This small place, which sprang in the course of a few weeks from obscurity
to fame, is situated upon the long line of railway which connects
Kimberley in the south with Rhodesia in the north. In character it
resembles one of those western American townlets which possess small
present assets but immense aspirations. In its litter of corrugated-iron
roofs, and in the church and the racecourse, which are the first-fruits
everywhere of Anglo-Celtic civilisation, one sees the seeds of the great
city of the future. It is the obvious depot for the western Transvaal upon
one side, and the starting-point for all attempts upon the Kalahari Desert
upon the other. The Transvaal border runs within a few miles.
It is not clear why the imperial authorities should desire to hold this
place, since it has no natural advantages to help the defence, but lies
exposed in a widespread plain. A glance at the map must show that the
railway line would surely be cut both to the north and south of the town,
and the garrison isolated at a point some two hundred and fifty miles from
any reinforcements. Considering that the Boers could throw any strength of
men or guns against the place, it seemed certain that if they seriously
desired to take possession of it they could do so. Under ordinary
circumstances any force shut up there was doomed to capture. But what may
have seemed short-sighted policy became the highest wisdom, owing to the
extraordinary tenacity and resource of Baden-Powell, the officer in
command. Through his exertions the town acted as a bait to the Boers, and
occupied a considerable force in a useless siege at a time when their
presence at other seats of war might have proved disastrous to the British
cause.
Colonel Baden-Powell is a soldier of a type which is exceedingly
popular with the British public. A skilled hunter and an expert at many
games, there was always something of the sportsman in his keen
appreciation of war. In the Matabele campaign he had out-scouted the
savage scouts and found his pleasure in tracking them among their native
mountains, often alone and at night, trusting to his skill in springing
from rock to rock in his rubber-soled shoes to save him from their
pursuit. There was a brain quality in his bravery which is rare among our
officers. Full of veld craft and resource, it was as difficult to outwit
as it was to outfight him. But there was another curious side to his
complex nature. The French have said of one of their heroes, 'Il avait
cette graine de folie dans sa bravoure que les Francais aiment,' and the
words might have been written of Powell. An impish humour broke out in
him, and the mischievous schoolboy alternated with the warrior and the
administrator. He met the Boer commandos with chaff and jokes which were
as disconcerting as his wire entanglements and his rifle-pits. The amazing
variety of his personal accomplishments was one of his most striking
characteristics. From drawing caricatures with both hands simultaneously,
or skirt dancing to leading a forlorn hope, nothing came amiss to him; and
he had that magnetic quality by which the leader imparts something of his
virtues to his men. Such was the man who held Mafeking for the Queen.
In a very early stage, before the formal declaration of war, the enemy
had massed several commandos upon the western border, the men being drawn
from Zeerust, Rustenburg, and Lichtenburg. Baden-Powell, with the aid of
an excellent group of special officers, who included Colonel Gould Adams,
Lord Edward Cecil, the soldier son of England's Premier, and Colonel Hore,
had done all that was possible to put the place into a state of defence.
In this he had immense assistance from Benjamin Weil, a well known South
African contractor, who had shown great energy in provisioning the town.
On the other hand, the South African Government displayed the same
stupidity or treason which had been exhibited in the case of Kimberley,
and had met all demands for guns and reinforcements with foolish doubts as
to the need of such precautions. In the endeavour to supply these pressing
wants the first small disaster of the campaign was encountered. On October
12th, the day after the declaration of war, an armoured train conveying
two 7-pounders for the Mafeking defences was derailed and captured by a
Boer raiding party at Kraaipan, a place forty miles south of their
destination. The enemy shelled the shattered train until after five hours
Captain Nesbitt, who was in command, and his men, some twenty in number,
surrendered. It was a small affair, but it derived importance from being
the first blood shed and the first tactical success of the war.
The garrison of the town, whose fame will certainly live in the history
of South Africa, contained no regular soldiers at all with the exception
of the small group of excellent officers. They consisted of irregular
troops, three hundred and forty of the Protectorate Regiment, one hundred
and seventy Police, and two hundred volunteers, made up of that singular
mixture of adventurers, younger sons, broken gentlemen, and irresponsible
sportsmen who have always been the voortrekkers of the British Empire.
