106 



CAPE COLONY AND SOUTH AFRICA. 



leaders were arrested on Die charge of high treason 

 unil taken to Pretoria,. Subsequent arrests raised 

 the number to nearly 60. The disarmament of 

 Johannesburg was accomplished by Jan. 8, when all 

 the Boer commandos met and marched into the city, 

 The quantity of arms handed over, 2,000 rifles and 

 :! .Maxims, was much smaller than had been brought 

 into the gold lields ; hence for weeks afterward the 

 Boer police searched the houses and the mines. 



I'lVMclent Kriiger issued two proclamations. In 

 one he promised that the Government would con- 

 tinue to guarantee adequate protection to the 

 peaceful development of the mining industry, and 

 threatened with the penalty of the laws of confisca- 

 tion any one, who should attempt to disturb the 

 peaceful development. In the other, dated Jan. 30, 

 he held out, a hope of concessions at the next ses- 

 sion of the Volksraad in redress of grievances, spe- 

 cifically in relation to the education of English 

 children and a municipality for Johannesburg. 



The Government, after 'the suppression of the 

 Johannesburg rising, began to guard against any 

 further revolts or foreign invasion by increasing 

 the armaments and military forces on an extraor- 

 dinary scale. Four strong forts were begun on the 

 hills above Pretoria, and two batteries of Krupp 

 guns were imported ; also Maxim and quick-firing 

 guns, and rifles enough for an army of 100,000 men. 

 The civil servants and railroad employees were 

 armed and formed into military companies. The 

 state artillery was raised from 100 to 500 men, and 

 500 well-armed men were aded to the Johannesburg 

 police. A volunteer force of 1,000 men was re- 

 cruited from Hollanders and Germans. The immi- 

 gration of large numbers of artisans and farmers 

 from Germany and Holland, encouraged as it was 

 by the Government, excited the suspicions of the 

 British party. The Afrikanders of the Orange 

 Free State and of the Cape and Natal were no less 

 stirred up by the attempt to subvert the Transvaal 

 Government than the Boers of the Transvaal. The 

 Afrikander Bond let' it be understood that any 

 act of interference by the British Government in 

 the Transvaal would precipitate an uprising in 

 Smith Africa that an army of 150,000 men could 

 not suppress. A revolt of the natives in the Lyden- 

 burg district, who thought that the English were 

 coming to their assistance and refused to believe 

 in Jameson's defeat, was promptly reduced by the 

 Boers. The Orange Free State, which had mobil- 

 ized its troops and massed them on the frontier on 

 the occasion of Jameson's raid, entered into a de- 

 fensive alliance with the South African Republic, 

 by which each state pledged itself to help the other 

 by military force either to resist invasion or to sup- 

 press disturbance. Both the Orange Free State 

 and the Transvaal made extraordinary military 

 preparations, and even the Boers of Cape Colony 

 and Xatal armed themselves for the purpose of as- 

 sisting their brethren against any attempt of the 

 British Government to destroy their independence. 



German Sympathy. Eleven months before the 

 outbreak of toe crisis, on the occasion of President 

 Kriiger's toast on the Kmperor's birthday, Lord 

 Kimberley commented in a letter to Sir Edward 

 Mulct, British ambassador to Berlin, on the atti- 

 tude of Germany toward the Transvaal, which the 

 British Minister of Foreign AITairs belie-- d was 

 iati-d to foster in the Transvaal a spirit con- 

 trary to the international posit i< f the Republic. 



The German Foreign Minister, I'.anm von Marschall. 

 replied thai the German policy aimed simply at 

 .it tack those material in- 

 terests that German] lias created by building rail- 

 wax- and by forming commercial ties in the Trans- 

 vaal, interests that demanded the maintenance <,f 

 roe Trans --li-dcpendcnt. state in accord- 



ance with the convention of 1884 and the preserva- 

 tion of the status quo as regards railroads and the 

 harbor at Delagoa Bay. He asked why Lord Kim- 

 berley. if he desired the maintenance of the status 

 quo, did not restrain the people who abused Ger- 

 many and proclaimed the absorption of the Trans- 

 vaal by Cape Colony as their programme. In a 

 conversation held with Count Hatzfeldt in October, 

 1895, Lord Salisbury said that he did not consider 

 the Transvaal question a black spot between Eng- 

 land and Germany and that he was at one with 

 Germany in desiring to uphold the status quo. 



On Dec. 24 the German consul in Pretoria tele- 

 graphed that news from Johannesburg points to 

 the preparation of disturbances by the English 

 party there. Baron von Marschall communicated 

 this to Sir Frank Lascelles, the English ambassa- 

 dor, and emphasized once again the necessity of 

 preserving the status quo. After publication of 

 the manifesto of the Reform Committee, which 

 the German consul believed from trustworthy ac- 

 counts to have been prompted by Mr. Rhodes and 

 supported by his friends, the German Minister of 

 Foreign Affairs directed the German representa- 

 tive in Pretoria to impress upon the Transvaal 

 Government that it must scrupulously avoid any 

 provocation if it wishes to retain German sympathy. 

 The German consul said that the manifesto was 

 looked upon universally as a threat to employ vio- 

 lence against the Government in order to bring the 

 Boer state under the influence of the Cape ; that 

 at the same time the overwhelming majority of the 

 subjects of other states condemned most emphat- 

 ically the revolutionary action of the English party. 

 After Dr. Jameson had crossed the frontier Baron 

 von Marschall authorized the consul in case of need 

 to summon German troops from the cruiser See- 

 adler, but only after consultation with President 

 Krtiger and solely for the protection of the consul- 

 ate and of life and property of German subjects. 

 At the same time he telegraphed to the German 

 minister in Lisbon to request permission for the 

 passage of 50 German troops through Portuguese 

 territory, as no other way of protecting German 

 subjects was open. The Portuguese gave no an- 

 swer to the request till Jan. '3, 1896, when the Ger- 

 man minister was told that Jameson had been de- 

 feated and all danger to foreigners was removed. 



President Krtiger requested the German consul 

 to report that he had done everything to avoid 

 provocation, but that his Government was com- 

 pelled to drive out the freebooters forcibly. When 

 Lord Salisbury, on Jan. 3, expressed the hope that 

 the Transvaal crisis was at an end. Count Hatzfeldt 

 remarked that the English Government would do 

 well to use any influence that it might possess over 

 the English elements in Johannesburg in order to 

 prevent any subsequent attempts at revolution. 

 On Jan. 3 the German Emperor telegraphed to 

 the President of the South African Republic, con- 

 gratulating him on the fact that, " without appeal- 

 ing to the help of friendly powers, he and his 

 people have succeeded in repelling with their own 

 forces the armed bands which have broken into 

 their country, and in maintaining the independence 

 of their country against foreign aggression." This 

 telegram caused tremendous excitement in Eng- 

 land. On Jan. 6, in a conversation with Sir Frank 

 Lascelles, Baron von Marschall protested against 

 the view of the English press that it was an act of 

 hostility against England and an encroachment on 

 English rights for the German Emperor to con- 

 gratulate the head of a friendly state on his victory 

 over an armed band that had invaded his land in 

 defiance of international law, and had been declared 

 to be outside of the pale of the law by the English 

 Government itself. 



