by Tom Anderson
Raosaheb’s strategy was sensible enough. Gawhilghoor was a legendary fortress in that part of India, thought to be impenetrable. Situated in the mountains north of the Deccan Plateau, it was known as the Fortress of the Skies and was defended both by strong walls and a ravine forming a natural defence between the walls. By this point Raosaheb’s army had shrunk to only around four thousand, but even that many men could hold the fortress against a much larger army.
It was difficult to bring the Goanese guns up the mountain to blow a breach in the walls, and they failed to make much impression once they were there. After a failed frontal assault against the main gate which suffered heavy casualties, Parreiras adopted a different approach. A second frontal attack was implemented by sepoys as a diversion, while his Portuguese soldiers stood by with ladders to attempt an escalade of the walls near the gatehouse. The daring plan was supported by Cazadores (Riflemen) stationed higher on a mountain ledge, who could accurately shoot down those enemy soldiers on the walls who planned to throw back the ladders and fight the escalading troops. In the event most records of the battle suggest it was the Cazadores who turned the tide, as otherwise Raosaheb’s men would have been able to defeat the escalade. With the accurate rifle bullets raining down from above, though, the Marathas retreated and the Portuguese were able to capture the gatehouse, opening the door to their main army. The rebels were defeated, and Raosaheb brought back to Poona for a public execution.
The brief Peshwa’s War served to place Portugal in a firm position of influence over the Peshwa’s domains in Konkan, vassalising Madhavarao. Working on the British model, Parreiras appointed a ‘resident’ at Pune whose real job was to inform the Peshwa what foreign policy he should set if he knew what was good for him. Ironically enough this involved shutting out British Bombay to some trade, just under the level of provocation that would get the British angry enough to intervene. Although Peter IV pursued the renewal of the old Anglo-Portuguese Alliance in American and African waters, India – as always – was another question.
Similar Portuguese interventions took place elsewhere, with renewed tinkering in spheres of influence that had previously been tacitly ceded to the Dutch: Portuguese ambassadors were sent to the anti-Dutch Kingdom of Kandy that ruled the interior of Ceylon, and (with less success, due to the tight Dutch system of control) several Javanese states. These were mostly due to Parreiras’ influence: due to his famous victory at Gawhilghoor in 1796, he received greater favours, a vice-countship and more powers from the King. He sought to establish a single policy for all Portuguese colonial and imperial activity in the Indian Ocean, which he saw as his rightful domain.
Possibly Parreiras’ greatest achievement was his alliance with Zand Persia. The Zand dynasty had proved to be relatively non-belligerent by Persian standards, but wars persisted in coming their way. In particular, a near-continuous battle with the Durranis of Khorasan had persisted ever since Ahmad Shah Durrani’s death, in which by the 1790s the Persians were starting to gain the upper hand. The Persians were also concerned about the Ottomans, for three reasons: as a source of direct aggression; in that their activities in the Crimea might drag Russia into intervention (particularly given Persia had taken the opportunity of the Russian Civil War to annex all of Azerbaijan); and the fact that Ottoman, and Ottoman-backed Omani, trade was usurping traditionally Persian-influenced lands in East Africa. Zanzibar, the great trading city whose name was Persian for ‘land of the blacks’, had become first Portuguese and then Omani (since 1698). The Zands were better informed about European philosophies than most Persian dynasties, obvious given their interest in the French Revolution (whereas the Ottomans dismissed it as ‘a Christian affair’) and so it is perhaps not surprising that Shah-Advocate Ali Zand Shah[269] is known to have quoted ‘if you would seek peace, prepare for war’…
Historically Portuguse-Persian relations had been fairly hostile, but the more moderate Zands could recognise the value of an alliance. The Zand leadership was tolerant enough to allow a few trade posts full of Catholics on the Persian coast – though the Persian people sometimes disagreed, persecuting their own Assyrian Christians in response – and, in exchange for this opening of trade, the Portuguese trained elements of the Persian army in European warfare, though other elements were kept traditional: the Zands were hedging their bets.
