Mafeking is a dull, unimportant town in the veld with a history that
attracted the Boers to it.
They considered that, like Natal and Kimberley, it did not rightfully belong
to Great Britain. They were a community of trekking and centrifugal atoms,
especially in the direction of territories in the possession of native
tribes, and their own country, though sparsely inhabited, was not spacious
enough for them. The bucolic ambition of the Boer, which is to dwell in a
house from which he cannot see the smoke of his nearest neighbour's chimney,
can be satisfied in a flat country only when the house stands in the midst
of a farm many thousand morgen in extent.
For a generation or two before the war, the Transvaalers had been
encroaching upon Bechuanaland. A Baralong chief named Montsioa was
dispossessed of Mafeking and could obtain no redress from the British
Government, which at that time was in an intermediate frame of mind, and did
not necessarily act on the assumption that in every dispute between white
man and native the latter was in the right.
Thus encouraged, the Transvaalers annexed Bechuanaland in 1868, but three
years later it was taken away from them under the Keate award, in an
arbitration to determine the respective rights of Boer and native over the
debateable territory.
After the war of 1881, the Transvaalers supposed that the British Government
would be unlikely to assert itself, and two little impudent republics of
adventurers were set up in territory which the award had declared to be
within the British sphere of influence. Montsioa fought for his rights, but
the British Government lay torpid for some time. Finally it was goaded into
action by a proclamation issued by Kruger annexing the territory to the
Transvaal. He soon found it advisable to cancel the proclamation, and in
1885 the Republics of Goshen at Mafeking and of Stellaland at Vryburg were
effaced by an expedition led by Sir Charles Warren. Bechuanaland was again
annexed by proclamation, but on this occasion to the British Empire.
The resentment of the Transvaalers against Mafeking, which originated in the
conviction that they had been wrongfully deprived of it, was aggravated by
the fact that it was the starting place of the Jameson Raid.
On
October 13 nearly 7,000 burghers, with six guns, under P. Cronje, sat down
before it. He expected to have little difficulty in recovering it.
Appearances were encouraging; the town was open and defenceless, and he was
probably aware that it was held by a weak garrison. Why the British should
have occupied such an out-of-the-way place as part of their plan of
campaign, he could not understand, but there it was, inviting attack.
Of
the half-hearted measures taken by the War and Colonial Offices in 1899,
when a war with the Transvaal seemed to be more probable every day, one of
the most intelligent was the commissioning of R. Baden-Powell, who had
formerly served in Bechuanaland and had recently commanded the 5th Dragoon
Guards, to "organize the defence of the Bechuanaland and Rhodesia
frontiers." It would neither involve a great expenditure of money, nor be
likely to wound the susceptibilities of the Transvaalers, who might be
provoked by more vigorous and minatory measures: and thus little harm would
be done if after all it were found to be an unnecessary precaution.
For these reasons it commended itself to Pall Mall, but its chief merit was
that it sent to South Africa a capable, versatile and zealous soldier, whose
mind did not run in the grooves. Yet if Baden-Powell had been sent to
Kimberley instead of to Mafeking, Kimberley would probably have fallen—after
an outbreak of civil war within the lines between him and Rhodes. It would
have been impossible to insulate the personal electricity with which each of
them was so highly charged, and short circuiting must have occurred.
The object of the contemplated display upon the Bechuanaland and Rhodesia
frontiers was twofold. They ran through the indefinite border belt which
separated black from white territory, and activity on them would not only be
witnessed by the tribes and exert an impressive influence on the native
mind, but would also draw away the Boers and prevent them concentrating
their forces. The central position of Mafeking on the Western line, and the
stores and supplies which had been collected in the town, attracted
Baden-Powell to it. It was singularly ill-adapted to hold defensively
against an active enemy.
