Roberts was convinced that ‘our having gained possession of the capital of the South African Republic [i.e. Transvaal] will enable the war to be brought to a rapid conclusion’.⁴ When he realised, however, that not even the fall of Pretoria would induce the Boers to surrender, he ordered an advance eastwards along the Delagoa Bay railway line, forcing the Boers to abandon their positions at Donkerhoek/Diamond Hill (11–12 June 1900) and Bergendal/Dalmanutha (21–27 August 1900) without really defeating them. On 1 September 1900 he annexed the Transvaal.

On 29 September 1900, Roberts was offered the post of C in C of the British army, and he accepted, convinced that all that was left to be done in South Africa was police work to get rid of the few isolated groups of Boers. At midnight, on 28/29 November 1900, Roberts handed over command to Kitchener and returned to England, where on 3 January he took up his new position. For his work in South Africa, he received many honours and awards.

Roberts’s appointment as C in C was widely welcomed, but in practice, he performed no better than his predecessor. He did try to improve the professional education of the officer corps, placed more emphasis on realistic training, and introduced a new rifle (the magazine Lee-Enfield) and new motor vehicles. As a matter of fact, although Roberts was, strictly speaking, from the old school of thought (and really represented an older era), he modernised the army as far as possible in line with new technologies. To some extent, he also laid the foundation for the modern British army, and for what later became the General Staff of the Army. But otherwise, there was not much he could do to reform the army. After all, he had less scope in the War Office than he had when he was C in C in India.

Roberts’s achievements as C in C were overshadowed by arguments concerning the exact role the C in C should play. In 1903, a Royal Commission recommended that the position of C in C of the British army be abolished, and consequently, in February 1904, Roberts left the War Office. Until November 1905, he remained a member of the newly formed Committee of Imperial Defence, but resigned because he disagreed with several of the government’s defence policies, especially with regard to compulsory military training. He became president of the National Service League in November 1905, addressing many meetings on the issue of national service (and warning against a German threat), but the British press and public were averse to conscription. As an Anglo-Irishman, Roberts supported the Ulster Unionists, was against home rule for Ireland and was involved in the Curragh incident (March 1914).⁵

When Britain entered the First World War in August 1914, Roberts was appointed Colonel in Chief of the Empire (i.e. overseas) troops in France. In November, when he received word that men of the Indian Army Corps had arrived for service on the Western Front, Roberts was intent on going to France to meet ‘his’ troops. He crossed the English Channel and visited the headquarters of the Indian regiments. By the evening of 13 November it was clear that he had caught a chill; pneumonia of one lung and pleurisy rapidly developed, and he died at St Omer at 2000 on 14 November 1914. After a military funeral service in St Paul’s Cathedral,⁶ his mortal remains were interred in the cathedral’s crypt, almost next to that of his old rival, Wolseley, and near the tombs of Nelson and Wellington.

Roberts was an unlikely soldier. He was a tiny man (only 5ft 3in tall), but sturdily built and very alert. As a ‘delicate’ child in India, he contracted ‘brain fever’, which left him blind in his right eye. Even by the end of the Victorian era, Roberts would not have physically qualified to be a soldier, but in mid-nineteenth-century Victorian Britain, someone with good military connections could get away with physical handicaps. He often suffered from digestive ailments and more than once, after concluding a campaign, ill health forced him to return to England.⁷

As most historical figures of note, Roberts had a complicated and even contradictory personality, and this had a bearing on his career. He was intelligent and a man of great charisma; he was friendly in his manners, courteous and renowned for his hospitality. He had many friends, had great influence on almost all who came into contact with him, was a team player and those who knew him well, in most instances, sincerely liked him.⁸ He was a skilled organiser, a strict disciplinarian and had the reputation that he got things done. He led by example, especially on the battlefield. He also endeared himself to ordinary soldiers, because of his efforts to improve their social conditions.

Roberts liked parties, but was a teetotaller. Fred and Nora Roberts had a high social standing, and were regarded as charming hosts.⁹ They and their children formed a close-knit family. They suffered the loss of four of their six children: three died in infancy and young Freddy after Colenso. Lady Roberts was in her own right a formidable and forceful woman, and it has been alleged that she had excessive influence over her husband, also with regard to military, personnel and other matters. Consequently, she was nicknamed ‘Lady Jobs’, and there were rumours of a ‘petticoat government’.¹⁰ Notwithstanding the fact that Queen Victoria disapproved of officers’ wives going to the war zone with their husbands, and Roberts’s reluctance to allow it, his own wife and daughters joined him in Bloemfontein in mid-April 1900, and later in Pretoria. They looked after the old field marshal, but the rumours persisted: some believed that Lady Roberts had something to do with the hardening policy towards the civilian Boer population, and also with regard to ‘Endless stories, probably many of which are untrue, [that] reach the Queen respecting Lady Roberts’ interference and her influence even exerted on the careers of officers in high command in South Africa.’¹¹ According to Roberts, his wife was a great help to him with regard to visits in hospitals: ‘She can discover a great deal more than I can in my periodical visits of inspection.’¹²

