orders of the Governments exactly coincided with my
desires.

Lest any one should think that the Transvaalers and the Free-Staters
separated here on account of a squabble, or because they found that they
could not work harmoniously together, let me state that this decision
was arrived at for purely strategic reasons. We had now been reduced to
a third of the original number of forty-five thousand burghers with
which we had started the campaign. This reduction was due partly to
Cronje's surrender, and partly to the fact that many of our men had
returned to their farms. How, then, could we think of making a stand,
with our tiny forces, against two hundred and forty thousand men, with
three or four hundred guns? All we could do was to make the best of
every little chance we got of hampering the enemy. If fortune should
desert us, it only remained to flee.

To flee--what could be more bitter than that? Ah! many a time when I was
forced to yield to the enemy, I felt so degraded that I could scarcely
look a child in the face! Did I call myself a man? I asked myself, and
if so, why did I run away? No one can guess the horror which overcame
me when I had to retreat, or to order others to do so--there! I have
poured out my whole soul. If I did fly, it was only because one man
cannot stand against twelve.

After the Transvaalers had crossed the Vaal River, I took twelve hundred
men to Heilbron, where there was already a party of my burghers. General
Roux with other Free-Staters was stationed east of Senekal, and the
remainder of our forces lay near Lindley. But the commandos from Vrede
and Harrismith, with part of the Bethlehem commando, still remained as
watchers on the Drakensberg.

When I arrived at Heilbron, late at night, I received a report that
fighting was taking place on the Rhenoster River, between Heilbron and
Lindley, and that General J.B. Wessels and Commandant Steenekamp had
been driven back. But on the following morning, when the outposts came
in, they stated that they had seen nothing of this engagement. I
immediately sent out scouts, but hardly had they gone, before one of
them came galloping back with the news that the enemy had approached
quite close to the town. It was impossible for me to oppose a force of
five or six thousand men on the open plain; and I could not move to
suitable positions, for that would involve having the women and children
behind me when the enemy were bombarding me. I had therefore