I.—The Transition.
From the capture of Bloemfontein onwards, the nomenclature of mounted troops in South Africa, except as a clue to their race, origin, and professional or unprofessional character, ceases to possess practical significance. There emerges a single military type—the mounted rifleman—the man, that is, who can ride and shoot. Whether in reconnaissance, tactics, or strategy, in defence or offence, in any combination from a patrol to a commando, squadron, brigade, or division, or as a single scout; be he Boer or Briton, the better he can ride, and the better he can shoot, the better soldier he is.
In the British Army this unity of type soon becomes definitely recognized in practice. Textbook regulations as to the duties appropriate to different categories of mounted troops vanish like smoke under the irresistible logic of experience. There soon ceases to be any practical field distinction between regular Cavalry and regular Mounted Infantry. Both alike must do the same duties, alike relying on the union of firearm and the horse, and judged invariably by the same inexorable and unvarying tests. So with the numerous other categories of mounted corps, Home and Colonial, which from this time forward begin to exceed in number the horsemen drawn from professional sources. Wide distinctions, indeed, are constantly visible, and are constantly recognized between 169the capacities of different corps according to their country of origin, social class, length of experience, and physical and moral characteristics, and, above all, according to the stamp of officer they possess. But these are distinctions of degree, not of kind. The ideal type never varies—that of the mounted rifleman.
But the practical recognition of an ideal is one thing, and its whole-hearted assimilation another. For the bulk of the mounted troops, given the will, the way was now plain. They had nothing positively to unlearn if they had an infinite amount to learn. The regular Mounted Infantry, indeed, and to a certain extent other classes, had still to rid their minds of an idea that they were a tactical appanage of Cavalry, but the possession of a firearm superior to that of Cavalry, and the absence of any other weapon to confuse their tactical ideas, made the path easy. The regular Cavalry, on the other hand, had still something very substantial to unlearn, and that something was the immemorial tradition of their branch of the service, the theory and practice of the arme blanche. It would be idle to underrate the magnitude of the requisite revolution, which primarily was one of thought, rather than of action. Still, five months of fighting had taught a lesson which could scarcely be mistaken, a lesson which at this period of the war would have amply justified, if it did not render imperative, the systematic and universal re-arming of the Cavalry with the magazine rifle, and the return of all steel weapons to store. These changes could not have been imposed upon the Cavalry from without, they must have proceeded from within by the initiative of Cavalry leaders. French alone, perhaps, had the authority and prestige to secure their general adoption at this time; but in French the revolution of thought had not taken place, indeed, never wholly took place, even at a later period, when the necessary changes had been carried through. His very strength and vitality 170tend, as always, to obscure the issue. He continues to do much valuable and responsible work, and is always the keenest of the keen for ambitious enterprises. But he cannot impress the true Cavalry stamp upon the British operations, in the broadest sense of the word “Cavalry.” Big strategical conceptions are useless without high combative capacity in the troops employed, and that treasured tradition of the arm had been weakened because it was not founded on the right weapon.
Without any strong new lead from above, conservatism naturally exerted its full sway over the minds of the elder Brigadiers and regimental officers. It was among some of the younger men, where habit was weaker and enthusiasm stronger, that the new régime was warmly and sincerely welcomed. These men were now finding their most fruitful sphere in the leadership of irregular corps, where there was no tradition to combat, and no weapon but the rifle.
The Cavalry, in spite of their unsuitable armament, continued to conform to the new type—no other course was possible—but as a body they conformed reluctantly and with a lack of imaginative zeal, thereby gravely imperilling their chance of guiding and inspiring progressive mounted action. In common with all other corps they improved greatly as time went on, and always, as befitted their standing in the professional army, set a good example of the prime soldierly virtues. Their staff work, too, was a model to the rest of the army. But when we consider the unique initial advantage they possessed in building on a broad and solid foundation of drill, discipline, and esprit de corps, we are bound to admit that the results are disappointing.
