Five hundred captives annually seem to have been the spoils taken by these Moros in the Philippines Islands, and as far south as Batavia and Macassar captive Filipinos were sold in the slave marts of the Malays. The aged and infirm were inhumanly bartered to the savage tribes of Borneo, who offered them up in their ceremonial sacrifices. The measures of the Spanish government, though constant and expensive, were ineffective. Between 1778 and 1793, a million and a half of pesos were expended on the fleets and expeditions to drive back or punish the Moros, but at the end of the century a veritable climax of piracy was attained. Pirates swarmed continually about the coasts of Mindoro, Burias, and Masbate, and even frequented the esteros of Manila Bay. Some sort of peace seems to have been established with Jolo and a friendly commerce was engaged in toward the end of the century, but the Moros of Mindanao and Borneo were increasing enemies. In 1798 a fleet of twenty-five Moro bancas passed up the Pacific coast of Luzon and fell upon the isolated towns of Paler, Casiguran, and Palanan, destroying the pueblos and taking 450 captives. The cura of Casiguran was ransomed in Binangonan for the sum of twenty-five hundred pesos. For four years this pirate fleet had its rendezvous on Burias, whence it raided the adjacent coasts and the Catanduanes. The Great Wars in America and Europe.--The English reoccupied Balanbangan in 1803, but held the island for only three years, when it was definitely abandoned. For some years, however, the coasts of the Philippines were threatened by English vessels, and there was reflected here in the Far East the tremendous conflicts which were convulsing Europe at this time. The wars which changed Europe at the close of the eighteenth century, following the French Revolution, form one of the most important and interesting periods of European history, but it is also one of the most difficult periods to judge and describe. We will say of it here only so much as will be sufficient to show the effect upon Spain and so upon the Philippines. The Revolution of the English Colonies in America.--In 1776 the thirteen English colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America declared their independence of Great Britain. In the unfair treatment of the British king and Parliament they had, they believed, just grounds for revolution. For nearly eight years a war continued by which England strove to reduce them again to obedience. But at the end of that time England, having successively lost two armies of invasion by defeat and capture, made peace with the American colonists and recognized their independence. In 1789 the Americans framed their present constitution and established the United States of America.