Willem Steenkamp - Assegais, Drums & Dragoons: A Military And Social History Of The Cape

Description

This book is about the genesis of the South African foot soldier of today that small, usually dirty, frequently over-tired and often hungry figure without whom an army cannot ring the gong of victory. He did not spring up full-grown out of the ground. He grew to what he is today through an evolutionary process that took several centuries.

Major-General Jack Turner & Brigadier-General John Lizamore

What motivated a small multiracial force of Cape-born soldiers whites, coloureds and Malays to put up such stiff resistance at the Battle of Blaauberg in 1806, in spite of odds so overwhelming that even some long-serving professional soldiers broke rank and ran? This was the intriguing question that launched author Willem Steenkamps research. It was an investigation which eventually took him back to 150 years before Jan van Riebeeck landed at the Cape in 1652, and involved examining the social as well as the military history of the Cape.

What Steenkamp discovered differs from what most South Africans think about that period, and he corrects a number of serious misconceptions not only about the soldiers of 1510-1806 but about the social and political development of the Cape. For students of the Napoleonic Wars, the book provides new information about a forgotten aspect of that conflict; for the ordinary reader here is a story no-one has ever told before in its entirety.

Assagais, Drums and Dragons: A Military & Social History of the Cape is a well researched and fascinating account that now illuminates a previously lightless corner of South African military history.

Descended from a 1690s-era VOC soldier, Willem Steenkamp is a writer, journalist and specialist tour guide who has also been a soldier, a security advisor and a director of military tattoos and other spectacles, among several other things. Since childhood he has been absorbing the Capes history from family stories (one of his ancestors was a hero of the Battle of Blaauwberg) and voluminous reading. And yes, he actually has fired flintlock muskets and muzzle-loading cannon. Willem lives in Cape Town.

Quotes

Without their history, cultures doom themselves to remain trapped in the most illusionary tense of all, namely the present. For, when trapped in the present, you become akin to a child. You know not whence you came, nor whither you go.

CICERO, 64 BC

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier.

DR SAMUEL JOHNSON

The boundaries of a nations greatness are marked by the graves of her soldier s.

NAPOLEON I

Let us be clear about three facts. First, all battles and all wars are won in the end by the infantryman. Secondly, the infantryman always bears the brunt. His casualties are heavier, he suffers greater extremes of discomfort and fatigue than the other arms. Thirdly, the art of the infantryman is less stereotyped and far harder to acquire in modern war than that of any other arm The infantryman has to use initiative and intelligence in almost every step he moves, every action he takes on the battle-field. We ought therefore to put our men of best intelligence and endurance into the Infantry .

FIELD-MARSHAL EARL WAVELL

Title Page

ASSEGAIS, DRUMS

AND DRAGOONS

A Military and Social History of the Cape

15101806

Willem Steenkamp

JONATHAN BALL PUBLISHERS

JOHANNESBURG & CAPE TOWN

Foreword

FOREWORD

This book stemmed from a request to the author by the South African Infantry Association that he write an informal history of the South African infantryman of all races through all the eras of this country. The associations requirements were not onerous, but they were very much to the point.

Firstly, the book must be neither a learned treatise on warfare nor a military history textbook. Instead, it must be as readable as possible for both the dedicated military specialist and anybody else, whether of military background or not, who has an interest in the subject particularly South Africas soldiers and ex-soldiers themselves.

Secondly, it must not be a hagiography but an attempt to tell the South African infantry story through the ages, without fear or favour. Thirdly, it must tell the story of events, not the exploits of individual regiments, except where this is necessary.

The end result, so it was hoped, would be a narrative, told in an entertaining but instructive way, of South African infantrymen of all races and nations throughout the recorded social history of our country, and in the context of that history.

That was the original intention. Not long after undertaking this task, however, it was apparent that the story of how the South African infantry soldier came to be was more complicated than it appeared, and that to compress the entire story into one volume would be a fruitless exercise.

If it was to serve any real purpose it must start by illuminating a largely lightless corner in South African military historical writing the period between the 16th century, when parts of what is now South Africa first connected with the outside world, and the beginning of the 19th century, the opening years of what might be called the pre-modern era.

During that period a basic footprint was trodden into the sub-continents soil as a symbiosis began to take place between indigenous warriors and soldiers trained in European doctrine which was to reach full flower in the 19th century.

What this book is about, therefore, is the genesis of the South African foot soldier of today that small, usually dirty, frequently over-tired and often hungry figure without whom an army cannot ring the gong of victory and in warfare there is no second prize. He did not spring up full-grown out of the ground at the wave of some magicians wand. He grew to what he is today through an evolutionary process, both social and military, that took several centuries.

The book has another aim, which is to foster the respect that real fighting soldiers often conceive for one another after they have laid down their arms, a respect that transcends differences of race, religion and belief that politicians, propagandists and others seek to keep alive to serve their own base purposes. They have yet to learn that if you unfairly denigrate your former enemy, you denigrate yourself in the process as well.

It is definitely not the final word on the subject, because there is a great deal that South African military historians have yet to unearth, about both the distant and the recent past. So this book must be seen for what it is, the starting point of a process, and it is hoped that it will serve as a reference work for future military authors delving into the many aspects of our military heritage which remain largely or totally untouched.

Major-General Jack Turner

HONORARY PRESIDENT, SA INFANTRY ASSOCIATION

Brigadier-General John Lizamore

NATIONAL CHAIRMAN, SA INFANTRY ASSOCIATION

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

When the South African Infantry Association asked me in 2006 whether I would be interested in writing a book about the South African infantryman, it set in motion a sequence of events for which I had been preparing myself in any case.

In January that year I had directed a bicentenary re-enactment of the Battle of Blaauwberg, and it had raised a question for which I had no clear answer. The fiercest resistance to the overwhelmingly larger invading British force in 1806 had come not from Lieutenant-General Jan Willem Janssens foreign regiments but from a strangely assorted mixture of French sailors, Batavian light horse gunners and a multiracial army of Cape soldiers: white citizen-warriors from Swellendam, a regiment of coloured infantrymen and a contingent of Malay artillerymen.