february to march, 1900.
i.—kimberley to paardeberg.
the true factors of success in mounted warfare received the most convincing illustration in the events immediately following the relief of kimberley.
the baneful influence of this town continued to react on british strategy. french, in an ardent mood, and with some justification from his original orders, resolved to pursue the investing commandos north with three brigades, two of cavalry, one of mounted infantry and colonials, and some of the kimberley mounted troops, altogether something over 4,000 men and five batteries. ferreira, with most of the free staters, had retreated east the night before, and was wholly out of reach. there remained on the route due north, and with eleven miles start, from 1,500 to 2,000 burghers under the transvaaler, du toit, and a heavy convoy. it soon became evident that, in the weak condition of french’s horses, the capture of this convoy was the only feasible object, and to this object french eventually confined himself. but an extraordinary hitch arose. one small body of 150[29] griqualand west rebels, with one gun, instead of evacuating the lines of investment during the night, had quietly remained at its post on the dronfield ridge, seven miles 114north of kimberley, and now acted as a sort of improvised rear-guard. one of the cavalry brigades, about 1,200 strong, with three batteries, in the course of a sweep north-west in order to envelop the convoy from that side, stumbled upon the griqualand men, and wasted several hours in a vain endeavour to dislodge them by fire-action. the delay destroyed whatever chance there had been of succeeding against du toit, and the brigadier was blamed for the delay. but what followed? on his way back to kimberley french attacked the lilliputian force, now separated by nine or ten miles from its nearest supports, with all three brigades, several hundred kimberley mounted troops, and all five batteries. still no result. french gave it up, and under cover of a dust-storm the griqualanders rode away safely, abandoning their gun and some killed and wounded.
this incident occurred on the day after the charge at klip drift, and it shows how completely the real significance of that episode had been lost upon the cavalry. at klip drift there was no chance of testing weapons; it was a case of riding through fire for an ulterior end. here was a real chance of testing the value of weapons. where was the steel? where, more pregnant question still, was the horse? what is the tactical purpose of a horse in attack if not to accelerate aggression and precipitate a crisis, using mobility to overcome vulnerability? the boers, it is true, were entrenched, but from what we know now of the physical factors in mounted attacks we can say with tolerable certainty that even the single brigade in the morning, properly disposed and extended, might have ridden, even at a moderate canter, into close quarters with the enemy with less loss than that involved in a lengthy dismounted attack. in the evening, with exhausted horses, but with a thirty-to-one superiority in men and guns, the smallest exertion of aggressive mobility would have made an end of the impertinent 115handful on the ridge. now, the cavalry were as brave soldiers as ever stepped. what they lacked was imagination to connect together the horse and the firearm as joint constituents of aggressive mobility, a defect aggravated by the possession of an inferior firearm, and by inexperience in the use of it. the crack of a rifle transformed the action into what their training-book called a “dismounted” action, and converted them into indifferent infantry. at whose compulsion? that of a few mounted riflemen, acting in defence, dismounted, virtually as a rear-guard for the main boer force; but with their horses at hand, available for escape, counted upon for escape (for otherwise their owners would not have been there), and eventually used for escape.
dronfield was an extreme case, and i do not wish to use it further than as a peg on which to hang an argument. with infinite variation of circumstance, the same root principles applied in every action of the war. let me make one more point clear before leaving the episode, and passing to another equally interesting and far more creditable to the cavalry. when i suggest a more rapid mounted advance, i do not, of course, mean that the horsemen should remain on horseback up to, during and after contact. that was the old cavalry view, based on the use of a steel weapon, and its strength accounts for the extraordinary reluctance of the cavalry to contemplate any other form of aggressive mobility. they could never get shock, because their adversaries willed otherwise, and could always impose their will; without shock they themselves were rightly conscious that a man on horseback with a sword or lance is not, except under very rare conditions, a match for a man on foot with a magazine rifle. but why, save for a valueless shibboleth, remain persistently on horseback? at dronfield, though the maps and narratives do not warrant the supposition, the summit of the ridge may, for all i 116know, have been unsuitable for rapid movement on a horse. but, as i pointed out in chapter ii., physical contact is not necessary for a charge by mounted riflemen. a charge is just as much a charge—in the sense of a killing, winning advance—if its mounted phase ends within point-blank, or even within “decisive” range of the enemy. each and every acceleration in the net rapidity of the whole movement makes it nearer to being worthy of the name of charge. finally, if actual contact is both practicable and desirable, if the horsemen can ride right home, they must dismount when they get there. if they do not, they will lose two-thirds of their killing power. their horses for the moment will be vulnerable encumbrances, but the men are better off dismounted than mounted, because they can use their rifles. i am premature now in discussing this point, but have thought it best to sketch the idea in advance. illustration will come later.
to continue. that same evening (february 16, 1900) french received written orders from roberts to march thirty miles to koodoos drift and cut off cronje’s retreat.
on the night of the 15th the old boer general, alarmed by the news of klip drift, had at last awakened to the fact that his 5,500 men and his cumbrous laager were on the point of being surrounded by an army of between 30,000 and 40,000 men. resolving to retire along the modder towards bloemfontein, he called up his men from the magersfontein trenches, and trekked in bright moonlight across the front of the sixth division at klip drift without being discovered by the mounted infantry. on the 16th, while french was riding north from kimberley, cronje held the sixth division at bay, and secured his next strategic point east, the passage of the modder at drieputs drift. in the action of this day we may note that the mounted infantry tried to do what the cavalry had done so successfully at klip drift—to ride in force 117through a fire-zone in order to pierce the enemy’s line. through no fault of their own, but simply through lack of that drill and horsemanship which the cavalry possessed, they failed badly, and were thrown into great disorder. after dusk, again unobserved, cronje continued his retreat, and at 4.30 a.m. on the 17th his main body and convoy were halted within a few miles of vendutie drift, with an advance-guard as far east as koodoos drift.
it was at this moment that french, in accordance with orders, was leaving kimberley to head off cronje. his division as a fighting unit had practically ceased to exist. horses had died in hundreds; whole regiments were demobilized. of the three brigades engaged in the northward sweep from kimberley, only one regiment—the carabineers—was fit to march. this and broadwood’s brigade, which had not been engaged, gave french 1,500 men and 12 guns. ardent as ever, notwithstanding, he started off, and in six hours reached vendutie drift in time to head off cronje. midway he had passed within two or three miles of ferreira’s force, about his equal in strength. ferreira, though he appears to have been but dimly aware of the course of events, should undoubtedly have thrown himself across the path of the cavalry. he missed the opportunity, and french rode on.
