The Fatal History of Portuguese Ceylon: Transition to Dutch Rule [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674863118, 9780674863101

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The Fatal History of Portuguese Ceylon

The Fatal History of Portuguese Ceylon Transition

to Dutch

George Davison

Winius

Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts 1971

Rule

© Copyright 1971 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London Library of Congress Catalog Card N u m b e r 75-152271 SBN 674-29510-2 Printed in the United States of America

To Manuel J. F. de Oliveira

The theme of this book is the loss of an important Portuguese imperial possession in Asia during the mid-seventeenth century. Its story has been thrice told in recent times from the viewpoint of the Dutch attackers, but it has not been told since the 1680s from the perspective of the Portuguese vanquished. The difference, however, is more than a subtle one. There has long been a tendency among writers to consider the era of Portuguese setbacks in Asia—in which the fall of Ceylon figured so prominently—as though the only explanation necessary for it was Portugal's collision with the superior rival power of Holland (and, to a lesser extent, England). This is an incomplete answer, and, insofar as history is scientific, it is also an unscientific answer because it leaves unexamined half the available data: the documents of the Portuguese themselves. Beyond this, it neglects a good tale. Because I believe history to be literary in nature with more conviction than I believe it to be scientific, I am reminded that the "muddy vesture of decay" is nearly always more fascinating than any record of triumph, and that Aristotle rated tragedy above all other forms of literary expression. Events in the narrative of Ceylon's loss to the Hollanders are at times reminiscent of high tragedy and make its reading far more arresting than the corresponding Dutch success story. Finally, if one considers history as a field of investigation concerned with the study of all human beings and their activities, there can be little reason for not examining some of these activities merely because they did not happen to be those of the winning side.

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Writing about Portugal's loss of Ceylon in the seventeenth century may illuminate some dark corners, but it also raises the problem of Ceylon's place in relation to the Portuguese Empire in Asia, and, specifically, its decline. Little has been said about the dimensions of this decline, aside from some suggestive articles

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Preface by Professor Charles R. Boxer of Yale University, but what strikes one at the outset is that any process so extended in time—about seventy yecirs—does not lend itself to precise characterization. It seems that for every assertion one makes, one can think of a counterassertion that tends to cancel out most of its validity. For example, one would be tempted to observe at the outset that the Portuguese had lost naval control of the Indian Ocean by 1606, the year in which vessels of the Dutch East India Company first blockaded Goa. Thereafter, Portuguese armadas were usually on the defensive. This could be said to inaugurate the first stage of the Portuguese decline in Asia. But, then again, the Indian Ocean is so vast that one might challenge this assertion by asking what "naval control" meant in terms of a f e w score of sailing vessels scattered about Asian vastnesses during the seventeenth century. One could say absolutely only that Portugal lost more men and ships in naval encounters than did the Dutch and could ill afford the losses. It could then be ventured, with perhaps more accuracy, that the first really serious loss to the Portuguese Empire in Asia was that of the Moluccan trade, again to the Dutch. Yet this was hardly reflected in any real territorial setback, but mostly through the fact that the Dutch East India Company had flanked the Portuguese concentrations of military and naval power to the west (centered in India and Malacca) and occupied an area where the Portuguese traded, but had never dominated. The fall of Ormuz to Anglo-Persian forces in 1623 might be still a better choice as marking the first absolute stage of Portuguese decline in Asia, for certainly Ormuz represented one of the original conquests by the great Afonso de Albuquerque and one of Portugal's major strategic holdings; moreover, upon its capture, the empire was deprived of its nominal monopoly on trade with Persia. But, once more, it could perhaps be argued that its loss was somewhat offset by Portuguese possession of Muscat nearby, whereas Ormuz itself as a stopper to prevent Arab trade from leaking into the Mediterranean had long been less than watertight, if owing to no more than an old Portuguese fear of displeasing the Shah by sealing off all commerce between India and his country. Thus, the fall of Ormuz by itself might not seem decisive enough to sustain the whole burden. Beyond this. Professor Boxer has called attention to the paradox that, even after the loss of Ormuz, the Portuguese crown was

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Preface actually gaining new lands in Zambezia (technically a part of the Estado da India) and Ceylon—territories certainly greater than the ones alienated if sheer acreage is any criterion. And last, if only to be contentious, some scholars might wish to claim that the decline had actually set in during the sixteenth century and not the seventeenth, at the time when spice prices fell in Europe and the crown began to lose money on the trade from India to Europe. It could then always be counterclaimed with equal merit that prosperity in Portuguese Asia itself was still increasing and not declining, on the strength of its purely Asian interport trade. Depending upon one's perspective, there seems virtually no limit to the ways one could view the problem. Because of the many difficulties in making unassailable generalizations about the blows suffered by Asia Portuguesa, it is probably safest to group several imperial misfortunes over a period of time and to say that these together best reflect Portugal's loss of stature as a great power in Asia. The losses of Ormuz in 1623 and of Malacca in 1641, when taken with the continual Dutch blockading of Goa after 1637, certainly mark these two decades as the crucial ones in the Asian decadencia. Though the losses of Ormuz and of Malacca were serious for the empire east of the Cape of Good Hope, I do not believe any single calamity to the Estado da India Oriental was greater than the fall of Ceylon in the 1650s—nor more revealing from a historical standpoint. Ceylon represented by far the largest and richest single possession in Asia of the Portuguese king; its captaingeneral was second in standing only to the viceroy himself. Once again, though, it is almost impossible to say exactly how much revenue its cinnamon and land rents represented in proportion to Portugal's total Malabar pepper trade, which was probably greater. Since military conditions on the island were seldom stable, moreover, one wonders whether all the profits from it could have been great if the cost of fighting had been deducted from them. What appears fundamental is that Ceylon was an integral part of the armament that formed the core of Portuguese defenses in Asia—that chain of fortresses down the west coast of India from Diu to Cochin, with its anchor in Colombo and Galle. Those defenses were still intact in 1638 when the Dutch invaded Ceylon. After that, there followed twenty years of ferocious fighting, negotiation, truce, and still more fighting before the Dutch had succeeded in wresting Ceylon from Portuguese control in 1656. By

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Preface then, if not before, it is obvious that Portuguese Asia had been drastically reduced and indeed lay open to further conquest on the Indian mainland. Most certain of all about Ceylon's importance is that it was the one place in Asia where Dutch and Portuguese armies fought land campaigns on any scale comparable to those they fought in Brazü. The Dutch attacked Ceylon because they considered it both valuable and vulnerable, and the Portuguese made its defense their chief Asian concern in the years 1638-1656. Ceylon was the cockpit, and the fight was a true test of Portuguese and Dutch strength and resolve in Asia. But whatever historians might think of Ceylon, Portuguese contemporaries always recognized its value. King John IV once called it "the best land I possess in India." • And as early as 1614, a Portuguese captain warned Phiüp I I I (II of Portugal) that Ceylon was "the key to all India." He concluded a long memorial on the subject with these prophetic words: " I f Your Majesty loses Ceylon, we can say we have lost all India and its commerce—which may God prevent! "2 Indeed, even after Ceylon was actually lost, the memory was so distressing to the Portuguese that Frei Fernâo de Queiroz began his history of the island by saying: "Of all the great and lamentable losses and ruins of the Portuguese state in the East Indies, the greatest and most p a i n f u l . . . was the island of Ceylon, because of the fruitful and most rich and in every respect most happy kingdom which was thereby lost, the enormous expense incurred . . . and the bloodshed and lives it cost the Portuguese nation; all of which came to naught by our mismanagement... " ^ Modern readers cannot feel sharply the tragedy of this loss and the "mismanagement" that led to it, but no one can deny that there remains a peculiar intensity to the tale, even after the world that gave it reality has receded so far from our own experience. This study evolved gradually, as most studies do. My interest in the Portuguese Empire in Asia was awakened by the late Professor Garrett Mattingly in his course on the expansion of Europe. At 1. Documentos Remetidos da India, Archivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon [hereafter cited as A.N.T.T.], Vol. 60, fol. 37. 2. Documentos Remettidos da India ou Livro das Mongóes (5 vols., Usbon: Academia das Ciencias, 1880-1935), III, 110-113. 3. Fernáo de Queiroz, S. J., Conquest of Ceylon, tr. Simon G. Perera, S.J. (3 vols., Colombo: Α. С. Richards, Acting Government Printer, 1930), I, ix.

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Preface his suggestion I investigated Diogo do Couto, a prophet of Portuguese imperial doom, and this led to the realization that, as of 1960, no monograph had been written in modern times about the decadencia of Asia Portuguesa in the seventeenth century. I soon made other discoveries. Among the first was that no historian had written about Portuguese Ceylon under Dutch attack, save in connection with tracing the estabhshment of the victor's power. The three modern writers who told of the Dutch conquest, Wilham van Geer, in his De Opkomst van het Nederlandsch Gezag over Ceylon (1895), Karunadasa W. Goonewardena, in his Foundation of Dutch Power in Ceylon, 1638-1658 (1959), and Richard G. Anthonisz, in his The Dutch in Ceylon (1929), treated Portugal as no more than a shadowy foe. This was partly because, as their titles suggest, Dutchmen and not Portuguese were their chief concern, but it was perhaps equally due to their lack of information about the Portuguese. Van Geer knew nothing about them, while Goonewardena and Anthonisz had access to two contemporary sources in translation—the seventeenth-century accounts of Frei Fernáo de Queiroz and of Captain Joâo Ribeiro—and to a synthesis based almost solely upon these—Sir P. E. Pieris' Ceylon: The Portuguese Era, published in Colombo in 1914. Pieris' work, however, suffered from its limitation to only two sources and from an even more local interest in Ceylon than that of his informants in the seventeenth century. One could not get much idea from either of these early writers, and consequently from Pieris, of Ceylon's relationship to the rest of the Portuguese cosmos. Goonewardena admitted that he wished to know much more about the Portuguese than he knew when he wrote his book. The work of Dr. Goonewardena especially indicated to me the need for a counterpart that would describe the loss of Portuguese Ceylon. He had made the Dutch conquest meaningful by Unking it with circumstances and command decisions in Batavia and in Amsterdam. This suggested that the fundamental approach to writing a modern account of the Portuguese defeat should be to connect Portuguese activities on the island itself with corresponding events in Goa and Lisbon. The result is that The Fatal History of Portuguese Ceylon closely parallels his account, but considers many of the same events from the Portuguese rather than the Dutch vantage point. There are, however, some significant differences. While its original model was Dr. Goonewardena's work, its subsequent de-

