Conquerors

by Roger Crowley

  On October 26, as he was approaching Calicut, the admiral hanged two captured Muslims from his mast. They had been condemned on the “evidence” of the children taken from the Miri, who recognized them as having killed some of Cabral’s men in the previous year’s massacre. Another was stabbed to death with spears the following day for having stolen things from the trading post, on the same testimony. On October 29, the fleet came to anchor some way off the town. “We could only see a small part of it situated in a flat valley entirely covered by large palm trees,” said Tomé Lopes. A deputation came from the samudri, repeating the terms already sent. Gama was unyielding. There must be a full restitution for loss of life and property, and all the Muslims must be expelled, “whether merchants or permanent residents, otherwise he did not wish to make peace or any agreement with him, because Muslims were enemies of Christians and vice versa since the world began…and henceforward not to allow any ship from Mecca to come to his ports or trade.” This was patently impossible, and Gama must have known that. The samudri gave the most mollifying answer he could. He wanted peace, but the Muslims had been there since ancient times. There were four or five thousand Muslim homes in the city; their people were honest and loyal and performed many valuable services.

  Gama declared the reply an insult and seized the messengers. Relations deteriorated over the day, with increasingly bad-tempered notes passing to and fro. In the midst of this, some fishermen had put to sea in their boats, thinking that peace had been agreed. The Portuguese snatched the men, then seized a large dhow laden with food. The samudri’s blood rose. Such actions were against the spirit of the ocean. “The Christians took more delight in theft and acts of aggression at sea than in trade…his port had always been open,” he pointed out, “and that’s why the admiral mustn’t hinder or chase away the Mecca Muslims.” If Gama accepted these terms, the samudri “would act accordingly…if not, he must quit his port at once and remain there no more; he wasn’t authorized to stay, nor to stop at any other port in all [the Malabar Coast of] India.” Gama responded with some cultural sneers: his own master could create as good a king out of a palm tree. The order to leave would have no other effect than to ensure that he didn’t get to enjoy chewing his betel leaf that day. He demanded a fitting reply by noon the following day. Or else.

  That evening he ordered all his ships toward the city; they were firmly anchored bows forward to minimize the target for the samudri’s guns. As darkness fell, the crews saw a large number of people on the beach with lanterns. They worked all night digging trenches and emplacements for their own artillery. “At dawn,” Lopes remembered, “we saw many more people come to the beach.” Gama ordered his ships to draw nearer and to be ready. Then he gave further orders. At one in the afternoon, if there was no further reply, they were to hang the captured Muslims from the masts, and many of the Hindu fishermen from the yards, “hoisting them up very high so that they could be more clearly seen.” No reply came. “And thirty-four were hanged.”

  There was soon a large crowd on the beach, looking aghast at the sight—and doubtless trying to identify their relatives. While they gazed up in horror, the ships fired two shots into the crowd from their heavy guns, scattering the people. All the other cannons opened up, hurling “a continuous storm and rain of iron balls and stones that created enormous destruction and killed many people.” Lopes watched as the people threw themselves on the sand, then fled, or crawled away on their stomachs “like serpents; and seeing them cry we jeered at them loudly and the beach was soon cleared.” There were attempts to return fire, but the Indian bombards were ineffectual—“they fired badly and took a long time to load”—and were abandoned as heavy shots started to land nearby. The firing continued until evening without a pause, tearing holes in the wooden houses and felling palm trees, with “such a crash that it seemed like they were being chopped down by axes. Sometimes we saw people fleeing from the town in places hit by shot.”

  The power of Portuguese artillery, unmatched in the Indian Ocean

  But Gama had not finished. Late in the evening, to speed things up and to increase the terror, he ordered all the bodies hanging from the yards to be hauled down. Their heads, hands, and feet were cut off and the truncated corpses thrown into the sea. The decapitated body parts were stowed in one of the fishing craft. A letter was drafted, translated into Malayalam, and fixed by an arrow to the prow; the boat was then towed toward the beach. The letter read:

  I have come to this port to buy and sell and pay for your produce. And here is the produce of this country. I am sending you this present now. It is also for your king. If you want our friendship you must pay for everything that you have taken in this port under your guarantee. Furthermore you will pay for the powder and the cannon balls that you have made us spend. If you do that, we will immediately be friends.

