We are not concerned here with the fatigues of the march from Dewetsdorp, nor with the particular stress which led to capitulation. It is enough to know that although a messenger had succeeded in getting through the enemy's lines, and although the casualties numbered only ten killed and thirty-five wounded out of 591 men of the regular army, some one betrayed his comrades' honour, and the whole party was captured.[21] If this column had been able to hold on an hour or so longer, there would have been no Reddersburg incident. In the same way, {258} if more prompt and more energetic measures had been taken from Headquarters to rescue the column from the perilous situation created by the defeat at Sannah's Post, the little force could easily have been brought into Bloemfontein with the help of cavalry. As a matter of fact there were on April 2 three cavalry brigades camped at Springfield, Rustfontein, and Bloemspruit respectively, all of which lie just outside the capital to the south and east. [21] NOTE.--The Officer Commanding was exonerated from all blame in this matter. In the meantime, what had become of the other detachments? At Wepener, four days later, a force of 1,898 men, composed almost entirely of Colonial Corps, under the command of Colonel Dalgety of the Cape Mounted Rifles, was attacked by De Wet and blockaded for fourteen days; but so skilfully, under the guidance of Major Ronald Maxwell, R.E., did the men entrench themselves, that the total casualties at the end of the siege were only 169. The other columns, at Smithfield, Helvetia, and Rouxville, were only saved by the skilful handling of Major Allen of the Royal Irish Rifles, who collected them all and withdrew on Aliwal North, and by the heroic spirit of the men themselves. The detachment from Helvetia marched seventy-three miles in fifty-two hours, and that from Smithfield forty-five miles in thirty-six hours. General Brabant sent out some empty waggons to meet the exhausted infantry, but, though almost barefoot and reeling with fatigue, they refused to accept the lift, saying that if they did so the good name of the regiment would suffer. {259} The story of all these detachments must be looked at as a whole, as a policy. It was the defeat at Sannah's Post which, coming "like a bolt from the blue," changed the whole situation; "the dispositions of the troops, designed to restore peace, were (now) not merely inadequate, they were wholly inappropriate."[22] It is difficult to see how the position of the Dewetsdorp detachment differs from that of the others, all of which were but the execution of the policy sketched in the telegram from the Field-Marshal to the War Office of March 21, given on page 243. [22] See _Official History_, vol. ii. p. 305. On April 9 Sir Herbert Chermside arrived at Springfontein to take over the command of the Third Division, and the next day the following letter reached Sir William Gatacre: "_From Chief of the Staff, S.A.F.F._