SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC. 



795 



stantial military assistance from them, but sim- 

 ply as an earnest of the spirit of imperial soli- 

 darity. The British military authorities had little 

 confidence in the efficiency of such troops, and 

 above all they wanted all the honors of victory 

 to go to the regular army in order to redeem the 

 inglorious defeats it had suffered at Majuba and 

 the other battlefields of the war of 1881. For 

 the same reasons the enlistment of Uitlander fugi- 

 tives from the Transvaal and of Cape Colonists 

 and Natalians was not encouraged at first. When 

 afterward it became evident that the war would 

 tax the military resources of the empire, and 

 when the colonial corps and the South African 

 volunteers proved better fighters than the average 

 British soldier, larger bodies were accepted, and 

 they were employed freely in operations where 

 their mobility and their abilities as scouts and 

 mounted infantry were of service, and hence 

 some of the hardest fighting as well as the chief 

 honors of the war fell to them. At the beginning 

 of the war the Cape volunteers, numbering 7,000, 

 and those of Natal, 2,500 in number, including 

 the Imperial Light Horse, were called to arms so 

 as to release the British garrisons, and 2,000 more 

 were raised in Cape Colony and 1,000 in Natal. 



At first a division was regarded as sufficient to 

 establish British supremacy ; but the fighting had 

 hardly begun when the army corps was found 

 insufficient. On Nov. 11 orders were issued for 

 the mobilization of a fifth infantry division. On 

 Nov. 30 a sixth division was called for, making 

 a total force, including the cavalry division and 

 the local troops, of 9,000 men. The Transvaal 

 Government notified foreign governments on Oct. 

 12 that a state of war existed with Great Britain, 

 but it was not till Nov. 20 that the British 

 Government concluded to recognize the two re- 

 publics as belligerent powers and notified the 

 European cabinets to that effect. When the 

 sixth division took its departure from England 

 in the middle of December a seventh was immedi- 

 ately ordered to be mobilized, bringing the forces 

 up to 89,070 regulars and, including the local 

 and colonial contingents, to a total of 105,770 

 men of all arms. Sir Charles Warren, an old 

 South African campaigner, was assigned to the 

 command of the fifth division, and Lieut.-Gen. 

 Sir Charles Mansfield Clarke to the command of 

 the sixth. After the successive reverses of Gat- 

 acre, Methuen, and Buller, all in one week, it 

 was found necessary to put forth the whole mili- 

 tary strength of Great Britain, and the colonies 

 were invited to send their best fighting men. An 

 eighth division was ordered to be raised in the 

 United Kingdom. All the reserves not yet em- 

 bodied were called out. The militia were asked 

 to enlist for the war, nine battalions in addition 

 to three that had already been enrolled for for- 

 eign service, and those that had taken the place 

 of regular troops at Gibraltar and Malta were 

 sent to South Africa. A force of imperial yeo- 

 manry was recruited, each soldier furnishing his 

 horse* and equipment. Mounted infantry corps 

 were enlisted, composed of men who could ride 

 and shoot. This was the class that the colonies 

 were expected to send also, and Gen. Buller was 

 instructed to recruit as many as he could in 

 South Africa. Re-enforcements of artillery, in- 

 cluding three howitzers batteries, were sent out 

 as soon as possible. The guns that had been sent 

 with the army corps were found to be almost 

 useless, as they were outranged by the Boer guns 

 and were not effective against infantry sheltered 

 in trenches or behind bowlders on the kopjes and 

 often hidden by hills. The ammunition was 

 shrapnel instead of common shell. The employ- 



ment of naval guns firing cordite shells was all 

 that enabled the British troops to maintain their 

 positions at Ladysmith, Chieveley, and Modder 

 river. The new re-enforcements raised in the 

 United Kingdom added 50,000 men to the 75,000 

 that were in the field and 20,000 that were on 

 the way. The regular infantry numbered 01,860; 

 cavalry, 8,600; artillery, 8,940, with 210 guns; 

 engineers, 3,200; auxiliary services, 6,910; naval 

 brigade, 1,100, with 38 guns; colonial contin- 

 gents, 2,400; local South African forces, 13,200. 

 The local troops were increased later to more 

 than 25,000. the colonial contingents were in- 

 creased to 4,000, and more volunteers were raised 

 in Great Britain until there were more than 

 200,000 men in the field. Lord Roberts of Can- 

 dahar was appointed commander in chief in South 

 Africa, and Lord Kitchener of Khartoum his 

 chief of staff. 



The losses in battle up to January, 1900, 

 amounted to 9,900 officers and men, and at least 

 30,000 were incapacitated by sickness. 



The Republican Forces. The two republics 

 were able to put into the field, under their law 

 of military conscription, which requires every 

 burgher between sixteen and sixty years of age 

 to report with horse and accouternients at the 

 summons of his field cornet, an army of nearly 

 70,000 burghers, not including Uitlanders and re- 

 cruits from Cape Colony and Natal. It was not 

 necessary to mobilize their whole force at any 

 time, because with their hardy ponies, able to 

 subsist on the herbage that begins to grow 

 abundantly in October, and to cover a distance 

 of 40 or 50 miles a day, they could take 

 their places in the ranks whenever their services 

 were required, and even move from one fron- 

 tier to the opposite one in eight or ten days, 

 and when necessary they could carry a week's 

 rations of jerked beef with them, and at other 

 times enjoy an abundant commissariat supple- 

 mented by food prepared by the patriotic Boer 

 women. The comma % ndos were armed mainly with 

 the Mauser rifle without bayonet, of which the 

 South African Republic had obtained 40,000 after 

 the Jameson raid, with 25,000,000 or more car- 

 tridges. They had also a great number of Mar- 

 tini-Henrys. Even before that event both gov- 

 ernments had begun to order guns from Creusot 

 and Krupp. The Boer gunners had been trained 

 by French, Dutch, and German instructors. 

 Their ammunition, however, obtained by con- 

 tract, was inferior, and where their fire was most 

 accurate the shells often failed to explode. The 

 guns possessed by the Boers were estimated by 

 the British Intelligence Department before the 

 war at 60 of various sizes, including fortress 

 artillerv, in the Transvaal, and 25 field pieces of 

 small caliber in the Free State. The military 

 authorities of the South African Republic de- 

 ceived British spies, who penetrated into the forts 

 at Pretoria and took notes of the war material, 

 old and new, that was visible, but did not get a 

 chance to see guns and ammunition that were 

 hidden away. Up to the beginning of hostilities 

 ordnance and ammunition were imported by way 

 of Lourenc.0 Marques, marked as ordinary mer- 

 chandise er concealed in locomotive boilers, 

 piano cases, or other strange receptacles. After 

 the campaign opened the Transvaal army was 

 known to have 8 15.5-centimetre or 100-pounder 

 Creusot guns of the Caiiet pattern, called by the 

 English soldiers the Long Tom; 8 Krupp guns of 

 the same caliber; 18 7.5-centimetre Creusot guns; 

 9 Maxim-Nordenfeldt 1-pound machine field guns, 

 the kind most dreaded by the British soldiers; 

 24 3.7 automatic Maxim guns; 8 12-centimetre 



