Episode 88 - Reitz chases Mustangs on the plains and Jan Smuts becomes pessimistic

Its the end of May and the guerrilla war has turned nasty as the coldest winter of living memory has started - bringing gusts of freezing wind which whipped through the Concentration Camps with their exposed bell tents a threadbare protection for the women and children. Also chilled to the bone was Deneys Reitz and his four German comrades who were riding south from the western Transvaal, heading for the Vaal River. Their plan was to cross in the Free State, then continue the four hundred kilometres further southwards in order to invade the Cape Colony. As we heard last week, the entire plan had a Quixotic flavour with Reitz the canny veld-wise Boer and his friends - two students, a businessman and a farm hand. It was the farm hand , Heinrich Wiese who had the first major problem. After the little group had bungled an attempt at capturing a spy the previous day, they set off before first light towards the Vaal River. The country-side was alive with British troops moving about on one of their drives ordered by commander in chief Lord Kitchener. They were burning farms and rolling up the Boer citizens forcing them into the internment camps. General Louis Botha, in command of the Boers in the Transvaal, was growing more concerned by the misery these people were suffering. His own private view now was that the Boers could not win, but he would carry on fighting based on his honour code. But he reached out to Lord Kitchener as we heard in podcast 86, asking for permission to send emissaries to Paul Kruger in Holland. Kitchener was also keen on ending the guerrilla war as fast as possible. The costs continue to rise, he now had almost a quarter of a million men in South Africa and the war that was supposed to last one to three months had now stretched to nineteen. While Free State President Steyn had sent a withering reply to Botha and Jan Smuts suggestion that a cease fire be negotiated, the Transvaal leadership stubbornly persisted in their plan and if an emissary was not permitted, they’d send messages.