Buller advances to relief of Ladysmith—Botha withdraws to north bank of the Tuqela—British exaggeration of strength of Boer position—disposition of Boer forces—spectacular advance of British—Their reception at Langwani—The repulse at the bridle drift—Hildyard's division beaten back at center—brave but fatal rally of Hart's brigade-Boers capture Colonel Long's batteries—Botha's report of the battle—importance of the victory.
General Buller reached Natal on the 25th of November, and lost no time in ordering an advance of all the forces he could collect to the relief of Ladysmith. The plan of operations which he was compelled to adopt to this end was not the plan of campaign which he had contemplated being able to carry out. The Orange Free State, rather than Natal, had been the way which he had intended to take to Pretoria. It was the line of advance marked out by all the military critics, and by general anticipation, as the most favorable for the British forces to follow. The English Commander-in-Chief found himself, therefore, forced to face a situation which had been the result of the political and military blunders committed in North Natal, and which rendered the relief of General "White and his beleaguered garrison in Ladysmith the paramount undertaking of the moment. All other plans but this one had to be put on one side, and the British general faced the task thus forced upon him with determined promptness.
Meanwhile Botha had withdrawn his commandoes to the north of the Tugela. He lost no time in making ready for the attack which was to be delivered by his antagonist. The railway bridge had been destroyed; the wagon bridge over the river being left intact, with care taken to have its approaches from the Colenso side commanded from well-selected positions on the northern bank.
From the 30th of November until the eve of the battle the opposing forces were virtually in sight of each other, the British tents between Frere and Chieveley being visible from the kopjes to the north of the river, where the positions of Botha's burghers could be easily seen from the level country south of Colenso. In fact, General White, fourteen miles in Botha's rear, was able to communicate with General Buller at Chieveley, eight miles south of Colenso, by flash-light at night and heliograph by day, so that Botha and his force were almost midway between two British armies having a combined strength of 33,000 men, and, at least, 12 batteries of artillery.
Colenso itself, which has given a name to one of the most disastrous battles for the English in the war, is a little village with only a dozen houses, and stands a few hundred yards south of the river, in the direction of Chieveley. Chieveley is some eight miles further south, on the railway line to Estcourt, the veldt rising a little from the river in a slope upward for about three miles, when it dips again on nearing Chieveley. Between Colenso and the river the ground is level and is covered, but not thickly, with clumps of mimosa trees and other scrubby plants. These trees, however, offered no effective shelter for the attacking army, as the kopjes overlooking the Tugela dominated the entire ground from the river outward, on to hills around Chieveley.
The Tugela near Colenso is a steep-banked river 150 yards wide, and was about four feet in water at the time of the battle. It was crossed by two bridges, a railway and a wagon bridge—about three-quarters of a mile apart—the former being destroyed by Botha after Buller had advanced from Estcourt, leaving the latter as the only structural means of passage from the south to the north side.
There was, however, a bridle drift some three or four miles to the west of the wagon bridge, fordable when the river was not in flood. These two vulnerable points were carefully and, as the sequel showed, adequately guarded in the plan of defense which Botha had prepared after his return from the reconnaissance to Estcourt.
The northern bank of the Tugela at Colenso offered no such formidable obstacle to General Buller as his own and the British war correspondents' descriptions would indicate. There is a consistent exaggeration of the natural strength of the positions held by Botha's small army in all the English reports of the battle; the obvious purpose being to magnify the difficulties which General Buller had to face in a fight which proved so disastrous to his own generalship and to the prestige of the British army. In all the accounts of this war, positions are made formidable or otherwise as a general required them to appear in reporting a victory or a reverse. In explaining the military considerations which induced General White to remain at Ladysmith, after his failure to arrest Joubert's march southward, rather than to fall back on the Tugela, Lord Roberts (South African Despatches, Vol. II., p. 13) wrote: " As Sir George White explains in his despatch, the Tugela, at that time of the year, was not a formidable defensive obstacle." Yet, when General Botha held this same river at Colenso with 5,000 Boers against General Buller and 23,000 British, it became, in the military view of all the British generals and all the war correspondents, one of the most formidable positions which English troops could possibly face.
Botha's lines were undoubtedly strong, but more through the ability with which he had planned their defense than from the natural advantages which they offered to his small force. The two photographic views on the following pages will enable the reader, who may have read General Buller's despatch, or some other English account of the battle, to contrast the actual scene of the battle-field of Colenso, drawn by the sun, with the picture of " mountains," hills, and kopjes which figured in the descriptive details of British chroniclers of the engagement. Behind (north of) the river, at a distance of four or five miles, a high range of hills bar the" way to Ladysmith, but these mountains were not occupied by the Boers in the fight at Colenso. They offered a strong defensive line to fall back upon, in the event of a reverse at the river, but they were otherwise of no advantage to Botha in the battle of the 15th of December. These hills, however, are represented in most of the English pictures of the battle-field as " the formidable positions " which General Buller attempted to storm and carry with his troops!
