Howard C. Hillegas - With the Boer Forces

H >> Howard C. Hillegas >> With the Boer Forces

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The death of General Joubert in Pretoria, on March 26th, was sincerely
regretted by all South Africans, for he undoubtedly was one of the most
distinguished men in the country. During his long public career he made
many friends who held him in high honour for his sterling qualities, his
integrity, and his devotion to his country's cause. He made mistakes--and
there are few men who are invulnerable to them--but he died while striving
to do that which he regarded the best for his country and its cause. If
dying for one's country is patriotism, then Joubert's death was sweet.

When war-clouds were gathering and the storm was about to burst over the
Transvaal Piet Cronje sat on the stoep of his farmhouse in Potchefstroom,
evolving in his mind a system of tactics which he would follow when the
conflict began. He was certain that he would be chosen to lead his people,
for he had led them in numerous native wars, in the conflict in 1881, and
later when Jameson made his ill-starred entry into the Transvaal. Cronje
was a man who loved to be amid the quietude of his farm, but he was in the
cities often enough to realise that war was the only probable solution of
the differences between the Uitlanders and the Boers, and he made
preparations for the conflict. He studied foreign military methods and
their application to the Boer warfare; he evolved new ideas and improved
old ones; he planned battles and the evolutions necessary to win them; he
had a natural taste for things military.

Before all the world had heard the blast of the war-trumpet, Cronje had
deserted the peaceful stoep and was attacking the enemy on the veld at
Mafeking. A victory there, and he was riding at the head of his men toward
Kimberley. A skirmish here, a hard-fought battle there, and he had the
Diamond City in a state of siege. Victories urged him on, and he led the
way southward. A Magersfontein to his wreath, a Belmont and a Graspan--and
it seemed as if he were more than nominally the South African Napoleon. A
reverse, and Cronje was no longer the dashing, energetic leader of the
month before. Doggedly and determinedly he retraced his steps, but
advanced cautiously now and then to punish the enemy for its
over-confidence. Beaten back to Kimberley by the overpowering force of the
enemy, he endured defeat after defeat until finally he was compelled to
abandon the siege in order to escape the attacks of a second army sent
against him. The enemy's web had been spun around him, but he fought
bravely for freedom from entanglement. General French was on one side of
him, Lord Roberts on another, Lord Kitchener on a third--and against the
experience and troops of all these men was pitted the genius of the
Potchefstroom farmer. A fight with Roberts's Horse on Thursday, February
15th; a march of ten miles and a victorious rear-guard action with Lord
Kitchener on Friday; a repulse of the forces under Lords Roberts and
Kitchener on Saturday, and on Sunday morning the discovery that he and his
four thousand men in the river-bed at Paardeberg were surrounded by forty
thousand troops of the enemy--that was a four days' record which caused
the Lion of Potchefstroom merely to show his fangs to his enemy.

When General Cronje entered the river-bed on Saturday he was certain that
he could fight his way out on the following day. Scores of his burghers
appealed to him to trek eastward that night, and Commandant-General
Ferreira, of the Free State, asked him to trek north-east in order that
their two Boer forces might effect a junction, but Cronje was determined
to remain in the positions he then occupied until he could carry all his
transport-waggons safely away. In the evening Commandants De Beer and
Grobler urged the general to escape and explained to him that he would
certainly be surrounded the following day, but Cronje steadfastly
declined, and expressed his ability to fight a way through any force of
the enemy. Even late that night, while the British troops were welding the
chain which was to bind him hard and fast in the river-bed, many of
Cronje's men begged the general to desert the position, and when they saw
him so determined they deserted him and escaped to the eastward.

Cronje might have accepted the advice of his officers and men if he had
not believed that he could readily make his way to the east, where he did
not suspect the presence of any of Lord Roberts's troops. Not until the
following forenoon, when he saw the British advance-guard marching over
the hills on the south side of the river, did he realise that the enemy
had surrounded him and that he had erred when he determined to hold the
position. The grave mistake could not be rectified, and Cronje was in no
mood for penitence. He told his men that he expected reinforcements from
the east and counselled them to remain cool and fire with discretion until
assistance came to them. Later in the day the enemy attacked the camp from
all sides but the little army repulsed the onslaught and killed and
wounded more than a thousand British soldiers. When the Sabbath sun
descended and the four thousand Boers sang their psalms and hymns of
thanksgiving there was probably only one man who believed that the
burghers would ever be able to escape from the forces which surrounded
them, and that man was General Cronje. He realised the gravity of the
situation, but he was as calm as if he had been victorious in a battle. He
talked cheerily with his men, saying, "Let the English come on," and when
they heard their old commander speak in such a confident manner they
determined to fight until he himself announced a victory or a defeat.

