imprisoned Huascar, and reigned so far as he knew over the whole
world. It was then that from outside the world came one hundred
sixty-eight men of an unknown race possessed of ships, horses, armor
and muskets--things very marvelous, and useful to have. The emperor
invited these strangers to cross the Andes, intending, when they came,
to take such blessings as the Sun might send him. The city of Caxamalca
was cleared of its people, and the buildings enclosing the market place
were furnished for the reception of the Spaniards.
The emperor’s main army was seven hundred miles to the southward, but
the white men were appalled by the enormous host attending him in his
camp, where he had halted to bathe at the hot springs, three miles from
their new quarters. The Peruvian watch fires on the mountain sides were
as thick as the stars of heaven.
The sun was setting next day when a procession entered the Plaza
of Caxamalca, a retinue of six thousand guards, nobles, courtiers,
dignitaries, surrounding the litter on which was placed the gently
swaying golden throne of the young emperor.
Of all the Spaniards, only one came forward, a priest who, through an
interpreter, preached, explaining from the commencement of the world
the story of his faith, Saint Peter’s sovereignty, the papal office,
and Pizarro’s mission to receive the homage of this barbarian. The
emperor listened, amused at first, then bored, at last affronted,
throwing down the book he was asked to kiss. On that a scarf waved and
the Spaniards swept from their ambush, blocking the exits, charging
as a wolf-pack on a sheepfold, riding the people down while they
slaughtered. So great was the pressure that a wall of the courtyard
fell, releasing thousands whose panic flight stampeded the Incas’ army.
But the nobles had rallied about their sovereign, unarmed but with
desperate valor clinging to the legs of the horses and breaking the
charge of cavalry. They threw themselves in the way of the fusillades,
their bodies piled in mounds, their blood flooding the pavement. Then,
as the bearers fell, the golden throne was overturned, and the emperor
hurried away a prisoner. Two thousand people had perished in the
attempt to save him.
The history of the Mexican conquest was repeated here, and once more a
captive emperor reigned under Spanish dictation.
This Atahuallpa was made of sterner stuff than Montezuma, and had his
defeated brother Huascar drowned, lest the Spaniards should make use of
his rival claim to the throne. The Peruvian prince had no illusions as
to the divinity of the white men, saw clearly that their real religion
was the adoration of gold, and in contempt offered a bribe for his
freedom. Reaching the full extent of his arm to a height of nine feet,
he boasted that to that level he would fill the throne room with gold
as the price of his liberty, and twice he would fill the anteroom with
silver. So he sent orders to every city of his empire commanding that
the shrines, the temples, palaces and gardens be stripped of their
gold and silver ornaments, save only the bodies of the dead kings, his
fathers. Of course, the priests made haste to bury their treasures,
but the Spaniards went to see the plunder collected and when they had
finished no treasures were left in sight save a course of solid golden
ingots in the walls of the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, and certain
massive beams of silver too heavy for shipment. Still the plunder of an
empire failed to reach the nine-foot line on the walls of the throne
room at Caxamalca, but the soldiers were tired of waiting, especially
when the goldsmiths took a month to melt the gold into ingots. So the
royal fifth was shipped to the king of Spain, Pizarro’s share was set
apart, a tithe was dedicated to the Church, and the remainder divided
among the soldiers according to their rank, in all three and a half
millions sterling by modern measurement, the greatest king’s ransom
known to history. Then the emperor was tried by a mock court-martial,
sentenced to death and murdered. It is comforting to note that of all
who took part in that infamy not one escaped an early and a violent
death.
Pizarro had been in a business partnership with the schoolmaster
Luque of Panama cathedral, and with Almagro, a little fat, one-eyed
adventurer, who now arrived on the scene with reinforcements. Pizarro’s
brothers also came from Spain. So when the emperor’s death lashed the
Peruvians to desperation, there were Spaniards enough to face odds of
a hundred to one in a long series of battles, ending with the siege of
the adventurers who held Cuzco against the Inca Manco for five months.
The city, vast in extent, was thatched, and burned for seven days with
the Spaniards in the midst. They fought in sheer despair, and the
Indians with heroism, their best weapon the lasso, their main hope that
of starving the garrison to death. No valor could possibly save these
heroic robbers, shut off from escape or from rescue by the impenetrable
rampart of the Andes. They owed their salvation to the fact that the
Indians must disperse to reap their crops lest the entire nation perish
of hunger, and the last of the Incas ended his life a fugitive lost in
the recesses of the mountains.
