ABSTRACT
In the early evening of 4 April 1900, a train carrying the Prince of Wales arrived in Brussels. At the station, a young man jumped on the footboard of the prince’s car and using a revolver fired two shots into it before he was arrested. Nobody was hurt. The next day, The Times reported that the assailant had declared that ‘he wanted to kill the Prince of Wales because his Royal Highness had caused thousands of men to be slaughtered in South Africa’. The editors therefore argued that the attack was incited by the pro-Boer propaganda campaign on the continent, which was at its height at the time. Other opinion makers too pointed out that the office of the minister plenipotentiary of Transvaal, Willem Leyds, was located in Brussels and suggested that he was directly involved in the assassination attempt. One of the most outspoken accusations came from the Secretary for India, Lord George Hamilton, who addressed his constituents in Acton when the news became known. He said that ‘if they had to seek for a reason for that foul attempt on the life of the heirapparent they would recollect that Brussels had been the headquarters of that factory of lies of which Dr Leyds was the manager’. 1
