Louis Botha — Boer Badass

 “Of all the Boer generals, 37-year-old (Louis) Botha was the prodigy.”

— Thomas Pakenham, “The Boer War”

Louis Botha was the commander of the Transvaal Army in the Anglo-Boer War, a daring, resourceful and determined warrior. And, like his compatriot Jan Smuts, he proved equally impressive as a post-war statesman, leading South Africa into a close relationship with their former foe, Great Britain, earning the wrath of diehard hardliners.

With a slouch hat pinned up on the right side, a dashing Vandyke beard and a piercing eye sighting down the barrel of a Mauser, Botha looked the part of the rakish raider in the field. Yet, as South African History online notes, “A great man of action, he was renowned for his simplicity, humanity, quick wit and good nature.”

Early in the war, Botha conducted a raid on a rail line that would have done Jesse James proud. His men scattered rocks on the track on a blind curve. When their prey, a British troop train armed with a 7-pounder ship’s gun, hove into sight, the Boers opened up on it with a field gun. As expected, the engineer put on steam, highballing around the curve, and into a pile of rocks. The engine stayed on the line, but the three armored troop trucks derailed.

“From nearly a mile away, Botha’s men poured shells and bullets into the stranded steel whale, soon silencing the 7-pounder.  The upturned trucks gave little cover to the British. Some of the soldiers scattered across the veld, to be hunted down and captured.”

— Pakenham

Among the captives was a young Winston Churchill. His escape from a Boer prison camp and his account of it would make the young fellow’s reputation.

Botha and other ace Boer generals like Smuts, Christian De Wet and Koos De la Rey gave Britain, in Kipling’s phrase “no end of a lesson.” But the small Free State and Transvaal republics were eventually ground down, and the British eventually figured out an effective counterinsurgency strategy when the war degenerated into a guerilla conflict.

Botha was on the negotiating team for the Boers in peace talks that not only ended the war, but in large part allowed the Boers to win the peace.

Botha would go on to become the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa, and a close ally of his former enemy. Too close for many Boers. When World War I broke out, he took his newly-minted nation into the war on the side of the British. Many Boers were strong Germanophiles, and Botha’s actions proviked the short, savage Boer Revolt.

With that suppressed, Botha and Smuts pursued their imperial ambitions for South Africa, chasing the Germans out of their South West Africa colony.

South African troops fought valiantly in Europe and in the East Africa Campaign.

Botha participated in the Versailles Treaty (which he thought too harsh on Germany) and led a military mission to Poland during that country’s war with the new Soviet Union.

Having gone from stocky to downright fat, Botha, 56, was in declining health and he contracted influenza and pneumonia in 1919. A massive heart attack finished off one of the great badasses of Frontier Partisans history.