April of that year he sailed with his cousin Francisco de Albuquerque
in command of six ships, the chief object of the expedition being to
establish the friendship existing between the King of Cochin and the
Portuguese and to build a fort at Cochin. Albuquerque made no long stay
in India, and in July of the following year was back in Lisbon. But
he remained long enough to see the vast possibilities there of failure
or success for Portugal, and when, two years later, he again went out,
although he sailed as the subordinate of Tristão da Cunha, it was on
the understanding that he should soon obtain independent command and
with the provisional appointment as Governor of India in his pocket.
Smooth co-operation with other officials was not Albuquerque’s
strong point, and he felt no doubt that if he was to serve his King
and country as he would wish he must be able to act freely. It is
significant of his commanding personality that during his two years’
presence at Court he succeeded in imposing his views. In his absence
later his enemies were often able to tie him hand and foot even though
he was Governor of India.
There were two opposed policies. Hitherto the Portuguese in India had
been confined to the sea, and many considered that this situation
should continue. In a sense they were right, since it was obviously
impossible in so vast an empire to conquer and hold large tracts of
land. But Albuquerque considered that this floating empire should
be nailed down at cardinal points by capturing important towns and
building strong forts, and it was with this purpose that he went out to
India.
In the summer of 1507 he separated, according to his instructions, from
Tristão da Cunha, and when the latter returned to Portugal with the
rest of the fleet Albuquerque with his six ships remained in India. Of
these ships he has left a vivid description: there were no provisions,
the lances and other arms were few and rotten, with great scarcity of
cables, sails, and rigging; the powder was all wet, of bombardiers
there were but few, of carpenters one or two, and a hundred and fifty
men were dying of disease.
Even so he set to work to strike terror into the Moors and hammer the
Portuguese Empire into shape. Coasting down Arabia he sacked various
cities, spreading desolation with fire and sword and mercilessly
mutilating the Moors who surrendered. The poet Antonio Ferreira called
Albuquerque “clement.” It is not a clemency that we would wish to
encounter in ordinary life, and even among his contemporaries some
condemned his cruelty. Bishop Osorio, for instance, considered it as
unworthy of so great a man: _illius rebus gestis indignum_.
But although Albuquerque could be harsh and grim enough (his suggestion
to King Manoel that Spanish and Portuguese Jews in India should be
extinguished one by one is most sinister), and was quick to anger and
a stern disciplinarian, he had no delight in cruelty for cruelty’s
sake. He wished to reduce the Moors throughout India to subjection, and
considered that such acts would best spread the terror of his name and
conceal the difficulties of his position. He would have been the first
to admit that his policy in this respect was a sign of weakness.
Albuquerque’s first great achievement was the bombardment and capture
of the important city of Ormuz, at the entrance of the Persian
Gulf, and in October he set about building a fortress. Milton in the
following century wrote of “the wealth of Ormuz.” To Albuquerque it
was but the first stone in the vast edifice of his projects, but to
his captains it was already more than enough. They wished to be making
prizes on the high seas, not to be bottled up in Ormuz building a fort
as if they were masons. Albuquerque, to whom in their complaints they
were very much like gnats in a thunderstorm, went on with his work,
tore up their first petition and placed a second under a jamb of one of
the fort’s doorways as it was being built. This was too much for the
vanity of his captains and several of them sailed away to India.
The result of this desertion was that Albuquerque was obliged
temporarily to abandon Ormuz. Small wonder that he wrote of their
conduct with extreme bitterness. “Without shame or fear of the
King or your Lordship,” he says in his letter to the Viceroy, Dom
Francisco de Almeida, “they deserted me in time of war, and during
actual hostilities with this city they left me and fled.... Portuguese
gentlemen have been guilty of no such vileness these three hundred
years, nor have I read of any such in the ancient chronicles.”
Even if they had all the right in the world on their side, these men
had deserted in the presence of the enemy; and had they been shot by
order of the Viceroy there and then, Portuguese rule would have been
greatly helped and strengthened and not only many troubles but many
lives spared in the future.
But no such salutary discipline prevailed in India; the instructions
given to the captains were partly independent, and the Viceroy
received them courteously and bade them draw up a document of their
complaints. When Albuquerque arrived in India his enemies took care
to foster differences between him and the Viceroy, who was opposed
to Albuquerque’s policy and methods, and, after being treated with
great discourtesy, Albuquerque was placed under arrest. One of the
accusations of his captains was that he wished to make himself King of
Ormuz.
