The going was slow. Everyone was heading for Pretoria. The road leading out of Johannesburg was choked with refugees, with their belongings piled onto oxwagons or whatever transport they could find. Impatient Boer fighters on worn-out horses, recently returned from the front, threaded their way through the crowd. ‘Going home, the war is over,’ they called, for all the world to hear.1 British soldiers kept an eye on them from a distance and allowed them to proceed. They were all refugees and not worth bothering about.
Deneys Reitz was among them, heading home on his Basuto pony. He picked his way nimbly through the crowd, keeping close to his eldest brother, Hjalmar. Charley, their African servant, followed them. Deneys had lost touch with his two other brothers. They had managed to get Arend on board a goods train in Johannesburg, in the care of a man who had promised to look after him. Deneys could only hope he would be all right. He was already delirious; it could well be typhoid fever. No one knew where Joubert was. It was said that a cavalry regiment had taken his unit by surprise at Koppie Alleen a fortnight earlier. That was the last Deneys had heard of him. He could be dead, for all he knew. All he wanted now was to get home. His father would know what to do. After all, he was the one who had started the war, literally, by signing the ultimatum to the British. Deneys felt miserable.
Things were very different when he had left for Natal eight months before. He was 17, filled with romantic notions and eager to fight. They were going to drive the British into the sea. And he had been given permission to accompany them, taking his own Mauser, even though he had to plead for it. But the experience had shattered his illusions. There was the interminable siege of Ladysmith, which had ultimately achieved nothing; the battle at Spion Kop, where he had witnessed the full horror of war: ‘the valiant dead . . . with blow flies in their mouths and nostrils’, human remains that looked as if they had been ‘through a meat grinder’, ‘mutilated faces . . . swelling up in the sun’.
These grim images continued to haunt him for a long time to come, but after their withdrawal from Natal he had nevertheless returned to enlist for duty at the front. This time he went to the Orange Free State, his birthplace, which held memories of a happy childhood, although it was hardly a front at all. The campaign had ended in a humiliating defeat. The widely dispersed Boer units hadn’t stood a chance against Roberts’s superior force. He himself had hardly fought at all. The British had driven them off. Even Koos de la Rey had been powerless to do anything. The same had happened in the Transvaal. The British had wiped them out. Most of the Boer fighters were disillusioned and many had abandoned the struggle. Johannesburg had already fallen and they had no idea what they would find in Pretoria.
It was late, around ten o’clock, when they arrived. They had ridden through the dark streets to their home in the suburb of Sunnyside, only to be bitterly disappointed. The grounds were deserted, the house was empty. They went round to their neighbours, but no one answered their knock. A few houses further on, someone finally appeared at the door. A few brief words—the president and the state secretary had fled; Pretoria would be surrendered to the British the following day—then the door was slammed shut.
They couldn’t believe that Kruger and their father had fled, but it was too late to make further enquiries. The brothers forced their way into their home, stabled their weary horses and found some food in the pantry. And after all those bitterly cold nights they had spent in the open they could sleep in their own beds again at last, but it was a dismal homecoming nevertheless. One brother missing, another ill and still making his way home, their house deserted. Their father and stepmother, their younger half-siblings were all gone. No one knew where.
The following morning Hjalmar and Deneys ventured out to see what had happened in their absence. The town was in chaos. There was gunfire, shops and supply depots had been plundered, and disturbing rumours were circulating. The British were evidently heading in their direction. They returned home and were packing their belongings when, to their delight, Joubert suddenly turned up, unharmed. His horse had been killed at Koppie Alleen, but he had escaped on foot and later completed the journey by train. There was no time to celebrate their reunion. The three brothers decided to leave as quickly as possible and head east while they still had a chance. Outside one of the ransacked shops they found a horse, which they requisitioned for Joubert. Charley had to remain behind. ‘The poor fellow piteously entreated us to keep him, but we had to harden our hearts.’ They could no longer afford the luxury of a servant. Horses and food were hard to come by; the animals they possessed were needed to carry their supplies. Charley was to take blankets and all he wanted from the house. Then their ways parted.
By evening the brothers were about 15 kilometres from Pretoria. They spent the night in the vicinity of the First Factory brandy distillery and at sunrise they discovered that hundreds of other Boer fighters had also sought refuge in the area. But there was no sign of their own military unit, the Afrikander Cavalry Corps. Who they did run into, however, was the state attorney, Jan Smuts, who told them where Kruger and their father had gone. Of course they hadn’t fled. They were in Machadodorp, about 250 kilometres further east along the railway line, where they had set up a new capital. From there they would continue to lead the struggle. Louis Botha was already raising a fresh army and Smuts himself was making his way to the western Transvaal to help Koos de la Rey organise the resistance.