On Monday morning it seemed as if the very blades of grass for miles
around the Boer laager were belching shot and shell over the dongas and
trenches where the burghers had sought shelter. Lyddite shells and
shrapnel burst over and around them; the bullets of rifles and
machine-guns swept close to their heads, and a few yards distant from them
were the heavy explosions of ammunition-waggons set on fire by the enemy's
shells. Burghers, horses and cattle fell under the storm of lead and iron,
and the mingled life-blood of man and beast flowed in rivulets to join the
waters of the river. The wounded lay groaning in the trenches; the dead
unburied outside, and the cannonading was so terrific that no one was able
to leave the trenches and dongas sufficiently long to give a drink of
water to a wounded companion. There was no medicine in the camp, all the
physicians were held in Jacobsdal by the enemy, and the condition of the
dead and dying was such that Cronje was compelled to ask for an
armistice. The reply from the British commander was "Fight or surrender,"
and Cronje chose to continue the fight. The bombardment of the laager was
resumed with increased vigour, and there was not a second's respite from
shells and bullets until after night descended, when the burghers were
enabled to emerge from their trenches and holes to exercise their limbs
and to secure food.

The Boers' cannon became defective on Tuesday morning, and thereafter they
could reply to the continued bombardment with only their rifles. Hope rose
in their breasts during the day when a heliograph message was received
from Commandant Froneman; "I am here with Generals De Wet and Cronje," the
message read; "Have good cheer. I am waiting for reinforcements. Tell the
burghers to find courage in Psalm xxvii." The fact that reinforcements
were near, even though the enemy was between, imbued the burghers with
renewed faith in their ability to defeat the enemy and, when a concerted
attack was made against the laager in the afternoon, a gallant resistance
followed.

On Wednesday morning the British batteries again poured their shells on
the miserable and exhausted Boers. Shortly before midday there was a lull
in the storm, and the beleaguered burghers could hear the reports of the
battle between the relieving force and the British troops. The sounds of
the fight grew fainter and fainter, then subsided altogether. The
bombardment of the laager was renewed, and the burghers realised that
Froneman had been beaten back by the enemy. The disappointment was so
great that one hundred and fifty Boers bade farewell to their general, and
laid down their arms to their enemy. The following day was merely the
repetition of the routine of former days, with the exception that the
condition of the men and the laager was hourly becoming more
miserable. The wounded clamouring for relief was in itself a misery to
those who were compelled to hear it, but to allow such appeals to go
unanswered was heartrending. To have the dead unburied seemed cruel
enough, but to have the corpses before one's eyes day after day was
torture. To know that the enemy was in ten times greater strength was
disheartening, but to realise that there was no relief at hand was enough
to dim the brightest courage. Yet Cronje was undaunted.

Friday and Saturday brought nothing but a message from Froneman, again
encouraging them to resist until reinforcements could be brought from
Bloemfontein. On Saturday evening Jan Theron, of Krugersdorp, succeeded in
breaking through the British lines with despatches from General De Wet and
Commandants Cronje and Froneman, urging General Cronje to fight a way
through the lines whilst they would engage the enemy from their side.
Cronje and his officers decided to make an attempt to escape, and on
Sunday morning the burghers commenced the construction of a chain-bridge
across the Modder to facilitate the crossing of the swollen river.
Fortunately for the Boers the British batteries fired only one shot into
the camp that day, and the burghers were able to complete the bridge
before night by means of the ropes and chains from their ox-waggons. On
Monday morning the British guns made a target of the bridge, and shelled
it so unremittingly that no one was able to approach it, much less make an
attempt to cross the river by means of it. The bombardment seemed to grow
in intensity as the day progressed, and when two shells fell into a group
of nine burghers, and left nothing but an arm and a leg to be found, the
Krijgsraad decided to hoist a white flag on Tuesday morning. General
Cronje and Commandant Schutte were the only officers who voted against
surrendering. They begged the other officers to reconsider their decision,
and to make an attempt to fight a way out, but the confidence of two men
was too weak to change the opinions of the others.

