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The capture of Alleman's Nek rendered Laing's Nek untenable, and Clery closing up from Ingogo next day found it abandoned. The enemy had evacuated the whole of the Majuba-Laing's Nek-Pougwana position, leaving scarcely so much as a wagon behind him, and was retreating northwards. The westward turning movement was tactically a success but strategically a failure.
A Government named the New Republic was organised by the farmers, and Meyer was elected President, a post which he held for four years, when the Transvaal annexed the republic to its own territory. In the war of 1881 Meyer took part in several battles, and at Ingogo he was struck on the head by a piece of shell, which caused him to be unconscious for forty-two days.
In answer to this he was ordered to do nothing of the sort, but to promise protection to everybody and refer everything home. Then came the battle of Ingogo, which checked for the time the flow of telegrams, or rather varied their nature, for those despatched during the next few days deal with the question of reinforcements.
He had been at Bronkhorst, and Laing's Nek, and Ingogo and Amajuba, and supposed that the English did not run up their flag excepting at the end of a fight. Garrett's estimate of Jameson's total loss in killed and wounded for the two days: "When they gave in they were minus some 20 per cent. of combatants. There were 76 casualties. There were 30 men hurt or sick in the wagons.
Soon after crossing the Transvaal border we passed the battle fields of Laing's Nek, Majuba Hill, and Ingogo, names indelibly associated with one of the saddest, as well as most humiliating, episodes of English modern military history, in connection with the Transvaal War of 1881.
"And at Ingogo?" "Six hundred and twenty." "And at Majuba?" "One thousand." "Then that makes two thousand five hundred men; yes, and the rest were finished at Bronker's Spruit. Nephews, that rooibaatje there," pointing to John, "is one of the last men left in the British army."
Another result of the Ingogo battle was that the Boers, knowing that we had no force to cut them off, and always secure of a retreat into the Free State, passed round Newcastle in Free State Territory, and descended from fifteen hundred to two thousand strong into Natal for the purpose of destroying the reinforcements which were now on their way up under General Wood.
I am informed by the General Officer Commanding, Natal, that he will not have enough troops, even when the Manchester Regiment arrives, to do more than occupy Newcastle and at the same time protect the colony south of it from raids, while Laing's Nek, Ingogo River and Zululand must be left undefended.
At first, Silas Croft would not believe it. "No general could have been so mad," he said; but soon the report was amply confirmed from native sources. Another week passed, and with it came the news of the British defeat at Ingogo. The first they heard of it was on the morning of February 8, when Jantje brought a Kafir up to the verandah at breakfast-time.
North of Newcastle we saw a station bearing the name of Ingogo; later on the train wound round the base of Majuba Hill, and when that was felt behind it plunged into a long rocky tunnel which pierces the grassy slope on which the tragedy of Laing's Nek was enacted all names, alas! too well known in the annals of our disasters.
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