One of the most entertaining of the online True Believers is a fellow called John Elsegood. This figure of fun can always be relied on to provide a bit of hilarity and, somewhat remarkably, his qualifications for holding forth about the Boer War are – wait for it – that he is an Australian horse-racing reporter. He also enjoys to cos-play, walking about waving an old South African flag. Some might wonder how these things equate to him being a self-declared expert on the Boer War but, such are the pathetically low standards of the breed, that his is actually a more impressive CV than 99% of the Defenders of the Myth.
Unsurprisingly, I was thus delighted to see that Elsegood was back again, spouting his normal laughable rubbish in a lengthy (and unreferenced[1]) post on his personal echo chamber on Facebook. Banging away on his little drum of self-pity, Elsegood is still sticking with the fiction of big, bad, nasty old Milner being entirely responsible for the war that… err… Kruger started.
I have left the various punctuation and spelling errors in, as I think they add to the unhinged comedy:
THE BUTLER WHO SAW THROUGH MILNER
General Sir William Butler proved in his short period in South Africa that he was the right man for the job. Unfortunately the man who stayed, Sir Alfred Milner, was the wrong man for his job and the Anglo-Boer war was the consequence and remains the dreadful epitaph of the latter.
There is probably no better example of a hawk and a dove co-existing together, supposedly on the same side but in reality poles apart.
Butler accepted the position of Commander-in-Chief of British forces in South Africa after the death of his predecessor General Goodenough. Butler arrived at the Cape in December 1898 and on the 17th of that month, just two weeks into his term, he gave a speech at Grahamstown, that immediately separated his position from Milner.
Milner who had arrived in May 1897, to be the Governor and High Commissioner at the Cape, had no empathy for the Boers and after the ZAR President Kruger’s re-election, in February 1898, wrote to his minister, Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain thus: ‘There is no way out of the political troubles of South Africa except reform in the Transvaal or war. And at present chances of reform…..are worse than ever.’
In contrast Butler’s as not only CIC (but initially as Acting High Commissioner, for three months, (while Milner was on leave in London) said, “South Africa….does not need a surgical operation, she needs peace, progress and the development which is only possible through the union of many hearts and the labour of many hands.”
The PM at the Cape, William Schreiner, instinctively recognized Butler as a man of peace.
The Uitlanders and their organization the SA League, hated him, even more so a little later when he refused to forward their petition to the Queen, protesting the release of a ZARP( a Boer policeman) who had shot an Englishman, Thomas Edgar, during an arrest.
The SA League built this up into a huge poltical circus as an example of the unfairness and bias of the evil Boer. It was nothing of the sort. Edgar had bashed another English speaking man senseless who died a few days later. During his arrest Edgar had struck the police officer twice with a rod and was subsequently shot dead in the scuffle. The SA League demanded that a petition be sent to the Queen but Butler refused, instead reminding home officials of the machinations of the League. Butler described the Uitlanders as ‘probably the most corrupt immoral and untruthful assemblage of beings at present in the world.’
Butler, himself an Irish Catholic, did not want a second Ireland to plague the English to all eternity and he believed intermarriages would ultimately fuse the two white tribes together.
In February 1899 Milner returned to his HC desk and duties, at the Cape. His meeting with Butler was chilly. They clearly disagreed over the Edgar case and Butler’s fair and exhaustively documented report. During their conversation, Butler commented that the only thing he envied about Milner was his library! (Matched only, one could add, by Milner’s vast lack of knowledge on South Africa).
For Milner, the General’s views were totally unacceptable and he set about forcing a confrontation with the Transvaal and President Kruger’s ZAR government.
Again encouraged the Uitlanders drew up a second petition that suited Milner perfectly and he transmitted it to Chamberlain, insisting on immediate action.
Milner followed with his inflammatory ‘Helots telegram’ likening the plight of British subjects to slaves on the mining fields with their lack of voting rights.
Milner had clearly wanted a military man who was eager to be a confidant in preparing for a clash with Afrikanerdom. Instead he got a man implacably opposed to fueling a war.
Butler carried out his instructions from the War Office correctly, by examining British defence preparedness in their two SA colonies. Part of his instructions he regarded as absurd. He was told that if war broke out he was to push his weak forces into Boer territory. This was a recipe for capture or annihilation and given what happened later to British generals- in Black Week (Dec 10-17,1899), at Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso)- it showed that Butler had a better grasp of reality than the theorists back home.
Butler had recommended a strictly defensive policy and as he had published a biography on General Colley, who had died at Majuba in 1881, he had no wish to repeat the disaster of that general of the first ABW-a short skirmish won by the Boers.
Butler was under no illusions of the enormity of the task to quell the Boers and even Milner would later concede that ‘his merit was that he knew the size of the job.’
Butler also, rightly, opposed the sending of anymore troops to South Africa because he knew that would signal British warlike intentions to the Boers –and the failure to heed his words ultimately did just that.
Eventually, a communiqué from the War Office asked him about army supplies and to authorize a number of mules to transport army supplies. It concluded by asking him for any observations he wished to offer. He replied, that a war would be the greatest calamity that ever occurred in South Africa…..advice unpalatable to the ruling elite, particularly Milner.
Milner’s next ‘trick’ was to try and get his CIC to assist an adventurer, by the names of Wools-Sampson, a trigger happy Briton, who wanted to raise an irregular horse regiment to help police the borders of the Cape and Natal. Butler agreed to see him, at Milner’s request, but correctly informed him that he had received no instructions from the War Office to do any such thing, as he requested. He knew that Wools-Sampson had fought the Boers in 1881 and had wanted to do so again during the Jameson Raid.
Butler gave a dispassionate account of the meeting but one eye witness reported furious outbursts on both sides with Wools-Sampson accusing the CIC of being a “traitor” and General Butler responding, calling him a “lunatic.”
Milner, of course, wrote home saying the situation was untenable- it had to be him or Butler and as usual the wrong choice was made. Butler officially tendered his resignation on 4th July 1899 and received a reply, by cable on 9th August, agreeing to it.
To PM Schreiner the General wrote, ‘Try and remember me as one who did his best, according to his lights, for South Africa and her peoples.’ He had.