In a position covering less than a square mile of territory, hemmed in on
all sides by an army almost as great as that which defeated Napoleon at
Waterloo, surrounded by a chain of fire from carbines, rapid-fire guns and
heavy cannon, the target of thousands of the vaporous lyddite shells, his
trenches enfiladed by a continuous shower of lead, his men half dead from
lack of food, and stiff from the effect of their narrow quarters in the
trenches, General Cronje chose to fight and to risk complete disaster by
leading his four thousand men against the forty thousand of the enemy.

The will of the majority prevailed, and on February 27th, the anniversary
of Majuba Hill, after ten days of fighting, the white flag was hoisted
above the dilapidated laager. The bodies of ninety-seven burghers lay over
the scene of the disaster, and two hundred and forty-five wounded men were
left behind when General Cronje and his three thousand six hundred and
seventy-nine burghers and women limped out of the river-bed and
surrendered to Field-Marshal Lord Roberts.

In many respects General Cronje was the Boers' most brilliant leader, but
he was responsible for many serious and costly reverses. At Magersfontein
he defeated the enemy fairly, and he might have reaped the fruits of his
victory if he had followed up the advantage there gained. Instead, he
allowed his army to remain inactive for two months while the British
established a camp and base at the river. General French's march to
Kimberley might readily have been prevented or delayed if Cronje had
placed a few thousand of his men on the low range of kopjes commanding
French's route, but during the two days which were so fateful to him and
his army General Cronje never stirred from his laager. At Magersfontein
Cronje allowed thirty-six cannon, deserted by the British, to remain on
several kopjes all of one night and until ten o'clock next morning, when
they were taken away by the enemy. When he was asked why he did not send
his men to secure the guns Cronje replied, "God has been so good to us
that I did not have the heart to send my overworked men to fetch them."

Cronje was absolutely fearless, and in all the battles in which he took
part he was always in the most exposed positions. He rarely used a rifle,
as one of his eyes was affected, but the short, stoop-shouldered,
grey-bearded man, with the long riding-whip, was always in the thick of a
fight, encouraging his men and pointing out the positions for attack. He
was a fatalist when in battle, if not in times of peace, and it is told of
him that at Modder River he was warned by one of the burghers to seek a
less exposed position. "If God has ordained me to be shot to-day," the
grim old warrior replied, "I shall be shot, whether I sit here or in a
well." Cronje was one of the strictest leaders in the Boer army, and that
feature made him unpopular with the men who constantly applied to him for
leaves-of-absence to return to their homes. They fought for him in the
trenches at Paardeberg not because they loved him, but because they
respected him as an able leader. He did not have the affection of his
burghers like Botha, Meyer, De Wet, or De la Rey, but he held his men
together by force of his superior military attainments--a sort of
overawing authority which they could not disobey.

Personally, Cronje was not an extraordinary character. He was urbane in
manner and a pleasant conversationalist. Like the majority of the Boers he
was deeply religious, and tried to introduce the precepts of his religion
into his daily life. Although he was sixty-five years old when the war
began he had the energy and spirit of a much younger man, and the terrors
and anxieties of the ten days' siege at Paardeberg left but little marks
on the face which has been described as Christlike. His patriotism was
unbounded, and he held the independence of his country above
everything. "Independence with peace, if possible, but independence at all
costs," he was wont to say, and no one fought harder than he, to attain
that end.

When the Vryheid commandos rode over the western border of their district
and invaded Natal, Louis Botha, the successor of Commandant-General
Joubert, was one of the many Volksraad members who went forth to war in
the ranks of the common burghers. After the battle of Dundee, in which he
distinguished himself by several daring deeds, Botha became
Assistant-General to his lifelong friend and neighbour General Lucas
Meyer. Several weeks later, when General Meyer fell ill, he gave his
command to his compatriot, General Botha, and a short time afterward, when
Commandant-General Joubert was incapacitated by illness, Botha was
appointed to assume the responsibilities of the commander-in-chief. When
Joubert was on his deathbed he requested that Botha should be his
successor, and in that manner Louis Botha, burgher, became Louis Botha,
Commandant-General, in less than six months.

