Majoor Voigt was a Dutch major of infantry in Atjeh in 1876, who commanded the mixed column of the June 1876 expedition into the IV Moekims in search of the band of Toekoe Tjihiq Lamngga.
The expedition
In the last days of May 1876 the civil and military commander gave Voigt the order to seek out Toekoe Tjihiq Lamngga’s band of some hundred men at Oedjong Blang Ganing and, if possible, to capture its chief. His column — 5 European and 8 Madurese officers, 70 European and Ambonese and 200 Madurese men of the 1e Bataljon Barisan van Bangkallang, two 12 cM. mortars and a medical officer, with the controleur D’Engelbronner and guides — left Kota Radja on 1 June, reached Boekit Seboen in the dark after three hours’ struggling over the last 3,600 metres of mud, and marched out again at four next morning.
When a midnight-fetched guide declared the band to have grown to 200 and the goal to lie at the farther kampong Naga Oembang, and proposed a night march for a better surprise, Voigt refused: on these dike-paths between drowned sawahs the least hindrance in the dark could create the greatest confusion, and the bulk of his troops was Madurese barisan, the least drilled in the army. Meijer added his own approval of the major’s refusal as right. The band had flown, leaving pots still cooking on the fire in the sheds of its last refuge; the kampong people pointed everywhere at the mountains; and Voigt — having declined, at the controleur’s request, to burn even the two abandoned houses that had sheltered the chief — withdrew to Kota Radja, reporting that the population’s show of confidence meant little and that he had certainly been deliberately misled by his guides out of fear of Toekoe Tjihiq and his followers. Meijer quoted and endorsed his report.
See Also
- Voigt expedition to the IV Moekims (1-3 June 1876)
- Toekoe Tjihiq Lamngga
- 1e Bataljon Barisan van Bangkallang
- D’Engelbronner
- IV Moekims
- Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876
Source
Atjeh van 26 December 1875 tot 4 September 1876, door H. F. Meijer (Breda: P. B. Nieuwenhuijs, 1883), chapter VII, pp. 204–209.