His successor as CIC at the Cape, General Forrestier-Walker, arrived on 6th September 1899 and soon wrote he could not improve on Sir William Butler’s sound defence plans.
The failure of those officers early in the ABW was because they used Butler’s defensive plans for offensive measures with disastrous consequences.
So Milner’s War, instead of Butler’s Peace, led to the most brutal war for a century- between the Napoleonic era and the Great War- and was the source of great bitterness between Afrikaner and Briton that is not fully erased, even today.
***
As is normal with Elsegood’s comedy gold, what is most striking is what he leaves out, rather than what he includes. No mention, of course, of the Secret Conferences, where Kruger began the pressure on the Orange Free State to join him in an Offensive Alliance against Great Britain, way back in 1887.[2] No mention of the Bogus Conspiracy, where Kruger’s spooks hatched a botched false-flag operation, to whip up support for war against Britain.[3] No mention of the oft-stated ambition of an Afrikaans Empire ‘from the Zambesi to the Cape’.[4] No mention of the awkward fact that – after 10 years of effort – the Transvaal and the Orange Free State signed an Offensive Alliance in 1897.[5] No mention of the war plans which were drawn up with Prussian assistance back in March 1898,[6] long before Kruger fired the starting pistol.
Instead, we get the trademark Elsegood hodgepodge of lies, distortions and unreferenced statements, sneakily passed off as historical fact. Milner, we are sagely assured (in mother-knows-best fashion), was ‘the wrong man for his job and the Anglo-Boer war was the consequence and remains the dreadful epitaph’. Well, no – firstly, the notion that Milner (rather than the man who declared war) was responsible for the Boer War only became fashionable almost 80 years after the event, when Pakenham published his nonsense account of the conflict.[7] Those who unthinkingly lapped up Pakenham’s hopelessly-biased version overlook that Milner’s stellar career was not at all impacted by some sort of negative association with the Boer War. He went on to serve as the Secretary of State for War – under a Liberal government – towards the end of the Great War. This was one of the highest offices of state, and, given that the Liberal PM at the time, David Lloyd-George, had been massively opposed to the Boer War, it is unthinkable that he would have elevated Milner to such high office had he considered him responsible for the war (that Kruger started). And, after the Great War, Milner was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies – again, under Lloyd-George’s Liberal government.
It would seem that his interest in horse racing has not stood him in good stead when it comes to understanding Late-Victorian-era geopolitics, as Elsegood’s notion that either Milner or Butler could decide between peace and war is utterly ridiculous; one was a civil servant, reporting to the Colonial Office (which reported to the PM, who reported to the British electorate); the other was an officer in the British army. Does Elsegood really not understand that these were not positions which carried the right to declare war on whoever they wished? Does Elsegood really not grasp that the Great Britain of 1899 was – unlike Kruger’s Transvaal – a functioning, liberal, multi-party democracy with numerous checks-and-balances?
Pretending that Milner started the Boer War is about as ridiculous as claiming the Governor of the Falklands started the 1982 conflict. Not only did Milner have absolutely no power to start a war, but the notion that he arrived in his new role in 1897, frothing at the mouth with aggressive intent, is patently false. Instead, it is simply a pleasing fantasy, dreamt up decades later to excuse the inconvenient fact that the Boer republics invaded British territory in 1899 – an attack which was the almost inevitable conclusion of many years of ‘cold war’, caused by Kruger’s determination that the Transvaal should replace Great Britain as the dominant power in the region. Or, as Andrew Roberts put it, ‘the two obstinate bearded old patriarchs, Salisbury and Kruger, both knew that this struggle was actually about ultimate regional paramountcy, about showing who was ‘Boss’ in South Africa’.[8]
Shortly after Milner had arrived in this challenging new post, far from being resolutely determined to start a war (which, let us be clear, he had absolutely no authority to do), he noted:
‘I have a strong hope and conviction that, with moderation and good sense, and a policy of firmness, patience, and good temper, these difficulties may yet be satisfactorily, if not immediately, settled.’[9]
As an example of this ‘moderation and good sense’, Milner intervened in a dispute within the oppressed and discriminated-against British Uitlander community in Johannesburg, insisting that courtesy demanded they must toast President Kruger as the head of state, before HM the Queen at a banquet held to celebrate her diamond jubilee:
‘…on the present occasion and all others, British subjects in the Transvaal should be most careful to avoid anything which might be regarded as a slight to the S.A.R. or its Chief Magistrate.’[10]
This would have been a strange thing to insist upon if – as Elsegood and the other National-Party-myth-lovers want us to believe – Milner was determined to whip up tensions / provoke a war. Indeed, far from the modern day re-invention of him as a swivel-eyed war-monger, desperate for any excuse to pick a fight with poor old Kruger, Milner, in a confidential letter to Chamberlain written on 2 August 1897, declared:
‘That country [the Transvaal] is in a terrible mess, social, political, and financial. I think great allowance must be made for the men who have to govern a country in that state, even if their methods often seem to us very unwise. We should be very patient with them, very conciliatory, remembering how much excuse they have for regarding us with suspicion. But we cannot afford to appear, or to be, weak. It is no use being conciliatory if people think you are only being conciliatory because you are afraid.’[11]
Firmness and patience—not aggression—were the order of the day, as he had previously made clear in a letter to Lord Selborne concerning the despatch of an extra battalion of infantry and a brigade division (3 batteries) of artillery which were sent to bolster the meagre imperial garrison in South Africa:
‘…we have not the slightest intention of attacking anybody. The force we are sending is too small for any aggressive purpose. But in view of the armaments of the Transvaal, there is a widespread and natural feeling of alarm among our own colonists. We are bound to reassure them by making our own territory safe, and we mean to do it.’[12]
Also in 1897, Milner had explained in a note to the Colonial Office that his object was:
‘…to make things as easy as possible for President Kruger. Reform there must be, but the Boers should not be unduly harassed or hurried. They must be given time and every opportunity to reform themselves.’[13]
Again, it is difficult to identify anything other than a policy of ‘wait and see’, and to let things sort themselves out—which was, of course, the last thing the tens of thousands of disenfranchised Uitlanders would have wanted to hear. They would have been even less happy to read Milner’s letter to Earl Grey, written in June of 1897, in which he explained:
‘…the Transvaal will remain a centre of disturbance in South Africa and the final untying of the general knot is adjourned. I don’t think this a disadvantage from our point of view. I think we can afford to wait, that time fights on our side and that all our disasters of recent days have been due to precipitation. The difficulty is that the oppressed majority in the Transvaal cannot be expected to, and certainly do not, take quite such a philosophical view of the situation. The great question is whether their material condition can be so far ameliorated and sufficient hope given them of an improvement in their position, to keep them from doing anything foolish, until either (1) the Reform party in the Transvaal gains the upper hand or (2) the stick-in-the-muds do something so outrageous as to compel Great Britain to interfere and finally settle the business. My belief is that the way out is on lines No.1. I think as the extreme bitterness and suspicion engendered by recent events subsides, there will be a beginning of enfranchisement, small at first perhaps, which will in the long run lead to a complete change in the policy of the Transvaal Government and bring it into line with the more progressive South African communities. Meanwhile, we have plenty to do in organizing our own vast possessions…’[14]
Elsegood pretends to attribute a supposedly ‘damning’ quote to Milner, though – surprise, surprise – misses out those parts of it which do not suit his preferred fiction. Elsegood would have us believe that, in early 1898, Milner said, ‘There is no way out of the political troubles of South Africa except reform in the Transvaal or war. And at present chances of reform…..are worse than ever.’
