The Capture of the Kraton on 24 January 1874 was the culminating episode of the second Aceh expedition, in which a reconnaissance sent by Lieutenant-general Van Swieten from Kota Goenoengan entered the Kraton of the sultan of Atjeh unopposed and hoisted the Dutch flag on the watch-house, to the strains of the Wilhelmus played by the band of the right half of the 14th bataljon. The capture came after a month of operations and several costly failures, and was followed within two days by the death of the sultan and within a week by the proclamation of annexation of Groot-Atjeh by right of conquest.
The Approach
After the taking of the missigit of the Kraton on 6 January 1874, letters were sent to Toekoe Nek of Marassa and to four other chiefs of the XXV Moekims. On 11 January 1874 Toekoe Nek held a secret meeting with the controller Kroesen, in which he promised to pay a visit to the supreme commander, and at the same time gave the advice that the Dutch should seize the Taman, the sultan’s fortified pleasure-garden south-west of the Kraton, in order to close the sultan off from the west side. Van Swieten, who had already vainly attempted to surprise the Kraton, decided to follow his advice. On 12 January 1874 the Taman or Kota Goenoengan was stormed and taken. From the west side too the Kraton could now be fired upon, and the Dutch fire “made the stay there so unsafe that, according to information received, the sultan had left it and had betaken himself to kampong Longbatta.”
On the advice of Toekoe Nek it was now decided to undertake a march to this kampong, where one of the Dutch army’s most embittered enemies, the imam of Longbatta, resided. At the same time the troops were to push through the kampongs Atoöh and Longbatta to the river, and to turn the enemy’s fortifications — consisting of the Kraton and the strong places of Pakan Atjeh and Panglima Polem along the river — in the south and east.
The Omtrekking, 23 January 1874
On 23 January 1874 the projected march took place under the command of General Verspyck. A column under Lieutenant-colonel Van der Heijden was to attempt the omtrekking while Verspyck kept the enemy occupied. The Krueng Daroe, which also ran through the Kraton, was crossed; various kampongs from which shots were fired were taken and punished. From kampong Moendjing Van der Heijden moved north-east and reached the burial-mound east of the Kraton, by which the omtrekking was in fact accomplished. “As the guide, however, had himself lost the way and thought that one had moved too far north, the column Van der Heijden returned and the operations were suspended for that day.” The next day the enterprise was resumed; Van der Heijden moved through kampong Longbatta, when he received the news that the Kraton had already been taken.
The Discovery
From Kota Goenoengan, between the brushwood, one saw:
“a broken piece of wall with a watch-house behind it, largely stripped of its roof covering. From there Kota Goenoengan had been continually and sometimes rather heavily fired upon during the previous days and also during the past night. But about 9 in the morning this fire slackened and soon ceased entirely. This led the supreme commander to suspect that the Kraton was not or only weakly occupied, and he therefore, as soon as the right half 14th had arrived, ordered that by a company a reconnaissance should be made, which was to try to enter the Kraton and on the above-mentioned watch-house was to hoist the Dutch flag.”
When this reconnaissance had advanced for some time without seeing the enemy, the supreme commander himself came up with his staff and the other companies to inform himself of the state of affairs. “Soon the heart of the Kraton was reached, and a repeated hoerah of our men and the Wilhelmus, played by the band of the right half of the 14th bataljon, proclaimed that the Kraton was in our possession.”
Verspyck’s Junction
Verspyck, hearing the hoerah and the Wilhelmus, turned towards the Kraton and found Pakan Atjeh and the entrenchment of Panglima Polem wholly abandoned by the enemy, whereupon Van der Heijden was also ordered to return. “Thus the whole position of the Kraton was in our hands on 24 January 1874, and with it the initial objective of the second expedition was attained.”
The Death of the Sultan, 26 January 1874
Two days after the taking of the Kraton, on 26 January 1874, the sultan of Atjeh died of cholera at Pagger Ajer, the cholera that had first raged among the Dutch troops and now made its ravages among the Atjehers. On 31 January 1874 Van Swieten issued his proclamation annexing Groot-Atjeh by right of conquest.
