (with the exception of his last campaign, in South Africa) was always numerically superior. He never suffered huge losses, but if need be, he would order his troops to attack under difficult circumstances. He could also be very harsh. An example to illustrate this is the way he dealt with those accused of being involved with the killing of Cavagnari’s mission in Kabul. He would not allow his feelings (or questions relating to the ethics or morality of his orders) to interfere with what he regarded as his duty. Everything taken into account, he was indeed an inspirational leader, even though today one would not necessarily agree with all his decisions and actions. Roberts had many successes, but more often than not, also had luck on his side.
During the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, Roberts was lucky to see action in many clashes and very lucky to survive that brutal conflict with only a slight wound. How different it could have been. Roberts was furious when sent to Natal in 1881 to find that peace had been concluded, and must have thought himself extremely unlucky. But, perhaps, he was, instead, very fortunate, for the mountainous terrain of northern Natal afforded the Boers excellent cover from where they could beat back an advancing conventionally trained army. This happened to Colley in 1881, and again in 1899–1900, when Buller failed on several occasions to break through to Ladysmith; and once more, Roberts was sent as replacement C in C to South Africa – this time to experience relative success.
At the start of the Second Anglo-Afghan War in November 1878, it was Roberts’s good fortune to be put in command of the Kurram Field Force, the smallest but best composed of the invading forces. In September 1879, Roberts was fortunate to be in command of the only force that at that stage could move out quickly to avenge Cavagnari’s death. After taking Kabul, and as the Afghans prepared for an all-out onslaught against the besieged British cantonment, Roberts received the plan for the attack from a servant; consequently, he was able to take effective counter-measures, and the attack was beaten off.17 He was also fortunate to have been put in command of the force to march from Kabul to Kandahar (August 1880), as Lieutenant General Donald Stewart could just as well have taken personal command of the relief force. The subsequent march provided Roberts with a unique opportunity to ‘redeem’ himself after the serious criticisms levelled against him for the way in which he had dealt with the alleged murderers of Cavagnari. And Roberts was lucky that towards the end of 1880, the British public was hungry for good news and for some ‘heroic’ exploits – his march from Kabul to Kandahar provided just that. The fact that he defeated an Afghan force the day after his arrival in Kandahar provided further reason to celebrate. Roberts realised the relative ‘unheroic’ nature of his Kabul–Kandahar march:
it surprised me very much to find that the kind people, by whom I was so greatly honoured, invariably appeared to think the march from Kabul to Kandahar was a much greater performance than the advance on Kabul the previous autumn, while, to my mind, the latter operation was in every particular more difficult, more dangerous, and placed upon me as the Commander infinitely more responsibility.18
But Roberts will forever be associated with the August 1880 march to Kandahar.
In South Africa, Roberts was very lucky that the Boers were almost obsessed with the siege of three garrisons, because this provided him with the opportunity to consolidate the British position and prepare unhindered for his flank march. Had the Boers exploited their mobility, invaded the British colonies at several places and destroyed the infrastructure, it would have put Roberts in a very difficult position. It was also to Roberts’s advantage that he had not been sent out in October 1899. Given the British army’s lack of preparedness for war in South Africa,19 whoever went out first would encounter problems. By the time Roberts was appointed C in C, the British government had realised that more troops were needed. Roberts was also lucky to have had as his first opponent Piet Cronjé, who, although regarded as a great general by the Boers, was indeed in more ways than one not fit to lead an army in a modern war against a large European army. Had the Boers used the Orange River as a natural line of defence, it would have made Roberts’s task that more difficult.20
After Magersfontein, Cronjé was not in favour of following up the Boer successes with an all-out assault on the British lines of communication, and when such operations did later take place, it was either too small (4–5 January 1900) or too late (February 1900).21 When De Wet captured the British wagon train at Watervalsdrif
on 15 February, Roberts took a calculated risk to continue with his advance. In this way, he didn’t lose momentum, but forced his tired troops to go on half-rations until the end of the month.22 This allowed Roberts to corner and in due course force Cronjé to surrender, but it also further undermined his troops’ health and made them more susceptible to contracting typhoid – something that eventually forced a long halt in Bloemfontein.
