Coxinga, aware that he faced a stubborn foe, proceeded cautiously. Throwing a sea blockade across the approaches to the island, he landed assault troops who methodically captured one after another of the shore outposts. “He was abundantly provided with cannon and ammunition.… He also had two companies of Black Boys, many of whom had been Dutch slaves, and had learned the use of the rifle and musket-arms. These caused much harm during the war in Formosa.”
We have a report of the stratagems adopted by Coxinga at this stage of operations, for a Dutch mission sent to him reported that they were led to a tent, where they were told to wait for Coxinga. “Meanwhile, several fine regiments marched past the tent. Then the captain who was with the deputies said they would be received as soon as Coxinga’s hair was combed; but that they might now come close to his tent, some distance off. Here also many armed men who had passed the other tent were again paraded before the deputies, from which they saw that the intention was to practice deceit as to the number of soldiers in the field. Ultimately the deputies were brought before Coxinga, who was sitting in an armchair, under an open blue tent, beside a small square table, and surrounded by all his magnates clothed in long garments like popes, without any weapons.”
When all the outer defenses had been subdued, Coxinga offered Castle Zeelandia an honorable surrender, adding, “But if you still persist in refusing to listen to reason and decline to do my bidding, and if you wish deliberately to rush to your ruin, then I will shortly, in your presence, order your Castle to be stormed. My smart boys will attack it, conquer it, and demolish it in such a way that not one stone will remain standing.”
The Dutch commandant of the fortress replied to this threat, “We understand its contents perfectly well; but cannot give you any answer than the one we sent you on 10th instant, namely, that we are bound for the honor of our omnipotent and true God—on Whose aid and assistance we entirely rely—as well as for the sake of our country and the Directors of the Dutch India Company, to continue to defend the Castle, even at the point of our lives.”
Consequently, a siege in the classic manner developed: a powerful invading force applied pressure to a well-entrenched and resolute defensive body, and if that were all the story, the assault on Castle Zeelandia would excite no great attention today. But the commander of the Dutch forces was a man of extraordinary character—in his own way quite the equal of Coxinga—and he was, in addition, one of the truly tragic men in the history of the Pacific, Frederik Coyett, an undaunted fighter whose fortitude in the midst of callous betrayal won him the verdict: “an honorable, brave, but ill-used man.”
Coyett was governor of Formosa, but he was subject to orders from his Dutch superiors in Java, where he had a vengeful host of detractors who systematically undercut him on every point, and one of the bitterest aspects of the siege he underwent was that the worst blows were struck against him not by his Chinese enemies but by his Dutch compatriots.
From 1646 till the invasion of 1661, Coyett had been aware that ultimately Coxinga’s pirates would invade Formosa. This apprehension was reported, by Coyett and others, in 1646, 1652, 1655, 1656 and 1660. In Java the reports were not only ridiculed; each sensible defensive step taken by Coyett was condemned as cowardice. “It seems rather absurd,” wrote the experts in Java regarding one fortification which was later to be the means whereby Coyett was enabled to hold Coxinga off for more than half a year, “that, on your own account and without previously acquainting us—far less asking our permission—Your Honor should have built such a strong fortification.… We wish reasonably to show our discontent herewith so that Your Highness may be a little more careful in the future and avoid the carrying out of such important undertakings, without previously obtaining our approval and formal consent.”
Badgered at headquarters, Coyett was also beset by local superstitions: “The extraordinary and terrible earthquakes of the previous year, lasting fourteen days at a stretch, seemed to portend Heaven’s wrath and threatening punishment upon the people; also, a story was circulated that a mermaid had shown itself in the Canal; and the soldiers told each other that, on a certain night in the Company’s Armory, there was heard a tumult and sound of all kinds of weapons, as if some thousands of men had been engaged in battle. True: one or two of those alleged circumstances may have arisen from common rumor, and may have had no sure foundation. But to what can we ascribe the statements that, on a certain night, one of the projections connected with the castle was seen in a blaze; that, on the execution ground between the castle and the city, a woeful groaning was heard, as of dying people—the voices of the Hollanders being distinguishable from those of the Chinese; and that the water of the Canal was once seen changing into fire and flames. There were said to be many more such fearful premonitions, and each reader is free to believe whatever he thinks best.”
