Sir Charles Warren and Spion Kop

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Title: Sir Charles Warren and Spion Kop - A Vindication
Author: Defender (pseudonym)
Language: English
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

Bold text is denoted by =equal signs=.

Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have
been placed at the end of the book.

A superscript is denoted by ^x or ^{xx}, for example Estab^t.

The Appendix had several passages marked with a vertical bar in the
margin, indicating that the passages so marked were omitted from the
published dispatches in 1900. In this etext these passages are
enclosed in double parentheses {{ ... }} and are also indented if
the passage is in a separate paragraph.

Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book.

[Illustration: _From a photograph by A. Bassano_]

[Illustration: Signature of Sir Charles Warren]

SIR CHARLES WARREN

AND

SPION KOP

SIR CHARLES WARREN
AND
SPION KOP

A VINDICATION
BY
‘DEFENDER’

WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, PORTRAIT AND MAP

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1902

PREFACE

It is now more than two years since the operation took place on
the Tugela River in Natal, that ended in the capture and the
unwarrantable abandonment the same day of the position of Spion Kop.
The lapse of time since these events occurred naturally caused a
loss of interest in this chapter of the history of the war in South
Africa; but the recent publication of portions of the despatches
omitted in the ‘Gazette’ of 1900, and also of other documents
received at the time by the War Office but not disclosed, has again
brought the subject into prominence, revived public interest in it,
and offered an opportunity which we gladly seize to vindicate the
conduct of an officer who has been condemned without being heard.

Whether Sir Charles Warren will be allowed any opportunity of
defending himself against the strictures passed upon him by Sir
Redvers Buller, either now or when the war is over, is doubtful; but
at length, having before us all the documents received at the War
Office, it is proposed to show in the following pages that, in spite
of the difficult circumstances in which he found himself, Sir Charles
Warren did his duty, and that, had Spion Kop not been recklessly
abandoned by a subordinate, there is every reason to suppose that he
would have gained a great success.

The publication of the despatches on Spion Kop in the parliamentary
Easter recess of 1900 took the world by surprise--so much so, indeed,
that a story was current that it was due to the mistake of a War
Office clerk. It did not commend itself as either a useful or a
desirable proceeding to publish to the whole world the strictures
passed by the General in command in Natal upon his second-in-command,
and those of the Commander-in-Chief in South Africa upon both,
especially as those officers were still serving their country in the
field.

The political mistake made by the Government was speedily
demonstrated by the debates that took place on the reassembling
of Parliament; but it now appears that a greater want of judgment
was shown than was then supposed, and that having decided, however
wrongly, to publish the despatches the Government would have
done better to have published them in full. And this for several
reasons--it would have made little difference to those censured,
would have enabled the public to understand the Spion Kop operations,
which could not be understood from the incomplete documents, and
would have prevented a distinguished officer lying for two years
under the shadow of unjust accusations.

Much capital was made by the Opposition in Parliament out of the
suggestion of the Secretary of State for War that Sir Redvers Buller
should rewrite his despatch, or rather should write a separate
despatch for publication; but any one who has tried to get to the
bottom of the business from the material available must have felt
that Lord Lansdowne was perfectly right in suggesting that what was
wanted was a simple statement from Sir Redvers Buller of what he
intended to do, and how it was done or not done. Instead of this
there were despatches giving formal cover to other despatches from
Sir Charles Warren, and then criticising that officer’s actions
unfavourably. No statement was to be found anywhere indicating what
Sir Redvers Buller had intended to do, and as the instructions he
issued were not published, the operation which Sir Charles Warren
was directed to execute could only be gathered from the references
he made to them in his reports. These reports were evidently written
to his chief in the belief that the General commanding would write a
full account of what he had proposed to do, and how far his orders
had been successfully carried out, or otherwise.

To most men, conscientiously compelled to censure in an official
despatch those employed under them, the suggestion from the War
Office that such censure should be confined to a confidential
communication, and that some account of the operation and the cause
of failure should be written for publication, would have come as a
welcome relief; and had Sir Redvers Buller seen his way to comply
with it and at the same time to send copies to Sir Charles Warren
of the confidential despatches, he would have placed himself in an
unassailable position, he would have given Sir Charles Warren an
opportunity of confidentially justifying himself, if he could do so,
to the Secretary of State for War and the Commander-in-Chief, he
would have enabled his countrymen to know more about the operations
than was otherwise possible, and the world would have been spared a
very painful exhibition.

To this course, however, Sir Redvers Buller would not consent. He
prided himself on his integrity in resisting such a proposal, and has
been much praised for refusing to write a despatch for publication,
having already written one, which was mainly an indictment of his
second-in-command, on whom he threw the responsibility for the
failure of the operations.

It is the custom of the Service--and a very fair and proper custom
it is--that an unfavourable confidential report made upon a junior
officer by his superior shall be communicated to him before it
is sent forward, so that he may have an opportunity either of
excusing himself or of amending his conduct, and may have no
reason to complain that advantage has been taken of a confidential
communication to make unfavourable reports behind his back, of which
he remains in ignorance.

Sir Redvers Buller does not appear to have been mindful of this
custom, when, instead of writing a simple account of what he proposed
to do, and how it failed of accomplishment, he used the opportunity
to criticise most unfavourably the conduct of the distinguished
officer, his second-in-command, still serving under him in face of
the enemy, and left him in complete ignorance of the accusations made
against him. This ignorance he knew must last in any case until the
despatches were published, and, if they were not published, would
never be removed. But Sir Redvers Buller went beyond this, for he
attached to his despatch a separate memorandum, ‘not necessarily for
publication,’ in which he reiterated his complaints of the conduct of
Sir Charles Warren and accused him of such incapacity as unfitted him
for independent command. But not a word of this reached Sir Charles
Warren, whose exertions in the field during the succeeding month
under Sir Redvers Buller contributed so greatly to the victory of
Pieters and the relief of Ladysmith; and it was not until he saw the
despatches in the newspapers, long after this campaign was over, that
he knew of the secret stab his reputation had received at the hand
of his commander. Two years later the recently published omissions
have informed him how seriously the attack upon his reputation as a
soldier was intended.

A correspondence between Mr. Henry Norman, M.P., and the Right Hon.
A. J. Balfour, First Lord of the Treasury, published on 21st February
last, contains some observations by the latter very much to the
point on the want of any narrative of the Spion Kop operations in
Sir Redvers Buller’s despatches. Mr. Balfour points out, as was done
two years before in the parliamentary debates, that the General in
command, ‘in accordance with the Queen’s Regulations, with the best
precedents, and with public convenience,’ should have furnished a
simple narrative, unencumbered by controversy, of the operations
which took place. To this Sir Redvers Buller objected, in a letter
published on the 26th March last, that he was not in command, that
he was not present, and that therefore it was not his duty to write
such a narrative. The reply of Mr. Balfour, from which an extract is
appended, will be found to be fully borne out in the pages of this
book.

Extract from a letter from Mr. A. J. Balfour to Sir Redvers Buller
dated 10th March 1902.

* * * * *

‘You say that, not being in chief command, you were not the proper
person to write an account of what took place. But can this be
sustained? I find that on 15th January you ordered Sir Charles
Warren to cross the Tugela to the west of Spion Kop; on the 21st
and 22nd you gave him personal instructions as to the disposal
of his artillery; on the latter day you agreed with him, after
discussion, that Spion Kop would have to be taken; on the 23rd you
definitely decided upon the attack; you selected the officer who
was to lead it, detailing one of your Staff to accompany him; it
was by your orders that on the 24th Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft
assumed command on the summit of Spion Kop after General Woodgate
was wounded, and all heliographic messages between the officers in
the fighting line and Sir Charles Warren passed through your camp,
and were seen by you before they reached their destination. As
you were thus in constant touch with the troops actually engaged
on the top of the hill, so also you kept general control over the
movements of the co-operative forces under General Lyttelton,
with whom you were in communication during both the morning and
the afternoon of the 24th. It is, of course, true that you were
not present at the actual Spion Kop engagement. But if this was a
reason for not writing an account of it, it was a reason equally
applicable to Sir Charles Warren, whose headquarters, as I am
informed, were very little nearer to the scene of action than
were your own. It was on these grounds that I did not draw any
distinction between your position during the days of Spion Kop and
that of any other general conducting operations over an extended
field, at every part of which he could not, from the nature of the
case, be present. You were responsible for the general plan of
action; you intervened frequently in its execution; you were not
prevented either by distance or any other material obstacle from
intervening more frequently still, had you deemed it expedient
to do so. Was I wrong, then, in pointing out that it would have
been in accordance both with precedent and the Queen’s Regulations
for you to have supplied the Commander-in-Chief with a narrative
of these important military events based on your own observations
and on the reports of those of your officers who were immediately
engaged with the enemy?’

* * * * *

We have never been able to understand why the orders given to Sir
Charles Warren were not published with the despatches two years
ago. True they were called secret instructions, but of course the
secrecy was a temporary matter, and they ceased to be secret when the
operations were over. Without them there was no way for the public to
learn officially, except in the most general way, what the General in
command in Natal desired to do, and probably, owing to the wording of
Lord Roberts’s despatch, a misconception arose, widely entertained in
the army and highly prejudicial to Sir Charles Warren.

This misconception was that Sir Redvers Buller instructed Sir Charles
Warren to make his turning movement by way of Acton Homes, instead
of which Warren obstinately preferred the route by Groote Hoek. It
was supposed that by the first of these two routes the force might
have marched a long way round, but would have got into Ladysmith
with little difficulty, whereas the (hypothetical) substitution
by Warren of the Groote Hoek road had necessitated the capture of
Spion Kop. The publication of the instructions upsets this theory.
The Acton Homes road is never mentioned. The only references to the
direction of the turning movement are vague--‘to the West of Spion
Kop’--‘acting as circumstances require’--‘refusing your right and
throwing your left forward’--and it now appears that Sir Redvers
Buller intended Warren to go by the Groote Hoek route.

In vain has the Government endeavoured to shield the military
reputation of Sir Redvers Buller at the expense of others. He has
been consistent in his efforts to get the despatches published in
full, even to the memorandum ‘not necessarily for publication’--a
severe condemnation of Sir Charles Warren’s incapacity, but a more
damning one of his own--and by his attitude has compelled the
Government to give way. How truly applicable is an epigram of Mr.
Henry Sidgwick, quoted by Sir Henry Howarth in a recent letter to the
‘Morning Post’: ‘The darkest shadows in life are those which a man
makes when he stands in his own light.’

In addition to the official documents on the subject of Spion Kop
much information of a very varied character has accumulated during
the last two years, and besides invaluable verbal observations and
descriptions gathered from conversation with officers from the front
who took part in the operations, there is a whole library of books by
newspaper correspondents, officers, and others, which bear upon these
operations and throw light upon much that is obscure in the official
papers. Among many others may be mentioned ‘My Diocese during the
War,’ by Bishop Baynes of Natal; ‘The Relief of Ladysmith,’ by Mr.
J. B. Atkins; ‘The Natal Campaign,’ by Mr. Bennet Burleigh; ‘London
to Ladysmith via Pretoria,’ by Mr. Winston Churchill, M.P.; ‘The
History of the War in South Africa,’ by Dr. Conan Doyle; ‘The Relief
of Ladysmith,’ by Captain Holmes Wilson; ‘Buller’s Campaign: With the
Natal Field Force of 1900,’ by Lieutenant E. Blake Knox, Royal Army
Medical Corps.

Magazine articles have also appeared from time to time, some
commenting on the operations themselves, others filling up gaps in
the narrative, and others again incidentally referring to facts in
connection with the operations. Among these last may be mentioned:
(1) A series of articles contributed by Sir Charles Warren himself to
the ‘National Review’ entitled ‘Some Lessons from the South African
War’; (2) Mr. Oppenheim’s defence of Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft in
the ‘Nineteenth Century’; (3) An instructive diary of Dr. Raymond
Maxwell, who was serving with the Boers, in the ‘Contemporary Review’
for December 1901; and (4) ‘The Diary of a Boer Officer,’ by another
of them, in the ‘United Service Magazine’ for February this year.
Some reference should perhaps be made to one of a series of articles
in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine’ by ‘Linesman,’ which was headed ‘Dies Iræ,’
and dealt with Spion Kop, because these articles have attracted a
good deal of attention, are cleverly written, and have since been
republished in book form. They do not, however, impress the military
reader as very accurate descriptions, but rather as war pictures,
in which the colour is laid on with no sparing hand to obtain
the highest effect, the aim being to please the sensation-loving
reader. The value of the account of Spion Kop given in ‘Blackwood’
is discounted by ‘Linesman’ himself, who, having told us that ‘what
the writer saw of the fight on the summit of Spion Kop was little
enough’; that he had learnt ‘to describe--nay, believe nothing that
one has not seen with one’s own eyes’; and that, ‘if the tongue is
an unruly member, much more so is the ear’; nevertheless proceeds to
describe in blood-curdling language what he did not see with his own
eyes, and must have heard with ‘unruly’ ears.

The general result of all the information is to make it clear that
Spion Kop was the key of the position dominating the country,
and that the holders of it opened the way to Ladysmith; that no
one was more astonished at its unauthorised abandonment than Sir
Charles Warren, except the Boers themselves, who refused to credit
the evidence of their senses, and at first believed its forsaken
condition to be a trap! No longer, indeed, is it possible to
regard the unwarrantable surrender of this position as a fortunate
accident preventing an actual and impending disaster on the morrow,
or, as Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft is reported to have said, ‘a
mop up in the morning.’ Rather its abandonment was the blundering
relinquishment of a hardly won and well assured success, only to be
compared with the fatuous withdrawal in the morning of the storming
parties which made the brilliant night attack and surprised the
fortress of Bergen op Zoom on 8th March 1814.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

PREFACE v

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 1

I. BEGINNING OF THE WAR--WARREN CROSSES THE TUGELA 55

II. POSITION OF AFFAIRS 75

III. ADVANCE TO VENTER’S LAAGER AND ATTACK OF THE
RANGEWORTHY HILLS 92

IV. BOER DEMORALISATION--TACTICAL IMPORTANCE OF
SPION KOP 119

V. CAPTURE OF SPION KOP AND ITS ABANDONMENT 135

VI. AFTER WITHDRAWAL--BOER COMMENTS 159

VII. SOME CRITICISMS 169

APPENDIX: EXTRACTS FROM DESPATCHES 203

SIR CHARLES WARREN

AND

SPION KOP

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

A short sketch of the career of Sir Charles Warren is an appropriate
introduction to his appearance in South Africa as the leader of the
5th Division of the army in the Natal campaign, and as the Commander
of the Field Force in the operations on the Tugela between 15th and
25th January 1900.

PARENTAGE

Lieut.-General Sir Charles Warren, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., F.R.S., is the
son of the late Major-General Sir Charles Warren, K.C.B., Colonel of
the 96th Foot, by his first wife, Mary Anne, daughter of William
Hughes, Esq., of Dublin and Carlow, and grandson of the Very Rev.
John Warren, Dean of Bangor, North Wales.

His father served under the Duke of Wellington in the march to Paris
after the battle of Waterloo, in India, and in South Africa, and the
notes and sketches he there made upon expeditions into the interior
were made use of by his son fifty years later, when reporting on
the Bechuana and Griqua territories in 1876. He saw active service
during a second tour in India, in China, and in the Crimean war,
and was several times wounded. He retired after holding the command
of the Infantry Brigade at Malta for five years, and was created a
Knight Commander of the Bath. He had a natural turn for science,
mathematics, and adventure, which, together with his love of
soldiering, was inherited by his son Charles.

EARLY SERVICE--GIBRALTAR AND CHATHAM

Lieut.-General Sir Charles Warren was born at Bangor, North Wales,
on 7th February 1840. His early education took place at the Grammar
Schools of Bridgnorth and Wem, and at Cheltenham College. He then
entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and from that
passed through the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and received
a commission as lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 23rd December
1857. After the usual course of professional instruction at Chatham,
Warren went to Gibraltar, where he spent seven years, and, in
addition to the ordinary duties of an Engineer subaltern--looking
after his men and constructing or improving fortifications and
barrack buildings--he was employed on a trigonometrical survey of
the Rock, which he completed on a large scale. He constructed two
models of the famous fortress, one of which is now at the Rotunda
at Woolwich, and the other at Gibraltar. He was also engaged for
some months in rendering the eastern face of the Rock inaccessible
by scarping or building up any places that might lend a foothold to
an enemy. He was selected in 1865 to assist Professor Ramsay in a
geological survey of Gibraltar, but it fell through. While at this
station he invented a fitment to gun carriages to supersede the truck
levers of the Service; an invention objected to at the time because
it was made of iron, but subsequently adopted into the Service.

In 1864 Lieut. Warren married Fanny Margaretta Haydon, a daughter
of the late Samuel Haydon, Esq., of Guildford. On the completion of
his term of service at Gibraltar he returned to England in 1865, was
appointed Assistant Instructor in Surveying at the School of Military
Engineering at Chatham, and a year later his services were lent by
the War Office to the Palestine Exploration Fund.

JERUSALEM, 1867 TO 1870

The object of the Palestine Exploration Fund was the illustration
of the Bible, and it originated mainly through the exertions of Sir
George Grove, who formed an influential committee, of which for a
long time Sir Walter Besant was secretary. Captain (afterwards Sir)
Charles Wilson and Lieut. Anderson, R.E., had already been at work on
the survey of Palestine, and, in 1867, it was decided to undertake
excavations at Jerusalem to elucidate, if possible, many doubtful
questions of Biblical archæology, such as the site of the Holy
Sepulchre, the true direction of the second wall and the course of
the first, second, and third walls, involving the sites of the towers
of Hippicus, Phasælus, Mariamne, and Psephinus, and many other points
of great interest to the Biblical student.

The task was entrusted to Lieut. Warren, who was assisted by
non-commissioned officers of Royal Engineers. The difficulties in the
way of carrying it out were great--obstruction on the part of the
Pashas, physical dangers, and want of money. As regards the first,
only great tact and firmness prevented the complete suspension of the
work. ‘Indeed,’ says Major-General Whitworth Porter in his ‘History
of the Corps of Royal Engineers,’ ‘the Vizierial letter, under which
the party was supposed to be acting, expressly forbade excavations
at the Noble Sanctuary and the various Moslem and Christian shrines.
How, in spite of this, Warren succeeded in his object is well told in
his “Underground Jerusalem.”’

With regard to physical danger Dean Stanley wrote: ‘In the plain
and unadorned narrative of Captain Warren,[1] the difficulties and
dangers of the undertaking might almost escape notice. Yet the
perils will appear sufficiently great to any one who draws out from
the good-humoured story the fact that these excavations were carried
on at the constant risk of life and limb to the bold explorers. The
whole series of their progress was a succession of “lucky escapes.”
Huge stones were day after day ready to fall, and sometimes did fall,
on their heads. One of the explorers was “injured so severely that he
could barely crawl out into the open air”; another extricated himself
with difficulty, torn and bleeding, while another was actually
buried under the ruins. Sometimes they were almost suffocated by the
stifling heat; at other times they were plunged for hours up to their
necks in the freezing waters of some subterranean torrent; sometimes
blocked up by a falling mass without light or escape.’

The third difficulty was want of money; for when Warren left
London he carried off all the money of the Fund (300_l._) for the
expenses of the party, the Committee hoping that, as the excavations
proceeded, public interest would be shown by a flow of subscriptions.
The Committee said: ‘Give us results and you can have money.’ Warren
replied: ‘No money, no results.’ In fact, however, he had at one time
advanced no less than 1,000_l._ out of his own resources.

The work went on for some three years with occasional interruptions.
Warren returned home in 1870, and spent the following year in
preparing the results of his work for the Committee of the Fund and
for the Press.

Sir Walter Besant, in his ‘Twenty-one Years’ Work in the Holy Land,’
writes:

‘It is impossible here to do more than to recapitulate the
principal results of the excavations, which are without parallel
for the difficulties presented and the courage displayed in
overcoming them.... It is certain that nothing will ever be done
in the future to compare with what was done by Warren.... It was
Warren who restored the ancient city to the world; he it was who
stripped the rubbish from the rocks and showed the glorious temple
standing within its walls 1,000 feet long, and 200 feet high, of
mighty masonry: he it was who laid open the valleys now covered
up and hidden; he who opened the secret passages, the ancient
aqueducts, the bridge connecting the temple and the town. Whatever
else may be done in the future, his name will always be associated
with the Holy City which he first recovered.’

So much was this the case that for a long time he was known as
‘Jerusalem Warren.’

In addition to ‘Underground Jerusalem’ he wrote ‘The Temple or the
Tomb.’

What high value was placed upon Captain Warren’s services by the
Administration of the Fund may be gathered from the following
quotation from ‘Our Work in Palestine,’ published by Bentley & Son in
1875, a book which had then reached its eighth thousand:--

‘Let us finally bear witness to the untiring perseverance, courage,
and ability of Captain Warren. Those of us who know best under what
difficulties he had to work can tell with what courage and patience
they were met and overcome. Physical suffering and long endurance
of heat, cold, and danger were nothing. There were besides
anxieties of digging in the dark, anxieties as to local prejudice,
anxieties for the lives of brave men--Sergeant Birtles and the
rest of his Staff--anxieties which we may not speak of here. He
has his reward, it is true. So long as an interest in the modern
history of Jerusalem remains, so long as people are concerned to
know how sacred sites have been found out, so long will the name of
Captain Warren survive.’

DOVER, SHOEBURYNESS, AND THE ORDNANCE FACTORIES, 1871 TO 1876

In 1871 Warren returned to military duty, and was posted to Dover
in command of the 10th Company of Royal Engineers, and for the next
year was employed on the fortifications of the fortress, principally
at Dover Castle and Castle Hill and Fort (Fort Burgoyne). He was
then transferred, in 1872, to the School of Gunnery at Shoeburyness,
where he remained for three years, and was very successful in his
administration of the Engineer duties in regard both to the barracks
and the experiments with big guns and iron plates carried out by the
Ordnance Committee. He had also Engineer charge of the gunpowder
magazine at Purfleet.

On his departure, in 1875, to take Engineer charge of the Gunpowder
and Small-arm Factories at Waltham Abbey and Enfield, he received the
highest commendation from the Commandant of the School of Gunnery,
who wrote to the War Office that Captain Warren’s professional
reputation as a highly instructed and accomplished officer was so
well established that it was unnecessary to refer to it, beyond
stating that the station had benefited largely by his administration
in carrying out the important duties entrusted to him, and that he
placed on record not only the support and assistance received from
him in all official matters, but that his social relations with the
Commandant and all other officers of the establishment rendered his
departure a subject of sincere regret to all.

He was a candidate in 1876 for the secretaryship of the Royal
Engineers’ Institute, when Colonel (afterwards Sir) Peter Scratchley
observed in his recommendation: ‘Captain Warren has been under my
command for four and a half years, and is, in my opinion, a most
able, conscientious, indefatigable officer, and one who would do
credit to the Corps wherever employed. His literary tastes, general
experience, and qualifications particularly fit him for the
appointment he is desirous of obtaining.’

Although unsuccessful his services were to be utilised in a wider
sphere than his own Corps.

In October 1876 he was asked by the Colonial Office to undertake
the duty of laying down the boundary line between Griqualand West
and the Orange Free State, and his services were at once lent by
the War Department. On leaving England he received a letter from
Lord Carnarvon’s private secretary saying how much the Colony was to
be congratulated on having obtained his services, and another from
his late chief, Colonel Scratchley, regretting his departure and
expressing his belief that he ‘would never meet an abler officer or a
better fellow.’

SOUTH AFRICA, 1876 TO 1879

_Griqualand West and the Orange Free State Boundary_

The necessity for laying down a boundary line between Griqualand West
and the Orange Free State had arisen from the rival claims of the
Chief Waterboer of the Griquas and of President Brand of the Orange
Free State to the Diamond Fields. The British Government acquired the
rights of the Waterboer, and, after some protracted negotiations, it
was arranged that the Orange Free State should abandon its claim on
receiving from Griqualand West the sum of 90,000_l._ Mr. de Villiers
was the expert nominated by the Orange Free State to be associated
with Captain Warren in laying out the boundary.

Warren, with two non-commissioned officers of Royal Engineers,
arrived at Cape Town towards the end of November, and, after an
interview with the Governor, Sir Henry Barkly, proceeded to Port
Elizabeth by steamer, and thence by coach, via Graham’s Town and
Cradock, to Kimberley, where Major Owen Lanyon, the Administrator,
introduced him to his colleague, Mr. Joseph E. de Villiers,
Government Surveyor. After an interview with President Brand at
Bloemfontein he went into camp outside Kimberley towards the end of
December, measured his base, took observations, and elaborated his
general scheme of operations.

The heat was intense, the shade temperature being over 100°
Fahr. for hours together, the atmosphere was highly charged with
electricity, and the thunderstorms were often terrific, the lightning
playing all round the encampment or party, and the ground being
struck in all directions. Mosquitoes and flies were also a great
nuisance.

The work, however, proceeded satisfactorily and expeditiously, and
on 18th April 1877 was completed and ready for inspection. A party
composed of the two Commissioners and officials of the two States
formally inspected the line from the Vaal to the Orange River, 120
miles, and an official notification of the completion of the work
was made to the respective Governments. The plans were then drawn on
a scale of three miles to the inch and completed before 15th May.
Captain Warren was entertained by President Brand at Bloemfontein to
meet the Volksraad at dinner. Votes of thanks from the Legislatures
of Griqualand West and the Orange Free State were presented to each
of the Commissioners, the former illuminated and very handsomely got
up.

_Griqualand West Land Claims_

Sending his party home, Warren went to Kimberley, and thence to
Pretoria and the Gold Fields and on to Delagoa Bay, intending to
go to England by Zanzibar. An interesting account of this journey
appeared in ‘Good Words’ two years ago. From Delagoa Bay, however,
he was directed to return to Cape Town to see Sir Bartle Frere, and
on arrival there was appointed Special Commissioner in Griqualand
West for six months to investigate and arrange the various land cases
in appeal before the High Court of Griqualand West. This delicate
mission he accomplished with great ability, tact, and judgment,
settling 220 out of 240 cases to general satisfaction, except that
of the lawyers, and avoiding a great amount of litigation. He was
made a Companion of St. Michael and St. George for his work on the
boundary, and received a letter from H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge,
Commander-in-Chief, expressing his great satisfaction at the
efficient manner in which he had performed the duties entrusted to
him of marking off the boundary between the Orange Free State and
Griqualand West, and also of the settlement of the land claims in the
latter province.

_Meeting with Mr. Cecil Rhodes_

It was on his way to Kimberley from Cape Town viâ Port Elizabeth
on this land claim business in Griqualand that he had the late Mr.
Cecil Rhodes as his travelling companion. As they were driving
over the brown veldt from Dordrecht to Jamestown, Warren noticed
that Mr. Rhodes, who sat opposite to him, was evidently engaged in
learning something by heart, and offered to hear him. It turned
out to be the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. In
the diary of this journey, also published in ‘Good Words’ of 1900,
Warren relates: ‘We got on very well until we arrived at the article
on predestination, and there we stuck. He had his views and I had
mine, and our fellow-passengers were greatly amused at the topic of
our conversation--for several hours--being on one subject. Rhodes
is going in for his degree at home, and works out here during the
vacation.’

_The Gaika War, 1878_

In January 1878 Warren proceeded to the Gaika war in command of the
Diamond Fields Horse, raised at Kimberley, and was engaged for six
months in Kaffraria. He bought his mounts and drilled his men on
the way, and infused his own indomitable energy into every member
of his command. He took part in numerous engagements, among which
may be mentioned the action of Perie Bush in March, when he was
injured by the falling of the bough of a tree, and the action at
Debe Nek on 5th April, where with seventy-five of the Diamond Fields
Horse he met 1,200 armed Kafirs of Seyolo’s tribe in the open, and
gained a complete victory. The Governor-in-Chief telegraphed his
congratulations on this brilliant success. A few weeks later Warren
had another successful fight at Tabi Ndoda on 29th April, when he
was slightly wounded. He was frequently mentioned in despatches,
and his conspicuous personal bravery, no less than his skill as
a commander, was brought to the notice of the Secretary of State
for War. The Governor-in-Chief especially commended him in his
despatches for ‘energy, ability, and resource displayed under most
trying circumstances.’ He had been promoted to be Major on 10th
April 1878, and his services in the campaign were recognised by a
brevet-lieutenant-colonelcy, dated 11th November 1878, and the South
African medal.

_Native Rebellion in Griqualand West and Troubles with the
Bechuanas, 1878-9_

Early in May the whole native population of Griqualand West, west
of the Vaal river, broke out in rebellion and, joining their former
enemies, the Kaal Kafirs (refugees from Cape Colony), commenced
depredations to the west of Griquatown. In consequence of this
critical state of affairs in Griqualand West the Executive Government
telegraphed for the assistance of Warren and the Diamond Fields Horse
from the Cape Colony. The regiment left King William’s Town on 14th
May and arrived at Griquatown on 10th June.

While Colonels Lanyon and Warren were fighting the rebels in the
far west the Bechuanas made incursions over the northern border,
murdering the white residents at Daniel’s Kuil and Cornforth
Hill, wrecking the mission station at Moteto in Bechuanaland, and
threatening the lives of the traders and missionaries in Kuruman
itself. Lanyon and Warren fought several successful actions with
the insurgent Griquas and Kaal Kafirs, particularly that at Paarde
Kloof on 18th June. Lanyon then returned to Kimberley, leaving Warren
in command of the Field Force with instructions to proceed to the
northern border in case assistance were required there. Commandant
Ford had been sent to the northern border for the express purpose
of saving the Kuruman mission station, and on 2nd July met with a
repulse at Koning (close to the border of Griqualand), but defeated
the enemy at Manyering on 8th July, and the following day arrived at
Kuruman. His force, however, was too small to do more than act on
the defensive, and he asked for assistance. Warren arrived with the
Field Force at Kuruman on 14th July, and Lanyon with a detachment
of troops on the 16th. On the 18th Warren’s force attacked Gomaperi
successfully, and on 23rd July carried Takoon by assault; and in
August the force returned to Kimberley, leaving a garrison to
protect Kuruman.

In consequence of the rebels joining with the Bechuanas it was found
necessary to continue the war, for Kuruman and Griqualand were both
threatened. Warren was again entrusted with the command of the Field
Forces on 21st September, and signally defeated the combined forces
of the Griquas, Bechuanas, and Old Colony Kafirs on 11th, 12th, and
14th October at Mokolokue’s Mountain. He then issued a proclamation,
which exhibited both firmness and tact, and offered an amnesty to all
but the ringleaders and murderers. This had a good effect.

Hostilities recommenced on the northern border (Cape Colony) in
January 1879, and subsequently in Bechuanaland and the Keate Award,
and the Griqualand West forces were ordered to co-operate with those
of the Cape Colony. On 11th February Warren was appointed Acting
Administrator of Griqualand West and disarmed all the natives.
During this and the following month the whole country was disturbed
in consequence of the disaster at Isandhlwana, and Warren offered
to take 500 white troops to the assistance of Lord Chelmsford, but
it was not considered desirable to take 500 white men away from
Kimberley at so critical a time. As Special Commissioner Warren
inquired into the land question of the Bloemhof districts, and in
April commanded the Griqualand West Field Forces in the northern
border of Cape Colony, and made arrangements to prevent the rebels
breaking through again into Griqualand West. They were thus forced
into Bechuanaland, and in conjunction with the Bechuanas again
threatened Kuruman. The Bechuana and Griqua ringleaders and the Cape
Colony rebels were defeated and captured by the Griqualand West
forces in August, and Warren was able to reduce the strength of his
columns in the field. He was invalided home in the autumn on account
of the hurt he sustained from the falling tree. He left the Cape much
to the regret of the South African people, among whom his name had
become a household word, and his departure was regarded by them in
the light of a personal loss. For his services during the past year
he received a clasp to his South African medal and nothing more.

