The Broken Crown of Batavia (the East Indies 1898)
When the Great War started, the rapport of force was not one which favoured the Batavian Kingdom. Leader of the self-proclaimed ‘Batavian Pact’ the VOC and the rulers of Java had declared war to the Grade Entente, the Central Alliance and the Slaver’s Alliance. With the possible exception of the latter, the Pact was outnumbered against each of these opponents and fielded inferior weapons. And to make it worse, the stability of the nation had already been unravelling before the first shot was fired. The Batavian Kingdom had been a model of prosperity for its upper classes; the persons at the bottom of the social order were sick of the brutality shown by the enforcers, the rising taxes and the high levels of conscription to garrison or fight in wars they couldn’t care less about.
As 1897 ended and with four months of warfare behind them, the Directors in charge of the Batavian war effort could admit in the privacy of their luxurious offices the war was going from disasters to disasters. Yes, they had not lost huge swaths of territory for the moment, but it was more due to the fact the East Indies were far from their enemies’ heartlands and needed time to gather vast expeditionary forces. The men nominally sworn to William III knew it would not last eternally and once the Great Powers launched the real offensives, the problems they had right now would seem small and unimportant by comparison.
The question was what they could do. Already the Batavian armed forces were fighting on three fronts externally and two internally. The French divisions were on Sumatra, the Entente proclaiming their determination to restore a Sultanate of Aceh for the entire island. Brunei and the UPNG forces were beating their regiments on Borneo. The Carolinian forces, supported by Alliance convoys, were in the process of conquering New Guinea. On Java, Theodore Roosevelt was leading a rebellion of disgruntled mercenaries. And on the Celebes, Princess Ingrid was reigning as Queen and denouncing her brother William as a usurper and the reason their eldest brother had been murdered.
With a clear chain of command, the Batavians would have probably agreed to prioritise one external front and dealing decisively with the internal threats. But the very nature of the VOC and the kingdom they had dominated for decades was now returning against them. The great land-owners and trade companies had no wish to sacrifice their possessions for those of their fellow Board-members. The men who governed Borneo didn’t want to withdraw the time to throw back the French back into the sea on the Sumatra front. And the same thing was happening on Java, Sumatra, Celebes and the Malayan Peninsula...the Batavian Kingdom was tearing itself apart. William III could have perhaps tried to regain some measure of royal authority but his drug-addled mind had long destroyed his capacity to care about the people he was supposed to govern.
As a result, the Batavian industries output was diverted everywhere and sometimes it included the hands of the rebels. By March 1898, the situation went beyond bad to outright calamitous. The French and the UPNG launched new offensives and broke through the defensive positions of the Batavians. The only thing saving Batavia from utter defeat was the deplorable infrastructure of the Batavian Kingdom; most of the time walking was the sole option the Entente and Alliance soldiers had.
But Sumatra was lost to the French and Borneo to the Alliance, this was the harsh truth. Some Batavians aristocrats tried to delay the unavoidable by fortifying their lands and launching raids with the few warships they had left, but on a global scale these efforts were late, in insufficient strength and not coordinated with each other.
At Batavia, many thought this was the best they could achieve. It would take most of 1898 for the French-Aceh troops to defeat totally the Batavian resistance on Sumatra and the same was true for the Brunei-UPNG. The advances of the Carolinians on New Guinea had stopped, since these troops were cut off from their motherland and had to rely on the Alliance. Assuredly, they had lost many of the islands they claimed in the Pacific but this was a small price to continue the fight for one more year.
By September 1898, they didn’t sing the same tune. Profiting from the confusion at the highest ranks of the VOC, Queen Ingrid used a French cruiser to leave Celebes and travel to Singapore in August, where she quickly rallied the island-fortress to her cause. The rest of the Malay Peninsula divisions, which had been waiting for their pay for months, rallied instantly to their new Queen when it was announced they would at last be rewarded for their duties.
The news stunned the Batavians. Just like this, tens of thousands troops had gone to the enemy and the Entente was landing troops to make sure Singapore would stay in their hands for the duration of war. The peninsula had been supposed to hold for months against the French squadrons and important expeditionary forces. Now, they were cut off from their ‘allies’ of Burma and Annam.
The fiasco had already been total but then Theodore Roosevelt captured Surabaya on October 12 1898, giving his rebellion a monumental propaganda boost.
After this avalanche of disasters, the government of Batavia, the VOC and the upper levels of the kingdom’s administration didn’t survive. Everybody was thinking the other factions were at fault, the great mistakes of the past months were blamed on generals, soldiers and sailors who had had their hands tied behind their backs from the very beginning. Soon riots spread in the streets and many of the power-makers escaped the capital. William III stayed, although whether it was a deliberate decision or he had not managed to realise the chaotic situation was open to debate. But as the end of 1898 drew near, it was clear there was no one in control of Batavia anymore and the kingdom was in its death throes...
