Filips van Zuylen was a Dutch

corsair A corsair is a privateer or pirate, especially: * Barbary corsair, Ottoman and Berber pirates and privateers operating from North Africa * French corsairs, privateers operating on behalf of the French crown Corsair may also refer to: Arts an ...

active in the 1620s. As part of the ''

Groot Desseyn The ''Groot Desseyn'' (Dutch for "Grand Design") was a plan devised in 1623 by the Dutch West India Company to seize the Portuguese/Spanish possessions of the Iberian Union in Africa and the Americas, in order that the Spanish would not collect eno ...

'' plan, he was particularly active against the

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Port ...

West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mau ...

but failed to capture the colony of

Luanda Luanda () is the Capital (political), capital and largest city in Angola. It is Angola's primary port, and its major Angola#Economy, industrial, Angola#Culture, cultural and Angola#Demographics, urban centre. Located on Angola's northern Atl ...

, an important center for the

Atlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade, transatlantic slave trade, or Euro-American slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and ...

, in early 1624. After this initial defeat he decided to wait for reinforcements from

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

before making a second attempt, this time with fellow corsair

Piet Heyn Piet Pieterszoon Hein (25 November 1577 – 18 June 1629) was a Dutch admiral and privateer for the Dutch Republic during the Eighty Years' War. Hein was the first and the last to capture a large part of a Spanish treasure fleet which tra ...

, in October of that same year. While approaching from the south Heyn missed van Zuylen's 3-ship squadron, waiting to the north of Loanda, and decided to go ahead with the attack on his own. Heyn's fleet suffered a disastrous defeat as a result. Many of his ships became stuck in the shallows just outside Loanda and, when other ships stopped to free them, made easy targets for the Portuguese cannons. Heyn quickly realized that his seven ships could not breach the colony's heavily defended fortifications. Following a failed nighttime sortie against Portuguese merchant ships moored in the harbor, he ordered a withdrawal and the Dutch corsair fleet retreated back to friendly ports. In 1641, another Dutch corsair, named

Cornelis Jol Cornelis Corneliszoon Jol (1597 – 31 October 1641), nicknamed ''Houtebeen'' ("pegleg"), was a 17th-century Dutch corsair and admiral in the Dutch West India Company during the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic. He was one ...

, succeeded in capturing Luanda after a brutal battle. Nevertheless, the colony did not last long under Dutch rule, as it was recaptured by the Portuguese in 1643.Ratelband, Klaas, ''Nederlanders in West-Afrika, 1600-1650''. Zutphen, 2003.

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