JAY, JAY. said, about 100,000 in the island; of which near 30,000 resided in the city till the year 1740, when the Dutch, pretending that they were in a plot against them, sent a body of troops into their quarter, and demanded their arms, which the Chinese readily delivered up; and the next day the governor sent another body, with orders to murder and massacre every one of the Chinese, men, women, and children. Some relate there were 20,000, others 30,000, that were put to death, without any manner of trial; and yet the barbarous governor, who was the instrument of this cruel proceeding, had the assurance to embark for Europe, imagining he had amassed wealth enough to secure him against any prosecution in Holland: but the Dutch, finding themselves detested and abhorred by all mankind for this piece of tyranny, endeavoured to throw the odium of it upon the governor, though he had the hands of all the council of Batavia, except one, to the order for the massacre. The states, therefore, dispatched a packet to the Cape of Good Hope, containing orders to apprehend the governor, and send him back to Batavia to be tried. He was accordingly apprehended at the Cape; but was never heard of afterwards. It is supposed he was thrown over-board in his passage to Batavia, that there might be no further inquiries into the matter; and it is said, all the wealth this merciful gentleman had amassed, and sent over before him in four ships, was cast away in the passage.
Besides the garrison here, the Dutch had formerly about 15,000 men in the island, either Dutch, or formed out of the several nations they had enslaved; and they had a fleet of between 20 and 30 men of war, with which they gave law to every power on the coast of Asia and Africa, and to all the European powers that visit the Indian ocean, unless we should except the British: it was, however, but a little before the revolution that they expelled us from our settlement at Bantam.