The Appointment of Jan van Swieten as opperbevelhebber (1873) was the decision taken in November 1873 to recall the gepensioneerd luitenant-generaal Jan van Swieten from retirement, vest him with the dual offices of opperbevelhebber der zee- en landmacht and regeerings-commissaris te Atjeh, and grant him “bijna onbeperkte volmacht” to conduct the second Aceh expedition. The appointment was controversial from the first: a retired officer recalled over the heads of active-duty generals, a stranger to the new generation of the Indische leger, and paired — against the grain — with a deputy whose inzichten differed sharply from his own.
The Choice
The failure of the first expedition and the death of Generaal Köhler outside the Kraton on 1 April 1873 had so shocked the Dutch nation that the government felt it must produce a commander of unimpeachable seniority. Van Swieten, a veteran Indisch krijgsman of “kundig, kalm en beleidvol” reputation, was recalled from retirement. Borel records the widespread surprise of the army: many officers were astonished that a retired officer was passed over the heads of active-duty generals, and the Indische leger, which “no longer knew him personally,” found him “geenszins populair.” The civil charge was no smaller than the military one: as regeerings-commissaris he combined the opperbevelhebberschap with “bijna onbeperkte volmacht,” a concentration of authority remarkable even in the colonial context.
Verspijck as Tweede Bevelhebber
Alongside van Swieten the government placed Generaal Verspijck as tweede bevelhebber. The pairing was intended to complement van Swieten’s caution with Verspijck’s energy. Yet Borel insists the government was unaware of how sharply the two men’s inzichten differed on krijgskundig gebied. Verspijck would in due course propose landing the third brigade at the Kroeng Raba-baai to take the Kraton from two sides — a plan van Swieten rejected out of “vrees” — and would personally lead the omtrekkende beweging of 23–24 January 1874 that actually carried the Kraton. He was, Borel writes, “te goed soldaat” to voice his disagreements publicly; the result was that the strategische fouten of the campaign were never corrected at the time.
Van Swieten’s Programme
In his opening address in Batavia in November 1873 van Swieten predicted that the Atjehneezen “onmogelijk hunne strijdkrachten lang bij elkander zouden kunnen houden” — that the enemy could not keep a field army together for long. It was an assessment that would prove catastrophically wrong. His reputation among his peers rested on a “kundig, kalm en beleidvol” manner and, in Borel’s telling, on a marked “gruwel van bloedvergieten” — a horror of shedding blood that would, in the coming months, govern every operational choice he made: leaving the third brigade at Padang, refusing the encircling movement, abandoning Lemboe the day after it was won, declining reconnaissance before the Mesigit storm, recalling the vesting-artillerie and the achterlaadkanonnen to Java, and finally declaring the war ended in his 23 April 1874 afscheidsrede. Each of these Borel would lay at the door of an appointment which, however well-intentioned, set the second expedition on its course from its very first day.
See Also
- Second Aceh Expedition (1873–1874)
- Jan van Swieten
- Generaal Verspijck
- Landing at Pedro-punt (6 December 1873)
- Fall of the Kraton (24 January 1874)
- Van Swieten declares the Aceh War ended (1874)
- Departure of Jan van Swieten from Atjeh (April 1874)
- 1873
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 9–11.