February to March, 1900.
I.—Kimberley to Paardeberg.
The true factors of success in mounted warfare received the most convincing illustration in the events immediately following the relief of Kimberley.
The baneful influence of this town continued to react on British strategy. French, in an ardent mood, and with some justification from his original orders, resolved to pursue the investing commandos north with three brigades, two of Cavalry, one of Mounted Infantry and Colonials, and some of the Kimberley mounted troops, altogether something over 4,000 men and five batteries. Ferreira, with most of the Free Staters, had retreated east the night before, and was wholly out of reach. There remained on the route due north, and with eleven miles start, from 1,500 to 2,000 burghers under the Transvaaler, Du Toit, and a heavy convoy. It soon became evident that, in the weak condition of French’s horses, the capture of this convoy was the only feasible object, and to this object French eventually confined himself. But an extraordinary hitch arose. One small body of 150[29] Griqualand West rebels, with one gun, instead of evacuating the lines of investment during the night, had quietly remained at its post on the Dronfield ridge, seven miles 114north of Kimberley, and now acted as a sort of improvised rear-guard. One of the Cavalry brigades, about 1,200 strong, with three batteries, in the course of a sweep north-west in order to envelop the convoy from that side, stumbled upon the Griqualand men, and wasted several hours in a vain endeavour to dislodge them by fire-action. The delay destroyed whatever chance there had been of succeeding against Du Toit, and the Brigadier was blamed for the delay. But what followed? On his way back to Kimberley French attacked the Lilliputian force, now separated by nine or ten miles from its nearest supports, with all three brigades, several hundred Kimberley mounted troops, and all five batteries. Still no result. French gave it up, and under cover of a dust-storm the Griqualanders rode away safely, abandoning their gun and some killed and wounded.
This incident occurred on the day after the charge at Klip Drift, and it shows how completely the real significance of that episode had been lost upon the Cavalry. At Klip Drift there was no chance of testing weapons; it was a case of riding through fire for an ulterior end. Here was a real chance of testing the value of weapons. Where was the steel? Where, more pregnant question still, was the horse? What is the tactical purpose of a horse in attack if not to accelerate aggression and precipitate a crisis, using mobility to overcome vulnerability? The Boers, it is true, were entrenched, but from what we know now of the physical factors in mounted attacks we can say with tolerable certainty that even the single brigade in the morning, properly disposed and extended, might have ridden, even at a moderate canter, into close quarters with the enemy with less loss than that involved in a lengthy dismounted attack. In the evening, with exhausted horses, but with a thirty-to-one superiority in men and guns, the smallest exertion of aggressive mobility would have made an end of the impertinent 115handful on the ridge. Now, the Cavalry were as brave soldiers as ever stepped. What they lacked was imagination to connect together the horse and the firearm as joint constituents of aggressive mobility, a defect aggravated by the possession of an inferior firearm, and by inexperience in the use of it. The crack of a rifle transformed the action into what their training-book called a “dismounted” action, and converted them into indifferent Infantry. At whose compulsion? That of a few mounted riflemen, acting in defence, dismounted, virtually as a rear-guard for the main Boer force; but with their horses at hand, available for escape, counted upon for escape (for otherwise their owners would not have been there), and eventually used for escape.
