The Battle of Mbumbi in 1622 marked an important turning point in the relationship between Portugal and the Kingdom of Kongo. This battle, usually viewed by existing historiography as a decisive defeat for Kongo, represented the first time that main-force Kongo armies met those of Portugal in battle.Footnote 1 A newly discovered document revises our understanding of the Battle of Mbumbi by revealing a second battle, probably waged near a place called Mbanda Kasi, that was a decisive Kongo victory. This Dutch States General document also helps to contextualize Kongo's larger place in the Thirty Years' War in the Atlantic and the Dutch invasion of Angola in 1641. The early decades of the seventeenth century are poorly documented in this region, coming just before the very well-documented period of the governor Fernão de Sousa, and as a consequence even a single, short document can completely reverse our understanding of this crucial period.
Most accounts of the Atlantic wing of the Thirty Years' War stress Dutch initiative in invading Angola in 1641, usually seen as a natural outgrowth of their campaign in Brazil (from 1630 onwards) and their desire to cut off the slave trade of Angola and divert it to their holdings in Pernambuco. While there is little question that a concern about obtaining slaves for Pernambuco was important, the attack was only possible thanks to the Dutch alliance with Kongo. This alliance, as the new document reveals, dated from a proposal on the part of Kongo's king, Pedro II (1622–4), to the Dutch States General to form a joint land–sea invasion of Angola, and was on Kongo's initiative as a result of their break with Portugal following the Battle of Mbumbi.
DEEPER BACKGROUND: KONGO AND PORTUGAL
The relationship between Kongo and Portugal was first formed when Portuguese sailors under Diogo Cão arrived at the mouth of the Congo River in 1483 and set in motion a long – and at times fruitful – alliance with Nzinga Nkuwu, the king of Kongo. In its earliest stages, Nzinga Nkuwu accepted baptism, taking the name of João I, and initiated a relationship that involved a substantial attempt by Portugal to build a model Christian kingdom in Kongo. Although Portugal's rather grandiose early plans – for example, to introduce plow agriculture and European-style systems of law – came to nothing, the alliance did produce important results.Footnote 2 As is also well known, the alliance went through rocky periods, and João's son Afonso I's (1509–42) lengthy correspondence with Portugal reveals the nature of Kongo's relationship with the European state, alongside contestation over recognition of Kongo's claims to trade monopoly on its coast, and, of course, the oversight of the burgeoning slave trade.Footnote 3
While Afonso's correspondence has often been viewed as an indication of a souring of the alliance, in fact it survived for many more years. This alliance was fundamental to the foundation of the Portuguese colony of Angola, when King Álvaro I wrote to Portugal in 1570 to ask for military aid against the ‘Jagas’, a still unidentified set of invaders or rebels who had temporarily forced him to abandon his capital.Footnote 4 While the Portuguese king, Sebastião, sent troops to aid his brother king, he also extracted promises, which are only vaguely known but included support for Paulo Dias de Novais building a colony on Kongolese territory at Luanda.Footnote 5 Álvaro offered military support to Dias de Novais in his earliest battles in the area and, when he was badly defeated by the Kingdom of Ndongo in 1579 and besieged near Luanda, Álvaro sent a substantial army to relieve him. That army, however, was defeated and forced to withdraw. Nevertheless, even in the subsequent period, Kongo soldiers (either individually or in groups under Kongo commanders) assisted the Portuguese in building their colony.Footnote 6
Thus, the alliance between Portugal and Kongo was still strong even at the end of the sixteenth century, but Portuguese ambitions to further their colonial development, control trade from the whole coast (including seeking the exclusion of Dutch merchants from Kongo), and capture slaves in warfare, put it under great stress.Footnote 7 By 1615, Kongo had found many reasons to complain of the governors of Angola, who they claimed were rogue officials in need of royal discipline from the now combined monarchy of Portugal and Spain.Footnote 8