When the attack came, Coyett had only one Dutchman for every thirty attacking Chinese, and of his personnel of 1140 only three dozen were soldiers, but some years earlier a handful of determined Dutchmen had defeated enormous numbers of unarmed Chinese and an insidious myth had taken root: “The Chinese in Formosa were regarded by the Hollanders as insignificant and in warfare as cowardly and effeminate. It was reckoned that twenty-five of them together would barely equal one Dutch soldier, and the whole Chinese race was regarded in the same way, no distinction being made between Chinese peasants and soldiers; if he was but a native of China, then he was cowardly and had no stamina.”
Coyett had only one experienced officer inside the fortress, and this captain personified the arrogant attitude against which Coyett had to struggle. Captain Pedel saw nothing foolish in marching two hundred and forty of the castle’s best men in parade formation right down the sand spit and into the face of four thousand Coxinga regulars. The result was appalling, and only those few Dutchmen who could swim out to sea and back to the castle escaped. Stubborn Captain Pedel, who had insisted that one Dutchman was worth a score of Chinese, was among the dead and Coyett was reduced to one officer, an impressed baker’s assistant of no skill or experience whatever.
But as before, the greater enemy was in Java, and at the very moment when Coyett’s best troops were being chopped to pieces by the Chinese, the directors in Batavia were sending their governor in Formosa this amazing dispatch: “Surely if Koxinga cherished any intention at all to come, he would have done so long ago.… The statement that Koxinga, hearing of Your Honor’s great preparations to resist him, had postponed his intended attack to a better opportunity, is entirely unacceptable, as was shown afterwards. He never appeared on our shore with evil intentions, although he had ample opportunity of so doing, and we would never be able to hold our possessions there in peace if we allowed ourselves to be kept in continual alarm by such idle threats. Your Honor’s predecessors never troubled themselves and others in this way, but always kept on their guard as became faithful, courageous men. This example Your Honor ought to have followed, without becoming so shamefully alarmed.… Accordingly, Governor Frederik Coyett is instructed hereby to retire from the government, and no longer to interfere in any way with the affairs of state.” Rarely has bureaucracy demonstrated such colossal ignorance and bad timing as that displayed in this letter, which, at the height of a siege, fired a brave man—for cowardice.
To replace the dauntless Coyett, his Dutch masters in Java had selected a dandy little hero, one Herman Clenk, who arrived off the besieged castle just as operations reached a furious pitch. His letters of commission stated that he was to assume governorship “of a land basking in peace and plenty,” but since Formosa, overrun by Coxinga’s troops, clearly failed to fit that description, the redoubtable Clenk scuttled off to the safety of Japan, then doubled back to Java, where as a reward for his courage he was given command of the yearly argosy to Amsterdam.
Still governor by default, the deposed Coyett dug in and defended the fort gallantly. His journal is an epic of human resolution: “This morning at daybreak a soldier named Hendrick Robbertsz c
ame swimming to the Pineapples, and afterwards to the redoubt. Having been carried into this place, he gave us the following account: Last month, the interpreter Druyvendal and a young schoolmaster had each been fastened to a cross [by the occupying Chinese forces], nails having been driven through their hands, the calves of their legs, and into their backs. In this sad condition they were exhibited to public view before the house of the Governor, our own people guarding these victims with naked swords. At the end of three or four days they expired after meat and drink had been forbidden them all that time. The reason for their execution was said to be that they had incited the inhabitants against the Chinese. They, however, denied to their last breath that they had ever done so.”