The full import of the Portuguese-Persian alliance, of course, would not come into play until the start of the Time of Troubles, after the early stages of the Jacobin Wars…
Chapter 47: Finisterre
“While we waited at the bottom of the world, someone turned it upside down…”
- Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse (private journal)
*
From: “Exploration and Discovery in the late 18th Century” (English translation) by Francois Laforce, Nouvelle Université de Nantes, 1961—
We have already covered the first two voyages of La Pérouse. The first, led by his flagship d’Estaing and accompanied by four frigates and a supply ship, was an arguably successful mapping mission that dramatically expanded French knowledge of the Pacific region, at a time when British investment in South Sea exploration had reached a low ebb. The second part of the mission, to establish new trade contacts, was less successful. Both Qing China and Japan were in highly isolationist moods and refused any attempts to expand trade.
Corea, under the ageing King Hyojang,[270] was more open to trade than it had been in the past, but was more interested in an exchange of ideas than the bread-and-butter trade which was what the emptying French treasury of the 1780s desperately needed. Nonetheless, La Pérouse allowed his two chief natural philosophers, the astronomer Laplace and the natural historian Lamarck, as well as the other scientific gentlemen among his crew, to trade ideas with the Coreans. La Pérouse’s account of Corea was of great interest in Europe, which had been out of touch with the country since King Yeongjo cracked down on Catholic missionaries in the 1750s. The European reading audience discovered that Hyojang, on his accession in 1770, had reversed this decision and tolerated Catholicism. This was thought partly to be due to Hyojang’s favouring the Silhak Movement, a Neo-Confucian school of thought which sought reforms to the corrupt Corean system of government of the eighteenth century.
The leader of the current ‘Third Wave’ of the Silhak Movement was Jeong Yak-yong, who had written a manifesto (the Mongmin Shimsu) whilst under house arrest by Yeongjo for his Catholic beliefs and his controversial reform ideas. Jeong’s ideas are comparable with those taking shape at the same time in Zand Persia, that the state must be headed by a King, but that the rights of common people must be inalienable, and they must be given a voice in the running of the state. He also favoured a utilitarian approach to philosophy and technology, and poured scorn on the Corean status quo which saw more interest in obscure poetry and etymology than things which would actually be of use to Corea lifting itself out of its subordinate position to China – unlike most Corean political thinkers, Jeong did not believe this subordination was an inevitability of history and geography.[271] Hyojang released Jeong from prison and used him as an advisor; he, and other prominent Silhak thinkers such as Pak Je-ga – who criticised the Chinese-style system of examination for civil service posts, arguing that this supposedly meritocratic approach had become corrupt and led to incompetents in positions of power – clashed with more traditional Confucians in open debates at court. The Silhak, although in the minority, won several political victories from the fact that their opponents had grown comfortable and complacent from having no opposition under Yeongjo’s authoritarian rule.
Like Zand ideas, Silhak writings were transmitted back to Europe (in this case via La Pérouse) and may have had some influence on the French Revolution, English Reformism, and other European radical movements of the period, much as the French Revolution influenced Persia in turn. The Coreans also acquired some European military technology from the French, primarily innovations artillery, which in the eastern school
of warfare was still held to be paramount. Although the Corean infantry would suffer from using outdated muskets for some years to come, this artillery knowledge nonetheless represented a significant advantage over other armies in the region – the Chinese having failed in their attempts to acquire superior European artillery from both the Swedes and the Russians. Additionally, Jeong’s position of power, together with his former career masterminding the construction of fortresses for the Corean government (before converting to Catholicism and developing radical political ideas) meant that Hyojang embarked upon a campaign of fortress-building along the border with China and elsewhere. This was partly in key with the Silhak idea that Corea should be able to stand up to China one day, rather than forever being a vassal, and partly because Hyojang wanted a series of royal strongpoints that could be held against rebellious nobles who objected to Silhak action against their corruption, and granting more power to their peasants. However, the nobles and traditional Confucians retained enough power at court to successfully shoot down a Silhak plan to collectivise farming on a village basis. The won some other victories, but the Silhak were more successful than most had predicted, and Jeong’s blend of Catholicism with Neo-Confucianism (inherited from the seventeenth-century missionary to China Matteo Ricci) became Corea’s most influential, if not most popular, religion/ideology.
