President Steyn arrives with reenforcements—Steyn and De la Rey overrule Cronje, and select Magersfontein as battlefield— Description of entrenchments—Disposition of Boer forces—Feint of Free State commandoes deceives Methuen—Ineffective two days' artillery attack by British—Cronje's speech to his soldiers—Gives order to fire on approaching Highlanders—Their annihilation—Fate of fifty of the Scandinavian Corps— Incidents of the battle—English and Boer losses—Methuen magnifies his enemy's force—London "Standard" on Boer humanity—Burial of the dead.
The three battles of the week, terminating in the sanguinary encounter at Modder River, fixed the excited attention of the civilized world upon Methuen's effort to reach Kimberley. General White's reverses in Natal had prepared the public for a similar development of successful Boer resistance against another English army, and, tho the accounts of the Belmont, Enslin, and Modder River fights were mainly supplied from British sources, it was plainly seen that Methuen's victories were of a Pyrrhic character, and were enticing him forward towards the growing risk of a serious disaster.
The main body of the Boer forces retired eastward by the north bank of the Riet River after the battle of the 28th of November, and laagered near Jaeobsdal; a commando of the Free Staters going north along the railway to Scholtznek as a strong patrol to guard the line to Kimberley. Cronje and De la Rey remained at Jacobsdal for two days, and then moved across the Modder and reached Scholtznek, by a march west, past Magersfontein.
Scholtznek is an elevated flat-topped ridge, connecting two higher kopjes which bend southward at the extremities; one side sloping down to the veldt north of Magersfontein, and the other descending in a similar direction west of the railway; the line running in between, and crossing over to the Nek to Spytfontein, which is between Modder River Junction and Kimberley.
President Steyn came from Bloemfontein to Scholtznek to encourage the burghers in their resolve to prevent the relief of Rhodes' headquarters. He succeeded in obtaining for Cronje about 1,500 more men from the south, and from around Kimberley; the advent of Christian De Wet to the lines before the latter city enabling the investment to be continued by a much smaller force. In fact, Colonel Kekewich and his garrison of 4,000 men were kept within the limits of their investment by 2,000 Boers, while Cronje and De la Rey were fighting the battle of Magersfontein. Cronje's entire force in this battle amounted to close on 5,000 men, with 3 (7.5 cm.) Krupp guns, 3 pom-poms, and 1 old Krupp, under the control of Major Albrecht. The Transvaalers included men of the Potchefstroom, Bloemof, and Gatsrand commandoes, numbering, with a small Scandinavian brigade, about 2,500 burghers. The Free State Boers were chiefly from the Bloemfontein, Hoopstadt, Winburg, Boshof, Jacobsdal, and Ladybrand districts; in all, some 2,000 men, with about 500 Afrikander volunteers, mainly from Griqualand West.
A Kriegsraad was held at Scholtznek to consider the plan of action by which the further advance of Methuen should be met. General Cronje was in favor of making the position of Scholtznek the next battle-ground. To this proposal De la Rey was strongly opposed. He referred to the fact that the burghers had fought better in the entrenched positions on the low ground at Modder River than on the kopjes at Belmont and Enslin, and that the English had suffered greater loss at the last than at the previous battles. He also insisted that, from a purely strategical point of view, it would be wiser to fight Methuen with the Scholtznek positions to fall back upon in the event of a defeat than to select those kopjes for the field of a final encounter, with Kimberley immediately behind them. He favored the stand being made a few miles nearer the Modder, at some " rands " or ridges which ran westward from the railway, parallel with the Modder River, and distant some three miles north of that stream. Cronje was imperiously in favor of his own plan, and the intervention of President Steyn had to be invoked to decide between the rival proposals of the two generals. Mr. Steyn gave his decision emphatically in favor of De la Rey, and Magersfontein was accordingly chosen for the next encounter with Methuen's army.
Trenches were dug at the base of the ridges, right across from the railway, and away east to where the kopje slopes downward in the direction of the river. These entrenchments were some five feet deep and three wide, and gave complete shelter to the burghers; a screen of mimosa- and vaal-bushes being placed a few feet in front of the pits, to hide the earth which the digging of the deep trenches had piled on the ground, and also to conceal the entrenched riflemen from view.