Of course, there was also a less attractive side to Bobs’s personality. Wolseley regarded him as a dreadful snob;¹³ people like the Duke of Cambridge distrusted Roberts, and regarded him as an intriguer and an unscrupulous opportunist.¹⁴ He was indeed shamelessly ambitious, and as a consequence could be manipulative, even devious, and did not shy away from self-advertisement or intrigue. Since the Jameson Raid of 1895–96, Roberts had been hoping that if war broke out in South Africa, he would be placed in command, but Buller was sent out. Roberts was undeterred. In the light of the fact that ‘accidents happen’, he wrote to Lansdowne, then Secretary of State for War, that if either Buller or Sir George White ‘should be incapacitated, I hope you will send me to South Africa’.¹⁵ He openly expressed his misgivings about Buller’s ability to defeat the Boers, and in a rather arrogant letter to Lansdowne a week before the Colenso debacle, placed his ‘services and … experience at the disposal of the Government’. But then he went further to make it clear that ‘if it is accepted, I must necessarily be placed in supreme command’ because ‘the country cannot afford to run any unavoidable risk of failure. A serious reverse in South Africa would endanger the Empire.’ The letter was ostensibly private, ‘unless, after reading it, you [Lansdowne] think my proposal worthy of consideration, then you are welcome to show it to the Prime Minister, and if you wish, Mr. Chamberlain’.¹⁶

Having chosen soldiering as a career, Roberts loved war, although he would probably have admitted that essentially war was a terrible thing. He had compassion for the ordinary troops, but if necessary, he would drive his soldiers hard and ordered them to attack an enemy that (with the exception of his last campaign, in South Africa) was always numerically superior. He never suffered huge losses, but if need be, he would order his troops to attack under difficult circumstances. He could also be very harsh. An example to illustrate this is the way he dealt with those accused of being involved with the killing of Cavagnari’s mission in Kabul. He would not allow his feelings (or questions relating to the ethics or morality of his orders) to interfere with what he regarded as his duty. Everything taken into account, he was indeed an inspirational leader, even though today one would not necessarily agree with all his decisions and actions. Roberts had many successes, but more often than not, also had luck on his side.

During the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, Roberts was lucky to see action in many clashes and very lucky to survive that brutal conflict with only a slight wound. How different it could have been. Roberts was furious when sent to Natal in 1881 to find that peace had been concluded, and must have thought himself extremely unlucky. But, perhaps, he was, instead, very fortunate, for the mountainous terrain of northern Natal afforded the Boers excellent cover from where they could beat back an advancing conventionally trained army. This happened to Colley in 1881, and again in 1899–1900, when Buller failed on several occasions to break through to Ladysmith; and once more, Roberts was sent as replacement C in C to South Africa – this time to experience relative success.

At the start of the Second Anglo-Afghan War in November 1878, it was Roberts’s good fortune to be put in command of the Kurram Field Force, the smallest but best composed of the invading forces. In September 1879, Roberts was fortunate to be in command of the only force that at that stage could move out quickly to avenge Cavagnari’s death. After taking Kabul, and as the Afghans prepared for an all-out onslaught against the besieged British cantonment, Roberts received the plan for the attack from a servant; consequently, he was able to take effective counter-measures, and the attack was beaten off.¹⁷ He was also fortunate to have been put in command of the force to march from Kabul to Kandahar (August 1880), as Lieutenant General Donald Stewart could just as well have taken personal command of the relief force. The subsequent march provided Roberts with a unique opportunity to ‘redeem’ himself after the serious criticisms levelled against him for the way in which he had dealt with the alleged murderers of Cavagnari. And Roberts was lucky that towards the end of 1880, the British public was hungry for good news and for some ‘heroic’ exploits – his march from Kabul to Kandahar provided just that. The fact that he defeated an Afghan force the day after his arrival in Kandahar provided further reason to celebrate. Roberts realised the relative ‘unheroic’ nature of his Kabul–Kandahar march:

it surprised me very much to find that the kind people, by whom I was so greatly honoured, invariably appeared to think the march from Kabul to Kandahar was a much greater performance than the advance on Kabul the previous autumn, while, to my mind, the latter operation was in every particular more difficult, more dangerous, and placed upon me as the Commander infinitely more responsibility.¹⁸

But Roberts will forever be associated with the August 1880 march to Kandahar.

