Chapter 25

THE MARCH ON PRETORIA

IN the early days of May, when the season of the rains was past and
the veldt was green, Lord Roberts's six weeks of enforced inaction
came to an end. He had gathered himself once more for one of those
tiger springs which should be as sure and as irresistible as that
which had brought him from Belmont to Bloemfontein, or that other in
olden days which had carried him from Cabul to Candahar. His army had
been decimated by sickness, and eight thousand men had passed into the
hospitals; but those who were with the colours were of high heart,
longing eagerly for action. Any change which would carry them away
from the pest-ridden, evils-melling capital which had revenged itself
so terribly upon the invader must be a change for the
better. Therefore it was with glad faces and brisk feet that the
centre column left Bloemfontein on May 1st, and streamed, with bands
playing, along the northern road.

On May 3rd the main force was assembled at Karee, twenty miles upon
their way. Two hundred and twenty separated them from Pretoria, but in
little more than a month from the day of starting, in spite of broken
railway, a succession of rivers, and the opposition of the enemy, this
army was marching into the main street of the Transvaal capital. Had
there been no enemy there at all, it would still have been a fine
performance, the more so when one remembers that the army was moving
upon a front of twenty miles or more, each part of which had to be
co-ordinated to the rest. It is with the story of this great march
that the present chapter deals.

Roberts had prepared the way by clearing out the south-eastern corner
of the State, and at the moment of his advance his forces covered a
semicircular front of about forty miles, the right under Ian Hamilton
near Thabanchu, and the left at Karee. This was the broad net which
was to be swept from south to north across the Free State, gradually
narrowing as it went. The conception was admirable, and appears to
have been an adoption of the Boers' own strategy, which had in turn
been borrowed from the Zulus. The solid centre could hold any force
which faced it, while the mobile flanks, Hutton upon the left and
Hamilton upon the right, could lap round and pin it, as Cronje was
pinned at Paardeberg. It seems admirably simple when done upon a
small scale. But when the scale is one of forty miles, since your
front must be broad enough to envelop the front which is opposed to
it, and when the scattered wings have to be fed with no railway line
to help, it takes such a master of administrative detail as Lord
Kitchener to bring the operations to complete success.

On May 3rd, the day of the advance from our most northern post, Karee,
the