President Burgess, the predecessor of Kruger is described in this work as leaving the Transvaal "brokenhearted by the cruelty and mean intrigue, the dissensions among and disloyalty of the people." He left a statement denouncing Kruger for his intrigues to secure the presidency for himself, and charges and proves Kruger to have been a leader in breaking promises and betraying where he had promised support. When the Transvaal was annexed after President Burgess' pathetic retirement before the rising tyrant, Kruger calmly took office under the British government, and resigned the dignity and emolument only when refused increased remuneration for which he repeatedly applied. The English authority during this time was undermined by rumors incessantly circulated among the sentimentalists of English statesmen, and having some foundation that the Transvaal would be given up. This was preparing the way for trouble, and the weakness displayed in England was met by what amounted to a conspiracy in the Transvaal. Kruger's point was an artful though crude demagogy of violence against taxation. It was about taxes that the first English war was finally started, and the Majuba Hill incident was preliminary to a complacent accommodation, glossed in England as magnanimity and exalted expression of the overwhelming power of Great Britain, but perfectly understood in the Transvaal to mean that the British Empire was whipped and could be kicked about at the pleasure of the powerful President. [Sidenote: Outrages Perpetrated by Boers] It was during the war leading down to this inglorious surrender and false peace, that many murders were committed by Boer assassins, who used white flags and Red Crosses to lure victims. A few incidents of this treachery are thus specified: "There was the murder of Green in Lydenburg, who was called to the Boer camp, where he went unarmed and in good faith, only to have his brains blown out by the Boer with whom he was conversing; there was the public flogging of another Englishman by the notorious Abel Erasmus because he was an Englishman and had British sympathies; and there were the various white flag incidents. At Ingogo the Boers raised the white flag, and when in response to this General Colley ordered the hoisting of a similar flag to indicate that it was seen, a perfect hail of lead was poured on the position where the General stood; and it was obvious that the hoisting of the flag was merely a ruse to ascertain where the General and his staff were. There was the ambulance affair on Majuba, when the Boers came upon an unarmed party bearing the wounded with the Red Cross flying over them, and after asking who they were and getting a reply, fired a volley into the group, killing Surgeon-Major Cornish."