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memoir · by a contemporary
Three Years' War
Christiaan Rudolf De Wet (1854–1922), 1902
Named on the page for Battle of Magersfontein.
draft Matched to the battle automatically; not yet reviewed.
Passages that name the battle; the whole book is at Project Gutenberg.
10–11 December 1899
Battle of Magersfontein
CHAPTER IV
At Bloemfontein we found everything ready for us, and at once started on our journey of sixty or seventy miles to Magersfontein, where we arrived on December the 16th.
CHAPTER IV
During the time I had spent in travelling, three important engagements had taken place, namely those of Colenso, Magersfontein and Stormberg. At Colenso, the English had suffered heavy losses, and ten guns had fallen into our hands. Magersfontein also had cost them dear, and there General Wauchope had met his fate; while at Stormberg seven hundred of them had been taken prisoners, and three of their big guns had been captured by us.
CHAPTER IV
I spent my first few days at Magersfontein in organizing the Free State burghers. When this task had been accomplished, General De la Rey and I asked General Cronje's permission to take fifteen hundred men, and carry on operations in the direction of Hopetown and De Aar with the intention of breaking Lord Methuen's railway communications. But Cronje would hear nothing of the scheme. Say what we would, there was no moving him. He absolutely refused to allow fifteen hundred of his men to leave their positions at Magersfontein, unless the Government found it impossible to procure that number of burghers from elsewhere. Thus our plan came to nothing.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Magersfontein Engagement-- British Losses, 23
Public domain. Text from Project Gutenberg.