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Let the Free Staters bring down two thousand good shots and resolute men to-morrow morning it is only fifty miles, with two lines of railway and what will happen to that little patch of white tents by the station?
They sure going to beat the rooineks, but are afraid that some may get away. If Joubert and Free Staters here, catch them in a trap and kill them all." Such was the substance of Jack's answer in his own language. By this time the rest of the party had turned out to hear the news.
We knew that they would thus interpret Lord Roberts's delay and his contradictory orders to Lord Methuen, but it was rather galling not to be able to deny it. "We have no dislike for the English," the man went on; and it was at least true of him and many of the Free Staters whom I met, although it was not true of all the Transvaalers.
But Perseus, now that he had got such auxiliaries as these, and put his men into such heart, because he was asked for a thousand staters for each officer, became bewildered at the amount of the sum which he would have to pay, and his meanness prevailing over his reason, refused their offers, and broke off the alliance, as if he had been steward of his kingdom for the Romans rather than fighting against them, and had to give an exact account of his expenses in the war to his enemies; though he might have been taught by them, who had besides other war materials, a hundred thousand soldiers collected together ready for use.
The official plan of an advance from the centre would force back the Free Staters engaged in the Cape Colony, and instead of isolating them would enable them to reinforce Cronje. After his arrival at Capetown, circumstances however compelled Lord Roberts to modify his plan of campaign.
Prinsloo withdrew with his Free Staters across the border, but was persuaded by Delarey, who had fallen back on Graspan about eight miles N.E. of Belmont, to rejoin him; and a favourable position was occupied on a group of kopjes astride the railway, where on November 25 another battle was fought, in which the Naval Brigade suffered a loss of nearly half its strength.
This action not only brought the inhabitants under the commando law of the adjacent Republic by which a form of conscription was enforced, but also overcame the scruples of the Free Staters who could still maintain that they were only engaged in defending their own territory.
Soon after, a party of Engineers and Infantry preparing gun positions on Wagon Point in view of a contemplated operation in support of Buller's expected advance by way of Potgieter's Drift, were fired on at short range by a body of Free Staters, who had succeeded in climbing to the nek, and who then threatened a redoubt in the western shoulder of the knoll on Wagon Hill, which commanded Wagon Point.
He had tried in succession, but without success, Colenso, Potgieter's Drift, and Trickhardt's Drift. He now informed White that he intended to make another attempt, but Lord Roberts advised him to postpone it until his own advance should draw off the Free Staters and weaken the barrier on the line of the Tugela.
Bloemfontein, the capital of the Orange Free State, had months before suffered the same fate, and thousands of Free Staters had surrendered to the English as they marched from Bloemfontein to the Transvaal.
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