Dronfield was an extreme case, and I do not wish to use it further than as a peg on which to hang an argument. With infinite variation of circumstance, the same root principles applied in every action of the war. Let me make one more point clear before leaving the episode, and passing to another equally interesting and far more creditable to the Cavalry. When I suggest a more rapid mounted advance, I do not, of course, mean that the horsemen should remain on horseback up to, during and after contact. That was the old Cavalry view, based on the use of a steel weapon, and its strength accounts for the extraordinary reluctance of the Cavalry to contemplate any other form of aggressive mobility. They could never get shock, because their adversaries willed otherwise, and could always impose their will; without shock they themselves were rightly conscious that a man on horseback with a sword or lance is not, except under very rare conditions, a match for a man on foot with a magazine rifle. But why, save for a valueless shibboleth, remain persistently on horseback? At Dronfield, though the maps and narratives do not warrant the supposition, the summit of the ridge may, for all I 116know, have been unsuitable for rapid movement on a horse. But, as I pointed out in Chapter II., physical contact is not necessary for a charge by mounted riflemen. A charge is just as much a charge—in the sense of a killing, winning advance—if its mounted phase ends within point-blank, or even within “decisive” range of the enemy. Each and every acceleration in the net rapidity of the whole movement makes it nearer to being worthy of the name of charge. Finally, if actual contact is both practicable and desirable, if the horsemen can ride right home, they must dismount when they get there. If they do not, they will lose two-thirds of their killing power. Their horses for the moment will be vulnerable encumbrances, but the men are better off dismounted than mounted, because they can use their rifles. I am premature now in discussing this point, but have thought it best to sketch the idea in advance. Illustration will come later.
To continue. That same evening (February 16, 1900) French received written orders from Roberts to march thirty miles to Koodoos Drift and cut off Cronje’s retreat.
On the night of the 15th the old Boer General, alarmed by the news of Klip Drift, had at last awakened to the fact that his 5,500 men and his cumbrous laager were on the point of being surrounded by an army of between 30,000 and 40,000 men. Resolving to retire along the Modder towards Bloemfontein, he called up his men from the Magersfontein trenches, and trekked in bright moonlight across the front of the sixth division at Klip Drift without being discovered by the Mounted Infantry. On the 16th, while French was riding north from Kimberley, Cronje held the sixth division at bay, and secured his next strategic point east, the passage of the Modder at Drieputs Drift. In the action of this day we may note that the Mounted Infantry tried to do what the Cavalry had done so successfully at Klip Drift—to ride in force 117through a fire-zone in order to pierce the enemy’s line. Through no fault of their own, but simply through lack of that drill and horsemanship which the Cavalry possessed, they failed badly, and were thrown into great disorder. After dusk, again unobserved, Cronje continued his retreat, and at 4.30 a.m. on the 17th his main body and convoy were halted within a few miles of Vendutie Drift, with an advance-guard as far east as Koodoos Drift.
It was at this moment that French, in accordance with orders, was leaving Kimberley to head off Cronje. His division as a fighting unit had practically ceased to exist. Horses had died in hundreds; whole regiments were demobilized. Of the three brigades engaged in the northward sweep from Kimberley, only one regiment—the Carabineers—was fit to march. This and Broadwood’s brigade, which had not been engaged, gave French 1,500 men and 12 guns. Ardent as ever, notwithstanding, he started off, and in six hours reached Vendutie Drift in time to head off Cronje. Midway he had passed within two or three miles of Ferreira’s force, about his equal in strength. Ferreira, though he appears to have been but dimly aware of the course of events, should undoubtedly have thrown himself across the path of the Cavalry. He missed the opportunity, and French rode on.
The mission of the Cavalry was to hold Cronje until the main army should come up and attack his rear. They performed this mission with skill, tenacity, and complete success, using fire-tactics and bluff to impose upon a force nearly four times their superior. Once more, in short, they were doing what they and the Colonials had done so well in the Colesberg operations two months earlier. Tactically, they stood in much the same position as the 900 Boers at Klip Drift, and if Cronje had come to the point even of contemplating the abandonment of his transport and dismounted burghers, he would have had, 118theoretically, the opportunity of bursting through the British containing line and making his point on Bloemfontein, just as French had burst through the Boer line and gained Kimberley. Knowing what we know now, we can see that this was what Cronje should have done or tried to do, though we can understand why he still declined to take this sort of action. His was not an independent mounted force, backed by an army. Not only in his instinctive perception, but in fact, it was an army in itself, the reverse of mobile, badly horsed, but, on the other hand, supported by small outlying detachments (under Ferreira, De Wet, etc.), from whom he expected vigorous co-operation. His transport represented not only public commissariat, but the private property of his burghers. Meanwhile his men carried the same rifles which had wrought such terrible havoc at Magersfontein. Slow-witted as he was, we must make allowance for this point of view throughout the operations of which the climax was now approaching, and indeed throughout the whole war. It was a standing weakness of the Boer organization that their transport was as ponderous as their fighting men were mobile. The ox governed net speed, not the horse.