On the top and behind the ridges, strong sangars and trenches were likewise built, and with special structures for the guns, which commanded both the railway and the pass running from the plain through the Boer position on to Scholtznek. Behind the kopje the ground dipped a little for a mile or two, and then rose again in the direction of the higher hill at Spytfontein.
These trenches and positions were constantly occupied every night from the 5th to the 10th of December by Cronje's forces, under the most rigorous system of inspection. Every other man in the line of trenches slept for two hours, while his neighbor, Mauser in hand, waited for the signal from the sentinels in advance of the lines which was to tell of the enemy's approach. The sleepers awoke and resumed the vigil, while their comrades slept in turn. At 3.30 each morning the whole line was alert, and an inspection of the enemy's position at the river junction was made to ascertain if any forward movement was in preparation. If no sign of such movement was seen, the whole force left the trenches and retired behind the hills, where they either slept during the daytime or attended to the duties of the commandoes. The English balloons always found Cronje's men in these daily locations, away north and east of the concealed trenches.
General Cronje's laager was five miles northeast of Magersfontein, where Mrs. Cronje and other officers' wives and friends were encamped. He retired there each night early, and was found back again in the lines inspecting the positions regularly at two o'clock every morning.
The Federal forces were disposed as follows over lines extending fully three miles: The extreme left of Cronje's position reached almost to the river, and was held by General De la Rey with a section of the Transvaalers and some Free State burghers. The brave but ill-fated Scandinavian Corps, under Field Cornet Flygare, occupied a post of observation in advance of De la Rey, on some rising ground. Next to De la Rey's men, Cronje's burghers occupied the trenches immediately under the ridge, and as far as the pass. The Hoopstadt, Kroonstadt, Bloemfontein, Boshof, and other Free Staters, with the Colonial Volunteers, lined the ridges further west, crossing the railway and extending to Basset's Farm, where the old road from Modder River Junction mounted to Scholtz nek, on the way to Kimberley.
The guns were behind the ridges dominating the railway and road, in between the positions held by the Free State and Transvaal burghers.
Lord Methuen rested his forces at Modder River Junction from the 29th of November to the 9th of the following month. His losses so far had been fully ten per cent, of his entire strength, and the advance from his base at De Aar had rendered his line of communications longer and weaker as his progress towards Kimberley increased. There was, therefore, a double reason why he should await reenforcements before making his next attempt to get past the opposing forces in his front. Both general and troops had~also learned something of the fighting qualities of their opponents, and the respect which these had enforced after three stubbornly-contested engagements and 1,000 British casualties rendered additional help in men and guns a necessity for the task in hand.
Accordingly, the Highland Brigade, under General Wauchope, a regiment of Lancers, Australian and Canadian Volunteers, and other levies, were despatched from Cape Town, together with two additional batteries of artillery, including a 4.7 naval gun, throwing a fifty-pound lyddite shell. Methuen's force, on the eve of his attack on Cronje, comprised close on 14,000 of the flower of the British army, including Guards and Highland regiments. He had a total of 38 field pieces.
Methuen has been blamed by military critics for not having made his next move forward over the veldt, west of the railway line and of Scholtznck, rather than by the way of Magersfontein. Obviously, other things being equal, that would have been the route of least difficulties, in the shape of kopjes and strong positions; and, for these reasons, the least advantageous for Cronje, with his relatively small opposing forces. The English general was compelled, however, to make the security of his communications a governing factor in his movements, and this fact enabled Cronje and De la Rey so to maneuver their commandoes, a few days previous to the 11th of December, as to force Methuen to fight over the ground on which the Boer generals had planned the theater of the next encounter.
On the 8th of December a column of 800 burghers splendidly mounted, composed of Free State Boers of the Fauresmith and Jacobsdal commandoes, with Colonial Volunteers, and led by Commandant Lubbe, crossed the Modder and Biet rivers, east of the Federal laager, under cover of the night, and swept southward, as a saddle commando, on Enslin. The enemy were completely surprised at this appearance of a strong force south of their camp at Modder River Junction, and were induced, in consequence, to strengthen their position at that point. This reconnaissance also compelled Methuen to abandon all idea of moving forward by any route which would leave his right flank exposed to an attack by what he believed to be a cooperating Boer force operating against his line of communications. After having created this impression for the purposes of their plans, the flying column was back again at Magersfontein on the night of the 10th.