  The corpses washed up on the shore. Cautiously, people came to inspect the boat and the prominent letter. Gama ordered the firing to stop so that those on the beach could absorb the impact of his offering. Lopes watched what happened next. When they saw the contents of the boat

  their faces changed, betraying the seriousness of the matter. They were utterly distraught, they couldn’t believe their eyes. Some of them came at the run, and when they saw the heads they always took off again at a run. Others took some of the heads and carried them away, holding them at arm’s length. We were very close and could see it all well. We all stayed awake that night, because of the great wailing from the shore, and the chanting over the bodies that the sea had thrown up. And all night they didn’t stop repairing their trenches by the light of candles and lanterns, out of fear that we were going to set fire to the town.

  At dawn, the artillery from all eighteen ships opened up again. The houses close to the water had already been ruined. This time the aim was higher, targeting the grand mansions of the wealthy and important farther back. The town seemed almost deserted; Gama could probably have sacked it if he had wished. Maybe he was still hoping to pummel the samudri into submission. The firing continued all morning. Four hundred shots from the heavy bombards tore into the town. There was a belated attempt by some craft to rescue a dhow the Portuguese had taken, but they were forced into hasty retreat.

  The next day Gama set sail for Cochin, trailing bloody vengeance behind him and leaving six carracks and a caravel, under the command of Vicente Sodré, to blockade Calicut by sea. At least the Portuguese could rely on some support at Cochin. Its raja proved to be Portugal’s most durable ally, whose loyalty in the long run largely went unrewarded, but his desire to escape the yoke of Calicut ensured a warm welcome.

  The whole Malabar Coast, however, was disturbed by the turbulent visitations of the Portuguese, and the growing tension between the Hindu kings and their Muslim trading subjects caused frictions even in Cochin. The loading of spices was a stop-and-start affair, with prices not agreed—and the merchants performing a tactical slowdown at strategic moments. “Sometimes they asked more for the spices,” according to Lopes, “at others they wouldn’t take our merchandise. Because of these new demands they made every day they would suddenly stop loading our ships. They thus compelled the admiral to go ashore every day.” Lopes noted, “When they had settled with him on one point they commenced loading again, and then suddenly they stopped.” Gama perhaps realized the limits to irascibility—it was crucial not to alienate his one true ally—and trading at Cochin at least provided some temperate local advice. In this interval, the Portuguese were able to widen their knowledge of the Indian subcontinent. They heard tales of Ceylon, “a rich and very large island three hundred leagues long, with great mountains, cinnamon grows in enormous quantities, precious stones, a great profusion of pearls.” It was an enticing prospect—to be added to the avid list of places for future investigation. Interested groups of Christians, followers of St. Thomas, came to see them from neighboring ports and offered both submission to King Manuel and help loading spices.

  —

  In
Calicut, the blockade of the Sodrés was causing hardship and the samudri was still working to find a solution to the Portuguese problem. He was attempting to construct a united front against the incomers by direct and indirect means, in the face of their terrifying firepower and aggression. His strategy was attritional: to attempt to slow down spice negotiations with Gama’s factors so that the Portuguese would stay too long and be trapped by the monsoon. This accounted for the stop-and-start tactics of the Muslim merchants at Cochin, but a blockade of its port from other trade forced them to come round.

  The samudri tried one more tack. He sent a Brahman to Gama with a fresh peace offer. Gama was impressed: the Brahmans, the high priests of India, were men of eminent caste. Through this emissary, the samudri offered payment for damages and a new treaty of friendship. Gama was inclined to take this visitor seriously, despite some discordant details in his story. He personally wanted to come to Portugal and asked to have his spices loaded on the ships. The Brahman and some other hostages departed with Gama back to Calicut. At Calicut the Brahman was let ashore, leaving his sons on board, promising to return. He failed to do so; another man came instead, asking Gama to send “a gentleman” ashore to receive what was owed. On hearing the word “gentleman,” Gama exploded. He demanded to make known to the king that he wouldn’t send even the least of his ship’s boys. He owed the king nothing; if the samudri had something to give him, he must bring it to the ship himself. Mollifying words were given in reply. It would all be sorted out by the end of the following day, but by evening the admiral’s patience had been exhausted.