the mission of the cavalry was to hold cronje until the main army should come up and attack his rear. they performed this mission with skill, tenacity, and complete success, using fire-tactics and bluff to impose upon a force nearly four times their superior. once more, in short, they were doing what they and the colonials had done so well in the colesberg operations two months earlier. tactically, they stood in much the same position as the 900 boers at klip drift, and if cronje had come to the point even of contemplating the abandonment of his transport and dismounted burghers, he would have had, 118theoretically, the opportunity of bursting through the british containing line and making his point on bloemfontein, just as french had burst through the boer line and gained kimberley. knowing what we know now, we can see that this was what cronje should have done or tried to do, though we can understand why he still declined to take this sort of action. his was not an independent mounted force, backed by an army. not only in his instinctive perception, but in fact, it was an army in itself, the reverse of mobile, badly horsed, but, on the other hand, supported by small outlying detachments (under ferreira, de wet, etc.), from whom he expected vigorous co-operation. his transport represented not only public commissariat, but the private property of his burghers. meanwhile his men carried the same rifles which had wrought such terrible havoc at magersfontein. slow-witted as he was, we must make allowance for this point of view throughout the operations of which the climax was now approaching, and indeed throughout the whole war. it was a standing weakness of the boer organization that their transport was as ponderous as their fighting men were mobile. the ox governed net speed, not the horse.
these considerations do not detract in any way from the credit due to french and the cavalry for their ride from kimberley to the drifts, and for pinning cronje to his ground at this critical moment. during the night two infantry divisions and the mounted infantry division, by dint of severe forced marching, were placed within striking distance of cronje’s laager at paardeberg. then came the battle, the week’s investment, the surrender.
unquestionably this day—february 17, 1900—was the great day of the cavalry in the south african war. but, alas for the tyranny of names! here is the official historian’s comment: “yet that night was a memorable one for french’s troops; for they had accomplished the 119mission assigned to them by lord roberts, and had demonstrated that the conditions of modern fighting still permit cavalry and horse artillery to play a r?le of supreme importance in war.” here is what i may call the inverted moral over again. “still permit!” what a pitifully cautious conclusion! is it for that that we maintain enormously expensive mounted corps and entrust them with vitally important duties?
the real truth is that it was in spite of being “cavalry,” not because they were “cavalry,” that french’s troops had succeeded in the mission assigned to them by roberts. throughout the operations the characteristics, inborn or acquired, which distinguished them from mounted riflemen, had been their bane, not their blessing. their steel weapons had been so much dead weight, their carbines poor substitutes for rifles, while faulty horsemastership, which we cannot dissociate from the artificialities of their peace training, is admitted to have been one of the causes of the appalling mortality in horses. french, as a spirited leader of horsemen, not as a leader of steel-armed, shock-trained horsemen, by pure force of will had overcome these obstacles and performed his allotted r?le. but without these obstacles, and leading a division of highly-trained mounted riflemen, what might he have done? unquestionably, his powerful division would have been employed at the outset to aid in crushing by normal tactical means cronje’s small force where it originally stood. but, apart from that fundamental difference, he might probably have dispensed with men numerous enough and efficient enough to act as eyes for the main army, a function which was in complete abeyance during these operations, with disastrous results at waterval drift, where de wet raided a supply column. he might, perhaps, in the course of his independent r?le, have ridden at, instead of through, the boers at klip drift, with far more demoralizing after-effects upon the enemy. he 120might have discovered and snapped up in his stride, as it were, cronje’s defenceless laager, then lying so near to him, and still have obeyed his orders to reach kimberley that night. he might, perhaps, have converted the northerly sweep from kimberley into a fruitful operation, by eliminating the absurd delay occasioned by the dronfield detachment. probably he would have reached the drifts with a larger and fresher force, able to regard what had been achieved rather as a prelude to still greater things than as the climax of a supreme effort. climax, in fact, it was. when roberts, a week later, called upon the cavalry for another divisional enterprise, french was unable to respond. this sort of thing will not do in any future war; let us be clear about that. we cannot afford to use up cavalry at this exorbitant rate. they are far too few and valuable, and will have far more varied and difficult duties to perform than french’s division performed.
there is no need, for our purpose, to describe the battle of paardeberg at any length, or to enter deeply into the controversy which has raged around the question of storming versus investment. time, i think, will confirm the view expressed in the times and german histories that kitchener, in spite of his ambiguous personal position on the battle-field of the 18th, and in spite of his faulty and disjointed tactical methods, was right in his endeavour to storm the laager at all costs there and then, and that he should have received more whole-hearted co-operation from the subordinate commanders. time, perhaps, may have already convinced lord roberts that the subsequent policy of investment, with its far-reaching moral and material consequences, was a mistake. but however this may be, the outstanding technical lesson is the same—the extraordinary power possessed by mounted riflemen, trained to entrench and shoot straight, even when they have lost their mobility, even when they suffer from 121flagrant defects of organization, morale, and discipline, in holding at bay vastly superior regular forces of all arms.
directly cronje accepted envelopment, his force lost its last resemblance to a mounted force. he was assailed mainly by infantry and artillery. but two incidents, which have a strong mounted interest, if the expression is permissible, deserve brief notice.
1. the pathetic little charge of hannay and fifty or sixty of his mounted infantry towards the end of the day. kitchener, burning to get into the laager in spite of many a bloody repulse, realizing that an irruption even at one point in the front of two and a half miles would lead to the collapse of the defence, and that such an irruption was beyond the power of the slow-moving infantry under the deadly boer fire, sent the following message to hannay at 3.30 p.m.:
“the time has now come for a final effort. all troops have been warned that the laager must be rushed at all costs. try and carry stephenson’s brigade on with you. but if they cannot go, the mounted infantry should do it. gallop up, if necessary, and fire into the laager.”
in the existing state of affairs it is difficult to defend the terms of this message. all the troops had not been warned. there was no proper provision for a supreme concerted assault. stephenson, who was hannay’s senior, received no message till much later. the mounted infantry were much scattered, and the spirit of breathless urgency conveyed by the message was inconsistent with the delay involved in co-ordinating their efforts with those of stephenson’s brigade, which was two miles from hannay on the opposite side of the modder.