As the Portuguese were gradually adopting a more aggressive attitude toward Kongo, the Dutch were establishing themselves in Central Africa. The first group, arriving in the sixteenth century, were merchants buying mostly ivory and copper, rarely or never buying slaves. They established a lively commerce with Loango and with Kongo, where they were actively involved in the trade with Soyo. Portuguese governors sought in every way possible either to expel the Dutch traders themselves or to persuade Kongo nobles and the king to expel them.Footnote 9
The breaking point for Luso–Kongo relations came in the late 1610s, when the Portuguese governors Bento Banha Cardoso and especially Luis Mendes de Vasconcellos made alliances with the Imbangala – described by European and Kongo sources as rootless, cannibal mercenaries who originated south of the Kwanza river. In 1617, Mendes de Vasconcellos transported some of the Imbangala bands northward across the Kwanza and used them as a vital military force for an all-out assault on the Kingdom of Ndongo. The results were incredible: Ndongo was badly defeated and Ngola Mbandi, its king, was driven into exile on an island fortress at the eastern end of his domains. Thousands of his countrymen were enslaved and deported to Brazil and the Spanish Indies, and, in the subsequent few years, Ngola Mbandi committed suicide while bands of Portuguese soldiers, Imbangala, and refugees roamed his kingdom, contributing to further misery and depopulation.Footnote 10
Mendes de Vasconcellos's successor, João Correia de Sousa, turned his attention to Kongo, seeing that the chaos in Ndongo was so fruitful in slaves and thus in revenue. His immediate target was the forested lands of Kazanze, a vassal of Kongo located a few miles north of Luanda and a refuge for runaway slaves. In his zeal to recapture these runaways, Correia de Sousa had his generals conduct a treacherous but successful campaign against Kazanze in the early months of 1622. During this campaign, he gathered intelligence that led him to believe that Kazanze was receiving active support from Kongo's duke of Mbamba, Pedro Afonso, as well as from Nambu a Ngongo, another of Kongo's vassal states. Following his victory in Kazanze, Correia de Sousa extended the campaign further north to the lands of Nambu a Ngongo, a campaign that provides an immediate background for the Battle of Mbumbi and its aftermath. This battle was, in fact, the definitive end of Kongo's alliance with Portugal and the prime motive for its turn to the Dutch.
THE BATTLE OF MBUMBI
The Battle of Mbumbi and its consequences were only vaguely known to scholarship until very recently. The earliest modern studies of Angolan history – such as Ralph Delgado's history (1948), or those of Jan Vansina (1965), David Birmingham (1966), W. G. L. Randles (1968), Anne Hilton (1982), and Graziano Saccardo (1983–4) – all relied on two short Jesuit accounts, both written by Mateus Cardoso, who worked in Kongo.Footnote 11 These two summary sources, neither occupying more than a page or two in their printed form, provided the basic details of the causes of the war, linking it to the war in Kasanze and to the attack on Nambu a Ngongo.Footnote 12 Only one new source for the battle has emerged since Cardoso's two accounts, and this is a very lengthy and detailed account of the battle and its campaign written by a group of Jesuit priests on 23 October 1623 denouncing the Portuguese governor João Correia de Sousa, which was published by the Portuguese scholar-priest António Brásio in 1988 in the final posthumous volume of his massive documentary collection, Monumenta Missionaria Africana.Footnote 13 John Thornton and Linda Heywood used this document in their account of the episode.Footnote 14 In light of this scarcity of source material, and the fact that it was all written by Portuguese Jesuits, a new account of the battle and its aftermath is welcome not just because it provides a new viewpoint (that of the Dutch and to some extent of the Kongo) but also because it reveals a different history of the battle's aftermath.
