The Africanders

by Le Roy Hooker

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 [[27]]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 [[28]]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.

As early as the 2d of February, 1793, negotiations were opened between the British government and the Dutch home and colonial authorities concerning a strengthening of the garrison at the Cape by a contingent of British troops from St. Helena. The States-General and the Dutch East India Company, in response to this proposal, signified their desire for aid in the form of warships to guard the coast of the Cape peninsula, and that in case such assistance could not be given they would accept the offered troops.

While this correspondence was going on events were transpiring that occasioned ill-feeling between the Dutch and the English, although they were in alliance against the French. Being [[29]]paralyzed by dissensions among their own people, the States-General made urgent appeals to the British government for more efficient aid in both men and money. To these appeals the answer of the English authorities was a bitter complaint that their troops were already bearing the brunt of the war in defense of the Netherlands, and that the Stadtholder and his government were not making proper exertions to raise men and money at home.

In making such answer, the British ministers seemed to be willfully blind to the prostrate condition of the Dutch government. The French had put the army of invasion under the command of Pichegru, one of the ablest generals of his time. One after another the Dutch strongholds were falling before him. The province of Friesland was threatening to make a separate peace with France if the States-General did not hasten to act in that direction for all Holland. The patriot party felt such antipathy to their English allies that it was difficult to get hospital accommodation in Dutch towns for the wounded British soldiers. And notwithstanding all these circumstances the English authorities asserted that the Stadtholder’s failure to put in the field a large and well-equipped force was due to [[30]]apathy in his own cause rather than to weakness. The one measure of additional help offered was that if the Dutch government would furnish five hundred to a thousand troops for the better defense of Cape Colony the English East India Company would transport them thither free of charge. It being impossible for the Dutch to furnish the men, the negotiations came to an end.