page_title: Rajasinha II of Kandy
section_title: Late reign: stalemate
hierarchical_section_title: Rajasinha II of Kandy / Late reign: stalemate
caption_attribution_description: The Dutch fort of Galle on the Southern Coast of Sri Lanka.
context_page_description: King Rajasinghe II, also known as Rajasingha II, was a Sinhalese King, reigned 1629 – 6 December 1687; third king of the kingdom of Kandy in Sri Lanka. Rajasingha requested Dutch aid to help expel the Portuguese from the island, which they successfully did in 1656. By this time however it had become clear to the Kandyans that the Dutch not only intended to expel the Portuguese but to replace them as the major colonial power on the island. This transfer of power is also believed to be where the Sinhala idiom / figure of speech “ඉඟුරු දී මිරිස් ගත්තා වාගේ” was originated - in reference that the Dutch Rule was much more of a menace to the king and cruel to the people in the island than the Portuguese. From 1645 onwards Rajasingha was engaged in sporadic warfare with his erstwhile allies.
context_section_description: Despite the resurrection of the treaty tensions remained between the Dutch and the Kandyans. The Treaty of Münster had secured Dutch independence in Europe in 1648 and they could now pursue colonial and mercantile expansion without fighting a ruinous war on their doorstep simultaneously. In contrast the kingdom of Kandy was exhausted by constant war, and still without access to Batticaloa, Trincomalee, and the lowlands. Furthermore, it had limited resources, and was increasingly wracked by internal instability.
  Nevertheless, from 1652 joint Kandyan-Dutch forces waged an increasingly brutal war against Portuguese strongholds along the coast. During this time Rajasingha had to request support from the sub-king — Patabanda — of Koggala, which suggests that the Kandyan kingdom had by this time become very decentralised, and that local leaders held considerable power.
  The landlocked Kandyans were successful in the inland area of the Korales and Sabaragamuwa but relied heavily on Dutch sea power. Accordingly, in August 1655 a large Dutch fleet commanded by Gerard Pietersz. Hulft arrived and the war entered its final phase with the siege by land and sea of the Portuguese colonial capital Colombo. By this point Rajasingha did not trust the Dutch at all and insisted that the city should be ceded to the Kandyan the moment it fell. When this happened in 1656, however, the Dutch shut the gates and left the Kandyans in the hinterlands. Faced with what he saw as yet another example of Dutch perfidy, Rajasingha repeated his devastations of the mid-1640s in the hinterlands of Colombo and withdrew to Kandy. The Dutch in the meanwhile secured power over the kingdom of Jaffna in 1658 and essentially replaced the Portuguese as Kandy's natural enemy on the island.
  Safe in his mountain fastness Rajasingha now adopted the same tactics he had deployed against the Portuguese to harass the Dutch. In 1660 his army is known to have been in the vicinity of Dutch-held Trincomalee, and seized the Englishman Robert Knox. Knox subsequently moved to Senkadagala and lived there until 1679; his writings provide one of the best sources on the Kandyan kingdom in the 17th century. Rajasingha may also have considered involving the French in Sri Lankan politics in an attempt to get yet another European power to displace the Dutch.
  In Kandy, Rajasingha faced discontented nobles and a populace who had always been opposed to the alliance with the Dutch. The internal situation became so unstable that for a while Rajasingha was forced to abandon the palace and allow rebels to seize control of Sengkadagala, and even suspended the annual Perahara. In 1664, he faced open rebellion from a noble known as Ambanwela Rala, and, unable in his fury to think of a suitable punishment, sent him to the Dutch, assuming they would execute him as a Kandyan noble. It was a mistake — Ambanwela Rala traded his knowledge of the workings of Kandy for a large coconut estate in Dutch territory and died a rich man.
  Despite this the king managed to retain control of the crown and expanded the sacred precinct of Kandy, the Dalada Maligawa, adding an extra storey to the central building.
caption: The fort of Galle in southern Sri Lanka, first a Portuguese, then a Dutch stronghold
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