capture the African Lakes Company's store of weapons. Another group headed towards the Alexander Livingstone Bruce Plantation's headquarters at Magomero. Chilembwe sent a messenger to Ncheu to alert Chinyama that the rebellion was starting. Chilembwe also sought support for his uprising from the German forces in German East Africa, on Nyasaland's far northern border, hoping that a German offensive from the north combined with a native insurrection in the south might force the British out of Nyasaland permanently. On 24 January, he sent a letter to the German Governor by courier through Portuguese East Africa. The courier was intercepted and the letter was never received. During the latter stages of the East African Campaign, after the German invasion of Portuguese East Africa, the German colonial army actually helped to suppress anti-Portuguese rebellions, among the Makombe and Barue peoples, worrying that African uprisings would destabilise the colonial order. Attack on the Livingstone Bruce Plantation The major action of the Chilembwe uprising involved an attack on the Bruce plantation at Magomero. The plantation spanned about and grew both cotton and tobacco. Around 5,000 locals worked on it as part of their thangata obligations. The plantation had a reputation locally for the poor treatment of its workers and for the brutality of its managers, who closed local schools, beat their workers and paid them less than had been promised. Their burning of Chilembwe's church in November 1913 created a personal animosity with the rebel leadership. The insurgents launched two roughly concurrent attacks—one group targeted Magomero, the plantation headquarters and home of the main manager William Jervis Livingstone and a few other white staff, while a second assaulted the plantation-owned village of Mwanje, where there were two white households. The rebels moved into Magomero in the early evening, while Livingstone and his wife were entertaining some dinner guests. The estate official, Duncan MacCormick, was in another house nearby. A third building, occupied by Emily Stanton, Alyce Roach and five children, contained a small cache of weapons and ammunition belonging to the local rifle club. The insurgents quietly broke into the Livingstone's house and injured him during hand-to-hand fighting, prompting him to take refuge in the bedroom, where his wife attempted to treat his wounds. The rebels forced their way into the bedroom, and after capturing his wife, decapitated Livingstone. MacCormick, who had been alerted, was killed by a rebel spear. The attackers took the