The covenant - James A. Michener [501]
The first two weeks of September 1914 were a hectic and dazzling experience: Paulus de Groot dispatched emissaries to the other commandos, advising them that he expected them to rise as soon as the great generals declared themselves in favor of Germany; Christoffel Steyn assembled seventy-two men out of a possible ninety, each ready to mount his pony and ride forth; Piet Krause had already put away his books and was eager to fight; Jakob van Doorn, at seventy, had purchased an automobile; and his son Detleef, at nineteen, was up in the hills behind Vrymeer, practicing with a Mauser.
Beginning on Friday, September 12, De Groot convened a series of leader-meetings attended by a secret agent of the German armed forces in South-West Africa, who assured the locals that all was in readiness. The uprising was to start on Tuesday, September 16; wild Manie Maritz would lead his commando across the border into German territory; General Beyers would resign his position with the government after releasing a fiery condemnation of Smuts; and General de Groot would summon the men in the northeastern Transvaal. Pretoria would be taken, the government would be captured; and German power would reach from the Atlantic on the west to the Indian Ocean at Tanganyika. Combined with victory in Europe, this would herald the dawn of Germanic hegemony, in which Afrikaner nationalism would dominate southern Africa, under German guidance.
On the night of Sunday, September 14, Detleef van Doorn rode slowly eastward to Venloo, where his brother-in-law, Piet Krause, had assembled twenty-two men of the local commando. They rode through the starry night to a meeting point where others were gathering for the uprising; when morning came and he saw the masses of men willing to fight once more for a republican South Africa, his excitement soared and he cried to Krause, 'Nothing can stop us now!' He gained additional reassurance when he found that these men were to be led by Christoffel Steyn.
And then the blows of misfortune began to fall. As Barend Brongersma had foreseen, God was not with these Afrikaners this time. The general on whom they depended most to lead them, Koos de la Rey, a fine and brilliant man, had the horrible misfortune to be riding out of Johannesburg to convene his segment of the rebellion when a policeman, suspecting that the speeding car might contain a team of gangsters who had committed many depredations, including murder of policemen, fired a shot at the Daimler's tire. It should never have hit the car, but it ricocheted off a rock, smashed into the head of De la Rey and killed him. Sometime later, capable General Beyers, who might have taken the dead man's place, tried to flee across the Vaal River and was drowned. Tough Manie Maritz was neutralized across the border, and even brave General de Wet, noblest of the lot, was surrounded and forced to surrender.
Slim Jannie Smuts made not a single mistake. When the rebellion appeared to be powerful, he did not panic; instead, he called up loyal Afrikaner troops to confront their defiant brothers, keeping the English section of the nation out of the fight. And when the rebellion began to fizzle, he did not exult. He simply maintained one pressure after another, and in the end, found himself victorious on every front: the German invading force from South-West Africa was beaten back; the Germans in Tanganyika were immobilized; and within the country only Paulus de Groot and Christoffel Steyn held out against him, pinned down, as in 1902, in a wee corner of the Transvaal.
'We must fight to the death,' De Groot told his men, and if any showed an inclination to despair, young firebrands like Piet Krause disciplined them, saying, 'In Europe, Germany is winning everywhere. Victory will still be ours.'
But then they were crushed by