October to December, 1899.

In these two opening combats of the war the steel weapon had had its first rebuff and its first success. What was to happen now?

Immediately after Elandslaagte, French’s force, having disposed of Koch, was recalled by White to Ladysmith (October 22). On the same night the Dundee force, now in a situation of great and growing peril from Joubert’s united commandos, was forced to retreat hurriedly and secretly to Ladysmith. White sent out 5,300 men to cover the last stage of the retreat against any possible interruption from the 6,000 Free Staters who were threatening Ladysmith from the west. Hence the action of Rietfontein (October 24), a desultory fire-fight, for the most part at very long ranges, against an invisible and intangible enemy; in its proof of the mysterious, far-reaching potency of the rifle, a pregnant contrast to the close encounters at Talana and Elandslaagte.

But it was six days later, at the battle of Ladysmith (or Lombard’s Kop), that the most definite and substantial proof was given of the superiority of the rifle over the steel. Joubert had closed on Ladysmith with 12,000 men. White, also with 12,000 men, of whom 3,000 were mounted, conceived a bold and elaborate plan of attack designed not merely to drive the Boers back, but to inflict a crushing defeat. To his two mounted brigades 71(each composed of two Cavalry regiments and a corps of Colonial mounted riflemen) White assigned functions which were typical of the military theory of that day. One was to co-operate with the Infantry attack on the right, wheeling wide round the flank, and getting behind the enemy’s left. The other, held in reserve behind our left Infantry attack, was designed, when both attacks had succeeded, to cut in upon the Boer line of retreat (which lay towards the left or north), and pursue the beaten burghers. In order to facilitate the scheme of pursuit, an Infantry force had been detached by night to seize a pass—Nicholson’s Nek, of evil memory—which the Cavalry would have to surmount before debouching upon the plain. Since the force so detached suffered disaster, and the whole of White’s attack, here and elsewhere, failed, the left mounted brigade had very little to do. The right mounted brigade, whose work began with daylight, failed to effect the purpose assigned to it. Fire-tactics were immediately imposed upon it by the enemy’s mounted riflemen operating on rocky, bushy ground, and in fire-tactics the Mauser, in the words of the “Official History,” at once “dominated the carbine.” Advance was impossible; proper flank support to the Infantry was scarcely less difficult; even the retreat at the end of the day’s fighting was far from an able performance. French, who led the brigade, was not the French of a fortnight later, when the horse and the steel weapon were beginning to be dissociated after their long traditional partnership. For the present the fact was painfully obvious that the only professional troops endowed with the mobility of the Boers were the least capable of grappling with the Boers in action.

But did mobility, backed by the rifle, inspire dash in the Boers? At this period, except in isolated cases, no. The inertia, so disproportionate to their tactical flexibility and brilliant skirmishing skill, was never more apparent 72than at the close of this battle outside Ladysmith, when White began his retreat. No such opportunity was ever to present itself again for a really decisive victory. Joubert regarded the action as a defensive action, and had issued general orders against a pursuit. On the other hand, a simple burgher, Christian de Wet, had inspired the one genuinely aggressive enterprise which distinguished the Boer movements on this day—namely, the attack and capture of the detached force at Nicholson’s Nek. This—like the capture of Majuba nearly twenty years earlier—was a feat of stalking pure and simple, with which the horse had little to do, save that it bore the riflemen rapidly from a distant part of the field into the outermost fringe of the zone of combat. The outermost fringe—that is the point to watch. Could horses penetrate the inner fringe under rifle-fire and so precipitate the decisive phase of a conflict? While waiting for the answer let us be sensible and remember that after all the main thing is to win fights. Galloping under fire is only a means to an end. Stalking under fire requires nearly as much dash to be effective.

