1805, December 29. (Sunday.)—My beloved spake and said unto me, Rise up, &c. (Cant. ii. 10, 11). Ah! why cannot I rise and go forth and meet my Lord? Every hindrance is removed: the wrath of God, the guilt of sin, and severity of affliction; there is nothing now in the world that has any strong hold of my affections. Separated from my friends and country for ever in this life, I have nothing to distract me from hearing the voice of my beloved, and coming away from this world and walking with Him in love, amidst the flowers that perfume the air of Paradise, and the harmony of the happy spirits who are singing His praise. But alas! my heart is cold and slothful. Preached on 2 Peter iii. 11, taking notice at the end of these remarkable circumstances, that made the text particularly applicable to us. It was the last Sabbath of a year, which had been memorable to us from our having left our country, and passed through many dangers. Secondly, within a few days they were to meet an enemy on the field of battle. Thirdly, the death of the captain. I was enabled to be self-collected, and in some degree tender. There was a great impression; many were in tears. Visited and conversed with Mr. M. twice to-day, and marked some passages for him to read. His heart seems tender. There was a considerable number on the orlop in the afternoon. Expounded Matt. xix. and prayed. In the evening Major Davidson and M’Kenzie came to my cabin, and stayed nearly three hours. I read Romans vi. and vii., and explained those difficult chapters as well as I could, so that the Major, I hope, received a greater insight into them; afterwards I prayed with them. But my own soul after these ministrations seemed to have received harm rather than good. It was an awful reflection that Judas was a preacher, perhaps a successful one. Oh, let my soul tremble, lest, after preaching to others, I myself should be a castaway.
1806. January 4.—Continued to approach the land; about sunset the fleet came to an anchor between Robben Island and the land on that side, farthest from Cape Town, and a signal was immediately given for the 59th Regiment to prepare to land. Our men were soon ready, and received thirty-six rounds of ball cartridge; before the three boats were lowered down and fitted, it was two in the morning. I stayed up to see them off; it was a melancholy scene; the privates were keeping up their spirits by affecting to joke about the approach of danger, and the ladies sitting in the cold night upon the grating of the after-hatchway overwhelmed with grief; the cadets, with M’Kenzie, who is one of their officers, all went on board the Duchess of Gordon, the general rendezvous of the company’s troops. I could get to speak to none of my people, but Corporals B. and B. I said to Sergeant G., ‘It is now high time to be decided in religion,’ he replied with a sigh; to Captain S. and the cadets I endeavoured to speak in a general way. I this day signed my name as a witness to Captain O.’s and Major Davidson’s wills; Captain O. left his with me; I passed my time at intervals in writing for to-morrow. The interest I felt in the outward scene distracted me very much from the things which are not seen, and all I could do in prayer was to strive against this spirit. But with what horror should I reflect on the motions of sins within me, which tempted me to wish for bloodshed, as something gratifying by its sublimity. My spirit would be overwhelmed by such a consciousness of depravity, but that I can pray still deliberately against sin; and often the Lord manifested His power by making the same sinful soul to feel a longing desire that the blessed gospel of peace might soothe the spirits of men, and make them all live together in harmony and love. Yet the principle within me may well fill me with shame and sorrow.
Since, on April 9, 1652, Johan Anthonie van Riebeck by proclamation took formal possession of the Cape for the Netherlands East India Company, ‘providing that the natives should be kindly treated,’[18] the Dutch had governed South Africa for nearly a century and a half. The natives had been outraged by the Boers, the Moravian missionaries had departed, the colony had been starved, and yet denied the rudiments of autonomy. The French Revolution changed all that, and very much else. The Stadtholder of the United Provinces having allied himself with Great Britain, Dumouriez entered Holland, and Pichegru marched the armies of France over its frozen waters in the terrible winter of 1794-5. To protect the trade with India from the French, Admiral Elphinstone thereupon took possession of the Cape, which was administered successively by General J.H. Craig, the Earl of Macartney, Sir George Young, and Sir Francis Dundas, for seven prosperous years, until the Treaty of Amiens restored it to the Batavian Republic in February 1803. It was then a territory of 120,000 square miles, reaching from the Cape to a curved line which extended from the mouth of the Buffalo River in Little Namaqualand to the present village of Colesberg. The Great Fish River was the eastern boundary. Now the Christian colonies and settlements of South Africa, enjoying British sovereignty and largely under self-governing institutions, stretch north from the sea, and east and west from ocean to ocean, to the great river Zambesi—the base from which Christian civilisation, by missions and chartered companies, is slowly penetrating the explored wilds of Central Africa up the lake region to the Soudan and Ethiopia.
