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Updated: June 28, 2025
In the rush of larger events few people have realised the significance of the rapid squashing of the Senussi in western Egypt, and the collapse of De Wet's rebellion in South Africa. Both these struggles would have been long, tedious and uncertain even in A.D. 1900. This time they have been, so to speak, child's play.
Scarcely fifty miles away at Tweefontein, De Wet's midnight charge had left behind it sixty men sleeping their last grim sleep in defiance of the peace ordained for the Christmas dawn. And, midway between the camp of the living and the line of the dead, there lay the little town of Bethlehem.
For three days De Wet held the line, and during all that time he worked his wicked will upon it. For miles and miles it was wrecked with most scientific completeness. The Rhenoster bridge was destroyed. So, for the second time, was the Roodeval bridge. The rails were blown upwards with dynamite until they looked like an unfinished line to heaven. De Wet's heavy hand was everywhere.
He argued with himself a little; then the rain came down and the wind leaped like a lion over the edge of the land, and the man's blood boiled as he breathed ocean air. "Us'll be wetted proper. I'll run for it, Mister Jan, an' you'd best to go up-long to your lil lew house. Wet's bad for 'e, I reckon." "No," he said, "I can't let you go, Joan. Look over there.
The cattle were rapidly driven together, oxen yoked and horses saddled, and in about three minutes' time we were on the move once more. De Wet's force and our own combined comprised nearly three thousand men, with six hundred waggons and carts, forming a train that made a splendid target for the British gunners.
The net result of De Wet's invasion was that he gained nothing, and that he lost about four thousand horses, all his guns, all his convoy, and some three hundred of his men. Once safely in his own country again, the guerilla chief pursued his way northwards with his usual celerity and success.
De Wet's delirious harangue had not exhausted its nine-days' life as a masterpiece of unconscious humour when General Botha left Pretoria for the Free State on November 9. Again, I am not concerned with the highly complex motives which prompted the veteran Dutch General to make his delightful "Five Bob Outrage" speech and other things at Vrede. Flogging dead horses is a useless job, anyway.
A column under Dartnell at Bethlehem, which had recently been reinforced from Rundle's command by a strong detachment under Barrington Campbell, was on the point of returning to Harrismith, when it was informed that De Wet's re-united commandos were lying in wait at a spruit about twenty miles out on the road to Harrismith.
The question presented itself forcibly to my mind when I saw with my own eyes the tall plumes of smoke rising from six farmhouses, De Wet's among them, in the neighbourhood of Roodeval. There is no doubt whatever that in the war of 1870 the classic type of modern war the villages and populations near the scene of a cut railway were severely punished.
After leaving Wolvehoek, we entered on Commandant De Wet's hunting-ground and the scene of his recent exploits.
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