Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [126]
All of the retourschip’s survivors, and the Sardam’s crew, were assembled on Batavia’s Graveyard to witness the sentencing. The surviving members of Cornelisz’s gang were present too. It was nearly evening by the time Pelsaert was ready to proceed and the leading mutineers shuffled forward to hear the verdicts on their cases.
The captain-general was the first man to be called. “Because Jeronimus Cornelisz of Haarlem, aged about 30 years, apothecary, and later under-merchant of the ship Batavia, has misbehaved himself so gruesomely,” Pelsaert intoned,
“and has gone beyond himself, yea, has even been denuded of all humanity and has been changed as to a tiger . . . and because even under Moors and Turks such unheard of, abominable misdeeds would not have happened, we, the undersigned persons of the Council . . . in order to turn us from the wrath of God and to cleanse the name of Christianity of such an unheard of villain, have sentenced the foresaid Jeronimus Cornelisz that he shall be taken to a place prepared to execute justice, and there first cut off both his hands, and after that punish him on a gallows with a cord until death follows—with confiscation of all his goods, Moneys, Gold, Silver, monthly wages, and all that he may have to claim here in India against the VOC, our Lord Masters.”
It was the maximum penalty available under Dutch law. And so the commandeur continued: Jan Hendricxsz, Lenert van Os, Allert Janssen, and Mattys Beer were sentenced to have their right hands removed before they were hanged; the other three mutineers—Jan Pelgrom, Andries Jonas, and Rutger Fredricx—received a slightly lesser punishment. Presumably because their crimes had been less extensive, these men were to go to their deaths unmutilated, but in each case they, like all the others, suffered the confiscation of their goods and died knowing that Jan Company, not their families, would inherit whatever meager worldly possessions they left behind.
Pelsaert had not yet finished. In the course of his investigation, the commandeur had also formed opinions of the remainder of the mutineers. Nine of them, he now announced, were to be taken to Java for interrogation—“or to punish them on the way, according to time and occasion.” They were Wouter Loos, Stone-Cutter Pietersz, Hans Jacob Heijlweck, Daniel Cornelissen, Andries Liebent, Hans Fredérick, Cornelis Janssen, Rogier Decker, and Jan Willemsz Selyns—by no means all of them minor figures in the tragedy. Nineteen other men, who had signed Jeronimus’s oaths and had been held on suspicion of active involvement in the mutiny, were freed “until later decision, unless something detrimental arises.” Most of them had done little more than pledge allegiance to Cornelisz—their numbers included relative nonentities such as the steward, Reyndert Hendricxsz, Gillis Phillipsen, the soldier who had sharpened the sword used to decapitate the net-maker Cornelis Aldersz, and the doubly bereaved Hans Hardens. Bastiaensz the predikant was also cleared, at least provisionally. But several of these men had been closer to Jeronimus than Pelsaert yet appreciated. Among those who were now released was Olivier van Welderen, who was more than capable of causing further trouble.
At least the commandeur could rely on Wiebbe Hayes. The Defenders’ leader, who was still a private soldier, was now promoted to the rank of sergeant at a salary of 18 guilders per month—twice his former wage. He was thus placed in charge of all the surviving soldiers, who had been without a commanding officer since the Sardam’s arrival in the archipelago, a move that no doubt helped to reinforce their sometimes doubtful loyalty to the Company. Hayes’s principal lieutenants on his island, the cadets Otto Smit and Allert Jansz, were both made corporals at a salary of 15 guilders. These promotions were the only