|
Project Gutenberg is a fantastic resource and points
the way to the future of publishing. Enjoy
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Great Boer War, by
Arthur Conan Doyle
(#26 in our series by Arthur Conan Doyle)
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to
check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or
redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this
Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit
the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information
about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.
Included is
important information about your specific rights and
restrictions in
how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to
make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic
Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: The Great Boer War
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Release Date: Feb, 2002 [EBook #3069]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on September 30, 2002]
[Most recently updated: September 30, 2002]
Edition: 11
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE GREAT BOER WAR
***
Project Gutenberg Etext of The Great Boer War by Arthur Conan
Doyle.
***
E-text editor's note: It may come as a surprise that the
creator of
Sherlock Holmes wrote a history of the Boer War. The then
40-year-old novelist wanted to see the war first hand as a
soldier,
but the Victorian army balked at having a popular author
wielding a
pen in its ranks. The army did accept him as a doctor and
Doyle was
knighted in 1902 for his work with a field hospital in
Bloemfontein. Doyle's vivid description of the battles is
probably
thanks to the eye-witness accounts he got from his patients.
This,
the best book on the Boer War I've encountered, is a long out
of
print lost classic that I stumbled across in a Cape Town
second-hand bookstore.
Robert Laing.
Proofed by Sue Asscher asschers@bigpond.com
***
THE GREAT BOER WAR
BY
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER 1. THE BOER NATIONS.
CHAPTER 2. THE CAUSE OF QUARREL.
CHAPTER 3. THE NEGOTIATIONS.
CHAPTER 4. THE EVE OF WAR.
CHAPTER 5. TALANA HILL.
CHAPTER 6. ELANDSLAAGTE AND RIETFONTEIN.
CHAPTER 7. THE BATTLE OF LADYSMITH.
CHAPTER 8. LORD METHUEN'S ADVANCE.
CHAPTER 9. BATTLE OF MAGERSFONTEIN.
CHAPTER 10. THE BATTLE OF STORMBERG.
CHAPTER 11. BATTLE OF COLENSO.
CHAPTER 12. THE DARK HOUR.
CHAPTER 13. THE SIEGE OF LADYSMITH.
CHAPTER 14. THE COLESBERG OPERATIONS.
CHAPTER 15. SPION KOP.
CHAPTER 16. VAALKRANZ.
CHAPTER 17. BULLER'S FINAL ADVANCE.
CHAPTER 18. THE SIEGE AND RELIEF OF KIMBERLEY.
CHAPTER 19. PAARDEBERG.
CHAPTER 20. ROBERTS'S ADVANCE ON BLOEMFONTEIN.
CHAPTER 21. STRATEGIC EFFECTS OF LORD ROBERTS'S MARCH.
CHAPTER 22. THE HALT AT BLOEMFONTEIN.
CHAPTER 23. THE CLEARING OF THE SOUTH-EAST.
CHAPTER 24. THE SIEGE OF MAFEKING.
CHAPTER 25. THE MARCH ON PRETORIA.
CHAPTER 26. DIAMOND HILL--RUNDLE'S OPERATIONS.
CHAPTER 27. THE LINES OF COMMUNICATION.
CHAPTER 28. THE HALT AT PRETORIA.
CHAPTER 29. THE ADVANCE TO KOMATIPOORT.
CHAPTER 30. THE CAMPAIGN OF DE WET.
CHAPTER 31. THE GUERILLA WARFARE IN THE TRANSVAAL:
NOOITGEDACHT.
CHAPTER 32. THE SECOND INVASION OF CAPE COLONY.
CHAPTER 33. THE NORTHERN OPERATIONS FROM JANUARY TO APRIL,
1901.
CHAPTER 34. THE WINTER CAMPAIGN (APRIL TO SEPTEMBER, 1901).
CHAPTER 35. THE GUERILLA OPERATIONS IN CAPE COLONY.
CHAPTER 36. THE SPRING CAMPAIGN (SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER, 1901).
CHAPTER 37. THE CAMPAIGN OF JANUARY TO APRIL, 1902.
CHAPTER 38. DE LA REY'S CAMPAIGN OF 1902.
CHAPTER 39. THE END.
PREFACE TO THE FINAL EDITION.
During the course of the war some sixteen Editions of this
work
have appeared, each of which was, I hope, a little more full
and
accurate than that which preceded it. I may fairly claim,
however,
that the absolute mistakes made have been few in number, and
that I
have never had occasion to reverse, and seldom to modify, the
judgments which I have formed. In this final edition the early
text
has been carefully revised and all fresh available knowledge
has
been added within the limits of a single volume narrative. Of
the
various episodes in the latter half of the war it is
impossible to
say that the material is available for a complete and final
chronicle. By the aid, however, of the official dispatches, of
the
newspapers, and of many private letters, I have done my best
to
give an intelligible and accurate account of the matter. The
treatment may occasionally seem too brief but some proportion
must
be observed between the battles of 1899-1900 and the
skirmishes of
1901-1902.
My private informants are so numerous that it would be hardly
possible, even if it were desirable, that I should quote their
names. Of the correspondents upon whose work I have drawn for
my
materials, I would acknowledge my obligations to Messrs.
