Lilla

Properties2
tagsconcept, acehnese, military, weapon, artillery, swivel-gun, aceh-war, achehnese
aliaseslila, Acehnese swivel-gun, Atjehnese light cannon, lilla swivel gun, rentaka, lela, Achehnese swivel gun

7 min read

The lilla was the light swivel-gun or short cannon used by the Atjehneezen in the Atjeh-oorlog — a small muzzle-loading piece, typically mounted on a swivel or suspended on ropes, that could be transported through the woodland and emplaced in a benteng or behind a borstwering with relative ease. Borel mentions the lilla repeatedly: its fire “caused more unrest than harm,” but the noise and the moral effect of being shelled by an enemy whom the Dutch had underestimated was considerable, and the lilla’s appearance on the covered position from which the first enemy shelling of K. Radja was conducted on 24 August 1874 was, in Borel’s account, a notable moment of the war.

Description and Use

The lilla was a small muzzle-loading cannon — typically of brass or iron — mounted on a swivel or, in some cases, suspended on ropes. The latter arrangement is recorded in Borel’s account of the surprise of Lamara Olejlo of 14–15 February 1875, when kapitein von Ende’s men captured “three or four enemy bentengs, several cannons and lillas” including a 4-pounder that had fired on Mandarsa Poeti — “it had no carriage but was ingeniously suspended on ropes.” The suspension allowed the gun to be trained on a target by pulling the ropes, and it allowed the gun to be moved through the woodland where a wheeled carriage could not go. The lilla was typically used at short range — within a few hundred paces — and was served by a small crew of one or two men. It was, in effect, the Atjehnese equivalent of the European light infantry support weapon, adapted to the conditions of woodland fighting in Atjeh.

Performance in Action

Borel’s account of the lilla’s performance is double-edged. On the one hand, the lilla’s fire “caused more unrest than harm” — the noise and the moral effect of being shelled by an enemy whom the Dutch had underestimated was considerable, but the actual damage inflicted by the small muzzle-loading piece was limited. On the other hand, the lilla’s appearance on the covered position from which the first enemy shelling of K. Radja was conducted on 24 August 1874 was a notable moment of the war. The enemy brought lilla’s and at least one cannon onto a covered position and fired at the Dutch flag flying high over the Kraton; several projectiles flew over the parapet through the interior. Dutch fire from the 12 c.M. achterlaadkanonnen at Pakan Atjeh silenced the enemy guns. The lilla was also used to harass the Lamara post east of the Marine-benteng from the kampong Langkroek — an annoyance that the Dutch eventually suppressed by the conquest of Langkroek on 28 September 1874.

The Lilla and the Atjehnese Artillery Tradition

The lilla was, in Borel’s account, a manifestation of the Atjehnese artillery tradition — a tradition that had once made Atjeh a regional power and that had not been wholly extinguished by the disarming provisions of the earlier Dutch treaties. The Atjehneezen had used artillery since the sixteenth century — large bronze cannon cast in the sultanate’s own foundries, as well as imported European pieces — and the lilla was the descendant of that tradition, adapted to the conditions of irregular warfare in the late nineteenth century. The lilla was less effective than the Dutch achterlaadkanonnen, but it was effective enough to harass the Dutch posts and to force the Dutch to maintain artillery at every post within range. The capture of lillas at Lamara Olejlo and at other conquered stellingen was, in Borel’s account, a small but regular feature of the conquests — a measure of the enemy’s residual artillery capability. The lilla thus stands in Borel’s account as a symbol of the Atjehnese enemy whom the Dutch had underestimated: a “woest, dapper, vrijheidlievend” people who, “uit eene geheel bijzondere stof gekneed,” could improvise a serviceable artillery from the resources of their own tradition.

Account in Hooijer’s De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897)

The lilla was a small Achehnese swivel gun, used by the besiegers of the Dutch post at Tjot Rang in Groot-Atjeh in April 1896.

Use at Tjot Rang

G. B. Hooijer recorded that at seventy-five metres’ distance from the benteng of Tjot Rang the Achehnese, so skilful in handling the patjol, made a trench fifty metres long waaruit met geweer en lilla de post onder vuur genomen werd — from which the post was taken under fire with rifle and lilla. The garrison could send no message from there to Kota Radja, and waited from one day to the next for the relief that came on 16 April 1896.

Hooijer described at Senelop the improvised Achehnese artillery of the same campaign: unexploded Dutch granaatkartetsen came back into the fortification with filed-off ridges and a small bamboo tube with a fuse in place of the time-fuse, fired from old sawn-off iron cannon or, as it was said, from hollowed-out coconut trunks strongly bound about with stolen telephone wire.

Account from H. F. Meijer (1883) — the Acehnese way of serving the lilla

H. F. Meijer, in Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876 (1883), explains how the Atjehnese enemy used his small-calibre ordnance — the lilla (also written lela), the Atjehnese gun of the lagune and kampong lines — when employed as position artillery. The piece was put in battery behind the breastwork, wholly hidden from the enemy’s eye, and fired. Directly after the shot, gun and carriage were drawn backwards into a pit or trench, in which the crew too had grenade-proof huts; when they reckoned themselves safe again, gun and carriage were hauled out — but at a different place than the time before — and put in battery until the chance seemed good to reopen fire.

In this way the enemy kept — with lilla batteries on the lagune northeast of the Dutch post at Koewala Gigiëng and in earth batteries at the mouth of the Kroeëng Raja — small, irreducible ordnance in action for a whole year against the modern 12 cm guns of the Dutch works, until the occupation of his own flanks made the device impossible. The same account lists the varied muzzle-loading and light Atjehnese small arms of these years: the lilla and donderbus (blunderbuss) beside the flintlock and percussion gun, and beside the Dutch breech-loaders whose numbers and losses fed the enemy’s rising stock.

See Also

Sources

Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 165, 191, 202, 249–251.

De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh, door G. B. Hooijer, Gep. Luit.-Kolonel O. I. Leger, met 24 platen (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn; Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Centrale Boekerij, Amsterdam. OCR-filename: 20260719_140140_DLP-134-De_verlaten_posten_in_Groot_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 36, 53.

Acknowledgement of sources. This article is a single consolidated account combining the material previously held in this entry with the account given in De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897) by G. B. Hooijer. Dutch terminology has been rendered in English, the original Dutch being retained only in direct quotations and in bibliographic citations.

Graph View

Backlinks