Within a month of his return from Calicut, he was again sailing north up the coast of India, this time with a revitalized fleet: twenty-three ships, 1,600 Portuguese soldiers and sailors, plus 220 local troops from the Malabar Coast and 3,000 “fighting slaves,” who carried baggage and supplies and in extreme cases might be enrolled in the fight. The initial objective of this expedition appears to have been ill-defined. There were rumors that the Mamluk sultan was preparing a new fleet at Suez to avenge the crushing defeat at Diu. But Albuquerque kept his cards close to his chest. Anchored at Mount Deli on February 13, he explained to his commanders that he had letters from the king to go to Ormuz; he also dropped in news of the Red Sea threat—and casually mentioned the subject of Goa, a city that had never figured in Portuguese plans. Four days later, to the surprise of almost everyone, they were embarked on its capture.
What had happened in the interim was a visit to the fleet by Timoji, the Hindu pirate who had once troubled Vasco da Gama. Timoji, a somewhat ambivalent figure, had thrown in his lot with the Europeans during the time of Almeida, and he came to see Albuquerque with a proposition. Despite the apparent coincidence of this meeting, it is likely that it had been set up: Timoji’s emissaries had visited Albuquerque in January. In all probability, the two men had secretly prepared this encounter well in advance. Timoji came with a well-rehearsed tale to tell.
The city of Goa, situated on a fertile island between two rivers, was the most strategically positioned trading post on the west coast of India. It lay on the fault line between two rival empires competing for the heart of the southern subcontinent: to the north, the Muslim kingdom of Bijapur; to the south its rivals, the Hindu rajas of Vijayanagar. Goa was fiercely contested between these two dynasties. It had changed hands three times in the past thirty years. Its particular value, and its wealth, derived from its role in the horse trade. From Ormuz it imported animals from Persia and Arabia, indispensable to both sides in their frontier wars. In the tropical climate, horses quickly succumbed and did not breed successfully, so stocks required continual replenishment. Goa had other advantages. It had an excellent deep-water port sheltered from the monsoon winds. The area was extremely fertile, and the island on which the city itself was located, Tiswadi or Goa Island, allowed all goods coming in and out to be efficiently taxed at customs points. As an island, it also suggested the possibilities for effective defense.
Goa at the time of Albuquerque
Timoji had pressing reasons as to why the Portuguese should attack Goa now. Whereas the Malabar cities had Muslim communities but were ruled by Hindus, here the majority Hindus were presently ruled by Muslims, who were not popular. The Hindus were heavily taxed. Unrest was further increased by the presence of a band of Rume fighters, fugitives from the battle of Diu, who oppressed the local population. Of greater concern to Albuquerque was that these men had plans for revenge. They were constructing a good number of carracks along Portuguese lines, probably with the help of European renegades. They had appealed to the Mamluk sultan for further aid. In effect, Goa was being prepared as a base for a Muslim counterattack in the war with the Franks.
Timoji stressed that it was the moment to strike. The sultan of Bijapur had just died; his young son, Adil Shah, was away from the city putting down an insurrection. The garrison left on the island was not large. Additionally, Bijapur was further distracted by a state of almost permanent hostility with Vijayanagar. There would be support within the city for a Portuguese takeover. Timoji said that he personally could arrange it. He knew the city well, its topography and means of access; he had relationships with the leaders of the Hindu community, who would welcome deliverance from the Muslims. The pirate’s exact motives might be hard to fathom, but he had recently proved to be a loyal ally, and his spy network was evidently extensive. Albuquerque was inclined to believe him. Goa fitted his personal vision of an Indian empire. Only ownership of territory would make the India enterprise secure. Goa’s strategic position was ideal for controlling the spice trade, while a monopoly of the horse trade would allow the Portuguese to intervene in the complex political and military game of southern India. The city could be defended easily—and there was no religious controversy with the Hindus.
The capture of Goa was just as easy as Timoji had suggested—though holding it would prove otherwise. The Hindu pirate collected his own force of two thousand men to help the operation. On February 15 or 16, Albuquerque sent exploratory ships into the mouth of the Mandovi River to take soundings. The depth was suitable for even his largest carracks. A pincer movement was prepared by land and sea. Timoji’s men captured and dismantled an artillery position on the landward side. Albuquerque’s nephew attacked the matching battery on the island at the mouth of the river. After a short, sharp fight, the defense collapsed and its captain retreated into the town. Meanwhile, Timoji had infiltrated the city. Two representatives came out to meet the armada and offered peaceful surrender. Albuquerque sent a message to the populace, granting complete religious tolerance for both resident Muslims and Hindus and a lowering of taxes. His only condition was that the Rumes and Adil Shah’s mercenary garrison should be expelled. They took chaotic flight out of the city.
On March 1, the governor took possession of Goa with great ceremony. The men of the new trained bands were assembled on the quay, their pikes glittering. Albuquerque stepped ashore in richly worked armor to be met by eight of the principal citizens of Goa on bended knees. They offered him the keys of the city. He rode through the gates on a horse with a silver chased saddle to the shouts of the people and the drums and pipes of the trained bands, a friar holding forth a jeweled cross, and the banner of the Order of Christ, a red cross on a white background, proclaiming the Christian conquest.
