On the 25th the Basel Mission servants were set upon, and several of them killed.

The Ashantis then attacked and captured the villages in which the friendly natives and traders lived, and set fire to these and to the cantonment.

The refugees, to the number of three thousand five hundred, with two hundred children, crowded round the fort, imploring the mission to allow them to enter.
It was wholly beyond the capacity of the fort to accommodate a tenth of their number.

Troops were therefore ordered down from the barracks, and formed a cordon round the fugitives.

The fort gate was closed, and a rope ladder led down one of the bastions.