These considerations do not detract in any way from the credit due to French and the Cavalry for their ride from Kimberley to the Drifts, and for pinning Cronje to his ground at this critical moment. During the night two Infantry divisions and the Mounted Infantry division, by dint of severe forced marching, were placed within striking distance of Cronje’s laager at Paardeberg. Then came the battle, the week’s investment, the surrender.
Unquestionably this day—February 17, 1900—was the great day of the Cavalry in the South African War. But, alas for the tyranny of names! Here is the Official Historian’s comment: “Yet that night was a memorable one for French’s troops; for they had accomplished the 119mission assigned to them by Lord Roberts, and had demonstrated that the conditions of modern fighting still permit Cavalry and Horse Artillery to play a r?le of supreme importance in war.” Here is what I may call the inverted moral over again. “Still permit!” What a pitifully cautious conclusion! Is it for that that we maintain enormously expensive mounted corps and entrust them with vitally important duties?
The real truth is that it was in spite of being “Cavalry,” not because they were “Cavalry,” that French’s troops had succeeded in the mission assigned to them by Roberts. Throughout the operations the characteristics, inborn or acquired, which distinguished them from mounted riflemen, had been their bane, not their blessing. Their steel weapons had been so much dead weight, their carbines poor substitutes for rifles, while faulty horsemastership, which we cannot dissociate from the artificialities of their peace training, is admitted to have been one of the causes of the appalling mortality in horses. French, as a spirited leader of horsemen, not as a leader of steel-armed, shock-trained horsemen, by pure force of will had overcome these obstacles and performed his allotted r?le. But without these obstacles, and leading a division of highly-trained mounted riflemen, what might he have done? Unquestionably, his powerful division would have been employed at the outset to aid in crushing by normal tactical means Cronje’s small force where it originally stood. But, apart from that fundamental difference, he might probably have dispensed with men numerous enough and efficient enough to act as eyes for the main army, a function which was in complete abeyance during these operations, with disastrous results at Waterval Drift, where De Wet raided a supply column. He might, perhaps, in the course of his independent r?le, have ridden at, instead of through, the Boers at Klip Drift, with far more demoralizing after-effects upon the enemy. He 120might have discovered and snapped up in his stride, as it were, Cronje’s defenceless laager, then lying so near to him, and still have obeyed his orders to reach Kimberley that night. He might, perhaps, have converted the northerly sweep from Kimberley into a fruitful operation, by eliminating the absurd delay occasioned by the Dronfield detachment. Probably he would have reached the Drifts with a larger and fresher force, able to regard what had been achieved rather as a prelude to still greater things than as the climax of a supreme effort. Climax, in fact, it was. When Roberts, a week later, called upon the Cavalry for another divisional enterprise, French was unable to respond. This sort of thing will not do in any future war; let us be clear about that. We cannot afford to use up Cavalry at this exorbitant rate. They are far too few and valuable, and will have far more varied and difficult duties to perform than French’s division performed.
There is no need, for our purpose, to describe the battle of Paardeberg at any length, or to enter deeply into the controversy which has raged around the question of storming versus investment. Time, I think, will confirm the view expressed in the Times and German Histories that Kitchener, in spite of his ambiguous personal position on the battle-field of the 18th, and in spite of his faulty and disjointed tactical methods, was right in his endeavour to storm the laager at all costs there and then, and that he should have received more whole-hearted co-operation from the subordinate commanders. Time, perhaps, may have already convinced Lord Roberts that the subsequent policy of investment, with its far-reaching moral and material consequences, was a mistake. But however this may be, the outstanding technical lesson is the same—the extraordinary power possessed by mounted riflemen, trained to entrench and shoot straight, even when they have lost their mobility, even when they suffer from 121flagrant defects of organization, morale, and discipline, in holding at bay vastly superior regular forces of all arms.
