Although the great events of India under the rule of Albuquerque may have obscured the deeds of Pacheco, he was evidently not forgotten, for in January 1509 he was sent with several ships against the French pirate Mondragon and defeated and captured him off Cape Finisterre, and probably about the year 1520 he was appointed Governor of the fort of São Jorge de Mina, a coveted post on the west coast of Africa.
Tradition has it that he came home in irons, and he may have been the victim of one of those accusations by subordinates which were becoming so common in the Portuguese overseas possessions. Pacheco had shown of old that he was one of those whom he calls inimigos da cobiça, with thoughts set on higher things than gold. But a new king was on the throne, who was but two years old when Pacheco was winning immortal renown for the Portuguese in India, and it seems to have been the general feeling that he was unfairly treated. Camões speaks of his “harsh and unjust reward.”
It appears that he continued to receive his pension, yet he is said to have died, about the year 1530, in extreme penury. We may be sure at least that his heart did not quail before poverty any more than it had before the countless host of Calicut. The recollection of his wiles and devices during those hundred days at Cochin must have been a powerful antidote to neglect and old age. “The thought of what he had done would prove music to him at midnight.”
A few, no doubt, of the heroic ninety on whose behalf Pacheco wrote to the King, recalling their services, survived, and they might discuss the apparent miracle of their famous victory, and, in Pacheco’s words, “the multitude of things in the very wealthy kingdoms of India,” glad at heart the while to be at home under the more temperate sun of Portugal and to rind their “eight feet of earth” in their own soil.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] “The nobles,” says Correa, “are called Nairs, and are men devoted to war.” The peasants “are so accursed that if they go along a road they must go shouting, lest Nairs should meet and kill them, for they may not carry arms, whereas the Nairs are always armed. And if as they go shouting a Nair answers they scuttle away into the wilds far from the road.”
[11] The poet Luis de Camões, after his return from the East, supported life on less than a third of that amount.
AFFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE.
From Gaspar Correa, Lendas da India, frontispiece to vol. ii. pt. 1.