After the Dutch pirates began to sail the seas of Eastern India
and the archipelago of Filipinas, and to carry cloves from Maluco,
silks from China, and drugs from the adjacent islands, they began
also to cripple the cities that were sustained by the trade, which
are the principal cities; because the seas were infested, and there
was little security on them from those pirates. They, from the first
year of their entrance into the Orient, coasted the shores, sounded
the ports, and established trading-posts in the chief places, which
they filled with people whom they brought from Holanda. Consequently,
by the year 1614, the Dutch had eighteen armed galleons in the South
Sea, and they burned the city of Arevalo, where the food for Maluco was
stored, and committed many other depredations, which obliged Don Juan
de Silva, governor and captain-general of the Filipinas Islands, to
prepare a large fleet to attack them and drive them from our seas. But,
thinking that the forces of the Filipinas were insufficient to attend
to so many things at once--the support of the camp in Maluco; the
defense of the city of Manila, which is in sight of twenty thousand
Chinese (who had already, in 1603, risen against it and incited a
war); and sallies to fight the enemy--it was determined to ask help
from the viceroy of India and to join the two forces, Castilian and
Lusitanian, who are especially being attacked by the Dutch. Indeed,
the letters-patent given to them by Count Mauricio read that they are
to make war on the Castilians and Portuguese. Besides this argument,
it is evident that Yndia is not less interested in driving out those
enemies than are the Filipinas.

Father Juan de Rivera, [72] then rector of the residence of the
Society of Jesus at Manila, was appointed to negotiate this league and
reenforcement. He prepared himself in a few days and left for Yndia on