These men were of the same stamp as those other admirable bodies of
natural fighters who did so well in Rhodesia, in Natal, and in the Cape.
With them there was associated in the defence the Town Guard, who included
the able-bodied shopkeepers, businessmen, and residents, the whole
amounting to about nine hundred men. Their artillery was feeble in the
extreme, two 7-pounder toy guns and six machine guns, but the spirit of
the men and the resource of their leaders made up for every disadvantage.
Colonel Vyvyan and Major Panzera planned the defences, and the little
trading town soon began to take on the appearance of a fortress.
On October 13th the Boers appeared before Mafeking. On the same day
Colonel Baden-Powell sent two truckloads of dynamite out of the place.
They were fired into by the invaders, with the result that they exploded.
On October 14th the pickets around the town were driven in by the Boers.
On this the armoured train and a squadron of the Protectorate Regiment
went out to support the pickets and drove the Boers before them. A body of
the latter doubled back and interposed between the British and Mafeking,
but two fresh troops with a 7-pounder throwing shrapnel drove them off. In
this spirited little action the garrison lost two killed and fourteen
wounded, but they inflicted considerable damage on the enemy. To Captain
Williams, Captain FitzClarence, and Lord Charles Bentinck great credit is
due for the way in which they handled their men; but the whole affair was
ill advised, for if a disaster had occurred Mafeking must have fallen,
being left without a garrison. No possible results which could come from
such a sortie could justify the risk which was run.
On October 16th the siege began in earnest. On that date the Boers
brought up two 12-pounder guns, and the first of that interminable flight
of shells fell into the town. The enemy got possession of the water
supply, but the garrison had already dug wells. Before October 20th five
thousand Boers, under the formidable Cronje, had gathered round the town.
'Surrender to avoid bloodshed' was his message. 'When is the bloodshed
going to begin?' asked Powell. When the Boers had been shelling the town
for some weeks the lighthearted Colonel sent out to say that if they went
on any longer he should be compelled to regard it as equivalent to a
declaration of war. It is to be hoped that Cronje also possessed some
sense of humour, or else he must have been as sorely puzzled by his
eccentric opponent as the Spanish generals were by the vagaries of Lord
Peterborough.
Among the many difficulties which had to be met by the defenders of the
town the most serious was the fact that the position had a circumference
of five or six miles to be held by about one thousand men against a force
who at their own time and their own place could at any moment attempt to
gain a footing. An ingenious system of small forts was devised to meet the
situation. Each of these held from ten to forty riflemen, and was
furnished with bomb-proofs and covered ways. The central bomb-proof was
connected by telephone with all the outlying ones, so as to save the use
of orderlies. A system of bells was arranged by which each quarter of the
town was warned when a shell was coming in time to enable the inhabitants
to scuttle off to shelter. Every detail showed the ingenuity of the
controlling mind. The armoured train, painted green and tied round with
scrub, stood unperceived among the clumps of bushes which surrounded the
town.
On October 24th a savage bombardment commenced, which lasted with
intermissions for seven months. The Boers had brought an enormous gun
across from Pretoria, throwing a 96-pound shell, and this, with many
smaller pieces, played upon the town. The result was as futile as our own
artillery fire has so often been when directed against the Boers.
As the Mafeking guns were too weak to answer the enemy's fire, the only
possible reply lay in a sortie, and upon this Colonel Powell decided. It
was carried out with great gallantry on the evening of October 27th, when
about a hundred men under Captain FitzClarence moved out against the Boer
trenches with instructions to use the bayonet only. The position was
carried with a rush, and many of the Boers bayoneted before they could
disengage themselves from the tarpaulins which covered them. The trenches
behind fired wildly in the darkness, and it is probable that as many of
their own men as of ours were hit by their rifle fire. The total loss in
this gallant affair was six killed, eleven wounded, and two prisoners. The
loss of the enemy, though shrouded as usual in darkness, was certainly
very much higher.