In
spite of recruiting difficulties raised by the Facing-both-Ways Ministry at
Capetown, which in a less tolerant and philosophic age would at once have
been swept away by a storm of indignation, he raised two irregular
regiments: the Rhodesian Regiment, which was sent into Rhodesia under
Plumer, and the Protectorate Regiment under Hore.
The Cape Ministry did what it could to prevent the Protectorate Regiment
going to Mafeking, and the corps was in fact mustered outside the Cape
Colony, and only entered the town a few days before war was declared. As at
Kimberley, so also at Mafeking, the Schreiner sect set itself placidly to
thwart the gentle and tentative early efforts of the British Government to
deal with the situation.
When P. Cronje appeared before Mafeking, Baden-Powell had a force of less
than 1,200 men, none of whom were regular soldiers and less than half of
whom were efficiently armed, with which to sustain the siege of an open town
by 7,000 Boers. He had also four small field guns of obsolete pattern, to
which were added later on a home-made howitzer and an ancient man-of-war's
smoothbore, which had left the foundry during the Napoleonic wars. In its
youth it had probably fought the French through a porthole, and now having
in the interval trekked across the South African veld into the possession of
a native tribe, was discovered in a Baralong kraal, restored to active
service, and, mounted on a Dutch wagon, aided in the defence of a little
settlement 400 miles away from the sound of the sea.
In
one respect only Baden-Powell had the advantage over Kekewich at Kimberley.
His burden was not increased by discord within the lines. The civilians
behaved with exemplary composure and put themselves unreservedly into his
hands.
An
archaic but effective simplicity characterized the methods of the defence.
Baden-Powell eked out his slender stock of men and instruments with tricks
and devices that might have been employed at the siege of Troy, but which
none the less deceived and confounded the slow-witted besiegers, whom he
scandalized with gibes and taunting messages. When asked to surrender to
avoid further bloodshed, he replied that the only blood hitherto shed was
the blood of a chicken in a compound; and on another occasion he reproved
Cronje for inactivity. Many of the incidents read like passages from the
Iliad. The besiegers were allured into determined attacks upon dummy
trenches; deceived by bogus orders shouted for their information through a
megaphone; alarmed by the sudden appearance of cavalry within the lines, for
did they not see the glint of lances? The lances were weapons that had been
forged in the railway workshops, and carried round, as it were in a parade
before the footlights by a body of supers making a gallant show upon the
stage.
What should be done in a besieged place with such an embarrassing asset as
ten tons of dynamite? Buller would have handed them over to his second in
command for disposal, and then if any accident occurred would have
disclaimed responsibility for it. Gatacre would have taken the chances, but
would not have hesitated to pitch his tent if necessary beside them. Colvile
would have searched his orders for instructions. Baden-Powell, not being
able to rid himself of the explosive by firing it, arranged that it should
be fired by the enemy. He loaded it on railway trucks, which he propelled a
few miles out of the town and then abandoned. There was no Laocoon to warn
the Boers, and they rushed at what they thought was an armoured train in
trouble. In the skirmish the dynamite exploded, and although no one was hurt
the enemy was terribly scared, and the resisting powers of the garrison
virtually augmented.
Baden-Powell thoroughly understood the Boer temperament. Many generations'
isolation from the progressive European world had rendered it peculiarly
liable to be ensnared by simple expedients. It was not wanting in
"slimness," but it was the "slimness" or cunning of a primitive race, and
was easily gulled by wiles that might have been employed against a tribe of
Red Indians. Baden-Powell alone of all the British leaders was aware of
this, and he owed much of his success to the knowledge. With but one man to
defend each ten yards of his perimeter of seven miles he hypnotized Cronje,
a dull man bewildered by a resourceful. His versatility instantly found a
way out of each difficulty that beset him. Before he sent out a party
detailed for a night attack that might easily go astray, he bethought
himself of the device by which a ship is often guided into her haven, and
hung up two lamps in the town as leading lights across the veld.
