"'Seeing, however, that Aylward, who is said to boast, whether truly or not, that he took part with his brother Fenians in the murder of the police constable at Manchester, as well as in the attempt to blow up the Clerkenwell prison, had succeeded Schlickman in the command of the Steelpoort Volunteers, I question whether the Government of the South African Republic has the power, even supposing it to have the will, to put a stop to further atrocities on the part of this band of "Filibusters," as they are commonly styled in the newspapers. "'In my opinion it will be requisite to call in the aid of British troops before this can be done, and I am not without hope that one of the results of the mission on which Sir T. Shepstone is about to start, will be a petition from persons of education and property throughout the country for such an intervention on the part of her Majesty's Government as will terminate this wanton and useless bloodshed, and prevent the recurrence of the scenes of injustice, cruelty, and rapine, which abundant evidence is every day forthcoming to prove, have rarely ceased to disgrace the Republics beyond the Vaal ever since they first sprang into existence.'" Von Schlickman was an ex-Russian officer, commanding a force of filibusters which had been engaged by the Transvaal Government, and his men being unpaid, were allowed to reimburse themselves by cattle or land seized from the natives. As a natural consequence, the war assumed a character of unrestrained ferocity. On receiving this information Lord Carnarvon wrote that his Government "could not view passively, and with indifference, the engagement of the Republic in foreign military operations the object or the necessity of which had not been made apparent."