- £450.00
2nd INVASION OF THE CAPE PROVINCE. 1901 damaged cover to Burghersdorp with a 1d cancelled CRADOCK JY 26 01. A fine MIDLAND T.P.O. 4 27 JUL 01 cancel is alongside. On the back is a Burghersdorp JY 29 arrival cancel. Written on the cover in pencil is ‘Recovered from enemy …. Baroda’. (Baroda is a village just north of Cradock). At the end of 1900 the Free State generals, Kritzinger and Hertzog, invaded the Cape Colony for the second time, and touched off a second, and far more serious rebellion. Intelligence reports made in the Eastern Cape in the second half of 1900 by the Boers describe widespread 'disloyalty' within the Dutch Reformed Church, the parliament, the civil service and the government schools. In 1901 the former Transvaal state attorney, Jan Christian Smuts, who had taken to arms with considerable native ability, conducted a spectacular raid into the Cape Colony, which took him within sight of Cape Town and on into, the far north-west of the Colony. The aim was to get the Afrikaans farmers to rebel against the British in the Cape. This however was completely unsuccessful. On 1 June Willowmore 200 miles north east of Cradock had been attacked by the Boer force. A very significant and rare cover from Boer action in this area in 1901
