A RENEGADE'S STORY 177 



for three years with the natives, the Portuguese 

 were treacherously attacked and nearly all mas- 

 sacred. This attack was probably instigated by 

 the King of the Congo, who was jealous of the 

 prestige and commerce which the presence of the 

 Portuguese brought to his vassal state of Angola. 



There is no contemporary reference in Brito 

 to the story related in the Catalogue of the 

 Governors of Angola written two hundred years 

 later that the rising was clue to the treachery of 

 a renegade Portuguese, who secretly advised the 

 Angolan King that the white men were plotting 

 his overthrow and the conquest of the country. 

 This story goes on to say that the Angolan King, 

 on the counsel of his " macotas " or head-men, 

 sent for the Portuguese and accused them of 

 treachery ; then, feigning to accept their denial 

 of the plot, induced them to make an expedition 

 to the interior, where they were ambushed and mas- 

 sacred with a thousand of their native Christians. 

 The outlying Portuguese settlers were murdered 

 at the same time, and the renegade who had 

 betrayed his comrades was executed by the King, 

 who declared him unfit to survive them. The 

 King then endeavoured to entrap the remnants of 

 the Portuguese, 150 men and two guns, who were 

 with Diaz, on a journey from Loanda, but they 

 retired to the fort of Anzelle, and so decisively 

 defeated the hordes of natives sent to attack him, 

 that the King, repenting of his treachery, slew all 

 the counsellors who had advised him to this 

 course. Diaz, reinforced, attacked the natives, 

 defeating them in a battle in the district of 



12 



