Augustin de Beaulieu was a French captain who led the French expedition to the East Indies of 1620–1621 in search of the pepper trade. Driven by monsoon and misfortune to Tikoe on Sumatra’s Westkust — a pepper-port dependent on the Sultan of Atjeh — and thence to Atjeh itself in early 1621, De Beaulieu became entangled in difficult negotiations with the Sultan and the Rijksgrooten over permission to buy pepper, and saw his Vice-Admiral Robert Gravé die and be buried in Atjeh. The De Beaulieu expedition is one of the principal French intrusions into the Dutch-Atjeh pepper trade in the early seventeenth century.
The French Saint-Malo expedition
The expedition was fitted out at Saint-Malo and consisted of several ships, including the Montmorency (De Beaulieu’s flagship), the l’Hermitage, the l’Espérance (under the Vice-Admiral Robert Gravé), and the Leiden. The plan was to reach the East Indies and break into the pepper trade that the VOC was already consolidating.
Landfall at Tikoe, Sumatra’s Westkust
Driven past Cape Guardafui, De Beaulieu could not make the intended coast and landed with the Montmorency and l’Hermitage at Tikoe on Sumatra’s Westkust — “een centrum van peperhandel, afhankelijk van den Sultan van Atjeh” — a centre of pepper trade, dependent on the Sultan of Atjeh. From Tikoe he came in early 1621 to Atjeh itself, where he had difficult negotiations with the Sultan and the Rijksgrooten (great officers) to obtain permission for the pepper trade. De Beaulieu particularly complained about the extortion of gifts during the negotiations: “vooral klaagt De Beaulieu over het afpersen van geschenken bij de besprekingen” — De Beaulieu particularly complained about the extortion of gifts during the discussions.
The arrival of the sick Gravé and the l’Espérance
Suddenly, in November 1621, while the Montmorency lay in a bay to be cleaned of the shell-layer that was impeding her sailing, an English ship appeared aboard which was the gravely ill Vice-Admiral Gravé. He, together with one De Parc of the l’Espérance’s crew, told the story of that ship — a tale full of inaccuracies that later appeared in print in De Beaulieu’s travel-adventures. The French had not reckoned on the Dutch carefully checking and recording their doings.
The truth was that before Tikoe the l’Espérance had lain twelve days waiting for a sloop sent ashore with fifteen sick sailors to fetch help. The sloop never reappeared. Ten of the sailors died; the five survivors took a Dutch yacht to Atjeh to seek their Admiral. On the great ship were 74 souls; Gravé and three others were still on their feet, but the ship was unmanageable for want of hands. The Dutch ship Leiden found the French “gants machteloos” — entirely powerless. Only two casks of water remained. Some of the sick were taken aboard the Leiden; the l’Espérance was given a crew of 50 Dutchmen. At the island Nassau it was hoped the sick would recover, but many found their grave there.
The Dutch Raad van Defensie and the French claim
When the Leiden and the l’Espérance arrived before Jakatra, 95 persons had died and 29 survived. The French printed account claims the ship was taken by force and brought to Java — “Tijdgenooten wisten beter” — contemporaries knew better. The Dutch ambassador in Paris was thanked by French nobles interested in the Dieppe expedition for the help given to the l’Espérance — for which favour they waived complaints about the lifting of Dutch sailors from French ships.
The death of Gravé at Atjeh
Gravé went in the bark l’Hermitage to Atjeh, where De Beaulieu had already departed. By English ship he set out, happened to meet his chief, and told him, deathly ill, of his troubles in the presence of witnesses. In the night of 9 November, two hours before daybreak, Gravé died of a violent fever “causée de facherie” — caused by vexation — arising “uit ergernis” (from offence/chagrin). He was buried in Atjeh. See Robert Gravé.
Aftermath
When Coen was in Holland in 1623 he wrote that the English and French questions had cost the Company some sixteen tonnes of gold. The French shipowners received their claimed damages — 550,000 livres — paid out by the VOC. Le Tellier’s grave is in Bantam. Gravé’s grave is in Atjeh.
Significance
For Atjeh’s history, De Beaulieu is the principal French protagonist of the early seventeenth century — the captain whose 1620–1621 mission brought French arms and French claims into the pepper trade that the Sultan of Atjeh controlled through his Westkust dependencies. The episode is also the proximate cause of Gravé’s death and burial at Atjeh, and of the long-running French claim for damages against the VOC that was eventually settled at 550,000 livres. Through De Beaulieu’s own later published narrative the episode entered the European literature of Asian travel.
Account from Verstege’s Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk (1886)
Verstege adopts the French admiral’s characterisation of the Atjehnese as a pillar of his argument. Beaulieu, who in the years 1620 and 1621 stayed a considerable time at Atjeh and got to know the people well, described them, in the pamphlet’s quotation, as “hoogmoedig, nijdig, zonder geloof en geweten, inzonderheid tegen de Christenen, als verraders, dieven en vergiftigers” (“haughty, spiteful, without faith and conscience, against the Christians in particular traitors, thieves and poisoners”), whose wickedness went so far that one would often hear the brother accuse his brother and the son his father, and who, when their wickedness was reproached to them and they were told they had a bad conscience, answered: “God verre, maar de Koning nabij is” (“God is far, but the King is near”). Two centuries later generaal van Swieten invoked the same Beaulieu in the letter of 17 October 1874 to generaal Knoop, in defence of his own judgment of the Atjehsche people (see Jan van Swieten); and Verstege places next to him the still better informed manuscript of the contrôleur Kroesen.
See Also
- Robert Gravé
- Tikoe
- Jan Pieterszoon Coen
- Hans de Decker
- St. Michel affair at Atjeh (1620-1621)
- Augustin de Beaulieu’s Atjeh mission (1620-1621)
- 1621
- Acheh
Source
Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie, by Dr. E. C. Godee Molsbergen, Oud-Hoogleeraar, Landsarchivaris te Batavia (Amsterdam: N.V. Swets & Zeitlinger Boekhandel en Uitgevers Mij., 1932), chapter LIV (“Augustin de Beaulieu en Robert Grave”), pp. 194–197 of the numbered-letter sequence.
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 11-12, 16. OCR: DLP-158.