On October 31st the Boers ventured upon an attack on Cannon Kopje,
which is a small fort and eminence to the south of the town. It was
defended by Colonel Walford, of the British South Africa Police, with
fifty-seven of his men and three small guns. The attack was repelled with
heavy loss to the Boers. The British casualties were six killed and five
wounded.
Their experience in this attack seems to have determined the Boers to
make no further expensive attempts to rush the town, and for some weeks
the siege degenerated into a blockade. Cronje had been recalled for more
important work, and Commandant Snyman had taken over the uncompleted task.
From time to time the great gun tossed its huge shells into the town, but
boardwood walls and corrugated-iron roofs minimise the dangers of a
bombardment. On November 3rd the garrison rushed the Brickfields, which
had been held by the enemy's sharpshooters, and on the 7th another small
sally kept the game going. On the 18th Powell sent a message to Snyman
that he could not take the town by sitting and looking at it. At the same
time he despatched a message to the Boer forces generally, advising them
to return to their homes and their families. Some of the commandos had
gone south to assist Cronje in his stand against Methuen, and the siege
languished more and more, until it was woken up by a desperate sortie on
December 26th, which caused the greatest loss which the garrison had
sustained. Once more the lesson was to be enforced that with modern
weapons and equality of forces it is always long odds on the defence.
On this date a vigorous attack was made upon one of the Boer forts on
the north. There seems to be little doubt that the enemy had some inkling
of our intention, as the fort was found to have been so strengthened as to
be impregnable without scaling ladders. The attacking force consisted of
two squadrons of the Protectorate Regiment and one of the Bechuanaland
Rifles, backed up by three guns. So desperate was the onslaught that of
the actual attacking party--a forlorn hope, if ever there was
one--fifty-three out of eighty were killed and wounded, twenty-five of the
former and twenty-eight of the latter. Several of that gallant band of
officers who had been the soul of the defence were among the injured.
Captain FitzClarence was wounded, Vernon, Sandford, and Paton were killed,
all at the very muzzles of the enemy's guns. It must have been one of the
bitterest moments of Baden-Powell's life when he shut his field-glass and
said, 'Let the ambulance go out!'
Even this heavy blow did not damp the spirits nor diminish the energies
of the defence, though it must have warned Baden-Powell that he could not
afford to drain his small force by any more expensive attempts at the
offensive, and that from then onwards he must content himself by holding
grimly on until Plumer from the north or Methuen from the south should at
last be able to stretch out to him a helping hand. Vigilant and
indomitable, throwing away no possible point in the game which he was
playing, the new year found him and his hardy garrison sternly determined
to keep the flag flying.
January and February offer in their records that monotony of excitement
which is the fate of every besieged town. On one day the shelling was a
little more, on another a little less. Sometimes they escaped scatheless,
sometimes the garrison found itself the poorer by the loss of Captain
Girdwood or Trooper Webb or some other gallant soldier. Occasionally they
had their little triumph when a too curious Dutchman, peering for an
instant from his cover to see the effect of his shot, was carried back in
the ambulance to the laager. On Sunday a truce was usually observed, and
the snipers who had exchanged rifle-shots all the week met occasionally on
that day with good-humoured chaff. Snyman, the Boer General, showed none
of that chivalry at Mafeking which distinguished the gallant old Joubert
at Ladysmith. Not only was there no neutral camp for women or sick, but it
is beyond all doubt or question that the Boer guns were deliberately
turned upon the women's quarters inside Mafeking in order to bring
pressure upon the inhabitants. Many women and children were sacrificed to
this brutal policy, which must in fairness be set to the account of the
savage leader, and not of the rough but kindly folk with whom we were
fighting. In every race there are individual ruffians, and it would be a
political mistake to allow our action to be influenced or our feelings
permanently embittered by their crimes. It is from the man himself, and
not from his country, that an account should be exacted.