The Tugela at Colenso, as all along its course, flows in a zigzag channel, the hanks on both sides being somewhat serrated in their formation. The land on both the north and south sides falls abruptly to the level of the bed of the stream, and, while this fact, coupled with the width of the river opposite the village, would expose a force endeavoring to cross to great disadvantage during the attempt, on the day of the battle there was no such insuperable obstacle either in the depth of the river or in the nature of its banks as has been so graphically described in the British version of the fight, a fact which will be proved conclusively in the story of the engagement.
The hog-backed hill seen immediately north of the broken bridge in picture No. 1 was " Fort Wylie " in the accounts of the fight. It was deeply trenched on the top and on both sides, which work, however, was done by the English when in occupation of Colenso in October and the early part of November. The character of these fortifications will be noted in the view of the west side of Fort Wylie in picture No. 2.
Botha's center extended from Fort Wylie to the wagon bridge, about a mile west from the railway bridge. On Fort Wylie he placed men of the Krugersdorp commando, under Field Cornet Van Wyk, and Vryheiders (Botha's own commando), under his brother-in-law, Cherrie Emmet. These men lined the trenches on the sides and the top of the hill overlooking the river. The Heidelberg commando came next in position, westward. Next to thefee, and about midway between the two bridges, Acting-Commandant Oosthuizen, of Krugersdorp, and Field Cornet Kemp were posted on a round ridge, with another picked body of riflemen. Near this latter position Pretorius had two quick-firing Krupp guns. It was from the right of his center, near the positions held by Oosthuizen, that Botha directed the operations of his small army.
His right extended further west from the wagon bridge to the bridle drift, three miles down the river. The Tugela, near this point, forms a bend north of a complete half circle, the drift being near this bend. Entrenchments were dug each side of the bend, a little back from the banks, so as to place any force attempting to ford the river between a cross-fire. The Swaziland commando, under Christian Botha, and a force of Zoutpansberg burghers held the left-hand side of the bend, while the Johannesburg and Boxburg men, under Ben Viljoen, lined the opposite side. North of these, on the Ladysmith road, the Middelburg men and the Free Staters were posted, to guard against any attempted turning movement west of Viljoen's position. They took no active part in the fight. Northeast of these, some 5,000 yards back from the river, two fifteen-pound Creusot guns were placed, which commanded the river front from the wagon bridge to the bridle drift.
The left wing of Botha's lines extended to Langwani Hill, about four miles east of Fort Wylie. This hill is on the south side of the Tugela, and was therefore detached from the main line of Boer defense. The river at this point turns sharply north and cuts the range, separating Langwani from the parent formation north of the river. This commanding hill was the key of the positions on the Tugela at Colenso, and had General Butler's tactical capacity enabled him to recognize this fact, and to have ordered his plan of battle with the turning and capture of Langwani as his first and governing operation, instead of making a frontal attack on the Boer left and center, Botha's position between the two bridges would have been rendered untenable.
Colonel Villebois-Mareuil has mentioned in his diary that it was he who drew General Botha's attention to the vital importance of securing Langwani against a possible plan of attack, such as its position would invite from any force strong enough to carry the hill, and ably led. This may be the correct explanation of the Boer general's precautions, tho he claims credit to himself for having foreseen the strategical value of the hill, and it is almost impossible to imagine so capable a general as Botha has shown himself to be overlooking in any sense the vital necessity of holding Langwani so as to cover and secure his left flank from the certain attack to which it would be open from there.
A dramatic incident in connection with this position forms part of the story of Colenso. With Colonel Villebois-Mareuil as a spectator of the battle was another French officer, Lieutenant Galapaud, of the 9th Chasseurs, who acted as military correspondent to "Le Matin," of Paris. He wrote a brief account of the great Boer victory, and embodied in his report Villebois-Mareuil's view of the vital value of Langwani to any attempt on the part of Buller to cross the Tugela at or near Colenso. This view appeared in the " Matin " early in February, and the next—that is, the fifth —attempt of Buller to reach Ladysmith was made with Langwani Hill as the pivotal point in his plan of operations, and was successful. So convinced was General Botha that Buller had been advised by cable of the opinion thus expressed within the Boer lines, that he caused the following letter to be published in the Boer press:
" Sir—In your issue of the 29th of March last there appears a translation of an extract from a description of the battle of Colenso, which took place on the 15th of December, 1899, and which was published in February last in the French paper "Le Matin.' . . . The extract reads: 'An important point, and where the main attack was expected, was the Langwani Hill, on the southern bank of the Tugela, which was occupied by only some 800 Boers, who were, however, selected from the best shots. Had the British made themselves masters of this position, they would have commanded all the Boer positions on the hank. A couple of British cannon there would mean a flight to us, and a victory to the British. As they were unacquainted with the weakness of this position, we watched it with the greatest anxiety.'
" In February this report was published in the Paris newspaper by some one who knew of the weak points of our position in this hill, and it was not till the 11th of that month that Buller made his attack upon the position, which he had formerly and for some time afterward carefully avoided, as witness Spion Kop, Pont Drift, etc.
