In a single week, at a time when the back of the war had seemed to be broken, we had lost nearly twelve hundred men with seven guns.  The men of the Free State—­for the fighting was mainly done by commandos from the Ladybrand, Winburg, Bethlehem, and Harrismith districts—­deserve great credit for this fine effort, and their leader De Wet confirmed the reputation which he had already gained as a dashing and indefatigable leader.  His force was so weak that when Lord Roberts was able to really direct his own against it, he brushed it away before him; but the manner in which De Wet took advantage of Roberts’s enforced immobility, and dared to get behind so mighty an enemy, was a fine exhibition of courage and enterprise.  The public at home chafed at this sudden and unexpected turn of affairs; but the General, constant to his own fixed purpose, did not permit his strength to be wasted, and his cavalry to be again disorganised, by flying excursions, but waited grimly until he should be strong enough to strike straight at Pretoria.

In this short period of depression there came one gleam of light from the west.  This was the capture of a commando of sixty Boers, or rather of sixty foreigners fighting for the Boers, and the death of the gallant Frenchman, De Villebois-Mareuil, who appears to have had the ambition of playing Lafayette in South Africa to Kruger’s Washington.  From the time that Kimberley had been reoccupied the British had been accumulating their force there so as to make a strong movement which should coincide with that of Roberts from Bloemfontein.  Hunter’s Division from Natal was being moved round to Kimberley, and Methuen already commanded a considerable body of troops, which included a number of the newly arrived Imperial Yeomanry.  With these Methuen pacified the surrounding country, and extended his outposts to Barkly West on the one side, to Boshof on the other, and to Warrenton upon the Vaal River in the centre.  On April 4th news reached Boshof that a Boer commando had been seen some ten miles to the east of the town, and a force, consisting of Yeomanry, Kimberley Light Horse, and half of Butcher’s veteran 4th battery, was sent to attack them.  They were found to have taken up their position upon a kopje which, contrary to all Boer custom, had no other kopjes to support it.  French generalship was certainly not so astute as Boer cunning.  The kopje was instantly surrounded, and the small force upon the summit being without artillery in the face of our guns found itself in exactly the same position which our men had been in twenty-four hours before at Reddersberg.  Again was shown the advantage which the mounted rifleman has over the cavalry, for the Yeomanry and Light Horsemen left their horses and ascended the hill with the bayonet.  In three hours all was over and the Boers had laid down their arms.  Villebois was shot with seven of his companions, and there were nearly sixty prisoners.  It speaks well for the skirmishing of the Yeomanry