Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/25

XVI detachments, could any real results be arrived at. In less than six years General made such progress that now even the most sceptical must admit that we have come to the beginning of the end. The traitor Uma and numbers of adventurers, fanatical leaders and guerilla chiefs perished; the chiefs of dependent states, the members of the Sultan's family, and finally their head himself who in 1878 as a child had been proclaimed Pretender-Sultan, submitted almost without exception; and thousands of refugees came back to their gampongs under the authority of Government. The continuance of the revolt is now censured by all chiefs of mark except a limited number of universally respected religious leaders. This exception—and in fact the whole attitude of the teungkus (men learned in the scriptures) during the closing years of the war—confirms anew the accuracy of what was said in this book in 1892 regarding the significance of the religious factor in the war; at that time no one believed it, but for the last two years every one has accepted it as a truth that he acknowledged from the first.

If one casts a glance over the map so as to form some idea of the extent and desolate character of the country in which, by day and still more by night, operations had to be continually carried on; if one knows that several military expeditions lasting weeks,—yes, and months—were necessary towards the central highlands of the Gayōs in order to track down the enemy; that from 1898 the rule was enforced that all houses and settlements should be spared—in the case of enemies as well as in the case of those who submitted; that one should always behave with the greatest indulgence towards hereditary chiefs, and that even repeated evidence of treachery formed no sufficient reason for not receiving them back into favour when they repented;—one then can understand what an effort must have been made to attain the position in which matters stand today.

Truly, although this guerilla warfare gave no place to feats of arms generally called famous, the courage, the devotion, the foresight and local knowledge necessary to enable officers with their small detachments of troops to march tens of miles a day over very hilly ground, often pathless, through forest, swamp, and riverbed, to reach some hidden destination, were greater than one can picture from the plain military reports; and the hardships and privations which they and their subordinates had to patiently undergo would have caused any less sober nation than the Dutch to blow their own trumpet very loudly.