Cronje soon found that Mafeking was not an easy prey. Although in all
probability he might at any time have overwhelmed it by sheer weight of
numbers, he refrained from making the attempt. It hit out so vigorously and
was believed to be so well protected by mines that he requisitioned a big
gun from Pretoria, which was mounted south of the town and came into action
on October 23. With a weapon throwing a shell more than three times heavier
than all the shells that could be fired in salvo by the artillery of the
defence, there was no doubt in his mind that the place must fall before the
end of the month.
The arrival of the gun quickened the attack for a time. The native location
S.W. of the town was made the object of a feint on October 25 to be
immediately followed by a real attack elsewhere, but the Baralongs, who had
been armed, resisted so stoutly that the operation failed. By the beginning
of November the Boers had been cleared out of a newly made advanced trench
on the east side; and Cannon Kopje on the south, the possession of which by
them would have made a considerable section of the defence works and perhaps
even the town itself untenable, was held under a converging fire of
artillery by fifty troopers of the British South Africa Police against a
thousand Boers.
Five weeks of Baden-Powell were enough for Cronje, who on November 19
trekked away to the south, leaving Snyman and 3,000 burghers to continue the
siege. His self-esteem had been wounded because the walls had not
immediately fallen to the sound of the big gun, and by Baden-Powell's
refusal to take a serious view of the situation in the frequent
communications that passed between them. It may be said that Cronje was
"chaffed" away from Mafeking; the gibes put him out of conceit with himself,
and instead of stimulating him into activity only made him more
dull-spirited than he was by nature. He had none of the instinctive military
genius which showed itself so notably in most of his colleagues, who, having
turned their ploughshares into swords at a moment's notice, were generally
more than a match for the professional soldiers against whom they were
pitted. He had the misfortune of meeting almost the only British leader then
in South Africa capable of instinctively assessing him on the spot at his
true valuation; and like a timid poker-player with a good hand, he allowed
himself to be bluffed by the flourishes of his opponent. He held good cards,
but he feebly threw them down. At Magersfontein he played his hand with
skill, but lost the deciding game at Paardeberg.
Baden-Powell was too zealous a soldier to conform to the schism that the
operations of war were akin to athletics or sport. Externally his
predilections were for the drama. He was a competent actor and manager, and
he rejoiced in Mafeking as in a stage play.
Many of his devices were as unsubstantial as stage scenery; the besiegers
were the villains of the piece who would meet with their deserts before the
curtain fell; there was comic by-play in his ways of beguiling the tedium
and the lassitude of the siege, in the bantering messages he sent out to the
besiegers, and now and then even in his garrison orders. The little garrison
was permeated by the exosmose action of his cheery optimism and humour
during seven weary months of waiting; and while it might seem to some that
he was treating the serious situation with unbecoming levity, he wisely kept
the tragedy of it, of which he was fully conscious, in the background.
His methods were so far successful that in a few weeks he had driven away
two-thirds of the force originally opposed to him, and had firmly gripped
the place. The enemy's superiority in artillery was neutralized by the
construction of underground shelters and warrens in which the women and
children took refuge during the daytime, leaving an apparently deserted town
to be bombarded. Thus Baden-Powell was relieved from the moral pressure
which a large number of casualties among them would have caused; and the
garrison suffered but little in the redoubts and trenches. Supplies were
plentiful and the water supply secure.
What Cronje had failed to do, Snyman could hardly be expected to accomplish
with a considerably reduced force, and the attack became more faint-hearted.
He carried out the Cronje policy of comfortable, lethargic squatting,
doubting not that the place must fall into his hands sooner or later.
Friends and relations tripped over from Johannesburg to admire and encourage
his brave burghers at their posts, and some were even allowed as a treat to
fire a shot at the Khakis.