The garrison, in the face of increasing losses and decreasing food,
lost none of the high spirits which it reflected from its commander. The
programme of a single day of jubilee--Heaven only knows what they had to
hold jubilee over--shows a cricket match in the morning, sports in the
afternoon, a concert in the evening, and a dance, given by the bachelor
officers, to wind up. Baden-Powell himself seems to have descended from
the eyrie from which, like a captain on the bridge, he rang bells and
telephoned orders, to bring the house down with a comic song and a
humorous recitation. The ball went admirably, save that there was an
interval to repel an attack which disarranged the programme. Sports were
zealously cultivated, and the grimy inhabitants of casemates and trenches
were pitted against each other at cricket or football. [Footnote: Sunday
cricket so shocked Snyman that he threatened to fire upon it if it were
continued.] The monotony was broken by the occasional visits of a postman,
who appeared or vanished from the vast barren lands to the west of the
town, which could not all be guarded by the besiegers. Sometimes a few
words from home came to cheer the hearts of the exiles, and could be
returned by the same uncertain and expensive means. The documents which
found their way up were not always of an essential or even of a welcome
character. At least one man received an unpaid bill from an angry tailor.
In one particular Mafeking had, with much smaller resources, rivalled
Kimberley. An ordnance factory had been started, formed in the railway
workshops, and conducted by Connely and Cloughlan, of the Locomotive
Department. Daniels, of the police, supplemented their efforts by making
both powder and fuses. The factory turned out shells, and eventually
constructed a 5.5-inch smooth-bore gun, which threw a round shell with
great accuracy to a considerable range. April found the garrison, in spite
of all losses, as efficient and as resolute as it had been in October. So
close were the advanced trenches upon either side that both parties had
recourse to the old-fashioned hand grenades, thrown by the Boers, and cast
on a fishing-line by ingenious Sergeant Page, of the Protectorate
Regiment. Sometimes the besiegers and the number of guns diminished,
forces being detached to prevent the advance of Plumer's relieving column
from the north; but as those who remained held their forts, which it was
beyond the power of the British to storm, the garrison was now much the
better for the alleviation. Putting Mafeking for Ladysmith and Plumer for
Buller, the situation was not unlike that which had existed in Natal.
At this point some account might be given of the doings of that
northern force whose situation was so remote that even the ubiquitous
correspondent hardly appears to have reached it. No doubt the book will
eventually make up for the neglect of the journal, but some short facts
may be given here of the Rhodesian column. Their action did not affect the
course of the war, but they clung like bulldogs to a most difficult task,
and eventually, when strengthened by the relieving column, made their way
to Mafeking.
The force was originally raised for the purpose of defending Rhodesia,
and it consisted of fine material pioneers, farmers, and miners from the
great new land which had been added through the energy of Mr. Rhodes to
the British Empire. Many of the men were veterans of the native wars, and
all were imbued with a hardy and adventurous spirit. On the other hand,
the men of the northern and western Transvaal, whom they were called upon
to face the burghers of Watersberg and Zoutpansberg, were tough
frontiersmen living in a land where a dinner was shot, not bought. Shaggy,
hairy, half-savage men, handling a rifle as a mediaeval Englishman handled
a bow, and skilled in every wile of veld craft, they were as formidable
opponents as the world could show.
On the war breaking out the first thought of the leaders in Rhodesia
was to save as much of the line which was their connection through
Mafeking with the south as was possible. For this purpose an armoured
train was despatched only three days after the expiration of the ultimatum
to the point four hundred miles south of Bulawayo, where the frontiers of
the Transvaal and of Bechuanaland join. Colonel Holdsworth commanded the
small British force. The Boers, a thousand or so in number, had descended
upon the railway, and an action followed in which the train appears to
have had better luck than has usually attended these ill-fated
contrivances. The Boer commando was driven back and a number were killed.
It was probably news of this affair, and not anything which had occurred
at Mafeking, which caused those rumours of gloom at Pretoria very shortly
after the outbreak of hostilities. An agency telegraphed that women were
weeping in the streets of the Boer capital. We had not then realised how
soon and how often we should see the same sight in Pall Mall.