On the early morning of Saturday, the Rev. Mr. Du Toit, a young Afrikander clergyman, was conducting a religious service behind the kopje which flanked the pass from the veldt over the ridge, when the boom of a large cannon was heard from the direction of the enemy, and as the word " Amen" was pronounced, ending the service, a lyddite shell burst just beyond the circle of the burgher congregation. No one was hit. Methuen's 4.7 naval gun had opened the battle of Magersfontein. During the whole of Saturday and Sunday the bombardment of the Boer positions continued, indicating in the stereotyped manner of the enemy that the time for a general attack was close at hand. There was no response of any kind from Cronje's guns. All was still as death, from the top of Scholtznek, in the rear, to the sunlit banks of the Modder River, with never a sign or a sound to speak of the presence of battery or Boer, of men or Mausers, where the rocks were rent asunder and the veldt was plowed by a rain of shells. Down in the trenches below the ridge men smoked their pipes in security, clutched their rifles, and lay still. Away on the north slope of the ridges, and in the secure shelter of Scholtznek, officers and men viewed the English batteries in perfect safety, and awaited the hour when the men behind the English guns should come within reach of bullets, when accounts should be settled for the killing of the wounded at Modder River, and for " the pig-sticking " of Elandslaagte. The results of Methuen's two days' artillery attack were three Boers killed and about double the number wounded.
At midnight on Sunday General Cronje was discovered in the trenches. He had ridden over from the laager in the rain with the intelligence that the attack by the enemy's infantry was to be made in a few hours. The entire lines were manned at once, and-every burgher and officer placed in position. The general inspected every point from the east to the west of his lines, and had every necessary preparation made long before the dark shadows of the doomed Highlanders were to be seen carelessly marching into the jaws of awaiting death.
The evening previously Cronje had received a telegram from Commandant-General Joubert reporting the progress of events in Natal, and sending a message of encouragement to the western commandoes, urging them to fight bravely for " Land un Volk." General Cronje read the message to his officers and men, after which he addressed them in the following few characteristic words:
" Burghers—You have listened to the general's telegram. Before you stands here Cronje. You know him. From the early days he was classed among the forefighters. How many bombs went over his head, or fell before his feet? How many bullets whistled right and left of him? And here he still stands before you, unharmed! Where is your faith? Believe that no bullet will hit you or do you any harm, without the will of God! Where is your faith? You must not continue to lie in the trenches, but when it is necessary you must upsaddle your horses, and storm the English in the flats."
There has been much controversy in Boer as in English circles as to the nature of the signal which warned the burghers of the approach of the Highland Brigade. The theory of a " flashing light" carried by Boer scouts who marched with the Highlanders, is too absurd for any but British war correspondent purposes. Such scouts would have been shot down along with the enemy by their own friends in the entrenchments. It has been claimed for three of the Hoopstadt commando, Cornelis Greyling and two Magnus brothers, that they were the first to discern the forms of the Tommies in the mist, and to warn the burghers with the fire of their rifles. 1 was assured, however, by both President Steyn, Judge Hertzog, and the Bev; Mr. Marquardt, who were present during the battle, that the first discovery of the enemy's movement was made by General Cronje himself, who, on going his rounds in that direction, saw the troops approaching, and gave the order to fire which sealed the fate of the Black Watch and of their brave general.
It has been related in English versions of this battle that a barbed wire fence formed part of General Cronje's defenses, and that it was a contact with this obstruction in the darkness of the early morning of December 11 by the Black Watch which gave the alarm to the Boer lines. There was no such special wire fence in existence. Any such obstacle, at the point where Wauchope and his Highlanders were first fired upon, would have tended to frustrate the design for which the trenches were so well concealed. This plan was to allow the enemy to approach as near as possible to the base of the ridge, without suspecting the presence of the burghers in the rifle-trenches below, and it is obvious that a fence of any kind built across the veldt 300 or 400 yards from the entrenchments would defeat this purpose. There was an ordinary wire fence on the farm of Magersfontein, but it had been there for years, and was intended to enclose a sheep and cattle ranch, and not to serve as part of a plan of battle. This boundary fence played nothing save an accidental part in the events of the 11th of December.
