Pel’s letter to Jan van Swieten was the particulier schrijven (private letter) in which generaal Pel — having inherited the command of the bezettingskorps on 26 April 1874 — wrote to his predecessor generaal van Swieten attributing his subsequent success to van Swieten’s beleid (conduct of the war). Van Swieten made the letter public and used it as a wapen (weapon) against his critics, citing it as proof that Pel had merely carried out van Swieten’s programme. Borel — drawing on the brochure of gep. luit. kol. de Rochemont — explains the letter as an act of nederigheid (humility), erkentelijkheid (gratitude) and deferentie (deference) on Pel’s part, and uses de Rochemont’s own quotations to demolish the claim that Pel merely executed van Swieten’s programme.
The Letter and Its Publication
The exact date of the letter is not recorded in Borel’s account, but it must have been written after Pel’s reversal of the afwachtende houding (wait-and-see posture) — that is, after 28 April 1874, when Pel ordered the daily bombardment of kampongs, and after the establishment of the Oeleh Leh post in early May 1874. In the letter Pel attributed his succes in restoring the Dutch position to van Swieten’s beleid. Van Swieten — who had been criticised for his afscheidsrede of 23 April 1874, for his échec at Lampoe Oek of 16 April 1874, and for leaving the bezettingskorps in a “zeer gebrekkige stelling” — made the letter public and used it as a wapen against his critics. The letter was, in van Swieten’s reading, a testimonial: the very commander who had inherited the Dutch position attested that van Swieten’s conduct of the war had been sound. The publication of the letter was, in effect, van Swieten’s defence against the charge of having squandered the fruits of the fall of the Kraton.
Borel’s Explanation
Borel explains the letter as an act of nederigheid, erkentelijkheid and deferentie on Pel’s part. Pel was, in Borel’s portrait, a man of doorzicht, beleid, rusteloos streven and zelfverloochening — a soldier who had inherited an impossible position and had restored it through two years of exhausting work, who had been promoted to generaal-majoor and invested with the Commander’s cross of the Militaire Willemsorde on the King’s birthday, and who had earned the praise of every honest observer of the Atjeh-oorlog. He was also, however, a junior officer writing to a senior — and a senior, moreover, who had once been his brigade commander. The letter was, in Borel’s reading, the expression of a soldier’s deference to his former chief: an act of nederigheid (humility) that attributed to van Swieten the credit that was properly Pel’s own. It was not, Borel insists, a documentary endorsement of van Swieten’s strategic programme — for Pel had, in fact, reversed that programme at every point. The daily bombardment of kampongs from 28 April 1874, the cutting of standing padi, the burning of kampongs from which the Dutch were fired on, the establishment of the Oeleh Leh post and the strategische driehoek Kwala Atjeh–Kota Radja–Oeleh Leh — all these were Pel’s work, not van Swieten’s. The letter’s tone of deference must not, Borel argues, be confused with a documentary endorsement of the afwachtende houding.
De Rochemont’s Brochure and the Refutation
The decisive refutation of van Swieten’s use of the letter is, in Borel’s account, supplied by the brochure of gep. luit. kol. de Rochemont — Wat hebben partijschappen — which van Swieten’s own defenders had cited as the source of the text of van Swieten’s instructions to Pel. Borel uses de Rochemont’s own quotations to demolish the claim that Pel merely executed van Swieten’s programme. The verbal instruction that Pel had received from van Swieten — “zooveel mogelijk vechten weinig, eene zuiver afwachtende houding bewaren” (fight as little as possible, keep a purely wait-and-see posture) — was, de Rochemont’s brochure itself acknowledged, the instruction that Pel had received and had then disregarded. The letter to van Swieten, written in deference to a former chief, could not be reconciled with the documentary record of Pel’s actual conduct of the war. Borel’s refutation is thus documentary: he uses the very brochure that van Swieten’s defenders had cited against Pel’s admirers to prove the opposite — that Pel had reversed van Swieten’s programme at every point, and that the letter to van Swieten was an act of personal humility, not a strategic endorsement. The letter thus stands in Borel’s account as a small but instructive document of the war: a private act of deference made public by a senior officer in his own defence, and ultimately turned against him by the documentary record.
See Also
- Generaal Pel
- Jan van Swieten
- De Rochemont brochure
- Afwachtende houding
- Aanvallende tactiek in Atjeh
- Van Swieten’s afscheidsrede (1874)
- Departure of Jan van Swieten from Atjeh (April 1874)
- Militaire Willemsorde
- Strategische driehoek (Atjeh)
- 1874
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 87, 96, 107, 117–119, 121–122, 127–128, 276–277, 280.