The leader of a large fleet of junks, traders or pirates as occasion served, known to the Portuguese of the day as Iquon, was compelled to place his services at the command of the last sovereign of the Ming dynasty, in whose cause he fought against the Manchu invaders along the coasts of Fuhkien and Kuangtung. In 1628 he tendered his submission to the Manchus, and for a time was well treated, and cleared the seas of other pirates. Gradually, however, he became too powerful, and it was deemed necessary to restrain him by force. He was finally induced to surrender to the Manchu general in Fuhkien; and having been made a prisoner, was sent to Peking, with two of his sons by a Japanese wife, together with other of his adherents, all of whom were executed upon arrival. Another son, familiar to foreigners under the name of Koxinga, a Portuguese corruption of his title, had remained behind with the fleet when his father surrendered, and he, determined to avenge his father's treacherous death, declared an implacable war against the Manchus. His piratical attacks on the coast of China had long been a terror to the inhabitants; to such an extent, indeed, that the populations of no fewer than eighty townships had been forced to remove inland. Then Formosa, upon which the Dutch had begun to form colonies in 1634, and where substantial portions of their forts are still to be seen, attracted his piratical eye. He attacked the Dutch, and succeeded in driving them out with great slaughter, thus possessing himself of the island; but gradually his followers began to drop off, in submission to the new dynasty, and at length he himself was reported to Peking as dead. In 1874, partly on the ground that he was really a supporter of the Ming dynasty and not a rebel, and partly on the ground that "he had founded in the midst of the waste of waters a dominion which he had transmitted to his descendants, and which was by them surrendered to the Imperial sway,"--a memorial was presented to the throne, asking that his spirit might be canonized as the guardian angel of Formosa, and that a shrine might be built in his honour. The request was granted.