614 



SOUTH AFRICA. 



British posts on the Delagoa Bay Railroad and 

 inflicted a loss of 83 officers and men. Kaalfon- 

 tein, near Pretoria, was invested and shelled a few 

 days later. Lord Kitchener's body-guard was sur- 

 rounded near Lindley, and all who were not killed 

 were taken prisoners. A train was waylaid on 

 the railroad near Kimberley. The main part of 

 the British army was practically helpless except 

 to guard ineffectually the main lines of commu- 

 nication. Cape Colony had to rely at first on the 

 local irregular troops for its defense. When the 

 columns of Lord -Kitchener's army were brought 

 south by rail to cooperate and the Cape troops 

 were in possession of the principal railroad sta- 

 tions the panic subsided. The Boer commandoes 

 retired from the more settled districts, where their 

 presence was not welcome even to their friends. 

 The eastern and western columns retired. In the 

 center, however, Kritzinger's commando was ac- 

 tive in the Middelburg and Graaf Reinet districts 

 and able to defy all the forces that could be mus- 

 tered, while fresh bands of Boers crossed the 

 Orange river to join it. Christian De Wet, having 

 left the Kroonstad district, was at this time at- 

 tempting to invade Cape Colony, and the British 

 made extraordinary exertions to head him off. 

 He was pursued by Major-Gen. Charles Knox's 

 columns, which he evaded after an engagement 

 near Thabanchu. Other columns concentrated to 

 hem him in, but the British would not go into 

 the hills after him. President Steyn of the Orange 

 Free State was with De Wet. Piet de Wet, who 

 had surrendered with a good part of his com- 

 mando after the fall of Bloemfontein and Preto- 

 ria, and had become the chairman of the Bloem- 

 fontein peace committee, wrote a letter to his 

 brother urging surrender, but the Free State com- 

 mandant-general and President were even more 

 determined than Botha was to continue the fight 

 for independence. 



The majority of the Cape Colony Afrikanders 

 who were willing and able to fight for the preser- 

 vation of the Boer republics had slipped away 

 and joined the commandoes long before. The 

 severe penalties inflicted on the participants in 

 the insurrection of 1900 deterred the people of 

 the border districts from repeating the experi- 

 ment, and the measures of disarmament then and 

 since then carried out left them much less well 

 prepared for war. The loyalists, on the contrary, 

 were furnished with weapons, and in January the 

 Government issued a general call to arms, to 

 which the British colonists in the towns and the 

 insignificant fraction of the Dutch who were 

 ardent loyalists from the beginning freely re- 

 sponded. There were already 12,000 Cape Col- 

 onists in the Cape police, the regular volunteer 

 corps, and the numerous irregular mounted corps, 

 and when the appeal was issued for volunteers 

 for local defense nearly as many more reported 

 themselves. There were besides 1,000 Rhodesians 

 and at least 10,000 Uitlanders fighting with the 

 British forces. In January a limited number of 

 men were allowed to return to the Rand, only 

 15 to each mine, while a large number of undesira- 

 ble individuals who had remained there were 

 taken to the seaboard and shipped off to Europe. 

 A special guard of 1,500 men was formed in 

 Johannesburg for the protection of the mines, and 

 a force of 5,000 men was raised elsewhere for the 

 same duty. The Dutch and other foreign govern- 

 ments protested against the deportation of neu- 

 trals who were their citizens, and still more 

 strongly against the seizure by the British of the 

 Boer Red Cross ambulances and the deportation 

 of the surgeons and nurses, which the British did 

 on the charge tha,t these took part in the fighting. 



Lord Kitchener, on taking the chief command, 

 proceeded to reorganize the British forces with a 

 vie%v to resuming aggressive operations. The 

 nominal strength w T as 210,000 of all ranks. Of 

 this force 20,000 were incapacitated by sickness 

 and other causes and 50,000 had to be detached 

 for garrison duty and to preserve the lines of 

 communication, so that the force available for 

 offensive operations was 140,000 men, who were 

 augmented before February by 20,000 reenforce- 

 ments from England. Half or more of the troops 

 were cavalry, artillery, and mounted infantry. 

 The divisional commands were broken up, and 

 the field army operated in brigades, over 40 in 

 number. To each brigade a definite area was 

 assigned, which it was ordered to clear until it 

 reached the square belonging to the next brigade, 

 and then if necessary to retrace its steps and 

 go over the ground a second time. The combined 

 movement was from the outside of each group of 

 squares inward, so that 4 brigades could be quick- 

 ly massed at any point of danger, and by means 

 of its scouts each brigade could keep in touch 

 with the brigades in front and rear and on either 

 side. It was expected by moving steadily in one 

 direction with these tactics to clear away and 

 to enclose the Boer commandoes, which if they 

 slipped through one group of brigades would find 

 themselves in the area of another. Supplies were 

 stored in a large number of places within two 

 days' march of any of the brigades, so that if 

 the Boers captured any of them the soldiers would 

 not have to go long without food. New contin- 

 gents were raised in Australia, New Zealand, and 

 Canada, and in Great Britain and South Africa 

 men accustomed to ride and shoot were sought. 

 Recruits were offered 5s. a day, with provision 

 for their families if married men. The approach 

 of the South African winter, when the grass 

 would disappear from the veld and the burgher 

 troops would feel yet more keenly the lack of 

 nourishment and warm clothing, was an addi- 

 tional motive impelling Botha to advance in force 

 to the southeast of the Transvaal and De Wet 

 to gather his forces for an invasion of Cape Col- 

 ony. Forced thus to action, Lord Kitchener had 

 a chance to put into systematic operation his 

 tactics of sweeping the country clean of its in- 

 habitants by sending 7 columns, under Gen. 

 French, to carry out a convergent movement in 

 the eastern Transvaal. The Boers were operating 

 in commandoes of 1,000 men or more, and there 

 were about 19,000 Boers in the field. The head- 

 quarters of the acting commandant-general and 

 of the Government of the South African Republic 

 had been at Pietersburg, far to the north of Pre- 

 toria. The simultaneous attacks early in Janu- 

 ary on Nooitgedacht, Belfast, Wonderfontein, and 

 other posts on the Delagoa Bay Railroad was the 

 first warning that the British had of the Boer 

 movement. Botha concentrated about 3,000 men 

 near Carolina, south of the railroad, and when he 

 reached Ermelo, at the beginning of February, he 

 had 7,000 men, and threatened to cut off British 

 communications with Komatipoort. A 'section of 

 the railroad in Portuguese territory was torn up 

 by Boer raiders. The British movement was now 

 developed. Gen. Smith-Dorrien's column, which 

 had met the Boers soon after they crossed the 

 railroad, was attacked on Feb. 6 by 2,000 men 

 at Bothwell, and lost 77 men in beating them off. 

 Other British columns occupied Ermelo on the 

 same day, and Botha retired to the eastward. 

 On the western border of the Transvaal Lord 

 Methuen's column, after it had reoccupied Bechu- 

 analand, scoured the country, carrying off all the 

 stock and provender, destroying stores, and col- 