In South Africa, Roberts was very lucky that the Boers were almost obsessed with the siege of three garrisons, because this provided him with the opportunity to consolidate the British position and prepare unhindered for his flank march. Had the Boers exploited their mobility, invaded the British colonies at several places and destroyed the infrastructure, it would have put Roberts in a very difficult position. It was also to Roberts’s advantage that he had not been sent out in October 1899. Given the British army’s lack of preparedness for war in South Africa,¹⁹ whoever went out first would encounter problems. By the time Roberts was appointed C in C, the British government had realised that more troops were needed. Roberts was also lucky to have had as his first opponent Piet Cronjé, who, although regarded as a great general by the Boers, was indeed in more ways than one not fit to lead an army in a modern war against a large European army. Had the Boers used the Orange River as a natural line of defence, it would have made Roberts’s task that more difficult.²⁰

After Magersfontein, Cronjé was not in favour of following up the Boer successes with an all-out assault on the British lines of communication, and when such operations did later take place, it was either too small (4–5 January 1900) or too late (February 1900).²¹ When De Wet captured the British wagon train at Watervalsdrif on 15 February, Roberts took a calculated risk to continue with his advance. In this way, he didn’t lose momentum, but forced his tired troops to go on half-rations until the end of the month.²² This allowed Roberts to corner and in due course force Cronjé to surrender, but it also further undermined his troops’ health and made them more susceptible to contracting typhoid – something that eventually forced a long halt in Bloemfontein.

This halt afforded the Boers the opportunity to consolidate their position and – after a crucial krijgsraad (council of war) meeting at Kroonstad on 17 March 1900 – implement a guerrilla type of warfare (thereby for the first time exploiting what was probably their greatest strength, namely mobility). Roberts was very lucky that the Boers did not immediately launch an all-out guerrilla offensive. For example, after his victories at Sannaspos and Mostertshoek, De Wet, strangely enough, opted for a conventional siege of a portion of the Colonial Division at Jammerbergdrif, near Wepener in the south-eastern Free State,²³ instead of destroying the British supply lines south of Bloemfontein, which would have left Roberts in a predicament. On the other hand, if Roberts had sent his cavalry in force to Sannaspos on 31 March, he might have been able to defeat the Boers and nip the guerrilla war in the bud. In due course, however, it became clear that the Boers had met their match in Roberts. They ‘knew’ Buller, because he had fought in the Anglo-Zulu War (1879), but the ‘Indian’ Roberts was an enigma to them.

Roberts is generally regarded as a good military leader, on and off the battlefield: he was a successful military administrator; he was a sound strategist in campaigns; and he was an excellent leader of men on the battlefield. However, he never had to take the field against an enemy that was really an equal (for example in Europe), and none of the battles he fought can really be regarded as great; as a matter of fact, his ‘greatest’ and most decisive battle, at Paardeberg, was more a siege than a battle (and on the first day, when there was an all-out British attack, Roberts was not even present). He is primarily remembered for his march from Kabul to Kandahar, although his march from Kushi to Kabul and from the Modder River via Bloemfontein to Pretoria were of greater military significance. Besides, his Kabul–Kandahar march was a test of endurance, rather than of strategy. However, as will be pointed out in the case study of the Second Anglo-Afghan War, Roberts was very successful in Afghanistan, and was regarded as the saviour of British prestige in the country.

Roberts was basically a Jominian in terms of his military thinking; he believed that the choice of the line of operations was the key to manoeuvring, and wanted to secure strategic objectives as quickly as possible.²⁴ After arriving in South Africa, Roberts also divided his force, in the sense that he did not abandon Natal to concentrate all his troops for a flank march. Interestingly enough, Buller originally also thought of invading the OFS from the west. Roberts had toyed with such an idea as early as 1897, but when he left British shores in December 1899, he still thought in terms of an advance from the south, all along the main railway line to Bloemfontein (i.e. Buller’s planned line of advance, after discarding the idea of an advance from the west): ‘I have no doubt in my own mind that we should adhere to the original intention of concentrating, South of the Orange River, and working thence by the principal route to Bloemfontein.’²⁵ But, en route to South Africa, Roberts reverted back to his 1897 strategy, and in due course refined it. He believed (correctly) that an elaborate flank march, based on the strategy of indirect approach, would be the surest way to position his force in such a way that the Boers would have to fight at a disadvantage. He wanted to throw the Boers off balance, relieve Kimberley, dislodge Cronjé from his Magersfontein positions (without a fight), hopefully defeat his force and capture Bloemfontein, and at the same time draw back the republican forces from the Cape Colony and even weaken their defences in Natal.²⁶