The long siege of Ladysmith now virtually began. By an error of judgment all the mounted troops, including the Cavalry regiments, were retained within the lines, and were thus practically demobilized for five months. Happily for our arms, however, French and his staff just succeeded in leaving the town for the south before investment was complete. Happily, too, the strenuous efforts to raise more volunteer mounted troops within South Africa were now bearing fruit. Two fine but wholly raw regiments, Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry and Bethune’s Mounted Infantry, were able to strengthen the miserably scanty forces which, pending the arrival of Buller and heavy reinforcements from England and the Cape, stood between Southern Natal and invasion. Even so, there was nothing during the 73first half of November to stop Joubert with the forces at his disposal from a vigorous raid on Maritzburg, and even on Durban. But his tactical inertia was exceeded by his strategical inertia. Egged on by Louis Botha, he did indeed initiate a raid with a force of over 3,000 picked men on picked horses, but it degenerated into a leisurely foray for loot and cattle. The time for action slipped by. British troops were pouring into Natal to redress the strategical balance, and in the last week of November the Boer force withdrew behind the Tugela, there, aided by abstraction from the investing force, to begin their long and desperate struggle to prevent the relief of Ladysmith.

Colenso, fought on December 15, was the first great event in this historic conflict. From our point of view, like all the subsequent fights in Natal, it needs very little comment. Buller, commanding a force of 18,000 men, of whom 2,500 were mounted, made a frontal attack with his Infantry and guns upon an immensely strong entrenched position held by 6,000 Boers. He failed, inflicted only nominal loss on the enemy, suffered 1,100 casualties himself, and lost ten guns. Two Cavalry regiments formed the professional nucleus of the mounted brigade; the rest were raw irregulars. There were Bethune’s and Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, who, in the fighting around Estcourt three weeks earlier, had been just blooded and no more, a squadron of Imperial Light Horse and some Natal volunteers who had had much the same experience, and the newly enlisted South African Light Horse, who had not yet fired a shot. Reconnaissance prior to the battle had been little more than nominal. Pitted against the Boer outposts—expert shots all of them—our scouts had rarely been able to get near the enemy’s lines. The Tugela fords were not properly known; the enemy’s principal positions were but dimly conjectured. Artillery fire was the substitute for reconnaissance, and that produced no response from the crafty burghers.

74In the battle itself the rifle from first to last governed tactics. The aggressive task given to the mounted brigade was the attack upon Hlwangwane Mountain, the great natural outwork upon which the Boer left flank rested. The irregulars were chosen for this attack, and rightly chosen, because rifles were absolutely essential. They made a plucky but vain effort to carry a strong position strongly held, and extricated themselves with some difficulty at the end of the day. The work of the Cavalry was confined to covering their retreat. As at Ladysmith, there was no opportunity for the steel, not from any chance causes, but because the rifle saw to it that no such opportunity should be allowed to occur.

Colenso was one of the three defeats in that sad week of mid-December, when the nation first realized the magnitude of the enterprise it had undertaken in South Africa. Let us carry events in other quarters of the field of war up to the same point, with special emphasis on the use of mounted troops.

Far up in the north the investment of Mafeking had begun immediately after the declaration of war (October 12). In a week the whole of the railway from Mafeking to Orange River was in Boer hands, and on the 23rd Kimberley was definitely invested. On no portion of this line were there any regular mounted troops, and of the local levies the only mobile force outside a besieged town was the Rhodesian Regiment of mounted riflemen, 450 strong, based on Tuli and commanded by Plumer, who, with this little handful of men and his own nerve and resource, did extraordinarily good work in threatening the Northern Transvaal, and at a later period in aiding in the relief of Mafeking.

Meanwhile the Boer invasion of Southern Cape Colony hung fire for three full weeks, and when it at last began, on November 1, the day Buller landed in South Africa, it was dilatory and methodless. Still, the strategical 75situation for ourselves was serious. White’s investment in Ladysmith, and the consequent danger to Southern Natal, had dislocated the entire scheme of British strategy, which was founded upon a resolve to land a whole Army Corps in Cape Colony and advance straight upon Bloemfontein and Pretoria. Buller’s decision, as we know, was to divert the greater part of his Army Corps to Natal, take command there himself, and make the relief of Ladysmith the primary British object. Probably the decision was the best that could have been come to, but it involved the dissolution of the Army Corps as an organized instrument of conquest, and the reduction of the grand scheme of irruption upon the enemy’s capital to a minor scheme of advance up the western railway line for the relief of Kimberley. In the meantime, and until a fresh army could be sent out from England, the vital portions of Cape Colony, comprising the great ports and the system of communications radiating therefrom, could only be protected against invasion by a mere demonstration of force exercised in the midst of districts teeming with disaffection.