Then came a civil war between the Pizarros, and Almagro, whose share
of the plunder turned out to be a snowy desolation to the southward.
It was not until after this squalid feud had been ended by Almagro’s
execution and Pizarro’s murder, that the desolate snows were uncovered,
revealing the incomparable treasures of silver Potosi, Spain’s share of
the plunder.
VIII
A. D. 1534
THE CORSAIRS
In 1453 Constantinople was besieged and stormed by the Turks, the
Christian emperor fell with sixty thousand of his men in battle, and
the Caliph Mahomet II raised the standard of Islam over the last ruins
of the Roman empire.
Four years later a sailorman, a Christian from the Balkan States,
turned Moslem and was banished from the city. He married a Christian
widow in Mitylene and raised two sons to his trade. At a very tender
age, Uruj, the elder son, went into business as a pirate, and on his
maiden cruise was chased and captured by a galley of the Knights of
Saint John who threw him into the hold to be a slave at the oars.
That night a slave upon the nearest oar-bench disturbed the crew by
groaning, and to keep him quiet was thrown overboard. Not liking his
situation or prospects, Uruj slipped his shackles, crept out and
swam ashore. On his next voyage, being still extremely young, he was
captured and swam ashore again. Then the sultan’s brother fitted him
out as a corsair at the cost of five thousand ducats, to be paid by
the basha of Egypt, and so, thanks to this act of princely generosity,
Uruj was able to open a general practise. His young brother Khizr,
also a pirate, joined him; the firm was protected by the sultan of
Tunis who got a commission of twenty per cent. on the loot; and being
steady, industrious and thrifty, by strict application to business,
they made a reputation throughout the Middle Sea. Indeed the Grand Turk
bestowed upon Khizr the title “Protector of Religion,” a distinction
never granted before or since to any professional robber. Once after
a bitter hard fight the brothers captured a first-rate ship of war,
_The Galley of Naples_, and six lady passengers besides three hundred
men were marched ashore into slavery. “See,” said the sultan of Tunis,
“how Heaven recompenses the brave!” Uruj, by the way, was laid up some
months for repairs, and in his next engagement, a silly attack on a
fortress, happened to lose an arm as part of his recompense.
By this time the brothers were weary of that twenty per cent.
commission to the unctuous sultan of Tunis, and by way of cheating him,
took to besieging fortresses, or sacking towns, Christian or Moslem as
the case might be, until they had base camps of their own, Uruj as king
of Tlemcen, and Khizr as king of Algiers. Then Uruj fell in battle,
and Khizr Barbarossa began to do business as a wholesale pirate with a
branch kingdom of Tunis, and fleets to destroy all commerce, to wreck
and burn settlements of the Christian powers until he had command of
the sea as a first-class nuisance. The gentle Moors, most civilized
of peoples, expelled from Spain (1493) by the callous ill-faith of
Ferdinand and Isabella, and stranded upon North Africa to starve,
manned Barbarossa’s fleets for a bloody vengeance upon Christian
Europe. Then Charles V brought the strength of Spain, Germany and Italy
to bear in an expedition against Barbarossa, but his fleet was wrecked
by a storm, clear proof that Allah had taken sides with the strong
pirate king. Barbarossa then despatched his lieutenant Hassan to ravage
the coast of Valencia.
It was upon this venture that Hassan met a transport merchantman with
a hundred veteran Spanish infantry, too strong to attack; so when this
lieutenant returned to Algiers deep-laden with spoil and captives from
his raid, he found King Barbarossa far from pleased. The prisoners
were butchered, and Hassan was flogged in public for having shirked an
engagement. That is why Hassan joined with Venalcadi, a brother officer
who was also in disgrace, and together they drove Barbarossa out of
Algeria. Presently the king came back with a whole fleet of his fellow
corsairs, brother craftsmen, the Jew, and Hunt-the-Devil, Salærrez and
Tabas, all moved to grief and rage by the tears of a sorely ill-treated
hero. With the aid of sixty captive Spanish soldiers, who won their
freedom, they captured Algiers, wiped out the mutineers, and restored
the most perfect harmony. Indeed, by way of proof that there really was
no trouble among the corsairs, King Barbarossa sent off Hunt-the-Devil
with seventeen ships to burn Spain. Ever in blood and tears, their
homes in flames, their women ravished, their very children enslaved,
the Spaniards had to pay for breaking faith with the Moors of Granada.
