He was now a member of a military caste called Habshi—African warriors, often horsemen, who fought for local rulers or were loaned out by a mercenary band leader to whomever was willing to pay. Some of these bands numbered in the thousands, but most were only a few hundred strong. The Indians called the Africans Habshi—a word derived from “Abyssinia,” the ancient name for Ethiopia—because a large majority of the Africans destined for India had started their sea journeys there. During the span of recorded history, it is estimated that as many as eleven million Africans were trafficked to India as slaves, primarily to be used as soldiers. During Yasuke’s time, when soldiers were in peak demand, estimates reach into the tens of thousands.
Yasuke spent his first years in India training to use weapons, to ride a horse, to kill and fight. Too valuable to be used as mere fodder (the weakest slaves, who were judged to have little military worth, were often used as human shields, driven before the main force to absorb bombardments), he took the field only after training. Throughout, he would have been both brutalized and baptized into the cult of the killer, through actual battle, but also by carrying out commissions such as executions for his new masters. In his teens, he’d likely supped with assassins, marched and fought beside fifty thousand men, helped slaughter entire villages, joked and bet as comrades fought to the death in camp over some village girl, missing token or misheard comment. He also grew taller and his muscles hardened. He learned to kill with his hands. To ignore the gore and screams of new friends and foe alike. By eighteen, he was a valuable warrior. Now training young boys, as he’d once been a lifetime ago. His body a chronicle of ever-fading scars, a book written in blood.
Gujarat, where he was then stationed, was a region in chaos, fought over by feuding noble families and factions (some among them of African origin) with significant fiefs and military might. Into this turmoil entered the all-conquering Akbar, the third of the Mughal emperors who’d been fighting over northern India for the last half-century, seeking to add to their previous conquests. Since ascending to the throne at age fourteen in 1556, he’d defeated foe after foe, often by surprising them with his speed and daring. He’d consolidated Mughal rule in northern India, and been pushing south into the center of the subcontinent, as state after state had fallen to him. Sarnal, where Yasuke had escaped from, was merely one of many places that had fallen to Akbar’s lightning-attack tactics.
Surat, walled and on the coast, would not fall so easily. (Or, so Yasuke and the other Habshi hoped.) The city was nominally ruled by the last shah of the Gujarati Muzaffarid dynasty, the twelve-year-old Muzaffar Shah III. As his forces fled before the Mughal onslaught, some took refuge in Surat, which was under the command of an officer named Hamzaban. Hope and resources were dwindling fast as ever more news of widespread Akbar victories elsewhere throughout Gujarat arrived in the walled city. In the chaos of retreat, the invaders had also managed to take possession of the Muzaffarid elephants and much of their treasury. The desperate besieged army had appealed to the Portuguese colonial government in Goa, offering handsome rewards to come to their aid. However, upon seeing the size of Akbar’s army, the Portuguese soldiers got cold feet and, behind the backs of the defenders trapped in Surat, tried to simply buy the assaulting Mughal emperor off with gifts of valuable novelty articles from Europe. They failed—Akbar detested double-dealing—and the siege continued.
Yasuke stood resolutely on the walls and watched Akbar’s huge army deploy below. It was January 11, 1573. Beyond its numbers, the sheer diversity of the force was astonishing. First arrived the cavalry bands, armored in mail, their shiny silver-colored helmets, some with turbans wrapped around them, peaked in long spikes which could run a man through. They carried long spears, curved swords and round shields. Some had short composite Mongol-style bows, a nod to the Mughals’ Mongol origins, in quivers attached to their saddles. Next arrived the infantry, sporting muskets, spears, swords, and led by their officers on highly decorated minicastles perched on the backs of elephants. Yasuke had seen these before in war, both on his side and in enemy attacks. Fearsome animals that could crush a man with a stamp of their huge feet or throw the same man into the air, impaled on a sharpened tusk.
The Emperor Akbar trains an elephant.
