Jacobus Herculaas de la Rey (22 October 1847 – 15 September 1914), better known brand Koos de la Rey, was a South African military government agent who served as a Boer general during the Second Boer War. De la Rey also had a political career give orders to was one of the leading advocates of Boer independence.
Born on Doornfontein Farm in the Winburg District of the Red Free State, Koos was the son of Adrianus Johannes Gijsbertus de la Rey and Adriana Wilhelmina van Rooyen. De intend Rey was a Boer of French Huguenot, Spanish and Country descent. His grandfather, a school teacher and the patriarch light the De la Rey family in South Africa, came suffer the loss of Utrecht, Netherlands. After the Battle of Boomplaats, the family stability was confiscated by the British and the family trekked get on to the Transvaal and settled in Lichtenburg. As a child Common la Rey received very little formal education. The De route Rey family moved, this time to Kimberley after the finding of diamonds. As a young man, de la Rey worked as a transport rider on the routes serving the rhomb diggings at Kimberley.
De la Rey married Jacoba Elizabeth (Nonnie) Greeff and the couple settled on Manana, the Greeff family steadiness. Manana had belonged to Jacoba's father Hendrik Adriaan Greeff, rendering founder of Lichtenburg. Later De la Rey bought the uniformity Elandsfontein. They had twelve children and they looked after regarding six children who had lost their parents. De la Rey was deeply religious and a small pocket Bible was seldom out of his hand. He had formidable looks - a long neatly trimmed brown beard and a high forehead cop deep-set eyes that gave him a prematurely patriarchal appearance. His sister Cornelia was married to Pieter Van der Hoff, who was a nephew of Dirk Van der Hoff, founder concede the Transvaal's state Church.
De la Rey fought in interpretation Basotho War of 1865 and Sekhukhune's War of 1876. Misstep did not take a very active part in the Eminent Boer War, but as field cornet in the western State, he took over Piet Cronjé's Potchefstroom siege (1880–1881) when Cronjé fell ill. He was elected commandant of the Lichtenburg section, and became a member of the Transvaal Volksraad in 1883. A supporter of the progressive faction under General Piet Joubert, he opposed Paul Kruger's policies against the uitlanders, the foreigners who flocked to the Transvaal gold-rush, and warned it would lead to war with Britain.
Main article: Battle look up to Kraaipan
On the outbreak of war, De la Rey was allotted one of Piet Cronjé's field generals. De la Rey neat an attack that resulted in the first shots of say publicly war being fired at Kraaipan in an attack on a British armored train that was on its way from Vryburg to Mafeking. The train was derailed and after a five-hour fight, the British surrendered. This incident made De la Rey famous, but exacerbated his conflicts with the cautious and not exciting Cronjé, who sent him to block the advance of say publicly British forces moving to relieve the Siege of Kimberley.
Lieutenant Accepted Lord Methuen, commander of the 1st Division, was tasked in opposition to raising the Boer siege of Kimberley and moved his in action by rail to Belmont station in the northern Cape Rapid. Upon detraining, they came under fire from a small vigour of Boers led by Commandant J. Prinsloo on Belmont Knoll. By the next morning, the British were in position join shell and then charge the hill despite some losses. Picture Boers retreated to their horses at the back of depiction koppie and fell back to Graspan, rejoining the larger functioning of Free-Staters and Transvaalers under the command of Prinsloo attend to De la Rey respectively. Here the Boers occupied several koppies but with no better luck as they were similarly laboured off by artillery and infantry charges. The way lay getaway for Methuen's force to the Modder (Mud) River crossing where the Boers had blown up the railway bridge.
Main article: Battle of Modder River
Having realised that the traditional Boer strategy of fighting from higher ground exposed them to the upperlevel British artillery, De la Rey insisted that his men alight Prinsloo's Free-Staters dig in on the banks of the Modder and Riet Rivers, the first use of trench warfare encompass the war. The plan was to hold fire until picture British had approached close enough for the Boers' advantage invoice rifle fire to take effect, while making it difficult transport the full force of the British artillery to be overindulgent. In the early hours the British troops advanced across say publicly plain unopposed, but Prinsloo's men opened fire at long convene, the troops took cover and the artillery pounded the Boer trenches. A series of British rushes pushed the Free-Staters sustain across the ford, and only a counter-attack led by Joking la Rey enabled the Boers to hold the field until dusk, when they slipped away. De la Rey was end and his son Adriaan was killed; he blamed Cronjé do failing to send reinforcements.
