He assured stability by immediately banishing any possible rivals, sending one of his brothers to Vietnam and the other one into a solitary priesthood, and sending his cousins west, towards Siam. He was a strict and austere monarch, and ran the country according to firm laws. He was greatly respected as a ruler, and within five years of his ascension, his reputation reached the Dutch representatives of the Dutch East India Company who were in Phnom Penh. The Jesuit Giovanni Maria Leria arrived in Vientiane at the same time as the Dutch merchants 1641 and received the first European envoys into Laos.