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Our Sailors; Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign, a non-fiction book by William H. G. Kingston |
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Chapter 26. Wars In South Africa |
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_ CHAPTER TWENTY SIX. WARS IN SOUTH AFRICA In 1879 Great Britain became involved in war with Cetewayo, chief of a powerful race of savages on the north-eastern border of the colony of Natal in South Africa, and two years after in a short conflict with the Boers, or Dutch farmers, in the Transvaal; and in both of these wars a Naval Brigade took part. From this time onward, South Africa has held a position of increasing importance in our colonial history, and is likely to continue to do so for many years to come; it will be well therefore before considering the wars referred to, to give a general view of the position of the British, the Dutch, and the Zulu at the date of their commencement. Cape Colony was originally founded by the Dutch about the middle of the seventeenth century; it was seized by Great Britain during the wars with France in 1806, and finally annexed to the British Empire by virtue of the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. A great proportion of the colonists, and especially of the farmers in the districts farthest from the coast and from civilisation, did not take kindly to British rule; and in 1835 and succeeding years a great number crossed the Orange River--at that time the boundary of the colony on the north--with the intention of setting up independent Dutch communities. To this movement, known as the Great Trek, the occupation by the Dutch Boers (i.e. farmers) of the territories, since known as the Orange Free State and the Transvaal, or South African Republic, is due. At that time the limits of the British colony were, on the north, the Orange River; and, on the east, the Fish River. Beyond this, on the east, was territory occupied by hostile Kaffir tribes, afterwards called British Kaffraria, and now annexed to Cape Colony, and still farther to the east of these lay the fertile land of Natal. A large section of the trekking Boers, after passing the Orange and going north, crossed the mountains, and descended upon Natal. There were a few English hunters and traders settled upon the coast, but the country had been depopulated of its original inhabitants by a ferocious and warlike race of superior physique, whom we call the Zulu. These had been trained to a high state of military and athletic perfection by a succession of sanguinary chiefs, and had broken and massacred every tribe with whom they had come in contact, so that in this district of Natal alone it is computed that over a million had perished, and but five or six thousand of the original inhabitants remained lurking in caverns and amid the dense bush. The first leader of the Boers, Retief, and some 70 persons, were treacherously murdered by Dingaan, the chief or king of the Zulus, at his kraal, which they had visited at his request in February 1838; and the chief made a sudden attack with his armies upon the isolated bands of farmers, and killed a great many of them. After many bloody fights, in which large numbers of Zulus were killed, the Boers drove Dingaan and his armies across the Tugela, and occupied the country. The British Government, however, declined to recognise the right of its colonists to leave the colony, wage war upon the native tribes, and set up as independent republics, and therefore, after overcoming the resistance of the Boers, occupied Natal, and eventually made it into a separate colony. After some trial of British rule, the bulk of the Dutch recrossed the mountains, and joined their fellow-countrymen in the Orange Free State, or in the land beyond the Vaal. At length in 1852 the British Government, having enough to do with native wars on the Cape frontier, found it expedient to concede independence to the Transvaal Boers; and two years afterwards abandoned the territory between the Orange and Vaal Rivers to its inhabitants, the Dutch farmers, who thus founded the Orange Free State. The Dutch of the Free State were of much the same type and education as the Cape Dutch, and soon settled down and arranged their affairs, and evolved an almost ideal form of republican government, under which, after having at great sacrifice and courage overcome the native difficulties on their borders, they lived a happy and contented existence, with increasing prosperity, no public enemy, perfect civil and religious equality, and, except for railways and public works, no public debt, until in 1899 that wonderful loyalty to race which is so remarkable a trait in the Dutch African involved them in the ambitions and the ruin of the South African Republic. With the Transvaal Boer it was far otherwise. Amongst the leaders of the Voor-trekkers, as the original emigrants from Cape Colony are called, were leaders of whom colonists of any race might be proud, such as Pretorius, Potgieter, Uys, and Retief, and, no doubt, among their followers were many like them; but it was the most discontented and the most uncivilised and turbulent, as a rule, that crossed the Vaal originally; and there they lived isolated lives, far away from any white being but those of their own family, without books, without intercourse with the outer world, surrounded only by their wives and children and Kaffir servants, or rather slaves; and thus the Transvaal Boer, to whom alone we ought to apply the name, became more sullen, obstinate, bigoted, and ignorant than his cousins farther south. Very little good could such people, with few exceptions little above the average of an English farm-labourer, do with independence. Many years were wasted in quarrelling and even fighting among themselves, every leader of a district with a few scattered farms claiming independence, before all were united under one government. There was constant war with natives on the border, no means of collecting taxes or providing for public works, and by the year 1877 it seemed as though the State must collapse and the Transvaal be overrun by its enemies. The Boers were defeated by Sekukuni, chief of the Bapedi; they had an open dispute with Cetewayo about territory which they had annexed from his country, and he was preparing for war; the tribes in the north had driven back the farmers; the State was bankrupt, and all was confusion. The more settled members of the community in the towns called for firm government, but the president had no power at his back to enforce it. Such a state of things encouraged a general native rising, and was a menace to the safety of all the whites in South Africa. The Cape Government watched the situation with anxiety, and at length the British Government intervened, and on 12th April 1877 proclaimed the Transvaal to be annexed to the British dominions. At the time it was believed that the majority of the burghers were in favour of this step, which met with no serious opposition. Subsequent events, however, proved that this belief was not well founded. It is, however, tolerably certain that it saved the Transvaal an attack from the thirty or forty thousand Zulus collected by Cetewayo on its frontier. _ |
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