ABSTRACT
The brief reign of Sultan Hamengkubuwana III (1812-14) was a turbulent and difficult time for the Yogyakarta sultanate. Begun in the aftermath of the British storming of the kraton on 20 June 1812, the two-and-a-half year reign was bedevilled by sibling rivalries at court, especially between the sultan and the family of his ambitious uncle, Pangéran Pakualam (r. 1812-29), who had been created an independent prince (pangéran miji) by the British as a reward for his help during the British attack. A son of the first sultan by one of his principal wives, Bendara Radén Ayu Srenggara, a scion of a leading Kedhu dynasty, Pakualam harboured his own designs on the sultanate and felt bitterly disappointed that the British had passed him over in June 1812 after the second sultan’s defeat and exile. This disappointment brought Pakualam to the brink of open revolt against the third sultan and his British backers in October 1812, when he discovered that, along with all the other princes of the Yogyakarta court, he would be shorn of his hereditary apanage lands in Kedhu, one of the richest provinces of south-central Java.
