"For the empire of all empires, For a map that grows in breadth."
(By Birthright Rudyard Kipling)
Last time illustrations from the magazine "Niva" for 1899 - 1900. the history of the Anglo-Transvaal War was by no means over, as it continued in 1901 and 1902. However, the number of photographs in the magazine in 1901 decreased significantly. However, the war itself took on a different character. After the surrender of the Cronje army, the Boers were demoralized. Their commandos just went home. And while they were undergoing rehabilitation there, the British managed to occupy most of their country, and they had to switch to guerrilla tactics.
Horse attack of the Boers. Rice. from the magazine "Niva". Another favorite drawing from my childhood, redrawn many times depending on the need. Louis Boussinard, who described the first attack of the Skins, did not sin against the truth: the Boers and foreign volunteers, as a rule, had neither pikes nor sabers and therefore attacked the British, firing at them from their rifles at a gallop.
All "progressive humanity", in modern terms, condemned the British, but there was little sense in this condemnation. "Coal stations" all over the world, the impregnable fortress of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, controlled by the British, an armada of battleships - all this made England invulnerable to criticism, like an elephant does not notice a pellet.
The war with the Boers led to the use of many types of weapons that were new for that time, and, in particular, not only the Maxim machine guns, but also 37-mm automatic cannons of the design of the same Hiram Maxim. However, not only the war. From the magazine "Niva" I once learned that an electric kettle, for example, went on sale back in 1901, and a household vacuum cleaner … in 1908, and not somewhere in England, but here in Russia …
And here is Maxim's cannon with a punctured cooling jacket. Such damage to this system was fatal. Water flowed out, the barrel overheated, and shooting became impossible.
At the same time, Lieutenant Edrikhin, who was in South Africa as a correspondent for the Novoye Vremya newspaper (and, apparently, was also an agent of Russian military intelligence) and wrote in newspapers under the pseudonym Vandam, already then warned the Russians: “It’s bad to have the Anglo-Saxon's enemy, but God forbid to have him as a friend … The main enemy of the Anglo-Saxons on the way to world domination is the Russian people. " But pay attention to what he wrote - about "world domination", that is, he believed that Russia was quite worthy of him!
But artillery of large calibers in this war used the old model of 1877. The guns did not have recoil devices and behind them were placed metal "slides", which were recoil brakes. Naturally, such weapons could not develop a high rate of fire. However, Louis Boussinard also wrote about this, the destructive power of such weapons was enormous, since their shells were filled with picric acid. The French called explosives based on it melinite, the British called liddite. Since it was also a good dye (!), The smoke when they burst was green!
Nevertheless, the powerful informational support of the Boers in newspapers around the world aroused massive sympathy for the Boers and a stream of volunteer volunteers poured into their army from literally everywhere. It is clear that most of the volunteers consisted of the Dutch (about 650 people), the French, who traditionally did not like the British (400), the Germans who did not like them almost more (550), Americans (300), Italians (200), “hot Swedish guys "(150), the Irish, who hated England in general (200), and Russians, in whose hearts" the ashes of burnt justice "were knocking (about 225).
The Dutch volunteer detachment under the command of Colonel Maksimov on October 1, 1900, who later became the first and last "Russian Boer general". So volunteering is a long-standing tradition.
It is clear that in general it was not much, but among the volunteers there were many talented officers, artillery specialists, doctors, that is, this international support for the Boers was very valuable. Another thing is that, as Louis Boussinard rightly wrote in his novel Captain Rip Head, the attitude of the Boers towards them was simply disgusting. Of course, even if it were different, the Boers would still have lost, since they could not compete with England. But the price of victory for the British would be much higher!
In 1900, the British began, for the first time in the history of war, to use armored steam transporters to transport troops inland. 5-mm steel armor protected them from blunt Mauser bullets at all ranges of fire. The presence of a cannon, towed from behind, made it possible to repel the attack of large cavalry detachments, so that the losses of the British during their movements around the country sharply decreased.