Directly Cronje accepted envelopment, his force lost its last resemblance to a mounted force. He was assailed mainly by Infantry and Artillery. But two incidents, which have a strong mounted interest, if the expression is permissible, deserve brief notice.
1. The pathetic little charge of Hannay and fifty or sixty of his Mounted Infantry towards the end of the day. Kitchener, burning to get into the laager in spite of many a bloody repulse, realizing that an irruption even at one point in the front of two and a half miles would lead to the collapse of the defence, and that such an irruption was beyond the power of the slow-moving Infantry under the deadly Boer fire, sent the following message to Hannay at 3.30 p.m.:
“The time has now come for a final effort. All troops have been warned that the laager must be rushed at all costs. Try and carry Stephenson’s brigade on with you. But if they cannot go, the Mounted Infantry should do it. Gallop up, if necessary, and fire into the laager.”
In the existing state of affairs it is difficult to defend the terms of this message. All the troops had not been warned. There was no proper provision for a supreme concerted assault. Stephenson, who was Hannay’s senior, received no message till much later. The Mounted Infantry were much scattered, and the spirit of breathless urgency conveyed by the message was inconsistent with the delay involved in co-ordinating their efforts with those of Stephenson’s brigade, which was two miles from Hannay on the opposite side of the Modder.
Hannay’s mood at the moment was one of despairing exasperation, after several previous failures to act up to what he considered the unreasonable expectations of his Chief. He now sent some hasty messages to outlying detachments of Mounted Infantry, and without wasting 122another moment, collected fifty or sixty of the men with him, and, longing for death, rode straight for the laager. He and many others were shot down, and the little charge flickered out, though a few men actually got into the laager. Nevertheless, even this tiny mounted effort had disproportionately great results, for under its cover the main firing-line dashed forward, and a part reached a good position within 350 yards of the Boer rifles. From this we can judge of the effects which might have attended a coherent, well-planned charge on a substantial scale. It was the old question of mobility versus vulnerability, illustrated in a very pointed way. The Infantryman, a small but a slow and steady target; the horseman, a large but a rapid and unsteady target, necessitating the spasmodic resighting of rifles on the part of the defence, and, by his very impetus, exercising a coercive moral effect upon their minds. When to use the aggressive power residing in the horse and rifle combined must be determined in every particular case by local circumstances. No rules can be laid down. But few can doubt that on this occasion, apart from executive methods, Kitchener’s instinct was sound. “Gallop up if necessary, and fire into the laager.” Substitute some more general word for “laager,” and there you have embodied in a few pregnant syllables the true spirit of the modern mounted charge. Nobody on the field would have dreamed of giving the same order to Cavalry, because of the manifest absurdity of demanding this kind of work from troops whose charging efficiency was supposed to depend on remaining in the saddle from first to last and wielding a steel weapon. These limitations, if adhered to, especially with the logical corollary of shock formation, albeit there was nothing to shock, would have rendered the charge a fiasco. If not adhered to, the Cavalry would have been in no better position than unskilled and ill-armed mounted riflemen. That, in fact, is exactly what they were, technically, plus 123the soldierly virtues and acquirements common to all professional troops of their race. But the fact was not yet realized.
Neither was the converse realized, except intuitively by Kitchener, that under modern conditions the real power to charge resides in well-armed mounted riflemen, not in the troops conventionally known as Cavalry. Circumstances had conspired to obscure this truth. The very name “Mounted Infantry” was a source of error, and the corps so labelled was a young corps, without a charging tradition, and only at the beginning of its education in the efficient use of the horse.
2. The intervention, first, of Commandant Steyn, then of Christian de Wet, with small mounted forces, coming from outside the battle area.
Steyn, with two guns and the Bethlehem commando “a few hundred” strong (I can get no more specific details), represented the first of the reinforcements which had been summoned away from Ladysmith to assist in succouring Cronje. He came up at 9 a.m., occupied a hill in rear of our eastern attack, delayed that attack for some two hours, and retained his position during the day. How far he had ridden before entering the action I do not know, but certainly a long distance.
