Note Back to Main Text — Chapter VII

Joubert quitted Zandspruit on the 12th October, and was at Volksrust in the evening, with the forces of Generals Kock and Lukas Meyer thrown widely forward on his right and left flanks respectively. Kock, coming through Botha's Pass with his motley foreign levies,[89] halted for the night at the mouth of the defile, whilst the units of the left horn of the invading crescent, reinforced this day by the commandos of Middelburg and Wakkerstroom, lay under Meyer some forty miles eastward, some in Utrecht, some in Vryheid, and some already at the concentration point, the Doornberg. On the 13th, whilst the wings remained quiescent, Joubert, with the main column, occupied Laing's Nek, having first, either by an excess of precaution, or from a fear lest the gap between him and Meyer were too great, made good that formidable obstacle by a turning movement around the left and over the Buffalo at Wools Drift; this was executed by his advance guard (Pretoria, Boksburg, part of Heidelberg, Standerton, Ermelo) under Erasmus. But though a coal-truck drawn by cables through the long tunnel, which penetrated the Nek, proved it to be neither blocked nor mined, this stroke of fortune rather increased than allayed the caution of the Boer General, to whom, grown old in Native wars, nothing appeared more suspicious than an unimpeded advance against an enemy. On the 14th he was still on the Nek, whilst Erasmus moved timidly on Newcastle, and Kock, who remained on the Ingagane, despatched a reconnoitring party of the German Corps along the Drakensberg, to gain touch with Trüter's Free Staters at Müller's Pass. This patrol, riding back next day, found Newcastle occupied by the commandos of Erasmus. The little town was almost empty of inhabitants, and the burghers wrought havoc amongst the deserted shops and houses. Not all the remonstrances of their officers, nor the general order from Headquarters, nor even the heavy wrath of their Commandant-General, who arrived in the town on the 18th, could stop their ruthless plundering, and by nightfall the township was a scene of sordid devastation.