It was remarkable, this chain of fortuitous circumstances which led to
Botha's rapid advancement, but it was not entirely due to extraneous
causes, for he was deserving of every step of his promotion. There is a
man for every crisis, but rarely in history is found a record of a soldier
who rose from the ranks to commander-in-chief of an army in one campaign.
It was Meyer's misfortune when he became ill at a grave period of the war,
but it was the country's good fortune to have a Botha ready at hand to
fight a Colenso and a Spion Kop. When the burgher army along the Tugela
was hard pressed by the enemy and both its old-time leaders, Joubert and
Meyer, lay ill at the same time, it seemed little less than providential
that a Botha should step out of the ranks and lead the men with as much
discretion and valour as could have been expected from the experienced
generals whose work he undertook to accomplish. It was a modern
representation of the ploughman deserting his farm in order to lead in the
salvation of Rome.

Thirty-five years before he was called upon to be Commandant-General of
the army of his nation Louis Botha was born near the same spot where he
was chosen for that office, and on the soil of the empire against whose
forces he was pitting his strength and ability. In his youth he was wont
to listen to the narratives of the battles in which his father and
grandfather fought side by side against the hordes of natives who
periodically dyed the waters of the Tugela crimson with the blood of
massacred men and women. In early manhood Botha fought against the Zulus
and assisted Lucas Meyer in establishing the New Republic, which afterward
became his permanent home. Popularity, ability, and honesty brought him
into the councils of the nation as a member of the First Volksraad, where
he wielded great influence by reason of his conscientious devotion to duty
and his deep interest in the welfare of his country. When public affairs
did not require his presence in Pretoria, Botha was with his family on his
farm in Vryheid, and there he found the only happiness which he considered
worth having. The joys of a pastoral existence combined with the devotion
and love of his family were the keystone of Botha's happiness, and no man
had a finer realisation of his ambitions in that respect than he. Botha
was a warrior, no doubt, but primarily he was a man who loved the
peacefulness of a farm, the pleasures of a happy home-life, and the
laughter of his four children more than the tramp of victorious troops or
the roar of cannon.

There are a few men who have a certain magnetic power which attracts and
holds the admiration of others. Louis Botha was a man of this class.
Strangers who saw him for the first time loved him. There was an
indescribable something about him which caused men looking at him for the
first time to pledge their friendship for all time. The light in his blue
eyes seemed to mesmerise men, to draw them, willing or unwilling, to him.
It was not the quality which gained friends for Kruger nor that which made
Joubert popular, but rather a mysterious, involuntary influence which he
exerted over everybody with whom he came in contact. A man less handsome,
of less commanding appearance than Botha might have possessed such a
power, and been considered less extraordinary than he, but it was not
wholly his personal appearance--for he was the handsomest man in the Boer
army--which aroused the admiration of men. His voice, his eyes, his facial
expression and his manner--all combined to strengthen the man's power over
others. It may have been personal magnetism or a mysterious charm which he
possessed--but it was the mark of a great man.

The early part of Botha's career as a general was fraught with many
difficulties, the majority of which could be traced to his lack of years.
The Boer mind could not grasp the fact that a man of thirty-five years
could be a military leader, and for a long time the Boers treated the
young commander with a certain amount of contempt. The old takhaars
laughed at him when he asked them to perform any duties, and called him a
boy. They were unable to understand for a long time why they should act
upon the advice or orders of a man many years younger than they
themselves, and it was not until Botha had fought Colenso and Spion Kop
that the old burghers commenced to realise that ability was not always
monopolised by men with hoary beards. Before they had these manifestations
of Botha's military genius hundreds of the burghers absolutely refused to
obey his commands, and even went to the length of protesting to the
Government against his continued tenure of the important post.