Christian de Wet with a small force had, like French, been working independently since the operations began. On the 15th, with 350 men, he had attacked the army’s supply column at Waterval, and destroyed or captured a third of it. On the 18th, having heard of Cronje’s peril, he rode north from Koffyfontein to the Paardeberg battle-field, a distance of thirty miles (just equal to French’s ride from Kimberley to the Drifts), with 600 men and 2 guns, and at 5 p.m., by a rapid coup de main, seized the cardinal point in our enveloping line—Kitchener’s Kopje—overlooking the rear of our central attack. The hill, with its neighbour Stinkfontein, also 124seized by De Wet, formed part of a chain, running north and south, of which Steyn already held the northern part. Firing in concert upon the batteries and troops below them, the two leaders developed a counter-attack, which not only put an immediate end to the British assaults upon the laager, but by the confusion which it caused, brought about the abandonment at nightfall of hardly-won positions. Whether, under any circumstances, Kitchener could have induced the troops to rush the laager that evening is very doubtful, but it is agreed on all hands that the immediate cause of failure was De Wet’s masterly intervention at the right place and the right moment. The indirect after-effects were still more important. Though a disinclination to incur further heavy losses was, no doubt, the determining factor in the decision of Lord Roberts not to renew the assault, the marked change for the worse in the tactical situation must have influenced his mind considerably. And if we follow the chain of causation backward, we shall find, in the heavy blow struck at his transport three days earlier by the same master-hand, an additional reason for postponing what the strategical situation so urgently needed—a rapid and uninterrupted advance on Bloemfontein, before Boer reinforcements had time to arrive from other quarters of the theatre of war. The Cavalry, for their part, were on starvation rations for two or three days after the 18th, owing to the loss of forage-waggons.
Now let the reader compare the work done by French and De Wet respectively in this third week of February, with a special view to the controversy which this book deals with, remembering the relative size of the armies for which each worked and the relative independent strength with which each operated. The analogy in regard to work done is in many respects close and obvious, the disparity in force equally striking. Both men alike were actuated by the Cavalry spirit in its truly wide 125sense of the mounted spirit: both were dashing leaders of Horse, linked in sentiment by the horse. But what could De Wet have done if he, an uneducated farmer, and his men, a rude militia, unaccustomed to drill together except at rare intervals, had been burdened with the disqualifications under which the Cavalry laboured?
There are no abnormalities here which in the least degree discount the plain lesson for future wars. But, as usual, the official critics, in discussing the Paardeberg campaign, resolutely ignore its plainest lesson. Our own Official Historian pays ample tribute to De Wet’s skill and dash, but refrains from any comparison of methods and armaments which might raise the thorny issue. The German historian (vol. i., p. 187) introduces De Wet with the observation that he “arrived from the south” with 500 men. How very simple it sounds to arrive from the south! Later on (p. 227), the Boer General is criticized for not having done more, the suggestion apparently being that he might have brought about the rout, or partial rout, of the British forces on the south side of the Modder, and have extricated Cronje there and then. I need not investigate the grounds of this hypothesis, which I take to be far-fetched, to say the least. Certainly, if De Wet had produced these results, he would have performed one of the most extraordinary feats in the history of war. My point is that the suggestion is complacently advanced without a word of explanation, express or implied, as to why such an exacting standard should be applied to Boer troops and such a relatively mild standard to British troops. If the critic were to try and equalize his standards, he would find himself writing of the previous day’s operations, that French “arrived from the west” with 1,500 men, and blocked Cronje’s advance, but that if he had shown proper resolution, he should have routed Cronje there and then. Or, to take an example from the day of the battle itself: Gordon’s 126brigade of Cavalry, something over 800 strong and 12 guns, arrived from Kimberley at about the same time as De Wet from Koffyfontein, and did useful work in seizing the Koodoos Heights to the north-east of the battle-field; but why not suggest that it should have intervened with crushing effect in the main battle, or that French himself, who, with Broadwood’s brigade and the Carbineers, also performed useful work in watching Cronje’s line of retreat, should have assisted actively in the assault?
