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1635: The village of Mattau

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On this date in 1635, Dutch soldiers occupying Formosa (Taiwan) massacred 26 people of the holdout aboriginal village of Mattau.

The Dutch had established themselves in southern Formosa from 1624 but their authority there was at first tenuous, and violently contested by some of the island’s natives. The Dutch spent the 1620s shoring up their Fort Zeelandia outpost and carefully noting the grudges to avenge.

Come 1635 the Europeans felt ready to deal out a little payback. First in line was a village some two or three thousand strong known as Mattau — today, the Madou District in the Tainan metropolis — whose people had bloodied the Dutch back in 1629 by repelling an expedition to the tune of 63 casualties.


Taiwanese aborigines, from Olfert Dapper, Gedenkwaerdig bedryf (1670)

The missionary Robert Junius left an account of how revenge was served:

It is well known to you all how some years ago the inhabitants of the village of Mattau most treacherously and shamefully killed sixty of your servants. On account of their great cunning they were most successful in their treachery, so that all of our people were killed without one of our enemies being even wounded. This was looked upon by them as a great unheard-of victory, and it filled them with pride. Not only Mattau but other villages, as Soulang and Bakloan, began to rebel against us, and matters took so serious a turn that we hardly ventured to set foot on Formosa. They even went so far as to hint that they would chase us from Tayouan. All this perplexed the Governor to such a degree that he scarcely ventured to leave the precincts of the Fort at night …

as long as Mattau remained unchastised the inhabitants showed a bold face, imagining that we had not the power, and did not dare to avenge the frightful crime that had been committed against us, by attacking their village. Consequently, we were regarded with very much contempt by all the people, especially by those of Mattau, who often showed how very little they were afraid of us, venturing not only to ill-treat the Chinese provided with our licences, but even tearing up Your Excellencies’ own passports and treating them with contempt. Governor Putmans, seeing how insolent these people had become, and that such conduct was no longer to be borne, very earnestly begged Governor-general Brouwer to send hither a sufficient military force to humble them and adequately defend the settlement. This enforcement of law and order was also very desirable on account of the Chinese residing here; because the security and prosperity of their sugar plantations required our protection against the natives, who were continually damaging them, as appeared from the many complaints that were made to us. Again, we who were occupied in the spiritual cultivation, with the conversion of these people of Sinkan — from time immemorial enemies of Mattau — foresaw that, if the people of Mattau were not humiliated, it was probable that one day this village would be fired by them and the inhabitants chased away; we then being left as shepherds without their flocks. In order that the foundation of our building might be rendered firmer in the future, the Governor-general was also requested by us to send a sufficient military force, and in the month of August 1635 the troops happily arrived.

After some deliberation about the place which should be first attacked, Governor Putmans decided to assault Mattau first and foremost; because the people there had done us most injury, and because victory could more easily be obtained by attacking a village in our neighbourhood than one village situated at a distance. Hence, on 22 November 1635 we received a communication from the Governor in which he desired us to meet him with some men of Sinkan. We resolved to do so next morning. We also told the Sinkandians what our plan was, and urged them to join us, so that the friendly relationship between us might thereby be rendered closer. To this they agreed.

We had not proceeded far on our march when the Sinkandians joined us, armed in their usual manner, thus proving their allegiance. They reported that one of the chief men of Mattau had been captured and put in irons in Sinkan. Soon after, we approached the village of Bakloan, very near which we had to pass. In order to prevent its inhabitants from taking flight, we endeavoured to calm their fears, assuring them that no harm would be done to them. Not far from Bakloan, we received tidings that the Sinkan men had already cut off a head, which they came to show while the blood was still flowing from it.