Burleigh,
Nevinson, Battersby, Stuart, Amery, Atkins, Baillie, Kinneir,
Churchill, James, Ralph, Barnes, Maxwell, Pearce, Hamilton,
and
others. Especially I would mention the gentleman who
represented
the 'Standard' in the last year of the war, whose accounts of
Vlakfontein, Von Donop's Convoy, and Tweebosch were the only
reliable ones which reached the public.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Undershaw, Hindhead: September 1902.
CHAPTER 1.
THE BOER NATIONS.
Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended
themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a
time
when Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with
them
a strain of those inflexible French Huguenots who gave up home
and
fortune and left their country for ever at the time of the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously
be
one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen
upon
earth. Take this formidable people and train them for seven
generations in constant warfare against savage men and
ferocious
beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling could
survive,
place them so that they acquire exceptional skill with weapons
and
in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited
to
the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman, and the rider.
Then,
finally, put a finer temper upon their military qualities by a
dour
fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming
patriotism. Combine all these qualities and all these impulses
in
one individual, and you have the modern Boer--the most
formidable
antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain. Our
military history has largely consisted in our conflicts with
France, but Napoleon and all his veterans have never treated
us so
roughly as these hard-bitten farmers with their ancient
theology
and their inconveniently modern rifles.
Look at the map of South Africa, and there, in the very centre
of
the British possessions, like the stone in a peach, lies the
great
stretch of the two republics, a mighty domain for so small a
people. How came they there? Who are these Teutonic folk who
have
burrowed so deeply into Africa? It is a twice-told tale, and
yet it
must be told once again if this story is to have even the most
superficial of introductions. No one can know or appreciate
the
Boer who does not know his past, for he is what his past has
made
him.
It was about the time when Oliver Cromwell was at his
zenith--in
1652, to be pedantically accurate--that the Dutch made their
first
lodgment at the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese had been
there
before them, but, repelled by the evil weather, and lured
forwards
by rumours of gold, they had passed the true seat of empire
and had
voyaged further to settle along the eastern coast. Some gold
there
was, but not much, and the Portuguese settlements have never
been
sources of wealth to the mother country, and never will be
until
the day when Great Britain signs her huge cheque for Delagoa
Bay.
The coast upon which they settled reeked with malaria. A
hundred
miles of poisonous marsh separated it from the healthy inland
plateau. For centuries these pioneers of South African
colonisation
strove to obtain some further footing, but save along the
courses
of the rivers they made little progress. Fierce natives and an
enervating climate barred their way.
But it was different with the Dutch. That very rudeness of
climate
which had so impressed the Portuguese adventurer was the
source of
their success. Cold and poverty and storm are the nurses of
the
qualities which make for empire. It is the men from the bleak
and
barren lands who master the children of the light and the
heat. And
so the Dutchmen at the Cape prospered and grew stronger in
that
robust climate. They did not penetrate far inland, for they
were
few in number and all they wanted was to be found close at
hand.
But they built themselves houses, and they supplied the Dutch
East
India Company with food and water, gradually budding off
little
townlets, Wynberg, Stellenbosch, and pushing their settlements
up
the long slopes which lead to that great central plateau which
extends for fifteen hundred miles from the edge of the Karoo
to the
Valley of the Zambesi. Then came the additional Huguenot
emigrants--the best blood of France three hundred of them, a
handful of the choicest seed thrown in to give a touch of
grace and
soul to the solid Teutonic strain. Again and again in the
course of
history, with the Normans, the Huguenots, the Emigres, one can
see
the great hand dipping into that storehouse and sprinkling the
nations with the same splendid seed. France has not founded
other
countries, like her great rival, but she has made every other
country the richer by the mixture with her choicest and best.
The
Rouxs, Du Toits, Jouberts, Du Plessis, Villiers, and a score
of
other French names are among the most familiar in South
Africa.
For a hundred more years the history of the colony was a
record of
the gradual spreading of the Afrikaners over the huge expanse
of
veld which lay to the north of them. Cattle raising became an
industry, but in a country where six acres can hardly support
a
sheep, large farms are necessary for even small herds. Six
thousand
acres was the usual size, and five pounds a year the rent
payable
to Government. The diseases which follow the white man had in
Africa, as in America and Australia, been fatal to the
natives, and
an epidemic of smallpox cleared the country for the newcomers.
Further and further north they pushed, founding little towns
here
and there, such as Graaf-Reinet and Swellendam, where a Dutch
Reformed Church and a store for the sale of the bare
necessaries of
life formed a nucleus for a few scattered dwellings. Already
the
settlers were showing that independence of control and that
detachment from Europe which has been their most prominent
characteristic. Even the sway of the Dutch Company (an older
but
weaker brother of John Company in India) had caused them to
revolt.
The local rising, however, was hardly noticed in the universal
cataclysm which followed the French Revolution. After twenty
years,
during which the world was shaken by the Titanic struggle
between
England and France in the final counting up of the game and
paying
of the stakes, the Cape Colony was added in 1814 to the
British
Empire.
In all our vast collection of States there is probably not one
the
title-deeds to which are more incontestable than to this one.
