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Updated: July 29, 2025
The condition of affairs in the Transvaal was no better. We Free-Staters had thought and I, for one, had supported the view at Vereeniging that, before sacrificing our independence, we ought to tell the owners of these farms, where there were still women and children, to go and surrender with their families, and thus save them from starvation.
If those Free-Staters they must have been thinking try to make a stand there, it will be the last stand they will ever make. And the English would have been quite right in their anticipations. To have stayed where we then were would, without doubt, have been the end of us.
This, however, was not because he disapproved of my suggestion in itself, but because he feared that the Transvaalers might say that the Free-Staters, now that their own country was in the enemy's hands, were going to leave them in the lurch. Yet in spite of his opposition, I had ultimately to carry out my own ideas, for, even if I was misunderstood, I had to act as I thought best.
Lest any one should think that the Transvaalers and the Free-Staters separated here on account of a squabble, or because they found that they could not work harmoniously together, let me state that this decision was arrived at for purely strategic reasons. We had now been reduced to a third of the original number of forty-five thousand burghers with which we had started the campaign.
On that date General Joubert joined us with a portion of the Transvaal commandos. On his arrival it was settled that the Transvaalers should proceed to the north of Ladysmith and occupy positions on the east of Nicholson's Nek, whilst the Free-Staters were to go to the west and north-west of that town.
The two Governments had agreed that Commandant General Louis Botha should cross the Vaal River, and that we Free-Staters should remain behind in our own country. And this was carried out, with our full approval. The Governments had also decided that even if the English entered the Transvaal, the Free State commandos were not to follow them.
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