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Updated: June 3, 2025
The war-sick burghers skulked in their laagers, and it is said that even necessary movements within the line were not ordered, from a fear lest the burgher, when once on his feet, would march in the direction which soonest took him out of his enemy's reach. To Botha, Buller's retirement across the Tugela came as a gleam of hope.
When he became surfeited with looting houses in conquered territory and stealing horses, luggage, and goods of lesser value in the laagers he returned to Johannesburg and Pretoria and assisted in emptying residences and stores of their contents.
When Louis Botha became Commandant-General of the army he issued an order that women would not be permitted to visit the laagers, and few, if any, took part in the engagements for some time thereafter. When the forces of the enemy approached Pretoria the women made heroic efforts to encourage the burghers, and frequently went to the laagers to cheer them to renewed resistance. Mrs.
Ten per cent. of the men in the commandos were allowed to return to their homes on leave of absence, and about an equal proportion left the laagers without permission, so that the officers were never able to keep their forces at their normal strength.
Several miles farther on were the hills on the outskirts of Pretoria, where, in the war of 1881, the Boer laagers sent forth men to encompass the city and to prevent the British besieged in it from escaping.
During the advance north he was a hundred times inside the Boer laagers, keeping Headquarters Staff daily informed of the enemy's movements; was twice captured and twice escaped. He was first captured while trying to warn the British from the fatal drift at Thaba'nchu.
General Botha and Mrs. General Meyer were specially energetic and effective in their efforts to instil new courage in the men, and during the war there was no scene which was more edifying than that of those two patriotic Boer women riding about the laagers and beseeching the burghers not to yield to despair.
I did not know the Boers gave British refugees the free run of their war laagers, and I'm interested in the matter, being a scribe myself and a man of peace. Just give me a few names and dates and facts, will you?" "No, I won't," he snarled.
I had one of this peculiar species at me the other day in Burghersdorp, and he painted a Boer laager so vividly, between nips at my flask, that if I had not seen a few laagers myself I should have felt bad over the matter.
The roar of our field-guns has died away instead of drawing nearer, and we look in vain for any sign of British cavalry on the broad plain, where they should be by now if Sir Redvers Buller's infantry attack had succeeded. January 26. The Boers are back in their former laagers.
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