Back in Java the Dutch governors at last reluctantly faced up to the seriousness of the situation in Formosa and belatedly assembled a formidable fleet intended for raising the siege, only to discover that no one would accept the dangerous command. “At last, after many inducements, with great promises of recompense and reward, they found an adventurer who dared to accept the commission, namely, Jacob Caeuw, a person so defective in the power of speech that one almost required an interpreter to understand his words—which were all spoken through the nose. According to his own confession, he had no other experience in warfare than that of having, when in the Academy at Leyden, often run his sword through the stones in the streets or through the windows of decent people’s houses.”
Caeuw’s deportment is an epic of cowardice. On August 12, 1661, he hove to his warships off Castle Zeelandia, saw that the situation was desperate and immediately fled to safer waters. After thirty days’ cruising, during which the beleaguered garrison suffered constant assault, Admiral Caeuw returned with the stirring proposal that he evacuate the women and children to Java.
At this Coyett exploded and the dashing admiral countered with the suggestion that he be appointed to visit China to see if the Manchus would help the Dutch fight the common enemy. Without waiting for a commission, he fled to the safety of the China coast, refused to land lest he get into trouble, and scurried away to peaceful Siam, where he announced his arrival with a salute of more than fifty guns, startling the Siamese to such an extent that he was asked to leave. “The powder he wasted,” wrote a compatriot, “might have been saved for doing better service at Formosa.”
Evicted from Siam, Admiral Caeuw contemplated going back to the relief of Castle Zeelandia, but thought better of it and fled to Java, where the directors, who were charging Coyett with cowardice, levied against Caeuw a trifling fine and suspension from his admiral’s job for six months.
Betrayed by fools, abandoned by cowards and badgered by poltroons, Frederik Coyett continued to rally his starving men and settled down to the last stages of a doomed nine months’ siege. His behavior was in the great tradition of heroes: in the last days a vote was taken; only one man stood out for continued resistance, and that was Coyett.
In his extremity, Coyett did find one fellow countryman whose courage equaled his own, and in this man the Dutch gained a notable hero whose name is still familiar in storybooks. One of the first prisoners taken by Coxinga upon investing the hinterland facing Castle Zeelandia was a venerable Lutheran minister, Anthonius Hambroeck, part of whose family had fled to safety inside the fort. When Coxinga sought a messenger to deliver his demand that the fort be immediately surrendered he selected Hambroeck, from whom he exacted a solemn promise that regardless of the outcome of the mission he, Hambroeck, would return to Coxinga in person with the message.
Upon arrival at the fort, Reverend Hambroeck, instead of advising surrender, steadfastly urged the Dutchmen inside never to give in. Then, having failed in his ostensible mission, he made preparations to return to Coxinga, although he knew that to do so meant certain death, for his advice to resist had been delivered in the presence of the other Coxinga messengers.
Hambroeck’s daughters inside the fort pleaded with their father not to return to Coxinga’s camp, but the old man said that he had given the word of a Dutchman and a minister, and that he was thus doubly bound. To the lamenting of his daughters he went forth and, as he had foreseen, he was promptly beheaded. But it was the spirit of men like him that kept Castle Zeelandia resolute during the worst part of the siege.
When surrender was forced upon him, through the advice of his councilors, Coyett was ignominiously hauled off a prisoner to Java, where his enemies demanded that he be put to death. The bill of indictment against him is a revolting document filled with inconsequential matters, smeared with a lust for personal revenge, and crawling with unction: “The plaintiff should have manifested a feeling of gratitude and loyalty in furthering the interests of those by whom he was treated, not as a servant, but with the affection of a father for his child; and this altogether apart from the terms of his oath. This sense of honor and duty should have impelled him thereto. But as the best-loved children frequently cause their parents the greatest sorrow—as the little lambs fed under their master’s table will attack first of all the children of him who supplies their wants—in like manner, the plaintiff and his councilors have so retaliated upon their kind and forebearing rulers that the entire building is shaken to its foundations.”
