The second Boni expedition was the Dutch campaign of November-December 1859 against the realm of Boni (Bone) on Celebes (Sulawesi), commanded by luitenant-generaal van Swieten, which in sixteen days after the landing brought the whole Bonische realm — Palakka, Pasempa, Pampanoea — under Dutch control: an example of energetic, forward-pressing warfare which Verstege set against the same general’s hesitant conduct in Atjeh fifteen years later.
The march
The first troops arrived at Badjoa on 27 November 1859, where the fort built during the first expedition still stood; the opperbevelhebber arrived on 3 December, and two days later all the necessaries were unshipped — also to advance, after the chief place Boni should be taken, without delay to Pasempa and Pampanoea, for an old folk tradition in Boni said that so long as Boni “the Mighty”, Pasempa “the Strong” and Pampanoea “the Rich” were not taken, the realm was not conquered. On 6 December at dawn the troops moved inland, in stiff fight took the chief place, and the same day the Dutch tricolour waved from its once so feared walls; on 7 December van Swieten wrote from his headquarters at Palakka to the Aroe Pitoes (the seven lords) of Boni, in a memorable phrase almost identical with the one in his Atjeh letter of 1 December 1873: “That he would not think of departing in a few months; if they would not accept the peace he offered, he would remain with his soldiers in their land, and would place it under the Dutch government and govern it himself, as had happened with Sindjai”. The fall of Boni notwithstanding, the opperbevelhebber advanced already on the 9th with a force to Pasempa, nearer the western boundary of the realm — which, not daring to await the Dutch, had fled (had it been well defended, it would have cost great sacrifices, as the English had felt in 1814); and on the 14th, without letting the victory cool, nine and a half companies of infantry with all the expeditionary artillery and cavalry marched, via Lantja and Timoerong, to Pampanoea, which they entered victoriously on 16 December — a march from Badjoa to Pampanoea of about 55 km in twelve days — while the navy was sent up the Tjinrana river with a flotilla and 160 marines to give the display of power more weight. On 16 December the opperbevelhebber could write to the Prince of Wadjo that the three places meant in the folk legend were in Dutch possession, and on 8 January 1860 he said to his soldiers in a day order: “De oorlog met Boni is geeindigd” (“The war with Boni is ended”). The same van Swieten, Verstege remarks, told the Netherlands in 1874 that with the undefended Kraton of Atjeh in his hands the campaign was ended and sailed home.
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. 45-47. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.