Great Boer War , livre ebook

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338 pages

English

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. During the course of the war some sixteen Editions of this work have appeared, each of which was, I hope, a little more full and accurate than that which preceded it. I may fairly claim, however, that the absolute mistakes made have been few in number, and that I have never had occasion to reverse, and seldom to modify, the judgments which I have formed. In this final edition the early text has been carefully revised and all fresh available knowledge has been added within the limits of a single volume narrative. Of the various episodes in the latter half of the war it is impossible to say that the material is available for a complete and final chronicle. By the aid, however, of the official dispatches, of the newspapers, and of many private letters, I have done my best to give an intelligible and accurate account of the matter. The treatment may occasionally seem too brief but some proportion must be observed between the battles of 1899-1900 and the skirmishes of 1901-1902.

Sujets

Histoire

Republic of South Africa

South Africa

History of Africa

Afrique du Sud

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819916901
Langue	English

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Preface To The Final Edition
During the course of the war some sixteen Editionsof this work have appeared, each of which was, I hope, a littlemore full and accurate than that which preceded it. I may fairlyclaim, however, that the absolute mistakes made have been few innumber, and that I have never had occasion to reverse, and seldomto modify, the judgments which I have formed. In this final editionthe early text has been carefully revised and all fresh availableknowledge has been added within the limits of a single volumenarrative. Of the various episodes in the latter half of the war itis impossible to say that the material is available for a completeand final chronicle. By the aid, however, of the officialdispatches, of the newspapers, and of many private letters, I havedone my best to give an intelligible and accurate account of thematter. The treatment may occasionally seem too brief but someproportion must be observed between the battles of 1899-1900 andthe skirmishes of 1901-1902.
My private informants are so numerous that it wouldbe hardly possible, even if it were desirable, that I should quotetheir name~. Of the correspondents upon whose work I have drawn formy materials, I would acknowledge my obligations to Messrs.Burleigh, Nevinson, Battersby, Stuart, Amery, Atkins, Baillie,Kinneir, Churchill, James, Ralph, Barnes, Maxwell, Pearce,Hamilton, and others. Especially I would mention the gentleman whorepresented the `Standard' in the last year of the war, whoseaccounts of Vlakfontein, Von Donop's Convoy, and Tweebosch were theonly reliable ones which reached the public.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Undershaw, Hindhead:
September 1902.
CHAPTER I
THE BOER NATIONS
Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of thosewho defended themselves for fifty years against all the power ofSpain at a time when Spain was the greatest power in the world.Intermix with them a strain of those inflexible French Huguenotswho gave up home and fortune and left their country for ever at thetime of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The product mustobviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable racesever seen upon earth. Take this formidable people and train themfor seven generations in constant warfare against savage men andferocious beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling couldsurvive, place them so that they acquire exceptional skill withweapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminentlysuited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman, and the rider.Then, finally, put a finer temper upon their military qualities bya dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent andconsuming patriotism. Combine all these qualities and all theseimpulses in one individual, and you have the modern Boer – the mostformidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of ImperialBritain. Our military history has largely consisted in ourconflicts with France, but Napoleon and all his veterans have nevertreated us so roughly as these hard-bitten farmers with theirancient theology and their inconveniently modern rifles.
Look at the map of South Africa, and there, in thevery centre of the British possessions, like the stone in a peach,lies the great stretch of the two republics, a mighty domain for sosmall a people. How came they there? Who are these Teutonic folkwho have burrowed so deeply into Africa? It is a twice-told tale,and yet it must be told once again if this story is to have eventhe most superficial of introductions. No one can know orappreciate the Boer who does not know his past, for he is what hispast has made him.
It was about the time when Oliver Cromwell was athis zenith – in 1652, to be pedantically accurate – that the Dutchmade their first lodgment at the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguesehad been there before them, but, repelled by the evil weather, andlured forwards by rumours of gold, they had passed the true seat ofempire and had voyaged further to settle along the eastern coast.Some gold there was, but not much, and the Portuguese settlementshave never been sources of wealth to the mother country, and neverwill be until the day when Great Britain signs her huge cheque forDelagoa Bay. The coast upon which they settled reeked with malaria.A hundred miles of poisonous marsh separated it from the healthyinland plateau. For centuries these pioneers of South Africancolonisation strove to obtain some further footing, but save alongthe courses of the rivers they made little progress. Fierce nativesand an enervating climate barred their way.