The Colonial Office made a strenuous but unsuccessful endeavour
to procure for him a brevet-colonelcy, and made the following
representation to the War Office in December 1879:

‘Until August 1878 Colonel Lanyon appears to have remained in the
field, but Lieut.-Colonel Warren, though not occupying a higher
position than that of Chief of Colonel Lanyon’s Staff, appears
to have acted to a great extent independently and not under his
immediate supervision; and when, at the close of the engagement
of 18th June at the Paarde Kloof, Colonel Lanyon arrived with
the Southern Column, he left Lieut.-Colonel Warren in command to
complete the victory, considering that the entire credit of the
brilliant success then attained was due to Lieut.-Colonel Warren.

‘In the operations at Kuruman and the capture of Litako and Takoon
Lieut.-Colonel Warren not only behaved with dashing personal
bravery as on previous occasions, but contributed materially to the
success of an operation which in many particulars clearly resembled
those just concluded against Morosi’s Mountain and Sekukuni’s Town.

‘In September 1878 Colonel Lanyon, being fully occupied with the
civil duties of his office, despatched Lieut.-Colonel Warren in
independent command of a Colonial force organised by him, to
operate against a combination of Griquas, Korannas, and Bechuanas
who were assembled at the Mokolokue’s Mountain on the confines
of the Kalahari desert, and were threatening the province with
invasion. It will be seen from the Reports that Lieut.-Colonel
Warren had here again to deal with the problem of capturing a
fortified mountain, which had proved so difficult in recent
South African warfare; and he effected his object by a brilliant
strategical movement, taking the enemy in reverse, and driving them
at once from their most formidable lines of defence, the work of
clearing them from krantzes, in which they subsequently took up
position, being successfully accomplished on the same day.

‘In January 1879 Warren succeeded Colonel Lanyon in the civil
administration of Griqualand West, but still retained the military
command in the province, and either personally conducted or
directed further operations in the south of the province, and to
the north and north-west, beyond the provincial border....

‘Not only were Lieut.-Colonel Warren’s military operations
successful throughout, but they were accompanied by a large measure
of political success; his tact, humanity, and moderation in victory
having done much to convert our enemies into friends, and to
promote the permanent pacification of the districts to the north of
the Orange River, over which our influence extends.

‘Lieut.-Colonel Warren has already been rewarded for his services
in the Gaika war by the brevet of lieut.-colonel, but his
subsequent services in Griqualand West form a distinct and very
creditable episode in the history of the recent South African
warfare, for which Sir Michael Hicks-Beach hopes that he may be
considered entitled to fresh recognition in the form of the brevet
of colonel, or such other mark of approbation as Colonel Stanley
and H.R.H. the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief may think proper
to recommend.

‘The operations of 1878-9 throughout South Africa should be
regarded as a whole, and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach trusts that
officers of the Regular Army who have organised and led to
victory the Colonial Levies in separate commands may be thought
not less deserving of the usual military rewards than officers
who have served under the immediate direction of the General
Commanding-in-Chief in leading her Majesty’s Regular Troops;
indeed, those of the former class have some special claims to
consideration on account of the difficulties which they had to
overcome; and in organising not only a combatant force, but also
the Transport, Commissariat, Pay and Hospital Departments of that
force, Lieut.-Colonel Warren displayed a general knowledge of
his profession which marks him as an especially intelligent and
valuable servant of the Queen.’

CHATHAM, 1880 TO 1882

The voyage home from South Africa was very beneficial to Warren’s
health, and early in 1880 he was able to take up the duties of the
post of Instructor of Surveying at the School of Military Engineering
at Chatham, to which he had been appointed. It would be too little
to say he entered with his usual zest into his new duties, because
he delighted in surveying, and nothing pleased him better than to
have a number of young officers to train in all its branches, and to
instruct in practical astronomy after Mess in the R.E. Observatory,
to say nothing of the large classes of officers of the Line which
passed through his hands and the training of the Sappers of his own
Corps. In 1881 Warren contributed to the Professional Papers of the
Royal Engineers a paper on the Boundary Line between the Orange Free
State and Griqualand West.

EGYPT AND ARABIA PETRÆA, 1882 TO 1883

But the even tenor of his way was broken in upon suddenly in the
summer of 1882. It may, perhaps, be remembered that when events
in Egypt in 1882 made it likely that we should have to undertake
military operations in that country, Professor Palmer, Professor of
Arabic at Cambridge, who was well acquainted with Syria and Arabia,
and Captain Gill, R.E., a distinguished traveller, were sent in June
to win over the chiefs of the Bedouin tribes in the South of Syria
and on the borders of the Suez Canal. They successfully accomplished
their journey and arrived at Suez on 1st August. Professor Palmer
reported that the Bedouins were favourably disposed, and that plenty
of camels could be procured for the army. On 8th August he left
Suez to go to Nakhl in the desert, half way between Suez and Akaba,
to procure camels for the Indian contingent. He was accompanied by
Captain Gill, who was attached to the Intelligence Department, and
whose mission was to cut the telegraph line in the desert, and by
Lieut. Charrington, R.N., flag-lieutenant to Admiral Sir William
Hewett. The party carried 3,000_l._ in gold, and, although provided
with a guide, no escort was taken, as no danger was apprehended. Soon
after the party left Moses Wells opposite Suez, rumours reached Suez
that their baggage had been plundered. Inquiries were set on foot
in all directions with no definite result, and the country and the
Government were alarmed and feared that some disaster had occurred.

Lieut.-Colonel Charles Warren, whose experience and qualification
for dealing with an inquiry among Arabs were highly thought of,
was selected by the Government to go on special service under the
Admiralty and take charge of a search expedition, and, should the
rumours of the murder of the party prove true, to bring the murderers
to justice. The task was a difficult and an exceptionally dangerous
one--to go into the desert and search among the wild Bedouin tribes
for the ill-fated expedition, with no loyal Arabs who could be called
upon to assist.

Warren went off in August at twelve hours’ notice to Egypt, and,
after reporting to the Admiral, proceeded to Tor, and at a later date
to Akaba by steamer. He found the Arabs at both places singularly
indisposed to enter into any communications; but up to the end of
September, and even later, he did not despair of the travellers being
still alive, and it was not until 24th October that he could report
with certainty the story of their tragic deaths on the previous 10th
August, and that he had found their remains.

Having no friendly Arabs to depend upon, Warren had to resort to the
expedient of suddenly swooping down on some Bedouins about Zagazig,
who had been fighting against us a week before, and capturing
several hundreds of them. These he sorted out, imprisoning some as
hostages, and taking 220, selected from various tribes, with him
as an escort into the desert. He was accompanied by Lieutenants
Burton and Haynes and Quartermaster-Sergeant Kennedy, all of the
Royal Engineers. After ascertaining that Professor Palmer had
been murdered, the expedition entered the desert in search of the
murderers; Warren made his arrangements for their capture, and
succeeded in taking eight out of fifteen. These were brought to
trial, convicted, and hanged.

During his hazardous operations Warren visited Akaba, where Arabi’s
flag was flying, and reduced it to submission. He also captured Nakhl
in the desert, which he reduced by surrounding it and cutting off
supplies; this caused a mutiny in the garrison and they capitulated.

In the House of Commons on 16th November Mr. Gladstone said that
‘Colonel Warren had performed the task of investigating the
circumstances of the murders with great energy and judgment, as well
as knowledge.’

On 27th November Admiral Sir Beauchamp Seymour conveyed to Warren by
letter his entire approbation of the means he had adopted ‘at much
personal danger to ascertain the fate of Professor Palmer and his
comrades. The perseverance and zeal,’ he says, ‘manifested by you and
by the subaltern officers of the Royal Engineers under your orders,
more especially during the trying march between Nakhl and the Suez
Canal, reflect the greatest credit on the noble Corps to which you
belong.’

An Admiralty letter of 4th December 1882 to Lord Alcester desires him
to inform Colonel Warren that the Lords of the Admiralty ‘are very
grateful to him for the energy, courage, and good judgment with which
he has prosecuted the inquiry, under circumstances of considerable
difficulty and danger.’ And again on 1st January 1883 Captain
Stephenson, the senior naval officer, conveyed their Lordships’ ‘high
appreciation of the manner in which Colonel Warren had performed the
difficult task of ascertaining the fate of Professor Palmer’s party.’
Captain Stephenson, who was at Suez when the search was going on,
added: ‘I wish to add my testimony to the patient, but energetic and
persevering, manner in which you have traced the sad fate of the
missing party, against many adverse circumstances in a part of the
country so desolate that assistance from me would have been of no
avail had any untoward circumstances occurred to your party.’

On 22nd January the Admiralty renewed their expression of their very
high appreciation of Warren’s services, and the Commander-in-Chief
of the army, H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, informed him of his high
satisfaction at receiving a very favourable report from the Admiralty
on the able manner in which he had carried out the duty entrusted
to him, and his own appreciation of the ‘hazardous services’ he had
performed. Warren, who was already a brevet-colonel,[2] was promoted
to be a Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George on the Queen’s
birthday, 24th May, and the Admiralty congratulated him in a letter
of 25th May 1883, expressing the gratification felt by the Board at
this mark of the Queen’s approval of the most valuable services which
he had rendered to her Majesty’s Government throughout the whole
time he was engaged in investigating the circumstances of the murder
of Professor Palmer and his party, and in bringing the guilty persons
to justice. Lieut.-General Sir Andrew Clarke, Inspector-General of
Fortifications, wrote to him in January 1883: ‘You are doing your
mission right well; we are all proud of you.’ Lord Northbrook wrote
in the same sense, and afterwards told Sir Charles Warren that his
exertions had saved the country an expenditure of at least two
millions on an expedition into the desert, which must have been
undertaken had he been unsuccessful. Warren received the Egyptian
medal and bronze star, and was also decorated by the Khedive with the
third class of the Order of the Mejidie.

CHATHAM, 1883-4

On his return home he resumed his duties at Chatham as the head of
the Surveying School. In 1884, when General Gordon was shut up in
Khartoum and completely cut off by the Mahdi, Warren volunteered to
go through Abyssinia and open communication with his old friend.
He was for some time in correspondence with Mr. W. E. Forster on
the subject, and Lieut.-General Sir Andrew Clarke highly approved
of the proposal, and wrote a minute in favour of it. In the end,
however, the idea was abandoned when it was decided to send a relief
expedition under Lord Wolseley. Warren found time during 1883 to
write a pamphlet giving a concise account of the military occupation
of South Bechuanaland in 1878-9, and he also contributed to the
Professional Papers of the Corps of Royal Engineers ‘Notes on Arabia
Petræa and the Country lying between Egypt and Palestine.’

BECHUANALAND EXPEDITION, 1884-5

In that part of Bechuanaland lying to the north of Griqualand West,
the white man had been rapidly encroaching upon native territory
since the days when Warren commanded the Field Force of Griqualand
West and prevented the Bechuanas invading the province. Two republics
had been established in Bechuanaland; one, called Stellaland, in
which English and Dutch adventurers had already taken possession of
the land, ‘eaten up’ the native tribes, and become to some extent
a settled people; the other, named Goshenland, in which Transvaal
filibustering Boers plundered and oppressed the native race, and
treated it with cruelty. These raiding Boers were supported by the
Transvaal Government, which, since the so-called ‘magnanimous’
settlement, after the Majuba defeat of the British, and the exposure
of the weak and vacillating policy of the British Government in the
South African Colonies, had steadily set before it the substitution
of a Dutch South Africa for a British, and had exhibited a contempt
for the Queen’s authority which was rapidly developing.

All attempts to arrange with Mr. Kruger, President of the Transvaal
Republic, for an equitable settlement of the Bechuanaland questions
having failed, and further negotiations being useless, the Government
had nothing left to them but to employ force. It was, however,
desirable, in sending troops into the country to enforce the views of
the Government, that the commander should be a man who had not only a
thorough knowledge of the country and of the questions in dispute,
but was also regarded as an authority in the settlement of land
questions by both the British colonists and the Boers. In this way it
was hoped that perhaps the moral support of an adequate force might
enable him to settle matters satisfactorily, without having recourse
to fighting.

Colonel Sir Charles Warren was the man who best fulfilled the
required conditions, and was selected for the command of the
expedition, given the local rank of Major-General, and appointed
Special Commissioner.

A force of 5,000 men was raised and equipped, and supplemented by
special troops and corps from home, one of which was Methuen’s
Horse. Warren’s instructions were to remove the filibusters from
Bechuanaland, to restore order in the territory, to reinstate
the natives in their lands, to take measures to prevent further
depreciation, and finally to hold the country until its further
destination was known. As Special Commissioner he was to be under
the directions of Sir Hercules Robinson, Governor of the Cape Colony
and High Commissioner in South Africa, but was to be left a large
discretion as regards local matters. In regard to operations in the
field, he was to be responsible to the Secretary of State for War and
the General Commanding in South Africa, and was not to be accountable
to the Colonial Government or the High Commissioner.

Sir Charles Warren landed at Cape Town on 4th December 1884, and
soon pushed his force up country into the disputed territory. The
promptness with which he moved, and the efficiency of his force gave
him the moral support which he required in carrying on negotiations
with Mr. Kruger, and in these diplomatic dealings he exhibited the
ability and tact which had distinguished him on previous occasions
when called upon to settle disputes of a similar kind.

An officer of the expedition wrote home in August 1885:

‘Immediately after I despatched my last, it became evident that
this Bechuanaland business was practically played out as a
campaign. I should think there never before was such a case of a
brilliantly executed advance into a distant country, followed by
such complete inanition, as has fallen upon everybody (except, of
course, the General Officer Commanding, who has had plenty to
do politically) as took place here. By 2nd April the General and
Headquarters Staff were fully established up at Mafeking (Rooi
Grond), with telegraphic communication--220 miles, working without
a hitch, I am glad to say--from end to end of the occupied country,
and stores enough along the whole length of line to feed the entire
army for three months. It really was a master stroke, considering
the slowness of transport, the sandy state of much of the road,
and the scarcity of water. But when one has said that one has said
everything--since that time we, as an expedition, have simply been
standing still.’

But ‘they also serve who only stand and wait,’ and while the
expedition was chafing at being kept idle, with no fighting to
do, and the prospect of rewards and distinctions for the campaign
fading away, the moral effect of its presence made itself felt. The
Transvaal Government, finding itself unprepared to fight, changed
its attitude and Sir Charles Warren was able to make a peaceful
settlement with Mr. Kruger, though not without many difficulties. He
returned to England after a bloodless campaign, receiving the thanks
of Parliament and of the Colonial Legislature, and promotion to the
Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. But he was
not made a supernumerary major-general after holding that rank in the
field, and, on his return, reverted to the rank of colonel.

CANDIDATE FOR PARLIAMENT, 1885

At the General Election of the autumn of 1885 Sir Charles Warren
was invited to stand as a candidate for Parliament to represent the
Hallam division of Sheffield in the Liberal interest, and in his
address he took an independent position, making no mention of any
party leader.

The principal points he laid stress on were:

(1) The Empire could not stand still. ‘Forward’ must be the motto.

(2) The prosperity of the nation depended on the moral tone of the
people continuing at a high standard, which could only be maintained
by unremitting attention to the religious education of the children.
Instruction, therefore, in the truths of Christianity must be real
and efficient.

(3) Education must be sound both as to mind and body, and in
elementary schools must be free, and the greatest attention paid to
physical training.

(4) The connection between the Mother Country and the Colonies must
be strengthened, a fixed colonial policy should be established clear
of party politics, and a federal parliament of the Empire should be
looked forward to.

(5) Ireland must remain part of the United Kingdom, but the greatest
amount of self-government practicable should be accorded to it.

(6) County Councils should be established.

(7) Disestablishment of Church with State only desirable if wanted by
both sides.

(8) Local option.

(9) Reforms regarding land tenure.

(10) Reform of House of Lords.

(11) Reforms in House of Commons to prevent obstruction.

Sir Charles was unsuccessful at the poll, but he had so won the
hearts of the Liberal constituents that they paid the whole of his
election expenses, and, on his leaving the constituency, presented
him with an address and a handsome case of Sheffield plate and
cutlery.

SUAKIN, 1886

In January 1886 Sir Charles Warren was appointed to command the
troops at Suakin, with the rank of Major-General on the Staff, and to
be Governor of the Red Sea Littoral. On arrival at his headquarters,
Suakin, he was greeted by a telegram from Simla containing
congratulations on his appointment from Lord Dufferin, under whom he
had served diplomatically when he was engaged in the Palmer Search
Expedition.

Warren found that the Suakin garrison was composed of three
nationalities--British, Indian, and Egyptian--all acting under
different regulations, and he at once set to work to introduce a
better organisation into the garrison, and to have a mobile force
to drive inland the Hadendowa Arabs, who were in the habit of
firing into Suakin every night. He took the friendly natives into
service and put them in the field against the Hadendowas, and in a
few days had a clear zone of several miles round the town. He also
commenced arrangements to open up the country as far as Berber and
to start commercial operations at various ports on the Red Sea, to
open up salt works, &c.; but he found no response from the Egyptian
authorities at Cairo, and soon discovered that they did not wish to
encourage trade by Suakin, as it would reduce that going through
Cairo.

After three months in this appointment, when he was beginning to find
that there was nothing to do but to sit down and hold the place, he
received a telegram from Mr. Childers, the Home Secretary, offering
him the Chief Commissionership of the Metropolitan Police, at a
time when there had been a considerable panic in London, and Sir
Edmund Henderson had resigned the office. He accepted the offer, and
left Suakin at the end of March. Before leaving he received a very
sympathetic address from the merchants in Suakin, recognising the
effort he had made on behalf of trade with the interior and along the
coast.

CHIEF COMMISSIONERSHIP OF POLICE, 1886 TO 1888

In his new position Warren had several difficult and complicated
problems to deal with. During the very first year of office the
Trafalgar Square demonstrations, permitted by a weak Government,
tested the powers of the police under their new chief to preserve
public order. The Liberal party abused their own nominee, but he was
firm. Then there were all the arrangements for the preservation of
order at the Queen’s Jubilee in 1887, which were so ably carried out.
He received many complimentary letters: one from the Home Secretary
expressing her Majesty’s entire approbation of the excellent manner
in which the arrangements for preserving good order were made by him;
another from the Commander-in-Chief, H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge,
congratulating him on the admirable manner in which they were carried
out, which in his opinion left nothing to be desired, and reflected
the greatest credit on the Metropolitan Police Force; in a third the
Prince of Wales, as Chairman of the Children’s Jubilee Festival,
caused his thanks to be conveyed to him for the invaluable assistance
he lent on the occasion; and finally Lord Salisbury informed him that
he was very glad to be the medium of acquainting him that the Queen
had been pleased to confer upon him, in special recognition of his
exertions in maintaining order in the metropolis during the past
difficult year, and of his services at the Jubilee celebrations, a
Knight Commandership of the Order of the Bath.

In July appeared a cartoon in ‘Punch’ with the following legend:

All honour to your management, my Warren,
All honour to the force you featly led!
And that honour, Punch opines, should not be barren
(May he hear hereafter more upon _that_ head).
’Midst the Jubilee joyous pageantry and pother,
(Though ’tis common of our Bobbies to make fun)
‘Taking one consideration with another,’
The Policemen’s work was excellently done.

Other difficulties he had to try him during his term of office were
an outbreak of burglaries, the muzzling of dogs, and the Whitechapel
murders, all of which irritated the public and caused the police to
be abused. He was not the man to stand by and hear his force unjustly
criticised without defending it, and he contributed an article to
‘Murray’s Magazine’ on the subject.

In the spring of 1888 he did not think the Home Secretary, Mr.
Matthews, gave him sufficient support, but rather endeavoured to
minimise his authority as head of the force, and he tendered his
resignation. This was not accepted, and he continued in his post
until the autumn, when he decided that he could no longer hold the
appointment with due regard to the good of the force and his own
credit.

The resignation was fully debated in the House of Commons on 14th
November 1888, when the Home Secretary said:

‘He was glad to have the opportunity furnished by what fell from
the Hon. Member for the Horsham Division, to do the fullest justice
to Sir Charles Warren. Sir Charles Warren was a man not only of the
highest character, but of great ability. During his tenure of the
office he had displayed the most indefatigable activity in every
detail of the organisation and administration of the force. By his
vigour and firmness he had restored that confidence in the police
which had been shaken--he believed with the right hon. gentleman,
unjustly shaken--after the regrettable incident of 1886.... Sir
Charles Warren had shown conspicuous skill and firmness in putting
an end to disorder in the metropolis, and for that he deserved the
highest praise.’

Again there appeared a cartoon in ‘Punch’ entitled ‘Extremes Meet,’
in which Sir Charles Warren and his predecessor were depicted
exchanging views:

SIR EDMUND: My dear Warren, you did too much.
SIR CHARLES: And you, my dear Henderson, did too little.
MR. PUNCH: H’m! Sorry for the _new_ man.

It was during his police work that he attended the meeting of the
British Association at Manchester in 1887 as President of the
Geographical Section and gave a very practical and useful opening
address.

STRAITS SETTLEMENTS, 1889 TO 1894

After some months of leisure Warren was appointed to command the
troops in the Straits Settlements in April 1889, as a Colonel on
the Staff with the rank of Major-General. Hitherto this command had
been one with that of Hong-Kong, where the Headquarters were; but,
owing to friction arising in 1888 between the civil and military
authorities in the Straits Settlements, it was decided to send out
an officer to Singapore in independent command to endeavour to make
things work smoothly. The difficulties arose from the peculiar nature
of the agreement which had been made with the Straits Settlements
when they were detached from India and established as a Crown Colony.

Sir Charles Warren soon found that the existing system was
impracticable for efficiency, and it was altered, but in carrying
out the alteration there arose a good deal of difference of opinion
between the civil and military authorities. Moreover, as a member of
council, Sir Charles Warren came to the conclusion that the annual
military contribution should be a sum calculated _pro rata_ to the
revenue up to the amount required. This gave great offence to the
colonists, who wished for a fixed sum, which was finally agreed to.
But in two years the revenue of the Colony rapidly diminished owing
to changes in the opium farming, &c., and the people found themselves
paying a much higher sum than they would have done according to Sir
Charles Warren’s proposal. Then they recognised his foresight, and
popular feeling changed in his favour.

During the five years Sir Charles was in the Straits Settlements he
did much travelling and occupied in the aggregate ten months (his two
months’ leave per annum) in seeing India, Ceylon, Burma, Siam, Java,
Japan, and some of the seaports of China. The Straits Settlements
being within his command, he visited the several States as a duty,
and, by request, inspected the armed constabulary (Sikhs) of Perak
and Selangor and the troops of the Sultan of Johore. He penetrated
into the uncivilised parts of the Straits Settlements and traversed
the peninsula from east to west, over the mountains from Selangor to
Pahang, through the Sakai country. At the time of the Pahang outbreak
he was ready with his troops for all emergencies, and prepared and
printed a field book for use in the jungle, should circumstances
require it.

He encouraged sports among officers and men, and did much to keep
up a good feeling between the troops and the inhabitants, and
established (under the Garrison Sports Committee) four yearly events,
for which he gave suitable challenge shields. The contests for these
prizes had a stimulating effect on sport in the Malay peninsula.

In addition to his military duties he was for several months chairman
of a committee to inspect and report on the police of the Straits
Settlements. As District Grand Master of the Eastern Archipelago, he
visited the several Masonic Lodges, presided at various functions,
and, on his leaving the Settlements, was presented by the fraternity
with a full-sized portrait of himself and a very handsomely
illuminated address.

The readiness of the garrison of Singapore for defence was brought
to a high pitch of perfection during his tenure of command. When he
first arrived it took several weeks to mobilise, and, after much
practice, he reduced the time to three days; when he arrived at this,
he saw it was not perfect unless it could be done in _three hours_,
and this was accomplished eventually. A practical test of this was
given. One evening, when he was dining at Government House to meet
the Admiral Commanding-in-Chief, the latter began to chaff at the
unreadiness of the army in comparison with the navy, and asserted
his opinion that Singapore could not mobilise under three weeks. Sir
Charles said that the Admiral would have to admit that it could be
done in three hours, and guaranteed that, if the Admiral would be out
at 6 A.M. at the jetty, he would find all the troops in their places,
although some of them would have to march six miles or more in the
dark, and cross the water in launches. The only point that would not
be the same as in time of war was the getting the launches into their
places, as they were in peace positions at the time. At 11 P.M. Sir
Charles Warren ordered the launches to be in position at 3 A.M. and
sent word to the troops to get ready at 1 A.M. They marched down from
Tanglin and Fort Canning Barracks to the wharf, were taken across
in launches and submarine miners, and were all in their places at 6
A.M., when the Governor and Admiral visited them in company with Sir
Charles Warren. The Admiral gave the highest praise a sailor could
give--that it had been done as well as if it had been done by the
navy.

His services at Singapore are summed up in an article in the ‘Straits
Times’ of 2nd April 1894, from which the following is an extract:

‘It is no new thing to speak praise of Sir Charles Warren; and in
trying to estimate the services that he has rendered to the Colony
it is difficult to do more than repeat ourselves. We have already
said he found in Singapore a number of soldiers and some forts,
while he leaves at Singapore a garrison in a fortress. He leaves
a fortress that is one of the strongest in Asia, and he leaves a
garrison whose readiness and perfection of mobilisation cannot
be surpassed. But on that it does not seem necessary to enlarge,
since it is a service that any soldier of first-rate capacity would
have done, and all competent persons knew that Sir Charles Warren
would do it. It is, perhaps, more interesting to record that in
his time Sir Charles Warren has been the best abused man in the
Colony, while at his departure he is as universally esteemed as
any man could be. It is but a couple of years ago that he was the
subject of persistent slander at the hands of persons who now sing
his praises and lament his departure. That conquest of enmity Sir
Charles has achieved by means at once simple and wise. When he
was the subject of detraction he paid no attention, but proceeded
quietly about the affairs he had in hand. When the persons who
had attacked him repented of their methods, he ignored that he
had been attacked, and dealt with the advances of his new friends
as if he had not known that they had been unfriendly. To put it
briefly, he proceeded on the path of duty regardless either of
praise or blame, until better knowledge rendered it impossible for
any one to persist in detraction. Sir Charles leaves the Colony
amidst a universal chorus of friendly greetings. To have achieved
such a conquest of public opinion amidst so small a community is a
great result. For the community is so small that no man can live
in it for a number of years without giving ample opportunity to
see his character in all its moods and tenses. From that scrutiny
Sir Charles Warren has emerged with success. The community of
the Straits feels that in losing him it loses not only a soldier
and a scholar, but also a most excellent example of a kindly and
simple-hearted gentleman.’

At one of the many farewell dinners in his honour Sir Charles
Mitchell, the Governor, said: ‘Each man in his turn played many
parts, but of all men he had known through his experience of this
somewhat difficult world, he knew none who in these times had
played so many parts, and played all those parts so well, as their
distinguished guest, Sir Charles Warren. As a man of letters, and as
a man of action, Sir Charles Warren had distinguished himself.’

Although, when Sir Cecil Smith was Governor, official difficulties
occurred between him and Sir Charles Warren on matters which could
not readily be settled, yet the differences were solely official,
and Sir Cecil Smith was one of the first to send Sir Charles Warren,
when he was leaving England in November 1899 for Natal, hearty good
wishes for his success and safe return with added glory to the high
reputation he had already gained. Sir Charles Warren left the Straits
Settlements on his return to England in April 1894, and he travelled
by way of Vancouver and the American Continent, spending some weeks
in exploring the Western States of the Union.

THAMES DISTRICT, 1895 TO 1898

In 1895 Sir Charles Warren was appointed Major-General commanding
the Thames District, and was told that he was to organise the
mobilisation of the Thames District for defence on the same model he
had so successfully established at Singapore. He took it in hand at
once, and in two years had so perfected the system that all troops
coming into the district were enabled on sudden mobilisation to find
their places and take up their duties immediately.

He was busily engaged, during his term of command, in the problem
of defence of the Thames and Medway, in which a great advance was
made, and in examining into the efficiency of the Royal Engineers for
active service in all their branches, and frequently inspected them
with this object in view.

He instituted field days between the various garrisons; marched all
the infantry to Sheerness during the spring months, and practised
defence of the coast there.

He took great interest in the various new regulations for the canteen
system, and pointed out the difficulty of having one contractor of
groceries. He favoured the tenant system for the dry canteen, while
keeping the wet canteen in the hands of the military.

During the autumn of 1896 he commanded a division at the New Forest
autumn manœuvres.

He established a District Rifle Association at Gravesend, and himself
gave two shields for annual competition: one for rifle shooting and
one for carbine shooting. He evinced great interest in the town of
Chatham and worked, in conjunction with the Mayor and Corporation, to
ameliorate its condition for the benefit both of the soldiers and of
the inhabitants.

On leaving the command in 1898 he was entertained at a public dinner
given by the Mayor, and presented with a silver salver bearing an
inscription, and with an address from which the following is an
extract:--

‘We sincerely thank you for the valuable services you have rendered
to our town; and whilst we much regret that we are losing from our
midst the presence of one so distinguished as a scholar, scientist,
and soldier, we rejoice that whilst here you greatly promoted
cordial relations between the military and civic authorities, and
took great interest in the moral and intellectual welfare of the
inhabitants of Chatham.’

Warren was now on the shelf, and took a house at Ramsgate, where he
resided until his services were again required by his country, and he
was appointed to the command of the 5th Division and embarked with it
for South Africa on 25th November 1899.

CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR

The last year of the nineteenth century opened at a period of intense
gloom for the British nation. The war in South Africa had found us,
as most wars do, quite unprepared. The little force in Natal, under
Sir George White, had been speedily surrounded by the mobile Boers,
its line of communication had been cut, and it was itself shut up in
an unfavourable position for defence at Ladysmith, and blockaded by a
Boer force.

Large reinforcements were pouring into South Africa from England,
and Sir Redvers Buller, who had arrived at Cape Town on 31st October
to take supreme command, had gone to Natal. Here he made his first
strategical mistake; and just as Sir George White, induced by
political pressure, occupied positions in the extreme North of Natal,
which he was not strong enough to hold, and had the consequences of
this departure from sound strategy burnt into him by the siege of
Ladysmith, so Sir Redvers Buller, moved by clamours for the relief of
Ladysmith and Kimberley, divided his force, sending part under Lord
Methuen to relieve Kimberley, and himself taking the remainder to
relieve Ladysmith, and learned a similar lesson.

