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The march of twenty-five thousand men round Jacobsdal towards the Modder tactically turns the Boer position at Magersfontein, so that it need not be carried by a frontal attack.
The commandos were completely demoralized. Indeed! the burghers from Fauresmith and Jacobsdal had already returned home from Poplar Grove without asking for permission to do so; and now all the others were hurrying back in the greatest disorder to their own districts.
There was a chap there who had just come from the State and knew all about it. After hearing the details from him I saw that there was no doubt of the genuineness of the thing. "The police rode back to Jacobsdal with Williams, and I promised to come after them; but when I came to think it over it didn't seem good enough.
There was no medicine in the camp, all the physicians were held in Jacobsdal by the enemy, and the condition of the dead and dying was such that Cronje was compelled to ask for an armistice. The reply from the British commander was "Fight or surrender," and Cronje chose to continue the fight.
Passing well east of Jacobsdal, suffering intensely from heat and thirst, the division sighted the Modder when still eight miles away.
South of Klip Drift at Wegdraai was Colvile's 9th Division, while the 7th Division was approaching Jacobsdal. Altogether the British forces were extended over a line of forty miles.
Until they passed Jacobsdal they thought they were going to the relief of Kimberley, but all unknown to them General French's cavalry had already performed that feat, and the direction of their march was changed. It was theirs to follow in pursuit of Cronje instead. In one terrible twenty-four hours they marched thirty-eight miles, and on Sunday morning, February 18th, they reached Paardeberg.
Two infantry divisions, the sixth and seventh, the last two from England, were moving towards the Riet River to the East of Jacobsdal. The point or points from which they started are not known, nor the direction of their march, which was screened by the cavalry division and perhaps also by a brigade of mounted infantry.
Lord Methuen has long held a crossing on to the peninsula or Doab between the two rivers, and the advance of a division into this peninsula must compel the prompt evacuation of Jacobsdal or bring about the ruin of any Boer force there, while at the same time it would increase the weight of troops that intervene between Magersfontein and Bloemfontein.
It was composed of burghers from Fauresmith, under Commandant Visser; from Bloemfontein, under Commandant Du Plooij; from Wepener, under Commandant Roux; from Smithfield, under Commandant Potgieter; from Thaba'Nchu, under Commandant J.H. Olivier; from Jacobsdal, under Commandant H. Pretorius; and of the Deetje Bloemfontein commando, under Commandant Kolbe.
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