Anagaloeng

Anagaloeng — modern Acehnese Aneu’ Galong — was a Dutch temporary military post established in the XXII Moekims of Groot-Atjeh during the 1890s — a post that, together with Senelop on its southern flank, formed the eastern anchor of the Dutch outer perimeter in the late concentratie period. The post was besieged by the forces of Toekoe Oemar after his defection in March 1896 and relieved on 18 April 18 April 1896, after a siege of approximately six weeks.

The strategic position

The Atjeh-Album of 1896 records that Anagaloeng was established in a strategically central position — at the junction of the XXII Moekims with the XXV Moekims and the XXVI Moekims — and that it commanded the principal lines of communication between the geconcentreerde linie and the upper valley of the Atjeh-rivier. The album’s narrative of the 1896 crisis places Anagaloeng as the post from which the *Patrol of 7 March 1896 near Anagaloeng|patrol of 7 March 1896]] was sent out — the patrol that produced the first officer fatality of the spring crisis, Lieutenant Westendorp.

The terrain

The Atjeh-Album records that the post at Anagaloeng was hooger gelegen (situated higher) than the surrounding sawahs (rice-fields), and that from its walls one could look out langs dien langen dijk, die recht noordelijk door rijstvelden voortloopt tot de rivier, naar het Zuid-Westen, waar op een paar honderd meters afstand de vijand nu zit in de benting Bak Tjerlak, naar het Zuid-Oosten, waar de brug ligt, die door een wachthuis wordt beschermd, naar het Oosten over de landtong, die door de rivier wordt omspoeld, en waarachter heel in verte de elegante kegel van den Gondberg verrijst. The view from Anagaloeng thus took in the river, the bridge, the enemy’s benting at Bak Tjerlak, and the elegant cone of the Gondberg in the distance. The hooge en steile bergwand (high and steep mountain wall) to the south of Anagaloeng — about an hour’s march away — was the principal topographical feature that distinguished the sound of the firing of the relief of Biloel and Lamkoenjit from that of the battle of Tjot Rang.

The siege of March-April 1896

The Atjeh-Album records that, after Toekoe Oemar’s defection in March 1896, the post at Anagaloeng — together with the post at Senelop — was besieged by the forces of the defected warlord. The album’s narrative of the siege records the desperate situation of the garrison — moge men een oog kunnen sluiten gedurende die nachten, na dagen vol spanning en werkzaamheid, waarin misschien geen enkel bericht tot hen kwam en ieder oogenblik een aanval, een strijd op leven en dood te wachten stond? — may one close an eye during those nights, after days full of tension and activity, in which perhaps no message reached them and every moment an attack, a struggle for life or death was to be expected? The besieged garrison could only listen for the sound of the relief expeditions in the distance, and judge from the sound whether the relieving force was a strong one.

The relief of 18 April 1896

The Atjeh-Album records that the post at Anagaloeng was relieved on 18 April 1896 — Eindelijk op den 18den April hoorden zij de dreun van ons geschut, het geratel van onze salvo’s — Finally on the 18th of April they heard the thunder of our artillery, the rattle of our salvos. The relief was accomplished by the column that had previously relieved Biloel and Lamkoenjit on 9 April 9 April 1896, and it was followed by an uitbundige vreugde (extravagant joy) at the post — met welk een uitbundige vreugde werden zij begroet, met welk een wellust de lastgeving uitgevoerd, alles bijeen te pakken, wat kon worden medegenomen en den brand te steken in de lage barakken, waaronder zij zooveel angst en zorg geleden hadden.

The connection with Teungku di Tiro

The Atjeh-Album records that Anagaloeng was, in the period before Toekoe Oemar’s defection, one of the principal sites of the conflict between the Dutch and the religious-party Moslemin. The album’s biographical essay on Teungkoe di Tiro records that the Teungku legde bij Anagaloeng een linie van verdedigingswerken aan, die uitmuntten door de wijze, waarop hij van het terrein gebruik had weten te maken — laid out at Anagaloeng a line of defensive works that excelled in the way he had managed to make use of the terrain. The reference places Anagaloeng as one of the principal sites of the Teungku’s defensive works — and as one of the principal sites of the conflict between the Dutch and the Moslemin in the late 1870s and early 1880s.

