Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 182

178
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[OCTOBER, 1919
and hearing the hideous noyse and cry of such a multitude, thought how to contrive away to send them all to theyr greate adorer Belzebub, which was by firing all our powder at one blast,"! as many of us as were left alive leaping into the sea, yet intercepted some ) by those divelish helhounds.
"Wee were at that present English 23, being all wounded foure excepted, blacks 4 an Javaes 4 : slayne English 5, Javaes 3 and blacks 13: all which were then living they tooke into theyr Friggotts and carried us on shoare about 24 houres after, where wee, the English, wanted all thinges whatsoever, irons, hunger and cold only excepted; the manner of our then present estate would be but prolix to write and therefore omitted.
"During all this time of our encounter, which was from 8 in the morning untill 4 in the afternoone, there was not more than three leagues distance from us a Dutch shippe, which could not by any meanes assist us, in regard of its being calme, yet at 6 or 7 in the evening in our lce came fayre by the shippe burning, and so she continued, the enemy not gaining. ought that belonged to the Honble. Company, but was enforced to leave her with the losse of more than 1400 men."93
(Letter from Walter Clark, Commander of the Company's ship Comfort, to the Council of Bantam, dated 1st April 1639. India Office Records, O. C. 1651 and 1671.)
VII. THE PIRATE COXINGA TAKES FORMOSA FROM THE DUTCH, 1661.
In 1624 the Dutch gave up their settlement in the Pescadores and, with the permission of the Japanese, settled at Taywan (Tai-ouan],"t in the Island of Formosa. Here in 1634 they built a fort which they named Fort Zeelandia. The Japanese soon found it advisable to retire and the Dutch made themselves masters of the whole island. In this position they found it necessary to take action against the Chinese pirates. In 1626 the leader of these was one Chin-chi-lung who collected a large fleet and made himself master of the seas. When trapped and killed by the Chinese authorities in 1646, he was succeeded hy one Chin-ching-kung, known to the Europeans by the Portuguese version of his name viz. Coxinga. He had been a tailor at Taywan in Dutch employ and had been baptized under the name of Nicholas Gaspard, but dissatisfied with his treatment by the Dutch, he turned pirate. Finding that he could not establish himself in China itself and full of animosity against the Dutch, he formed the project of seizing the Island of Formosa. This he sncceeded in doing in the year 1661. How he did so is told by Gautier van Schouten, who was in the Dutch East Indies at the time. Coxinga behaved with especial cruelty to the native converts and to the Dutch pastors, but such cruelty was characteristic of the Chinese pirates. It was exhibited as fiercely against their own countrymen as against foreigners; and, it is only fair to say, met with equally cruel reprisals.
During and after the Tartar invasion, pillaging and piracy, disorders on land and sea continued incessantly throughout China, as there were always two factions at war with each other. At last the remainder of the party which had been defeated on land betook itself to sea under the command of a famous pirate named Chinchilung or Yquion. He soon found himself master of a great fleet, and at the head of several valiant corsairs, that is, if corsairs deserve that the quality of valour should be ascribed to them.
2 Mandelslo (p. 87) says that some 1,200 of the enemy were blown into the air. 23 The prisoners were ultimately released on payment of rangom and arrived safely at Surat.
24 This was the port of exchange between Japan and China owing to the prohibition of direct intercourse. Mandelslo, p. 165.