The younger Boers, however, were quicker to discern the worth of the man,
and almost without exception gave him their united support. There was one
instance when a young Boer questioned Botha's authority, but the burgher's
mind was quickly disabused, and thereafter he was one of the
Commandant-General's staunchest supporters. It was at the battle of Pont
Drift, when General Botha was busily engaged in directing the movements of
his men and had little time to argue fine points of authority. The general
asked two young Boers to carry ammunition to the top of a kopje which was
being hard-shelled by the enemy. One of the Boers was willing immediately
to obey the general, but the other man refused to undertake the hazardous
journey. The general spoke kindly to the Boer, and acknowledged that he
would be risking his life by ascending the hill, but insisted that he
should go. The Boer finally declared he would not go, and added that Botha
was too young to give orders to men. The Commandant-General did not lose
his temper, but it did not require much time for him to decide that a
rebuke of some sort was necessary, so he knocked the man to the ground
with his fist. It was a good, solid blow, and the young Boer did not move
for a minute, but when he rose he had fully decided that he would gladly
carry the ammunition to the top of the kopje.

After General Botha demonstrated that he was a capable military leader he
became the idol of all the Boers. His popularity was second only to that
of President Kruger, and the hero-worshippers arranged for all sorts of
honours to be accorded to him after the war. He was to be made President,
first of all things; then his birthday anniversary was to be made the
occasion of a national holiday; statues were to be erected for him, and
nothing was to be left undone in order that his services to his country
might be given the appreciation they deserved. The stoical Boers were
never known to worship a man so idolatrously as they did in this case, and
it was all the more noteworthy on account of the adverse criticism which
was bestowed upon him several months before.

General Botha's reputation as a gallant and efficient leader was gained
during the campaign in Natal, but it was not until after the relief of
Ladysmith that his real hard work began. After the advance of Lord
Roberts's large army from Bloemfontein was begun myriads of new duties
devolved upon the Commandant-General, and thereafter he displayed a skill
and ingenuity in dealing with grave situations which was marvellous, when
it is taken into consideration that he was opposing a victorious army with
a mere handful of disappointed and gloomy burghers. The situation would
have been grave enough if he had had a trained and disciplined army under
his command, but in addition to making plans for opposing the enemy's
advance, General Botha was compelled to gather together the burghers with
whom he desired to make the resistance. His work would have been
comparatively easy if he could have remained at the spot where his
presence was most necessary, but it was absolutely impossible for him to
lead the defensive movements in the Free State without men, and in order
to secure them he was obliged to desert that important post and go to the
Biggarsberg, where many burghers were idle. Telegraph wires stretched from
the Free State to Natal, but a command sent by such a route never caused a
burgher to move an inch nearer to the Free State front, and consequently
the Commandant-General was compelled to go personally to the Biggarsberg
in search of volunteers to assist the burghers south of Kroonstad. When
General Botha arrived in Natal in the first days of May he asked the
Standerton commando to return with him to the Free State. They flatly
refused to go unless they were first allowed to spend a week at their
homes, but Botha finally, after much begging, cajoling, and threatening,
induced the burghers to go immediately. The Commandant-General saw the men
board a train, and then sped joyously northward toward Pretoria and the
Free State in a special train. When he reached Pretoria Botha learned that
the Standerton commando followed him as far as Standerton station, and
then dispersed to their homes. His dismay was great; but he was not
discouraged, and several hours later he was at Standerton, riding from
farm to farm to gather the men. This work delayed his arrival in the Free
State two days, but he secured the entire commando, and went with it to
the front, where it served him valiantly.

The masterly retreat of the Boer forces northward along the railway and
across the Vaal River, and the many skirmishes and battles with which
Botha harassed the enemy's advance, were mere incidents in the
Commandant-General's work of those trying days. There were innumerable
instances not unlike that in connection with the Standerton commando, and,
in addition, there was the planning to prevent the large commandos in the
western part of the Transvaal, and Meyer's large force in the
south-eastern part, from being cut off from his own body of burghers. It
was a period of grave moment and responsibilities, but Botha was the man
for the occasion. Although the British succeeded in entering Pretoria, the
capital of the country, the Boers lost little in prestige or men, and
Botha and his burghers were as confident of the final success of their
cause as they were when they crossed the Natal border seven months before.
Even after all the successive defeats of his army, Commandant-General
Botha continued to say, "We will fight--fight until not a single British
soldier remains on South African soil." A general who can express such a
firm faith in his cause when he sees nothing but disaster surrounding him
is great even if he is not always victorious.

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