provided the English governor would supply them with powder, lead, clothing, and such other articles as they needed.
Hendrik Krugel dictated two additional articles:
3. That the people of Graaff-Reinet would not draw the sword against the English.
4. That their only reason for refusing to take the oath required was that when the states-general of the Netherlands should retake the country they would not he able to justify themselves if they did so.
These articles were confirmed by all present, and the crowd outside then dispersed. Next morning Van Jaarsveld and some others proposed to the reverend Mr. Von Manger that he should remain under their government, but he declined, on the ground that he had taken an oath of fidelity to the king of England. On the 20th he and Mr. Bresler left the drostdy to return to Capetown.
On hearing of these proceedings, General Craig sent Major King wdth three hundred men of the eighty-fourth regiment to Stellenbosch, to be in readiness to move forward at short notice. Supplies of ammunition and goods of all kinds were cut off from the district of Graaff-Reinet. A corps of Hottentots was raised for service in the interior. They were enlisted for a year, were provided with arms, clothing, and rations, and each man received sixpence a week in money.
Meantime dissension appeared among the people of Graaff-Reinet. The farmers of the fieldcornetcies of Zwartkops River, the Zuurveld, and Bruintjes Hoogte remained faithful to the government they had established, but the others were beginning to argue that it would be better to submit to the English than to be deprived of ammunition and of a market to buy and sell in. Woyer, for whose apprehension the government was striving, suddenly disappeared, and another who had been very active in encouraging resistance—Hubert Dirk Campagne—was arrested when on a visit to Capetown, and was sent to England to be dealt with there.
Just at this time an event took place which disheartened the great majority of the patriot party in the colony. This