  Tropical night fell over Calicut.

  In the dark hours before dawn, the lookouts of Gama’s ship saw a fishing boat leaving the harbor. As it came closer, they realized that it was actually two boats tied together. Gama was roused from his cabin. Dressing quickly, he came out on deck, thinking that the king was delivering on his promise. It was soon clear that something different was in train. They could discern seventy to eighty boats silently putting to sea. For a while those on watch persisted in believing they were a fishing fleet. It was when the first shots rang out that they realized their mistake.

  The fireballs from the attackers’ bombards skimmed the water and thwacked holes in the flagship. Soon the boats had surrounded the ship. Showers of arrows hit anyone who appeared on deck. Rocks were hurled from the top masts, but the attackers were now too close and delivering too much fire for the Portuguese gunners to operate their own guns. A captured dhow attached to the carrack’s stern was set on fire in the hope that the flames would spread to the ship itself. It was cut loose. More boats swarmed around, armed with light bombards and bows and arrows. There was nothing for it but to cut the anchor cables, abandon the anchors, and cast off, but Gama’s flagship had been secured with a stout chain precisely to prevent someone from cutting its cable in the dark. The crew had to hack away laboriously at this with axes, under steady fire, before the ship could be released. When it was finally freed, the sea was so calm that the vessel sat motionless on the dawn water, being subjected to a storm of missiles.

  It was chance that saved Gama’s ship. Vicente Sodré’s flotilla—a carrack and two caravels—unexpectedly appeared from Cannanore. The sea was flat calm, and the ships had to be laboriously rowed forward against the armada of small boats, firing their guns. The attackers finally drew off, “some without arms or legs, others killed outright by the cannons.”

  The deeply suspicious Gama was doubly furious: both at the trap and at having allowed himself to be lured into it. Again the suspended bodies of the hostages were paraded along the seafront from the yardarms of his caravels, then dumped in a native boat and floated to the shore with an even more sulfurous message: “O miserable man, you had me called and I came at your request. You have done all that you could, and you would have done more if you could. You have had the punishment that you deserve: when I return here I will pay your due—and it won’t be in money.”

  Signature of Vasco da Gama

  9

  Toeholds

  December 1502–1505

  GAMA SET SAIL FOR Lisbon in February 1503, leaving behind two fragile toeholds on the Indian coast—the trading posts at Cannanore and Cochin—and a furious and humiliated samudri in Calicut, additionally enraged with the sultan of Cochin for defying his attempts to uproot the Portuguese pirates. It was clear that there could be no peaceful negotiations with these intruders, whose visitations were assuming an ominous regularity. With the dying of each monsoon, their ships returned, sometimes in small squadrons, sometimes in major shows of force. They announced themselves with displays of flags and volleys of cannon fire. They came with intemperate demands for spices and for the expulsion of the deep-rooted Muslim community; they flouted the taboos of Hindu culture and backed up their threats with traumatic acts of violence beyond the acceptable rules of war.

  The Portuguese now started trying to introduce a toll system for shipping along the shores of the Malabar Coast; they issued safe-conduct passes, called cartazes, that ensured protection for the vessels of friendly powers. This was effectively a tax on commerce. In time it would require merchant shipping to trade in Portuguese-controlled ports and, additionally, pay substantial import and export duties. The cartazes, stamped with the image of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, marked a radical shift in the Indian Ocean. With the coming of the Europeans, the sea was no longer a free-trade zone. The cartaz system introduced the alien concept of territorial waters, a politicized space controlled by armed force and the Portuguese ambition to dominate the sea.

