Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill (63 page)

Credit 24
: Alamy

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: Churchill Archives Centre

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: Churchill Archives Centre

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: Churchill Archives Centre (The Churchill quote in the caption is from Celia Sandys’s book
Churchill: Wanted Dead or Alive
, 103.)

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: Churchill Archives Centre

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: Library of Congress

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Candice Millard, the
New York Times
bestselling author of
The River of Doubt
and
Destiny of the Republic
, is a former editor and contributing writer at
National Geographic
magazine.

She lives in Kansas City, Kansas, with her husband and three children.

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Winston Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace, a lavish Oxfordshire manor built in the early eighteenth century for John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough.

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More than just the source of his family status, Marlborough was Churchill’s inspiration for success on a grand scale. “He never rode off any field except as a victor,” Churchill wrote of his famous forebear.

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Born into the highest ranks of British aristocracy, Churchill had an air of haughty self-confidence even at the tender age of seven.

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What he longed for most, however, was the love and attention of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer and had little time for his oldest son. One of the great regrets of Churchill’s life was that Randolph died an early and tragic death, depriving Winston of the chance to know his father.

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Churchill’s American mother, born Jennie Jerome, was a famous beauty, said to have “more of the panther than of the woman in her look.” Although his mother used her influence with high-ranking men to help him win military appointments, Churchill, like most of the men in her life, was forced to adore her “at a distance.”

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To Churchill’s dismay, his widowed mother, still beautiful and restless at forty-five, became romantically involved with a young aristocrat named George Cornwallis-West, who was only two weeks older than Churchill. Despite ardent opposition from her sons and his parents, Jennie and George would marry before the Boer War was over.

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As he set sail for South Africa, Churchill carried in his wallet this pencil sketch of a beautiful young socialite named Pamela Plowden, the first great love of his life. “I must say,” he had written to his mother after meeting Plowden in India, “that she is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.”

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On October 9, 1899, Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal, sent an ultimatum demanding that the British Empire withdraw its troops and cease interference in the affairs of the Boer republic, or prepare for war. When the British contemptuously allowed the deadline to pass, Kruger knew that war was inevitable. Bowing his head, he said, “So must it be.”

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Soon after war was declared, Sir Redvers Buller was named commander in chief of Her Majesty’s army in South Africa. Buller, who had won the Victoria Cross in South Africa twenty years earlier, during the Anglo-Zulu War, was nicknamed the Steamroller, in the expectation that he would quickly flatten the Boers.

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While anticipating an easy victory, the British did not consider the extraordinary fighting skills of the Boers, strikingly personified in Louis Botha, the youngest commander in their ranks. Nearly six feet tall with violet-blue eyes, Botha’s quiet confidence quickly earned him the respect and trust of his men, and his relentless attacks on the enemy forces would leave the vaunted British army reeling.