r the sun
could do to just such surprises, and that the ablest generals served
by the trustiest scouts have in the most heroic periods of our history
sometimes found themselves face to face with the unforeseen. We are
assured, for instance, that even on the eve of Waterloo both Blucher
and Wellington were caught off their guard by their great antagonist.
On June 15th, at the very moment when the French columns were
actually crossing the Belgian frontier, Wellington wrote to the Czar
explaining his intention to take the offensive about a fortnight
hence; and Blucher only a few days before had sent word to his wife
that the Allies would soon enter France, for if they waited where they
were for another year, Bonaparte would never attack them. Yet the very
next day, June 16th, at Ligny, Bonaparte hurled himself like a
thunderbolt on Blucher, and three days after, Wellington, having
rushed from the Brussels ballroom to the battlefield at Waterloo,
there saved himself and Europe, "so as by fire."

The occasional surprises our troops have sustained in the Transvaal
need not stagger us, however much they ruffle our national
complacency. They are not the first we have had to face, and may
possibly prove by no means the last; but it is at least some sort of
solace to know that however often we were surprised during the last
long lingering stages of the war, our men yet more frequently
surprised their surprisers. Whilst I was still there in July 1901,
there were brought into Pretoria the surviving members of the
Executive of the late Orange Free State, all notable men, all caught
in their night-dresses--President Steyn alone escaping in shirt and
pants; whilst his entire bodyguard, consisting of sixty burghers, were
at the same time sent as prisoners to Bloemfontein. Laager after
laager during those weary months was similarly surprised, and waggons
and oxen and horses beyond all counting were captured, till apparently
scarcely a horse or hoof or pair of heels was left on all the
far-reaching veldt. The Boers resolutely chose ruin rather than
surrender, and so, alas, the ruin came; for many, ruin beyond all
remedy!

[Sidenote: _Train Wrecking._]

During this same period of despairing resistance the Boers imparted to
the practice of train wrecking the finish of a fine art. At first they
confined their attentions to troop trains, which are presumably lawful
game; and as I was returning from Koomati Poort the troop train that
imm