W. A. Coblijn — gepensionneerd Kolonel van het Oost-Indisch Leger (retired Colonel of the Netherlands Indies Army) — was a Dutch military writer, veteran of the Atjeh-oorlog, and the author of the polemical pamphlet Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen (‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef, 1893), in which he reviewed the twenty years of war since 1873, attributed the failure of the Dutch arms not to a fatum (destiny) but to the interference of de politiek (politics), and set out a detailed programme for the subjugation of Atjeh with a reserve-brigade cantoned in the Padangsche Bovenlanden and supported by fast cruisers. In 1879, as Majoor commanding the 6e Bataljon Infanterie, he marched as voorhoede-commandant of the Lamtoba column from Lampanas to Lamtoba and Selimoen — the tocht of which W. Cool and G. B. Hooijer’s Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis (1889) gives the eyewitness account.
Service in the campaign of 1879
Coblijn wrote as an eyewitness of the war. In the closing tactical argument of his pamphlet he records of the operations of 1879, under the command then renewed in Atjeh: bij onzen langen tocht van Lampannas naar het dal van Lamtoba en vandaar naar Selimoen (on our long march from Lampannas to the valley of Lamtoba and thence to Selimoen) the troops with a few companies repeatedly searched kampongs and rendered the captured weapons unusable. The passage places him in the columns that operated west of Groot-Atjeh in the campaign year 1879, the year of the operations against the XXII Moekims and the operations against the XXVI Moekims of generaal Van der Heijden.
The Lamtoba–Selimoen tocht
That “long march” Coblijn made as Majoor of the 6e Bataljon, and Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis records his part in it. On the march of 28–29 July 1879 he commanded the voorhoede, deliberately made stronger than custom demanded and furnished with Mineurs, mountain artillery and an ambulance under Nöckedved, “since in mountain terrain a column files man behind man along narrow footpaths and support comes late.” He again commanded the voorhoede of the punitive expedition against Kepaja Doewa in early August. In the march to Selimoen of 13 August 1879 it was Coblijn who, when the voorhoede lay bunched under the enemy’s fire before the marsh-crossing and the earthen trench at the ruined kampong of Kepaja Doewa, “gave last tot stormen” — sending the 1st platoon of the 2nd Company of the 6e Bataljon, with Kapitein Clerkson at its head, to turn the work through the dammed-up spring-marsh and the bamboo abatis, while he joined himself to the 2nd platoon holding the front: the position was carried with three wounded. The next day, 14 August, he likewise let the voortroep — a company strong — storm the fire of Lam-Lepong, after which the kampong was burned. On the evacuation of the valley of 22–23 August Coblijn commanded the second, slower division — the 6e Bataljon, the section of cannon, the Mineurs and the vivres train — which, having had to leave part of the stockpiled provisions behind for want of bearers, completed the march on the 23rd, reuniting the whole column in the beach bivouac of Lampanas.
Military writings
Coblijn had earlier published De Indische Infanterie (The Indies Infantry), a geschrift (treatise) which he cited in Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen as having most strongly disapproved, years before, of the withdrawal into a more concentrated position. He was also the translator into Dutch of Von der Goltz’s Das Volk in Waffen, which he cited as the door ons uit het Duitsch vertaalde boek Het gewapende volk (The Nation in Arms), the work from which he drew the military lessons — including the maxim of the German Kaiser, that of Moltke, and the military writers Derrécagaix and Horsetzky — with which he combatted the anti-militarist argument of Mr. S. van Houten in the Vragen des Tijds.
The pamphlet of 1893
In Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen — bearing as its motto the sentence “When work of this kind is to be done, it should be done promptly” — Coblijn rejected the proposition of oud Vice-Admiraal P. Ten Bosch, who in his work De sluiting der Atjehsche kust (The closing of the Atjeh coast) had written that er een fatum op den Atjeh-oorlog rust (a destiny rests upon the Atjeh war). Against philosophical resignation Coblijn placed the responsibility of men: the war had been opened unprepared in 1873, with only two battalions armed with Beaumont rifles, because the expedition’s leaders reckoned three battalions together with the Barisans of Kroesen sufficient and made no provision for reserve or replenishment. He condemned the condemning of the leaders of the first expedition by the enquête-commissie, the strategic dispersion under Pel and Van der Heijden, the triple échec of Batoe Iliq in 1880, the experiment of the civil government under Pruys van der Hoeven and Laging Tobias, the passive concentration after the decisions of 19 August 1884, and the piecemeal attacks on Kaloet in 1892. Against the latter’s newspaper critics he cited Scherer’s scheepvaartregeling and, in a naschrift written while the pamphlet was already at the printer’s, the brochure De onderwerping van Atjeh of majoor J. B. van Heutsz.
Coblijn and Van Heutsz
Coblijn acknowledged the importance of Van Heutsz’s brochure but differed from its programme on the essential point: where Van Heutsz adopted — in improved form — the scheepvaartregeling of Resident Scherer as the first of four means of subjugation, Coblijn held that the work kan geschieden (can be done) only by the sword, without untimely interference of politics. With the late ex-Governor-General Van Rees he endorsed the demand that the issue of firearms to Acehnese be stopped for good, and he quoted from the brochure Van Heutsz’s own figures — that at the beginning of 1891 already some thousands of rifles stood under license in native hands, about eighty per cent breech-loaders, and that cartridges were being supplied in hundreds of thousands from the war magazine — together with Van Heutsz’s words: Dwaze illusie! and Misschien zullen wij ze nog eenmaal bloedig moeten terughalen (Foolish illusion! … Perhaps we shall one day have to take them back bloodily).
Significance
Coblijn is significant as one of the most outspoken Dutch military publicists on the Atjeh-oorlog before the definitive conquest. His pamphlet of 1893, printed at Haarlem by Ruigrok & Co. and preserved, stamped, in the library of the Second Chamber of the Staten-Generaal, belonged to the same discussion of that year as the brochure of Van Heutsz: both officers demanded an end to the tactics of the defensive, and both looks to a solution by force. Coblijn’s work is distinguished by its bitterness against the parliamentary and ministerial management of the war, its extensive citation of the pamphlet literature of the preceding decade, and its detailed tactical and organisational programme — the only full-length printed statement of the partij van de daad (party of action) written by a veteran of the campaign of 1879.
See Also
- Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen (Coblijn, 1893)
- Coblijn’s programme for the subjugation of Atjeh
- De onderwerping van Atjeh (Van Heutsz, 1893)
- Issuance of firearms to Acehnese
- Civil versus military government in Atjeh
- S. van Houten
- P. F. Laging Tobias
- G. A. Scherer
- Aceh War
- Selimoen Expedition (August 1879)
- Lamtoba column (1879)
- Punitive expedition against Kepaja Doewa (August 1879)
- 6e Bataljon Infanterie
- 1873
- 1879
- 1893
Source
Hoe Atjeh te onderwerpen, door W. A. Coblijn, gepensioneerd Kolonel van het Oost-Indisch Leger (‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders van Cleef, 1893), pp. 5–7, 85, 101, 115–120. OCR-filename: 20260716_140310_DLP-100-Hoe_Atjeh_te_onderwerpen_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.
Eene schoone bladzijde uit Atjeh’s geschiedenis, door W. Cool en G. B. Hooijer (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1889), pp. 13-14, 26, 38-41, 49-50, 66-67. OCR-filename: 20260720_115822_DLP-135-Eene_schoone_bladzijde_uit_Atjeh_s_geschiedenis_Nemotron_OCR_v2_OCR.txt.