The Boer Position Could Only Be Taken By Outflanking It,
And We Were Not Numerous Enough Nor Mobile Enough To Outflank It.
There Lay The Whole Secret Of Our Troubles, And No Conjectures As
To What Might Under Other Circumstances Have Happened Can Alter It.
About half-past five the Boer guns, which had for some unexplained
reason been silent all day, opened upon the cavalry.
Their
appearance was a signal for the general falling back of the centre,
and the last attempt to retrieve the day was abandoned. The
Highlanders were dead-beat; the Coldstreams had had enough; the
mounted infantry was badly mauled. There remained the Grenadiers,
the Scots Guards, and two or three line regiments who were
available for a new attack. There are occasions, such as Sadowa,
where a General must play his last card. There are others where
with reinforcements in his rear, he can do better by saving his
force and trying once again. General Grant had an axiom that the
best time for an advance was when you were utterly exhausted, for
that was the moment when your enemy was probably utterly exhausted
too, and of two such forces the attacker has the moral advantage.
Lord Methuen determined - and no doubt wisely - that it was no
occasion for counsels of desperation. His men were withdrawn - in
some cases withdrew themselves - outside the range of the Boer guns,
and next morning saw the whole force with bitter and humiliated
hearts on their way back to their camp at Modder River.
The repulse of Magersfontein cost the British nearly a thousand
men, killed, wounded, and missing, of which over seven hundred
belonged to the Highlanders. Fifty-seven officers had fallen in
that brigade alone, including their Brigadier and Colonel Downman
of the Gordons. Colonel Codrington of the Coldstreams was wounded
early, fought through the action, and came back in the evening on a
Maxim gun. Lord Winchester of the same battalion was killed, after
injudiciously but heroically exposing himself all day. The Black
Watch alone had lost nineteen officers and over three hundred men
killed and wounded, a catastrophe which can only be matched in all
the bloody and glorious annals of that splendid regiment by their
slaughter at Ticonderoga in 1757, when no fewer than five hundred
fell before Montcalm's muskets. Never has Scotland had a more
grievous day than this of Magersfontein. She has always given her
best blood with lavish generosity for the Empire, but it may be
doubted if any single battle has ever put so many families of high
and low into mourning from the Tweed to the Caithness shore. There
is a legend that when sorrow comes upon Scotland the old Edinburgh
Castle is lit by ghostly lights and gleams white at every window in
the mirk of midnight. If ever the watcher could have seen so
sinister a sight, it should have been on this, the fatal night of
December 11, 1899. As to the Boer loss it is impossible to
determine it. Their official returns stated it to be seventy killed
and two hundred and fifty wounded, but the reports of prisoners and
deserters placed it at a very much higher figure. One unit, the
Scandinavian corps, was placed in an advanced position at
Spytfontein, and was overwhelmed by the Seaforths, who killed,
wounded, or took the eighty men of whom it was composed. The
stories of prisoners and of deserters all speak of losses very much
higher than those which have been officially acknowledged.
In his comments upon the battle next day Lord Methuen was said to
have given offence to the Highland Brigade, and the report was
allowed to go uncontradicted until it became generally accepted. It
arose, however, from a complete misunderstanding of the purport of
Lord Methuen's remarks, in which he praised them, as he well might,
for their bravery, and condoled with them over the wreck of their
splendid regiments. The way in which officers and men hung on under
conditions to which no troops have ever been exposed was worthy of
the highest traditions of the British army. From the death of
Wauchope in the early morning, until the assumption of the command
of the brigade by Hughes-Hallett in the late afternoon, no one
seems to have taken the direction. 'My lieutenant was wounded and
my captain was killed,' says a private. 'The General was dead, but
we stayed where we were, for there was no order to retire.' That
was the story of the whole brigade, until the flanking movement of
the Boers compelled them to fall back.
The most striking lesson of the engagement is the extreme
bloodiness of modern warfare under some conditions, and its
bloodlessness under others. Here, out of a total of something under
a thousand casualties seven hundred were incurred in about five
minutes, and the whole day of shell, machine-gun, and rifle fire
only furnished the odd three hundred. So also at Ladysmith the
British forces (White's column) were under heavy fire from 5.30 to
11.30, and the loss again was something under three hundred. With
conservative generalship the losses of the battles of the future
will be much less than those of the past, and as a consequence the
battles themselves will last much longer, and it will be the most
enduring rather than the most fiery which will win. The supply of
food and water to the combatants will become of extreme importance
to keep them up during the prolonged trials of endurance, which
will last for weeks rather than days. On the other hand, when a
General's force is badly compromised, it will be so punished that a
quick surrender will be the only alternative to annihilation.
On the subject of the quarter-column formation which proved so
fatal to us, it must be remembered that any other form of advance
is hardly possible during a night attack, though at Tel-el-Kebir
the exceptional circumstance of the march being over an open desert
allowed the troops to move for the last mile or two in a more
extended formation.
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