Download or read book The Boer Fight for Freedom written by Michael Davitt and published by Theclassics.Us. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ... The prompt release of Lord Methuen by De la Rey astounded the press of the civilized world by its knightly magnanimity. It created a painful impression among the friends of the Boer cause everywhere, by its uncalculating. and seemingly unpatriotic, generosity. Neither the captured general nor the British army merited any such consideration at Boer hands. Lord Methuen was the first English general to asperse the Boers in the war. He libeled them at Belmont, Enslin, and Modder River in unfounded charges; allegations made. too. in true English fashion, with the object of attempting to offset the true charges of Boer officers that the rules of civilized warfare had been deliberately violated by Methuen's troops at each of these battles. His officers arrested a Boer ambulance at Modder River, and sent doctors and assistants serving under Red Cross ensigns, as prisoners to Cape Town. All this was known to De la Rev, who had fought Methuen in his attempt to relieve Kimberley, and whose superb plan of aggressive defense at Magersfontein enabled Cronje to inflict upon this general and a powerful British army one of the greatest defeats of the war. The fate, too, of Commandants Lotter and Scheepers was present to De la Rey's mind when he released his captive. These officers had been executed for burning Government buildings in Cape Colony, and for shooting armed Kaffirs. Methuen had burned farms and villages in the Transvaal and Free State, and his men had killed wounded Boers at Modder River. De la Rey's own homestead had been burned by his troops, and the entire district in which he was born--the locality in which poetic justice decreed the defeat and capture of Methuen at his hands--bore testimony to the barbarous methods resorted to by the...