The need for vigorous mounted action, always urgent, was becoming daily more urgent. With the relief of Ladysmith and the capture of Bloemfontein, the march of conquest definitely begins. With it the elements of 171strength and weakness in the Boer character and organization begin to assume clearer shape. Two contrary streams of tendency declare themselves: on the one hand, a progressive decline in corporate strength; on the other, new and marked symptoms of individual vitality, erratic, spasmodic, ephemeral, but of incalculable significance in determining the nature and length of the struggle, the character of the conquest, and the future political relations of the two belligerent races.
Of these two streams of tendency, the former, now and for six months to come, was the stronger and more rapid. It was hastened naturally by the overwhelming numerical superiority of the invaders at every threatened point. What to defend? where concentrate? was the distracted cry. Under this strain the old national fabric crumbled visibly, and although, by a process which was scarcely perceptible to the superficial view, the corrupt and diseased elements of the old body politic perished with it, the immediate military results were fatal. It became increasingly difficult for the Boers to maintain organized forces of any size in the field. Only one so considerable even as Cronje’s at Magersfontein ever appeared again. The opposition to our central march up the railway to Pretoria, to Buller’s advance through Natal, and to the other parallel movements, was made with miserably small forces. In the centre, before Pretoria was reached, the Free Staters had parted from their comrades of the sister State, and taken to local warfare. In June the Transvaalers rallied well at the battle of Diamond Hill outside Pretoria; then there was a reaction; then a revival, ending, after a creditable display of resistance along the line of the Delagoa Railway, in the sudden and apparently compete dissolution of the organized burgher forces on the Portuguese border in mid-September.
Such, in a few words, is the main course of events. But in the vast and thinly-peopled rural areas which constitute 172the great bulk of the republican territories periodical disturbances delay the main British advance. Amid the general wreck one Boer institution survives in its integrity, the territorial military system, based on the obligation of every individual citizen to serve in arms when called upon as a member of his ward and commando. Centralized forces melt, only to reappear as local bands inspired by a local patriotism, and summoned into sudden activity at the call of some trusted leader. Through the chequered drama flits the restless figure of Christian de Wet, the first Boer leader to teach his countrymen the real meaning and potency of aggressive mobility. Behind him is the sombre, passionate Steyn, and together these two men are the incarnation of that stubborn national purpose which often seemed to sleep, but which never died. All their efforts, nevertheless, are apparently unavailing. Wherever bands, by accretion or coalition, exceed a certain size, they succumb to the law of decay. The great machine of invasion and occupation rolls slowly but irresistibly forward.
Plainly, each fresh exhibition of weakness, and, a fortiori, each fresh spasm of activity, on the part of the defence, should have been an incentive to redoubled efforts on the part of the attack. I do not refer so much to our national efforts in the shape of reinforcements, horses, and the material of war; these flowed uninterruptedly and in enormous volume from the home country and the Empire at large. I refer to field efforts, and here again not so much to the higher strategy, which was uniformly worthy of the great soldier who conceived and directed it, as to that tactical fire and energy which alone could give us really substantial victories over the men opposed to us, instead of such limited successes as resulted in the occupation of towns, positions, and railways, but left the heart and will of the foe daunted, indeed, and depressed, but unsubdued. These crushing blows we 173never succeeded in attaining. Paardeberg, the nearest approach to such a victory, was robbed by the nine days’ investment of much of its moral value. Prinsloo’s surrender in the Brandwater basin in July of the same year produced as many prisoners as Paardeberg, but was marred by the escape of De Wet and Steyn, with the most resolute elements of the Boer forces present. Reviewing the combats of the period, we see one pattern of action recurring again and again with monotonous regularity, although with innumerable variations of local circumstance and personal performance. A very inferior Boer force defends an immensely extensive position; there are proportionately wide turning movements by our mounted troops, which fall short in vigour and completeness; frontal attacks by our Infantry; an action more or less prolonged; a Boer retreat covered by a small, but extraordinarily efficient, rear-guard; an ineffectual pursuit. The position is won, but the enemy has suffered physically very little. A time comes later when positions count for nothing, and men count for everything. Then earlier shortcomings bear bitter fruit.
