infinitely rich.  He constantly employed in his castle three hundred goldsmiths.  This would seem an exaggeration, but that it is well known the Malayan princes have them always about them in great numbers at this day, working in the manufacture of filigree, for which the country is so famous.  His naval strength has been already sufficiently described.  He was possessed of two thousand brass guns and small arms in proportion.  His trained elephants amounted to some hundreds.  His armies were probably raised only upon the occasion which called for their acting, and that in a mode similar to what was established under the feudal system in Europe.  The valley of Achin alone was said to be able to furnish forty thousand men upon an emergency.  A certain number of warriors however were always kept on foot for the protection of the king and his capital.  Of these the superior class were called ulubalang, and the inferior amba-raja, who were entirely devoted to his service and resembled the janizaries of Constantinople.  Two hundred horsemen nightly patrolled the grounds about the castle, the inner courts and apartments of which were guarded by three thousand women.  The king’s eunuchs amounted to five hundred.

The disposition of this monarch was cruel and sanguinary.  A multitude of instances are recorded of the horrible barbarity of his punishments, and for the most trivial offences.  He imprisoned his own mother and put her to the torture, suspecting her to have been engaged in a conspiracy against him with some of the principal nobles, whom he caused to be executed.  He murdered his nephew, the king of Johor’s son, of whose favour with his mother he was jealous.  He also put to death a son of the king of Bantam, and another of the king of Pahang, who were both his near relations.  None of the royal family survived in 1622 but his own son, a youth of eighteen, who had been thrice banished the court, and was thought to owe his continuance in life only to his surpassing his father, if possible, in cruelty, and being hated by all ranks of people.  He was at one time made king of Pidir but recalled on account of his excesses, confined in prison and put to strange tortures by his father, whom he did not outlive.  The whole territory of Achin was almost depopulated by wars, executions, and oppression.  The king endeavoured to repeople the country by his conquests.  Having ravaged the kingdoms of Johor, Pahang, Kedah, Perak, and Dilli, he transported the inhabitants from those places to Achin, to the number of twenty-two thousand persons.  But this barbarous policy did not produce the effect he hoped; for the unhappy people, being brought naked to his dominions, and not allowed any kind of maintenance on their arrival, died of hunger in the streets.  In the planning his military enterprises he was generally guided by the distresses of his neighbours, for whom, as for his prey, he unceasingly lay in wait; and his preparatory measures were taken with such secrecy that the execution alone unravelled them.  Insidious political craft and wanton delight in blood united in him to complete the character of a tyrant.