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.
Colonel Mahon, a young Irish officer who had made his reputation as a
cavalry leader in Egypt, had started early in May from Kimberley with a
small but mobile force consisting of the Imperial Light Horse (brought round
from Natal for the purpose), the Kimberley Mounted Corps, the Diamond Fields
Horse, some Imperial Yeomanry, a detachment of the Cape Police, and 100
volunteers from the Fusilier brigade, with M battery R. H. A. and pom-poms,
twelve hundred men in all. Whilst Hunter was fighting his action at Rooidam
on May 4th, Mahon with his men struck round the western flank of the Boers
and moved rapidly to the northwards. On May 11th they had left Vryburg, the
halfway house, behind them, having done one hundred and twenty miles in five
days. They pushed on, encountering no opposition save that of nature, though
they knew that they were being closely watched by the enemy. At Koodoosrand
it was found that a Boer force was in position in front, but Mahon avoided
them by turning somewhat to the westward. His detour took him, however, into
a bushy country, and here the enemy headed him off, opening fire at short
range upon the ubiquitous Imperial Light Horse, who led the column. A short
engagement ensued, in which the casualties amounted to thirty killed and
wounded, but which ended in the defeat and dispersal of the Boers, whose
force was certainly very much weaker than the British. On May 15th the
relieving column arrived without further opposition at Masibi Stadt, twenty
miles to the west of Mafeking.
In the meantime Plumer's force upon the north had been strengthened by the
addition of C battery of four 12-pounder guns of the Canadian Artillery
under Major Eudon and a body of Queenslanders. These forces had been part of
the small army which had come with General Carrington through Beira, and
after a detour of thousands of miles, through their own wonderful energy
they had arrived in time to form portion of the relieving column. Foreign
military critics, whose experience of warfare is to move troops across a
frontier, should think of what the Empire has to do before her men go into
battle. These contingents had been assembled by long railway journeys,
conveyed across thousands of miles of ocean to Cape Town, brought round
another two thousand or so to Beira, transferred by a narrow-gauge railway
to Bamboo Creek, changed to a broader gauge to Marandellas, sent on in
coaches for hundreds of miles to Bulawayo, transferred to trains for another
four or five hundred miles to Ootsi, and had finally a forced march of a
hundred miles, which brought them up a few hours before their presence was
urgently needed upon the field. Their advance, which averaged twenty-five
miles a day on foot for four consecutive days over deplorable roads, was one
of the finest performances of the war. With these high-spirited
reinforcements and with his own hardy Rhodesians Plumer pushed on, and the
two columns reached the hamlet of Masibi Stadt within an hour of each other.
Their united strength was far superior to anything which Snyman's force
could place against them.
But the gallant and tenacious Boers would not abandon their prey without a
last effort. As the little army advanced upon Mafeking they found the enemy
waiting in a strong position. For some hours the Boers gallantly held their
ground, and their artillery fire was, as usual, most accurate. But our own
guns were more numerous and equally well served, and the position was soon
made untenable. The Boers retired past Mafeking and took refuge in the
trenches upon the eastern side, but Baden-Powell with his war-hardened
garrison sallied out, and, supported by the artillery fire of the relieving
column, drove them from their shelter. With their usual admirable tactics
their larger guns had been removed, but one small cannon was secured as a
souvenir by the townsfolk, together with a number of wagons and a
considerable quantity of supplies. A long rolling trail of dust upon the
eastern horizon told that the famous siege of Mafeking had at last come to
an end.
So ended a singular incident, the defence of an open town which contained no
regular soldiers and a most inadequate artillery against a numerous and
enterprising enemy with very heavy guns. All honour to the towns folk who
bore their trial so long and so bravely--and to the indomitable men who
lined the trenches for seven weary months. Their constancy was of enormous
value to the empire. In the all-important early month at least four or five
thousand Boers were detained by them when their presence elsewhere would
have been fatal. During all the rest of the war, two thousand men and eight
guns (including one of the four big Creusots) had been held there. It
prevented the invasion of Rhodesia, and it gave a rallying-point for loyal
whites and natives in the huge stretch of country from Kimberley to
Bulawayo. All this had, at a cost of two hundred lives, been done by this
one devoted band of men, who killed, wounded, or took no fewer than one
thousand of their opponents. Critics may say that the enthusiasm in the
empire was excessive, but at least it was expended over worthy men and a
fine deed of arms.