Barbarossa was not yet altogether king of Algiers. For twenty years the
Peñon, a fortress fronting that city, had been held by Martin de Vargas
and his garrison. Worn out with disease and famine these Spaniards
now fought Barbarossa to the last breath, but their walls went down in
ruin, the breach was stormed, and all were put to the sword. De Vargas,
taken prisoner, demanded the death of a Spaniard who had betrayed
him. The traitor was promptly beheaded, but Barbarossa turned upon De
Vargas. “You and yours,” he said, “have caused me too much trouble,”
and he again signed to the headsman. So De Vargas fell.
Terrible was the rage of Charles V, emperor of half Europe, thus defied
and insulted by the atrocious corsair. It was then that he engaged the
services of Andrea Doria, the greatest Christian admiral of that age,
for war against Barbarossa. And at the same time the commander of the
faithful, Suleiman the Magnificent, sent for King Barbarossa to command
the Turkish fleet.
He came, with gifts for the calif: two hundred women bearing presents
of gold or silver; one hundred camels laden with silks and gold; then
lions and other strange beasts; and more loads of brocades, or rich
garments, all in procession through Constantinople, preceding the
pirate king on his road to the palace. The sultan gave him not only a
big fleet, but also vice-regal powers to make war or peace. Next summer
(1534) eleven thousand Christian slaves, and a long procession of ships
loaded with the plunder of smoking Italy were sent to the Golden Horn.
Incidentally, Barbarossa seized the kingdom of Tunis for himself, and
slaughtered three thousand of the faithful, just to encourage the rest.
It was to avenge the banished King Hassan, and these poor slaughtered
citizens that the Emperor Charles V, attended by his admiral, Andrea
Doria, came with an army and a mighty fleet to Tunis.
He drove out Barbarossa, a penniless, discredited fugitive; and his
soldiers slaughtered thirty thousand citizens of Tunis to console them
for the pirate’s late atrocities.
Poor old Barbarossa, past seventy years of age, had lost a horde of
fifty thousand men, his kingdom of Tunis, fleet and arsenal; but he
still had fifteen galleys left at Bona, his kingdom of Algiers to fall
back upon, and his Moorish seamen, who had no trade to win them honest
bread except as pirates. “Cheer up,” said he, to these broken starving
men, and after a little holiday they sacked the Balearic Isles taking
five thousand, seven hundred slaves, and any amount of shipping. Then
came the building of a Turkish fleet; and with one hundred twenty sail,
Barbarossa went to his last culminating triumph, the defeat of Andrea
Doria, who had at Prevesa one hundred ninety-five ships, sixty thousand
men, and two thousand, five hundred ninety-four guns. With that victory
he retired, and after eight years of peace, he died in his bed, full of
years and honors. For centuries to come all Turkish ships saluted with
their guns, and dipped their colors whenever they passed the grave of
the King of the Sea.
_Sea Wolves of the Mediterranean_, Commander E. Hamilton Currey,
R.N. John Murray.
IX
A. D. 1542
PORTUGAL IN THE INDIES
It was Italian trade that bought and paid for the designs of Raphael,
the temples of Michelangelo, the sculptures of Cellini, the inventions
of Da Vinci, for all the wonders, the glories, the splendors of
inspired Italy. And it was not good for the Italian trade that
Barbarossa, and the corsairs of three centuries in his wake, beggared
the merchants and enslaved their seamen. But Italian commerce had its
source in the Indian Seas, and the ruin of Italy began when the sea
adventures of Portugal rounded the Cape of Good Hope to rob, to trade,
to govern and convert at the old centers of Arabian business.
Poverty is the mother of labor, labor the parent of wealth and genius.
It is the poverty of Attica, and the Roman swamps, of sterile Scotland,
boggy Ireland, swampy Holland, stony New England, which drove them to
high endeavor and great reward. Portugal, too, had that advantage of
being small and poor, without resources, or any motive to keep the
folk at home. So the fishermen took to trading and exploration led by
Cao who found the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama who smelt out the
way to India, Almeida who gained command of the Indian Seas, Cabral
who discovered Brazil, Albuquerque who, seizing Goa and Malacca,
established a Christian empire in the Indies, and Magellan, who showed
Spain the way to the Pacific.
