February 8th, 1900
Sir Redvers Buller on Monday set out on his third attempt to relieve
Ladysmith. He appears to have made a feint against the Boer position north
of Potgieter's Drift, and, while there attracting the attention of the Boers
by the concentrated fire of many guns, to have pushed a force of infantry
and artillery across the river to the right of Potgieter's Drift. This
force, of which the infantry belongs to Lyttelton's brigade, carried and
defended against counter attack a hill called Vaal Krantz, at the eastern
end of the Brakfontein ridge. To the east of Vaal Krantz runs a good road to
Ladysmith, along which the distance from the Tugela to Sir George's White's
outposts is about ten miles. To the east again of the road is a hill called
Dorn Kop. Here the Boers have an artillery position which seems to command
Vaal Krantz, and they probably have the usual infantry trenches. The Boer
position then faces the Tugela and runs from Spion Kop on the west, the Boer
left, to Dorn Kop on the east, the Boer right. Sir Redvers Buller's attack
is an attempt to pierce the centre of this position.
To
break the centre of an enemy's line, to pour your forces into and through
the gap, and then roll up the more important of his divided wings, is an
operation which if it can be successfully executed makes a decisive victory;
if followed up it ruins the enemy's army. But it is in modern conditions the
most difficult form of attack. The long range of modern weapons, of guns
that kill at two miles and of rifles that kill at a mile--to take a moderate
estimate of their power--enables the defender to concentrate upon any attack
against his centre the fire of all the rifles in his front line for a couple
of miles, and of all the guns standing on a length of four miles. A similar
concentration of fire is only occasionally and temporary possible for the
assailant, though if it should happen that the ground exposes a point of the
defender's line to such concentric fire, while it protects some points held
by the assailant, the attack would have a prospect of success. But the
moment the point of attack is recognised by the defender he will collect
every available battery and rifleman from all parts of his line and place
them on that portion of his front which commands the path of the assailant.
To prevent this the assailant must engage the defender along his whole line
so that all the defending forces are fully occupied and there are none to
spare for the critical point or region.
Sir Redvers Buller's task is rendered harder by the fact that his own troops
before they can attack must cross the Tugela. He has two bridges at the
point here supposed to have been selected for the main attack, but troops
can hardly cross a bridge at a quicker rate than a brigade an hour, and as
the Boers ride faster than the British infantry can walk, and as the British
troops south of the river cannot effectually engage the Boers, it will not
have been easy so to occupy the enemy along the whole front as to prevent
his massing guns and rifles--at any rate rifles--to defend his centre.
So
much for the initial difficulties, which seem by a combination of feint and
surprise to have been so far overcome on Monday that the advanced British
troops effected a lodgment in the centre of the Boer position, from which a
counter-attack failed to eject them. The next thing is, as the British force
is brought across the river, to attack one of the Boer wings while
containing or keeping back the other. Before this, can be done the enemy's
centre must really be pierced, so that troops can be poured through the gap
to turn the flank of one of the enemy's divided halves. This piercing is
most difficult in the conditions of to-day, for the enemy by establishing a
new firing line behind the point carried by our troops may be able to
enclose in a semicircle of fire the party that has made its way into the
position. Against such an enveloping fire it is a hard task to make headway.
All these aspects of his problem a General thinks out before he starts; he
does not make his attempt unless and until he sees his way to meet the
various difficulties, both those inherent in the nature of the operation and
those that arise from the local conditions and from the character of the
particular enemy. The difficulties are therefore not reasons why General
Buller should not succeed, but their consideration may help to show why with
the best previous deliberation and with the bravest of troops he may perhaps
not be able to break the Boer resistance.
There is one feature of his task that is perhaps not fully appreciated by
the public. In order to relieve Ladysmith he must thoroughly defeat and
drive away the Boer army--must, so to speak break its back. For, supposing
he could clear a road to Ladysmith and march there, leaving the Boer army in
position on one or both sides of his road, his position on reaching the
place would be that he would have to fight his way back again, and that
unless he could then defeat the Boers his Army would be lost, for it would
be cut off from its supplies. The relief of Ladysmith and the complete
defeat of the Boer army are therefore synonymous terms. There is, however, a
sense in which a partial defeat of the Boers would be of use. If the Boer
army, though not driven off, were yet fully absorbed in its struggle with
Sir Redvers Bullet and had drawn to its assistance some portion of the force
investing Ladysmith, it might be possible for Sir George White to make a
sortie and to break through the investing lines. To that case, however, the
term "the relief of Ladysmith" could hardly be correctly applied.
How far Sir George White can co-operate with Sir Redvers Buller depends
partly upon the mobility of his force. His horses after three months in
Ladysmith can hardly be in much condition, even supposing that they have not
already begun to be used as food for the troops. Supposing there are horses
enough for the field guns, and that the naval guns and mountain guns were
destroyed at the last moment before the sortie. The men and the field
artillery would then have to make a night attack, followed by a march of
about seven miles in trying conditions, and by a second attack in which they
would join hands with Sir Redvers Buller. This does not imply exertions
impossible to troops like Sir George White's, and such a move perhaps offers
the best way out of the difficulties of the situation. If in that case Sir
George White made for the north side of Dorn Kop a part of the Boer army
would probably be destroyed, and the loss which the British force would have
suffered would thus to some extent be made up for. It is presumed that Sir
Redvers Buller and Sir George White, who are able to communicate with one
another, have a cipher which enables them to inform each other without
informing the enemy.
Any plan which will unite Sir George White's force, or the bulk of it, with
that of Sir Redvers Buller on the Tugela will simplify the whole problem of
the War. Lord Roberts is preparing for an advance in force from the Orange
River, which will sooner or later transfer the centre of gravity to the
western theatre of War, in which the British troops will not be confronted
by the difficulties of an unknown or very imperfectly known mountainous
region. The movements now taking place in the Cape Colony are the
preliminaries to that advance. The method, the only right method, is to use
the reinforcements that have arrived--the sixth and seventh divisions--to
secure a preponderance first at one point and then at another, instead of
distributing them evenly over the whole area and the various points of
contact. The idea would seem to be, first, to strengthen General French
until he has crushed the Boer force with which he is dealing, then to use
his troops to secure the defeat of the Boers who are opposing Sir William
Gatacre, and then to cross the Orange River with three divisions and deal a
blow against the Boer army that is now between the Riet River and Kimberley.
This plan of beating in detail the Boer forces in the western theatre of
war, if carried out so as to lead in each case to a crushing defeat of the
Boers, would be the prelude to a collision between the main Boer army and a
British force its superior in every respect. The first certain evidence that
some such idea is at the foundation of the new operations may be hailed as
the beginning of victory. For the present it is enough to know that the
departure of Lord Roberts from Cape Town augurs the opening of an energetic
campaign with that unity of direction in a strong hand which is the first
element of success in war.
