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Updated: June 7, 2025
That will send all the Free Staters scurrying back in a hurry, and even the Transvaalers will begin to think that it is time to go. Then I suppose we shall advance and clear Natal out." "Well, perhaps we may be back again to help you by that time," Field answered; "but we are heartily tired of this place, and of watching the Boers making their positions stronger and stronger every day."
I have poured out my whole soul. If I did fly, it was only because one man cannot stand against twelve. After the Transvaalers had crossed the Vaal River, I took twelve hundred men to Heilbron, where there was already a party of my burghers. General Roux with other Free-Staters was stationed east of Senekal, and the remainder of our forces lay near Lindley.
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.
Lord Roberts suffered but 115 casualties. Its effect on the enemy was chiefly moral. The Transvaalers, whose country had not yet heard the sounds of war, were alarmed, but the Free Staters were dismayed. The ties of race and kindred had engulfed them in a war which was not for their own cause, and the brunt of which they had borne for ten weeks.
Delarey had been joined by P. Cronje, who unperceived by Methuen's cavalry came in with a body of Transvaalers from Mafeking, and was in occupation of the loop between the rivers. At sunrise on November 28 Methuen advanced from his camp at Witkoplaagte six miles south of the river. The fight began under misapprehensions on each side.
We know regiments are arriving from England at the Cape every day. When they get strong enough to invade the Orange Free State and take Bloemfontein, and march north, the Boers here will be hurrying away to defend their homes. Of course the Free Staters will go first, but the Transvaalers will have to follow.
It would neither involve a great expenditure of money, nor be likely to wound the susceptibilities of the Transvaalers, who might be provoked by more vigorous and minatory measures: and thus little harm would be done if after all it were found to be an unnecessary precaution.
The districts of Cape Colony west of De Aar and Hopetown were remote and backward, and sparsely inhabited by discontented and unprosperous Dutch farmers. To stir up the discontented and set the veld on fire, a party of Transvaalers swooped down from Vryburg before the war was many days old.
White's force, which numbered about 13,000 men, occupied a perimeter of fourteen miles on the hills and kopjes nearest to the town, and was enveloped by an outer perimeter of thirty six miles held by 23,000 Boers. The positions N.E. of the Klip River were occupied by the Transvaalers, and the opposite semi-circle by the Free Staters.
This was a kindly throw of Fate, because England alone could administer all the wealth of the region without its becoming a danger, not only to the community at large, but also to the Transvaalers. That this is so can be proved by the eloquence of facts rather than by words.
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