The death of General J. H. R. Köhler on 14 April 1873 during the second storming of the Missigit (great mosque) near the Kraton was the signal reverse of the first Aceh expedition. Köhler, the expedition’s commander, was struck in the chest by a bullet while standing on the raised foundation of the burned-out mosque directing operations, and died within minutes.
Context
After the Dutch landing at Pantei Tjermin on 8 April, the first major objective was the Missigit Raja (imperial mosque), which lay a short distance northwest of the Kraton on the left bank of the Atjeh river and was enclosed by a rectangular perimeter wall 2½ metres high and nearly a metre thick, 170 metres long by 120 broad. The mosque was first taken, then evacuated for lack of fresh troops, on 10 April. After reconnaissances (including a major probe by Major Knoote on 12 April) showed that the Kraton could not safely be reached with the Missigit in Dutch rear, Köhler decided, after consultation with his chief of staff and other senior officers on 13 April, to retake the mosque the following day.
The Second Storming of the Missigit
The second assault on the Missigit was launched at 5.30 a.m. on 14 April. Overall direction was again entrusted to Major Cavaljé. A storming column was again led by Captain van Lier. After artillery preparation, Van Lier’s company advanced at the double, followed by a party of mineurs and sappers under 1st Lieutenant Bordes with about forty convict labourers carrying scaling ladders.
The Acehnese met the attackers with heavy musketry from the walls, but the Dutch reached the foot of the wall. The ladders were placed; the defenders on top thrust them away with lances, fired down or cut at the climbers with klewangs, and threw heavy stones. Men climbed the ladders repeatedly and fired their rifles à bout portant; many fell wounded. Captain van Lier, trying to encourage his men, rushed up a ladder himself but was struck down unconscious by a heavy stone. Artillerymen climbed with grenades in their hands, lit them halfway up and hurled them inside; the brave gunner Kool van Heerens (C. H. Kool van Heerens) paid for this bold action with a fatal klewang-cut.
The wall was not carried. Major Cavaljé, observing at close range, judged that troops armed with the Beaumont breech-loader were needed, and requested them of Köhler; a company under Captain Huijer arrived shortly. Hardly had Huijer reached the spot and received a quick briefing when he grabbed the breech-loader of a fallen soldier, rushed up a ladder, fired shot after shot at the Acehnese crowding above him, won himself a moment’s space, and leaped onto the wall — followed instantly by fusilier Gilgien, the first man to join him. Despite a lance wound in the arm and a wrenched knee from the jump down inside, Huijer and Gilgien held their ground until the rest of the column poured over the wall and the Acehnese fled with heavy loss. The Missigit was taken for the second time.
The Fatal Shot
Measures were taken at once to avoid the exhaustion that had forced evacuation after the first capture. The west wall was largely blown in by the engineers with gunpowder, opening a free connection between the beach encampment (where Colonel van Daalen had been left in command) and the mosque. The chief of staff, Colonel Van Wissekerke, inspected the site and reported favourably to Köhler, who then came in person to the captured position to satisfy himself.
Köhler, surrounded by his officers, was standing for some moments at the east wall, on the raised platform that had been the foundation of the burned mosque. Major Cavaljé warned him that at that spot several men had already been hit by enemy fire from the eastern bush, and that the general would be wise not to expose his life unnecessarily. Almost at that instant the characteristic whistle of a bullet was heard, followed by a dull thud.
Major Cavaljé, seeing blood on the general’s tunic-sleeve, believed the wound to be light; but Köhler stretched both hands heavenward, let them fall powerless on the shoulder of his comrade, and cried “Mijn God, mijn God, wat is dat!” (“My God, my God, what is that!”). His already breaking gaze wandered over the officers around him; he fell unconscious into the arms of his adjutant, naval Lieutenant C. J. Marinkelle (Marinwarinkelle). The medical officer Oosterhoff rushed up from the adjacent ambulance and had the general carried to one of the field hospitals, but the brave soldier, mortally hit in the chest, died in the surgeon’s arms within minutes.
It was nine o’clock in the morning.
Aftermath
Half an hour later Köhler’s body was taken to the roadstead and put aboard the steamship Soerabaja. Next day the steamer Siak carried it to Penang, from where it was taken on to Batavia and buried with full honours. A simple monument, erected by friends and admirers, marks his grave.
Command devolved first on Colonel Egter van Wissekerke in the Missigit, and that same afternoon passed to Colonel E. C. van Daalen, who came over from the beach camp. Van Daalen’s extreme caution, the continuing uncertainty about the Kraton’s exact position (which lay only a few hundred yards east of the mosque), the exhaustion of the troops, the worsening monsoon, and the failure to find a viable way forward led eventually to the abandonment of the expedition at the end of April.
Significance
The death of Köhler — the first Dutch general officer killed in the Aceh War — was a profound shock to Dutch public opinion and, together with the failure of the first expedition, helped to convince the government that a much larger second expedition under a senior retired officer, General van Swieten, would be required. Köhler is remembered in Dutch colonial historiography as an officer who had risen from the ranks by sheer merit and who fell, according to Brooshooft, “in the fulfilment of his duty.”
See Also
- Köhler
- First Aceh Expedition
- Battle of the Missigit (10 April 1873)
- Pantei Tjermin and Kota Mogat
- Van Daalen
- Huijer
- Van Lier
- Kool van Heerens
- Missigit Raja
- Kraton
- 14 April
- 1873
Source
Brooshooft, Mr. P. Geschiedenis van den Atjeh-oorlog 1873–1886. Utrecht: F. B. van Ditmar, 1886, Hoofdstuk IV (“De eerste expeditie”), pp. 53–56 (pp. 65–68 of the OCR).