Akbar’s foot soldiers acted quickly, erecting a palisade to defend against missiles from the city, and then started to dig tunnels toward and beneath the city walls. As the weeks went by, Yasuke and the other defenders could hear the scraping as the miners’ shovels grew nearer, the soil piling in huge telltale mounds outside the wall. The work had now advanced as far as the gates and the huge “impregnable” walls felt less and less secure to Yasuke and his comrades who manned them. They were surely going to collapse imminently, either from the undermining of their foundations, or from the massive explosion Akbar’s men would eventually set beneath them in the hollowed-out tunnels.
By February, Hamzaban and his Portuguese colleague Antonio Cabral (no known relation to the Jesuit superior who’d welcomed Yasuke to Japan, but the Cabral were a famous Portuguese noble family who got themselves all over the world) trapped with nowhere to go, despaired of assistance from other quarters. The walls would soon be breached. They surrendered and Akbar, in an unusually merciful gesture, agreed to spare their lives and send the besieged troops—Portuguese and African—back to Goa, having now established diplomatic relations with Europe for the first time.
Akbar was less merciful when it came to the commander Hamzaban. After the behind-the-scenes negotiations were concluded, Surat’s leaders rode out under a flag of truce to offer their surrender before both armies. And Emperor Akbar had received them with the respect, dignity and pomp due to their station. He’d even erected a gilt awning a short distance from the wall where he welcomed the enemy commanders and their official surrender in the heat of the day. Yasuke and his worried comrades had no choice but to watch impotently as the city, and perhaps their lives, were bargained away. As far as he knew, the besieged troops would be killed or handed over as slaves to a new master.
Akbar was flanked by his lords and two huge African eunuch bodyguards clad in white with golden turbans. All seemed to go well. The Portuguese commander remained with his head bowed to the ground, prostrated in defeat. Hamzaban, however, seemed to be carrying on at length, giving an impassioned speech. Suddenly, Akbar motioned and the two Habshi bodyguards seized the prostrated Hamzaban and held him between them. With another Akbar command, a man walked from behind the awning with a large pair of tongs and yanked Hamzaban’s tongue from his mouth by the roots. Hamzaban collapsed forward, blood spraying the ground, as Akbar gestured that proceedings were at an end. Cabral raised himself quickly, walked backward out of the emperor’s presence and, when he judged it safe to do so, turned and marched quickly back to the city gates. Inside, he gestured to his own men, and they raced to pack up and return to their waiting galleys; they were leaving posthaste.
Word spread quickly. Yasuke and his African comrades were also free to leave the city, but had to depart immediately. They all had one day. Midday tomorrow, Akbar’s men would enter the city and kill any soldier remaining; Akbar’s mercy was clearly far from unconditional. One day was plenty but where should they go? They were masterless, their commanders killed or fled. Rumor spread that the Portuguese were looking for rowers to replace some men who’d perished during the voyage from Goa, and many of the Habshi grasped desperately at this escape method.
Yasuke was one of them. He joined the Portuguese galley crew as an oarsman and rowed the four hundred nautical miles to Goa. The winds were weak in the spring, but the galleys propelled by their oarsmen sped through the waves. Behind them, thousands of soldiers had been stranded in Surat. Their end, he never learned.
In four days, Yasuke was in Goa on the west coast of India, starting a new life.
The Portuguese had conquered Goa in 1510 and the city quickly became a center of trade, missionary and military activity: t
he jewel of the Portuguese Indies. Along with a majority Indian population of more than sixty thousand, Goa had a thousand civilian and military Portuguese inhabitants and some ten thousand slaves, most originally from Africa. Goa’s lifeblood was trade—in Indian slaves, gold, silk, other fabrics and spices. The eventual exports to Portugal and the wider European market were paid for with the profits from the China-Japan silk trade, which was dominated by the Portuguese middlemen ever since the Chinese government had banned direct Chinese trade with Japan. While other forts and missionary stations also appeared along the coasts of the Indian subcontinent, Goa remained the key to Portuguese India.
