PAARDEBERG AND LADYSMITH
Pibroch of Donuil Dhu, Pibroch of Donuil,
Wake thy wild voice anew, summon Clan Conuil.
Come away, come away, hark to the summons!
Come in your war array, gentles and commons!
Regimental March.

In the meantime various engagements had taken place elsewhere, and a curious condition of stalemate was gradually setting in, during which the British troops kept in touch with large bodies of Boers, but were in most cases quite unable to advance and relieve the beleaguered townships of Ladysmith, Mafeking, and Kimberley. The whole situation gradually formed itself for the long-awaited advance of Sir Redvers Buller, with all its unfortunate contingencies. But we must first deal with the engagement at Stormberg. It has been narrated, in a former chapter, how General Gatacre—or General ‘Backacher,’ as he was called in the Service—was the first to reach the thorny entanglements of the Dervish camp at the Atbara. He was a man of the greatest bravery, but by no means a skilful general, relying solely upon the courage of the British soldier. In a country like South Africa, where a pound of personal bravery was not always as fruitful as an ounce of strategy, optimism of this kind was only overloading a willing horse. It was magnificent, but it could not stop a rifle bullet at a thousand yards. Unfortunately, too, the forces under General Gatacre had been largely drawn upon for the assistance of Lord Methuen and Buller. On the night of December 9 he discovered that the Boers were in position at Stormberg, and with his little force of 3000 men set out for a night march, intending to storm the Boer trenches at dawn. The whole scheme of attack, on a lesser scale, was painfully similar to that at Magersfontein. It was so splendidly obvious.

By the time the men had come within reach of the Boer position they were so tired they could hardly drag their feet along. To Gatacre fatigue was nothing. At the break of the dawn he alone was full of zeal and courage, and spurred on by dread of a reverse to storm the position. Unfortunately it was the Boers who opened fire on the British, when a deadlock instantly ensued. It was difficult to carry the hill under such conditions; for on such occasions, when aeroplanes did not guide artillery fire, our own guns played as much havoc among our own infantry as among the Boers.

In a similar plight at Dargai the Gordons carried the position and enabled their comrades to move; but here it was impossible to extricate the men, and this led to a miserable surrender of a good many and the forlorn retreat of the rest.

Gatacre fell back after the action, and was shortly reinforced, but the incident had in no way improved matters for the prestige of the British arms. Within a week Methuen had suffered a crushing reverse at Magersfontein while Gatacre had been again beaten.

Fortunately by this time great numbers of troops were arriving in South Africa, and soon after Sir Redvers Buller prepared for the crossing of the Tugela River. On Friday, December 15, he advanced from Chieveley Camp to storm the Boer position. It was the first step towards Ladysmith. As none of the Highland regiments took part in this action, it is merely necessary to record that the battle of Colenso took place, and despite the heroism of the British soldiers, and in particular the Irish Brigade, the action was lost, and our troops, after a loss of 600, fell back on Chieveley Camp.

The first advance to the relief of Ladysmith had been severely and ignominiously checked.

The Christmas of 1899 was as black as any through which our nation has passed. The repeated defeats of the British forces flung a gloom over the country that for a moment almost paralysed it. More and more troops had been despatched to South Africa, and numbers only seemed to magnify our disasters. At such a moment Britain turned to her sons in this country and throughout the Empire.

But it was necessary to do more than raise new armies: the whole country required reassurance, and the name of one man instantly rose before the public mind. When Lord Roberts was asked to take supreme command in South Africa, with Kitchener as his Chief of Staff, he accepted with the same readiness that Sir Colin Campbell displayed at the time of the Indian Mutiny. “It is God’s will,” said Roberts, now heartbroken at the death of his son, and two days before Christmas he left London for the front.

His very name was half the battle, for, to recall the familiar lines:
There is something that’s audacious
In the very name of ‘Bobs,’
There’s a dare and dash about it
Makes you sort of want to shout it,
So that all the world can hear it
As you cheer.