In reality, he did indeed say:
‘…there is no way out of the political troubles of South Africa except reform in the Transvaal or war. And at present the chances of reform in the Transvaal are worse than ever’[15], but Elsegood sneakily left out all the rest of the exchange: ‘any little signs of consideration for the subject races of the Transvaal, whether European or native, and of civility to us, have ceased to appear. Kruger has returned to power more autocratic and reactionary than ever. He has immense resources of money and any amount of ammunition for war, to which he is constantly adding. Politically he had strengthened his hold on the Orange Free State and the Colonial Afrikaners continue to do obeisance to him … Kruger will never take any step which he thinks will provoke us to fight. But if he is assured that our hands are full in other directions, he will certainly seize the opportunity.’[16]
A very different message than the falsehood Elsegood is trying to get away with, I am sure you will agree. There is no doubt that, after a year in South Africa, Milner had realised Kruger was a dishonest, duplicitous, and dangerous character, and he wanted to resolve the unfair treatment of the Uitlanders with rather more urgency than did his masters in London – but it is a massive leap to equate this to a desire to start a war. What is more interesting still is that Elsegood cunningly neglected to detail Chamberlain’s response to the aforementioned communique, which – on 19 March 1898 – was to remind Milner that, ‘The principal object of HMG in South Africa at present is peace. Nothing but a most flagrant offence would justify the use of force’.[17] As his biographer, John Marlowe, stated: ‘Milner warned Greene[18] that ‘HMG are not at all anxious to bring matters to a head. We must keep up our wickets and not attempt to force the game’. Milner, once he felt he had taken the measure of the bowling, was not a natural stone-waller. But the captain’s orders were clear and he had to obey them’.[19]
And, as late as May 1899, Milner sent a long telegram to his superiors in London. Parts of it are instructive in terms of his take on the situation:
‘The true remedy is to strike at the root of all these injuries—the political impotence of the injured. What diplomatic protests will never accomplish, a fair measure of uitlander representation would gradually but surely bring about. It seems a paradox, but it is true, that the only effective way of protecting our subjects is to help them to cease to be our subjects. The admission of the uitlanders to a fair share of political power would no doubt give stability to the Republic. But it would, at the same time, remove most of our causes of difference with it, and modify and, in the long run, entirely remove that intense suspicion and bitter hostility to Great Britain which at present dominates its internal and external policy … A certain section of the Press, not in the Transvaal only, preaches openly and constantly the doctrine of a republic embracing all South Africa, and supports it by menacing references to the armaments of the Transvaal, its alliance with the Orange Free State, and the active sympathy which, in case of war, it would receive from a section of Her Majesty’s subjects. I regret to say that this doctrine, supported as it is by a ceaseless stream of malignant lies about the intentions of the British Government, is producing a great effect upon a large number of our Dutch fellow-colonists. Language is frequently used which seems to imply that that the Dutch have some superior right, even in this Colony, to their fellow-citizens of British birth. Thousands of men peacefully disposed, and, if left alone, perfectly satisfied with their position as British subjects, are being drawn into disaffection, and there is a corresponding exasperation on the side of the British.
I can see nothing which will put a stop to this mischievous propaganda but some striking proof of the intention of Her Majesty’s government not to be ousted from its position in South Africa. And the best proof alike of its power and its justice would be to obtain for the uitlanders in the Transvaal a fair share in the government of the country which owes everything to their exertions. It could be made perfectly clear that our action was not directed against the existence of the Republic. We should only be demanding the re-establishment of rights which now exist in the Orange Free State, and which existed in the Transvaal itself at the time of, and long after, the withdrawal of British sovereignty. It would be no selfish demand, as other uitlanders besides those of British birth would benefit by it. It is asking for nothing from others which we do not give ourselves. And it would certainly go to the root of the political unrest in South Africa, and, though temporarily it might aggravate, it would ultimately extinguish the race feud, which is the great bane of this country.’[20]
Now, one might reasonably wonder why Elsegood simply left all this correspondence out of his rather desperate character-assassination of Milner. A more open-minded reader would agree that these words certainly do not leave one with the impression that Elsegood’s bogeyman had a burning desire to invade the Transvaal and add it to the British Empire, or that his intentions were anything other than simply to gain a fair franchise for the Uitlanders. Alas, the notion that Milner ‘caused the war’ or that he ‘had always been desperate for war’ has been repeated so often that many no longer even think to query it – and charlatans like Elsegood frantically keep this convenient falsehood alive.