The Jesuit accounts of the battle were all framed in their particular complaints against the governor João Correia de Sousa, who, they claimed, waged the war against Nambu a Ngongo and subsequently against Kongo illegally. Such conflict compromised Jesuit mission activity in the area. Their complaint was heightened by the fact that, when they challenged Correia de Sousa's authority to wage the war and opposed it (along with a good many Portuguese residents who thought the war ruined their trade with Kongo), he arrested and persecuted them. According to the Jesuits, the Portuguese force took ‘a great number’ of prisoners (soon to be exported as slaves), then ‘sacked the whole settlement of Bumbi, not sparing the possessions of the Portuguese who were established there, despoiling them and robbing them as if they were enemies’.Footnote 15 The Jesuits spared no gruesome details in their account, noting the ‘cruelty which was used against the Christians of Congo’, which included cannibalism.Footnote 16
Thus the battle itself, while fully described, was somewhat lost in their rhetoric of complaint. In fact, for the Jesuits, the fact that a Portuguese-led army had invaded Kongo, captured Christians and enslaved them, and allowed Imbangala cannibals to eat their captives was the central point of their correspondence, not the military history of the campaign. They did provide some details of the aftermath, however. They noted that anti-Portuguese rioting broke out all over Kongo and that Pedro II, the new king of Kongo, while mobilizing an army to counterattack, ordered all of those Portuguese who could to assemble with his army when it camped at Mbanda Kasi, an unidentified location in the vicinity of Mbumbi, so that he could put them under royal protection. For this, some in his court accused him of being ‘king of the Portuguese, for not having sought vengeance against the resident Portuguese.’Footnote 17 Again, the Jesuits stressed the interest of Portugal and Portuguese because, in their long letter, they included a verbatim transcript of a letter written by 55 Kongo-based Portuguese merchants to beg the governor to remove his army from Kongo or they would all be ruined if not killed.Footnote 18
Having given their account, the Jesuits then moved on to other topics. Subsequent letters reveal very little about the resolution of the situation in Kongo, where a royal army was camped at Mbanda Kasi apparently facing a Portuguese force fresh from victory at Mbumbi. The closest Jesuit writers came is in a Latin chronicle of the Jesuits written from original but now lost sources by António Franco in 1725, which noted vaguely that Pedro ‘led his own men into a battle line in order to throw back the Portuguese’, following the battle.Footnote 19 The newly-found Dutch States General document in fact reveals the ultimate result of the crisis.
Pedro not only mobilized his army and protected Portuguese residents in Kongo but he also wrote a number of letters of protest: one to the Vatican, another to King Charles III of Spain and Portugal.Footnote 20 He also wrote to the Dutch States General to seek the aid of the Netherlands. Although this letter has not survived or been located in the archives, it was discussed at some length by the States General. The directors of the States General, whose session the new document summarizes, were informed by Dutch merchants who had heard of the battle first hand in Kongo and by letters written by Pedro II and Count António Manuel of Soyo. It is thus as close to a Kongo version of the events as we are likely to get without discovering the actual letter of Pedro, which might still be somewhere in The Hague.Footnote 21 While the Jesuit accounts do not mention much about the aftermath of the battle, the Dutch one, although only a summary, deals with it at length.
The Dutch summary describes a great victory following the initial defeat, won by Pedro's army and that of his subordinate ruler, the Count of Soyo (in whose lands the Dutch were established), which drove the Portuguese out of Kongo territory. It also describes the violent anti-Portuguese riots that followed this and that included the disarming and humiliation of Portuguese residents throughout the kingdom but particularly in Soyo, where the Dutch merchants were probably witnesses. Finally it describes, surely based on Pedro's letter, a proposal for an alliance between Kongo and the Dutch in which Kongo forces would attack Luanda from land in coordination with a Dutch seaborne attack. Pedro was proposing hiring the Dutch as mercenaries, for he outlined a plan to pay them in ivory and silver, and as a further concession to allow them to occupy Luanda in place of the Portuguese.