Significance

Anagaloeng’s significance in the documentary record of the Atjeh-oorlog is as the eastern anchor of the Dutch outer perimeter in the late concentratie period, and as the post whose siege defined the spring 1896 crisis. Its relief on 18 April 1896 — after a siege of approximately six weeks — was the last of the three relief operations of April 1896, and it was the moment at which the Dutch began to recover the initiative from Toekoe Oemar’s defected forces. The post’s strategic position — at the junction of the three sagis of Groot-Atjeh — and its earlier history as a site of Teungku di Tiro’s defensive works place it as one of the principal operational centres of the late concentratie period.

Account in Hooijer’s De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897)

Anagaloeng was a kampong (village) and Dutch military post on the Atjeh-rivier in the XXII Moekims of Groot-Atjeh, called by the Achehnese de navel van het land — the navel of the country — and the granary (voorraadschuur) of the XXII Moekims, taken by Toekoe Djohan on 21 December 1893, fortified by the Dutch as a model benteng, invested for eighteen days after the defection of March 1896, and lifted and burnt on 18 April 1896.

Capture by Toekoe Djohan

Pressing further into the kampong belt after taking Lam Barih, Toekoe Djohan reached Anagaloeng on 20 December 1893, and it fell into his hands the following day after a furious fight. Hooijer described his tactics in detail: his bands swarmed out over a great distance, enveloping the objective — a complex of pasture and arable land, coconut gardens, enclosed patches of rice-field, houses scattered within dense hedges and fortifications concealed under greenery at the edge of the kampongs (villages), all bounded at the rear by the broad river describing an arc. His fighters, broad-shouldered and narrow in the hips, carrying a small head on a long, muscular neck, lay down behind the dykes netting the rice-fields or hid in the tangled vegetation of the raised mounds. Their black heads, wound about with a piece of cloth, showed above the grass-stalks on every side; their shots were faithfully answered from the barricaded kampong edges. Only when the defender’s fire fell silent at some point — his ammunition spent or a man fallen — did the attacker venture forward, creeping like snakes from dyke to dyke or striding through the bushes on long, almost black-scorched lean legs about which the wide dark Achehnese trousers fluttered.

At Anagaloeng, however, the defenders did not take flight at once. The klewangs had to be swung and the war-cry raised, and the champions excited by opium, shrieking and leaping like madmen, had to lead their men in storming the last redoubt of the Moslemin before they gave up the fight and quitted the field.

The terrain and the river

A plate showed the plain from Indrapoeri to Lambaroe, through which the winding river cut its sharply incised bed; before the kampongs, whose trees rise against the silhouette of the hills east of the XXVI Moekims, the top of the steep river bank is visible where it makes a wide bend, and the figures of the soldiers on the right show how deep they sank into the high grass covering the plain.

Hooijer noted that although these grounds often stood under water when the river could no longer hold the moisture flowing in great masses from the largely deforested mountain ridges of the deeper interior, they were less marshy than those of the XXVI Moekims. When the thunder echoed from the Goudberg to the Glé Raja and tropical rains clattered down on the motionless trees, the surplus water of the middle part of the valley — gradually raised by the sediment of earlier floods — ran off towards the foot of the hills and trickled thence through creeks and streams to the lower course of the river or to the sea coast.

This terrain, first entered by Dutch troops in 1879, was in consequence een lustoord — a place of delight — compared with the low lands and stinking marshes of the XXVI Moekims, out of which malaria seemed to rise. Faces pale with fever regained their healthy brown colour on the drier ground; the temperature was less oppressive; the winds were cool instead of lukewarm; and the free view over the mountain masses, sliding away behind one another like stage wings to where the Atjeh-stroom and the Selimoen-rivier unite in the deepest part of the valley, disposed the mind to cheerfulness.

