Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/398

 554f SEQUEL OF JAVANESE HISTORY* of poison, but the operation being slow, and the despot pressing his death by repeated messages from the palace, his relative seized him by the hair of the head, dragged him to the ground, and strangled him by treading on his neck ! ! (A. J. 1(327, A. D. 1704.)— The Susunan Mangkorat was succeeded by his son, who took the title of Mangkorat Mas, but he was not many months seated on the throne, when his tyrannical and violent conduct drove hi^ uncle, the Pangeran Pugar, into rebellion. This prince fled to Samarang to the Dutch, and being counte- nanced by them, was installed Susunan under their auspices. The consequence was a civil war, which raged in the central and eastern districts of the island for four years, and which ended in the seizure of the person of Mangkorat Mas, by an act of treachery on the part of the Dutch, and his final banishment to Ceylon. Mangkorat Mas appears to have been a tyrant, voluptuous and wanton, equally destitute of talents and of pru- dence. His character, and probably that of many an eastern despot, is pourtrayed in the following anecdote of him, which is circumstantially related by the Javanese writers : In his flight from his ca- pital, proceeding eastward to join the force of the gallant and intrepid Surapati, he halted in the distant and secluded district of Fronorogo, and here, unconscious that he had already virtually lost