These details were not unknown before the discovery of the States General document: Portuguese reports of the time make vague mentions of a Kongo–Dutch alliance; the Jesuits mentioned it; the governor Fernão de Souza, who arrived in 1624, noted it in passing. Indeed, even Vicente do Salvador, the historian of Brazil, writing in 1627, knew of the alliance. However, none of these authors made a direct connection to the second battle and particularly to the Kongo victory.Footnote 22
It was also known from Piet Heyn's own diary of his voyage that he carried the letter with him to remind the authorities in Soyo and Kongo of the terms of the proposed military operation. This was also noted in Johannes de Laet's history of the West India Company.Footnote 23 These documents have not been widely known to Africanists, though Anne Hilton did mention them in her history of Kongo.Footnote 24
A KONGO VICTORY AT OR NEAR MBANDA KASI?
Of all the documents available to modern-day historians of central Africa, only the States General account makes an unambiguous claim of a great Kongo victory that followed the disaster at Mbumbi, claiming that the Portuguese, after conquering the ‘Duchy’ (actually Marquisate) of Mpemba, ‘were driven out of the conquered Duchy with many losses’.Footnote 25 While the details of location are surely a bit fuddled, the idea of a great victory won by troops of Kongo and Soyo together is unmistakable.
However, once we understand that Kongo won a victory and that Pedro was considering a Dutch alliance, other documents reveal a new history of the post-Mbumbi era. First of all, it is clear that Kongo's army, mobilized to expel the Portuguese, also went on to invade portions of the area that Portugal claimed as part of Angola, to retake them for Kongo. We know that Pedro's army had not yet defeated the Portuguese by the end of January 1623, for this is when the Portuguese merchants of Kongo wrote from the royal camp to denounce the governor.Footnote 26 On 12 March 1623, Pedro wrote to the Ouividor Geral of Angola, André de Morais Sarmento, to tell him that he was presently in the lands of his vassal Manimotemo, and that he was collecting the obedience of a number of other vassals, notably of Mbwila, Nzala, Lundu, and Lunga, and ‘I expect others to come every day’.Footnote 27 To reach Motemo, Pedro's army would have marched through Lunda, Lunga, and Nambu a Ngongo, the reverse of the route taken by the Portuguese army in entering Mbamba. Taking obedience from Nzala and Mbwila was a provocative gesture, for the Portuguese campaigns of Luis Mendes de Vasconcellos had forced these two to swear obedience to Angola in 1619–20.
The Portuguese did respond to this threat, for, when Pedro II died on 13 April 1624, the Jesuit Mateus Cardoso noted that he had recently learned of an attack on Cahenda and Engombe by a Portuguese commander with a force of Imbangala, probably in February or March 1624.Footnote 28 These two lands lay immediately south of Motemo in the upper Dande river valley, and the Portuguese operations there may have reversed gains that Pedro had made, at Portugal's expense.
Portugal's concern over rumors of a Dutch alliance and an active offensive surely explain the efforts of the bishop of Angola, Simão de Mascarhenas, who succeeded Correia de Sousa as temporary governor on 3 August 1623, to make amends with Kongo. He immediately began negotiations with Pedro by sending Alonso Cruzado, ‘an ancient man in these parts’, with a letter asking Pedro to reopen the roads that had been closed by the war. At that point, probably in August, Pedro had returned to his capital, São Salvador, and presumably had withdrawn his army from the field. Pedro was prepared to negotiate, and ordered the roads opened immediately. However, he must have been feeling extremely confident of the reversal of Portuguese gains that his victory entailed because, in his negotiations, Pedro demanded that the Portuguese withdraw the presidio of Embaca, a fort that Luis Mendes de Vasconcellos had founded in 1617 as the first step in his offensive against Ndongo.Footnote 29
The suggestion that the fort be withdrawn is indicative of what Pedro's larger plans might have been. He probably knew that, following the devastating war that Mendes de Vasconcellos had launched against Ndongo, Ngola Mbande, the king of Ndongo, had sued for peace, sending his sister Njinga Mbande to Luanda to negotiate it in 1622. Correia de Sousa had been conciliatory to the mission, and promised among other things to withdraw the fort to the Luinha river, and thus out of the heartland of Ndongo. No doubt Correia de Sousa's intention had been to placate Ndongo while the wars with Kazanze, Nambu a Ngongo, and then Kongo were afoot. In making a demand to the bishop that he honor the treaty of 1622, Pedro was orchestrating the diplomacy of Ndongo as well as Kongo.Footnote 30 It is possible that he contemplated a more formal military alliance with Ndongo to attack Luanda from two fronts, or at the least to tie up Portuguese military forces in several places.