But it was different with the Dutch. That veryrudeness of climate which had so impressed the Portugueseadventurer was the source of their success. Cold and poverty andstorm are the nurses of the qualities which make for empire. It isthe men from the bleak and barren lands who master the children ofthe light and the heat. And so the Dutchmen at the Cape prosperedand grew stronger in that robust climate. They did not penetratefar inland, for they were few in number and all they wanted was tobe found close at hand. But they built themselves houses, and theysupplied the Dutch East India Company with food and water,gradually budding off little townlets, Wynberg, Stellenbosch, andpushing their settlements up the long slopes which lead to thatgreat central plateau which extends for fifteen hundred miles fromthe edge of the Karoo to the Valley of the Zambesi. Then came theadditional Huguenot emigrants – the best blood of France threehundred of them, a handful of the choicest seed thrown in to give atouch of grace and soul to the solid Teutonic strain. Again andagain in the course of history, with the Normans, the Huguenots,the Emigrés, one can see the great hand dipping into thatstorehouse and sprinkling the nations with the same splendid seed.France has not founded other countries, like her great rival, butshe has made every other country the richer by the mixture with herchoicest and best. The Rouxs, Du Toits, Jouberts, Du Plessis,Villiers, and a score of other French names are among the mostfamiliar in South Africa.
For a hundred more years the history of the colonywas a record of the gradual spreading ,of the Afrikaners over thehuge expanse of veld which lay to the north of them. Cattle raisingbecame an industry, but in a country where six acres can hardlysupport a sheep, large farms are necessary for even small herds.Six thousand acres was the usual size, and five pounds a year therent payable to Government. The diseases which follow the white manhad in Africa, as in America and Australia, been fatal to thenatives, and an epidemic of smallpox cleared the country for thenewcomers. Further and further north they pushed, founding littletowns here and there, such as Graaf-Reinet and Swellendam, where aDutch Reformed Church and a store for the sale of the barenecessaries of life formed a nucleus for a few scattered dwellings.Already the settlers were showing that independence of control andthat detachment from Europe which has been their most prominentcharacteristic. Even the sway of the Dutch Company (an older butweaker brother of John Company in India) had caused them to revolt.The local rising, however, was hardly noticed in the universalcataclysm which followed the French Revolution. After twenty years,during which the world was shaken by the Titanic struggle betweenEngland and France in the final counting up of the game and payingof the stakes, the Cape Colony was added in 1814 to the BritishEmpire.
In all our vast collection of States there isprobably not one the title-deeds to which are more incontestablethan to this one. We had it by two rights, the right of conquestand the right of purchase. In 1806 our troops landed, defeated thelocal forces, and took p05session of Cape Town. In 1814 we paid thelarge sum of six million pounds to the Stadholder for thetransference of this and some South American land. It was a bargainwhich was probably made rapidly and carelessly in that generalredistribution which was going on. As a house of call upon the wayto India the place was seen to be of value, but the country itselfwas looked upon as unprofitable and desert. What would Castlereaghor Liverpool have thought could they have seen the items which wewere buying for our six million pounds? The inventory would havebeen a mixed one of good and of evil; nine fierce Kaffir wars, thegreatest diamond mines in the world, the wealthiest gold mines, twocostly and humiliating campaigns with men whom we respected evenwhen we fought with them, and now at last, we hope, a South Africaof peace and prosperity, with equal rights and equal duties for allmen. The future should hold something very good for us in thatland, for if we merely count the past we should be compelled to saythat we should have been stronger, richer, and higher in theworld's esteem had our possessions there never passed beyond therange of the guns of our men-of-war. But surely the most arduous isthe most honourable, and, looking back from the end of theirjourney, our descendants may see that our long record of struggle,with its mixture of disaster and success, its outpouring of bloodand of treasure, has always tended to some great and enduringgoal.
The title-deeds to the estate are, as I have said,good ones, but there is one singular and ominous flaw in theirprovisions. The ocean has marked three boundaries to it, but thefourth is undefined. There is no word of the `Hinterland;' forneither the term nor the idea had then been thought of. Had GreatBritain bought those vast regions which extended beyond thesettlements? Or were the discontented Dutch at liberty to passonwards and found fresh nations to bar the path of the Anglo-Celticcolonists? In that question lay the germ of all the trouble tocome. An American would realise the point at issue if he couldconceive that after the founding of the United States the Dutchinhabitants of the State of New York had trekked to the westwardand established fresh com