Such inattention to the very elements of strategy might have speedily
led to overwhelming disaster and to the triumph of the Boer States,
and would undoubtedly have done so, had the Boers possessed a general
worthy of the name. With what surprise and satisfaction would such a
commander have observed the disposition of the British force in the
North of Natal, with what rapidity would he have masked Sir George
White’s division, and, crossing the Tugela, seized the railway at
its mouth, and, by the capture of Durban, have held Natal in the
hollow of his hand! But, although the generalship of the Boers was
hopelessly timid, and they lost the opportunity of carrying all
before them at the outset, and driving the British into the sea, the
neglect of sound strategy on our side made itself seriously felt, and
it was not until Lord Roberts, at a later date, having collected and
organised a large force, moved steadily on his objective--the capital
of the Orange Free State--that either Kimberley or Ladysmith was
relieved.

At the end of 1899 disaster after disaster had caused the public
spirit at home to be much depressed, and men began to ask one
another what was the reason. Was it the fault of our generals?
or were the pluck and splendid bravery of our troops--so much
in evidence--impotent, in these days of smokeless powder and
quick-firing and long-range guns, against white men, equally well if
not better armed, accustomed from their childhood to ride and shoot,
stalk game, and avail themselves of cover, knowing the country and
using every device to fight without endangering their own lives?

But to whatever depths the spirit of the nation sank at that terrible
Christmas of 1899, however freely it was confessed that we had
been too cocksure of success, had too much forgotten the God of
battles, had despised our enemy, and arrogantly assumed that the
war would be a walk-over; however much mothers and sisters, widows
and orphans, plunged into saddest mourning by the losses under Lord
Methuen at Belmont, Eslin, the Modder River, and Majesfontein,
under Major-General Gatacre at Stormberg, and under Sir Redvers
Buller at Colenso, might bewail their loved ones who had died for
their country on the battlefield, there was a most notable, a most
wonderful, self-control among the people generally. Subdued by a
distinct sense of disappointment and humiliation as one disaster
after another occurred, there was no hesitation, no acceptance of
defeat, but a dogged determination that the war, being a righteous
war, must at any sacrifice be carried to a victorious conclusion. The
national honour had been wounded by the impudent invasion of British
dominions beyond the seas, and that wound could only be healed by
the complete subjugation of the invader. The galling remembrance
of the disasters of the previous Boer war--never retrieved--of
the overbearing insolence and ingratitude which had rewarded the
pusillanimous policy of so-called magnanimity, had formed amongst
all classes a determination that there must be no more Majuba
treaties. Never again must a British defeat by Boers be allowed to
conclude the matter, to rankle and fester in a way so difficult for a
high-spirited people to bear, even when disguised under the name of
magnanimity. Defeat must only mean renewed effort and determination
to succeed. We were in the hands of God, but, so long as we could
send out a man to fight, we were determined to go on, and, God
willing, at whatever cost to end the matter, once for all, in such a
way that our wounded honour should be healed, the susceptibilities of
our invaded Colonies soothed, and the Boer taught to know his proper
place, but as a member of a free and world-wide Empire and a subject
of the Queen.

Such were the feelings of disappointment and sorrow, and yet of
determination, by which the majority of people at home were animated
when the last year of the nineteenth century commenced, and the
successes of Major-General French at Colesberg, and of Colonel
Pilcher at Douglas on New Year’s Day, cheered despondent hearts, and
inspired a hope that the luck was about to turn.

At this time Lord Roberts, who, after the disasters of the first half
of December 1899, had been sent out to take supreme command, was,
with Lord Kitchener, still on the high seas; Lord Methuen was holding
a position at the Modder River, waiting for reinforcements before
taking further action; Sir Redvers Buller, after the failure of the
attack on Colenso on 15th December 1899, had withdrawn his whole
force (two divisions) to Chieveley, there to mature his plans for a
second advance. Time was passing, Sir George White was hardly pressed
in Ladysmith by the investing Boers, and the 5th Division, commanded
by Sir Charles Warren, had not yet arrived at the Cape. Three days
after the battle of Colenso Sir Redvers Buller had sent orders to
the Cape that this division was to be sent on to him at once, and he
awaited its arrival before making his next move.

It was no wonder then that, in the state of public feeling at home
at this time, the chief interest centred in the Natal Field Force,
and great expectations were formed of what Sir Redvers Buller, whose
reputation as a man of exceptional power and ability stood high in
the official world, would do when reinforced by the 5th Division
under so capable a commander as Sir Charles Warren. This officer,
as we have seen, had recently commanded the Thames District and
had gained much experience in South African warfare twenty years
previously, while some years later he was entrusted with the command
of the Bechuanaland Expedition, and carried through the campaign
so successfully that the Boers yielded all the main issues without
fighting. When he was nominated to the command of the 5th Division
in November every one rejoiced, wondering only that he had not
been among the first generals to be sent out. When he landed with
his division in Natal on the first day of the New Year, and by his
seniority became second in command to Sir Redvers Buller, great hope
was entertained that the combined wisdom of these two distinguished
men would soon solve the difficulty of the relief of Ladysmith, and
the operations immediately after his arrival were watched at home
with hopeful if critical eyes.

WARREN CROSSES THE TUGELA

On the disembarkation of the 5th Division at Durban at the beginning
of 1900 it at once entrained for Estcourt, where it arrived on 3rd
January, adding to the strength of the Natal Field Force about 50
per cent. of both field artillery and infantry. Three days later Sir
Charles Warren went to Frere to report to Sir Redvers Buller that his
division was mobilised and ready to march.

Sir Redvers Buller had now decided to make another attempt to relieve
Ladysmith, and this time he proposed to cross the Tugela higher up
than Colenso, and force a way through the hills opposite Potgieter’s
Drift. Accordingly an army order was issued on 8th January directing
the following moves to take place under the orders of Lieut.-General
Sir C. F. Clery, K.C.B., on the night of the 9th to 10th January.

2ND DIVISION AND ATTACHED TROOPS

(_a_) _Major-General Hildyard’s Column_

Mounted Brigade: 400 of all ranks (including one squadron 13th
Hussars).

2nd Infantry Brigade.

Divisional Troops: a battery of Royal Field Artillery.

Corps Troops: 2 naval 12-pr. guns.

To move from Chieveley by the south of Doorn Kop to the camp already
selected in the vicinity of Pretorius Farm.

(_b_) _Major-General Hart’s Column_

Mounted Brigade: 400 of all ranks.

5th Infantry Brigade.

73rd Battery Royal Field Artillery.

17th Field Company Royal Engineers.

Corps Troops: 6 naval 12-pr. guns.

To move from Frere by the Frere-Springfield road to the camp selected
south of Pretorius Farm.

(_c_) _Headquarters and Divisional Troops 2nd Division_

Mounted Brigade: Headquarters and main body Supply Column (from
Frere), Medical unit.

Divisional Troops: a battery of Royal Field Artillery, Ammunition
Column, Supply Column (from Frere), Field Hospital (from Frere).

Corps Troops: 2 squadrons 13th Hussars, 2 guns 66th Battery Royal
Field Artillery, 2 naval 4·7-inch guns, Supply Column (from Frere).

To move from Chieveley (except where otherwise mentioned) by the
Frere-Springfield road to the camp south of Pretorius Farm, except
that one squadron 13th Hussars for the 5th Division and 2 guns 66th
Battery Royal Field Artillery will be left at Frere.

5TH DIVISION AND ATTACHED TROOPS

The following troops will move on the evening of 10th January from
Frere to Springfield, under the orders of the Lieutenant-General Sir
C. Warren, G.C.M.G., K.C.B.:--

_5th Division_

4th Infantry Brigade.

11th Infantry Brigade.

Divisional Troops.

_Corps Troops_

10th Brigade.

Artillery--

61st Battery Royal Field Artillery (Howitzer).

78th Battery Royal Field Artillery.

Ammunition Column.

Engineers--

Pontoon Troop.

Balloon Section.

Section Telegraph Division.

Supply Park.

On 9th January the following explanatory memorandum was issued from
Frere Camp:--

1. The General proposes to effect the passage of the River Tugela,
in the neighbourhood of Potgieter’s Drift, with a view to the
relief of Ladysmith.

2. Forces (already detailed) will be left at Chieveley and Frere to
hold these points, while the remainder of the army is operating on
the enemy’s right flank.

3. Springfield will be seized and occupied, and the march of the
main body and supplies to that point will be covered by a force
encamped about Pretorius Farm.

4. With reference to Field Orders, dated 8th instant, paragraph 2
(_a_), the primary duty of Major-General Hildyard’s column is to
protect the march of the troops from Frere to Springfield during
the formation of a supply depôt at Springfield, but he will also
operate so as to induce the enemy to believe that our intention is
to cross the River Tugela at Porrit’s Drift.

5. As stated in paragraph 2 (_b_) and (_c_) of the Field Order
above quoted, the remainder of Lieut.-General Clery’s force will
encamp south of Pretorius Farm. Major-General Hart will, under
General Clery’s orders, assist in every way the supply columns
as they pass his camp, and he will also be prepared to support
Major-General Hildyard, if necessary.

6. On the afternoon of the 10th instant General Clery will send
a sufficient force from the Mounted Brigade, with Artillery, to
reconnoitre, and, if possible, occupy Springfield.

7. The force under General Warren’s command (Field Order, dated
8th instant, paragraph 3) will reach Springfield on the morning of
the 11th instant, in support of the mounted troops referred to in
paragraph 6 of this order.

8. The General Commanding-in-Chief will proceed to Springfield on
the 11th instant.

Between 10th and 13th January the whole Natal Field Force, except
the 5th Brigade covering Colenso, was in motion from Chieveley,
Frere, and Estcourt, concentrating on Springfield within five miles
of Potgieter’s Drift (Spearman’s or Mount Alice). This position was
seized by the cavalry on 11th January, on which day General Buller
telegraphed home that he had occupied the south bank of the Tugela at
Potgieter’s Drift, and seized the pont, that the river was in flood,
and the enemy strongly intrenched four and a half miles to the north.

The objective was the advance to Ladysmith by forcing the passage
of the Tugela at Potgieter’s, and, with this in view, maps of the
country about the drift were issued, with an account of the road
from Potgieter’s to Ladysmith. Upon reconnoitring the Boer positions
on the hills in front of Potgieter’s Sir Redvers Buller, however,
came to the conclusion that they were too strong to be taken by
direct attack, and on 14th January he directed Sir Charles Warren to
reconnoitre Trichard’s Drift, some six miles higher up the river to
the westward, with a view to the possibility of crossing there and
advancing to the west of Spion Kop and getting round to the north of
that hill.

On 15th January the following secret orders were issued by Sir R.
Buller to Sir C. Warren:--

1. The enemy’s position in front of Potgieter’s Drift seems to me
to be too strong to be taken by direct attack.

2. I intend to try and turn it by sending a force across the Tugela
from near Trichard’s Drift, and up to the west of Spion Kop.

3. You will have command of that force, which will consist of the
11th Brigade of your Division, your Brigade Division, Royal Field
Artillery, and General Clery’s Division complete, and all the
mounted troops except 400.

4. You will of course act as circumstances require, but my idea
is that you should continue throughout, refusing your right and
throwing your left forward till you gain the open plain north of
Spion Kop. Once there you will command the rear of the position
facing Potgieter’s Drift, and I think render it untenable.

5. At Potgieter’s there will be the 4th Brigade, part of the 10th
Brigade, one battery Royal Field Artillery, one howitzer battery,
two 4·7-inch naval guns. With them I shall threaten both the
positions in front of us, and also attempt a crossing at Skiet’s
Drift, so as to hold the enemy off you as much as possible.

6. It is very difficult to ascertain the numbers of the enemy with
any sort of exactness. I do not think there can be more than 400 on
your left, and I estimate the total force that will be opposed to
us at about 7,000. I think they have only one or at the most two
big guns.

7. You will take two and a half days’ supply in your regimental
transport, and a supply column holding one day more. This will give
you four days’ supply, which should be enough. Every extra wagon is
a great impediment.

8. I gathered that you did not want an ammunition column. I think
myself that I should be inclined to take one column for the two
Brigade Divisions. You may find a position on which it is expedient
to expend a great deal of ammunition.

9. You will issue such orders to the Pontoon Troop as you think
expedient. If possible, I should like it to come here after you
have crossed. I do not think you will find it possible to let oxen
draw the wagons over the pontoons. It will be better to draw them
over by horses or mules, swimming the oxen; the risk of breaking
the pontoons, if oxen crossed them, is too great.

10. The man whom I am sending you as a guide is a Devonshire man:
he was employed as a boy on one of my own farms; he is English to
the backbone, and can be thoroughly trusted. He thinks that if you
cross Springfield flat at night he can take you the rest of the way
to the Tugela by a road that cannot be overlooked by the enemy, but
you will doubtless have the road reconnoitred.

11. I shall endeavour to keep up heliographic communication with
you from a post on the hill directly in your rear.

12. I wish you to start as soon as you can. Supply is all in, and
General Clery’s Division will, I hope, concentrate at Springfield
to-day. Directly you start I shall commence to cross the river.

13. Please send me the 10th Brigade, except that portion which you
detail for the garrison at Springfield, as soon as possible; also
the eight 12-pr. naval guns, and any details, such as ammunition
column, &c., that you do not wish to take.

On the same day Sir Redvers Buller issued a spirited appeal to the
troops in which he said ‘We are going to the relief of our comrades
in Ladysmith; there will be no turning back.’ Great was the rejoicing
of the men, and Sir Redvers was greeted with cheers wherever he
showed himself and shouts of ‘No turning back this time.’

Sir Charles Warren’s force was in fact a flying column consisting of
1,500 mounted troops, 12,000 infantry, and 36 field guns, carrying
with it three and a half days’ provisions. The wagons, guns, and
wheeled vehicles of this force (leaving all tents, camp equipage, and
stores behind) formed a column fifteen miles in length.

The whole of the long-range guns, the howitzer battery, the mountain
battery, and two brigades of infantry (8,000 men) remained with Sir
Redvers Buller at Potgieter’s.

The force thus placed under Sir Charles Warren’s command was
hastily put together, and he could not even see them all before
they started. The 5th Division had but recently arrived--some of
the battalions having just landed from a long sea voyage--had been
hurriedly mobilised, and was not acclimatised to the heat of Natal in
midsummer. The 2nd Division had only just arrived from Chieveley and
was unknown to General Warren until he met it on the line of march
on 16th January, while the mounted troops he only saw in detail, as
they did not join his command until the 17th of the month. No extra
Staff was allotted to the force as a whole, and upon the Staff of the
5th Division were thrown the additional staff duties of the flying
column, for no regimental officers were available, all being required
with their units.

Sir Charles Warren was ordered to move as soon as supplies were
all in and the 10th Brigade had removed from Springfield Bridge
to Spearman’s Hill. He tells us in his despatch that he made his
arrangements for getting supplies on 15th January, moved the 10th
Brigade on the following day, and on the evening of that day left
Springfield with a force under his command which amounted to an army
corps (less one brigade), and by a night march arrived at Trichard’s
Drift, and took possession of the hills on the south side of the
Tugela river.

The officers detailed for intelligence were as yet all with Sir
Redvers Buller, and therefore Sir Charles Warren, once he started,
had to rely for local information entirely on the mounted troops
not yet under his command. They had had only a short march, while
the infantry marching from Springfield had had a very long day’s
march. The cavalry should therefore have been able to carry out some
reconnaissances, but no information could be obtained from them
during the night. On the 17th they came under Sir Charles Warren’s
command, and soon after reported that Wright’s farm was occupied by
Boers. At dawn on the 17th Warren commenced throwing his pontoons
across the Tugela at Trichard’s Drift; but the infantry, crossing by
punts, first Major-General Woodgate’s brigade and then Major-General
Hart’s, got across. Sir Redvers Buller was himself present in the
middle of the day and addressed Major-General Woodgate’s brigade,
giving also directions to that officer as to his attack. The mounted
troops passed over principally by the drift, and went over the
country as far as Acton Homes. By evening Major-Generals Woodgate and
Hart had their brigades with a battery of artillery lining the crests
of the foothills facing Spion Kop.

The crossing of the fifteen miles of wagons could not be carried
out under thirty-six hours, and occupied the night of the 17th and
the whole of 18th January. While this operation was in progress it
was necessary to employ one brigade to protect the convoy to the
south to prevent an incursion of Boers from Middle Drift, and two
brigades to the front. A demonstration was also made by Major-General
Lyttelton at Potgieter’s. By the evening of the 18th the passage of
the river was successfully accomplished by the whole force with all
its impedimenta.

The wagons, however, could not be kept in the hole where the
crossing was effected, and orders were given that they should march
on the following morning to Venter’s Laager, before the attack on
the Rangeworthy hills was commenced. In the meantime the question
of attacking the Boer positions in front of them was considered
by Major-Generals Woodgate and Hart, who reported that it was too
hazardous in the daytime.

During the afternoon of the 18th intelligence was received that a
detachment of our mounted troops had had a successful engagement
with a party of Boers at Acton Homes and that support was required.
Sir Charles Warren sent on the whole of his remaining cavalry (300),
and Major-General Hildyard’s brigade was ordered to march early
the following morning. The engagement resulted in the capture of
thirty-one Boers.

Sir Redvers Buller telegraphed to the Secretary of State for War on
the 18th from Spearman’s Hill:

‘A battery of field artillery, howitzer battery, and Lyttelton’s
brigade are across the Tugela River at Potgieter’s Drift. The
enemy’s position is being bombarded by us. Five miles higher up
Warren has crossed the river by a pontoon bridge, eighty-five yards
long, and hopes that his force will, by this evening, have advanced
five miles from the river. To his right front the enemy are busily
intrenching.’

CHAPTER II

POSITION OF AFFAIRS

Leaving Sir Charles Warren on the north side of the Tugela in advance
of Trichard’s Drift and Sir Redvers Buller at Spearman’s Hill, with
Major-General Lyttelton at Potgieter’s, let us pause to consider the
general position of affairs. In order to understand it we must know
the features of the country between the Tugela and Ladysmith, the
relief of which was the object of the operations; the numbers of the
forces employed on each side; the positions occupied by the enemy,
and the ways in which they could best be attacked.

We cannot do better, in the first instance, than quote from Sir
Charles Warren himself as to the country between the Tugela
and Ladysmith and the strategy adopted. The extract is from a
contribution last autumn to the ‘National Review’ entitled ‘Lessons
from the South African War.’

‘If the Colonial farm map[3] is examined it will be seen that
immediately south of Ladysmith is the rugged country of Grobelaar’s
Kloof, extending to the Tugela and Colenso, some twelve miles from
Ladysmith, and that the only practicable directions of advance
within easy access of the rail-head at Frere were that to the
right, following the line of railway to Pieters through very rugged
mountains, and that to the left, by Potgieter’s and Skiet’s Drifts,
through comparatively open country, with a fairly good wagon road
of sixteen miles from Frere to Potgieter’s Drift, and a good wagon
road of fourteen miles into Ladysmith over open country, the only
hills to be met with being those commanding Potgieter’s Drift from
the south, and Lancers Hill, held by the Boers investing Ladysmith
and six miles from that city. This open country is, however,
commanded on the south by the Doorn Kloof range resting on the
Tugela.

‘It was the left-hand advance that was chosen, but, though the Boer
lines on the north side of the Tugela about Potgieter’s Drift and
Vaalkrantz were commanded by the high ground of Mount Alice and
Zwart Kop, 1,000 feet above the Tugela, the attack was not at once
made upon their position. Again, there was a choice of making a
détour, either to the right by Doorn Kloof, or to the left over the
Spion Kop range and its adjuncts.

‘So far as the map will indicate there is much in favour of an
advance by Doorn Kloof, particularly because its possession seemed
to be a necessity to cover the advance over the open country
between Potgieter’s Drift and Lancers Hill.

‘On the left is the Spion Kop range, stretching ten miles north
from the Tugela and separating the open country about Acton Homes
from the open country about Potgieter’s. This range is 1,000 to
1,500 feet above the Tugela, and behind it lay the principal camps
of the Boer army. The result of taking the left-hand route would
very much increase the distance for wagons into Ladysmith.

From Potgieter’s Drift to Lancers Hill, 8 miles.
” ” ” past Fair View to Lancers Hill, 24 miles
” ” ” past Acton Homes to Lancers Hill, 35 miles.

Moreover, Acton Homes was on the line of communication of the
Orange Free State Boers with some of their mountain passes, and
they kept a large force in the hills above to secure their retreat.’

As to the strength of the Boer force opposed to the British on the
Tugela there is the greatest difference of opinion. Sir Redvers
Buller has put it at some 7,000 men, a Boer writer says it was
little over half that number, while Sir Charles Warren thinks it was
much greater than 7,000. It is generally agreed that the British
Intelligence Office rightly estimated the combined forces of the
enemy at about 60,000, increased probably by foreigners and rebels to
80,000, and that about half of that number were in Natal. If, then, a
very liberal allowance be made for the numbers required to guard the
lines of communication to the Orange Free State and the Transvaal,
to carry on the investment of Ladysmith, to patrol and reconnoitre
the country, a very large force would still be available for watching
the British Brigade at Chieveley and opposing the British forces at
Potgieter’s and Trichard’s Drifts; and whatever the number may have
been on the Tugela the Boers were all mounted and acting on interior
lines, and could easily and rapidly concentrate a large force in any
direction on the Tugela front.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that during the month which had
elapsed since the battle of Colenso the Boers had largely increased
their forces on the Tugela, and we know that they had been busy
preparing long lines of intrenchment in favourable positions right
away beyond Acton Homes to the positions defending the roads leading
to the passes to the Orange Free State. All round the Acton Homes
basin the hills had been fortified, pom-poms and guns were in
position along the western slopes of the Rangeworthy hills, and guns
and rifles on the road to the Harrismith Pass. The Boers were quite
prepared all along the line, and, although they were uncertain where
the British were going to cross the river and strike, and were so
badly commanded that they allowed the crossings to be made without
serious resistance, they were quite ready with camps in sheltered
positions, with retired ‘schanzes’ on the hills, with outposts on the
slopes to the river, to concentrate a large front in any direction
from which they might be attacked.

Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill, in his ‘London to Ladysmith via
Pretoria,’ thus describes the position in front of Sir Redvers Buller
and Sir Charles Warren:--

‘When Buller had arrived at Potgieter’s he found himself confronted
by a horseshoe position of great strength, enclosing and closing
the debouches from the ford where he had secured a practical
bridgehead. He therefore masked Potgieter’s with seven battalions
and twenty-four guns, and sent Warren with twelve battalions and
thirty-six guns to turn the right, which rested on the lofty
hill--almost mountain--of Spion Kop. The Boers, to meet this
turning movement, extended their line westwards along the heights
of the Tugela valley almost as far as Acton Homes. Their whole
position was therefore shaped like a note of interrogation laid
on its side, --◠, the curve in front of General Lyttelton, the
straight line before Sir Charles Warren. At the angle formed by
the junction of the curve and the line stands Spion Kop--“Look-out
Hill.” The straight position in front of Sir Charles Warren ran in
two lines along the edge and crest of a plateau which rises steeply
two miles from the river, but is approachable by numerous long
arêtes and dongas.’

Let us now consider what were the operations Sir Redvers Buller
proposed to execute. The instructions[4] he issued to Sir Charles
Warren are necessarily the official record of what was in his mind
at the time. But they are vague where they should be definite, and
definite where they should be elastic. They tell Sir Charles Warren
that, finding the Boers in front of Potgieter’s too strongly posted
to allow of a direct attack upon their positions, his chief has
decided to send him with the larger part of the army to turn their
flank by crossing the Tugela near Trichard’s Drift and ‘moving up to
the west of Spion Kop.’

But what the west of Spion Kop meant, whether the road by Acton
Homes, or that by Fair View and Groote Hoek or Rosalie, the former
twice as long as the latter, is not explained and it is impossible
to gather from these instructions. Lord Roberts, in his despatch,
though evidently in some perplexity, seems to think it meant the
Acton Homes road.

Next Sir Charles Warren was instructed to act as circumstances
require, but he was to continue to refuse his right and throw his
left forward till he gained the open plain north of Spion Kop,
where he was told he would command the rear of the position facing
Potgieter’s Drift, which he would be able to render untenable. While
Sir Charles Warren was so employed, Sir Redvers Buller undertook to
threaten both of the positions in front of Potgieter’s and also to
attempt a crossing at Skiet’s Drift, so as to hold the enemy off Sir
Charles Warren as much as possible.

But the turning force of 12,000 men had fifteen miles of wagons
accompanying it, and was to take with it only four days’ provisions,
which, of course, could be filled up by Sir Redvers Buller so long
as it was in road communication with him; but, as soon as this was
broken, Sir Charles Warren’s operations were limited to what he
could do in four days. And that Sir Redvers Buller intended the
road communication to be broken is shown by his request in the
instructions that as soon as Sir Charles Warren had made the passage
of the river he should, if possible, send the pontoons to him.
Finally, Sir Charles Warren was directed by these instructions to
send the eight naval 12-pr. guns to Sir Redvers Buller, a step which
had a very important bearing upon the final issue of the undertaking.

The success of Sir Charles Warren, therefore, depended upon his
being able to accomplish his flanking movement in four days from the
time of leaving his temporary base, upon his having no necessity for
long-range guns, and upon the right flank of the Boers, which he was
to turn, being within easy reach.

It is, however, well to read the views of others on the spot of the
intentions of Sir Redvers Buller.

Thus Bishop Baynes of Natal, in ‘My Diocese during the War,’ gives
some information on the subject, which was obtained at first hand
from Major-General Lyttelton. On pages 180 and 181 he says:

‘_Tuesday, Jan. 16th._--I went up the hill after breakfast: when
I came back to lunch I found the camp in a stir. At last the
orders had come to move, and the plan of campaign was declared,
and General Lyttelton explained it to me. Our brigade is to move
off about 2.30 to the river, and two battalions are to cross
Potgieter’s Drift to-night and the rest to-morrow. To-morrow
our big guns will open on the Boers and we shall make a big
demonstration. Meanwhile Sir Charles Warren, with his other brigade
(General Woodgate’s), and with General Clery’s Division (consisting
of General Hildyard’s and General Hart’s brigades), is to move away
to a point five or six miles higher up the river, cross there, and
approach the flank of the Boer position up the slopes of Spion
Kop. The hope is that the Boers will not be able to spare men
enough from here (besides Colenso and Ladysmith) to offer effective
opposition to Sir Charles Warren, or, if they do, then we may get
through their defences here. General Lyttelton called the colonels
of his battalions together and explained the plan to them.’

Mr. J. B. Atkins, in his ‘Relief of Ladysmith,’ writes:

‘On Friday, January 19, I crossed Waggon Drift and rode some five
miles further to the advanced position of Sir Charles Warren, who
was now marching west. Obviously the plan was this: Warren was to
make a long march round and attack the Boer hills in the rear,
and the force remaining at Potgieter’s Drift would simultaneously
attack them in front. Warren’s troops were, in a word, to become a
detached force; they would disappear round the stretching hills,
and when we heard them banging away behind Spion Kop, we, who
stayed behind, would have our signal to advance.’

Mr. Bennet Burleigh, in ‘The Natal Campaign,’ says:

‘Whilst this demonstration was proceeding near Potgieter’s, Sir
Charles Warren, with his guns and part of Clery’s division,
advanced towards a drift near Trieghardt’s Farm, commonly so
called, six miles west of Mount Alice.[5] It was upon the direct
Acton Homes road and led to the rough ground, foothills, and
detached ranges behind, on the west of Spion Kop. The possession of
these, it was trusted, would drive the Boers from the vicinity of
Potgieter’s, and Spion Kop must fall into our hands.’

It is now understood that Sir Redvers Buller intended Sir Charles
Warren to advance by the Fair View and Groote Hoek or Rosalie road,
because he says in the memorandum ‘not necessarily for publication,’
just published: ‘From the first there could be no question but that
the only practicable road for his column was the one by Fair View.
The problem was to get rid of the enemy who were holding it.’ And
it seems more likely he would call the Fair View road that from
Fair View to Groote Hoek than that to Acton Homes, which he would
probably call the Acton Homes road. And, indeed, there is this
corroboration--that the troops were furnished with a list of the
wells of water on the road from Trichard’s Drift to Groote Hoek, or
Rosalie, by Fair View Farm. The length of the road from Fair View to
a point near Groote Hoek is nine miles, and the length of the road
to the same point by way of Acton Homes is twenty miles, more than
double the length. Yet Lord Roberts had both Buller’s memorandum and
also his secret instructions to Warren before him when he wrote in
his covering despatch:

‘The plan of operations is not very clearly described in the
despatches themselves, but it may be gathered from them and the
accompanying documents that the original intention was to cross the
Tugela at or near Trichard’s Drift, and thence, by following the
road past Fair View and Acton Homes, to gain the open plain north
of Spion Kop, the Boer position in front of Potgieter’s Drift being
too strong to be taken by direct attack.’

The truth is that the information possessed as to the country was
extremely small. No general description of it was available. There
were no road reports, no reconnaissances--in fact, it was to all
intents and purposes ‘an unknown country.’ From the high ground on
the south side of the Tugela the hills to the north could be scanned,
and it could be seen that to the west of Spion Kop the Rangeworthy
hills appeared to terminate abruptly in the Bastion or Sugar Loaf
Hill. Here it was supposed that the Boer trenches ended and were held
by only a small force. It was this range that Sir Charles Warren
was directed to attack, by pivoting the right of his line on Spion
Kop and swinging round his left until he gained the so-called open
country to the north of Spion Kop.

Beyond, towards Acton Homes, other hills could be seen, but nothing
was known about them. It was generally supposed that the ground was
good for cavalry for a certain distance; but the information given
was that the Acton Homes road, leading through Clydesdale, passed
through a country full of dongas and small kopjes, and passed eight
or nine miles north of Potgieter’s. The open country immediately
north of Spion Kop could only be reached by wagons by the road
leading past Fair View to Groote Hoek. The farm map, procured from
the office of the Surveyor-General of Natal and available for the
troops, gave a fairly good idea of the ground about Spion Kop; but
it was uncertain how far it could be relied upon. It showed that
mountain ranges beyond Spion Kop extended to the west, range after
range, with a large hill both to the north and north-east of Acton
Homes, the high road from Acton Homes to Ladysmith passing up a
valley between high hills. It was also evident, from the lines taken
by the rivers and streams, that the water-parting continues from
Spion Kop several miles to the north-east of Acton Homes.

The Orange Free State Boers encamped on the Tugela drew their
supplies from Harrismith. Their communications were by two roads
leading through the Drakensberg mountains to the south of Van
Reenan’s pass, the more southerly passing Oliver’s Hoek. These two
roads meet at Acton Homes. Acton Homes, which lies in a basin,
is surrounded on three sides by hills, and these hills formed an
important strategic position. On the north and north-east they
guarded the investing lines of Ladysmith, and on the north-west and
west the communications of the Orange Free State Boers with their
base. It was not difficult to believe that these hills were covered
with intrenchments strongly held, or able at short notice to be
strongly held.

In regard both to the positions held by the Boers and the numbers of
the enemy there was a good deal of information which must have been
at the disposal of Sir Charles Warren; but the difficulty would no
doubt have been to know how much of it was reliable.

It seems to have been certainly known that, since the troops had
marched westwards to Potgieter’s on 10th January, large bodies of
Boers had been moving up the river from the neighbourhood of Colenso,
and massing behind Spion Kop and Acton Homes, and that near the
latter place there was a large Boer camp which supplied the camp
behind Spion Kop with provisions.

