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124 C H A P T E R XII What befell me on the voyage from Siam to Melaka and how the ambassador ordered 14 men to treacherously injure me despite his words of friendship, in revenge for the stab wounds I had given him in Siam The junk aboard which the ambassadors were sailing accompanied us up to the islands of Cambodia, where we became separated. The islands were very green and had many fruit trees. I went ashore on many of them and I killed some snakes and cobras that were as thick as a man and even more. As soon as we came to the Mekong estuary we entered [the river]. In the city at that time there was a Castilian and a Portuguese who was called Diogo Veloso, whose wife was still being held captive in  Ms. fol. 41 recto–44 recto.  Ms. Islas de Camboya. See the list of place names (Islas de Camboya).  Ms. barra de Camboya. See the list of place names (Barra de Camboya).  Lit: it.  The exact location is uncertain, but possibly Lovek as De Coutre mentioned the presence of Veloso in the city. See the list of place names (ciudad de Camboja).  He is subsequently identified by name as Blas Ruiz. Morga gives his full name as Blas Ruiz de Hernan González (also spelled Gonçales), see: Morga, Sucesos, for example pp. 82, 120; also Subrahmanyam, “Manila, Melaka, Mylapore”: 234, where Blas Ruiz is described as “a married settler (casado) from Lima, native of la Calzada, which is close to Ciudad Real”.  Ms. Diego Velosso. 11-12 MJdC.indd 124 10/24/13 5:22:29 PM 125 Jacques de Coutre’s Life in Southeast Asia: Chapter XII Siam, where he had also been; and the king had sent him to Manila with an embassy and he had not returned with an answer. He went from Manila to the kingdom of Cochinchina accompanied by the said Blas Ruiz—that was the name of the Castilian—from whence they had gone overland to the kingdom of Laos,10 where a son of the king of Cambodia11 lived who was married to a daughter of the king of Laos.12 The two of them advised the king of Laos to send his son-in-law to Cambodia with a very large fleet to seize power in that kingdom, because it was his by right. In effect he followed their advice and sent the prince as a general and Blas Ruiz and Diogo Veloso as captains of the fleet. They arrived in Cambodia, where they found a tyrant who was called Laksamana,13 who was a rebel and was obeyed as a king.14 When the tyrant saw such a large fleet he pledged obedience to the prince, albeit with malice. There were many other Portuguese in the city15 who had escaped from that junk that the king of Siam had sent to Manila, aboard which was the Capuchin father, Friar Pedro Ortiz [Castellano].16 In the River of Cambodia17 —where they had been driven by a squall—they had come across a fleet of Laotians,18 which  King Sâtha I of Cambodia in 1595. Concerning the confusion over the king’s identity and that of his father (Barom Racha, Apra Langara Pamararaja) and son (Prauncar, Baroma Racha), see Briggs, “Spanish Intervention”, pp. 132–45.  Naresuan sought the neutrality of the Spanish governor in Manila, Don Luis Pérez Dasmariñas, after the 1594 invasion of Cambodia, but Veloso proceeded to Manila on behalf of the King of Cambodia, Sâtha I, see Morga, Sucesos, p. 82; Briggs, “Spanish Intervention”, pp. 140–1; Subrahmanyam, “Manila, Melaka, Mylapore”: 234–5. The appraised date of this Manila incident is June 1595. 10 Ms. here and subsequently: Lau, the kingdom of Lan Xang. See also Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola’s Conquista de las Islas Molucas (Conquest of the Maluku Islands, 1609), p. 267; Briggs, “Spanish Intervention”, pp. 142–3. 11 The son was Baroma Racha or King Prauncar, installed after the death of his father Sâtha around 1596–7. Morga reported that Blas Ruiz and Diogo Veloso [Belloso] proceeded to the kingdom of Laos (or Lan Xang) to find the fugitive king and restore him to the Cambodian throne. They found that he had already passed away—and also king Sâtha’s eldest son, Chey Chettha—but that several members of the royal family, including the king’s second son Prauncar, were...

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