No
serious operation occurred until the end of the year. On the morrow of
Christmas Day, Baden-Powell made an unsuccessful attempt to carry a fort on
Game Tree Hill, which commanded the approach to the town from the north. He
was unaware of its strength, and the casualties amounted to nearly one-fifth
of the force engaged, a loss which he could ill afford; but early in January
he compelled the big gun, which could neither face the shells of his little
battery of 7-pounders nor the rifles of his marksmen, to withdraw to a more
distant emplacement east of the town. Towards the end of the month an
encouraging message was received from Lord Roberts at Capetown.
The Boer line of circumvallation was in plan an irregular hexagon, of which
the north-east face was pushed inwards and a re-entrant angle formed at the
Brickfields; where a fort was built nearer to the town than any other post
of the attack, and the operations during February and March were mainly a
struggle for the possession of it. After several weeks of sapping and
counter sapping, the Boers, though supported by the fire of the big gun in
its new emplacement, were expelled from the Brickfields on March 23.
April was marked by the final withdrawal of the big gun, which, after a
heavy bombardment on the 11th, was sent away to Pretoria; and by the
appearance of young Eloff, fresh from the capital, with instructions to do
what he could to stimulate the attack, for once in a way, into real
activity. More than a fortnight elapsed before he succeeded. Snyman gave him
little encouragement, but could not oppose a mandate from Kruger, Eloff's
grandfather.
The Molopo River, after passing south of the town, runs through the only
weak place in the defence, the native location, which during the first few
days of the siege had been attacked without result by Cronje. Westward of it
the steep banks of the river afford a covered way of access to the thickly
clustered huts lying within the perimeter of the defence, which Eloff saw
might be turned if he got a footing among them.
Early in the morning of May 12 a heavy fire was opened upon the town from
the east, but was soon discontinued; and then an alarm came from the S.W. It
was Eloff, who, with 300 burghers, had wriggled up the river bed through the
outposts and had set fire to the native huts: a signal for the
reinforcements which Snyman had promised in writing. It also warned the
garrison. The natives were too much terrified to offer resistance, and
Eloff, leaving the greater part of his force to hold the location, advanced
upon the town. The police building in the open was surrounded and the
detachment holding it taken prisoners. A pause was now made to allow the
promised reinforcements to come up.
Eloff's gallant thrust gave the garrison the opportunity for which it had
long been hoping. The troops of the western section of the defence closed in
and were manoeuvred by Baden-Powell through the telephone. The door by which
Eloff came in was shut, not only to a retreat but also to the reinforcements
which timidly knocked at it; the burghers holding the location were
overpowered, and Eloff's party was penned up in the police building with its
prisoners, whose condition was suddenly dramatically reversed. Eloff, seeing
that Snyman had failed him, surrendered to the men he had captured a few
hours before, within the walls of the prison in which he had confined them.
The ordeal of Mafeking soon came to an end. On May 15 it was reported that
the relief column under Mahon, who on that day joined Plumer at Massibi on
the Molopo twenty miles from Mafeking, was approaching. The combined forces,
though vigorously opposed by Delarey, whom L. Botha had sent when the news
of the advance reached him, entered the town on May 17 and ended a siege of
213 days.
Mafeking, the last and most instructive of the sieges, proved that there was
hardly any disparity of numbers or preponderance of available military
resources that could not be neutralized by good leadership opposed to bad.
Baden-Powell had not only detained a considerable Boer force on the edge of
the storm, but with a body of irregular troops had beaten the men of
Magersfontein, Colenso, and Spion Kop.
The relief of Mafeking, however, did not vitally affect the general
situation. The capture of the town during Lord Robert's advance would no
doubt have caused annoyance and trouble, but if necessary it could have been
retaken without much difficulty. Nor would its fall have greatly benefited
the enemy, who probably would have been tempted by the success to hold an
unsound position and detain in it commandos urgently required elsewhere.
