A Narrative of the Boer War: its causes and results

Preface

. In the following pages the author does not aim at support ing a policy called either Conservative or Liberal in connection with the Transvaal, and that circumstance in itself may be a sufficient one to justify the adverse criticism of adherents to either creed. In England, where party feeling runs high and penetrates to every recess, such an announcement as that prefixed is no doubt injudicious on the part of one who would enter the 'book market' with an eye to the business of the mart. Disclaiming, however, any other motive than that of an endeavour to give a truthful and impartial narrative of the affairs concerning the Transvaal, no further apology on my part is necessary for any facts related herein, nor is further explanation required of any inferences drawn from the facts. It should be stated that since the Narrative has been written, Lieutenant Hill of the 58th Regiment, and Dr. Mahon of the Naval Brigade, both of whom will be found mentioned in these pages, for having performed valiant services upon the battle-field, have received the much coveted Victoria Cross ' For Valour.' The Author. Pietermaritzburg, 1882. V CONTENTS

Part I. The British In The Transvaal

CHAI-. PAGE 1. INDIRECT CAUSES OF THE WAR, 1 II. THE ACT OF ANNEXATION, 26 III. DIRECT CAUSES OF THE WAR, .44 IV. THE INCEPTION OF THE STRUGGLE, . . . 1 16

Part II. The Battle-fields

V. BRONKHURST SPRUIT ENGAGEMENT, . . . .129 VI. THE INVASION OF NATAL, 147 VII. MARCH OF THE RELIEF COLUMN TO MOUNT PROSPECT, 1 56 VIII. THE BATTLE OF LAING'S NEK, 160 IX. PRESIDENT BRAND THE MEDIATOR — CAMP LIFE, '73 X. BOER PETITION OF RIGHTS, 1 80 XI. THE FIGHT ON INGOGO HEIGHTS, 196 XII. THE INCEPTION OF PEACE NEGOTIATIONS, . . 229 XIII. THE BOER ADVANCE INTO NATAL— A RECONNAISSANCE, 232 XIV. THE GROWTH OF PEACE NEGOTIATIONS, .... 240 XV. MOUNT PROSPECT CAMP REINFORCED — A MORNING CALL IN THE TRANSVAAL — SKIRMISHING, . . . 244 XVI. THE FIGHT ON THE MAJUBA — A FLIGHT FOR LIFE, . 253 XVII. BURYING THE DEAD — AN INTERVIEW WITH JOUBERT — THE GENERAL'S FUNERAL, 304 XVIII. SIR EVELYN WOOD IN COMMAND — CONTEMPORARY EVENTS IN THE FREE STATE AND CAPE COLONY, CONTENTS. VIII

Part III. The Peace

CHAi*. PAGE XIX. A LONG ARMISTICE AND ITS RESULT, .... 324 XX. LAING'S NEK DESERTED, . 338

Part IV

A JOURNEY THROUGH THE TRANSVAAL. XXI. THE SIEGE OF STANDERTON, 341 XXII. A VISIT TO HEIDELBERG, 356 XXIII. THE SIEGE OF PRETORIA, 365 XXIV. THE SIEGE OF POTCHEFSTROM, 389 XXV. THE SIEGE OF LEYDENBURG, 432 XXVI. MARABASTADT AND RUSTENBURG— THE HOSTILITY OF THE NATIVES, 438 XXVII. THE SIEGE OF WAKKERSTROOM — THE SEIZURE OF UTRECHT AND MIDDLEBURG, 445 XXVIII. TREKKING SOUTH — THE FIRST MEETING OF THE BOER VOLKSRAAD — WAITING FOR THE ROYAL COMMISSION, 460 XXIX. THE ROYAL COMMISSION — ITS FUNCTIONS AND POWERS —MR. GLADSTONE AND THE MALCONTENTS, . 482 XXX. THE CONVENTION, 522 XXXI. THE VOLKSRAAD AND ITS VERDICT — CONCLUSION- POSTSCRIPT, -534

