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There was one instance when a young Boer questioned Botha's authority, but the burgher's mind was quickly disabused, and thereafter he was one of the Commandant-General's staunchest supporters. It was at the battle of Pont Drift, when General Botha was busily engaged in directing the movements of his men and had little time to argue fine points of authority.
He had a slight success at Doornberg on 7 November, when his force amounted to 2000 men; but Botha now came south into the Orange State and completely defeated De Wet on the 11th to the east of Winburg. De Wet himself escaped and attempted a junction with Beyers who had fled south from the Transvaal.
When Botha heard of this he at once informed the enemy that the matter had been arranged without his knowledge, and that he could grant no armistice. I think this is the only case on record where an armistice has ever been refused by us, although armistices were asked for many times by the British.
Scholtz produced a piece of paper and said Lord Roberts had sent him to enquire why Botha insisted on more unnecessary bloodshed, and why he did not come in to make peace, and that sort of thing. Botha asked if Scholtz held an authoritative letter or document from the English general, to which the Doctor replied in the negative. Smit now suggested that he should be allowed to see Mr.
When Smith-Dorrien reached the Lake, Botha had already started to meet him. Early in the morning of February 6 the British Camp was attacked, but although the attempt was furthered by a stampede of Smith-Dorrien's horses, Botha failed. He was compelled to draw off, but with the greater portion of his burghers wriggled round to the rear of the columns.
A letter was then read from the deputation in Europe, which had been written five months previously, and which had been brought through the English lines in safety. It contained little more than an assurance that our cause occupied a better position in Europe than it had ever done before. The Chairman then asked Commandant L. Botha to address the meeting.
Even Premier Asquith of the United Kingdom declared the proposals "fatal to the very fundamental conditions on which our empire has been built up and carried on." Stronger than any logic was the presence of Louis Botha in the conferences of 1907 and 1911. On the former occasion it was only five years since he had been in arms against Great Britain.
At Elandslaagte the Boers had exactly seven hundred and fifty burghers pitted against the five or six thousand British; Spion Kop was won from three thousand British by three hundred and fifty Boers; at the Tugela Botha with not more than twenty-six hundred men fought for more than a week against ten times that number of soldiers under General Buller; while the greatest disparity between the opposing forces was at Paardeberg, where Cronje spent a week in trying to lead his four thousand men through the encircling wall of forty or fifty thousand British soldiers.
The foreigners who accompanied the various Boer armies the correspondents, military attachés, and the volunteers will testify that the officers, from Commandant-General Botha down to the corporals, were always zealous in their endeavours to conduct an honourable warfare, and that the farmer-generals were as gentlemanly as they were valorous.
Gough managed to escape that night and to report that it was Botha himself, with over a thousand men, who had eaten up his detachment. The prisoners and wounded were sent in a few days later to Vryheid, a town which appeared to be in some danger of capture had not Walter Kitchener hastened to carry reinforcements to the garrison.
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