The bishop not only carried a desire to negotiate with him, but had probably already been advised to make restitution of captives, as the Overseas Council in Lisbon had decided on 6 April to seek the slaves out in Brazil and return them.Footnote 31 In addition, they ordered the return of João Correia de Sousa to Portugal ‘in chains’.Footnote 32 In a letter to the crown of 3 February 1624, de Mascarhenas noted the results of his inquiries and the return of 53 persons to Mbamba, including a female cousin of the late duke.Footnote 33 Over the next several years, the gradual return of the captives unfolded, ultimately resulting in the return of over a thousand from Brazil. The Portuguese response to this real threat from Kongo resulted in one of the few times in the history of the slave trade that so many slaves were returned to their homeland.
The Spanish-Portuguese government's attitude and the aggressive way in which the bishop pursued it (continued by the succeeding governor, Fernão de Sousa, after his arrival in 1624) suggest that the war was more than just an embarrassing episode in the career of a thoroughly disobedient governor. No doubt a significant part of the gesture was also the recognition that Kongo, unlike Ndongo, possessed the military strength to take on and repel a Portuguese army, even when reinforced by Imbangala mercenaries. It was also driven, no doubt, by Pedro's diplomatic overture to the States General.
Dutch merchants had surely played a role in this opportunity, for it was Joris Pietersen, a merchant who dealt with Kongo and Loango, who brought the letter to the Netherlands. They were vexed with the Portuguese attempts to prohibit their trade on the coast and were anxious to seize any opportunity to break them. The time was also opportune, for the Dutch West India Company, chartered in 1621 largely as a privateering organization intent on attacking Spanish and Portuguese trade and possessions, was preparing to send out its first expeditions. Plans had already been laid by the Company to attack Bahia in Brazil (which would be carried out in 1624), and Dutch knowledge of the slave trade was such that they were aware of the vital role that Angola played in supplying Brazil's unwilling African workers. A Dutch Company attack on Luanda might not be possible, but with the cooperation of a powerful African army, one that had already discomfited the Portuguese in the field, it was more plausible.Footnote 34
Pedro's letter was not just a plea for aid. In fact, he offered the Dutch very concrete rewards, including paying for the ships and the salaries of the soldiers in gold, silver, and ivory. This would be accompanied by handing over to the Dutch the city of Luanda and its surrounding lands, which would not only deprive the king of Spain of an important site but would also allow the Dutch to dominate the slave trade to Brazil, which, the members of the States General were told, amounted to 24,000 slaves a year.