The Van der Heijden encampments

At the broad, mirroring stream, spanned by an iron bridge, General van der Heijden had caused two bivouacs to be pitched on both banks when preparing to continue his campaign of conquest through the valley. Then it was not Achehnese who fought for the Dutch: almost every day columns marched right and left to clear the surrounding terrain, to chastise Lamkrak, to select points where posts would be built when the wetness of the sawahs allowed a further advance, and to fetch great transports of supplies. Scores of officers were quartered in huts; in a great shed they gathered for a game; and the presence of the General, who for months lived in a low hut covered with bean-straw matting and floored with pebbles, gave consecration to the whole. Long barracks housed several battalions; hundreds of coolies and kettinggangers slept on their mats under lean-tos; guns stood in the corners of the palisades; and above all flew the Dutch flag, conjuring a bright flickering point of red, white and blue above the eternal dark green of the heavy trees and the brown-yellow garment of the muddy rice-fields.

On one occasion the waters rose so high that the encampments were buried two metres deep and the soldiers had to take refuge on the high kampong ground of Anagaloeng. Over the float-bridge connecting the two camps, soldiers, Chinese and native women passed continually; on the stream lay the great Chinese barges in which the sick were carried to the Kraton; and in the water floundered soldiers of every skin colour — negers, inlanders, sinjo (Eurasian)‘s en blanke Europeanen allergezelligst dooreen.

Abandonment in 1884 and the death of Teungkoe di Tiro

The benteng the Dutch kept there after the fighting was decided was abandoned in 1884, when the Achehnese — irreconcilable and bowing only to power — took up arms again and compelled the Dutch to withdraw behind the geconcentreerde linie. Their spiritual leader in the holy war, Oelama Teungkoe di Tiro, breathed his last at Anagaloeng, lying on the gravestone erected there for Kapitein Miseroy in the time of Dutch mastery.

The model benteng

The benteng now erected there was, Hooijer wrote, a model of neatness. The standing wire entanglement about the upright parapet looked as regular as if it were factory work rather than soldiers’ work, and would in time of need prove at least as useful as a wet moat. The barrack roofs were in splendid condition. Freshness streamed through the soldiers’ quarters from the mountains south of the valley. Within, the parapet behind the house was properly covered with wickerwork; the banquettes on which the marksmen would stand were secured against crumbling by bamboo revetment, and even the little stair to them was as well provided. Around the great Achehnese dwelling that served as officers’ quarters — built by Teungkoe di Tiro from the deck-planks of the Dutch bridge — the red bricks lay regularly against each other, preventing the officers’ salon beneath the house from having to be entered with muddy feet. There it was a soft twilight to eyes struck outside by the fierce sunlight; it was cool behind the atap (palm-thatch) flaps that could be raised or lowered at will; and easy rattan chairs invited rest while the inscription Monaco invited play.

Toekoe Moeda Baid

The post lay immediately beside the territory of Toekoe Moeda Baid, the powerful head of the VII Moekims, banished by General van der Heijden for faithlessness and recalled and rehabilitated by General Demmeni for the sake of his influence. That neighbourhood kept the officers in suspense and the sentries awake; one of the nearby blokhuizen garrisoned by his people fell or was played into the hands of the Moslemin a few hours after a Dutch inspection had found all in order.

The patrol of 7 March 1896 and the siege

For two years the changing garrison had a fairly quiet time. At the beginning of 1896, however, the commandant received orders to patrol the surroundings before his detachment was relieved and to drive off the hostile marksmen who kept firing at Dutch transports. On 7 March 1896 Kapitein Blokland marched out with seventy-two men, leaving only twenty-eight behind, and was severely mauled; the liniecommandant (commander of the line), coming from Senelop and gathering forty men from Lam Soet and Lambarih on the way, relieved him with the help of the Captain of the Staff, who drew the enemy’s fire upon himself.