In all this, Roberts was to a large extent successful, but Boer short-sightedness made his achievements look better than they really were. Roberts took a calculated risk in marching his army some 75 miles across the veldt, but on the eve of the march, he was in an excellent position: he had a huge army at his disposal; his strategy was sound (and had not leaked out); and the Boers were either demoralised after weeks of waiting or, in the case of the Colesberg front, confused, thanks to French’s deception manoeuvres, which created the impression that the main British advance would start from there. The eventual successful implementation of Roberts’s flank march is a classic example of how the strategy of an indirect approach can be applied. This ‘Blitzkrieg’ altered the course of the war, and Roberts showed that he could be a daring commander. His forced march from the Modder River to Bloemfontein can be superficially compared to his march from Kushi to Kabul in 1879, or from Kabul to Kandahar in 1880. In all instances, Roberts marched without a line of communication, but in South Africa the idea was to outflank a relatively large Boer army, to capture (not re-take) the enemy’s capital and to draw the republican forces back from colonial territory. In South Africa, Roberts proved that he was a good strategist, although he outmanoeuvred the Boers, rather than defeated them. Paardeberg was a turning point, but it was still no Waterloo or Omdurman. It must also be kept in mind that Roberts’s advance in South Africa took place in areas with not as much natural cover (for the Boers) as in Natal.

Roberts should only receive partial credit for the ultimate British victory in South Africa. It is true that at Paardeberg he ensured that the Boers could no longer win the war; that he laid the foundation for victory by capturing some 7 per cent of the Boer forces and dislocating them psychologically. But he underestimated the Boers’ determination to continue the fight, even with the odds stacked high against them. By not defeating the Boers in the field and allowing them to regroup and successfully make the transition to guerrilla warfare, Roberts was also responsible for laying the foundation for a protracted and costly war.

Poplar Grove (7 March 1900) was supposed to have been a second Paardeberg, perhaps even on a larger scale, with French ordered to cut off the retreat of the 5,000 Boers who had taken up positions in the low-lying hills, while two divisions of infantry would attack from the south and south-west. But French moved too late, and when the Boers saw what was happening, they hastily evacuated their positions and fled eastwards. They had learnt their lesson at Paardeberg. If Presidents Paul Kruger (Transvaal) and Marthinus Steyn (OFS), who were both present, had been captured together with a large force of Boers, it could indeed have meant the end of the war. Roberts’s military thinking was sound, but he was let down by his military instruments (i.e. cavalry and infantry).²⁷ At Abrahamskraal-Driefontein (10 March), Roberts was once again unable to defeat the Boers decisively, and they were able to escape and fight another day. So, Roberts succeeded in driving off the Boers, but did not destroy them, and they could regroup. Yet, after the capture of Bloemfontein, he was probably at the height of his whole military career, having dramatically changed the course of the war in the five weeks since he commenced his advance.

After driving the Boers from their positions at Doornkop and Klipriviersberg, south of Johannesburg (28–29 May 1900), Roberts allowed them to withdraw from the city before he entered it on 31 May. He wanted to avoid street fighting and the destruction of the gold mines, and also believed (with characteristic over-optimism) that the war was all but won. By allowing the Boers to escape, however, he probably added nearly two years to the duration of the conflict.²⁸ Pretoria was also captured without a fight; but again the commandos were allowed to escape. At Donkerhoek/Diamond Hill (11–12 June 1900), just east of Pretoria, General Louis Botha tried to stop the British advance. This was to have been a decisive British victory. Although the Boers evacuated their positions after heavy British bombardments and attacks, Roberts failed to destroy them, and they were able to fight another day.²⁹ And so, with characteristic impatience, Roberts kept on advancing, without (after Paardeberg) defeating the Boers in the field, and allowing them to regroup and operate behind the British line of advance, whereas in Afghanistan, after reaching Kandahar, he defeated the Afghans decisively on 1 September 1880. Through common sense and the intelligent application of the principles of war, Roberts indeed changed British fortunes in Afghanistan and South Africa, but was only able to defeat the Afghans and the Boers, not to conquer them.

When Roberts arrived in South Africa, there was a stalemate; by the time he left, both republics were officially in British hands, although in practice, they were only in control as far as their guns could shoot. Roberts indeed outmanoeuvred the Boers strategically, but did not defeat them tactically. The war against space was still far from over. Eventually, it was Kitchener who was ruthlessly successful in South Africa – but only after laying waste to large areas of the war zone, building some 8,000 blockhouses (a process started by Roberts), and expanding the scorched earth policy (once again, a policy that was started by Roberts). How long would Roberts have taken to do his own police work? Would the conditions in the internment camps (a term preferred to the controversial term ‘concentration camps’) in 1901 have been better under Roberts than under Kitchener? How would Roberts have dealt with local politicians? What kind of peace would Roberts have brought about – and when? What we do know is that ‘[h]e left behind him a campaign of uncertain duration, but of certain issue’.³⁰