This was the best news the brothers had heard in a long time. Joubert decided to head directly for Botha’s camp. Hjalmar and Deneys wanted to speak to their father first and hear what he thought of it all. He might also have news of Arend. They set off for Machadodorp.2
Lord Roberts wasted no time. As far as he was concerned, the capture of Pretoria on 5 June 1900 had brought the war to an end. This was the harsh reality and the Boers would have to resign themselves to it. He moved into Melrose House, one of the ostentatious new mansions in town, and got down to business. Until then, he had relied on tough military action and proclamations to intimidate his adversaries. Now it was time to introduce penalties to enforce those ‘paper bombs’. If the Boer leaders had any sense, they would accept his invitation to sit down and talk. If not, they would have to face the consequences.
He had more or less written off the leaders of the resistance in the Orange Free State, or the Orange River Colony, as it had been renamed on 24 May. There was nothing to be done with them. That much was clear from Steyn’s counter-proclamations and Christiaan de Wet’s acts of sabotage. On 31 May Roberts acquired additional powers by imposing martial law. A day later, he issued a proclamation with a firm deadline. Anyone who failed to hand in their arms within 14 days, by 15 June, would be deemed—and treated as—a rebel, with all the consequences for their person and property.3
At first Roberts still hoped that something would come of his edict, as far as the Transvaal authorities were concerned. At the beginning of June Louis Botha, for one, seemed to be open to reason. Intermediaries, including his wife, Annie, were sent to talk to him. Louis de Souza, the War Department secretary with whom Churchill had become acquainted during his time in prison, went a step further. He sent Botha a letter, purportedly from Roberts, which amounted to nothing less than an outright attempt at bribery. He offered Botha—and De la Rey—exemption from exile, if they surrendered. They would be allowed to remain in South Africa on trust, with an annual stipend of £10,000 each. No one was sure who was behind the offer. Botha couldn’t believe that Roberts would stoop so low, but found any attempt to approach him, directly or indirectly, insulting. It strengthened his resolve not to negotiate without a prior guarantee that the South African Republic would retain its independence. Otherwise, the Transvalers, like the Freestaters, would continue to fight. The Battle of Diamond Hill on 11 and 12 June proved they were still capable of doing so.
Roberts was losing patience. He decided to tighten the screws, on everyone. On 16 June 1900 he issued a proclamation for both territories—the fifth proclamation by this time—to deal with the ‘small parties of raiders’ who were continuing to destroy railway bridges and telegraph lines. They wouldn’t be able to do this, he reasoned, without the knowledge and consent of other inhabitants and ‘the principal civil residents’ in the vicinity. And those in question would be deemed guilty of complicity with immediate effect. Any destruction of public property would be punished by burning down homesteads in the area and imprisoning prominent citizens in the district.
Three days later, Roberts introduced further measures. Proclamation 6 of 19 June added to the existing sanctions a penalty of collective financial liability. The local community would be held to account for any costs resulting from damage to property. In addition, the director of the now militarised railway system was authorised to carry prominent civilians on the trains as hostages.
Roberts decided to set an example right away to show that he meant business. The man who had conducted the most daring raids and caused the greatest damage to the British railway and telegraph lines was, without a doubt, Christiaan de Wet. On 7 June he had carried out a spectacular raid on Roodewal station, not far from his own farm, Roodepoort. There was also the fact that the two-week amnesty Roberts had granted for all Boers under arms in the Orange River Colony on 1 June was about to expire. The next step was obvious. On 15 June Roberts informed his staff officers of his decision. He declared De Wet a rebel and ordered that he be treated accordingly. Proclamation 5 was issued the following day. Roberts demanded that the sanctions announced in it—including the burning down of farmsteads—were seen to be enforced. ‘A few examples only will be necessary and let us begin with De Wet’s farm.’ Lord Methuen was responsible for executing the sentence. On 16 June Roodepoort was reduced to ashes.4
This was too close for comfort. By the time it was safe enough for Christiaan de Wet to return to his property, the embers had died, but the sight of it, even from a distance, was heartbreaking. They had destroyed the work of a lifetime. De Wet asked his generals Stoffel Froneman and Piet Fourie to rein in their horses, and proceeded alone. This was the price he had paid. His three eldest sons, Kotie, Izak and Christiaan, were on commando with him; his wife, Cornelia, and their nine other children had been roaming the countryside for months, taking refuge in a laager somewhere along the Vaal. And now his farm and everything he possessed had been razed to the ground. They had used dynamite, as he saw at once, and they had done the job thoroughly. He dismounted, knelt at the grave of his infant daughter, and prayed. Then he rode back to his companions, his face pale and drawn. ‘Let’s go. There’s work to be done.’5