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Preface velopment took the narrative further afield than his Foundation of Dutch Power in Ceylon, if only because failures seem to demand more explanation than successes. To make it clear why the Portuguese lost the fight for Ceylon, one must not only follow Dr. Goonewardena's model by showing the island in relation to the command at aU levels in the Portuguese administrative system, but go even further and represent its history in relation to the problems Portugal faced in Europe and the South Atlantic during the same period. Only then does the explanation seem to be comprehensive. As it turned out, I did not have much difficulty in estabhshing the linkage among the levels of command in Colombo, Goa, and Lisbon. This came about almost automatically, in fact. For aside from the narratives of Queiroz and Ribeiro, the most basic documents containing information about Ceylon are the letters exchanged between the king in Lisbon and the viceroys in Goa. When these letters are used as a supplement, the focus of one's narrative is almost automatically expanded beyond the confines of the island. What proved far more difficult was to assess the battle for Ceylon in relation to simultaneous crises in other parts of the Portuguese world. The problem is that nearly all the surviving documents tend to cast light upon only one area at a time and seldom consider the influence of widely separated parts of the Portuguese Empire upon one another. For example, to read through a codex of council minutes like one of the Consultas Mixtas—which deals topically with the problems of Asia, of Africa, and of Brazil—is to follow, as it were, streams that flow along parallel courses, but never converge. Yet, taken together, these documents are highly suggestive of an interrelationship. Upon first seeing the Consultas Mixtas, I thought that a small nation fighting three simultaneous w a r s one on its border with Spain and two with the Dutch in Ceylon and in Brazil—would be bound to give priority to the areas most vital to its interests and somewhat neglect the rest. To establish this, however, proved quite another thing. I can best indicate the difficulties by digressing for a moment in order to describe the councils of King John IV. This will actually show how the records of his government came to be produced and why the ones remaining today did not tell me much of what I wanted to know. John was set upon his throne on December 1, 1640, by a Portuguese coup d'etat ending sixty years of Spanish rule (1580-1640),

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Preface and he immediately set about to remodel the Portuguese administration. First of all, he equipped himself with a new Conselho do Estado, or Council of State, to replace the Hispano-Portuguese Conselho de Portugal which had met in Madrid. This was the senior council presided over by the king himself, and it considered the weightiest matters of government and made the principal appointments to office. Next, John named a Conselho da Guerra, or War Council, which, though it was second in order of creation, actually turned out to be the most restricted in scope. As its name suggests, it was concerned primarily with military affairs, especially the border war against Spain. The third council to be appointed was actually greater in importance, the Conselho da Fazenda, or Treasury Council. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the king had merely continued this body, established in 1591, during the Spanish period. Its title suggests its vital nature and function. Finally, in December, 1643, after nearly three years of his administration, he organized a new council to administer his colonies, the Conselho Ultramarino, or Overseas Council. It was fashioned after the defunct (1614) Conselho da India, formed by Madrid in 1604 to run Portuguese imperial business along the lines of Spain's Consejo de Indias, or Council of the Indies. It was, however, less powerful; imperial administration had been conducted during John's first years mostly by the Treasury Council, and even after the creation of the Overseas Council the Treasury Council continued to finance and outfit fleets and to receive goods from Incoming voyages. With few other exceptions (among them, regulation of churches in the overseas territories), the Overseas Council attended to the practical matters of empire after the spring of 1644. The deliberations of this body formed the basis for King John's instructions to his viceroys in Brazil and India, but one might say that the council (as shown by its Consultas Mixtas) was deliberately "uninstructive" on some matters or, rather, that there was a limit to the magnitude of business brought before it. For being junior to the Council of State, it deferred to that body on matters of the highest policy. Whenever a crucial question arose—whether to support the war in Brazil rather than the war in Asia, for example—it was considered by the senior council, whose workings were the Olympian ones and certainly the most interesting of all. But for the historian today, these workings remain a mystery. As chance would have it, all save a scrap or two of the Council of

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Preface State records perished in the terrible Lisbon earthquake of November 1, ITSS.·· Instead of being able to obtain my answers with ease from this vanished series, I have had to depend upon scattered hints in John IV's letters to his viceroys, upon a few surviving records of Council of State activity found outside its lost proceedings, one among the papers of the Council of War, and upon other evidence in the separately preserved peace deüberations of 1648, to be found in the National Library of Lisbon (as F. G. 1570 of the Reservados) and also in the Cadaval collection. The result is that while I have been able to cite a certain amount of evidence suggesting that Portuguese help for embattled Ceylon took second place to the war effort to save Brazil, I cannot be as specific as I— or readers—might wish. For my coverage of Portuguese military events on the island, I have begun with the basic histories of two contemporaries. Father Fernáo de Queiroz, S.J., and Captain Joáo Ribeiro, just as every writer on Portuguese Ceylon must.^ Then I have brought to bear all the other information I could find. Little of this was narrative in nature, however, and none of it covered the whole period— hence the necessity to return continually to Queiroz and Ribeiro, most of whose own sources have disappeared in the passage of time. 4. For more information on these councils and some of the men who served on them, see Charles R. Boxer, Salvador de Sà and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola (London: University of London at the Athlone Press, 1952), pp. 157-163; see also Marcello Gaetano, О Conselho Ultramarino: Esboço da Sua Historia (Lisbon: Agencia Gérai do Ultramar, 1967), pp. 1955. In my researches I did unearth a lone volume, or rather two of them with identical texts, of Gouncil of State consultas, or deUberations, from the years 1654 and 1655, in the Cadaval archive in Muge. Its contents fully confirmed how important this council was in setting the country's course, for the material all dealt with the highest matters of government. But, the particular years covered were not vital ones to my story. It seems that no historian has called attention to this isolated survival. 5. Without the great Conquista (Espiritual e Temporal) de Ceiläo (Colombo, 1916) of the Jesuit Father Queiroz (1617-1688) and the Fatalidade Histórica da Ilha de Ceiläo (Lisbon, 1836), of Ribeiro (1622-1693), it would be almost impossible to attempt a work on the fall of Portuguese Ceylon to the Dutch. Ribeiro spent almost eighteen years on the island (1640-1658) as a soldier and officer and fought in nearly all the important battles between the Kandyans and Dutch and the Portuguese. Although he wrote many years afterward, he remembered vividly (though not so weU as the earher Spaniard Bemal Diaz del Castillo) and was remarkably openminded for a man of his time. His story and descriptions of military life and fighting (as well as Sinhalese culture) are often more vivid and sug-

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Preface Among the materials I used to supplement these two seventeenthcentury writers, the single most important source has been the Documentos Remetidos da India in the National Archives of the Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, covering the decade 1641-1651, and the Goan Livras das Mongóes, an extension of the same series, resuming in 1651 and extending through the faU of Colombo. The Monedes have recently been brought to Lisbon on microfflm, largely through the efforts of Father Antonio da Silva Rego, of the Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, where they form part of that institution's Filmoteca Ultramarina Portuguesa. Together, these two series contain correspondence between the king and Overseas Council in Lisbon and the viceroys of Goa, along with cartas que acusam, enclosures relevant to the subjects treated. Nearly equal in value have been the Consultas Mixtas and the Documentos Avulsos in the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, or Overseas Historical Archive, which are the deliberations of the Overseas Council. Of different emphasis are the Assentos do Conselho do Estado, or signed decisions of the viceregal council in Goa. While assents of the Goan Conselho were not binding on the viceroy, he almost invariably followed them; they provide an indispensable source of information regarding concerns, conflicts, and conduct within the viceregal administration. This series is embodied in five large quarto volumes from India, issued serially during the 1950s under the editorship of the late Dr. Panduronga S. S. Pissurlencar, former director of the Goan archives. (It is worth mentioning, incidentally, that the appendixes to these volumes contain many documents from the Monçôes and other series as well.) Besides this, I have used some other archival material, chiefly the Livro dos Segredos No. 1, in the Filmoteca, two newsletters from the Public Library and District Archive of Evora, the Jesuítas na Asia, and a host of other miscellaneous papers in the Ajuda gestive than the much longer and more comprehensive general history of Father Queiroz, who lived in Goa and wrote exclusively from documentation. But Queiroz' book is the greatest single work on the history of the Portuguese in Ceylon and of the mishaps that cost them the island. Most of what is known about Queiroz himself is to be found in the preface to Bishop S. G. Perera's edition of 1930, w h ü e Professor C. R. Boxer has written two useful articles on Ribeiro: " A n Introduction to Joao Ribeiro's 'Historical Tragedy of the Island of Ceylon' 1685," Ceylon Historical Journal, III (Jan., Apr. 1954), pp. 234-255, and "Captain Joao Ribeiro and His History of Ceylon, 1622-1693," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Britain and Ireland (Pts. 1, 2, 1955), pp. 1-21.

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Preface Palace, the manuscript collections of the National Library of Lisbon, the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon, the Overseas Historical Archive in Lisbon, and the Cadaval Famüy Archive at Muge, in the Ribatejo district. I have tried to read everything of any importance pertaining to Portuguese Asia for the 1630s, 1640s, and 1650s, but this, of course, is impossible. Any researcher who has worked in Lisbon knows that rich material can turn up in wholly unexpected places and that even in collections known to contain information the extent is vast and the disarray of centuries so complete that unlimited time must be expended to locate it. There is one collection of miscellaneous printed documents that archival research has demonstrated to be especially valuable; Matilde A. Hedwig Fitzler's О Cèreo de Columba. This volume would have been far more satisfactory if Miss Fitzler had printed in full all the snatches of documents in her footnotes, but she has gleaned nearly all the most important narratives and letters from the Ajuda Palace and from the National Library of Lisbon, as well as a few from the Overseas Historical Archive. These documents were not only convenient to have in one place, but, in the absence of adequate archival guides, their citations gave me some idea of where to begin looking for similar material. Just as Dr. Goonewardena used Father Queiroz and Captain Ribeiro as his principal sources of information about Portuguese activities in Ceylon, I have borrowed from him, principally to provide background material concerning the activities of the Dutch. The intent here was not pilferage, but, rather to give him full credit for a job well done. I disagree with him in places, but he is faithful and accurate, and I do not beheve the story he tells need be told again, at least in this century. My intention was, in any case, to write no more about the Dutch than was absolutely necessary for the sense of my own account. I refer readers who wish more information about the purely Dutch side to his able book and perhaps to the older one of Van Geer, though it is in Dutch and does not cover the whole period of the conquest. Among secondary works, besides those of Van Geer and Goonewardena, I have found those of the late Edgar Prestage useful for information regarding diplomatic activity between Portugal and the States General of Holland, particularly his Diplomatic Relations of Portugal with France, England and Holland from 1640 to 1668, together with his edition of the correspondence of Francisco de Sousa Coutinho. I have also used Professor Boxer's books,

