Tirò Teungkoes was the fanatical house of oelamas of Pidië, “the cradle of the irreconcilable religious leaders”, whose destruction by H. J. Schmidt between 1908 and 3 December 1911 was, in du Croo’s phrase, “the great epic of those stirring days”.
The line ran from Teungkoe di Tirò, the fiercest religious resistance leader, who died in 1891, through his eldest son Teungkoe Mat Amin, killed at Aneu’ Galong in June 1896, to Tgk. Tjhi’ Majét and Tgk. di Boekét, killed by Schmidt in May 1910, and finally to the sixteen-year-old Tgk. Ma’at, who fell in December 1911 after refusing a last offer of submission “because a Tirò Teungkoe preferred martyrdom to surrender.” At the end of 1907 the Tirò band fled from Geumpang to Pidië before Schmidt’s patrols; on 8 February 1908 Schmidt surprised its hiding-place on the kr. Meu’, where five of the principal Teungkoes fell. After the deaths of the two great Tirò men in 1910 the band split: the Pedireezen attached themselves to T. Dagang of Tangsé, while the strangers, mainly oelama’s from Groot Atjeh, followed Tgk. Ma’at. The struggle was waged by Schmidt with his two famous marechaussée brigades under Molier and Von Gilsa, “who for years devoted themselves exclusively to this commission,” and is described as a classic example of the colonial kleine oorlog in Marechaussee in Atjeh. A last remnant under Tgk. Ma’ Aréh di Lam Goet was taken in January 1913, “and Central Pidië was cleared.”
See Also
Source
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 X, XI, XII.