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The road leading to Reddersburg from Dewetsdorp traverses this ridge. Hence it was absolutely necessary to seize it before the enemy if we were to intercept them. So on we went, leaving the weary and exhausted behind to follow on as soon as possible.
Between Sannah's Post and Reddersburg he in one day persuaded more than a hundred sworn burghers to break their oaths of neutrality and join him. Whether the energy and resource which he displayed would not have been more profitably expended in a vigorous effort to shrivel up the line between Bloemfontein and the Orange is a matter for speculation.
I had expected that the force at Reddersburg which lay only about four or five miles from Mostertshoek would have seen the fight in progress, or heard the cannonading, and would have hastened to the assistance of their comrades. Nevertheless, I had given orders that as soon as it was daylight, every one must do his utmost to force the English to surrender.
In the neighbourhood of Bloemfontein, Reddersburg, and Dewetsdorp, and at every other place where it was possible, his troops had made prisoners of burghers who had remained quietly on their farms. The same course of action had been pursued by the column which fell into our hands at Mostertshoek I myself had liberated David Strauss and four other citizens whom I had found there.
Next day he heard that the British had occupied Dewetsdorp, and soon after that the garrison was retiring on Reddersburg, and the attack on the line, which perhaps he never seriously intended to make, was indefinitely postponed. For as soon as he had disposed of the prisoners of Mostert's Hoek, he cast his eye round the horizon and descried two other isolated garrisons, at Smithfield and Wepener.
The next day all those thirty head were found grazing some fifteen miles westwards under the lee of hills near Reddersburg, where they had found safe shelter. Everybody's cattle were recovered which had not been kraaled, including mine.
On Thursday, at two p.m., we left the battlefield with our wounded for Reddersburg, where the people received us most kindly and placed the Government school-room at our disposal. After burying the dead, and assisting the wounded to Bethany railway station, Mr. Burgess returned to headquarters at Springfontein and gave General Gatacre an account of the disaster.
I also sent a strong guard to a point near Reddersburg, for I had heard that a reinforcement of from thirteen hundred to two thousand British troops had come from the direction of Bothathanie railway station, and were now encamped at Reddersburg.
He was then thirty miles away from the commandoes, but instantly despatched a report to us to come post-haste so as to attack the enemy at Dewetsdorp or intercept them, should they try to join the main body, which was advancing under Gatacre on Reddersburg. In the meanwhile the burghers of that district, who had gone to their farms on the fall of Bloemfontein, were commandeered.
For weeks reinforcements had been gathering, and the chaplains' work had covered a larger area. It was now time to strike their tents and march. But this unfortunate column was unfortunate still. With the memory of the disaster to the Northumberland Fusiliers at Stormberg still in their minds they marched forward, only to meet with fresh disaster at Reddersburg. =The Disaster at Reddersburg.=
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