1821 - The Battle for Palembang

18: Redoubt No. 2 (Gombora Island, 1821)

Dutch Lines Besieging Fortress Gombora, Musi River, 1821

The 493 men of the Thirteenth Regiment (King's Eastern Legion) gathered at the foremost forward trench. The Mangkunegaran Flanquers reinforced them, numbered at 65 men, the rest lost to a vile combination of enemy fire, wounds inflicted, attrition, or disease, or were condemned to the sickbed from such mentioned reasons. The Thirteenth manned the foremost right wing of the day's action, the centre held by Lieutenant-Colonel Taets van Amerongen's 24th Regiment and the left by the 9th Regiment, and they were all gathered there for one reason.

The three regiments formed the now 1,300-strong infantry component of Colonel Brabant's brigade, then supplemented by the artillery batteries, logisticians, pioneers and sappers, and medical staff, which put the brigade's number up to 2,200 strong. The brigade would've been much more numerous had it not been for the engagement at Muntinghe's Town and multiple skirmishes across the countryside along with the exhausting siege of Gombora, where near to half had been taken into sickbeds by disease and attrition alone.

The Brigade, now assembled in its might, would now march against Gombora, but not for the walls, for they would have to take the two Palembangese redoubt first before they could even set sights to its seemingly gargantuan walls. The walls, though, were no problem; continuous bombardment for the previous week had collapsed a section of the wall, a point where they would then charge the breach and fight in vicious, unorderly, and savage hand-to-hand combat until the garrison either surrendered or were killed to a man. However, that had to wait, and terribly so, for the two redoubts still stood between Brabant's Brigade and Gombora.

Brabant, who sat upon his horse some distance behind the trenches and out of enemy cannon-shot, looked down onto his telescope and viewed the bombarded redoubts irritatingly. They had been bombarded since morning and yet they refused to show any signs of collapse or relent.

Colonel Brabant stood behind the main lines, using a spyglass to review the enemy defences, something he had done impulsively for the past several weeks, wondering when they will be attacked. Every moment passed meant another man sick, and with no hope of reinforcement, one man less in the final assault. Brabant, though, completely understood that any kind of storming of Gombora would have to follow the digging, otherwise it would compromise the men to the extremities of enemy cannon and musket shot, and unless the diggings were proper and the bombardment was sufficient, any kind of assault would certainly fail.

On another note, de Kock was waiting for something else. The Javanese spymaster, Aria Kertanegara, had arranged for an uprising in Palembang city by Dutch loyalists, which he was recently informed.

"I do not like this, Lemaire." Said Brabant to the man next to him, mounted and stiff-lipped, as if seeing the sourness of the situation.

Major Lemaire removed his telescope and looked at Brabant. "Neither do I, sir." He said. "But we have our orders, don't we?"

"Our men are hungry and ill-supplied. The redoubts had not been properly bombarded and regardless of that princely uprising in the city, we're not damned ready for this assault..." he spat, "Damn that Aria Kertanegara, that snake."

"Raden Mas Aria Kertanegara, a baron of Java, Charles." Chuckled Lemaire.

"But all so sudden... all so sudden..." said Brabant, however, before his ramblings could continue, the two heard the sound of hooves from behind them. They looked behind and Aria Kertanegara, de Kock's Javanese head of intelligence, flanked by three other prominent officers, all on horseback: Major Cochius, head of Engineers, Captain Paul van der Wijck, his deputy, and Captain Ghijsels, one of de Kock's adjutants, rode together, and rode their horses right next to them. There was one more among them, however, and it was a woman, of brown hair and long legs. Was that not the one Kertanegara called Girasole?