When the Great War started, the rapport of force was not one which favoured the Batavian Kingdom. Leader of the self-proclaimed ‘Batavian Pact’ the VOC and the rulers of Java had declared war to the Grade Entente, the Central Alliance and the Slaver’s Alliance. With the possible exception of the latter, the Pact was outnumbered against each of these opponents and fielded inferior weapons. And to make it worse, the stability of the nation had already been unravelling before the first shot was fired. The Batavian Kingdom had been a model of prosperity for its upper classes; the persons at the bottom of the social order were sick of the brutality shown by the enforcers, the rising taxes and the high levels of conscription to garrison or fight in wars they couldn’t care less about.
As 1897 ended and with four months of warfare behind them, the Directors in charge of the Batavian war effort could admit in the privacy of their luxurious offices the war was going from disasters to disasters. Yes, they had not lost huge swaths of territory for the moment, but it was more due to the fact the East Indies were far from their enemies’ heartlands and needed time to gather vast expeditionary forces. The men nominally sworn to William III knew it would not last eternally and once the Great Powers launched the real offensives, the problems they had right now would seem small and unimportant by comparison.
The question was what they could do. Already the Batavian armed forces were fighting on three fronts externally and two internally. The French divisions were on Sumatra, the Entente proclaiming their determination to restore a Sultanate of Aceh for the entire island. Brunei and the UPNG forces were beating their regiments on Borneo. The Carolinian forces, supported by Alliance convoys, were in the process of conquering New Guinea. On Java, Theodore Roosevelt was leading a rebellion of disgruntled mercenaries. And on the Celebes, Princess Ingrid was reigning as Queen and denouncing her brother William as a usurper and the reason their eldest brother had been murdered.
With a clear chain of command, the Batavians would have probably agreed to prioritise one external front and dealing decisively with the internal threats. But the very nature of the VOC and the kingdom they had dominated for decades was now returning against them. The great land-owners and trade companies had no wish to sacrifice their possessions for those of their fellow Board-members. The men who governed Borneo didn’t want to withdraw the time to throw back the French back into the sea on the Sumatra front. And the same thing was happening on Java, Sumatra, Celebes and the Malayan Peninsula...the Batavian Kingdom was tearing itself apart. William III could have perhaps tried to regain some measure of royal authority but his drug-addled mind had long destroyed his capacity to care about the people he was supposed to govern.
As a result, the Batavian industries output was diverted everywhere and sometimes it included the hands of the rebels. By March 1898, the situation went beyond bad to outright calamitous. The French and the UPNG launched new offensives and broke through the defensive positions of the Batavians. The only thing saving Batavia from utter defeat was the deplorable infrastructure of the Batavian Kingdom; most of the time walking was the sole option the Entente and Alliance soldiers had.
But Sumatra was lost to the French and Borneo to the Alliance, this was the harsh truth. Some Batavians aristocrats tried to delay the unavoidable by fortifying their lands and launching raids with the few warships they had left, but on a global scale these efforts were late, in insufficient strength and not coordinated with each other.
At Batavia, many thought this was the best they could achieve. It would take most of 1898 for the French-Aceh troops to defeat totally the Batavian resistance on Sumatra and the same was true for the Brunei-UPNG. The advances of the Carolinians on New Guinea had stopped, since these troops were cut off from their motherland and had to rely on the Alliance. Assuredly, they had lost many of the islands they claimed in the Pacific but this was a small price to continue the fight for one more year.
By September 1898, they didn’t sing the same tune. Profiting from the confusion at the highest ranks of the VOC, Queen Ingrid used a French cruiser to leave Celebes and travel to Singapore in August, where she quickly rallied the island-fortress to her cause. The rest of the Malay Peninsula divisions, which had been waiting for their pay for months, rallied instantly to their new Queen when it was announced they would at last be rewarded for their duties.
The news stunned the Batavians. Just like this, tens of thousands troops had gone to the enemy and the Entente was landing troops to make sure Singapore would stay in their hands for the duration of war. The peninsula had been supposed to hold for months against the French squadrons and important expeditionary forces. Now, they were cut off from their ‘allies’ of Burma and Annam.
The fiasco had already been total but then Theodore Roosevelt captured Surabaya on October 12 1898, giving his rebellion a monumental propaganda boost.
After this avalanche of disasters, the government of Batavia, the VOC and the upper levels of the kingdom’s administration didn’t survive. Everybody was thinking the other factions were at fault, the great mistakes of the past months were blamed on generals, soldiers and sailors who had had their hands tied behind their backs from the very beginning. Soon riots spread in the streets and many of the power-makers escaped the capital. William III stayed, although whether it was a deliberate decision or he had not managed to realise the chaotic situation was open to debate. But as the end of 1898 drew near, it was clear there was no one in control of Batavia anymore and the kingdom was in its death throes...
