September, 1900, to May, 1902.

Note.—For actions and operations mentioned in this chapter (part of which covers ground not yet dealt with by our Official Historians), the reader is referred to the Times History, vol. v.

So ended what is usually known as the “regular war.” In South Africa the expression had no precise significance. Regular war had been melting imperceptibly into guerilla war for some time past. The Boers were not dependent, as thickly peopled industrial communities are dependent, on their railways, capitals, and principal towns. The vast majority lived on the land, and the land was theirs, very little ravaged as yet, and, as to vast areas, still even unvisited. The guerilla war may truly be said to have begun in the Free State in March, 1900, after the capture of Bloemfontein, and in the Transvaal not later, at any rate, than July, when Botha, from necessity rather than from choice, sent most of his burghers to their own districts. Nor was the crash at Komati Poort followed by anything more than a partial lull in hostilities.

Over both the newly annexed Colonies we exercised no authority outside the range of our guns. In the greater part of the Transvaal, it is true, there were two months during which the burghers, like wasps, stung rarely unless they were disturbed; but in the sister state, De Wet’s return at the end of August, after the first “hunt,” had roused his countrymen to fresh offensive efforts. After some weeks of propaganda and reorganization 211he took the field on September 20, just when Roberts was approaching Komati Poort. A month later he was laying formal, though unsuccessful, siege, to a fortified town in the Transvaal—Frederikstad—and in Mid-November, undeterred by a sharp reverse at Bothaville (November 6), he was marching south through the Eastern Free State, besieging and, this time, capturing another fortified town—Dewetsdorp—and endeavouring to invade Cape Colony. By a great concerted effort, organized by Kitchener, and known as the second “De Wet hunt,” he was checked, but not before he had succeeded, early in December in throwing across the border bands under Kritzinger and Hertzog, which lit an inextinguishable flame of rebellion among the Dutch colonists.

Certain incidents in this period (September to November, 1900) call for special notice.

1. The march of 173 miles made by French’s Cavalry division, about 3,000 strong, across the Eastern Transvaal in October, with the object of “clearing the country.” This march revealed with startling clearness both the nature of the campaign which was beginning, and the incapacity of the Cavalry, armed and equipped as they were, to cope with it. Bands, which never exceeded a third and rarely exceeded a fifth or sixth of French’s strength, harassed the column all the way with vicious little attacks, which were repelled, but which met with no punishment, nor with any adequate tactical retaliation. The expedition achieved nothing, encouraged the enemy, and was attended by enormous losses of oxen and horses. It is true that numbers of other columns (the majority composed mainly of Infantry) were tramping about the country at this time with scarcely better results, and nearly all suffering from the disability imposed by heavy ox-transport. It is true also, that the country traversed by French presented peculiar difficulties in its remoteness from railways, and in the pugnacity of 212its burghers. But, with allowance for these considerations, the marked feature of the expedition, from the point of view of our inquiry, was the failure of the Cavalry to reap advantage, tactically, from occasions when the enemy sought a conflict.

2. A more hopeful omen for the future was afforded at about the same time in the Free State, by the action of Bothaville[50] (November 6, 1900), at the end of a long chase of De Wet by some columns of mounted riflemen under Charles Knox, after the Boer leader’s retreat from Frederikstad, and before his attempt to invade Cape Colony. His laager and guns were surprised and attacked at close range in brilliant style by a small advance-guard composed of only sixty-seven regular Mounted Infantry, who held their ground until reinforced, and brought about the capture of several guns, much transport, and 100 men, after a fiercely contested fight of some hours’ duration. This exploit was something wholly new. Nothing exactly like it had been done by our mounted troops since the war began. Some excellent work, too, though never quite good enough for the purpose, was done by the same and other mounted columns in the subsequent hunt of De Wet, arising out of his attempted raid on Cape Colony (November 24 to December 13, 1900). Co-operation was far better, and tackling power higher than in the “hunt” of the preceding August.

3. Charges.—We note the Boer mounted charge occurring—

(a) On at least one small occasion during the march of the Cavalry division referred to above. I have no details, only a bare mention of the circumstance in the “Official History” (vol. iii., p. 432). The movement was repelled.

(b) On November 6, at Komati River, in the course of some operations under Smith-Dorrien, near the Delagoa 213Railway, where Boers, firing from the saddle, charged clean through a rear-guard of Canadian mounted troops (Times History, vol. v., p. 51; “Official History,” vol. iii., p. 442).