Amusingly, Elsegood also assures us that Milner ‘insisted on immediate action’ from ‘Pushful’ Joe Chamberlain[21] – despite the latter being his boss. Is he really so completely oblivious to the pecking order in the Colonial Office? Does Elsegood really think that the Secretary of State for the Colonies took orders from his men on the ground?
And then, attempting to demonstrate a stark contrast – and in what he hopes is a killer blow – Elsegood claims that General Butler considered the Uitlanders to be ‘immoral’ and ‘untruthful’. Well, Butler’s antipathy towards the Uitlanders would perhaps make a little more sense had Elsegood troubled himself to relate that the General was, even by the rather ugly standards of the time, deeply anti-Semitic, ‘hilariously’ referring to Johannesburg as ‘Jewburg’.[22] That he dismissed these people as a vast cabal of scheming Jewish capitalists needs to be understood in the context that (in one of the few things Elsegood gets right), Butler was an Irish Catholic. This might seem unimportant to the modern reader, but one must understand that – until as late as 1965 – official Catholic doctrine specifically blamed the Jews for the ‘deicide’ of Jesus.[23] This only started changing in the years after the Second World War, when many felt that centuries of what was, essentially, Vatican-approved antisemitism had contributed to the horrific events of the Holocaust; the alleged ‘silence’ of Pope Pius XII[24] during the war was also roundly (if not always entirely fairly) condemned.
The quote that Elsegood pretends was a general rant against the Uitlanders was actually directed at the Jewish capitalists of the Witwatersrand: ‘When General Sir William Butler, of the Welsh Regiment, referred to Johannesburg as ‘Jewburg’, he had in mind, ‘the most corrupt, immoral and untruthful assemblage of beings at present in the world’.[25]
Of course, antisemitism was hardly an uncommon trait in those days, but Butler certainly took it to a different level, and was described as being ‘particularly scathing in his attacks. He regarded Johannesburg as a cross between Monte Carlo and Sodom and Gomorrah, and during his brief tenure as Commander-in-Chief in South Africa in 1899, he wrote that, ‘If the Jews were out of the question, it would be easy enough to come to an agreement; but they are apparently intent upon plunging the country into civil strife’.[26]
It is puzzling that this unpleasant aspect of his new-found hero’s character was completely left out of Elsegood’s sycophantic hagiography. Butler’s antipathy toward the cause of the Uitlanders was – at least in part – driven by his virulent antisemitism, and the open-minded reader will reasonably ask why Elsegood omitted this. Indeed, so determined is this effort at white-washing, that one is even left wondering if Elsegood approves of Butler’s views on the matter.
It is interesting that the perfectly valid aspirations of the Uitlanders in respect to gain a fair franchise are simply dismissed by Elsegood. His joy of walking about with the old South African flag gave a hint that he has a deep contempt for democracy, and this rather adds to that impression. As much as it pains the True Believers to admit it, Kruger’s Transvaal – the one that Elsegood so fawningly admires – had an even more restrictive franchise than the later, Apartheid-era South Africa. All the Uitlanders were requesting was for the Transvaal to adopt franchise laws similar to those in place in the rest of the region – including the Orange Free State. Hardly an unreasonable position for them to have adopted, and one which I would certainly have taken had I been in their place. Indeed, I defy any readers to claim they would have done otherwise.
Perhaps foolishly, I had hoped that humanity had moved on from the times when a self-declared ‘Chosen People’ felt entitled to deny the vote / basic rights to other groups, based entirely on their race / religion / culture, but it seems the likes of Elsegood still crave for those halcyon days.
It is interesting that, when discussing Butler’s rejection of the Uitlanders’ proposal to raise a body of light horse, Elsegood rather conveniently omits the most telling sentence Butler uttered in that meeting: ‘England is not preparing for war, even if the Transvaal is preparing’.[27] A somewhat remarkable part of the story to leave out; a cynic might even think he has an agenda. Equally entertaining is that, when it comes to writing about one of the driving forces behind this regiment, and as well as misspelling his name, Elsegood dismisses ‘Wools-Sampson’ [sic] as ‘a trigger happy Briton’. In fact, Woolls-Sampson[28] was born in the Cape Colony, and was a man of great conviction and honour, serving time in jail in the aftermath of the Jameson Raid, rather than paying a fine and accepting Kruger’s conditional pardon.[29]
Furthermore, Elsegood is peddling the fiction that noble, peace-loving Butler was taking a stand against the rapacious intent of the scheming Brits… whereas, in reality, even just a few weeks before the Boers invaded, he had ‘been informed that there was no special reason to fear immediate war and was ordered to curtail long-authorized military expenditure’.[30] That was the instruction from his political masters in London – so why, do you suppose, did Elsegood fail to mention it?
And in addition to his complete ignorance of geopolitics, Elsegood’s knowledge of military history is also very poor. Feverishly building the Boer War up as some sort of epic clash of titans – rather than, in truth, a comparatively short colonial / guerrilla war[31] – Elsegood squeals that the conflict was ‘the most brutal war for a century – between the Napoleonic era and the Great War’. Has he really never heard of, for example, the American Civil War (between 620,000 to 850,000 deaths)? Or the Franco-Prussian War (total military casualties of about 800,000, plus another 250,000 civilian deaths from disease[32])? And, of course, even these wars were as nothing in comparison to the Taiping Rebellion. Fought in China between 1850 and 1864, this massive civil war resulted in a truly mind-boggling 20-30 million deaths. It would seem that, such is his massively inflated belief in the importance of the Boer War, that the rest of the planet simply fails to feature in Elsegood’s lunatic computations.
Another part I especially liked was when Elsegood admitted that the British army only had ‘weak forces’ in theatre when the Boers attacked – quite a change from the normal shrieks of there being a vast army, ‘massing on the border’. So which is it? Can we possibly hope for some consistency from the Defenders of the Myth?
Equally, it was noteworthy that Elsegood brings Black Week (which, for some reason, he claims ran between 10-17 December[33]) into the story. In the Wacky World of Elsegood, the ‘pushing of forces into Boer territory … was a recipe for capture or annihilation and given what happened later to British generals- in Black Week… it showed that Butler had a better grasp of reality than the theorists back home’. This is a bizarre statement indeed, given that all three actions of Black Week were fought inside British territory, and took place 2 months after the Boers started the war by invading said territory.[34] Perhaps Elsegood should invest in a copy of my Boer War Atlas, so he can learn where all these places are.
