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of President Burgers, which cannot be said to have been one of active opposition, a considerable number of the Boers accepted the annexation with complacency. Burgers himself left the Transvaal a disappointed, heart-broken man, and a deathbed statement published some time after his decease throws a lurid light on the intrigues which arose before and after annexation. He shows how, for purely personal ends, Kruger allied himself with the British faction who were agitating for annexation, and to undermine him and endeavour to gain the presidency, urged the Boers to pay no taxes. However this may be, Burgers was crushed; but as a consequence the British government and not Paul Kruger was, for a time at least, master of the Transvaal. In view of his attitude before annexation, it was not surprising that Kruger should be one of the first men to agitate against it afterwards. The work of destruction had gone too far. The plot had miscarried. And so Kruger and Dr Jorissen, by whom he was accompanied, were the first to approach Lord Carnarvon with an appeal for revocation of the proclamation. Lord Carnarvon’s reply was that the act of annexation was an irrevocable one. Unfortunately the train of events in England favoured the intrigues of the party who wished the annexation cancelled. In 1878 Lord Carnarvon resigned, and there were other evidences of dissension in the British cabinet.
Kruger, who since the annexation had held a salaried appointment under the British Government, again became one of a deputation to England. His colleague was Piet Joubert. They laid their case before Sir Michael Hicks Beach (who had succeeded Lord Carnarvon) but met with no success. Sir Michael, however, in a despatch dated September the 16th 1878, reiterated the intention of the British cabinet to grant the state “to the utmost practicable extent, its individuality and powers of self-government under the sovereignty of the queen.” On the occasion of Kruger’s second mission to endeavour to get the annexation revoked Sir T. Shepstone determined to dispense with his further services as a government servant, and terminated the engagement. In the beginning of 1879 Shepstone was recalled and Colonel Owen Lanyon, who had served in Bechuanaland and was then administrator of Griqualand West, was appointed administrator in the Transvaal. In the meantime, the Zulu forces which threatened the Transvaal had been turned against the British, and the disaster of Isandhlwana occurred. Rumours of British defeat soon reached the Transvaal, and encouraged the disaffected party to become bolder in their agitation against British rule. Agitation for independence.Thus Sir Bartle Frere wrote at the time: “All accounts from Pretoria represent that the great body of the Boer population is still under the belief that the Zulus are more than a match for us, that our difficulties are more than we can surmount, and that the present is the favourable opportunity for demanding their independence.” In April Frere visited Pretoria and conferred with the Boers. He assured them that they might look forward to complete self-government under the Crown, and at the same time urged them to sink political differences and join hands with the British against their common enemy, the Zulus. The Boers, however, continued to agitate for complete independence, and, with the honourable exception of Piet Uys, a gallant Boer leader, and a small band of followers, who assisted Colonel Evelyn Wood at Hlobani, the Boers held entirely aloof from the conflict with the Zulus, a campaign which cost Great Britain many lives and £5,000,000 before the Zulu power was finally broken. In June Sir Garnet Wolseley went to South Africa as commander of the forces against the Zulus, and as high commissioner “for a time,” in the place of Sir Bartle Frere, of the Transvaal and Natal. Meantime Frere’s proposals to fulfil the promises made to grant the Boers a liberal constitution were shelved. After the “settlement” of the Zulu question, Sir Garnet Wolseley proceeded to Pretoria and immediately organized an expedition against Sikukuni, who throughout the Zulu campaign had been acting under the advice of Cetywayo. Sikukuni’s stronghold was captured and his forces disbanded.
Sir Garnet Wolseley now assured the Boers at a public gathering that so long as the sun shone the British flag would fly at Pretoria. In May 1880 he returned to England, having established in the Transvaal a legislative council with powers so limited as to convince many of the Boers that there was no intention of fulfilling Shepstone’s promises. Meanwhile events in Great Britain had once more taken a turn which gave encouragement to the disaffected Boers. Already in November 1879 Gladstone had conducted his Midlothian campaign. In one speech, referring to Cyprus and the Transvaal, he said: “If those acquisitions were as valuable as they are valueless, I would repudiate them, because they were obtained by means dishonourable to the character of our country.” And in another speech he said that the British had insanely placed themselves in the strange predicament of the free subjects of a monarchy going to coerce the free subjects of a republic. Effect of Mr Gladstone’s Speeches in England.Expressions such as these were translated into Dutch and distributed among the Boers, and they exercised a good deal of influence in fanning the agitation already going on in the Transvaal, So keenly were the Midlothian speeches appreciated by the Boers that the Boer committee wrote a letter of thanks to Gladstone, and expressed the hope that should a change in the government of Great Britain occur, “the injustice done to the Transvaal might find redress.” In April 1880, this change in the British Government did occur. Gladstone became prime minister, and shortly afterwards Frere was recalled. Could events be more auspicious for the party seeking retrocession? On being directly appealed to by Kruger and Joubert, Gladstone however replied that the liberty which they sought might be “most easily and promptly conceded to the Transvaal as a member of a South African Confederation.” This was not at all what was wanted, and the agitation continued. Meanwhile in the Transvaal, concurrently with the change of prime minister and high commissioner, the administrator, Colonel Lanyon, began vigorously to enforce taxation among the Boers. Men who would not pay taxes to their own appointed governments, and who were daily expecting to be allowed to return to that condition of anarchy which they had come to regard as the normal order of things, were not likely to respond willingly to the tax-gatherer’s demands. That many of them refused payment in the circumstances which existed was natural.
In November matters were brought to a head by the wagons of a farmer named Bezuidenhout being seized in respect of the non-payment of taxes, and promptly retaken from the sheriff by a party of Boers. Outbreak of War, 1880.Lanyon began to recognize that the position was becoming grave, and telegraphed to Sir George Colley, the high commissioner of South-East Africa, for military aid. This, however, was not immediately available, and on the 13th of December the Boers in public meeting at Paardekraal resolved once more to proclaim the South African Republic, and in the meantime to appoint a triumvirate, consisting of Kruger, Pretorius and Joubert, as a provisional government. Within three days of the Paardekraal meeting a letter was sent to the administrator demanding the keys of the government offices. Formal proclamation of the republic was made on the 16th of December (Dingaan’s Day) at Heidelberg. Hostilities forthwith began. Meanwhile pressure was put on the British prime minister to carry out the policy he had avowed while out of office. But it was not until Great Britain was suffering from the humiliation of defeat that he was convinced that the time for granting that retrocession had arrived. The first shots fired were outside Potchefstroom, which was then occupied by a small British garrison (see Potchefstroom). On the 20th of December some 240 men under Colonel Anstruther, chiefly belonging to the 94th Regiment, while marching from Lydenburg to Pretoria, were surprised at Bronkhorst Spruit, and cut up by the Boer forces. Half the men were killed and wounded; the other half including some officers, were taken prisoners. Captain Elliot, one of the prisoners, who had been released on parole, was shot dead by Boers while crossing the Vaal, and Captain Lambert, another paroled prisoner who accompanied Elliot, was also shot,
