The Covenant: A Novel by James A. Michener

Author:James A. Michener [Michener, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 9780804151504
Publisher: Random House LLC
Published: 2014-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

From outside came the explosion of fireworks and cries of delight from those who welcomed 1835.

Harry and Juanita left the dance immediately. After a brief three hours’ rest he kissed her farewell, buckled on his saber, picked up dispatches for the frontier, and rode out into the night as the citizens slept soundly in preparation for the next day’s revelry.

At dawn Smith was well east of Cape Town, and in six days he covered the six hundred miles to Grahamstown, where, without resting, he took command.

The governor, Sir Benjamin D’Urban, sorely frightened by the Xhosa invasion, arrived himself on January 14, and soon Englishmen and Boers, two thousand strong, were ready, accompanied by their three hundred Coloured militiamen. ‘We shall thrash the Kaffirs,’ Smith said, but it took seven months to make good his threat. However, with men like Tjaart van Doorn and Richard Saltwood at his side he proved tireless … and merciless. After one three-week push, he announced with satisfaction, ‘I have burned two thousand, seven hundred and sixteen huts. That’ll teach ’em.’ But in a more sober mood he estimated correctly: ‘It would take me one hundred thousand of England’s finest to crush these Xhosa.’

When finally he had forced them back to their own territory he returned to Grahamstown, where triumphal arches lauded him as the victor of the frontier, the subduer of the rebellion. ‘We shall now have peace,’ he declared.

But peace depended primarily upon the actions of Sir Benjamin, who had arrived at the Cape filled with the preachments of Dr. Simon Keer. However, service with a realist like Harry Smith, plus personal experience on the battlefront, had induced a radical change of mind. In his perceptive report on the Sixth Kaffir War he informed London that ‘this fertile and beautiful province is almost a desert, and the murders which have gone hand in hand with this work of pillage and rapine have deeply aggravated its atrocity.’ He added that in his opinion the Kaffirs were irreclaimable savages: ‘Merciless barbarians who have driven our seven thousand farmers to utter destitution.’

Desirous of preventing a repetition, and eager, as an honest man, to formulate a just settlement, he annexed a vast territory, erected a chain of forts, and moved every man he could to garrison the land. Friendly blacks who had not participated in the war were invited to remain where they were, and new lands would be opened up for Boer and English settlers.

It was a sensible solution and went a long way toward compensating the farmers for their grievous losses, but when the costs of the war had been totted up, Sir Benjamin stuck assegais in a large map to indicate the extent of the huge losses suffered by the white men: 100 slain, 800 farms burned, 119,000 cattle stolen, 161,000 sheep milling. Coloured suffered comparably.

When news of this prudent settlement reached London, Dr. Keer stormed Parliament: ‘The blacks were fully justified in their attempts to reclaim lands that were rightfully theirs. Three thousand of

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