Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa since September 1795, Volume 1 (1908).pdf/163

1805] and Jan Swanepoel were wounded. At the instance of the governor, the council hereupon resolved to give to Zaaiman's parents, Roux, and Swanepoel farms free of quitrent for life; and to present silver goblets with suitable inscriptions on them to the militia captains Willem Wium, Willem Morkel, Jacobus Linde, and Pieter Human.

The regular European troops of all arms were between fifteen and sixteen hundred in number. No reinforcements had been sent out since the transfer of the colony, though the original strength of the regiments in garrison was greatly reduced by desertion, ordinary mortality, and unusually heavy losses from a very malignant form of dysentery which was prevalent in November and December 1804, when most of the soldiers were in a camp on the Liesbeek river. The troops were distributed over the Cape peninsula, except a detachment of eighty men at Fort Frederick. From the almost exhausted treasury of the Batavian Republic, General Janssens had drawn until recently money at the rate of £100,000 a year for military purposes of all kinds, but he was now trying to manage with a smaller sum.

So matters stood at the Cape at the close of the year 1805. For a long time an attack had been expected, and within the last few days tidings were received which set every one on the alert. On the 24th and 25th of December the French privateer Napoleon, which had recently brought some fifty English prisoners of war from Mauritius to the Cape and then went to cruise in the route of homeward-bound ships, was chased by the English frigate Narcissus, and, to avoid capture, was run ashore on the coast south of Hout Bay. Her crew brought the intelligence to Capetown, and it was suspected that the frigate had companions. Then came a vessel with a report that she had passed in the Atlantic a great fleet steering south, and on the 28th another arrived with news that a large number of English ships had sailed from Madeira on the 3rd of October.

The fleet which was thus announced as likely to be approaching was in fact fitted out for the conquest of