The Indische Brigade was the expeditionary force of 3 000–4 000 men that kapitein der artillerie G. F. W. Borel proposed to raise in the Netherlands and despatch directly to Atjeh in his March 1878 articles Een vaderlandsch belang in Het Vaderland (1–3 March 1878) and amplified in De Militaire Spectator, No. 7, jaargang 1878. It is the prescriptive closing of Onze vestiging in Atjeh: the aanvallende stelsel and the mobiele colonnes that Borel had advocated throughout the book required, he argued, a metropolitan reinforcement on the scale of the 1830 French expedition against Algiers (quoted from Camille Rousset’s L’Histoire de la guerre de Crimée).
The Proposal
Borel’s Indische Brigade was to comprise 150 officers and 3 000 men — infanterie, artillerie and mineurs — raised in the Netherlands from Dutch vrijwilligers, not from the inlandsche or European troops of the regular Indische leger. The volunteers were to be attracted with premies: ƒ 250–300 handgeld at enlistment, ƒ 1 per day soldij in Atjeh, and an equal premie on return. They were to be bound to a strict two-year maximum verbintenis, after which they would be released with the premie and (Borel suggested) the option of settling in the Indies. They were to be armed with steel achterlaadkanonnen with schokbuis — the modern materieel whose absence Borel had indicted throughout the book — and were to be sent directly from the Netherlands to Atjeh, not via Java’s “ongezonde garnizoenen,” where European troops lost acclimatisation and acquired the diseases that had carried off so many in the crisis of May–June 1874 and the cholera catastrophe of February 1875. The estimated cost was ƒ 6 000 000 for the first year and ƒ 10–15 million for the whole two years, to be raised as an oorlogsleening and ultimately repaid, Borel suggested, in Acehnese pepper. The brigade’s members were to be promised the Militaire Willemsorde for distinguished conduct.
Strategic Rationale
The strategic rationale for the Indische Brigade is set out at length in Borel’s closing chapters. The Atjeh-oorlog, already in its sixth year by 1878, could not, Borel argued, be ended by the Indische leger alone. The army was “in geen gunstigen toestand”: manschappen onvoldoende geoefend, kaders in treurige staat, many sick or unfit, with a groot gebrek aan officieren, especially in the artillerie. The stelling-Pel from the Kroeng Raba to the Kwala Gigieng — completed by generaal Pel in May 1875 and extended to the Kroeng Tjoet in February 1876 — had been left “nagenoeg onveranderd” under generaal Wiggers van Kerchem’s long command, and the afwachtende houding (wait-and-see posture) had once again become Dutch strategy. The XXII Moekims — “de kern van Atjeh’s weerstandsvermogen,” the densest-populated Sagi containing the Sultan’s voorraadschuren and the most hostile chiefs — had never been permanently occupied; Borel’s recommended response was repeated tuchtigingen by the brigade’s mobiele colonnes, each of 600–800 man infanterie with a battery of 4–6 stukken, a sectie mineurs and some cavalleristen, operating two or three in verbond toward the same doel. The example of kolonel van der Heijden’s two expeditions against Gedoeng in June 1878 — after the second of which the chief laid down bestuur and his son came to submit — was, Borel argued, proof of the aanvallende stelsel.
The Algiers Model and the Closing of the Book
Borel closes Onze vestiging in Atjeh with the wish that, if the Indische Brigade proposal is adopted, the words of Camille Rousset on the 1830 French expedition against Algiers — which departed France on 25 May 1830 with 36 000 soldiers — may apply to the Dutch in Atjeh: “rien n’avait été négligé pour le succès de l’expédition.” The analogy is pointed: the submission of Pasangan after naval bombardment on 15 August 1878 — news of which reached Borel by telegraph while he was writing — confirmed his argument that “eerst moet de vijand getuchtigd worden en wel in die mate dat hem geen andere uitweg overblijft dan het hoofd in den schoot te leggen.” He invokes in jest the words of prins von Bismarck on the “psychologische oogenblik” at which to begin negotiations with Atjehnese chiefs after a few tuchtigingen. The book is finished at ‘s-Gravenhage on 27 August 1878. The Indische Brigade proposal — though never adopted in Borel’s exact form — anticipated the later metropolitan reinforcements and the maréchaussée system associated with van Heutsz that finally brought the Atjeh-oorlog to a close in the early twentieth century.
See Also
- G. F. W. Borel
- Een vaderlandsch belang (Borel, 1878)
- Onze vestiging in Atjeh (Borel, 1878)
- Mobiele colonnes (Borel)
- Aanvallende tactiek in Atjeh
- Afwachtende houding
- Indische Leger
- Militaire Willemsorde
- Achterlaadkanonnen van 12 c.M.
- 1878
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 336–337, 339, 346, 354–357, 360, 364, 366, 369.