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Updated: May 23, 2025
There I received a report that President Steyn with his staff was coming from Machadodorp, where he had met the Transvaal Government. The President requested me to come and see him, and also to meet General De la Rey, who would be there. I told the commandos to go on in the direction of Bothaville and went with my staff to the President. We met on the 31st of October near Ventersdorp.
It was a Waggon Hill upon a small scale, two dour lines of skirmishers emptying their rifles into each other at point-blank range. Once more, as at Bothaville, the British Mounted Infantry proved that when it came to a dogged pelting match they could stand punishment longer than their enemy. They suffered terribly.
The English were within three hundred paces of us, on a little hill near Bothaville, and close to the spot from whence my outpost had just returned. It was early morning. The sun had not risen more than twenty minutes and many of the burghers still lay asleep rolled up in their blankets. The scene which ensued was unlike anything I had ever witnessed before.
I got up and went to the outhouse where my Kaffir slept. I woke him up and asked him where the Hottentot was. "Oh, he is gone," he replied, "to go and fetch his things to go with the baas." I at once felt that there was something wrong, and went and called my men. I told them to saddle-up, and went off with my staff to the farm of Mr. Schoeman on the Valsch River, to the east of Bothaville.
In defiance of chronology it may perhaps make a clearer narrative if I continue at once with the movements of De Wet from the time that he lost his guns at Bothaville, and then come back to the consideration of the campaign in the Transvaal, and to a short account of those scattered and disconnected actions which break the continuity of the story.
We marched on with the intention of crossing the railway line somewhere near Winburg. On the morning of the 5th we arrived at Bothaville, where we found General Froneman, who had been marching with the commandos from Rhenoster River. Little did we know that a terrible misfortune was awaiting us.
When De Wet left Bothaville on November 6, his arm was, metaphorically speaking, in a sling, and he was footsore; but ten days later he had brought together in the Doornberg a force of 1,500 men, with whom he proposed to cut his way into the Cape Colony. His movement south may be compared to that of a small swift steamer endeavouring to escape from a blockaded seaport.
After a repulse at Fredrikstad, soon followed by a severe mauling at Bothaville, from which he broke out as a fugitive, he placidly and confidently trekked southwards unopposed for 150 miles, magnetically attracting to himself a force sufficient to blot out Dewetsdorp in the presence of a bewildered enemy, who, though in overwhelming numbers, was feebly strung out in lengths without breadth.
"Good," I said to the Hottentot, "I shall see you about this again." For I wished to cross-question him. I then went into the house with the Landdrost, and spent a good deal of time in writing with him. Late in the evening he went back to Bothaville and I to bed exactly at eleven o'clock. I had scarcely laid down when the Hottentot came back to my thoughts, and I began to grow uneasy.
Besides the stationary troops at Bloemfontein and on the railway, the VIIIth and Colonial Divisions under Rundle and Brabant were at Senekal and Ficksburg; Colvile with the IXth Division, who had been taken off Ian Hamilton's lead and allowed to run alone, was near Lindley; and Methuen had come into Kroonstad from Bothaville, the line of his march, which was originally towards the Transvaal, having been changed by orders from Lord Roberts.
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