The siege of Fort Zeelandia of 1661–1662 ended the Dutch East India Company's rule over Taiwan and began the Kingdom of Tungning's rule over the island.
Prelude
From 1623 to 1624, the Dutch had been at war with Ming China over the Pescadores. In 1633 they clashed with a fleet led by Zheng Zhilong in the Battle of Liaoluo Bay, ending in Dutch defeat. By 1632 the Dutch had established a post on a peninsula named Tayoan (now Anping District of Tainan), which was separated from the main part of Formosa by a shallow lagoon historically referred to as the . The Dutch fortifications consisted of two forts along the bay: the first and foremost fortification was the multiple-walled Fort Zeelandia, situated at the entrance to the bay, while the second was the smaller Fort Provintia, a walled administrative office. Frederick Coyett, the governor of Taiwan for the Dutch East India Company, was stationed in Fort Zeelandia with 1,733 people: 905 soldiers and officers, 547 slaves, 218 women and children, and 63 married men, while his subordinate, Valentyn, was in charge of Fort Provintia and its garrison of 140 soldiers.
In 1659, after an unsuccessful attempt to capture Nanjing, Koxinga, son of Zheng Zhilong and leader of the Ming loyalist remnants, felt that the Qing Empire had consolidated their position in China sufficiently, while his troops needed more supplies and soldiers. He began searching for a suitable location as his base of operations, and soon a Chinese man named (), who was working for the Dutch East India Company in Formosa (Taiwan), fled to Koxinga's base in Xiamen and provided him with a map of Taiwan.
Koxinga's invasion
Landing On 23 March 1661, Koxinga's fleet set sail from Kinmen (Quemoy) with hundreds of junks of various sizes, with roughly 25,000 soldiers and sailors aboard. They arrived at Penghu the next day. On 30 March, a small garrison was left at Penghu while the main body of the fleet left and arrived at Tayoan on 2 April. On Baxemboy Island in the Bay of Taiwan, unrelated to the siege, a Chinese force of 2,000 soldiers attacked and routed 240 Dutch musketeers. After passing through a shallow waterway unknown to the Dutch, the main body of Koxinga's invasion fleet landed at the bay of . Three Dutch ships attacked the Chinese junks and destroyed several until their main warship, the Hector, exploded due to a cannon firing near its gunpowder supply. The remaining two ships consisted of a yacht and a lesser warship, which could not keep Koxinga from controlling the waters around Taiwan. No further opposition was for the time encountered. The remainder of Koxinga's men safely landed and built earthworks overlooking the plain.
Siege
On April 4, Valentyn surrendered to Koxinga's army after it laid siege to Fort Provintia. The rapid assault had caught Valentyn unprepared since he was under the impression that the fort was under the protection of Fort Zeelandia. On April 7, Koxinga's army surrounded Fort Zeelandia, sending the captured Dutch priest Antonius Hambroek as an emissary, demanding the garrison's surrender. However, Hambroek urged the garrison to resist instead of surrender and was executed after returning to Koxinga's camp. Koxinga ordered his artillery to advance and used 28 cannons to bombard the fort.
Koxinga was confident in his army's ability to overwhelm the fort. They outnumbered the defenders twenty-to-one and he had hundreds of cannons. After careful planning and multiple feints, Koxinga bombarded the fort during the night, demolishing the roof of the Dutch governor's house. While initially unable to respond, the Dutch were able to reposition their guns and return fire from different angles using the bastion forts as vantage points. The assault was driven back with hundreds of Koxinga's best soldiers killed. The Dutch governor wrote that the enemy's cannons were badly placed, unprotected, and easy to destroy. The assault had caused no damage other than damaging a few houses and lightly wounding one Dutch artillerist. Shocked at the defeat, Koxinga abandoned the approach of taking the fortress by storm in favor of starving it out.
On the 28th of May, news of the siege reached Jakarta, and the Dutch East India Company dispatched a fleet of 12 ships and 700 sailors to relieve the fort. The first time they tried to land, they were forced away by bad weather, and one ship's crew was captured by the natives when it crashed into the beach. The natives killed most of the crew and sent them to Koxinga. On July 5, the relief force arrived and engaged in small-scale confrontations with Koxinga's fleet. On July 23, the two sides gave major battle as the Dutch fleet attempted to break Koxinga's blockade. A second, ultimately unsuccessful attempt at relief was mounted in October. The Dutch tried to bombard the Chinese position with their ships, but their shots were too high and missed their target, giving the Chinese gunners time to prepare and return fire. Meanwhile, the smaller Dutch ships engaged the Chinese junks, which lured them into a narrow strait with a false withdrawal. The Dutch ships were unable to get away as the wind had died, and they were forced to paddle their boats, but the Chinese caught them and massacred the crew on board, and used pikes to kill those who jumped overboard. The Chinese caught Dutch grenades in nets and threw them back at the Dutch. The Dutch flagship Koukercken ran aground right in front of an enemy cannon placement and was sunk. Another ship was stranded and its crew fled to Fort Zeelandia. The remaining Dutch fleet was forced to retreat with the loss of two ships, three smaller vessels, and 130 casualties.
