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This plunged the Great Trek into temporary disarray. In total 534 men, women and children were killed in the Weenen massacre . Retief's death and the Weenen massacre eventually led to the decisive Voortrekker victory at Blood River , after which Andries Pretorius and his "victory commando" recovered the remains of the Retief party.
The Great Trek was not universally popular among the settlers either. Around 12,000 of them took part in the migration, about a fifth of the colony's Dutch-speaking white population at the time. [2] [15] The Dutch Reformed Church, to which most of the Boers belonged, explicitly refused to endorse the Great Trek. [2]
The subsequent favourable reports of the Commission Treks resulted in many farmers leaving their farms and trekking into the interior of Southern Africa, in what later became known as the Great Trek. Uys sold his own farm in December 1836 and left the Uitenhage area with his party of 100 Voortrekkers (as they became known) in April 1837.
Potgieter chose the one on the plain, while Uys decided to attack the hill in front of the commando. The pack horses were left here and Uys crossed the Nzololo. He continued along the deep pools of the Reed creek and crossed it some 120m further, swinging north to ascend Italeni Hill where the white shields were waiting.
Importation of the book was subsequently banned in South Africa, owing to its commentary on the Great Trek, the event in which the book is set. Many of his 14 novels and most of his short stories are historically based fictional adventures, set against the backdrop of major African, and, in particular, South African historical events.
The carronade used during the battle on an improvised carriage Andries Pretorius brought with him from the Cape. The trekkers—called Voortrekkers after 1880 [4] —had to defend themselves after the betrayal murder of chief Trekker leader Piet Retief and his entire entourage, and ten days later the Weenen/Bloukrans massacre where "not a soul was spared."
The Great Trek occurred between 1835 and the early 1840s. During that period some 12,000 to 14,000 Boers (including women and children), impatient with British rule, emigrated from Cape Colony into the great plains beyond the Orange River, and across them again into Natal and the vastness of the Zoutspansberg, in the northern part of the ...
Marthinus Jacobus Oosthuizen (October 14, 1818 – April 2, 1897) was a Voortrekker farmer known for his heroism in battle. He was born near Uitenhage and joined the "Groot Trek" (Great Trek). He became famous for his heroism during a battle on 16 February 1838 shortly after the murder of Piet Retief and his delegation, and the massacres of ...