MENT

It was arranged, as has been mentioned, that the rising at
Johannesburg should take place on the night of the 4th of January.
The arsenal at Pretoria was to be seized, and Dr. Jameson with his
troops was to make his appearance, assist the Reformers in urging
their claims, and, if necessary, save the women and children from
possible violence.

"According to the original plan," says Mrs. Lionel Phillips in her
"South African Recollections," "what with the smuggled rifles, those
in private hands, the spare weapons to be brought by Jameson's men,
and those men (the Reformers) themselves, Johannesburg must have
mustered a little army of not less than 5000 men, to say nothing of
the guns which might possibly be captured in the arsenal. It was
believed that with this force the town could be held against any
attack that might be made by the Transvaal forces, and that, upon a
failure in the first assault, the Boers would have adopted their
well-known tactics of cutting off supplies, with a view to starving
the town into submission. To meet this contingency the town was
provisioned for two months, and it was supposed that the British
Government would never sit still and allow the Uitlanders to be
forced into capitulation in the face of the wrongs which they had
suffered. In November, when Jameson came to Johannesburg, the
supporting force had dwindled to 800. The telegrams apprising the
Reformers of his advance spoke of 700, and in reality he started
with less than 500 men."

But by the time the plot should have neared completion, the
conspirators, as has been shown, had ceased to be of one accord on
the subject. On Christmas Day Mr. Leonard interviewed Mr. Rhodes in
Cape Town, and represented to him the divided state of affairs.
Meanwhile the Reformers in Johannesburg desired to make known to Dr.
Jameson their change of front, and, to prevent him starting on the
expedition, despatched two messengers to Pitsani Camp by different
routes. These messages were received on December the 28th, and with
them other telegraphic ones from Mr. Leonard and Mr. Rhodes
explicitly directing the expedition not to start.

The news that Dr. Jameson had started, in spite of these messages,
came on the Reformers like a thunderclap. They were not ready--they
had not sufficient arms to fight with, and they were not of one
mind. The doing had been easy enough, and they had fancied the
undoing would be as simple. They had laid their gunpowder