Indies Brigade

The unit was under the command of Lieutenant-General Baron Carl Heinrich Wilhelm Anthing, a German officer in Dutch service, and consisted of: After the formation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814, by which the British relinquished control of the Dutch colonies, King William I of the Netherlands acted to recruit troops to safeguard his colonial possessions.

Allied commander-in-chief Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington positioned the brigade with the 1st Netherlands Division near the town of Halle.

[2] In the Allied invasion of France following the victory at Waterloo, the Indies Brigade took part in the assaults on Le Quesnoy, Valenciennes and Condé-sur-l'Escaut.

On board of the De Ruyter were Commissioners-General Buyskes and Elout, the botanist Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt, and about 600 soldiers of the Indies Brigade who had been at the Battle of Waterloo, but now came to fulfill the original task of the brigade: defending the Dutch East Indies, under command of lt-general Anthing; another 1200 were spread over the remaining ships.

[10] The Brigade remained in an encampment at Meester Cornelis until the formal handover of power by the British lt. governor-general to the Commissioners-General on 19 August 1816.

Lack of tact on his part, in connection with his right to be answerable only to acting Governor-General Godert van der Capellen directly caused difficulties and frictions to arise in his relationship with the supreme authority.

Though troops of the Indies Brigade took part in the suppression of the insurrection at Ambon and Saparua in the second half of 1817, Anthing was not personally involved in that campaign.