Sultan Agung conquered most of Java but lacked a navy
In three decades Sultan Agung turned the Central Javan kingdom of Mataram into the master of nearly all of Java. His one great failure came at Batavia, the Dutch East India Company's base on the coast, where his larger army could not overcome a rival that controlled the sea. Indonesia made him a National Hero in 1975.
Born Rangsang, he took the throne at 20 in 1613. Strictly he was Mataram's fourth sultan, since his half-brother Martapura had reigned for a single day, crowned only to honour their father's promise to Martapura's mother, Queen Tulungayu. Agung's capital was still at Kotagede, but in 1614 work began on a new palace at Karta, about 5 kilometres to the southwest, which the court occupied four years later. The Dutch called him Agoeng de Grote, Agung the Great, and legends about him blend myth and magic with verifiable events.
His first strike, against Surabaya and Malang in 1614, failed, though he extracted a heavy indemnity and used it to take Wirasaba the next year. A Surabayan counterattack in 1616 was crushed, and the coastal towns of Lasem, Pasuruan and Tuban, one of Java's oldest and largest cities, fell by 1619. Surabaya itself had defeated his father and daunted his grandfather. Agung isolated it by seizing its allies, Sukadana on Borneo in 1622 and the island of Madura in 1624, before taking the city by siege in 1625. Mataram now held all of central and eastern Java except the far west and mountainous south.
Agung openly despised trade, and his agrarian kingdom kept no serious fleet. That proved decisive when he attacked Batavia in 1628 and 1629: Dutch naval power allowed the settlement to hold out. He then turned east against the Balinese in Balambangan, framing the campaign as a holy war, but never reached Bali itself, which remained a Hindu state amid Muslim neighbours.
Failure at Batavia encouraged vassals to revolt, and expansion stalled. Pajang rose in 1617 and Pati in 1627, and he spent 1631 to 1636 subduing Sumedang and Ukur in West Java. Because his soldiers revered the fighters of Giri Kedaton as heirs of the saint Sunan Giri, he entrusted its suppression to Pangeran Pekik, a descendant of Sunan Ampel and husband of Agung's sister. He ruled until 1645.
Source: Sultan Agung of Mataram
