Bakongo
The 1665 Kongo-Portuguese war and the killing of the hereditary king by the Portuguese soldiers led to a political vacuum. Kongo kingdom disintegrated into smaller kingdoms, each controlled by nobles considered friendly by the Portuguese. One of these kingdoms was the kingdom of Loango. The Loango was in the northern part, above the Congo river, a region which long before the war was already an established community of the Kongo people. New kingdoms came into existence in this period, from the disintegrated parts in the southeast and the northeast of the old Kongo kingdom. The old capital of Kongo people called Sao Salvador was burnt down, in ruins and abandoned in 1678. The fragmented new kingdoms of Kongo people disputed each other's boundaries and rights, as well as of other non-Kongo ethnic groups bordering them, leading to steady wars and mutual raids.