Many of the Portuguese emigrants settled and married in India outside of Portuguese-ruled areas. They were called casados, the married ones, long-term settlers who’d escaped the poverty of their European homes to make their fortune. Portugal was a hard land with few routes to riches outside maritime service, and conditions under Portuguese rule were harsh and pay was poor. Europeans had come east to sell their services as mercenaries, or deserted the Portuguese Crown permanently to the highest bidder. Local Muslim or Hindu rulers would often pay a premium for renegade casados, who brought intelligence about the infidel Catholic enemy and crucial military skills, such as gunnery. This pattern of desertion by the Europeans meant that Goa, and other Portuguese outposts, cried out for manpower and depended heavily on men like Yasuke, who were commonly seen as more loyal to the individual Portuguese officers and dignitaries who employed them than a European would be.
Yasuke and several of his comrades were happily employed by a Portuguese merchant who gave them food, shelter and additional training in combat and domestic service. They worked in Goa in various merchants’ homes as security and valets making a stable but meager living.
Roughly a year later, Yasuke met a tall Catholic man named Valignano.
* * *
As they neared their destination, Nobunaga’s capital, a foothill rose out of the trees. Yasuke’s thoughts returned to his immediate surroundings. Closer, the setting sun caught the top of the mount and reflected off something shiny, giving it a golden aura like an angel’s halo in the weakening sun of the dying day.
Azuchi Castle.
The first of the style that now gives us the image of a “typical Japanese castle,” Azuchi was an ornate palatial fortification of multiple floors with intricate gables and turrets. As much mansion and political power center as war-orientated stronghold, the full complex covered the low mountain and was topped by a massive gilt keep, Nobunaga’s yakata, towering above the local landscape—reminiscent of the buildings seen in classic Chinese paintings, which had been imported in great quantity to Japan for more than a millennium and had set the new standard for beauty and splendor. The outside of its top floor was clad in gold and truly seemed to beam its light across the whole of Japan.
The party of horsemen entered through a huge gate under burning reed torches at the foot of the hill on which the castle was built. The sun set to the west over the lake. The speed they’d traveled had not allowed for much rest or food, and now that they’d arrived, Nobunaga called for refreshment before the long climb up the hill to the living quarters.
Fifty servants emerged from every direction to tend the horses and supply the demanded food. The group of weary riders sat to a snack of cups of bitter, vividly green, almost luminous, tea and sweet rice-flour dumplings dyed green, pink and yellow. It seemed to Yasuke that everything about Nobunaga was colorful—a far cry from the somber, austere world of the Jesuits. After eating, they rode up the hundreds of steep steps to the living quarters, passing through the hustle and bustle of evening castle life. As the horses climbed, Yasuke realized the whole hill was the castle. The keep atop was only the highest of multiple levels of buildings, palisades and defenses.
Some three thousand people would have lived there at that time. Yasuke and the rest of the entourage passed hundreds of soldiers on sentry—those on palace garrison duty while Nobunaga and his personal clique were away—and the busy houses of senior retainers and, again and again, through ever more ranks of bowing samurai guards. Today was not a day for huge ceremony and decorum. No one, besides the castle’s thousands of residents, Nobunaga’s own people, was watching. No outsiders to impress here. They pressed on up the hill, joking and in a fine mood to be home.
The inner precincts comprised multiple palaces of senior vassals and family members, temples, large administrative buildings, grand chambers, guest quarters and accommodation for those on duty. Retainers such as Yasuke were accommodated on lower levels of the mountain or in the warrior quarters of the town of Azuchi below.
Nobunaga had designed it to inspire awe and be compared favorably with the faded grandeur of the imperial family’s quarters in Kyoto. On a clear day, Kyoto, only twenty-five miles away, was almost visible from the top floors of Azuchi Castle, which commanded unrivaled views over Lake Biwa and the vast plains which reached eastward toward the distantly looming mountains from whence Nobunaga had burst onto the national scene so many years before.