This less than a century’s progress has been made possible by the expedition of 1806, in which Henry Martyn, almost alone, represented Christianity. After the three years’ respite given by the virtual armistice of Amiens, Napoleon Bonaparte again plunged Europe and the world into war. William Pitt’s last government sent out this naval armament under Sir Home Popham. The 5,000 troops were commanded by Sir David Baird, who had fought and suffered in India when the senior of the future Duke of Wellington. Henry Martyn has told us how the squadron of the sixty-three sail had anchored between Robben Island and the coast. The Dutch Governor, General Jan Willen Janssens, was more worthy of his trust than his predecessor ten years before. He had been compelled to send on a large portion of his force for the defence of Java, soon to fall to Lord Minto, the Governor-General, and had only 2,000 troops left. He had received only a fortnight’s notice of the approach of the British fleet, which was reported by an American vessel. He drilled the colonists, he called French marines to his aid, he organised Malay artillery, he embodied even Hottentot sepoys, and made a reserve and refuge of Hottentot’s Holland, from which he hoped to starve Cape Town, should Baird capture it. Both armies were equal in numbers at least.
All was in vain. On January 8 was fought the battle of Blaauwberg (on the side of Table Bay opposite Cape Town), from the plateau of which the Dutch, having stood the musketry and field pieces, fled at the charge of the bayonet with a loss of 700 men. The British, having dropped 212, marched on Cape Town, halted at Papendorp, and there, on January 10, 1806, were signed the articles of capitulation which have ever since given the Roman-Dutch law to the colony. Sir David Baird and Sir Home Popham soon after received the surrender of Janssens, whose troops were granted all the honours of war in consideration of their gallant conduct. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 Lord Castlereagh sacrificed Java to the Dutch, but kept South Africa for Great Britain. The surrender of the former, in the midst of the splendid successes of Sir Stamford Raffles, is ascribed to that minister’s ignorance of geography. He knew equally little of the Cape, which he kept, beyond its importance to India, but God has overruled all that for the good of Equatorial, as well as South, Africa, as, thanks to David Livingstone, vacillating statesmen have begun to see.
Henry Martyn’s Journal thus describes the battle and the battlefield.
1806, January.—Ten o’clock. When I got up, the army had left the shore, except the Company’s troops, who remained to guard the landing-place; but soon after seven a most tremendous fire of artillery began behind a mountain abreast of the ship; it seemed as if the mountain itself were torn by intestine convulsions. The smoke rose from a lesser eminence on the right of the hill, and on the top of it troops were seen rushing down the farther declivity; then came such a long drawn fire of musketry, that I could not have conceived anything like it. We all shuddered at considering what a multitude of souls must be passing into eternity. The poor ladies were in a dreadful condition, every peal seemed to go through their hearts; I have just been endeavouring to do what I can to keep up their spirits. The sound is now retiring, and the enemy are seen retreating along the low ground on the right towards the town. Soon after writing this I went ashore and saw M’K., &c., and Cecil, with whom I had an agreeable conversation on Divine things. The cadets of our ship had erected a little shed made of bushes and straw, and here, at their desire, I partook of their cheer. Three Highlanders came to the lines just as I arrived, all wounded in the hand. In consequence of their report of the number of the wounded, a party of East India troops, with slings and barrows, attended by a body of cadets with arms, under Major Lumsden, were ordered to march to the field of battle.