hannay’s mood at the moment was one of despairing exasperation, after several previous failures to act up to what he considered the unreasonable expectations of his chief. he now sent some hasty messages to outlying detachments of mounted infantry, and without wasting 122another moment, collected fifty or sixty of the men with him, and, longing for death, rode straight for the laager. he and many others were shot down, and the little charge flickered out, though a few men actually got into the laager. nevertheless, even this tiny mounted effort had disproportionately great results, for under its cover the main firing-line dashed forward, and a part reached a good position within 350 yards of the boer rifles. from this we can judge of the effects which might have attended a coherent, well-planned charge on a substantial scale. it was the old question of mobility versus vulnerability, illustrated in a very pointed way. the infantryman, a small but a slow and steady target; the horseman, a large but a rapid and unsteady target, necessitating the spasmodic resighting of rifles on the part of the defence, and, by his very impetus, exercising a coercive moral effect upon their minds. when to use the aggressive power residing in the horse and rifle combined must be determined in every particular case by local circumstances. no rules can be laid down. but few can doubt that on this occasion, apart from executive methods, kitchener’s instinct was sound. “gallop up if necessary, and fire into the laager.” substitute some more general word for “laager,” and there you have embodied in a few pregnant syllables the true spirit of the modern mounted charge. nobody on the field would have dreamed of giving the same order to cavalry, because of the manifest absurdity of demanding this kind of work from troops whose charging efficiency was supposed to depend on remaining in the saddle from first to last and wielding a steel weapon. these limitations, if adhered to, especially with the logical corollary of shock formation, albeit there was nothing to shock, would have rendered the charge a fiasco. if not adhered to, the cavalry would have been in no better position than unskilled and ill-armed mounted riflemen. that, in fact, is exactly what they were, technically, plus 123the soldierly virtues and acquirements common to all professional troops of their race. but the fact was not yet realized.
neither was the converse realized, except intuitively by kitchener, that under modern conditions the real power to charge resides in well-armed mounted riflemen, not in the troops conventionally known as cavalry. circumstances had conspired to obscure this truth. the very name “mounted infantry” was a source of error, and the corps so labelled was a young corps, without a charging tradition, and only at the beginning of its education in the efficient use of the horse.
2. the intervention, first, of commandant steyn, then of christian de wet, with small mounted forces, coming from outside the battle area.
steyn, with two guns and the bethlehem commando “a few hundred” strong (i can get no more specific details), represented the first of the reinforcements which had been summoned away from ladysmith to assist in succouring cronje. he came up at 9 a.m., occupied a hill in rear of our eastern attack, delayed that attack for some two hours, and retained his position during the day. how far he had ridden before entering the action i do not know, but certainly a long distance.
christian de wet with a small force had, like french, been working independently since the operations began. on the 15th, with 350 men, he had attacked the army’s supply column at waterval, and destroyed or captured a third of it. on the 18th, having heard of cronje’s peril, he rode north from koffyfontein to the paardeberg battle-field, a distance of thirty miles (just equal to french’s ride from kimberley to the drifts), with 600 men and 2 guns, and at 5 p.m., by a rapid coup de main, seized the cardinal point in our enveloping line—kitchener’s kopje—overlooking the rear of our central attack. the hill, with its neighbour stinkfontein, also 124seized by de wet, formed part of a chain, running north and south, of which steyn already held the northern part. firing in concert upon the batteries and troops below them, the two leaders developed a counter-attack, which not only put an immediate end to the british assaults upon the laager, but by the confusion which it caused, brought about the abandonment at nightfall of hardly-won positions. whether, under any circumstances, kitchener could have induced the troops to rush the laager that evening is very doubtful, but it is agreed on all hands that the immediate cause of failure was de wet’s masterly intervention at the right place and the right moment. the indirect after-effects were still more important. though a disinclination to incur further heavy losses was, no doubt, the determining factor in the decision of lord roberts not to renew the assault, the marked change for the worse in the tactical situation must have influenced his mind considerably. and if we follow the chain of causation backward, we shall find, in the heavy blow struck at his transport three days earlier by the same master-hand, an additional reason for postponing what the strategical situation so urgently needed—a rapid and uninterrupted advance on bloemfontein, before boer reinforcements had time to arrive from other quarters of the theatre of war. the cavalry, for their part, were on starvation rations for two or three days after the 18th, owing to the loss of forage-waggons.
now let the reader compare the work done by french and de wet respectively in this third week of february, with a special view to the controversy which this book deals with, remembering the relative size of the armies for which each worked and the relative independent strength with which each operated. the analogy in regard to work done is in many respects close and obvious, the disparity in force equally striking. both men alike were actuated by the cavalry spirit in its truly wide 125sense of the mounted spirit: both were dashing leaders of horse, linked in sentiment by the horse. but what could de wet have done if he, an uneducated farmer, and his men, a rude militia, unaccustomed to drill together except at rare intervals, had been burdened with the disqualifications under which the cavalry laboured?
there are no abnormalities here which in the least degree discount the plain lesson for future wars. but, as usual, the official critics, in discussing the paardeberg campaign, resolutely ignore its plainest lesson. our own official historian pays ample tribute to de wet’s skill and dash, but refrains from any comparison of methods and armaments which might raise the thorny issue. the german historian (vol. i., p. 187) introduces de wet with the observation that he “arrived from the south” with 500 men. how very simple it sounds to arrive from the south! later on (p. 227), the boer general is criticized for not having done more, the suggestion apparently being that he might have brought about the rout, or partial rout, of the british forces on the south side of the modder, and have extricated cronje there and then. i need not investigate the grounds of this hypothesis, which i take to be far-fetched, to say the least. certainly, if de wet had produced these results, he would have performed one of the most extraordinary feats in the history of war. my point is that the suggestion is complacently advanced without a word of explanation, express or implied, as to why such an exacting standard should be applied to boer troops and such a relatively mild standard to british troops. if the critic were to try and equalize his standards, he would find himself writing of the previous day’s operations, that french “arrived from the west” with 1,500 men, and blocked cronje’s advance, but that if he had shown proper resolution, he should have routed cronje there and then. or, to take an example from the day of the battle itself: gordon’s 126brigade of cavalry, something over 800 strong and 12 guns, arrived from kimberley at about the same time as de wet from koffyfontein, and did useful work in seizing the koodoos heights to the north-east of the battle-field; but why not suggest that it should have intervened with crushing effect in the main battle, or that french himself, who, with broadwood’s brigade and the carbineers, also performed useful work in watching cronje’s line of retreat, should have assisted actively in the assault?
