Later that year, the VOC, without English support, committed one of the bloodiest outrages of the colonial era when they assaulted the main island of Lonthor and slaughtered most of its approximately thirteen thousand inhabitants. The few survivors were sent off to forced labor in Java or enslaved to work the clove trees that had once been theirs. In the decades that followed, those who had been packed off to Java were sent back home when the Dutch found themselves in need of native expertise to salvage their mismanaged nutmeg groves.