Kimberley, Mafeking, and Wepener, more than the operations at large,
demonstrated the anomalous character of the war. Hitherto, invaders had been
accustomed to besiege the invaded, in South Africa the invaded besieged the
invaders. Such a reversal of the order of things military had rarely before
occurred. The sieges of the Peninsular War are not an exception, for
Wellington was from a military, though not from a political point of view,
as much an invader as the lieutenants of Napoleon.
Baden-Powell is a suppressed personality whose merit was not fully
recognized. With
scarcely an exception, no individual leader was more self-reliant, or
handled imperfect tools with greater skill. For seven months he kept the
flag flying over the lonely Baralong kraal in the veld. His unconventional
even theatrical methods were not to the taste of his serious superiors, who
underestimated his success. His only reward was the Companionship of the
Bath, which was also bestowed upon the militia colonels, most of whom, from
no fault or no want of zeal on their part, but from lack of opportunity,
never met the enemy except in some casual paltry skirmish.
The junction of the two columns advancing to the relief of Mafeking—Plumer's
from the north and Mahon's from the south—was effected at the right moment,
for it is doubtful whether either of them acting alone would have been able
to deal with Delarey.
Plumer with the Rhodesian Regiment had been trekking here and there and
skirmishing with the enemy for seven months. On the eve of the war he was
sent by Baden-Powell to Tuli, a village in Rhodesia not far from the right
bank of the Limpopo, which is the northern boundary of the Transvaal. His
instructions were "to defend the border, to attract the enemy away towards
the north, and then in due time to co-operate with the British force," which
it was expected would soon be invading the Transvaal from the south, and
also to overawe the doubtful native tribes between Tuli and Mafeking, a
distance of 500 miles; and he had under his immediate command at Tuli one
irregular regiment 500 strong.
He
remained for some weeks seeing to the drifts, which were now in his
possession and now in that of the enemy. A Boer raid into Rhodesia on
November 2 forced the outlying detachments back upon Tuli, which was
seriously threatened by some commandos under F.A. Grobler of Marico. The
Government of Pretoria, however, growing anxious at the presence of British
troops elsewhere, vetoed a promising enterprise and recalled him. The raid
of November 2 was answered a few weeks later by Plumer, who, finding the
drifts unoccupied, reconnoitred thirty miles towards the south. Nearly six
months elapsed before another British soldier set foot in the Transvaal. A
subsequent reconnaissance again found no trace of the enemy on the left bank
of the Limpopo, and showed that it was unnecessary for him to remain on the
river. He had the advantage of being cut off from communication with
superior officers ignorant of local conditions, and was able to act freely
upon his own responsibility.
He
soon heard news which clearly indicated the way he should go. The railway
from Buluwayo to Mafeking was held as far as possible towards the south by
patrols of police under Nicholson, and the Rhodesian Volunteers under
Holdsworth were also on the line. In the gap between the railhead and
Mafeking, a Boer commando, said to have been detached from Mafeking by
Cronje, was at Sekwani on the N.W. border of the Transvaal and within
striking distance of the Western line. It was face to face with the border
tribes and was soon in trouble with them. Although they were not allowed to
attack Sekwani independently, they were permitted to co-operate as
non-combatants in an attack which Holdsworth was about to make on it, but
only on the condition that they did not cross the Transvaal border. This was
a refinement of policy which they could hardly be expected to understand,
and they precipitated Holdsworth's action by attacking the Boer laager,
which lay but a mile or two across the border, on their own account, and the
operation had therefore to be abandoned. To avenge this native attack, in
which several burghers had been killed, reinforcements were brought over by
the Boers from the Pietersburg line, and Holdsworth's position at Mochudi on
the Western line, whither he had retired after the Sekwani failure, was
endangered.
