Siam had received two Jesuits in 1630. They came as envoys of the governor of the Philippines, and so charmed the King that they were invited to stay. When Spanish vessels followed them, the Siamese were indignant; but the quarrel was adjusted, and in 1685 six learned "mathematicians" of the great King Louis XIV. came, with gorgeous parade and an imposing military escort, to the Siamese court. The Jesuits were now everywhere diplomatic agents for the expansion of French commerce, if not French territory, and the work in Siam was facilitated by a French adventurer, named Phaulcon, who had won the King's confidence. The King asked for more "mathematicians," and fourteen Jesuits eagerly responded. But with them (in 1687) came a French squadron and several regiments, who proceeded to occupy and fortify positions in Bangkok and Merguy. The King soon detected that the learned mathematicians and the minister Phaulcon and the French regiments had a close and secret understanding, and this remarkable attempt to spread the gospel came to a premature close. Phaulcon lost his head, and the mathematicians were banished.
We have seen in a previous chapter how the Jesuits had applied their elastic principles to the conversion of India, the original and central field of the Asiatic missions. After sending most imposing figures of baptisms to Europe during a century, they announced, we saw, that the work had been profoundly unsatisfactory, and some new plan of reaching the educated Hindus must be adopted. So Father de Nobili had dressed as a Hindu priest of the most sacred caste, had adopted all the emblems and practices of the caste, and had behaved throughout life in such a way that the other members of the Saniassi sect were unable to discover that he was a Christian. Father Britto, Father Beschi, and other Jesuits succeeded him in this fantastic rôle. Rome was solemnly assured, as it was from China, that the rites and emblems of the Saniassi (which are saturated with Hindu mythology) were "purely civil" in their nature; local prelates (who were frequently ex-Jesuits) and Vatican officials were bribed or persuaded to sanction this fiction; and for more than a century the Jesuits permitted a number of members of the Society to don the sacred clothes and practise the rites of the Saniassi.