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The commandos facing Buller were driven off; and the right, which had been opposing French and Pole-Carew so feebly that neither of them suffered a single casualty, fell away. Buller went in pursuit, but was unable to worry the retreat. Some commandos withdrew eastwards along the line, others broke off towards Lydenburg and Barberton. The Boer Governments retired from Machadodorp to Nelspruit.
About the 15th of January, 1902, I obtained information that our Government were being chased all over the country, and had now encamped at Windhoek near Dullstroom, to the south of Lydenburg. At the same time I received an order from Acting-President Schalk Burger, stating that he wished to see me.
Every farmhouse sent out its riflemen, and the trysting-place was the outside of the nearest British fort. All through the country small detachments were surrounded and besieged by the farmers. Standerton, Pretoria, Potchefstroom, Lydenburg, Wakkerstroom, Rustenberg, and Marabastad were all invested and all held out until the end of the war. In the open country we were less fortunate.
He was out of the Old Colony Burgersdorp, I think but he had come to the Transvaal when the Lydenburg goldfields started. He was prospector, transport-rider, and hunter in turns, but principally hunter. In those early days he was none too good a citizen. He was in Swaziland with Bob Macnab, and you know what that means.
Another meeting of all burghers north of Lydenburg was now convened, to be held at a ruined hotel some 12 miles west of Nelspruit Station, which might have been considered the centre of all the commandos in that district.
Here every commando stopped intending of course to push on to the north and then to cross the mountains near Lydenburg in a westerly direction. The day when I arrived at Hector's Spruit, President Steyn, attended by an escort of 100 men, went away by the same route.
In accordance with these orders, Colonel Anstruther marched from Lydenburg, a town about 180 miles from Pretoria, on the 5th December, with the headquarters and two companies of the 94th Regiment, being a total of 264 men, three women, and two children, and the disproportionately large train of thirty-four ox-waggons, or an ox-waggon capable of carrying five thousand pounds' weight to every eight persons.
And again, later on, we have in the words of South Africa's historian the gist of the complaint against the then existing state of things: 'The community of Lydenburg was accused of attempting to domineer over the whole country, without any other right to preeminence than that of being composed of the earliest inhabitants, a right which it had forfeited by its opposition to the general weal.
Here I appointed as field-cornet a young man of 23 years of age, a certain J. S. Schoenman, who distinguished himself subsequently by his gallant behaviour. We had barely completed our arrangements when we were again attacked by one of the enemy's columns from Lydenburg. At first we successfully defended ourselves, but at last were compelled to give way.
Therefore, that same night I think it was the 21st of January although I had lost count of dates the Government, whom I accompanied, departed and proceeded to the Kloof Oshoek, between Dullstroom and Lydenburg. The weather was very unpropitious, rain falling in torrents, and as may be understood, we were in a sad plight.
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