" I wish, therefore, through the medium of your paper, to impress most seriously upon correspondents the great need of caution in the furnishing of reports, so that the possibility of advantage being thereby afforded to the enemy may be entirely excluded. I am, etc., C. Sandbehg, Military Secretary and Adjutant of the Act. Com.-General. Smaldeel, 5th April, 1900."
Eight hundred men, made up of Wakkerstroom burghers, with lesser proportions of crack shots from the Utrecht, Standerton, Zoutpansberg, and Ermelo commandoes, were entrenched on Langwani, under the joint command of Joshua Joubert and Commandant Swart, two most capable officers who had already dis-tinguished themselves for capacity and bravery. This body of picked men had one Maxim gun, and no other artillery of any kind. The river bank between Langwani and Fort Wylie was not entrenched, but was watched by the forces at Botha's center. Any attempt on the enemy's part to effect a crossing between the center and left wings would have exposed both his flanks to a destructive Are.
In the dip of the ground behind Botha's center, men of several commandoes were in reserve awaiting the development of the enemy's attack, and available for emergencies. Among these were some of the Johannesburg Police, under Pohlman, and a few men of Blake's Irish Brigade, who had come from the lines around Ladysmith to assist in the defense of the Tugela positions.
The guns, numbering two fifteen-pound Creusots, two quick-firing seven-pound Krupps, and two pom-poms—one irregular battery—were distributed over the lines from the kopje near the wagon bridge to the hill north of the bridle drift, on the wagon road to Ladysmith, Captain Pretorius being in chief charge. There were no guns on Fort Wylie, despite the number of times they were 17" silenced" there, in .the English reports, by Bullcr's batteries. This strong position was-held exclusively by riflemen.
Every preparation having been made* for the coming battle, the order was given by Botha that no response of any kind should be made to the enemy's artillery until the actual assault by his infantry should be delivered. Not a shot was to be fired by gun or Mauser, no light was to be shown at night, nor movement of men by day, that could reveal to English ears or eyes at what place in the seven miles of defensive Boer positions, from Langwani to the bridle drift, guns or men would be ready for the final challenge to the possession of the way to Ladysmith. Confident in the, strength of his position, and in the determination and capacity of his small force to stop effectively the English at Colenso and to turn them back, Botha awaited the onset of his antagonist.
At one o'clock on the morning of the 15th of December scouts brought word to General Botha's tent that the enemy were about to advance. The whole laager was alert in a few moments, and final orders were given to the various officers who were to be in immediate command at the anticipated points of attack. The morning was beautifully clear, with a cloudless South African sky, as the men from Botha's laager, with bandoliers well filled and Mausers charged, took up their allotted positions behind the Tugela. Away south at Chieveley the countless lights of the enemy's camp could be seen, as the British were preparing their forward movement. Gradually these lights began to fade as the brightening dawn stole across the Zululand border, and eager eyes scanned the far-stretching veldt in anxious watchfulness for the active foe. The hours moved slowly, as it seemed, until the fuller light of the awakened day revealed the forward lines of Buller's army marching steadily over the intervening plain. The whole of the enemy's forces could be clearly seen when, at about five o'clock, they began to take the form of well-defined columns of huge proportions, four or five miles south of the village; three of the divisions swinging in the direction of the Boer left, center, and right, along the river.
The scene, as viewed from the threatened kopjes behind the river, was one of unparalleled attraction, as the sun peeped over the eastern hills and sent its rays down upon the embattled British legions proudly marching on their way to the combat. There would be death to many, possibly defeat to all, in that huge disproportionate array of England's might and military pride, now sweeping on in majestic motion, like a resistless flood, over the resounding veldt. It was war in all its spectacular glory, as seen from where the little force of warrior farmers and beardlessboys behind the Tugela gazed with fascinated but fearless eyes, upon the wondrous living picture of 20,000 marching men; and war with all its horrors to the fathers and sons of families who looked upon these thousands of their country's foes whom they must in a few moments meet in the shock of deadly strife.
Suddenly there came from the Boer positions a deep volume of thrilling sound, rolling, as it were, like peals of muffled thunder down from the hills, on towards the river, along which it swept as if in echoing response to some chant of giants from the mountain tops behind, and then died away, leaving a more deathlike stillness in the morning air. It was the morning hymn of the Boer camp; the invocation of Divine help for the cause of " Land un Volk," sung by the older burghers as, rifle in hand, and hearts and minds set on victory, they stood ready to do or die for Transvaal freedom.
" General, the enemy is about to attack! Where are your men?" The speaker was Colonel Villebois-Mareuil, who had ridden rapidly from his tent behind the laager to where Louis Botha was standing, midway between the two bridges, glass to eyes, intently looking at the movements of the British troops as they were beginning to separate into independent columns.
" All right, Colonel," smilingly replied the Boer general. " Buller will find my men in their places, at the right time, have no fear!"
