The excursie in het Samalangasche was the expedition into the territory of Samalanga in which the Korps Maréchaussée took part, and during which the stronghold of Batee Iliek — notorious since the time of General Van der Heyden — was taken by storm.
The expedition
The jubilee number of 1930 records that the corps was not lacking at the excursion into the Samalangasche, “waarbij o.a. het uit den tijd van generaal Van der Heyden beruchte Batoe-Iliek stormenderhand werd genomen” — at which, among other things, the Batee Iliek made notorious in the time of General Van der Heyden was taken by storm.
The position had acquired its reputation during the governorship of General K. van der Heijden, under whose administration the Dutch action had shortly before extended over the valley of Groot-Atjeh, prior to the concentratie decision of 19 August 1884.
Aftermath: the pursuit inland
The jubilee account places the storming of Batee Iliek within the corps’s larger pattern of operations in these years. The Maréchaussée, it records, “dreef de verzetslieden steeds meer het binnenland in, waar zij zich schuil wisten te houden, doch ook daar werden opgespoord” — drove the resistance fighters ever further into the interior, where they contrived to keep themselves hidden, but where they were tracked down as well. Most of the corps’s dead, the account adds, fell during the patrols.
See Also
- Samalanga
- Batee Ilie
- K. van der Heijden
- Korps Maréchaussée te voet in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden
- Onderwerping van Peusangan en Pasé (1899)
- Patrouille (Maréchaussée)
Source
Het Korps Maréchaussée in Atjeh: De Atjehsche Garde, 1890 - 2 April 1930, Extra Jubileum-nummer of Het Nieuws van den Dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië issued for the fortieth anniversary of the corps (1930), pp. 1-16. Offprint DLP-143, Bibliotheek KITLV, accession 621 116 794.