Roberts’s aim to create a deterrent succeeded, at least partially. The Boers were shaken by the attack on Roodepoort. For those who were still uncommitted, the reprisal against the Free State’s commandantgeneral was a turning point. If even De Wet’s farm could go up in flames, nothing was safe; their own homes were also in danger. There was nothing to do but accept the enemy’s terms. Thousands of Boer fighters had done so after the British army’s double breakthrough on 27 February 1900 and now thousands more followed suit. Between March and July of that year 12,000 to 14,000 Boers—between a fifth and a quarter of the original 60,000 conscripts in the two republics—abandoned the struggle. The impact was huge and, to compound the problem, many of them were wealthy burghers and senior government officials. These were people who had something to lose. Among them were men like General Hendrik Schoeman, a member of the Transvaal Executive Council, and General Andries Cronjé, the younger brother of Piet ‘Paardeberg’ Cronjé.6
But the Roodepoort incident was counterproductive as well. Many Boers were defiant and more determined to fight on. De Wet’s example counted for more than Roberts’s deterrent. He had sacrificed all for the sake of a free and independent country. More resolute than ever, ‘Chrisjan’ was going to fight on, to the bitter end if necessary. His attitude enhanced his moral authority and strengthened the resolve of many who had not yet taken the plunge.
Roodepoort became a double-edged symbol. For the defectors, or ‘hands-uppers’ (hensoppers), it exemplified the futility of resistance; for the hardliners, the ‘bitter-enders’ (bittereinders), it confirmed the noble purpose of their cause. But the upshot was that Roberts’s draconian measures sowed discord among the Boers, who were compelled to choose sides for or against him. The choice was between returning to their peaceful, rustic way of life, as loyal subjects of the British regime, or being hunted down as rebels. This was the war Roberts declared on every Boer personally. It was a war waged not on the battlefield but in village communities and families, between neighbours, brothers, fathers and sons. A war of conscience.
Pressure from their leaders left them virtually no choice at all. President Steyn’s first counter-proclamation, issued on 19 March, made that clear to the burghers of the Orange Free State. His government was, and would continue to be, the only legitimate authority. Evading military service was deemed an act of treason. Roberts’s subsequent proclamations of 24 May and 1 June changed nothing as far as he was concerned. On 11 June Steyn hit back with a new counter-proclamation. Roberts’s demands, he said, were in violation of international law, ‘as the Government of the Orange Free State is still fully functional’ and burghers must comply with its orders alone.7
After their initial ambivalence, the Transvaal authorities took an equally firm stand. From Machadodorp, on 8 June, President Kruger issued his own counter-proclamation against Roberts’s first and second ‘Transvaal’ proclamations. In substance it was similar to Steyn’s. He rejected the validity of the British demands and urged burghers not to be misled ‘by their promises and threats’. Swearing an ‘oath of loyalty’ to the British regime was considered treason. And doing so, he warned them, was no guarantee against being banished to St Helena.
That wasn’t the end of it. Reports came in from Botha and other commandants about demoralised burghers. Kruger responded with a series of telegrams, some encouraging, some reproachful, and some an inimitable combination of the two. On 20 June, for instance, he addressed himself directly to those who were still undecided. ‘Brothers, brothers, I implore you not to give up hope. Be steadfast and fight in the name of the Lord. Look into your hearts: if you are cowardly and flee, it is because you have ceased to believe in a God in Heaven and have forsaken the Almighty.’ But, he assured Sarel Oosthuizen—the ‘dark horseman’ who had captured Churchill and who now held the rank of general—there was still hope, even if there were only a few left who were prepared to fight. ‘I believe it will be the same as in the case of Gideon and his three hundred men: a small band of stalwarts will take it upon themselves to fight the whole battle and the Lord will say unto the beast, so far and no further.’
Along with biblical aphorisms, the telegrams from Machadodorp also contained warnings of earthly retribution. Burghers who abandoned their posts would be ‘guilty of murder’. And in districts where the Boers were still in control, those who shirked military service were to be arrested and court-martialled. In addition, their property was to be confiscated, the president added on 24 June. Anyone who took the oath of neutrality was to be prosecuted. In the words of the state secretary, F.W. Reitz, the oath was ‘a betrayal of country and nation’.8
Long rows of railway carriages constituted the new headquarters of the Transvaal government and its entourage of civil servants who had come from Pretoria. Deneys and Hjalmar Reitz had been travelling for three days, first on horseback as far as Middelburg, where they managed to get a lift on a goods train. They reached the new capital, Machadodorp, early in the morning and found their father in one of the train carriages. They were relieved to see each other again, safe and sound after all those months. And he knew where Arend was: in a Russian field hospital in Waterval Onder, 20 kilometres down the line. Their stepmother and the younger children had gone to Lourenço Marques, and from there sailed to Holland to stay with relatives. The war was far from over, their father continued. The new strategy was working better for the Boers than largescale confrontations. Look at George Washington! He too had fought for a seemingly lost cause, but triumphed in the end.