It was to be Louis Botha's day; a day forever memorable in the annals of true military renown, and no general ever looked more confident of victory than did the handsome young farmer as he stood there in the early morning facing his foes with men into whom he had infused his own dauntless spirit and cool determination.
In a few moments a cloud of smoke puffed forth from the rising ground between Chieveley and Colenso, and ten guns of Buller's batteries had opened the fray in a cannonade upon the Boer center. Fort Wylie was the objective of the enemy's artillery, and lyddite shells and shrapnel commenced to pound the river bank and the surrounding ground. The half-formed columns of the advancing troops seemed to pause in their movement to note the effects of their artillery fire. The guns continued to roar their thunderous challenge to the sunlit kopjes 7,000 yards away, but there was no response. The echoes of the naval battery reverberated over the plain, and up among the hills beyond the Tugela, but no sound came back from the belabored entrenchments to indicate the presence there of a solitary foeman or a single gun. All was still in front and beyond the river. Neither sign nor sound gave any evidence of life or motion where, like a tiger crouching in his lair ready for the deadly spring at an approaching elephant, the little burgher army awaited the coming nearer of Britain's hosts.
For half an hour the enemy's guns played upon the center of Botha's position, and then the English right wing, screened by a large force of mounted infantry and cavalry, swung to the east, and went straight for Langwani. This was Barton's and Dundonald's division, and was accompanied by a battery of field artillery. Simultaneously another division of the enemy, composed of infantry, and estimated by Botha to be 4,000 strong, also with artillery, swept southward from Buller's center column, and directed its course for the bridle drift, where Botha's right lay concealed.
The first contact came from Langwani. The enemy's horsemen, in advance of the infantry, trotted across the veldt as if engaged in a riding parade over Salisbury Plain. On they came, halted; a few shots from some Armstrongs at the hill ahead, with no reply; then another move forward, in careless, almost close, formation. Then, when at about 200 yards distance from the base of Langwani, a murderous hail of lead belched forth, sudden as lightning, and swept the first line of riders out of their saddles. Again and again the shots rang out from somewhere in front— from exactly where could not be seen—and the entire column was hurled upon its rear and knocked into utter confusion. The enemy raced back behind his guns, leaving over 150 of his men weltering on the veldt. The shock was terrific, and the more so as the smokeless powder of the Mauser cartridges rendered the deadly marksmen's exact position invisible to the troops sent reeling rearward on their battery and supports.
Meanwhile the engagement had become general all along the line. General Hart's division, composed mainly of three crack Anglo-Irish regiments and the Border Regiment, directed its course across from the rising ground southwest of the village to the bend in the Tugela, west of the bridge, where a crossing at the bridle drift " was " to be made, according to General Clery's order. Incredible as it may seem, the men marched along, with officers by their side and generals in command, in quarter-column formation! The line of the advance was almost level; there was no shelter in the character of the ground except a few mimosa bushes between the marching men and the bank across the river where an enemy might be found, but notwithstanding all this the obedient Tommies swung along with rifles on their shoulders, as if the occasion was one of an Easter Monday maneuver near Brighton, and not that of a deadly game of actual war in South Africa.
On the Britishers came towards the drift, the Fusiliers and Connaught Bangers in front, and the Border Regiment and Inniskillings behind. Their pace was being watched in breathless excitement by eyes now inflamed with the passion for killing, which war feeling begets even among psalm-singing Christians, and sights were being adjusted to fire when the troops should reach a certain spot on their way to the river bank, some 300 yards' distance from the Tugela. Like the men of Buller's right wing, they appeared, as seen from the Boer trenches, to be oblivious of real danger. They came along in careless gait, nearer and nearer in their fateful march, until about 600 yards only separated them from the men with leveled rifles behind the river.
There are two explanations given of the mistake which the officer in charge of the Boer Krupp to the left of Christian Botha's position here made in discharging his weapon before the enemy had approached nearer to the river. One is that he saw a movement in the enemy's column as if the more or less close formation, of the approaching Tommies was about to be changed in consequence of the fire which was heard from the direction of the Boer left, and he was afraid of losing so tempting a target as the blundering English officers had thus created. The other explanation is, that the Boer center had, as he thought, given the signal for attack by their fire upon the forces in front of them. The temptation theory is the more probable, under the circumstances. The disobedience of orders was only too natural in face of so inviting an occasion, but it saved the advancing English from what would have otherwise been a far more deadly fire had they been allowed to approach a few hundred yards nearer the entrance to the drift.
