that, when the
entire Chinese force pursued him in a fleet of many ships, he went
out to meet them at a legua's distance from his principal island,
[56] and fought with them the greatest battle that those seas have
ever seen. Cot-sen sent most of their champans to the bottom, and
captured many; few escaped, and those were damaged. This filled that
country with such fear that their precautions [against him] wrought
more destruction than his cruelty could have accomplished; for these
obliged the king of China to depopulate the extensive coasts of his
entire kingdom, a strip of land six leguas wide embracing cities of
100,000 or 200,000 inhabitants, in order that they might not be the
prey of the conqueror. [57] This was a measure tending to the latter's
prosperity; for all those many people, finding themselves without
land or settled mode of life, crowded into the corsair's service to
spend their lives and to maintain themselves on the abundant booty
offered to them by his power as absolute master of the seas.

The intention of this barbarian [Cot-sen] was to become the master
of China, profiting by the hatred of the Chinese to the Tartars,
and on the present occasion by the fact of the king's death. But
as Cot-sen needed land whereon to maintain so many people, he was
minded to conquer Hermosa and these islands. Accordingly, he landed
[on Hermosa] first in April, 1660, with 100,000 men, a hundred cannon
for batteries, and a still larger number of field-pieces; the cannons
carried balls of forty to fifty libras. At first the Dutch scoffed
at their forces, calling them "men of the paypay"--that is, "of the
fan," which all of that nation use, as if they were women. Confident
in the impregnable nature of their fortress (into which they gathered
the feeble garrison of the island), and in the large and splendid
force of men which defended it, more than two thousand in number,
although they had nineteen ships, they did not take these out of
the river when they could; and the Sangleys attacked them on the
sea to great advantage overcoming the Dutch with their champans, and
inflicting much injury on them--for these champans are lighter vessels
[than those of the Dutch], and their people are very skilful in the
management of artillery. The Dutch at once sallied out with 300 men
to prevent them from occupying the islet in the Mosamboy entrance,
[58] on which the Chinese expected to plant their battery; but the
multitude charged up