Lieutenant-Colonel de Rochemont was a retired (gepensioneerd) Dutch luitenant-kolonel and author of the brochure Wat hebben partijschappen — cited by Borel as the source for the text of van Swieten’s verbal instruction to kolonel Pel (“zooveel mogelijk vechten weinig, afwachtende houding bewaren”). Borel turns de Rochemont’s own quotations against him to demolish the claim — put about by van Swieten’s partisans — that Pel had merely carried out van Swieten’s programme.
The Brochure and the Instruction
De Rochemont’s brochure Wat hebben partijschappen enz. was published in defence of van Swieten’s conduct of the war. Its most consequential passage was the quotation of van Swieten’s verbal instruction to Pel on his departure — the afwachtende houding instruction that Borel treats as the original sin of the bezettingskorps’s inheritance. Borel cites de Rochemont as the source of the text and uses the same brochure to refute the central claim of van Swieten’s partisans: that Pel had merely carried out van Swieten’s programme, and that the stelling-Pel and the aanvallende campaign of 1874–1876 were but the execution of van Swieten’s design. Borel’s argument is that the afwachtende houding instruction was the very opposite of the aanvallende tactiek Pel actually adopted; that Pel’s first act on assuming command was to begin the daily bombardment of kampongs from 28 April 1874 that van Swieten had always refused; and that the stelling-Pel was “een jaar te laat” — had van Swieten acted in 1874 what Pel achieved in 1875 could have been done at a fraction of the cost.
The Pel Letter and Its Publication
De Rochemont’s brochure also entered the controversy over Pel’s particulier schrijven to van Swieten, in which Pel had attributed his succes to van Swieten’s beleid. Van Swieten had made the letter public and used it as a wapen against his critics. Borel explains the letter as Pel’s nederigheid, erkentelijkheid and deferentie — a private courtesy seized upon by van Swieten’s partisans as a public testimonial. De Rochemont’s use of the letter in his brochure is, in Borel’s reading, an example of how the partisans of van Swieten were willing to use Pel’s name in his lifetime to defend a system Pel had abandoned, and to suppress the afwachtende houding instruction that was the documentary proof of what van Swieten had actually intended.
Significance
De Rochemont is, in Borel’s narrative, the principal pamphleteer of van Swieten’s cause, and his brochure is the document Borel most often cites against itself. The convergence of Booms’s “zeer juist geschreven critiek,” Knoop’s “slechts ten deele gelukt,” and Borel’s own participant-observation against the de Rochemont brochure establishes, in Borel’s narrative, the professional military consensus on the second expedition.
Sources
Atjeh gedurende de tweede expeditie en later, Een Oud Officier, Batavia: Ogilvie & Co., 1876, pp. 12-16.
See Also
- De Rochemont brochure
- Second Aceh Expedition (1873–1874)
- Jan van Swieten
- Generaal Pel
- Pel’s letter to Jan van Swieten
- Afwachtende houding
- Stelling-Pel
- Generaal Booms
- Generaal Knoop
- 1873
- Coastal Fortifications in Aceh
- Second Aceh Expedition
- Royal Netherlands East Indies Army
Source
Onze vestiging in Atjeh, critisch beschreven, by G. F. W. Borel, Kapitein der Artillerie. ‘s-Gravenhage: D. A. Thieme, 1878. pp. 276–277.