Even more entertaining was that the horse racing pundit claimed the British army used Butler’s ‘defensive plans for offensive measures with disastrous consequences’– which is obviously a completely meaningless statement, and little wonder Elsegood didn’t feel capable of referencing this nonsense. Basically, we are asked to believe that, by sticking to the long-agreed defensive plan not to hold Laing’s Nek due to the paucity of troops available, the British… err… used this as an ‘offensive plan’? That has to be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read about the Boer War – and I’ve read a lot of stupid things from True Believers. If nothing else, at least it confirmed that Elsegood has zero knowledge of military matters – as if there was ever any doubt.
Indeed, Elsegood prattled on quite a lot about ‘defensive plans’, as though that was all peace-loving Butler’s idea. In reality, in the years and months before the republican invasion, all thoughts in Natal were entirely focused on how best to defend the colony from impending Boer attack – and these were developed long before Butler’s very brief appearance in the story. Even holding Natal in its entirety was a near impossibility with the paltry forces available, so the notion that the British were planning an attack on the republics from the colony (which would obviously require far more troops) is truly ridiculous:
Reports on the frontier defence of Natal had been submitted during the years 1896–7, by Major-General G. Cox, who was then holding the sub-command of that colony, and by Lieut.-General Goodenough. After a careful examination of the question whether the tunnel under Laing’s Nek, the Dundee coalfields to the south, and Van Reenen’s Pass could be protected with the troops available, General Goodenough decided that none of these could be guarded.[35]
When General Butler took over from General Goodenough, all Elsegood’s hero did was agree with his predecessor’s fears about the extreme difficulties of being able to defend Natal:
To a suggestion as to a possible occupation of Laing’s Nek, General Butler had replied that he did not think the immediate possession of that place of great importance and that its occupation by a weak force would be a dangerous operation. The regular troops in Natal had at this date been only reinforced by one more battalion, and consisted of but two cavalry regiments, one brigade division field artillery [ie. three batteries], one mountain battery, and three infantry battalions.[36]
Elsegood bleats about the additional British troops which were finally being sent to South Africa – as if belatedly mobilising troops to defend Natal and the Cape excuses Kruger’s long-planned invasion. In reality, every nation has an obligation to defend its subjects when an attack is looming and, besides, the troop numbers involved were paltry.
Even before the collapse of the Bloemfontein talks on 5 June, the government of (self-governing) Natal had been putting pressure on the governor, Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson,[37] for additional imperial protection.[38] On 8 June, in London, the Commander-in-Chief of the British army, Lord Wolseley,[39] took a similar line, and pushed his political masters for approval to mobilise an army corps, cavalry division, and supporting elements for exercises on Salisbury Plain, and for transport to be organised for such a force if it were necessary to deploy it to South Africa.[40] This, Wolseley reckoned, would be enough to dissuade Kruger from attacking. Furthermore – or so the old warhorse reasoned – if war was inevitable, then it was better it started sooner rather than later, before Kruger added yet more weaponry to his arsenal, and before the dry winter months turned to spring, and there was plentiful grazing for the Boers’ ponies.
Butler, on the other hand, was criminally oblivious to the threat of invasion. If he had had any competence whatsoever, he should have been screaming from the rooftops about the impending danger from Kruger’s Transvaal. It goes without saying that Butler, as the GOC in South Africa, was responsible for the defence of British territory and HM Subjects in the region, and yet he was either willfully blind to all the Intelligence which warned an attack was looming, or was utterly naïve. Either way, his culpability for the lack of British defensive preparations is blatant; Milner could see the threat, as could the leaders of Natal, and even, thousands of miles away in London, so could Lord Wolseley.
A commander who fails to identity, understand and respond to a blatant threat, is not a ‘man of peace’ or a ‘dove’ – he is an incompetent fool who dropped the ball, and didn’t do his job. Writing in 1901, Lieutenant-Colonel Henderson remarked that ‘it is doubtless true that, had Natal been garrisoned by 20,000 men, and Ladysmith adequately fortified’, then the British would have won the war very quickly[41] – or, more likely, the Boers would never have been foolish enough to attack.[42] Instead, Butler did basically nothing, but because he completely failed to prepare to defend against Kruger’s invasions, Elsegood wants us to believe that he was some sort of far-sighted genius. One has to wonder if Elsegood similarly admires the American commanders who ignored all the warnings in the months prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, or the Israeli Generals who failed to identify, and prepare to defend against, the 1973 invasions.
Unfortunately for all concerned, the powers-that-be in London seemed to favour Butler’s wishful thinking / head-in-the-sand approach, rather than heed the warnings from the leadership of Natal, Lord Wolseley, and Milner. Instead HM Government, in the wise words of Leo Amery,
‘were determined to do nothing that could possibly be construed as a desire to force a war upon the Transvaal, before exhausting every resource of diplomacy, and refused to mobilise an army corps or even to sanction any expenditure on preparations which they knew could not be kept secret. Militarily, and probably diplomatically, their decision was unsound. Politically it was wise. The Government had a righteous cause, and were exceedingly anxious to do nothing that could put that cause in the wrong in the eyes of moderate men, whether among English Liberals, in the British Colonies, or even among the Dutch population of Cape Colony and the Orange Free State’.[43]
As just mentioned, the absurdly small garrison prompted a demand from the Natal government (not from Milner) that reinforcements strong enough to defend the entire colony should be sent out. [44] Despite the pressure from both the Natal government and Lord Wolseley, it was not until almost two months later, on 2 August 1899, and then only reluctantly, that London finally authorised a small number of reinforcements – just 2,000 men – to be mobilised to South Africa.[45] Of these, just one battalion – the 1st Manchesters – was destined for Natal, shipping in from Gibraltar. The other battalion – the 1st Royal Munsters – was sent to the Cape. The Secretary of State for War, Lord Lansdowne,[46] rather optimistically stated these reinforcements would be sufficient to deter any Boer invasion.[47] Perhaps Elsegood can point out the ‘aggressive intent’ in all this, as it certainly escapes me.