Roberts took Colonel George Henderson with him to South Africa as his Chief of Military Intelligence. They discussed the planned tactics in depth, and Roberts’s strategy, as implemented, mirrored Henderson’s ideas.³¹ Although Henderson emphasised the importance of defeating the enemy in the field, he also focussed on the strategic value of threatening the opponent’s capital, and that helps to explain why Roberts attached so much value to the rapid capturing of both republican capitals³² (‘I am a firm believer in the maxim that the surest way to disconnect and discourage an enemy is to go straight for their Head Quarters.’³³) With hindsight, of course, this was a mistake because the Boers did not attach much value to their capitals, could quickly move their headquarters and continued their struggle long after the capitals had been captured. Consequently, after the fall of Pretoria, Roberts’s strategy, in a sense, lost its momentum.

Roberts had many troops at his disposal, and yet he was still not able to force his will onto the Boers. After the capture of the Boer capitals and the annexation of both republics, Roberts was convinced that the Boer forces had been reduced to ‘a few marauding bands’,³⁴ and that the war ‘is degenerating, and has degenerated, into operations carried on in an irregular and irresponsible manner by small, and in many cases, insignificant bodies of men’.³⁵ Roberts’s lack of understanding of the prevailing military situation, is underscored by the fact that he allowed a considerable number of his officers and men to terminate their voluntary engagements, sending a regular unit home and asking soldiers to join the constabulary – in line with the misconception that only police work still remained to be done. These decisions fuelled the (wrong) perception that by the end of 1900 the war was ‘practically over’.³⁶ In practice, the war was about to escalate geographically.

When purely military actions alone did not produce the desired results, Roberts resorted to unconventional methods. In Afghanistan, as was done on the North-West Frontier in India, the British Army from time to time burnt dwellings to pacify the country – in line with the unwritten rule of imperial warfare (against ‘non-white’ people). The almost summary execution of Cavagnari’s alleged killers was most certainly also geared towards having a particular psychological effect on the local population. In South Africa, Roberts was adamant that it should be a white man’s war. Initially, he also treated the Boers (the first white people he ever fought against) very leniently, hoping that a policy of conciliation would lead to the pacification of the country. For example, upon entering the OFS in the second week of February 1900, he made it clear that he would ensure the safety of ordinary citizens and their possessions, and in his proclamation of 15 March 1900 he invited the Free Staters to surrender and to take an oath of neutrality, so that they could return to their homes. On 31 May 1900, shortly after entering the Transvaal, a similar type of proclamation was issued.³⁷ Roberts hoped that, by treating the Boers leniently, they would surrender and the war would end. These and the following proclamations can, with hindsight, be regarded as a form of psychological warfare, and initially proved to be quite successful; for example, from March to July 1900, some 13,900 Free State and Transvaal burghers voluntarily surrendered.³⁸

But Roberts underestimated the power of Afrikaner nationalism, because several Boers who surrendered, took up arms again. Where Boers who voluntarily surrendered previously could settle on their farms, they were now taken into custody, and in a proclamation dated 1 June 1900, Roberts said that those Boers who did not surrender would henceforth be regarded as rebels.³⁹ However, these threats did not intimidate those Boers who believed in their cause; they referred to Roberts’s proclamations as ‘paper bombs’, and guerrilla activities increased. Consequently, Roberts gradually changed his attitude and strategy, and according to the proclamations of 16 and 19 June 1900, if a railway line was attacked or damaged, Boer houses in the vicinity would be burnt.⁴⁰ Roberts, in due course, became convinced that only ‘severe measures’ would subdue the Boers and that there had to be ‘no mercy’.⁴¹ He also made it clear that if burghers did not surrender, ‘they and their families will be starved’.⁴² What Roberts did in fact admit by issuing these ill-conceived proclamations was that he was unable to find a military solution to the problems his army faced. Soon, the destruction of Boer property became part and parcel of the British military strategy, with its concomitant internment camps, where those Boer (and black) civilians who had been left destitute by the scorched earth policy were kept – and where by war’s end some 28,000 white (and at least 23,000, but probably many more black) civilians had died, leaving a trail of trauma and bitterness. The first official ‘refugee camp’ for whites was established at Mafeking in July 1900, primarily to house Boers who had surrendered voluntarily, plus their families. Before the end of 1900, eight other camps for whites were established.⁴³ So, Roberts’s strategy in South Africa evolved from sporadic farm-burning to a fully fledged scorched earth policy, which Kitchener would later on expand even further.