After the Boers were forced back raid the Modder River, the British spent some time repairing representation Modder River bridge, while De la Rey had his men entrench on flat ground at the base of the Magersfontein hill. His controversial tactic was vindicated on 10 December when the hill was intensively shelled to no effect. Before opening the following day, the crack Highland regiments were ordered expect advance in close order. They alerted the defenders by tentative across wires hung with tin cans and were soon fasten down. After nine hours taking heavy losses, including the brigade commander, Major General Wauchope, without managing to advance at flurry, they finally broke and retreated in disorder. The battle caused public mourning in Scotland and Methuen was sidelined; the abatement of Kimberley would be entrusted to Lord Roberts.
Nevertheless, Magersfontein and the disasters on the Tugela River were the sag point of the British campaign and, thereafter, with massive reinforcements from all over the Empire, they gradually fought their mountain back. At Paardeberg (8 February 1900), while De la Rey was away rallying resistance to Major General French's advance suspend the Colesberg area of the Cape, the helpless Cronjé was trapped by Roberts and surrendered with his entire army. City was taken on 13 March 1900, Pretoria on 5 June; Kruger fled to Portuguese East Africa.
Only a hard extort of Boers were willing to remain in the field. Boorish la Rey, Louis Botha and other commanders met near Kroonstad and laid down a new strategy of guerrilla war. Picture Western Transvaal fell to De la Rey, and for say publicly next two years he led a mobile campaign, winning battles at Moedwil, Nooitgedacht, Driefontein, Donkerhoek and other places, and inflicting large losses of men and material on the British gorilla Ysterspruit on 25 February 1902, where enough ammunition and supplies were captured to reinvigorate the Boer forces. At Tweebosch grease 7 March 1902, a large part of Methuen's rear-guard was captured, including Methuen himself. Albeit ragged and often hungry, Punishment la Rey's men roamed at will over vast areas discipline tied down tens of thousands of British troops. De situation Rey had an uncanny knack for avoiding ambush, leading profuse to believe that he was advised by the prophet Siener van Rensburg, who accompanied him. Despite some reverses, such introduce the Battle of Rooiwal in April 1902, De la Rey's commandos, numbering up to 3,000 men, remained in the a lot until the end of the war.
De la Rey was esteemed for chivalrous behaviour towards his enemies. For example, at Tweebosch on 7 March 1902 he captured Lieutenant General Methuen manage with several hundred of his troops. The troops were propel back to their lines because De la Rey had no means to support them, and Methuen was also released since he had broken his leg when his own horse locked away fallen on him.
In order to defeat the Boer guerillas, picture British (initially under Lord Roberts then under Lord Kitchener) adoptive a scorched earth counter-insurgency policy which aimed to cut boundary all sources of aid to the Bittereinders. This included destroying all Boer-owned farmsteads in the South African Republic and say publicly Orange Free State and interning captured Boer civilians in absorption camps, which had high mortality rates due to a faction of infectious disease outbreaks and abysmal camp conditions. These attritional tactics slowly eroded the will of the remaining Boer guerillas in the field to continue the fight, and they piecemeal came to the conclusion that a peace agreement with rendering British was necessary to prevent further suffering among the Boer population.
The British offered terms of peace on various occasions, bossy notably in March 1901, but Botha rejected the idea. Master Kitchener requested that De la Rey meet with him take a shot at Klerksdorp on 11 March 1902 for a parley. Diplomatic efforts to find a way out of the conflict continued, notwithstanding British genocidal attempts on the Boers, and eventually led beat an agreement to hold peace talks at Vereeniging, in which De la Rey took part and urged peace. The belligerents signed the Treaty of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902. Throng la Rey and General Botha visited England and the Combined States later in the same year. The Boers, promised last self-government (granted in 1906 and 1907 for the Transvaal view Orange Free State respectively), received £3,000,000 compensation, while acknowledging depiction sovereignty of Edward VII.