We
had it by two rights, the right of conquest and the right of
purchase. In 1806 our troops landed, defeated the local
forces, and
took possession of Cape Town. In 1814 we paid the large sum of
six
million pounds to the Stadholder for the transference of this
and
some South American land. It was a bargain which was probably
made
rapidly and carelessly in that general redistribution which
was
going on. As a house of call upon the way to India the place
was
seen to be of value, but the country itself was looked upon as
unprofitable and desert. What would Castlereagh or Liverpool
have
thought could they have seen the items which we were buying
for our
six million pounds? The inventory would have been a mixed one
of
good and of evil; nine fierce Kaffir wars, the greatest
diamond
mines in the world, the wealthiest gold mines, two costly and
humiliating campaigns with men whom we respected even when we
fought with them, and now at last, we hope, a South Africa of
peace
and prosperity, with equal rights and equal duties for all
men. The
future should hold something very good for us in that land,
for if
we merely count the past we should be compelled to say that we
should have been stronger, richer, and higher in the world's
esteem
had our possessions there never passed beyond the range of the
guns
of our men-of-war. But surely the most arduous is the most
honourable, and, looking back from the end of their journey,
our
descendants may see that our long record of struggle, with its
mixture of disaster and success, its outpouring of blood and
of
treasure, has always tended to some great and enduring goal.
The title-deeds to the estate are, as I have said, good ones,
but
there is one singular and ominous flaw in their provisions.
The
ocean has marked three boundaries to it, but the fourth is
undefined. There is no word of the 'Hinterland;' for neither
the
term nor the idea had then been thought of. Had Great Britain
bought those vast regions which extended beyond the
settlements? Or
were the discontented Dutch at liberty to pass onwards and
found
fresh nations to bar the path of the Anglo-Celtic colonists?
In
that question lay the germ of all the trouble to come. An
American
would realise the point at issue if he could conceive that
after
the founding of the United States the Dutch inhabitants of the
State of New York had trekked to the westward and established
fresh
communities under a new flag. Then, when the American
population
overtook these western States, they would be face to face with
the
problem which this country has had to solve. If they found
these
new States fiercely anti-American and extremely unprogressive,
they
would experience that aggravation of their difficulties with
which
our statesmen have had to deal.
At the time of their transference to the British flag the
colonists--Dutch, French, and German--numbered some thirty
thousand. They were slaveholders, and the slaves were about as
numerous as themselves. The prospect of complete amalgamation
between the British and the original settlers would have
seemed to
be a good one, since they were of much the same stock, and
their
creeds could only be distinguished by their varying degrees of
bigotry and intolerance. Five thousand British emigrants were
landed in 1820, settling on the Eastern borders of the colony,
and
from that time onwards there was a slow but steady influx of
English speaking colonists. The Government had the historical
faults and the historical virtues of British rule. It was
mild,
clean, honest, tactless, and inconsistent. On the whole, it
might
have done very well had it been content to leave things as it
found
them. But to change the habits of the most conservative of
Teutonic
races was a dangerous venture, and one which has led to a long
series of complications, making up the troubled history of
South
Africa. The Imperial Government has always taken an honourable
and
philanthropic view of the rights of the native and the claim
which
he has to the protection of the law. We hold and rightly, that
British justice, if not blind, should at least be colour-blind.
The
view is irreproachable in theory and incontestable in
argument, but
it is apt to be irritating when urged by a Boston moralist or
a
London philanthropist upon men whose whole society has been
built
upon the assumption that the black is the inferior race. Such
a
people like to find the higher morality for themselves, not to
have
it imposed upon them by those who live under entirely
different
conditions. They feel--and with some reason--that it is a
cheap
form of virtue which, from the serenity of a well-ordered
household
in Beacon Street or Belgrave Square, prescribes what the
relation
shall be between a white employer and his half-savage,
half-childish retainers. Both branches of the Anglo-Celtic
race
have grappled with the question, and in each it has led to
trouble.
The British Government in South Africa has always played the
unpopular part of the friend and protector of the native
servants.
It was upon this very point that the first friction appeared
between the old settlers and the new administration. A rising
with
bloodshed followed the arrest of a Dutch farmer who had
maltreated
his slave. It was suppressed, and five of the participants
were
hanged. This punishment was unduly severe and exceedingly
injudicious. A brave race can forget the victims of the field
of
battle, but never those of the scaffold. The making of
political
martyrs is the last insanity of statesmanship. It is true that
both
the man who arrested and the judge who condemned the prisoners
were
Dutch, and that the British Governor interfered on the side of
mercy; but all this was forgotten afterwards in the desire to
make
racial capital out of the incident. It is typical of the
enduring
resentment which was left behind that when, after the Jameson
raid,
it seemed that the leaders of that ill-fated venture might be
hanged, the beam was actually brought from a farmhouse at
Cookhouse
Drift to Pretoria, that the Englishmen might die as the
Dutchmen
had died in 1816. Slagter's Nek marked the dividing of the
ways
between the British Government and the Afrikaners.
And the separation soon became more marked. There were
injudicious
tamperings with the local government and the local ways, with
a
substitution of English for Dutch in the law courts. With
vicarious
generosity, the English Government gave very lenient terms to
the
Kaffir tribes who in 1834 had raided the border farmers. And
then,
finally, in this same year there came the emancipation of the
slaves throughout the British Empire, which fanned all
smouldering
discontents into an active flame.
