By the end of the year 1616, Don Juan de Silva had collected the greatest armament, that had been seen in the Philippines; it consisted of ten galleons, four galleys, a patache, and many smaller vessels, with all necessary supplies, and five thousand men, two thousand being Spaniards and Portuguese. He sailed with this formidable armament, on the last day of this year, to attack the forts of Malacca; but as the galleons had not arrived which were expected from India, and which he imagined had wintered in the Straits of Malacca, and it was known that the Dutch kept some vessels in these Straits, in expectation of the ships from China which passed by here, the Governor thought it most adviseable, to attack these ships in the first instance, and after he had destroyed them, he should be able to join the galleons from India, and proceed to the Dutch forts in Malacca. The reasoning was good, but it failed in the execution, the galleons of India having been burnt, in an engagement they had with the Dutch, and the latter having quitted the Straits eight days before the Spaniards arrived, flying with all their effects, as they had received secret intelligence of their route. At the same time that the Spanish galleons entered the Straits, two Malay merchantmen from China arrived very richly laden; by saving which, the inhabitants of Malacca called Don de Silva their preserver, received him on shore under a canopy, and expected from his valour, and the powerful fleet he brought, that India would be freed from those freebooters, the Dutch; but he was seized with a fever, and died in eleven days, on the 19th of April, 1616. He had ordered his body to be embalmed, and directed it should be carried to Xerez de los Cavalleros, to a convent of bare-footed carmelites, and buried there. Before he died, he gave the command of the armament to Don Alonzo Henriquez, who brought it back to Manila, without effecting any thing else. By the death of the Governor, the command devolved on Don Andres Alcaraz, the oldest Oidor, who had been left in charge of the government by Don Juan de Silva, when he sailed with the armament for Malacca. About the same time our squadron sailed from the bay, another Dutch squadron, which had lately arrived by the Straits of Magellan, entered the mouth of the harbour, and lay a month close to Marivelez. There were only four ships and two pataches laying before Manila, and it was without artillery, ammunition, or soldiers. The Governor ad interim was not dismayed at this; he armed those few ships he possessed, fortified certain positions, and was encouraged in the undertaking by the people, who took up arms, not only the laity, but even the ecclesiastics also. The Dutch commander wrote two letters to the Royal Audience, and one to General Pablo Blancardo, whom the Spaniards had carried prisoner to Manila; but as soon as he learned that Blancardo had died in prison, he made sail to the Moluccas.