History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 2 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

De Gama’s arrangements with the king of Cananore.

Having arranged how the king of Calicut and his subjects were to be disposed of, his majesty of Cananore returned to his palace, and matured with his council the measures to be taken so as to carry out wishes of his friend and ally the king of Portugal. In matters of trade it was agreed that a fixed price should be set upon all articles offered for sale, and that there should be no bargaining between the buyer or seller for the purpose of either lowering or raising prices. The chief merchants of the city and natives of the country were to arrange with the factors from the ships what the prices were to be, and these “should last for ever.” A factory was to be established where goods were to be bought and sold; and all these things were written down by the scribes, so as to constitute an agreement, which both parties signed. When completed, De Gama took counsel with his captains, and settled that two divisions of the fleet should cruise along the coast, “making war on all navigators, except those of Cananore, Cochym, and Coulam,”[35] while the factors should remain on shore, with a sufficient number of men to buy and gather into their warehouse at Cananore, “for the voyage to the kingdom, much rice, sugar, honey, butter, oil, dried fish, and cocoa-nuts, to make cables of coir and cordage.”

Departure for Calicut.

Bombards the city.

Horrible cruelties.

Having arranged all these matters to the satisfaction of everybody at the place, except the Moorish merchants, who were “very sad” when they saw their ancient trade by the Red Sea passing into the hands of strangers, Dom Gama sailed with his combined fleet for Calicut, where, on arrival, he found the port deserted of its shipping, the news of his doings at Onor and Baticala having reached the ears of the people of Calicut; the king, however, sent one of the chief Brahmins of the place, with a white flag of truce, in the vain hope that some terms of peace might be agreed upon. But the captain-major rejected every condition, and ordering the Indian boat to return to the shore, and the Brahmin to be safely secured on board of his ship, he bombarded the city, “by which he made a great destruction.” Nor was his vengeance satisfied by this wanton destruction of private property, and the sacrifice of the lives of many of the inhabitants of the city; while thus engaged “there came in from the offing two large ships, and twenty-two sambacks and Malabar vessels from Coromandel, laden with rice for the Moors of Calicut:” these he seized and plundered, with the exception of six of the smaller vessels belonging to Cananore. Had the acts of this representative of a civilised monarch been confined to plunder, and the destruction of private property at sea and on shore, they might have been passed over without comment as acts of too frequent occurrence; but besides this, they were deeply dyed with the blood of his innocent victims. The prayers he had offered to God with so much solemnity on the banks of the Tagus proved, indeed, a solemn farce; his own historian adding the shameful statement, that after the capture of these peaceable vessels, “the captain-major commanded them” (his soldiers) “to cut off the hands, and ears, and noses of all the crews of the captured vessels, and put them into one of the small vessels, in which he also placed the friar, without ears, or nose, or hands, which he ordered to be strung round his neck with a palm-leaf for the king, on which he told him to have a curry made to eat of what his friar brought him.”[36]

Perhaps no more refined acts of barbarity are to be found recorded in the page of history than those which Correa relates with so much simplicity of his countryman; they would seem, indeed, to have been almost matters of course in the early days of the maritime supremacy of the Portuguese, and may in some measure account for the unsatisfactory condition into which that once great nation has now fallen. Supposing, however, the exquisite barbarism of sending to the king the hands, ears, and nose of his ambassador, to whom Dom Gama had granted a safe conduct, not enough to convey to the ruler of Calicut a sufficiently strong impression of the greatness, and grandeur, and power, and wisdom, and civilisation of the Christian monarch, whose subjects he had offended, the captain-major ordered the feet of these poor innocent wretches, whom he had already so fearfully mutilated, “to be tied together, as they had no hands with which to untie them; and in order that they should not untie them with their teeth, he ordered them” (his crew) “to strike upon their teeth with staves, and they knocked them down their throats, and they were thus put on board, heaped up upon the top of each other, mixed up with the blood which streamed from them; and he ordered mats and dry leaves to be spread over them, and the sails to be set for the shore, and the vessel set on fire.”[37]

Arrives at Cochym, 7th Nov., where he loads,

In this floating funeral pile eight hundred Moors, who had been captured in peaceful commerce, were driven on shore as a warning to the people of Calicut, who flocked in great numbers to the beach to extinguish the fire, and draw out from the burning mass those whom they found alive, over whom “they made great lamentations.” When the friar reached the king with his revolting message, and deprived of his hands, ears, and nose, an object of the deepest humiliation, he found himself in the midst of the wives and relations of those who had been so shamefully massacred, bewailing in the most heart-rending manner their loss, and imploring the king to render them aid and protection from further injury. Although the king’s power was feeble compared to that of the Portuguese, with their trained men of war, and vastly superior instruments of destruction, the sight of his faithful Brahmin, whom he had despatched in good faith to offer any conditions of peace which Dom Gama might demand, led him to resolve with “great oaths” that he would expend the whole of his kingdom in avenging the terrible wrongs which had been inflicted upon his people. Summoning to his council his ministers and the principal Moors of the city, he arranged measures for their protection from the even still greater dishonour and ruin which was threatened with awful earnestness by their invaders. The Moors, with one voice, “offered to spend their lives and property for vengeance.” In every river arrangements were made for the construction of armed proas, large rowing barges and sambacks, and as many vessels of war as the means which their country afforded could produce. But long before this fleet was ready, Dom Gama had sailed with his expedition for Cochym, where he arrived on the 7th of November, having on his passage done as much harm as he could to the merchants of Calicut, many of whose vessels he fell across in his cruise along the coast.

Cochym, like Cananore, had resolved from the first to court the friendship of Portugal. Its rulers conceived it more to their interests to submit to the conditions of Dom Gama, however humiliating, than to resist his assumed authority. Consequently when his fleet made its appearance, the king of Cochym was ready to receive him with every honour; and when his boat, with its canopy of crimson velvet, very richly dressed, approached the shore, the king, accompanied by his people, came to the water-side to meet him, prepared to secure his friendship by any submission, however abject. Numerous rich and valuable presents having been interchanged, arrangements were made to provide the cargo the captain-major required, on similar conditions to those which had been entered into at Cananore.