Kingdom of Kongo
Kongo Civil War

In the aftermath of the battle of Mbwila, there was no clear succession. The country was divided between rival claimants to the throne. The two factions, Kimpanzu and Kinlaza, hardened, and partitioned the country between them. Pretenders would ascend to the throne, and then be ousted. The period was marked by an increase in BaKongo slaves being sold across the Atlantic, the weakening of the Kongo monarchy and the strengthening of Soyo.

During this chaos, Kongo was being increasingly manipulated by Soyo. In an act of desperation, the central authority in Kongo called on Luanda to attack Soyo in return for various concessions. The Portuguese invaded the county of Soyo in 1670. They met with no more success than Garcia II, being roundly defeated by Soyo's forces at the Battle of Kitombo on 18 October 1670. The kingdom of Kongo was to remain completely independent, though still embroiled in civil war, thanks to the very force (Portuguese colonials) it had fought so long to destroy. This Portuguese defeat was resounding enough to end all Portuguese ambitions in Kongo's sphere of influence, until the end of the nineteenth century.

The battles between the Kimpanzu and Kinlaza continued plunging the kingdom into a chaos not known in centuries. The fighting between the two lineages led to the sack of São Salvador in 1678. Ironically, the capital built by the pact of Mpemba and Mbata was burned to the ground, not by the Portuguese or rival African nations but by its very heirs. The city and hinterland around Mbanza Kongo became depopulated. The population dispersed into the mountain top fortresses of the rival kings. These were the Mountain of Kibangu east of the capital and the fortress of the Águas Rosadas, a line founded in the 1680s from descendants of Kinlaza and Kimpanzu, the region of Mbula, or Lemba where a line founded by the Kinlaza pretender, Pedro III ruled; and Lovota, a district in southern Soyo that sheltered a Kimpanzu lineage whose head was D Suzanna de Nóbrega. Finally, D Ana Afonso de Leão founded her own center on the Mbidizi River at Nkondo and guided her junior kinsmen to reclaim the country, even as she sought to reconcile the hostile factions.

In the interim, however, tens of thousands fleeing the conflict or caught up in the battles were sold as slaves to European slave traders every year. One human stream led north to Loango, whose merchants, known as Vili (Mubires in the period) carried them primarily to merchants bound for North America and the Caribbean, and others were taken south to Luanda, where they were sold to Portuguese merchants bound for Brazil. By the end of the seventeenth century, several long wars and interventions by the now independent Counts of Soyo (who restyled themselves as Grand Princes) had brought an end to Kongo's golden age.
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