To those who imagine that the relative merits of Cavalry and the pure type of mounted riflemen have been judicially weighed, or even consciously contrasted, by Germans, and that we can safely fortify ourselves with their opinion in favour of the retention of the steel as the superior weapon, I commend the study of these chapters on the Kimberley and Paardeberg operations, and especially of the passage dealing in detail with the work of the British Cavalry (pp. 163–165, 176–178). Abounding in wise and true criticism, containing scarcely a sentence which can be challenged in any direct, positive way, they constitute a perfect masterpiece in the art of begging the one really fundamental question. What is the use of demonstrating that Roberts’s strategy from the outset bore the character rather of an attempt to man?uvre Cronje away from Kimberley than of an effort to defeat him where he stood, and that it was mainly through Cronje’s own errors that his envelopment was accomplished, if no clue is given as to the underlying motives of the British General’s cautious policy? Political motives apart, the dominating military fact was the extremely formidable character of the Boers as mounted riflemen—a known, proved fact, which rightly and naturally exercised a profound influence on Roberts’s plans. Without a recognition of this fact the whole operations are unintelligible. It is impossible to understand 127why it was necessary to employ an Army Corps whose mounted troops alone exceeded the enemy’s main force, and to use most of these mounted troops not tactically but strategically. Nor can we understand why the operations ended so successfully as they did, unless we realize that of the two constituents of the Boer fighting strength, the horse and the rifle, Cronje, encumbered by his precious waggons and by his helpless non-combatants, persisted in relying almost wholly on the rifle, to the neglect of the horse. On the other hand, a recognition of that dominant military fact explains most of the minor shortcomings and errors upon which the German critic comments adversely. One fault only it does not explain, the imperfect system of command, but that was far worse in the Boer army than in our own. It explains why Methuen’s division was not used for a containing attack upon the Magersfontein trenches, so as to pin down Cronje at an earlier stage; why the whole of the Cavalry were used for the raid on Kimberley, to the neglect of other important duties; and it throws into vivid light the detailed criticisms passed upon the Cavalry themselves. As to these latter criticisms, one can only admire the unerring dexterity with which the critic skates over the thinnest of thin ice in avoiding even the most distant allusion to the distinguishing features of Cavalry as the standard European arm. On armament and equipment he is silent. No one could gather that the Cavalry carried steel weapons and were equipped and trained primarily for shock. In commenting on the destruction of horse-flesh (p. 176), he notices several preventable causes, but associates none with the conventional systems of peace training. He is severe on the failure in reconnaissance, and attributes it principally to the effect of the modern long-range rifle in keeping scouts and patrols at a distance, but he does not suggest that the Cavalry carbine was an inadequate weapon, or that the lack of 128individual skill and initiative was connected in any way with the traditional training of Cavalry.
On the fire-action of Cavalry, as at the Drifts on February 17, he would do well to study his compatriot Bernhardi. Like our own Official Historian, he regards such action as an interesting and important modern discovery, and descants sapiently on the additional value it will give to Cavalry in future wars. No writer on any other arm but Cavalry would dare to show such ignorance. As though, nearly forty years earlier and five years before his own great war against the French, the American Cavalry leaders had not in scores of similar combats proved the value of fire-action! Surely he must have heard of Sheridan’s brilliant interception of Lee’s army in April, 1865?
On Cavalry in offence he is enigmatically reticent. The strange comment on the Klip Drift charge I have noticed. Equally strange are the comments on subsequent actions. Much impressed, apparently (pp. 159 and 166), by the failure of French’s division to dislodge the little Dronfield detachment on February 16, as compared with their success in containing Cronje on the 17th, he seems to be on the very verge of embracing the obvious rational conclusion. The two combats he describes as being of “quite extraordinary value” for instructional purposes. We wait breathlessly for the inference. But there is none, except, so far as I understand him, the depressingly lame conclusion that no more can be done by Cavalry than was done at Dronfield. And yet a few pages earlier (p. 150) we find him accepting De Wet’s destructive attack on the army’s supply column as the most natural thing in the world; while a few pages later he is actually blaming the same leader for not converting his intervention at Paardeberg (smart enough in itself, in all conscience) into a decisive attack against immensely superior forces.