So determined were the enemies of Coyett that the hero of Formosa was actually dragged onto the execution block, but as the headsman lifted his axe, some sanity manifested itself and the sentence was changed to two years of brutal imprisonment followed by exile for life to the fetid islet of Ay, near Banda. Thirteen years after his heroic defense of Castle Zeelandia, Coyett was finally released through the pressure of friends in Holland who knew the true story, but they had to post a bond of 25,000 guilders that he would live only in the Netherlands, would never visit Java and would take no part whatever in Eastern affairs.
Old books show Coxinga as he accepted the surrender of this gallant Dutchman. Under palm trees the brave defenders of the fortress march forth in heavy armor. Across a narrow channel stands Castle Zeelandia, its walls still un-breached, while on a little knoll Coxinga sits in a beribboned tent at a table with a heavily brocaded cloth. He wears a Jesuit cap, becaped robes like those favored by Cardinal Richelieu, and no weapons. Dutch suppliants approach their austere conqueror with no show of cringing or humility, while Chinese soldiers parade and scurry in the background.
That night Coxinga became the first king of Formosa. His rule, which was one of the bright spots of the period, started auspiciously with just and compassionate surrender terms for the Dutch, who were allowed to retire unmolested to their ships, taking with them considerable possessions and all honor. There was no revenge. Coxinga’s rule continued with a series of wise measures for the government of Formosa: “In order to establish our rule over this island we must have food for our subjects. With insufficient food in the house even a family, in spite of ties to bind them, finds it difficult to live happily. So in this island, notwithstanding the patriotic spirit of our subjects, we cannot hope for tranquillity unless we provide them with the necessaries of life.… Hence our soldiers, whose occupation is to guard us against our foes, should prepare for battle by engaging, in times of peace, in agriculture.” Coxinga’s conquest of Formosa was to be used by the Japanese several centuries later as a basis for their occupation of the island, since he was half Japanese.
It is noteworthy that of all the characters in this book who sought dominion over some Pacific isle, the only one who accomplished his dream in full measure was this son of Nicholas Iquan, the illegitimately born Chinese tailor, and he became king of what is probably the most desirable island in this ocean.
Had he continued to make the government of Formosa his main job, he might have constructed there an enduring kingdom as an example to surrounding empires. Even so, because of what he did accomplish, many writers have begun to argue against calling him a pirate. They claim that his official commissions from the Ming government made him a bona fide general rather than an improvising marauder. They believe that his operations in the China
Seas had official approval, and were therefore the accomplishments of an admiral, not a buccaneer. And they cap their arguments by pointing out that Coxinga’s constructive work on Formosa partook more of statesmanship than of piracy.
But to Coxinga’s contemporaries he was a pirate, and they so described him. Naturally, the secondary accounts which were built upon those sources carried over that colorful word. The present authors have concluded that while Coxinga was admittedly a general, an admiral and a statesman, he was also a pirate, and their contention is based not upon the piracy of his youth—when he operated with the fleet he more or less haphazardly inherited from his piratical father—but rather upon his curious relationship with Manila in the closing years of his life. In this bombastic affair with the Spaniards he was certainly neither a statesman nor a general. He was a pirate.
For many years the city of Manila had exercised a strange fascination on the mind of Coxinga, for not only were the Philippine Islands accessible and inviting—they lay less than three hundred miles south of Formosa—but they were also exceedingly rich, and the galleons which lugged away the prolific wealth of Manila were a constant temptation to anyone as piratical as Coxinga.
But in the case of Coxinga there was an added fascination, for as a Chinese he had special reason to want to humiliate proud Manila. The Spaniards in that city had acquired a nasty habit of goading their Chinese settlers into provocative acts and then assassinating the lot of them. Accustomed as Chinese immigrants were to rough treatment overseas, in Manila they underwent barbarities that were matched nowhere else. In fact, slaughtering Chinese had become a kind of national sport.