If I were to enter deeply into the psychological causes of this instinctive relaxation of effort—for it was not a conscious process traceable in orders and despatches—I should travel far beyond the limits of my subject. In absolute strictness the psychology of the war is not relevant to that subject. If the student were to observe an ideal sense of mental proportion, distinguishing between the ardour inspired by a particular weapon and the ardour inspired by racial and national ambitions, there would be no need to stray beyond the purely technical aspects of the subject with which I am dealing. I have recognized from the beginning, however, that there are three objections to taking this course: first, that the line in question is often exceedingly difficult to draw; second, that in tracing and illustrating the development of 174mounted tactics some reference to the deeper moral causes at work tends greatly to elucidation; third, and most decisive reason, that one of the most subtle and insidious methods of discrediting the rifle and investing the arme blanche with a kind of posthumous distinction, has been to smother plain technical issues under hazy moralization. “Thought waves” are in fashion. Now, let us insist by all means on the old Napoleonic axiom that the moral forces in war count in the proportion of three to one to the physical; but when we see one weapon palpably outmatched by another let us recognize the fact as a fact. When we call the war “peculiar,” from the peculiar moral factors underlying it, let us not erase its technical lessons from our memory on the same ground. I remarked an example of this perverse tendency in the official comments on Poplar Grove, but Mr. Goldman is its most outspoken and sincere exponent. He has honestly convinced himself that the Cavalry never had any real chance of grappling with the enemy, and, consequently, no chance of proving the pre-eminent value of the arme blanche.[42] The picture he suggests is one of the Boers continually on the run, and running so fast that the exhausted troopers can never catch them. Their oxen, it would seem, run equally fast, or else take the most unsportsmanlike course of beginning to retreat prematurely. These are rear-guard actions, it is true, but these do not count. In some mysterious way they “make pursuit all but impracticable.” The Boers, in short, who “had no Cavalry in the proper and technical sense of the word,” by their aggravating pusillanimity did not supply the “primary conditions” for the “discharge (that is, on our side) of Cavalry duties.” That we had an enormous preponderance of force, and that it is the business of Cavalry to take advantage both of numerical and moral weakness in the enemy, Mr. Goldman does not recognize. He altogether ignores, too, that 175counter-current of offensive Boer activity which, throughout the war, supplies us with the most interesting and instructive examples of mounted tactics. But for the moment I need dwell no longer on this version of a war which lasted for two and a half years, cost us a heavy list of casualties and prisoners, and not a few very sad disasters. It is an unconscious insult, not merely to the army as a whole, but to the Cavalry, who did much excellent work as mounted riflemen, and to the great body of irregular mounted troops, whose existence Mr. Goldman appears to forget, and the best of whom surpassed the Cavalry in aggressive action. That a serious writer can commit to print, without qualification or reservation, the statement that the Boers “invariably beat a hasty retreat when confronted by Cavalry that could fight on horseback with carbine, lance, and sabre,” shows the fantastic lengths to which the arme blanche bias can carry those who submit to it.
Faced, however, with the fact that such travesties are extant, a writer on the arme blanche is compelled to take at least a passing account of moral factors. I need not spend any more words in proving that there was, in fact, on our side a general mildness of effort. Nearly all critics have agreed upon the fact. What were the causes?
1. About the deepest of all there is no dispute. Long years of peace and civil prosperity had softened the national fibre. We were not only unprepared for war, but forgetful of the grim meaning of war. In a general reluctance to incur heavy losses the commanders only reflected the national and social sentiment behind them.
