The Dutch in Brazil now sent an expedition to the north to obtain possession of the Province of Maranhao.  They captured and plundered the capital, pillaging churches and ransacking the sugar factories.  The Governor, Maciel, appears to have behaved very badly, and with no little treachery towards his fellow-countrymen.  Nassau, when Maciel surrendered, treated him with contempt, and imprisoned him.  The situation had now become grimly farcical.  In Europe the Dutch were supplying the Portuguese with arms and stores, and acting in general as their allies; while in Brazil the two nations were openly at war, and the Dutch were sending hostile expeditions in all directions!

Just at this period, indeed, the ambition of the Dutch appeared to swell to the highest point.  Count Mauritz determined to push his conquests far to the south, and had even prepared an expedition for the capture of the Spanish town of Buenos Aires; but the attempt was frustrated by the hostility of the Portuguese and Indians nearer home.  All this time, of course, Dutch fleets had been harrying the Pacific coast, and the Dutch had actually obtained a footing in Southern Chile, although this was not destined to prove permanent.  With the extension of their boundaries, however, it was but natural that the difficulty of preserving their dominion should increase.

In Maranhao, freshly conquered as it was, rebellion broke out almost as soon as the Dutch had established themselves.  Desperate fighting took place in the neighbourhood of the capital, and many barbarities were committed on both sides.  The Dutch Governor, in a fit of exasperation, delivered twenty-five Portuguese to the savages of Ceara, and sent fifty to the Barbadoes to be sold as slaves.  The English Governor, however, after he had received these latter on shore, set them at liberty, and administered a severe reproof to the agent who had offered white men for sale in this way.  Owing to happenings such as these the bitterness between the two races increased.

In the end Maranhao was regained by the Portuguese, and the Fort of Ceara itself was surprised by a force of Tapuya Indians and its garrison massacred.  These occurrences were ominous, and the turn of the tide seemed to have set in.  Prince Mauritz of Nassau now sent in his resignation, and, after leaving everything in a state of complete preparedness, set out for Europe, accompanied by no fewer than 1,400 persons all told, a force which could ill be spared from Brazil at that period.  Among them were a few Indians who were taken to Holland to demonstrate to the inhabitants of that country the accomplishments of their countrymen, and the nature of the new subjects.