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While the activities of the Dutch administration of the Cape of Good Hope between 1652 and 1795 is fulsomely recorded in the vast archive of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), ego documents or life writing, such as private diaries and letters, from ordinary inhabitants of the colony are very rare. This state of affairs hampers historians' understanding of how the population of the Cape during this era reacted to and felt about events that we know well from the viewpoint of the VOC. For this reason alone, the existence of three letters by a burgher militiaman during the contest over the Cape between Britain and the VOC authorities during June to September 1795, is significant. Although these letters have resided in the manuscript collection of the National Library of South Africa in Cape Town for half a century, they remain unknown to most historians and the general public. This article presents a translation with commentary of these letters and reveal the valuable insights a perceptive reader can glean from them, not just about the military operations of mid-1795, but also about the political, social and cultural history of the Cape at the end of the eighteenth century from the viewpoint of an ordinary citizen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]