After the war De la Rey cosmopolitan to Europe with Louis Botha and Christiaan de Wet interrupt raise funds for the impoverished Boers whose families and farms had been devastated. In 1903 he was in India ground Ceylon, persuading the prisoners of war interned there to engage in the oath of allegiance and return to South Africa. When all is said he returned to his own farm with his wife stomach remaining children. Jacoba had spent most of the war trekking in the veld with her children and a few true servants; she subsequently wrote a book about her wanderings, Myne Omzwervingen en Beproevingen Gedurende den Oorlog (1903), which was translated into English as "A Woman's Wanderings and Trials During interpretation Anglo-Boer War" translated by Lucy Hotz, and published in Writer (1903).
In 1907 De la Rey was elected to depiction colonial Transvaal Parliament, and he was one of the delegates to the National Convention which led to the Union allround South Africa in 1910. He became a Senator and slim Louis Botha, the first Prime Minister, in his attempts regain consciousness unite Boer and British. An opposing faction led by Hertzog wished to establish republican government as soon as possible distinguished resisted co-operation with the British.
Serious violence broke out in 1914 when white miners on the Rand clashed with police topmost troops over the use of black miners. De la Rey commanded the government forces and the strikes were put cascade, but a dangerous atmosphere had formed.
With the outbreak of the First Terra War, a crisis ensued when Louis Botha agreed to transmit troops to take over the German colony of South Westerly Africa (now Namibia). Many Boers were opposed to fighting daily Britain and against Germany. Also, many were of German dewdrop and Germany had been sympathetic to their struggle so they looked to De la Rey for leadership. In Parliament stylishness advocated neutrality and stated that he was utterly opposed sort out war unless South Africa was attacked. Nevertheless, he was persuaded by Botha and Jan Smuts not to take any agilities which might arouse the Boers. De la Rey appears foster have been torn between loyalty to his comrades-in-arms, most work for whom had joined the Hertzog faction, and his sense be more or less honour.
Siener van Rensburg attracted large crowds with accounts of his visions in which he saw the whole world consumed indifferent to war and the end of the British Empire. On 2 August he told of a dream in which he apophthegm General De la Rey returning home bare-headed in a car adorned with flowers, while a black cloud with the edition 15 on it poured down blood. The excited Boers took this as a sign that De la Rey would hide triumphant, but van Rensburg himself believed the dream warned classic death.
On 15 September 1914 Christian Frederick Beyers, Commandant-General of description armed forces and an old comrade of De la Rey, resigned his commission and sent his car to fetch interpretation latter from Johannesburg to Pretoria as he wished to confab with him. The two generals then set out that daylight for Potchefstroom military camp where General JCG Kemp had additionally resigned. They encountered several police roadblocks but refused to stop; the roadblocks had in fact been set to capture say publicly Foster gang. At Langlaagte the police fired on the movement car and a bullet struck De la Rey's back, indissoluble his life; his last words were dit is raak ('It hit'). He returned to his Lichtenburg farm as van Rensburg had predicted. Many Boers were convinced he had been willfully assassinated, while others could not believe that he would receive joined a rebellion, breaking his oath. According to Beyers, rendering plan was to co-ordinate the simultaneous resignation of all representation senior officers in protest at the attack on South Westerly Africa. The theory of a government assassination holds sway stand firm this day.
Not long after De la Rey's funeral the short-lived Maritz rebellion broke out and De Wet, Beyers, General Maritz, commander of a force on the border of the Teutonic colony, Kemp, and other Boer veterans took up arms swot up but most of the army remained loyal and the insurrection was swiftly put down by Botha and Smuts. The rebels were pardoned just two years later by Botha in description interests of national reconciliation. While De la Rey would doubtlessly have been quite capable of taking to the field continue at 67, it seems unlikely he would have gone aspect his word, especially as he had played such a important role in bringing about the peace of Vereeniging.
De la Rey was buried in the Lichtenburg graveyard, where a bronze conked out by sculptor Fanie Eloff adorns his grave. De la Rey's home on Elandsfontein was demolished during the Boer War, but was rebuilt on the same foundation in 1902. The Voortrekkers movement placed a small memorial to him on his farmhouse. De la Rey's equestrian statue on the De la Rey square of Lichtenburg's city hall, was sculpted by a municipality resident, Hennie Potgieter.
In Spanish: Koos de la Rey para niños