Colonel de Roy van Zuydewijn was a Dutch kolonel of the Indische leger who led the frontal assault on the voorwerk of the Mesigit on 6 January 1874 during the storming of the Mesigit, the bloodiest single action of the second expedition against Atjeh. In Borel’s account his is the name attached to the borstwering on which the first Dutch footing was gained at the cost of 220 dead and wounded.
The Storming of the Mesigit
The Mesigit — the fortified mosque that served as voorwerk of the Kraton — lay “als een tijger die op zijn prooi loert” at “niet meer dan 1200 passen” from the Dutch bivouak at Penajoeng. The Atjehneezen had built a meesterlijk work: a 180-metre earthen borstwering reinforced with bamboo, dwarswallen and schietkokers, fronted by a dry gracht filled with bamboe-doeri versperringen. Without proper reconnaissance and “tegen alle Indische traditiën in, zonder noemenswaardige voorbereiding, alleen in front, waar ze natuurlijk het sterkst was,” generaal van Swieten ordered the assault. Battalion after battalion was repulsed by “moorddadig vuur.” After a “hevigen strijd” De Roy van Zuydewijn’s column at last gained footing on the borstwering, while luitenant-kolonel Pel flanked the work and entered the Mesigit unopposed from the rear.
Borel’s Judgement
The Mesigit cost 220 Dutch dead and wounded; enemy losses, Borel records, were “vermoedelijk slechts onbeduidend.” Borel’s strictures fall principally on van Swieten, who ordered the assault without reconnaissance and “alleen in front” against the strongest face of the work, and not on De Roy van Zuydewijn, who carried out the order with the courage and tenacity the situation demanded. The colonel’s name survives in Borel’s narrative as the symbol of the Dutch infantry’s hard-won footing on the Mesigit wall — the action that, in Borel’s account, ought to have been the prelude to an immediate omtrekkende beweging but was instead followed by nineteen days of desultory bombardment before Verspijck finally completed the encirclement on 24 January 1874.
See Also
- Storming of the Mesigit (6 January 1874)
- Mesigit of Atjeh
- Kraton of Atjeh
- Jan van Swieten
- Generaal Verspijck
- Generaal Pel
- Bombardment of the Kraton (January 1874)
- Fall of the Kraton (24 January 1874)
- Bamboe-doeri versperringen
- 1874
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 17, 27.