Prior to the arrival of these paltry reinforcements, the total British garrison across the whole of southern Africa was only 9,940 officers and men. Bear in mind that this is the time when we are constantly asked to believe that there were endless legions of British troops, poised on the borders of the Boer republics. Remarkably, on 27 August, Lansdowne stated that no further reinforcements would be deployed to South Africa.[48] What is not remarkable, however, is that Elsegood left this out of his version of events.
Far from Butler being some sort of lone voice for peace, HM government – and this is the most fundamental thing to understand about the Boer War – had absolutely no intention of starting a war against the republics, no motivation for doing so, no plans in place to do so, hardly any troops in theatre to do it with, and no interest in (reluctantly) mobilising any more than a defensive force. As much at it will upset some people, one of the more damning findings of the post-war Royal Commission was that, quite simply, there was no plan in place in the event of a war with the Boer republics, let alone a scheme to invade them.[49] And far from this admission of a complete lack of preparedness being a cover-up, it was actually deeply embarrassing for the War Office and the army. As The Spectator thundered in August of 1903, the report was so damning as to be
‘surely one of the most amazing documents to which a General can ever have had to sign his name. Not only had there been no preparation for the Boer War, but there had been no preparation for any war of any kind whatever. Every arrangement that was made seems to have been made on the supposition that the British nation, even three weeks before the Boer commandos marched into Natal, was about to enjoy the blessings of eternal peace’.[50]
Though conveniently overlooked by Elsegood, by early September 1899, and with the looming Boer invasion obvious to all but the most air-headed Little Englander, Natal’s new prime minister, Colonel Hime,[51] had had enough. Hime was not prepared to ignore the blatant signs that the republics were readying themselves to invade the colony – again, things completely overlooked by Elsegood. The Natal government pointed out that, over the frontier, every preparation was being made by the Boers, that food and warlike stores in large quantities had been accumulated at Standerton, Volksrust, and Vryheid, that Natal was full of Boer spies, and that attempts were being made to incite and stir up the natives.[52] Under pressure from the Hime government, the Governor of Natal – Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, remember, not nasty, wicked bogeyman Milner – insisted that London urgently despatch reinforcements sufficient to hold Laing’s Nek and protect the whole colony from an invasion. Hely-Hutchinson sent a lengthy despatch to the Colonial Office, urging that,
In the opinion of the Ministers, such a catastrophe as the seizure of Laing’s Nek, and the destruction of the northern portion of the railway would have a most demoralising effect on the natives and the loyal Europeans in the colony, and would afford great encouragement to the Boers and their sympathisers.[53]
Alas, Sir Walter’s plea was largely fobbed off with the assurance that troops would be moved from India, but even when these additional units arrived, they would not be sufficient – in the opinion of the Commanders on the ground (the ineffectual Butler thankfully having been replaced by then) – to allow for any alteration of the existing defence plans. Laing’s Nek was still considered far too isolated to hold, due to the lack of water and the sheer vulnerability of the position, surrounded on three sides as it was by Boer territory: ‘it was felt that such a forward position would be strategically unsafe, and would impose on the troops in Natal a task beyond their powers.’[54]
Again, it is strange that none of this was mentioned by Elsegood, but perhaps you are beginning to see a pattern.
All this might come as something of a surprise for those who prefer to pretend that Britain was rushing enormous numbers of troops to the region, ready to invade the peaceful, benign and completely innocent republics. In reality, it should be noted that – for all the manufactured squeals of anguish from the Boers, and Reitz’s demands for an explanation of the ‘massing of British troops’ – up to that point, the only reinforcements which had arrived in South Africa in the three months since the failed Bloemfontein Conference were a few small elements of the Army Service Corps and Royal Engineers. Even the two battalions (1st Manchesters and 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers[55]) ordered to move in August had yet to arrive, and none of the existing garrison had been moved out of either Ladysmith or Cape Town.[56] So quite who was ‘massing’ will never be known, and it is beyond ridiculous that some people still take these claims seriously.
In London, the Cabinet met on 8 September and finally bowed to this sustained pressure from the leaders of Natal. HM government agreed on three courses of action, none of which could in any way be considered aggressive:
First of all to raise the garrison of South Africa without delay to a strength sufficient to repel any aggression on the part of the Boers and to protect the whole territory of the colonies. Secondly, to continue its efforts for peace. Thirdly, to await the effect of its despatch of September 8 before making up its mind to embark on the expensive preparations necessary for the equipment of the army corps.[57]
If Elsegood looks up from his copy of The Racing Post long enough to read any of that, he will note that – even with Kruger’s forces ready to invade – there was zero thought in London of offensive operations against the republics, and every hope of a peaceful solution to the diplomatic dispute that Kruger had caused. Indeed, there was still a reluctance to even contemplate readying Britain’s (one and only) expeditionary army corps.
Instead, and still entirely focused on defending British territory from a now inevitable invasion, orders were sent to the Viceroy of India to dispatch, with the least possible delay, a cavalry brigade, an infantry brigade, and a brigade division[58] of field artillery to Durban.[59] In the event, they would not arrive a moment too soon. It is worth noting that, as well as sailing times from Bombay to Durban being a week less than from Great Britain, the main reason it was decided to move troops from India was that the battalions stationed there were held at full strength. In contrast, the understrength shells of those retained in the motherland would have to have been brought up to full strength by calling up reserves[60] – and, even at this late stage, there was still no desire to do this. Yes: you read that correctly – even with Kruger’s invasion looming, the British army was still not authorised to bring her home-based battalions up to strength; until this was done, they were essentially un-deployable.
The various contingents of reinforcements ordered to sail on 8 September totalled some 10,000 men. This, the Cabinet had been advised, would raise the garrison to a level which would make the British territories in southern Africa safe from Boer aggression, so that negotiations could continue.[61] Do please take a moment to let that line sink in: make the British territories in southern Africa safe from Boer aggression, so that negotiations could continue. How strange that Elsegood neglected to mention this inconvenient reality.