From the moment he set foot on the island, Albuquerque considered Goa to be a permanent possession of Portugal. He acted accordingly. Strict discipline was imposed on the men. There was to be no plunder, and he forbade acts of violence, robbery, or sexual assault on people who were now subjects of King Manuel. The governor would maintain this position with unswerving ferocity in the face of extraordinary setbacks and fierce criticism during the years ahead.
They explored the city thoroughly. The shah’s palace, with its great square, perfumed gardens, and pavilions of finely worked wood, was as splendid as that at Calicut. They found 150 Arabian horses in the royal stables and a hundred elephants. Timoji’s account of the war preparations of the Rumes was also discovered to be correct. Large carracks were under construction in the dockyard; the arsenal contained stockpiles of war materials—cannons, gunpowder, swords—and forges and tools for manufacturing all the equipment for a substantial maritime expedition. The governor ordered the ships to be completed as a welcome addition to the fleet.
Albuquerque set about the creation of Portuguese Goa with zeal. This was the first territorial acquisition in Asia. To mark its permanency, within a fortnight he had ordered the establishment of a mint “to mint new currency, in the service of His Highness, in this his new realm.” The circumstances surrounding this reflected his sensitivity to the local situation. The leading figures of the city had quickly approached him about the lack of coinage in Goa, necessary to reinvigorate trade. The new flagship coin was to be the cruzado—or the Manuel—a glittering gold disk bearing the cross on one side, on the other an armillary sphere, the symbol of the Portuguese king, struck at a weight of 4.56 grams, the local Goan standard, heavier than its Portuguese equivalent. To announce its inception publicly, the new coinage was carried through the streets in silver basins to the sound of drums and pipes, accompanied by clowns and dancers and heralds proclaiming in Portuguese and the local language that “this was the new currency of the king our lord, who ordered that it should run in Goa and its territories.”
The attention to detail over the new coinage reveals Albuquerque in all his complexity: a practical and flexible administrator, sensitive to local conditions, able to rethink solutions in new frameworks—and yet touched b
y a blind and often insufferable sense of self that was to cause many problems. On the lesser coins the sphere was controversially obversed with the letter A, “to show who had minted them.” It was the kind of action that would provide ammunition for Albuquerque’s enemies and stoke rumors back in Portugal that the governor was intending Goa for his own fiefdom.
The first faltering steps in colonial administration were not error-free. Timoji was initially put in charge of tax collecting, but this promised to stir dissent from both communities and his remit had to be altered. And although Albuquerque had promised religious freedom, he recoiled in horror at the practice of suttee—the immolation of Hindu widows on their husband’s funeral pyres—and banned it. The underlying sense of Christian mission and his own obduracy also led him to order summary executions that were to cause unrest.
In the midst of this two ambassadors turned up, one from Shah Ismail, the Shia ruler of Persia, the other from Albuquerque’s old adversary Hwaga Ata in Ormuz, asking for help from Adil Shah against the Portuguese. They were nonplussed to find Adil Shah gone and Albuquerque in occupation. However, Albuquerque spotted a strategic opportunity in relations with Ismail, the sworn enemy of the Sunni Mamluks. He proposed a joint operation. The Portuguese would attack from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, the shah from the east. “Then if God wills that this alliance be concluded, you could descend with all your power upon the town of Cairo and the lands of the sultan, and my lord the king would pass over to Jerusalem and conquer all the country on that side”—giving Albuquerque the chance to fulfill Manuel’s crusading dream. He sent an ambassador back to the shah with this message, together with a conciliatory letter to be delivered along the way to the puppet king of Ormuz, overlooking the past. The unfortunate chosen for this role, Ruy Gomes, never made it to Persia. Hwaga Ata poisoned him in Ormuz.
Urgency informed the governor’s actions in Goa. He was aware that the city’s defenses were insufficient, and it was clear that at some point the young Adil Shah would reappear and demand his valuable trading port back. Repairs were hampered by a lack of lime from which to make mortar; the walls had to be rebuilt with stone packed with mud. Knowing that time was pressing, he detailed teams of men to work round the clock in rotation to shore up the defenses against a possible attack; the governor was on site night and day urging on the work. He was determined to hold Goa at all costs. By April, however, the mood among the Portuguese was restive. Many of the fidalgos did not share their governor’s vision. The monsoon season was on the way, and distant rumors reached Goa that Adil Shah was preparing a substantial army. Relations with the citizens had soured somewhat over the severity of his justice, and some of his captains began privately to chafe for a return to Cochin. Failure to leave soon would mean being trapped by the rains and forced to sit out a long season, possibly under siege. It was already evident that the favored tactic of Portugal’s enemies was to wait until the heavy rain and rough seas isolated their forces from outside help. Albuquerque was not to be shaken. Goa was Portuguese and would remain so.
