December, 1899, to March, 1900.

I interpose a chapter here in order to carry events in other parts of the theatre of war up to the date of the capture of Bloemfontein.

A sketch will suffice, since specifically mounted operations were few. No body, either of mixed mounted troops or of regular Cavalry reckoned separately, comparable in size to that formed by Roberts in the main theatre, existed anywhere else. The largest homogeneous mounted force outside this area was Brabant’s newly raised Colonial division, nominally 3,000 strong, which, in conjunction with Gatacre’s troops, had been deputed to push back the invaders of Eastern Cape Colony from Dordrecht and Stormberg, while Clements, succeeding French in the positions opposite Colesberg, checked the menace to Central Cape Colony. Brabant, however, seems not to have been able to muster an effective strength of more than 2,000 during the period under review. That fine permanent corps, the Cape Mounted Rifles, was a strong, stiffening element in an otherwise raw force of Cape Colony volunteers. Fortunately, the work before them was not severe, for the success of Roberts in the north threw the Boers into a strictly defensive attitude from the middle of February onwards, and in the early days of March caused 151a general retreat. A successful attack upon Labuschagne’s Nek, between Dordrecht and Jamestown, on March 4, gave the recruits confidence.

Clements had had a much harder task than Gatacre and Brabant. Stronger forces opposed him, and the Boer retreat set in later. Early in February all the regular Cavalry, save two squadrons of Inniskilling Dragoons, had been diverted to Roberts’s command. There remained, besides these squadrons, 500 Australian horsemen, together with Infantry and Artillery which made up the force to a total strength of about 5,000 men and 14 guns. Against Clements—if the official estimate is correct—the forces at one time were as great as 11,000. Clements, fighting stubbornly, was forced back south of Rensburg, and, in the course of the retreat, all his mounted troops, and particularly the Australians, did excellent service—fire-tactics, of course, being the universal rule. The danger was soon over. On February 21 Clements was reinforced with 900 mounted men and two batteries, and at about the same period the tide of invasion slackened. A week later, on the news of Paardeberg, the Boers were in full retreat for the north. By the middle of March—two days after the fall of Bloemfontein—Clements, Gatacre, and Brabant were all within the Free State borders.

We need not enter at any length either into the siege of Ladysmith or into the long series of operations which ended in its relief. The numerical facts, broadly speaking, were that White, with 13,000 men and 51 guns, was invested by a force under Joubert which originally numbered 23,000 men and 17 guns, but which dwindled gradually by abstractions to the Tugela, to Cronje, and to Colesberg, and finally fell to a strength of about 5,000; while, on the line of the Tugela, Buller, reinforced in the period following Colenso to a strength of 30,000 men and 73 guns, faced Louis Botha and Lukas Meyer with a 152strength which varied in round numbers from 7,000 to 9,000 men and about 18 guns.

As in the western theatre and in every other part of the field of war, the rifle, whether in the hands of mounted men or Infantry, was the decisive weapon. Artillery, as a mere statement of the relative strengths in that arm shows, was comparatively negligible. Sword and lance were out of court. Every responsible person at the time realized this fact. Short as we were of mounted troops, nobody would have dreamed of asking for more troops trained to shock on the ground that shock was either requisite or possible.

The most striking circumstance about the mounted troops in Natal—upwards of 5,000 in number—was the fact that rather more than half were locked up in Ladysmith during the whole four months of the sieges. Four Cavalry regiments, besides the Natal Carbineers, other Natal Volunteers, and the greater part of the Imperial Light Horse—2,800 men in all—were demobilized in this way. The mistake, no doubt, was serious, and White has been freely blamed for it. At the same time, it is only fair to White to put ourselves in his position, and recognize that the question of retaining or parting with his mounted troops was subsidiary to the much larger problem which originally faced him in deciding what was to be the r?le of the Natal army after the battle of Ladysmith on October 30, 1899. Had he possessed, in his force of professional mounted regiments, troops really capable, in conjunction with the volunteers, of tackling the Boer mounted riflemen, it is difficult to believe that, in spite of the moral and material value of Ladysmith, he would have accepted investment there as an alternative to the maintenance of his army as an active field-force. But the battle of the 30th, revealing a deficiency in the striking-power of the army as a whole, had revealed a weakness in the Cavalry which was in no way attributable to moral 153causes, but simply to armament and training. This circumstance must have influenced him powerfully in resolving to accept investment, a resolve which it is exceedingly difficult to impugn. A retreat to the Tugela, harassed by a greatly superior Boer force, whose temper was exhilarated by the success at Nicholson’s Nek, would have been a hazardous operation. It is no reflection on the regular Cavalry, but the simple truth, to say that they had not as yet shown the capacity to act as rear-guard for such a retreat.