Chapter I. Indirect Causes Of The War

T^HE circumstances which impelled the Boers of the Transvaal V _ to fight for independence in the years 1880 and 1881 were many ; yet it is not a difficult matter to sum up the causes which urged this handful of uncultured farmers to engage in the desperate task of throwing off the to them hateful British yoke. There can be little doubt that an outbreak of hostilities was precipitated by one flagrant act of injustice on the part of the Government at Pretoria, and that at a time when the suspicion first entered the minds of well-informed and thoughtful men in the country that the Boers meant to carry out their threat to fight for their liberty, failing all attempts by agitation to regain their independence. The flagrant act of injustice I have alluded to, I will detail later on, when giving an account of the ' Bezhuidenot ' affair.

How these descendants of the Dutch Calvinists and Huguenots of the seventeenth century succeeded in the field, armed only with rifles, against the trained and disciplined troops of England, beyond all expectation, and so gained for themselves and their cause that attention which their voices had never been able to command, will be read in history with wonder. I might say also that their success in arms won sor them that small measure of independence which they enjoy to-day ; for it must remain an incontrovertible fact, that had the Boers not been successful in battle, the Transvaal at this hour would be under 1*1 A the British' flag still. Let us suppose for a moment that the Potchef strom garrison had been strong enough to beat off its assailants at the outset, ar*d had. done so ; or that the affair at Bronkhurst Spruit had resulted in the defeat of the Boers, and that reinforcements from Natal had entered the Transvaal prior to the occupation of Laing's Nek by the enemy, will any man "venture to say that the result of the outbreak would have been the abandonment of the Transvaal to the Dutch farmers ?

By their determination and success in the field against the British, the inhabitants of the new State gained their independence, — force of arms, not force of oratory or the righteousness of their cause, has given them half that they wished for ; because the Imperial Government would never have listened to the story of Boer wrongs, it would never have discovered that there was any righteousness in their cause unless the sordid question of pounds, shillings, and pence necessary to subjugate and hold in subjection this people had gained for them a hearing, and carried conviction in a quarter where pounds, shillings, and pence are held in no light esteem. To write an account of the invasion of Natal and the war in the Transvaal cannot be a pleasant task for an Englishman (if the plain, unvarnished truth is related), for the reason that it must be a record in which defeat of and disaster to his own countrymen predominates, — a record of defeat and disaster relieved only to a very slight extent by instances in which the British held their own against an enemy who had been the subject more of British contempt than British admiration.

If, three months before the first shot was fired, any one ventured the opinion that the Boers would fight, that man would be regarded as something worse than a simpleton. I am speaking now of Natal, the Cape Colony, and the Free State, countries adjacent to the Transvaal, where naturally men claim to have a more intimate knowledge of Boer proclivities and intentions than do those who reside at a greater distance from South-East Africa. It was thought that the Boers had let the annexation pass too quietly, and that they had refrained too long from active resistance to British authority to determine to fight in the year 1880. As proof that the Boers would not take up arms, the fact was freely pointed out that they talked too much ever to come to that conclusion, and that their efforts to regain their independence would never go further than protests, petitions, and resolutions passed at mass meetings or INDIRECT CAUSES OF THE WAR. 3 gatherings of the people.

Again, it was thought that the rapid increase in the British civilian element since the annexation would act as a deterrent to any scheme for rebellion that the Boers might project ; add to this the circumstance that few people in Natal, the Free State, or the Cape Colony, really knew the feeling of the descendants of the Voortrekkers, that their troubles were a matter of indifference, even if known to their neighbours, and that the mass meetings, the protests, and the resolutions passed by the Transvaal Boers were supposed to be the outcome of the work of a few agitators, and it is easy to account for the mistaken notions long entertained by residents immediately outside the Transvaal. Inside the State, with only one journal identified with the Boer cause, with a scattered population of malcontents for the most part living miles away from any centre of population, a malcontent population not given to ventilating its grievances in the press, for the simple reason that writing is amongst that people an art next to unknown, it is not to be wondered at that a very poor idea of the feeling cf ' the farmers ' prevailed amongst those who' were identified with commerce in the towns, and that the English residents pooh-poohed — as Englishmen invariably do pooh-pooh, often to their cost — the humble efforts and schemes of those they regarded as their inferiors.

