As to the charge of brutality, things were probably no worse nor any better than the time a party of Indians was hired in New Sweden to track down some settlers who deserted. These luckless subjects, who had first tried unsuccessfully to desert to the Dutch, fled toward the English settlements on the Chesapeake. The savages did their job well--and efficiently--bringing back only the heads of those who resisted capture. The Swedish governor could only protest the Dutch usurpation of his life-giving trade in the face of the military odds against him and his own internal problems. His government was left intact however, and he bided the time that reinforcements would arrive. But none came, nor even any word. In the end he asked to be relieved. When there was no reply to his request Johan Printz, at last disillusioned and completely frustrated, finally took it on his own authority in 1653 to relinquish his post and sail for home. Once, some years earlier when Printz was a young officer in the Army of Sweden, he had been dismissed from the service for surrendering his post without authority. When he left America under similar conditions, it is said that he took the precaution of getting a letter of recommendation from Peter Stuyvesant to the Dutch West India Company, just as insurance. The year after Printz sailed away reinforcements did at long last arrive in New Sweden, and with them came a new and impetuous governor named Johan Rising. Finding Fort Casimir in the embarrassing position of being without gunpowder and greatly underestimating the general situation of the Dutch in New Netherland, Rising made the mistake of reducing the fort to Swedish rule and pledging the loyalty of some of the Dutchmen there. Infuriated, the Directors of the Dutch West India Company sent a fleet of ships and two hundred veteran soldiers across the sea to their governor at New Amsterdam. They ordered him to gather all possible additional forces before the Swedes could be reinforced and “exert every nerve to avenge that injury, not only by restoring affairs to their former situation, but by driving the Swedes from every side of the river.” Stuyvesant responded with alacrity. In September of 1655 he was under sail for the South River with a fleet of seven armed ships, land artillery for besieging batteries, and several hundred soldiers. Captain Sven Skute who was the commandant at Fort Casimir, now called Fort Trinity by the Swedes, had greatly strengthened the fortifications there in anticipation of the attack. Shot and powder were stored in good supply, as were all other necessities for defense. Skute had written orders from the Council at Fort Christina not to let the enemy pass.