Page 238 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

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238 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

What was the Tragedy of Amboina ? Was it, as tho
English of the time asserted, a massacre, under judicial
forms, of innocent trade rivals for sordid motives ? Or was
it, as the Dutch contended, an act of justice perpetrated
upon a body of unscrupulous conspirators ? It is not
difficult to answer the questions. Time has unlocked
. many of the official secrets of that period and with the
.
documentary evidence available much is made clear which
two or three centuries ago was involved in obscurity. The
truth would appear to lie between the two extremes.
The Dutch were not bloodthirsty murderers venting their
private vengeance on unoffending men: nor were they
patterns of justice meting out punishment to proved
i criminals. They were simply men inspired by unholy \
\ zeal for a bad cause. They sincerely believed that a con­
r spiracy was afoot against them and that i,La Englishmen
were implicated in it. Having this fixed idea in their
mind they worked upon it with the unscrupulous energy
of the type of police official who makes his evidence fit
the theory he has formed of a crime. When, however,
we have said this much in their favour we have said all.
Nothing can extenuate the horrible brutality with which
the so-called evidence was got together, or the ruthless—
and even from the extreme standpoint of Dutch policy—
unnecessary severity with which the course of justice was
directed. The whole business was a judicial crime of
the blackest and most infamous type—one which even
after three centuries cannot be regarded without a feeling
of indignation.
This sombre episode of Amboina, besides putting a
period to the lives of Towerson and his associates, set a
decisive limit to the ambitions of the English to play a

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