Bound up in their business and the strife of accumulating wealth — that strife is as ardent in South Africa as it is in any part of the world, probably a shade more intense than in Europe — the Transvaal merchants, traders, and storekeepers remained to the eleventh hour blind to the true state of affairs around them. That fault, if it is a fault, they have paid for dearly. But the chief offender in this respect was undoubtedly the Government, at the head of which Sir .Owen Lanyon presided. If the merchants thought it was their business to look after their own business, well and good, — trade, and not the cares of others, was their chief concern and their chief object in coming to the Transvaal. As long as the Boers remained in the country and the inflow of inhabitants continued, as long as there was in their minds no fear of the Boers regaining possession of the territory, it did not concern the merchants to bother about the rights or wrongs of the Boers — any more than that consideration troubled the Imperial Government — whilst a Government on the spot, charged with the duty of having an eye to the interests of every class of people in the Transvaal, was present at Pretoria.

That that Government at Pretoria signally failed in its business, it will be my duty to attempt to demonstrate, and that will be one of the causes I shall assign for the Boer war. That the colonial possessions of England have outgrown in extent the limit which the mind of statesmen at home can comprehensively grasp and beneficially control, is the cause undoubtedly of the growth of a republican spirit in the colonies, which has as yet found only a limited expression in the public press, but which exists to an extent probably not contemplated by people in England ; and that republican spirit, the outcome of dissatisfaction with the controlling power of the mother country, will assuredly prove, before many years have passed, as fatal to the controlling power, if Imperial policy towards Crown or semi-Crown colonies is not speedily remodelled, as the growth of republicanism in the United States proved fatal to the jurisdiction of England in that quarter of the globe.

The circumstance of an Englishman being elbowed out of the land of his birth and having to gain a livelihood in one of the colonies, does not in the remotest degree stifle in him the aspiration for 'popular' government which is inborn in every Briton. The settler in any one of our colonies seldom dwells in the country of his choice more than four or five years without discovering — if it is what is known as a Crown colony, or one which has not a responsible government of its own — that whilst there are certain advantages gained by the intimacy of connection with the mother country, those advantages are more than counterbalanced in the long run by the absence of practical knowledge of the necessities of the colony on the part of those who endeavour, however honestly, to govern it from a distance.

The colonist not unfrequently finds that he is the sport of parties at home, either Conservative or Liberal, as party exigencies serve ; and though he may have left England the most ardent Conservative or Liberal, he is soon convinced that neither the principles of Liberalism nor Conservatism are of any practical value to the land of his adoption. He discovers that it is as much the custom of the Conservative Ministry as it is of a Liberal Ministry to ignore the wants and to frustrate the schemes of progress which form the subject of the colonist's appeal to the home Government that wilful blindness and wilful deafness, wilful misconstruction and wilful misunderstanding, on the part of that Government seem to be the leading lines of colonial policy; and that in -the Crown there is no court of appeal, no avenue towards redress, no prospect of a reversal of the inferior authority, no attentive ear for grievances so INDIRECT CA USES OF THE WAR. 5 palpable that they should not require stating.

The colonist, there fore, whose destinies are ruled and whose life and good government depend upon that distant authority known as the Crown and the Cabinet, becomes imbued with a republican spirit, for it is not in the nature of man that he can identify himself with parties which are of no practical benefit to him in his sphere of labour. As an instance I might cite the Zulu war and the Zulu settlement : the Conservatives were applauded for their determination to break the power of Cetewayo ; but colonial applause gave place to jeers as soon as the ineffectual nature of the settlement became known, and that the cost of that war and that settlement in which colonists had had no voice was, in part, to be defrayed by the colony of Natal and the Transvaal. Any shadow of participation in that event, save the spending of blood and money, was denied Natal and the Transvaal : colonial opinion and experience were declined without thanks, rather derided as worse than valueless.