Happily the Boer leaders had no eye for aggressive strategy, nor indeed any military organization on which to base aggressive strategy. Absorbed by the prospect of capturing Mafeking and Kimberley, just as in Natal they were absorbed by the prospect of capturing Ladysmith, they fell naturally in both cases into an attitude of strategical defence—defence against the relief of the towns they were investing. The same feebleness which characterized the raid upon Southern Natal early in November characterized the straggling invasion of Southern Cape Colony at the same period. Nevertheless, it was no light task for us to conceal our weakness in this quarter, and, with a thin containing line of troops gathered from the fragments of the old Army Corps, to hold in play greatly superior Boer forces. It was French who 76was called to undertake this delicate and difficult duty. How he performed it I shall relate in the next chapter. For the present, let us briefly review Methuen’s advance from Orange River towards Kimberley.

Methuen started on November 20 with a total force of 10,000 men, including 7,000 Infantry, 16 guns, and only 1,000 mounted men. The professional mounted element was represented by one Cavalry regiment, and three companies of regular Mounted Infantry; the irregular element by Rimington’s Guides and a handful of New South Wales Lancers. Methuen, therefore, was relatively weaker in mounted troops than any leader in Natal, and his operations provide proportionately less material for criticizing mounted tactics and the weapons suitable thereto. I say “proportionately” less, because, as I pointed out in my preliminary chapter upon the numbers and quality of the British and Boer mounted troops, we cannot reckon the Boers twice over, once in their capacity as dismounted riflemen holding positions against our Infantry, and a second time as mobile riflemen available for mounted evolutions against our Cavalry. Yet that strange error has been constantly made, and among other cases in the case of Methuen’s first three battles—Belmont (November 23), Graspan (November 25), and Modder River (November 28), in the first two of which the total British force engaged outnumbered the total Boer force engaged by nearly four to one, and in the third by more than two to one, while the British mounted troops, reckoned independently, amounted to half the Boer force and a quarter the Boer force respectively. The enemy, with something over 2,000 men at Graspan and Belmont, and with about 3,500 at Modder River, supported by Artillery which never exceeded three guns and two pompoms, had to make head against 7,000 British Infantry on the first two occasions, 6,800 on the second, and 7,500 on the third, backed by Artillery which rose 77from sixteen to twenty guns. The Infantry included the Brigade of Guards, and, taken as a whole, were as fine a body of troops of their class as could be found in any European country. These troops bore the brunt of all three battles. They stormed the rocky heights at Belmont and Enslin, and faced the yet more deadly fire which swept across the level plain from the sunken beds of the Modder and the Riet. Whatever tactical flexibility the Boers may have derived from their ponies in meeting these attacks, nearly the whole of their small force was pinned to its position until the crisis of each action, by the necessity of meeting Infantry and Artillery attacks in superior force.

The British mounted troops, on a reasonable calculation of relative strength, must be regarded as having been left approximately free for supplementary independent action on the enemy’s flanks and rear. This is how Methuen regarded them and endeavoured to use them. In the event, though all worked their hardest, they had no appreciable effect on any of the actions. The steel weapon was useless, although the terrain for shock was ideal. The Cavalry were not adapted or properly trained for fire-action, and the Mounted Infantry and irregulars, though trained and adapted for it, were very backward in the art. Reconnaissance, too, was inadequate. Methuen never knew with accuracy the strength and position of the enemy, and at Modder River was totally at sea until his Infantry was actually under heavy fire. The conditions no doubt were exacting. It was not numbers, but a small quantity of picked scouts that was needed. But Cavalry training had not encouraged that kind of individual merit.

The conventional comment upon all these actions has been that, owing to the paucity and exhaustion of the mounted troops, we could not reap the fruits of victory by sustained and destructive pursuit. There is truth, of 78course, in the proposition, but only that sort of half-truth which for instructional purposes is often more misleading than error.

As an example of this sort of mistaken criticism I will take the Official Historian’s remarks upon Graspan, on which occasion Methuen sent his mounted men in two bodies (one including two squadrons of Lancers, the other one squadron) six miles to the rear of the enemy’s main position with a view of surprising their laager and cutting off their retreat. There were no Boer reserves here, save a small guard to the laager, which, though sighted by the stronger British detachment, was not attacked. The Boers ultimately dealt with were the same men who had held the main position almost to the bayonet’s point against our Infantry, and who retreated after their defeat at that point. So far from intercepting or hampering the retreat, both bodies of mounted troops, unable to effect a junction, were attacked in detail by the fugitives, and put into dangerous positions, from which the fire-power of their Mounted Infantry and mounted riflemen were the principal means of extrication.

