The Great Boer War | Page 6

the Orange Free State. In the meantime another body of
the emigrants had descended into what is now known as Natal, and had
defeated Dingaan, the great Chief of the Zulus. Being unable, owing to
the presence of their families, to employ the cavalry tactics which had
been so effective against the Matabeli, they again used their ingenuity
to meet this new situation, and received the Zulu warriors in a square of
laagered wagons, the men firing while the women loaded. Six burghers
were killed and three thousand Zulus. Had such a formation been used
forty years afterwards against these very Zulus, we should not have had
to mourn the disaster of Isandhlwana.
And now at the end of their great journey, after overcoming the
difficulties of distance, of nature, and of savage enemies, the Boers saw
at the end of their travels the very thing which they desired least--that
which they had come so far to avoid--the flag of Great Britain. The
Boers had occupied Natal from within, but England had previously
done the same by sea, and a small colony of Englishmen had settled at
Port Natal, now known as Durban. The home Government, however,
had acted in a vacillating way, and it was only the conquest of Natal by

the Boers which caused them to claim it as a British colony. At the
same time they asserted the unwelcome doctrine that a British subject
could not at will throw off his allegiance, and that, go where they might,
the wandering farmers were still only the pioneers of British colonies.
To emphasise the fact three companies of soldiers were sent in 1842 to
what is now Durban--the usual Corporal's guard with which Great
Britain starts a new empire. This handful of men was waylaid by the
Boers and cut up, as their successors have been so often since. The
survivors, however, fortified themselves, and held a defensive
position--as also their successors have done so many times since--until
reinforcements arrived and the farmers dispersed. It is singular how in
history the same factors will always give the same result. Here in this
first skirmish is an epitome of all our military relations with these
people. The blundering headstrong attack, the defeat, the powerlessness
of the farmer against the weakest fortifications--it is the same tale over
and over again in different scales of importance. Natal from this time
onward became a British colony, and the majority of the Boers trekked
north and east with bitter hearts to tell their wrongs to their brethren of
the Orange Free State and of the Transvaal.
Had they any wrongs to tell? It is difficult to reach that height of
philosophic detachment which enables the historian to deal absolutely
impartially where his own country is a party to the quarrel. But at least
we may allow that there is a case for our adversary. Our annexation of
Natal had been by no means definite, and it was they and not we who
first broke that bloodthirsty Zulu power which threw its shadow across
the country. It was hard after such trials and such exploits to turn their
back upon the fertile land which they had conquered, and to return to
the bare pastures of the upland veld. They carried out of Natal a heavy
sense of injury, which has helped to poison our relations with them
ever since. It was, in a way, a momentous episode, this little skirmish
of soldiers and emigrants, for it was the heading off of the Boer from
the sea and the confinement of his ambition to the land. Had it gone the
other way, a new and possibly formidable flag would have been added
to the maritime nations.
The emigrants who had settled in the huge tract of country between the

Orange River in the south and the Limpopo in the north had been
recruited by newcomers from the Cape Colony until they numbered
some fifteen thousand souls. This population was scattered over a space
as large as Germany, and larger than Pennsylvania, New York, and
New England. Their form of government was individualistic and
democratic to the last degree compatible with any sort of cohesion.
Their wars with the Kaffirs and their fear and dislike of the British
Government appear to have been the only ties which held them together.
They divided and subdivided within their own borders, like a
germinating egg. The Transvaal was full of lusty little high-mettled
communities, who quarreled among themselves as fiercely as they had
done with the authorities at the Cape. Lydenburg, Zoutpansberg, and
Potchefstroom were on the point of turning their rifles against each
other. In the south, between the Orange River and the Vaal, there was
no form of government at all, but a welter of Dutch farmers, Basutos,
Hottentots, and