The Death of Generaal Pel (24 February 1876) was the sudden death, in the night of 24 February 1876, of generaal Pel at the bivouac at Lamjoeng — between Tongah and Silang, on the far side of the Kroeng Tjoet — of a slagaderbreuk (ruptured artery), in the very days when his noorderwaartse march was sealing off the Kroeng Tjoet mouth and completing the closure of Atjeh from the sea, an event Borel calls “eene ware nationale ramp.”
The march
On 22 February 1876 Pel marched from Pango northward via Lamkapang, Loeëng Iek, Poeklat and Oeleh Karang to the kampong of Pinang, which was found abandoned — “in den rug genomen” — as were all the enemy’s earlier versterkingen there. The troops bivouacked that night at the Mesigit te Kajoe Adang. On 23 February 1876 Langgoegoeb was doorgetrokken and Tongah on the left bank of the Kroeng Tjoet was reached. At the bivouac at Lamjoeng, on the far side of the river, between Tongah and Silang, Pel in the night of 24 February 1876 suddenly overleed of the consequences of a slagaderbreuk.
Borel’s elegy
Borel’s elegy is the most quoted passage of the book. “Het vaderland verloor in hem een zijner trouwste, ijverigste en meest bekwame dienaren; dat verlies was in de gegeven omstandigheden bijna onherstelbaar en kon eene ware nationale ramp genoemd worden.” Pel’s plan — the great Kroeng Raba–Kroeng Raya line to isolate Atjeh from the sea — remained geheim: he had not communicated it even to his chief of staff, and nothing about it was found in his archive. The plan, Borel concludes, was lost with him.
Engel continues the march
Lt.-kol. Engel, who had arrived at Lamjoeng with the 9de battalion to versterk the ageerende troepen, assumed tijdelijk oppergezag as the oldest hoofdofficier in Atjeh. He immediately took the required measures and continued the march via Tjade to Kwala Gigieng, reached on 26 February 1876, where a bivouac was opgeslagen. Posts were opgericht at Kwala Gigieng and on the island of Kota Pohama in the lagune, to completely seal the gemeenschap between sea and the mouth of the Kroeng Tjoet. The closure was Pel’s last completed work.
Aftermath
On 10 March 1876 generaal Wiggers van Kerchem assumed military and civil command. From then on, Borel writes, the war entered another phase: Wiggers was “geen voorstander van het aanvallende stelsel”; he wished not to extend the linie further and to adopt a “strijkt afwachtende houding.” The line Kroeng Raba–Kwala Gigieng has remained “nagenoeg onveranderd” ever since. Pel’s death, in Borel’s view, turned a war that was on the point of being won into a war that would drag on for years.
See Also
- Generaal Pel
- Lamjoeng
- Tongah
- Kroeng Tjoet
- Kwala Gigieng
- Kota Pohama
- Pango
- Luitenant-kolonel Engel
- Generaal Wiggers van Kerchem
- Pel’s Buitenzorg planning session (1875)
- Afwachtende houding
- Aanvallende tactiek in Atjeh
- 1876
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 323–325, 327, 329–332.