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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 that 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 veldt 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 Boor 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, business men,
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 Fitz-Clarence, 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 bad 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 be 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 be
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 those
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-lb.
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 African 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 Bitting and looking at it. At the same time he dispatched 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 Fitz-Clarence 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 (Sunday cricket so shocked Snyman that
he threatened to fire upon 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-in. 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 not 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 medieval Englishman handled a bow, and skilled in
every wile of veldt 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 dispatched 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, bad descended upon the railway, and an action
followed in which the train appears to have bad 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 armour 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. (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 rained 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 rifle. men 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 'I 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 Eloffs 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 horse artillery and pom-poms, twelve
hundred men in all. Whilst Barton 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 Boor 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 when about halfway that the enemy had
possession of the only water supply and of the hills which surrounded
it. For an hour 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 townsfolk 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) bad 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 not less 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.
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