The Official Historian says: “At Graspan, as at Belmont, the open plains across which the enemy was compelled to retire were singularly favourable to Cavalry action, and had a satisfactory mounted brigade with a Horse Artillery battery been available, the Boers could not have effected their escape without suffering very heavy losses. Not only were the mounted troops at Lord Methuen’s disposal insufficient numerically, but their horses were already worn out by the heavy reconnaissance duty which had of necessity been carried out day after day without relief under the adverse conditions of a sandy soil, great heat, and a scarcity of water.”

There could be no better instance than this of the way 79in which the arme blanche faith is perpetuated from generation to generation, in defiance of experience. Every schoolboy has been puzzled by that reiterated comment upon most of the battles of history, that the exhaustion, or insufficiency, or feeble handling of the Cavalry by the victorious side prevented the full fruits of victory being garnered in. Why does this phenomenon happen so very often? he wonders. The historians rarely tell him two simple reasons—namely:

1. That troops armed even with a poor firearm are rarely so utterly and universally demoralized, even after a severe defeat, as to be unable to check the onset even of fresh Cavalry.

2. That Cavalry, who in all normally constituted armies form but a small proportion of the combatant troops, if they have worked hard in reconnaissance on previous days, not to speak of their action in prior phases of the battle, rarely find their horses fresh enough for long sustained gallops against a retreating army. (The reader will remember that this freshness is one of the four great conditions for the successful use of the steel.)

Both these limitations, which are cumulative, must be constantly borne in mind when criticizing mounted action in the South African War or any other war, and it must be noted that the second limitation applies to mounted riflemen, as well as to Cavalry, with this important reservation, that fire-action very often enables the former to dispense with long gallops, while for the steel weapon nothing short of a hand-to-hand mêlée, attained through the medium of the “charge,” is of any use at all.

Now what moral does the Official Historian draw from Graspan? His conclusion amounts to this, that if, in addition to our Infantry and sixteen field and naval guns, and in addition to about 900 mounted troops whose 80horses were worn out with reconnaissance, we had had a “satisfactory” mounted brigade (and the context shows that he means a brigade of Cavalry) and a battery of Horse Artillery, both fresh for pursuit and with an ideal terrain over which to pursue, the Boers, 2,000 to 3,000 in number, many of them just as tired as our men by long rides to the field and by reconnaissance, would not have effected their escape without heavy losses. If we could only have everything always as we wish it! Unfortunately, in most wars the kind of conditions imagined by the critic are Utopian. If we count on obtaining anything like such a superiority over any European foe, we are living in a fool’s paradise. Instead of complaining of our bad luck in fighting against the Boers, we ought to congratulate ourselves upon our advantages, and search coldly and unflinchingly for the causes which enabled so small a people to withstand a powerful Empire for so long.

In the light of common sense, what is the most striking feature of Graspan and of all these other fights? Surely the power of a small number of mounted riflemen, skilled in the management of the horse and skilled in the use of the modern firearm, to withstand greatly superior forces framed upon the European model, even allowing for cases where the proportion of mounted troops did not reach the normal European standard. The one thing emphatically that these fights in South Africa do not prove is that we wanted more steel-armed horsemen. The only way of proving that we did involves that reductio ad absurdum of the steel weapon which the Official Historian unconsciously finds himself drawn to embrace. For that is what it comes to. Given a force of mounted troops approximately equal to the whole Boer force, plus a threefold superiority in Infantry and guns, and we should have turned defeat into destruction. During an important part of the campaign, as I 81shall afterwards show, we did actually obtain something like these very conditions, but in only one instance were able to make destructive use of them, and in that instance solely through the agency of the firearm.

Before leaving Graspan, let us note for future use that on two occasions parties of Boers tried to ride down British mounted troops (both Cavalry and Mounted Infantry) in the open. The attempts failed, but there was no retort in kind. De la Rey was in command of the Boer force on this day. It will be interesting to observe his use of the mounted charge at a later period of the war.

