a dozen. (This memorable victory is annually commemorated by the Boers as Dingaan’s Day, while the Umslatos, which ran red with the blood of the slain, was renamed Blood river.) Dingaan fled, the victorious Boers entered the royal kraal, gave decent burial to the skeletons of Retief and his party, and regarded themselves as now undisputed masters of Natal. They had recovered from a leather pouch which Retief carried the deed by which Dingaan ceded “to Retief and his countrymen the place called Port Natal together with all the lands annexed . . . as far as the land may be useful and in my possession.” This was the 5th or 6th cession made by Chaka or Dingaan of the same territory to different individuals. In every case the overlordship of the Zulus was assumed.
Returning south, Pretorius and his commando were surprised to learn that Port Natal had been occupied on the 4th of December by a detachment of the 72nd Highlanders sent thither from the Cape. The emigrant farmers had, with the assent of the few remaining Englishmen at Port Natal, in May 1838 issued a proclamation taking possession of the port. This had been followed by an intimation from the governor of the Cape (Major-General Sir George Napier) inviting the emigrants to return to the colony, and stating that whenever he thought it desirable he should take military possession of the port. In sanctioning the occupation of the port the British government of the day had no intention of making Natal a British colony, but wished to prevent the Boers establishing an independent republic upon the coast with a harbour through which access to the interior could be gained. After remaining at the port just over a year the Highlanders were withdrawn, on Christmas Eve 1839. Meantime the Boers had founded Pietermaritzburg and made it the seat of their volksraad. They rendered their power in Natal absolute, for the time, in the following month, when they joined with Panda, Dingaan’s brother, in another attack on the Zulu king. Dingaan was utterly defeated and soon afterwards perished, Panda becoming king in his stead by favour of the Boers.
At this time, had the affairs of the Boer community been managed with prudence and sagacity they might have established an enduring state. But their impatience of control, reflected in the form of government adopted, led to disastrous consequences. Legislative power was vested, nominally, in the volksraad (consisting of twenty-four members), while the president and executive were changed every three months. But whenever any measure of importance was to be decided a meeting was called of het publiek, that is, of all who chose to attend, to sanction or reject it. “The result,” says Theal, “was utter anarchy. Decisions of one day were frequently reversed the next, and every one held himself free to disobey any law that he did not approve of. . . . Public opinion of the hour in each section of the community was the only force in the land” (History of South Africa 1834–1854, chap. xliv.). While such was the domestic state of affairs during the period of self-government, the settlers cherished large territorial views. They were in loose alliance with and in quasi-supremacy over the Boer communities which had left the Cape and settled at Winburg and at Potchefstroom. They had declared themselves a free and independent state under the title of “The Republic of Port Natal and adjacent countries,"[1] and sought (September 1840) from Sir George Napier at the Cape an acknowledgment of their independence by Great Britain. Sir George, being without definite instructions from England, could give no decisive answer, but he was friendly disposed to the Natal farmers. This feeling was, however, changed by what Sir George (and many of the Dutch in Natal also) thought a wilful and unjustifiable attack (December 1840) on a tribe of Kaffirs on the southern, or Cape Colony, frontier by a commando under Andries Pretorius, which set out, nominally, to recover stolen cattle. Having at length received an intimation from London that the queen “could not acknowledge the independence of her own subjects, but that the trade of the emigrant farmers would be placed on the same footing as that of any other British settlement, upon their receiving a military force to exclude the interference with or possession of the country by any other European power,” Sir George communicated this decision to the volksraad in September 1841. Under the arrangement proposed the Boers might easily have secured the benefits of self-government, subject to an acknowledgment of British supremacy, together with the advantage of military protection, for the British government was then extremely reluctant to extend its colonial responsibilities. The Boers, however, strongly resented the contention of the British that they could not shake off British nationality though beyond the bounds of any recognized British possession, nor were they prepared to see their only port garrisoned by British troops, and they rejected Napier’s overtures. Napier, therefore, on the 2nd of December 1841, issued a proclamation in which he stated that in consequence of the emigrant farmers refusing to be treated as British subjects and of their attitude towards the Kaffir tribes he intended resuming military occupation of Port Natal. This proclamation was answered in a lengthy minute, dated the 21st of February 1842, drawn up by J. N. Boshof (afterwards president of the Orange Free State), by far the ablest of the Dutch who had settled in Natal. In this minute British and Dutch in conflict.the farmers ascribed all their troubles to one cause, namely, the absence of a representative government, which had been repeatedly asked for by them while still living in Cape Colony and as often denied or delayed, and concluded by a protest against the occupation of any part of their territory by British troops. An incident which happened immediately after these events greatly encouraged the Boers to persist in their opposition to Great Britain. In March 1842 a Dutch vessel sent out by G. G. Ohrig, an Amsterdam merchant who sympathized warmly with the cause of the emigrant farmers, reached. port Natal, and its supercargo, J. A. Smellekamp (a man who subsequently played a part in the early history of the Transvaal and Orange Free State), concluded a treaty with the volksraad assuring them of the protection of Holland. The Natal Boers believed the Netherlands to be one of the great powers of Europe, and were firmly persuaded that its government would aid them in resisting England.
On the 1st of April Captain T. C. Smith with a force of 263 men left his camp at the Umgazi, on the eastern frontier of Cape Colony, and marching overland reached Durban without opposition, and encamped, on the 4th of May, at the base of the Berea hills. The Boers, cut off from their port, called out a commando of some 300 to 400 men under Andries Pretorius and gathered at Congella at the head of the bay. On the night of the 23rd of May Smith made an unsuccessful attack on the Boer camp, losing his guns and fifty men killed and Wounded. On the 26th the Boers captured the harbour and settlement, and on the 31st blockaded the British camp, the women and children being removed, on the suggestion of Pretorius, to a ship in the harbour of which the Boers had taken possession. Meantime, an old Durban resident, Richard (commonly called Dick) King, had undertaken to convey tidings of the perilous position of the British force to the commandant at Graham’s Town. He started on the night of the 24th, and escaping the Boer outposts rode through the dense bush and across the bridgeless rivers of Kaffraria at peril of his life from hostile natives and wild beasts, and in nine days reached his destination—a distance of 360 m. in a direct line, and nearly 600 by the route to be followed. This remarkable ride was accomplished with one change of mount, obtained from a missionary in Pondoland. A comparatively strong force under Colonel A. J. Cloete was at once sent by sea to Port Natal, and on the 26th of June Captain Smith was relieved. The besieged had suffered greatly from lack of food. Within a fortnight Colonel Cloete had received the submission of the volksraad at Pietermaritzburg. The burghers represented that they were under the protection of Holland, but this plea was peremptorily rejected by the commander of the British forces.
The British government was still undecided as to its policy towards Natal. In April 1842 Lord Stanley (afterwards 14th earl of Derby), then secretary for the colonies in the second Peel Administration, wrote to Sir George Napier that the establishment of a colony in Natal would be attended with little prospect of
- ↑ Commonly called the Republic of Natalia or Natal.