The notion – feverishly peddled by Elsegood and various other idiots today – that this level of reinforcement was in any way an aggressive move is utter nonsense; in the event of war with the republics, the War Office Intelligence Department reckoned London would need to field 200,000 men in South Africa to force a victory.[62] The reinforcements which were redeployed in September 1899 only brought the garrison up to about a tenth of that number – and they would take a long time to get there.
Even when they arrived, and as we have seen, holding Laing’s Nek was still completely out of the question. But under severe pressure from Hely-Hutchinson to resist the pending invasion of Natal, the best the army could do was attempt to defend the coalfields at Dundee. Thus – on the 25 September 1899 – troops finally started moving north from Ladysmith to try and hold Glencoe and Dundee. They would not even be in position before Kruger invaded (the fourth and final battalion, the 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers, would only arrive in Dundee on 15 October[63]). Worse still, with such small numbers of troops available, the splitting of the diminutive Natal garrison was a serious error.
Far from Elsegood’s fantasy of only Butler being able to see such things, this dispersed deployment was completely at odds with accepted military doctrine, which advocates the concentration of forces. Though Elsegood surreally and inanely bleats about ‘using defensive plans for offense’, the newly-arrived GOC Natal, Sir George White, actually determined,
to withdraw the Glencoe detachment and assemble the whole at Ladysmith … The Governor [Hely-Hutchinson], on being informed of this intention, remonstrated against the withdrawal from Glencoe in terms which are thus recorded in his subsequent report of the interview to the Secretary of State for the Colonies: ‘Now that we were there, withdrawal would, in my opinion, involve grave political results, loyalists would be disgusted and discouraged; the results as regards the Dutch would be grave, many, if not most, would very likely rise, believing us to be afraid, and the evil might very likely spread to the Dutch in Cape Colony; and the effect on our natives, of whom there were 750,000 in Natal and Zululand, might be disastrous. They as yet believe in our power – they look to us – but if we withdraw from Glencoe they will look on it in the light of a defeat, and I could not answer for what they, or at all events a large proportion of them, might do.’[64]
Alas – and as has happened so often throughout history – HM Government’s wishful-thinking, naïvety, dithering, and penny-pinching had left the British army on a very sticky wicket.
So no, Butler – with his open contempt for Judaism and incompetent inability to grasp the threat from Kruger’s Transvaal – was not some latter-day, peace-loving saint, defiantly standing up to the make-believe ‘war-mongering dreams’ of Milner and the dastardly HM Government. Ineptitude and indecisiveness (by Butler and others) had left the British colonies dangerously exposed, and, as we have seen, London was in no way interested in starting a war; Milner had no power to start one even if he’d wanted to; and what little thought there was of bolstering troop numbers in South Africa, was entirely defensive in nature, and done both begrudgingly and belatedly. As much as it pains Elsegood and all the other devotees of National Party propaganda, Kruger – motivated by his ridiculous delusions of grandeur and fantasies of the Almighty smiting the British with a few well-placed thunderbolts – was to blame for the Boer War. Not Milner.
I accept that this might come as a surprise to someone who really only knows about horse racing, but the nation which plans their aggression for years, mobilises first, declares war, and then invades their neighbour, is – surprise, surprise – generally regarded as being responsible for the conflict they start. It still baffles me why this simple reality is so hard for some to grasp.
NOTES:
[1] It should come as no surprise that Elsegood appears to have a deep hatred of using references. When I ripped apart an early piece of his nonsense, he claimed that he would respond… but proudly announced to the world that he wouldn’t be ‘using 58 references when he did so’. Bizarrely, this buffoon seems to think that using a lot of references in an article is actually a negative – but – unsurprisingly, he was too cowardly to respond in any case.
Here’s the link: https://www.chrisash.co.za/2020/04/19/bloemfontein-conference-a-determined-path-to-war/
[2] Cook, The Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal War, p.92
[3] Amery, The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.1, p.301
[4] Farrelly, The Settlement After the War, p.173
[5] Cook, The Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal War, p.95
[6] War Office, Military Notes on the Dutch Republics of South Africa, p.52
[7] writing in the Times Literary Supplement, one of Pakenham’s reviewers, Roland Oliver, pointed out the problem with this myopia: ‘if Milner is placed centre-stage, it follows that Kruger, Steyn [president of the Orange Free State] and Smuts will get off lightly and that the Afrikaners of the Cape Province will hardly score a mention’. Another reviewer remarked that Pakenham’s chapter on ‘Preparing for a Small War’ is ‘all about the British, Milner at the Cape, Lansdowne, Wyndham and Wolseley at the War Office, Chamberlain at the Colonial Office, as if Kruger purchased no Mausers, did not issue an ultimatum, nor send the commandos forth into the Cape and Natal’. Worse still, as another reviewer noted, was that ‘While his survey of the sources is impressive, Pakenham is not above creating details when they are unavailable’.
[8] Roberts, Salisbury – Victorian Titan, p.732
[9] Headlam, The Milner Papers, p.43
[10] Headlam, The Milner Papers, p.51
[11] Headlam, The Milner Papers, p.73
[12] Headlam, The Milner Papers, p.41
[13] Headlam, The Milner Papers, p.51
[14] Headlam, The Milner Papers, p.103
[15] Marlowe, Milner: Apostle of Empire, p. 47
[16] Marlowe, Milner: Apostle of Empire, p. 47
[17] Marlowe, Milner: Apostle of Empire, p. 47
[18] Sir William Conyngham Greene KCB, GCMG, PC (1854–1934) was the British agent in Pretoria at the time, and was a long-serving diplomat and later British ambassador to Japan. His attempts to reach an agreement with the Kruger government were frustrated by the endless chicanery and duplicity of Kruger’s gaggle, so much so that an exasperated Conyngham Greene declared his efforts at diplomacy to have been ‘reduced to a regular kaffir bargain’. Though we are always told to believe Kruger was desperate to make concessions, and had no interest in war, one well-placed observer noted the slippery and dishonest way the Transvaal went about their business: ‘Sir Conyngham Greene’s diplomatic experience in civilized lands, such as Holland and Greece—and Persia—had misled him as to what he was reasonably justified in expecting. A veneer of European civilization is at times disconcerting.’