In the very first meeting of the West India Company on 3 August 1623, the 19 directors (Heren XIX) decided that the slave trade of Angola was important and that the Portuguese should not hold it alone. They also decided that their first project would be to attack Brazil and that the two projects went together. In December 1623, the Company dispatched two fleets into the Atlantic. The first one, composed of three small vessels under the command of Philips van Zuylen, was sent to the Angola coast to raid and reconnoiter the area. After a blockade of Luanda in June–August 1624, in which a number of Portuguese vessels were sunk, burned, or captured, van Zuylen sailed up the coast to Soyo, where his fleet were well received by Count António and sold much of their loot for ivory, takula wood, exotic skins, and food.Footnote 35 Many in Kongo believed that van Zuylen's fleet would carry out the attack specified in Pedro II's letter: Fernão de Sousa reported that, when van Zuylen arrived in Soyo, the duke of Mbamba and his subjects celebrated, dancing the war dance (nsanga) and brandishing naked swords. They were reported to have said that when Luanda was taken, ‘the whites [Portuguese] will be our captives’.Footnote 36
In fact, the force was not equipped with the manpower to make an assault on the town. This task was to be entrusted to a much more powerful fleet, which left the Netherlands a few weeks after van Zuylen. It included some 24 ships and over 3,000 soldiers under the command of Jacob Willekens, and sailed to Bahia to capture the town. On 5 August, a portion of the fleet, under command of Piet Heyn, sailed for Luanda with three capital ships and something in the order of 550 soldiers and sailors. In other words, more or less the force that Pedro had requested in his letter to the States General. The ships did not sail directly to Africa, however, but up the coast to Pernambuco, looking for prizes before making the crossing.Footnote 37
Piet Heyn was surprised when his fleet arrived in Luanda in October, for the new governor, alerted to the weakness of the city by van Zuylen's blockade, had fortified key locations and, after a hot fight, drove Heyn's fleet off. Heyn subsequently sailed up the coast to Soyo with the letters from Pedro II and António in hand, hoping either to collect some of the payment or to gain the support of a land army to renew the attack on Luanda. The count, however, refused to acknowledge the letter, explaining that there was a new king in Kongo, Garcia I, who had come to the throne earlier in the year, after Pedro's death, and was a friend of the Portuguese. Moreover, he made protestations of his loyalty to the Catholic faith and his unwillingness to cooperate with the Protestant Dutch in such an adventure.Footnote 38
Of course, other factors were at work. Pedro's military success at Mbanda Kasi and the remarkably conciliatory attitude of Philip III and the bishop-governor de Mascarenhas had probably taken the edge off the Kongo nobility's anger. The Portuguese counterattack at Engombe and Cahenda probably also revealed the difficulties of carrying on an offensive war closer to the Portuguese interior bases of Masangano and Embaca, let alone Luanda itself. To further complicate matters, a group of ‘Jaga’ invaders had destroyed the province of Vungu, the traditional center of the kingdom of Kongo, which lay on the north bank of the Congo river just upstream from Soyo.Footnote 39 Pedro's son Garcia, who had succeeded him, was only 17 years old and was already showing signs of unpopularity with segments of the Kongo nobility, who would soon deprive him of his throne.Footnote 40 A military operation against Luanda either from Soyo or from Kongo in these circumstances was impossible.
Piet Heyn knew nothing of the changed political circumstances and left early in 1625, angered at what he saw as Kongo duplicity. But the alliance that was formed from Pedro's letter did not disappear, and in fact the Dutch would return to discuss alliances. Indeed, in 1641, it was on the terms of Pedro's original letter that Cornelis Jol attacked Luanda, and that Kongo's powerful king Garcia II sent an army to Mbamba to support him. The alliance held up through the war against the Dutch, even though the Dutch eventually abandoned their positions in Angola, and Garcia's own efforts were diverted by a struggle against his disobedient count of Soyo, Daniel da Silva.Footnote 41
The Battle of Mbumbi and its successor battle had a long-lasting impact on both the Kongo and the Portuguese, if less so on the Dutch following their occupation of Angola. In 1657, Governor Luis Martins de Sousa Chichorro, seeking to exploit a rebellion in Kongo against Garcia II, sent a large army into Kongo to aid the rebels. The army advanced rapidly into the kingdom, and was met, once again, by the marquis of Mbumbi, and, once again, the latter's army was routed by the superior Portuguese force. After spoiling the country and resting the army, the Portuguese commander decided to advance further into Kongo and cross the Lozi river. But at that point his captains rebelled, refusing to cross the river, claiming that those who did so would never come back. It is likely that memories or knowledge of the earlier Portuguese defeat informed these soldiers' resistance.Footnote 42
TEXT AND TRANSLATION (BY ANDREA MOSTERMAN)
Transcribing this seventeenth-century Dutch manuscript and translating it into contemporary English proved to be quite a challenge.Footnote 43 For the transcription, I tried to stay as close as possible to the original seventeenth-century hand in which the text was written. As such, I capitalized letters that are capitalized in the original, and I used the original spelling and punctuation. I left abbreviations, usually followed by a colon or a period, as they appear in the original. However, the original text uses an accent on the letter u (ú) to distinguish the u from other similar looking letters, which I decided not to replicate because the distinction between the different letters is clear in the transcription. Footnote 44 I did choose to include, within square brackets, parts of words that are illegible in the original. Since the translation and the transcription are printed together, we decided to translate the original text in contemporary English, using the American English rules of spelling and grammar. By doing so, we aimed to make the translated text more accessible to the reader, while those who would like to read the text in its original language can turn to the transcription.
