But the skillfully arranged programme was spoiled by the shrewdness of President Kruger. There was no initial conflict in the streets of Johannesburg. Penetrating the design, the president withdrew all the Transvaal police from the streets of the city; there was no one to exchange shots with, and therefore no reason to justify a call for outside interference. By cutting the telegraph wires Jameson made it impossible for friend or foe to know his whereabouts, but the report got abroad that he was coming. In Johannesburg some desired, some feared, his coming. A member of the committee of the National Union assembled a hundred of the malcontents and attempted to lead them out to co-operate with the invaders, but they tamely surrendered to a burgher force without firing a shot. As for Jameson, on Wednesday, the 1st of January, 1896, he was checked near Krugersdorp by a few hundred burghers hastily collected, and on the next day was surrounded near Doornkop and forced to surrender. Thus ended the attempt at revolution. During the few days which closed 1895 and opened 1896, there was a state of social, political and financial chaos in Johannesburg. All that was left visible of the reform association was confined within the walls of a single clubhouse—a resort of the leading spirits in the conspiracy. The European population at large seemed to be unaware of anything connected with the affair but the, to them, unaccountable situation—full of peril to life and property—which had been created they knew not how. The state of panic was sustained and intensified by the wildest rumors of what Jameson was to do, of thousands of burghers assembling to lay siege to the town, of a purpose to bombard the city from the forts, of a new government about to be proclaimed—indeed, anything and everything might happen. When it leaked out that the principal actors in the revolutionary movement had secretly removed their families from the city—which was to be the storm-center of the expected disturbance—there was a general stampede. Men and women fought for place on the outgoing trains. In one tragical instance an overladen train left the track, and forty persons, mostly women and children, perished. To exaggerate the misery and disaster to innocent and peaceable people, caused by this unfortunate and abortive uprising, would be impossible.