  —

  The full implications of these threats to Indian Ocean trade were now echoing across the wider world. In December 1502, the worried Venetians established a Calicut committee with the express purpose of soliciting action from the sultan in Cairo; this was to be undertaken by their ambassador, Benedetto Sanuto, “to find rapid and secret remedies.” The utmost discretion was essential. The potential scandal of aiding Muslims against their Christian brethren made Venetian overtures extremely delicate, but Sanuto’s mission was clear: to highlight to the sultan the threat posed by a Portuguese blockade of his spice route, to urge him to put pressure on the samudri to expel the intruders, and, to the obvious advantage of the Venetians themselves, to lower tariffs on spices traded through Egypt to compete with the Portuguese.

  In Cairo itself, the sultan, Al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghawri, had other things to concern himself with—outbreaks of sedition, threats to the pilgrim routes to Mecca and Medina from Bedouin tribesmen, an empty treasury—but the sudden appearance of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean was as disconcerting as it was inexplicable. “The audacity of the Franks knows no limit,” reported the chronicler Ibn Iyas of their growing incursions.

  They say that the Franks have succeeded in effecting a breach in the dyke constructed by Alexander [the Great]…this breach has been made in a mountain that separates the China Sea [the Indian Ocean] from the Mediterranean. The Franks have been striving to enlarge this cutting to allow their ships to pass into the Red Sea. Such is the origin of this piracy.

  In the Arabian Nights world of Mamluk Cairo, such fantasies circulated. The sultan turned a deaf ear to the Venetian suit: the notion of cutting his tax revenues held little appeal, but the echo of Portuguese outrages continued to amplify. The sultan was guardian of the holy places of Mecca and Medina and, according to his title, “Defender of the Faithful.” While a blockade of the Red Sea would affect his purse, freedom for hajj pilgrims and the wider protection of Muslims touched his very legitimacy. The fate of the Miri had made a deep impression. A second event in the winter of 1502, while Gama was still in Cochin, ensured that, sooner or later, the Portuguese problem would have to be addressed.

  —

  Vicente Sodré, Gama’s uncle, had left to patrol the Malabar Coast farther north and was off the coast of Cannanore, where the Portuguese were on friendly terms, when he received a request from its raja to apprehend ships belonging to a wealthy Musl
im merchant that had just departed without paying their taxes. Sodré, whose taste for violence was equal to that of his nephew, would have burned the ships if the raja wished. The raja did not—paying the taxes would be quite sufficient. The merchant, known as Mayimama Marakkar, returned to port and paid grudgingly, then left again with curses on the raja and the king of Portugal.

  On the raja’s complaint, Sodré took the law into his own hands. He had the merchant stripped naked and tied to the mast, where he was savagely beaten and subjected to one of the unpleasant outrages that the Portuguese were prone to inflict on the Muslims of Morocco, that of merdimboca—“shit in the mouth”—to which Sodré added a further ingredient. He was gagged with a short stick and, with his hands tied behind him, a piece of bacon fat was also inserted into his mouth. The abused man offered a huge sum of money to be spared these humiliations. Sodré’s reply was akin to that of Gama when the Miri tried to buy its freedom: “goods could be paid for with money, but not the honor of kings and great lords.” Marakkar was a powerful figure within the trading world of the Indian Ocean, and this traumatic ordeal left him burning for revenge. In 1504 he went in person to Cairo to report this blasphemy to the sultan, Defender of the Faithful, and request action against the cursed infidels.

  Back on the Malabar Coast, the samudri was also hankering for vengeance. He fully understood the danger the Portuguese would pose if they secured a permanent foothold within the spice kingdoms. It was almost common knowledge that when Gama sailed away on the inevitable winds, the samudri would fall on Cochin to punish its sultan and destroy the nascent Portuguese trading post. To this end, the squadron of Vicente Sodré was tasked with protecting the colony and supporting Cochin’s ruler. Sodré, however, had also been commissioned to blockade the Red Sea and destroy Muslim ships traveling to and from Calicut, and this latter task, which promised rich plunder, was more to his liking. Aided and abetted by his brother Brás, Sodré ignored all the pleas of the king of Cochin and the Portuguese trading post and set sail north to line his pockets. This flagrant desertion of his countrymen did not go unprotested. Two captains gave up their commands to stay with the beleaguered colony.