It was also understood that the Orange Free State Boers were posted
along the right of the line as far as Spion Kop, and that thence the
Transvaal Boers were extended to the left or eastward; that, in the
vicinity of Spion Kop and Groote Hoek, there were five or six large
camps, their position being very central, as from that point the
Boers could easily go in an hour either west to Acton Homes on the
one side, or east to Doorn Kloof on the other.

Thus, in whatever direction our troops marched along the Boer lines,
they were always confronted by a large body of Boers.

A trench had been cut along the Boer lines behind Potgieter’s Drift
as far west as Spion Kop, with a number of men always in it so long
as the main body of the British force faced them. On Spion Kop
itself, on the east side, were four guns, which, it was said, would
rake Trichard’s Drift at long ranges, while to the west of Spion Kop,
on the Rangeworthy hills, an intrenchment had been made and was held
by the enemy, who could be readily reinforced should the British
cross the drift.

It must not, however, be supposed that Boers can fight only behind
prepared trenches. They are experts at quickly raising up ‘schanzes,’
which they make in a few minutes, and they only construct regular
trenches when they have considerable time at their disposal, or
when there is no natural material lying handy on the ground. On
Spion Kop, and to the west over the Rangeworthy hills and beyond,
the Boers did not require trenches to make an effectual resistance.
There was plenty of material to enable them to hold the crests of the
hills against a far superior force; but they preferred to make their
position almost impregnable by selecting continuous grassy slopes,
over which an advance would be impracticable in daylight. From such
positions nothing but artillery fire could drive them out.

CHAPTER III

ADVANCE TO VENTER’S LAAGER AND ATTACK OF THE
RANGEWORTHY HILLS

At the end of Chapter II we left Sir Charles Warren across the
Tugela with all his force, including his wagons, on the night of
18th January and ready to march to Venter’s Laager on the following
morning.

As the wagons marched on the morning of the 19th in four or five
parallel columns, in length about three miles or so, the brigades
commanded by Major-Generals Hart and Woodgate also kept pace with
them until opposite Fair View, where the right of the line was to
rest in the attack of the Rangeworthy hills. The two brigades then
occupied the slopes of the adjoining hills. This march was a very
remarkable one, and it is to be doubted whether there is another
instance on record of such a force, forming a length of three or
four miles, with wagons four or five deep on the column’s reverse
flank, being successfully led by a flank march right along the face
of commanding hills held by an enemy strongly intrenched and provided
with long-range guns, on a road just out of range of effective
rifle fire, and with a rapid river on its reverse flank. It was
in accordance with the instructions, but it was a most hazardous
proceeding, and it was owing to the careful management of Sir Charles
Warren, as well as the want of initiative or military instinct on the
part of the Boer commander, that there was no disaster.

General Warren had reconnoitred the Fair View-Groote Hoek road, and
found that it led within effective rifle range round the west flank
of Spion Kop, and was therefore an undesirable road so long as Spion
Kop was held by the enemy. He then crossed the Venter’s Spruit,
near Venter’s Laager, and examined the other road by Acton Homes.
He ascertained that it led through a strongly defended pass at the
water-parting, and that on both sides it was held by the Boers, while
it was twice the length of the first road. The length was the great
defect. There was only one road leading to it, and the wagons could
only go singly. The force could not possibly watch a front of fifteen
miles occupied by the enemy. The result would be that each day’s
march must be limited by the length of road that could be watched.
The force was to be provisioned for only four days, and, even if
everything went successfully, it would take three days to get from
Venter’s Spruit by Acton Homes to the point near Groote Hoek. It was
therefore evident that the road could not be used, even if it were
not so strongly held by the enemy.

In the evening Sir Charles Warren assembled his General and Staff
Officers and the Officers Commanding Royal Artillery and Royal
Engineers, and pointed out to them that there were only two roads
by which the wheeled transport and guns could proceed: (1) by Acton
Homes, and (2) north of Fair View by Rosalie or Groote Hoek. He
informed them that he rejected the Acton Homes road because time
would not allow of it, and his subordinate commanders concurred
unanimously. He then pointed out that the only possible way of all
getting through by the road north of Fair View would be by taking
three or four days’ food in their haversacks and sending all their
wagons back across the Tugela; but before this could be done the
position in front of them must be captured.

Although Sir Redvers Buller does not mention in his despatches what
information he possessed, either as to the routes to Ladysmith or as
to the measures taken by the Boers to prevent them to him, he quotes
incidentally, and in quite a different connection, the following
message which Sir Charles Warren telegraphed to him the same evening:

‘(Sent 7.54 P.M., received 8.15 P.M.) Left flank, 19th January.

‘_To the Chief of the Staff_

‘I find there are only two roads by which we could possibly
get from Trichard’s Drift to Potgieter’s, on the north of the
Tugela--one by Acton Homes, the other by Fair View and Rosalie; the
first I reject as too long, the second is a very difficult road for
a large number of wagons, unless the enemy is thoroughly cleared
out. I am therefore going to adopt some special arrangements which
will involve my stay at Venter’s Laager for two or three days. I
will send in for further supplies and report progress.

‘C. WARREN.’

This is not the sort of message he would have sent if he had been
ordered to take the Acton Homes-Ladysmith road, and it shows
unquestionably that, as to the roads and the country, very little was
known.

The reply to the message was that three days’ supply was being sent.

It has been supposed by some writers on the subject--and the popular
notion at the time certainly was that the mountainous country
suddenly ended at the western slopes of the Rangeworthy hills to
the west of Spion Kop--that Acton Homes was situated on a level
plain, and that Sir Charles Warren had only to march round by Acton
Homes, keeping the Rangeworthy hills and Spion Kop at a respectful
distance, and he would be able with little delay to take the lines
opposing Potgieter’s Drift in reverse. It does not appear whether Sir
Redvers Buller entertained this idea; if he did, he gave no definite
instructions, apparently, in that sense to Sir Charles Warren;
but if he did not, then he must have supposed that the Boer right
flank rested on the Rangeworthy hills and could be turned, and was
unaware that it extended to Acton Homes and the roads to the Orange
Free State. We can hardly suppose that when he wrote of sending
Sir Charles Warren to turn the Boer flank he expected Sir Charles
Warren to accomplish on the Rangeworthy hills, with 12,000 men and no
long-range guns, what he himself had been unwilling to attempt a week
before at Potgieter’s Drift with 20,000 men and long-range guns. If
he did, he was sending him on a hazardous undertaking, and yet this
was what opening the Fair View and Rosalie road practically meant--an
attack on the centre of the Boer position.

We have already alluded to the prejudice created against Sir Charles
Warren by the unfortunate suggestion that while Sir Redvers Buller
desired him to go by the Acton Homes road, he preferred the nearer
road to Groote Hoek and Rosalie. It is now clear that, if Lord
Roberts had not alluded to Acton Homes in this connection, the idea
would never have entered any one’s head, because such a route in
the circumstances was impossible. It might have been the conception
of a military genius to have thought that the best way of relieving
Ladysmith would be to strike at the communications of the Orange
Free State Boers on the Harrismith and other roads; but this we
need not consider, as it certainly did not suggest itself to Sir
Redvers Buller. Had Sir Charles Warren’s force been composed mainly
of well-trained mounted troops, and had the country been less hilly,
possibly the aspect of affairs would have been changed, and he
might have made a real wide turning movement; but he had hardly any
mounted troops, and the country was very hilly. He was, in fact, told
to do an impossible thing--to turn a flank at a point where there
was no flank to turn. As Mr. J. B. Atkins observes in his ‘Relief
of Ladysmith’: ‘It had been discovered that after all there was no
way round to the back of Spion Kop through open country. The hills
in which the Boers were are, in fact, a spur of the Drakensberg
mountains: wherever Sir Charles Warren might go, he must go through
mountains.

Sir Charles Warren was not consulted as to the plan of operations,
or as to the supplies, or impedimenta to accompany him, and it was
generally understood that on his arrival at Frere he had advocated
the attack of the Boers intrenched on the south of the Tugela
at Colenso, and proceeding on the lines which were eventually
successful. But, if the suggestion was made, it was not approved.
Instead, Sir Redvers Buller proposed to break through the Boer
line at Potgieter’s, just as he had tried to do at Colenso. On
11th January his force, assembled at Potgieter’s, was stronger by
two brigades of infantry and a brigade division of artillery than
it was at Colenso, and yet he hesitated, after the experience of
Colenso, to attack the Boer positions. Nevertheless, he seems to
have expected to be able to relieve Ladysmith by sending Sir Charles
Warren with 12,000 men and thirty-six field guns to attack the Boer
position in the Rangeworthy hills west of Spion Kop, while he held a
certain number of Boers in front of him by making a demonstration at
Potgieter’s.

With the map before us there is but one solution to Sir Redvers
Buller’s directions. He assumed that the Boer right rested in the
vicinity of Bastion Hill, a spur of the Rangeworthy hills, and he
wished Sir Charles Warren, pivoting on Spion Kop, to sweep round his
left to overlap that position.

Sir Charles was given no long-range guns with which to reply to
those of the Boers. He had to deal with an enemy already confident
with the victory gained at Colenso, and he was doomed to failure if
he attempted to advance before he had demoralised the enemy by a
continuous and effective artillery fire.

Had Sir Charles Warren been so ill-advised as to try to advance by
the Acton Homes road to Ladysmith, it is not difficult to prophesy
what would most probably have occurred. The Boers had strongly
fortified the hills all round the Acton Homes basin, pom-poms and
guns were in position along the western slopes of the Rangeworthy
hills, and guns and rifles on the road to the Harrismith pass. Any
force attempting to proceed by that route would no doubt have been
allowed by the Boers to enter the basin, and then would have been cut
off from Trichard’s Drift by the closing of the road below Bastion
Hill. The column, thus hemmed in and caught in a trap, would have
been compelled either to fight its way down to the Middle Drift or to
surrender. In either case Natal would have been at the mercy of the
Boers.

ATTACK OF THE RANGEWORTHY HILLS

Sir Charles Warren had assured himself by his reconnaissance that
no wide outflanking movement was possible, and he had come to the
conclusion that the only way to carry out his instructions was
to capture the positions in front of him, creeping up the dongas
and long arêtes, alluded to by Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill, and
getting his artillery to work so as to bring an effective fire on
the Boer trenches, and, after a complete artillery preparation, to
make an infantry attack--certainly in the first instance a frontal
attack, because it always must be a frontal attack when an enemy
defending a position and acting on interior lines is more mobile than
the attacking force--to break through the Boer lines, rolling them
up from each flank, and, having cleared the front, and opened the
road from Fair View to Rosalie, to send the wagons back, and, with
supplies for four days in the haversacks, to march round Spion Kop
to the appointed position. These were the ‘special arrangements’ to
which he referred in his telegram to the Chief of the Staff on 19th
January.

Looking at matters as we now know them, it seems a foolhardy
proceeding to send a general with 12,000 infantry and guns inferior
in range to those of the enemy to attack a large force strongly
intrenched on commanding positions, flanked by infantry fire and
long-range guns, and at the same time to issue an order that there
must be no turning back.

Sir Charles Warren believed that by adopting a plan which he employed
later successfully at Pieters--a continuous fire of artillery for
some days in order to demoralise the enemy, and an attack with a
long line, with very weak supports, because the Boers have none,
every man being in the fighting line--he might be successful. At
Pieters the artillery fire on the Boer lines was continuous from
22nd to 27th February--that is, five or six days--and with as long a
period of artillery fire on the Rangeworthy hills, it is probable
that the Boers would have retired, as it is known they were getting
demoralised on 23rd January and had begun to move their wagons to the
west.

Sir Charles Warren lost no time after his reconnaissances in making
his dispositions for attack, and issued the following instructions to
Lieut.-General Sir C. F. Clery dated 19th January:

‘_General Officer Commanding 2nd Division_

‘I shall be glad if you will arrange to clear the Boers out of
the ground above that at present occupied by the 11th Brigade,
by a series of outflanking movements. In the early morning an
advance should be made as far as the Hussars reconnoitred to-day,
and a shelter-trench there made across the slope of the hill. A
portion of the slopes of the adjoining hill to the west can then
be occupied, the Artillery assisting, if necessary, in clearing
the western side and upper slopes. When this is done I think that
a battery can be placed on the slopes of the western hill in such
a position that it could shell the schanzes of the Boers on Spion
Kop and the upper portion of the eastern hill. When this is done
a further advance can be made on the eastern hill, and artillery
can be brought to bear upon the upper slopes of the western hill.
It appears to me that this might be done with comparatively
little loss of life, as the Boers can in each turn be outflanked.
The following Cavalry are at your disposal: two squadrons Royal
Dragoons and 5th Divisional Squadron.’

General Clery accordingly moved at 3 A.M. on 20th January with a
force of four batteries Royal Field Artillery and the 5th and 11th
Brigades of Infantry to occupy the heights to the west and north-west
of Spion Kop. The eastern spur[6] was occupied with two battalions
of the 11th Brigade, and the spur immediately to the west of the
latter with the two remaining battalions of the 11th Brigade. On
occupying these heights Lieut.-General Clery found himself in front
of a semicircular range of heights completely overlooking the heights
he had arrived on. The left of this high ridge almost rested on Spion
Kop, while the right extended to the spur overlooking Fair View Farm.
The road which would have to be used for wagons in the advance
passed on the left of this position, but the enemy’s position was
very strong, with a glacis reaching down to the heights occupied by
Lieut.-General Clery. The ground on the other flank (left) afforded
a good deal more cover for advance, and Lieut.-General Clery hoped,
if he succeeded in occupying that flank of the ridge, to swing round
to the right and take the remainder of the enemy’s position in flank.
He therefore moved up the artillery to the eastern spur and moved
the 5th Brigade to reinforce the two battalions of the 11th Brigade
already on the western spur, placing the whole of this latter force
under Major-General Hart, and directing him to move forward against
the left flank of the enemy’s position. This was done, and a series
of kopjes was occupied in succession, which brought the force that
evening within reach of storming the enemy’s position.

In a despatch dated 20th January 1900 Sir Charles Warren says:

‘After successfully carrying some of the hills General Clery
reported that he had now reached a point which it would be
necessary to take by frontal attack, which he did not think would
be desirable. To this I replied: “I quite concur that a frontal
attack is undesirable, and that a flank attack is more suitable.
I intended to convey that we should hold what we get by means
of intrenchments when necessary, and not retire, continuing the
advance to-morrow if it cannot be done to-night; frontal attack,
with heavy losses, is simply playing the Boer game.”’

On the same day Sir Redvers Buller telegraphed to the Secretary of
State for War:

‘General Clery with part of Warren’s force has been in action from
6 A.M. till 7 P.M. to-day. By judicious use of his artillery he has
fought his way up, capturing ridge after ridge, for about three
miles. Troops are now bivouacking on the ground he has gained, but
main position is still in front of them.’

Bishop Baynes of Natal, in ‘My Diocese during the War,’ writes:
‘_Saturday, January 20th._--The fighting is continuous, but the real
battle is on the other side of the hill, where Sir Charles Warren
is swinging his line round. His right wing, which is only some five
miles from us over the ridge of Spion Kop, is the pivot, and while
that remains more or less stationary, a long line is gradually
swinging round to his left, so bringing the Boers into a =V=.’

On 20th January ‘the cavalry on the extreme left, under Lord
Dundonald, demonstrated effectively,’ says Mr. Winston S. Churchill,
‘and the South African Light Horse, under Colonel Byng, actually
took and held, without artillery support of any kind, a high hill
(Sugarloaf Hill), called henceforward Bastion Hill, between the Dutch
right and centre.’

Mr. Bennet Burleigh says: ‘Warren prosecuted his turning movement,
sending his right and centre well in, whilst Hildyard on the left
with Hart’s Brigade moved forward. Clearly the object in view was to
seize Bastion Hill, as we have dubbed it from its shape, and roll up
the Boer right towards Spion Kop over the direct Ladysmith road viâ
Potgieter’s.... Still, it was with his left that he pushed hardest
with Hildyard’s and Hart’s Brigades--the latter thrown further
forward.’

On 21st January it was found that the enemy had evacuated the
position during the night, and it was occupied by Major-General
Hart’s Brigade in the morning. Two battalions had been detached from
the 2nd Brigade on the previous evening to assist the troops on the
heights, and were directed to co-operate with Major-General Hart by
attacking the enemy’s right flank. When the enemy’s position of the
previous day had been thus occupied it was discovered that the enemy
had fallen back to a second strong position in near, the advance to
which was over open ground and entailed a frontal attack.

Sir Redvers Buller, who went over to see Sir Charles Warren on the
21st, warned him that the enemy had received large reinforcements,
some 2,500 men, to strengthen their right flank, and ordered two
batteries to move from the hill on the right to ground on the left,
where they came into action against the enemy’s right flank. A fire
was kept up all day, but it was not considered advisable to make a
frontal attack on his position.

It is only reasonable to suppose that Sir Charles Warren explained
verbally to Sir Redvers Buller, on this first occasion of meeting
him since his reconnaissance, what his plans were--i.e. the ‘special
arrangements’ he had alluded to in his telegram of 19th January--the
continual bombardment, the advance on both sides of an arête, and the
alternate turning of the Boer position on the right hand and on the
left, with the ultimate intention, when the position was gained, of
sending the wagons back and advancing in light order with provisions
carried in the haversack.

Sir Charles Warren, on 21st January, asked to be supplied with
another infantry brigade to extend his line to the left, with
howitzers and long-range guns. The infantry brigade and howitzers
were sent to him, but not the long-range guns.

Sir Redvers Buller telegraphed to the Secretary of State for War on
21st January:

‘Warren has been engaged all day, chiefly on his left, which he has
swung round about a couple of miles. The ground is very difficult,
and, as the fighting is all the time up-hill, it is difficult
exactly to say how much we gain, but I think we are making
substantial progress.’

Early on the morning of the 22nd four howitzers arrived, and Sir
Redvers Buller, who came over about the same time, gave directions
where they were to be placed. Two were brought into action on the
height close to the batteries already in action there; the others
came into action on the left to keep down the Boer fire from Acton
Homes. They were all effective in reaching the enemy’s position,
and fire was kept up by both sides until near sundown. Both sides
retained generally the same positions at the close of the day.

It was on the 22nd that Sir Redvers Buller held a consultation with
Sir Charles Warren and his Generals on the situation. Sir Charles,
it is understood, pointed out that it would be impossible to get the
wagons through by the road leading past Fair View, unless Spion Kop
were first taken; and Sir Redvers, who, it is believed, strongly
objected to the wagons being sent back, agreed that Spion Kop would
have to be taken; but he preferred to make an attack from the British
left flank from Bastion Hill, and proposed that it should be made
that night. Both Sir Charles Warren and Lieut.-General Clery were,
it is gathered, opposed to the proposal as a hazardous proceeding,
because, if successful, it would mean to take the whole line of the
enemy’s position, which they might not be able to hold.

We learn from Sir Redvers Buller’s own despatch that he was impatient
of delay, and wanted an immediate attack, either to the right or to
the left, preferably to the left, but an attack at once. It would
seem that, in deference to the opinions expressed at the conference,
Sir Redvers did not further press the attack from the left on that
day, and Sir Charles Warren decided to attack Spion Kop that night,
because, if the force must take the wagons, it was only possible to
do so by making the road from Fair View to Groote Hoek safe for them,
and the road could only be made safe for them by the capture of Spion
Kop, which, as Sir Redvers Buller has observed, was evidently the key
of the position.

We now see why Spion Kop was attacked. The Acton Homes route was out
of the question, and there remained three courses or lines of action
for consideration:

(1) The attack from the left, on Salient, from Bastion Hill
(favoured by Sir Redvers Buller, but deemed to be very hazardous by
Sir Charles Warren and other generals);

(2) The attack from the right, on Spion Kop, which, if successful,
would turn the enemy’s position and the Boers would have to go;

(3) Continuous long-range and high-angle artillery fire on the Boer
positions and trenches, by which the Orange Free Staters would be
worn out and demoralised, leaving only the Transvaal Boers to be
dealt with.

Sir Redvers Buller, commanding in chief, advocated the first. Sir
Charles Warren, second in command, was in favour of the third. But as
Sir Redvers Buller insisted on either the first or second, and Sir
Charles Warren objected to the first, the second--that is, the attack
from the right on Spion Kop--was decided upon.

Sir Charles Warren had been reinforced at noon of the 22nd by the
10th Brigade under Major-General Talbot Coke. The Brigades of both
Major-Generals Hildyard and Hart were on the hills, as we have seen,
in touch with the enemy. The choice, therefore, of a column for the
assault of Spion Kop was limited to the 11th Brigade forming the
right attack, or the 10th Brigade just arrived. Sir Charles Warren
selected the latter, and put Major-General Coke in orders to command
the attack that same night. General Coke, however, asked for a delay
of twenty-four hours to enable him to reconnoitre the position with
the officers commanding the battalions to be employed in the assault,
and to this Sir Charles assented.

On 23rd January Sir Redvers Buller again visited Sir Charles Warren,
and, as he states in his despatch, again advocated an attack from
the left. This, we have seen, Sir Charles Warren and his Generals
had deemed too hazardous when considered on the previous day; and
in the light of Sir Redvers Buller’s memorandum ‘not necessarily
for publication,’ in which he mentions how he went over to tell Sir
Charles Warren that the Boer right was being strongly reinforced on
the 21st, and also of his Vaal Krantz despatch of 8th February, in
which he again mentions that the Boer right had been considerably
strengthened, so much so that on 25th January any attempt to advance
his left would probably have been unsuccessful, it is strange that he
should on 23rd January have been so desirous to try his fortune in
that direction.

Finding that his proposal to attack from the left was not concurred
in by his juniors, Sir Redvers Buller would not take upon himself the
responsibility of ordering it, and gave no direction to Sir Charles
Warren beyond that which he mentions in his despatch--that he must
either attack or his force would be withdrawn. Retirement was the
last thing to be thought of, especially bearing in mind the general
order to the troops in which Sir Redvers Buller told them there
would be no turning back. Sir Charles Warren states in his despatch
that, being given the alternative to attack or retire, he replied
that he should prefer to attack Spion Kop to retiring, showed the
Commander-in-Chief the orders of the previous evening, and explained
the reason of the postponement of the attack for twenty-four hours.

On this same 23rd January Sir Redvers Buller telegraphed to the
Secretary of State for War the following despatch, and it is a matter
to note as we go along that in no one of these telegraphic despatches
is there the slightest hint or expression that would lead the reader
to suppose Sir Redvers Buller had any cause of dissatisfaction,
or that Sir Charles Warren was not carrying out the operations in
accordance with his wishes:

‘Warren holds the position he gained two days ago. In front of him,
at about 1,400 yards, is the enemy’s position west of Spion Kop.
It is on higher ground than Warren’s position, so it is impossible
to see into it properly. It can only be approached over bare, open
slopes. The ridges held by Warren are so steep that guns cannot
be placed on them, but we are shelling the enemy’s position with
howitzers and field artillery, placed on the lower ground behind
the infantry. Enemy reply with Creusot and other artillery. In the
duel the advantage rests with us, as we appear to be searching
his trenches, and his artillery fire is not causing us much loss.
An attempt will be made to-night to seize Spion Kop, the Salient
which forms the left of the enemy’s position facing Trichard’s
Drift, and divides it from the position facing Potgieter’s. It has
considerable command over all the enemy’s intrenchments.’

It was on 23rd January that Sir Redvers Buller altered Sir Charles
Warren’s disposition, and directed him to hand over to Major-General
Coke the command of the 5th Division, retaining the command of the
whole force across the Tugela. This step was no doubt taken to
relieve Sir Charles Warren from over-work, and to free his hands for
the more important duties of the general command; but at such a time
any change of the kind was unfortunate, and such a change naturally
caused an entire alteration of arrangements, because there was no
Staff supplied for the commander of the whole force, and the Staff of
the 5th Division had carried on both the divisional duties and those
for the whole force.

He had now to improvise a Staff for himself, and as he could get no
regimental officers, as all regiments were short, he had to work with
a very attenuated Staff.

‘The Commander-in-Chief,’ says Sir Charles Warren, ‘then desired that
I should put General Woodgate in command of the expedition’ to attack
Spion Kop.

Sir Redvers Buller says he ‘suggested that as General Coke was still
lame from the effects of a lately broken leg, General Woodgate, who
had two sound legs, was better adapted for mountain climbing.’

Whether the word ‘desired’ or ‘suggested’ was used, it was regarded
as an order, and Major-General Woodgate was detailed for the duty,
while Lieutenant-Colonel àCourt--an officer of Sir Redvers Buller’s
Staff--was directed to accompany him.

Now Major-General Talbot Coke was well known as an intelligent
officer, much impressed with the use of the spade in war, and the
importance of intrenching, and it was doubtless on this account that,
in spite of his being slightly lame, he was selected by Sir Charles
Warren for the command of the assaulting column.

It has been asked why Sir Charles Warren, whose activity and energy
are so marked a feature of his character, did not lead the attack
in person, and Lord Roberts regrets that he did not visit Spion Kop
during the afternoon or evening of the 24th. It is stated on very
good authority that he proposed to command the attack in person, but
was forbidden by Sir Redvers Buller on the very reasonable and proper
ground that, as commander of the whole force across the Tugela, it
was not his province to lead a portion of it: that he might have to
give orders to his left as well as to his right, and for this reason
he should not go up Spion Kop, but occupy a central position, whence
he could issue orders to right and left, and be in communication with
the Commander-in-Chief.

CHAPTER IV

BOER DEMORALISATION--TACTICAL IMPORTANCE OF SPION KOP

Before relating the capture of Spion Kop and the events of 24th
January, it will not be amiss to see how the other side regarded the
British operations up to this time, and what importance they attached
to the position of Spion Kop; and, further, how far it was tactically
sound to occupy the hill in the circumstances.

In the diary of Mr. Raymond Maxwell, published in the ‘Contemporary
Review’ of March 1901, we have the daily notes of a busy doctor in
the Boer ambulance, who jots down shortly any scraps of information
he hears about the operations going on. The doctor was not a Boer,
nor even a naturalised burgher of the Transvaal, but a British
subject who for three years had practised as a medical man in the
Transvaal and, when war became imminent, was asked to take the
place of his colleague, Dr. Everard, who was down with malaria, in
charge of a Boer ambulance, until Dr. Everard should be well enough
to relieve him. As refusal meant expulsion and the loss of all his
property, he consented to act, considering that at any rate under the
Red Cross flag he was in a neutral position. His diary, which extends
from 28th September 1899 to 20th February 1900, when Dr. Everard was
well enough to relieve him, is instructive and illuminating, and from
it we quote the following extracts, made during some of the days we
have been considering:

‘_January 20th._--The English are now trekking for Acton Homes,
and have occupied Mount Alice, on which they have posted artillery
to cover the advance. A patrol from the Pretorian commando was
surprised and cut off--forty-eight killed, wounded, and missing.

‘The two forces are now getting into touch, and the English are
evidently going to try and obtain the Thaba Njama (Black Mountain)
ridge.

‘_January 21st._--Severe fighting going on. The English have got
on to the ridge, and have put up schanzes all along it, and at
some points are only eight hundred to nine hundred yards from our
trenches. Our men are beginning to get very jumpy and nervous,
as their trenches are lying mostly in open rolling country, and,
according to many of the Burghers, could be rushed. There has been
continuous rifle fire from the various schanzes and trenches all
day. Two Ermelo men have been killed and five wounded. Total Boer
casualties up there, so far, are sixty. The English artillery
is magnificent, so much so that our guns can only be worked at
intervals.

‘_January 22nd._--All eyes are now directed to the Upper Tugela,
and there is no doubt affairs there are becoming critical. The
strain of the continuous fighting is beginning to tell on the
Burghers, more especially as there are every day more or less
casualties in the trenches. The Burghers get into the trenches
before daylight, and then have to remain in them till they are
relieved the next morning before daybreak. The country is too open
and exposed for them to leave the trenches, unless it is dark.
Moreover, they are expecting a rush some morning early, or a night
attack.

‘_January 23rd._--Excitement everywhere is intense, and if things
continue like this for a few days longer, the Boers will break
and run. Things are hanging in the balance, and the officers and
burghers are looking more anxious now than when retreating through
Weenen. The English have only to win through our trenches to the
Ladysmith-Van Reenen road, i.e. about one mile of open rolling
country, and then Ladysmith is practically relieved.

‘Owing to the Boer trenches not being “cast-iron” positions, and
chiefly because they have no good back door to them, the Boers do
not like them, and I verily believe the English are going to break
through at last. The wear and tear and strain of the last two days’
fighting is telling very much on the burghers.’

Here we have evidence that Sir Charles Warren’s plan of advancing
step by step after periods of continuous bombardment was demoralising
the Boers, and that another day or two of such bombardment would
have enabled the British to rush the Boer trenches with success.

A writer of a paper entitled ‘Pages from the Diary of a Boer
Officer,’ by another of them, contributed to the ‘United Service
Magazine’ of February 1902, says, in reference to the importance of
Spion Kop:

‘The centre and key of the line of defence was Spion Kop, a
flat-topped hill, which through its height dominated all the
federal positions.... Besides being the central position this
hill was the key of the federal line of defence and thus most
important--the taking and the holding of Spion Kop by the English
meaning the defeat of the Republicans and the relief of Ladysmith.’

With regard to the question--Was it tactically right to capture
this hill?--said by both sides to be the key of the position, it
seems an absurd question to ask; for if the advance could have been
accomplished without taking it, it could not rightly be called the
key of the position. Nevertheless, some critics have maintained that
its capture was a blunder, and that, had it not been abandoned, our
chances of success would have been no greater.

Sir Charles Warren has discussed this question in one of his
contributions to the ‘National Review’ in 1901 on ‘Some Lessons from
the South African War,’ and it will not be out of place to quote his
views on the subject which are given in the following extract:

‘_The Capture of a Hill._--Commanding sites in the vicinity of
contending troops must always attract attention, because there is
a natural impulse in man to strive for the higher ground. Recent
criticisms, however, have rather deprecated this longing and have
minimised the advantages the higher ground presents from a failure
to comprehend the principles which govern the subject.

‘It is quite true that in the defence of flat-topped hills, such as
are found in South Africa, it is difficult to obtain a good fire
down the steep slopes from trenches running along the edge or outer
crest, without partly exposing the defenders. It is also admitted
that strong positions can be taken up in gently swelling low ground
with good glacis, or flat surfaces, for frontal fire; but the
command of view from the summits of hills, and the immunity from
being seen, must for a long time to come be powerful factors in the
choice of defensive lines.

‘The Boers, with a shrewdness and skill which smacks somewhat of
European military aid, have, in cases where practicable, taken
advantage of both conditions, by holding the outer edges, or
crests, of flat-topped hills lightly, and by placing their main
trenches about a mile behind on the hill’s comparatively flat
surface. They thus derived all the advantage of the smooth glacis
for frontal fire, while they had command of view without being seen
into, could not in many instances be touched by long-range guns,
and in a great measure debarred the attack from using field guns
against them, because the only positions they could be placed in
were under rifle fire.