Significance
The capture of the Kraton was, in a strict military sense, a decisive success: the seat of the sultanate was in Dutch hands. Yet, as General Pel observed in his note of 30 April 1875, the political effect was slight: “All those victories have as yet given few political results, even the taking of Longbatta, however much impression it made among the Atjehers. The population is here and there inclined to peace, but the war-party has still too much influence for one to dare to declare oneself openly.” The sultan’s death did not end the sultanate; the Toewankoe Haschim and the war-party maintained the institution in shadowy form at Keumala (Kemala), and the struggle was to continue for more than three decades.
Account from Na 1795 (1924) — the schoolroom memory
The *Na 1795* school-history textbook of F. Roorda records the capture of the Kraton in its canonical compressed form:
“De 1e expeditie mislukte, Köhler sneuvelde, maar de 2e expeditie onder Van Swieten bracht succes. De Kraton (paleis) van den sultan werd ingenomen, Kota Radja werd de zetel van ons gezag.”
The textbook’s two clauses — “De Kraton (paleis) van den sultan werd ingenomen” (“The Kraton (palace) of the sultan was taken”) and “Kota Radja werd de zetel van ons gezag” (“Kota Radja became the seat of our authority”) — fix the two consequences of the capture: the strategic objective achieved, and the colonial capital founded. The capture of the Kraton on 24 January 1874 is the documentary hinge between the two: the act by which the palace of the sultan became the seat of the Dutch colonial administration.
The *Na 1795* textbook does not record the sultan’s flight explicitly, but the subsequent narrative — the continuation of the war for thirty years under a succession of Dutch commanders and the eventual surrender of the pretender-sultan in 1903 — is the implicit document of the sultan’s evasion of capture. The Kraton was thus, in the documentary record, an empty prize: the palace taken, the sultan escaped, the war continued.
The second expedition in the schoolroom frame
The second Aceh expedition of November 1873 – January 1874 was the Dutch military response to the failure of the first expedition of March–April 1873 — the expedition that had ended with the death of Major-General Köhler at the Battle of the Missigit on 10 April 1873. The second expedition, under the command of General Van Swieten, returned to the assault on the Kraton with a larger force and a more methodical plan. The Kraton — the palace-fortress of the sultan — was the strategic objective of both expeditions; its capture in the second was the proximate Dutch victory of the war.
The Proclamation of 31 January 1874 in the schoolroom frame
A week after the capture of the Kraton, on 31 January 1874, General Van Swieten issued the proclamation of annexation by which Atjeh — or, in the colonial formulation, Groot-Atjeh — was declared to belong to the Government of the Netherlands East Indies by right of conquest. The proclamation is the formal founding document of the colonial administration of Atjeh, the legal basis on which all subsequent Dutch governance of the territory rested.
The wider significance in the schoolroom frame
The capture of the Kraton on 24 January 1874 is significant for the encyclopedia of Achehnese history, in the schoolroom memory, on three counts. First, it is the principal Dutch military success of the opening phase of the Atjeh-oorlog — the act by which the war was transformed from a punitive expedition into a conquest, and by which the strategic objective of both expeditions was finally achieved. Second, it is the proximate cause of the proclamation of annexation of 31 January 1874 — the formal founding document of the colonial administration of Atjeh. Third, it is the founding event of the colonial capital of Kota Radja — the seat of Dutch authority in Atjeh for the next forty-four years, and the documentary fix, in the schoolroom memory, of the transformation of the sultan’s palace into the colonial seat of government.
Sources
De Atjeh-Oorlog: Kort Overzicht van Oorsprong, Verloop en Gevolg, door J. A. Kruijt. ‘s-Gravenhage: Loman & Funke, 1896. Chapter III, “Tweede expeditie, van December 1873 tot April 1874.” OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-101-De_Atjeh_oorlog_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 13–14.
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 23–34.
Atjeh gedurende de tweede expeditie en later, Een Oud Officier, Batavia: Ogilvie & Co., 1876, pp. 7-12, 20-35, 68-72.
See Also
Source
De geschiedenis van Nederland in onzen tijd, by J. A. de Bruyne, Directeur der Hoogere Burgerschool te Zierikzee. Deel IV. 1872-1883. Nieuwe uitgave. Schiedam: J. F. Dupont, 1912, Hoofdstuk I, pp. 23-26.
Na 1795: Repetitie-boekje voor de Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis ten behoeve van Hoogere Burgerscholen en Candidaat-Notarissen, by F. Roorda (Groningen: P. Noordhoff, 1924), p. 47.