Portuguese Attacks and Ndongo's Conquest
In 1618 the Portuguese governor of Angola, Luis Mendes de Vasconcelos, launched a large scale attack on Ndongo, using newly acquired Imbangala allies. The allied Imbangala, mercenary soldiers from south of the Kwanza River, turned the day and allowed Mendes de Vasconcelos' forces to sack Ndongo's capital and pillage the country. During the following two years, Mendes de Vasconcelos' son João led a detachment of Portuguese and Imbangala forces into Matamba where they did great damage. During this time the Imbangala band of Kasanje deserted the Portuguese and continued a campaign of destruction in Matamba. Thousands of Matamba subjects were killed and thousands more deported to the Americas. It is during this period, for example that the ethnonym "Matamba" appears in slave inventories in Spanish America in considerable numbers.
Ndongo continued to suffer attacks from Portuguese forces, and in 1624 Queen Njinga Mbandi (also known as Nzinga) took over as ruler of that country. She continued the war unsuccessfully against Portugal and was forced to flee the country in 1626 and then again in 1629. During her second flight Njinga entered Matamba and her forces routed the army of Matamba's ruler, Queen Mwongo Matamba, capturing her and taking her prisoner. From at least 1631 onward, Njinga made Matamba her capital, joining it to the Kingdom of Ndongo.
Read more about this topic: Kingdom Of Matamba
Famous quotes containing the words attacks and/or conquest:
“We are supposed to be the children of Seth; but Seth is too much of an effete nonentity to deserve ancestral regard. No, we are the sons of Cain, and with violence can be associated the attacks on sound, stone, wood and metal that produced civilisation.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)
“What girl could fail to make a conquest who collapsed at a man’s feet in the moonlight?”
—John L. Balderston (1899–1954)