The sun was beginning to set when we reached the river near Mattau, and as the locality was quite unknown to us, many considered that it would be more prudent to pass the night on the bank of the river. But on His Honour receiving further information about the place, and hearing from the Sinkan men that the inhabitants of Mattau were preparing to flee, so as to leave us nothing but an empty village in the morning, he resolved to make victory all the greater by attacking Mattau that very night. Animated by the greatest courage, and heeding no obstacle whatever, we suddenly, to the great dismay of the inhabitants, appeared in the village, and the enemy did not venture to offer any resistance. Having passed along some of the streets, a rest was given to the men, a suitable place for passing the night was chosen, and the Sinkandians were securely placed in the midst of us. Next day the village was set on fire; and we found that in all twenty-six men of Mattau had been killed.

This demonstrative massacre, combined with the Lamey Island massacre a few months later, did vigorous work for the pacification campaign; not only the Mattau but other natives who heard news of the slaughter soon sued for peaceful submission to the Dutch hegemony — which in turn permitted the peaceable cultivation of Chinese sugar plantations most profitable to the Dutch East India Company.

That is, until a Chinese warlord chased the Dutch off Formosa in 1662.

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1644: Joost Schouten, LGBT VOC VIP

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On this date in 1644, Joost Schouten, the able merchant and diplomat of the Dutch East India Company, “was strangled and burned to ashes in my presence in Batavia [Jakarta] because of his gruesome sodomy.”

That’s the report of Gijsbert Heeck who, like Scouten, left a noteworthy memoir. Heeck allowed that Schouten “was a man of unusual knowledge and extraordinary intellect,” but despite his gifts remained “in his heart … a hypocritical villain and seducer of many, secretly using his prominence and great authority to force them away from the path of decency into the way of his shameful foulness, seeking thereby to satisfy his devilish lechery.”

Before all that devilish lechery stuff came to light, Joost Schouten (English Wikipedia link | Dutch) had enjoyed a brilliant two-decade career in the Far East, most notably in Siam. There, Schouten ingratiated himself with the Siamese king Prasat Thong,* winning lucrative trade concessions, personal honors, and a seat for himself on the East India Company’s executive organ, the Council of the Indies.

A report that Schouten initially wrote for that company surveying Siam’s geography, people, and politics was published in 1638 and translated into many tongues: he was the first general account of Siam for Europeans. While several others would follow (pdf) in the 17th century, Schouten’s Description remains an essential source for the period.

Schouten himself was no mere observer in the ferocious scramble for colonial position and trade leverage in East Asia. It’s for this august person that the explorer Abel Tasman (as in Tasmania) named Schouten Island (off the coast of Tasmania). That was on the voyage that Tasman undertook to circumnavigate Australia, and discover (for Europeans) New Zealand — a voyage outfitted by Joost Schouten. Given another decade, with Dutch commerce on the come, who knows what heights he might have attained.

But the envoy’s scintillating service record did him little good when a handsome French halberdier repulsed by Schouten’s advances entrapped him in June 1644. This was an offense the Company took incredibly seriously.

Schouten confessed the crime voluntarily, and the only consideration the judges showed him was a pre-burning mercy strangulation. Their verdict, according to Peter Boomgaard, evinced “fear for the punishing hand of God if those who ruled did not take drastic measures.” Schouten was an educated man; indeed, he himself had been a judge. All the worse that, where he had wrought his best service for the Dutch Republic, he had also consciously invited its undoing in a hail of fire and brimstone.

One could, on the other hand, say that it was the Company itself that tempted divine wrath. After all, those in its service routinely spent months in overwhelmingly male environments: ships at sea, and trading outposts that were by now barred to European women. (Local women were a different story, of course.) Nor was Schouten’s particular stomping-grounds of Siam near as virulent in its attitude towards homoeroticism as the Calvinists back home; Schouten’s own travelogue noted that “their Priests, as well as many of the Gentry, are much given to Sodomy, that unnatural passion, being esteemed no sin, nor shameful thing amongst them.” Abroad on the blooming East, coinpurse bursting with the commerce of nations: it must have been a heady experience.