In September, Koxinga attacked the Dutch redoubts with intent to capture them. Coyet remarked on the accuracy of Chinese cannon bombardment against Dutch gun emplacements on the fort, which rendered them immobile. Dutch carpenters tried to build a fortification at the base of the redoubt but failed due to enemy cannon fire. Coyet ordered 50 musketeers to provide cover fire and clear the Chinese gunners. They were successful, but during night time, the Chinese returned and mined the musketeers' positions with explosive charges. However they went off too early the next day while the musketeers were returning to their positions and failed to kill them. The Dutch were able to fortify the redoubt.
In October, several dozen Dutch troops raided a nearby island for provisions. The raid took a disastrous turn when they encountered a small group of Chinese soldiers. They tried to flee, but suffered heavy casualties, losing 36 men.
In December, deserting German mercenaries brought Koxinga word of low morale among the garrison, and he launched a major assault on the fort, which was ultimately repelled. In January 1662, a German sergeant named Hans Jurgen Radis defected to give Koxinga critical advice on how to capture the fortress from a redoubt whose strategic importance had gone hitherto unnoticed by the Chinese forces. Koxinga followed his advice and the Dutch redoubt fell within a day. This claim of a defector appears in a post hoc account of the siege written by Frederick Coyett, whom scholars have noted sought to absolve the author of responsibility for the defeat. A Swiss soldier also writes about the betrayal independently. Ming records make no mention of any defector or German named Hans Jurgen Radis.
On 12 January 1662, Koxinga's fleet initiated another bombardment, while the ground forces prepared to assault the fort. With supplies dwindling and no sign of reinforcement, Coyett finally ordered the hoisting of the white flag and negotiated terms of surrender, a process that was finalized on February 1. On the 9th of February, the remaining Dutch East India Company personnel left Taiwan; all were allowed to take with them their personal belongings, as well as provisions sufficient for them to reach the nearest Dutch settlement.
Torture Both sides used torture in the war. One Dutch physician carried out a vivisection on a Chinese prisoner. The Chinese amputated the genitals, noses, ears, and limbs of Dutch prisoners while they were still alive and sent back the mutilated corpses and prisoners to the Dutch. Chinese rebels had earlier cut the genitals, eyes, ears, and noses of Dutch people in the Guo Huaiyi rebellion. The mouths of Dutch soldiers were filled with their amputated genitals by the Chinese who also slammed nails into their bodies, and amputated their noses, legs, and arms and sent the bodies of these Dutch soldiers back to the fort.
Taiwanese indigenous peoples
The Taiwanese indigenous peoples initially allied with the Dutch and fought against the invading Chinese. In the Kingdom of Middag, the natives appeared to warmly welcome troops led by Koxinga's commander, Chen Ze. After luring Chen Ze's troops into a false sense of security, the natives attacked while most were sleeping, killing 1,500. A separate native ambush in southern Taiwan wiped out a Koxinga force of 700. Despite being allied to the Dutch since the Guo Huaiyi Rebellion in 1652, the native switched sides during the siege. The aboriginals (Formosans) of Sincan defected to Koxinga after he offered them amnesty and proceeded to work for him executing captured Dutchmen. On 17 May 1661, the frontier aboriginals in the mountains and plains also surrendered and defected to the Chinese; some celebrated their freedom from compulsory education under Dutch rule by hunting down and beheading Dutch colonists and destroying their Christian school textbooks. Koxinga formulated a plan to give oxen, farming tools, and teach farming techniques to the Taiwan Aboriginals. He distributed Ming gowns and caps, hosted chieftains at feasts, and gifted tobacco to the crowds of Aboriginals who gathered to meet and welcome him as he toured native villages following his victory over the Dutch.
Aftermath
Dutch prisoners
During the siege of Fort Zeelandia, the Chinese took many Dutch prisoners, among them the missionary Antonius Hambroek, his wife, their son and daughter. Koxinga sent Hambroek to Fort Zeelandia to persuade the garrison to surrender; if unsuccessful, Hambroek would be killed upon return. Hambroek went up to the Fort, where two of his other daughters still remained, and urged the garrison not to surrender. He subsequently returned to Koxinga's camp and was beheaded. Additionally, a rumor was spread among the Chinese that the Dutch were encouraging the native Taiwan aboriginals to kill the Chinese. In retaliation, Koxinga ordered the mass execution of Dutch male prisoners, - access date: December 10, 2014 mostly by crucifixion and decapitation with a few women and children also being killed. The remainder of the Dutch women and children were enslaved, with Koxinga taking Hambroek's teenage daughter as his concubine (she was described by the Dutch commander Caeuw as "a very sweet and pleasing maiden"), while other Dutch women were sold to Chinese soldiers to become their (secondary) wives or mistresses. The daily journal of the Dutch fort recorded that "the best were preserved for the use of the commanders, and the rest were sold to the common soldiers. Happy was she that fell to the lot of an unmarried man, being thereby freed from vexations by the Chinese women, who are very jealous of their husbands." The Dutch women enslaved as concubines and wives following the siege were never freed. In 1682, at least some were reported to still be alive when a Dutch merchant based in Quemoy, received an invitation from one of Koxinga's son to arrange terms for releasing the remaining prisoners, though it came to nothing.
Later Ming–Dutch encounters In 1663, the Dutch allied with the Qing dynasty against the Zheng forces. In 1663, 15 Dutch ships scattered a Zheng fleet of several hundred junks.