(c) In the second “De Wet hunt.” This, I think, was the first example in the war, on the Boer side, of what I may call the penetrating charge, after the Klip Drift pattern, that is, designed to pierce a screen for ulterior purposes, not to inflict immediate loss on the enemy. It occurred at the close of the hunt, when, at Springhaan’s Nek (December 14, 1900), the Boers, accompanied by a mass of waggons, burst through the Thabanchu line of fortified posts, which had been strengthened at the point attacked by small detachments of mounted riflemen. It is worth while, though I have not the space, to examine the incident side by side with the Klip Drift charge, noting relative numbers, size of target, ground, and the effect of fire upon men and animals in rapid movement (Times History, vol. v., pp. 40–42. Not mentioned in “Official History”).

(d) A successful little charge, this time by Britons, occurred on the same day in another part of the field, at Victoria Nek, where a detached Boer force was attacked and very roughly handled by the Welsh Yeomanry and the 16th Lancers. The “Official History” makes no mention of the episode, and my own information is scanty. Some of the Yeomanry, it is said, used clubbed rifles. Whether the Lancers used their swords I do not know. As to clubbed rifles, contrast the Boer plan of firing from the saddle (Times History, vol. v., pp. 41–42).

(e) On the British side again, Bothaville (referred to above) was certainly on the border-line of charges. The advance-guard dismounted at something like point-blank range. So few in numbers, they would have gained little by riding home, and might have defeated their own 214object. As it was, they achieved their object, and that is all that matters, whether it is Infantry, Cavalry, or mounted riflemen who are charging.

My digression has run to greater length than I intended. There was no pause in the current of Boer aggression. No sooner had De Wet turned his back on the Orange River than the long-prepared offensive revival in the Transvaal was carried into effect. Viljoen’s enterprises against the Delagoa Railway towards the end of November had heralded the storm, which, during the early part of December, broke with violence in the western district, where the Buffelspoort convoy was destroyed (December 2, 1900), and De la Rey defeated Clements at Nooitgedacht (December 13, 1900). The revival spread to the south-east, where several towns on the Natal border were attacked, and culminated in the north-east, with Viljoen’s capture of Helvetia, on December 31, and Botha’s simultaneous midnight attacks of January 5 upon the garrisons of the Delagoa Railway, one of which, that on Belfast, came perilously near success.

Kitchener, who had assumed the chief command in South Africa on November 29, 1900, just when the Free State revival was declining, and the Transvaal outbreak was beginning, was faced with an extraordinarily difficult and complicated problem. He had to cope with a new national spirit among the Boers, emanating from men who were wholly unconnected with the old Kruger régime, and gathering strength from the elimination, by surrender or voluntary exile, of the supporters of that régime. The new national spirit took practical shape in a new military spirit, one of vigorous offence, conducted by men who represented what, beyond all question now, was the most formidable type of soldier in the world—the mounted rifleman—men who were equally at home in defending or assaulting entrenched positions, and in attack or defence in the open field.

215Our own resources for dealing with the situation were manifestly inadequate. It was not only that there had been visible in some of the recent events disquieting signs of feebleness in defence, leading to unjustifiable surrenders. This evil was largely due to the lassitude and staleness which affected the army in general. The really grave feature was our inability to retaliate effectively against these aggressive enterprises, an inability strikingly illustrated by the long but futile operations which were set on foot in the Western Transvaal after Nooitgedacht. The truth came like a flash, pitilessly illuminating past shortcomings, that all along we had been conquering the country, not the race, winning positions, not battles. Psychological causes apart, our cardinal military weakness had always lain in the mounted arm, not in numbers, except at the very first, but in quality. Unless we carry self-deception so far as either to eliminate from the calculation the great masses of Infantry who had borne the main brunt of the regular campaign and had suffered far the heaviest losses, or, on the other hand, to count the enemy twice over, once as opponents of the Infantry, and again as opponents of our mounted troops; unless we perpetrate one of these errors, we must candidly admit that we had had our full chance of securing decisive victories through the semi-independent agency of mounted men. The figures and facts to which I drew attention in sketching the main operations from Paardeberg to Komati Poort prove this conclusively. We had missed our chance, and the consequences of missing it, obscured at the time by a long record of successful invasion and occupation, were now apparent. The war, obviously, was to be a mounted war. In the last resort nothing but efficiency in the same formidable type which the Boers represented could enable us to conquer them. Infantry would still perform the task of holding the ground won; they would also perform many valuable 216subsidiary duties in the field, but always of a defensive or semi-defensive character. For offence, whether for finding the enemy and forcing him to action, or for beating him when he sought action himself, mounted riflemen, good enough and numerous enough, were an indispensable necessity. In this respect, what were our prospects?