The Boer gunner had, however, done his work well. His first shell exploded in the midst of the Dublin Fusiliers, as they were in the act of obeying the belated orders of the officer in command, and deploying; twenty of them being killed or wounded on the spot. The Krupp shell was instantly supplemented by repetitions and by volleys of rifle fire, and in a few minutes the whole front line of the advancing brigade was swept down. Like the spluttering of hail on a glass roof came the " ping-pings " of the Mausers, and troops were falling and tumbling all round. It was all the work of a couple of minutes, but within that time Buller's left column, which was to have crossed the Tugela at the drift and to have turned Botha's right, was utterly demoralized. The Border Regiment and the Inniskillings turned back and fled, pursued by the winged messengers of the deadly Mauser, until beyond the range of accurate aim. The Dublin Fusiliers and Connaught Bangers lay flat on the ground to evade the hail of lead flying round them, and the fate of Hart's brigade of famous British troops was sealed for the day. Spasmodic efforts on the parts of a few hundred men separated from the main body of Hart's column were made to find some kind of shelter from Boer bullets better than the bare veldt offered, and some of these detached troops reached the banks of the Tugela in their attempts to escape the galling fire from over the river, but at no time after the attack was opened by the Swaziland burghers on the first line of advance was any serious attempt again made to ford the bridle drift.
Buller's center had in the meantime joined in the fray, which now extended along the whole line from Langwani to the drift. Hildyard, with a force estimated from the Boer positions at 8,000 men, advanced in front of his batteries of naval guns and field artillery, and opened fire upon Botha's positions between the bridges. This attacking force was handled with better judgment than either Buller's right or left columns. It advanced in open order, in line with the railway; the naval guns and twelve-pounders searching the Boer lines with a ceaseless cannonade of lyddite shells and shrapnel.
Botha's anticipation as to the tactics that would be employed by his adversary was fully realized. Buller's main object seemed to be to make the; attacks on Botha's right and left positions synchronize with Hildyard's frontal attack in great force upon the Boer center near the wagon bridge; in the expectation that if he could obtain footing under the cover of Fort Wylie the key of the Boer positions would be won, and with it the battle. Botha relied upon the coolness of the select men he had placed in his center to smash any attempt to cross the river at or near either of the bridges.
Hildyard's division came along in two main columns; the artillery and its supports to the right of the railway (Scene II.), and the infantry about 1,000 yards to the left, opposite to a strongly-entrenched kopje where Pretorius, with a Krupp and pompom and concealed riflemen, were posted. As at Magersfontein, the Boer plan was to depend entirely upon the Mauser; the few guns being reserved for use after the enemy had been allowed to approach near enough for the most effective play of rifle fire. Hildyard's guns had belabored Fort Wylie from the back of the village without dieting any response, and thus encouraged by the silence across the river both artillery and infantry continued to advance until about 1,500 yards only separated their front lines from the river bank. Then the men in the trenches let themselves go, and out from the lines between Fort Wylie and the wagon bridge leaped sheets of horizontal fire from 1,500 rifles, with their fifteen shots per minute, into the ranks of the stricken British in front. Pretorius added the fury of his pom-pom to this storm of bullets, and in a few minutes no living object, man or horse, remained standing round Hildyard's batteries behind the village. The troops forming the brigade advancing to the right of the railway were held back as by a resistless hurricane, and they fell on the veldt and lay there at the mercy of the invincible marksmen across the Tugela. No force could face that leaden storm, and, as in the case of Hart's and Barton's broken columns, Hildyard's division of Devons, Surreys, and Yorkshires and the rest, had to yield before the pitiless hail of bullets which swept through their ranks from the Boer lines.
Already the day had been won for the Vierkleur. Buller was compelled to send help to General Hart to bring his far-famed regiments back from their hopeless position in front of some 1,000 cool-headed, steady-firing farmers, and the crossing of the bridle drift was abandoned. Sporadic attacks had been made by some of the Dublin Fusiliers after the first attempt to cross had so signally failed, but they were of no avail against the overpowering fire of the defenders. The Swaziland commando, which formed part of the Boer right wing, at this point allowed a party of the enemy to approach quite near to the river without firing. The few daring Tommies stood out in this action in strong contrast to the thousands who had fled on the first onslaught and who could not he induced by entreaty or by threats to form again for attack. They raced forward for the river bank, pluckily disregarding the fate that had befallen their dead comrades lying around, and were quite close to the entrance of the drift when the Swaziland burghers poured a deadly volley into them from the other side of the river, killing or wounding the whole party except six. Fully 100 of the British troops went down in this one short but decisive encounter at the river. This was the last rally of the men of Hart's brigade.
The troops in this column had been stupidly led to a place where they were so many helpless human targets, and from which no officer showed ability to extricate them with soldierly credit. Officers pranced about, shouting ridiculous orders, and calling out " Forward! Charge! " in an impotent display of courage without judgment, and of rank without capacity to inspire confidence. The men ran back, or lay down, as seemed best for their safety, in a condition of absolute demoralization from the galling fire which poured into their ranks from invisible foes over the river. There were enough of them, in all conscience, to have made a human bridge across, the Tugela, and to storm the trenches held by only 1,000 farmers on the other side, but there was neither the generalship to direct nor the true military spirit to lead such a movement in the officers of the brigade. They had all lost their heads early in the fight, and Mr. Thomas Atkins is not trained or expected to act independently of his superiors in any emergency. In this instance the troops were mainly Anglo-Irish, and whatever initiative and courage was shown by the groups or companies of the Dublin Fusiliers or Connaughts who rushed for the river bank in face of the Mauser fire was exhibited in the spirit of desperate men who saw themselves helplessly led and hopelessly beaten. It was men like these in the three attacking and beaten British columns who won the generous praise of Louis Botha. His judgment upon their officers and upon the mass of Buller's 33,000 fighters on the field of Colenso was of a totally different character.