2. Unfamiliar with wars in general, we were blind, above all, to the meaning of this particular war, whose object was not only to defeat, but to conquer, annex, and absorb a free white race. Since we became a nation, we had never before attempted to achieve such an object, 176and we did not realize its inherent difficulties. Signs of weakness in the enemy encouraged the delusion that the war was an ordinary war, whose events were to be estimated by ordinary standards. Signs of strength were undervalued and misinterpreted. Lord Roberts, the soul of generosity and humanity, after the fall of Bloemfontein, initiates an exceedingly indulgent civil policy which defeats its own end. He is compelled as time goes on to pass from the extreme of indulgence to the extreme of severity. But in spite of this disagreeable necessity he is always inclined to believe—and the whole army shares the feeling—that a collapse is imminent, and that no absolutely supreme and sustained efforts are required to hasten the end and seal the definitive triumph.
And what sort of triumph? The philosophic historian will discern that momentous problem already formulating itself, not merely in the minds of statesmen, but, dimly and inarticulately, in the minds of the army, which embodied in an extraordinarily representative manner the civic instincts of the British race. Did we really in our hearts desire such crushing victories as would shatter the spirit of our opponents and lay the foundation for a racial ascendancy, as opposed to a racial fusion, in South Africa? The question becomes of absorbing practical interest in later phases of the war, when the antagonistic schools of thought find expression in two equally able and determined men. For the present it is only a matter of conjecture how far a latent instinct of fraternity with our foes and future fellow-citizens, now that Majuba was at last avenged by Paardeberg and Pieter’s Hill, reacted on the vigour with which hostilities were pressed.
3. A more simple and prosaic motive for caution was the very well-founded respect entertained for the military capacity of the Boers. The sense of some absolutely overwhelming necessity for decisive blows would, doubtless, have gone far to neutralize caution, but this conviction 177was not present. The reverses of the early months had left an impression both on the popular mind and on the leaders in the field which subsequent successes could not wholly obliterate. Fresh reverses, on a smaller scale, were soon to mar the onward progress of success. From this time forward every action, however feebly or strongly contested, shows the Boers still highly formidable. Until the actual débacle on the Portuguese frontier, there are no panics. Retreats are orderly, transport and guns are preserved almost intact. However dispirited the majority, there invariably reappears that manful minority of stalwarts upon whose conduct, at one or another point, the difference between repulse and defeat hangs. Numbers, indeed, almost cease to count; quality is everything.
This resisting power, with its offensive counterpart, was derived, on its military side, solely from skill and audacity in practice of the mounted rifleman’s art. And here we return again to the solid ground of our inquiry. Giving their due weight and proportion to the broader moral factors which affected both sets of belligerents and, in our own army, all branches of the service alike, we can see our technical issue sharply and vividly defined in every phase and detail of hostilities.
Against a mounted enemy, even if his strategical mobility is conditioned by heavy transport, in the last resort it is always to vigorous mounted action that we must look both for the power to give effect to the attacks of Infantry and Artillery and for retaliation against those stinging little raids and counter-strokes which so often at critical times turned the scale in the higher Boer counsels. Foot-riflemen will never develop their full aggressive power against mounted riflemen unless they are conscious that their efforts will lead to a decisive issue through the correspondingly indispensable agency of mounted riflemen.
178
II.—The Halt at Bloemfontein.
There was a pause of seven weeks in the British advance after the capture of Bloemfontein. Reinforcements of all arms, remounts, transport, supplies, were collected in great volume. The supply system and hospital system were reformed, communications strengthened, garrisons organized. During a large part of this period the mounted troops in the central theatre were at little more than half their effective strength from lack of horses.
