amous
brotherhood of the Invincible Lion which had wintered in the straits of
Magellan, had been murdered through the treachery of the King of Candy.
His countrymen had not taken vengeance on his assassins. They were
perhaps too fearful of losing their growing trade in those lucrative
regions to take a becoming stand in that emergency. They were also not as
yet sufficiently powerful there.

The East India Company had sent out in May of this year its third fleet
of eleven large ships, besides some smaller vessels, under the general
superintendence of Matelieff de Jonghe, one of the directors. The
investments for the voyage amounted to more than nineteen hundred
thousand florins.

Meantime the preceding adventurers under Stephen van der Hagen, who had
sailed at the end of 1603, had been doing much thorough work. A firm
league had been made with one of the chief potentates of Malabar,
enabling them to build forts and establish colonies in perpetual menace
of Goa, the great oriental capital of the Portuguese. The return of the
ambassadors sent out from Astgen to Holland had filled not only the
island of Sumatra but the Moluccas, and all the adjacent regions, with
praises of the power, wealth, and high civilization of that distant
republic so long depicted by rivals as a nest of uncouth and sanguinary
savages. The fleet now proceeded to Amboyna, a stronghold of the
Spanish-Portuguese, and the seat of a most lucrative trade.

On the arrival of those foreign well-armed ships under the guns of the
fortress, the governor sent to demand, with Castilian arrogance, who the
intruders were, and by whose authority and with what intent they presumed
to show themselves in those waters. The reply was that they came in the
name and by the authority of their High Mightinesses the States-General,
and their stadholder the Prince of Orange; that they were sworn enemies
of the King of Spain and all his subjects, and that as to their intent,
this would soon be made apparent. Whereupon, without much more ado, they
began a bombardment of the fort, which mounted thirty-six guns. The
governor, as often happened in those regions, being less valiant against
determined European foes than towards the feebler oriental races on which
he had been accustomed to trample, succumbed with hardly an effort at
resistance. The castle and town and whole island were surrendered to the
fleet, and thenceforth became virtually a colony of the republic with
which, n