This halt afforded the Boers the opportunity to consolidate their position and – after a crucial krijgsraad (council of war) meeting at Kroonstad on 17 March 1900 – implement a guerrilla type of warfare (thereby for the first time exploiting what was probably their greatest strength, namely mobility). Roberts was very lucky that the Boers did not immediately launch an all-out guerrilla offensive. For example, after his victories at Sannaspos and Mostertshoek, De Wet, strangely enough, opted for a conventional siege of a portion of the Colonial Division at Jammerbergdrif, near Wepener in the south-eastern Free State,23 instead of destroying the British supply lines south of Bloemfontein, which would have left Roberts in a predicament. On the other hand, if Roberts had sent his cavalry in force to Sannaspos on 31 March, he might have been able to defeat the Boers and nip the guerrilla war in the bud. In due course, however, it became clear that the Boers had met their match in Roberts. They ‘knew’ Buller, because he had fought in the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), but the ‘Indian’ Roberts was an enigma to them.
Roberts is generally regarded as a good military leader, on and off the battlefield: he was a successful military administrator; he was a sound strategist in campaigns; and he was an excellent leader of men on the battlefield. However, he never had to take the field against an enemy that was really an equal (for example in Europe), and none of the battles he fought can really be regarded as great; as a matter of fact, his ‘greatest’ and most decisive battle, at Paardeberg, was more a siege than a battle (and on the first day, when there was an all-out British attack, Roberts was not even present). He is primarily remembered for his march from Kabul to Kandahar, although his march from Kushi to Kabul and from the Modder River via Bloemfontein to Pretoria were of greater military significance. Besides, his Kabul–Kandahar march was a test of endurance, rather than of strategy. However, as will be pointed out in the case study of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, Roberts was very successful in Afghanistan, and was regarded as the saviour of British prestige in the country.
Roberts was basically a Jominian in terms of his military thinking; he believed that the choice of the line of operations was the key to manoeuvring, and wanted to secure strategic objectives as quickly as possible.24 After arriving in South Africa, Roberts also divided his force, in the sense that he did not abandon Natal to concentrate all his troops for a flank march. Interestingly enough, Buller originally also thought of invading the OFS from the west. Roberts had toyed with such an idea as early as 1897, but when he left British shores in December 1899, he still thought in terms of an advance from the south, all along the main railway line to Bloemfontein (i.e. Buller’s planned line of advance, after discarding the idea of an advance from the west): ‘I have no doubt in my own mind that we should adhere to the original intention of concentrating, South of the Orange River, and working thence by the principal route to Bloemfontein.’25 But, en route to South Africa, Roberts reverted back to his 1897 strategy, and in due course refined it. He believed (correctly) that an elaborate flank march, based on the strategy of indirect approach, would be the surest way to position his force in such a way that the Boers would have to fight at a disadvantage. He wanted to throw the Boers off balance, relieve Kimberley, dislodge Cronjé from his Magersfontein positions (without a fight), hopefully defeat his force and capture Bloemfontein, and at the same time draw back the republican forces from the Cape Colony and even weaken their defences in Natal.26
In all this, Roberts was to a large extent successful, but Boer short-sightedness made his achievements look better than they really were. Roberts took a calculated risk in marching his army some 75 miles across the veldt, but on the eve of the march, he was in an excellent position: he had a huge army at his disposal; his strategy was sound (and had not leaked out); and the Boers were either demoralised after weeks of waiting or, in the case of the Colesberg front, confused, thanks to French’s deception manoeuvres, which created the impression that the main British advance would start from there. The eventual successful implementation of Roberts’s flank march is a classic example of how the strategy of an indirect approach can be applied. This ‘Blitzkrieg’ altered the course of the war, and Roberts showed that he could be a daring commander. His forced march from the Modder River to Bloemfontein can be superficially compared to his march from Kushi to Kabul in 1879, or from Kabul to Kandahar in 1880. In all instances, Roberts marched without a line of communication, but in South Africa the idea was to outflank a relatively large Boer army, to capture (not re-take) the enemy’s capital and to draw the republican forces back from colonial territory. In South Africa, Roberts proved that he was a good strategist, although he outmanoeuvred the Boers, rather than defeated them. Paardeberg was a turning point, but it was still no Waterloo or Omdurman. It must also be kept in mind that Roberts’s advance in South Africa took place in areas with not as much natural cover (for the Boers) as in Natal.
