Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 29, 2025
At 7 o'clock next morning General Botha and his men arrived at Elandslaagte and off-saddled in hopes of getting something to eat. They were also doomed to disappointment. Such wanton destruction of God's bounty was loudly condemned, and had Mr. Pretorius, the Commissioner of Stores, not been discreet enough to make himself scarce, he would no doubt have been subjected to a severe "sjamboking."
They will be a weapon in our hands when we return to the delegates." Commandant-General Botha: "I do not quite understand, Lord Milner. I did not interpret Mr. Chamberlain's telegram in the sense that we had to present new proposals in order to bind our hands further. I thought that proposals were to be made with a view to establishing peace."
To find out if this were so Lord Kitchener, at the end of February, sent a verbal message to Louis Botha, and on the 27th of that month the Boer general rode with an escort of Hussars into Middelburg. 'Sunburned, with a pleasant, fattish face of a German type, and wearing an imperial, says one who rode beside him.
Commandant-General Botha sent word that he was in a bad plight on the "Hoogeveld," the enemy having concentrated all his available troops upon him. I was asked to divert their attention as much as possible by repeated attacks on the railway line, and to worry them everywhere.
I asked General Botha how we stood. He sighed, and answered: "If only the burghers would fight we could stop them easily enough; but I cannot get a single burgher to start fighting. I hope their running mood will soon change into a fighting mood. You keep your spirits up, and let us do our duty." "All right, General," I answered, and we shook hands heartily.
Young Botha was educated at Greytown, and though a good, sound commercial scholar, he gave no evidence in his schoolboy days of what was in him. No one who knew him then would have dreamed that before he was forty years of age he would be the foremost soldier of his country.
It wasn't till all the Irish were killed that the English took to bribing. Bribed Botha they did with a bag of gold. For all the generals in England that are any good are Irish. Buller was the last they had, and he died. They can find no good generals at all in England, unless they might get them very young."
A pale of blockhouses denied them access to the "protected area." Muller effected a trifling success in the middle north. Beyers in the Pietersburg district was unable to prevent Grenfell reaching a point but sixty miles from the Limpopo and there making prisoners of a local commando. No organized attempt was made to disturb Botha in the Ermelo district.
The Boers of the Great Trek resented the annexation, and one Pretorius took the field, but was beaten on August 29 at the battle of Boomplatz by Smith, who had under his command six companies of infantry and two squadrons of cavalry; a force which strangely contrasts with the masses of soldiery opposed to Pretorius' successors, Joubert, Botha, Cronje, De Wet, and Delarey.
On the morning of the 5th I went to the place of destination, which we reached at 11 o'clock, to find the Commandant-General and suite had already arrived. General Botha had been riding all night long in order to get through the enemy's lines, and had been resting in the shadow of a tree at Hoetspruit.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking