Conquerors

by Roger Crowley

  When the powerful bank of the Fuggers set up in the city in 1503–04, it was taken as a sign that Venice’s reputation as the spice hub of Europe was under serious threat, to the malicious delight of the city’s rivals across Italy and beyond. Priuli’s pious hope that Portuguese trade would founder on the rocks of the Cape proved overly optimistic. In February 1504, the Venetian senate listened somberly to a report on the spices that had flowed in from Gama’s second voyage. In contrast, spices had been in extremely short supply for Venetian merchants in Alexandria, for reasons that, unknown to Venice, had as yet little to do with the Portuguese, everything to do with the internal troubles of the Mamluks.

  Lisbon and the Tejo in the sixteenth century

  In the spring of 1504, the Calicut committee decided to renew its secret operations to undermine Portugal’s position. The Venetians commissioned two agents: Leonardo da Ca’Masser was sent to Portugal to investigate further the state of its spice trade. He was to pose as a merchant, to report back in code, and to garner as much information as he could on the whole operation. Meanwhile, Francesco Teldi was to assume the role of a dealer in jewels and go to Cairo, to urge the sultan again, and in utmost secrecy, to break the Portuguese operation in the Indies. The Calicut committee, in conclave within the doge’s palace, entertained wilder schemes. Could the sultan be persuaded to dig a canal at Suez, which might lower the transport costs to Europe? There is no evidence that this idea was ever put to al-Ghawri, but Teldi was instructed to suggest to him that many Venetian merchants were anxious to buy spices in Lisbon, and Manuel had cheekily invited them to do so; that the signoria, of course, wanted to stand by its old trading alliances but if, alas…Implications were to be left hanging in the air, hints and suggestions that other courses might have to be pursued. The truth was that both sides had a common interest but they could approach each other only tangentially, across a frontier of mutual suspicion.

  Even before these men could depart, the growing cries of outrage from the Indian Ocean had compelled the sultan in Cairo to act. He decided on a more muscular approach to test Venetian support and Christian resolve. In March he dispatched a Franciscan monk, Brother Mauro, with a blunt threat: get the Portuguese to withdraw from the Indian Ocean or see the holy places of Jerusalem destroyed. In April, when the Venetians received the monk, they played it ambiguously. They dared not support the sultan’s position; they made a show of asking the sultan not to act but intimated sympathy by hints and circuitous phrasing. Teldi was to inform the sultan that they had not felt able to openly side with him, but also that the Christian powers would be unlikely to defend Jerusalem. They quickly passed the unwelcome visitor on to the pope, like a hot potato. Julius II, in his turn, hurriedly referred the horrifying threat on to Manuel, first by letter, then by forwarding its human agent, Brother Mauro, in person to the Portuguese court. As the monk did not reach Lisbon until the following summer, in June 1505, Manuel had plenty of time to prepare his response. And when the message did arrive, it would have a decisive effect on the Portuguese, though not the one the sultan intended.

  Ca’Masser’s spying mission to Portugal started badly. By the time he reached the capital he had been unmasked, betrayed by Venice’s Florentine rivals there, and thrown into a “horrible prison,” as he later put it. Brought before the king, he somehow managed to talk his way out and spent two years collecting invaluable intelligence for the Venetian state. But Manuel was becoming increasingly wary of foreign snooping. A month after Ca’Masser’s arrival, he issued an edict banning the construction of globes and the reproduction of charts, in an attempt to hoard Portugal’s hard-won advantages against inquisitive interlopers.

  The Portuguese certainly came to think the worst of the Venetians in an increasingly acrimonious commercial contest. They believed, probably erroneously, that two cannon founders who had aided the samudri in 1504 had been sent from Venice. The maritime republic seems to have stopped short of supplying Cairo with technical aid at state level, but there were certainly merchants willing to ship copper bars to Alexandria for the purpose, and they stiffened Arab resolve. There was a floating pool of seamen, artificers, gunners, and technical experts, outcasts and criminals from the Mediterranean basin, some of them probably from the Venetian colonies close to the African shore—Crete and Cyprus—willing to sell their skills to whoever would employ them, and by 1505 some of these men were finding their way to Cairo. The slow buildup of pressure within the Arab world would soon demand decisive action.

  10

  The Kingdom of India

  February–August 1505

  LISBON, FEBRUARY 27, 1505. The orotund phrases of an imperial edict. An address to all those involved in the business of India:

  Dom Manuel, by the grace of God king of Portugal and of the Algarves of this sea and the sea beyond in Africa, lord of Guinea and of the conquest, navigation and commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India, we declare to you captains of the forts that we order to have built in India, judges, factors…the captains of ships, that we send there in this squadron and fleet, noblemen, knights, squires, ship’s masters, pilots, administrators, seamen, gunners, men at arms, officers and platoons, and all other persons…

  The list ran down the hierarchy of rank. Then came the substance: “that through this our letter of authorization as proof, that we, through the great confidence that we have in Dom Francisco d’Almeida…we give him charge as captain-major of all the said fleet and armada and the aforesaid India and to remain in possession of it for three years.”

  There had been repeated debates and fierce opposition voiced within the court about the wisdom of the India venture. The high loss of life, the stubborn resistance of the samudri, the massacre at Calicut, the noble preference for local crusading in nearby Morocco, the fear of the jealousy of rival princes—all these had led to strong resistance to Manuel’s plans. But by 1505 the king, supported by an inner circle of ideologues and advisers, was sure that it was his destiny to pursue the India project. What was wrapped up in the proclamation of February 27 was an entirely new strategy, a bold long-term plan resting on ambitions of breathtaking scale: to establish a permanent empire in India backed up by military force and to gain control of all the trade of the Indian Ocean. The timing was not incidental. Manuel, aware that Brother Mauro was on his way from the pope to express his fears for Jerusalem, probably wanted to act before the unwelcome messenger arrived in person. On a larger scale, the conjunction of international events was highly favorable: Italy was convulsed by war; the Venetians were distracted by their Ottoman campaigns; the Mamluk regime seemed to be in decline; Spain was embroiled in Europe. A window of opportunity existed, a moment of destiny. Manuel realized, too, that the time lags in communication made control from Lisbon impractical. Congenitally insecure and suspicious as he was, Manuel had to delegate to a chosen representative and hand over the baton of command long enough for effective plans to be implemented.

  Francisco de Almeida

  The man to whom this was to be entrusted, Dom Francisco de Almeida, was only the king’s second choice. Tristão da Cunha had been his initial nomination, but the experienced seaman had suddenly been struck down by blindness, probably the result of a vitamin deficiency. Though he later recovered, the incident was taken as a sign from God. Almeida was to be the first member of the high nobility to lead an India expedition. He was about fifty-five years old, with wide military, diplomatic, and nautical experience, but he also possessed the personal qualities that Manuel hoped for in a man to whom he might entrust high affairs of state. Almeida was incorruptible, unmoved by the lure of riches, benevolent, a widower without home ties, pious, and mature in his judgments. For many, the attraction of India was the prospect of personal gain; Almeida was untarnished by the appetites of the Sodrés. He valued titles above bales of spices, and he knew how to fight.

  Almeida was not just to be the captain-major. He was also granted the elevated title of viceroy, nominally with executive power to act in the
king’s place. What this meant in practice was spelled out a week later in the regimento, the instructions given to him by the king. They ran to 101 closely written pages, containing 143 different items divided into chapters and subchapters that revealed both the microscopic level of detail at which the king wished to direct his appointee and the breathtaking scale of his ambition.

  After sailing around the Cape, Almeida was ordered to get control of the Swahili coast. His targets were to be the ports of Sofala, key to the gold trade, and Kilwa. The recommended method was to arrive in the guise of friendship, then attack the towns by surprise, imprison all the Muslim merchants, and seize their riches. Forts were to be constructed and control then exercised over the sources of gold, necessary for trading on the Malabar Coast in exchange for spices. It was to be a mission of war, disguised as peace. Then, wasting no time, he was to proceed directly across the Indian Ocean and build four more forts: at the stopover island, Anjediva, as a support and provisioning hub, and in the friendly cities of Cannanore, Quilon, and Cochin.

  Moving north, another fort was to be built at or near the mouth of the Red Sea and close to the kingdom of Prester John, to choke off the sultan’s spice trade and ensure that “all India should be stripped of the illusion of being able to trade with anyone but ourselves.” Two ships were to be on permanent patrol along the African coast as far as the Horn of Africa.

  The regimento then turned its attention to the intractable Calicut problem. One way or another, the new samudri, as hostile as his predecessor, was to be dealt with. Almeida was to establish peace if the samudri agreed to expel all the Muslims; if not, “wage war and total destruction on him, by all the means you best can by land and sea so that everything possible is destroyed.”

  No strategic point was to be overlooked. After locking up the Red Sea, a fleet was to be sent to other Islamic city-states and kingdoms: Chaul and Cambay, and Ormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Almeida was to demand annual tribute to the king of Portugal; to order these states to break off all commercial relations with the Arab merchants of Cairo and the Red Sea; to capture all Muslim shipping along the way. To pay for all this, he was to ensure the full loading and prompt sailing of the annual spice fleets.

  Portuguese map of southern Africa from 1502, the coastline marked with pillars

  Manuel’s ambition did not end there. After seeing to the spice ships, the viceroy was ordered to open up new frontiers by “discovering” Ceylon, China, Malacca, and “whatever other parts have still not been known.” Pillars were to be planted on this new soil as markers of possession. It was an exhaustive list.

  Though the instructions also claimed to allow Almeida a certain freedom of action in the case of unseen eventualities, in practice they imposed a rigid agenda. Manuel never had seen and never would see the world whose conquest he was demanding, but the regimento revealed an astonishing grasp of the choke points of the Indian Ocean and an authoritative geostrategic vision for controlling them and constructing his own empire. This knowledge had been acquired at breathtaking speed. Within seven years of bursting into the new world, the Portuguese understood, with a fair degree of accuracy, how the twenty-eight million square miles of the Indian Ocean worked, its major ports, its winds, the rhythm of its monsoons, its navigational possibilities and communication corridors—and they were already eyeing farther horizons. The methodology of knowledge acquisition had been developed over the years of slogging round the coast of Africa, during which the Portuguese had become expert observers and collectors of geographical and cultural information. They garnered this with great efficiency, scooping up local informants and pilots, employing interpreters, learning languages, observing with dispassionate scientific interest, drawing the best maps they could. Astronomers were sent on voyages; the collection of latitudes became a state enterprise. Men such as Duarte Pacheco Pereira, substituting firsthand observation for the received wisdom of the ancients, operated within the parameters of Renaissance inquiry. Information about the new world was fed back into a central hub, the India House in Lisbon, where everything was stored under the crown’s direct control to inform the next cycle of voyages. This system of feedback and adaptation was rapid and effective.

  Manuel had drawn on a small coterie of advisers to construct the regimento for Almeida. Influential among them was Gaspar, the Polish Jew posing as a Venetian whom Vasco da Gama had kidnapped on his first voyage. He is woven into the first decade of Portuguese exploration, invaluable as an expert and an interpreter, an elusive figure, changing his identity and name to suit the patron of the moment and the needs of the situation. First Gaspar da Gama, to Manuel probably Gaspar da India, on the forthcoming voyage he would call himself Gaspar de Almeida “out of love for the viceroy.” He had a propensity to tell his new employers what they wanted to hear, but he was well informed. He seems to have had a good knowledge of the Indian Ocean and to have traveled widely. It was he who suggested the first overture to Cochin, and he had probably made voyages to Ceylon, Malacca, and Sumatra. He also understood the strategic importance of the Red Sea. It was this information that seeped into Manuel’s grand plan of 1505.

  Gaspar had advocated that the Portuguese should go straight for the Muslim jugular—attack Aden, close the Red Sea, and suffocate Mamluk trade first; then the samudri would be compelled to become a Portuguese client—rather than laboriously constructing forts on the Malabar Coast that would cost money and lives. The wisdom of the forts strategy would become a hotly debated issue in the years ahead. Manuel had absorbed the plan but not the sequence: he preferred first to establish secure bases on Indian soil as a platform for snuffing out Muslim trade.

  Other figures in the group that surrounded the king were encouraging him in an increasingly grandiose interpretation of the astonishing events unfolding in the Indian Ocean. Among them his second wife, Maria of Aragon, believed deeply that Manuel’s destiny was directed by heaven; so did one of his key advisers, Duarte Galvão, and the man who would become the executive architect of the Manueline dream: Afonso de Albuquerque.

  It was with the advice of this tight circle that Almeida’s instructions were drawn up and the expedition fitted out. The fleet was huge: twenty-one ships, seven times the number that had sailed with Gama just eight years earlier, captained by an illustrious generation of experienced seamen—including João de Nova and Fernão de Magalhães, the Magellan who would circumnavigate the world in the following decade. Almeida’s son also went, the dashing Lourenço, “a noble gentleman…physically stronger than anyone else, expert in the use of all weapons.”

  In all, fifteen hundred men were enrolled, comprising a microcosm of society sent to create a Portuguese state beyond the sea. They ranged in tiers from noble gentlemen to the outcasts and the lowest rungs of society—converted Jews, blacks, slaves, convicts—as well as a component of foreign adventurers and merchants. All had volunteered. They had been chosen to provide the skills not only to sail and fight but also to establish a new state. They included shoemakers, carpenters, priests, administrators, judges, and physicians. There was a substantial contingent of German and Flemish gunners, as well as three privately financed ships, got up by German and Florentine bankers and merchant capitalists, a huge investment. Gaspar went along with another Venetian interpreter. Even a few women smuggled themselves aboard, disguised as men; their names appeared in the registers soon after: Isabella Pereira, Lianor, Branda, and Ines Rodrigues.

  This was, to all intents and purposes, the Portuguese Mayflower, departing to settle a new world. It carried cannons for forts as well as cannons for ships; goods to trade (lead, copper, silver, wax, coral); prefabricated components for fortresses, such as window frames and dressed stone; wood for the construction of small ships; and a host of other building materials and tools. They had come to stay.

  The charged significance of this particular expedition was reflected in the ritual Mass, on March 23, 1505, in Lisbon Cathedral. The chronicler Gaspar Correia left a bravura account of this th
eatrical event. After the service the ceremonial bestowal of the banner, “of white damask emblazoned with the cross of Christ in red satin, outlined in gold and fringed with gold tassels and a gold star”; the king appeared through a curtain to present this talisman, which carried “the sign of the true cross,” to his viceroy, accompanying it with a long speech of benediction and an exhortation to perform great deeds and “the converting of many infidels and peoples.” Almeida and all the nobles and captains knelt to kiss the king’s hand. Then the sumptuous procession to the waterfront, with “Dom Francisco de Almeida, governor and viceroy of India,” and his captains riding, the retinue on foot. Almeida himself cut a distinguished figure, dressed in a fine tabard and a hat of black satin and mounted on a richly caparisoned mule, a man “of medium height and dignified presence, a little bald but of great authority, preceded and followed by eighty men of arms carrying gilded halberds.” They wore gray shoes, jackets of black velvet, and white leggings, outfitted with gilded swords, in their hands caps of red satin; the captain of the guard, on horseback, carried the baton of his authority. This was how Manuel projected his mission and destiny.