But what kind of investment was White to accept? Here, no doubt, he is open to the charge of compromising between two logical alternatives, the one being to send away instantly the bulk of his mounted troops and Field Artillery, and with the rest of his force to accept a formal siege, with the purely passive object of detaining as many Boers as he could; the other, to keep his force intact, and maintain a defence so active and supple in character as to enable him to cut loose at any moment and co-operate with the relieving force. Although something like this latter course was evidently in his mind, as it would naturally be in the mind of any spirited Field Commander, he did not clearly grasp the determining factors and act accordingly. He did not foresee the initial impotence of Buller before the Colenso position, also largely attributable to a deficiency in efficient mounted troops. He occupied too small a perimeter to permit of elastic offence, and he forgot that the tactical weakness of his Cavalry was an obstacle even more serious to the kind of operations he had in his mind than it was to the larger plan of complete freedom which he had rejected. This weakness again became manifest in the small offensive operations of November 14 and December 7–8. Then came Buller’s failure at Colenso, and henceforth White’s attitude, though courageous and unyielding, was strictly passive. This was all the more 154to be regretted because the Boer attitude, save for the one big attack of January 5 on C?sar’s Camp and Wagon Hill, and for the minor attack on November 9, was equally passive, while their numbers sank to a point well below the strength of the garrison.

White’s mounted troops were reduced by degrees to the r?le of foot-soldiers, and in that capacity took their share in the defence. The part played by the regular Cavalry, gallant as it was, could not have been, and was not, so important as that played by the irregulars, who were genuine, though improvised riflemen. All alike took part in the great fight of January 5, and by common consent the chief honours belong to the Imperial Light Horse, whose heroic defence of Wagon Point, the key to the threatened position, at a cost of 25 per cent. of the numbers engaged, was as fine a feat of arms as their final attack at Elandslaagte. It was by a detachment of the same regiment, in conjunction with a body of Natal Mounted Volunteers, that the brilliant little sortie of December 7–8 was carried out and the two heavy guns on Pepworth Hill destroyed.

During the last month of the siege, when forage became scarce, and 75 per cent. of the Cavalry horses had to be turned adrift or converted into food, the troopers returned their lances, swords, and carbines to store, received rifles instead, and took regular posts in the defence. That change of weapons once made, it is almost inconceivable that it should not have been adhered to when horses were once more available. Why deliberately revert to an inferior firearm? Why deliberately resume steel weapons whose futility was manifest? Tradition—nothing more: the ineradicable habit of associating together the horse and the steel weapon as complementary elements of the highest mounted efficiency; the same habit which induces General French, in defending the arme blanche, to say that “nothing is gained by ignoring the horse, the 155sword, and the lance,” as though these weapons were inseparable adjuncts of the horse, and as though South African experience were not one long and costly proof of the contrary.

Buller’s mounted force, about 2,600 strong during the period following Colenso, was composed mainly of South African irregulars,[35] with two and a half Cavalry regiments, and a few regular Mounted Infantry. It played a creditable, though not a distinguished, part in the operations. The battles, from the British point of view, were all pre-eminently Infantry battles. In one instance only, so far as I am aware, was a mounted corps employed in conjunction with Infantry in a really critical and desperate fight, and that was the detachment of Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry at Spion Kop. For the rest, we find them operating on the wings, seizing advanced positions, and guarding the flanks of the main attack. Fire-tactics are the invariable rule, and efficiency in fire-tactics the test of general utility.

