Pasé Expedition

Properties2
tagsevent, war, aceh, knil, colonial, battle, aceh-war, dutch, 1899, noordkust, 19th-century
aliasesPasai expedition, Pasè expedition (1899), expeditie naar Pasè 1899, Pasè river crossing 1899, Geudong operations 1899, crossing of the Pasè river

6 min read

The Pasé Expedition was one of the great successes of the glorious period of Van Heutsz in the Aceh War, the third-named of the expeditions and excursions that Musket lists in Oost-Indisch Journael by Merac (1947). The Pasé Expedition was the expedition to the Pasé region of Aceh — the region of the Samudra Pasai kingdom — conducted under Van Heutsz as part of the all-out offensive.

The great successes of the glorious period

“the time also of our great successes! The Pidië expedition, the expeditions in Idi and Peusangan, the Pasé expedition, the Samalanga expedition, the expeditions to the Gayo and Alas lands, the action in the Tangsé and Geumpang area and on the North Coast of Atjeh, the patrol actions on the always restless West Coast, and finally the Battle of Batèë-Ilië, by which the organised, general resistance in Atjeh was broken for good.” The Pasé Expedition is the third-named of the great successes, after the Pidië-expeditie and the expeditions in Idi and Peusangan.

Significance

The Pasé Expedition is significant in Oost-Indisch Journael as one of the great successes of the glorious period of Van Heutsz. The book’s argument — that the great successes of the glorious period were the expeditions and excursions by which the organised, general resistance in Atjeh was broken for good — is the book’s frame for the offensive phase of the Aceh War. The Pasé Expedition is therefore one of the book’s — and the colonial memory’s — great successes of the glorious period.

The crossing at Geudong

Fierce resistance was offered at the river. The far bank was strongly held, its key point being a fortified missigit (mosque), and to make matters worse the river was in bandjir (flood).

On 21 June 1899, during the operations at Geudong in support of the marechaussée, Swart’s company of the 12th Battalion Infantry was sent to the front line. Halted by the greatly swollen Pasè river, and despite heavy enemy fire delivered at short range, he at once took energetic measures for a crossing, went over the river, gathered some seventeen soldiers about him on the right bank, and with great skill and boldness drove the superior enemy from his position to the south by a flank attack with heavy loss, thereafter maintaining himself in the captured position pending the arrival of further troops.

Swart’s own narrative added the details omitted from the official citation. Working himself onto dry land from an improvised raft, he found beside him — to his surprise — lieutenant Mac Gillavry of Van Heutsz’s staff, who had come along without his knowledge. Their little rafts happened to reach a stretch of the enemy position that was unoccupied. They worked their way cautiously and slowly along the bank in the direction of the missigit and reached the edge of the fortification, where Swart carefully posted his men. When all had recovered their breath he gave the signal “voorwaarts”: they sprang forward, over the wall of the missigit and into the midst of a startled garrison certainly a couple of hundred strong. The surprise had robbed the defenders of their courage; after a short but violent fight the garrison fled and left the missigit to Swart and his eighteen men.

At that moment Swart saw Van Heutsz standing with his staff on the far bank and heard him shout: “who is that commander there and with how many men is he posted?” Swart shouted back: “Captain Swart with eighteen men, but he requests reinforcement!” The reinforcement was got across.

The action on the river fortification

In a further engagement of the same campaign, Swart’s battalion advanced against a fortification lying on the river. “We were of course heavily fired upon,” he recalled, “and I remember how at a certain moment, when we were at the fortification, I pushed someone who was standing in front of me through the fence and at once gave the order to try to get onto the entrenchment. That succeeded, and we even pressed on over the entrenchment, and then the enemy, who could go nowhere else, was free to swim for it.”

During that fight Swart suddenly felt something against his belly and found he had received a contourschot which had not penetrated. The doctor treated it in the evening, after his wounded had been dressed: “you got off lightly there,” he said.

Two further wounds sustained by Swart in the operations of 1899 are recorded in his service record: at the storming of the kampong Bambi in Pidië, a grazing shot above the right temple on 8 May 1899; and at the taking of the enemy positions on the Glé Risé, a blood-blister on the belly from a thrown stone on 21 November 1899. At the Glé Risé he led his company “with judgement and with great intrepidity” in the attack on a very strong and stubbornly defended position.

For his distinction in the operations in Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden between 1 June 1899 and 31 December of that year, Swart was promoted Knight 3rd Class of the Militaire Willemsorde by royal decree of 13 July 1900 no. 29.

Significance (du Croo, 1943)

The Pasè expedition belongs to the phase of the Atjeh-oorlog in which Van Heutsz, as Governor, drove the campaign forward at a tempo his predecessors had not attempted. For H. N. A. Swart personally it converted a dispirited Jannen-company of the 12th Battalion into an élite unit and confirmed the reputation as a fighting officer on which his subsequent administrative career was built.

See Also

Source

Oost-Indisch Journael: Palaver om de tafel met het gat, by Merac, Toekan-Serie no. 2, ed. G. L. Tichelman (Haarlem: De Gulden Pers, 1947), the chapter on den zieleherder.

Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter IV, pp. 20–21; Extract from the service record of H. N. A. Swart, pp. 174–175.

Graph View