Roberts should only receive partial credit for the ultimate British victory in South Africa. It is true that at Paardeberg he ensured that the Boers could no longer win the war; that he laid the foundation for victory by capturing some 7 per cent of the Boer forces and dislocating them psychologically. But he underestimated the Boers’ determination to continue the fight, even with the odds stacked high against them. By not defeating the Boers in the field and allowing them to regroup and successfully make the transition to guerrilla warfare, Roberts was also responsible for laying the foundation for a protracted and costly war.
Poplar Grove (7 March 1900) was supposed to have been a second Paardeberg, perhaps even on a larger scale, with French ordered to cut off the retreat of the 5,000 Boers who had taken up positions in the low-lying hills, while two divisions of infantry would attack from the south and south-west. But French moved too late, and when the Boers saw what was happening, they hastily evacuated their positions and fled eastwards. They had learnt their lesson at Paardeberg. If Presidents Paul Kruger (Transvaal) and Marthinus Steyn (OFS), who were both present, had been captured together with a large force of Boers, it could indeed have meant the end of the war. Roberts’s military thinking was sound, but he was let down by his military instruments (i.e. cavalry and infantry).27 At Abrahamskraal-Driefontein (10 March), Roberts was once again unable to defeat the Boers decisively, and they were able to escape and fight another day. So, Roberts succeeded in driving off the Boers, but did not destroy them, and they could regroup. Yet, after the capture of Bloemfontein, he was probably at the height of his whole military career, having dramatically changed the course of the war in the five weeks since he commenced his advance.
After driving the Boers from their positions at Doornkop and Klipriviersberg, south of Johannesburg (28–29 May 1900), Roberts allowed them to withdraw from the city before he entered it on 31 May. He wanted to avoid street fighting and the destruction of the gold mines, and also believed (with characteristic over-optimism) that the war was all but won. By allowing the Boers to escape, however, he probably added nearly two years to the duration of the conflict.28 Pretoria was also captured without a fight; but again the commandos were allowed to escape. At Donkerhoek/Diamond Hill (11–12 June 1900), just east of Pretoria, General Louis Botha tried to stop the British advance. This was to have been a decisive British victory. Although the Boers evacuated their positions after heavy British bombardments and attacks, Roberts failed to destroy them, and they were able to fight another day.29 And so, with characteristic impatience, Roberts kept on advancing, without (after Paardeberg) defeating the Boers in the field, and allowing them to regroup and operate behind the British line of advance, whereas in Afghani
stan, after reaching Kandahar, he defeated the Afghans decisively on 1 September 1880. Through common sense and the intelligent application of the principles of war, Roberts indeed changed British fortunes in Afghanistan and South Africa, but was only able to defeat the Afghans and the Boers, not to conquer them.
When Roberts arrived in South Africa, there was a stalemate; by the time he left, both republics were officially in British hands, although in practice, they were only in control as far as their guns could shoot. Roberts indeed outmanoeuvred the Boers strategically, but did not defeat them tactically. The war against space was still far from over. Eventually, it was Kitchener who was ruthlessly successful in South Africa – but only after laying waste to large areas of the war zone, building some 8,000 blockhouses (a process started by Roberts), and expanding the scorched earth policy (once again, a policy that was started by Roberts). How long would Roberts have taken to do his own police work? Would the conditions in the internment camps (a term preferred to the controversial term ‘concentration camps’) in 1901 have been better under Roberts than under Kitchener? How would Roberts have dealt with local politicians? What kind of peace would Roberts have brought about – and when? What we do know is that ‘[h]e left behind him a campaign of uncertain duration, but of certain issue’.30
Roberts took Colonel George Henderson with him to South Africa as his Chief of Military Intelligence. They discussed the planned tactics in depth, and Roberts’s strategy, as implemented, mirrored Henderson’s ideas.31 Although Henderson emphasised the importance of defeating the enemy in the field, he also focussed on the strategic value of threatening the opponent’s capital, and that helps to explain why Roberts attached so much value to the rapid capturing of both republican capitals32 (‘I am a firm believer in the maxim that the surest way to disconnect and discourage an enemy is to go straight for their Head Quarters.’33) With hindsight, of course, this was a mistake because the Boers did not attach much value to their capitals, could quickly move their headquarters and continued their struggle long after the capitals had been captured. Consequently, after the fall of Pretoria, Roberts’s strategy, in a sense, lost its momentum.
Victoria's Generals Page 25
