After the Dutch pirates began to sail the seas of Eastern India and the archipelago of Filipinas, and to carry cloves from Maluco, silks from China, and drugs from the adjacent islands, they began also to cripple the cities that were sustained by the trade, which are the principal cities; because the seas were infested, and there was little security on them from those pirates. They, from the first year of their entrance into the Orient, coasted the shores, sounded the ports, and established trading-posts in the chief places, which they filled with people whom they brought from Holanda. Consequently, by the year 1614, the Dutch had eighteen armed galleons in the South Sea, and they burned the city of Arevalo, where the food for Maluco was stored, and committed many other depredations, which obliged Don Juan de Silva, governor and captain-general of the Filipinas Islands, to prepare a large fleet to attack them and drive them from our seas. But, thinking that the forces of the Filipinas were insufficient to attend to so many things at once—the support of the camp in Maluco; the defense of the city of Manila, which is in sight of twenty thousand Chinese (who had already, in 1603, risen against it and incited a war); and sallies to fight the enemy—it was determined to ask help from the viceroy of India and to join the two forces, Castilian and Lusitanian, who are especially being attacked by the Dutch. Indeed, the letters-patent given to them by Count Mauricio read that they are to make war on the Castilians and Portuguese. Besides this argument, it is evident that Yndia is not less interested in driving out those enemies than are the Filipinas.
Father Juan de Rivera,[1] then rector of the residence of the Society of Jesus at Manila, was appointed to negotiate this league and reenforcement. He prepared himself in a few days and left for Yndia on November 21 of the year 1615. He reached Malaca on Tuesday, December 9, by Manila reckoning, but Wednesday by that of Malaca; for the date for those sailing west is later, and earlier for those sailing east.[2]
From Malaca he journeyed to Cochin, and from Cochin to Goa, at the time when Yndia was engaged in the wars of the north; because peace with the great Mogor[3] had been broken. The viceroy had gone with a powerful fleet to capture, if possible, four English ships anchored at Surate, where he received the letters belonging to our voyage and embassy. Considering the importance of the matter, he hastened his return and went to Goa. There he furnished four galleons for the said help, and three hundred or more soldiers, appointing as commander of the latter Don Francisco de Miranda Enrriquez.[4]
The latter left Goa May 12. The voyage, which is generally thirty days, lasted three and one-half months. We ran short of water in the middle of the open stretch, and thought that we were lost, on account of having been despatched with broken tanks and hogsheads. Together with this was the disorder among the soldiers of Yndia, who surreptitiously took with them many servants of their own and of other people, so that it was necessary to support these people aboard the vessel. These afterward consumed the food, and then caught and spread a pestilence. Although there were only one hundred and ten soldiers in our galleon, there were about seven hundred persons, mostly negroes and Cafres; of these many were free, although nominally slaves, as Don Gonzalo de Silva, bishop of Malaca, who was aboard the same galleon, testified. He declared that many lads were free, even some whom they were taking as captives. This is a general sin, wherefore some Portuguese authors say, with Father Hernando Rabelo, that God is punishing Yndia and the Portuguese nation, which alone has more slaves than any other nation of the world.
July 30 we met two Dutch ships, which were apparently going from Palliacate [i.e., Palicat] to carry aid to Maluco. Our galleon fought singlehanded with those two ships, because the other galleons were far to leeward. The enemy had waited two days between us, without our knowing it, in order to show themselves at a favorable opportunity. So great is the confidence of the Portuguese that they did not fear them. They said that they were ships from Cochin, and that, had they known in time that they were enemies, they could have captured them easily. In short they remained a cannon-shot from the flagship, and so fought until night, when they made off badly battered—as we learned later from the people of Achen, on whose coast one of the ships was immediately wrecked, having sprung a leak through the effect of our balls and their own firing. They only killed two of our men. After the battle, our galleon ran aground on a shoal, on the eve of our Lady of the Assumption, near Pulo Parcelar. At the first shock, the helm was shifted seaward, and all that night we tossed up and down dreadfully until, next morning, we miraculously got off the shoal. We reached the strait of Sincapura on August 10, where, as the pilots said the Manila monsoon was over, we determined to run to Malaca.