At the Boer left similar detached attempts were also made to turn the position, but with a like result. One of these efforts assumed the character of a renewed attack by the major part of Barton's brigade. The column partly re-formed behind its batteries after the first shock and retreat, and went forward more tentatively under cover of its guns. The Imperial Light Horse, Natal Carabineers, Thorneycroft's and Bethune's Mounted Infantry, all South African levies and steady fighters, together with other sections of Buller's right wing, joined in the second attempt on Langwanie but the burghers remained as firm as the rock on which they grimly held their ground, and poured volley after volley of decimating fire into their foes. The supporting British artillery was of no avail. Its shells hit the hill and missed the Boers, while the 800 marksmen behind their sangars and entrenchments continued to send their steady and resistless rifle fire into the mass of beaten Tommies before them.
This magnificent performance of Botha's left wing in withstanding all attempts by artillery, infantry, and cavalry assault to shake its hold on Langwani was above all praise. The men merited in every way the confidence which had been placed in their grit and accurate shooting when they were selected to hold the hill against all comers. Commandant Joshua Joubert and Field .Cornet Swart were both slightly wounded, and had the satisfaction of losing only some six men in killed and wounded during the whole fight, as against the hundreds of the enemy who went down before the fire of their intrepid commandoes.
Upon witnessing the complete failure of Hildyard's attempts to get near the wagon bridge, General Buller resolved upon a retreat from the field on which he had been so completely and so easily beaten.
It was at this stage of the battle, and when Botha's victory was all but complete, that an English officer with two batteries of artillery and their support was seen dashing like fury into the very center of the battle-field, in a mad gallop to save the day and turn the tide of triumph for the Boers before it spelled complete disaster to the British. It was a splendid exhibition of daring and courage of that bold and reckless kind which is always deserving of praise for its heroism, no matter what may be said of the judgment which impels or of the consequences which follow from it. Possibly Colonel Long believed that his batteries and his lyddite-throwing navals had really silenced the Boer artillery west of Fort "Wylie, and that a rush forward with some of his guns at this juncture would give him a freer and fuller range at which he might overwhelm the Boer center with a raking fire from a few hundred yards' distance. It may be, also, that as generalship had completely failed to gain the prize of victory, he thought that a forlorn hope of an artillery attack might possibly succeed.
Colonel Long's brigade division had been previously engaged in helping the right flank of Hildyard's attacking columns in their effort to reach the wagon bridge near the Boer center. His guns "had moved while thus employed within the zone of Mauser fire, and were driven back, despite all the fury of their fire, which Villebois-Mareuil described derisively as " much money expended in smoke, without any results." Beaten from this point in the English plan of attack, Long, for some reason not yet fully explained, went one worse in artillery recklessness by galloping his two batteries from his previous position across the open space, right in front of the village of Colenso, and within some 500 yards of the spot from whence the Krugersdorp and Vryheid commandoes had already decimated the foremost lines of Hildyard's column with their fire. The exact spot is marked X in Scene II. of the battle-field.
In a word, the daring Colonel had raced his guns far beyond the covering forces of Hildyard's infantry, and had taken them right under the noses of the riflemen on Fort Wylie. Men had been lying flat on their faces here for hours among the dead and wounded, afraid to lift a head or move a limb, so completely was the place dominated and swept by the Boer riflemen behind the river. But it was into this jaw of death that Colonel Long rushed with his smoking teams and twelve Armstrongs. Nor were the men who worked the doomed batteries wanting in the wild courage of their too daring leader. They served their guns with splendid pluck and marvelous coolness, executing every order with admirable discipline, and the twelve guns were soon engaged again in what had been for them during the whole day but a noisy, ineffectual pounding of rocks and ridges. A few rounds only had been delivered at Fort Wylie, and the adjacent Boer trenches, when Botha's center directed its fire with deadly precision upon the ill-fated batteries, and their doom was sealed.
The Boer general had been quick to note the extraordinary blunder of the British officer in bringing his guns to so dangerous a length from protecting infantry, and instantly availed himself of the chance which was thus given him. He ordered up reenforcements to the positions of the Krugerdorp men at once, and directed a concentrated fire upon the British batteries, while his pom-pom and Krupp were trained upon all points in the rear and around the doomed guns from whence succor might, arrive. The attention of the center forces of the two armies was now absorbed in the fight for the imperiled Armstrongs. No braver efforts could have been made to rescue the guns than were attempted again and again by British officers and men, but almost all were shot down who engaged in the perilous task. Lieutenant Roberts, son of Lord Roberts, was mortally wounded in an attempt which was partially successful in the ultimate dragging away of two of the twelve guns. Colonel Long had been severely wounded in the early part of the fray around the batteries, and several other officers had also been shot down in their frantic endeavors to extricate the guns from their desperate situation.
