Transvaal (South Africa) -- History -- War of 1880-1881
Into the history of that event I do not propose to enter; it is
sufficiently well known. Suffice it to say in this brief summary, that
it was the result of a compact under which Dr. Jameson was to come to
Johannesburg with a large armed force of Rhodesian police, with the
view of assisting the Uitlanders to obtain by arms what was denied to
their petitions.
The agreement is undoubted and admitted, but all the rest is chaos.
Failure in a hundred shapes dogged the steps of these ineffective
conspirators. Dr. Jameson, with 500 men instead of 1200, took the bit
between his teeth and started at the wrong time. The Uitlanders did not
sally forth to meet him, the wires were not cut, the railway line was
not destroyed, the Boers were warned, and assembled in great numbers.
Dr. Jameson, who apparently lost his way on the veld, was entrapped
into a bad position, where, after a space of somewhat feeble combat, he
and his whole force surrendered, their lives being guaranteed to them.
The despatch-box of the raiders, with the ciphers and sundry
incriminating documents, was allowed to fall into the hands of the
enemy, and, on their own ammunition-waggons, the personnel of the Raid
performed the journey to that city of Pretoria, which when reinforced
by the Uitlanders they were to have entered in triumph. Thence they
were in due course despatched to London for trial. The members of the
Reform Committee were also seized and tried at Pretoria, several of
them being condemned to death, a sentence which was not executed; the
whole story, coming to its end to an accompaniment of the clash not of
swords, but of gold; the fines inflicted upon the conspirators by the
Transvaal Government amounting to a total of many tens of thousands of
pounds.
Such, except for mutual recriminations which still continue, was the
end of Johannesburg's armed attempt to throw off the yoke of the Boer,
and of the efforts of the ruling powers of Rhodesia to assist them in
the task. Of course the upshot was that the poor Uitlanders fell into a
still deeper pit of oppression and despair. Lord Rosmead, then Sir
Hercules Robinson, never a proconsul remarkable for an iron will, it is
true visited the Transvaal in a great flurry, and assured, or caused
Sir Sidney Shippard and the British agent, a gentleman of the somewhat
alien-sounding name of Sir Jacobus de Wet, in substance to assure the
Uitlanders that if only they would disarm probably their wrongs must
shortly be righted by a beneficent Boer president, assisted to the task
by a Raad full of forgiveness and charity. Moreover, Sir Jacobus de Wet
told them explicitly that the lives of Jameson and his men depended
upon their laying down such weapons as they possessed, although of
course those lives were already guaranteed by the terms of the
surrender.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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