The enemy's plan of attack was to move the Highland Brigade forward on Sunday night, parallel with the Modder, and then wheel to the left towards one of two passes which led from the veldt through the ridges, on towards the eastern slope of Scholtznek; the object evidently being to clear and hold the ridges for, the advance of the artillery and supporting columns, by which the hills ahead were to be assailed, and the Boers driven from the way to Kimberley. Neither Methuen nor Wauchope had calculated upon finding Cronje's center entrenched where they believed his outposts or brandwachts would alone be met with, and hence the fate of the Highland Brigade was sealed.
This brigade was made up of the Black Watch, the Highland Light Infantry, the Argylls, Seaforths, and Sutherlands. From the English accounts of Wauchope's advance towards the passes in the ridge, it appears that his men were kept in quarter column formation until they were fired upon. This fact reflects no blame upon the general, under the circumstances. The darkness of the early morning, the difficulty of keeping a large body of men in touch with each other while moving over strange ground, coupled with the ignorance of Methuen's intelligence officers as to the true location of the Boer lines, explain the otherwise culpable negligence of the order of march. The ridges ahead were manifestly intended to be the cover for the first operations of Wauchope and his men, and the open space immediately south of these ridges would have given him the occasion and opportunity for deploying his brigade previous to the ascent of the pass, had he not been surprised. It, however, showed on the unfortunate general's part a strange ignorance of Boer methods of warfare to approach within a couple of hundred yards of elevated ground, presumably only a few miles in front of his enemy's main position, without preparing for a possible attack, even by outposts.
It was about half-past three in the morning of Monday when General Cronje, on making his rounds, noted the silent approach of the enemy. The space in front of the trenches was open southward to the river, with nothing but the level veldt between the Boers and their foes, except here and there a vaal-bush or a clump of mimosa shrubs. The falling rain obscured the struggling efforts of the dawn to spread itself over the landscape with the light that heralds the morning, and the forms of the marching soldiers were not discernible in the gloom; but the heavy tramp of 4,000 men could be heard coming nearer and nearer, until the mass of troops looming out of the mist like a wall of moving matter, approached within 100 yards of the entrenchments. Then a hurricane of pelting leaden hail leaped out of the darkness, sweeping from right to left, and the black animated wall fell down, and groans and cries from wounded men rent the air. Out from under the ridges and from the trenches to the right came a ceaseless and merciless torrent of lead, the bushes concealing the flashes from the Mausers, but the missiles plowing their way through the now falling and wildly rushing ranks of the doomed brigade. In half a minute after the signal to fire had been given by Cronje, over 700 of the Highlanders were strewn like swaths of grass before the mowers on the plain; among them being the ill-fated Wauchope, who was shot dead in the first volley. The fiction woven around a dying message was absurd on the face of it. Three bullets had passed through his body, and no sound ever escaped his lips that could be heard amidst the detonating storm of the burgher fire.
No man born of woman could stand against such a fusillade from out of the unknown positions beyond, and, "with the whole first and second lines of their column struck down as by an earthquake, the Highland Brigade broke and fled from the field. Many had thrown themselves prostrate on the veldt after the first shock, and escaped the fate of their comrades for a time; but as the moving hours began to lift the mist from the plain these Tommies became visible objects to the fierce eyes behind the vaal-bushes, and death continued to tell the bead-roll of his British victims that early morning. Pity it was that Celtic blood should have paid so dear a penalty for so ignoble a cause, and that men from Highland glens and isles, sons of once liberty-loving clans, should be the fallen foemen of a brave little Protestant nation, fighting for life and liberty against the hereditary enemy of " the Celtic Fringe."