The adventurous armoured train pressed on as far as Lobatsi, where it
found the bridges destroyed; so it returned to its original position,
having another brush with the Boer commandos, and again, in some
marvellous way, escaping its obvious fate. From then until the new year
the line was kept open by an admirable system of patrolling to within a
hundred miles or so of Mafeking. An aggressive spirit and a power of
dashing initiative were shown in the British operations at this side of
the scene of war such as have too often been absent elsewhere. At Sekwani,
on November 24th, a considerable success was gained by a surprise planned
and carried out by Colonel Holdsworth. The Boer laager was approached and
attacked in the early morning by a force of one hundred and twenty
frontiersmen, and so effective was their fire that the Boers estimated
their numbers at several thousand. Thirty Boers were killed or wounded,
and the rest scattered.
While the railway line was held in this way there had been some
skirmishing also on the northern frontier of the Transvaal. Shortly after
the outbreak of the war the gallant Blackburn, scouting with six comrades
in thick bush, found himself in the presence of a considerable commando.
The British concealed themselves by the path, but Blackburn's foot was
seen by a keen-eyed Kaffir, who pointed it out to his masters. A sudden
volley riddled Blackburn with bullets; but his men stayed by him and drove
off the enemy. Blackburn dictated an official report of the action, and
then died.
In the same region a small force under Captain Hare was cut off by a
body of Boers. Of the twenty men most got away, but the chaplain J.W.
Leary, Lieutenant Haserick (who behaved with admirable gallantry), and six
men were taken. [Footnote: Mr. Leary was wounded in the foot by a shell.
The German artillerist entered the hut in which he lay. 'Here's a bit of
your work!' said Leary good-humouredly. 'I wish it had been worse,' said
the amiable German gunner.] The commando which attacked this party, and on
the same day Colonel Spreckley's force, was a powerful one, with several
guns. No doubt it was organised because there were fears among the Boers
that they would be invaded from the north. When it was understood that the
British intended no large aggressive movement in that quarter, these
burghers joined other commandos. Sarel Eloff, who was one of the leaders
of this northern force, was afterwards taken at Mafeking.
Colonel Plumer had taken command of the small army which was now
operating from the north along the railway line with Mafeking for its
objective. Plumer is an officer of considerable experience in African
warfare, a small, quiet, resolute man, with a knack of gently enforcing
discipline upon the very rough material with which he had to deal. With
his weak force--which never exceeded a thousand men, and was usually from
six to seven hundred--he had to keep the long line behind him open, build
up the ruined railway in front of him, and gradually creep onwards in face
of a formidable and enterprising enemy. For a long time Gaberones, which
is eighty miles north of Mafeking, remained his headquarters, and thence
he kept up precarious communications with the besieged garrison. In the
middle of March he advanced as far south as Lobatsi, which is less than
fifty miles from Mafeking; but the enemy proved to be too strong, and
Plumer had to drop back again with some loss to his original position at
Gaberones. Sticking doggedly to his task, Plumer again came south, and
this time made his way as far as Ramathlabama, within a day's march of
Mafeking. He had with him, however, only three hundred and fifty men, and
had he pushed through the effect might have been an addition of hungry men
to the garrison. The relieving force was fiercely attacked, however, by
the Boers and driven back on to their camp with a loss of twelve killed,
twenty-six wounded, and fourteen missing. Some of the British were
dismounted men, and it says much for Plumer's conduct of the fight that he
was able to extricate these safely from the midst of an aggressive mounted
enemy. Personally he set an admirable example, sending away his own horse,
and walking with his rearmost soldiers. Captain Crewe Robertson and
Lieutenant Milligan, the famous Yorkshire cricketer, were killed, and
Rolt, Jarvis, Maclaren, and Plumer himself were wounded. The Rhodesian
force withdrew again to near Lobatsi, and collected itself for yet another
effort.
In the meantime Mafeking--abandoned, as it seemed, to its fate--was
still as formidable as a wounded lion. Far from weakening in its defence
it became more aggressive, and so persistent and skilful were its riflemen
that the big Boer gun had again and again to be moved further from the
town. Six months of trenches and rifle-pits had turned every inhabitant
into a veteran. Now and then words of praise and encouragement came to
them from without. Once it was a special message from the Queen, once a
promise of relief from Lord Roberts. But the rails which led to England
were overgrown with grass, and their brave hearts yearned for the sight of
their countrymen and for the sound of their voices. 'How long, O Lord, how
long?' was the cry which was wrung from them in their solitude. But the
flag was still held high.
