The Crisis at Kota Radja (May–June 1874) was the most perilous moment of the Dutch occupation of Atjeh between the departure of generaal Jan van Swieten on 26 April 1874 and the first monsoon reinforcements of mid-June, when the garrison of K. Radja — emaciated by cholera, malaria and the bandjir’s precursor rains — could field only a handful of men per company and was being closed upon nightly by the Atjehneezen. Borel’s verdict is uncompromising: “500 kloeke Atjehneezen zouden voldoende geweest zijn” to have taken the Kraton.
The state of the bezettingskorps
Kolonel Pel inherited a garrison that was, in Borel’s phrase, allerdonkerendst. Companies that should have fielded 125 bayonets could now muster fewer than thirty; only the gravest cases could be taken into the ambulances, the less grave being left at their posts because no beds existed. Repeated attempts to evacuate the sick to Padang or Java were thwarted by the heavy surf of the baai and the Atjeh-rivier’s treacherous bar. Mortality was buitengewoon; among the dwangarbeiders (convict labourers) it was rampzalig. Pel himself, Borel records, slept every night in full uniform, ready to mount the parapet at the first alarm.
The enemy closes in
The Atjehneezen, scenting weakness, crept closer each night. They feasted openly, with gamelan and drumming, three or four hundred paces from the parapet, slaughtering and roasting Dutch slaughter-oxen stolen across the line. On the night of 16–17 July 1874 — only weeks after the worst of the crisis — seven freshly landed slaughter-oxen were led clean over the parapet of K. Radja, through a gap in the bamboe-doerie, without anyone noticing until morning, an episode Borel cites as proof of the verregaande brutaliteit of the enemy and of the wretched state of Dutch watchfulness.
The thread snaps tight
Pel warned the government in Batavia repeatedly that the establishment could not hold out another fortnight. The arrival of the Indische Stoomboot-maatschappij’s steamer Baron Sloet van de Beele on 11 June 1874 with roughly 400 men — disembarked on 12 June and feestelijk ontvangen by the garrison, with the Prins Alexander anchoring the same day with a couple of hundred more — broke the spell. Demurrage alone on the Baron Sloet van de Beele cost the Treasury almost ƒ 17 000. The reinforcements let Pel clear the ambulances, resume offensive operations, and open the first attack on Lampoeloe on 20 June 1874 — “den eersten stap op een nieuwen weg.”
See Also
- Generaal Pel
- Kota Radja
- Bezettingskorps in Atjeh
- Jan van Swieten
- Indische Stoomboot-maatschappij
- Battle of Lampoeloe (20 June 1874)
- Afwachtende houding
- Liggelden
- 1874
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 144–152, 168–169.