It must be confessed that on this occasion the British
philanthropist was willing to pay for what he thought was
right. It
was a noble national action, and one the morality of which was
in
advance of its time, that the British Parliament should vote
the
enormous sum of twenty million pounds to pay compensation to
the
slaveholders, and so to remove an evil with which the mother
country had no immediate connection. It was as well that the
thing
should have been done when it was, for had we waited till the
colonies affected had governments of their own it could never
have
been done by constitutional methods. With many a grumble the
good
British householder drew his purse from his fob, and he paid
for
what he thought to be right. If any special grace attends the
virtuous action which brings nothing but tribulation in this
world,
then we may hope for it over this emancipation. We spent our
money,
we ruined our West Indian colonies, and we started a
disaffection
in South Africa, the end of which we have not seen. Yet if it
were
to be done again we should doubtless do it. The highest
morality
may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told
story
comes to be finished.
But the details of the measure were less honourable than the
principle. It was carried out suddenly, so that the country
had no
time to adjust itself to the new conditions. Three million
pounds
were ear-marked for South Africa, which gives a price per
slave of
from sixty to seventy pounds, a sum considerably below the
current
local rates. Finally, the compensation was made payable in
London,
so that the farmers sold their claims at reduced prices to
middlemen. Indignation meetings were held in every little
townlet
and cattle camp on the Karoo. The old Dutch spirit was up--the
spirit of the men who cut the dykes. Rebellion was useless.
But a
vast untenanted land stretched to the north of them. The nomad
life
was congenial to them, and in their huge ox-drawn wagons--like
those bullock-carts in which some of their old kinsmen came to
Gaul--they had vehicles and homes and forts all in one. One by
one
they were loaded up, the huge teams were inspanned, the women
were
seated inside, the men, with their long-barrelled guns, walked
alongside, and the great exodus was begun. Their herds and
flocks
accompanied the migration, and the children helped to round
them in
and drive them. One tattered little boy of ten cracked his
sjambok
whip behind the bullocks. He was a small item in that singular
crowd, but he was of interest to us, for his name was Paul
Stephanus Kruger.
It was a strange exodus, only comparable in modern times to
the
sallying forth of the Mormons from Nauvoo upon their search
for the
promised laud of Utah. The country was known and sparsely
settled
as far north as the Orange River, but beyond there was a great
region which had never been penetrated save by some daring
hunter
or adventurous pioneer. It chanced--if there be indeed such an
element as chance in the graver affairs of man--that a Zulu
conqueror had swept over this land and left it untenanted,
save by
the dwarf bushmen, the hideous aborigines, lowest of the human
race. There were fine grazing and good soil for the emigrants.
They
traveled in small detached parties, but their total numbers
were
considerable, from six to ten thousand according to their
historian, or nearly a quarter of the whole population of the
colony. Some of the early bands perished miserably. A large
number
made a trysting-place at a high peak to the east of
Bloemfontein in
what was lately the Orange Free State. One party of the
emigrants
was cut off by the formidable Matabeli, a branch of the great
Zulu
nation. The survivors declared war upon them, and showed in
this,
their first campaign, the extraordinary ingenuity in adapting
their
tactics to their adversary which has been their greatest
military
characteristic. The commando which rode out to do battle with
the
Matabeli numbered, it is said, a hundred and thirty-five
farmers.
Their adversaries were twelve thousand spearmen. They met at
the
Marico River, near Mafeking. The Boers combined the use of
their
horses and of their rifles so cleverly that they slaughtered a
third of their antagonists without any loss to themselves.
Their
tactics were to gallop up within range of the enemy, to fire a
volley, and then to ride away again before the spearmen could
reach
them. When the savages pursued the Boers fled. When the
pursuit
halted the Boers halted and the rifle fire began anew. The
strategy
was simple but most effective. When one remembers how often
since
then our own horsemen have been pitted against savages in all
parts
of the world, one deplores that ignorance of all military
traditions save our own which is characteristic of our
service.
This victory of the 'voortrekkers' cleared all the country
between
the Orange River and the Limpopo, the sites of what has been
known
as the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In the meantime
another
body of the emigrants had descended into what is now known as
Natal, and had defeated Dingaan, the great Chief of the Zulus.
Being unable, owing to the presence of their families, to
employ
the cavalry tactics which had been so effective against the
Matabeli, they again used their ingenuity to meet this new
situation, and received the Zulu warriors in a square of
laagered
wagons, the men firing while the women loaded. Six burghers
were
killed and three thousand Zulus. Had such a formation been
used
forty years afterwards against these very Zulus, we should not
have
had to mourn the disaster of Isandhlwana.
And now at the end of their great journey, after overcoming
the
difficulties of distance, of nature, and of savage enemies,
the
Boers saw at the end of their travels the very thing which
they
desired least--that which they had come so far to avoid--the
flag
of Great Britain. The Boers had occupied Natal from within,
but
England had previously done the same by sea, and a small
colony of
Englishmen had settled at Port Natal, now known as Durban. The
home
Government, however, had acted in a vacillating way, and it
was
only the conquest of Natal by the Boers which caused them to
claim
it as a British colony. At the same time they asserted the
unwelcome doctrine that a British subject could not at will
throw
off his allegiance, and that, go where they might, the
wandering
farmers were still only the pioneers of British colonies. To
emphasise the fact three companies of soldiers were sent in
1842 to
what is now Durban--the usual Corporal's guard with which
Great
Britain starts a new empire. This handful of men was waylaid
by the
Boers and cut up, as their successors have been so often
since. The
survivors, however, fortified themselves, and held a defensive
position--as also their successors have done so many times
since--until reinforcements arrived and the farmers dispersed.