There occurred in connection with Colonel Long's action a tragic incident, similar to that recorded in the account of the battle of Talana Hill, and which cost twenty lives to the enemy by the bungling fire of his own guns. A body of men of Hildyard's column who had taken part in the attack upon the Boer center, and had advanced further than their fellows, were compelled to lie flat on the ground within a couple of hundred yards of the river for several hours after their comrades had been shot back or shot down. They could neither advance nor retire. The general's orders to retire did not reach them, nor could they, without risk of being " potted," have obeyed had they heard and attempted to comply. They lay where a few mimosa bushes or a chance hole in the veldt gave them some kind of protection against the fire of their watchful foes over the river. The burning sun beat down upon their parched bodies. Thirst assailed them with a horrible mockery of the fact that the waters of the Tugela were only a few yards away, and that Death stood as a sentinel to invite them towards this tantalizing offer of relief. It was under these trying conditions that some fifty soldiers heard the welcome sound of Long's guns only 300 yards behind where they had lain in agony all that horrible morning. The bat-teries had been placed immediately in the rear of where the prostrate British lay, and were already barking in furious challenge at the ceaseless rifle fire from over the river. The prostrate Tommies rose to their feet and made directly for the welcome shelter of Colonel Long's batteries. It was here where the horrible blunder of the English gunners was committed. These men had no knowledge of the position of their unfortunate comrades. They had galloped from another part of the battle-field in obedience to the orders of their officers, and were unaware of the fact that between them and the river were numbers of their own troops in such con-finement and shelter as the veldt could afford them. On seeing, therefore, a body of fifty men, rifle in hand, leaping up from near the bank of the river and making towards the guns as if to rush them by assault, two of the Armstrongs were trained upon the unfortunate men and twenty-five of them were shot down by the fire of their own artillery.
This incident gave rise to the rumor that British soldiers were fired upon by their officers for running away and for refusing to charge at the position beyond the river. This was a widespread belief among all the burghers who fought at Colenso, but my own conviction is that the tragedy occurred in the manner I have explained.
Meanwhile continuous but ineffectual attempts were being made to recover the British batteries. Bodies of the Devonshire andWest Surrey Eegiments had been sent by General Buller's orders, earlier in the day, to assist in the task on which all the British energies and anxieties were now centered. Nothing, however, could live near the guns. The spot was the target for a continuous hail of Mauser and pom-pom fire, and numbers of troops thrown forward to retrieve Long's courageous blunder of the morning were shot down before they could reach the spot where dead and wounded men and dying horses lay heaped around the luckless batteries.
Two bodies of the Devonshire and West Surrey Regiments succeeded in getting near to where the guns lay, but were compelled to shelter themselves in two dongas or large holes from the fire of the Boers. Colonel Bullock was in command of the Devons, and, not having received the order to retire, held his ground in the shelter of a hollow, prepared to dispute, as far as possible, the possession of the Armstrongs until darkness might enable the other forces driven back from the field to attempt their rescue.
General Botha had resolved, however, to frustrate this obvious plan. After seeing the enemy shot back from every position they had attempted to occupy, he ordered a couple of hundred burghers to cross the river and bring in the guns. These men were led by Field Cornet Cherrie Emmet, brother-in-law of General Botha, and Lieutenant Pohlman, of the Johannesburg Police, " the bravest of the brave," as they have been deservedly called for their many feats of heroism during the war. Most of the men swam the river with their horses, while others who were unmounted waded across the stream, holding their rifles above their heads; a crossing which showed that, had the British an equal determination to reach the north side of the Tugela in the fight of the morning, there was no insuperable difficulty in the depth of the river to prevent them. .
Pohlman and his Police advanced on the first donga, occupied by fifty British officers and men, and called upon them to surrender, which they did without firing a shot. They were sent across to the Boer lines. Emmet waited for the return of Pohlman and his men before advancing upon the second donga, nearest the abandoned batteries, in which Colonel Bullock and some forty of the Devonshire Regiment were concealed. On receiving the required aid, Emmet and the Krugersdorp contingent rushed at the donga, and called upon the British to hold up their hands orthey would be shot. The troopers laid down their arms at once, but Colonel Bullock refused to comply with the Boer officer's command, and fired his revolver, wounding one of Emmet's burghers. This act would have met with instant chastisement at the hands of the enraged Boers had Emmet not prevented further firing, so as to save Bullock's life. The English officer then attempted to parley, in order to gain time. This conduct, however, could not bo tolerated, and Bullock was instantly knocked down with the butt-end of a rifle by an elderly Boer, and the last stand for the English batteries had been made. The Devons and their officers were taken prisoner and sent across the river, while Emmet with the Krugersdorp men seized the prize of the day, and carried ten British guns in triumph to where General Botha awaited this final proof of the complete victory which he had won for Transvaal Independence on that memorable 10th of December.