In the result it is seen that there is some thing more than a probability of Zululand requiring a second process of settlement, and that at no distant date. That is the act of a Conservative Government ; to-day a Liberal Government con templates the release of those men imprisoned by their predecessors. The release, indeed, will not be due to any advice from a quarter which will be most affected by the liberty of those chiefs, but to the advice of a section of the party in power, and will be made as a pro test against and recorded as evidence condemnatory of the misdeeds of those in opposition. Each successive Government must have a colonial policy of some description : the policy of the one will differ from that of the other; but there is ever accord between Liberal and Conservative on the broad ground of ignoring the opinions and desires of those governed by their policy.

Only indirectly, and as a rule very indifferently at that, represented in Parliament, colonies ruled by the Crown have no chance of being heard, unless, perchance, their contentions on any given subject will furnish valuable material for the arguments of a Liberal against Conservative theories, or vice versa. I have mentioned the Zulu affair as an instance encouraging European settlers in South-East Africa to cast off any allegiance to party in England, but instances could be multiplied. As for the general interest with which the colonies are regarded at home, England takes as much interest in Natal and the Transvaal — when war does not attract attention — as France or Russia does, and perhaps no more. The rule of these colonies by either of those foreign countries would, therefore, in all probability, be as wise and beneficial as that of England.

If no particular benefit is derived from one national Government, that Government speedily falls into contempt by the subject. If there is such a growth of republican feeling amongst colonial settlers, it is not difficult to imagine how widespread, nay, universal, is that feeling amongst their children — those who, born in the colony, have little or nothing to bind them to England, who know little about it, and whose ears are daily filled with local grievances, the outcome of Imperial rule. The Imperial Government, I have remarked, appears to have, in regard to her colonies, no particular policy, no plan or system, no broad line of action save that of running counter to the will of the European inhabitants of those dependencies under the Imperial thumb. This policy has claimed for it the advantage of a corrective and chastening influence.

Up to a certain point, administered in moderate doses, the restraining influence is beneficial, but the quantity has long since become an unwholesome one. One further exception is to be noted as regards England having no colonial policy, and, as far as Natal is concerned, it is a notorious one ; it is that policy having for its aim to ' protect ' the black man, to encourage him in idleness and vice, to pet and spoil him, to stimulate him to rebellion, and then, having made him an insuffer able nuisance to himself, and a terror to every one around him, having educated him up to the point of danger which is unbearable, to slaughter him to a sufficient degree to make him tractable for a time. That, at all events, has been Imperial policy as regards Natal and the Transvaal, and the only foundation or cause for this policy is the all-pervading and essentially insular English notion that when a man leaves the shores of England, his nature undergoes a complete change; that he loses all sense of humanity and justice towards his inferiors; that arrogance, bloodthirstiness, and cruelty take the place of those better feelings ; and that his all-absorbing passion thenceforth is to wreak vengeance for imaginary wrongs on any black-skinned individual who comes across his path.

Nothino* could be farther from the mark ; I speak as regards Natal after two years' residence in the country, and coming from England imbued with the orthodox Exeter Hall spirit and belief. As regards the native population in this colony, I assert, without fear of contradiction, that the Englishman behaves towards the native servant with no more arrogance than do nineteen out of every twenty Englishmen at home conduct themselves to their white servants ; and as regards oppression and severity, it is shown in no more marked degree than in the Englishman in England to his employee. It would seem that the very first principle of colonial direction by England was that of courting ignorance of the country that is to be governed ; and that done, every consequent mistake comes instinctively. I allude to the regulation respecting Her Majesty's representatives for her colonies, which enjoins a residence covering a period sufficient for a governor to become acquainted with the wants of a country, and as soon as he has, so to speak, served his apprenticeship, and is equal to the work by experience and observa tion, promptly to remove him to go through another apprenticeship somewhere else, and to make room for a new apprentice in the place he has served his time in.

This everlasting chopping and changing is probably at the root of the evil of colonial maladminis tration. The practice suggests a constant experimentalizing ; each new governor having naturally his own particular pet scheme, each governor anxious to do his best and better than his predecessor — that is to say, better in the eyes of his employers, not in the eyes or interests, necessarily, of the inhabitants of the country. From them he has nothing to gain ; their approbation he is not dependent on, and their censure he can afford to treat with contempt. Unless imbued with a high moral sense of duty, which is not more common to administrators and governors than to any other class of men, he can ignore local necessities and feeling, if even he has discovered what these are, and follow the programme which he knows to be rather consonant with the ideas of Her Majesty's Ministers.