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Preface Salvador de Sä and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola and The Dutch in Brazil, 1602-1686, for background information pertaining to Brazil. And a recent monograph on an earlier epoch in Ceylon, Dr. Tikiri Abeyasinghe's Portuguese Rule in Ceylon, 15941612 (1966), has helped me correct mistakes in my introductory chapter and add to its dimension. Works by R. G. Anthonisz and N. MacLeod also proved useful at times, though in most cases they are superseded by the information contained in Goonewardena. Although it is perhaps for readers alone to judge wherein the originality of this study lies, I should like to indicate at least where I think it does. It is certainly not in the military narrative, except perhaps for my use of a new source for the account of Constantino de Sá's expedition to Uva in 1630. For the rest, I have only tried to make what happened more intelligible. Nor can I claim much more fairly to have discovered anything new about Portuguese diplomacy of the Restoration era; rather, I have done no more than to assemble what is known and to place it in context. But there are two new things in the book; I hope they will be of some significance. First, I have estabhshed that the shift of Portuguese interest from India and the Indian Ocean to Brazil and the Atlantic took place during the mid-seventeenth century, and not only after the discovery of Brazilian gold in the 1690's. Councillors of King John IV accorded the saving of Brazil a clear priority over that of saving Portuguese India—a choice equivalent to letting the Dutch overrun Ceylon and Portuguese positions on the Malabar Coast. Second, the study is among the first to suggest that the local interests of those Portuguese who identified themselves with Goa rather than Lisbon were antithetical to the metropolitan interests of the crown, and it is perhaps the first to show exactly how these Goan interests formed an obstruction that seriously impaired the Portuguese effort to save Ceylon after renewal of war with the Dutch in 1652. It is customary before closing, and properly so, to express thanks for courtesies extended in the course of such an undertaking as mine. It is not so usual to weave this into a story. One day in February, 1961, Dr. H. J. de Graaf, of the Koninklijk Instituut voor de taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde, The Hague, arrived at that foundation's library just as I was working unprofitably on a doctoral topic involving Dutch Ceylon. A project occasionally does not appear so feasible in the archives as it did from afar. Dr. de Graaf had succeeded my Fulbright adviser at Leiden, Professor

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Preface T. H. Milo, who died suddenly the month of my arrival, but he had been in Asia when I first began searching for him. He quickly confirmed by diagnosis that my original topic was not viable. As we spoke, he discovered my interest in Portuguese studies and suggested that I shift my emphasis from the Dutch to the Portuguese in Ceylon. I had already considered this, but I protested that without access to the Goan archives, material was too sparse. He then cryptically withdrew from his wallet a Singapore newspaper photograph only a fortnight old, which showed him seated on a mat, enjoying dinner with a European priest he had encountered. The clergyman was Father Antonio da Silva Rego, from whom Dr. de Graaf had learned what few scholars then knew: that Father da Silva Rego had been instrumental in microfilming significant parts of the Goan archives and had brought them to Portugal. I was soon on my way to Lisbon. I must mention Dr. J. J. van Dullemen and Mevr. M. van Doorne, of the United States Educational Foundation in the Netherlands, for graciously allowing me to leave my sponsoring country. Dr. de Graaf for inspiring me, and Father da Silva Rego for so generously receiving me. Dr. Carlos de Azevedo, of Fulbright's cooperating agency, the Comissáo Cultural Lu so-Americana, proved both a scholar and a gentleman who opened doors on this and on a subsequent grant to Portugal in 1964-1965. The directress of the Ajuda Palace archives, Dra. Améha Machado dos Santos and, especially, the acting directress (1961) of the National Archive of the Torre do Tombo, Dra. Amelia Felix, did everything possible to help me in my quest, as did Dr. Alberto Iria, of the Overseas Historical Archive. To all of these kind people and to their institutions, I can only offer my profound gratitude. I also wish to acknowledge the help of many others. The Sra. Marquesa de Cadaval most graciously extended to me the use of her private manuscript library and enhanced its already great attractiveness by calling me to her delicious table; no other archive I have visited has made such an impact on the whole man. Her archivist, Father Francisco Leite de Faria, О.F.M. Cap., twice traveled out from Lisbon with me to facilitate my searches. He is a historian in his own right and I am sure he had better things to do, but he was too good natured to admit it. Father Georg Schurhammer, S.J., of the Archivum Historicum Societatis lesu in Rome, and Mevr. Dr. M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz, of the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, both devoted many hours on my behalf, searching for material in their archives that

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might have helped me gain more insight into the 1653 mutiny in Goa against the Count-Viceroy of Obidos. It turned out, unfortunately, not to exist. AU scholars know the value of such "negative research"—and I am exceedingly grateful to them. I also extend my gratitude to Professor Francis M. Rogers, of Harvard University, who has given unstintingly of his time to make corrections and valuable suggestions, all of which I have tried to incorporate. Dr. K. W. Goonewardena, now vice-chancellor of the Vidyalankara University of Ceylon at Kelaniya, whom I met for the first time only last month, has graciously allowed me to incorporate into my own maps of Portuguese and Dutch Ceylon the results of his painstaking research into the location of boundaries dividing the antagonists. Dr. T. B. H. Abeyasinghe, of the University of Ceylon at Colombo, also made his contribution to this book, in the form of many helpful criticisms, and I am happy to be in his debt as well. A final acknowledgment is due Professor Charles R. Boxer, Professor of the History of the Expansion of Europe Overseas at Yale University. It is scarcely possible to cite him for every instance where his correspondence as well as his incredibly voluminous research has suggested the whereabouts of material or the advisability of emendations, or where his consolations and personal kindnesses have smoothed the way. George D. Winius GainesvUle, Florida June, 1970

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Illustrations Mercator-Hondius map of Ceylon. The Ins. Ceilan, incolis Tenarisin dicitur, from the Fourth World Atlas (1613) of Gerardus Mercator, first published by Jodochus Hondius in 1606. Derived from Portuguese sources, the map suggests the struggle between Portugal and Kandy and foreshadows the future intervention of the Dutch. 2 Map of Southwest Ceylon

32

Map of the Indian Ocean

86

View of Goa in the mid-seventeenth century. From Philippus Baldaeus, Naauwkeurige Beschryvinge van Malabar en Choromandel,... Ceylon (Amsterdam, 1672). 88 Plan of Colombo in V.O.C, possession by 1655. Its Portuguese origin is suggested by the Dutch copyist's retention of Portuguese words like "Bahja" for "bay." Hulft and his associates probably used another copy of this map during the siege. Leupe-Collectie, no. 941 (Buitenlandse Kaarten), Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague. 140 Bird's-eye view of Colombo. It was drawn not long after the Portuguese surrender in 1656. The incoming Dutch vessel and the departing Portuguese one symboUze the change in possession. Note that the Dutch have already strengthened the bastion of Sao Joào. Later, they rebuilt the entire defense system. Leupe-Collectie, no. 619-115 (Buitenlandse Kaarten), Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague. 144

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Contents Part One. The Military

Predicament

Chapter I

Ceylon I The Cartography

of a Dilemma,

1594-

1629 II

3

Ceylon I The Last Stand of Dom

Constantino

de Sà, 1630 III

15

Ceylon I Stalemate and Dutch

Intervention,

1630-1641

Part Two. The Abortive IV

31

Negotiations

Lisbon, Goa, The Hague, Brazil, Angola / A Crown in Crisis, 1641-1643

V

Goa, Batavia, and Ceylon / A Matter of

49 Principle,

1643-1644

Part Three. The Disordered VI VII

67

Polity

Goa I The Vicious Circle, about 1610-1650

87

Goa, Ceylon, The Hague, and Lisbon / In Time of 105

Truce, 1645-1652 VIII

Goa and Ceylon / War and Two Revolts,

1652-

1655 IX

121

Goa and Ceylon / The Debacle, 1655-1656

141

Retrospect

167

Appendix

173

Notes

175

Bibliography

203

Index

211

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Part One The Military Predicament

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Mercator-Hondius map of Ceylon

Whenever they come across it in the portfolio of an antiquarian bookseller, collectors are certain to be delighted by a decorated map first published in 1606 as part of the fourth MercatorHondius world atlas. In contrast to Dutch sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cartography of Europe and the Mediterranean world, substantially accurate even by present-day standards, the Ins. Ceilan, incolis Tenarisin dicitur is a quaint, almost childlike, engraving of an oddly trapezoidal Ceylon garnished with elephants, wild boars, deer, and foxes that wander among trees and bumpy mountains. As a cartouche in Latin explains, "It was the illustrious Petrus Plancius who furnished for insertion in this work of ours the description of this island of Ceylon mapped by 'Cypriane Sanchez,' The Spanish cartographer."^ And, as though there were not enough map makers already associated with the Ins. Ceilan, it is fairly obvious that Cipriano Sanches Vilavicêncio, who provided it for Plancius, who sold it to Jodochus Hondius, was not the originator, either. Among other things, he omits the vital port of Galle entirely, something no professional would have done; Sanches must only have tidied up and redrawn a crude sketch obtained from a returning voyager. Thereafter, the Dutchmen Plancius and Hondius (who was the heir to Mercator's engravings) must have had their own woes in deciphering Sanches, to judge from the curious garbling of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin in the captions. For all its omissions and whimsicalities, the map is among the earliest representations of the island and is considerably closer to actuality than the Ptolemaic rendition of 1582, which Gerardus Mercator had borrowed from the Franco-Venetian cartographer, Antonio Lafreri. It could only have been drawn sometime between 1594 and 1600; scarcely a decade could have elapsed between the original sketch, the

I Ceylon / The Cartography of a Dilemma, 1594-1629

11 Ceylon I Sanches version, and its substitution for the Lafreri map in Hondius' 1606 re-edition of Mercator. What is highly pertinent to a history of Portuguese Ceylon is that the innocent-looking map faithfully portrays the predicament of the Portuguese at the turn of the seventeenth century: they were masters of the island's wealth, but they were trapped between the hostile worlds of Kandy in the interior and the Dutch prowling the seas nearby.

The Lure of Ceylon's Wealth Except for typical elephants with their native drivers, the beasts wandering across the landscape have less to do with reality than with the Dutch engraver's fancy; to gain some idea of Ceylon's wealth in the eyes of contemporary Europeans, one must turn to the captions. In the "Imperio de Cota" (Empire of Kotte) on the island's west coast * there stands the notice in large type: "Here is cinnamon, from the beach twenty-five leagues inward"; its importance is illustrated with sketches of many cinnamon trees. To the north are the coastal islands and the Jaffna Peninsula, then still part of the Tamil Kingdom of Jaffnapatam. The captions there read: "Here are hollow jewels," meaning pearls. In the south are other annotations: "Here are found gems," "Here are sapphires," "Here is grain and cardamom," and "Tanks for elephants to drink from." Seventeenth-century Ceylon was, in short, valued for its abundance of spices, pearls, and gemstones (rubies, sapphires, topazes, cat's-eyes) and for its trained elephants, much in demand on the Indian mainland. Among these riches, cinnamon had always been the greatest source of revenue for the Portuguese. By the last third of the sixteenth century, this condiment was finding favor among Europeans in addition to the vast market it already enjoyed in Asia.** Only Ceylon produced it in prime quality: perhaps 3,000 bahars, or 9,000 quintals—or about 2,000,000 pounds—were exported between 1621 and 1630.^ Areca nut, cardamom, ginger, and a variety of guinea pepper were also plentiful, but only its areca nut was consumed in great quantity beyond the island's shores; the Tamil peoples of southern India, for example, wrapped it in a betel leaf and chewed * Shown at the bottom, since seventeenth-century map makers did not equate the top of a page with north. One can best understand the spice trade of late medieval and early modern times if one uses a contemporary word for spices—"drugs." Cinnamon, for example, was considered beneficial for the heart, for cataracts, dropsy, stopping of the kidney, and weaknesses of the liver.

