access to the Atlantic coast, and had made Dahomey a prominent power along the Slave Coast. Wars with the Oyo Empire The Aja kingdoms had been tributaries to the Oyo Empire since the 1680s. After Agaja had conquered Allada, it appears that he sent a smaller tribute and so on April 14, 1726, the Oyo Empire sent its army against Dahomey. The Oyo conquered Abomey and burned the city while Agaja and his troops escaped into the marshes and hid until the Oyo armies returned home. Agaja rebuilt Abomey and when he conquered Whydah the next year he provided many gifts to the King of Oyo. Despite these gifts, tributary terms acceptable to Oyo were not agreed to and so the Oyo Empire returned on March 22, 1728. As part of a strategy, Agaja buried his treasure, burned food resources, and made all the residents of Abomey abandon the city. The Oyo army found it difficult to remain in that situation and so they returned to Oyo in April. This strategy was repeated in 1729 and 1730, with Oyo sending increasingly larger armies and Agaja and his troops retreating into the marshes. The 1730 invasion was particularly devastating as the Oyo feigned acceptance of gifts from Agaja but then ambushed Dahomey's forces when they returned to Abomey. With the regular destruction of Abomey, Agaja moved the capital to Allada and ruled from there (his son Tegbessou would later move the capital back to Abomey while appointing a puppet king in Allada). After the 1730 attack by the Oyo Empire, Agaja's forces were particularly depleted. Huffon and the deposed royal family of Whydah, with support from the British and the French, attempted to reconquer the city. With depleted forces, Agaja created a special unit of women dressed in war armor to assemble at the back of his remaining army to make his forces look larger. The ploy worked as the Whydah forces saw a huge force marching toward the city and fled before any fighting happened. After this attack, Agaja asked the Portuguese leader in the area to negotiate a peace agreement between Dahomey and Oyo. The agreement set the boundaries between Oyo and Dahomey at the Ouémé River and made Dahomey a tributary state of Oyo, a status which would remain until 1832. As a guarantee, Agaja had to send a son, Tegbessou, to Oyo. Centralization For the last ten