Corea was, of course, only one of the places that La Pérouse visited on his first voyage. His ships explored the South Sea Islands, the Galapogos Islands (whose fauna Lamarck would use to argue for his ideas of spontaneous evolution), and the long-forgotten Dutch discovery of New Zealand, which the French renamed Autiaraux after the name given to it by its Mauré natives. La Pérouse’s supplying of some Mauré tribes with muskets in return for supplies dramatically upset the balance of power in Autiaraux for many years to come.
After exploring the unexpectedly fertile south coast of New Holland (as it was then called), the fleet returned to France in 1793. Despite the deepening economic crisis, La Pérouse and his scientific allies were so popular and influential that they received enough ships and funds to return to New Holland (or La Pérouse’s Land as it was officially renamed) and plant a colony. Possibly Louis XVI believed that such a colony would make a good prestige project to help re-inspire public faith in his government, replacing the losses in the wars in America. That proved to be inaccurate, but by the time the French Revolution broke out, the large fleet was already rounding the Cape of Good Hope.
The next six years have been celebrated in countless, mostly French-penned, novels and films. La Pérouse returned to the site he had named Albi after his hometown[272] and established a full-blown colony on the site of their former temporary camp. He was accompanied by his scientific men – Lamarck and Laplace now joined by others such as Jacques-Julien Houtou de Labillardière, a botanist, and C.F Beautemps-Beaupré, a hydrographical engineer who mapped the approaches to Albi bay, and many others, in such detail that the colony suffered fewer accidents in that regard than any other colony in unknown lands in history. Lamarck was impatient to learn more about the fauna of the new continent (and Labillardière, of course, thought the same about the flora) and advocated that La Pérouse plant other outposts so that their hinterlands could be explored in detail, with the outposts as bases for resupply. La Pérouse was extremely doubtful about whether this was a good idea, only about eight months after Albi was established but, on the other hand, his success in this country had been and would be partly due to what worth the natural philosophers could extract from it. He beat Lamarck’s ambitious ideas down to one further outpost colony, which Beautemps-Beaupré was asked to site. The engineer, after surveying several bays along the coast north of Albi, chose one whose country – and afterwards the city placed there – was named Béron after the native name.[273]
The colony cities, Albi and smaller Béron, came into existence with relatively large populations, not least because Louis XVI had taken a leaf out of Britain’s book and given La Pérouse all the most politically awkward people he could find as colonists. This meant that the colonist population was somewhat sullen and resentful, but La Pérouse was helped by the fact that the rather barren terrain behind the colonies, filled with natives (whom the French rather inaccurately called indiens[274]) who were not unreasonably resentful at all these mysterious white strangers appearing on their land. This meant the colonists had to stick together, no matter how awkward their divisions were, or die.
They nearly died anyway. Lamarck had overestimated the farming potential of New Gascony[275] and the colonies proved unable to feed themselves. Trade with the Indiens proved unhelpful due to a wider difference in values than even that between Europeans and the Mauré, and also because the natives simply had little to trade. Only around Béron was a lasting relationship achieved with the local Ouarandjeré people, although European diseases worked their toll even with that agreement.
To prevent starvation, La Pérouse decided to return to Autiaraux and trade with the Mauré for staple crops, and perhaps farming advice in these climes (although the climates of La Pérouse’s Land and Autiaraux proved different enough for this not to be of much use). At the same time, he sent his second-in-command, Captain Philippe Durand of the Émeraude, to try the same mission with the Dutch East India Company and the South Sea islands. Durand was arguably more successful in terms of obtaining food and local crop seeds with which to improve the colony’s supply situation, but La Pérouse’s voyage was, inevitably, more colourful.