Steam tractors of such transporters had large rear wheels with developed lugs, so their cross-country ability was very high.
It should be noted that it was on the fields of the Transvaal that many types of modern weapons were tested - lidite shells and Maxim machine guns, new khaki uniforms, and massively used armored trains, concentration camps for civilians and much more, which were subsequently most actively used in years of the First World War.
Interestingly, in South Africa, the British used not only their "maxims", but also tested the American Browning machine guns, nicknamed "potato digger". The British did not like them, but the Americans themselves adopted them and supplied them to Russia in 1914-1917. During the Civil War in Russia, this machine gun was the second most popular.
The Boers themselves, after the defeat inflicted on them, resisted for another year. But the British switched to new tactics. The whole country was divided into squares, separated by barbed wire, the passageways between the barriers of which were controlled by armored trains and a warehouse system with powerful searchlights and telegraph communications.
"The Boers are trying to cross the line of barbed wire at the warehouse." Rice. from the magazine "Niva".
Surprisingly, judging by this text, the searchlight at that time was called … "porthole"!
Jam jars were hung on the wire, the patrols walked with dogs, so it was difficult to break through them. It was enough to attack one warehouse, and an armored train immediately went to his aid, suppressing the Boers with fire. Of course, there was still a desert where there were no wires and warehouses, but it was impossible to live there, since there was no water or food. The population, driven into the camps, could also do nothing to help the Boer partisans.
Again, the Boers set out on all sorts of tricks in order to break through the wire barriers of the British, for which they sent herds of enraged buffaloes at them. By the way, this phrase is found in the "Niva" magazine and … then it literally migrated into A. Tolstoy's novel "Aelita", where the Atlanteans are fighting the Asians in a similar way. But … neither in the novel, nor in real life, the poor buffaloes did not help to defeat the enemy!
Boer victory at Twyfontaine. Yes, the Boers continued to defeat the British. But for every victory they ended up with two defeats.
Finally, on May 31, 1902, the Boers, who feared extremely and not without reason for the lives of their wives and children, were forced to surrender. As a result, the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Republic were annexed by Britain.
So, with ropes, the British often had to "jack up" their locomotives. "Broneparovoz" called "Shaggy Mary", 1902
But it should also be noted that with their courage and stubborn resistance, as well as to a certain extent and thanks to the sympathies of the entire world community, the Boers got off quite easily. They managed to bargain amnesty for all the participants in the war, and achieved the right to self-government. Dutch was allowed to be used in government offices and in court, and it was also allowed to be taught in schools. Moreover, the British even paid compensation to the Boers for their destroyed farms and houses, so that some of them even enriched themselves on this, since it was not always possible to check what was burned down there and what was the total area of the destroyed buildings. But most importantly, the British - ardent opponents of slavery, allowed the Boers to continue to exploit and also destroy the black population of Africa, which formed the basis of the future policy of apartheid.
And here is what the Niva magazine wrote about the start of negotiations between the Boers and the British. The commissioners then went to the Boer commando to discuss the question of peace, and Kitchener promised not to interfere with the Boers.
The Boers are discussing the question of peace. Rice. from the magazine "Niva".
It should be noted that the British in the course of this war tainted themselves with a multitude of completely outright crimes, which were all the more conspicuous to their contemporaries, because before that, nothing like this had happened during the wars. The execution of the Boer General Scheepers, who was captured on the farm while sick, seemed especially outrageous. A trial was arranged over him, which accused him of killing civilians through a train wreck and cruel treatment of the British prisoners. Naturally, he was found guilty and shot. The news of this outraged the whole world and it got to the point that one of the American congressmen suggested that the US Secretary of State protest the British government in connection with the execution of a Boer officer. The protest was announced, however, nothing, of course, has changed. But it is clear that the Russian mistrust and hostility towards the British have very long roots.
General Scheepers. Rice. from the magazine "Niva".