I attached myself to these, and marched six miles through the soft burning sand with them. The first we came to was a Highlander, who had been shot through the thigh, and had walked some way from the field and lay spent under some bushes. He was taken care of and we went on, and passed the whole of the larger hill without seeing anything. The ground then opened into a most extensive plain, which extended from the sea to the blue mountains at a great distance on the east. On the right was the little hill, to which we were attracted by seeing some English soldiers; we found that they were some wounded men of the 24th. They had all been taken care of by the surgeons of the Staff. Three were mortally wounded. One, who was shot through the lungs, was spitting blood, and yet very sensible. The surgeon desired me to spread a great-coat over him as they left him; as I did this, I talked to him a little of the blessed Gospel, and begged him to cry for mercy through Jesus Christ. The poor man feebly turned his head in some surprise, but took no further notice. I was sorry to be obliged to leave him and go on after the troops, from whom I was not allowed to be absent, out of a regard to my safety. On the top of the little hill lay Captain F., of the grenadiers of the same regiment, dead, shot by a ball entering his neck and passing into his head. I shuddered with horror at the sight; his face and bosom were covered with thick blood, and his limbs rigid and contracted as if he had died in great agony. Near him were several others dead, picked off by the riflemen of the enemy. We then descended into the plain where the two armies had been drawn up.
A marine of the Belliqueuse gave me a full account of the position of the armies and particulars of the battle. We soon met with some of the 59th, one a corporal, who often joins us in singing, and who gave the pleasing intelligence that the regiment had escaped unhurt, except Captain McPherson. In the rear of the enemy’s army there were some farm-houses, which we had converted into a receptacle for the sick, and in which there were already two hundred, chiefly English, with a few of the enemy. Here I entered, and found that six officers were wounded; but as the surgeon said they should not be disturbed, I did not go in, especially as they were not dangerously wounded. In one room I found a Dutch captain wounded, with whom I had a good deal of conversation in French. After a few questions about the army and the Cape, I could not help inquiring about Dr. Vanderkemp; he said he had seen him, but believed he was not at the Cape, nor knew how I might hear of him. The spectacle at these houses was horrid. The wounded soldiers lay ranged within and without covered with blood and gore. While the India troops remained here, I walked out into the field of battle with the surgeon. On the right wing, where they had been attacked by the Highland regiment, the dead and wounded seemed to have been strewed in great numbers, from the knapsacks, &c. Some of them were still remaining; with a Frenchman whom I found amongst them I had some conversation. All whom we approached cried out instantly for water. One poor Hottentot I asked about Dr. Vanderkemp, I saw by his manner that he knew him; he lay with extraordinary patience under his wound on the burning sand; I did what I could to make his position comfortable, and laid near him some bread, which I found on the ground. Another Hottentot lay struggling with his mouth in the dust, and the blood flowing out of it, cursing the Dutch in English, in the most horrid language; I told him he should rather forgive them, and asked him about God, and after telling him of the Gospel, begged he would pray to Jesus Christ; but he did not attend. While the surgeon went back to get his instrument in hopes of saving the man’s life, a Highland soldier came up, and asked me in a rough tone, ‘Who are you?’ I told him, ‘An Englishman;’ he said, ‘No, no, you are French,’ and was going to present his musket. As I saw he was rather intoxicated, and might in mere wantonness fire, I went up to him and told him that if he liked he might take me prisoner to the English army, but that I was certainly an English clergyman. The man was pacified at last. The surgeon on his return found the thigh bone of the poor Hottentot broken, and therefore left him to die. After this I found an opportunity of retiring, and lay down among the bushes, and lifted up my soul to God. I cast my eyes over the plain which a few hours before had been the scene of bloodshed and death, and mourned over the dreadful effects of sin. How reviving to my thoughts were the blue mountains on the east, where I conceived the missionaries labouring to spread the Gospel of peace and love.
At sunrise on the 10th, a gun from the commodore’s ship was instantly answered by all the men-of-war, as the British flag was seen flying on the Dutch fort. The future historian of the Christianisation of Africa will not fail to put in the forefront, at the same time, the scene of Henry Martyn, on his knees, taking possession of the land, and of all lands, for Christ.