Less than ten years since he had first visited Autiaraux, he returned to find that the Mauré iwi (tribe) he had traded with, the Egnaté Raucaoua,[276] had been busy. They were part of a tribal confederacy or ouaca[277] with three other tribes, called the Tainui, and had taken the opportunity afforded by La Pérouse’s gifts to embark on an expansionist phase. The Tainui had managed to defeat the iwis of Tetaitocquerau,[278] demolishing their pa fortresses after winning key open battles thanks to La Pérouse’s muskets. The Tainui control of Tetaitocquerau was particularly significant because, according to Mauré legend, it was where their race first arrived in the islands in a fleet from Polynesia, and possessed a certain symbolic importance. Both because of this, and simply because of the Tainui absorbing the iwis there, the inland Egnaté Touaritaux formed an alliance with the Egné Touaux of the eastern coast to resist the Tainui aggression.[279] By autumn 1795, when La Pérouse arrived, the Tainui offensive had largely petered out anyway, as they had run out of gunpowder for their muskets.
La Pérouse’s return was welcomed by the Tainui, who had seen the advantages of trading with him before, and were willing to do so again – but this time with a little more experience and cunning. The Tainui’s chief negotiator, Huiwai, offered as much supplies and expertise to La Pérouse as the Tainui could spare – if La Pérouse gave them not just more ammunition and weapons, but also the secret of how gunpowder was made. La Pérouse hesitated, knowing that the long-term impact of this would be great. He was persuaded to give in not simply by necessity but also by Lamarck, who noted that this would be a useful example to study of how important such weapons were in deciding the balance between peoples, and how this fitted into Linnaean Racialism. La Pérouse was unmoved by this cold and cynical maneouvre, but Lamarck had a powerful position and so he agreed to appease the man. In the coming years, the Tainui would resume their offensive, failing to conquer the Touaritaux-Touaux alliance, but successfully achieving domination over the Taranacquie[280] peoples of the south.
This meant that the Tainui-led ‘empire of the musket’ now extended over almost half of the northern island of Autiaraux known as Eahcinomawe.[281] The other half consisted of the Touaritaux-Touaux alliance and the nonaligned iwis, most of whom began to side with the Touaritaux-Touaux. The latter managed to gain the secret of gunpowder from the Tainui by espionage around 1803, shifting the balance again. However the Tainui still had the advantage of having most of the muskets themselves, Maori metallurgy still being rudimentary and not up to mak
ing new guns. The main reason why the Tainui did not expand further was that their leadership had trouble holding down the resentful new peoples they had added to their domain, and guns made little difference to that, a point which Lamarck noted in his log. The new discoveries took a longer time to filter down to the southern isle named Tavay Pocnammoo, which had a far smaller population and was dominated by the Quai Taioux.[282] Generally speaking, the stage was set for the two major power groups to divide Eahcinomawe between them; what would happen next was anyone’s guess.
La Pérouse’s (and Durand’s) assistance helped the colonies survive 1795 and 1796. It was at this point that the frigate Richelieu, attached to La Pérouse’s force, encountered its British counterpart, HMS Lively, while on a voyage of exploration around the barren north of La Pérouse’s Land and New Guinea. The British opened fire without warning, fortunately at long range. The Richelieu’s captain, Paul de Rossel, decided to flee as his men were unprepared and he had let fighting drills lapse due to the fleet’s exile at the end of the world. The Lively gave chase, but a lucky shot from one of the Richelieu’s stern guns brought down her foremast, and the Richelieu was able to hide before the Lively could catch sight of them again in a sheltered New Guinea bay that de Rossel had recently mapped. A disappointed Captain Cooke[283] returned to Calcutta with a confused sighting of a French ship far from all regular shipping lanes.
