To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918

by Adam Hochschild

On February 15, 1900, French’s scouts finished reconnoitering the last enemy stronghold between his troops and the besieged Kimberley, fortified positions held by some 900 Boer soldiers on two ridges about three-quarters of a mile apart. Then, surrounded by snorting horses, the jangle and creak of boots and spurs, and the smell of saddle leather, the impetuous general gave the order that all cavalrymen dreamed of: Charge! Successive waves of shouting British troopers in tall sun helmets galloped up the gently rising valley between the two ridges: first the lancers with pennants flying, their khaki-clad chests crisscrossed by diagonal straps, proud swordsmen next, horse-drawn artillery in the rear. French himself led the second wave of troops. It was a bold move, and it worked. Some 3,000 cavalrymen suffered fewer than two dozen casualties. “The feeling was wonderfully exciting, just as in a good run to hounds,” said a British officer. “An epoch in the history of cavalry,” enthused the London Times history of the war; the Boer foot soldiers “availed nothing against the rushing speed and sustained impetus of the wave of horsemen. . . . This was the secret French had divined.” There was, however, less to this rushing speed and sustained impetus than met the eye. To begin with, the Boer defenders on these ridges had no machine guns. Also, in the scorching Southern Hemisphere summer the British horses charging across the bone-dry veldt raised such masses of dust that Boer marks...