With the arrival overland from the Cape Colony of the Boer voortrekkers, however, a great change came over the scene. Momentous events followed one another in quick succession. Here was a well-armed, mounted and efficient force, extremely small in numbers as compared with the Zulus, and very desirous of occupying the land they found vacant in the northern portions of Natal. Although in no way intending to be aggressors, the entirely amicable and co-operative spirit in which they entered upon negotiations with Dingana being evidence of this fact, they were undoubtedly regarded _ab initio_ in that light by the Zulus. The Boers, however, had arrived in these practically unexplored regions prepared for all contingencies, war included; Dingana saw this, and war they were compelled to enter upon forthwith. The treacherous and brutal massacre of Piet Retief, along with some sixty followers and forty Hottentot and Native servants, at the principal royal kraal, Mgungundhlovu, on the 6th February, 1838, followed almost immediately by the cold-blooded murders of 281 Boer men, women and children, together with 250 of their coloured servants, at Bushman's and Blauwkrantz Rivers in Natal, were the initial acts of that wholly unprovoked war. The valiant manner in which 460 voortrekkers subsequently went forth to oppose an army outnumbering them by at least 40 to 1; the readiness with which they moved about the roadless country with cumbersome transport, notwithstanding the traps occasionally laid by a crafty foe; their crushing victory over some 9,500 Zulus at Blood River on 16th December, 1838; and their further expedition of January-February, 1840, when, as the result of a battle between Dingana and their ally Mpande, the former's power was finally shattered, will always stand to their credit, and be a lesson as to how operations can be conducted with success against a race of barbarians. Subsequently to the death of Dingana, probably from poisoning, in January, 1840, his brother, Mpande, who, towards the end of 1839, had crossed over into Natal with a vast concourse of adherents to seek the protection of the Boers, was later on formally installed by the latter as Paramount Chief of the Zulus. Between 1840 and 1843, the relations between the English settlers on the coast and the Boers, who had taken up their residence further inland,[8] unhappily became so strained that open hostilities broke out between them in the winter of 1843, the former having been strengthened by a regiment sent overland to Durban in 1842. This regrettable conflict resulted in the formal annexation of Natal by the British Government, the majority of the Boers falling back to establish themselves in territory across the Vaal, then already partly occupied by their own countrymen, and now known as the Transvaal.