frontier, the British Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland called upon the local Cape Burgher Commandos. The Cape burghers were mounted frontier gunmen, recruited locally from Boer, Mfengu, settler, Khoikhoi and Griqua populations, and fiercely loyal to Stockenström. They objected to serving under an imperial commander, so Governor Maitland promoted Stockenström to colonel, so as to place him in command of the local mixed commandos. Stockenström's burgher force first cleared the south-western part of the Eastern Province up to the Fish River, inflicting a string of defeats on the amaNgqika, and then advanced to Fort Beaufort, where it was initially ordered that he would invade the Xhosa country. Instead of launching a military invasion to destroy the Xhosa armies, Stockenström selected a small group of his mounted commandos, crossed the Colony's border and rapidly rode deep into the Transkei Xhosa heartland, directly towards the kraal of Sarhili ("Kreli"), the paramount chief of all the Xhosa. Due in part to the speed of their approach, they were barely engaged by Xhosa forces and rode directly into Sarhili's capital. Paramount Chief Sarhili and his generals agreed to meet Stockenström (with his commandants Groepe, Molteno and Brownlee), unarmed, on a nearby mountain ridge. The meeting was initially tense - the fathers of both Sarhili and Stockenström had been killed whilst unarmed. Both men were also veterans of several frontier wars against each other and, while they treated each other with extreme respect, Stockenström nonetheless made the extreme demand that Sarhili assume responsibility for any future Ngqika attacks. After protracted negotiations, Sarhili agreed to return any raided cattle & other property and to relinquish claims to the Ngqika land west of the Kei. He also promised to use his limited authority over the frontier Ngqika to restrain cross-border attacks. A treaty was signed and the commandos departed on good terms. However, Governor Maitland rejected the treaty and sent an insulting letter back to the Xhosa paramount-chief, demanding greater acts of submission and servility. Furious, Stockenstrom and his local commandos resigned and departed from the war, leaving the imperial troops and the Xhosa - both starving and afflicted by fever - to a long, drawn-out war of attrition. Andries, his health ruined by this expedition (he remained in poor health the rest of his life), called on the British government to institute an inquiry into the war, maintaining that it had been prolonged needlessly but the new