It
is singular how in history the same factors will always give
the
same result. Here in this first skirmish is an epitome of all
our
military relations with these people. The blundering
headstrong
attack, the defeat, the powerlessness of the farmer against
the
weakest fortifications--it is the same tale over and over
again in
different scales of importance. Natal from this time onward
became
a British colony, and the majority of the Boers trekked north
and
east with bitter hearts to tell their wrongs to their brethren
of
the Orange Free State and of the Transvaal.
Had they any wrongs to tell? It is difficult to reach that
height
of philosophic detachment which enables the historian to deal
absolutely impartially where his own country is a party to the
quarrel. But at least we may allow that there is a case for
our
adversary. Our annexation of Natal had been by no means
definite,
and it was they and not we who first broke that bloodthirsty
Zulu
power which threw its shadow across the country. It was hard
after
such trials and such exploits to turn their back upon the
fertile
land which they had conquered, and to return to the bare
pastures
of the upland veld. They carried out of Natal a heavy sense of
injury, which has helped to poison our relations with them
ever
since. It was, in a way, a momentous episode, this little
skirmish
of soldiers and emigrants, for it was the heading off of the
Boer
from the sea and the confinement of his ambition to the land.
Had
it gone the other way, a new and possibly formidable flag
would
have been added to the maritime nations.
The emigrants who had settled in the huge tract of country
between
the Orange River in the south and the Limpopo in the north had
been
recruited by newcomers from the Cape Colony until they
numbered
some fifteen thousand souls. This population was scattered
over a
space as large as Germany, and larger than Pennsylvania, New
York,
and New England. Their form of government was individualistic
and
democratic to the last degree compatible with any sort of
cohesion.
Their wars with the Kaffirs and their fear and dislike of the
British Government appear to have been the only ties which
held
them together. They divided and subdivided within their own
borders, like a germinating egg. The Transvaal was full of
lusty
little high-mettled communities, who quarreled among
themselves as
fiercely as they had done with the authorities at the Cape.
Lydenburg, Zoutpansberg, and Potchefstroom were on the point
of
turning their rifles against each other. In the south, between
the
Orange River and the Vaal, there was no form of government at
all,
but a welter of Dutch farmers, Basutos, Hottentots, and
halfbreeds
living in a chronic state of turbulence, recognising neither
the
British authority to the south of them nor the Transvaal
republics
to the north. The chaos became at last unendurable, and in
1848 a
garrison was placed in Bloemfontein and the district
incorporated
in the British Empire. The emigrants made a futile resistance
at
Boomplaats, and after a single defeat allowed themselves to be
drawn into the settled order of civilised rule.
At this period the Transvaal, where most of the Boers had
settled,
desired a formal acknowledgment of their independence, which
the
British authorities determined once and for all to give them.
The
great barren country, which produced little save marksmen, had
no
attractions for a Colonial Office which was bent upon the
limitation of its liabilities. A Convention was concluded
between
the two parties, known as the Sand River Convention, which is
one
of the fixed points in South African history. By it the
British
Government guaranteed to the Boer farmers the right to manage
their
own affairs, and to govern themselves by their own laws
without any
interference upon the part of the British. It stipulated that
there
should be no slavery, and with that single reservation washed
its
hands finally, as it imagined, of the whole question. So the
South
African Republic came formally into existence.
In the very year after the Sand River Convention a second
republic,
the Orange Free State, was created by the deliberate
withdrawal of
Great Britain from the territory which she had for eight years
occupied. The Eastern Question was already becoming acute, and
the
cloud of a great war was drifting up, visible to all men.
British
statesmen felt that their commitments were very heavy in every
part
of the world, and the South African annexations had always
been a
doubtful value and an undoubted trouble. Against the will of a
large part of the inhabitants, whether a majority or not it is
impossible to say, we withdrew our troops as amicably as the
Romans
withdrew from Britain, and the new republic was left with
absolute
and unfettered independence. On a petition being presented
against
the withdrawal, the Home Government actually voted forty-eight
thousand pounds to compensate those who had suffered from the
change. Whatever historical grievance the Transvaal may have
against Great Britain, we can at least, save perhaps in one
matter,
claim to have a very clear conscience concerning our dealings
with
the Orange Free State. Thus in 1852 and in 1854 were born
those
sturdy States who were able for a time to hold at bay the
united
forces of the empire.
In the meantime Cape Colony, in spite of these secessions, had
prospered exceedingly, and her population--English, German,
and
Dutch--had grown by 1870 to over two hundred thousand souls,
the
Dutch still slightly predominating. According to the Liberal
colonial policy of Great Britain, the time had come to cut the
cord
and let the young nation conduct its own affairs. In 1872
complete
self-government was given to it, the Governor, as the
representative of the Queen, retaining a nominal unexercised
veto
upon legislation. According to this system the Dutch majority
of
the colony could, and did, put their own representatives into
power
and run the government upon Dutch lines. Already Dutch law had
been
restored, and Dutch put on the same footing as English as the
official language of the country. The extreme liberality of
such
measures, and the uncompromising way in which they have been
carried out, however distasteful the legislation might seem to
English ideas, are among the chief reasons which made the
illiberal
treatment of British settlers in the Transvaal so keenly
resented
at the Cape. A Dutch Government was ruling the British in a
British
colony, at a moment when the Boers would not give an
Englishman a
vote upon a municipal council in a city which he had built
himself.