They little knew their man. To expect Albuquerque, whose dreams of
conquest were as wide and magnificent as those of Alexander, to
vegetate as King of Ormuz was a mistake as colossal as to believe that
Napoleon could be content to rule Elba. There can be no doubt that
Albuquerque was unjustly treated by men incapable of understanding him,
all the more so in that Almeida’s term of office was up and by right
it was Albuquerque and not he who should have been governing India.
Albuquerque for his part disdained to be conciliatory.
Fortunately for Albuquerque and for India his imprisonment only lasted
a few weeks. The arrival of the Marshal, Fernando Coutinho, from
Portugal put a new face on the situation; he released Albuquerque and
installed him as Governor of India. Almeida set out for, but never
reached, Portugal.
The year 1509 was almost out, and it is 1510 which marks the beginning
of Albuquerque’s victories. With the Marshal he attacked Calicut,
but the Marshal’s impetuous rashness (he was so nettled by a first
success of the impetuous but wise Albuquerque that he said he would
take Calicut with no other arm than a stick in his hand) involved the
expedition in disaster, and, although they sacked Calicut, the Marshal
and many of the Portuguese lost their lives in a disorderly retreat
to the ships, Albuquerque himself receiving a wound which permanently
disabled his left arm.
The rest of the year was occupied with Goa.[14] He obtained possession
of this city after a mere show of resistance, but a large and
ever-growing army of Turks forced him to abandon it after being reduced
to great straits and danger. Albuquerque had had fresh trouble with his
captains, but on the arrival of a few ships from Portugal he returned
to Goa in the autumn and stormed it. Most of the Moors were put to
the sword in a massacre which lasted four days. Some Moorish women of
almost white complexion he married to Portuguese soldiers. This was
a deliberate policy, approved by the King of Portugal, in order to
provide a peaceful settled population.
The possession of Goa changed the whole position of the Portuguese
in India. Remote kings who had hitherto looked on the new-comers as
passing freebooters now sent ambassadors offering friendship and
treaties.
Barely six months after taking Goa, Albuquerque stormed and sacked
Malaca, in Malay, a city which now belongs to the British Empire and
has about 100,000 inhabitants, and which then, in Albuquerque’s own
words, was “_muito grande cousa_.”[15] Of all the great spoils the
Governor characteristically reserved for himself only two great bronze
lions which he intended to have placed on his tomb. But his ship, laden
with the costliest plunder, much of which was intended for King Manoel,
met with a violent storm and foundered. Albuquerque, dressed in a brown
coat and anything that came to hand, escaped on a raft.
In 1513 he carried out his long-cherished project of an attack on Aden,
whence, he said, “vermilion, currants, almonds, opium, horses, dates,
gold” went to India. The Portuguese assaulted but failed to take the
town--in their eagerness the ladders broke again and again under their
weight--and it was not safe to blockade it for fear of adverse winds,
lack of water, and the large and speedy assistance the enemy might
expect. Swift cameleers carried the news of the attack in fifteen days
to Cairo, and, generally, the presence of a large Portuguese fleet in
the Red Sea made a far-reaching impression.
Albuquerque set out to attack Aden again in 1515, but was occupied for
some time at Ormuz, and fell ill there. He started to return to India,
and on the way received tidings from a passing boat that his successor
to the Governorship of India had been appointed, and many important
posts given to his personal enemies.
This was his death-blow. Only a year before he had written to the King
of his determination to continue in India for the rest of his life,
at whatever sacrifice to himself, for the sake of maintaining and
strengthening the empire he had won. Now heartbroken he exclaimed, “Out
of favour with men for the sake of the King, and out of favour with the
King for the sake of men. It is good to make an end.” He dictated a
last brief letter to the King “in the throes of death,” recommending
his son, and died as the ship came in sight of Goa, straining his eyes
to see the tower of the church he had founded (December 1515).
Next day his body, dressed in the habit of Santiago, was carried ashore
and buried amid universal grief. The natives perhaps mourned him
sincerely, since he had worked for their prosperity and his attitude
towards them, as distinguished from the Moors, had always been kindly.
