Wilson, With the Flag to Pretoria. Chapter III. "Condition of Affairs on the Western Frontier"

The Investment of Ladysmith, Mafeking, and Kimberley
Excerpts from: H. W. Wilson, With the Flag to Pretoria: A History of the Boer War, 1899-1900, London, 1901. CHAPTER III.

COLONEL R. S. S. BADEN-POWELL.
Colonel R. S. S. Baden-Powell, who is commanding the plucky little garrison of Mafeking, is forty-three years old, and was educated at Charterhouse. He joined the 13th Hussars in 1876, and has seen service in India, Afghanistan, and South Africa. His recently published textbook on the art of scouting has had an enormous circulation. He has also written many books of travel and sport, is a noted amateur artist and actor, and equally at home at scouting, fighting, pigsticking, polo, big-game shooting, hunting, yachting, acting, singing writing, and painting. Major, 1892; Lt.-Colonel, 1896; Colonel, 1897.

Condition of Affairs on the Western Frontier.
Meantime on the western frontier of the Boer republics the enemy was hard at work. The British forces in this direction were altogether insignificant. At De Aar, an important railway junction on the line between Capetown and Kimberley, was a handful of British troops guarding a great accumulation of stores for the use of the Army Corps when it arrived. The camp was practically undefended, and was open to a daring attack, for the garrison was too weak to occupy the heights which commanded it. Hopetown, on the Orange River, to the north of De Aar, was occupied by a diminutive force. At Orange River station the great bridge over the Orange River was held by a detachment of bluejackets, and by a handful of infantry entrenched at either end. Beyond that point, which is over 580 miles by rail from Capetown, the line to Kimberley had to be left unguarded. In Kimberley was a detachment of the Loyal North Lancashire battalion, a battery of garrison artillery with some old 7-pounder muzzle-loaders, and a considerable number of volunteers raised and armed by the De Beers Company, which worked the diamond mines. The main difficulty was the provisioning of the place, for there were some 10,000 Kaffir workers in the mines, who were not permitted by the Boers to go to their homes.

LT.-COLONEL HERBERT S. O.. PLUMER.
Has seen much active service in Africa. He was present at El Teb and Tamal in the Soudan War of 1884 ; and in South Africa, under Sir, F. Carrington in 1896, he raised and commanded a corps of Mounted Riflemen. He commands, the gallant little contingent of Rhodesians whose business it is to relieve Mafeking. Col. Plumer has an unusually happy knack of being able to get on well with colonial troopers.

Kimberley lies close to the Free State frontier and 647 miles north of Capetown. In an analogous position close to the Transvaal frontier, 230 miles further to the north, and on the long railway which descends from Rhodesia to the sea, stands Mafeking, with Vryburg half-way between it and Kimberley. At Mafeking had assembled a small British force of irregulars, raised by Colonel Baden-Powell, an officer of exceptional dash and capacity, from the splendid material available in Rhodesia, and some detachments of the British South Africa Company's police. Still further to the north and more than a thousand miles from the Cape were other small detachments under Colonel Plumer, at Palapye, Makloutsi, and Tuli, on the northern frontier of the Transvaal. Between these detachments and Mafeking, between Mafeking and Kimberley, between Kimberley and Orange River, the communications could not be protected, and were certain to be broken. Thus from the first it was evident that Mafeking and Kimberley would have to stand sieges of considerable duration.

On the southern frontier of the Free State handfuls of troops occupied the important railway junctions of Naauwpoort and Stormberg, and there were British outposts at Aliwal North. It should be explained that three railways run from the littoral of Cape Colony inland to the Free State or the Free State frontier. The first comes up from Capetown to Kimberley by De Aar; the second from Port Elizabeth to Bloemfontein by Rosmead Junction and Naauwpoort ; the third from East London by Stormberg to Springfontein on the Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth railway. Lines from De Aar to Naauwpoort and from Rosmead to Stormberg connect the three. Stormberg and Naauwpoort were therefore points of the utmost strategical importance.

The attitude of the Dutch Ministry in power in Cape Colony was so dubious that defensive preparations were rendered more difficult. Mr. Schreiner, the Cape Premier, allowed tons of ammunition and hundreds of railway trucks to enter the Free State just before the war, and seems to have taken no steps of any kind to protect the Colony against invasion. The Cape Mounted Police, a superb body of men, 1,900 strong, the Cape Mounted Rifles, 1,000 strong, and the Cape Volunteers, 4,000 strong, were not drawn upon for defence as they should have been. The volunteers were not properly armed or supplied with ammunition. In fact, the Cape Ministry appeared to hold to the view that a strict neutrality ought to be preserved by the Colony. There may have been an object not altogether unfriendly in this--to keep quiet the Cape Dutch--or there may have been real disloyalty. But had 5,000 or 6,000 Cape Colonials been available at the outset, Stormberg could have been firmly held, and the Boers prevented from besieging Kimberley.

