The latter part of Kieft's administration was marked by contests with the citizens, who compelled him, in 1641, to grant them a municipal council, composed of twelve of the most prominent residents of New Amsterdam, which council he arbitrarily dissolved at the first opportunity. He also stirred up a war with the Indians, in which he was the principal aggressor. This war brought great loss and suffering upon the province, and came near ruining it. Kieft, alarmed at the results of his folly, appointed a new municipal council of eight members, and this council at once demanded of the States General of Holland the removal of Kieft. Their demand was complied with, and in 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was made Governor of New Netherlands, and reached New Amsterdam in the same year. Stuyvesant was essentially a strong man. A soldier by education and of long experience, he was accustomed to regard rigid discipline as the one thing needful in every relation of life, and he was not slow to introduce that system into his government of New Amsterdam. He had served gallantly in the wars against the Portuguese, and had lost a leg in one of his numerous encounters with them. He was as vain as a peacock, as fond of display as a child, and thoroughly imbued with the most aristocratic ideas--qualities not exactly the best for a Governor of New Amsterdam. Yet, he was, with all his faults, an honest man, he had deeply at heart the interests of the colony, and his administration was mainly a prosperous one.