The days were coming when the People was to have more to say than the pope in regard to the disposition and arrangements of certain large districts of this planet.  While the world-empire, which still excited so much dismay, was yielding to constant corrosion, another empire, created by well-directed toil and unflinching courage, was steadily rising out of the depths.  It has often been thought amazing that the little republic should so long and so triumphantly withstand the enormous forces brought forward for her destruction.  It was not, however, so very surprising.  Foremost among nations, and in advance of the age, the republic had found the strength which comes from the spirit of association.  On a wider scale than ever before known, large masses of men, with their pecuniary means, had been intelligently banded together to advance material interests.  When it is remembered that, in addition to this force, the whole commonwealth was inspired by the divine influence of liberty, her power will no longer seem so wonderful.

A sinister event in the Isle of Ceylon had opened the series of transactions in the East, and had cast a gloom over the public sentiment at home.  The enterprising voyager, Sebald de Weerdt, one of the famous brotherhood of the Invincible Lion which had wintered in the straits of Magellan, had been murdered through the treachery of the King of Candy.  His countrymen had not taken vengeance on his assassins.  They were perhaps too fearful of losing their growing trade in those lucrative regions to take a becoming stand in that emergency.  They were also not as yet sufficiently powerful there.

The East India Company had sent out in May of this year its third fleet of eleven large ships, besides some smaller vessels, under the general superintendence of Matelieff de Jonghe, one of the directors.  The investments for the voyage amounted to more than nineteen hundred thousand florins.

Meantime the preceding adventurers under Stephen van der Hagen, who had sailed at the end of 1603, had been doing much thorough work.  A firm league had been made with one of the chief potentates of Malabar, enabling them to build forts and establish colonies in perpetual menace of Goa, the great oriental capital of the Portuguese.  The return of the ambassadors sent out from Astgen to Holland had filled not only the island of Sumatra but the Moluccas, and all the adjacent regions, with praises of the power, wealth, and high civilization of that distant republic so long depicted by rivals as a nest of uncouth and sanguinary savages.  The fleet now proceeded to Amboyna, a stronghold of the Spanish-Portuguese, and the seat of a most lucrative trade.