RHODESIAN HORSE.
The Rhodesian Horse was originally formed during the Matabele War, in the course of which it did magnificent service. A contingent is here shown under the command of Lieut. Maurice Gifford. A detachment of this regiment proceeded to the relief of Mafeking under Colonel Plumer and repulsed the Boers on more than one occasion.

First Act of War.
The Boers opened proceedings on the western frontier by advancing on October 11 under Commandant Cronje from Zeerust to Mafeking, while they broke the railway both to the north and south. On the 13th the siege began. On the night of the 12-13th an armoured train, bringing up two 7-pounder guns and ammunition, which had been sent forward from Capetown, was derailed at Kraaipan, a 'station forty miles south of Mafeking, and its contents and the party in charge were captured. The engine-driver and one man succeeded in ,escaping to the south. This was the first example which showed the utter uselessness of armoured trains operating without any support. A rail removed or thrown out of gauge, and they were at the enemy's mercy.

The Boers seem to have anticipated an easy and an early success at Mafeking. The resources of the place were small; the garrison all told did not exceed 1,200 men, and was ill provided with artillery. But there was a large accumulation of stores and ammunition, which would at least enable the defenders to hold out or some months. Cronje had under him 4,000 or 5,000 men with good artillery, and had all the resources of the Pretoria arsenals and magazines behind him, He could draw guns of the heaviest calibre if he wanted them.

Attempts to Capture Mafeking.
On the 14th the enemy were engaged by the garrison, with an armoured train supporting, and were driven back with some loss. On the 17th the Boers began to shell the town with small field guns, but caused no loss. A few houses were slightly damaged, a dog was killed, and that was all. On the night of this day, as the Boers were pushing their trenches dangerously near the British lines, a sortie was brilliantly executed by Captain Fitzclarence with sixty men. He stormed the enemy's position at the point of the bayonet, and did great execution amongst the Boers, who were taken wholly by surprise. Various little sorties took place during the next few days, and Cronje gave courteous notice that he intended to bombard. At the same time he cut off the British water-supply.

On the 24th the Boers placed three heavy siege guns in position, and with them shelled the town, while the smaller weapons kept up a heavy fire. Three bedrooms were wrecked, the gas plant destroyed, and the town set on fire. Next day the bombardment was resumed, and the enemy massed for an assault, compelling the little British force to leave the bomb-proofs and line the trenches. Day after day these experiences continued till on the 31st an assault was actually delivered upon Cannon Kopje, an outlying hill protected by a small fort. The Boers advanced under cover of the fire of four 15-pounder field guns and of a 5.9-inch siege gun, but were repulsed after a. long and desperate struggle, in which the little garrison suffered severely and lost the services of Captains Marsham and Pechell both of whom were killed.

To keep his men in good spirits, always a hard task in a long siege, Colonel Baden-Powell held impromptu concerts, at which fragments of popular operas were given by the ladies and officers in the town. He speedily obtained the complete confidence of his men. No precaution was neglected; everything was foreseen; and in spite of his limited resources be was never beaten. By common agreement between the British and the Boers, Sunday was observed as a day of trace, Once or twice when the Boers were noticed to be digging trenches on that day, "B.-P." as his men called him, drew Cronje's attention to the fact, and the digging stopped. The Boers however, persistently shelled the hospital and a convent which the nuns had refused to abandon. These heroic ladies attended the sick and wounded, and took the fullest share in the hard work, setting an example Which was above all praise.

On November 7 the garrison made a very successful sortie, drawing the Boers under the fire of our ambushed artillery by a feigned retreat. The enemy broke and fled in great disorder, losing heavily. After this an interval of Boer inactivity followed, though the town was constantly shelled, Cronje, with a good number of his men, was withdrawn, as his services were wanted elsewhere, and Commandant Snyman replaced him. The position of the biggest of the Boer guns was altered the Boer field artillery left for the south.

The accuracy of the Boer fire was great. Seven successive shots from the 5.9-inch gun struck the front of one of the forts, completely destroying the earthworks, though, strangely enough, there was no loss of life. The convent was hit eight times; a shell struck a hotel and, bursting, moved a billiard table some inches without injuring those who were playing billiards. Another shell took off the roof of a house in which five men were breakfasting without wounding any of the five.

A LULL IN THE FIGHTING: DINNER-TIME AT MAFEKING DURING THE SIEGE.
This photograph represents the interior of the "Graveyard Redan," at the cemetery.

Turning from gallant little Mafeking to the earlier stages of the siege of Kimberley, Boer forces had assembled at Boshof and Jacobsdal, the one to the north-east, the other to the south of that town, in readiness for a move when President Kruger gave the signal. On October 12 the Jacobsdal commando crossed the frontier, seized Modder River station, telephoned to Kimberley to try to find out the force in the town, and then made all preparations for the destruction of the iron bridge which spans the river at this point. The Boshof , commando advanced on Riverton, a station on the railway to the north of the town, drove back a detachment of Cape Police, and looted and wrecked the town.