Thus General Clements with about 3,000 men had been dislodged in a few days, defeated, and driven back to the point from which, two months before, General French had started. Yet he had none the less rendered good service by keeping a large force of Boers occupied in operations which brought them no substantial success, at the very time when they should have been hurrying north to save Cronje. After the 15th the Boers seem to have discovered that they were confronted only by a skeleton force and to have at last realised their mistake. But it was already too late; the 150 miles from Arundel to Paardeberg could not be covered in time to effect a junction with General Cronje, and that gallant burgher had to be left to his doom. Meantime General Clements was reinforced, and in view of the weakening of the Boers in his front, was no longer in serious danger. [Illustration: _Photo by R. C. E. Nisson._] FIELD ARTILLERY ON COLES KOP. A 15-pounder of the 4th Field Battery under Lieutenant Maine firing from the top of the hill.] [Sidenote: Seizure of German steamers.] While these things were happening in Colesberg and at the front, grave political difficulties had arisen at home over the seizure of the German steamers _Herzog_, _Bundesrath_, and _General_, on the charge of carrying contraband to Delagoa Bay. The _Bundesrath_ was brought into Durban as prize to the British cruiser _Magicienne_ on December 30. On being chased she had changed the position of her cargo, an act which was certainly calculated to give rise to grave suspicions. A search of nine days' duration at Durban, however, failed to disclose any contraband in her hold, and the German Government in the most peremptory manner demanded her immediate release. It insisted that Delagoa Bay being a neutral port, German ships could carry what they liked to that place, though it also gave an assurance from the steamers' owners that there was no contraband on board. Before a definite answer had been returned to its demand, the _General_ was stopped and searched at Aden, on January 4, and the _Herzog_, on January 6, was brought into Durban as prize of the cruiser _Thetis_. At this news German public opinion, which had all through the war been bitterly hostile to England, was thoroughly aroused, and the German Government took action which savoured of open unfriendliness, demanding the immediate release of all three vessels and the payment of compensation. Yet it was notorious that the three ships were crowded with foreigners, enlisted in Europe by the Transvaal secret agents, and proceeding to the front to take part in the war. The German Government had made use of British troubles at an earlier period to obtain Samoa, and now employed its dispute with England as an argument for a greater German Navy--to be used, it was hinted, in the not remote future against England. [Sidenote: [JAN. 1900.] [Sidenote: Lord Roberts conciliates the Colonials.]