Cronjé, Piet Arnoldus

Cronjé, Piet Arnoldus (c. 1840-1911), Afrikaner soldier, born in the Transvaal in South Africa. Strongly anti-British, Cronjé was one of the outstanding Afrikaner fighters in the revolt of 1881, which brought the Transvaal under Afrikaner control. In 1896 Cronjé led the Afrikaners who forced the surrender of the Jameson raiders, an army from Cape Colony led by Leander Starr Jameson who assisted British immigrants in the Transvaal (known as Uitlanders) in their attempt to share in the government of Afrikaner republics. Early in the South African War, Cronjé commanded the Afrikaner forces in the western frontier of the Transvaal. He organized a siege of the city of Kimberley and defeated the British in Magersfontein, thus thwarting the plans of the British to relieve their forces in Kimberley. After the British general Lord Roberts had succeeded in ending the siege of Kimberley, Cronjé was surrounded by the British near Paardeberg. His ammunition spent and his food gone, Cronjé surrendered. Regarded by the British as a brave and dangerous enemy, Cronjé remained a prisoner on the island of St Helena until the end of the war. After his release in 1902 he returned to the Transvaal, where he died in 1911.