General Botha's report of the battle to President Kruger was wired from Colenso at seven in the evening, after the enemy had been driven back and had retreated to Chieveley. It was a brief report, and will live in military history as worthy of the Christian hero who had gained the great triumph so simply recorded:
" The God of our fathers has to-day granted us a brilliantvictory. We repulsed the enemy on every side, and from three different points. We allowed them to place twelve of their cannons, amidst a heavy bombardment, right alongside the river, and soon as their horses were detached we opened fire upon them with our Mauser musketry, and killed their cannon-service, and shot them so completely out of their position that they only succeeded in rescuing two of their guns.
" We captured the remaining ten—big, beautiful cannons—together with twelve ammunition wagons, filled to the brim.
" We have also made prisoners of war of about 170 of their best men, who stormed us so pluckily time after time.
" There are various officers among our prisoners of war.
" The enemy's loss must have been terrible. Their dead are lying upon each other, and I think the British loss must have been 2,000 men.
" Our loss is confined to about 30 killed and wounded. I will send fuller report later.
" We have brought the enemy's captured cannon through the river.
" The English were continually stationing their ambulance wagons in unauthorized positions in front of their cannons and troops."
On Monday, the 18th, the following additional particulars of the great fight of Friday were wired to the Government at Pretoria by Botha:
" The battle-field was carefully visited by our men, and all that remained upon it in the way of war implements was collected and taken possession of.
" Of the enemy's force we made 180 prisoners of war, and we killed at least 200 of their artillery company.
" During the whole period of battle, the enemy continued to run its ambulance wagon in and about the firing line.
" The English were yesterday engaged in interring their killed until late in the afternoon, and to-day there are still numbers of unburied dead on the battle-field.
" I am unable to send you accurate returns of the dead and wounded on the English side, but I am certain my estimate which I previously wired you is by no means exaggerated.
" The English Bed Cross officials told me that on the one battlefield there were alone 760 wounded, and that when the roll-call took place yesterday morning 3,000 of the enemy failed to answer to their names.
" This being the case, an armistice was asked for by the British general for the purpose of finding and burying his dead, and we granted this under certain specific conditions for a period of twenty-four hours, from Saturday morning, 7 o'clock.
" At an adjacent kop there are still lying 21 unburied dead. I have instructed our people to go and inter these poor fellows.
" The British Bed Cross officials also state that many of the enemy's officers fell, and that this broke the courage of the rank and file.
" I found the counting of the English dead too inhuman a problem; but their loss was severe, and this is sufficiently proved by their retreat in confusion, their loss of cannon, their surrender of their positions, the removal of their camp, and their request for a twenty-four hours' armistice.
" The ten cannons and gun-wagons, together with the 12 fully-laden ammunition wagons we captured, are all in perfect order.
" The enemy has pulled up all his tents and broken camp entirely.
" In the documents found in the pockets of the dead and captured officers it appears that there was a force of 23,000 of the enemy on the battle-field."
The completeness of the Boer victory cannot be fully measured by the mere recorded results of the battle. These results were 18damaging enough, in all conscience, to British generalship and martial prestige. They spoke to an astounded military world of an army of 23,000 men and 50 guns being beaten by a force which consisted of less than 5,000 farmers and a single battery of artillery. Over four times the number of men and eight times the number of guns were hurled back with ease, and with comparatively little loss to the victors, by a small Transvaal force of no military training, led by a young farmer who had never studied a book on the science of war in his life.
The capture of the ten Armstrong guns was even a more decisive evidence of the thorough defeat and demoralization of General Buller's army after a few hours' fighting than the retreat which followed its failure to cross the Tugela. The facts relating to the action of Colonel Long, and to the various attempts that were made to recover the two batteries, have been related above. The manner in which Emmet and Pohlman with a couple of hundred burghers were permitted to take the guns over the river is more extraordinary still. It must be borne in mind that this was the river which English correspondents and soldiers, writing subsequently about the battle, declared to be " impassable," and to be " staked with barbed wire." Field Cornet Emmet and his men rode their horses through this very stream, with ease, and carried back the 10 Armstrong guns, 12 wagons of ammunition, and 150 prisoners across this identical river, without the loss of a man or a horse, and without encountering the imaginary barbed wire.
While these 200 Boers rode into the Tugela, and dashed at dongas where an unknown number of the enemy lay concealed, six or eight naval guns, and at least as many batteries of field artillery, could not be further away than 7,000 or 8,000 yards during the whole proceeding! Nay, more, 20,000 of the flower of England's army, commanded by the very ablest of her generals, were still actually on or in the immediate vicinity of the battle-field, with arms in their hands. And yet, in view of these astounding facts, General Buller's despatch relating to the battle of Colenso, is mainly remarkable for the amount of praise which he therein bestows upon every one engaged in the fight, with one exception—the one officer who, whatever may be said of his judgment, exhibited some of the same daring courage which sent Emmet and Pohlman and their burghers into the still smoking battle-field to carry back prisoners and batteries under the very eyes of half a hundred English guns and of an army which its general has declared (after the battle) was " capable of going anywhere and doing anything."