We had evolved our type of mounted rifleman, which, in essentials, followed the Boer type, but in practice fell short of the ideal. The Cavalry, who from the first should have inspired and furthered the educational process, were only just beginning to substitute the rifle for the carbine, a change which must, I imagine, have been finally prompted by the experience, alluded to above, of their divisional march across the Eastern Transvaal, in October, 1900. So far as I know, the first occasion on which any considerable force of Cavalry carried rifles in the field was in the great driving operations which began in that same district, and again under French, at the end of January, 1901. The lance was already discarded, and eventually the sword also was discarded, but not until many months later. There seems to have been no simultaneous abandonment of swords by all Cavalry regiments alike. The change was gradual. In dwelling once again upon the backwardness of Cavalry training, I must explain once again, for fear of misunderstanding, that I am criticizing them by a standard special to themselves, the only standard appropriate to a professional force which had been in the field for more than a year. I need scarcely say that their record in the guerilla war, as in all the war, is honourable, and in many respects admirable; but by contrast with what they might have become without the arme blanche habit and training, it is comparatively negative and tame. With a few trifling exceptions they escape the reverses which so often befell their less disciplined and less experienced irregular comrades, but they do not stand out pre-eminent 217in that aggressive energy which was the great tradition of their arm. In the matter of leadership we find them supplying many excellent column commanders—men like Byng, Briggs, Scobell, and Rimington, to name only a few—but on the whole they can scarcely be said to have surpassed other arms of the service in the production of good leaders. Needless to say, good leading never came from any other source than oblivion of steel methods and unreserved reliance on the rifle.

The regular Mounted Infantry had made rapid strides in efficiency, in spite of the extraordinary difficulties with which they had to grapple—inexperience in riding and horse-management, dearth of officers, hurried organization, absence of common tradition and esprit de corps. But they had been worked with great severity, had shrunk greatly from the ordinary wastage of war, and could only be reinforced by the same unscientific and wasteful methods by which they had been raised—that is, by abstraction from Infantry battalions, which, in their turn, lost in efficiency from the process.

The prospect was even worse with the irregulars, Home and Colonial. All had worked hard, and most had done exceedingly well, considering their inexperience and the faults inseparable from improvised unprofessional corps. In sheer fighting efficiency the best of the seasoned Colonials, South African, Australasian and Canadian, had undoubtedly excelled all other mounted troops. Like the self-made soldiers of the American Civil War, they had seemed by intuition to grasp the possibilities of a union of the rifle with the horse. But the irregular mounted army was dissolving in Kitchener’s hands. Enlisted for limited terms, the various corps, Yeomanry included, had reached, or were soon to reach, their limit. It was necessary to forego their accumulated experience, to issue fresh appeals for volunteers, and to reconstruct this part of the army from top to bottom. 218The thing was done, but the stamp of new men enlisted (for there were many re-enlistments), whether from Home or the Colonies, and in spite of higher pay, was never again so good as of old. This deterioration was especially noticeable in some of the minor South African corps, whether raised for general purposes, or for the special purpose of acting as a local militia for the defence of Cape Colony. There was one marked exception to the general rule. The South African Constabulary, recruited from all parts of the Empire, and designed to be a permanent force, obtained the cream of the recruits.

Kitchener’s first reconstruction of the volunteer mounted army was not final. Limited terms again ran out, as the war dragged on, and fresh contingents replaced time-expired men. But the sources never ran dry, and on balance the strength tended to increase.