The gods, they said, had summoned him to war in heaven. His enemies
continued to fear him even dead, so that King João III declared that
India would be safe so long as Albuquerque’s body remained there, and
it was only in 1566 that his bones were brought to Portugal.
A contemporary Portuguese historian, Barros, thus describes
Albuquerque: “He was a man of medium height, of a cheerful, pleasant
countenance, but when angry he had a melancholy look; he wore his beard
very long during the time of his command in India, and as it was white
it made him very venerable. He was a man of many witty sayings and
in some slight annoyances [_menencorias leves!_ Had not Barros read
Albuquerque’s letters?] during his command he said many things the wit
of which delighted those whom they did not immediately affect. He spoke
and wrote very well with the help of a certain knowledge of Latin [the
superior Barros!]. He was cunning and sagacious in business, and knew
how to mould things to his purpose, and had a great store of anecdotes
suited to different times and persons. He was very rough and violent
when displeased and he tired men greatly by his orders, being of a very
urgent disposition. He was very charitable and devout, ever ready to
bury the dead. In action he was somewhat impetuous and harsh. He made
himself greatly feared by the Moors and always succeeded in getting the
better of them.”
Another historian, Correa, who had served Albuquerque three years
as private secretary in India, knew him better and appreciated his
greatness. It is Correa who gives us an imposing glimpse of the
Governor of India two years before his death, _i.e._ at the time when
Albuquerque described himself as “a weak old man.” He was dressed “in
doublet and flowing open robe, as was then the fashion, all of black
damask streaked with black velvet, on his head a net of black and
gold thread, and above this a large cap of black velvet; in his belt
a dagger of gold and precious stones worth fifteen thousand crusados,
round his neck a thick chain; and his long white beard, knotted at the
end, gave him a very venerable presence.”
Albuquerque was sincerely devout, even to the verge of mysticism or
superstition. He believed that St. James went before the Portuguese on
a white horse guiding them to victory, and when in the Red Sea that a
fiery cross in the sky was specially sent to beckon him on to further
conquests.
There is a massive strength in all that he said and did.[16] After
he had subdued Ormuz its king hesitated whether he should pay
his customary tribute to Persia and sent to consult Albuquerque.
Albuquerque made a little collection of firearms and cannon-balls and
answered, “In this coin is the King of Portugal wont to pay tribute.”
But the whole man is in his letters, aptly described as being “written
with a sword.” Perhaps it is only in the letters of Napoleon that one
finds the same mingling of great plans and conceptions with a mastery
of the smallest details and concern for things which a lesser man would
scorn to notice.
This Governor, the fear of whose name extended far into China, to
whom the Kings of Narsinga and Persia, Siam, Cambaya, Turkey, and
Cairo sent gifts, the conqueror of Ormuz and Cananor, Goa and Malaca,
who dispatched his agents even to the remote Moluccas, and who was
determined to destroy Mecca (five hundred Portuguese were to ride
swiftly inland from the coast, take it by surprise and burn it to
ashes) and thought of altering the course of the Nile, did not disdain
to occupy himself with the alphabets for teaching children to read, the
missals and pontificals for churches, pearl-fisheries, the horse trade,
the colour of the Red Sea, how to pack quicksilver, and a hundred
other matters of great diversity, while on the question of arms and
merchandise to be sent from Portugal to India[17] no modern official
report could exceed his letters in accuracy and minuteness.
For instance, he declares that lances are sent out unsharpened, as they
come from the Biscay factories, to the care of a _barbeiro inchado_ in
India, and in 1513 says that he now has workmen in Goa who can turn out
better guns than those of Germany. Unfortunately in Portugal India was
regarded merely as a mine to be exploited, not as a field that required
farming in order to continue productive. Albuquerque, when, as he says,
over his neck in work, had to answer great bundles of letters from the
King, often filled with carping criticisms of his actions or containing
contradictory projects. He complains that there is a new policy for
each year, almost in the words of Dante in the _Purgatorio_:
fai tanto sottili
Provvedimenti ch’ a mezzo Novembre
Non giunge quel que tu d’Ottobre fili.