Unfortunately, however, 'the evil that men do lives after
them,'
and the ignorant Boer farmer continued to imagine that his
southern
relatives were in bondage, just as the descendant of the Irish
emigrant still pictures an Ireland of penal laws and an alien
Church.
For twenty-five years after the Sand River Convention the
burghers
of the South African Republic had pursued a strenuous and
violent
existence, fighting incessantly with the natives and sometimes
with
each other, with an occasional fling at the little Dutch
republic
to the south. The semi-tropical sun was waking strange
ferments in
the placid Friesland blood, and producing a race who added the
turbulence and restlessness of the south to the formidable
tenacity
of the north. Strong vitality and violent ambitions produced
feuds
and rivalries worthy of medieval Italy, and the story of the
factious little communities is like a chapter out of
Guicciardini.
Disorganisation ensued. The burghers would not pay taxes and
the
treasury was empty. One fierce Kaffir tribe threatened them
from
the north, and the Zulus on the east. It is an exaggeration of
English partisans to pretend that our intervention saved the
Boers,
for no one can read their military history without seeing that
they
were a match for Zulus and Sekukuni combined. But certainly a
formidable invasion was pending, and the scattered farmhouses
were
as open to the Kaffirs as our farmers' homesteads were in the
American colonies when the Indians were on the warpath. Sir
Theophilus Shepstone, the British Commissioner, after an
inquiry of
three months, solved all questions by the formal annexation of
the
country. The fact that he took possession of it with a force
of
some twenty-five men showed the honesty of his belief that no
armed
resistance was to be feared. This, then, in 1877 was a
complete
reversal of the Sand River Convention and the opening of a new
chapter in the history of South Africa.
There did not appear to be any strong feeling at the time
against
the annexation. The people were depressed with their troubles
and
weary of contention. Burgers, the President, put in a formal
protest, and took up his abode in Cape Colony, where he had a
pension from the British Government. A memorial against the
measure
received the signatures of a majority of the Boer inhabitants,
but
there was a fair minority who took the other view. Kruger
himself
accepted a paid office under Government. There was every sign
that
the people, if judiciously handled, would settle down under
the
British flag. It is even asserted that they would themselves
have
petitioned for annexation had it been longer withheld. With
immediate constitutional government it is possible that even
the
most recalcitrant of them might have been induced to lodge
their
protests in the ballot boxes rather than in the bodies of our
soldiers.
But the empire has always had poor luck in South Africa, and
never
worse than on that occasion. Through no bad faith, but simply
through preoccupation and delay, the promises made were not
instantly fulfilled. Simple primitive men do not understand
the
ways of our circumlocution offices, and they ascribe to
duplicity
what is really red tape and stupidity. If the Transvaalers had
waited they would have had their Volksraad and all that they
wanted. But the British Government had some other local
matters to
set right, the rooting out of Sekukuni and the breaking of the
Zulus, before they would fulfill their pledges. The delay was
keenly resented. And we were unfortunate in our choice of
Governor.
The burghers are a homely folk, and they like an occasional
cup of
coffee with the anxious man who tries to rule them. The three
hundred pounds a year of coffee money allowed by the Transvaal
to
its President is by no means a mere form. A wise administrator
would fall into the sociable and democratic habits of the
people.
Sir Theophilus Shepstone did so. Sir Owen Lanyon did not.
There was
no Volksraad and no coffee, and the popular discontent grew
rapidly. In three years the British had broken up the two
savage
hordes which had been threatening the land. The finances, too,
had
been restored. The reasons which had made so many favour the
annexation were weakened by the very power which had every
interest
in preserving them.
It cannot be too often pointed out that in this annexation,
the
starting-point of our troubles, Great Britain, however
mistaken she
may have been, had no obvious selfish interest in view. There
were
no Rand mines in those days, nor was there anything in the
country
to tempt the most covetous. An empty treasury and two native
wars
were the reversion which we took over. It was honestly
considered
that the country was in too distracted a state to govern
itself,
and had, by its weakness, become a scandal and a danger to its
neighbours. There was nothing sordid in our action, though it
may
have been both injudicious and high-handed.
In December 1880 the Boers rose. Every farmhouse sent out its
riflemen, and the trysting-place was the outside of the
nearest
British fort. All through the country small detachments were
surrounded and besieged by the farmers. Standerton, Pretoria,
Potchefstroom, Lydenburg, Wakkerstroom, Rustenberg, and
Marabastad
were all invested and all held out until the end of the war.
In the
open country we were less fortunate. At Bronkhorst Spruit a
small
British force was taken by surprise and shot down without harm
to
their antagonists. The surgeon who treated them has left it on
record that the average number of wounds was five per man. At
Laing's Nek an inferior force of British endeavoured to rush a
hill
which was held by Boer riflemen. Half of our men were killed
and
wounded. Ingogo may be called a drawn battle, though our loss
was
more heavy than that of the enemy. Finally came the defeat of
Majuba Hill, where four hundred infantry upon a mountain were
defeated and driven off by a swarm of sharpshooters who
advanced
under the cover of boulders. Of all these actions there was
not one
which was more than a skirmish, and had they been followed by
a
final British victory they would now be hardly remembered. It
is
the fact that they were skirmishes which succeeded in their
object
which has given them an importance which is exaggerated. At
the
same time they may mark the beginning of a new military era,
for
they drove home the fact--only too badly learned by us--that
it is
the rifle and not the drill which makes the soldier. It is
bewildering that after such an experience the British military
authorities continued to serve out only three hundred
cartridges a
year for rifle practice, and that they still encouraged that
mechanical volley firing which destroys all individual aim.