The constant changes and fluctuations make it exceedingly difficult to obtain accurate numerical estimates of our total mounted strength (regular and irregular) at any given time during this period. But we may say with approximate accuracy that in June, 1901, when all the volunteer mounted troops first appealed for in December, 1900, were in the field, and when the professional element had been reinforced, the total mounted strength was about 80,000, of whom 14,000 were regular Cavalry, and 12,000 regular Mounted Infantry (now divided into 27 battalions). The new contingent of Yeomanry numbered about 16,000; the South African Constabulary 7,500, and the Australasian contingents 5,000. Exclusive of the Cape Colony militia (District Mounted Troops and Town Guards), South Africa itself provided about 24,000 men enrolled in active corps. These are the full nominal figures. The effective fighting strength of the same units, on June 19 (according to an official state), was, within a man or two, 60,000.

The total strength of the whole army at the same 219period was about 244,000; “effective fighting strength” (according to the same official state), 164,000.

During the last year of the war, from June, 1901, to June, 1902, the regular Cavalry increased, in round numbers, to 16,000; the regular Mounted Infantry to 15,000; the Australasian and Canadian contingents to 13,000; and the South African Constabulary to 9,500; while in the last five months a wholly new mounted corps, eventually 2,300 strong, was formed from the personnel of the Royal Artillery. By this time the second contingent of Yeomanry had dwindled considerably, and a third was formed, 7,000 strong, most of whom did not arrive in time to fight. At the end of the war, with the active South African corps and the District Mounted Troops reckoned in, there must have been 100,000 mounted men in the field, without counting the Boer levies, known as National Scouts and Orange River Colony Volunteers. The whole army numbered about a quarter of a million.

While this progressive increase went on in British strength, and predominantly in mounted strength, the Boers steadily diminished. Here, too, periodical estimates are extraordinarily difficult. Within the two annexed states, not only enrolled burghers of fighting age, but every surviving male, except boys below, say, fourteen, and infirm old men, now had to be reckoned as potential enemies. The rebel element in Cape Colony was an indeterminate quantity. The foreign element gradually disappeared. If we accept the calculation of the Official Historians, that from first to last in the whole war, with the inclusion of rebels and foreigners, a grand total of 87,365 persons took arms against us at one time or another; if, at the other end of the scale, we bear in mind the number of men who laid down their arms at the conclusion of the war—namely, 21,256, and if we examine the intermediate statistics of surrenders, captures, and casualties, the rough conclusion 220may be drawn that at Christmas, 1900, we had still about 55,000 potential enemies to reckon with, and in June, 1901, about 45,000. During the last year the average monthly reduction was about 2,000.

But, apart from estimates of potential strength, the numbers actually on a war-footing at any given moment were very small—rarely more than 15,000—and sometimes as low probably as 9,000. No single body of men larger than 3,000—and this figure was exceedingly rare—ever again took the field.

The reduction in total numbers was one of quantity, not of quality. The weakest, morally or physically, were weeded out. The fittest survived and became continuously more formidable. That is what gives such extraordinary interest to the mounted operations of the guerilla war. How the small nucleus of veterans with limited resources and without external help managed to hold out for a year and three-quarters after the crash at Komati Poort against an Empire drawing upon inexhaustible resources of men, money, and material, and how, though losing their independence, they succeeded in obtaining terms which ensured to them in the near future political equality with their conquerors, is a story I have endeavoured elsewhere to take my share in telling. In these pages I have to confine myself, as closely as possible, to my own narrow issue. But it is necessary, once more, to say a few words on the larger aspects of the campaign.

First let us rid our minds of the fallacy that guerilla war is a wholly distinct thing in kind from regular war. It is nothing of the sort. War is a science whose fundamental principles are constant, however wide and numerous the variations of circumstance under which it is conducted. Perhaps I may be allowed to quote what I wrote on this point in my preface to vol. v. of the Times History:
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“Whether the enemy be based on rich and populous towns, linked by a network of railways, or on nomadic knots of waggons, filled from half-ravaged mealy fields, whether he draws ammunition from well-equipped arsenals, or gleans it from deserted camping-grounds, whether he man?uvres in armies 100,000 strong, or in commandos 500 strong, the problem of grappling with that enemy and forcing him to admit defeat is in essentials the same. Moreover, it is the peculiar interest of guerilla war that it illuminates much that is obscure and difficult in regular war. Just as the R?ntgen rays obliterate fleshy tissues, and reveal the bony structure, so in the incidents of guerilla war there may be seen, stripped of a mass of secondary detail, the few dominant factors which sway the issue of great battles and great campaigns. Subjected to close analysis, one of Kitchener’s combinations may be perceived to have succeeded or failed from the same causes which dictated the success or failure of Marlborough’s combinations. It is equally true that in many of the short and sharp actions described in this volume there may be distinguished, following one another with kinematographic rapidity and vividness, the same phases through which long struggles on historic battle-fields have passed.”

