On the morning of the 12th the Saxon commanding officers approached Hohenlohe with a statement of the famishing condition of their men, and threatened to withdraw them again to Saxony.
Certainly some of the principal chiefs regarded all that was done simply as the preparation for a last struggle with the whites, their plan being to throw the whole Amaxosa nation fully armed and in a famishing condition upon the colony.
But nobody was wronged; his creditors were all paid in time, and his hands were at least clean of traffic in reversions, clerkships, tellerships and all the rest of the rich sinecures which it was thought no shame in those days for the aristocracy of the land and the robe to wrangle for, and gorge themselves upon, with the fierce voracity of famishing wolves.
The picture of the industrious and famishing populations of the Riviera is (whether true to fact or not) one of the best things that Michelet has done.
