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With the army of General Cronje captured at Paardeberg were no less than a hundred burghers who had not reached the sixteenth year, and among those who escaped from the laager in the river-bed were two Bloemfontein boys named Roux, aged twelve and fourteen years.
In that way he secured time for the completion of the action against Cronje, and upon its favourable issue he will be master of the situation. In Natal the situation has been changed by the action of Lord Roberts. The two Boer Republics are well aware that they must stand or fall together.
We agreed that the attack should be made by three separate parties, that General Philip Botha, with Commandant Thewnissen, should retake the positions which we had abandoned at Stinkfontein, General Froneman the position immediately to the north of these, and I, with General Andreas Cronje, others still further north. The attack was made on the following morning.
Not only so, but French was north of him; and as it turned out it was French, in virtue of the superior mobility of his cavalry, who headed him off to the eastward, giving time for the British infantry to come up. The trains went with Cronje, and apparently it was his unwillingness to drop them, rather than the direction of his retreat, that lost him.
Immediately in front of us were the buildings and kraals of Stinkfontein, and there on the opposite bank of the river stood Paardeberg. To the left and to the right of it were khaki-coloured groups dotted everywhere about General Cronje was hemmed in on all sides, he and his burghers a mere handful compared with the encircling multitude. What a spectacle we saw!
The farm-house of General Andrew Cronje stood just above the drift and was the only conspicuous mark for the English guns on our side of the river, so in order to protect it the general had turned it over to the ambulance corps to be used as a hospital.
He studied foreign military methods and their application to the Boer warfare; he evolved new ideas and improved old ones; he planned battles and the evolutions necessary to win them; he had a natural taste for things military. Before all the world had heard the blast of the war-trumpet, Cronje had deserted the peaceful stoep and was attacking the enemy on the veld at Mafeking.
On Saturday evening Jan Theron, of Krugersdorp, succeeded in breaking through the British lines with despatches from General De Wet and Commandants Cronje and Froneman, urging General Cronje to fight a way through the lines whilst they would engage the enemy from their side.
Their commanding officer mounts the Town Hall steps, and addresses the townspeople, congratulating them on their loyalty, announcing the speedy end of the war, hinting at the hosts of British soon to be expected, and praising the Mayor, a brother of General Cronje, for his wise foresight in submitting; in return for which he said he would try to obtain the release of the General from Lord Roberts.
French was racing to head Cronje off on the north of the Modder River, and the main body of the army was advancing in his rear, but we at Modder River knew next to nothing of these movements. It is worth while to recall the principal events in Lord Roberts's operations near Modder River.
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