On April 30, 1900, in South Africa, on top of a mountain near the town of Thabe-Ncho, during a bloody battle, a Russian and a British shot simultaneously at each other - and both were wounded. The British captain Beechcroft Towse, with twelve soldiers, held the heights against fifteen hundred Boers; Among the latter was a Russian volunteer, retired lieutenant colonel Yevgeny Maksimov. Tauz and Maksimov shot at each other: as a result, the British was blinded, and the Russian received a crushed shoulder and a head wound - in the English reports he was recorded and killed. For his bravery in this and previous battles, Peacock received the Victoria Cross, the highest British military award. The Russian, on the other hand, survived - he was rescued from the other world by the doctor of the Russian-Dutch sanitary department, von Rennenkampf. To understand how a Russian officer got to a mountain in Africa, it is necessary to explain why they fought in the first place. In 1886, gold was found in the Transvaal - the largest deposit in the world - and the British Empire, firmly entrenched in the ports of Cape Town and Durban captured from the Netherlands, wanted to take the gold for themselves. In 1899 the two small Boer republics declared war on Britain; Alongside them, volunteers from all over Europe fought against the global giant - the Dutch, Germans, French, Irish and Russians. Almost like in Spain thirty years later. Yevgeny Maksimov was a man with a troubled destiny: the son of a naval officer, a veteran of the Russo-Turkish war, a retired lieutenant colonel of the Gendarmerie Corps, a military journalist and a traveler who visited Abyssinia and Central Asia. At first he went to the Transvaal as a correspondent of the General Staff, but after an English protest he went as a private citizen and at the same time sent encrypted intelligence reports to St. Petersburg. In Africa he joined the "Foreign Legion" of European volunteers, and after the death of his commander, the French Comte de Villebois-Marie, led a detachment of Boer warriors.

On April 30, 1900, in South Africa, on top of a mountain near the town of Thabe-Ncho, during a bloody battle, a Russian and a British shot simultaneously at each other - and both were wounded. The British captain Beechcroft Towse, with twelve soldiers, held the heights against fifteen hundred Boers; Among the latter was a Russian volunteer, retired lieutenant colonel Yevgeny Maksimov. Tauz and Maksimov shot at each other: as a result, the British was blinded, and the Russian received a crushed shoulder and a head wound - in the English reports he was recorded and killed. For his bravery in this and previous battles, Peacock received the Victoria Cross, the highest British military award. The Russian, on the other hand, survived - he was rescued from the other world by the doctor of the Russian-Dutch sanitary department, von Rennenkampf. To understand how a Russian officer got to a mountain in Africa, it is necessary to explain why they fought in the first place. In 1886, gold was found in the Transvaal - the largest deposit in the world - and the British Empire, firmly entrenched in the ports of Cape Town and Durban captured from the Netherlands, wanted to take the gold for themselves. In 1899 the two small Boer republics declared war on Britain; Alongside them, volunteers from all over Europe fought against the global giant - the Dutch, Germans, French, Irish and Russians. Almost like in Spain thirty years later. Yevgeny Maksimov was a man with a troubled destiny: the son of a naval officer, a veteran of the Russo-Turkish war, a retired lieutenant colonel of the Gendarmerie Corps, a military journalist and a traveler who visited Abyssinia and Central Asia. At first he went to the Transvaal as a correspondent of the General Staff, but after an English protest he went as a private citizen and at the same time sent encrypted intelligence reports to St. Petersburg. In Africa he joined the "Foreign Legion" of European volunteers, and after the death of his commander, the French Comte de Villebois-Marie, led a detachment of Boer warriors.