There is reason to believe that the mounted troops might have been employed to greater advantage had the higher command of the army been in stronger hands. Though they were less than half as numerous as the mounted force at the disposal of Lord Roberts, they were on the average more than a quarter, and sometimes not far from a third, the strength of the whole Boer force opposed to them—a tolerably high proportion, if we reflect that the Boers, immensely strong though their position was, had to sustain the attacks of 20,000 Infantry, to say nothing of an overwhelming number of guns.

The most hopeful enterprise in which the mounted troops were ever actually engaged was in the opening 156operations of the Spion Kop campaign (January 18 to 20), when Dundonald’s brigade of 1,500 men, including one Cavalry regiment, acted as advance-guard to Sir Charles Warren, who, with the greater part of the army, was deputed by Buller to turn the Boer right, while Lyttelton threatened the centre.[36] One of the most disappointing features of a painful story was the waste of a golden opportunity for utilizing mounted strength against an enemy whose high tactical mobility rendered surprise exceedingly difficult. Dundonald, a Cavalry man, certainly did his utmost, and, as far as he was allowed, did well. Unnecessary delays had attended the turning movement from the first, but a considerable measure of surprise was, in fact, obtained. Few Boers had rallied to the threatened flank; none were entrenched. Dundonald, operating boldly in advance, gained on the evening of the 18th a position, overlooking Acton Homes, which might, under vigorous generalship, have been turned to great strategical advantage. His men were in high fettle owing to the skilful surprise and defeat of a Boer detachment which rode out to check them. But Warren seems to have regarded his mounted troops wholly in a protective light, and to have resented anything approaching independent action. The chance was thrown away[37] and 157the operations never recovered from the initial sluggishness of movement.

Another opportunity for a vigorous use of mounted troops came after the great fight at Pieter’s Hill (February 27), which led to the relief of Ladysmith and to a general retreat of the Boer forces both from the beleaguered town and from the Tugela heights. If we regard all Buller’s previous operations as one long-drawn battle—and in a sense they may so be regarded—now, it would seem, was the time for pursuit. The two leaders of horse were undoubtedly anxious to pursue. Men and horses were alike fresh. Buller refrained. There is a 158general agreement that he was wrong. Whatever the prospects of success, he should unquestionably have tried, for instinctive and habitual mounted energy was the vital need in South Africa if a mounted enemy was to be not only defeated, but conquered.

At the same time, a close examination of the facts does not appear to justify the assumption of the Times historian that a pursuit would have involved the Boers in utter destruction and defeat. The critic lays excessive and indiscriminating stress on the demoralization of the enemy. He forgets that Botha’s troops and the investing force combined numbered in all about 13,000 men, as against 2,600 of our mounted troops; that there was not much question of further co-operation by our Infantry, who were exhausted by ten days of continuous fighting, and that the encounters which actually did take place between our mounted troops (regulars and irregulars alike) and the Boer rear-guard were not of such a character as to warrant a belief that a general pursuit, begun at the earliest possible moment, would have led to the destruction of the Boer army.

Both the German and British Official Historians correctly point out that, in order to have been really effective, the intervention of the mounted troops should have begun at, or immediately after, the climax of the great Infantry fight on the 27th. Here was just the difficulty: The British attack, delivered on a front of about three miles, was threefold—upon Railway Hill, Inniskilling Hill and Pieter’s Hill, the latter representing the extreme Boer left, the only quarter at which the mounted troops could possibly have intervened. The two first positions were stormed in magnificent style by the Infantry, supported by a tremendous fire of Artillery, and were won at about 5 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. respectively—that is, very late in the afternoon. On the left, at Pieter’s Hill, the Boers still stood desperately at bay. It was not till 6.30, in the 159growing dusk, that the southern, or nearest, crest of the hill, held by the Standerton and Heidelberg commandos, was carried by a final charge of 300 Irish Fusiliers, who lost a third of their strength engaged and had all their officers killed or wounded. The northern part of the hill was still obstinately held when the battle came to an end, and was evacuated only during the night.

According to the “Official History,” the same unyielding attitude was shown ............