At Magersfontein, on December 10, Methuen’s enterprise for the relief of Kimberley came to an abrupt end. Since the battle of Modder River, twelve days earlier, both sides had been reinforced. The Boers, holding a strong entrenched position under Cronje, were now some 7,000 in number with 5 guns and some pompoms. Methuen had received a brigade of Infantry, another Cavalry regiment, a fourth company of Mounted Infantry, and a battery of Horse Artillery. Altogether he had 11,000 Infantry, 1,600 mounted troops, and 33 guns (not counting a large number of machine guns)—that is to say, a total superiority of about two to one, and in guns of about six to one. Between a third and a quarter of the Boer force—representing their right—was not engaged in the battle. About seven-eighths of our force was engaged.

It is scarcely necessary to recall the tragic catastrophe which befell the Highland Brigade in their night attack upon the key of the Boer position, Magersfontein Hill, where the enemy’s centre rested. The rest of the battle, from the British point of view, resolved itself into a successful effort to save this isolated brigade from total annihilation, and an unsuccessful effort to break through the Boer left, which was flung forward crescent-wise over 82undulating, bushy ground. The whole battle was a fire-battle; the rifle supreme, the British guns of very little aggressive killing value, though potentially of high defensive value in preventing Boer counter-strokes. Horses on both sides were in the background. With the exception of some irregulars on our extreme left, all our mounted troops, including the Cavalry, fought on foot like the Infantry. The two Lancer regiments, their equipment and habits considered, did particularly well, but not, let it be remembered, in the capacity for which they had undergone nineteen-twentieths of their severe and elaborate training. I hope that here, as at Colenso, the reader will mentally figure his European parallels, substituting whatever categories of troops he pleases, in whatever relative strength, and on whatever terrain. We may remark that the topography of Magersfontein was in no sense peculiar. The position was not nearly as strong as at Colenso, where a river divided the combatants. Nor was it stronger than the averagely strong defensive position in Europe. The height of Magersfontein Kopje had no significance; for, like shrewd soldiers, the Boers had discovered that it is the forward and lowest slopes of a hill which give the most deadly field of fire, and it was these which they defended. The position was entrenched with peculiar skill, and held by peculiarly steady and accurate marksmen—that was all. These marksmen were mounted riflemen, many of whom had ridden to join Cronje from distant points. If they had been shock-trained European horsemen, they could neither have entrenched nor held the position. Though they scarcely used their horses at all during the action, the horses (like their cumbrous and bulky transport) were there, out of range, in almost defenceless knots and groups, vulnerable to just the sort of attack which Cavalry are supposed to be able to deliver. Separation from their horses, it may be observed, did not perturb these riflemen in the manner in which 83mounted riflemen are always, in Cavalry theory, supposed to be perturbed. They sat in narrow ditches on nearly level ground, from which retreat meant exposure to a withering storm of gun and rifle fire. Nor on this occasion is it easy to impute lack of aggressive dash to the Boers. Very few troops so situated and so outmatched in numbers and Artillery could have launched counter-strokes, whether mounted or on foot. That is a point which must be kept in mind whenever we compare the action of a small force of high mobility against a large force of low mobility. The defensive power of the former is far greater in proportion than its offensive power.

While the Highland Brigade was moving “ghost-like to its doom” in the dark morning hours of December 10, Gatacre’s force—200 miles away in Cape Colony—was approaching an even worse fate at Stormberg. This unhappy affair need not detain us long. It was a case of a mismanaged night attack by 1,850 Infantry, 450 regular Mounted Infantry, and 12 guns, upon 1,700 Boers. Although the surprise was complete, ignorance of the topography and the exhaustion of the troops involved our force in disastrous failure. Our Mounted Infantry escorted the guns and covered the final retreat, but took no part in the critical fighting. So far as mounted lessons are concerned, the moral was against the Boers. Here, certainly, they showed a marked lack of aggressive mobility. When total destruction of the British force was well within their grasp, they were content with a partial, if substantial, success. There was no real pursuit, even by two fresh commandos which appeared on the flank of the retreat. If the action stood alone, it might be plausibly conjectured that the absence of a steel weapon was accountable for this slackness. A review of the whole war disposes of the supposition.

84Colenso, Magersfontein, Stormberg, three decided checks in three widely distant areas of the theatre of war, constituted the “Black Week” of mid-December, 1899. With the single exception of the charge at Elandslaagte, on the second day of hostilities, the sword and lance had effected nothing.