On January 10, 1900, he landed at Cape Town, and appreciated at once the extreme gravity of the situation. The successes of the Boers were encouraging signs of revolt amongst the Cape Colonists, and to crush these symptoms at once Roberts set out towards the Orange Free State, anxious at the same time to distract the pressure upon Kimberley and Ladysmith. But there were many other things to do. In such a country as South Africa great numbers of mounted troops were a necessity. No attempt had been made so far to work upon the material that was already to hand. Regiments were formed of South African colonists, and mounted forces such as the Yeomanry and the Australian and Canadian Horse were to prove one of the most potent influences in the later stages of the campaign.

In the meantime there was continued bad news from the seat of war. Again Buller had attempted to cross the Tugela River, and had met with utter defeat. The forlorn capture of Spion Kop, with a loss of men amounting to forty per cent, had only proved a futile engagement and a barren victory.

Buller, who was courageous as a lion, admitted that his heart failed him after Spion Kop, and that he feared the relief of Ladysmith had become an impossibility. But Roberts telegraphed to him that whatever the cost might be, Ladysmith must be relieved. In the meantime Roberts set out upon the road to Bloemfontein with the hope of relieving Kimberley by the end of February. On February 8 he reached Methuen’s camp on the Modder River, and knowing so well how sore the Highland Brigade must feel over the disaster at Magersfontein, he made them a little speech stating that he had never campaigned without Highlanders, and hoped he would never do so, and it was the Highlanders in India and Afghanistan who had brought him his success. He then wired to Kimberley the three words that were to mean so much, “We are coming.”

It was all like a rushing of clean wind in a parched land. Now for the first time the Boers found themselves baffled as to the intentions and plans of a British leader. They had hitherto taken it for granted—and rightly so—that they would be forewarned of every move that was to take place, and had acted accordingly. Lord Roberts gave them the impression that Bloemfontein was his objective. Instead, on February 12 he instructed General French to make a dash on Kimberley, while he would follow with the infantry. French, the only general to make his reputation in South Africa, and almost the only one who did not lose it, set out with his cavalry, made his way round the Boer position, and pierced the Boer lines. Then, hastening on, he broke through the enemy, and that same evening entered Kimberley.

The genius of French was even more apparent at Koodoostrand Drift, where he cut off Cronje’s retreat toward Bloemfontein. It was a piece of military daring as great as the sudden appearance of Montrose at Inverlochy, or Jackson at Manasses Junction. Speedily Cronje entrenched his men, but the arrival of the infantry rendered his ultimate surrender inevitable.

Inside the laager Cronje, despite the bitter recriminations of the Boers, did his best to put up a stout resistance, while outside our troops crept nearer night by night, until on February 27—the anniversary of Majuba—the Gordon Highlanders, to whom such a task was naturally very acceptable, advanced upon the Boer trenches under a heavy fire, and won a position controlling the inside of the laager. Cronje, realising that further resistance was impracticable, sent in a notice of his surrender to Lord Roberts. The meeting of the Boer commander and the hero of Kandahar must have been one of the most graphic incidents in the war. An eye-witness has narrated: “Presently the body of horsemen came past the hospital tents into the camp. A heavy bundle of a man was lumped atop of a wretched bony little Boer pony. Was this the terrible Cronje? Was it possible that this was the man who had held back the British army at Magersfontein?... Lord Roberts stepped forward, saluted, shook hands, and handed his fallen enemy a chair: ‘You have made a gallant defence, sir; I am glad to meet so brave a foe,’ was his greeting.”

Thus within a brief fortnight Roberts had entirely altered the whole aspect of the war. He had inflicted a heavy defeat upon the Boers, relieved Kimberley, and captured Cronje, together with 4000 men. From now onwards his swift advance, his unerring judgment, and the services of his mounted troops not merely gave fresh heart to the Empire, but broke the confidence of the enemy.

We must now return to Ladysmith............