Of these the typical man was Da Gama, a noble with the motives of a
crusader and the habits of a pirate, who once set fire to a shipload
of Arab pilgrims, and watched unmoved while the women on her blazing
deck held out little babies in the vain hope of mercy. On his first
voyage he came to Calicut, a center of Hindu civilization, a seat of
Arab commerce, and to the rajah sent a present of washing basins, casks
of oil, a few strings of coral, fit illustration of the poverty of his
brave country, accepted as a joke in polished, wealthy, weary India.
The king gave him leave to trade, but seized the poor trade goods until
the Portuguese ships had been ransacked for two hundred twenty-three
pounds in gold to pay the customs duties. The point of the joke was
only realized when on his second voyage Da Gama came with a fleet,
bombarded Calicut, and loaded his ships with spices, leaving a trail of
blood and ashes along the Indian coast. Twenty years later he came a
third time, but now as viceroy to the Portuguese Indies. Portugal was
no longer poor, but the richest state in Europe, bleeding herself to
death to find the men for her ventures.
Now these arrogant and ferocious officials, military robbers, fishermen
turned corsairs, and ravenous traders taught the whole East to hate
and fear the Christ. And then came a tiny little monk no more than
five feet high, a white-haired, blue-eyed mendicant, who begged the
rice he lived on. Yet so sweet was his temper, so magical the charm,
so supernatural the valor of this barefoot monk that the children
worshiped him, the lepers came to him to be healed, and the pirates
were proud to have him as their guest. He was a gentleman, a Spanish
Basque, by name Francis de Xavier, and in the University of Paris had
been a fellow student with the reformer Calvin, then a friend and
follower of Ignatius de Loyola, helping him to found the Society of
Jesus. Xavier came to the Indies in 1542 as a Jesuit priest.
Once on a sea voyage Xavier stood for some time watching a soldier
at cards, who gambled away all his money and then a large sum which
had been entrusted to his care. When the soldier was in tears and
threatening suicide, Xavier borrowed for him the sum of one shilling
twopence, shuffled and dealt for him, and watched him win back all
that he had lost. At that point Saint Francis set to work to save
the soldier’s soul, but this disreputable story is not shown in the
official record of his miracles.
From his own letters one sees how the heathen puzzled this little
saint, “‘Was God black or white?’ For as there is so great variety of
color among man, and the Indians are themselves black, they esteem
their own color most highly, and hold that their gods are also black.”
He does not say how he answered, indeed it was hardly by words that
this hidalgo of Spain preached in the many languages he could never
learn. Once when his converts were threatened by a hostile army he went
alone to challenge the invaders, and with uplifted crucifix rebuked
them in the name of God. The front ranks wavered and halted. Their
comrades and leaders vainly pressed them to advance, but no man dared
pass the black-robed figure which barred the way, and presently the
whole force retreated.
Once in the Spice Islands while he was saying mass on the feast of
the Archangel Saint Michael a tremendous earthquake scattered the
congregation. The priest held up the shaking altar and went on with
mass, while, as he says, “Perhaps Saint Michael, by his heavenly power,
was driving into the depths of hell all the wicked spirits of the
country who were opposing the worship of the true God.”
Such was the apostle of the Indies, and it is a pleasant thing to trace
the story of his mission in Japan in the _Peregrination_, a book by a
thorough rogue.
Fernão Mendes Pinto was a distant relative of Ananias. He sailed for
India in 1537 “meanly accommodated.” At Diu he joined an expedition
to watch the Turkish fleet in the Red Sea, and from Massawa was sent
with letters to the king of Abyssinia. That was great luck, because
the very black and more or less Christian kingdom was supposed to be
the seat of the legendary, immortal, shadowy, Prester John. On his way
back to Massawa the adventurer was wrecked, captured by Arabs, sold
into slavery, bought by a Jew, and resold in the commercial city of
Ormus where there were Christian buyers. He found his way to Goa, the
capital of the Portuguese Indies, thence to Malacca, where he got a job
as political agent in Sumatra. With this ended the dull period of his
travels.
[Illustration: FRANCIS XAVIER]
In those days there were ships manned by Portuguese rogues very good in
port, but unpleasant to meet with at sea. They were armed with cannon,
pots of wild fire, unslaked lime to be flung in the Chinese manner,
stones, javelins, arrows, half-pikes, axes and grappling irons,
all used to collect toll from Chinese, Malay, or even Arab merchants.
