The second Bali expedition was the Dutch expedition of June 1848 against the Balinese strongholds of Djagaraga, which failed in a direct assault and returned to Java by decision of a council of war. The history of these operations was written down, at the request of the unhappy commander, generaal Van der Wijck, by the chief of the staff, luitenant-kolonel van Swieten — the future opperbevelhebber at Atjeh — and it is from that work that Verstege in 1886 cited the young van Swieten’s ringing doctrine of the invasion war against the addresses of the old one.
The repulse
Landed on 7 and 8 June 1848, the force advanced straight against the very strong inland positions of Djagaraga. The resistance was so heavy that the troops, after a long and bitter struggle, sounded retreat on 9 June, and already on 20 June (upon the decision taken in a council of war) returned to Java. In his account the overste defended the course taken: the objective points lay deep inside the country; their conquest would cost time, and so long one had to live from own resources, all brought from the ships; the war could not be drawn out, whereby the possibility fell away to fasten upon the coasts, to bring the neighbouring population to submission, and to carry on a methodical war with the resources of the land; “dit is het grondbeginsel der invasie-oorlogen” (“this is the fundamental principle of wars of invasion”). And further (p. 66): to have decided at once on the lengthy methodical attack, before trying the quicker and violent assault (attaque de vive force), would have been impossible without exposing oneself to the suspicion of overcautiousness; “Bij de meeste oorlogen in Indië heeft de stoutheid van den aanval en de dapperheid onzer soldaten bijna altijd over de sterkste verschansingen gezegevierd” (“In most wars in the Indies the boldness of the attack and the bravery of our soldiers have almost always triumphed over the strongest entrenchments”).
Verstege’s use of the lesson
Against these maxims of the overste of forty-one years of 1848 — and against the deeds of the same general at Boni in 1859 (see Second Boni expedition (1859)) — Verstege set the words and deeds of the sexagenarian opperbevelhebber of 1873–1874 in Atjeh, who after the fall of the Kraton went to the afwachtende houding (wait-and-see posture): “Met de jaren echter veranderen de menschen, verminderen vooral hunne voortvarendheid en hun ondernemingsgeest” (“With years, however, men change; above all their forwardness and their spirit of enterprise diminish”). The old van Swieten himself wrote with perfect justice in 1879 that “the principles of strategy are everywhere and for all conditions nearly the same, and that no departure from them can be made without danger” — a truth, Verstege concluded, to which the war history of Bali and Boni bore witness against him.
See Also
Source
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 38-40. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.