and at Coulam.
When the queen of Coulam, a neighbouring and friendly state, where the pepper was chiefly produced, heard of the wealth which the king of Cochym and his merchants were making by their commercial intercourse with the Portuguese, she sent an ambassador to Dom Gama to entreat him to enter into similar arrangements with herself and her people, saying that “she desired for her kingdom the same great profit, because she had pepper enough in her kingdom to load twenty ships each year:” but Dom Gama was a diplomatist, or at least a dissembler, as well as an explorer. To fall out with the king of Cochym did not then suit his purpose, which he would very likely have done had he allowed the queen of Coulam to share in the lucrative trade without his sanction; but he nevertheless appears to have made up his mind to reap the advantage of the queen’s trade under any circumstances. Consequently, he sent word to the queen “that he was the vassal of so truthful a king, that for a single lie or fault which he might commit against good faith, he would order his head to be cut off; therefore he could not answer anything with certainty, nor accept her friendship, nor the trade which she offered, and for which he thanked her much, without the king (of Cochym) first commanded him.”[38]
Opens a factory at Coulam.
After this palaver he recommended that she should ask the king of Cochym’s permission to open up commercial intercourse with the Portuguese, an arrangement he was not likely to assent to, as besides curtailing his profits, he would lose the revenue he derived from the queen’s pepper, which now passed through his kingdom for shipment. The king was naturally perplexed and “much grieved, because he did not wish to see the profit and honour of his kingdom go to another.” So after talking the matter over with De Gama’s factor, he resolved to leave it entirely in the hands of the captain-major, and informed the queen’s messenger that the matter was left altogether to his good pleasure, no doubt himself believing that the trade would be therefore declined. But the king of Cochym had made a sad mistake, for the Portuguese navigator was a diplomatist far beyond the king’s powers of comprehension; to his discomfiture and amazement Gama informed the ambassador of Coulam “that he was the king’s vassal, and in that port was bound to obey him as much as the king his sovereign, and, therefore, he would obey him in whatever was his will and pleasure; and since the queen was thus his relation and friend, he was happy to do all that she wished!”[39] Consequently he despatched two of his ships to load pepper, at “a river called Calle Coulam,” sending the queen a handsome mirror and corals, and a large bottle of orange-water, with scarlet barret-caps for her ministers and household, and thirty dozen of knives with sheaths for her people. Soon afterwards he established a factory in her kingdom.
While Dom Gama was employed loading his ships with the produce of India for Portugal, the king of Calicut had prepared a fleet which he hoped would capture and destroy the fleet of the Christian monarch who had done his people such grievous wrongs. It consisted of “several large ships, and sambacks, and rowing barges, with much artillery and fighting men, and two captain-majors.” But the king of Calicut, either anxious to avoid war, or to obtain information of the condition and power of the vessels then under Dom Gama, sent a confidential Brahmin to Cochym, with a letter to the captain-major, in which, after stating the force now at his command, he expressed a wish that there should be “no more wars nor disputes”[40] between them, and that he would make compensation for the injury his people had sustained on the previous voyage; but the Brahmin received no better reception than his predecessor had done. He was tied to the bits, or framework that surrounds the main-mast; an iron shovel, full of embers, was put “close to his shins, until large blisters rose upon them, whilst the interpreter shouted to him to tell the truth,” as to whether the king his master meant what he said in the letter he had addressed by him to Dom Gama; but as he would not speak, “the fire was brought closer by degrees, until he could not bear it,” and when he had told all he knew, the captain-major “ordered the upper and lower lips of the Brahmin to be cut off, so that all his teeth showed; and he ordered the ears of a dog on board the ship to be cut off, and he had them fastened and sewn with many stitches on the Brahmin, instead of his, and he sent him in the Indian boat to return to Calicut!”[41]
Calicut declares war against Dom Gama.
The king, as well he might, when his mutilated and insulted ambassador presented himself, at once ordered his fleet to proceed in search of the Portuguese, and to intercept them on their way from Cochym back to Cananore, where they had gone to fill their ships with the ginger which had been collected for them at that place. Dom Gama’s departure was, however, delayed for a few days. He had to permanently establish his factory at Cochym, and make arrangements for its protection during his absence, and for the purchase and storage of produce ready for the ships which would annually be despatched to India from the Tagus. He had also to found a Portuguese colony, the first colony of Europeans in India, for which purpose he “left carpenters, and caulkers, blacksmiths, turners, and cordage-makers, who were to refit the ships which had to remain at Cochym,” as well as other “workmen and men-at-arms,” in all sixty persons, to whom “the factor was to give their pay, and a cruzado per month for their maintenance.”
Success of the Portuguese.
Desecration of the Indian vessels,
When Dom Gama had completed his arrangements at Cochym, he sailed for Cananore. The king of Calicut with his fleet lay in wait for him. “Coming along the coast with a light land breeze, there were so many sail” that the Portuguese did not see the end of them. In the van there might be as many as “twenty large ships, with many fustas and sambacks.” These Dom Gama ordered his caravels, each of which carried thirty men with four heavy guns below, and six falconets, and ten swivel-guns on deck, to attack, which they did with great vigour, and soon brought down the mast of the flag-ship of the Moors, killing many of the crew, and sinking three of the large vessels. Amid this havoc, Dom Gama himself bore down with the rest of his fleet, and, as the wind freshened, he came with great force through the midst of his opponents, “doing wonders” with his artillery, and firing both broadsides as he passed, shattering them both in hull and rigging, and leaving the Calicut fleet almost a helpless mass.