That, Hooijer wrote, was the prelude to the drama that followed three weeks later, when the post — which was to have been made a permanently occupied fixed point — was invested by a population suddenly turned hostile. For eighteen days the garrison was left to itself, amply supplied with vivres and ammunition, until a column appeared which after several actions relieved it. Without heavy losses the post was lifted and burnt on 18 April 1896.

Sources

The Achehnese, Vol. I, by Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, translated by A.W.S. O’Sullivan, indexed by R.J. Wilkinson. Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1906.

Oom Ambon van het K.N.I.L., by G. W. T. Dames, Maj. Inf. K.N.I.L. b.d. (‘s-Gravenhage: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1954), chapter “De colonne Schmidt.”

Generaal Swart, Pacificator van Atjeh (“General Swart, Pacifier of Atjeh”), by M. H. du Croo, Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with the collaboration of H. J. Schmidt, Titular Colonel K.N.I.L. (retired), with a foreword by His Excellency Lieutenant-General K.N.I.L. (retired) G. K. Dijkstra (Maastricht: N.V. Leiter-Nypels, 1943), Chapter III.

Atjeh-Album van Eigen Haard, uitgave van de N.V. Het Tijdschrift “Eigen Haard”, Amsterdam, 1896, pp. 5, 8, 10, 16, 20 (Toekoe Oemar — Zijn Verraad; De Poeassa — Atjehers en Kafirs — Anagaloeng — Eindelijk Ontzet; Een Terugblik — Wat Reeds Verkregen Werd; De Geestelijkheid in Atjeh — Teungkoe di Tiro; De Inwendige Toestand — Wat Nu?).

The Withdrawal of January 1885

Anagaloeng had served as a significant Dutch military post and collection point along the communication line extending 121 palen eastward from Lambaroe through the XXII Moekims. Located on the main road eastward from Lambaroe toward the interior, the post commanded approach routes from the south and east and served as a staging point for operations toward Djerir.

During the withdrawal of January 1885, Anagaloeng became a critical logistics hub. Over an 84-palen stretch from Anagaloeng to Djerir, approximately 2,000 men and numerous vehicles were deployed over about seven hours to evacuate materials and personnel. A temporary post was established at Boekloe on the road from Anagaloeng to Lambaroe to protect the ongoing transport of materials.

Anagaloeng was evacuated on 13 January 1885, simultaneously with Indrapoeri, Djerir, Glé-Kamping, Long-Lemoh, Tjot-Basetoel, Samagani, and Lepong-Ara. Casualties during the evacuation operations: 1 minder militair killed and 1 officer and 12 minderen wounded on 13 January; 1 minder militair killed and 6 minderen wounded on 14 January. Following evacuation, the area around Anagaloeng returned to Acehnese control.

Source

De Geconcentreerde Stelling in Groot-Atjeh, ‘s-Gravenhage: De Gebroeders Van Cleef, 1885, pp. 24–29.

De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh, door G. B. Hooijer, Gep. Luit.-Kolonel O. I. Leger, met 24 platen (Haarlem: De Erven F. Bohn; Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1897). Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Centrale Boekerij, Amsterdam. OCR-filename: 20260719_140140_DLP-134-De_verlaten_posten_in_Groot_Atjeh_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 38, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48, 50, 52.

Acknowledgement of sources. This article is a single consolidated account combining the material previously held in this entry with the account given in De verlaten posten in Groot-Atjeh (1897) by G. B. Hooijer. Dutch terminology has been rendered in English, the original Dutch being retained only in direct quotations and in bibliographic citations.

tags	place, military-post, aceh-war, 1896, aceh, xxii-moekims, groot-atjeh, besieged-post, defensive-position, fortress, battle-site, resistance, highland, battle, benteng, colonial
aliases	Anagaloen, Anagalueng, Aneu' Galong, Aneu Galong, the temporary post at Anagaloeng, Aneu' Galoom, Galong, Anagalóang, Ana' Galong, de navel van het land, voorraadschuur der XXII Moekims

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