Roberts’s assessment of the situation in South Africa when he left in December 1900, also with regard to what remained to be done to end the war, was over-optimistic and did not tally with the situation at grassroots level. By burning farms, Roberts had – ironically – also removed an important reason why many Boers drifted away from commandos; i.e. to look after their property and loved ones. As the guerrilla war intensified, and when the proclamations, and even the resulting destruction of property, did not have the desired effect, Roberts resorted to other forms of ‘psychological warfare’. Boer women and children were sent to the Boer lines in the eastern Transvaal to put pressure on the republican forces to surrender, but to no avail. Roberts sent several letters to Louis Botha (Commandant General of the Transvaal forces), trying to convince him that further resistance was futile. He also offered Boer generals salaries, should they surrender; for example, £10,000 a year to Botha and Koos de la Rey, which was rejected with contempt, and strengthened the Boers’ resolve to continue the struggle.⁴⁴

Even Roberts had to admit that ‘the guerrilla aspect that the war has assumed is an infinitely more troublesome phase of war than which has gone before’.⁴⁵ Eventually it was the British forces that were caught physically and psychologically unprepared for the new kind of warfare that the Boers waged from the end of March 1900 onwards. Roberts underestimated the Boers’ resolve and ability to continue their resistance. But, everything taken into account, it is unlikely that any other general would have fared better.

On one terrain Roberts had full control. Through the years, he cultivated good relationships with politicians and had the support of his political masters. Writing to the Secretary in the Foreign Department, A C Lyall, from Kabul on 6 August 1880 (i.e. on of the eve of the start of his famous march, but referring to his march to Kabul the previous year), Roberts wrote: ‘When I accepted the command of the Kabul Field Force last September [1879] it was on the understanding that I was to be supreme in political, as well as military, matters.’⁴⁶ With regard to the war in South Africa, Lansdowne gave Roberts a free hand and protected him from interference by other politicians. When Roberts’s initial moderate policy with regard to the Boers did not produce the envisaged results, Lansdowne assured him that if he adapted a tougher stance, he (Lansdowne) would support and defend him.⁴⁷

Roberts’s participation in many battles in India (1857–58), his numerous mentions in dispatches and VC is the material on which a patriotic press and popular magazines feed and from which legends are made. His storybook career in India focussed press attention on him, and when he was a commanding officer, afforded him the opportunity to manipulate the media to suit his own interests. In Afghanistan, Roberts expelled a reporter who was critical of his actions,⁴⁸ while keeping and rewarding those reporters who were positively inclined towards his work. Roberts’s reputation to a large extent derived from his Kabul–Kandahar march, and was created by the pro-Roberts media. By 1878, the electric telegraph and cable had been in use for some years, which meant that the dispatches of commanders and war correspondents could be transmitted quickly. Roberts used this technology to his own advantage, for example, to ensure that his own dispatches were transmitted before those of anyone else.⁴⁹ At the end of 1899, a number of reporters accompanied Roberts to South Africa. He was, once again, determined to control and ‘manage’ the press, and was successful, because most of the reports that were published about his campaign by ‘the brilliant band of War Correspondents who accompany this Army’,⁵⁰ were favourable. Rudyard Kipling’s famous music-hall ballad ‘Bobs’,⁵¹ of course, also ensured Roberts public exposure, fame and concomitant endearment and hero-worship – hero-worship that went back all the way to the war of 1878–80 in Afghanistan.

The Second Anglo-Afghan War, 1878–80⁵²

On 12 April 1876, Lord Lytton became Viceroy of India. By this time there was growing concern in Britain about the possibility of Russian expansion in Central Asia, especially in the light of the fact that Sher Ali (the Amir of Afghanistan) was (mistakenly) suspected of being an ally of the Russians. While some officials in India believed in a policy of ‘masterly inactivity’ (i.e. non-interference), Roberts and others believed that a ‘forward policy’ (i.e. more militant, pre-emptive action) was the correct approach.⁵³ Lytton bought into the latter; he and Roberts became close friends, and in April 1878 he appointed Roberts as the commander of the Punjab Frontier Force. On 11 August 1878, a Russian mission arrived in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan, but was withdrawn soon after. When in September 1878, Sher Ali refused to allow a similar British mission to take up position in Kabul, an apology was demanded. When no answer was received, Britain declared war on Afghanistan on 21 November 1878.

