The Anglo-Transvaal War in Photos and Pictures
"For the empire of all empires,
For the card that grows in breadth. "
(Rudyard Kipling "By birth")
For the card that grows in breadth. "
(Rudyard Kipling "By birth")
Last time with illustrations from Niva magazine for 1899 - 1900. story The Anglo-Transvaal War is not over, because it continued in 1901 and 1902. However, the number of photos in the magazine for 1901 of the year has decreased significantly. However, the war itself took a different character. After the surrender of the army of Cronje, 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 Boers. Fig. from the magazine "Niva". Another favorite drawing from my childhood, redrawn many times depending on need. Louis Bousenenar, who described the first attack of the Molokosos, did not sin against the truth: the Boers and foreign volunteers, as a rule, had neither a peak nor a sabers, and therefore attacked the British, firing at them with rifles at full gallop.
All "progressive humanity", in modern terms, condemned the British, but there was little sense from this condemnation. "Coal stations" around the world, the impregnable fortress of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, controlled by the British, the armada of armadillos - all this made England invulnerable to criticism, as the elephant does not notice the pellets.
The Boer War led to the use of many new weapons and, in particular, not only the Maxim machine guns, but also 37-mm automatic cannons designed by Hiram Maxim. However, not only war. From the magazine "Niva" I once learned that the electric kettle, for example, went on sale in 1901 year, and a household vacuum cleaner ... in 1908 year, and not somewhere in England, but here in Russia .
But this is a Maxim gun with a broken cooling jacket. Such damage to this system was fatal. The water flowed, the barrel overheated, and shooting became impossible.
At the same time, Lieutenant Yedrikhin, who was in South Africa as a correspondent for the newspaper Novoye Vremya (and, apparently, also an agent of the Russian military intelligence), and wrote to the newspapers under the pseudonym Vandam, had already warned the Russians: Anglo-Saxon is the enemy, but God forbid, to have his friend ... The main enemy of the Anglo-Saxons on the path to world domination is the Russian people. ” But pay attention to what he wrote about “world domination,” that is, he believed that Russia was completely worth it!
But the artillery of large calibers in this war used the old, model 1877 of the year. The guns had no recoil attachments and behind them were put metal “slides”, which were retard brakes. Naturally, such weapons could not develop high rates of fire. However, Louis Bussenar also wrote about this, the destructive power of such guns was immense, as their shells were stuffed with picric acid. For the French, explosives based on it were called melinitis, among the English they were ledidite. Since it was also a good dye (!), The smoke at their break was green!
Nevertheless, the powerful informational support of the Boers in the newspapers of the whole world aroused mass sympathies for the Boers, and a flood of volunteer volunteers literally poured into their army literally from 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), the Americans (300), the Italians (200), “hot the Swedish guys ”(150), the Irish people who hated England at all (200), and the Russians, who had“ the ashes of burned justice ”(about 225) pounded in their hearts.
The Dutch detachment of volunteers under the command of Colonel Maximov 1 of October 1900 of the year, which later became the first and last "Russian Boer general". So volunteering is an old tradition.
It is clear that in general it was a little, 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 Bussenar rightly wrote in his novel “Captain Sorvi-golov,” the attitude towards them from the side of the Boers was simply disgusting. Of course, even if it were different, the Boers would still have lost, since with England they could not bear the force. 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 wars to use armored steam carriers to transport troops to the depths of the country. 5-mm steel-nickel armor protected them from dull Mauser bullets at all distances of fire. The presence of the gun, towed from behind, made it possible to repel the attack of large cavalry units, so that the losses of the British during the movement around the country dropped sharply.
Steam tractors of such conveyors had large rear wheels with developed lugs, so their permeability was very high.
It should be noted that it was on the fields of the Transvaal that many types of modern weapons were tested - lidittovye projectiles and machine guns "maxim", new khaki uniforms, and massively used armored trains, civilian concentration camps and much more, which later was most actively used in the years of the First World War.
Interestingly, in South Africa, the British did not only use their “maxims”, but also tried out the American Browning machine guns, nicknamed “potato digging machine”. The British did not like them, but the Americans themselves adopted them and delivered them to Russia in 1914 - 1917. In the years of the civil war in Russia, this machine gun was the second in mass.
The Boers themselves, after their defeat, resisted for another year. But the British moved to a new tactic. The whole country was divided into squares separated by barbed wire, the passages between the barriers which were controlled by armored trains and the system of warehouses with powerful searchlights and telegraph communication.
"Boers are trying to cross the line of wire barriers at the warehouse." Fig. from the magazine "Niva".
Surprisingly, judging by this text, the searchlight at that time was called ... "porthole"!
They hung jars of jam on the wire, patrols walked with the dogs, so it was difficult to break through them. It was enough to attack one warehouse, as an armored train immediately departed to its aid, suppressing the Boers with fire. Of course, there was still a desert, where there was no wire and warehouses, however, it was impossible to live there either, because there was no water, no food. The population, driven into the camps, also could not help the Buram-partisans.
Again, the Boers launched on a variety of tricks to break through the barbed wire of the British, for which they sent herds of mad buffaloes. By the way, this phrase is found in the magazine “Niva” and ... then literally migrated to the novel by A. Tolstoy “Aelita”, where the Atlanteans are fighting in the same way with Asians. But ... neither in the novel, nor in real life did the poor buffaloes help the enemy!
The victory of the Boers at Twi-Fontaine. Yes, the Boers defeated the British and beyond. But for each victory they eventually had two losses.
Finally, 31 in May, 1902, the Boers, who were extremely and not without reason fearing 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, by ropes, the English often had to “blind” their locomotives. Broneparovoz under the name Shaggy Mary, 1902
But it should also be noted that with their courage and stubborn resistance, and also to a certain extent, and thanks to the sympathies of the entire world community, the Boers rather “got off easily”. They managed to bargain all participants in the war for an amnesty and secured the right to self-government. The Dutch language was allowed for use in public institutions and in court, it was also allowed to study in schools. Moreover, the British even paid the boers compensation for their destroyed farms and houses, so that some of them even became rich in this, because it was not always possible to check what their burned out buildings were and what the total area of the destroyed buildings was. But the most important thing is that the British, the ardent opponents of slavery, allowed the Boers to continue exploiting and destroying the black people of Africa, which formed the basis of the future policy of apartheid.
But what Niva magazine wrote about the start of the Boer’s negotiations with the British. The ombudsmen then dispersed to discussing the question of peace in the Boer commando, and Kitchener promised not to impede the boers in this.
Boers are discussing the issue of peace. Fig. from the magazine "Niva".
It should be noted that the British during the war stained themselves with a lot of completely frank crimes, which were all the more conspicuous to their contemporaries, because before that, nothing of the kind had happened during wars. The shooting of the Boer General Scheepers, who was captured on the farm, seemed particularly outrageous. He was convicted of a trial that accused him of killing civilians through train derailment and cruel treatment of prisoners by the British. Naturally, he was found guilty and shot. The news of this outraged the whole world and it came to the point that one of the American congressmen proposed that the US Secretary of State protested to the British government over the execution of the Boer officer. The protest was declared, however, nothing, of course, did not change it. But it is clear that the mistrust and ill will of the Russians towards the British have very long roots.
General Scheepers. Fig. from the magazine "Niva".
Information