Original: Nationaal Archief Nederland, Staten Generaal, 5751, Session of 27 October 1623 (excerpt)
Voorders connen wij u[w] Ho: Mo: niet verbergen het geene wij uijt de raporten van Joris pietersen (onlanghs van de Custen van Louango en Angola thuijs gecomen) verstaan hebben, nopende de gelegentheijt aldaar, Principalijck daarin bestaande, dat d'oorlooghe tusschen den Coninck van Congo geassisteert met den Prins van Sonhio en de Portugesen onstaan (uijt oorsake dat sijl. na hare gewoonlijcke Aart het Hertochdom van Pembo sonder eenige redenen, als omme de Inwoonderen tot Slaaven te maken, en het gehele Land te vermeesteren overvallen, en den Hertogh met vele van sijne onderdanen gedoot hebben) dagelijcx meer aanwiesen, ende door de moedicheijt vanden Prins van Sonhio (die Langhe Jaren vijant van Portugesen is geweest) soo voordelijck waren gevoert, Dat alle de portugesen met veel ver- lies uijt het veroverde Hertochdom wederom verjaacht sijn, na welcke Victorie heeft de voorn: Prins alle de portugesen (die nu lange Jaaren in sijn eijgen landen en daar ontrent woonden) van haar geweer tot brootmessen toe, doen ontblooten, de hoeden ende Schoenen tot teijckenen van versmaatheijt affnemen, als oock de Seijlen af slaan en de Roers onthalen van seeckere haare twee Scheepen die inde Haaven van Pindo lagen, en alles voort te lande in bewaaringhe doen brengen: Welcke Commotien in die quartieren soo aangewassen sijn, Dat de Co- ninck van Congo en hoochgemelte Prince van Sonhio, (van meeninge sijnde alle de Portúgesen uijt haar Landen te verjagen) aan de Neder- lansse Comiesen hare brieven afgesonden hebben, versouckende sij wilden in haren naam bij uw Ho: Mo: en den doorl: Prince van oraignen te weegh brengen Dat hunl. vier off vijff oorlochscheepen nevens Vijff off Ses hondert Soldaten tot assistentie mochten bijgevought werden, om alsoo te water zoo wel als te lande (daar sij den vijant wel getroost sijn) de Custen voor de Portugiesen en haaren aanhang te verseeckeren, Geloovende daarenboven de Scheepen en costen vande Maantgelden vande Soldaten met Gout, Silver ofte olifants tanden te betalen, ende tot danckbaarheijt en Erkennisse daarentegen in handen te stellen het fort en stad van Louando met de landen daar ontrent gelegen, welcke plaatse van dien Inportantie en den Coninck van hispanien soo dienstich is, Dat Jaarlijcx daar uijt over de vier en twintich duijsent Swarten naa Brasilien, West-Indien en andere plaetss. gescheept worden; welcke petitie sij daar naar met brieven aan uw Ho: Mo: en sijne Vurst: Doorl: hebben vernieuwt, doch alsoo dese gecomen sijn in handen van een c[ommie]s, die noch eenige tijt op de Custen sal blij- ven, sijn de selve soo haast [ni]et te verwachten, evenwel naa het oordeel vande Compa. sal dese saake dienen levendich gehouden te worden, oock genegen sijnde daartoe tot affbreuck der vijanden en vermeerderinghe vande Commercie naa haer vermogen daarin te Contribueeren. Indien uw Ho: Mo: noch conden verstaen tot de leeninge van duijsent soldaten soo om in dit, als in een ander notabel exploiot tegen den Coninck van hispanien gebruijct te werden, twelck wij uw Ho: Mo: als noch in on- derdanicheijt recommanderen, wel verstaande dat onder de selve Sol- daten mede gerekent sullen sijn de versochte hondert Coppen om een Compaignie op dese aanstaende vloote voor een Colonel (met advijs van sijne Princel. Excie. daar over te stellen) te formeren, om alsoo den Co: van Hispaignien (die naar de laaste advijsen apprehenderende het gevolgh van dese Saake, rede in Equipagie is, van veertich ex- traordinairi Oorlochscheepen) met vigeur, en betrouwende op Go- des Seegen, te resisteren.
