The First Capture of Mesjid Raya took place on 10 April 1873 during the First Aceh Expedition, when Dutch troops commanded by Major Cavaljé launched an initial assault against the fortified Mesjid Raya Aceh in Banda Aceh.
Detailed Narrative
At 7:00 AM on 10 April 1873, a Dutch advance column of 2,100 troops marched from the Pante Cermin beachhead toward the interior. Arriving at a burial mound 300 meters west of the Mesjid Raya Aceh at 12:30 PM, the troops came under intense rifle fire from the mosque walls and surrounding palm groves in Kampong Pungei.
Major Cavaljé deployed a storming column of two and a half companies led by Captain Van Lier. As the troops advanced across open rice fields, Acehnese warriors executed a surprise klewang counter-attack, which was repulsed at close quarters.
Arriving within 70 paces of the mosque, the Dutch soldiers discovered that the masonry walls stood 2.5 meters high and were entirely unscalable without ladders. Mortar batteries commanded by Lieutenant Kielstra opened fire with light-shell illumination rounds, eventually setting the wooden roof of the Great Mosque ablaze.
As dense smoke and flames engulfed the building, Major Cavaljé’s infantry, led by 1st Lieutenant C. Sweijs, scaled the walls and entered the mosque enclosure at 2:00 PM. However, extreme heat from the burning timber structure rendered the position uninhabitable, causing several soldiers to collapse from heat stroke. At 6:00 PM, Major-General Johan Harmen Rudolf Köhler ordered his troops to evacuate the ruins and retreat to a bivouac on the rice fields, allowing Acehnese defenders to reoccupy the site overnight.
See Also
Source
De expeditiën naar Atjeh 1873-1874, W.W.F. Herfkens, Koninklijke Militaire Academie, 1900, pp. 14-18.