Cheribon, which had conquered Bantam and Pajajaran, lost gradually her strength, became tributary to Mataram in 1625 and wholly dependent in 1632. She declined still more after the death of Panambahan Girilaya, who divided his succession between his sons Pangeran Martawijaya (later Sooltan Sepooh) and Pangeran Kartawijaya (later Sooltan Anom), on condition of their providing for a third son, Pangeran Wangsakarta of Godong (later Panambahan). Embroiled in the rebellion of Trunajaya against the authority of Mataram and captured, Martawijaya and Kartawijaya were kept as hostages at its capital, Karta. Released through the intervention of Sooltan Tirtayasa of Bantam, more commonly known as Abu’l-Fatah, they returned home only to get again mixed up in hostilities against Mataram and the Dutch East India Company, which overran Cheribon with its soldiers and improved the opportunity by regulating the affairs of Girilaya’s three sons to its own best advantage. The foundation of Batavia on the site of old Yacatra, taken by Jan Pietersz Coen, May 30, 1619, had meant, among other things, an always keener competition in trade with Bantam or, rather, the “establishment of a free rendezvous”, _i.e._ free of bickerings with native princes and princelings, for the fleets of the Company on their long voyage to the Moluccos. Bantam having outstripped Cheribon by the importance she derived from English and Dutch shipping, resented the blow which threatened to relegate her to a second or third place, and this resulted in frequent conflicts with the intruders, though the boundary line of their settlement and their mutual relationship had been carefully defined in the treaty of 1659. On the other side in occasional difficulties with Mataram, the Company, acting on the _divide et impera_ principle, encouraged the rivalry between the middle and western empires, which both strove for supremacy in the Priangan. How the Company accomplished its purpose and triumphed, needs here no detailed examination. Its objects and the considerations which moved it, are wittily discussed in a Javanese mock-epic, the _Serat Baron Sakendher_, a satire on the rise of Dutch power at Batavia, the foundation of Moor Yang Koong (Jan Pietersz Coen). If that pattern of regents _outre mer_, the first Dutch Governor-General in Java, whose motto was “never despair”, whose grip like the grip of the tiger, has invited comparison with Ganesa (firstborn of Siva and Parvati) for wisdom and cautious statecraft, with Skanda (also sprung from the Mahadeva’s loins but without the Devi’s collaboration) for resolution and mettle, here we find him as the son of Baron Sookmool, Baron Sakendher’s brother, and Tanaruga,[16] daughter of the Pajajaranese Princess Retna Sakar Mandhapa, and the poet makes the personification of the Company say to his twelve hopefuls, the earliest Tuan Tuan Edeleer, or honourable members of the Governor-General’s Council: Good measures you will