Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 15, 2025
He fulfilled his duties admirably, until he was made a prisoner of war. This happened when he was leading a courageous attack at Paardeberg in order to relieve General Piet Cronje. From Harrismith our commando advanced to within six miles of the Natal-Free State frontier, and camped not far from Bezuidenhoutspas, in the Drakensberg.
Of their dead we have no accurate knowledge, but two hundred wounded in a donga represented their losses, not only during a bombardment of ten days, but also in that Paardeberg engagement which had cost us eleven hundred casualties.
and their army in Natal had been weakened, before Buller's final advance, by the departure of commandos going to succour their brethren not only on the Modder, but also in the Cape Colony. The situation on the Tugela was reported to Pretoria almost simultaneously with the news that Cronje was hemmed in at Paardeberg.
Thoroughly exhausted, the men flung themselves upon the ground to sleep, but after two or three hours the artillery fire roused them from their slumbers and the order came to advance. There was no time for breakfast, and from five o'clock in the morning until late at night they had to go without food. The battle of Paardeberg is not likely to be forgotten by any of those who were engaged in it.
Perhaps the politic generosity of the British leaders and the patriotic bias of correspondents exaggerated the importance of the share of the Canadian troops in the whole campaign; but their courage, initiative, and endurance were tested and proved beyond all question. Paardeberg sent a thrill of pride and of sorrow through Canada.
Lord Roberts, therefore, who was at Paardeberg on Monday evening, may have had with him four brigades or two divisions, representing twenty thousand men, besides the three brigades engaged, which represented before the battle something like fifteen thousand. Of French and the cavalry division there is no report.
He was one of the few who escaped from the disastrous fight at Paardeberg, and shortly afterwards, at the war council at Kroonstad, the French officer was created a brigadier-general the first and only one in the Boer army and all the foreign legions were placed in his charge.
The decision was critical, and proved fatal. The British 6th Division pressed on untiring after nightfall, aiming to reach Paardeberg, but, missing the precise point, they passed on and halted a mile and a half below Wolveskraal, nearly opposite the ford Cronje intended to use. Though all unknowing, they had taken a commanding position to head him, as French had at Koodoosrand.
An armistice, restricted to the arena of the recent fighting, was granted by the Boers on February 25, for the purpose of bringing away the wounded and burying the dead; and during the barter of news on the very narrow strip which separated the British fallen from the enemy's positions, the burghers refused to believe that Cronje was surrounded at Paardeberg, and retorted that Lord Roberts had lost all his transport and supplies at Waterval Drift, and was helpless.
I had, therefore, no hesitation in ordering my men to up-saddle at midnight, and by half-past two we had joined Vice-Vechtgeneraal Philip Botha. I had sent him word to be ready to move, so that we were able to hasten at once to General Cronje's assistance. Our combined force amounted to three hundred men all told. Paardeberg
Word Of The Day
Others Looking