Change of Generals

H. W. Wilson
With the Flag to Pretoria: A History of the Boer War, 1899-1900
Harmsworth Brothers, London, 1901.

Lord Roberts' Military Career.
The new commander- in-chief, Field-Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar, was in his sixty-eighth year, yet, despite his age, he had retained the vigour and energy of youth. Nineteen years before, in 1881, he had gone out to South Africa to avenge Majuba, and had been recalled when Mr. Gladstone changed his mind and decided to make a humiliating compromise with the Boers. Now he was to achieve the work which then Fortune had withheld from him. No soldier was more beloved and venerated by the nation, to which his name had long been a household word. The feeling of admiration and respect for him was strengthened by the thought that he went forth fresh from the bereavement caused by the loss of his only son, the gallant and devoted Lieutenant Roberts, who had laid down his young life in the desperate attempt to save the guns at Colenso. In sacrificing his private sorrow at the public call, the Field-Marshal set a heroic example of resignation under affliction. If he was popular in the best sense with the nation, he was adored by the Army, which knew him for an officer of the most remarkable personal courage, strategic insight, and equability. In the Indian Mutiny he had won that highest distinction our Army can give-the Victoria Cross-by attacking two Sepoys and capturing from them a standard. His serenity of temper and self-restraint were extraordinary. When at Poplar Grove he saw his whole plan or the capture of the Boer army deranged by the hesitation of a subordinate, though other great leaders would have stormed with rage, he uttered not a complaint or a reproach. Closing his field glass, he rode off in silence. As a leader of men, his sympathetic Irish temperament enabled him always to win the enthusiasm of his troops. They would have followed him anywhere. A few words from him at once raised the courage of the shattered and decimated Highland Brigade and restored to it the spirit which had marked it before Magersfontein. A telegram in his magic style cheered Mafeking in its sore distress and raised the spirit of its garrison to elation; his praise supported his noble army through the trials of the weary march to Bloemfontein; a speech from him renewed the flagging energy of thirsty, famished men. His exquisite tact smoothed the ruffled Colonials, who had, in the earlier stages of the war and by other commanders, been studiously disregarded and snubbed.

Small in stature as great in mind, he was known among his men by one of those affectionate nicknames which testify to a commander's popularity with his soldiers. just as Marlborough was christened by his troops "Corporal John," just as Napoleon was to his men "the little Corporal," so Lord Roberts was "Bobs" to his followers.

		FIELD-MARSHAL LORD ROBERTS OF KANDAHAR AND WATERFORD, V.C., K.P., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E. This portrait, perhaps better than any other of the many which exist, brings before one the true character of this great soldier. There is no fencing with the steady, penetrating, and yet not unkindly gaze of the eyes. The whole face speaks of that perfectly-balanced combination of justice and mercy, vigour and refinement, inflexibility and consummate tact, which have made Lord Roberts equally loved and feared. "His army," says Mr. Julian Ralph with absolute truthfulness, "will do anything for him; march longer, starve harder, go without tents, blankets, and rum more days and weeks, and die in greater numbers for him than for any other man alive."
Photo by the London Stereoscopic Co.

In his character was that strength which simple faith and reliance upon a Higher Power gives to the greatest among men. "Pray as if everything depended upon God, act as if everything rested with yourself" -- the motto of the saint -- was, it may be, one secret of his success. "He has never been known to use an oath," writes Mr. Ralph in his exquisite sketch of this noble figure. "And, indeed, there must be comparatively few men whose religion influences them so deeply as does his in every affair of life. He never parades his piety, never forces it upon those around him. Yet on every Sunday since he joined his army he has attended Divine service. Not a word has he ever spoken to his staff suggesting or ordering their presence-yet he is certain to attend the weekly service-an example to the army so modestly and so persistently presented that it cannot help but be powerful. When he took the sacrament at Driefontein, the other day, in the face, one might say, of the whole army, it was without a hint of the parading of religion. All saw in it an act of simple faith. It is almost as hard to reconcile his gentleness and sympathy with the firm-sometimes stern-course which a general so supreme in command, and at the head of so large an army, must often have to follow. I have asked many of his friends how he can be both sorts of men at once-how he can possess traits which we imagine must war with one another. "He does possess them, that's all," is the best answer I have had; "I don't know how, but he does."

As with Lord Nelson, to look upon him was to love him. "I have known many great faces, but that of Lord Roberts is a face apart. I fancy that, in the minds of their worshippers, some of the soberer gods of the old mythologies had faces like his," wrote Mr. Ralph. And the face portrayed the man, at once stern and gentle, noble and humble, patient with the vast patience of one who knows men and their petty failings, steadfast and strong.

For the command in South Africa Lord Roberts had many peculiar qualifications. He was no stranger to the art of making war against a brave, half-civilised enemy in difficult and mountainous country. If in the Abyssinian War of 1868 he had seen nothing worth the name of serious war, he had in the little wars with the hill tribes on the Indian frontier, and especially in the second Afghan war, gained valuable experience. In many ways the Afghans resembled the Boers. Both peoples were soldiers by instinct and expert shots, with a talent for taking cover. The Afghans in the war of 1877-8, the Boers in the struggle of 1899-1900, were both for the first time acting in masses with the help of artillery. Both could rely upon the great distance to be traversed by the British troops and the comparative barrenness of their country which yielded scanty supplies of food and forage, as their best auxiliaries. But of the two races the Boers were incomparably the more formidable enemies.

Lord Roberts' generalship in the Afghan War had been of a very high order. In command of the Kuram column he distinguished himself early in 1879, so that in the autumn of that year he was appointed to lead the army which was to avenge the murder of the British Resident at Cabul. On October 1st his real advance began. It was made with startling rapidity, and on the 13th he marched through the streets of Cabul. Here his small army had to pause, as in March and April, 1900 the British Army had to halt at Bloemfontein, and the enemy rallied, inflicting more than one minor reverse upon his troops. But it was his great march from Cabul to Kandahar, in the summer of 1880, which best illustrated his judgment and daring. Cutting loose from his base, living on the land as General Sherman had done in the famous march to the sea, he led his little column, 10,000 strong, on August 8th, out of his camp at Cabul. On the 31st he entered Kandahar, having covered in the twenty-three days 320 miles, and this in sweltering heat. So rapid were his movements that he everywhere forestalled his enemies and met with no opposition on the march.

Not only was Lord Roberts great in war; in the quiet times of peace he strove earnestly for military reform. He especially distinguished himself during his Indian and Irish commands by the emphasis which he placed upon good shooting and the development of the soldier's intelligence. He did not want his men to be the soulless automata of the eighteenth-century barrack square. It is admitted by all, that under him the Indian Army was raised to a pitch of efficiency which it had never possessed before, and which, perhaps, has not marked it since. Some who did not know him may have feared that here was another reputation, won in savage or barbarous warfare, going to be lost in that land where the fair fame of so many had suffered swift eclipse. They may have asked themselves, if he failed with Lord Kitchener, who was left. Yet those who knew him and had served under him felt no such concern. To them his success was certain.