Pinto found that this life suited him, and long afterward, writing as a
penitent sinner, described the fun of torturing old men and children:
“Made their brains fly out of their heads with a cord” or looked on
while the victims died raving “like mad dogs.” It was great sport to
surprise some junk at anchor, and fling pots of gunpowder among the
sleeping crew, then watch them dive and drown. “The captain of one such
junk was ‘a notorious Pyrat,’ and Pinto complacently draws the moral
‘Thus you see how it pleased God, out of His Divine justice to make the
arrogant confidence of this cursed dog a means to chastise him for his
cruelties.’”
So Christians set an example to the heathen.
Antonio de Faria, Pinto’s captain, had vowed to wipe out Kwaja Hussain,
a Moslem corsair from Gujerat in Western India. In search of Hussain he
had many adventures in the China seas, capturing pirate crews, dashing
out their brains, and collecting amber, gold and pearls. Off Hainan he
so frightened the local buccaneers that they proclaimed him their king
and arranged to pay him tribute.
Luckily for them Faria’s ship was cast away upon a desert island. The
crew found a deer which had been left by a tiger, half eaten; their
shouts would scare the gulls as they flew overhead, so that the birds
dropped such fish as they had captured; and then by good luck they
discovered a Chinese junk whose people, going ashore, had left her
in charge of an old man and a child. Amid the clamors of the Chinese
owners Faria made off with this junk. He was soon at the head of a
new expedition in quest of that wicked pirate, Kwaja Hussain. This
ambition was fulfilled, and with holds full of plunder the virtuous
Faria put into Liampo. Back among the Christians he had a royal
welcome, but actually blushed when a sermon was preached in his honor.
The preacher waxed too eloquent, “whereupon some of his friends plucked
him three or four times by the surplice, for to make him give over.” It
seems that even godly Christian pirates have some sense of humor.
Once in the Malay states, Pinto and a friend of his, a Moslem, were
asked to dine with a bigwig, also a True Believer. At dinner they spoke
evil about the local rajah, who got wind of the slander. Pinto watched
both of these Moslem gentlemen having their feet sawn off, then their
hands, and finally their heads. As for himself, he talked about his
rich relations, claiming Dom Pedro de Faria, a very powerful noble, as
his uncle. He said the factor had embezzled his uncle’s money and fully
deserved his fate. “All this,” says Pinto, “was extemporized on the
spur of the moment, not knowing well what I said.” The liar got off.
Pinto’s career as a pirate ended in shipwreck, capture, slavery and a
journey in China where he was put to work on the repairing of the Great
Wall. He was at a city called Quinsay in 1544 when Altan Khan, king of
the Tumeds--a Mongolian horde--swept down out of the deserts.
The Mongols sacked Quinsay, and Pinto as a prisoner was brought before
Altan Khan who was besieging Pekin. When the siege was raised he
accompanied the Mongol army on its retreat into the heart of Asia. In
time he found favor with his masters and was allowed to accompany
an embassy to Cochin China. On this journey he saw some cannon with
iron breeches and wooden muzzles made, he was told, by certain Almains
(Germans) who came out of Muscovy (Russia), and had been banished by
the king of Denmark. Then comes Pinto’s account of Tibet, of Lhasa,
and the Grand Lama, and so to Cochin China, and the sea. If it is
true, Pinto made a very great journey, and he claims to have been
afterward with Xavier in Japan. In the end he returned to Lisbon after
twenty-one years of adventure in which he was five times shipwrecked,
and seventeen times sold as a slave.
It is disheartening to have so little space for the great world of
Portuguese adventure in the Indies, where Camoens, one of the world’s
great poets, wrote the immortal _Lusiads_.
However ferocious, these Portuguese adventurers were loyal, brave
and strong. They opened the way of Europe to the East Indies, they
Christianized and civilized Brazil. Once, at sea, a Portuguese lady
spoke to me of England’s good-humored galling disdain toward her
people. “Ah, you English!” she cried. “What you are, we were once! what
we are, you will be!”
_Vasco da Gama and his Successors_, by K. G. Jayne. Methuen.
X
A. D. 1841
RAJAH BROOKE
Borneo is a hot forest about five hundred miles long, and as wide,
inhabited by connoisseurs called Dyaks, keen collectors. They collect
human heads and some of their pieces are said to be very valuable. They
are a happy little folk with most amusing manners and customs. Here is
their ritual for burial of the dead: