Conquerors

by Roger Crowley

  His brief, as explained by Manuel in a letter to Almeida, was to “guard the mouth of the Red Sea, capture Muslim cargo ships, secure all the prize cargoes that can be found in them, establish treaties in places that seem useful, such as Zeila, Barbara and Aden, also to go to Ormuz, and to learn everything about these parts.” It provided Albuquerque with a huge field of operations, from the Red Sea, along the Arabian Peninsula, and across the Persian Gulf to the shores of northwest India. He chose to interpret these instructions loosely, in his own fashion.

  Despite a shortage of men and materials, shoddy ships, and inadequate weapons—and orders that seemed pacific in relation to the places mentioned in Manuel’s letters—Albuquerque took his cutthroat crews on a thunderous blitz along the Arabian coast. The small ports on the barren shores of what is modern Oman, backed by the irreducible deserts of Arabia, were surprisingly prosperous. They lived by exporting dates, salt, and fish and by the valuable trade in horses to the warlords of continental India.

  It was here, in a few short weeks, that Albuquerque founded a reputation that was exceptional within the ranks of Portuguese conquistadors, and that would be cemented in its history with the singular title of “the Terrible.” His fleet of tattered ships, adorned with all their flags, sailed into the trading ports of Oman, one after another, demanding submission to the Portuguese crown. Instead of the absent trumpets, the crews were ordered to raise a clamor of warlike noise as their vessels rode boldly into view. Albuquerque would demand an audience on his quarterdeck that was designed to impress and unnerve. The hapless emissaries of the local sheikh would step aboard into a carefully framed tableau: the captain-major dressed in gray velvet and cap, a gold chain around his neck, a scarlet cloak around his shoulders, sat in an ornately carved chair, surrounded by his captains got up as brightly as they could manage, in a setting decked with finely worked hangings. Each commander carried an unsheathed sword that implied a clear message: submission or war. Albuquerque had little time for the pleasantries of Oriental diplomacy. Gifts were refused. The messengers would be routinely informed that he did not accept presents from those he might soon have to fight. With his long beard and unflinching demeanor, he aimed to frighten. There was a great deal of psychological bluff in these choreographed shows. Vastly outnumbered and thousands of miles from home, he used his intimidating presence to great effect. Sometimes he would insist that his men dress in different outfits each day to deceive visitors about the numbers at his disposal.

  Albuquerque’s field of operations on a contemporary map, showing Socotra (Cacotoia) near the mouth of the Red Sea, the coast of the Arabian peninsula east of Aden (Adam), and the island of Ormuz (unlabeled) at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.

  Some of the ports along the Omani coast submitted meekly. Others resisted and were sacked. Swarms of criminalized seamen from the Lisbon jails looted, murdered, and burned. Exemplary terror was a weapon of war, intended to soften up resistance farther down the coast. In this fashion, a string of small ports went up in flames. In each one the mosque would be routinely destroyed; the destruction of Muscat, the trading hub of the coast and “a very elegant town with very fine houses,” was particularly savage. When the ships’ gunners set about cutting away the pillars that supported its mosque, “a very large and beautiful edifice, the greater part of it being built of timber finely carved, and the upper part of stucco,” the building collapsed on top of them. Albuquerque gave the men up for dead, but, “thanks to Our Lord,” went on the chronicler, “they came out alive and sound, without a wound or a bruise….Our people were frightened, and when they saw them gave many thanks to Our Lord for that miracle which he had done for them, and set fire to the mosque, which was burned so that nothing remained of it.” Such providential acts inflamed Albuquerque’s sense of divine mission. At the port of Qurayat, having collected all the useful supplies he could, “he ordered the place to be set on fire…and the fire was so fierce that not a house, not a building, nor the mosque, one of the most beautiful ever seen, was left standing.” Albuquerque was intent on transmitting terror ahead of him: “he ordered the ears and noses of the captured Muslims to be cut off, and sent them to Ormuz as a testimony to their disgrace.”

  That Albuquerque possessed an intemperate streak was becoming increasingly apparent, not just to the hapless Omanis but also to his own captains. It was usual for the captain-major to consult with his ship commanders and, often, to be subject to a vote of the whole group. Albuquerque, intelligent, impatient, and possessed of an unshakable belief in his own abilities, had no such tact or cooperative spirit. The captains had been nominally informed at the start of the Omani expedition, but as the weeks wore on the relationship became strained. By mid-September they were inside the mouth of the Persian Gulf, increasingly distant from the key task to which they had been assigned: blocking the mouth of the Red Sea. The drive up the Arabian coast had one clear destination in Albuquerque’s mind: the island city of Ormuz, a small nugget of parched rock anchored offshore that was the axis of all Gulf traffic between Persia and the Indian Ocean. It was an immensely wealthy trading place—the great Arab traveler Ibn Battuta had found it “a fine large city with magnificent bazaars” and tall handsome houses. When the Chinese star fleet had called, they’d declared “the people of the country…very rich….There are no poor families.” It controlled the famed pearl fisheries of the Persian Gulf and dispatched large numbers of Arabian horses to meet an insatiable demand among the warring empires of continental India. “If the world were a ring, then Ormuz would be the jewel in it,” ran the Persian proverb. Albuquerque was well aware of the city’s reputation and strategic worth.

  Aggressive action against Ormuz seems to have formed no part of his instructions from King Manuel to “establish treaties.” The harbor was thronged with merchant ships when Albuquerque arrived, but he proceeded in customary style. He refused all gifts from the king’s messengers; his reply was simple: become vassals of the Portuguese crown or see your city destroyed. The chief vizier, Hwaga Ata, concluded that Albuquerque, with just six ships, was a seriously deluded man, but on the morning of September 27, 1507, in a hubbub of noise, Portuguese bronze cannons again outgunned a far larger Muslim fleet. The vizier quickly sued for peace, accepted Manuel as his lord, and agreed to payment of a hefty annual tribute.

  Albuquerque saw the hand of the Christian God at work in the victory. In the aftermath he wrote to Manuel about “the great miracle Our Lord performed…which was seen by all of us who were there three days after the battle….

  A considerable number of dead Muslims, more than nine hundred, floated on the water, and most of them had many arrows sticking in their bodies, legs and arms, despite the fact that I had brought with me neither archers nor arrows. A great deal of gold, swords chased with silver and jewels belonging to the nobles were found on them. The gathering of this booty by our men working in boats took eight days, during which some gained considerable wealth from what they found.

  This miracle of friendly fire seemed like a confirmation of Manuel’s divine mission in the Indian Ocean that delivered both victory and profit.

  Albuquerque had not finished with Ormuz. He insisted on the right to build a fort. At this juncture, relations with his captains reached a crisis. The ship commanders could see no point in this activity: it was not in their orders, the blockade of the Red Sea was being neglected, Socotra needed to be resupplied with food, Ormuz had already submitted to the crown, and in any case, there would be insufficient men left to garrison a new stronghold. These men, and their crews, also had vested interests in returning to the mouth of the Red Sea, where they believed there were valuable prizes to be seized, but Albuquerque brushed aside their complaints. He even insisted that the captains should participate in the manual labor. It was to be a team effort. As this work was undertaken in full view of the watching population, it was considered a personal insult by the high-ranking captains and fidalgos.

  The four captains came to see the captain-m
ajor as an intractable martinet who refused to listen to legitimate grievances. If he was constructing a huge strategic plan on behalf of Manuel for control of the Indian Ocean, this was not apparent in the written orders, and he failed to carry his commanders with him. In person he was physically intimidating; his rages cowed people. It seemed that by sheer force of personality he was intent on subduing the Muslim sea. The four leading captains, including the experienced João de Nova, came to the conclusion that Albuquerque was dangerous and possibly mad. Finding themselves verbally abused, they committed their complaints to paper:

  Sir, we do this in writing, because by word of mouth we dare not, as you always answer us so passionately; and for all that you sir have frequently told us that the king gives you no orders to take counsel with us, yet this business is of so great an importance, that we consider ourselves obliged to offer you advice; did we not do so we would be worthy of punishment.

  A first written deposition in November 1507 was torn to pieces. When they presented a second, he folded it up without a glance and placed it beneath a stone doorway being constructed in the fort.

  When four men defected to Ormuz, converted to Islam, and the vizier, Hwaga Ata, refused to hand them back, Albuquerque’s rage knew no bounds. “I was out of control,” he later confided to Almeida. He ordered his captains ashore to “kill every living thing. They obeyed their commander against their will, being extremely unhappy at having to do this. They went ashore…and killed just two old men but couldn’t bring themselves to do it. Killing four or five animals, they came across some more people and told them to run away.” According to the chronicler, they believed that their commander “was damned and had the Devil in him.”

  Albuquerque pressed ahead with full-scale war against Ormuz in the face of these objections. He poisoned the wells and began to bombard its walls. “The captains were driven to despair…and didn’t stop petitioning…to which [Albuquerque] took no heed. They didn’t want to obey a captain-major who was mad and who wasn’t fit to command a rowing boat, let alone a fleet.” Furious at this insubordination, Albuquerque on one occasion “seized [João de Nova] by the chest and grappled with him and João began to shout that he was hurting and assaulting him for no good reason. All the captains were witness that [Albuquerque] grabbed his beard and pulled it out.” According to the chronicler, “when they saw that their complaints made so little impression on the captain-major…they took counsel to depart for India.” In mid-January 1508 they deserted, sailing off to Cochin to tell their side of the story to the viceroy. Albuquerque was furious. He had now but two ships, and the siege of Ormuz had to be lifted. He sailed back to Socotra to relieve the famished garrison.

  The failure to patrol the Red Sea was to prove costly. The slowly advancing Mamluk fleet reached Aden in August 1507. While Albuquerque was blitzing the Omani coast in September, it slipped across the Arabian Sea behind his back to the Gujarati port of Diu. The Portuguese had no idea that it was there.

  13

  Three Days at Chaul

  March 1508

  ALONG THE WEST COAST of India, Lourenço de Almeida remained unceasingly busy with naval operations. After the dispatch of the annual spice fleet at the end of December 1507, he was again tasked with convoy duties. In January he set off up the Malabar Coast, escorting a merchant fleet from Cochin. Along the way he took opportunities to burn the ships of Arab traders and damage ports friendly to the samudri. A warlike approach to Dabul, still a haunted place for the young commander, brought a rapid capitulation and the immediate payment of tribute. By February the fleet of merchant ships and their accompanying Portuguese carracks, galleys, and caravels had reached its final destination, the trading terminus at Chaul, nestling in the curved mouth of a river.

  It was near the end of the sailing season. Soon monsoon weather would close the sea to shipping and the Portuguese could expect to hole up in Cochin, recuperating and repairing their vessels during months of enforced idleness. The men were tired; Lourenço was still recovering from wounds received earlier; the holds were full of booty collected along the coast; the heat was rising. Meanwhile, the Cochin merchants, whom they were escorting, were conducting their trade with interminable sloth. A month passed. February slipped into March. Low-lying Chaul was becoming insufferably humid. The men had nothing to do but spend their money on wine and dancing girls and sink into indolence. Lourenço was kicking his heels in frustration. There was an expectation that Afonso de Albuquerque’s squadron would join them soon.

  As they waited for the Cochin merchants to conclude their loading, other, more muffled rumors reached Lourenço’s ears: that an Egyptian fleet was on its way; that it had docked at one of the key ports of Gujarati trade, Diu, two hundred miles away across the Gulf of Cambay; that it was coming to wage holy war on the Franks; that its troops were “white” men (probably Turks) and highly committed, well armed and with artillery. These rumors came variously: from the local people in Chaul, from a venerated Brahman who came to see Lourenço from Diu, and finally from the viceroy himself. But Francisco de Almeida evidently believed that there was no threat worthy of serious consideration. He sent just one ship. There was no evidence that any fleet yet encountered had the ability to match Portuguese gunnery, even when hopelessly outnumbered. Lourenço paid little heed to the reports.

  In fact, the tardy Egyptian fleet had finally reached Diu six months earlier, after a long and wandering voyage during which it had suffered considerable attrition. Men had deserted for lack of pay; two ships had mutinied; a quarter of the men had been killed in the Arabian campaign along the way; and at Diu, Hussain Musrif, the fleet commander, was receiving a somewhat cautious reception from its governor. Malik Ayaz was a self-made man, a former military slave from the Caucasus who had risen to a position of power under the Muslim sultan of Gujarat and held Diu almost as a personal fiefdom, with its own fleet of fustas—small galleys. Shrewd, pragmatic, and extremely cunning, Ayaz had a realistic idea of the balance of power at sea. His trade with the outside world, which included the export of the cotton and turbans that were no longer reaching Egypt, was being paralyzed by Portuguese blockades. His independence at Diu required room for maneuvering between two implacable forces: growing Portuguese supremacy in the Indian Ocean and Muslim determination to destroy it. He now found himself in a difficult situation, knowing that sooner or later he would receive a “visit” from the Franks, yet aware that failure to embrace holy war could invite destruction at the hands of his powerful overlord, the Gujarati sultan. He had already attempted secret negotiations with the viceroy but knew how carefully he had to play his hand.

  Hussain had entered the arena with a clear strategic plan and a rallying call to jihad. Among those who responded was Mayimama Marakkar, the Arab merchant who had been abused by Vicente Sodré in 1503. Marakkar had been vocal in Cairo on behalf of the samudri in trying to prompt the sultan into constructing a pan-Islamic front against the detested Christian interlopers. He came to Diu with a sizable ship got up at his own expense and with three hundred armed men, many of whom were skilled archers drawn from his own tribe. They had sworn to die for vengeance and the faith, and their ship was well equipped with artillery and munitions.

  The Egyptians had their spies in Chaul, and they were infinitely better informed than the Portuguese languishing there in the heat. They knew how small Lourenço’s force was. He had three small carracks, three caravels, and two galleys—about five hundred men in all. Hussain’s aim was to fall on them suddenly and wipe them out, then tackle the Portuguese caravels blockading Calicut and cut off the forts at Cochin and Cannanore before the monsoon. He now called on the support of Ayaz. There was no alternative but a show of enthusiasm from Diu’s governor. With the addition of his small fleet, Hussain led a fleet of forty-five vessels: forty fustas and galleys, one galleon, and four carracks that had been constructed by European shipwrights at Suez. It was to be a definitive showdown for power and the trade of the Indian Ocean.

  A Frid
ay in March—the chosen day of the week for the start of Islamic campaigns. At Chaul, the Portuguese were whiling away their time on the banks of the Kundalika River. The Cochin merchants’ ships were still concluding their loading operations beside Chaul town on the northern bank. The Portuguese ships were drawn up across the water in haphazard order. Lourenço’s ship, the São Miguel, and that of his experienced vice-captain, Pêro Barreto, the São António, were anchored in midstream. The others were closer to the southern shore with their prows to land. Many of the men were ashore, and Lourenço was amusing himself by throwing spears with other noblemen.

  Toward the middle of the day, with the breeze coming in, lookouts sighted five European carracks out to sea. The long-awaited arrival of Albuquerque’s squadron was greeted with joy. Men stopped to watch their approach with relaxed interest, but one old soldier was scrutinizing the rigging more intently. Then he shouted to his squire, “I want to arm myself now, we all need to!” He called for his breastplate and started rapidly to buckle it on—to the mocking amusement of others standing about. “These Albuquerques coming in,” he snapped, “they haven’t got crosses on their sails. They’re flying the banners of Mahomed….Sirs, I pray to God that I alone will be the fool today and that you’ll still be laughing at nightfall.”

  For naval operations along the Indian coast the Portuguese employed oared galleys as well as sailing ships.

  The ships sailed into the mouth of the river; behind the carracks, six galleys rowing in good order. Everyone could now see that the vessels were decked with red-and-white flags and pennants emblazoned with black crescent moons. They made an impressive show, their warriors in magnificent turbans and brilliantly colored silks over their armor, which glittered in the sun, “and entering the river decked out like this, sounding many war trumpets, that together with the gleaming of their weapons made the fleet more terrifying. Advancing like this, our men finally realized that they were the Rumes.” Their main sails were furled and their sides were covered with nets to impede projectiles. They were stripped for action.