This was the news which reached Plumer at the end of the year. His original
instructions were obsolescent and he readily adapted himself to the altered
situation. He saw that it was more important to clear the railway north of
Mafeking than to remain where he was on the chance of a Boer invasion of
Rhodesia, of which his reconnaissances south of the Limpopo saw no sign. The
nearest station on the Western line was Palapye, and on December 27 he set
out on his midsummer march of 170 miles to it. Within a fortnight, his
little force of irregulars, which three months before had been sent out into
the South African wilderness to perform duties that might have engrossed a
division, passed away from Tuli beyond the Limpopo on to the visible stage
of war near Mochudi.
In
the middle of January, 1900, he reached Gaberones. On his left flank Sekwani
was still occupied by the enemy, though in reduced numbers; in front of him
the Boers were not only strongly posted on the railway at Crocodile Pools,
but able to draw upon Mafeking for reinforcements, by the help of which they
successfully resisted an attack on February 11. Plumer's force, though
augmented by detachments he had picked up on the line, was unequal to the
task of advancing along it. He therefore decided to diverge from the railway
and advance by way of Kanya, a native town lying twenty miles west of the
line.
On
March 6 he reached Lobatsi, where he was forty-five miles from Mafeking. He
found, however, that it was an awkward place to defend and soon quitted it,
as Baden-Powell seemed to be in no immediate need, and was in fact averse to
Plumer's small force throwing itself upon the besiegers. With the greater
part of his command, the rest being sent back to hold the railway at
Crocodile Pools, he withdrew to the base which he had established at Kanya;
afterwards advancing to Sefetili, thirty miles from Mafeking, where he
awaited the approach of Mahon's relieving column from the south.
Baden-Powell, rejoicing in his siege, was not anxious that the game which he
was playing so well should be brought to a premature conclusion, and was
more afraid for Plumer than for himself.
Plumer filled in his two months at Kanya and Sefetili by occasional raids in
the direction of Mafeking and by an expedition towards Zeerust. The column
in the south, of whose movements many false reports reached him from time to
time, seemed to be tarrying by the way, and it was not until May 12 that he
received a message from Lord Roberts that it was nearing its destination.
For some weeks after his entry into Bloemfontein, Lord Roberts was unable to
arrange for the direct relief of Mafeking by a column specially detailed for
the purpose. He had originally intended that this should be done by Methuen,
but subsequently ordered him to operate in the Free State on the left flank
of the advance on the Transvaal. He hoped to apply his favourite method of
an automatic relief, brought about by external pressure elsewhere. At the
end of April, however, when it had become an urgent matter, he ordered
Hunter, who had recently arrived at Kimberley from Natal, to send out a
mounted force under Mahon, following it himself with the rest of the Xth
Division.
He
left Kimberley on May 3, and on the following day Mahon set out from Barkly
West on his 230 miles' march to Mafeking. Mahon advanced wide of the railway
up the Hart's River, which joins the Vaal at Barkly West, his right flank
being covered by Hunter, who kept close to the Vaal. Mahon met with no
serious resistance until he had covered 200 miles of his journey, when he
found a force which had been sent down from Mafeking across his path, and
which diverted him to Massibi; where he joined Plumer on May 15.
The advance of the main and less mobile body under Hunter was aided by
demonstrations made by Methuen from Boshof. With three columns claiming
their attention the bewildered Boers were unable to do more than offer a
stout but ineffectual resistance to Hunter on the Vaal on May 5. Two days
later he occupied Fourteen Streams and restored the railway communication
across the Vaal, having during his halt taken possession of Christiana, a
village in the Transvaal a few miles up the river. It was now no longer
necessary for him to hurry after Mahon, and his advance northwards was made
at leisure. Early in June he occupied Lichtenburg, where Mahon rejoined him.
Mafeking as well as Kimberley were now in the hands of Lord Roberts, but the
Western line joining them to Capetown was not yet secure. The districts of
Cape Colony west of De Aar and Hopetown were remote and backward, and
sparsely inhabited by discontented and unprosperous Dutch farmers. Nearly a
year before, while the Cape Government was placidly blinking under the
shadow of Table Mountain and only taking action that thwarted the attempts
of the Imperial Government to prepare for war, and like the unjust steward
intriguing for reception in Boer houses if the Empire should fail, arms had
been sent into these districts by the Boers of the Republics, and courses of
instruction in the use of them were actually being held.
