For thirty-eight years this island had been dominated by the Dutch, whose fortresses commanded the channel of the Pescadores. The colony was regarded as an important one by the Dutch colonial government at Batavia. The city of Tai-wan, on the west coast, was a considerable center of trade. It was strongly protected by the fortress of Zealand, and had a garrison of twenty-two hundred Dutch soldiers. After months of fighting, Koxinga, with an overpowering force of Chinese, compelled the surrender of the Hollanders and the beautiful island passed into his power. A Threatened Invasion of the Philippines.--Exalted by his success against European arms, Koxinga resolved upon the conquest of the Philippines. He summoned to his service the Italian Dominican missionary, Ricci, who had been living in the province of Fukien, and in the spring of 1662 dispatched him as an ambassador to the governor of the Philippines to demand the submission of the archipelago. Manila was thrown into a terrible panic by this demand, and indeed no such danger had threatened the Spanish in the Philippines since the invasion of Limahong. The Chinese conqueror had an innumerable army, and his armament, stores, and navy had been greatly augmented by the surrender of the Dutch. The Spaniards, however, were united on resistance. The governor, Don Sabiano Manrique de Lara, returned a defiant answer to Koxinga, and the most radical measures were adopted to place the colony in a state of defense. All Chinese were ordered immediately to leave the Islands. Fearful of massacre, these wretched people again broke out in rebellion, and assaulted the city. Many were slain, and other bands wandered off into the mountains, where they perished at the hands of the natives. Others, escaping by frail boats, joined the Chinese colonists on Formosa. Churches and convents in the suburbs of Manila, which might afford shelter to the assailant, were razed to the ground. More than all this, the Moluccas were forsaken, never again to be recovered by Spaniards; and the presidios of Zamboanga and Cuyo, which served as a kind of bridle on the Moros of Jolo and Mindanao, were abandoned. All Spanish troops were concentrated in Manila, fortifications were rebuilt, and the population waited anxiously for the attack. But the blow never fell. Before Ricci arrived at Tai-wan, Koxinga was dead, and the peril of Chinese invasion had passed. Effects of These Events.--But the Philippines had suffered irretrievable loss. Spanish prestige was gone. Manila was no longer, as she had been at the commencement of the century, the capital of the East. Spanish sovereignty was again confined to Luzon and the Bisayas. The Chinese trade, on which rested the economic prosperity of Manila, had once again been ruined. For a hundred years the history of the Philippines is a dull monotony, quite unrelieved by any heroic activity or the presence of noble character. [74] CHAPTER X.