The voorlaadkanonnen in Atjeh (muzzle-loading guns in Atjeh; specifically the getrokken voorlaadkanonnen van 12 c.M., rifled 12 cm muzzle-loaders) were the obsolete artillery pieces that the vesting-artillerie was forced to use after generaal van Swieten recalled the achterlaadkanonnen van 12 c.M. to Java in February 1874. Their tijdbuis (time fuze) shells failed to burst on Atjeh’s wet, bedekte terrain — half of the 12 c.M. puntgranaten failed to explode — and Borel demands their replacement by steel achterlaadkanonnen with schokbuis (impact fuze) throughout his book.
Description and Defects
The voorlaadkanonnen van 12 c.M. were rifled muzzle-loading guns — a type that had been superseded in European service by the breech-loading rifled steel gun but that remained in Dutch colonial service in the 1870s. The guns were loaded from the muzzle (the front of the barrel) rather than from the breech (the rear), which limited their rate of fire and made them more laborious to serve. Their shells were fitted with tijdbuizen — time fuzes that were set to burst the shell after a calculated interval. The tijdbuis system depended on the shell striking a sufficiently hard surface at the right moment; on Atjeh’s wet, bedekte (covered) terrain — where the ground was often marshy, where the enemy’s stellingen were hidden by bamboo-doeri thickets, and where the targets were often earthen borstweringen rather than stone walls — the tijdbuizen failed to function. Borel records that half of the 12 c.M. puntgranaten failed to explode; the unburst shells were recovered by the Atjehneezen and, in some cases, reused.
The Forced Use After the Recall of the Achterlaadkanonnen
The voorlaadkanonnen were used in Atjeh only because the achterlaadkanonnen had been recalled. After the fall of the Kraton on 24 January 1874 van Swieten had recalled one of the two companies of vesting-artillerie, with much of the materieel — including the achterlaadkanonnen, “het beste geschut dat hij bezat.” The voorlaadkanonnen van 12 c.M. were what the vesting-artillerie had left. kolonel Pel — who inherited the bezettingskorps on 26 April 1874 — “dacht er evenwel geheel anders over” than van Swieten on the question of artillery, and as early as 28 April 1874 he ordered the vesting-artillerie to open fire from the voorlaad-kanonnen van 12 c.M. on all kampongs within range — daily, at varying hours. The daily bombardment was intended to damage the enemy and to prevent “samenscholen van groote massa’s volk”; but the failure of half the shells to explode exposed the inadequacy of the obsolete materieel. The bombardment led directly to the request to return the achterlaadgeschut from Java.
The Vindication and the Demand for Replacement
The vindication of Borel’s demand for the replacement of the voorlaadkanonnen by steel achterlaadkanonnen came with the return of the achterlaadgeschut to Atjeh in the course of 1874. The destruction of the Lampoe Oek fortification on 18 September 1874 — “What had not been obtained earlier through fierce struggle costing heavy sacrifices was now achieved by a few cannon shots” — was the work of the 12 c.M. achterlaadkanon, not the voorlaadkanon. The destruction of Mandarsa Poeti on 5 October 1874 was likewise the work of the achterlaadkanon: “a few shots from 12 c.M. achterlaadkanon established range; then whole front wall brought down.” The contrast between the two pieces of materieel was, in Borel’s account, the contrast between a serviceable modern weapon and an obsolete museum piece. Borel’s proposal for the Indische Brigade in 1878 prescribed that the brigade be armed with steel achterlaadkanonnen with schokbuis — the modern materieel whose absence Borel had indicted throughout the book. The voorlaadkanonnen were, in Borel’s reading, a symptomatic failure of the Dutch colonial military: an institution that sent its troops to war with obsolete materieel, and that recalled the one modern piece it possessed at the very moment the campaign required it most.
See Also
- Achterlaadkanonnen van 12 c.M.
- Vesting-artillerie in Atjeh
- Generaal Pel
- Jan van Swieten
- G. F. W. Borel
- Destruction of the Lampoe Oek fortification (18 September 1874)
- Indische Brigade (proposed)
- 1874
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 44, 48, 54, 116–118, 161, 175, 184, 191–198, 200, 202, 212, 336–337.