Following the lead of the others, Yasuke trailed Nobunaga to his private chambers. Then he and the others were dismissed, and retired to their own quarters. Nobunaga’s favorites were accommodated in their own houses nearest to the keep. For example, Ranmaru, the most handsome of the amusing young samurai who’d ridden with them and clearly the group’s star, had only a very short walk to the private residence that he had been assigned, immediately below the donjon (the innermost keep).
Yasuke, meanwhile, was initially only a short distance away, but by no means assigned a private house; he was to lodge with the guards for now. This did not lessen his elation, but he was still puzzled as to what to do. Nobunaga had talked with him at length, but still given few clues as to his new ongoing role. He bedded down on a futon beside the nine other men in the room. The others kept quiet and to themselves, acting as if he weren’t even in the room. He soon discovered his roommates would change throughout the night as they took turns guarding the castle. These were temporary quarters for those on duty. Yasuke waited for his turn on the watch, but it never came. Worse, his dutiful offers to join the watch were ignored with curious stares. Had Nobunaga already forgotten him again?
* * *
A day behind Nobunaga and Yasuke rode a party of Jesuits led by Valignano. The Visitor was eager to see Azuchi Castle and the new Jesuit mission in town. The town of Azuchi, below the main castle, proved bustling and wealthy—living off the needs and excesses of the stronghold’s inhabitants and Nobunaga’s court. Daily, new buildings were being constructed and old structures were replaced with improved ones. The people and fruits of the countryside—food, timber, silver, gold, charcoal and weapons—flowed in and merchants from afar brought exotic wares they’d purchased in Japanese ports from international go-betweens.
The mission in Azuchi now comprised a Catholic church, residential quarters and a seminary, all housed in the same building. Father Organtino, who oversaw the mission in Kyoto and who’d first accompanied Yasuke to Nobunaga, had been assigned leadership of the seminary in 1580 and now rode alongside Valignano. They’d arrived the day after, having taken the journey at a much more serene pace.
The seminary was originally intended for Kyoto, the materials first bought and delivered to a building site directly next to the Kyoto church. But an inspiration of Organtino’s changed all this. If they could build a church in Nobunaga’s own city, Azuchi, it would demonstrate to all they were directly under the warlord’s protection. The Jesuits would be untouchable by their enemies all over Japan. No one would dare. Nobunaga had proved happy enough to comply and saw this request as foreign validation of his rule and global reach. He offered the Jesuits several places, including a vacated temple precinct and newly reclaimed land, freshly drained with a brook flowing alongside it.
Father Organtino had chosen the reclaimed site, near the foot of the castle mountain and around the
corner from Nobunaga’s horse ground, Matsubara. A place where Nobunaga went to ride daily, he would therefore see the Jesuit buildings every day and be reminded of Christ’s presence in his city. Nobunaga had declared the selected plot too small—they needed more land to build an edifice grand enough for his Azuchi—and the warlord ordered the two neighboring properties vacated and destroyed, adding the newly empty land to the Jesuit plot. The missionaries saw it as yet more proof of God’s divine vision for a Catholic Japan. More than one thousand workers supplied by Lord Takayama (the most powerful Christian lord sworn to Nobunaga) lugged, carried and sailed the building materials from Kyoto.
The seminary-cum-church and Jesuit residence was a large three-storied building of European style with a prominent and highly un-Japanese bell tower at the front. It stood out. Around twenty-five boys were already students there and they’d come from all over Japan, from the noblest Christian families. These young men were Rome’s greatest hope in Japan, nothing less than an elite who’d pave the way for Christ’s entry into his newest earthly domain.
That Valignano had, as he arrived in Azuchi, glanced up to the magnificent castle looming high above and wondered what Yasuke might be doing there, is unlikely. Unless, of course, he hoped Yasuke would prove a valuable source of information in the heart of the warlord’s home.
* * *
For the next few weeks, Yasuke stayed in the guard quarters. He was, however, given the honor of his own room so as not to be disturbed by the changing of the watch. Still, life felt temporary and transient. To pass the time, he spent hours exploring the castle.
Azuchi Castle painted in the nineteenth century and based upon descriptions from Yasuke’s time.
Yasuke: In Search of the African Samurai Page 16