The troops in the rear of the Black Watch rushed back in the disorder of a panic from the scene of so terrible a reception. Attempts were made to rally them again, but it could be seen from the trenches as the light of the growing day increased that these efforts were in vain. The lesson of that awful minute or two had done its work. The battle of Magersfontein had already been fought and won.
The Seaforth Highlanders were rallied about seven o'clock through the imprudent action of the Scandinavian Corps. Some fifty of this body, under Field Cornet Flygare, were about 1,000 yards in advance of De la Rey's trenches, on a piece of rising ground with some vaal-bushes upon it. They had occupied that position as an outpost to watch against any turning movement by the river against De la Rey's trenches, during Saturday and Sunday. On seeing the Highlanders decimated and demoralized, after the fire from the entrenchments, Flygare, Baron Helge Fagerskold, and other young members of the corps, believing the enemy were quitting the field, moved from their position out into the veldt, and opened fire upon the nearest body of Scotchmen. These chanced to be Seaforths, and, seeing how few their assailants were, they immediately advanced upon the Scandinavians. It was fully 800 against half a hundred, but the Norsemen nobly, if rashly, held their ground, and were surrounded and cut to pieces; 39 out of 53 being killed and wounded, seven taken prisoners; the other seven, who were in charge of the horses, escaping into De la Rey's lines in the rear.
The gallant Scandinavians fought like lions, many of them being found the following day with three or four dead or wounded Englishmen around them, showing how dearly they had made the enemy pay for the lives taken. Both Field Cornet Flygare and Baron Fagerskold were found stripped and robbed. According to a statement made by Charles Uggla, President of the Scandinavian Organization in the Transvaal, " the rifle of Carl Albers Olsson lay by his side, and, in addition to several bayonet wounds, he had also three rifle wounds. Fifty of our corps took part in the fight, and only seven came out unscathed. We found that the bodies of our men were all robbed, and Commandant Flygare was stark naked; even his spectacles had been removed/''
The Scandinavians did not fall unavenged. News of the unequal encounter they were waging was brought to the Boer lines by the men in charge of the horses, whereupon the Ficksburg men and 100 other burghers under De Villiers leaped into their saddles and dashed across the field, taking the Seaforths in the flank when retiring after the fight with the brave but impetuous Flygare and his decimated corps. The burghers returned to the ridges, bringing about thirty Highlanders as prisoners, having shot the others back from the field.
Another daring feat was carried through in the midst of the terrific bombardment by the enemy's entire artillery when the Gordons were sent forward to attack De la Rey's position. This point was held by some of the Fauresmith, Boshof, and Ladybrand men, along with Transvaal burghers, and Cronje ordered 300 men from the ridges behind the center to ride to De la Rey's assistance. This they did, right across the space which was being swept by Methuen's guns, but, before they had reached the men whom they were intended to reenforce, the converging Mauser fire from the center and flank entrenchments had driven the Gordons pell-mell back behind their artillery, in a veritable sauve qui peut.
One of the most remarkable features of the fearful struggle in front of the ridges was the silence of the Boer guns. Not a. shot had been fired by them from the time the Black Watch were mowed down until the enemy commenced to retire from the battle-field with ranks hopelessly shattered and broken. There were the crouching lines of demoralized troops, scattered over the face of the veldt 200 or 300 yards away; unable to go further back, afraid to approach any nearer the circle of fire and death which the Mausers behind the vaal-bushes had drawn in the blood of England's soldiers across the impurpled plain. Three pom-poms and three Krupps were away a little to the west, guarding the Boer right, the railway, and the road to Seholtznek, but near enough to sweep the open space now dotted with khaki-colored prostrate forms. Not a shot nor a sign came from Major Albrecht's artillery! The English guns thundered from behind the enemy's lines; battery after battery raining shells upon the ridges, the hills behind them, upon the entire length of Cronje's lines from where at Basset's Farm the gallant Hoopstadt burghers under Commandant Greyling fired from the cover of their sangars, to where the marksmen of the Gatsrand and Potchefstroom had strewn the ground in front of their trenches with British dead—naval guns and howitzers, field pieces, mountain batteries, and Maxims rained shrapnel, lyddite, and bullets for hours. But no Boer gun spoke in reply. There lay the lines, unshaken and unbroken, where Cronje's 5,000 farmers held at bay 13,000 foemen and forty guns, with no weapon but the Mauser rifle. It was a magnificent and unparalleled display of superb coolness; that reliance upon calm courage and steady nerves and ready aim to beat back so great a force from the ridge they had confidently and proudly hoped to cross over the broken ranks of the Boers.
