The march order for the Selimoen expedition was the written instruction issued by Generaal K. van der Heijden, Militaire Bevelhebber of Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, dated 11 August 1879, directing Luitenant-Kolonel Gerlach, commanding the column then encamped in the valley of Lamtoba, to march against Selimoen on 13 August 1879 “ten einde de naar hier gevluchte bevolking en hoofden der XXII en XXVI Moekims tot onderwerping te dwingen” — in order to compel the population and chiefs of the XXII and XXVI Moekims, fled thither, to submission. The order is reproduced at length, with a logistics footnote, in W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889), pp. 35–37.
Political background
Under the impression of the presence of the strong column at Lamtoba, negotiations with Achehnese chiefs from the Selimoensche had already been opened. Because these did not, in the Military Commander’s judgement, advance quickly enough, the General resolved “met het zwaard den knoop door te hakken” — to cut the knot with the sword — and issued the order. The decision overrode the prior hesitation at Batavia: Governor-General Van Lansberge had, by letter of 7 August 1879, warned that in case of failure he would have to declare his disapproval of a tocht “die in strijd is met uwe instructien.”
Content of the order
The order prescribed:
- the march of the column from Lamtoba to Selimoen on 13 August 1879 — a distance the guides reckoned at three day-marches;
- the establishment of an etappe-post for provisions at Ajer-Alang on the Atjeh river, halfway between Indrapoeri and Selimoen;
- the burning of the kampongs should they be found deserted or should the column be fired upon from them;
- in case of submission, the taking of five hostages and the delivery of a surety-money (waarborgsom) approximately corresponding to that fixed for Lamtoba — that is, ten dollars for every wooden house and three dollars for every bamboo house (see Hok gantjing);
- communication with the column of Majoor Lubeck, which was simultaneously to march from Indrapoeri along the Atjeh river to Selimoen, by means of two vuurpijlen (signal rockets) to be sent up at seven o’clock in the evening, the signal to be answered half an hour later in the same manner.
The logistics annex
The book preserves, as a footnote wider than the order itself, the staff calculation that accompanied the feasibility of the movement. At the opening of the stay at Lamtoba the column-commandant had already ordered his chief of staff — W. Cool — to compute the coolie requirement for such a tocht: at three day-marches, with one day of occupation at Selimoen, seven march-days were to be reckoned, of which six required carriage of provisions. For a column of 366 European and 665 native troops with five horses, even excluding the 300 coolies attached to the artillery, engineers and ambulance, some 600 bearers would be needed to carry six days’ provisions — and, since those bearers themselves had to eat, a recursive computation brought the requirement to 1,000 coolies for the transport alone, or about 1,600 together with the coolies already attached, those required at Lampanas, and so forth. As only some 900 were with the column, 700 would have had to be brought up, and the stockpiling of the necessary provisions at Lamtoba would have demanded fifteen days. It was these figures, the authors noted, that brought the Military Commander to provide otherwise — by the establishment of the Ajer-Alang etappe: “Eenigszins uitvoerig is deze quaestie meegedeeld om eenig denkbeeld te geven van de groote moeilijkheden, die de regeling van den transportdienst aanbiedt bij oorlogen tegen onbeschaafde volken, wanneer men ver van zijn operatiebases moet ageeren.”
Transmission and delay
The packets containing the order reached the bivak at Lampanas on 11 August at three o’clock in the afternoon, but arrived in the bivak at Lamtoba only at eleven o’clock on 12 August, brought by a detachment of more than a hundred coolies carrying provisions. The military commander of Lampanas, called upon to explain the delayed forwarding, justified himself by the accompanying instruction to dispatch at the same time 150 coolies with vivres to Lamtoba: since these could not have marched before four o’clock and would thus have had to make their way chiefly in the dark, he had held the route to be too difficult for that — a delay whose consequence was that Majoor Ducroo’s heavy reconnaissance to Kroeng Raija was made on the very eve of the Selimoen march.
See Also
- Selimoen Expedition (August 1879)
- Selimoen
- Lamtoba column (1879)
- Majoor Gerlach
- General van der Heijden
- Van Lansberge’s letters on the Selimoen tocht (7 and 21 August 1879)
- Ajer-Alang
- Hok gantjing
- Transport and Coolie System in Aceh
Source
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 35-37 with footnotes, and p. 37 footnote 3. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.