‘For example, we may refer to the two Boer positions in front of
Potgieter’s and Venter’s Spruit. The former was strongly situated
in the low swelling ground north of the Tugela, but it could be
seen into and bombarded by long-range guns at 7,000 yards, at a
height of some 600 feet above it, and from as many field guns
as could be brought together at 3,500 yards in the lowland north
of the Tugela. The Venter’s Spruit position, on the other hand,
extending from the Rangeworthy farm round by Acton Homes, and
thence into the Drakensberg, was quite as strongly situated on
the swelling ground of the comparatively flat hill-top; but it
also possessed the enormous advantage that the hills on which it
was situated were over 1,000 feet above the Tugela, and thus it
could not be seen into or dominated by our long-range guns, and
with difficulty could field guns be brought against it: moreover,
from it could be seen the movements of our troops. The main camps
of the enemy were behind Spion Kop and Acton Homes, and were thus
nearer the western position than the eastern. It is not too much to
say that, had there been a high hill or a balloon in the vicinity
overlooking the Venter’s Spruit position as Zwart Kop does that of
Potgieter’s, the great strength of that position would have been
more fully appreciated.

‘Let us now consider the advantage of occupying hills in the line
of the advance of an attack. They are obvious, both on account
of the command of view they afford of the enemy’s position, and
because they screen from view and from fire a portion of the
attack; but it is to be noted that the reverse slopes only of those
hills can be securely held, not the flat summits. The only case in
which it may be generally disadvantageous to hold a hill is when it
is in such proximity to the enemy’s lines that it can be taken in
reverse or all round by the enemy’s fire.

‘A most conspicuous instance of the secure holding of a hill within
the enemy’s lines occurred on 24th February, after the failure of
the attack on the isolated position of Hart’s Hill. During the
retirement the 1st Battalion Durham Light Infantry kept possession
of a nook or kloof on the side of that hill which could not be
reached by the enemy’s fire, and from which neither rifle fire nor
shell could dislodge them. To the eye from afar they seemed to be
in a perilous position, but they were secure.

‘The holding of such a position is not alluded to in our drill-book
or in tactical works, nor is it likely to be in favour with book
tacticians for a long time to come; it is of too practical a
character--the natural outcome of our troops returning to primitive
ways and instinctively securing a position they could hold under
stress of severe fire. The tactics of the future must eventually
recognise the importance of the method of holding a hill, for it
was by clinging to the reverse slope of hills that we were enabled
to relieve Ladysmith with so comparatively small a loss when
advancing against a superior force.

‘It was in this manner that we held our ground against superior
numbers on the hills above Venter’s Spruit from 17th to 25th
January 1900. Sir R. Buller describes our troops on this occasion
as perched on the edge of an almost precipitous hill, admitting
of no second line, and in his telegram of 27th January he says,
“The actual position held was perfectly tenable.” Mr. Winston
Churchill describes the position as follows: “The infantry had
made themselves masters of all the edge of the plateau, and the
regiments clustered in the steep re-entrants like flies on the
side of a wall.” All through our advance on Ladysmith the reverse
slopes of hills we captured sheltered our forces.

* * * * *

‘Let us consider Spion Kop as a hill on the line of our
advance--was its capture likely to be advantageous or not?

‘The summit at its southern extremity (the highest point of all the
range) outflanked and could see down into our position at Three
Tree Hill, and though just out of rifle range this was an undoubted
advantage to the enemy. Moreover, it was higher by about 150 feet
than any portion of the enemy’s lines, and could enfilade their
trenches at long rifle range, and could see into their works, and
also dominate their camps to the north.

‘Evidently it was a desirable position for either side to hold; but
while the enemy could not (according to their mode of fighting)
put guns upon it, it could, if in our possession, be so utilised.
Our guns, placed on the lower slopes, could search out some of the
enemy’s guns behind the Rangeworthy hills, and guns placed on the
summit (as they might have been ultimately) would have forced the
enemy to retire from the Rangeworthy position, not necessarily
altogether, but to take up a new position they had prepared further
to the east. It was thus desirable as a possession if it were not
an absolutely necessary objective in our advance.’

Captain Holmes Wilson in his ‘Relief of Ladysmith’ states that only
the passive occupation of Spion Kop was contemplated, that ‘the
passive occupation of Spion Kop could never have led to anything,’
that Spion Kop should not have been occupied unless it was intended
to make at the same time a general advance along the whole line,
and that ‘the mere fact of going to the top of a high hill cannot
constitute a tactical success as long as the enemy’s moral courage
lasts; when, however, the movement draws the fire of the whole of the
opposing army it is more likely to end in a disaster than in defeat.’

These statements of Captain Wilson bristle with misapprehensions
and misconceptions, and may be resolved into seven points on which
explanations are necessary.

(1) As to the advantages or disadvantages of holding a hill in
the line of advance of an attacking force, the advantages are:
(_a_) that the hill may give command of fire and a view of part
of the enemy’s line; (_b_) that it cannot so readily be seen into
or commanded by fire; and (_c_) that it gives protection from the
enemy’s fire to troops properly placed behind it. The disadvantages
arise when the hill projects so far into the enemy’s line that it
can be taken in flank or in reverse by the enemy’s fire.

(2) The advantages of the occupation of hills during the war are
exemplified in the following: Rangeworthy, Mount Alice, Zwart Kop,
Hussar Hill, The Gomba, Monte Christo, Llangwani, Colenso Hills,
Hart’s Hill, and Pieters, with many others. In all these cases the
hill was more or less exposed, but there were not such strenuous
endeavours on the part of the Boers, and the British troops had
learnt their lesson and knew how to dispose of themselves.

(3) Had Spion Kop been within the enemy’s line of defence so that
the enemy could fire along its front or into its front, i.e. get a
fire on it of an arc of 180° or more, a passive occupation could
not have been carried out, and a general advance would have been
required. But Spion Kop was actually within the British line. The
arc of the enemy’s fire directed on Spion Kop did not exceed 100°,
i.e. not more than on any other position we held in our advance.
The statement that it drew the fire of the whole Boer army is
ludicrously impossible. The whole rifle fire of the enemy at short
range was confined to an arc of about 100°, and could not have been
from more than about 500 Boers. At long ranges it was confined to a
hill in one direction at 2,000 yards distance. The guns that could
fire on to it were from (i) a position in front of Three Tree Hill,
(ii) east of Spion Kop, (iii) hill behind Spion Kop. Spion Kop was
perfectly tenable, quite as tenable as any of the hills already
named. The only difference was that in the case of Spion Kop the
troops were all new, in the other cases they had learnt their
severe lesson. It is impossible to compare the action of the troops
on Spion Kop with their action subsequently.

(4) Spion Kop is not abnormally high. It is 1,500 feet above the
Tugela, while the general line of Boer trenches on the Rangeworthy
hills is about 1,200 to 1,300 feet above the Tugela. Spion
Kop, when it was occupied by us, was about 150 feet above the
point--400 yards distant, occupied by the Boers. The Spion Kop
range shelves down gradually to the east. It is about 500 feet
above Three Tree Hill, and 500 to 600 feet above the neck, where it
becomes steep. It is not a very formidable hill. It is about the
height above the Tugela that the Rock gun at Gibraltar is above the
level of the sea; but then the point where the ascent was commenced
was 400 feet above the Tugela, and carts could go some 400 feet
higher, so that the climb at most was only 700 feet, or half the
height of Gibraltar. A man in good condition could walk up and down
several times during the day without fatigue. There was nothing
formidable in the climb.

(5) The statement that the passive occupation of Spion Kop could
not lead to anything is not borne out by the facts. The troops on
Spion Kop had already outflanked the Boer position, and the Boer
camp at the front of the hill had to be moved.

(6) Moreover, it is incorrect to say that only a passive occupation
of Spion Kop was contemplated. The occupation of Spion Kop was
necessary before an advance could take place, but when it was
captured the advance could be made, and would have been made if the
hill had not been abandoned.

(7) The position occupied by the troops on the top of Spion Kop
is described elsewhere, and was, no doubt, wrong. The inner crest
should have been occupied in the first instance.

To sum up:

(1) There are decided advantages in the occupation of a hill in
line of the advance to attack, if it be not abnormally high.

(2) The advantage was practically shown by the occupation of hills
in similar positions to Spion Kop all through the war.

(3) Spion Kop was advantageously placed for occupation.

(4) It was not abnormally high.

(5) A passive occupation of it was sufficient at first, and in
itself caused the Boers to shift their camp and turned their
positions.

(6) The passive occupation would have given place to an active one
on the following day, when the Boers could not have held their
trenches.

(7) The position was one that should have been held.

CHAPTER V

CAPTURE OF SPION KOP AND ITS ABANDONMENT

On 23rd January the command at the front was divided into two attacks
under Sir Charles Warren; the left attack under Lieutenant-General
Clery, with his two brigades, the 2nd and 5th; and the right attack
under Major-General Talbot Coke with the 10th and 11th Brigades. Thus
Major-General Coke had the command of the attack on Spion Kop and
orders were issued by him and made to him in reference to the column
of attack.

Major-General Woodgate having been selected for the command of this
column, it devolved upon Major-General Coke as commander of the 5th
Division and of the right attack to make all the arrangements in
connection with it in consultation with Sir Charles Warren. He gave
orders that the column should consist of two and a half battalions
of Major-General Woodgate’s Brigade, the 2nd Royal Lancaster, 2nd
Lancashire Fusiliers, and two companies South Lancashire, to which
Sir Charles Warren added 200 of Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, half
the 17th Company Royal Engineers, and two companies of the Connaught
Rangers to intrench half-way up in case of a check during the assault.

All the arrangements for the water supply, food, ammunition,
Artillery and Engineers’ services and for the wounded were arranged
between Sir Charles Warren and Major-General Coke, with the aid
of the officers commanding the Army Service Corps and the Royal
Artillery, the Commanding Royal Engineer and the Principal Medical
Officer. Sir Redvers Buller was asked by telegram to send over the
mountain guns and also the East Indian water-carriers who were said
to be in his camp. Sir Charles Warren had a long interview with
Major-Generals Talbot Coke and Woodgate, in which, it is understood,
the subjects of the attack and the intrenchments were discussed, and
the orders to Major-General Woodgate for the attack, founded on
those of the previous day, were issued by Major-General Talbot Coke.

At seven o’clock in the evening of 23rd January Major-General
Woodgate started with the column for the attack, the troops carrying
rations for the following day with them. Mr. Bennet Burleigh in ‘The
Natal Campaign’ gives the following graphic account of the march:

‘The force proceeded in the gloaming down the slope, moving
rearward along the deep dongas to get upon the south side of Thaba
Emanyama. Painfully going forward, scrambling over boulders and
rocks in the darkness, the column, in two thin lines, silently,
slowly neared the mountain. No smoking, no talking--the orders
not to fire but to use the bayonet--the men held grimly onward.
Almost every man carried a rifle, including General Woodgate....
Whenever a difficult part was reached Thorneycroft went ahead with
two or three of his men to discover the best way of surmounting the
obstacle, or ascertaining if Boers lay behind interposing ledges.
General Woodgate, though far from well, persisted in leading his
men. In steep places he had in several instances to be pushed and
pulled to assist him onward.’

The column arrived half-way up at half-past one o’clock in the
morning of the 24th, and carried the summit at half-past three,
some of Thorneycroft’s men and of the Royal Engineers and South
Lancashires rushing the position with fixed bayonets with a loss
of only three men wounded. The cheers of the successful assailants
were heard at the bivouac at Three Tree Hill, and when day broke the
summit of Spion Kop was seen to be enveloped in thick mist, which
no doubt had assisted the assaulting column to arrive at the top
undiscovered.

Early in the morning the troops intrenched themselves as well as the
darkness would admit, and from the bottom of the hill the Sappers
commenced making a zigzag path to the summit for the water mules and
the mountain battery to ascend, and later straight slides at the
steep places for the naval 12-pr. guns which Sir Redvers Buller was
to send over.

About half-past five o’clock in the morning the Boers, who had fled
at the first assault, returned with strong reinforcements, and, as
the mist lifted from time to time, commenced firing at our troops
from a kopje to the north, some 400 or 500 yards away. Our trenches,
owing to the rocky nature of the plateau on the top, were very
shallow, and, owing probably to the darkness and fog, were wrongly
placed in the middle of the plateau.

At 7 A.M. Sir Charles Warren rode over from Three Tree Hill to
the foot of Spion Kop, whence the ascent of the column had taken
place, examined the approaches, and gave the Imperial Light Infantry
instructions how they should advance to the support of the column
without attracting the fire of the enemy. He then returned to Three
Tree Hill, but the mist still prevented any signalling from the
top of Spion Kop, and it was not until after nine o’clock that Sir
Charles Warren received by the hands of Lieut.-Colonel àCourt, who
had returned from the top, the following letter from Major-General
Woodgate, written about two hours before:

‘Spion Kop: 24th January 1900.

‘Dear Sir Charles,--We got up about four o’clock, and rushed the
position with three men wounded. There were some few Boers, who
seemed surprised, and bolted after firing a round or so, having
one man killed. I believe there is another somewhere, but have
not found him in the mist. The latter did us well, and I pushed
on a bit quicker than I perhaps should otherwise have done, lest
it should lift before we got here. We have intrenched a position,
and are, I hope, secure; but fog is too thick to see, so I
retain Thorneycroft’s men and Royal Engineers for a bit longer.
Thorneycroft’s men attacked in fine style. I had a noise made later
to let you know that we had got in.

‘Yours &c.,
‘E. WOODGATE.’

Lieut.-Colonel àCourt expressed himself as quite satisfied that the
summit could be held--‘held till doomsday against all comers,’ he
said to Mr. Bennet Burleigh.

Not long after General Woodgate had written his letter to Sir Charles
Warren the Boer fire grew very hot, and he fell mortally wounded.
Colonel Blomfield of the Lancashire Fusiliers was also wounded soon
after, and Colonel Crofton of the Royal Lancasters, as senior
officer, then assumed the command.

As the mist cleared, it became evident to those below and on Three
Tree Hill that the schanzes held by our men on the top were exposed
to both frontal rifle fire and to shell fire from the left front,
and that a good deal of fighting was going on. Sir Charles Warren
therefore directed Major-General Coke to send up the Imperial Light
Infantry, who were posted at the foot of the hill, to reinforce
Colonel Crofton, the Dorset Regiment taking their place at the foot.

A little before ten o’clock a message was received by Sir Charles
Warren from Colonel Crofton which ran as follows:

‘Reinforce at once or all lost. General dead.’

Sir Charles Warren replied:

‘I am sending two battalions, and the Imperial Light Infantry are on
their way up. You must hold on to the last. No surrender.’

It is due to Colonel Crofton to state that the message he ordered to
be sent was, he says:

‘General Woodgate dead; reinforcements urgently required.’

The message was not written down by him, or by the signalling
officer, and it is impossible to trace how the alteration occurred.

The Dorset Regiment was then sent up, and subsequently the Middlesex
Regiment. Sir Charles Warren went over to see Major-General Coke and
directed him to go up himself to Spion Kop and, as Commander of the
5th Division and of the right attack, take command of the troops
there--some 5,500 men. Major-General Coke left for Spion Kop about 11
A.M., and arrived on the slopes, some 600 feet below the summit, at
noon.

At noon a message arrived from Sir Redvers Buller ordering Sir
Charles Warren to place Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft in command on
the summit. Sir Redvers Buller says he telegraphed to Sir Charles
Warren: ‘Unless you put some really good hard-fighting man in
command on the top you will lose the hill. I suggest Thorneycroft.’
Sir Charles Warren, though so much nearer the scene of operations
than Sir Redvers Buller, was in a much inferior position for seeing
what was going on at the top of Spion Kop, and, astonished though
he may have been at the selection of this gallant young officer to
supersede the colonels commanding brigades and regiments, he regarded
the intimation as an order--in fact, he says in his despatch it was
an order--and he at once signalled to Colonel Crofton: ‘With approval
of the Commander-in-Chief I place Lieutenant-Colonel Thorneycroft in
command of the summit with the local rank of Brigadier-General.’

The confusion consequent upon this order will be considered further
on.

* * * * *

At the same time Major-General Lyttelton, who had been bombarding
all the morning with his artillery at Potgieter’s, apprised by Sir
Charles Warren of Colonel Crofton’s telegram and asked to give
assistance on his side of Spion Kop, demonstrated strongly by sending
two squadrons of Bethune’s Horse and the Scottish Rifles to reinforce
the extreme right on the top of the hill, while later the King’s
Royal Rifles crossed the river and moved against a high point of
Spion Kop. These troops did very good work, and in the afternoon Sir
Charles Warren wired to Major-General Lyttelton: ‘The assistance you
are giving most valuable. We shall try to remain _in statu quo_
during to-morrow. Balloon would be of incalculable value.’

In the meantime all available sandbags and tools for intrenching
were sent by the hands of the troops going up, each man carrying
something. Two hundred gallons of water were well on their way, some
springs near the top were developed by the Engineers, the zigzag
pathway was completed, and coils of 3-inch cable got ready for
hauling up the naval guns.

Then followed an anxious time for Sir Charles Warren. The rifle and
shell fire of the Boers was extremely hot on the top, the signallers
had been hit and some of their apparatus destroyed, and for some
two or three hours he was unable to get any replies to repeated
inquiries. There was no news of the mountain guns or the naval 12-pr.
guns, which Sir Redvers Buller was to send across the river to
him--in fact, the former only left Springfield at eleven o’clock that
morning.

A little after two o’clock in the afternoon news of the situation
was received, sent an hour or so earlier by Major-General Coke, who
was then on the plateau of the slopes below Spion Kop. The report
was that the top of the hill was crowded with men exposed to shell
fire, but holding on well, that General Coke had stopped further
reinforcements beyond the point where he was, at the same time
letting the troops on the top know that help was close at hand, and
ammunition being pushed up. From the report of Major-General Coke,
recently published, it appears that on his way up he found the track
very much congested with men, and, on hearing that the troops were
crowded together on the top in a small space exposed to shell fire,
very judiciously stopped the reinforcements that had not passed him;
unfortunately he received urgent requests from the top soon after for
more men, and allowed them to proceed.

Major-General Coke seems to have started from the plateau for the
summit about three o’clock and to have reached it half an hour later,
and was then _de facto_ in command there over every one. For some
time he was unable to find any one in command on the summit, or in
touch with the signalling station at the Hospital Sangar. He was
unaware that Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft had been placed in command
on the summit with the rank of Brigadier-General, although on his
way up he had received a report from that officer which he forwarded
with remarks to Sir Charles Warren, and which will be referred to
later. Failing to find any one in command he passed over to the
right and met Colonel Hill, who with the leading companies of the
Middlesex Regiment got to the summit about noon, and, understanding
that Colonel Crofton had been wounded, told Colonel Hill that the
command devolved upon him as the next senior officer, and gave him
detailed instructions as to intrenching at sundown. An hour later,
while still on the top, but separated from Colonel Hill, he received
the following message from him, sent at 5.5 P.M.:

‘We have now plenty of men for firing line, but the artillery fire
from our left (west) is very harassing. I propose holding out till
dark and then intrenching.’

The selection of Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft to take command over
his seniors in the heat of action was a signal example of the danger
of a serious departure from precedent at such a time. The difficulty
of making a selection known and understood by all concerned was
enormous, and the risks of mistakes most serious. Lieut.-Colonel
A. W. Thorneycroft was only a major of six months’ standing in the
Royal Scots Fusiliers, who held the local rank of Lieut.-Colonel
while in command of a special corps. Brave and active to a degree, he
was selected by Sir Redvers Buller because he was known as ‘a good
hard-fighting man,’ and right well had he maintained his reputation
during that morning; but, just because he was such a man, he was at
the front in the thick of the fight. ‘The fight was too hot, too
close, too interlaced for him to attend to anything but to support
this company, clear those rocks, or line that trench.’[7] But the
commander on the top should have been out of the thick of it, able
to direct the general conduct of matters and to keep in touch with
his General below, leaving the actual fighting to his many able
subordinates; this meant a man of some experience in command, and
this Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft, whatever else he was, certainly
was not. Thus, although both the Officers Commanding Artillery and
Engineers at the top of Spion Kop knew about the arrangements for
bringing up guns and intrenching at night, he seems to have heard
nothing about it, and so also about water, food, ammunition, &c.

After General Coke’s arrival on the summit many of the troops who had
formed the storming party were allowed to go down the hill to get
water and food.

About half-past four o’clock in the afternoon Sir Charles Warren
received Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft’s message, sent from the top two
hours before, in which the situation was described as follows:

‘Hung on till last extremity with the old force. Some of the
Middlesex here now, and I hear Dorsets are coming up, but force
really unable quite to hold so large a perimeter. Enemy’s guns on
north-west sweep the whole of the top of the hill. They also have
guns to east. Cannot you bring artillery fire to bear on north-west
guns? What reinforcements can you send to hold the hill to-night?
We are badly in want of water. There are many killed and wounded.
If you wish to really make a certainty of the hill for the night,
you must send more infantry and attack the enemy’s guns.’

Major-General Coke saw this message at his position at the signal
station about three o’clock, just before leaving for the summit, and
added the following observation:

‘I have seen the above and have ordered the Scottish Rifles and the
King’s Royal Rifles to reinforce the Middlesex Regiment. The Dorset
Regiment and the Imperial Light Infantry have also gone up. We
appear to be holding our own at present.’

At six o’clock, before it got dark, Major-General Coke on the summit
wrote an account of the situation (received by Sir Charles Warren
at half-past seven), and having personally handed over command on
the summit to Colonel Hill, and assured himself that he understood
his duties and responsibilities, went back to the reserves half-way
down the hill which he chose for the command post. There he remained
until half-past nine in the evening, when, in obedience to an order
from Sir Charles Warren, he went down to see him, leaving his
deputy-assistant adjutant-general at the post to carry on the routine
duties of the command in his name during his absence. Some hours
before he started down the hill, water and provisions were arriving
regularly at the signal station and being passed to the top.

Down below Sir Charles Warren had been busy with arrangements for
sending up at night all that was necessary to enable the position
to be held next day. The mountain battery and naval 12-pr. guns,
however, only arrived at Trichard’s Drift between five and six
o’clock in the afternoon.

Colonel Wood, R.E., who was on the top during the day, was fully
informed of all that was to be done at sundown, although, of course,
it was not possible to know precisely when the guns would reach the
top until they actually came in from Trichard’s Drift.

The mountain battery arrived at the foot of Spion Kop about half-past
seven in the evening, completely tired out with their long march, and
it was arranged that they should rest there until midnight, when the
moon rose, and there would be plenty of time for them to ascend and
get their guns into position on the top before daybreak. Notice of
this was sent to Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft by the hand of a scout.

Major-General Coke could hardly have left the summit at 6.30 P.M.
when Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft, as night was closing in, made up
his mind that the hill was untenable. He sent the following message
to Sir Charles Warren, which was not received that night:

‘The troops which marched up here last night are quite done up.
They have had no water, and ammunition is running short. I consider
that, even with the reinforcements which have arrived, it is
impossible to permanently hold this place so long as the enemy’s
guns can play on the hill. They have three long-range guns, three
of shorter range, and several Maxim-Nordenfeldts, which have swept
the whole of the plateau since 8 A.M. I have not been able to
ascertain the casualties, but they have been very heavy, especially
in the regiments which came up last night. I request instructions
as to what course I am to adopt. The enemy are now firing heavily
from both flanks, while a heavy rifle fire is being kept up in the
front. It is all I can do to hold my own. If my casualties go on at
the present rate I shall barely hold out the night. A large number
of stretcher-bearers should be sent up, and also all the water
possible. The situation is critical.’

But he did not wait for a reply. At the time he despatched this
message the intention to abandon the position had already been
taken, for at half-past six o’clock the companies of the Royal
Lancaster Regiment were ordered to form up near the dressing station
preparatory to retirement and Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft himself
says in his report:

‘When night began to close in I determined to take some steps, and
a consultation was held. The officer commanding Scottish Rifles and
Colonel Crofton were both of opinion that the hill was untenable.
I entirely agreed with their view, and so I gave the order for the
troops to withdraw on to the neck and ridge where the hospital was.’

By seven o’clock orders were issued for the troops to retire on the
Hospital Sangar, and the collecting of the men and bringing in of the
wounded commenced. It is said that Colonel Hill had a warm discussion
with Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft, who, however, asserted his right as
brigadier-general commanding on the summit to order a retirement. He
neither sent word to Major-General Coke nor to Sir Charles Warren.
Why Colonel Hill did not tell Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft that the
former had only just left the hill remains unexplained.

At the time that Major-General Coke left his post in charge of his
Staff Officer the preparations for retirement had been in full swing
for three hours.

The first intimation that Captain Phillips, Major-General Coke’s
Staff Officer, had of the retirement was being awakened at the
command post by the sound of men moving at 11.30 P.M. He then found
a general retirement proceeding. He at once stopped the flow of men
down the hill--the Scottish Rifles and a large number of stragglers
of the Dorset, Middlesex, and Imperial Light Infantry, whom he
collected. The reserves--Bethune’s Mounted Infantry and the bulk of
the Dorsets--remained in position as posted in support of the front
line. The other corps had gone down the hill, and Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft with them. Captain Phillips promulgated the following
memorandum to all commanders, but they did not act on it, urging
that they had distinct orders from Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft:

_‘Officers Commanding Dorsetshire and Middlesex Regiments, Scottish
Rifles, Imperial Light Horse_:

‘The withdrawal is absolutely without the authority of either
Major-General Coke or Sir Charles Warren. The former was called
away by the latter a little before 10 A.M. When General Coke left
the front about 6 P.M. our men were holding their own, and he left
the situation as such, and reported that he could hold on. Some
one, without authority, has given orders to withdraw, and has
incurred a grave responsibility. Were the General here, he would
order an instant reoccupation of the heights.

‘H. E. PHILLIPS,
‘_Deputy-Assistant Adjutant-General_.’

At that time, 11.30 P.M., the spur was still held to within about 300
yards of the summit, but the summit itself was evacuated. Signalling
communication could not be established because the oil had run out.

In the meantime, at nine o’clock, Colonel Sim, R.E., with 200 men of
the Somersetshire Regiment, carrying tools, started to construct the
emplacements for the naval guns. Sir Charles Warren gave him a letter
to Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft explaining the work Colonel Sim had to
do and telling him it was of vital importance that the summit should
be held.

When the troops were being marched off to go down the hill by
Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft about 10 P.M., Mr. Winston Spencer
Churchill arrived with the information that the mountain guns and a
naval 12-pr. gun were coming up during the night. As Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft was going down the hill about midnight he met
Lieut.-Colonel Sim, who gave him Sir Charles Warren’s letter. He said
it was too late, as the men, unsupported by guns, could not stay. He
ordered Lieut.-Colonel Sim to take his party back. Lieut.-Colonel Sim
sent them back and himself went on to ascertain if the retirement was
general, and, finding it was so, he walked up the valley to warn the
officer in command of the naval gun of the altered situation, and
prevent him risking his gun by moving it to the evacuated hill-top.

Half-past two on the morning of 25th January was an hour to be
remembered by many of the actors in this abortive enterprise. Captain
Phillips at the Commanding General’s post had managed to get the
signals to work and sent the following message:

‘Spion Kop: 25th January 1900. 2.30 A.M.

‘_General Officer Commanding Three Tree Hill_:

‘Summit of Spion Kop evacuated by our troops, which still hold
lower slopes. An unauthorised retirement took place. Naval guns
cannot reach summit before daylight; would be exposed to fire if
attempted to do so by day.’

About 2.30 A.M. the following message from Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft reached Sir Charles Warren:

‘24th January 1901 (no hour fixed).

‘Regret to report that I have been obliged to abandon Spion Kop,
as the position became untenable. I have withdrawn the troops in
regular order, and will come to report as soon as possible.

‘ALEC THORNEYCROFT,
‘_Lieut.-Colonel_.’

No messenger was sent down to acquaint Sir Charles Warren of the
intention to retire taken as early as 6.30 P.M.; no heed was paid to
the vigorous protests of either Colonel Hill or Captain Phillips,
and Sir Charles Warren’s positive instructions received on the way
down by the hand of Colonel Sim were treated with scant respect--in
fact, were ignored; and so it came to pass that Major-General Coke,
summoned by Sir Charles Warren at nine o’clock, and Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft, unsummoned, arrived together at Sir Charles Warren’s
headquarters about 2.30 A.M. on the 25th, and for the first time he
heard of the abandonment of the hill after the retirement had been
completed, and found all his plans at once swept away.

Mr. Bennet Burleigh says in ‘The Natal Campaign’:

‘Had the troops but waited throughout the night until the guns
and Engineers arrived, the whole situation of affairs would have
been completely changed. I met the mountain battery, on the
evening of the battle, on its way up. The naval guns were a little
farther off, and the Engineers were also on the march. Then I and
everybody thought that the firing had been practically finished for
the day, and that Warren’s preparations for the absolute holding of
Spion Kop would be carried through before morning. That, in that
event, the Boers must beat a retreat all along the line none could
doubt.’

After a careful consideration of all the circumstances who can wonder
that Lord Roberts stated in his despatch of 13th February 1900 that
he was unable to concur with Sir Redvers Buller in thinking that
Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft exercised a wise discretion in ordering
the troops to retire, or can fail to agree with Lord Roberts that his
assumption of responsibility and authority was wholly inexcusable?

CHAPTER VI

AFTER WITHDRAWAL--BOER COMMENTS

On the morning of 25th January Sir Redvers Buller went over to see
Sir Charles Warren and decided to assume command and to withdraw
to the south side of the Tugela. Then General Warren ‘made his
retirement memorable for speed and orderliness,’ and by 8 A.M.
on 27th January ‘the force was concentrated south of the Tugela,
without the loss of a man or a pound of stores.’ That the retirement
was effected without molestation by the Boers is evidence that the
capture of Spion Kop had surprised them and the week’s fighting and
bombardment had demoralised them.

But if the retirement from Spion Kop was a surprise to Sir Charles
Warren and to Sir Redvers Buller, it was equally so to the Boers. Mr.
Bennet Burleigh tells us:

‘In the morning, after daybreak, the enemy could scarcely credit
their senses that our soldiers had left the hill-top. “Where are
the soldiers?” the few Boer scouts who rode forward under the white
flag asked our surgeons and ambulance men. “Gone!” “What for?”
And subsequently it leaked out from several of them that they had
thought the position was lost and they had begun trekking.’

It is interesting to note the views of those on the Boer side. For
instance, in the article in the ‘United Service Magazine,’ giving the
diary already referred to of a Boer officer, we find the following
observations:

‘The English had employed the night (23rd to 24th January) in
making some wide but low shallow trenches, with corresponding
parapets of stones, earth, and sods to shelter behind.... These
trenches had been established more or less in the centre of the
plateau, which was a fatal blunder, this being the very spot where,
in the circumstances, a concentrated artillery fire would tell with
the deadliest effect.

‘The fight dragged on until the evening, and the position was
not recaptured. Those Federals who left the hill at dark thought
that the effort to dislodge the English had been a failure--that
the fight was lost. It seemed a Platrand fiasco over again,
notwithstanding the fine work done by the Federal artillery, and
the fact that the retaking of a position like Spion Kop was an
easier task than the storming of a defence like Platrand.