[19] Marlowe, Milner: Apostle of Empire, pp.47-48
[20] Cook, The Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal War, p.123
[21] Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914), made his money as a manufacturer of screws in Birmingham, and went on to serve as the city’s mayor. Although never prime minister, Chamberlain was one of the most important British statesmen of the late Victorian / Edwardian era. Initially, a radical Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist, then a leading imperialist in coalition with the Conservatives. His son, Neville, served as PM in the years prior to WW2, and was famous (infamous?) for his policy of appeasement.
[22] Judd & Surridge, The Boer War, p.243
[23] The 1965 ‘Nostra Aetate’, or the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions, was an official declaration of the Second Vatican Council, promulgated on 28 October 1965 by Pope Paul VI. It was ‘the first in Catholic history to focus on the relationship that Catholics have with Jews’; the inflammatory word ‘deicide’ was dropped, in favour of the statement ‘what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today’. For the first time, it was noted that the Church ‘decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone’.
[24] Pope Pius XII (1876-1958), born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, he was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City from 2 March 1939 until his death on 9 October 1958.
[25] Posel, Darker Share of Pale: From Shtetl to Colony, p.65
[26] Judd & Surridge, The Boer War, p.243
[27] Gibson, The Story of the Imperial Light Horse in the South African War, p.17
[28] Later, Colonel Sir Aubrey Woolls-Sampson (1856–1924). Born in the Cape Colony as plain old Aubrey Sampson, he later added his mother’s maiden name to become Woolls-Sampson, though was also known by the delightfully non-woke nickname of ‘Sambo’. Fluent in English, Dutch, and Zulu from an early age, he was adept at field craft and moved to the Transvaal where he worked as a goldminer and big-game hunter. Woolls-Sampson served, and was wounded in, the First Boer War before exploring in Rhodesia and beyond. Finding himself in Johannesburg prior to the Jameson Raid, Woolls-Sampson naturally joined the Reformers and was held in a Transvaal gaol for 15 months as a result. He went on to help raise the Imperial Light Horse, and then to serve as a highly effective and much-feared intelligence officer throughout the Boer War.
[29] Farrelly, The Settlement After the War, p.164
[30] Walker, A History of Southern Africa, p.478
[31] As much as True Believers love to tell one another it was the longest, toughest war in history, the fact is that the guerrilla phase of the Boer War lasted just 2 years – compared to a 20th Century average for such conflicts of 9 years
[32] Yes, folks: you read it here first – large numbers of civilians died of disease during wars of that period… the Boer War was not unique in this regard, no matter how desperately some pretend it was
[33] In reality, Stormberg was fought on 10 December, Magersfontein the following day, and then Colenso on 15 December 1899
[34] It is barely ever mentioned, but well worth noting, that the British defeats of Black Week were very much against ‘the run of play’ – in the weeks prior to Black Week, the invading Boers had been defeated at Talana Hill, Elandslaagte, Belmont, Graspan and Modder River. Additionally, their attempt to storm Ladysmith on 9th November had been driven off. Willow Grange could be considered a draw tactically, but was a British strategic victory, as it ended the Boer drive towards Durban. Indeed, the only significant republican victory prior to Black Week had been at Nicholson’s Nek.
[35] Maurice, History of the War in South Africa, Vol.1, p.44
[36] Maurice, History of the War in South Africa, Vol.1, p.45
[37] Maurice, Life Of General Lord Rawlinson Of Trent, p.44
[38] Amery, The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.1, p.103
[39] Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley (1833 – 1913)
[40] Amery, The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.2, p.98
[41] Sternberg & Henderson, p.viii
[42] It is certainly true that, had the republics caught wind of significant reinforcements being shipped in, this might have accelerated their invasion plans. However, this could have been done over the winter, before the all-important grass was ready to sustain the horses of the invading Boers. One should also bear in mind the significant resistance to attacking the British Empire from more intelligent elements of the Orange Free State government, and the time needed to muster and deploy the Commandos – Kruger could not simply order an invasion at a moment’s notice.
[43] Amery, The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.2, pp.99–100
[44] Amery, The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.1, p.103
[45] Maurice, History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.1, p.1
[46] Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne, KG, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, PC (1845–1927). A Liberal, turned Liberal-Unionist, turned Conservative, Lansdowne held a string of high-level positions in HM Government at the height of the colonial period, including Governor of Canada, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, and – at the time of the start of the Boer War – Secretary of State for War. He would go on to be Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, then Leader of the House of Lords
[47] Cd.1789, p.17
[48] National Archives of South Africa (Pretoria), microfilm M. 1726 (Cab. 37/50): Lansdowne – Wolseley, 27 August 1899 (letter)
[49] Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commission on the War in South Africa, Vol.1, p.429
[50] Spectator, 29 August 1903
[51] Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Albert Henry Hime, KCMG, PC (1842–1919), an ex-Royal Engineer who moved to Natal and became the premier in June 1899. The village of Himeville in the foothills of the Drakensberg is named after him
[52] Amery, The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.1, pp.103–4
[53] Maurice, History of the War in South Africa, Vol.1, p.45
[54] Maurice, History of the War in South Africa, Vol.1, p.46
[55] The 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers was the only battalion of reinforcements to be shipped to South Africa from the United Kingdom before the general mobilisation following the Boer invasions. As one of the five infantry regiments that recruited in the south of Ireland, the Munsters were disbanded in 1922 with the establishment of the independent Irish Free State.
[56] Amery, The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.1, p.104
[57] Amery, The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.1, p.105
[58] This term has since fallen out of use, but meant a unit of three batteries (or two of RHA).
[59] Maurice, History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.1, p.2
[60] Amery, The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.1, p.105
[61] Amery, The Times History of the War in South Africa, 1899–1902, Vol.1, p.105
[62] Churchill, My Early Life, p.228
[63] Maurice, History of the War in South Africa, Vol.1, p.456
[64] Maurice, History of the War in South Africa, Vol.1, p.47
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