to those who imagine that the relative merits of cavalry and the pure type of mounted riflemen have been judicially weighed, or even consciously contrasted, by germans, and that we can safely fortify ourselves with their opinion in favour of the retention of the steel as the superior weapon, i commend the study of these chapters on the kimberley and paardeberg operations, and especially of the passage dealing in detail with the work of the british cavalry (pp. 163–165, 176–178). abounding in wise and true criticism, containing scarcely a sentence which can be challenged in any direct, positive way, they constitute a perfect masterpiece in the art of begging the one really fundamental question. what is the use of demonstrating that roberts’s strategy from the outset bore the character rather of an attempt to man?uvre cronje away from kimberley than of an effort to defeat him where he stood, and that it was mainly through cronje’s own errors that his envelopment was accomplished, if no clue is given as to the underlying motives of the british general’s cautious policy? political motives apart, the dominating military fact was the extremely formidable character of the boers as mounted riflemen—a known, proved fact, which rightly and naturally exercised a profound influence on roberts’s plans. without a recognition of this fact the whole operations are unintelligible. it is impossible to understand 127why it was necessary to employ an army corps whose mounted troops alone exceeded the enemy’s main force, and to use most of these mounted troops not tactically but strategically. nor can we understand why the operations ended so successfully as they did, unless we realize that of the two constituents of the boer fighting strength, the horse and the rifle, cronje, encumbered by his precious waggons and by his helpless non-combatants, persisted in relying almost wholly on the rifle, to the neglect of the horse. on the other hand, a recognition of that dominant military fact explains most of the minor shortcomings and errors upon which the german critic comments adversely. one fault only it does not explain, the imperfect system of command, but that was far worse in the boer army than in our own. it explains why methuen’s division was not used for a containing attack upon the magersfontein trenches, so as to pin down cronje at an earlier stage; why the whole of the cavalry were used for the raid on kimberley, to the neglect of other important duties; and it throws into vivid light the detailed criticisms passed upon the cavalry themselves. as to these latter criticisms, one can only admire the unerring dexterity with which the critic skates over the thinnest of thin ice in avoiding even the most distant allusion to the distinguishing features of cavalry as the standard european arm. on armament and equipment he is silent. no one could gather that the cavalry carried steel weapons and were equipped and trained primarily for shock. in commenting on the destruction of horse-flesh (p. 176), he notices several preventable causes, but associates none with the conventional systems of peace training. he is severe on the failure in reconnaissance, and attributes it principally to the effect of the modern long-range rifle in keeping scouts and patrols at a distance, but he does not suggest that the cavalry carbine was an inadequate weapon, or that the lack of 128individual skill and initiative was connected in any way with the traditional training of cavalry.
on the fire-action of cavalry, as at the drifts on february 17, he would do well to study his compatriot bernhardi. like our own official historian, he regards such action as an interesting and important modern discovery, and descants sapiently on the additional value it will give to cavalry in future wars. no writer on any other arm but cavalry would dare to show such ignorance. as though, nearly forty years earlier and five years before his own great war against the french, the american cavalry leaders had not in scores of similar combats proved the value of fire-action! surely he must have heard of sheridan’s brilliant interception of lee’s army in april, 1865?
on cavalry in offence he is enigmatically reticent. the strange comment on the klip drift charge i have noticed. equally strange are the comments on subsequent actions. much impressed, apparently (pp. 159 and 166), by the failure of french’s division to dislodge the little dronfield detachment on february 16, as compared with their success in containing cronje on the 17th, he seems to be on the very verge of embracing the obvious rational conclusion. the two combats he describes as being of “quite extraordinary value” for instructional purposes. we wait breathlessly for the inference. but there is none, except, so far as i understand him, the depressingly lame conclusion that no more can be done by cavalry than was done at dronfield. and yet a few pages earlier (p. 150) we find him accepting de wet’s destructive attack on the army’s supply column as the most natural thing in the world; while a few pages later he is actually blaming the same leader for not converting his intervention at paardeberg (smart enough in itself, in all conscience) into a decisive attack against immensely superior forces.
129the exasperating feature of all this is that for a controversialist like myself, who is trying to make a point good, there is never anything quite concrete enough to grapple with closely. it is not as if, in his remarks on the klip drift charge, the critic ever even alluded to the conventional function of cavalry in offence, shock with the arme blanche, and endeavoured to explain why it was in abeyance in all this fighting against the boers, and why we may expect that in future wars it will resume its old sway. if he were to take that course, issue could be joined frankly and fairly. but, as i have said, he is absolutely silent on this crucial point, just as he is absolutely silent on the comparative merits of the boer type. the two themes, so patently and intimately intertwined, are kept rigorously distinct, shut off from one another by a kind of thought-tight bulkhead which divides his mind into two hermetically-sealed compartments, in one of which, i suppose, is enshrined the arme blanche dogma, inviolate, inviolable, not to be sullied by the least intrusion of polemical argument.
it is strange enough to find germans accepting this class of criticism. it is barely credible that we, whose war this was, should, in our turn, accept it at second-hand from germans and hail it as oracular. that seems to be the situation. but the paradox does not end there. as i shall show at the proper time, bernhardi’s work, the bible of our own cavalry school, contains within itself the most crushing refutation of the arme blanche theory, simply because his special purpose and special environment permitted him to descant more freely and enthusiastically on the virtues of the rifle. he, too, kept the rifle and the steel in carefully separated compartments, but the arrangement is so transparent that it cannot deceive. experience of his own in south africa, confirming in every particular those fire-lessons which he drew from the american civil war, would have saved him from 130many palpable inconsistencies. however that may be, let the reader clearly understand this, that what i have quoted from the official critic is the kind of evidence on which german practice is founded. if he thinks it convincing and satisfactory, well and good. but let him not be deluded into thinking that the germans have honestly assimilated and co-ordinated the lessons of the south african war. the contrary can be proved to demonstration out of their own mouths.
it must be added that, besides these comments on the kimberley operations, scarcely any attention is paid in the german official history to the mounted question. the war may be truly said to have been studied by germans from a purely infantry standpoint. that the mounted factor was dominant throughout is a fact they disregard, even if they perceive it.
ii.—poplar grove.
march 7, 1900.
i have now to record the progress of events up to the capture of bloemfontein. the investment of cronje’s laager lasted nine days. de wet reinforced the key position at kitchener’s kopje, and implored cronje to break out. cronje could not induce his men, whose horses were gradually destroyed by artillery fire, to try. de wet, who was driven off his kopje by an enveloping movement in which the cavalry took the principal part, tried to regain it two days later and failed. meanwhile reinforcements from other parts of the theatre of war gradually brought the total of boers outside the lines and between paardeberg and bloemfontein up to something between 5,000 and 6,000. aware of the process of reinforcement, and fully alive to the ill-effects of delay, roberts tried to arrange for a raid by the cavalry on 131bloemfontein. by the 24th transport had been collected, the brigades reorganized, and all was ready for a start. but at the last moment french was compelled reluctantly to state that the horses were not in a fit state for the expedition. de wet might possibly have made some more effective diversion with the newly-arrived troops, had not the moral decay which made such havoc in the boer forces after the date of cronje’s capture begun even before that capture was consummated.
cronje surrendered with 4,000 men on february 29. vastly more important as the results might have been, had it been possible to storm the laager and accelerate the advance on the free state capital, paardeberg was, nevertheless, the turning-point in the war. roberts’s broad scheme of strategy was signally justified. many days before the actual surrender pressure had been relieved at every threatened point in the theatre of war, mafeking alone excepted—at kimberley, at colesberg, dordrecht, and other points along the frontier of central cape colony, and at the tugela heights and ladysmith. buller fought the successful battle of pieter’s hill on the day cronje surrendered, and on the next day ladysmith was relieved.