Deneys was cheered by his optimism. Still, he couldn’t stop worrying about all those burghers who were giving up the fight. But first he wanted to see Arend. From the edge of the escarpment the train clawed its way down the precipitous slope from Waterval Boven to Waterval Onder. It was far warmer in the valley. Arend was in good hands. The Russian nurses said he was improving. His fever had subsided, though the danger hadn’t yet passed. Near the hospital they caught a glimpse of Kruger. They knew from their father that he had fled from the bitter cold of the heights. He was sitting in a saloon carriage, ‘a lonely, tired man’, lost in thought, with a large Bible lying open on the table before him. They didn’t presume to approach him.
Back in Machadodorp they took leave of their father and set off to find a commando unit they could join. After collecting their horses in Middelburg, they met up with a contingent of German volunteers, about 60 strong, led by an Austrian, Baron von Goldeck. They were on reconnaissance for Louis Botha, a task that appealed to Deneys and Hjalmar. Botha was assembling a new army and was pleased with the results. Thousands of weaker men had disappeared, but those who remained were ‘good fighting men’.
One evening Deneys’s old unit turned up. It was the Pretoria commando he had fought with in Natal—or, at least, what was left of it, no more than half, 150 men at most. They had a new field cornet, Max Theunissen, a youngster of 25. Although Deneys had got on well with the Germans, he felt closer to his old comrades and decided to rejoin them. Hjalmar remained with Von Goldeck. Deneys took his roan and the Basuto pony to carry his supplies. Botha had given Theunissen instructions to destroy the railway line between Pretoria and Johannesburg. They were back on familiar territory.
But the fates were against them. The British were guarding the railway and they were unable to get anywhere near it. They nevertheless remained in the area for a while, hoping an opportunity would present itself. A few days later Reitz was told that the Afrikander Cavalry Corps in which he had served in the Orange Free State was also operating in the region. He decided to look up his ‘old companions’ and have a word with Commandant Malan.
The happy reunion ended in tragedy. While Reitz was talking to his friends, a British column bombarded them with lyddite grenades. The first shells were wide of the mark, but the British artillerymen soon had them in their sights. Malan ordered his men to take cover. Reitz found safety behind a garden wall, while several others sought shelter behind a willow tree. It was a poor position. A shell hit the trunk and exploded on impact. The seven unfortunate men standing there were ‘blown to pieces which strewed the ground for thirty yards beyond’. When the British gun stopped firing, ‘their remains had to be collected with a shovel, a most sickening spectacle.’
As if that wasn’t bad enough, a few minutes later Commandant Malan was also hit. He took a bullet through the throat and died within minutes. Reitz was devastated. He had been considering joining the Afrikander Cavalry, but now abandoned the idea. They seemed to be under an unlucky star.
So he remained with the Pretoria commando. The weeks that followed were uneventful. They lingered around Pretoria and kept an eye on the British troops, sniping at them from time to time. The spell of relative calm gave the Boer leaders an opportunity to reorganise their scattered troops, and the townspeople time to recover. It was mid-July, in the dead of winter.9
Piet de Wet had been mulling over the idea for some time. It was 19 July, and that day’s encounter at Karroospruit confirmed the conclusion he had reached. He had done all he could, along with Danie Theron, the commandant of the Scouts Corps, but they had been forced to flee from Broadwood’s troops. They had been hopelessly outnumbered and hadn’t stood a chance. It had been like this all the time lately. There was simply no point. He would have to have a word with his brother.
It is hard to say who was the more stubborn, Christiaan or Piet de Wet. Perhaps that’s why they had always got on so well together. Piet was seven years younger than Christiaan, his favourite elder brother. They came from a family of 14, living in Dewetsdorp in the Orange Free State, a village named after their father. The brothers had farmed together in the Transvaal for a while and shared many memories of the war. They had been in Paardekraal in December 1880, the first time war was declared on the British. They had also helped to win that war, on the slopes of Majuba Hill on 27 February 1881. And their names were linked to the successes of the present war as well, most notably the battles at Nicholson’s Nek on 30 October 1899 and Sannaspos on 31 March 1900. They had risen through the ranks at lightning speed; both had become generals in almost no time at all. Christiaan was commander-in-chief of the Free State forces. Piet held the same rank over the men on the ‘Cape’ front, to the south.
