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Updated: May 29, 2025
One of their stock subjects of conversation was their great General, the man of Magersfontein General Cronje. "What do you Britishers and Australians think of Cronje?" was a stock question with them. "Do you think him a good fighter?" "Well, yes, unquestionably he is a good fighting man." "Do you think him as good as Lord Roberts?" "No.
Go ask the hills of Afghanistan, and if there be tongues within them they will tell you that they sweep like hosts from hell. Ask in sneering Paris, and the red records of Waterloo will give you answer. Ask in St. Petersburg, and from Sebastopol your answer will come. They thought of the dreary morning hours of Magersfontein, and they smote the steel downwards through the neck into the liver.
At 1 a.m. on December 12 in a storm of rain and thunder the Brigade in mass of quarter-columns marched out of its bivouac, guided by a staff officer's compass which the lightning and the rain soon made unreliable. The objective point was the southern edge of the Magersfontein Ridge, about three miles distant.
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.
No amount of the portentous signalling that went on night after night could resuscitate our faith in the Military. An age ago the Magersfontein misfortune had put off indefinitely the long-expected succour. We had been made to feel our insignificance beside the "Military Situation." Our population after all was mainly black, but black or white, we were nothing to the "Military Situation."
Could it be, was it conceivable that Methuen had been worsted at Magersfontein? That indeed was a reasonable conclusion to draw from the reticence of our Rulers. But it was not strictly logical, and besides we liked it not. Our paper would tell the truth and shame the devil if the Censor, who was also a "sojer," did not unblushingly forbid it.
But we will not linger longer over this tragic and pathetic tale. Suffice it, all was done for the wounded that could possibly be done; and that Christian ministers committed reverently to the earth 'until the morning' those who fell so bravely and so suddenly at Magersfontein. Mr.
The railroad, after crossing the Modder, runs on the west side of the river nearly due north for two miles, and then turns north-west for two more, when it passes between two kopjes, both fortified. The right-hand one of these, the Magersfontein, extends to the south-east for three miles, rising there to an abrupt peak about 150 feet high, which is the key of the situation.
"Let us believe that, John; but there has been too much cheap excitement." Dark days followed. Who will ever forget Stormberg and Magersfontein? A pall seemed to hang over the kingdom. Ladysmith remained in the grip of the invader; the Boers were not yet driven out of Natal. Meantime Caesar had reached Sir Redvers Buller.
They found, however, that between Spytfontein and the river, the Magersfontein group of kopjes would afford excellent positions to Methuen from which Spytfontein could be attacked. During Methuen's halt at Modder River Delarey and Cronje received considerable reinforcements. From Natal, from the Basuto border, and from Kimberley, commandos were summoned to Spytfontein.
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