another week’s delay followed cronje’s surrender, a delay attributed by our official historian mainly to the need of still further recuperating the cavalry and artillery horses, partly also to the necessity of increasing the general supplies for the army, in view of the contemplated change of base to the free state railway. behind all we see the far-reaching effects of de wet’s raid on the supply column on the 15th of the month.
methuen’s division had been sent north by way of kimberley. with the other three infantry divisions, 4,900 mounted riflemen (including some recent additions), and 2,800 regular cavalry, roberts, on march 6, had an 132army with an effective strength in round numbers of 30,000 men and 116 guns. facing him, on the poplar grove position, a few miles east, and barring the road to bloemfontein, were between 5,000 and 6,000 boers and 8 guns under de wet. these are the figures supplied at the time by the intelligence, and apparently accepted by the official historian, though villebois de mareuil is quoted as having estimated them at 9,000. but the frenchman appears to have reckoned in the forces at petrusberg and elsewhere, which did not take part in the coming battle. roberts, giving the outside estimate of 14,000 men and 20 guns in his instructions of march 6, evidently included, in order to be on the safe side, all the commandos which were known to have left colesberg, stormberg, and ladysmith, but which the intelligence mentioned as “not since located.”
the boers occupied a crescent of heights no less than twenty-five miles in extent astride of the modder river. the ford at poplar grove drift formed the communicating link between the commandos on the left or southern bank, which were the most numerous, and the commandos on the right or northern bank. the natural line of retreat to bloemfontein lay by roads on the left bank, and in particular by the road crossing the river at poplar grove drift, and thence following its course closely eastward. the only alternative, or rather additional route, on this side of the river, that via petrusberg, took a much more southerly sweep, and, since it skirted the extreme boer left, which rested on the hills known as the seven kopjes, could only be regarded as a perilous flank line of retreat, which any threat of envelopment on the left would suffice instantly to close.
the plan of lord roberts was that french, with all the cavalry, half the mounted infantry, and six batteries, should sweep round the boer left by a détour of some seventeen miles, get in rear of their centre, and block 133their line of retreat by the poplar grove road. to this road, and somewhere in the neighbourhood of the drift, he foresaw that the greater part of the boer force, threatened in front by three divisions of infantry and 70 guns, and in rear by the mounted troops and 42 guns, must converge. here, then, he hoped to bring about a second paardeberg, once more in the bed of the modder river.
the scheme in general character was what the situation demanded. after what had happened, and in view of the disparity of forces, there could have been no question here of man?uvring de wet from his positions. the marvel was that he dared to risk (and there is no doubt that he intended to risk) a battle against such odds and in the existing moral condition of the burghers. to aim at his complete destruction was the only course worthy of lord roberts and his army. the tactical method proposed, that of using the bulk of the mounted troops as a distinct tactical unit, was equally sound. numerically, our mounted troops exceeded the whole boer army as estimated by the intelligence. the force allotted to french—approximately 5,000 troopers and 42 guns—was five times superior in artillery to the whole boer force, not far short of equality in horsemen, and was certainly superior to the commandos on the south bank, with which he was specially concerned. this force, moreover, had the immense advantage of possessing complete independent mobility, whereas the boers, if they wished to maintain the semblance of an organized army, had to preserve their heavy transport and conform their speed to it. i have often alluded to the importance of this governing factor, and at poplar grove, in particular, it must be borne in mind if we are to gain any instruction from what happened. for the rest, the function designed by roberts for french was the same as that performed by him so admirably, albeit with a weak force, at the drifts on february 17—that is, to contain the boer force until 134the rest of our army should have time to come up and crush it.
i have only sketched the plan of operations, and i can only sketch what actually happened. i must assume that the reader has before him the map and the narratives of the official and times histories.
there is no dispute as to the facts, and both accounts in this respect are substantially the same, but that of the times, for a reason to which i shall have to refer later, is more lucid. there has been much controversy over the day’s work and over the cause which led to an almost painful fiasco. some of this controversy is not strictly relevant to our inquiry, and i shall refer to it as briefly as possible. the point i have to make is absolutely simple and unmistakable.
let the reader first read the instructions issued by roberts on march 6, and grasp their spirit. their details are not, and could not have been, cut and dried. battles never follow the course of cut-and-dried instructions. one point needs special notice, that roberts expected the cavalry to be well behind the boer positions and somewhere near the modder before the infantry began direct attacks, and before the enemy began any general retreat. the sixth division, which was to follow the track of the cavalry for several miles, and was then to capture seven kopjes, on which the boer left rested, would find the enemy “shaken by the knowledge that the cavalry had passed their rear.” the movements of the other three infantry divisions were, it is implied, to conform to the course of events in this quarter. on the other hand, the cavalry division is regarded as wholly independent of the other arms. it was to set the pace, so to speak, and govern the course of events.
now, it is quite clear from the narrative that from the very first there was no chance of realizing the commander-in-chief’s idea in its fulness. to have done that 135it would have been necessary for french either to make so wide a détour as to pass outside the range of vision of the boers on seven kopjes, or, describing a shorter curve, to circle unobserved round seven kopjes before daylight, and thence to make for the modder. to be seen was to precipitate the boer retreat. roberts seems scarcely to have realized this, and i think he is fairly open to the criticism that he might have rested his whole plan more boldly on the specific intelligence report that there were only 6,000 boers opposed to him, who must, however good or bad their morale, begin an immediate retreat directly they realized that the road to bloemfontein was threatened by so large and mobile a force as that of french. on this basis he would have altered the tone of his instructions to the infantry, omitted references to preliminary bombardments, and enjoined speed as the all-important requisite.
french appears from the first to have treated the conception of getting round the boer rear unobserved as hopeless, on the ground of time and the condition of his horses. he himself, with good reason, suggested starting overnight. roberts rejected this proposal, and named the hour of 2 a.m. owing to an unfortunate misunderstanding, french did not start till 3 a.m. he marched very slowly, halted at 5 a.m. expressly in order to “wait for daylight,” which came at 5.45, and reached the farm kalkfontein, three miles south-east of seven kopjes, at about 6.45 a.m., having covered twelve miles in three and three-quarter hours. he had been observed and, at 6.30, fired at from seven kopjes, and so far from circling north-east round that hill in order to make for the modder, he had inclined, after passing it, slightly to the south, and now, as the official map shows, could not be said to be thoroughly “in rear” even of seven kopjes. this inclination was made partly with the object of watering his horses at kalkfontein dam, a step which he considered 136essential. the halt at the dam seems to have lasted about three-quarters of an hour for the bulk of the division, though detachments continued to push on north and north-east. in the meantime french rode out to reconnoitre.