In fact, by April Adil Shah had put down the rebellion in his kingdom. Unbeknownst to Albuquerque, he had also brokered a truce with the rival kingdom of Vijayanagar. He was ready to spring the monsoon trap. That month he dispatched his general Palud Khan with a large force, speculatively calculated at forty thousand men—trained fighters from Iran and central Asia—to dislodge the intruders. When this force reached the banks of the Mandovi River, it quickly routed Timoji’s impromptu fighting band. Across the narrow creeks and crocodile-infested rivers that separated Goa Island from the mainland, the defenders could now see the tents and banners of a large army. It was apparent that the perimeter of the island, some eighteen miles, would stretch Albuquerque’s forces to the limit in the attempt to guard the swampy fords, which at low tide might allow an enemy across. Palud Khan kept the Portuguese captains watchful and at full stretch with a series of feints and tentative probes across the lagoons. He slipped letters to the Muslims of Goa. Men from the city started to desert and join the Islamic army. Palud waited for the weather to worsen.
One day, as the defenders stared uneasily across the narrow creek that separated the two sides, they saw a man come down to the water’s edge, waving a white flag. A voice called out in their language, “My Portuguese lords, let someone come and speak with me to relay [the information] that I come with a message for the governor.” A boat was sent out. The man identified himself as a Portuguese named João Machado, and he begged a safe-conduct to speak to Albuquerque.
Machado had been a convict dropped on the Swahili coast a decade earlier and was in the service of Adil Shah, but he seemed to come with a lingering nostalgia for his own people. He brought helpful advice. His message was a simple one. Palud Khan’s forces would soon be further augmented by Adil Shah himself. The monsoon was approaching. Leave the island now, before it was too late. Return the women and children from the sultan’s harem who had been left behind when the shah’s garrison fled. The shah wished to be on good terms with the governor. In return, he would grant him another place on the coast to build a fort.
The message contained a threat, a sweetener, and an appeal to common sense. Albuquerque ignored them all. There would be no terms. “What the Portuguese win they never give up” was his proud reply. Nor would he return “either the children or the women, whom he was keeping as [Portuguese] brides, and whom he hoped to make Christians.” Not for the first time, Albuquerque’s intransigent negotiating style shocked people. When his decision was relayed back to Palud Khan, the general “was completely amazed, because he well knew how few men the governor had.” He returned to his tent and started to order the construction of large rafts, platforms mounted on canoes lashed together, for transporting an invasion force across the river.
Stubbornly clinging to his imperial vision, Albuquerque did not heed advice. He believed that he could hold out during the monsoon until the next fleet arrived from Lisbon, in August. He was unaware how much Adil Shah’s truce with Vijayanagar had freed the young ruler’s hand, and he chose to ignore the growing discontent among his own men. Incessant forays across the shallow creeks kept them at full stretch, when they were not being exhorted to work harder at the walls. Over the straits, they could see how large the enemy force was. Sapped by the heat and on tightening rations, there was a sullen and uncomprehending spirit among many of the fidalgos as well as their men. Even Timoji had fallen out with the unyielding Albuquerque. As the rain started to lash down and the seas to roughen, the Portuguese could feel the jaws of the trap closing. The governor was becoming increasingly isolated, as he had been at Ormuz. He was reliant on a small band of noblemen personally loyal to him, the most prominent of whom was his nephew, the young António de Noronha, enterprising and brave. Elsewhere, the inhabitants of Goa, Hindus as well as Muslims, were sizing up their chances and concluding that it might be better to side with the army outside the gates.
Palud Khan, informed of the growing dissent among the Portuguese captains, timed his all-out assault well. On the night of May 10 or 11, with the monsoon rain lashing down, the wind whipping the palm trees, and the tide out, so that the fords were more easily traversable, swarms of rafts pushed out across the shallow river. In the confusion of the night, the mixed force of Portuguese and local Malabar troops was taken by surprise. There was a lack of cohesion between the two units. They were overtaken so fast and fled in such panic that they left their cannons behind. In a short while, the Portuguese were forced back into the town. Some of the local troops defected. In the city, the Muslims rose against their new masters. There was street-to-street fighting as Albuquerque struggled to control the situation.
Soon the Portuguese were bottled up within the citadel. For twenty days the governor urged the men to resist, endlessly doing the rounds of the command posts, eating as he rode, but the hastily rebuilt walls bonded with mud were inexorably crumbling. Revolt among the population was spreading. It was clear that he no longer had enou
gh men to hold out indefinitely. Adil Shah himself arrived in person. From the walls they could see the sea of tents and the blue and red flags—“and all their tents fluttered with banners and their terrible cries broke the spirits of our men.” A growing number of captains petitioned for withdrawal before it was too late. The chances of making it out of the harbor and to the safety of Cochin were getting slimmer by the day. The governor, supported by his coterie, stubbornly insisted that the city could be held and that Adil Shah would need to return to his fight with Vijayanagar. It was only when news reached him of the truce between the two potentates, João Machado came again to warn him of a plan to burn his boats, and a ship was sunk in the channel to block their escape that he realized that the situation was untenable.
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