After this state of things had continued for several hours, and ineffectual attempts had been made by Guards and Gordons and Lancers to make some impression on the Boer lines, General Cronje, with seven adjutants or members of his staff took a stand on the extreme east of De la Rey's position to judge of the possibility of an attack upon the enemy's right flank along the river. At that very time the Lancers were feeling the way for a similar movement round De la Rey's left. Suddenly, on rounding a stony elevation, about a mile eastward of the Boer entrenchments, a troop of some 200 Lancers were sighted only 400 yards away. The distance to De la Rey's position was too far for any thought of immediate help from there, and the Lancers had seen the mounted burghers emerge from the back of the small kopje. Betreat was possible and easy, but Cronje's voice rang out in his peremptory tones: " Schiet hulle terug! "—" Shoot them back! " The seven burghers dismounted, spread themselves over the stony hillock, and opened fire upon the Lancers, emptying saddles at every shot. Cronje, with his inseparable karwats in hand, sat his horse while his body-guard held oft the Lancers, who, thinking that the hill was hiding a big force of Boers behind those who were firing, wheeled round and galloped back to their lines.
The remnants of the Black Watch and Seaforths absolutely refused to advance again into the death-trap of the open space, where their comrades lay stark in death, and others cried in vain for water and help. It is no reflection on their courage that they left the field cursing the authors of the disaster. The Gordons had been led away round to the right from the place where Wauchope and his men bad fallen in the first onset of the fray. So had the Guards, in order that they should not be unnerved by the sight of the heaps of their slain and stricken comrades; but the way they were taken so as to escape this unmanning spectacle landed them where De la Rey's entrenchments were on the right flank and where Boos with his rotchefstroomers held them in front. It was a greater blunder than that into which bad direction had led the unfortunate Wauchope and his men in the early morning, and, on a converging fire being opened upon them, the Guards first and Gordons after turned and ran from the foes they could neither see nor face.
While this panic lasted some field pieces of the enemy's artillery which had been moved forward to within 2,000 yards of the Boer entrenchments, to support the advance of the Guards and Gordons, were left on the veldt, after these regiments had retreated. The men who served them were caught in the rush of the Guards backward, and were swept along. The guns remained there between both forces for hours; Cronje unable with the fewness of his men and guns to bring them in, with 30 other British guns 1,000 yards or so in their rear, while the enemy's forces were too demoralized to attempt their rescue. Finally, batteries in the rear came up behind the abandoned guns, while ambulance wagons were placed in front, and in the full view of the burghers on the ridges the guns were thus rescued, the mules from one Bed Cross wagon being unhitched and attached to the limber of one of the guns.
It was now well on in the afternoon, and it was evident to Cronje " and De la Rey that the enemy was thoroughly beaten all along the line. The renewed activity of Methuen's guns was meant as a cover for the retreat of the forces on Modder River, and Major Albrecht was at last permitted after the impatience of the day to let loose his few guns to hasten the departure of the beaten British army from the most disastrous field English troops had fought upon for fifty years. Thus, after a silence of fully eight hours in so sanguinary a battle, did the final act in Cronje's plan of defensive aggression develop itself, in the use of his few guns upon a retreating enemy when the fire of Krupp and pom-pom could no longer direct, by the evidence of their positions in the Boer lines, the enemy's overwhelming artillery to the places where the deadlier weapon of the rifle with its fifteen shots per minute built an impregnable wall of fire and death before the British legions. There on the ridge, close to the pass through which "Wauchope was to have marched his men on that fateful morning, Piet Cronje stood, whip in hand, with the fierce light of triumph in his eyes, gazing exultingly across the plain as 12,000 or 13,000 of England's best troops and seven batteries of her guns were driven from the field by the defenders of Transvaal liberty. Turning to his secretary, Cronje dictated the following brief message to President Kruger:
" God has given a great victory to the Federal forces. The enemy were repulsed three times with fearful losses. Our casualties were small. The Scandinavian Corps lost heavily.