This is looking at the question from a very low moral standpoint as regards the servants of the Queen, but history forces the fact into prominence. What connection has this argument with the Boer war for independence ? This : that the Transvaal Boers have seen in Natal what the government of a practically Crown colony is. They have noted that with even a local representative assembly, Englishmen in Natal have agitated for responsible government, and have groaned under the rule of Downing Street; and the desire of Natal for independence has taught the Boers a lesson which, in truth, they hardly needed, but which has doubtless had due weight with them. If in Natal, where the white population is essentially English, there was a desire for freedom from Imperial rule, there must be some thing obnoxious and undesirable in the same rule for the Transvaal.

This inference duly drawn by the Boers I put forward as again one of the causes of their resort to arms to win their independence. If it is true that the system of the appointment of colonial governors for comparatively short periods is one that has many disadvantages ; if six successive governors or administrators, during a period of say thirty years, are less likely to give, collectively, during their periods of office as much satisfaction to the people, and are less likely to work out a beneficial policy to meet the wants and necessities of the country, than would two or even three administrators whose residence covered the same space of time, how much more forcible is the argument that in the state of the Transvaal directly after the annexation, the system of constantly changing the administrative officer was pernicious to the highest degree !

Nothing devised could be more unfortunate and directly provocative of dissatisfaction than that policy, or rather the creation of a political agent one day for the purpose of undoing him the next. Between 1876 and 1880, five of Her Majesty's representatives had a hand in the government of the Transvaal : first Sir Theophilus Shepstone ; second and third, Sir Bartle Frere and Sir Owen Lanyon ; fourth, Sir Garnet Wolseley ; fifth, Sir George Pomeroy Colley. Later on, I propose to allude at some length to the parts which severally these gentlemen played in relation to the country. Here I will not do more than point out briefly the results of experiment ing with men on men in this way. The appearance of Sir Bartle Frere and Sir Owen Lanyon on the scene as successors to Sir Theophilus Shepstone led the disaffected Boers to believe that there was prevalent in the mind of the English Government a suspicion that the Transvaal had not turned out, or even bid fair to turn out, such a valuable acquisition to the British Empire as was at first expected it would prove, and that its beneficial government under the British flag was a matter of considerable difficulty : this was in itself sufficient to raise the hopes of the disaffected malcontent section, and to make them take heart again.

It endued them with new life, and was eminently calculated to encourage a belief that England was at all events about to take a new departure in the manner of the govern ment of the country. Directly after Sir Bartle Frere had surveyed the land, and had proved to those who were agitating for the cancellation of the act of annexation that they had nothing to hope in that direction from his advent, and immediately after Sir Owen (at that time Colonel) Lanyon had, in conjunction with his chief, set about concerting measures for the government of the territory, Sir Bartle Frere retired from the scene ; and with his disappearance came practically a limit to Sir Owen Lanyon's policy, since Sir Garnet Wolseley, the new High Commissioner, took everything on his own shoulders, and Sir Owen Lanyon had in all matters only to receive and carry out the instructions of his superior.

Sir Garnet Wolseley's first intimation to Colonel Lanyon at this juncture is worth reproducing. It is as follows : — 'Pietermaritzburg, Sunday, June 29. 'I am now High Commissioner for South-Eastern Africa, therefore in future send all reports to me under flying seal to General Clifford, Maritzburg. I have full powers to make peace without reference to England. I write to you by post to-day. Meanwhile, undertake no offensive operations of any kind against Secocoeni. Endeavour to protect life and property on your frontier. Raise no more men except what are required for police and strictly defensive purposes. I do not approve of the present very extensive weekly expenditure. Please check and restrict it in all possible ways, and do not embark in any new plans entailing large outlay of public money.