Whether coming around to the Siamese “esteem” or having nurtured it from the start, Schouten had, he said, indulged same-sex encounters** with some 19 different men since putting to sea from a return visit to the mother country in 1637. At least three of those partners — a boatswain’s mate, a soldier, and a burgher — were to their sorrow alive and conveniently identifiable in the Indies.

“Those who were known [to have taken part in his deeds] were, either with him, or later … smothered under water since they were unworthy to continue living among humans,” concluded our eyewitness Gijsbert Heeck. “Which is a fitting recompense and retribution for their gruesome life on earth. In the hereafter, however, the worst is still to come. But it is not for us to judge.”

* Prasat Thong, a law-and-order type, is alleged by the account of another 17th century Dutchman to have personally conducted some executions.

** Schouten, 40ish at his death, said that he was always the “passive” (penetrated) partner in these affairs with much younger men. (This, and all the text that follows it in the post, is also as per Boomgaard.)

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1672: Cornelis and Johan de Witt lynched

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Chapter 1. A Grateful People

On the 20th of August, 1672, the city of the Hague, always so lively, so neat, and so trim that one might believe every day to be Sunday, with its shady park, with its tall trees, spreading over its Gothic houses, with its canals like large mirrors, in which its steeples and its almost Eastern cupolas are reflected,–the city of the Hague, the capital of the Seven United Provinces, was swelling in all its arteries with a black and red stream of hurried, panting, and restless citizens, who, with their knives in their girdles, muskets on their shoulders, or sticks in their hands, were pushing on to the Buytenhof, a terrible prison, the grated windows of which are still shown, where, on the charge of attempted murder preferred against him by the surgeon Tyckelaer, Cornelius de Witt, the brother of the Grand Pensionary of Holland was confined.
…

the whole town was crowding towards the Buytenhof, to witness the departure of Cornelius de Witt from prison, as he was going to exile; and to see what traces the torture of the rack had left on the noble frame of the man who knew his Horace so well.

Yet all this multitude was not crowding to the Buytenhof with the innocent view of merely feasting their eyes with the spectacle; there were many who went there to play an active part in it, and to take upon themselves an office which they conceived had been badly filled,–that of the executioner.

There were, indeed, others with less hostile intentions. All that they cared for was the spectacle, always so attractive to the mob, whose instinctive pride is flattered by it,–the sight of greatness hurled down into the dust.

-Alexandre Dumas, pere, The Black Tulip

That ominous mob got its spectacle this date in 1672, lynching the Dutch Republic’s longtime de facto head of state, Johan de Witt along with his brother Cornelis/Cornelius.


A statue of Johan (standing) and Cornelis de Witt in their native Dordrecht.

The mercantile powerhouse that was the 17th century Dutch Republic was the stage for a long-running conflict between the Orange monarchists (hence the soccer uniforms) and the Republican merchant class.

With the sudden death of the young William II, Prince of Orange in 1650, leaving the (non-hereditary) executive office of stadtholder vacant, the Republicans became ascendant.

And the outstanding figure of the First Stadtholderless Period was Johan de Witt, scion of a Dordrecht merchant family powerful enough that William II had imprisoned de Witt’s own father during a power struggle.

Elevated in 1653 and at the tender age of 28 to the leadership position of Grand Pensionary, Johan de Witt’s “eloquence, sagacity and business talents” guided the Dutch ship of state for essentially the remainder of his life.

This was the apex of the Dutch Golden Age. The Dutch East India Company dominated Asian trade routes,* and the Low Countries’ culture thrived on the wealth: Rembrandt and Vermeer were at the height of their talents; Spinoza revolutionized philosophy; van Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope.

While all these guys were landing themselves in their respective canons, Johan de Witt was trying to keep the age Golden.

Having only relatively recently broken free of Spain, the small country was an up-and-comer on the horns of a serious security dilemma: its leading commercial position put it into maritime competition with England, while its continental location made it vulnerable to the enormous army of the neighboring continental hegemon, France. Ultimately, even with its trade wealth, it did not have the resources to keep up with both of western Europe’s leading powers.