During the first phase of the war, three British columns invaded Afghanistan. The smallest column, composed of excellent troops and known as the Kurram Field Force (116 officers and 6,549 men, with 18 guns), was commanded by Roberts. He left Kohat on the Indus River, quickly occupied the Kurram Valley and moved up to the Shutargardan Pass. On 2 December 1878, after a daring night march, Roberts (3,200 men with 13 guns) defeated an Afghan force (about 4,000 men with 11 guns) at the Peiwar Kotal, at the northern exit of the Kurram Valley. The Afghans were in excellent positions on the Kotal heights. Roberts broke the traditional military rules by dividing his small force, and with an excellent flanking movement took the Peiwar Kotal with 2,300 men, while the rest of his force attacked the enemy front. Roberts was successful because he did careful reconnaissance, correctly evaluated the terrain and situation from a tactical point of view, was prepared to take a risk in order to achieve surprise and attacked from an unexpected quarter (as he later did in South Africa, albeit on a much larger strategic scale). This was a dramatic and decisive victory, the first major British victory of the war, and it ensured the success of the British invasion. Sher Ali fled, leaving his son, Yakub Khan, on the throne. After Peiwar Kotal, Roberts started his expedition into the Kost Valley on 2 January 1879 and occupied it. If and when his camp or soldiers were attacked, he had the nearby villages looted and burnt, as was the custom in colonial warfare; a precursor to what happened in South Africa more than two decades later.

The first phase of the war ended on 26 May 1879, when the Treaty of Gandamak was signed. Roberts returned to Simla, having fought brilliantly against superior forces – his reputation as a national hero firmly established. In the meantime, Major Sir Louis Cavagnari, a friend of Roberts, was sent to Kabul as Britain’s envoy, where he and his entourage were murdered by a mob in the British Residency on 3 September 1879. By that time only Roberts’s Kurram Field Force was still available to be re-activated, and henceforth it was known as the Kabul Field Force (about 6,600 men with 18 guns). Roberts led his force from Ali Khel into central Afghanistan. He planned to concentrate his force at Kushi, some 40 miles from Kabul, from where he would march on the city. Roberts’s military operations during the second phase of the war can be divided into four sub phases:⁵⁴ (1) The march from Kushi (which started on 30 September 1879) to occupy Kabul (9 October); (2) the attempts to quell the Afghan opposition, which culminated in him being besieged in Kabul; (3) the preparations for a spring campaign; and (4) the march from Kabul to Kandahar (8–31 August 1880) and the battle outside the city (1 September).

Roberts’s force marched through unsurveyed, mountainous and hostile country. Just before reaching Kabul, Roberts met in battle, on 6 October, a large Afghan force under the command of Nek Mohammed Khan, on the Charasiab heights. Roberts had at least 3,800 British and Indian troops with 16 guns (plus 2 Gatlings) under his command, against probably about 12,000 Afghans with 20 guns. Roberts reached Charasiab village on the evening of 5 October. The next day, he skilfully dislodged the entrenched Afghan force by means of a flank movement, and followed it up with a cavalry pursuit. It was the first time that the British army used the relatively speaking new-technology Gatling guns in action. The road to Kabul was now open, thanks to Roberts’s willingness to take a risk in an effort to ensure surprise. On 9 October 1879, a triumphant Roberts entered Kabul, and Yakub Khan was removed from the throne. This campaign was indeed a turning point in Roberts’s career.

Roberts made a tactically wise decision not to use the formidable Bala Hissar Fortress overlooking Kabul as his base, but rather the as yet unfinished rectangular military cantonment at Sherpur, a mile north of the city centre. His first task now was to avenge the death of his friend Cavagnari. This he did swiftly and brutally, which led to much controversy, especially because the testimonies were not always very reliable, and since it was clear that a spirit of vengeance influenced the judgements. At least eighty-seven Afghans were executed (others were shot when they resisted being taken into custody), which soon led to an outcry in the British media and caused a political storm back home, raising doubts about Roberts’s political judgement. Lytton, however, had made it clear to him that ‘it is not justice in the ordinary sense, but retribution that you have to administer on reaching Kabul …. What is required is a prompt and impressive example … Your object should be to strike terror, and to strike it swiftly and deeply.’⁵⁵

In the meantime, the Afghan forces opposed to British rule, reorganised, and ‘jihad’ was proclaimed. Some 100,000 Afghans answered the call. When Roberts realised that large numbers of Afghan tribesmen were gathering to the north of Kabul, he sent a force to catch those Afghans in a pincer movement. However, due to a lack of effective intelligence, Roberts did not realise how strong the Afghans were. His soldiers fought several days in and around the Chardeh Plain, without any real success; as a matter of fact, on 11 December, the British were nearly defeated and were lucky to be able to fall back to the Sherpur cantonment. The Afghans then re-occupied Kabul. This led to Roberts being besieged in Sherpur (15–23 December 1879). On 21 December, he ordered Brigadier General Charles Gough to speed up his march from Jagdalak to Kabul. This provoked a huge onslaught against Roberts’s force. On 23 December 1879, just before dawn, the Afghan forces (about 50,000) under Mohammed Jan launched an all-out attack. The Afghans stormed the west, south and east walls of the cantonment but were driven back, and Roberts then ordered a counter-attack. The Afghans were thoroughly defeated in the ensuing battle. British and Indian casualties amounted to 33; the Afghans left about 3,000 dead on the battlefield. Roberts used Gatling guns and the new breech-loading Martini and Snider rifles with great effect. After Roberts repulsed the onslaught, he reoccupied the city of Kabul.