In Malaca the ships were very inhospitably received, for soldiers are wont to commit depredations. But within a few days they were made to see that the landing there of the galleons was for their relief and the salvation of their city; for a month after their arrival the king of Achen came with sixty thousand men to besiege it. Information of this number and of the other things that will be related, was given by the Portuguese who were captives in Achen and returned to Malaca. They had three hundred and fifty sail—among them sixty galleys, each with three pieces in the bows; the piece in the midship gangway fired balls of sixty libras, as we saw in those found in the galleons after the war. Along the sides they carried five falcons, firing balls of six libras. In the royal galley, called “Espanto del mundo” [i.e., Fear of the world] by the people of Achen, were sixteen hundred soldiers and one hundred and fifty falcons and half-sized falcons. That king of Achen, the most powerful on the sea of all this Orient, had concerted with the Dutch that both should take Malaca. Consequently they took a few days in arriving. The king of Achen arrived first at the bay of Malaca with a squadron of eighteen galleys, in order to reconnoiter the place. Finding our four galleys anchored in the port, and learning that they were war-vessels, they put to sea to await the Dutch. When our men saw them depart and go toward the strait, where they might capture the boats from China and unite with the Dutch, they resolved to set sail and give battle. They did so with the four galleons and six galliots—ten small vessels. They encountered the Achen boats on November 15, and fought for two and one-half days. The enemy carried a considerable force. They burned one galliot, so that the soldiers abandoned it and went to the galleons. The flagship grappled eleven galleys. Fire was set to it many times, but our men extinguished it. The enemy grappled the galleon of Don Juan de Silveira, which carried twenty-two pieces of artillery, and set fire to it. They were unable to extinguish the fire, and so it was entirely burned.
Don Juan de Silvera and Antonio Rodriguez de Gamboa, son of the commander-in-chief of that fortress of Malaca, and forty other Portuguese, took to the water; but all were captured by the king of Achen and placed aboard his galley. A fresh wind began to blow, wherewith the vessels separated and the men of Achen went to their country with something less than thirty craft, counting large and small boats, and with two thousand men killed. Although we did them damage, it was not so great as that which we received. Accordingly they regarded it as a victory and entered their kingdom in triumph—where they feasted the captains, whom they treated courteously, and then loosed them and gave them liberty.
On December 7 of the same year of 1615, the Dutch reached the bay of Malaca with seven ships and one patache, coming to join the king of Achen. They found our three galleons, which, for greater security, had been anchored between a sandbank made by the sea and a small island near Malaca. There they said that they were invincible, for entrance could be had only by a channel near the rampart, which, by means of its pieces of artillery, would refuse entrance. On the sea side they were defended by the sandbank and shoals. But the enemy sounded the port that night with its lanchas and found a new channel, where they entered without being hindered by the rampart. This was attributed to the fault and negligence of those who could and ought to have prevented the lanchas from making soundings, because of the many galliots in the port.
The enemy having entered and coming within cannon range, opened a fierce bombardment, which lasted two and one-half days. At this time our vessels defended themselves with three pieces that could be fired, and no more, because they were anchored, and the current threw them in a line toward the Dutch; although had the people on shore been diligent, they could have brought the vessels about with cables. The enemy tacked at will and played the majority of their pieces. We discovered that our galleons were stronger than their ships, for their balls did not pass through the sides of the galleons, especially of the almiranta and flagship. The damage inflicted by them was through the open ports; while we saw that our balls passed through the Dutch ships from side to side, and then went bounding through the water. Nevertheless, distrusting the Dutch and their battery, the men of the galleons began to edge away and to leave them at the approach of night, especially when they saw Captain Juan Pinto and Admiral Alfonso Vaez fall; they were killed with four others, by a ball that entered through a port.
First they abandoned the galleon called “Plata,” without taking the precaution to set it afire when they left, so that the enemy could not approach with their artillery. This the enemy did, entering and capturing it, as was well seen; and afterward they set it afire.