In March 1846, a man stole an axe from a trading store in Fort Beaufort in today's Eastern Cape. Few could have imagined that this relatively trivial incident would result in the devastating Seventh Frontier War (1846-47), also known as the 'War of the Axe'.
GARRISON TOWN
Fort Beaufort had been established in 1822 as a British military outpost on the Cape's eastern frontier with the Xhosa. Its location,