The Cartography of a Dilemma,

1594-1629

it with a squirt of lime to aid digestion.® Some Ceylonese cardamom was also shipped to Ormuz and Persia, but, because its individual grains were of greater size than the type grown on the Malabar Coast and in Java, contemporaries seem not to have prized it so highly. Of the gems and export of elephants to Indian potentates perhaps it can most truly be said that they exerted their greatest influence on the baroque imagination: probably the Portuguese never made them pay.^ No royal councillor, though, doubted that such intrinsically valuable and exotic commodities might be made to do so in the future, while every topaz, pearl, and sapphire sneaked out in the duffel of a soldier added to Ceylon's glitter abroad. In fact, whether it made money or not, the place charmed Europeans. The sailor François Pyrard de Laval, whose ship touched there early in the seventeenth century, wrote: "No words can express the goodness, richness and fertility of this island." ^ Father Fernäo de Queiroz may never have visited Ceylon at all, yet he succumbed to its siren song, devoting thirty years and a 1,052-folio-page history to that "most fruitful and rich and in every respect most happy kingdom." And the councillors of King Philip II (III of Spain) called it "The most important thing in all Portuguese India." s Until the very end of the sixteenth century the Portuguese had confined their presence mostly to the west coast citadels of Colombo, Negombo, and Galle. Colombo, their capital, lay in the middle of the maritime strip coveted as the island's prime cinnamon land and embraced within its 1,300 paces of wall a small but fair harbor. Negombo, a more modest fortification to its north, protected Colombo's flank and acted as a depot for the rich spicelands of the interior, while Galle, missing from the Sanches шар, but located just where the coast turns at the south, possessed the best anchorage (though tricky to enter) and the most defensible, rocky site. There were other strong places, notably at Kalutara; like the three major ones, they were close to the sea and suited Portugal's limited interests during the sixteenth century to collect condiments for export and protect the puppet monarchy. But as will presently be seen, in the mid-1590s Portugal was at once bequeathed a new status in Ceylon and confronted with a grave new threat that changed the whole basis of its occupation. The Hostile

Hinterland

Near dead center on the Mercator-Hondius map there is marked "Reino de Candea" (Kingdom of Kandy) in such heavy type that

11 Ceylon I one would judge the place to have held more than ordinary importance. Close by is a minute diagram of a fortress, interposed between Kandy and the Portuguese capital at Colombo, located in the Imperio de Cota. Although the fortress appears to belong to Kandy, because of its proximity, it actually represents a Portuguese outpost, in fact, a number of them. The pre-eminence accorded Kandy and the symbolic fortress provide sure indications that the original sketch was made no earher than 1594, for Kandy's distinction in the history of Ceylon begins only after it became Portugal's enemy, in the same year. Opposition to Portugal's presence in Ceylon was, in itself, not new; its permanent establishment there in 1518 had led to immediate trouble, when it had supported the weaker of two warring factions. For nearly eighty years thereafter, Portugal had been obliged to spill out its substance and blood in the jungles in order to maintain rulers friendly to its interests. And yet, during all that time, Portugal never formally claimed possession of the island. It was content merely to manipulate the once dominant kings of Kotte, who pretended to be emperors, but owed their throne many times over to Portuguese forays against their enemies. In 1580 the last ruler of the dynasty, Dom Joäo Dharmapala, "by grace of God, Perea Pandar," childless and growing old, announced that he would bequeath his kingdom to the Portuguese crown, then worn by Phüip II of Spain, as Phihp I of Portugal.* The fact that Dom Joâo had become a Christian early in his long reign (1557) gave them joy, but it was actually a grave liability to his Portuguese heirs. Because of his conversion, whatever authority he had enjoyed among his own Buddhist people when he ascended the throne had been dissipated long before Portugal inherited it. Rival kings in Ceylon had rejoiced at Dom Joâo's apostasy from Buddhism. One of them. King Mayadunne of Sitawaka, listening, apparently, to the advice of a renegade Portuguese, turned the tables on Dom * In 1580 Philip announced his claim to the empty throne of Portugal through his mother, the Empress Isabella, daughter of King Manuel I. Although the dying Cardinal-King Henry had apparently favored Philip as his successor, this meant "Spanish captivity" to the Portuguese masses, who immediately began to organize resistance. The Portuguese nobility was divided at the prospect of a union of crowns, but Philip changed many minds with "sUver bullets." Then he sent m his armies under the Duke of Alva to make good his claim. The following year (1581), however, he solemnly promised the Portuguese Cortes at Tomar that he would behave as a Portuguese king toward his Portuguese subjects and use only Portuguese advisers and councils to administer the country. Philip thus truly became Phüip I in Portugal, and he kept his promise with only minor infractions. The worst aspect of Spanish rule was that Portugal, previously on friendly terms with all Europe, acquired Spain's enemies, notably France, England, and the United Provinces, who henceforth preyed upon its shipping and empire.

The Cartography

of a Dilemma,

1594-1629

Joáo's Jesuit confessors and further weakened the allegiance of Kotte's Buddhist subjects by proclaiming that they no longer needed to obey a monarch who had deserted the faith.' In the years preceding Dharmapala's death, the discontent among his Kottyan subjects approached rebellion. As a result, Kotte's new Christian rulers inherited power over a people whose loyalty was already severely shaken. This might not have proved dangerous had there been no Buddhist kingdom inclined to challenge the impending transfer. But in that year the Portuguese suddenly found themselves confronted with one, the Kingdom of Kandy. Kandy, until 1594, had never been important in Sinhalese history. It was poor, mountainous, and landlocked, and it had always been dominated by its more powerful neighbors, Kotte and Sitawaka. But its girdling mountain walls rose out of the jungles of south-central Ceylon like the battlements of a feudal castle. In 1594 Kandy's crown was seized by a Sinhalese renegade from Portuguese service, who dropped his baptismal name of Dom Joáo de Austria and reverted to Buddhism as Konappu Bandara. Highly trusted by his Portuguese masters, this man had been sent at the head of an army to punish Raja Sinha, the aging king of Sitawaka, who had been making trouble on the Kottyan frontier. To the delight of the Portuguese, he caught the Raja unawares and Uterally cut the Sitawakan army to pieces. The jubilation did not last long. Instead of returning in triumph to Colombo as the Portuguese expected, Konappu veered off into Kandy and defied them by occupying its vacant throne. The claims he laid to it, however, were clearly defective; many of his subjects regarded him as little more than a usurper. Perceiving this weakness. Viceroy Matias de Albuquerque and Ceylon's Captain-General Pero Lopes de Sousa soon contrived to exploit it. The rightful heir to Kandy was a gentle, convent-reared princess named Dona Catarina, who was living at Portuguese expense. Her hour had obviously come; to place a ten-year-old on Konappu's throne, reasoned Albuquerque and Sousa, meant the difference between complete Portuguese mastery of Ceylon and suffering a king who would stir dissension among Kottyans restive under their European administrators. The plan was for the captain-general to escort Dona Catarina into her kingdom with Portuguese troops and a large native force to be commanded by a skillful native officer, Jayawira Bandara. Dona Catarina and her entourage no doubt encumbered an army

ί I Ceylon I in the field, but were essential to stress the expedition's legitimacy and to encourage defection f r o m Konappu's ranks. The first days proved the strategy to be sound enough; Kandyans deserted the would-be king en masse, and he found himself unable to assemble more t h a n a token army. According to one version of w h a t occurred next, he tried a desperate ruse. On the day before w h a t would h a v e been a hopeless battle, Konappu is supposed to have written a message on an ola, or palm leaf, which purported to be his highly secret instructions to Jayawira B a n d a r a for the betrayal of Sousa. Then he sent it to the Portuguese c a m p by a messenger who allowed himself to be captured in the vicinity of Jayawira's tent. Whether or not this actually happened, something drove Sousa to a desperate act of his own: convinced suddenly that Jayawira was a traitor, the captain-general called in his native c o m m a n d e r and stabbed h i m to death without asking an explanation. Horrified, the lascarins, or native auxiliaries in Portuguese service, fled, whereupon Konappu attacked. In the ensuing melee, Sousa was captured alive, but soon died. Konappu married the hapless Dona Catarina and ascended the throne with newly acquired legitimacy, r e n a m i n g himself Wimaladharmasuriya. After such an incredible setback Portuguese hopes of conquering the island in one stroke vanished; f r o m that day it had to be taken inch by inch f r o m an implacable foe. A new commander, Dom Jerónimo de Azevedo, was rushed f r o m Goa to fill the empty captain-generalcy and quench rebellions that h a d flared in the a f t e r m a t h of the disaster. For two years he could undertake little punitive action against Wimala; then, in 1597, old King Dom Joâo D h a r m a p a l a died, and Portugal laid claim to Kotte under the terms of his will. Soon thereafter, Azevedo cautiously took the offensive. Until 1603 he used the small n u m b e r of f r e s h soldiers he received f r o m Goa to drive Wimala's troops out of regions to Kotte's north and east (called the Four and Seven Korales, or counties) and to bottle t h e m up behind Kandy's own mountains. He then ordered forts, often little more t h a n moated palisades of fascines, to be constructed opposite the more important passes and at strategic confluences; it is undoubtedly one of these forts that is represented on the map.® Their function w a s both offensive and defensive. None could have supported a large garrison (for m u c h of this period, Portugal had no more t h a n 400 regular soldiers on the island), and the stockades were probably m a n n e d as observation posts that

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The Cartography of a Dilemma,

1594-1629

could swiftly be reinforced from base camps at Malwana, Ruwanella, or Menikkadawara. Then they could either repel invaders or serve as advance bases for forays into Kandy itself." This sealing off of the Kandyan frontier provided security for the Kottyan lands, but it could not permanently satisfy Portugal. High officials in the metropolis continually fretted over deficits; it appears that all the cinnamon and other stuffs exported from Ceylon did not remunerate Lisbon for the armaments and skirmishes necessary to check Wimala's ambitions.Though they could not send him reinforcements massive enough to conquer Kandy, members of the India Council urged Azevedo to finish the war quickly, perhaps partially believing the rumors were true that Ceylon's captains-general had enormous secret income and might, if they cared to, pay for the war out of their own pockets." In 1603 Viceroy Aires de Saldanha did muster a substantial number of troops for Ceylon in hopes one large expenditure might save money by bringing hostilities with Kandy to a swift conclusion.But the resulting invasion force was still too small to crush Wimala. After an initial success or two, a large body of the lascarins deserted, and the Portuguese withdrew. Official policy did not change. Azevedo continued to receive a stream of bellicose instructions from his superiors. Finally he devised small-scale but systematic semiannual raids into Kandy that caused great devastation. Then in 1612, the year after Azevedo was promoted to viceroy, Wimala died. Senarat, his successor, was a former Buddhist monk who proved himself no military man; tormented by the Portuguese incursions and distracted by rivals to his throne, he seized a border fortress or two to give himself leverage, then signed a truce with Portugal in August, 1617, and, apparently, a second in 1619." Kandy had not been destroyed after twenty-three years of Portuguese penance for Sousa's rashness, but it had been neutralized. Thereafter, Ceylon settled down to a reasonable quiet, at least for an island where political intrigue was akin to sport. In 1619 Dom Constantino de Sá was appointed its captain-general by Azevedo's successor as viceroy, Dom Joáo Coutinho. Because Sá was honest, vigilant, and well liked by the Sinhalese in his charge, Portugal's outlook for tranquil times and profit from Ceylon might have appeared the best for half a century. Yet within a year the Portuguese were more anxious than ever, convinced that Kandy was seeking to repudiate the treaties it had made with them and

11 Ceylon I invoke foreign intervention. Had they happened to see it, the Hondius map would only have played upon their fears by reminding them that the Dutch might be very eager to cooperate.