For a generation, de Witt’s statecraft kept the men of the Low Countries out of that predicament, while his brother Cornelis chipped in with a couple of timely naval victories. (Actually authored by Michiel de Ruyter, but Cornelis rode shotgun.)

In 1654, Johan brought the First Anglo-Dutch War to a close, making with Oliver Cromwell a secret pact he was only too happy to enforce never to allow William II’s son, the eventual William III, to be named stadtholder. Reason being: William III was the grandson of the Stuart king Cromwell beheaded, Charles I, and thus a potential claimant to the English throne. Both Protestant Republics had a distinct interest in keeping this monarchist well away from power. (Both would be sorely disappointed.)

A decade and a Stuart Restoration later, de Witt maintained (mostly) Dutch dominance of the seas in the Second Anglo-Dutch War, then held off France (with the help of a timely alliance with the recent adversary, England) in the War of Devolution.

In each case, he kept at least one of England or France on the sideline, or in his own camp.

But the Third Anglo-Dutch War was the charm — as it was also the Franco-Dutch War, and therefore 1672 was Rampjaar: disaster year. While the Dutch were aces on the waves, a massive French invasion easily overwhelmed them on terra firma.

Detail view (click for the full image) of a grisly painting of the mutilated de Witt brothers strung up at The Hague. It’s attributed to Jan de Baen, who in better times took Johan de Witt’s portrait.

De Witt’s never-beloved mercantile oligarchy speedily collapsed with the military reverses, and the now all-grown-up William III was there to pick up the pieces to popular acclaim. Arrested for treason, Cornelis sustained torture without confessing, but when Johan visited him in prison — and William III incriminatingly withdrew the cavalry protecting the brothers — the mob quenched its fury with the de Witts’ blood.

every one of the miscreants, emboldened by his [Johan’s] fall, wanted to fire his gun at him, or strike him with blows of the sledge-hammer, or stab him with a knife or swords, every one wanted to draw a drop of blood from the fallen hero, and tear off a shred from his garments.

And after having mangled, and torn, and completely stripped the two brothers, the mob dragged their naked and bloody bodies to an extemporised gibbet, where amateur executioners hung them up by the feet.

Then came the most dastardly scoundrels of all, who not having dared to strike the living flesh, cut the dead in pieces, and then went about the town selling small slices of the bodies of John and Cornelius at ten sous a piece.

-Dumas

The word “ungrateful” comes to mind.

De Witt stood altogether on a lower plane than Cromwell. We regard him rather as a man of rare and singular talent, than as one of the chosen great ones of the earth, which Cromwell was. He stands far above the common run of men; and he was head and shoulders above nearly all the notable men of his time. He would have been greater if the movement of his limbs had been less burdened with the Dutch governing apparatus … He is not one whom the world can ever greatly admire or love.

–History of the administration of John De Witt, grand pensionary of Holland, a Google books freebie.

(Here’s another, and here’s a 17th century volume de Witt himself coauthored.)

The rise of William III came with the decline of that Dutch Golden Age: the country fended off the immediate military threat, but it increasingly slipped behind its larger neighbors. Costly as was the Franco-Dutch War, it is a step on the path towards the present-day Europe, and this gives us enough excuse to notice that the Eurovision lead-in tune is actually from a Te Deum composed to mark its end.

But William’s own ascent to this wealthy sovereignty was just the beginning for him. Sixteen years later, the House of Orange’s champion vindicated Cromwell’s trepidation about him and gained a far more satisfactory position from which to do battle with his Gallic rival Louis XIV by stunningly overthrowing the Stuart dynasty and becoming King of England in the Glorious Revolution.**

* The Dutch remained the sole western contact of closed Japan until 1854, which is why Japan’s eventual period of scientific advancement became known as ‘Dutch Learning’.

** Albion did not forget the de Witts, either: according to this 1785 cant dictionary, the term “dewitted” had a 17th-18th century run in English to denote — well, exactly what happened to Cornelis and Johan.

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