General information about Daendels 🌙
Hii everyone!! As you know by the title, I'm going to talk abt who is Daendels briefly as many might not know who he is. Just note that this are just a summary/simplified writing abt Daendels life so I might miss some events and I apologize if there is some missinformation due to translation since I'm using google translate for most of it 🙏 and if you guys have anything to ask or say, feel free to tell me!!
Herman Willem Daendels was born on 21 October 1762, Hattem, Netherlands. I didn't find much information abt his childhood besides him attending Athenaeum Illustre in Deventer n studied law in University of Harderwijk where he obtained his doctorate. He was supposed to be continue his father as a city leader but the stadtholder, William V ended up choosing another person so he eventually turned against the stadtholder and became a patriot which basically where his entire carrier started.
There are many things that happened when he became a patriot and eventually he was banished from his own hometown by the court of Gelderland then he joined the French army to fight off the stadtholder armies. He held at least 2 coups during his life. It was supposed to be 3 but the last one was interferred by Augereau that was probably sent by Napoleon.
For a while, Daendels decided to become a farmer in De Dellen to find peace for a while. Few years later when Louis Napoleon became the king of Holland, Daendels came back again into the military and eventually he was given a title of Marshal of Holland and became a governor-general for Dutch East Indies (Now Indonesia) to protect them from the British.
Daendels was quite well known in Indonesia these days due to the Great Postal Road that he build. It was a road that extend until 1.000 km that was only build in one year with a cost of 12.000 people losing their lives. For years people had always thought he never paid the workers but someone managed to find archieves that Daendels actually paid the workers but was corrupted by the local regent. He also made hospitals and school as he saw many locals can't read or receive any education. I read somewhere that he also allow local people to become his soldiers. Daendels also respect Napoleon n Louis by making his subordinates swear an oath by the name of Napoleon, pray for Napoleon etc (I'll go over detail next time) Overall he achieve many things for Dutch East Indies in only the span of 3 years. Some even called him the Founding Father of Modern Indonesia.
Sadly, he was replaced by Jan Willem Janssens due to the Dutch Minister that didn't like his approach and decided to tell them to Napoleon. Napoleon somehow believed them and decided to tell Decrès (French Minister) to write a resignation letter to Daendels. After Daendels got replaced, not so long after that, Janssens was unable to stop tue British attack and the Dutch East Indies was taken over by the British.
Daendels was appointed Major General, 26th division that serve under Marshal Victor. I'm still not very sure on what he had done before he eventually decided to protect the Modlin fortress for almost a year. After Napoleon lost the battle of Leipzig, Daendels was taken as prisoner of war. There more details regarding Daendels time in Modlin but I'll go in detail later in another post.
During his time as prisoner of war, Daendels wrote letters to the new king of the Netherlands, William I but none of them was responded. When he came back to the Netherlands, the King felt that Daendels can he a bad influence so he decided to appointed him as a governor general of Dutch Gold Coast (Now Ghana) as a way to prevented him to interfere with the new government. In the Dutch Gold Coast, Daendels didn't achieve much and eventually passed away and 2 May 1818 due to Malaria.
Soo that's basically Daendels life in a simple way. I will go on more details on later posts but for now I think this is enough. Thank you everyone and I'll see you guys in the next post ^^