To
stir up the discontented and set the veld on fire, a party of Transvaalers
swooped down from Vryburg before the war was many days old. Rebel commandos
were raised, and most of the districts lying between the Orange and the
Molopo were involved, some of them being annexed by proclamation to the
Republics. For several months the trouble was confined to the right bank of
the Orange, but during February it passed over to the left bank.
In
pursuance of his policy of striking swiftly and strongly at the centres of
population, and not from neglect, Lord Roberts had left the rebellious and
disaffected districts more or less to themselves, in the belief that
indirect action would retrieve the situation and that his advance would take
the heart out of the rebels and deter them from crossing the river; and for
some months there had been no British troops south of the Orange except at
De Aar and Hopetown.
Now, however, the railway, which until his arrival at Bloemfontein was his
only line of communication, was threatened. The Prieska and Herbert
districts on the left bank of the Orange, and even the remote Gordonia
district lying in the angle between the Orange and the Molopo, which was too
far away to be included in the first batch of proclamations, were annexed by
the Boers. There was much danger of the advancing army not only finding its
communications broken, but also a formidable rebellion springing up behind
it.
The troops on the line were insufficient to deal with the situation, and
Lord Roberts was obliged to draw upon Clements, who was acting in the other
disturbed districts of the Cape Colony south of the Free State. Lord
Kitchener, who chanced to be passing through De Aar on his way back from
Naauwpoort, where he had been sent to look after the central advance, made
arrangements for the Prieska operations and rejoined Lord Roberts at
Kimberley; but his presence was soon required again at De Aar. Three columns
had started westward from the line, but the centre column, which was
composed of the troops withdrawn from Clement's command, met with opposition
in the Prieska district, and was compelled to retire on March 6. When the
news reached Lord Roberts he sent Kitchener to take charge of the
operations, which from that time was successful. The rebellion south of the
Orange was suppressed; the leaders disappeared; and by the end of the month
Kitchener was free to return to Head Quarters at Bloemfontein.
Not many weeks, however, elapsed before there was trouble in Griqualand, a
considerable portion of which was in the hands of rebel descendants of the
burghers of the Great Trek, who were joined by rebels expelled from the
districts south of the Orange during the late operations. A column had been
sent out against them from Kimberley by Methuen in March, but Lord Roberts
disapproved of the expedition and it was recalled. At the request of Sir A.
Milner, who from the first had been of the opinion that the British hold on
South Africa was in greater danger from rebellion in the Colony than from
the commandos of the two Republics, Lord Roberts consented to send a force
into Griqualand under the command of Warren, who was brought round from
Natal, and returned to the country through which he had worked in the
Bechuanaland Expedition of 1885. In the middle of May, Warren set out from
Belmont. The only regular troops in his column were a few Irish mounted
infantry. Douglas was easily taken on May 21, and on his way to Campbell he
was compelled by supply and transport difficulties to halt at Faber's Put,
where at dawn on May 30 he was surprised by the rebels, who, knowing that
they had not to face regular troops, anticipated an easy victory. They
succeeded in almost surrounding the camp before the alarm was given, but
after a brief struggle were driven off.
Early in June Campbell and Griquatown were occupied; and on the 24th
Kuruman, which had been in the hands of the rebels for nearly six months,
was recovered. Near Khies, lower down the Orange, the force which had been
left to watch the banks after the suppression of the Prieska rebellion, some
of the fugitives from which had returned to the river under the leadership
of a Jew, attacked and carried their laager. This and the Faber's Put affair
were the only serious fights in the clearing of the Colony north of the
Orange.
Thus by the end of June Lord Roberts had secured the railway from Mafeking
and Kimberley to the south.