It must be confessed that Albuquerque in these letters, filled with the
eloquence of the Old Testament, gave as good as he got: the pity is
that the King probably only saw them in the official summaries. “Sir,
the soldiers in India require to be paid their salaries,” he says on
one occasion, or “Your Highness is not well informed,” and he warns
him that should matters continue as in the past the empire will come
crumbling about the King’s ears.
Again he writes that he is not amazed that the accusations should be
made, but amazed that the King should believe them. The names of his
accusers were withheld, as later in trials before the Inquisition, but
he knew whence the trouble came and does not mince his words in telling
the King of the corruption, greed, carelessness, and incompetence of
the officials in India appointed by the King. “And if I were not afraid
of Your Highness I would send you a dozen of these mischief-makers in a
cage.”
In five days he writes nineteen letters to the King, some of them
of considerable length, this task occupying him till dawn, after a
long day’s work. On a single day he wrote the King eight letters, one
of which contains a splendid general account of the state of India,
another is a little masterpiece describing the misdeeds of one of his
captains.
No doubt his critics believed him to be harsh and insensible.
That this was far from being the case is shown by the fact that on
receiving, amid a shower of blame and criticisms, a sympathetic letter
from his old friend, the historian Duarte Galvão, he shed tears, and
also by the deep feeling he displayed when a whole batch of letters
came from the King full of dispraise. “Your Highness blames me, blames
me, blames me,” he wrote, and again, “My spirits fell to the ground and
my hair turned twice as white as it was before.”
When, therefore, a few months after he had written of his intention to
return from Ormuz to India in order to see the King’s letters and know
if he had sent ships and men for the expedition against Aden, he heard
that his successor was appointed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say
that the news killed him.
Albuquerque’s crime was to have thought of India and Portugal first,
before personal interests and ambitions. “They call me a harsh man,”
he said; and “these officials of yours do not love me.” But if he
could vigorously show his dislike of the false and slovenly, he always
liberally rewarded good service, was loyal, generous, and unselfish,
and showed a most delightful pleasure in any thorough work or workman.
“The best thing I ever saw,” he says of a map; and of a good carpenter,
“he is a marvellous man.”[18]
No sooner was Albuquerque dead than his greatness was felt, and
posterity has never sought to deny it. If we consider the conditions
under which his great work was accomplished in six years--his ships
often so rotten that they sank of sheer old age, his men few and
ill-armed (before he received reinforcements in October 1512 he says
that the whole number of Europeans under his command in India were but
1,200, of whom barely 300 were properly armed), the fact that all his
projects were liable to be upset by orders dictated in ignorance at
home, and that as soon as his back was turned (for instance, when he
went to attack Aden) all the officials in India treated him as dead and
his instructions as a dead letter--we will not deny that posterity has
done well to honour and admire this man in his lonely magnificence.
_Fannomi onore e di ciò fanno bene._
No doubt he had great faults, since everything in him was great. He
adopted oriental methods in dealing with the kings of the East. He
murdered in cold blood the powerful minister of the young King of
Cochin, and in one of his letters to King Manoel he remarks calmly, “In
all my letters I bade him kill the Samuri of Calicut with poison.” But
he understood the East and was the only man who could have established
the Portuguese Empire firmly. That he was not given a free hand and
every assistance from the first was the doom of that empire, and
Portugal never saw his like again.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Albuquerque’s father, Gonçalo de Albuquerque, was in favour at
Court. His grandfather João Gonçalvez had been secretary to King João I
and King Duarte, but was hanged for murdering his wife in 1437.
[13] In 1461 or 1462. In one of his letters (April 1, 1512) he says
that he is fifty. Correa, who calls him old in 1509, says that he
was over seventy at the time of his death. Despite the very definite
assertion in his letter, perhaps the last word has not been said as to
his age. Misprints in these matters are common. Couto, for instance,
says that Albuquerque’s nephew Naronha is nearly seventy in 1538 and
eighty in 1540. All the historians call Albuquerque old, yet the
captain of a fortress was considered too young for the post because he
was under forty (Correa III, 687). On the other hand not Borrow merely
but Couto (VI. 2. ix) calls Castro old, although he did not live to be
fifty. Perhaps in Albuquerque’s letter we should read LX instead of L
(for indeed why should he speak so fatherly to King Manoel (1469-1521)
if he was not considerably older than the King?), and _sesenta_ for
_setenta_ in Correa.
