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Updated: June 15, 2025
As he passed, but without altering his pace in the slightest, or even looking towards me, he said quite distinctly 'Methuen beat the Boers to hell at Belmont. That night the air seemed cooler and the courtyard larger. Already we imagined the Republics collapsing and the bayonets of the Queen's Guards in the streets of Pretoria. Next day I talked to the War Secretary.
The singularity of this point of honour, and the tenacity of its observance, seem more congruous to primeval than to modern warfare. The above description gives a general idea of the conditions confronting Methuen on the 21st of November, when he began his advance.
It is said that he manned the works on the slope with burghers firing black powder so as to draw the enemy's fire away from the trenches in which only smokeless powder was used. Methuen obtained little information during his halt at Modder River. The country was so much intersected by the wire fences of the farms that cavalry scouting was difficult.
The harried Boers moved a hundred miles north to Rustenburg, followed by Methuen, Fetherstonhaugh, Hamilton, Kekewich, and Allenby, who found the commandos of De la Rey and Kemp to be scattering in front of them and hiding in the kloofs and dongas, whence in the early days of September no less than two hundred were extracted.
His objections were transmitted to Buller, who speedily put the question in its proper light by telegraphing to Kekewich that "what we have to do is to keep the Union Jack flying over South Africa without favour to any particular set of capitalists," and Methuen met his protest with the answer that "Rhodes has no voice in the matter."
From Klerksdorp Methuen struck back westwards to the south of his former route, and on March 14th he was reported at Warrenton. Here also in April came Erroll's small column, bringing with it the garrison and inhabitants of Hoopstad, a post which it had been determined, in accordance with Lord Kitchener's policy of centralisation, to abandon.
Thus it was that at the age of nine I was sent away from home and began an independent career at the boarding-school kept by the Reverend Mr. Quirk, at Methuen, Massachusetts. Here I remained for seven years, in the course of which both my parents died, victims of typhoid.
Shouts of laughter greeted his exploit, but he quickly remounted, and was one of the first to reach the hill for which we were making, and which dominated the railway. Keeping the Nordenfeldt in reserve, we opened fire with Krupp and small-arms on the advance guard of the enemy. We did not know at the time that we were tackling Lord Methuen and five thousand men, but such was the case.
The whole convoy with four Armstrong guns was captured. Besides this the enemy lost 400 in killed and wounded, and 859 prisoners of war, including Lord Methuen himself, who was wounded in the leg. The Boer casualties amounted to 9 killed and 25 wounded. Do not such engagements prove that the Boers could hold their own not only behind stones and in trenches but also on the plain?
At the same time that Carlos III. was proclaimed, a treaty was negotiated with Portugal, known as the Methuen Treaty, which gave England the practical monopoly of Portuguese trade, and sent the gold of Brazil by way of Lisbon to London, an advantage so great that it aided materially in keeping up the war on the continent as well as in maintaining the navy.
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