But they reacted differently to Roberts’s advance, and this drove a wedge between them. Christiaan wanted to change tactics right away. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for. He would let the British through and attack their communication lines from the rear, taking decisions one at a time as events unfolded, and relying on his instincts. A resourceful, independent thinker with a recalcitrant streak, he found this kind of approach suited him best. Piet preferred tried and trusted methods: shrewdly chosen positions and skilful manoeuvres to intercept the British advance, rather than improvisations and decisions on the spur of the moment. He was a man committed to law and order, a man with respect for private property.
These traits came to the fore in a dispute that dragged on for months between himself and the Transvaal military procurements commission. Shortly before the war, Piet de Wet had supplied them with 100 horses. They had agreed on a price of £20 per head, but De Wet received only £18. He was incensed and even the war did nothing to take his mind off the matter. On 18 March 1900—within days of the fall of Bloemfontein—he sent two furious telegrams to Pretoria, one of them to Kruger himself. It was scandalous. The sale had set him back £200. Did those office clerks actually have the authority to take decisions like that at their own discretion? Who were they to say his horses weren’t worth the price they had agreed on? It was the worst kind of injustice: a man who was out fighting, risking his life, while they were simply juggling paper clips in Pretoria.
No one knows how the affair ended, but it showed what kind of man Piet de Wet was. If he believed he was in the right, nothing could persuade him otherwise. And that was his attitude to the war. The closer the British approached, the less convinced he was that it would end well. The Boers had done their best, he more than anyone else, but it hadn’t been enough. It was time to face up to the truth. To continue would cost them their land, their possessions, their wives and children. The Boer leaders would have to make the best of it. They owed it to their families. He decided to act. On 18 May he informed Broadwood and Hamilton that he was prepared to surrender on condition that he could return to his farm in Lindley. His proposal was turned down—on Roberts’s authority, he was given to understand. They would accept only an unconditional surrender. For him, this was a step too far.
So he continued to fight. Two weeks later, on 31 May, he achieved a brilliant success. Not far from Lindley, he and Commandant Michael Prinsloo—Marthinus’s younger brother—captured an entire British battalion. And not just any battalion. It comprised 500 volunteers of the 13th Imperial Yeomanry, including many from wealthy, aristocratic families.
The Lindley affair caused a commotion in Britain, but that didn’t raise Piet de Wet’s hopes. In early June he decided of his own accord to propose a partial ceasefire to Lord Methuen. Steyn was against it—Roberts too, incidentally—and in a military council meeting on 6 June Piet’s elder brother called him to account. It was a serious clash, with Piet in turn accusing Christiaan—along with Steyn and particularly the Transvaal authorities—of misleading the public. The foreign intervention they were promising was a myth. In the meantime, Pretoria had also fallen. Continuing the war would ruin the country, he warned them, with innocent women and children paying the highest price. But his words fell on deaf ears. Worse than that, Christiaan lost his temper and flew into a rage.
At the end of June a more personal quarrel widened the rift between the brothers. Surprisingly, they found themselves embroiled in a squalid contest. Steyn had nominated Christiaan to succeed Naas Ferreira as commandant-general. He hadn’t been elected in accordance with the usual procedure, and Piet and two other generals, Marthinus Prinsloo and Jan Olivier, raised objections. Although Steyn saw no need for it, Christiaan decided to call an election to remove any doubt. The outcome was clear: he won 26 votes, Olivier three, Prinsloo two and his brother one.
The implications were self-evident. Piet de Wet left the meeting, disappointed. He took command again, out of a sense of duty, but never moved far from his farm in Lindley. He and his wife, Susanna, had a heart-to-heart talk. She was worried about the British burning down their house as well. What would become of her and their 11 children? Would they end up living like vagabonds, like her sister-in-law Cornelia? The prospect was too awful to contemplate.
After grappling with the problem for several weeks, Piet decided to make one last attempt. On 20 July he visited his elder brother in Blesbokfontein. Did Christiaan still see any chance of being able to continue the struggle? The question alone infuriated him. ‘Are you mad?’ was his only reply. There was nothing more to be said. Piet returned to his troops and discussed the matter with a few trusted friends. They agreed with him. On 24 July he made enquiries about the terms the British were offering. In reply to one of his men, he said, ‘I can’t advise you. Each of you must do what you believe best, but I am going home.’ On 26 July 1900 he went to Kroonstad to surrender.10