Translation
In addition, we cannot hide from your High Mightinesses what we have learned from the reports of Joris Pietersen (who recently returned home from the coasts of Luanda and Angola) concerning the situation there, mainly consisting of the daily increasing warsFootnote 45 that arose between the king of Kongo,Footnote 46 assisted by the princeFootnote 47 of Soyo, and the Portuguese (originating in that they [the Portuguese], according to their nature, attacked the duchy of Mpemba without any reason but to enslave the inhabitants and attack and conquer the entire country, and they killed the duke with many of his subjects). And thanks to the courage of the prince of Soyo (who has been an enemy of the Portuguese for many years),Footnote 48 [the wars] were carried out so effectively that all of the Portuguese were driven out of the conquered duchy with many losses. After this victory, the distinguished prince made all the Portuguese (who now lived in his own lands and surrounding areas for many years) strip from their gun to their daggers,Footnote 49 taking away their hats and shoes as signs of contempt, as well as taking their sails off the yards and removing the rudders of their two ships that lay in the harbor of Mpinda, and, afterwards, sequestering everything ashore. This turmoil in those regionsFootnote 50 increased to such an extent that the king of Kongo and the aforementionedFootnote 51 prince of Soyo (being of the opinion that all the Portuguese should be driven off their lands) sent the Dutch factor letters, requesting in their name to get your High and Mightinesses and the Serene Highness the Prince of Orange to provide them with four or five warships as well as five or six hundred soldiers for assistance on the water as well as the land (whereFootnote 52 they had faced the enemy well) in order to secure the coasts from the Portuguese and their supporters. [They] expect, moreover, to pay for the ships and the monthly wages of the soldiers with gold, silver, or ivory and out of gratitude and recognition put in [your] hands the fort and the city of Luanda with the surrounding lands, a place of such importance and so useful to the king of Spain as more than twenty-four thousand blacks are shipped annually from there to Brazil, the West-Indies, and other places.Footnote 53 They have renewed this petition afterwards with letters to your High and Mightinesses and his Princely Excellency, but because these came into the hands of a [factor]Footnote 54 who will remain on the coast for a while these should not be expected to arrive soon. However, according to the Company's judgment, this case should be kept alive, and since it is also inclined to bring harm to the enemies and increase of commerce, the Company will contribute according to its capacity. If your High and Mightinesses could warrant the loan of a thousand soldiers to be used in this or in another notable exploit against the King of Spain, which we stillFootnote 55 humbly recommend to your High and Mightinesses, understanding that among these soldiers will be counted the formerly requested hundred soldiersFootnote 56 formed in a company for a colonel on this upcoming fleet (with recommendation of his Princely Excellency for this transfer), we could, with vigor and trusting on God's blessing, resist the king of Spain (who after the latest recommendations understands the consequences of this case, which is the reason for the equipping of forty extraordinary warships).
