of their superior refinement and of their heavenly religion, fighting like furies, and intriguing like fiends one against another. But the Portuguese were now become debauched and effeminate, and were unsupported by fresh reinforcements from Europe; the Dutch were spurred on by all the ardour of united revenge, ambition, and the love of gain. The time was now come when the Portuguese were to expiate their perfidy, their robberies, and their cruelties; and the prediction of one of the kings of Persia was fulfilled, who, asking an ambassador just arrived at Goa, how many governors his master had beheaded since the establishment of his power in India, received for answer—"none at all." "So much the worse," replied the monarch, "his authority cannot be of long duration in a country where so many acts of outrage and barbarity are committed."
The Dutch commenced their career in India with an air of moderation that formed a politic contrast with the arrogance and pretension of the Portuguese. They fought desperately with the Portuguese, but they kept a shrewd eye all the time on mercantile opportunities. They sought to win their way by duplicity, rather than by decisive daring. By these means they gradually rooted their rivals out of their most important stations in Java, the Moluccas, in Ceylon, on the Coromandel and Malabar coasts. Their most lucrative posts were at Java, Bantam, and the Moluccas. No sooner had they gained an ascendency than they assumed a haughtiness of demeanor that even surpassed that of the Portuguese; and in perfidy and cruelty, they became more than rivals. All historians have remarked with astonishment the fearful metamorphosis