let us pause here for a minute. it must be clear that, whatever the justification, french’s action was altogether inconsistent with the idea of a rapid sweep of an independent mounted force round the enemy’s rear. he has been criticized for not furthering that idea, and the official historian, in the course of his rather rambling and obscure comments upon the day’s work, meets the point by replying that if french, owing to the condition of his horses, thought the task impossible, “it is safe to say that there is in the world no living authority who can pronounce a decision against him.” let us accept that conclusion unreservedly, adding, however, that french, under the circumstances, should have frankly told his chief that he could not attempt to carry out the full design, instead of leaving him and the whole army to understand that an effort, at any rate, would be made. roberts would certainly have altered his plan, on the assumption that french, although he could turn the boer left, could not within the time allotted him compass the complete half-circle which would bring him to the modder before the enemy fully realized the threat to their communications.
apart from that criticism, let us agree that french was free from blame in not being in a position to move in force from kalkfontein before 7.30 a.m. or thereabouts. was the game up? it had scarcely begun. the cavalry advance had been a complete surprise to the boers. their gun-fire from seven kopjes at 6.30 appears to have coincided with their first discovery of the turning movement. at seven they realized that their position was turned, though not enveloped, and between seven and 137eight they began the only course open to them—a retreat, both from the seven kopjes and from table mountain, the next position northward, towards the poplar grove road, just as roberts had foreseen. french in person witnessed the beginning of this retreat, and reported it to roberts in two successive messages, at 7.30 and 8 a.m., noting in the second instance the presence of a long line of waggons, and adding in both cases that he was “following the pursuit with artillery fire.” but how was he to use his 5,000 horsemen? there were two alternatives: one, to make a direct pursuit; the other, to resume the thread of roberts’s original idea, and endeavour to intercept the boer retreat at the river. the first meant less distance for his horses and a strong offensive r?le over an ideal terrain on the lines traditionally reserved for cavalry; the second meant a détour involving more strain to his horses, though on equally good terrain, and culminating in a semi-defensive containing r?le like that which he had played on february 17. french rejected the first alternative, because, in the words of his second message, the enemy were “too well protected by riflemen on neighbouring kopjes and positions to enable me to attack them, mounted or dismounted.” but, while rejecting this aim, he did not resolutely embrace the other,[30] which was still undoubtedly practicable, in view of the fact that the boer retreat, though it was covered by mounted skirmishers, was maintained throughout at the rate of ox-waggons not of unhampered horsemen. the division was sent to the low ridge of middlepunt, some five miles north-east of kalkfontein, where one brigade at least was actually nearer to the river than a considerable part of the 138boer retreating forces; but here, again, it was brought to a standstill by “small groups” of boer riflemen. from this time (8.30 a.m.) until the evening, the story is one of impotence on the part of the division, in the face of mere handfuls, relatively, of these riflemen, who represented the only stout-hearted element in a thoroughly disorganized force. it was the story of dronfield over again: the failure of cavalry, armed and equipped as the cavalry were, to develop offensive power against mounted riflemen.
there need be no doubt as to the nature of the boer retreat. the “official history,” indeed, speaks of “panic” (p. 201), and de wet, when he appeared on the scene, seems to have regarded the flight as a disgraceful surrender to unreasoning fear. but the evidence does not support this extreme view. de wet was not present on the boer left when the cavalry made its appearance, and did not realize that retreat was imperative. the fact that every gun and waggon was eventually saved, and that no prisoners were taken, is inconsistent with the full meaning of the word “panic.” on the other hand, it is quite certain that the greater part of the boer force was thoroughly demoralized, determined not to fight, and deaf to the entreaties and threats of kruger, who met them on the poplar grove road, and that it was only by the valour and self-sacrifice of a very small minority, spurred on by the fiery energy of de wet, that a thin rear-guard was formed and maintained throughout the morning and afternoon. a resolute stroke would have broken down this flimsy screen, and turned what was already a defeat into a rout.
in the efforts that have been made to explain the ineffective action of the cavalry, much stress is laid on the condition of the horses. but the irony of the matter is that weak tactics brought their own punishment, and produced far greater exhaustion in the horses 139than a policy of strong offence. at 8.30, broadwood’s brigade, on the extreme right of the division, as it deployed on the middelpunt ridge facing north, was only seven miles from the river. french, however, contracting his front, ordered broadwood to close in westward. immediately a party of boers seized some farm-buildings which broadwood evacuated, and began to enfilade our line. broadwood was then sent back, with an additional brigade of mounted infantry and a battery, and it took these troops two hours (until 11.30) to dislodge the audacious boer detachment. broadwood now asked for permission to pursue immediately, but french allowed another hour to elapse.[31] then an advance to the river was begun, and even now such an advance offered great possibilities of success. but again de wet interposed a screen which checked the whole division.
the principal opposition came from a group of only forty men (“official history,” p. 202) at bosch kopjes, on our extreme right. broadwood was sent back (about 2 p.m.) by a long détour to envelop this point, while the batteries and a brigade of mounted infantry attacked it in front. two hours were spent in formally carrying the position. by this time (4 p.m.) all the commandos, with their guns and waggons, had escaped. a last rear-guard was driven in at 5 p.m. by the cavalry brigades of gordon and porter. what the average distance covered by the division in the course of the day amounted to it is difficult to say, but broadwood’s brigade, as the times history points out, must certainly have covered at least forty miles, or nearly double the distance which would have sufficed originally to place it astride the modder. the division had suffered some fifty casualties, and the 140loss of 213 horses. these were almost the only casualties to the army during the day.
what of the infantry? here the original idea, deeply implanted on the minds of all concerned, that the cavalry would succeed at an early hour in placing itself directly in rear of the boer centre, produced strange results. nobody was prepared for a premature boer flight, and few could take it in. it will be remembered that movements were to conform to the right, where the sixth division, acting in concert with the cavalry, was to storm seven kopjes. the halt of the cavalry at kalkfontein caused a corresponding halt of the sixth division. repeated messages from headquarters (based on french’s reports) could not persuade the divisional commander that the position was untenanted. it was formally attacked and occupied near noon, four hours after its evacuation. hesitation and delay were communicated all down the line, each brigade waiting for the next.
all this indicates an atmosphere, common to the whole army, of excessive caution. the times historian suggests that a more resolute advance on the part of the infantry, and especially on the part of the sixth division, might have turned the scale in promoting more vigorous action by the cavalry. no doubt it would have had this effect. but it is surely a very poor compliment to the cavalry arm to suggest, as mr. goldman does, that it is not their business to push home an active pursuit unless the enemy’s retreat has been originally brought about by infantry and guns. the fact is, of course, that the cavalry controlled the course of events. they had been expressly entrusted with this duty from the first, and nothing could lighten the responsibility, least of all a premature flight on the part of the enemy. they alone were in touch with what was actually happening, and in them alone lay the power to infuse vitality into the action.