" Cronje."
A full and complete account of the total Boer losses in the battle of Magersfontein was published, name by name, on January 15, 1900, in the Free State and Transvaal press; the number of killed being 71, and of wounded 165. Of these no less than 19 killed and 20 wounded belonged to the heroic little band of Scandinavian Uitlanders who fell before the onslaught of the Seaforth Highlanders.
The English losses have been variously given at figures ranging from 1,000 to 1,500. The Highland Brigade alone left 700 men on the field. Wauchope's Black Watch lost 300 men and 20 officers.
Lord Methuen's puerile attempt to minimize the significance of his defeat by asserting that there were " 16,000 Boers in front of him" at Magersfontein stands ridiculed in absolute refutation by the Blue Book " African Despatches (Vol. I., pp. 17,18), February, 1901," where Lord Roberts gives the names of Commandants and Field Cornets, and names and numbers of commandoes of Cronje's army on its surrender at Paardeberg, two months after Magersfontein. The total strength is given at 3,919 men, with 150 wounded. Adding to these figures the number of killed and wounded at Paardeberg, and the casualties at Magersfontein, it will be found that they correspond with the estimate of 5,000 men which I have given of Cronje's united forces at the battle of the 11th December, allowing for 500 or 600 Colonial Volunteers and Transvaalers who took part in both battles, but were not caught in the trap of Paardeberg.
The (London) " Standard " war correspondent, writing from the battle-field (January 8, 1900), bore the following testimony to the humanity of the victorious Boers:
" In the intervals of armistice which were subsequently arranged, the enemy behaved with great courtesy. They had given water to our wounded of the Highland Brigade early in the morning after the battle. These poor fellows had lain all day Monday under heavy fire and hot sun, and all Monday night, which was particularly cold, without water, and they had had no food since Sunday evening. The Boer Commander, General Cronje, was exceedingly courteous and kind, assisting in every way possible. He further offered 50 burghers to help to bury our dead. Lord Methuen sent a letter of thanks to General Cronje for his courtesy."
On the day after the battle, as the Boers were in the act of assisting the burial of their dead enemies, the naval gun at Methuen's camp opened fire upon the Boer positions, despite the armistice which Cronje had granted. The English chaplain had to ride back to the British lines to have the firing stopped.
The English dead were very badly buried, and General Cronje had to communicate with Lord Methuen on Wednesday to point out that the work was so hastily done that limbs were protruding from the too shallow pits in which the bodies had been interred. I was solemnly assured by the Bev. Mr. Marquardt, of the Dutch Beformed Church, who was present during the scene, which he described with a shudder, that the second burial party sent by Methuen were all intoxicated while performing the gruesome task of re-burying their comrades. Drink was, it appears, deemed to be necessary for the burying party, owing to the rapid decomposition of the bodies after lying some days in the broiling sun. Some of the Tommies jumped on the covering of the pits so as to press down the bulging carcases of the dead. A horrible and sickening scene, truly; but it is only by the painting of war in its true and ghastly character, and not in its tinsel trappings, that the victims of war—the working men—may be induced not to lend their support to those who wage war for other than noble and patriotic ends.
The tragic but true soldierly death of General Wauehope greatly impressed the entire Federal forces, officers and men. Every mark of respect was shown to the body on the battle-field; his dirk and other personal belongings being reverently preserved until they could be forwarded to the dead chieftain's family. The Landrost of Hoopstadt, into whose custody they were given for safety, authorized me to say in my letters to the Dublin " Freeman's Journal" that these mementoes of a gallant foeman's fall would be sent by himto General Wauchope's relatives whenever applied for. Intimation to this effect was made after my return from the Transvaal to the British Secretary for War, through the medium of a question in the House of Commons.
I must now leave General Cronje and his great victory until, in the course of this story, the fatal retreat to Paardeberg has to be related.