One small forward movement only was made: that to Karee Siding, twenty-seven miles north of Bloemfontein, a movement deemed necessary for the purpose of safe-guarding the passage over the Modder at Glen. Three thousand five hundred or 4,000 Boers with 8 guns held a line of low hills astride of the railway, with a level plain behind them. French and Tucker, who seem to have held a joint command, attacked with 9,000 men and 32 guns. Of the mounted troops present, 650 were regular Cavalry, 880 regular Mounted Infantry and Colonials, numbers which should have been sufficient to turn and hold the enemy effectually enough to give the Infantry their full chance. In principle the Poplar Grove tactics were employed, with variations of detail. The mounted troops, riding well in advance, were to turn both hostile flanks, and, when the Infantry attacks had been driven home, cut in upon the retreat. The engagement was a dull example of the now too common type. Both flanks were duly turned without opposition, and in good time (10 a.m.), by the mounted troops, but then a sort of paralysis set in. The Cavalry brigade, which was now somewhat behind the Boer right flank and within eight miles of the railway, was inactive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., though still unopposed, while the Mounted Infantry on the Boer left were held up by a small outlying detachment. Meanwhile the Infantry attacks, spirited enough, 179though not very well directed, ran their course, the Boers making a fairly steady stand, and yielding only between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. to threats of the bayonet. But there was nothing to intercept or hamper their retreat. Both mounted corps had eventually begun to move on, but were checked by slight flank guards. Our casualties were 189, almost entirely in the Infantry; those of the enemy 34.
This was emphatically a case where the professional mounted arm, which was separately brigaded, should have set an example of vigour to the younger and improvised corps. There seems, from the official and other narratives, to have been no valid reason against attempting an interception, though we must make allowance for the division in the higher command which may have had ill-effects. Such inaction was very unlike either French or Tucker. The poor condition of the horses is no explanation.
From Karee Siding (March 29) we turn to its anti-type, Sannah’s Post (March 30). With the exception of De Wet’s raid on the main army’s transport at Waterval, this was the first genuine feat of independent aggression on the part of the Boers which the war had as yet produced. The same leader was again the guiding spirit, and he began a career of aggression just when most of his countrymen were thinking more of surrender than resistance, and in several districts were actually handing in their arms.
De Wet, with 1,500 men and 7 guns, made a swift and secret expedition against the Waterworks, twenty-one miles due east of Bloemfontein, and then in British hands. Arriving within striking distance on the evening of March 29, he learnt that there was bigger game afoot, in the shape of an independent British force under Broadwood, who was retiring westward before a greatly superior force of Free Staters under Olivier and others. Broadwood was safely ahead, however, and his pursuers do not come into the story. De Wet resolved to ambush him and 180to that end posted 400 men in the bed of the Korn Spruit, which Broadwood would have to cross, and the rest, under his brother Piet, three miles away behind the British camp, on the high ground bordering the Modder River.
Broadwood’s was an exclusively mounted force, numbering 1,700, with 12 Horse Artillery guns. There were two regiments of regular Cavalry, together only 330 strong, and Alderson’s brigade of mounted riflemen, 850 strong, and composed of regular Mounted Infantry and Colonial riflemen. In fact, it was a typical mixed force of all the various classes of mounted troops then in the field. The gist of the story is well known. Breaking camp early on the 30th, without prior reconnaissance of the ground before them, the head of the transport and one of the two batteries marched into the ambush, and were captured. “Q” battery managed to escape, with the loss of a gun and many men. Piet de Wet meanwhile began his attack upon the rear, though as yet only with stationary fire upon the troops holding the Modder drifts. Broadwood acted with coolness and resolution. While the greater part of Alderson’s brigade kept Piet de Wet in check, the regular Cavalry and two companies of Mounted Infantry were sent across the Korn Spruit to take the 400 Boers who lined it in reverse. Dangerous as Broadwood’s own position was, the position of those Boers was for some little time almost equally dangerous. They were separated by three miles and by the Modder River from their main body, which, moreover, was being briskly engaged by the Mounted Infantry. Cramped in their narrow gully, they were being attacked in front by the five guns of “Q” battery, and threatened in flank and rear from rising ground which overlooked the spruit by the superior force of Cavalry and Mounted Infantry. They had no guns, and were much weakened in numbers by the detachment of the necessary guards for the captured British guns and waggons.