‘The night of the 24th to the 25th was one of confused and chaotic
panic, which strongly savoured of the beginning of a rout. In the
estimation of many the hour of hasty retreat had no doubt sounded,
and horses’ heads were turned Ladysmithwards without waste of time.
It was expected that the English would make an attack in force
next morning, or perhaps in the night, but the demoralisation was
so great that no regular watches were kept all along the line of
defence in the proximity of Spion Kop. Here and there, it is true,
some determined fellows clubbed together with the resolve to have
one more trial the next morning, but there is no doubt that if
the British had attacked that night the Federals would have made
but poor resistance at the utmost, and that their rout would have
been a matter of course. Had the English only held the Spion Kop
in force until the morning, a second struggle, weakened as the
Federals were, would have meant an heroic effort, a short fight,
and the success of the English.

‘It was with feelings of blended wonder and thankfulness that some
of the Pretoria men and some Free Staters under Commandant Cronje,
on climbing the Kop at daybreak, found it tenanted only by corpses
and some wounded. Lo! the English had gone! Was it possible? It
might be a trap! But no, it was the truth: no soldiers, with the
exception of the harmless dead and crippled Khakis, were in sight.
The incredible news spread.

‘The exultation of the foreigners at the new gift of victory made
to the Federals by English incompetency was great. The remarks
uttered in different languages may be condensed in the words of a
German officer whose critical judgment was short and to the point:
“Wahrhaftig! Dummheit gegen Unwissenheit.” (“Truly, stupidity
against ignorance.”) The Boers, hardly knowing what exultation
means, were less loud and less given to criticise, but the
astonishment they manifested was a censure not to be gainsaid....
Why the English abandoned the Kop in the night from the 24th to
the 25th is for me and many others somewhat of a mystery.’

Mr. Raymond Maxwell, in the Boer ambulance, records in his diary:

‘_January 24th._--It was rumoured last night that Kimberley had
fallen, but this is most likely spread about owing to the critical
position at Upper Tugela.

‘Fighting began to be very heavy at Upper Tugela early this
morning, and a very big affair is going on. At mid-day news came
that the English had occupied Spion Kop, a high ridge to the left
of the Boer positions, and completely commanding them, during the
night. The Boers stormed the hill at daylight, and got to the
ridge, and then fearful fighting began at practically point-blank
ranges. Our artillery and pom-poms were posted so as to shell the
top, and the English are suffering severely, though still sticking
to the position. After sundown news came that somewhere about
1,000 troops were taken prisoners on the top. At dark the burghers
decided that they had had enough of it, and retired and left the
troops in possession of the Kop. Wild rumours are flying about,
and everything is beginning to point to a general retirement on to
Ladysmith, or possibly to the Biggarsberg. It is even said that the
Upper Tugela laagers have begun to pack up and prepare to trek.
Boers killed said to number forty.

‘Owing to the confusion it is impossible to get authentic news.
Two light carriages arrived to-day to transport my wounded, but no
mules were sent to drag them.

‘_January 25th._--All the morning the excitement has been terrible.
This evening news came that for some inscrutable reason the English
retired from Spion Kop the night of the fight or early this
morning. The burghers are wild with delight, and are now beginning
to claim a great and glorious victory. The English have suffered
heavy losses, and then go and throw up a hard-won position--a
position which practically meant the relief of Ladysmith. From it
they could have flanked all the Lower Tugela positions, i.e. if the
burghers had remained in them to be flanked. Between Spion Kop and
Ladysmith is country easy to negotiate, with good roads and good
enough water. With Spion Kop and the Acton Homes positions being
held, it would have been possible to make use of the Van Reenen
main road to bring the convoys up. Goodness only knows what will
happen now, though they still hold the Thaba Nyama ridges and may
be able to break through from there.

‘Prisoners number 250, mostly Lancashire Fusiliers. The Boer
loss is 200 certain, and an uncertain number unaccounted for.
The English loss must have been very heavy, as our artillery was
playing on to them all the time. General Woodgate is said to have
been killed.

‘The rumour of Kimberley’s surrender is now denied.

‘_January 26th._--It now appears that the English made a great
blunder in the manner in which they took up their positions on the
top of the hill. They surprised and drove off the Boer picket, and
then started to intrench. Instead of intrenching along the front
ridge, they threw up trenches in the middle of the top; and varying
from fifty to 150 yards from the edge. The Boers were thus enabled
to climb up their side of the hill without being fired on, and as
soon as they reached the ridge the positions of the two forces were
equal, or, rather, the Boers had the better of it, as the English
artillery could not get at them.

‘If the trenches had been at the front edge, not a Boer could have
got up, as the ascent is very, very steep.

* * * * *

‘_January 31st._--I rode over and saw the schanzes, trenches,
&c., of our men, and the English at Thaba Nyama. The two
positions extend for a long way, nearly parallel to each other.
The Boer positions consisted of long isolated trenches dug in
the bare veldt, and for Boer positions were undoubtedly weak and
unsatisfactory. The English had schanzed the long ridge for a great
distance. The schanzes were beautifully made, and in many places
were compartments large enough to hold three men lying down. The
distance between the positions varied from 1,000 yards in some
places to 1,800 in others. In front of the English left was a sort
of kloof. Between one edge of this and the schanzes was a flat of
about eighty yards. Between the other edge and a long Boer trench
was an open slope of about 100 yards. For some reason the English
would jump out from the schanzes in batches of twenty-five or
thirty men, and make a run for the kloof, and it was while doing
this that most of the English were shot. If they had waited till
dark, as many men as required could have got into the kloof without
any risk, and then a night attack or a rush on the trench could
have been made at daylight. This was what the Boers were afraid
of for five or six days. The country at the back of the trench is
often rolling veldt, affording no cover for any retiring force, and
if an attack had been made the Boers would have had to have stopped
and made a fight of it. There were millions of empty cartridges
lying about, and also several unburied soldiers.

‘_February 2nd._--I rode up to the top of Spion Kop and had a
good look round. General Botha had obtained a twenty-four hours’
armistice, so that the English dead might be properly buried, as
our men had to hold the position and the stench was too dreadful.

* * * * *

‘In some places the English trenches were just behind one another,
and quite parallel, and in the flurry and excitement of the fight
it would be surprising if some of the men in the front trenches
were not shot from behind. From the Kop we could also see Chieveley
and Ladysmith, and the people in the latter must have been able
to see the fight and the Boer retreat, and what they must have
suffered the next day, when it dawned on them that the English were
not going to hold the position after having won it, can be easily
imagined.’

CHAPTER VII

SOME CRITICISMS

If we inquire what was thought at home of the failure at Spion Kop
after the high hopes which the advent of Sir Charles Warren in Natal
had raised, we must look back for a moment to the beginning of the
operations and note the great interest with which the news from Natal
was day by day eagerly read by the public. The excitement caused
by the second attempt of Sir Redvers Buller to relieve Ladysmith
by a turning movement to the left of Potgieter’s Drift was greatly
increased when his telegram, dated 23rd January, 6.30 P.M., was
received, stating that General Warren held the position he had gained
two days before, and that ‘an attempt will be made to-night to seize
Spion Kop, the Salient which forms the left of the enemy’s position
facing Trichard’s Drift and divides it from the position facing
Potgieter’s.’

The public remained in suspense until the announcement came that
Spion Kop had been captured and that Warren considered it tenable.
Then there were loud rejoicings everywhere, too soon, alas, disturbed
by sinister rumours of failure, coming in some mysterious way from
the Continental Press, and then the brief telegram of 25th January:
‘Warren’s garrison, I am sorry to say, I find this morning had in
the night abandoned Spion Kop’; followed subsequently by another
exonerating Colonel Thorneycroft from all blame.

The position in consequence thus presented itself to the public: The
attack on Spion Kop had for some unknown reason proved a failure,
and the relief of Ladysmith had been thereby indefinitely postponed.
Somebody was to blame. Sir Redvers Buller said Warren’s garrison had
abandoned Spion Kop, but he exonerated Thorneycroft. The natural
inference was that Warren was the man to be hanged. Then came the
reaction, and the fickle public turned to rend the unsuccessful
Generals. This state of feeling was not improved by the publication,
after many weeks’ delay, of the despatches in which Sir Redvers
Buller throws the whole blame upon Sir Charles Warren, and not only
exonerates Thorneycroft but considers that he saved the situation;
in which also Lord Roberts is of opinion that Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft’s assumption of responsibility and authority was
needless, unwarrantable, and wholly inexcusable; that Sir Charles
Warren should have visited Spion Kop during the afternoon or evening;
that ‘there was a want of organisation and system which acted most
unfavourably on the defence’; and that the failure of the attempt
to relieve Ladysmith was probably in part due to errors of judgment
and want of administrative capacity on the part of Sir Charles
Warren; but that it must also be ascribed to Sir Redvers Buller’s
disinclination to assert his authority.

With the dismay felt at the folly of the Government in making such a
wanton exhibition to the world of the shortcomings of our commanders
in the field there was mingled a grim satisfaction that in censuring
all concerned the public disappointment was avenged. Lord Roberts had
administered a rough sort of justice. There had been a failure, and
all the leading actors in the business were blamed; but the one who
came off worst was Sir Charles Warren. Sir Redvers Buller had thrown
the blame on Sir Charles Warren, but had supported Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft. No one spoke for Sir Charles Warren, who was not
allowed to speak for himself. Consequently the critics took up the
parable, and Sir Charles Warren was blamed for everything that
occurred.

We doubt very much whether, if Spion Kop had been held and the relief
of Ladysmith had followed, we should have heard much of the criticism
that has been freely used; its seizure would have been regarded as a
brilliant tactical success, as indeed it was regarded at the time,
and it is only necessary to point to the English newspapers and the
letters of the Press correspondents before the abandonment was known
to show this.

Now a tactical operation cannot be right or wrong merely because some
subsequent action makes it futile. We have the evidence of the Boers
that they considered Spion Kop the key of the position and that, had
it been held, Ladysmith would probably have been won. Surely, then,
the blame of failure should not be thrown upon the General who
ordered it to be taken, but on the officer who abandoned it without
sufficient reason and without consulting him.

Mr. Oppenheim has written a defence of this officer in the
‘Nineteenth Century,’ in which he says that Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft had to come to some decision, and that he had
held on all day hoping for the presence or intervention of a
superior officer. But Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft was himself a
brigadier-general commanding the colonels in command of two brigades,
and the only use he made of this position was to force them to
withdraw; while Major-General Coke, his superior officer, was on the
summit from half-past three to half-past six, and Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft does not appear to have made any effort to get
instructions from him or to refer to him before ordering a retirement
at dark.

Mr. Oppenheim states that Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft did not know
that stores of ammunition, water, food, &c., were on their way up;
but this is no excuse, because, if he had gone to his proper post of
command, he would have known it; but he stuck to his own corps, and
never really exercised the command until he decided to retire. He
also states that all agreed it was impossible to hold the hill. But
Colonel Hill and Major-General Coke evidently did not agree. Colonel
Hill had made preparations for intrenching, and knew where the tools
and sandbags were, although Colonel Thorneycroft did not.

Two great faults were committed on the summit of Spion Kop, for
neither of which can Sir Charles Warren be held responsible. The
one was the position of the intrenchments, with regard to which Sir
Charles Warren had given special instructions. There are two methods
adopted for intrenching a hill when attacked by an advancing force.
The usual method is to intrench the crest nearest to the enemy,
but this involves moving across the top of the hill without cover.
The other method is to intrench the crest farthest away from the
enemy in the first place, as this gives complete security to the
attack, neither rifle nor shell fire being able to touch it, and
when opportunity offers, after artillery cannonading, or at night,
to advance to the other crest nearest the enemy and intrench there;
but at Spion Kop, owing perhaps to the fog, neither one nor the other
method was adopted, the trenches were placed in the middle of the
plateau, and, as made, were not of much use--too little earth was
thrown up, and a little earth will not resist a Mauser bullet. If
earth is used it must be in considerable quantity, and there was not
much available. There were, however, plenty of stones, with which the
Boers soon construct their cover. Badly-made trenches placed in an
absolutely wrong and a most exposed position, contrary to Sir Charles
Warren’s instructions, constituted the first fault.

The second fault committed on the summit was crowding line upon
line to give the firing line moral support. The result was carnage.
The officers commanding brigades and Colonel Thorneycroft clamoured
for reinforcements to give this moral support. Major-General Coke
several times checked the upward move of reinforcements, but in the
end gave way to urgent messages and let them go on until by 3.30 P.M.
the small summit was crowded with five battalions besides details.
Sir Redvers Buller, Sir Charles Warren, Major-Generals Coke and
Lyttelton, and Colonel àCourt all thought two battalions on the top
sufficient.

Both these faults were due to want of proper training of both
officers and men.

We shall now consider Sir Redvers Buller’s despatches and memorandum
of 30th January 1900 in some detail, and make some very adverse
criticisms. It is with reluctance that we do so, but it must be
remembered that Sir Redvers has no one but himself to blame that
these despatches are before the public. It was his own doing that
they saw the light in the first instance, and it is equally his own
doing that the portions omitted in the first instance have lately
been published too. It is only, therefore, in justice to Sir Charles
Warren, who has not been allowed to reply, that we examine these
despatches critically.

It will not be forgotten that a despatch written a month earlier
on the Zoutspan Drift action was perused by critics at home with
amazement and perplexity. The easy insouciance with which the
late Adjutant-General of the Forces, who for seven years had been
primarily responsible for the training of the officers and men of the
army, referred to their want of training when tried in the field, it
was felt, could not easily be surpassed.

‘I suppose,’ he wrote, ‘our officers will learn the value of
scouting in time, but in spite of all one can say, up to this
our men seem to blunder into the middle of the enemy, and suffer
accordingly.’

But his despatches of 30th January throw this one into the shade in
their complete detachment from all responsibility, and recall, more
than anything else, the reports of an umpire at peace manœuvres,
which praise this side and blame that, with the comfortable assurance
that the writer is an independent observer, on whom no one can turn
the tables.

In the first of the two despatches of 30th January Sir Redvers Buller
gives no indication, as we have already pointed out, of what he
intended Sir Charles Warren to do when he sent him across the Tugela.
He merely regrets that an expedition, which he thinks should have
succeeded, failed, and refers to Sir Charles Warren’s despatch for
particulars. The only comment on Sir Charles Warren’s dispositions
was that he had ‘mixed up all the brigades, and the positions he held
were dangerously insecure.’

In the second despatch, while maintaining the same attitude of
irresponsibility, he adopts the _rôle_ of the captious critic. He
objects to Sir Charles Warren’s statement that three and a-half days’
supplies were insufficient to advance by the left through Acton
Homes, because, he says, he had promised to keep--and was actually
keeping--Sir Charles filled up. As if this in any way affected the
amount of provisions he could carry with him when once he had cleared
the position in front and moved forward and away from the Tugela.

From this trivial and futile criticism Sir Redvers jumps suddenly
to 23rd January, on which day, he says, he went over to see Sir
Charles Warren and pointed out that he had no further report, and no
intimation of the special arrangements foreshadowed in a telegram
from him on the 19th. It might from this be supposed that since the
19th Sir Redvers had had no communication with Sir Charles Warren,
was getting anxious, and thought it time after four days’ silence to
inquire what he was doing; it would hardly occur to any one that he
was in constant telegraphic communication with Warren, and that he
had been with him both on the 21st and the 22nd of the month.

What were the special arrangements referred to in Sir Charles
Warren’s letter of the 19th, and why is it suggested that they were
kept, so to speak, up his sleeve, until his Commander could stand it
no longer?

‘On January 20th,’ said Sir Redvers Buller in his telegraphic
despatch of 27th January, ‘Sir Charles Warren, as I have reported,
drove back the enemy and obtained possession of the southern
crests of the higher tableland, which extends from the line Acton
Homes-Honger’s Poort to the Western Ladysmith Hills.’ We may
conclude, therefore, that on the 20th Sir Charles Warren was too
fully occupied to telegraph what were the special arrangements he
had mentioned in his telegram of the night before. On the 21st Sir
Redvers Buller saw him and was able to discuss the matter verbally
with him, and if he did not do so surely it was his own fault, as he
might very easily have asked him anything he wanted to know.

These special arrangements were apparently three:

(1) Continual bombardment; then

(2) To advance on both sides of an arête or gully, outflanking the
enemy on either side as he advanced; and finally

(3) To proceed without wagons when he had driven the enemy out.

They resulted, as we have seen, from the reconnaissances of the
18th, which impressed Sir Charles Warren with the difficulties of
any advance with fifteen miles of wagons. He therefore proposed to
keep the wagons at Venter’s Laager until he was able to advance, and
then send them back across the river. There was no great secret about
these proposals. With the first and second Sir Redvers apparently
concurred, and with the third he did not. If he thought Sir Charles
had anything else in view, why did he not ask him?

Sir Redvers Buller, in his despatch of 30th January, then goes on
to say that he further pointed out to Sir Charles Warren ‘that for
four days he had kept his men continuously exposed to shell and rifle
fire, perched on the edge of an almost precipitous hill, that the
position admitted of no second line and the supports were massed
close behind the firing line in indefensible formations, and that a
panic or sudden charge might send the whole lot in disorder down
the hill at any moment. I said it was too dangerous a situation to
be prolonged, and that he must either attack, or I should withdraw
his force. I advocated, as I had previously done, an advance from his
left.’

One has really to call to mind that it is Sir Charles Warren’s
commanding officer who gives utterance to these observations, that
he personally saw the troops under Warren cross the Tugela, that
he issued to them the ‘no turning back’ order, that he addressed
General Woodgate’s Brigade when it had crossed and gave that General
instructions as to his attack, that from day to day he telegraphed
home encouraging accounts of the operations being carried out,
that he made no sign of disapproval, that he was in telegraphic
communication with Sir Charles Warren all the time and many messages
passed to and fro, that on three days out of the four--viz. on the
21st, 22nd, and 23rd--he was personally present with the force and
the dispositions of the troops were made subject to his approval,
that he had himself given directions how the howitzers were to be
disposed, and that in his telegraphic despatch of 27th January,
when all was over, he had stated that ‘the actual position held
was perfectly tenable but did not lend itself to advance.’ It was
surely unfair to himself as well as to Sir Charles Warren to make out
that for four days the troops remained in one position, and that a
dangerous one.

But if the dispositions were those of Sir Charles Warren, and he
alone was responsible for them, did they merit the disapproval with
which his chief stigmatises them? Is not the attack of a hill, whose
top is exposed to the enemy’s artillery fire and affords barely any
cover, best undertaken by seizing and holding the near crest line--in
other words, ‘perching on its edge’? If the attack intrench this near
crest, their reserves can remain lower down under cover; any shell
fire which does not hit the trench passes harmlessly over; reliefs,
also, can be safely carried out, and supplies of ammunition, water,
and food brought up to the firing line without exposure.

As we have already observed, and perhaps may be permitted to repeat
in this connection, had Sir Charles Warren’s instructions been
carried out at Spion Kop--and probably the fog made it difficult
to do so--his firing line would have been on the outer edge of the
hill, that farthest from the enemy, and not on the plateau, and what
better position could it have had? A small body could have held it,
which could have been relieved from time to time, and at nightfall
the other crest nearest to the enemy could have been seized and
intrenched. Then again reserves massed behind a hill are not in so
bad a position as Sir Redvers Buller’s despatch would imply, and when
he speaks of the danger of a possible sudden charge of the Boers
driving the whole lot of our men in disorder down the hill, he does
not appear to appreciate the distinctive qualities either of the foe
or of our own men. What would Tommy Atkins have more warmly welcomed,
or the Boers have more disliked, than a contest at close quarters
with cold steel?

Unfortunately, the feeble intrenchments which were constructed on
Spion Kop were too far advanced on the plateau of the hill, so
that the approach to them from the edge of the hill was exposed to
the shell and rifle fire of the enemy, and, equally unfortunately,
neither mountain battery nor naval guns were sent over by Sir
Redvers Buller in time to be of use in opposing the Boer fire.

In a previous chapter we noted that no sign of dissatisfaction with
Sir Charles Warren’s conduct appeared in any of Sir Redvers Buller’s
telegrams during the operations, and if these telegrams are compared
with the despatches they will be found to be glaringly inconsistent.

We find, further, that while in large matters, such as the attack
from the left, in which the strategy of the Commander-in-Chief might
be involved, Sir Redvers Buller contented himself with advocating
the course he preferred, and abstained from giving any order for its
adoption, in comparatively small matters, which would more obviously
lie within the province of the subordinate commander to determine,
he, on several occasions, caused his own views to be carried out.
Thus he substituted Major-General Woodgate for Major-General
Coke in the command of the column for the assault of Spion Kop,
because the one was able to climb better than the other; and he
nominated over the heads of experienced colonels Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft, a young and inexperienced major of a year’s standing,
holding the local rank of lieut.-colonel, to command on Spion Kop
after Major-General Woodgate was wounded, because he was a good
hard-fighting man. Neither physical strength and ability to climb nor
the gallantry of a fighting man are, however, the main qualifications
of a commander, and these efforts of the Commander-in-Chief to assert
himself in minor matters had, it would seem, something to say to the
failure of the enterprise.

That Sir Redvers Buller should endeavour to justify the retirement
of Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft is not difficult to understand; that
he should attempt to do so at the expense of his second-in-command
is inexplicable. It was only human nature that he should wish to
support the action of the gallant young officer, specially selected
by himself to command over the head of his seniors, who had fought
like a lion and had kept up the spirit of his men in depressing
circumstances.

But had the same warm and generous sentiment animated him towards
his second-in-command he could not have supported the retirement by
disparaging the work done by Sir Charles Warren, and by belittling or
ignoring altogether the efforts he had made to enable the garrison of
Spion Kop to hold on to the position.

Probably the unkindest cut of all, though no doubt the result of
thoughtlessness, was Sir Redvers Buller’s telegram of 25th January:
‘Warren’s garrison, I am sorry to say, I find this morning had in
the night abandoned Spion Kop.’ He might have said ‘Thorneycroft’s
garrison,’ and he could well have afforded to say ‘my garrison,’
but this would have been to abandon the _rôle_ of the irresponsible
critic.

So also he declined to hold any investigation into the circumstances
of the withdrawal as proposed by Sir Charles Warren. He says in his
despatch:

‘I have not thought it necessary to order any investigation. If
at sundown the defence of the summit had been taken regularly in
hand, intrenchments laid out, gun emplacements prepared, the dead
removed, the wounded collected, and, in fact, the whole place
brought under regular military command, and careful arrangements
made for the supply of water and food to the scattered fighting
line, the hills would have been held, I am sure.

‘But no arrangements were made. General Coke appears to have
been ordered away just as he would have been useful, and no one
succeeded him; those on the top were ignorant of the fact that guns
were coming up, and generally there was a want of organisation and
system that acted most unfavourably upon the defence.’

Such a string of inconsistencies and erroneous statements only
shows that not only did Sir Redvers Buller not think it necessary
to order an official investigation, but that he did not even think
it necessary before writing his despatch to take the trouble to
ascertain the facts for himself.

_At sundown_, before any defence could be taken regularly in hand,
the abandonment had not only been decided upon by Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft, but the preparations for retirement were actually
commenced. This he might have gathered from Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft’s report, in which he says: ‘When night began to close
in I determined to take some steps,’ &c., and there must have been
other reports, which have not been published, before him from which
he could have known the precise time when the retirement was arranged.

After categorically enumerating the various arrangements that should
have been made at nightfall in order to hold the position on the
following day, Sir Redvers Buller writes: ‘But no arrangements were
made.’ He does not say who should have made them, or who should have
carried them out, but the inference from what he says is that as
‘General Coke appears to have been ordered away just as he would have
been useful,’ he considers that Major-General Coke should have made
them.

But Major-General Coke did not receive the order to go and see Sir
Charles Warren until 9.30 P.M., some three hours after nightfall, and
after the order for withdrawal had been given.

In refutation of Sir Redvers Buller’s assertion that no arrangements
were made, in face of all the reports he had before him, some of
which have been published, showing what arrangements were made, let
us see if it can be ascertained what actually was done.

PRECAUTIONS TAKEN AND ARRANGEMENTS MADE

_Hospital and Ambulance Work._--A field hospital was established at
Wright’s farm and all the available ambulance and stretcher bearers
were assembled at the foot of Spion Kop ready for action. Mr. Winston
Spencer Churchill says that in ascending Spion Kop on the afternoon
of 24th January he passed through the ambulance village. Every
available stretcher belonging to every brigade was in use on Spion
Kop.

It may be here observed that the casualties of Spion Kop itself were
not so great as at Colenso, although, if the whole week’s fighting is
considered, they were greater.

_Food._--The troops went up Spion Kop with one day’s rations in hand,
and during the day the regimental wagons were collected at the foot,
within 600 feet of the summit. So that the troops on Spion Kop were
quite as near their food as they had been at Three Tree Hill.

_Ammunition._--Mr. Winston S. Churchill relates how he found a man
dragging down a box of ammunition all by himself. There was plenty
of ammunition on the summit at sunset, and it was unfortunate that
Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft did not ascertain this.

Sir Charles Warren, in his despatch of 1st February 1900 (Blue Book,
p. 76), states that the Dorset Regiment carried down a large quantity
of ammunition in the dark, which otherwise would have fallen into the
hands of the enemy.

_Water Supply._--Majors H. N. Sargent and E. J. Williams were in
charge of the water supply, and their reports of 28th January have
been published. The former says:

‘All the available pack mules which could be procured, viz. 25,
were utilised in carrying biscuit tins filled with water up the
hill, the tins being refilled from water carts placed at the
foot of Spion Kop. Each tin contained 8½ to 9 gallons of water.
An officer was placed in charge of the water carts, and had a
plentiful supply of spare tins, in addition to those carried by
the mules. The mules were divided into two sections, each under an
officer. These two sections of mules conveyed to the troops up the
hill at each trip 425 gallons of water.

‘The water supply was kept going continuously during the day and
late at night, with the exception of one break, caused by an order
being given for one section of mules to bring up ammunition. In
addition to the water conveyed on mules, there was a spring at the
top of the hill under Royal Engineers’ charge, which yielded a fair
supply. I superintended generally the water supply myself, and made
frequent inquiries as to whether the troops were getting sufficient
quantity on top of the hill, and was told they were.’

Major Williams states that he took twelve mules with water to the
trees near the top of the hill, arriving there about noon, and
established a water depôt there; that the mules made a second
trip, and were then taken for ammunition; that the Royal Engineers
successfully dug for water at a place three quarters of the way up
the hill, that it was thick but fairly plentiful; that from 3 P.M. to
8 P.M. he impressed more mules and continued to hurry up water to the
water depôt, while men were also sent up with filled water bottles
for distribution to the fighting line. At 8 P.M. it was too dark
for the mules to work, and although several fell over the cliff in
getting up, there were at that time several full boxes of water at
different spots on the hill. He also says that supplies of all kinds
were plentiful at the foot of the hill.

Colonel A. W. Morris, Assistant Adjutant-General, who accompanied
Major-General Coke up Spion Kop, saw the water depôt supply by the
trees--some twenty tins of water. He says in his report of 28th
January:

‘Personally, I do not think the men were suffering very badly from
want of water. I consider that under the circumstances nothing
could have been better than the very difficult arrangements made
for water supply: it was not plentiful, but sufficient for the
purpose required.’

It seems clear from the above that there was a larger supply of water
on Spion Kop than there was at any other hill action in Natal.

_Guns._--Major-General Coke attempted to take up a machine gun, but
unfortunately it overturned. The mountain guns, the only guns that
Sir Redvers Buller could spare for the summit of Spion Kop, were, it
is believed, at Frere; at any rate, they were not in any way in Sir
Charles Warren’s command and did not arrive at the foot of Spion Kop
until 7.30 P.M. and then the men required rest. Shortly before noon
on the 24th Sir Redvers Buller offered to send over two naval guns
from Potgieter’s Drift, an offer which Sir Charles Warren accepted.
They arrived at Spion Kop long after dark.

At 4 P.M. Sir Charles Warren sent Captain Hanwell, R.A., up Spion Kop
to arrange about placing these naval guns, and had Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft been properly exercising command he should have learnt
all about the guns from this officer. Slides were made in the morning
in the hillside in case the naval guns should arrive, and 3-inch
cable was got ready for hauling them up. These guns could have been
got up, but even if they had been placed on the slopes they would
have knocked out the pom-poms.

An Artillery officer, Lieutenant Dooner, was also on Spion Kop
all day telegraphing information to the Officer Commanding Royal
Artillery as to the effect of his fire.

Two guns of the 19th Battery Royal Field Artillery were ordered up
the hill to the lower slopes, and had just started when they were
met by the retiring force and turned back. Lord Dundonald also had
orders to take his machine gun up.

_Engineer Operations._--These seem to have been very complete.
Lieut.-Colonel Wood and his Staff Officer, Lieut.-Colonel Sim and
his Staff Officer, and the 17th Company of Royal Engineers were
engaged about Spion Kop all the time, and the 37th Company, sent from
Potgieter’s, arrived at midnight of 24th January.

During the 24th the whole of the picks, shovels, and sandbags in
possession of the force were carried up to the summit of Spion Kop,
and were there ready to be made use of at sundown. Colonel Hill knew
where they were deposited; Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft apparently did
not.

The 17th Company R.E. made the mule path and the gun slides, which
were ready the one at noon, the others in the afternoon. This company
and others were employed in developing the springs on the sides
of Spion Kop, and also made a dam. In the afternoon a message was
sent to the half of the 17th Company R.E. on the top of Spion Kop
directing the officer in command to be ready to make entrenchments
there at nightfall, and Colonel Sim was ordered to go up with a
working party of the Somersetshire Regiment.

It is not too much, then, to say that so far as Sir Charles Warren
was concerned everything was ready, and action would have been taken
during the night in regard to all the points mentioned by Sir Redvers
Buller had not the retirement prevented it.

Sir Redvers Buller was therefore mistaken when he wrote, ‘No
arrangements were made.’ Arrangements _were_ made, as stated in Sir
Charles Warren’s despatch and corroborated from so many sources. It
_was_ known on the top of Spion Kop that the guns were to go up, but
quite possibly Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft did not know it, as he did
not place himself in a position to know anything but what was going
on in the firing line, and at sundown, when everything should have
been done and could have been done, he ordered the withdrawal.

And yet this is the one act which Sir Redvers Buller singles out
for special commendation. Colonel Thorneycroft, he says, ‘saved the
situation’ and ‘exercised a wise discretion.’

Now, no one will withhold from this officer the praise due to his
gallantry, but his determination to retire from Spion Kop, in spite
of the ‘No surrender’ order sent to Colonel Crofton, in spite of the
protests of Colonel Hill, in spite of the remonstrances of other
officers, and in spite of the explicit orders of Sir Charles Warren
conveyed to him on the way down by Colonel Sim, was not so much an
error of judgment as an assumption of responsibility which, had it
been a determination to advance in spite of orders, might perhaps
have been justified by success, but as a determination to retire
was perfectly unjustifiable and led to the abrupt termination of an
enterprise which had been boldly commenced by the seizure of the key
of the position, and which, in the opinion of Lord Roberts, ought to
have succeeded.

If, then, the chief blame for this failure must lie upon the officer
who ordered and carried out the retirement from Spion Kop, the
officer in chief command, who assumed so detached a position in his
orders and despatches, and yet so constantly interfered when he
should have given his second-in-command a free hand, seems to be
rightly dealt with in the observations of Lord Roberts.

