When the call to assemble at the Cape was signaled to the country Burghers, only seventy men from the Swellendam district responded. The nationals, who had been in revolt against the Dutch East India Company’s government, declined to obey. Further appeals by letter failed to bring any more of them in. At last, on the 7th of July, in a written communication, it was proposed by the nationals that they would rally to the defense of the country if the government would grant them amnesty for the past and pledge a reasonable redress of their grievances as soon as possible. Among the principal stipulations were these: The nationalists were to be exempted from direct taxation and to have free trade; the cartoon money—a depreciated currency—was to be withdrawn from circulation, and they were to be granted permission to hold in perpetual slavery all Bushmen captured by commandos or individuals. The nationals had no sooner dispatched the letter containing their overture than it occurred to some of them that their claims would surely be ignored if the British obtained control of the colony. Therefore, without waiting for a response from the government, they resolved to aid in the defense of the country, and at the same time continue to assert their right to self-government. In accordance therewith a company of one hundred and sixty-eight mounted men was organized under Commandant Delpont and at once set out for Cape Town. The rally from the country districts of Swellendam, Stellenbosch and Drakenstein brought together a force of eleven hundred and forty horsemen. Two hundred of these were added to the post at Muizenburg. The rest were stationed at Cape Town and along the road to the camp as pickets. Hostile operations came on very slowly. Admiral Elphinstone seized three more Dutch merchant ships that were lying in Simon’s Bay on the 9th of July. On the 14th he landed four hundred and fifty soldiers, who occupied Simonstown, and strengthened the post a week later by adding four hundred marines. Strangely enough, neither the English commanders nor Commissioner Sluysken chose to regard these movements as acts of war. The Commissioner had been careful to order that no attack should be made on the English, and that nothing whatever should be done that would provoke retaliation or furnish grounds for them to throw the blame of opening hostilities on the Dutch. It was not until the 3d of August that any act was committed which was by either party construed into an act of war. On that day a Burgher officer fired at an English picket and wounded one of the men. For this he was reprimanded by the Commissioner. General Craig reported it in his dispatches as the beginning of hostilities.