In the plans of the University of Maastricht, the parade ground will be deepened so that it will be possible to provide the passageway between the buildings at level -1 with a glass wall.
General Dibbets was commander-in-chief of the fortified town of Maastricht in the difficult period from 1830 to 1839. In this period, the Belgians revolted against the authority of King William I. Dibbets maintained Dutch authority in the fortified town, much to the displeasure of some. After his death in 1839, he was buried in bastion C of the Nieuwe Bossche Fronten, but in the 1920s his grave blocked the development of the area into a business park. His tomb was finally erected behind the safe fences of the barracks in 1927.
Bernardus Dibbets and the displeasure of Maastricht
In 1830, the Belgian Revolution broke out in the southern part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Belgium seceded, and, despite King William I’s attempts to bring the rebellious regions back into line, it would remain so. In that same autumn in London, the Great Powers decide how matters would be decided between the Netherlands and Belgium. There was no doubt about Maastricht – it was a part of the Netherlands.
The city was now in a difficult position, because the insurgents had taken over all of today’s province of Limburg, with the exception of Maastricht and the village of Sint Pieter. Just that year, General Dibbets was appointed commander-in-chief of the 5th Grand Military Command and the fortified town of Maastricht. William I ordered him to maintain the fortified town for the Netherlands. Dibbets carried out this assignment in the face of difficult circumstances. After all, it was not always clear who he could trust. Regularly, soldiers, even senior officers, deserted to the Belgians. The insurgents themselves would have liked nothing more than to add this Dutch island to their conquests.
In 1831, martial law was proclaimed in the fortified town, a state of emergency that gave Dibbets far-reaching powers as the highest military authority in the town. This situation remained unchanged until 1 July 1839, when the final division of the assets between the Netherlands and Belgium was completed.
Maastricht remained ‘Dutch’, and, according to tradition, this was Dibbets’ fault. When anti-Dutch sentiment rears its head – which happens regularly – a scapegoat is easily found, and General Dibbets becomes the whipping boy, or he is ‘demonised’, as we would say today. He is said to have been a brutal drunkard who ruled the citizens with a rod of iron, but objective historiography has been unable to confirm this.
On 2 April 1839, Baron Dibbets was buried with military honours at the General Cemetery on Tongerseweg. Two months later, he was transferred to bastion C outside the Bosch Gate, which was given the name of Dibbets Bastion. It was a great honour to be buried within the fortifications. But the people of Maastricht did not treat the grave with much respect, because tradition has it that, for years, it was custom for people to urinate on Dibbets’ grave on Sundays after Mass, in order to express their displeasure with his actions. In 1927, the monument was moved to the Tapijn Barracks, where it is safe behind a high fence. The remains of General Dibbets could then no longer be traced. When the barracks were to be named in 1934, ‘General Dibbets Barracks’ seemed to be an obvious choice because of the prominence of the monument. It seems the Ministry of War did not dare to do so because of the negative sentiments in the city.
In 1989, the 150th anniversary of the death of General Dibbets was commemorated at the monument on the initiative of Stied Witlox. This event also led to heated discussions and letters to the editor of the local newspaper.
Finding the remains of the General and the placement of the monument in the context of the new layout of the site has again given rise to discussion. For example, there have been calls for new research to be carried out in an attempt to locate the grave and to move the monument to that location. It now appears that the monument will remain where it is and that the mystery of the fate of General Dibbets’ remains will forever go unsolved.