Had he furnished Sir Charles Warren with naval guns, with mountain
guns, and with a balloon in time to be of use, and not on urgent
request at the last moment; had he allowed Sir Charles Warren time to
continue his bombardment and supplied him with longer-ranging guns,
instead of urging him to attack on the threat of withdrawing the
force; had he even, after the decision to attack Spion Kop, at once
sent over the naval 12-prs. and another company of Royal Engineers to
help to get them up at sundown, the story might have been different.
But he did none of these things. He only appointed an inexperienced
young officer to take command at the top of Spion Kop over all his
seniors, and thinks that officer saved the situation by the wise
discretion he exercised in abandoning the position he was chosen to
defend.

If the memorandum ‘not necessarily for publication’ recently
published does not, to our mind, add much to the blame Sir Redvers
Buller had already thrown upon Sir Charles Warren, it certainly puts
more definitely the opinion the senior had formed of his junior,
and, in this light, should not have been concealed from the latter
for two years; but, on the other hand, the memorandum tends to lessen
our already waning confidence in Sir Redvers Buller.

The same sort of inconsistencies run through it that we have noticed
in the despatches. Thus he says: ‘On the 19th he (Sir Charles Warren)
attacked and gained a considerable advantage. On the 20th, instead
of pursuing it, he divided his force and gave Clery a separate
command.’ But there is no sort of agreement between this statement
and the telegram he sent at 9.15 P.M. on the 20th, wherein he relates
how Clery by judicious use of his artillery had fought his way up,
capturing ridge after ridge for about three miles, and the troops
were bivouacking on the ground he had gained.

So in the next sentence of the memorandum: ‘On the 21st I find
that his (Warren’s) right was in advance of his left, and that the
whole of his batteries, six, were crowded on one small position on
his right, while his left was unprotected by artillery, and I had
come out to tell him that the enemy on that flank had received a
reinforcement of at least 2,500. I suggested a better distribution of
his batteries, which he agreed to to some extent, but he would not
advance his left.’ How is it possible to reconcile this statement
with his telegram of 21st January, in which he said: ‘Warren has been
engaged all day, chiefly on his left, which he has swung round about
a couple of miles. The ground is very difficult, and, as the fighting
is all the time up-hill, it is difficult exactly to say how much we
gain, but I think we are making substantial progress’?

Finally his memorandum says: ‘On the 19th I ought to have assumed
command myself; I saw that things were not going well--indeed, every
one saw that. I blame myself now for not having done so.’ It was on
the 19th that Warren made his flank march to Venter’s Laager, that
he occupied the lower slopes of the Rangeworthy Hills, and that he
reported the result of his reconnaissances. What was not going well?
He had not been attacked, happily, in his flank march, he had decided
that the road by Fair View to Groote Hoek must be the route--and,
as we understand, Sir Redvers Buller says there can be no question
that was the only route--and he had captured positions on the hills.
Only a few paragraphs before in this same memorandum Sir Redvers
Buller says that on the 19th Sir Charles Warren attacked and gained
a considerable advantage. Is a considerable advantage indicative of
things not going well? Instances of these apparent contradictions
and inconsistencies in the actions, telegrams, and despatches of
Sir Redvers Buller could be multiplied. What does it all mean? Why
this sudden change of bearing towards his principal General? We
cannot say; but there is the painful fact that after the abandonment
of Spion Kop by the commander nominated by Sir Redvers Buller this
change of attitude is evident on comparing the telegrams with the
despatches.

In conclusion, whatever faults Sir Charles Warren may have exhibited,
we can only say that the accusations made against him, and of which
for months he was kept in ignorance, do not stand the investigation
we have given them.

It has been stated in Parliament that in August 1900 Sir Charles
Warren, on his return home, wrote his own answer to the accusations,
of which he was then aware from the published despatches. Since then
the Government has been worried by Sir Redvers Buller into publishing
further accusations against Sir Charles Warren, who tells us, in his
recent letter to the newspapers, that he has asked the Government
in common justice to give his refutation the same publicity. At
present the Government has decided not to publish it, in order that
the personal controversy involved between two distinguished Generals
may not be prolonged. But is this quite fair to Sir Charles Warren?
Having made public all that is to be said against him, might he not
be allowed to show that he can justify himself?

APPENDIX

_EXTRACTS FROM DESPATCHES_[8]

FROM FIELD-MARSHAL LORD ROBERTS TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR

Army Headquarters, South Africa, Camp,
Dekiel Drift, Riet River: 13th February, 1900.

My Lord,--I have the honour to submit, for your Lordship’s
information, despatches from General Sir Redvers Buller, describing
the advance across the Tugela River on the 17th and 18th January,
1900, and the capture and evacuation of the Spion Kop position on the
23rd and 24th January, as well as certain minor operations between
the 19th and 24th January on the right or eastern line of advance.

2. The plan of operations is not very clearly described in the
despatches themselves, but it may be gathered from them and the
accompanying documents themselves that the original intention was
to cross the Tugela at or near Trichard’s Drift, and thence by
following the road past ‘Fair View’ and ‘Acton Homes,’ to gain
the open plain north of Spion Kop, the Boer position in front of
Potgieter’s Drift being too strong to be taken by direct attack.
The whole force, less one brigade, was placed under the orders of
Sir Charles Warren, who, the day after he had crossed the Tugela,
seems to have consulted his General and principal Staff Officers,
and to have come to the conclusion that the flanking movement
which Sir Redvers Buller had mentioned in his secret instructions
was impracticable on account of the insufficiency of supplies. He
accordingly decided to advance by the more direct road leading
north-east, and branching off from a point east of ‘Three Tree Hill.’
The selection of this road necessitated the capture and retention
of Spion Kop, but whether it would have been equally necessary to
occupy Spion Kop, had the line of advance indicated by Sir Redvers
Buller been followed, is not stated in the correspondence. As Sir
Charles Warren considered it impossible to make the wide flanking
movement which was recommended, if not actually prescribed, in his
secret instructions, he should at once have acquainted Sir Redvers
Buller with the course of action which he proposed to adopt. There
is nothing to show whether he did so or not, but it seems only fair
to Sir Charles Warren to point out that Sir Redvers Buller appears
throughout to have been aware of what was happening. On several
occasions he was present during the operations. He repeatedly gave
advice to his subordinate commander, and on the day after the
withdrawal from Spion Kop he resumed the chief command.

{{3. In his note[9] on Sir Charles Warren’s report,
accompanying despatch of 30th January 1900,[10] Sir
Redvers Buller expresses a very adverse opinion on the
manner in which Sir Charles Warren carried out the
instructions he had received. Without a knowledge of the
country and circumstances it is difficult to say whether
the delay, misdirection, and want of control, of which
Sir Redvers Buller complains, were altogether avoidable;
but, in any case, if he considered that his orders were
not being properly given effect to, it appears to me
that it was his duty to intervene as soon as he had
reason to believe that the success of the operations
was being endangered. This, indeed, is admitted by
Sir Redvers Buller himself, whose explanation of his
non-interference can hardly be accepted as adequate. A
most important enterprise was being attempted, and no
personal considerations should have deterred the officer
in chief command from insisting on its being conducted
in the manner which, in his opinion, would lead to the
attainment of the object in view, with the least possible
loss on our side.}}

As regards the withdrawal of the troops from the Spion Kop position,
which, though occupied almost without opposition in the early
morning of the 24th January, had to be held throughout the day under
an extremely heavy fire, and the retention of which had become
essential to the relief of Ladysmith, I regret that I am unable
to concur with Sir Redvers Buller in thinking that Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft exercised a wise discretion in ordering the troops to
retire. Even admitting that due preparations may not have been made
for strengthening the position during the night, reorganising the
defence, and bringing up artillery--in regard to which Sir Charles
Warren’s report does not altogether bear out Sir Redvers Buller’s
contention--admitting also that the senior officers on the summit of
the hill might have been more promptly informed of the measures taken
by Sir Charles Warren to support and reinforce them, I am of opinion
that Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft’s assumption of responsibility and
authority was wholly inexcusable. During the night the enemy’s fire,
if it did not cease altogether, could not have been formidable, and,
though lamp signalling was not possible at the time, owing to the
supply of oil having failed, it would not have taken more than two or
three hours at most for Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft to communicate
by messenger with Major-General Coke or Sir Charles Warren, and to
receive a reply. Major-General Coke appears to have left Spion Kop at
9.30 P.M. for the purpose of consulting with Sir Charles Warren, and
up to that hour the idea of a withdrawal had not been entertained.
Yet almost immediately after Major-General Coke’s departure
Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft issued an order, without reference to
superior authority, which upset the whole plan of operations, and
rendered unavailing the sacrifices which had already been made to
carry it into effect.

On the other hand, it is only right to state that Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft appears to have behaved in a very gallant manner
throughout the day, and it was doubtless due, in a great measure,
to his exertions and example that the troops continued to hold the
summit of the hill until directed to retire.

5. The conduct of Captain Phillips, Brigade-Major of the 10th
Brigade, on the occasion in question, is deserving of high
commendation. He did his best to rectify the mistake which was
being made, but it was too late. Signalling communication was not
re-established until 2.30 A.M. on the 25th January, and by that time
the naval guns could not have reached the summit of the hill before
daybreak. Major-General Coke did not return, and Lieut.-Colonel
Thorneycroft had gone away. Moreover, most of the troops had begun
to leave the hill, and the working parties, with the half company of
Royal Engineers, had also withdrawn.

6. It is to be regretted that Sir Charles Warren did not himself
visit Spion Kop during the afternoon or evening, knowing as he did
that the state of affairs there was very critical, and that the
loss of the position would involve the failure of the operations.
He was, consequently, obliged to summon Major-General Coke to his
headquarters in the evening in order that he might ascertain how
matters were going on, and the command on Spion Kop thus devolved
on Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft; but Major-General Coke was not
aware of this. About midday, under instructions from Sir Redvers
Buller, Sir Charles Warren had directed Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft
to assume command on the summit of the hill, with the temporary
rank of Brigadier-General, but this order was not communicated to
Major-General Coke, who, until he left the position at 9.30 P.M., was
under the impression that the command had devolved on Colonel Hill,
as senior officer, after Colonel Crofton had been wounded. Omissions
or mistakes of this nature may be trivial in themselves, yet may
exercise an important influence on the course of events; and I think
that Sir Redvers Buller is justified in remarking that ‘there was a
want of organisation and system which acted most unfavourably on the
defence.’

7. The attempt to relieve Ladysmith, described in these despatches,
was well devised, and I agree with Sir Redvers Buller in thinking
that it ought to have succeeded. That it failed may, in some measure,
be due to the difficulties of the ground and the commanding positions
held by the enemy--probably also to errors of judgment and want
of administrative capacity on the part of Sir Charles Warren. But
whatever faults Sir Charles Warren may have committed, the failure
must also be ascribed to the disinclination of the officer in supreme
command to assert his authority and see that what he thought best
was done, and also to the unwarrantable and needless assumption of
responsibility by a subordinate officer.

8. The gratifying feature in these despatches is the admirable
behaviour of the troops throughout the operations.

I have the honour to be, My Lord,

Your Lordship’s most obedient Servant,
ROBERTS, _Field-Marshal,
Commanding-in-Chief, South Africa_.

FROM GENERAL SIR REDVERS BULLER TO THE
SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR.

(_Through Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, G.C.B., Commander-in-Chief,
Cape Town._)

Spearman’s Hill: 30th January, 1900.

Sir,--I have the honour to report that General Sir Charles Warren’s
Division having arrived at Estcourt, less two battalions, 10th
Brigade, which were left at the Cape, by the 7th January, it moved to
Frere on the 9th.

{{I attach a copy of Natal Army Orders of the 8th
January,[11] giving full particulars of the intended move
and organisation of the force.}}

The column moved as ordered, but torrents of rain fell on the
9th, which filled all the spruits, and, indeed, rendered many of
them impassable for many hours. To forward supply alone took 650
ox wagons, and as in the 16 miles from Frere to Springfield there
were three places at which all the wagons had to be double spanned,
and some required three spans, some idea may be formed of the
difficulties, but these were all successfully overcome by the willing
labours of the troops. {{I attach a statement of the supply trains.}}

The 4th Brigade reached Springfield on the 12th, in support of the
mounted troops who had surprised and seized the important position of
Spearman’s Hill, commanding Potgieter’s Drift, on the 11th.

By the 13th all troops were at Springfield and Spearman’s Hill, and
supply was well forward.

On the 16th, a reserve of 17 days’ supply having been collected,
General Sir C. Warren, in command of the 2nd Division, the 11th
Brigade of the 5th Division, the Brigade Division Royal Field
Artillery, 5th Division, and certain corps troops, including the
Mounted Brigade, moved from Springfield to Trichard’s Drift, which is
about six miles west of Potgieter’s.

{{I attach a copy of the orders[12] under which Sir C.
Warren acted, and enclose his report of his operations
(C).}}

On the night of the 23rd, General Warren attacked Spion Kop, which
operation he has made the subject of a special report. On the
morning of the 25th, finding that Spion Kop had been abandoned in
the night, I decided to withdraw General Warren’s force; the troops
had been continuously engaged for a week, in circumstances entailing
considerable hardships, there had been very heavy losses on Spion
Kop. General Warren’s dispositions had mixed up all the brigades,
and the positions he held were dangerously insecure. I consequently
assumed the command, commenced the withdrawal of the ox and heavy
mule transport on the 25th; this was completed by midday the 26th;
by double spanning the loaded ox wagons got over the drift at the
rate of about eight per hour. The mule wagons went over the pontoon
bridge, but all the mules had to be taken out and the vehicles passed
over by hand. For about seven hours of the night the drift could not
be used as it was dangerous in the dark, but the use of the pontoon
went on day and night. In addition to machine guns, six batteries of
Royal Field Artillery, and four howitzers, the following vehicles
were passed: ox wagons, 232; 10-span mule wagons, 98; 6-span, 107;
4-span, 52; total, 489 vehicles. In addition to these, the ambulances
were working backwards and forwards evacuating the sick and wounded.

By 2 P.M., the 26th, all the ox wagons were over, and by 11.30 P.M.
all the mule transports were across and the bridge clear for the
troops. By 4 A.M., the 27th, all the troops were over, and by 8 A.M.
the pontoons were gone and all was clear. The troops had all reached
their new camps by 10 A.M. The marches averaged for the mounted
troops about 7 miles, and for the infantry and artillery an average
of 5 miles.

Everything worked without a hitch, and the arrangements reflected
great credit on the Staff of all degrees; but I must especially
mention Major Irwin, R.E., and his men of the Pontoon Troop, who were
untiring. When all men were over, the chesses of the pontoon bridge
were so worn by the traffic that I do not think they would have
lasted another half hour.

Thus ended an expedition which I think ought to have succeeded. We
have {{suffered heavily (for casualty return, _see_ K), very heavy
losses, and}} lost many whom we can ill spare; but, on the other hand,
we have inflicted as great or greater losses upon the enemy than they
have upon us, and they are, by all accounts, thoroughly disheartened;
while our troops are, I am glad and proud to say, in excellent fettle.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your obedient Servant,
REDVERS BULLER,
_General Officer Commanding_.

FROM LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR CHARLES WARREN TO
THE CHIEF OF THE STAFF

Hatting’s Farm: 29th January, 1900.

Sir,--I have the honour to make the following report on the
operations on the north side of the Tugela, west of Spion Kop, from
the 17th to the 27th of January, 1900:--

1. On the 8th January field orders were published constituting the
10th Brigade of the 5th Division a Corps Brigade, and placing the
4th Brigade in the 5th Division. The 5th Division thus constituted
marched from Frere on the 10th instant, arriving at Springfield on
the 12th instant.

2. On the 15th January I received your secret instructions to command
a force to proceed across the Tugela, near Trichardt’s Drift, to the
west of Spion Kop, recommending me to proceed forward refusing my
right (namely, Spion Kop), and bringing my left forward to gain the
open plain north of Spion Kop. This move was to commence as soon as
supplies were all in, and the 10th Brigade (except two companies)
removed from Springfield Bridge to Spearman’s Hill.

3. I was provided with 4 days’ rations, with which I was to cross
the Tugela, fight my way round to north of Spion Kop, and join your
column opposite Potgieter’s.

4. On the 15th January I made the arrangements for getting supplies,
and moved the 10th Brigade on the following day; and on the evening
of the 16th January I left Springfield with a force under my
command, which amounted to an Army Corps (less one brigade), and by a
night march arrived at Trichardt’s Drift, and took possession of the
hills on the south side of the Tugela.

5. On the 17th January I threw pontoon bridges across the Tugela,
passed the infantry across by ponts, and captured the hills
immediately commanding the drift on the north side with two brigades
commanded by Generals Woodgate and Hart. The Commander-in-Chief was
present during part of the day, and gave some verbal directions to
General Woodgate.

The Mounted Brigade passed over principally by the drift, and went
over the country as far as Acton Homes, and on the following day
(18th) had a successful action with a small party of Boers, bringing
in 31 prisoners.

During the night of the 17th, and day of the 18th, the whole of the
wagons belonging to the force were brought across the Tugela, and the
artillery were in position outside of Wright’s Farm.

6. On the 19th two brigades advanced, occupying the slopes of the
adjoining hills on the right, and the wagons were successfully
brought to Venter’s Spruit.

In the evening, after having examined the possible roads by which
we could proceed, I assembled the General Officers and the Staff,
and the Officer Commanding Royal Artillery, and Commanding Royal
Engineer, and pointed out to them that of the two roads by which we
could advance the eastern one, by Acton Homes, must be rejected,
because time would not allow of it, and with this all concurred. I
then pointed out that the only possible way of all getting through
by the road north of Fair View would be by taking 3 or 4 days’ food
in our haversacks, and sending all our wagons back across the Tugela;
but before we could do this we must capture the position in front of
us.

7. On the following day, 20th January, I placed two brigades and
six batteries of artillery at the disposal of General Sir C. F.
Clery, with instructions to attack the Boer positions by a series of
outflanking movements (copy of instructions herewith[13]), and by the
end of the day, after fighting for 12 hours, we were in possession of
the whole part of hills, but found a strongly entrenched line on the
comparatively flat country beyond us.

8. On the 21st the Boers displayed considerable activity on our
left, and the Commander-in-Chief desired me to move two batteries
from right to left. At a subsequent date, during the day, I found it
impossible to proceed without howitzers, and telegraphed for four
from Potgieter’s. These arrived early on the morning of the 22nd, and
the Commander-in-Chief, arriving about the same time, directed me to
place two of these howitzers on the left, two having already been
placed on the right flank. I pointed out to the Commander-in-Chief
that it would be impossible to get wagons through by the road leading
past Fair View unless we first took Spion Kop, which lies within
about 2,000 yards of the road. The Commander-in-Chief agreed that
Spion Kop would have to be taken. Accordingly that evening orders
were drawn up giving the necessary instructions to General Talbot
Coke to take Spion Kop that night, but, owing to an absence of
sufficient reconnaissance, he requested that the attack might be put
off for a day.[14]

9. On the 23rd January the Commander-in-Chief came into camp, the
attack on Spion Kop was decided upon, and Lieut.-Colonel àCourt, of
the Headquarters Staff, was directed by the Commander-in-Chief to
accompany General Woodgate, who was detailed to command the attacking
column. The account of the capture of Spion Kop is given in another
report.

10. On the morning of the 25th January the Commander-in-Chief
arrived, decided to retire the force, and assumed direct command.
The whole of the wagons of the 5th Division were got down to the
drift during the day, and were crossed over before 2 P.M. on the 26th
January.

11. The arrangements for the retirement of the 5th Division were
exceedingly well got out, and the retirement was made in good order
during the night of the 26th, the whole of the troops crossing to the
south side of the Tugela before daylight, and the wagons were packed,
and the troops bivouacked near the spruit about 2 miles to the east
of the pontoon bridges. About 10 P.M., previous to the retirement,
heavy musketry was heard to the north of our position, which has been
attributed to a Boer commando thinking we were going to make a night
attack.

{{12. I append reports[15] from Lieut.-General Sir C.
F. Clery, K.C.B., on the operations conducted by him
on the 20th, 21st, and 22nd, also from Major-General
Hildyard, C.B., for his operations on those dates.

13. I propose to forward as soon as possible a more
detailed report of the movements of brigades and units,
and acts of individuals.}}

C. WARREN, _Lieut.-General,
Commanding 5th Division_.

SIR REDVERS BULLER’S MEMORANDUM ‘NOT
NECESSARILY FOR PUBLICATION.’

{{Spearman’s Camp: 30th January, 1900.

Secretary of State,--In forwarding this report[16]
I am constrained to make the following remarks, not
necessarily for publication:

I had fully discussed my orders with General Warren
before he started, and he appeared entirely to agree
that the policy indicated of refusing the right and
advancing the left was the right one. He never, though,
attempted to carry it out. From the first there could be
no question but that the only practicable road for his
column was the one by Fair View. The problem was to get
rid of the enemy who were holding it.

The arrival of the force at Trichard’s was a surprise
to the enemy, who were not in strength. Sir C. Warren,
instead of feeling for the enemy, elected to spend two
whole days in passing his baggage. During this time
the enemy received reinforcements and strengthened
his position. On the 19th he attacked and gained a
considerable advantage. On the 20th, instead of pursuing
it, he divided his force, and gave General Clery a
separate command.

On the 21st I find that his right was in advance of
his left, and that the whole of his batteries, six, were
crowded on one small position on his right, while his
left was unprotected by artillery, and I had come out
to tell him that the enemy on that flank had received a
reinforcement of at least 2,500. I suggested a better
distribution of his batteries, which he agreed to, to
some extent, but he would not advance his left, and I
found that he had divided his fighting line into three
independent commands, independent of each other and
apparently independent of him, as he told me he could not
move any batteries without General Clery’s consent.

The days went on. I saw no attempt on the part of
General Warren either to grapple with the situation or
to command his force himself. By the 23rd I calculated
that the enemy, who were about 600 strong on the 16th,
were not less than 15,000, and General White confirmed
this estimate. We had really lost our chance by Sir C.
Warren’s slowness. He seems to me a man who can do well
what he can do himself, but who cannot command, as he
can use neither his Staff nor subordinates. I can never
employ him again on an independent command.

On the 19th I ought to have assumed command myself;
I saw that things were not going well--indeed, every
one saw that. I blame myself now for not having done
so. I did not, because I thought that if I did I should
discredit General Warren in the estimation of the troops;
and that if I were shot, and he had to withdraw across
the Tugela, and they had lost confidence in him, the
consequences might be very serious.

I must leave it to higher authority whether this
argument was a sound one. Anyhow, I feel convinced that
we had a good chance on the 17th, and that we lost it.

REDVERS BULLER, _General_.}}

FROM THE GENERAL OFFICER COMMANDING, NATAL,
TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR

(_By the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, Cape Town_)

Spearman’s Hill: 30th January, 1900.

Sir,--In forwarding Lieut.-General Sir C. Warren’s report on the
capture and evacuation of Spion Kop, I have the honour to offer the
following observations. {{The figures in my report refer to those in
margin:--}}

1. Sir C. Warren is hardly correct in saying that he was only allowed
3½ days’ provisions. I had told him that transport for 3½ days would
be sufficient burden to him, but that I would keep him filled up as
he wanted it. That he was aware of this is shown by the following
telegram which he sent on the day in question. It is the only report
I had from Sir C. Warren:--

(Sent 7.54 P.M. Received 8.15 A.M.)

‘Left Flank: 19th January.

‘To Chief of the Staff,--I find there are only two roads by which
we could possibly get from Trichard’s Drift to Potgieter’s, on
the north of the Tugela--one by Acton Homes, the other by Fair
View and Rosalie; the first I reject as too long, the second is a
very difficult road for a large number of wagons, unless the enemy
is thoroughly cleared out. I am, therefore, going to adopt some
special arrangements which will involve my stay at Venter’s Laager
for 2 or 3 days. I will send in for further supplies and report
progress.

‘C. WARREN.’

The reply to this was that 3 days’ supply was being sent.

2. I went over to Sir C. Warren on the 23rd. I pointed out to him
that I had no further report and no intimation of the special
arrangements foreshadowed by this telegram of the 19th; that for four
days he had kept his men continuously exposed to shell and rifle
fire, perched on the edge of an almost precipitous hill; that the
position admitted of no second line, and the supports were massed
close behind the firing line in indefensible formations, and that a
panic or a sudden charge might send the whole lot in disorder down
the hill at any moment. I said it was too dangerous a situation to be
prolonged, and that he must either attack or I should withdraw his
force. I advocated, as I had previously done, an advance from his
left. He said that he had the night before ordered General Coke to
assault Spion Kop, but the latter had objected to undertaking a night
attack on a position the road to which he had not reconnoitred, and
added that he intended to assault Spion Kop that night.

3. I suggested that as General Coke was still lame from the effects
of a lately broken leg, General Woodgate, who had two sound legs, was
better adapted for mountain climbing.

4. As no heliograph could, on account of the fire, be kept on the
east side of Spion Kop, messages for Sir C. Warren were received by
our signallers at Spearman, and telegraphed to Sir C. Warren; thus I
saw them before he did, as I was at the signal station. The telegram
Sir C. Warren quotes did not give me confidence in its sender, and,
at the moment, I could see that our men on the top had given way, and
that efforts were being made to rally them. I telegraphed to Sir C.
Warren: ‘Unless you put some really good hard-fighting man in command
on the top you will lose the hill. I suggest Thorneycroft.’

{{5. This is a mistake. _See_ =A= in Sir C. Warren’s
report. Colonel àCourt was sent down by General Woodgate
almost as soon as he gained the summit.}}

6. I have not thought it necessary to order any investigation. If at
sundown the defence of the summit had been taken regularly in hand,
entrenchments laid out, gun emplacements prepared, the dead removed,
the wounded collected, and, in fact, the whole place brought under
regular military command, and careful arrangements made for the
supply of water and food to the scattered fighting line, the hills
would have been held, I am sure.

7. But no arrangements were made. General Coke appears to have been
ordered away just as he would have been useful, and no one succeeded
him; those on the top were ignorant of the fact that guns were coming
up, and generally there was a want of organisation and system that
acted most unfavourably on the defence.

It is admitted by all that Colonel Thorneycroft acted with the
greatest gallantry throughout the day, and really saved the
situation. Preparations for the second day’s defence should have been
organised during the day, and have been commenced at nightfall.

As this was not done, I think Colonel Thorneycroft exercised a wise
discretion.

Our losses, I regret to say, were very heavy, but the enemy admitted
to our doctors that theirs were equally severe, and though we were
not successful in retaining the position, the losses inflicted on the
enemy and the attack generally have had a marked effect upon them.

I cannot close these remarks without bearing testimony to the gallant
and admirable behaviour of the troops: the endurance shown by the
Lancashire Fusiliers, the Middlesex Regiment, and Thorneycroft’s
Mounted Infantry was admirable, while the efforts of the 2nd
Battalion Scottish Rifles and 3rd Battalion King’s Royal Rifles were
equally good, and the Royal Lancasters fought gallantly.

I am writing to catch the mail, and have not any particulars yet to
enable me to report more fully on details.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your obedient Servant,
REDVERS BULLER.

REPORT BY LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR CHARLES WARREN, K.C.B.,
UPON THE CAPTURE AND SUBSEQUENT EVACUATION OF SPION KOP

_Capture and Evacuation of Spion Kop_

Chief of the Staff,--I make the operations against Spion Kop in a
separate report, because they did not enter into my original plans.

Under the original instructions of the General Officer
Commanding-in-Chief, of 15th January, 1900, I was to act as
circumstances required, but, according to instructions, was generally
to continue throughout refusing my right, and throwing my left
forward until I gained the open plain north of Spion Kop.

[Sidenote: 1]

Upon the 19th of January, on arrival at Venter’s Laager, I assembled
all the General Officers, Officers Commanding Royal Artillery and
Royal Engineers of Divisions, and Staff Officers together. I pointed
out to them that, with the three and a-half (3½) days’ provisions
allowed, it was impossible to advance by the left road through Acton
Homes. In this they unanimously concurred. I showed them that the
only possible road was that going over Fair View through Rosalie, but
I expressed my conviction that this could not be done unless we sent
the whole of our transport back across the Tugela, and attempted to
march through with our rations in our haversacks--without impedimenta.

The hills were cleared on the following day, and very strong
entrenchments found behind them. The Commander-in-Chief was present
on the 21st and 22nd January, and I pointed out the difficulties of
marching along the road, accompanied by wagons, without first taking
Spion Kop.

Accordingly, on the night of the 22nd, I ordered General Coke to
occupy Spion Kop. He, however, desired that the occupation might be
deferred for a day in order that he might make a reconnaissance with
the Officers Commanding battalions to be sent there.

[Sidenote: 2]

On the 23rd January the Commander-in-Chief came into camp, and
told me that there were two courses open--(1) to attack, or (2)
to retire. I replied that I should prefer to attack Spion Kop to
retiring, and showed the Commander-in-Chief my orders of the previous
day.

[Sidenote: 3]

The Commander-in-Chief then desired that I should put General
Woodgate in command of the expedition, and detailed Lieut.-Colonel
àCourt to accompany him as Staff Officer.

The same evening General Woodgate proceeded with the Lancashire
Fusiliers, the Royal Lancaster Regiment, a portion of Thorneycroft’s
Horse, and half company Royal Engineers, supported by two companies
of the Connaught Rangers and by the Imperial Light Infantry, the
latter having just arrived by Trichardt’s Drift.

The attack and capture of Spion Kop was entirely successful. General
Woodgate, having secured the summit on the 24th, reported that he
had entrenched a position and hoped he was secure, but that the fog
was too thick to permit him to see. The position was rushed without
casualties, other than three men wounded.

[Sidenote: A]

Lieut.-Colonel àCourt came down in the morning and stated that
everything was satisfactory and secure, and telegraphed to the
Commander-in-Chief to that effect. Scarcely had he started on his
return to headquarters when a heliogram arrived from Colonel Crofton
(Royal Lancaster). The message was: ‘Reinforce at once, or all lost.
General dead.’

He also sent a similar message to headquarters. I immediately ordered
General Coke to proceed to his assistance, and to take command of the
troops. He started at once, and was accompanied by the Middlesex and
Dorsetshire Regiments.

I replied to Colonel Crofton: ‘I am sending two battalions, and the
Imperial Light Infantry are on their way up. You must hold on to the
last. No surrender.’

This occurred about 10 A.M.

[Sidenote: 4]

Shortly afterwards I received a telegram from the Commander-in-Chief,
ordering me to appoint Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft to the command of
the summit. I accordingly had heliographed: ‘With the approval of the
Commander-in-Chief, I place Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft in command of
the summit, with the local rank of Brigadier-General.’

For some hours after this message I could get no information from
the summit. It appears that the signallers and their apparatus were
destroyed by the heavy fire.

I repeatedly asked for Colonel Thorneycroft to state his view of
the situation. At 1.20 P.M. I heliographed to ascertain whether
Colonel Thorneycroft had assumed command, and at the same time asked
General Coke to give me his views on the situation on Spion Kop.
Still getting no reply, I asked whether General Coke was there, and
subsequently received his view of the situation (copy attached). He
stated that, unless the artillery could silence the enemy’s guns, the
men on the summit could not stand another complete day’s shelling,
and that the situation was extremely critical.