129The exasperating feature of all this is that for a controversialist like myself, who is trying to make a point good, there is never anything quite concrete enough to grapple with closely. It is not as if, in his remarks on the Klip Drift charge, the critic ever even alluded to the conventional function of Cavalry in offence, shock with the arme blanche, and endeavoured to explain why it was in abeyance in all this fighting against the Boers, and why we may expect that in future wars it will resume its old sway. If he were to take that course, issue could be joined frankly and fairly. But, as I have said, he is absolutely silent on this crucial point, just as he is absolutely silent on the comparative merits of the Boer type. The two themes, so patently and intimately intertwined, are kept rigorously distinct, shut off from one another by a kind of thought-tight bulkhead which divides his mind into two hermetically-sealed compartments, in one of which, I suppose, is enshrined the arme blanche dogma, inviolate, inviolable, not to be sullied by the least intrusion of polemical argument.
It is strange enough to find Germans accepting this class of criticism. It is barely credible that we, whose war this was, should, in our turn, accept it at second-hand from Germans and hail it as oracular. That seems to be the situation. But the paradox does not end there. As I shall show at the proper time, Bernhardi’s work, the bible of our own Cavalry school, contains within itself the most crushing refutation of the arme blanche theory, simply because his special purpose and special environment permitted him to descant more freely and enthusiastically on the virtues of the rifle. He, too, kept the rifle and the steel in carefully separated compartments, but the arrangement is so transparent that it cannot deceive. Experience of his own in South Africa, confirming in every particular those fire-lessons which he drew from the American Civil War, would have saved him from 130many palpable inconsistencies. However that may be, let the reader clearly understand this, that what I have quoted from the official critic is the kind of evidence on which German practice is founded. If he thinks it convincing and satisfactory, well and good. But let him not be deluded into thinking that the Germans have honestly assimilated and co-ordinated the lessons of the South African War. The contrary can be proved to demonstration out of their own mouths.
It must be added that, besides these comments on the Kimberley operations, scarcely any attention is paid in the German Official History to the mounted question. The war may be truly said to have been studied by Germans from a purely Infantry standpoint. That the mounted factor was dominant throughout is a fact they disregard, even if they perceive it.
II.—Poplar Grove.
March 7, 1900.
I have now to record the progress of events up to the capture of Bloemfontein. The investment of Cronje’s laager lasted nine days. De Wet reinforced the key position at Kitchener’s Kopje, and implored Cronje to break out. Cronje could not induce his men, whose horses were gradually destroyed by Artillery fire, to try. De Wet, who was driven off his kopje by an enveloping movement in which the Cavalry took the principal part, tried to regain it two days later and failed. Meanwhile reinforcements from other parts of the theatre of war gradually brought the total of Boers outside the lines and between Paardeberg and Bloemfontein up to something between 5,000 and 6,000. Aware of the process of reinforcement, and fully alive to the ill-effects of delay, Roberts tried to arrange for a raid by the Cavalry on 131Bloemfontein. By the 24th transport had been collected, the brigades reorganized, and all was ready for a start. But at the last moment French was compelled reluctantly to state that the horses were not in a fit state for the expedition. De Wet might possibly have made some more effective diversion with the newly-arrived troops, had not the moral decay which made such havoc in the Boer forces after the date of Cronje’s capture begun even before that capture was consummated.
Cronje surrendered with 4,000 men on February 29. Vastly more important as the results might have been, had it been possible to storm the laager and accelerate the advance on the Free State capital, Paardeberg was, nevertheless, the turning-point in the war. Roberts’s broad scheme of strategy was signally justified. Many days before the actual surrender pressure had been relieved at every threatened point in the theatre of war, Mafeking alone excepted—at Kimberley,............