ommando, had broken back in the
middle of February and Louis Botha had got away at the same time, but so
successful were his main operations that French was able to report
his total results at the end of the month as being 292 Boers killed or
wounded, 500 surrendered, 3 guns and one maxim taken, with 600 rifles,
4000 horses, 4500 trek oxen, 1300 wagons and carts, 24,000 cattle, and
165,000 sheep. The whole vast expanse of the eastern veld was dotted
with the broken and charred wagons of the enemy.

Tremendous rains were falling and the country was one huge quagmire,
which crippled although it did not entirely prevent the further
operations. All the columns continued to report captures. On March 3rd
Dartnell got a maxim and 50 prisoners, while French reported 50 more,
and Smith-Dorrien 80. On March 6th French captured two more guns, and
on the 14th he reported 46 more Boer casualties and 146 surrenders, with
500 more wagons, and another great haul of sheep and oxen. By the end
of March French had moved as far south as Vryheid, his troops having
endured the greatest hardships from the continual heavy rains, and
the difficulty of bringing up any supplies. On the 27th he reported
seventeen more Boer casualties and 140 surrenders, while on the last
day of the month he took another gun and two pom-poms. The enemy at that
date were still retiring eastward, with Alderson and Dartnell pressing
upon their rear. On April 4th French announced the capture of the last
piece of artillery which the enemy possessed in that region. The rest
of the Boer forces doubled back at night between the columns and escaped
over the Zululand border, where 200 of them surrendered. The total
trophies of French's drive down the Eastern Transvaal amounted to eleven
hundred of the enemy killed, wounded, or taken, the largest number in
any operation since the surrender of Prinsloo. There is no doubt that
the movement would have been even more successful had the weather been
less boisterous, but this considerable loss of men, together with the
capture of all the guns in that region, and of such enormous quantities
of wagons, munitions, and stock, inflicted a blow upon the Boers from
which they never wholly recovered. On April 20th French was back in
Johannesburg once more.

While French had run to earth the last Boer gun in the south-eastern
corner of the Transvaal, De la Rey, upon the western side, had still
managed to preserve a considerable artillery w