Desire paymaster to report at once, in writing, the payments he has already made, giving all possible details as to objects of expenditure, and report to me fully, yourself, on the subject. In future you will please take orders only from me.' The disaffected Boers naturally enough concluded at first that Sir Garnet's appointment meant the inauguration of a new era. Imperfectly acquainted as the majority of them were with the feeling of public opinion in England as to Lord Chelmsford's con duct of military operations in Zululand, they may be excused if they thought in their own minds that the primary cause of Sir Garnet Wolseley's appointment was to follow a different line of action in the Transvaal to that proposed by Sir Bartle Frere. Sir Garnet Wolseley did follow a different line to Sir Bartle Frere as soon as he could give his immediate attention to the Transvaal ; and if the people were disappointed in Sir Bartle Frere, they were disagreeably disappointed in Sir Garnet Wolseley.

The change, nevertheless, must have been received as further evidence of mental vacillation in England as regarded her new possession. The policy of the hero of Ashantee was the culminating stroke to their backs, although fresh evidence was forthcoming of experimenting with administrators for the country in the appointment of Sir George Colley in 1880, Sir Owen Lanyon, however, being still retained at Pretoria. If this display of a procession of administrators for the Transvaal represented to the Boer mind wavering and indecision, uneasiness and dissatisfaction, of English Ministers with the business as transacted in the Transvaal, — and that would be the light in which agitators would choose, and not unreasonably, to view the affair, — it is certain that it was very injurious to the reputation of every man who played his brief part in that procession, because they never had an opportunity, owing to want of time, of carrying out the policy — whether good or bad — of which they propounded the first principles.

Equally injurious was it to the country itself, leaving the malcontent Boers out of the question, because under the circumstances no serious legislation could be undertaken or reforms effected. A country disposed to be unsettled was periodically being shaken up and kept in a state of excitement, when the only cure for its complaint was as much rest and quietness as was compatible with the inauguration of progressive and beneficial measures for its rule. The procession of administrators will be allowed, I think, to rank amongst the causes of the Boer war as a good one in the secondary list. In the primary list should rank foremost the thorough want of sympathy, in mode of life, manners, religion, social customs, habits, aspirations, and thought, between Englishmen and the Transvaal Boers — I say the Transvaal Boers, because they must really be considered a distinct people from the Dutchmen who have settled in the Cape (or Old Colony, as it is called in South-East Africa), distinct from the Boers in the Orange Free State, and distinct from the majority of the Dutch who are content to remain in Natal.

The Transvaal Boers are recruited largely from that section of Dutch settlers in South Africa who have always, and probably will for ages to come, resent as an intrusion the presence of Englishmen in their midst ; very much in the same way that certain of our countrymen have an aversion to the heathen Chinee, the Transvaal Boer has an aversion to the Britisher. The Britisher, ever since one Dutchman set foot in this country, has been following him up, ' always a-chevying,' as poor Joe complained, elbowing him out steadily but surely. The Englishman has become in a manner the natural foe of the Boer, and the true Boer will, for many a long year to come, look at the Englishman askance. When the Englishman has not been fighting with the Boer, he has been on his trail with a wagon-load of goods, family Bibles, and Manchester stuffs ; and I do not know whether it arises from the fact that commercial morality has never been lower amongst the traders than it is at the present day, but it has come to pass, by some means or other, that the Boer regards the British trader in not so fair a light as the British trader regards himself.

Whether it is a gun, a family Bible, schiedam, cotton stuffs, or a new Constitution we offer the Boer, either out of our commercial love for him or out of our sheer philanthropy, the Boer mistrusts us. He will buy from us because we have the only market available to him, and he will sell to us because we are the only present available purchasers ; but he has not a scintilla of respect for us, or the remotest wish to be more intimate with us. An Africander, i.e. one born in South Africa, if he can speak Dutch, is less an object of aversion to the Boer; but even the Africander is not constituted exactly to the Boer mind, for the simple reason that he is not a Boer, and that his ways can never be their ways. In the Transvaal now there are many Old Colony Boers, but they appear to be quite distinct from the Trans vaal Boer ; they move in their own ' set,' and to a large extent their ideas are different to those of their neighbours.