141what are we to conclude? first, that french, apart altogether from the capacity of his men, was below his usual form on this day, otherwise he would have risked more and tried harder, even against his own judgment, for a more energetic officer never lived. second, that his men, in training and armament, were unequal to their work, and that at the bottom of his heart he knew it. i speak with especial reference to the regular cavalry. the half-trained mounted infantry who worked with them had been brought up to believe that they lacked that highest sort of offensive power which was held to reside in cavalry. who can fail to detect the paralyzing influence of the arme blanche at poplar grove? when i suggest that french himself must have felt it, i only make the plain inference from his message to roberts at 8 a.m. who were these “riflemen” whose protective action forbade a direct pursuit, mounted or dismounted? cavalry under another name, performing one of the elementary functions of cavalry—the shielding of a retreat. assuredly, if the steel weapon had any merit at all, then was the time to show it. where is the “future war” against a white race, in which, all the circumstances considered, better opportunities are going to present themselves? no such war can be conceived unless, indeed, accepting the reductio ad absurdum in its entirety, we reckon arme blanche training as a disadvantage, and count on meeting mounted troops destitute of the very qualities which enabled the scanty boer rear-guard to stave off destruction from its main body.
the official commentary upon poplar grove is not well-conceived. it is difficult to reconcile with the plain narrative of facts, which is evidently written by a different hand, and in lucidity suffers only from not being constructed with a view to the obvious conclusions and from the absence of a map showing times and movements. the map shows none of the original boer positions on the 142south bank—only some arrows marked “boers retreating.” the british dispositions are those at 11.30 a.m. as a guide to the action, the map is useless, and the times map, though topographically less perfect, must be consulted. in the text there is no practical instruction—not a hint that there was anything wrong with the equipment, armament, or tactics of the cavalry. overlaid with irrelevant invectives against the british public for expecting too much of its troops, and with vague moralization on the psychology of the war, we find two definite propositions recurring: that the initial failure of the cavalry to work round the enemy’s rear before the boers took alarm necessarily and immediately involved the failure of the whole operation, and that the root-cause lay in the condition of the cavalry horses, which is written of here and elsewhere as though it were a circumstance attributable to an “act of god” wholly out of control of the cavalry themselves. the narrative itself refutes both propositions.[32] they are unfair to everybody concerned—to lord roberts in particular, to the infantry, to the cavalry themselves, and to french. it is difficult to believe that brave men find any satisfaction in hearing themselves defended in this fashion. that is the vice of worshipping a fetish. a purely technical question is converted into a question personal to a branch of the service. and he who attacks the fetish is forced to risk the odious imputation of attacking persons and regiments.
i allude with some reluctance to mr. goldman’s commentary on poplar grove. his enthusiasm for the fetish, always in excess of his discretion, here leads him into confusions and contradictions which, to an unbiassed mind, effectually destroy the case he is endeavouring to build 143up. his narrative, unintentionally, is not always accurate. at page 132 he represents french, soon after 7.30 a.m., when he first saw the boer retreat, as “straining every nerve to overtake” a disorganised enemy only three miles ahead, but “crippled by broken-down animals,” failing “to bring his brigades up in time to throw them on the close ranks of the enemy.” no such scene took place. french, as his own messages and the known facts show, refrained from this sort of direct pursuit on the express ground that the enemy’s skirmishers were too strong. in any case, the suggestion is untenable. the boer retreat was regulated by the speed of their transport. the horses, unquestionably, were in bad condition, but to paint them as too “crippled” to overtake waggons, is not only exaggerated but inconsistent with what followed. to do mr. goldman justice, it is also inconsistent with his own subsequent commentary; for on page 137 he restates the facts, without any criticism, but correctly.
then he proceeds. admitting that the occasion was one for the cavalry arm to “turn a defeat into a rout, and capture guns and waggons,” he nevertheless fathers on french (without any authority that i can discover) the idea that such action should rightly be preceded by the enemy’s defeat at the hands of infantry and guns. then, combating the suggestion that the cavalry should have charged through the enemy’s screen at middelpunt, as they charged at klip drift, he reminds us that the klip drift charge was “mainly through flank-fire, while here the boers were in front,” and a charge must have meant “certain destruction and probable annihilation.” after reading the official and times narratives, one can afford to smile at this hysterical exaggeration, but that is a small matter. what does this comment, as a whole, imply? once more, a crushing condemnation of the steel weapon. the boers were just as much “cavalry,” in the broad 144sense of armed horsemen, as french’s troops themselves. can a frontal charge never be made by cavalry, in the narrow sense, upon mounted riflemen? here, if ever, was the opportunity. it is the old reductio ad absurdum—an unconscious but unreserved admission that the rifle dictates mounted tactics, not the steel. for, of course, mr. goldman means by “charge” a charge with the steel weapon. no other charge is recognized by him, and i hope the reader will note the tardy but instructive sidelight on the klip drift episode, where, as i showed, the steel weapon was not in question at all.
still, mr. goldman is always candid, and, in spite of his hypothesis of “certain destruction,” we find him admitting in the next breath that french was unduly delayed by a small number of audacious skirmishers. immediately after he is qualifying this admission by attributing failure mainly to the condition of the horses. finally, he concludes that “failure was clearly attributable, not in any degree to defects in executive operations on the field, but to the details of the plan as a whole not having been evolved in the first instance with sufficient preciseness of calculation.” of all lessons to be drawn from poplar grove this is the least helpful, and, if only mr. goldman knew it, the most damaging to the arm whose interests he has so warmly and genuinely at heart. of all arms in the service it least becomes the cavalry to complain of lack of precision in a commander-in-chief’s calculations. their mobility invests them with the duty and privilege of correcting and turning to advantage errors in calculation, especially when the error arises in the first instance from an overestimate of the strength and morale of the enemy.