At the beginning of May 1880, Lieutenant General Donald Stewart took overall command in Kabul. While negotiations were underway to find a peaceful solution to the ‘Afghan problem’, a British force was severely defeated at Maiwand by Ayub Khan on 27 July 1880, some 35 miles west of Kandahar, and the garrison in the latter city (5,000 men, commanded by Major General J M Primrose) was then besieged. Roberts was ordered to relieve Kandahar, while another force under Major General R Phayre was ordered to march from Quetta to Kandahar. Of course, Roberts would try his best to get there first, in what was also referred to as the ‘Race for the Peerage’. Consequently, his troops would march with as little kit as possible and only light mountain guns were taken with the force. On 7 August 1880, Roberts moved his hand-picked task force (basically a flying column) of 273 British officers, 2,562 British and 7,151 Indian troops, plus 18 guns, out of the Bala Hissar Fortress to Sherpur, and the next day the march proper began. Instead of taking the direct road via Maidan, the longer route via the Logar Valley was chosen, because it was deemed to be safer. Conditions were difficult: Roberts pushed his men as hard as possible; they marched without a line of communication; days were extremely hot, and nights very cold; there were dust storms, and a scarcity of water; many soldiers fell ill, including Roberts, who suffered from fever, headaches and constant nausea (and had to be carried in a doolie). On 27 August, news was received that Ayub Khan had abandoned the siege, when he heard of Roberts’s approaching force. Kandahar was reached on 31 August. The march proper took place from 8–31 August; i.e. twenty-four days, during which time only two full days were used to rest the troops. A distance of 324 miles was covered; i.e. on each of the twenty-two marching days, an average of 14.7 miles were covered. There was no fighting during the march, but many casualties due to illness.⁵⁶

After Roberts entered Kandahar on 31 August 1880, he resolved, notwithstanding his ill health, to attack Ayub Khan’s force as soon as possible. The next day, 1 September 1880, Roberts moved out with approximately 11,000 men and 32 guns. Ayub Khan had about 13,000 men, also with 32 guns, under his command. The battle of Kandahar commenced at about 0930 at Baba Wali, some 2 miles north-west of the city, where the Afghans had their camp. The British charged the Afghan positions, drove them off and captured their camp and all their artillery. This was the most decisive victory of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Roberts’s force suffered 35 killed and 213 wounded; the Afghans lost at least 600 killed, but their total casualties were perhaps as high as 3,500. After the battle, Roberts collapsed, and on 8 September 1880, a medical board decided that he needed to go home.

Of all the British officers involved in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, Roberts did most of the fighting. As indicated earlier, he correctly pointed out that his march with the Kurram Field Force to Kabul in October 1879 was in more than one way a more important (and much more difficult and risky) military feat (as was Stewart’s march from Kandahar to Kabul in April–May 1880). However, his renowned march ‘from Kabul to Kandahar’, with its alliterative ring, captured the imagination of the British public. The British army’s defeat at Maiwand had refocussed the attention of the British public on Afghanistan, and Roberts’s march (re-)attracted the attention of the British press and public like nothing else in the war had done.⁵⁷ The effect of his march can be likened to the way in which the defence of Rorke’s Drift in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 counterbalanced the defeat suffered by the British at Isandlwana. Almost overnight, Roberts became a popular public hero, but also a rival (and logical successor) to Wolseley, who at that stage was QMG of the British army.

To defeat the Afghans militarily was one thing; to control them was something else. Fearing that they could once again become victims of Afghan retaliation (as was the case towards the end of the First Anglo-Afghan War), the Liberal Party that came to power in Britain in March 1881 decided to withdraw from Afghanistan. So the Second Anglo-Afghan War was indeed a Pyrrhic victory for Britain, and somewhat of an embarrassment – and it destroyed or tarnished several military and political careers. For ‘Bobs Bahadur’ (Bobs the Hero/the Brave), however, it was a triumph. He was fêted as the saviour of British prestige in Afghanistan, and was showered with honours and rewards. The Kabul–Kandahar march was the defining event of the Second Anglo-Afghan War and Roberts’s career. It set him up for the important role he was to play in India and elsewhere in the years to follow; more than twenty years later, another of his marches would catch the British public’s imagination and world media’s attention, when he outmanoeuvred the Boer citizen armies in South Africa.