181As the Official Historian remarks, everything depended on the execution of the Cavalry turning movement. But again the paralysis sets in, as at Dronfield, Poplar Grove, and Karee Siding—a paralysis not due in the remotest degree to moral weakness, and certainly not in this case to weak horseflesh. There is nothing that we need talk about with bated breath or tactful reticence: neither our men nor their officers were to blame—only the habits and disabilities imposed by an obsolete weapon. A party of riflemen thrown out by De Wet from the spruit brought the attack to a standstill.
Disappointed on this side, Broadwood had no other course than to order a retreat of Alderson’s Mounted Infantry and the guns from the other side of the spruit (10.30 a.m.). As in so many similar actions in South Africa, everything hinged on the extrication of a badly crippled battery. The rescue of “Q” by the heroism of its own gunners and its mounted escort forms a brilliant little episode by itself. When the guns were out of immediate danger, the general retreat began. Piet de Wet’s men instantly poured across the Modder drifts and pursued hotly. The behaviour of Alderson’s brigade—Colonials and Englishmen alike—in this their first defensive engagement was very steady, though they suffered greatly from inexperience in man?uvre and fire. The retirement, conducted by successive movements of units, was orderly and cool, New Zealanders and Englishmen in combination having the honour of constituting the ultimate rear-guard. Eventually Broadwood’s force was concentrated safely on the farther side of the Spruit, having lost seven guns, most of its transport, and a third of its strength in casualties and prisoners.
Broadwood should have received help from other forces in the neighbourhood, including some Mounted Infantry, who were very feebly handled; but there is no need to enter into that lengthy and controversial topic.
182We have to note certain points of interest:
1. The Boer Pursuit.—Except for the Stormberg case three months back, this was the first example of a Boer mounted pursuit. All narratives agree in saying that it frequently took the form of charging on horseback up to close quarters, accompanied in some instances by a wholly new practice—fire from the saddle. Sometimes the burghers dismounted, and, with the rein over the arm, fired. Here we see the germ of important later developments. A year afterwards De la Rey or Kemp in similar circumstances would have used the same methods with more system and audacity.
2. Conversely, and again with the exception of Stormberg, this was the first example of a really critical rear-guard action for British mounted troops. We note remarkable proofs of improvement in general efficiency, together with several faults: indifferent marksmanship; lack of adroitness in the handling of led horses; lack of judgment in deciding upon the right moment to retire (several detachments were cut off through holding on too long); and a general insufficiency of that individual skirmishing capacity which enabled the Boers in similar predicaments to make one skilled man go as far as five unskilled men.
3. The contrast between the arme blanche and the rifle is unusually marked. Nomenclature is immaterial. All the work on the field was Cavalry work, not only in the broad sense of the term, but by the regular Cavalry’s standards. In essence, De Wet’s intercepting ambush in the Korn Spruit was the same kind of work as that done by the Cavalry themselves on the day before Paardeberg, and the same as that which they should have tried to do at Karee Siding. The projected, but abortive, counter-stroke upon the ambuscaders was Cavalry work. Piet de Wet’s rear attack and pursuit, and Alderson’s resistance to them, were both Cavalry work. The terrain was open.
183We may add that De Wet’s whole enterprise and the rapidity, secrecy, and nerve with which he carried it out were a good example of the true Cavalry spirit. Whether we call De Wet a “partisan” or not makes no difference. If his good qualities constitute partisanship, every Cavalry officer, from the highest to the lowest, should be a partisan.
4. The absence of reconnaissance on the morning of the battle needs no comment. There were some exceptional reasons, which I need not go into, for a relaxation of normal precautions, but no valid excuse.
De Wet, in his characteristically impulsive style, wasted no time after his victory, but dashed off south, and on April 4 snapped up a post of 600 men at Reddersburg. Then, instead of raiding the communications of the main army, which would undoubtedly have been his best course, he succumbed to the Boer craving for sieges, and wasted more than a fortnight in investing Wepener with a force which increased to more than 7,000 men. Wepener, defended by 1,900 men, who were mainly mounted troops belonging to Brabant’s Colonial Force, made an excellent and successful defence until relieved by Hart and Brabant himself.