With
the experience of the first Boer war behind them, little was
done,
either in tactics or in musketry, to prepare the soldier for
the
second. The value of the mounted rifleman, the shooting with
accuracy at unknown ranges, the art of taking cover--all were
equally neglected.
The defeat at Majuba Hill was followed by the complete
surrender of
the Gladstonian Government, an act which was either the most
pusillanimous or the most magnanimous in recent history. It is
hard
for the big man to draw away from the small before blows are
struck
but when the big man has been knocked down three times it is
harder
still. An overwhelming British force was in the field, and the
General declared that he held the enemy in the hollow of his
hand.
Our military calculations have been falsified before now by
these
farmers, and it may be that the task of Wood and Roberts would
have
been harder than they imagined; but on paper, at least, it
looked
as if the enemy could be crushed without difficulty. So the
public
thought, and yet they consented to the upraised sword being
stayed.
With them, as apart from the politicians, the motive was
undoubtedly a moral and Christian one. They considered that
the
annexation of the Transvaal had evidently been an injustice,
that
the farmers had a right to the freedom for which they fought,
and
that it was an unworthy thing for a great nation to continue
an
unjust war for the sake of a military revenge. It was the
height of
idealism, and the result has not been such as to encourage its
repetition.
An armistice was concluded on March 5th, 1881, which led up to
a
peace on the 23rd of the same month. The Government, after
yielding
to force what it had repeatedly refused to friendly
representations, made a clumsy compromise in their settlement.
A
policy of idealism and Christian morality should have been
thorough
if it were to be tried at all. It was obvious that if the
annexation were unjust, then the Transvaal should have
reverted to
the condition in which it was before the annexation, as
defined by
the Sand River Convention. But the Government for some reason
would
not go so far as this. They niggled and quibbled and bargained
until the State was left as a curious hybrid thing such as the
world has never seen. It was a republic which was part of the
system of a monarchy, dealt with by the Colonial Office, and
included under the heading of 'Colonies' in the news columns
of the
'Times.' It was autonomous, and yet subject to some vague
suzerainty, the limits of which no one has ever been able to
define. Altogether, in its provisions and in its omissions,
the
Convention of Pretoria appears to prove that our political
affairs
were as badly conducted as our military in this unfortunate
year of
1881.
It was evident from the first that so illogical and
contentious an
agreement could not possibly prove to be a final settlement,
and
indeed the ink of the signatures was hardly dry before an
agitation
was on foot for its revision. The Boers considered, and with
justice, that if they were to be left as undisputed victors in
the
war then they should have the full fruits of victory. On the
other
hand, the English-speaking colonies had their allegiance
tested to
the uttermost. The proud Anglo-Celtic stock is not accustomed
to be
humbled, and yet they found themselves through the action of
the
home Government converted into members of a beaten race. It
was
very well for the citizen of London to console his wounded
pride by
the thought that he had done a magnanimous action, but it was
different with the British colonist of Durban or Cape Town,
who by
no act of his own, and without any voice in the settlement,
found
himself humiliated before his Dutch neighbour. An ugly feeling
of
resentment was left behind, which might perhaps have passed
away
had the Transvaal accepted the settlement in the spirit in
which it
was meant, but which grew more and more dangerous as during
eighteen years our people saw, or thought that they saw, that
one
concession led always to a fresh demand, and that the Dutch
republics aimed not merely at equality, but at dominance in
South
Africa. Professor Bryce, a friendly critic, after a personal
examination of the country and the question, has left it upon
record that the Boers saw neither generosity nor humanity in
our
conduct, but only fear. An outspoken race, they conveyed their
feelings to their neighbours. Can it be wondered at that South
Africa has been in a ferment ever since, and that the British
Africander has yearned with an intensity of feeling unknown in
England for the hour of revenge?
The Government of the Transvaal after the war was left in the
hands
of a triumvirate, but after one year Kruger became President,
an
office which he continued to hold for eighteen years. His
career as
ruler vindicates the wisdom of that wise but unwritten
provision of
the American Constitution by which there is a limit to the
tenure
of this office. Continued rule for half a generation must turn
a
man into an autocrat. The old President has said himself, in
his
homely but shrewd way, that when one gets a good ox to lead
the
team it is a pity to change him. If a good ox, however, is
left to
choose his own direction without guidance, he may draw his
wagon
into trouble.
During three years the little State showed signs of a
tumultuous
activity. Considering that it was as large as France and that
the
population could not have been more than 50,000, one would
have
thought that they might have found room without any
inconvenient
crowding. But the burghers passed beyond their borders in
every
direction. The President cried aloud that he had been shut up
in a
kraal, and he proceeded to find ways out of it. A great trek
was
projected for the north, but fortunately it miscarried. To the
east
they raided Zululand, and succeeded, in defiance of the
British
settlement of that country, in tearing away one third of it
and
adding it to the Transvaal. To the west, with no regard to the
three-year-old treaty, they invaded Bechuanaland, and set up
the
two new republics of Goshen and Stellaland. So outrageous were
these proceedings that Great Britain was forced to fit out in
1884
a new expedition under Sir Charles Warren for the purpose of
turning these freebooters out of the country. It may be asked,
why
should these men be called freebooters if the founders of
Rhodesia
were pioneers? The answer is that the Transvaal was limited by
treaty to certain boundaries which these men transgressed,
while no
pledges were broken when the British power expanded to the
north.
