The queen having been seized with a dangerous ill ness, Mona Zingha believed that his succession to the crown was not a distant event, and therefore permitted the Romish priest to attend her, and even assisted him self in the performance of divine service in the church. His wishes were soon realised by the death of his prin cess in the following year, 1666,after a short and unhapp) reign of two years and six months.
Her remains were no sooner deposited beside her sister's, in the church which she had built, than Mona Zingha declared his abhorrence of Christianity, and re vived the horrid Giagan rites. Five women of the first rank were by his order buried in the queen's grave, and upwards of 40 persons of distinction were next sacri ficed, for their well-known attachment to the Christian religion. Others were tortured, in order to find some pretence for the total extermination of the missionaries,, and all their adherents.
Ile wrote to the viceroy at Loanda, that he had ab jured the Christian religion, which, he said, he had for merly embraced merely out of respect to the religion of his queen, and that he now returned to the ancient sect .of the Giagas: That there might remain no doubt of his sincerity in that declaration, he followed it with the sacrifice of a great number of victims in honour of their bloody and idolatrous rites, with the destruction of all Christian churches and chapels, and with a persecution of the Christians in all parts of his kingdom. By these violent measures he would have effectually extirpated the Christian religion from his dominions, had not Don John, the princess Barbara's first husband, from whom she had been divorced on account of his having another wife, and who had the advantage of being a professed Christian, and the only lawful heir of the crown, risen in arms against him. With such bravery did he attack
the tyrant, that he forced him to take refuge in an island . in the Coanza, and then caused himself to be proclaimed king.
From that island, however; Mona Zingha effected his escape, collected his scattered Giagas, and once more appeared in the field of battle. There Don John was defeated and killed; and Mona Zingha having recover ed his dominions, renewed, his bloody massacres with increased fury ; but Don Francisco, the son of Don John, having collected some forces, put an end to the reign and the life of this bloody tyrant in the very first battle.
Don Francisco was raised to the throne by the unani mous voice of the nation; but whether he maintained the peace which queen Zingha ha7d concluded with the Portuguese, or whether he afterwards revived his claim to the kingdom of Angola, we are not:informed ; the 'history which we have of that country from the Portu guese writers terminating here. It is, however, certain, that the Portuguese retained their conquests; and, as before related, are still in possession of the richest pro vinces of that kingdom. See Dapper's Description de p. 360. Lopez's History of the Kingdom of Congo. Osborne's Collection of Travels, vol. ii. p. 537, and Modern Universal Mst. vol. xliii. (A. F.)