The first Jesuits to arrive after the granting of formal authorisation by the Spanish king were two Italians. They left Asuncion October 10, 1609, and it took them five months of incessant travelling to reach the Paranapanema. The work already done there by the earlier Fathers had borne some fruit. The Indians were prepared for the coming of the new missionaries and readily gathered into the towns which they founded in rapid succession. For the first few years all went well, and within a very short time they claimed to have at least forty thousand souls under their guidance. In 1614 there were 119 Jesuits in Paraguay and Guayra, and the work of evangelising and reducing to obedience the whole Guarany population of the Parana valley went on apace. For twenty years these Guayra missions spread and prospered, while to the east and south the Jesuits acquired more and more influence with the Indians in Paraguay proper, and more and more hemmed in the Creoles of Asuncion. In 1629 a thunderbolt burst upon Guayra out of a clear sky. The Portuguese from Sao Paulo appeared before the Mission of San Antonio and destroyed it utterly, burning the church and houses and driving off the Indians as slaves. Other missions shortly suffered the same fate, and within the short space of three years the towns had been sacked, most of the inhabitants of the region carried off or killed, and the remnants had fled down the river under the leadership of the Fathers. The Paulistas were animated by motives, some good, some bad. Primarily they wished to capture slaves. They hated the Jesuits and had themselves suffered from the latter's system of segregating the aborigines. Only a few decades before, their fathers had destroyed the Jesuit missions near Sao Paulo, and they were determined not to permit themselves to be hemmed in and crowded out by Indians ruled and protected by Jesuits. They believed in the doctrine of "Brazil for the White Brazilians," and they regarded the Jesuits and their neophytes as natural enemies and fair prey. The sentiment of nationality also animated them. As descendants of Portuguese they hated the Spaniards and their rule. Their allegiance to the Spanish dynasty that had usurped the crown of Portugal sat lightly. The Jesuits came by way of Asuncion, their communications were with the Spanish authorities, and most of them were Spaniards. The Paulistas, as Portuguese, viewed with alarm a rapid spread of Spanish ecclesiastics up the Parana valley, which threatened soon to reach their own neighbourhood. Avarice, love of adventure, race pride, patriotism, hatred of priestly domination, all co-operated to push them on to undertaking these memorable expeditions.