The upshot of these trespasses was the scene upon which every
drama
of South Africa rings down. Once more the purse was drawn from
the
pocket of the unhappy taxpayer, and a million or so was paid
out to
defray the expenses of the police force necessary to keep
these
treaty-breakers in order. Let this be borne in mind when we
assess
the moral and material damage done to the Transvaal by that
ill-conceived and foolish enterprise, the Jameson Raid.
In 1884 a deputation from the Transvaal visited England, and
at
their solicitation the clumsy Treaty of Pretoria was altered
into
the still more clumsy Convention of London. The changes in the
provisions were all in favour of the Boers, and a second
successful
war could hardly have given them more than Lord Derby handed
them
in time of peace. Their style was altered from the Transvaal
to the
South African Republic, a change which was ominously
suggestive of
expansion in the future. The control of Great Britain over
their
foreign policy was also relaxed, though a power of veto was
retained. But the most important thing of all, and the
fruitful
cause of future trouble, lay in an omission. A suzerainty is a
vague term, but in politics, as in theology, the more nebulous
a
thing is the more does it excite the imagination and the
passions
of men. This suzerainty was declared in the preamble of the
first
treaty, and no mention of it was made in the second. Was it
thereby
abrogated or was it not? The British contention was that only
the
articles were changed, and that the preamble continued to hold
good
for both treaties. They pointed out that not only the
suzerainty,
but also the independence, of the Transvaal was proclaimed in
that
preamble, and that if one lapsed the other must do so also. On
the
other hand, the Boers pointed to the fact that there was
actually a
preamble to the second Convention, which would seem,
therefore, to
have taken the place of the first. The point is so technical
that
it appears to be eminently one of those questions which might
with
propriety have been submitted to the decision of a board of
foreign
jurists--or possibly to the Supreme Court of the United
States. If
the decision had been given against Great Britain, we might
have
accepted it in a chastened spirit as a fitting punishment for
the
carelessness of the representative who failed to make our
meaning
intelligible. Carlyle has said that a political mistake always
ends
in a broken head for somebody. Unfortunately the somebody is
usually somebody else. We have read the story of the political
mistakes. Only too soon we shall come to the broken heads.
This, then, is a synopsis of what had occurred up to the
signing of
the Convention, which finally established, or failed to
establish,
the position of the South African Republic. We must now leave
the
larger questions, and descend to the internal affairs of that
small
State, and especially to that train of events which has
stirred the
mind of our people more than anything since the Indian Mutiny.
CHAPTER 2.
THE CAUSE OF QUARREL.
There might almost seem to be some subtle connection between
the
barrenness and worthlessness of a surface and the value of the
minerals which lie beneath it. The craggy mountains of Western
America, the arid plains of West Australia, the ice-bound
gorges of
the Klondyke, and the bare slopes of the Witwatersrand veld--these
are the lids which cover the great treasure chests of the
world.
Gold had been known to exist in the Transvaal before, but it
was
only in 1886 that it was realised that the deposits which lie
some
thirty miles south of the capital are of a very extraordinary
and
valuable nature. The proportion of gold in the quartz is not
particularly high, nor are the veins of a remarkable
thickness, but
the peculiarity of the Rand mines lies in the fact that
throughout
this 'banket' formation the metal is so uniformly distributed
that
the enterprise can claim a certainty which is not usually
associated with the industry. It is quarrying rather than
mining.
Add to this that the reefs which were originally worked as
outcrops
have now been traced to enormous depths, and present the same
features as those at the surface. A conservative estimate of
the
value of the gold has placed it at seven hundred millions of
pounds.
Such a discovery produced the inevitable effect. A great
number of
adventurers flocked into the country, some desirable and some
very
much the reverse. There were circumstances, however, which
kept
away the rowdy and desperado element who usually make for a
newly
opened goldfield. It was not a class of mining which
encouraged the
individual adventurer. There were none of those nuggets which
gleamed through the mud of the dollies at Ballarat, or
recompensed
the forty-niners in California for all their travels and their
toils. It was a field for elaborate machinery, which could
only be
provided by capital. Managers, engineers, miners, technical
experts, and the tradesmen and middlemen who live upon them,
these
were the Uitlanders, drawn from all the races under the sun,
but
with the Anglo-Celtic vastly predominant. The best engineers
were
American, the best miners were Cornish, the best managers were
English, the money to run the mines was largely subscribed in
England. As time went on, however, the German and French
interests
became more extensive, until their joint holdings are now
probably
as heavy as those of the British. Soon the population of the
mining
centres became greater than that of the whole Boer community,
and
consisted mainly of men in the prime of life--men, too, of
exceptional intelligence and energy.
The situation was an extraordinary one. I have already
attempted to
bring the problem home to an American by suggesting that the
Dutch
of New York had trekked west and founded an anti-American and
highly unprogressive State. To carry out the analogy we will
now
suppose that that State was California, that the gold of that
State
attracted a large inrush of American citizens, who came to
outnumber the original inhabitants, that these citizens were
heavily taxed and badly used, and that they deafened
Washington
with their outcry about their injuries. That would be a fair
parallel to the relations between the Transvaal, the
Uitlanders,
and the British Gov |
