ng to be done. I believe General Botha
intended to concentrate the troops round Pretoria, and there offer
some sort of resistance to the triumphant forces of the enemy, and we
had all understood that the capital would be defended to the last; but
this communication altered the position considerably. Shortly
afterwards all the Boer officers met at Irene Estate, near Pretoria,
in a council of war, and were there informed that the Government had
already forsaken the town, leaving a few "feather-bed patriots" to
formally surrender the town to the English.

I thought this decision of easy surrender ridiculous and
inexplicable, and many officers joined me in loud condemnation of it.
I do not remember exactly all that happened at the time, but I know a
telegram arrived from the Commandant-General saying that a crowd had
broken open the Commissariat Buildings in Pretoria and were looting
them. An adjutant was sent into Pretoria to spread an alarm that the
English were entering the town, and this had the effect of driving all
the looters out of it. Some of my own men were engaged in these
predatory operations, and I did not see them again until three days
after.

The English approached Pretoria very cautiously, and directed some big
naval guns on our forts built round the town, to which we replied for
some time with our guns from the "randten," south-west of the town;
but our officers were unable to offer any organised resistance, and
thus on the 5th of June, 1900, the capital of the South African
Republic fell with little ado into the enemy's hands. Bloemfontein,
the capital of the Orange Free State, had months before suffered the
same fate, and thousands of Free Staters had surrendered to the
English as they marched from Bloemfontein to the Transvaal. Happily,
however, in the Free State President Steyn and General De Wet were
still wide awake and Lord Roberts very soon discovered that his long
lines of communication were a source of great trouble and anxiety to
him. The commandos, meanwhile, were reorganised; the buried Mausers
and ammunition were once more resurrected, and soon it became clear
that the Orange Free State was far from conquered.

The fall of Pretoria, indeed, was but a sham victory for the enemy. A
number of officials of the Government remained behind there and
surrendered, together with a number of burghers, amongst these
faint-hearted brethren being even members of the Volksraad and men who
had played a p