I repeat these words here because, among the many perversions of history for which the arme blanche school is indirectly responsible, none is more widespread than the vague idea, for it cannot be called a reasoned opinion, that the guerilla war may be ignored for instructional purposes. This is only an insidious extension of the proposition that the whole war was so “peculiar” as to afford no condemnation of the arme blanche; but the guerilla war is supposed to lend itself especially well to the propagation of that fallacy. So mercurial and intangible was the enemy (the suggestion is), so incalculable and irresponsible his movements, so numerous and safe the lairs from which he could gather, and to which he could disperse, so complete his independence of bases and communications, that it is useless to look for 222strategical, much less for tactical and technical lessons. To speak plainly, all this is pernicious nonsense. Every soldier knows in his heart that no success in action was ever gained on either side but by high individual efficiency in the men, by clever and spirited leading, and by putting into practice ordinary military principles. When we compare the Boers, in the way of legitimate metaphor, to wasps or mosquitoes, do not let us vainly imagine that their tactical methods were no more highly developed than those of that class of insect. A fortiori let us reject Mr. Goldman’s strange delusion that they practised evasion so perpetually and successfully as not to give our Cavalry—to say nothing of our mounted riflemen—a fair chance for the “discharge of Cavalry duties.” Neither sporadic sniping nor persistent evasion would have enabled the Boers to maintain their long resistance. They needed victories, however small, not only to replenish their ammunition, but to sustain their spirit and they could only obtain them by careful preparation, bold execution, and disciplined tactical methods. In war you can get nothing for nothing. However familiar the ground to you, and however great the disabilities under which your enemy labours, if you are going to do damage of any consequence you must concentrate a disciplined force, however small; feed it when concentrated; make plans, often concerted plans needing accurate co-operation; scout boldly and intelligently; hold your force well in hand and in close order up to the limit of prudence; and when the hour for action comes, rely on the valour and skill of your men to execute a definite tactical scheme in a coherent, disciplined fashion. In this way only—a way old as war itself—were actions, small or great, won in South Africa either by ourselves or by the Boers.

As to the arme blanche, whatever opportunities, if any, the past had afforded, those opportunities still existed. 223If it had been possible to exert shock in the past, it was equally possible now. That the numbers engaged on either side in any given action were on the average smaller made no difference. Nor did the Boer way of fighting, though it improved greatly in vigour, change in any essential particular. They had always fought and still fought in such a way as to make the rifle absolute arbiter of tactics. The secondary characteristics which lend such peculiar difficulties to guerilla war had not the remotest bearing on this question of weapons for horsemen. What bearing could they conceivably have? The problem still was to thrash the enemy whether he sought action or declined action. If it was a case of finding and forcing to battle an evasive foe, the weapon which inspired most ardour and nerve in the search was the best weapon. If the foe chose to accept action, or himself forced an action, the weapon which decided the issue was the best weapon. Combat is the one and only test, and combats were innmerable. Whether the Boers came to the scene of combat by train, or from some base-town, or whether they had been summoned suddenly from the farms of a certain limited district, was immaterial to the efficacy of weapons. In accepting combat, whether with little or great ardour, they accepted all the risks and penalties of combat. That is the only healthy way to look at the matter if we are to gain true instruction from the war, and not merely to drug our minds with the complacent thought that the difficulties were immense, and that on the whole we did as well as we could be expected to do.

The whole of the South African War, and the guerilla war in particular, was a superb school for mounted troops. It was an exceedingly hard school, but hard schools are the best. Our soldiers, and above all our Cavalrymen, ought to thank Providence on their knees for having given them this unique and unrivalled opportunity for 224practice in their art within a ring-fence, so to speak, subject to no external disturbance, and against an enemy who, however formidable in quality, could never be reinforced, and were bound to dwindle in numbers.

Did we tackle the guerilla war in such a way as to make the most our schooling? I am afraid we did not. I am not at all sure that, by the time we had reached that stage, we had the power to do so; but however that may be, when we are looking for lessons, let us ruthlessly eliminate bad or doubtful precedents, and fix our eyes on good precedents.

Our principal weakness was not a new one, though it ............