We had now been reduced to a third of the original number of forty-five thousand burghers with which we had started the campaign.

This reduction was due partly to Cronje's surrender, and partly to the fact that many of our men had returned to their farms.

How, then, could we think of making a stand, with our tiny forces, against two hundred and forty thousand men, with three or four hundred guns?
All we could do was to make the best of every little chance we got of hampering the enemy.

If fortune should desert us, it only remained to flee.
To flee--what could be more bitter than that?
Ah! many a time when I was forced to yield to the enemy, I felt so degraded that I could scarcely look a child in the face! Did I call myself a man?
I asked myself, and if so, why did I run away?
No one can guess the horror which overcame me when I had to retreat, or to order others to do so--there! I have poured out my whole soul.

If I did fly, it was only because one man cannot stand against twelve.
After the Transvaalers had crossed the Vaal River, I took twelve hundred men to Heilbron, where there was already a party of my burghers.