1706, when the royal favor was finally lost for good and the Company's agents expelled from the Kingdom. In 1659 there arrived at Ayuthia one of the most extraordinary figures in the history of Siam. This was Constantine Phaulcon, the son of a Cephalonian innkeeper, who ran away to sea in an English ship and, eventually making his way to Siam, stayed there to become Chief Minister of the Crown and the trusted adviser of the King, Phra Narai. Under Phaulcon's able guidance the country for a time prospered greatly. Not only were the Portuguese and Dutch merchants, already established, encouraged to extend the scope of their enterprise but the English and French East India Companies were invited to set up factories at the capital. The King himself, in partnership with his First Minister, operated a profitable fleet of merchantmen and became the principal trader of his own country. About this time it came to be believed in Europe that the whole of the Far East was ripe for conversion to Christianity and a Roman Catholic Mission was organized in France to put this ambitious design into effect. Ayuthia, possessing a cosmopolitan population and strong commercial ties with Japan, China, the Sunda Isles, and India, was considered the best central location for the project and, in A.D. 1662, three French bishops with a staff of priests arrived there to inaugurate the work. These ecclesiastics were favorably received by the King and within a short period the mission had acquired a considerable number of adherents. In order further to strengthen their position, however, they sought and obtained the official support of Louis XIV of France, who exchanged complimentary letters and embassies with the Siamese monarch. Phaulcon, in the confidence of the bishops, was thus brought into correspondence with Colbert, Louis's minister, and before long the French King's interest was centered on more material aspects of Siam than its spiritual welfare. A scheme was set afoot for securing the supremacy of France in the Asiatic kingdom through the agency of the priests, who, apparently believing that, with material support from Louis, they could convert the King himself to Christianity, were not unwilling to do their part. Six French men-of-war and a body of 1,400 soldiers were therefore dispatched to Siam, ostensibly to assist in intimidating the Dutch, who were at the time causing trouble from their fortress of Malacca. The two principal ports of Bangkok and Mergui were garrisoned by a part of these French troops and the King was induced to attach another part of them to his own person. The missionaries then began to exhort the King with all the eloquence at their command but found that his conversion was a more difficult matter than had been expected. Their obstinate insistence with him and Phaulcon's ascendancy over him ended by alarming the Siamese, and when remonstrances against the ever-increasing number of foreigners in the service of the State went