At 6.30 P.M. I asked if he could keep two battalions on the summit,
removing the remainder out of reach of shells; also whether two
battalions would suffice to hold the summit. This was in accordance
with a telegram on the subject sent me by the Commander-in-Chief.
Later in the evening I made arrangements to send two (naval) 12-prs.
and the Mountain Battery Royal Artillery to the summit, together with
half company Royal Engineers (and working parties, two reliefs of 600
men each), to strengthen the entrenchments and provide shell covers
for the men. I may here mention that the 17th Company Royal Engineers
proceeded at the same time as General Woodgate’s force, and were
employed until daylight upon the entrenchments, then upon road making
and water supply.

Sandbags were sent up early on the 24th instant.

While Colonel Sim was, with this party, ascending the hill, he met
Colonel Thorneycroft descending, having evacuated the position. {{For
the remainder of the account of the proceedings I attach the reports
made to me by Colonel Thorneycroft[17] and by General Coke,[18]
together with reports on the supply of food and water rendered by
officers thus engaged. The supply of ammunition was ample.}}

I wish to bring to notice that I heard from all but one expression of
the admirable conduct and bravery shown by officers and men suffering
under a withering artillery fire on the summit of the slopes, and
also of those who, with so much endurance, persisted in carrying up
water and food and ammunition to the troops during this day.

[Sidenote: 5]

During the day a Staff Officer of the Headquarters Staff was present
on the summit, and reported direct to the Commander-in-Chief.

At sunset I considered that the position could be held next day,
provided that guns could be mounted and effective shelter provided.
Both of these conditions were about to be fulfilled, as already
mentioned.

In the absence of General Coke, whom I ordered to come to report in
person as to the situation, the evacuation took place under orders,
given upon his own responsibility, by Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft.
This occurred in the face of the vigorous protests of General Coke’s
Brigade-Major, the Officer Commanding the Middlesex Regiment, and
others.

[Sidenote: 6]

It is a matter for the Commander-in-Chief to decide whether there
should be an investigation into the question of the unauthorised
evacuation of Spion Kop.

CHARLES WARREN, _Lieut.-General_.

{{FROM LIEUT.-COLONEL A. W. THORNEYCROFT,
THORNEYCROFT’S MOUNTED INFANTRY, COMMANDING ON SPION KOP,
TO THE CHIEF STAFF OFFICER TO GENERAL SIR C. WARREN.

Camp, Trichard’s Drift: 26th January, 1900.

Sir,--On the night of the 23rd January, 1900, I
rendezvoused with 18 Officers and 180 men, Thorneycroft’s
Mounted Infantry, 2nd Bat. Lancashire Fusiliers, 2nd
Bat. Royal Lancaster Regiment, and half company Royal
Engineers, the whole under the command of General
Woodgate. At 9 P.M. we started to march to the top of
Spion Kop. I led the way with a small advanced party,
crossed the dongas and advanced up the hill; on reaching
the first plateau the force closed up in formation,
and went on again. As the front broadened I got the
Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry into line, right across
the hill, and the remainder followed in successive lines
up the last slope, when we were suddenly challenged. I
had ordered the men to lie down when challenged; they
did so. The Boers opened fire from magazines. When I
thought that they had emptied their magazines I gave the
order to charge; an officer on my left gave the order to
charge also, and the whole line advanced at the double
and carried the crest line at 4 A.M., when I halted and
reformed the line. There were about ten men wounded
altogether. Orders were immediately given by General
Officer Commanding to form a trench and breastwork. There
was a mist on the hill, and in the darkness and mist it
was difficult to get the exact crest line for a good
field of fire, and the boulders made it difficult to
dig, but we made a rough trench and breastwork. At 4.30
a few Boers came up and began firing. The men lined the
trench, but the picquets in front replied to the fire,
and firing ceased for a time. The Boers then returned
with strong reinforcements from their camp, which lay
concealed in a hollow on the side of the hill, and which
was obscured in the mist; we sent out men in front to
enable them to get a better field of fire; with two lulls
in the firing the mist rose about 8 A.M., when the rifle
fire on both sides became heavy and the Boers opened fire
from three guns and a Maxim-Nordenfelt. The shrapnel fire
was very accurate and burst well, sweeping the whole
plateau. General Woodgate was wounded early in the action
and Colonel Blomfield assumed command, but he, too, was
wounded. At this time I was directing the movements
of the Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, and sent out
reinforcements to the firing line which was in advance
of the trench; word was sent to me that General Sir C.
Warren had heliographed that I was to assume command. I
sent out more men to the flanks as the Boers were working
round, and the replacing of casualties gradually absorbed
all the men of the force. The firing became hotter on
both sides, the Boers gradually advancing; twice the men
charged out from the entrenchments in the centre and
kept them back, but at length the entrenchment became
the firing line in the centre (the left maintained their
advanced position).

The Boers closed in on the right and centre. Some
men of mixed regiments at right end of trench got up
and put up their hands; three or four Boers came out
and signalled their comrades to advance. I was the
only officer in the trench on the left, and I got up
and shouted to the leader of the Boers that I was the
Commandant and that there was no surrender.

In order not to get mixed up in any discussion I
called on all men to follow me, and retired to some
rocks further back. The Boers opened a heavy fire on us.
On reaching the rocks I saw a company of the Middlesex
Regiment advancing, I collected them up to the rocks, and
ordered all to advance again. This the men did, and we
re-occupied the trench and crest line in front.

As the companies of the Middlesex arrived I pushed
them on to reinforce, and was able to hold the whole
line again. The men on the left of our defence, who were
detached at some distance from the trench, had held
their ground. The Imperial Light Infantry reinforced
this part. The Boers then made a desperate endeavour to
shell us out of the position, and the fire caused many
casualties. The Scottish Rifles came up, and I pushed
them up to the right and left flanks as they arrived.
There was some discussion at this time as to who was
in command, and the Officer Commanding Scottish Rifles
said he would go and see General Talbot Coke, who was
reported to be at the foot of the hill, to get orders.
Up to this I had issued the orders, but as I only got
a verbal message I did not understand that I had the
temporary rank of Brigadier-General. I continued to
direct operations while the Officer Commanding Scottish
Rifles went to see General Talbot Coke. General Coke said
that Colonel Hill was in command, but I could not find
him. The heavy fire continued, and the Boers brought a
gun and Maxim-Nordenfelt to bear on us from the east,
thus sweeping the plateau from the east, north, and
north-west, and enfilading our trenches. The men held
on all along the line, notwithstanding the terrific
fire which was brought to bear on them, as the enemy’s
guns (which now numbered five and two Nordenfelts) were
absolutely unmolested. When night began to close in I
determined to take some steps, and a consultation was
held. The Officer Commanding Scottish Rifles and Colonel
Crofton were both of opinion that the hill was untenable.
I entirely agreed with their view, and so I gave the
order for the troops to withdraw on to the neck and
ridge where the hospital was. It was now quite dark, and
we went out to warn all to come in. The enemy still kept
up a dropping fire. The regiments formed up near the
neck, and marched off in formation, the Scottish Rifles
forming the rear guard. I was obliged, owing to want of
bearers, to leave a large number of wounded on the field.

In forming my decision as to retirement I was
influenced by the following:--

1. The superiority of the Boer artillery, inasmuch as
their guns were placed in such positions as to prevent
our artillery fire being brought to bear on them from the
lower slopes near camp, or indeed from any other place.

2. By my not knowing what steps were being taken to
supply me in the morning with guns, other than the
mountain battery which, in my opinion, could not have
lived under the long-range fire of the Boer artillery,
and their close-range rifle fire.

3. By the total absence of water and provisions.

4. By the difficulty of entrenching on the top of hill,
to make trench in any way cover from artillery fire with
the few spades at my disposal, the ground being so full
of rocks.

5. Finally, I did not see how the hill could be held
unless the Boer artillery was silenced, and this was
impossible.

Lieutenant Winston Churchill arrived when the troops
had been marched off.

I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your obedient Servant,
ALEC. THORNEYCROFT, _Lieut.-Colonel,
Commanding Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry_.}}

{{REPORT OF MAJOR-GENERAL TALBOT COKE, OFFICER
COMMANDING 10TH BRIGADE

_Attack on Spion Kop, 23rd, 24th, 25th January, 1900_

Pontoon Bridge: 25th January, 1900.

In accordance with your orders, General Woodgate
assumed command of the column for the night attack, and
settled his rendezvous near the Royal Engineer bivouac,
for 7 P.M., 23rd instant. I bivouacked on the hill upon
which the Connaught Rangers’ picquets are south of Three
Tree Hill.

The first shots were fired at 3.40 A.M.

The valley between my position and Spion Kop, and also
the top of that feature itself, was enveloped in mist
until about 8 A.M., when it could be seen that our force
held the schanzes on the summit. Shortly after it was
seen to be exposed to a frontal fire from rifles, and to
shell fire from its left front.

In accordance with orders communicated to me by you, to
send a battalion to reinforce, a signal message was sent
to the Imperial Light Infantry, which occupied a covering
position towards Wright’s Farm, to proceed at once to
support, moving by the right flank of the kop. The 2nd
Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment was ordered to the place
vacated by the Imperial Light Horse.

The position of Spion Kop was now seen to be exposed
to a cross fire of artillery, and by your instructions I
sent the Middlesex Regiment in support.

About 11.10 A.M., in consequence of the regrettable
news about General Woodgate, at your order I proceeded
to the kop myself. On arrival there, I found the track
leading up very much congested, and, from information
received, I formed the opinion that too many men were
getting into the trenches and stone cover above, and
becoming exposed to the artillery fire; I accordingly
checked reinforcements. Soon after this, on my way
up, an urgent message was received from Colonel Hill,
who commanded at this time on the right, calling for
reinforcements, as his line had actually fallen back
before, and lost some prisoners to the Boers, who were
pressing on in front. I accordingly sent up the rest of
the Imperial Light Infantry available.

I now met Major Bayly, a Staff Officer, from the 4th
Brigade, who informed me that an urgent message for help
had been received from Colonel Crofton, who commanded on
Spion Kop after General Woodgate was wounded. General
Lyttelton had accordingly despatched the Scottish Rifles
as an actual reinforcement, and a battalion of the King’s
Royal Rifles against the hill to the north-west of Spion
Kop. It was on the further slope of this hill that one of
the Vickers-Maxim guns was placed. (This battalion worked
its way some distance up the hill, but its action did not
materially affect the situation.)

I now again received an urgent appeal for support, this
time for the centre and left. I sent the Scottish Rifles.

I now had only as a reserve Bethune’s Mounted Infantry
and the Dorsetshire Regiment. These I retained and they
were not engaged at the actual front.

The shell fire was most galling, and was aimed not
only at the summit, but at the crest of the spur leading
up, along which reinforcements and parties bringing back
wounded had to pass. The fire came--

1. From field guns firing shrapnel and common shell,
situated, as I endeavoured to point out in a signal
message to you, north-west of our position.

2. From a Vickers-Maxim, in about the same direction.

3. From a similar gun to the north-east.

All these were beyond the effective rifle fire, and
our supporting artillery on and about Three Tree Hill
and on the Dragoon’s Maxim position apparently could
not see them; consequently they poured, unchecked, an
uninterrupted cross fire on to our position from about 8
A.M. till dark--ten hours.

Losses were very heavy, owing to the numbers
necessarily assembled to hold back the Boer frontal
attack, established under cover, and in which they showed
gallantry in pushing forward to our lines. Colonel
Crofton was now reported wounded, and the command of the
troops in front devolved on Colonel Hill, Commanding 10th
Brigade.

So the situation continued until 6 P.M., when I wrote
a report and despatched it to you by Colonel Morris,
A.A.G. (I request that this document, to save labour,
may be attached). I first showed this to Colonel Hill,
and he concurred, even taking exception to my reference
to a retirement. I had no doubt that the infantry, which
had so gallantly held its own all day, would be able to
continue to do so when the shell fire abated at nightfall.

I accordingly went back to my reserves, having
personally handed over command at the summit to Colonel
Hill.

About 9.30 P.M., in consequence of your orders, I left
for your camp, leaving a Staff Officer (Captain Phillips)
behind. The narrative must now be his.

About 11.30 P.M. this officer, who was sleeping, was
awakened by the sound of men moving, and found a general
retirement proceeding.

He allowed no one to pass after this, stopped the
Scottish Rifles, and collected a large number of
stragglers of the Dorset, Middlesex, and Imperial Light
Infantry. Bethune’s Mounted Infantry and the bulk of the
Dorsets remained in position as posted in support to the
front line. The other corps had gone down the hill.

He then published memorandum attached,[19] to all
commanders, except Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft, who had
gone on; but they did not act upon it, urging that they
had had distinct orders from Lieut.-Colonel Thorneycroft,
who, as far as I knew, was only assisting Colonel Crofton
in a portion of the front line, to retire.

We now held the spur to within about 300 yards of the
summit, but the summit itself was evacuated. Signal
communication could not be established at the moment, as
the lamp which the signalling officer counted upon ran
out of oil, and some time was lost in obtaining another.

About 1.30 A.M. a person, not by his speech an
Englishman, was brought in on suspicion by a picquet. He
made a statement to the effect that a naval gun would
shortly be brought up, and requested that it might not be
fired on. This was the first intimation of any naval gun
coming to Spion Kop.

About 2.20 A.M. a naval officer reported that he
had one 12-pr. gun below Spion Kop, near the donga on
the west. He said he had orders to take this up to
the summit. When asked whether he could do so before
daylight, he said he could not. As it would be impossible
to move the gun in any line after daybreak, on account
of hostile fire, he was told to stand by in a place of
safety. Signalling communication was now opened, and the
attached message[20] sent.

As Captain Phillips got no instructions, about 2.30
A.M. he ordered vehicles back to a place of safety.
All regimental wagons had been sent across by the
Deputy-Assistant Adjutant-General (B), 5th Division.

Shortly after 4 A.M., there still being no orders, and
a mass of transport, small-arm ammunition carts, &c.,
at the donga, steps were taken to cover this passage,
and, with the concurrence of the Officer Commanding
Dorsetshire Regiment, and Officer Commanding Scottish
Rifles, certain dispositions were made with the latter
battalion and about half the former. The other half of
the Dorsetshire Regiment were employed in carrying away a
large number of boxes (about 80) of small-arm ammunition,
brought back from the front and elsewhere.

The Imperial Light Infantry, Middlesex, and
Thorneycroft’s had apparently gone home. Bethune’s were
dismissed.

It was now light, and Boer ‘sniping’ commenced. Captain
Phillips reported to me at the donga, about 4.45 A.M.,
when I was in possession of your order as to the pontoon
crossing.

TALBOT COKE, _Major-General,
Commanding Right Attack_.}}

{{CASUALTIES

+------------+----------------+-----------------+--------------------+
| | | Officers | Men |
| Date | ---- +-----------------+--------------------+
| | |Killed |Killed |
| | | Wounded | Wounded |
| | | Missing| Missing|
+------------+----------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-------+------+
| January | | | | | | | |
|17th to 20th| 5th Division | 1 | 12 | -- | 26 | 178 | -- |
|20th | 2nd ” | -- | 8 | -- | 4 | 102 | 2 |
|21st | 2nd ” | 1 | 8 | -- | 13 | 131 | 5 |
|22nd | 2nd ” | -- | 1 | -- | 1 | 19 | 1 |
|23rd | 2nd ” | -- | -- | -- | 1 | 14 | -- |
|24th | 2nd ” | 1 | 1 | -- | 4 | 12 | -- |
|24th | 5th ” | 21 | 22 | -- | 139 | 388 | 279 |
|24th | 4th Brigade | 6 | 11 | 6 | 32 | 120 | 2 |
|25th | 2nd Division | -- | -- | -- | -- | 10 | -- |
|26th | 2nd ” | -- | -- | -- | -- | 3 | -- |
|21st, 22nd, | 5th ” | -- | 1 | -- | 1 | 33 | -- |
| 23rd, 25th,| | | | | | | |
| 26th, 27th | +-----+-----+-----+-----+-------+------+
| | Totals | 30 | 64 | 6 | 221 | 1,010 | 289 |
| | | \-----><-----/ | \------><--------/ |
| | | 100 | 1,520 |
|23rd |General Barton’s| | | | | | |
| | force is not | | | | | | |
| | included in | | | | | | |
| | above. He lost | 1 | 1 | -- | 4 | 5 | 11 |
|20th |Lost by General | | | | | | |
| | Lyttelton, not | | | | | | |
| | shown above | -- | 1 | -- | 2 | 13 | 1 |
| | +-----+-----+-----+-----+-------+------+
| | | 1 | 2 | -- | 6 | 18 | 12 |
| | | \-----><----/ | \------><-----/ |
| | Grand Totals | 103 | 1,556 |
|Losses on | | | | | | | |
| 24th | | 28 | 34 | 6 | 175 | 520 | 281 |
| (included | | \-----><-----/ | \-------><------/ |
| above) | Totals | 68 | 976 |
+------------+----------------+-----------------+--------------------+

There are said to have been 243 buried on Spion Kop, so no doubt
many of those shown missing were killed.}}

INDEX

Abyssinia, 31

àCourt, Lieut.-Colonel, 117, 139, 140, 175, 215, 221, 224

Acton Homes, 72, 73, 77-81, 85-90, 93-97, 100, 110, 111, 120, 126,
165, 178, 179, 204, 213, 223

Admiralty, 27, 29, 30

Akaba, 26-28

Alcester, Lord, 29

Anderson, Lieut., 4

Arabi, 28

Arabia Petræa, 25, 32

Atkins, Mr. J. B., 84, 98

Bangor, N. Wales, 2

Barkly, Sir Henry, 12

Barton, Major-General, 237

Bastion Hill, 87, 99, 100, 107, 110, 111

Bayly, Major, 233

Baynes, Bishop, 83, 106

Bechuanaland, 2, 18-20, 32-35, 61

Belmont, 58

Berber, 39

Besant, Sir Walter, 4, 7

Biggarsberg, 164

Bloemfontein, 12

Bloemhof, 20

Blomfield, Colonel, 140, 229

Botha, General Louis, 167

Brand, President, 12, 13

Bridgnorth Grammar School, 2

British Association, 44

Buller, Sir Redvers, 55, 56, 60-62, 66-72, 74, 75, 78, 80-83, 85,
86, 95-99, 106, 108-117, 128, 136, 138, 142, 144, 147, 158,
159, 169-172, 175-180, 183-188, 192, 193, 195, 197-200,
203-209, 211, 215, 218, 222

Burleigh, Mr. Bennet, 85, 107, 137, 140, 157, 159

Burma, 46

Burton, Lieut., 28

Byng, Colonel, 107

Cairo, 40

Cambridge, Duke of, 14, 23, 30, 41

Cape Town, 12, 14, 35, 55, 60

Carlow, 2

Charrington, Lieut., 26, 27

Chatham, 2, 4, 24, 53

Chelmsford, Lord, 20

Cheltenham College, 3

Chief Commissioner of Police, 40, 41

Chieveley, 60, 63-66, 70, 78, 168

Childers, Right Hon. H. C. E., 40

Churchill, Mr. W. S., 80, 101, 107, 128, 155, 189, 231

Clarke, Sir Andrew, 32

Clery, Sir C. F., 62, 65-68, 84, 85, 103-106, 110, 135, 198, 215-218

Clydesdale, 88

Coke, Major-General Talbot, 112, 113, 116, 117, 135-137, 141-145,
148-151, 153, 154, 157, 173-175, 184, 187, 188, 192, 206, 207,
215, 220-227, 230, 232, 236

Colenso, 57, 60, 62, 66, 76, 79, 84, 90, 99, 100, 131, 189

Colesberg, 59

Colonial Office, 20

‘Contemporary Review,’ 119

Cornforth Hill, 18

Cradock, 12

Crimean War, 2

Crofton, Colonel, 140, 141, 143, 146, 152, 196, 208, 224, 225, 230,
233-235

Cronje, 162

Daniels Kuil, 17

Debe Nek, 16

Dekiel Drift, 203

Delagoa Bay, 14

Diamond Fields, 12

Diamond Fields Horse, 16, 17

Dooner, Lieut., 193

Doorn Kloof, 76, 77, 90

-- Kop, 63

Dordrecht, 15

Douglas, 59

Dover, 9

Drakensberg Mountains, 89, 98, 126

Dublin, 2

Dufferin, Lord, 39

Dundonald, Lord, 107

Durban, 56, 62

Egypt, 25, 27, 32

Election Address, 37, 38

Enfield, 10

Ermelo, 121

Eslin, 58

Estcourt, 62, 66

Everard, Dr., 120

Fair View, 77, 81, 86, 88, 92-95, 97, 101, 104, 110, 111, 199, 204,
214, 217, 219, 223

Ford, Commandant, 18

Forster, Right Hon. W. E., 32

Fort Canning, 48

French, Major-General, 59

Frere, 62-66, 76, 209, 212

Frere, Sir Bartle, 14, 192

Gaika War, 16, 23

Gatacre, Major-General, 57

Gibraltar, 2, 4, 133

Gill, Captain, 25-27

Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., 28

Gomaperi, 18

Gordon, General C. G., 31

Goshenland, 33

Griqualand West, 2, 11-23, 25, 32

Grobelaar’s Kloof, 76

Groote Hoek, 81, 86-88, 90, 93, 94, 97, 111, 199

Grove, Sir George, 4

Guildford, 4

Hadendowa Arabs, 39

Hanwell, Captain, 193

Harrismith Pass, 79, 89, 98, 100

Hart, Major-General, 65, 72, 73, 84, 92, 105, 107, 108, 112, 218

Hatting’s Farm, 212, 215

Haydon, F. M., 4

-- S., 4

Haynes, Lieut., 28

Hewett, Sir W., 26

Hicks-Beach, Sir M., 23, 24

Hildyard, Major-General, 62, 65, 66, 74, 84, 107, 112, 215, 216

Hill, Colonel, 146, 149, 152, 153, 174, 194, 196, 208, 230, 233-235

Hongers Poort, 179

Hospital Sangar, 145, 152

Hughes, M. A., 1, 2

-- W., 2

Irwin, Major, 211

Isandhlwana, 19

Jamestown, 15

Jerusalem, 4, 7, 8, 9

Jubilee, Queen’s, 41

Kaal Kafirs, 17, 18

Kaffraria, 16

Kalahari Desert, 22

Keate-Award, 19

Kennedy, Quartermaster-Sergeant, 28

Khartoum, 31

Kimberley, 12, 14, 18-20, 56, 57, 163, 165

King William’s Town, 17

Kitchener, Lord, 60

Kruger, President, 33-36

Ladysmith, 55-57, 61, 62, 65-67, 69, 75, 77, 78, 80, 84, 88, 95-100,
107, 122, 123, 129, 160, 164, 168, 170-172, 179, 205, 208

Lancers Hill, 76, 77

Lanyon, Sir O., 12, 17, 18, 21, 22

Litako, 21

Llangwani, 131

Look-out Hill, 80

Lyttelton, Major-General, 73-75, 80, 83, 84, 143, 175, 233, 237

Mafeking, 36

Majesfontein, 57

Majuba, 33, 59

Manyering, 18

Matthews, Rt. Hon. H., 40, 42, 43

Maxwell, Dr. R., 119, 163

Methuen, Lord, 34, 56, 58, 60

Middle Drift, 73

Mitchell, Sir C., 50

Mobilisation, 47, 48

Modder River, 57, 60

Mokolokue’s Mountain, 19, 22

Moteto, 18

Monte Christo, 131

Morosi’s Mountain, 21

Morris, Colonel A. W., 192, 234

Moses Wells, 26

Mount Alice, 66, 77, 85, 120, 131

‘Murray’s Magazine,’ 42

Nakhl, 26, 28

Natal, 1, 55, 56, 61, 62, 70, 78, 85, 88, 101, 169, 192

‘National Review,’ 75, 124

New Forest Manœuvres, 53

Oliver’s Hoek, 89

Oppenheim, Mr., 173

Orange Free State, 11-14, 25, 57, 78, 88-90, 97, 98, 112

Orange River, 13, 23

Paarde Kloof, 18, 21

Pahang, 46

Palestine, 4, 32

Palmer, Professor, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 39

Perak, 46

Perie Bush, 16

Phillips, Captain, 153-157, 207, 235, 236

Pieters, 76, 102, 131

Pilcher, Colonel, 59

Platrand, 160

Police, 40, 41

Porrit’s Drift, 65

Port Elizabeth, 12

Potgieter’s Drift, 62, 65-68, 70, 73-78, 80-82, 84, 85, 87-90, 95-99,
107, 115, 125, 126, 143, 169, 193, 194, 204, 209, 210, 212,
214, 219

Pretoria, 14

Pretorius Farm, 63-65

Prince of Wales, 41

‘Punch,’ 42-44

Ramsay, Professor, 3

Ramsgate, 54

Rangeworthy Hills, 73, 79, 87, 91, 92, 96-102, 126, 129-132, 199

Red Sea Littoral, 39

Rhodes, Rt. Hon. Cecil, 15

Riet River, 203

Roberts, Field-Marshal Lord, 57, 60, 81, 86, 97, 117, 158, 171, 196,
203, 208, 209

Robinson, Sir Hercules, 34

Rooi Grond, 36

Rosalie, 81, 86, 94, 95, 97, 101, 219, 223

Salisbury, Lord, 41

Sargent, Major H. N., 190

Scratchley, Sir Peter, 10, 11

Sekukuni’s Town, 21

Selangor, 46

Seymour, Sir B., 29

Seyolo, 16

Sheerness, 52

Sheffield, 37

Shoeburyness, 9, 10

Siam, 46

Sim, Lieut.-Colonel, 155, 157, 194, 196, 226

Singapore, 44, 49

Skiet’s Drift, 68, 76, 82

Smith, Sir Cecil, 51

Spearman’s Hill, 66, 69, 71, 74, 75, 209, 212, 217, 219, 220

Spion Kop, 67, 68, 72, 77, 80-82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 96,
98-101, 103, 104, 106, 107, 110-119, 123, 126, 129-135, 138,
139, 142-144, 147, 150, 156, 158-164, 167-174, 182-184, 186,
189, 190, 192-197, 200, 203-207, 210, 212, 214, 215, 219-227,
232-237

Springfield, 63-66, 69-72, 144, 209-213

Stanley, Colonel, 23

-- Dean, 5

Stellaland, 32

Stephenson, Captain, 29

Stormberg, 57

Straits Settlements, 44-47, 50

Suakin, 39, 40

Suez, 26, 29

Sugarloaf Hill, 87, 107

Syria, 25, 26

Tabi Ndoda, 16

Takoon, 18, 21

Tanglin, 48

‘Temple or the Tomb,’ 8

Thaba Njama, 120, 137, 165, 166

Thames District, 51, 52

Thorneycroft, Lieut.-Col. A. W., 136-138, 140, 142, 145-148, 150-158,
170-175, 184-189, 193-195, 205-207, 221-229, 231, 235, 236

Three Tree Hill, 104, 129, 132, 133, 138-141, 156, 189, 204, 232, 234

Tor, 27

Trafalgar Square, 40, 41

Transvaal, 32, 33, 36, 78, 90, 112, 119

Trichard’s Drift, 67, 69, 71, 72, 75, 78, 81, 85, 86, 90, 95, 100,
115, 150, 203, 210, 212, 213, 217, 219, 224, 227

Tugela, 1, 56, 62, 65-67, 69, 71, 72, 74-81, 87, 89, 92, 95, 99, 116,
118, 121, 125, 126, 132, 133, 159, 163, 164, 177, 178, 181,
203, 204, 212-216, 218, 219, 223

Underground Jerusalem, 5, 8

‘United Service Magazine,’ 123

Vaal Krantz, 76

-- River, 13, 17

Van Reenen’s Pass, 89, 113, 122, 165

Venter’s Laager, 73, 92, 93, 96, 180, 199, 219

-- Spruit, 93, 94, 125, 126, 128, 213

Villiers, Mr. J. E. de, 12

Waggon Drift, 84

Waltham Abbey, 10

Warren, Lieut.-General Sir C., Biographical Sketch, 1-54

Warren, Major-General Sir C., 1

-- Very Rev. John, 2

Waterboer, 11, 12

Weenen, 122

Wem Grammar School, 2

White, Sir George, 55, 56, 60, 218

Williams, Major E. J., 190, 191

Wilson, Captain Holmes, 130

-- Sir Charles, 4

Wolseley, Lord, 32

Wood, Lieut.-Colonel G. K., 150

Woodgate, Major-General, 72, 73, 84, 92, 116, 117, 135-141, 165, 181,
184, 185, 213, 215, 220, 221, 224, 226, 227, 229, 232, 233

Wright’s Farm, 72, 189, 213, 232

Zagazig, 27

Zanzibar, 14

Zoutspan Drift, 176

Zwart Kop, 77, 126

PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

[Illustration: Plan showing ground on which operations of 17 to 25
Jan. 1900, took place.

London: Smith Elder & Co. _Stanford’s Geog^l Estab^t London._]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Warren was promoted to be Captain on 20th October 1869.

[2] 11th November 1882.

[3] See reproduction.

[4] See pages 67 to 69.

[5] Potgieter’s Drift.

[6] Called Three Tree Hill.

[7] ‘London to Ladysmith viâ Pretoria.’

[8] N.B.--Black marginal line indicates that portions so marked were
not published with the despatches, 1900.

[9] See D.

[10] See C.

[11] See pages 62 to 66.

[12] See pages 67 to 69.

[13] See page 103.

[14]

{{Hatting’s Farm: 30th January, 1900.

The Chief of Staff,--With reference to my report on the operations
on the Tugela, already forwarded, will you please attach the
accompanying addition?

C. WARREN, _Lieut.-General, Commanding 5th Division_.

Hatting’s Farm: 30th January, 1900.

I omitted to state that during the afternoon of the 22nd the
Commander-in-Chief proposed an attack upon the enemy’s position on
our left flank that night. I summoned at once the General Officers
available--namely, Generals Clery, Talbot Coke, and Hildyard.
General Clery, who was in command of the left attack, did not
consider it advisable to make this attack, because, if successful,
it would commit us to taking the whole line of the enemy’s
position, which he considered a hazardous proceeding, as we might
not be able to hold it. In this I concurred, more particularly as
it was evidently too late in the day to carry the operation out
effectively.

C. WARREN, _Lieut.-General, Commanding 5th Division_.

I continually proposed to General Warren that he should attack the
enemy’s right, which was _en l’air_ and not strong, and which it
was part of the original programme to try and turn, but I never
suggested doing this hurriedly or without adequate forethought and
preparation.--R. B.}}

[15] See pages 104 and 105 for substance of Sir C. F. Clery’s Report.
The Report of Major-General Hildyard is not reprinted.

[16] C.

[17] See G.

[18] See H.

[19] See page 154.

[20] See page 156.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Section F in the Appendix is a reproduction of a Report by Sir
Charles Warren and has several sidenotes in the margin. The
Sidenote ‘A’ is referenced from section E. Sidenote ‘1’ appears
twice in one paragraph but is shown only once in this etext.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the
text and consultation of external sources.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg 120: ‘Thaba Mjama’ replaced by ‘Thaba Njama’.

Index: ‘Sarjent’ replaced by ‘Sargent’.
Index: ‘Van Renen’ replaced by ‘Van Reenen’.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Sir Charles Warren and Spion Kop - A Vindication" ***

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