Note 42 — III. Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel. A History of the Successful Struggle of a few Hollanders and Huguenots against Tyranny and Corruption.

See Valentyn’s great work on India, the last volume of which contains the history of Ceylon and also of Mauritius. See also the volume Vies des Gouverneurs Generaux, by J. P. I. du Bois. The account of Pieter Kolbe, in his Caput Bonæ Spei Hodiernum, is so distorted by his bitter animosity towards Simon van der Stel as well as towards his son Willem Adriaan that no reliance can be placed upon it. Van der Aa, in his Biographisch Woordenboek der Nederlanden, says that Simon van der Stel, son of Adriaan van der Stel and Monica da Costa, was born in Amsterdam, but that is a mistake, and not the only one in the article. See Biographisch Woordenboek der Nederlanden, door A. J. van der Aa, Zeventiende Deel, Tweede Stuk, Haarlem, 1874. I copied the article on the Van der Stel family in the above work, and published it in 1911 in the third part of my Belangrijke Historische Dokumenten over Zuid Afrika. It will be found on pages 11 and 12 of the volume.

In Johan Saar’s Account of Ceylon 1647-1657, this event is related as follows: “To pick a quarrel they (the Hollanders) seized upon four of the best elephants of the King of Candi. He, as a sensible man, sent word to the Hollanders that he had no intention to do anything against them, and he expected them, for their part, to act likewise; he had called them in as friends to be his allies against the Portuguese, and he hoped therefore that they would not settle in his territory. But the Hollanders from the beginning were bent upon war. When the king saw that it could not be avoided, he collected by one of his generals (a Saude, or what we should call a Count) about 60,000 men, chiefly natives, besides a few Portuguese whom he had formerly made captives, and who had entered his service. He would no longer trust the Hollanders.... In the following year (Anno Christi 1646) in the month of May, Mr. van der Stält (Van der Stel) received fresh orders to march with 150 men (picked soldiers), plenty of ammunition, powder, lead, and other materials of war, and also two field guns. He met with the heathen Saude in a small clearing, but as the latter had no orders to fight, because the king was still disinclined to go to war, he withdrew into the forest. The Hollanders opened a heavy fire from their field-guns and fire-arms, so that 400 were killed, and many were wounded. As the Hollanders had taken the offensive, the Saude did not care to act only on the defensive. He therefore came out of the forest, and closing round our people, attacked them with such energy that he cut off the head of Mr. Van der Stel, who had been carried in a palanquin or litter, clad in red scarlet. Of our men, who had numbered 150, they got 103 heads. The rest fled into the jungle and hid themselves as best they could. When the King, who had been near, heard of the onslaught he hurried to the spot, and although he was told that his men had been forced to fight, he showed displeasure. At once he ordered drums to be beaten and proclamation to be made that none of the Hollanders who had fled into the jungle were to be killed, but they were to be brought alive before him; that he would treat them well; and that he would swear by his God that he was innocent of the bloodshed. He then gave directions to have the head of Mr. Van der Stel put into a silver bowl, and covered it with white cloth, and sent it by one of the prisoners to their Captain in the great camp, to say that this was the head of Mr. Van der Stel, and that the King would see his body as well as the other 103 bodies decently buried.”