Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [116]
What persuaded Cornelisz to take such an insane risk? The overtures that had been made on 1 September seemed to have been positively received, and the captain-general was confident that Wiebbe and his men were genuinely desperate for the clothing. He had returned from the reconnaissance of the previous day “saying joyfully to his folk that they now quite certainly had those [people] surely in his hands.” Possibly he was also convinced, by the ragged appearance of Hayes’s troops, that the Defenders were not much of a threat. But knowing Jeronimus, it seems likely that he was also fatally overconfident. The captain-general had complete faith in his own powers of persuasion and perhaps did not understand that the loyalists mistrusted every word he said. Having seen Zevanck and Van Huyssen fail to overwhelm Hayes by force, it may have seemed to him that he was teaching his companions a lesson in how to handle malcontents. And, of course, he retained the absolute conviction that his God was protecting him.
Cornelisz arrived on Wiebbe Hayes’s Island with a bodyguard of five: David Zevanck, Coenraat van Huyssen, Gsbert van Welderen, Wouter Loos, and Cornelis Pietersz. His men struck the Defenders as “very skinny of hunger and thirst,” but, even in this diminished condition they were still dangerous, having committed 25 or 30 murders between them. They bore the promised supplies of laken and red wine. A party of Defenders came to meet them, and the bales of cloth were opened on the beach. While the men drank wine and passed samples of the cloth about, Wiebbe and Jeronimus conversed. The captain-general monopolized the negotiations, “deceiving [him] with many lies, saying he would harm none, that it had only been on account of the Water that he had fought against them, [and] that there was no need to distrust him because some had been killed.” While Hayes was thus occupied, however, Zevanck and the other mutineers were “walking hither and thither,” trying to strike up conversations with individual Defenders. As Cornelisz had instructed, they attempted to suborn Wiebbe’s men, promising them 6,000 guilders a man, and a share in the salvaged jewels, if they would change sides.
It proved to be a fatal mistake. The Defenders had anticipated treachery, and they were ready for it. Rather than listening to Zevanck and his companions, they fell upon them suddenly, and Jeronimus paid dearly for setting foot on Hayes’s Island without adequate protection. Hopelessly outnumbered, his bodyguard surrendered with hardly a fight. Cornelisz was taken prisoner and bound. Only Wouter Loos escaped, tearing himself free from his captors and making off in the mutineers’ skiff before he could be recaptured.
David Zevanck and his companions now had less than two minutes to live. A quarter of a mile away across a muddy channel, the remaining mutineers had realized too late what was happening. They seized their arms and made ready to attempt a rescue, but Hayes and his men saw them coming and backed away, dragging their new prisoners with them. As the Defenders reached their positions and turned to face another attack, Wiebbe took rapid stock of his situation. The advantage he had enjoyed in numbers had probably all but evaporated, for it must have required at least two men to guard each of the struggling mutineers and prevent their fleeing after Loos. Moreover, his enemies’ blood was up, and it would probably remain so while there was a chance for them to save their leaders. The logic was inescapable: he gave the order to kill the prisoners.
Jeronimus alone was spared; he was too important, both as a ringleader and a