De Wet’s activity, however, had changed the whole military situation. The south-eastern Free Staters were up in arms to the estimated number of 10,000, and Roberts was compelled before proceeding farther to clear this flank. His design, however, was not merely to clear it, but to make the relief of Wepener the starting-point for an enveloping movement of great magnitude, and with overwhelming force. Three Infantry divisions joined directly or indirectly in the operations and large numbers of mounted men of all classes. First came some ill-knit and overcautious preliminary operations, which I need not describe; then French, with an Infantry division and two Cavalry brigades immediately under his hand, 184assumed general control over the British forces from April 22 onwards.
The critical day was April 24, when he endeavoured to surround and crush a force of 6,000 Boers posted near Dewetsdorp. The scheme on that day, as French planned it, was in general form a repetition of the Poplar Grove and Karee Siding schemes, and was made to hinge on the intercepting action of the two Cavalry brigades upon the Boer line of retreat. Inevitably, and from the same unvarying cause, the intercepting movement came to nothing, the Cavalry being easily checked by small Boer parties. Again and again, in reading of such incidents, we feel how unfair it was to brave men to have given them an armament and training which prevented them from showing their best qualities.
In the course of the earlier operations detachments of the newly-raised Yeomanry, brigaded under Rundle, were for the first time in action. They did tolerably well, considering their rawness and inexperience, and I think it is generally agreed that Rundle, in his original attack upon Dewetsdorp on April 20, with a greatly superior force, might have relied somewhat more on their aid, in association with his other mounted troops.
De Wet now ordered a general retreat north of all the south-eastern Free Staters. By the end of April that portion of the country was wholly in British hands, and on May 3 Roberts was able to begin the grand advance for which he had been so long preparing.
III.—The Advance to Pretoria.
When that advance began there were in round numbers 200,000 British troops in South Africa, of whom 50,000 were on the lines of communications. With a moderate allowance for absenteeism, there were 30,000 Boers in the field, including the 2,000 besiegers of Mafeking.
185Our particular concern is with the British mounted troops, which had been remounted, reorganized, and largely increased in number. An additional regular Cavalry brigade joined the central army under Roberts; fresh battalions of regular Mounted Infantry, suffering from a serious scarcity of officers, were hastily formed, and fresh contingents of Colonial troops, both from overseas and within South Africa, continued to come into line. Half the Imperial Yeomanry—between 4,000 and 5,000 men, that is—were available at the beginning of May, and the whole force of 10,000 was before very long in the field.
For administrative purposes, Cavalry and mounted riflemen, hitherto associated together, were now separated. For the central army a division of four brigades of regular Cavalry, about 5,000 sabres strong (without counting Horse Artillery) was formed;[43] and at the same time the mounted riflemen were organized anew in one big division, 11,000 strong, divided into two brigades of four corps each, each corps being composed jointly of regular Mounted Infantry and Colonial mounted riflemen. Neither of these organizations proved to be permanent. The latter was from the first little more than nominal. In order to supply the mounted needs of the army at large, as time went on units had to be broken up and distributed where they were most required. The Yeomanry, similarly, were never employed as a divisional unit, but only in detachments.
Brabant’s Colonial Defence Force was now at its full strength of 3,000, and Buller, in Natal, though he had had to part with the Imperial Light Horse, who were sent round with Hunter’s Division to Kimberley, possessed, owing to the union of the Tugela and Ladysmith armies, between 5,000 and 6,000 mounted men, divided into three brigades, two of them homogeneous Cavalry units of 186three regiments apiece, the third composed of South African mounted riflemen.
In the far west of the theatre of war the Kimberley mounted troops were now available for active work, and in the north-west Plumer, with some 750 mounted Colonials, was still conducting his clever and plucky operations for the assistance of Mafeking and the security of the Rhodesian border. In the far north the Rhodesian Field Force, some 4,000 strong, mainly consisting of Australasian mounted riflemen and partly of Yeomanry, was on its way westward from Beira, under Carrington. Strathcona’s Horse, a new Canadian corps, 500 strong, had been detached on an abortive scheme for raiding the Delagoa Bay Railway via Louren?o Marques.
