And here we close this chapter of the history of the Boers. We leave them, for the moment, divided as to the government of the Dutch East India Company, but a homogeneous people seventeen thousand strong, and having developed out of the elements mixed in their blood and the peculiar environment and experiences in which they lived a new race of civilized men to be known in the history of commerce, diplomacy and war as Africanders. CHAPTER II. FIRST CONTACT OF AFRICANDER AND BRITON IN DIPLOMACY. (1795.) Colonel Robert Jacob Gordon was in chief command of all the regular military forces maintained in the Cape colony. These consisted of a regiment of infantry numbering twenty-five officers and five hundred and forty-six rank and file, an artillery corps mustering twenty-seven officers and four hundred and three rank and file, fifty-seven men stationed at the regimental depots Meuron and Württemberg and a corps of mountaineer soldiers, called pandours, numbering two hundred and ten. It is important to remember that at this time the colonists were divided in sentiment as to the government of the Dutch East India Company, but united in loyalty to the States-General and the Stadtholder of Holland. In the interior the people had risen up in a mild revolt, had dismissed the local magistrates who were the appointees of the Company, and had instituted incipient republics under the government of representative assemblies. Even in Stellenbosch and Cape Town the majority sympathized with these movements, and only waited a favorable opportunity to declare against the Company’s rule. It is equally important to know that the military, also, were divided in sentiment on this subject. Of the infantry, the officers were loyal to the Orange party, but the rank and file were mercenaries from nearly every country in the north of Europe, and were zealous for that party or nation from whom they could draw the highest pay. The artillery corps, on the contrary, was composed almost entirely of Netherlanders, with a few French and Germans. These men were attached to the mother country. A large majority of them, however, sympathized with the republican movement in Europe, and would have preferred alliance with the French rather than with the English, for, at that time, the lead of France was toward republicanism. Thus weakened by internal divisions, the Colony presented an open door to invasion by any power that might covet a point of so great strategic importance on the ocean thoroughfare between Europe and the Orient. The English government, when about to enter into hostilities with France, became apprehensive that the French would perceive the value of the Cape colony and instantly take forcible possession of it. This they determined to prevent at any cost; for the military occupancy of the Cape by the French would bring England’s highway to India under the control of her hereditary foe.