before leaving poplar grove, i wish to make an additional reference to two points:
1. condition of horses.—it must strike any impartial student of these operations that the argument from the 145condition of french’s horses, weak as they certainly were from unpreventable causes, is subjected to an intolerable strain. i do not wish to lay any undue stress on horse management, though we miss the acknowledgment that the horse is a possession whose good condition is one of the supreme tests of regimental efficiency. gunners, from the colonel to the driver, hold it a point of honour not to blame their horses as long as there is anything else left to blame, and the cavalry have the same high ideal. it is only when the arme blanche is in danger of discredit that we find its advocates, official and unofficial, laying excessive stress on the condition of the horses, without even a suggestion that the cavalry may have been partly to blame for it. but i want the reader to go beyond these operations, and inquire, what standard of speed and endurance have advocates of the arme blanche in mind when they represent the arm as tactically unfit? it must be inferred that the standard consists in ability at any moment to gallop a considerable distance at high speed—"everlastingly to gallop," as count wrangel, the austrian authority, frankly puts it.[33] this standard is the logical result of the shock theory of which wrangel is an uncompromising exponent; for, as i have pointed out, one of the four indispensable conditions of shock is capacity to gallop fast, partly because of the highly vulnerable target presented by mounted troops in mass, and partly because heavy impact is the essence of shock. if, as in our own present peace training, we reduce the standard of speed, in contradiction of our own manual, we compromise fatally on shock. in south africa, shock being already obsolete, the steel weapon was in reality obsolete too. this the cavalry could not make up their minds to recognize, and, among other hampering associations, the idea of capacity for high speed as an ever-present essential for strong tactical offence lived on in a 146good many minds. we find it in correspondence and despatches; we can trace it constantly in field-tactics, and it was probably in the back of french’s mind during the whole of the poplar grove action, though it must have been clear that in order to overcome the sporadic opposition of the boer rear-guard no such efforts were necessary. there is no question that the boer horses were far fresher and stouter than ours. if the boers to a man had fled from the field, we could not have caught them. but we should have captured their guns and transport.
the galloping idea in its extreme form is wholly foreign to the tactical action of mounted riflemen, for whom the “charge” is a relative term, denoting the climax of aggressive mobility, not an isolated exotic flowering in the midst of a dull waste known as “dismounted action.” if we consider mere physical effects, which are all that matter, the few mounted riflemen who snapped at broadwood’s flanks as he marched towards the modder, and afterwards held up two brigades and twelve guns for two hours, did just as much for their side as the scots greys at waterloo, and, when they first made their attack, “charged” in as real and substantial a sense as the cavalry at klip drift.
it is tolerably certain that the exaggerated claim for speed as a tactical sine qua non at all moments will do more in future wars to eliminate shock, and enthrone the rifle in its true position, than any other factor, even although the opposing cavalries enter the war with the fixed conviction that they must join issue in terms of shock. the side which first breaks that compact will win. in future wars cavalry will have far harder work to do than they have ever had before. in the thick of a hard-fought war the galloping horse will be a rarity, the regiment of galloping horses still rarer, the brigade or division a nine days’ wonder. any unit whose power to deal decisive strokes in action can be exercised only 147by means of really high speed will be of little service. manchurian evidence confirms this truth.
2. horse artillery acting with cavalry.—this is a new point in our discussion, and i ask the reader to watch it carefully throughout the war. he will have been struck already by the large number of guns which accompanied the cavalry in these operations, and the disproportionately small results which ensued. french had forty-two guns at poplar grove, and was never opposed by more than two at a time, and altogether, i think, by six. the question is, to what extent should mounted troops, acting independently, rely on the support of artillery? the war proves, i think, that they should rely as little as possible on that form of aid. when, for strategical purposes, high mobility is required, the strain on the gun-teams is great, and may—though this rarely happened in south africa—limit the strategical mobility of the mounted troops. but i am thinking more of field-tactics. here the ill-effects of excessive reliance on artillery were often visible, particularly in offence. the preliminary bombardment, a serious drag upon all offensive action in south africa, was the curse of mounted action. generally ineffective in its physical and moral results upon the enemy, it weakened the spirit of offence by weakening surprise, which, in one form or another, is the soul of aggressive mounted action. as events turned out, french would have done better, i believe, at poplar drift if he had had no guns at all. the problem which confronted him when he first sighted the boer retreat could not then have been solved by a compromise in which a “pursuit with artillery fire” figured as a prominent element. such pursuits are useless; the artillery fire during the whole day caused, i suppose, scarcely a dozen casualties, while a whole brigade of mounted infantry had to be told off as escort to the seven batteries. at every turn the possession of 148guns was a temptation to employ slow, formal methods, where rude, overmastering vigour was requisite. at dronfield we can detect the same source of weakness. and at klip drift, would french have charged at all without the support of an enormous weight of artillery?
the boers, always weak in artillery, do not seem at any time to have placed much moral reliance on guns as a support for aggressive action. their weakness in aggression came from other causes. it was only when they had lost all their artillery that they carried aggressive mounted action to its highest point.
it is true that in defence guns are often valuable to mounted troops. since leaving ramdam, the one occasion on which french’s guns were useful to him was on february 17, when he headed and contained cronje, pending the arrival of the infantry. the two batteries which he had succeeded in bringing with him, besides assisting to repel attacks on the cavalry, covered the drift which cronje’s transport had to pass, and made the crossing impossible. later experience, however, proved with increasing force that, even in defence, guns, however well fought—and they were always magnificently fought—were often productive of more embarrassment than advantage to a mounted force. for the moment i am speaking of offence and defence as though they were distinct functions. of course, they are not. they melt into one another, and may alternate half a dozen times in one day. the best defence is always tinged by offence. an independent mounted force must be equipped to meet all contingencies. nevertheless, all things considered, i suggest that the mounted troops who rely least on artillery at any rate, when they are given a distinctly aggressive task, will achieve most.
the reason, i think, is this: that their mobility and the surprise which is its fruit make the personal factor paramount. the rifle is eminently a personal weapon, the 149gun essentially an impersonal weapon. in that respect, let us note in passing, the gun bears a distant analogy to the sword. for the denser the mass of swordsmen and the greater the shock sought to be produced, the less personal is the weapon.
iii.—the final advance to bloemfontein.
march 10 to 13, 1900.
there is little that need detain us in the further advance to bloemfontein. it began on march 10, in three parallel columns under french, tucker, and the commander-in-chief, and ended in the occupation of the capital on the 13th. demoralization turned to genuine despair in most of the burghers who fled from poplar grove. whole commandos melted to a shadow through desertion. it was only through the agency of reinforcements brought up by de la rey, notably the transvaal police (zarps), that a show of resolute opposition could be organized by de wet. at abraham’s kraal (or driefontein), eighteen miles east, where, on march 10, the next stand was made, and where french commanded, the principal interest lies in the fine infantry attack of the sixth division towards the evening, and the stubborn defence made by the small body of zarps on the driefontein kopjes. an attempt by the cavalry a little earlier in the day to turn the enemy’s left was unsuccessful, and the final pursuit came to nothing.
in the last stage of the march the cavalry were handled vigorously and did well, though the opposition was slight. the best minor tactical stroke during the month’s operations was that delivered by major scobell’s squadron of the scots greys late in the evening of the 12th.[34] on the 13th bloemfontein was occupied.