To sum up, if we compute the Yeomanry at their full strength, but exclude from the calculation the garrison of Mafeking and various small detachments doing duty on the communications or in process of formation into regiments, there were at this period in the field nearly 40,000 mounted men, of whom about 8,300 were Cavalry, still armed with carbine and lance or sword, and the rest, in the generic sense, mounted riflemen. Numerically, therefore, our mounted strength, viewed apart from the great masses of Infantry and Artillery, was greater by several thousand than the Boer strength actually in the field, even if we deduct half the Yeomanry as not yet fully available. But I need scarcely again warn the reader that such comparisons, for many obvious reasons, must be used with caution. In one quarter, however—the centre—our preponderance in mounted strength alone over the Boers opposed to us was very remarkable.
The Commander-in-Chief’s strategical scheme was of great simplicity and enormous magnitude. On a front of 300 miles, 109,000 men (I am using round numbers), with 350 guns, were to execute converging marches northward, 187with Pretoria as the central objective. On the extreme right, Buller, with 45,000 men, was to march through Natal; on the extreme left, Hunter, starting from Kimberley with 10,000 men, was to penetrate the Western Transvaal, and, incidentally, to relieve Mafeking. Methuen, starting with another 10,000 from the same point, was to march through the Western Free State. Lord Roberts, in the centre, with 25,000 men, was to move directly up the railway from Bloemfontein; while immediately on his right flank Ian Hamilton, with 14,500 men, supported by Colvile with 4,000 men, moved through the Eastern Free State.
Such was the plan of the grand advance. The principal subsidiary field-force was that of Rundle and Brabant, who were to follow slowly through the Eastern Free State, which was the most formidable region of all, sweeping up arrears, and making good the ground won. Warren, with 2,000 men, was to quell the rebellion in Bechuanaland; and Carrington was designed to co-operate from the far north, moving through Rhodesia upon the Northern Transvaal.
The distribution of mounted troops was as follows: Exclusive of Artillery corps, troops, etc., there were with Roberts and the central army four and a half corps, in all 3,600 strong, of mounted riflemen, and three brigades of Cavalry under French, also 3,600 strong. These three brigades, however, did not come into line until May 8, five days after the beginning of the advance. Having been employed almost continuously since the capture of Bloemfontein, and having received only small instalments of fresh horses, they had to spend the first days of May in a thorough refit. Their Horse Artillery had been wisely reduced to one battery for each brigade. The remaining brigade of Cavalry, under Broadwood, and the four remaining corps of mounted riflemen—1,400 and 4,300 strong respectively—were with 188Ian Hamilton. Buller’s mounted troops I have mentioned. Hunter’s were the Imperial Light Horse and the Kimberley corps. The Yeomanry were distributed between Methuen, Warren, Carrington, and Rundle, with the latter of whom Brabant’s Colonial division was acting.
There is no need, even if my space permitted, to follow with any closeness the fortunes of the grand advance. I have now reached a point in the war where it is necessary only to summarize events, to select from a vast number of operations conducted over a vast expanse of territory, typically interesting examples of mounted action, and along with the process of selection to trace the growth of principles.
The most interesting, naturally, of all the operations of that period were those of the two central columns under Roberts and Ian Hamilton, which from May 3 onwards[44] worked in close combination, and may be regarded as one force, nearly 40,000 strong, with 119 guns, exclusive of Colvile’s supporting column. It will have been noticed that they were far stronger in mounted troops than any other portion of the army. Indeed, at the lowest computation of their effective mounted strengths, and at the highest estimate of the Boer effectives from time to time opposed to them, it appears that Roberts and Hamilton together must at every stage in the advance have had a decisive superiority in mounted troops alone over the whole force of their opponents. Until May 8, when French’s three brigades of Cavalry came up, not more than 5,500 Boers in all opposed both columns, which at that time had 9,............