April was a trying month for the defence. They knew that Methuen, who
had advanced as far as Fourteen Streams upon the Vaal River, had retired
again upon Kimberley. They knew also that Plumer's force had been weakened
by the repulse at Ramathlabama, and that many of his men were down with
fever. Six weary months had this village withstood the pitiless pelt of
rifle bullet and shell. Help seemed as far away from them as ever. But if
troubles may be allayed by sympathy, then theirs should have lain lightly.
The attention of the whole empire had centred upon them, and even the
advance of Roberts's army became secondary to the fate of this gallant
struggling handful of men who had upheld the flag so long. On the
Continent also their resistance attracted the utmost interest, and the
numerous journals there who find the imaginative writer cheaper than the
war correspondent announced their capture periodically as they had once
done that of Ladysmith. From a mere tin-roofed village Mafeking had become
a prize of victory, a stake which should be the visible sign of the
predominating manhood of one or other of the great white races of South
Africa. Unconscious of the keenness of the emotions which they had
aroused, the garrison manufactured brawn from horsehide, and captured
locusts as a relish for their luncheons, while in the shot-torn
billiard-room of the club an open tournament was started to fill in their
hours off duty. But their vigilance, and that of the hawk-eyed man up in
the Conning Tower, never relaxed. The besiegers had increased in number,
and their guns were more numerous than before. A less acute man than
Baden-Powell might have reasoned that at least one desperate effort would
be made by them to carry the town before relief could come.
On Saturday, May 12th, the attack was made at the favourite hour of the
Boer--the first grey of the morning. It was gallantly delivered by about
three hundred volunteers under the command of Eloff, who had crept round
to the west of the town--the side furthest from the lines of the
besiegers. At the first rush they penetrated into the native quarter,
which was at once set on fire by them. The first building of any size upon
that side is the barracks of the Protectorate Regiment, which was held by
Colonel Hore and about twenty of his officers and men. This was carried by
the enemy, who sent an exultant message along the telephone to
Baden-Powell to tell him that they had got it. Two other positions within
the lines, one a stone kraal and the other a hill, were held by the Boers,
but their supports were slow in coming on, and the movements of the
defenders were so prompt and energetic that all three found themselves
isolated and cut off from their own lines. They had penetrated the town,
but they were as far as ever from having taken it. All day the British
forces drew their cordon closer and closer round the Boer positions,
making no attempt to rush them, but ringing them round in such a way that
there could be no escape for them. A few burghers slipped away in twos and
threes, but the main body found that they had rushed into a prison from
which the only egress was swept with rifle fire. At seven o'clock in the
evening they recognised that their position was hopeless, and Eloff with
117 men laid down their arms. Their losses had been ten killed and
nineteen wounded. For some reason, either of lethargy, cowardice, or
treachery, Snyman had not brought up the supports which might conceivably
have altered the result. It was a gallant attack gallantly met, and for
once the greater wiliness in fight was shown by the British. The end was
characteristic. 'Good evening, Commandant,' said Powell to Eloff; 'won't
you come in and have some dinner?' The prisoners--burghers, Hollanders,
Germans, and Frenchmen--were treated to as good a supper as the destitute
larders of the town could furnish.
So in a small blaze of glory ended the historic siege of Mafeking, for
Eloff's attack was the last, though by no means the worst of the trials
which the garrison had to face. Six killed and ten wounded were the
British losses in this admirably managed affair. On May 17th, five days
after the fight, the relieving force arrived, the besiegers were
scattered, and the long-imprisoned garrison were free men once more. Many
who had looked at their maps and saw this post isolated in the very heart
of Africa had despaired of ever reaching their heroic fellow-countrymen,
and now one universal outbreak of joybells and bonfires from Toronto to
Melbourne proclaimed that there is no spot so inaccessible that the long
arm of the empire cannot reach it when her children are in peril.
