In 1877 the first intrusion came. The British were now abundant in Griqualand West, the diamond region, and on the Transvaal borders lay a host of native enemies, chief among them being the warlike Zulus, led by the bold and daring Cetewayo. Only fear of the British kept this truculent chief at rest. Meanwhile the Boer Republic had fallen into a financial collapse. Its frequent wars with the natives had exhausted its revenues and thrown it deeply into debt. A serious crisis seemed impending. On the plea of preventing this, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, secretary of Natal, made his way to Pretoria, the capital of the republic, and issued a proclamation annexing the Transvaal country to Great Britain. The public treasury he found to be almost empty, it containing only twelve shillings and six pence, and even part of this was counterfeit coin. His act was arbitrary and unwarranted, and while the Boers submitted, they did so with sullen anger, quietly biding their time. [=The Zulu War=] In the following year the Zulus, who had been threatening the Boers, broke out into war with the British, and with such energy that the whites were at first repulsed by the impetuous Cetewayo and his warlike followers. In this onset Prince Napoleon, son of the deposed emperor Louis Napoleon, who served as a volunteer in the British ranks, was killed. The British soon retrieved the disaster, and in the end decisively defeated the Zulus, capturing their king, who was taken as a prisoner to London. After the Zulu war Sir Garnet Wolseley led his troops into the Transvaal, telling the protesting Boers that "so long as the sun shone and the Vaal River flowed to the sea the Transvaal would remain British territory." Other acts of interference, and the attempt of the British officials to tax the Boers, added to their exasperation, and at the end of 1880 they resolved to fight for the independence of which they had been robbed. Wolseley had before this left the territory, and the troops had been reduced to a few detachments, scattered here and there. [=War With the Boers=] The first hostile action took place on December 20, 1880, a detachment of the Ninety-fourth regiment, on its march to Pretoria, being waylaid by a body of about 150 armed Boers, who ordered them to stop. Colonel Anstruther curtly replied: "I go to Pretoria; do as you like." The Boers did more than he liked. They closed in on his columns and opened on them so deadly a fire that the British fell at a frightful rate. Out of 259 in all, 155 had fallen dead or wounded in ten minutes' time. Then the colonel, himself seriously wounded, ordered a surrender, and the Boers at once became as friendly as they had just been hostile. They had lost only two killed and five wounded.