[14] Goa is thus described by an early traveller: “La città di Goa è
la più fresca delle Indie e la più abbondante di tutte le cose da....
È detta città molto grande, con buone case e grandi e belle strade
e piazze, murata d’intorno con le sue torri e fatta in una buona
fortezza. Fuori di detta città vi erano molti horti e giardini copiosi
e pieni d’infiniti arbori fruttiferi, con molti stagni di acque; eranvi
molte moschee e case d’ orationi di gentili. Il paese d’intorno è molto
fertile e ben lavorato.”
[15] The same traveller says: “Questa città di Malaca è la più ricca
scala di più ricchi mercatanti e di maggior navigatione e traffico che
si possa trovare nel mondo.”
[16] The story, maliciously recorded by Barros, that Albuquerque sent
ruby and diamond rings to the historian Ruy de Pina to jog his memory
in relating the events of India, may or may not be true. In a way it is
characteristic, for Albuquerque, if he wished for Pina’s praise, which
one may be inclined to doubt, was not a man to beat about the bush.
Perhaps after all it was more honest to plump down the rubies than to
indulge in _elogio mutuo_.
[17] In one letter he bids the King plant all the marsh-lands of
Portugal with poppies, since opium is the most welcome merchandise in
India.
[18] _Estimava muito os homens cavalleiros_, says Correa, who knew him
personally and insists more than once that he was very accessible. To
cope with what Albuquerque himself calls the “mountains of petitions”
that beset him he employed six or seven secretaries, but he dealt with
them unconventionally, signing them or tearing them up in the street as
they were given him, thereby expediting his business but offending the
vanity of the petitioners.
[Illustration: JOÃO DE CASTRO.]
VII
DOM JOÃO DE CASTRO
(1500-1548)
Era tambem de sua pessoa tam esforçado como em letras insigne.--PEDRO
DE MARIZ, _Dialogos de Varia Historia_.
In that low shady quinta, embowered amongst those tall alcornoques,
once dwelt John de Castro, the strange old Viceroy of India.--GEORGE
BORROW, _The Bible in Spain_.
Castro was still a schoolboy when Albuquerque died. Born in 1500, the
son of D. Alvaro de Castro, in high office under Kings João II and
Manoel, and a daughter of the Count of Abrantes, he studied with the
famous mathematician, Pedro Nunez, and had a scientific as well as
a classical education. There is every reason to believe that he was
a promising and fervent scholar, but the victories of Dom Duarte de
Meneses in North Africa appealed to him even more than did the figures
of Euclid, and in 1518 he “took the key of the fields” and fled to
Tangier. There he served with the greatest distinction for nine years,
and stood high in favour with the Governor, Meneses, who knighted him
and on his return to Portugal in 1527 furnished him with a glowing
recommendation to the King.
Of the next few years of his life comparatively little is known. He
received a _comenda_ from the King, was employed on various service,
and married D. Leonor de Coutinho, of noble family but poor. Probably
he was able to devote considerable time to quiet study. In 1535 he
commanded one of the twenty-five Portuguese ships in the Emperor
Charles V’s victorious expedition against Tunis. It was on this
occasion that Castro’s lifelong friend, the gallant poet Prince Luis,
followed his example of 1518 and ran away to join the expedition
against the wishes of his brother King João III.[19]
In the autumn Castro was back in his favourite Cintra. There he himself
planted a _quinta_, to which his thoughts, later in India, constantly
turned. Those who go along the delightful shady road of orchard
and running streams, rock and woodland from Cintra to Monserrate
and Collares come in a few minutes to an archway and green door on
the right. It is here, in the _quinta_ now known as _Penha Verde_,
overlooking the fertile plain of Collares to the sea, that Castro, like
Pitt planting by moonlight or Garibaldi in his island, indulged his
love of husbandry.
“Here,” says one of his early biographers, “he entertained himself with
a new and strange kind of agriculture, for he cut down fruit-bearing
trees and planted wild woods, perhaps to show that he was so
disinterested that not even from the earth would he expect reward. Yet
it is no wonder if one who disdained the rubies and diamonds of the
East should think little of the products of Cintra’s rocks.” It was to
the _matos_ of the Serra de Cintra that he longed to return in 1546.
But he certainly did not despise the fruits of the soil, and probably
occupied himself with grafting experiments.