The Shadow on the Seas Sailing an empty space on the map between the title cartouche and Ceylon's coastline, there is a small ship, at first glance typical of the decorations that grace cartography of the early modern era. But on closer inspection one is tempted to believe that Petrus Plancius, the apostle of Dutch expansion overseas, knew of the two earliest Dutch visits to Ceylon and was responsible for the tiny, but prophetic touch: fluttering from the little vessel's mainmast is none other than the tricolor flag of the United Provinces. It would almost seem that by so engraving their colors next to the island the "heretics of Europe," as the Iberians called Dutchmen, were symbolically staking out their claim to the Portuguese inheritance. Their first visits had indicated, at any rate, that the Dutch would make trouble for the Portuguese if they could and even know exactly how to go about it. In 1602, eight years after Wimala's triumph, two Dutch ships dropped anchor only months apart at Batticaloa, a quiet harbor on the island's east coast, which the Portuguese had never occupied. Hollanders were then new in Asia (Cornells Houtman had made the first Dutch voyage only six years before), and pilots still navigated Cape Comorin and the coast of Ceylon en route to Java and the Moluccas rather than sailing directly across the Indian Ocean, as they later did. Vigilant from the beginning, the Portuguese had already anticipated that passing Dutch squadrons might attack Galle, directly upon their route, and had begun fortifying it after 1597. But it seems the newcomers had more sophisticated ideas. Instead of merely firing broadsides at Galle as they passed, the captains of both vessels had slipped around to the island's blind side and called on Wimala." The first visitor, Joris van Spilbergen, was in reality harmless because, as representative of a small trading enterprise that antedated the Dutch East India Company, he was hampered by the minute amounts of his employers' capital and the need to turn an immediate profit. What he lacked in substance he made up for with stylish salesmanship. Sensing, apparently, that self-appointed diplomacy on his stadhouder's behalf would ingratiate him more with Wimala than a commercial approach, he spoke eloquently of tendering Prince Maurits' friendship and of the enmity of the

10

The Cartography of a Dilemma, 1594-1629 House of Orange for all Portuguese. Then, at the strategic moment, his aides unveüed an oü portrait of Maurits himself, and the captain presented it with a flourish to the Kandyan King. Wimala was deeply impressed: he sent Spilbergen on his way from Batticaloa with letters to Maurits, presents, and a hold crammed with cinnamon. A few months later Admiral Sebald de Weert of the newly organized East India Company arrived there, perhaps unaware of Spilbergen's call until he was ushered into Wimala's presence and shown the painting. Wimala repeated to de Weert the same overtures he had made to Spilbergen, averring that Kandy would make an alliance against Portugal worth Prince Maurits' trouble. De Weert thereupon returned in 1603 at the head of seven ships filled with company soldiers. The admiral, however, was a man of action rather than a suave diplomat; in fact, the complexity of bridging differences between East and West proved completely beyond him. First, there arose a misunderstanding between him and the King over some Portuguese prisoners taken after a trifling naval engagement; it seems that de Weert had promised them safe conduct before consulting Wimala. Then apparently he had seated these prisoners at his ship's table above the Kandyan ambassadors, who spitefully reported him in league with the enemy. Later, at a banquet ashore, when de Weert and Wimala were discussing a joint expedition against Galle, the King rejected flatly de Weert's insistence upon transporting him there in a Dutch ship. De Weert seemingly had drunk too much by this time and became offensive in his manner, telling Wimala that if he would not come aboard there would be no expedition. It appears that de Weert then raised his glass and proposed a toast, which enraged Wimala. The King shouted suddenly, "Kill this dog!" Warriors rushed the admiral, who boozily reached for his scabbard. Within minutes de Weert and forty-seven of his command lay dead.'^ Even though the surviving Hollanders crowded on saü and hurried away, the Portuguese did not interpret garbled reports they received of de Weert's murder as meaning that the East India Company's interest in Ceylon had ended.'® They became, instead, all the more apprehensive lest the intruders return to complete the design revealed by de Weert's abortive visit. The idea of fortifying the east coast ports, Batticaloa and Trincomalee, in order to hamper Kandyan commerce and thwart further Dutch contacts must have occurred to the authorities at this time, but heightened warfare aimed at Kandy's destruction probably appeared an even

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11 Ceylon I

more fundamental way of preventing a future alliance and more in accord with plans already in motion." The bellicose instructions to crush Kandy after 1603 likely stemmed as much from Lisbon's desire to head off Dutch intervention as they did from its desire to spare expenses by doing away with the Kandyan frontier garrisons. The Portuguese authorities had merely been alarmed by Spilbergen and de Weert, but it was an ineffectual Dutch captain named Marcellus Boschouwer who set the fatal events in motion that ruined Luso-Kandyan relations just after they had taken a tum for the better. Boschouwer's superiors in Amsterdam routed him via Ceylon in 1612 to see whether he might extract some trading privileges from Kandy. The letters he bore from the Prince of Orange promised that the truce with Spain expressly included native rulers in its terms— a way of hinting that gratitude might be expressed in bales of cinnamon. Boschouwer, however, chose to ignore the circumscribed extent of his company's interest in Ceylon when King Senarat of Kandy treated him as a prince, gave him a princess, and offered him concession after concession in return for promises of Dutch help against the Portuguese. The officer dallied for a few years amid Senarat's hospitality, then drew up a treaty and tried to convince East India Company officials in Masulipatam that they should send munitions. Because his employers were preoccupied with fending off English rivals, Spanish threats, and native enemies in the Malay archipelago, they rebuffed Boschouwer's entreaties as diversionary and disowned his diplomacy. Undaunted, he took his case back to Amsterdam, where he swaggered about with his princess and was refused again. Then he quit his job to obtain assistance from the wüling Danes (who in 1616 had formed an India company of their own), but died in 1620 while leading a squadron of five Danish ships back to Ceylon. By the time these ships anchored off Trincomalee, Senarat had already signed truces (1617-1619) with Portugal and probably felt impelled to turn the unlucky Scandinavians away. As the Danes puzzled over what to do next, Portuguese troops appeared and chased them from the island. Though the Portuguese realized they had repelled a Danish incursion and not a Dutch one, they were understandably convinced that Senarat had solicited the foreign help and was violating the treaty he had signed.·' That the Danes were there as a result of Boschouwer's visit years before could never have occurred to them, as indeed the inordinate delay in cause and effect was remarkable

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The Cartography of a Dilemma, 1594-1629 even for that age. The new captain-general, Dom Constantino de Sá, undoubtedly sent urgent dispatches to Goa and Europe that Senarat was courting the Protestant European enemies of Portugal in order to gain an advantage and reopen hostilities. And he surely concluded that, this being the case, Portugal had no choice but to build the harbor fortresses in Batticaloa and Trincomalee and to destroy Kandy. But nothing was done immediately, and during the government of Femáo de Albuquerque (1619-1622) Sá was assigned to duties elsewhere, including the relief of Ormuz, then under siege by the Persians. King Senarat was angry and disturbed when Portuguese troops and a military engineer first appeared in Trincomalee in 1624, the year after Sá was reassigned to Ceylon. Because the only logical site for a fortification to guard its harbor was occupied by an ancient Hindu temple, the Portuguese used part of it for their military construction and tumbled the rest down a steep clifF into the surf. The King remained silent, as though he understood perfectly that protests and professions of good faith were fruitless. Thereafter Sá itched to attack and overthrow him, but instead tried to maintain what was left of the truce until Portugal could answer his requests and send reinforcements.'® As Father Queiroz indicates, Sá was fully aware that "past experience had shown quite clearly that the conquest of Kandy did not consist in merely burning the city, but in holding the highlands and lowlands, for which two arrayals [garrisons] were necessary." ^o In 1628 Sá resumed his work of blocking Senarat's eastern outlets to the sea, convinced that a new risk of war was outweighed by the leverage to be gained; after strengthening of Menikkadawara on the borderlands between Portuguese territory and Kandy in the east, he passed around the island and built a second coastal fort at Batticaloa.2i The King skulked in the distance with an army, incensed at seeing his one fair port taken away from him, yet afraid to attack. He offered Sá a fortune in jewels, but Sá paid no attention. Instead, during the return march to Colombo, the Portuguese captain-general seems to have detached fifty men from his small but well-disciplined army and raided Kandy itself, laying torch to the royal buüdings and forcing the King, presumably elsewhere at the time, to move his residence to Uva, in the remotest part of his realm. Then in 1629, whüe en route from Galle to reinforce Batticaloa, Sá devastated even that outpost. But on his return from the expedition, he fell sick with a raging fever and was given the last

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rites. Three years of harsh campaigning had taken their toll of his forces, and he had been obliged still further to weaken them by sending what reserves he had to reinforce JafFnapatam, an isolated Portuguese territory in the far north of the island. As Sá slowly regained his strength, he came to realize that there could be no more campaigns against Kandy until Portugal furnished reinforcements. By now, any prospect of restoring concord between Portugal and Kandy had vanished.

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The disaster that befell Dom Constantino de Sá e Meneses de Noronha has almost been forgotten in Portugal and Ceylon, but it moved contemporaries to hear of such a great man ending his days unnecessarily, out of grief that his intentions were misunderstood. He was afidalgo (nobleman) who possessed all the ideal virtues of a seventeenth-century gentleman-at-arms: courage, magnanimity, loyalty, piety, and an openness of manner. Rarer still, he was modest and cared nothing for theatrics. In an age when George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, galloped from Calais to Madrid with the Crown Prince Charles disguised as his valet, Sá was not in the least flamboyant. Rather, his concession to baroque extravagance was that he allowed a mistaken reproach to turn his caution into foolhardiness.

II Ceylon / The Last Stand of Dom Constantino de Sá,

1630

It was in the spring of 1630 that life seemed to close in about him. After twenty years of devotion to Portuguese India and Ceylon, he found himself accused of neglecting his duty—and that because his dispatches to Lisbon and Madrid had imbued his superiors with his own point of view. Under normal circumstances, Sá might have been considered the officer least likely to bring Portuguese fortunes in Ceylon close to ruin. Appointed its captain-general (in 1619) at the age of thirty-three, he had served there continuously except for the three-year interval already noted (1620-1623) when Governor Fernäo de Albuquerque placed his son in the important post in order that the younger Albuquerque might have no superior in Asia save his father. Jorge de Albuquerque's ineptness only served to underscore Sá's competence and his skill at working with few men and skimpy supplies. But for all his exertions, Sá in 1630 was no closer than Azevedo had been thirty-five years before to overcoming the King of Kandy. Until 1620 Lisbon and Goa had taken the initiative in urging their captains-general in

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π I Ceylon I Ceylon to fortify Trincomalee and Batticaloa and to finish off Kandy. Thereafter, other concerns absorbed official attention: the Anglo-Persian threat to Ormuz (1621-1623) and the first Dutch West India Company invasion of Brazil (1624).' Following the Danish episode, it was Sá who prodded his superiors to send reinforcements and money. When none were forthcoming, he risked war by proceeding with construction of the forts as soon as he was reappointed to Ceylon's captaincy-general. During most of the 1620s he had been forced to keep the peace. In the last years of the decade, however, official interest in Ceylon had begun to revive. Ormuz had been lost, and there was no fighting in Brazü, at least temporarily. Sá had eagerly awaited the arrival in Goa of his distant kinsman, Dom Miguel de Noronha, third count of Linhares, as new viceroy of India, patient in the expectation that the countviceroy would be generous with the soldiers he was bringing from Portugal in his India fleet. Instead, events took an unhappy turn. When Linhares arrived in October, 1629, it was amid disaster and shipwreck; what would have been Sá's reinforcements were lost. Then it appears the new viceroy had been handed reports written by Ceylon's vedor da fazenda real (royal overseer of finance), Ambrosio de Freitas, a man who loathed his captaingeneral and informed Linhares that Sá was an idler and had sufficient troops to attack Kandy, when he barely could muster forces enough for garrison duty. Linhares, who became one of Portuguese India's best viceroys, was on principle opposed to laggards, and he must have been upset by reports from other sources that treasury officials in Ceylon were carrying on an extensive illegal trade in cinnamon, evading imposts and selling it directly to Portugal's enemies, the Dutch.^ Unaware, apparently, that the responsibility for these irregularities lay with Freitas himself and eager to provide an example for all India that his rule was to be impartial and honest, even toward relatives, the count-viceroy hurried ofl^ dispatches for Sá. In them he condemned the captain-general's inactivity toward Kandy and accused him of elevating private gain above regard for duty. Linhares was too new in Portuguese Asia to have penetrated the shadows beneath its coconut palms. An official strange to the East, particularly a viceroy, always spent the first months of his tenure wondering whose tongue he could trust in a milieu noted for bitter feuding. The count-viceroy learned his job faster than most, but it was one of the great mistakes of his career that he misunderstood the motives of Sá.

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The Last Stand of Dom Constantino

de Sä, 1630

Rather than being an accompUce, Sá was a victim of corruption. Ceylon's vedores dafazenda real, like those throughout the empire, held their patents of office directly from the crown, and the craftier ones could always manage to keep treasury operations effectively independent of their captains-general.^ As hatred increased between him and Sá, Freitas deliberately withheld moneys for military necessities from his superior, and often his salary. A few months before Linhares' arrival, Sá had even been obliged to purchase artillery and a powder mill for Colombo from his personal savings.·· At least one contemporary accused Freitas himself of masterminding the illegal cinnamon trade, but it is hardly to be supposed that, as chief of thieving treasury officials, he would at once be guileful enough to abuse his power toward his captaingeneral and innocent enough to be deceived by his subordinates.^ Upon receipt of the messages from Linhares, Sá should have explained the island's true weakness and even the necessity to sacrifice his own pay in service to the crown. Had he done so, he probably would have ended the misunderstanding; at least Sá's own son, who knew and admired Linhares years later in Portugal, thought so. He wrote of Linhares' letters to his father: "It is well known that the count-viceroy acted with the intention of pursuing the conquest of Kandy, little mindful of the real state of Ceylon. He wrote twice to Constantino de Sá in rather harsh words, [and then was] astonished at the silence, which in his opinion implicated him with his enemies." ® When he read the tart words of Linhares' dispatches, instead of explaining himself, Sá decided to undertake what he had before deemed inadvisable. Without breaking his silence to Linhares, he made ready his expedition for the remote hills of Kandy. "Whether it was excessive courage or excessive despair, let others judge," wrote Frei Fernâo de Queiroz.^

The March The captain-general could have had little hope of defeating or of capturing King Senarat of Kandy with the scanty forces at his command. Though Freitas had been replaced in June by Sá's friend, Lancarote de Seixas Cabreira, Sá could not enlist more than the four to five hundred Portuguese soldiers already serving in Ceylon and perhaps two hundred casados, married veterans who volunteered their services. Seixas Cabreira at least found the money to pay those already on Sá's roster, but there was no time to carry out the recruiting in Portuguese mainland stations like

17

il I Ceylon I Cochin or Negapatam that Freitas' tactics had blocked. What Sá really needed was a generous supply of fresh troops from Portugal by way of Goa; short of these troops, probably all the men he might have mustered from among India's resident Portuguese soldiers and married settlers would scarcely have allowed him to succeed in his aim. Of the professional European troops available in Ceylon, most were stationed at the general headquarters camp in Menikkadawara, thirty miles up the Kelani River from Colombo, or nearer the Kandyan frontier at forward bases described in Chapter I. Both were under the command of the captain-major of the field, the immediate subordinate of the captain-general, and grouped into estancias, or companies, of thirty-six to thirty-eight men, each led by a captain whose duty it was to feed his soldiers three meals per day on allowances he received and with cooks and provisions supplied from native villages. Soldiers were paid twice per year— midsummer and Christmas—and could then elect to be transferred to another company if they did not Uke their officers; periodically, there was a redistribution to bring existing companies to uniform size, since popular captains who kept a good table amassed the largest number of subordinates. As was true in most colonial campaigns in Asia fought by European powers, however, the majority of Sá's army did not consist of Portuguese soldiers at all, but rather of native auxiliaries. These lascarins, as they were called in Ceylon, were summoned to render service for the usufruct of their land in lowland districts under Portuguese control, and they reported, with their weapons and a fortnight's supply of food, to their dissawes, or provincial governors who also commanded the Portuguese troops within their jurisdictions.® Since the Portuguese reorganization of Kotte some thirty years before, most of these dissawes were white men, who left the actual business of commanding their lascarins to mudaliyars and aratchis, Sinhalese district chieftains who were allotted proportionately greater territories than the lascarins within the dissawanies? According to the figures provided by Father Manuel de Assunçào, prior of the Augustinian convent of Colombo, the four Portuguese dissawes together mustered 4,400 lascarins for the expedition, along with their mudaliyars and aratchis.^" Their rendezvous with the Portuguese army was at the base camp in Menikkadawara, the usual residence of the captain-major; perhaps 550 European troops

18

The Last Stand of Dom Constantino

de Sä, 1630

ascended the river ahead of their commander, joined the auxiliaries, and awaited his arrival. Upon his own departure from Colombo, Sá did not speak as a man who expected to return, possibly because he had been warned by a Sinhalese aratchi only a few days before that four of the mudaliyars who would accompany him were secretly in the pay of the King and planned to turn upon Sá deep in enemy territory." The accused were his closest friends among the Sinhalese, men he had raised to positions of authority and wealth, all but one from poverty and lowly ancestry.^^ He had at first dismissed the informant abruptly, whereupon the aratchi approached him again through a priest. Sá then showed his openness by confronting the four mudaliyars directly, was reassured by their denials, and finally dropped the matter when the aratchi himself fled to Kandy." It was an old Kandyan trick to create suspicion between European officers and their auxiliaries, one that had apparently caused Pero Lopes de Sousa to execute Jayawira Bandara. But even so trusting a man as the captain-general could not have forgotten the matter completely. Sá's self-pity is revealed in some remarks Assunçâo attributes to him near the moment of his departure from that city. In Assunçào's account, written only the November after Sá's August march against Kandy, the florid speeches that clog the later narratives are all absent; the captain-general is quoted directly only twice. But the Augustinian has him telling his friends who were pleading with him to delay the campaign: That in no respect would he go back on his intent that he had for his expedition to the city of Uva because should he die while upon it, it would be of little consequence, and that if he should die, they could look in his pocket and discover in it a letter in which they would see the causes and reasons that moved him to march to Uva and make the present expedition . . . " Then he said to his friends that he would be pleased to end his life on the expedition he was determined to make to the city of Uva because thereby his enemies would be satisfied and content; and also that the pleas of his friends were not enough [to stop him], nor the [too] few Portuguese [soldiers] he had, nor the certainty of rebellion and treason . . . And having finally decided, the last day of July, 1630, he sent a message to all the captains and soldiers who at this time were assembled in the fortress of Menikkadawara that within two days they should confess and take Communion and put themselves aright with God, because he wished to d e p a r t . .

19

и I Ceylon /

Sá could not have delayed by that time, for his army awaited in the field, and August was upon him. Coming as it does in the midst of the southwest monsoon season when winds blow steadily across the Indian Ocean, the month brings enough rainfall to sustain the paddies and keep down the dust, yet its comparative dryness makes rivers low and easy to ford. The time for marching clearly was at hand. After meeting his little army at Menikkadawara, Sá ordered it southward through the rough hill country around Sitawaka to Sabaragamua, located up the Kalu River near modern Ratnapura. Sabaragamua was to be the last Portuguese outpost Sá visited before assaulting King Senarat's capital at Badulla.'® He stayed there two days, supplying his men with fresh provisions and waiting for two faithful friends to arrive, Luis Gomes Pinto and Luis Cabrai de Faria. Then, on August 9, he launched his army into the wilderness. Between fifty and a hundred elderly volunteers had to be left behind, reducing Sá's European troop strength to about 450." The passage of a baroque army through the forests of Asia was never recorded by a contemporary painter, even a bad one; save for Albert Eckhout and Frans Post in the Brazilian entourage of Johan Maurits of Nassau, few artists traveled outside Europe before the eighteenth century. Yet, had even the talented Eckhout set himself to portray an expedition like Sá's, the scene would have taxed his palette. Ceylon's jungles are among the world's gaudiest; there is scarcely a season when they are not in flower, either with the waxy blossoms of the iron tree, with gold-veined dark velvet "Wanna Raja" orchids, the crimson and tangerine petals of the Asoka and coral trees, or with lilac, yellow, and mauve blooms of creepers that intertwine in sixteen or twenty varieties. The framework of the woodlands is provided by the majestic teak, spreading Kumbuk trees, slender talipot palms, and by snake trees, whose roots twist as if in serpentine agony. Through this prolific wilderness, alive with parrakeets and chattering hordes of monkeys, Sá's men marched single file to the blare of trumpets and rhythmical beat of tambours, their embroidered flags and standards dipping and weaving through the foliage. In Ceylon only infantry was employed, for the jungle was too dense and often too swampy for horses, while the mountains were too precipitous.

20

The Last Stand of Dom Constantino

de So, 1630

Before the vanguard went pioneers to slash back the foliage where it interfered and men with hoes to clear the path. Their task was hazardous; frequently they flushed cobras or were attacked by poisonous insects that burrowed under the skin and festered. Behind them marched soldiers and officers arranged in the Sinhalese style according to ascending rank and culminating first in two mudaliyars bearing the round, white shields of royal authority, then the sergeant major and the captain-general himself. The dissawes and the captain-major accompanying the captaingeneral acted only as his retinue, for by Sinhalese practice they were considered to have no individual authority save in his absence; hence, the sergeant major stood close by to transmit his personal orders to the mudaliyars and lesser officers. Because the captain-general was regarded by the Sinhalese as successor to their own semidivine kings of Kotte, Sá rode in a sedan chair dressed proudly in white plumes and in gilt half-armor under a scarlet cape bordered with silver. He obviously disliked riding in the palanquin and would not have done so unless his position demanded it; at rivers he stepped from his portable throne and waded ahead of his men. Whatever loss of dignity he might have suffered among the lascarins must have been compensated by the courage this example imparted to the native troops, who were almost pathologically afraid of immersing themselves. He knew how to lead, even if wading streams and walking in the wet grasses nearby invited by far the most unpleasant experience of campaigning in Ceylon: leeches that had to be seared off with the smoldering fuse of a matchlock before they would drop away, leaving shins to ooze blood for weeks. Throughout the eight days of passage through the jungle country following departure from Sabaragamua, the mountains must have dominated Sá's thoughts. To the expedition's left, visible at every gap in the trees and at every ford, towered the barren cone of Adam's Peak and the blue mountains hunched behind it. Named by Islamic travelers centuries before the advent of the Portuguese because they fancied the world's first man had spent years of solitary exile there in expiation for his sin, the mountain's sharp, 7,360foot summit bears a faint but gigantic footprint that imagination has ascribed to him. Though scarcely the loftiest among the world's elevations, Adam's Peak is one of the most breathtaking in its precipitous rise from the jungle floor, whether silhouetted in magenta haze against an azure sky or shrouded in its own storm above a sunlit landscape.

21

II I Ceylon I The captain-general knew that the adversaries who awaited him among the saw-toothed ridges to the east were less his enemies than the sheer cliffs of gneiss and the narrow paths along which his army must approach Badulla. In pitched battles Portuguese and their lascarins were more than a match for the Kandyans, who seldom risked assaulting frontally a force under European command, even one considerably inferior in numbers. The reason, aside from the scarcity of firearms among Asians, lay in the want of planning and discipline on the part of native levies. When they attacked, Kandyans did so fiercely and with a whoop, but there was more confusion than coordination in their ranks. Determined resistance from experienced Portuguese troops nearly always put them to rout. Kandyans were at their best in laying ambuscades and fighting in defiles. Suddenly, as from nowhere, they could cloud the air with spears and arrows and fall upon the segment of a European army whose other units were drawn out along a narrow line of march between boulders and ledges. Over a century, dozens of Portuguese expeditions had been wiped out by surprise and by trickery. And soldiers who strayed often fell into well-camouflaged traps. Weaponry under these conditions was bound to be primitive when compared to that evolving in Europe; even as King Gustavus Adolphus was oüing his regementsstycke, his mobile light artillery, for a showdown against Tilly that would forever antiquate sword and pike warfare, Sá marched toward Budulla with an army whose equipment, except for firearms, differed little from that of a Roman legion. Cannons in Ceylon were useful only on fortress walls; harquebusses, half-pikes, and daggerlike swords called calachurros were the only arms of use in the limited combat area of mountain path and jungle undergrowth. Other battle gear was even more backward by European criteria, for Portuguese soldiers still carried shields of steel or water buffalo hide to protect themselves against Sinhalese spear- and arrowheads, while those who could not afford half-armor wore jerkins quilted with plates of leather inside, much as had foot soldiers in the Italian wars. Despite the annoying leeches, Portuguese soldiers in Ceylon followed the Sinhalese custom of going barefoot at all times, possibly because much of the terrain was marshy underfoot and would have caused boots or sandals to rot. On August 17, when Sá's expedition arrived in Idalgashinna after a hard climb through the Halmadulla Pass, it was at the threshold of the Kandyan lair, three days' march from Badulla and high

22

The Last Stand of Dom Constantino

de Sä, 1630

above the point where foothUls meet the mountain escarpment. The dense jungle was behind and 3,000 feet below them; as they moved ahead, trees and undergrowth alternated with barren cliffs and tawny slopes of gneiss, then leveled into Uva's grassy upland plains surrounded by mountains and interrupted by an occasional coppice of jungle. After three more days of marching, most of it through gorges and along mountain streams between conical hills, the army sighted its destination, nestled deep in a verdant and peaceful valley at the base of 6,671-foot Mount Namunakuli. As the army descended to the valley floor, Senarat's host, perhaps 12,000-strong, appeared on a hillside above and poised itself for a human avalanche. A fearful clash seemed imminent as the Kandyans wavered toward the Portuguese; then, suddenly, the army wheeled and vanished, leaving Badulla and the royal palace before the invaders' feet. Sá cautiously entered the city and chose for his encampment a large Buddhist temple compound, secure between a waUed ditch and a river in the event Senarat should reappear. During the next two days smoke billowed in columns high above the valley floor and drifted onto the surrounding peaks. Sá swiftly but methodically ravaged the district, sacking the palace and putting it to flame, then firing the temples and thatched homes; he drove off cattle and burned to the stalk 2,000 measures of rice.'® When Badulla lay in ashes, Sá broke camp and started for home along the route he had come. The date seems to have been August 20. What happened next is clear enough in outline between the four known accounts but hopelessly contradictory in detail. Because it is impossible to reconcile the precise circumstances, I have chosen to follow the Assunçâo report, dated only three months after the expedition. It is by far the most straightforward, and it blends the richest surrounding detail with the least heroic images. It seems that the day before the army was to leave Badulla, Luis Gomes Pinto was approached by a loyal Sinhalese aratchi, Jerónimo Idrumaraturi, who gave to him some olas taken from a building about to be burned. Pinto was able to read Sinhalese and so recognized the messages as orders from the Kandyan King to traitorous Sinhalese in Sá's own midst. He hastened to his commander. "Sir!" he cried, "we are finished and we cannot escape, because Dom Teodosio, Dom Cosmo, Dom Baltasar and Dom Aleixo have sold Your Mercy and all of us." Sá lost no time in seeking further proof, as Assunçâo wrote: "The General accepted this as the seal of certainty, after what the pasha [his informant] and other persons

23

π I Ceylon I of trust had told him in Colombo. He desired to take swift measures in the case; and he ordered then and there that they should execute the four traitors, giving the order that the whole expedition should be marched half a league [out of Badulla] to the top of a mountain, where he wished to place himself in the midst of his best people and defend himself against all comers. And while everyone was preparing to march, he ordered the four traitors to be placed in the midst of four companies of loyal people, so that, as night fell, they might be lanced and killed." ^ This was obviously Heaven's own solution, thought Assunçâo, except that the sins of the Portuguese had ordained the future otherwise. Pinto, a man "who was always cocksure in everything," made the mistake of counsehng delay: "Sir, this is not the time to kill these men because there will be a great commotion with us so very close to Uva, where the Kandyan enemies might descend upon us in a matter of moments. Therefore it seems to me Your Mercy ought to postpone this command till tomorrow morning, when we are already well along the road." " Sá adopted this suggestion of his close friend and did no hurt to the conspirators that night, the last spent in Badulla. The traitors were already near panic; presumably even before Sá recognized them for what they were, their consciences had shaped his every chance remark to reveal knowledge of their villainy. The moment their captain-general had notified them to change their positions in the next day's order of march, they grasped that they must act at once or be put to death.^^ The traitors made good use of their stay of execution: the four succeeded in passing word back to a fifth conspirator still unknown to Sá, who was in charge of lascarins under Luis Teixeira de Macedo, captain of the rear guard. Pinto and Sá expected the initial trouble to come from outside their ranks; instead, it came from within. Early in the morning of August 21, shortly after their departure from Badulla, the conspirator in the rear guard, Dom Jerónimo, alias R a j a Pasha, fell on Teixeira de Macedo and pinioned him. Minutes later, up ahead near the main force, six or seven thousand Kandyans appeared in battle array on a hillside below Sá, waving colored banners and screaming "This is your last hour to Uve!" At the signal, Dom Cosmo, Dom Aleixo, Dom Teodosio, and Dom Baltasar began to lead the lascarins, who until then had been considered loyal. Even Sá was momentarily deceived, viewing them as in pursuit of the four. He was on the point of ordering Portuguese contingents to go along when Pinto choked: " A h ! Sir! Do not send

24

The Last Stand of Dom Constantino

de Sä, 1630

any Portuguese companies! Those are all mutineers!" As Sá and the Portuguese looked on, his lascarins and the enemy embraced. One Portuguese volunteer from Colombo, Joáo Bemardes, who had accompanied his treacherous friend, Dom Cosmo, in the confusion, lost his life before he could scramble back. As Bernardes' head was raised on a pike, Sá could only exclaim in dismay that "those whom he had so many times called sons had become carnivorous lions against him." It was at this horrible moment that the folly of allowing his wounded pride to enslave his judgment must nearly have defeated him. Clutching his dagger, he exclaimed: "If it were permissible for a Christian to kill himself, I would do it now with this knife!" To this comment Pinto exclaimed with grim humor: "Do not worry. Your Mercy, because tomorrow at this time. Your Mercy and I wül be dead, anyway!" The captain-general hurriedly called a council of his remaining Portuguese officers, but because the ranks were so sorely pressed by Kandyans and his own turncoat lascarins, there was time only to hear the nearly unanimous cry, "Sir, let us keep on going and reach our own territory before the enemy grows." As the army retreated during midmorning, the news reached Sá from his rear guard that his close friend, Teixeira de Macedo, had been taken, a tactic in fact invented by the four conspirators to make Sá delay his march until the main Kandyan force could catch him. Until this moment the Portuguese perhaps still had some chance of escape, if only they could outdistance the main body of their foes. But the four conspirators had calculated perfectly his reactions to Teixeira de Macedo's seizure: rather than continuing to retreat, he ordered the Portuguese to t u m back in search of his comrade. Pinto pleaded with him despairingly: "Sir—Your Mercy —why return? Then we are lost and the enemy will surround us. Leave, Your Mercy, Luis Teixeira, since it is far better to lose just one man than Your Mercy and all of us. Let us march out of here and not turn b a c k ! " " This time Sá did not listen to Pinto, but gave orders that the decimated and retreating army reverse its direction. It had gone "only a few steps" when it was struck by the main force of the pursuing Kandyan host. Thereafter it could do little more than fight for survival until darkness fell. Determined to escape the ignominy of capture by Senarat, Sá that night changed into the armor of a common soldier. On the following day, August 22, he sought to determine whether

25

II I Ceylon I his army could resume its retreat, but learned quickly that the enemy had divided itself into four parts and boxed the Portuguese in. As the enemy attacked on all sides, Sá and the Portuguese began to fight, "not now as those who had hope of victory, but as those who wished to sell their lives to the enemy with great expense." Colombo was too distant, the terrain too rough, and the 380 Portuguese too hungry and weakened to have any thought of breaking out. By now the number of their foe had mounted to perhaps 12,000 men." The final battle began with a great volley of Portuguese musketry and a cloud of Kandyan arrows. Sá's servants loaded his three wheel lock harquebusses (espingardas de pederneira) and rotated them to him as he took aim and shot down his foe; perhaps Assunçâo is correct when he reports that "he killed more than thirtyodd without moving from one place." Around the captain-general fought his closest friends with their companies, Luis Gomes Pinto, Simào de Pina, and Calisto Machado, "defending him and inspiring the blacks with awe." But soon nature intervened: "It seems that the Lord God had sought out this place to serve as a sepulcher for so many bodies of Christians who in His name gave up their lives, for he permitted that on that day it should rain so much water that, beginning at eight in the morning, it lasted until three in the afternoon; and since in the rain our musketry was useless against the enemy, their arrows fell upon us so thickly that in a short time our ranks were totally ruined." By then Sá and his remaining companions were surrounded by a great swarm of enemy soldiers, each one struggling for the honor of slaying him: "Initially he received an arrow in his chest, which hurt him terribly, but this was not enough to keep him from laying one hand on his sword, taking in the other a shield of steel, and charging his enemies like a lion, who in turn seconded it with another arrow in his arm, and with a lance through his thigh; and with these wounds they conquered him, who so many times had emerged as a victor; and when he fell upon the ground, the Kandyans cut off his head, all of them struggling to take it in their hands." Pinto took command, and two hours later he was killed. The 130 men who remained alive then saw that further fighting would be suicidal. Kandyans shouted, "throw your arms down!" The dazed and bloody Portuguese did so. The fight was over, and the prisoners were led away to several years of captivity while other Kandyans severed heads of those who had fallen and piled them into a grisly

26

The Last Stand of Dom Constantino

de Sä, 1630

pyramid.™ An hour or so later, survivors of the rear guard surrendered. It is reported that Sá's head was presented to King Senarat on a drum. Almost immediately the great captain-general's memory came to be venerated by Portuguese and Kandyans alike. The Christians who knew him extolled his loyalty, his justice, his devotion to God and King, his poverty (he left behind only a few hundred xerafins), his military achievements, and his honor. The Kandyans, who had suffered eight years by his sword, went further: it is said they built a shrine in which to worship him as Kusal Neti Deiyo (The Unfortunate God), "so that after death, he might do them no harm."^' In the end there was renown for him among friend and foe, but no Portuguese were left on the field to look in the pockets of his headless corpse and find the viceregal correspondence he urged upon those who had disliked the expedition. The significance, however, was amply clear to Father Queiroz, who wrote: "These letters killed Constantino de Sá and placed Ceylon in danger of final ruin." The

Traitors

The principal reason for the captain-general's defeat among the hills of Uva was neither lack of supply, nor faulty relations between high officials, nor wounded pride, damaging as all of these circumstances were to the Portuguese cause. What actually lost the day was a failure to hold the loyalty of the Luso-Sinhalese mudaliyars and lascarins. "Sir! We are finished and we cannot escape," Pinto had cried the moment he had heard of the impending treachery, "because Dom Teodosio, Dom Cosmo, Dom Baltasar and Dom Aleixo have sold Your Mercy and all of us!" That Senarat of Kandy should have offered bribes and position to these four trusted officers if they would consent to betray Sá is not surprising. What is surprising is that men made rich by their masters and high in Portuguese councils should have proved so willing to be subverted. Because of such treachery, contemporary writers seldom had favorable things to say about the Sinhalese. " A people weak, pusillanimous vile and without word of honor," Assunçâo thought them, and Captain Joäo de Ribeiro wrote: "in the end, the blacks are all our enemies." Sá's son, Joáo Rodrigues de Sá e Meneses, was of the identical opinion. Yet embedded in his Rebelión de Ceylan there is an extraordinary document that could only have come from a Sinhalese source.^^ Both Sá e Meneses and Father Queiroz (who

27

II / Ceylon I copied it from him) reproduce the speech as an example of Sinhalese perfidy. To modern readers, however, it goes far to suggest what the Sinhalese viewpoint actually was. While still in Colombo some months before Sá's fatal march, the four conspirators, plus a fifth, the captain-general's own private secretary, Dom Manuel, were said to have assembled at the latter's house after the marriage of his daughter. There, in secrecy, Dom Cosmo is said to have delivered an address to the other plotters. That it could have become known verbatim to the Portuguese many years later is doubtful, and certainly the historical allusions sound odd. But whatever its origin, the quotation conveys sentiments that no Portuguese writer of the seventeenth century would likely have invented: How long, illustrious companions, shall we live as slaves to these vile Portuguese, whose harsh servitude you have borne for nearly 125 years without any liberty other than what they permit us? Is it possible that you should be so far removed from reason that, though liberty is the thing of greatest value among mortals, you should be so habituated to slavery as altogether to forget it, or to despise it to such an extent that, being able to be free men and lords, you exchange your freedom for slavery, without letting the remembrance of what your ancestors held raise an honorable thought in your hearts? Nor do you reflect on the unhappy fate of your children, for if by our weakness and irresolution we are reduced to slavery, they wül have either certain death or banishment before them; because if today [the Portuguese] let you enjoy our property (in order to have men to accompany them for our ruin), tomorrow, they wül become the owners, either with death or the extinction of the [Sinhalese] name or at least with the banishment and transmigration of your famUies, because the more they dread our courage, the more do they want to secure their dominion. If the Spaniards have done so to the Africans, who have been inhabitants of Spain for 800 years even though they were baptized: if the Persian king did so to the Armenian nobility... what better terms do we expect from the Portuguese who are anxious to perpetuate themselves in Ceylon and enjoy altogether its riches and delights . . . Who does not see that our religion is fallen, our nobility extinct and our riches drained . . . there is not a year when all there is in Ceylon does not pass to Goa and from Goa to Portugal.. The Portuguese had no inkling of why the natives should have acted as they did. Sá was wounded, one suspects, as much mentally as bodüy, because "those whom he .had so many times called sons had become carnivorous lions against him." Time and greater upheavals in Asia have since made clear what the well-intentioned

28

The Last Stand of Dom Constantino

de Sà, 1630

captain-general, the advocate of paternalism, could not understand in his last, anguished battle. For there is no reason to suppose that seventeenth-century Sinhalese accepted foreign domination more willingly than did their descendants three hundred years later, or that the anticolonial feehng of nationalism is a new phenomenon among very old civilizations.

The Errant

Knight

When enemies of the late captain-general heard the news of the massacre, they contrived to give their old slanders a new fillip, one aimed at robbing him of posthumous glory. It was this calumny that both Father Queiroz and Sá's son, Joáo Rodrigues de Sá e Meneses, attacked in their writings. The Luso-Spanish chronicler, Manuel de Faria e Sousa, has adopted its essence: "Constantino de Sá, [after] having shown courage and sense in the first days of his tenure, we [then] saw him lose through sloth the chance to cut off the heads or tie the hands of the King of Kandy; now we see him lose his life with valor appropriate for a youth and imprudence quite unbefitting an older тап."«^ The distortion, however, embodied a kind of truth. Like other fidalgos high in the service of the Portuguese crown, Dom Constantino de Sá wore the habit of the Order of Christ, the great crusading institution of Henry the Navigator. Most members had grown comfortable with its ideals, but Sá appears to have been an anachronism—a true cavalier in an age when knighthood's flower had turned to seed. Unquestioning trust in one's comrades, utter loyalty on the field of battle, pride so tender a single undeserved slight could alter the direction of a lifetime; all these were qualities prized in the seventeenth century, more, one suspects, because they were heirlooms than because a society of growing complexity could use them any longer. For a hero to have displayed such openness on the eve of battle that he would call in subordinates accused of disloyalty and ask them about it would have been a deUcious idea to medievale and would have moved them to tears. But a sober and bureaucratic council is not likely to have been impressed when hves and empires were at stake. It could only have agreed with the unsympathetic Faria e Sousa who wrote of Sá: "Look what almost jumps out at you as the first error of that General! Everyone must persuade himself, when surrounded by enemies, that the greatest enemy of all is to put too much trust in their friendship, and risk having to pay with an Ί was wrong,' an

29

Ί never thought' or a 'who would have thought.' Rather, think every thought, and always believe the worst."'® The strange tale of massacre in the hills of Uva might have lent itself to the epic poetry of an earher age or found its way into the folklore of a race other than the Portuguese. As has been said, the Sinhalese reportedly even built Sá a temple. But in the viceroyalty of Goa, bloodlettings and heroism, treachery and reverses were far too commonplace to take much notice of, and the Portuguese who lived through them were too much in motion to raise many children. All one can say today of the march is that it demonstrated unforgettably Portugal's lack of power to master Kandy before the Dutch intervened, just as the siege that followed proved Kandy's inability to push Portugal into the sea without the help of the Dutch.

30

Even before Goa was aware of what had taken place, the worst crisis had passed. When news did arrive on October 10, the only course Linhares could take was to divert to Ceylon as many troops as possible from other stations.' The original Kandyan plan had been to descend like an avalanche upon an unsuspecting and unprepared Colombo immediately after the captain-general's defeat. Had this strategy been followed, Portuguese power on the island might have ended twenty-six years sooner than it actually did. But, fortunately for the Europeans, the victorious Sinhalese took their time. For one thing, SencU^at had fallen ill; then, the anonymous writer of the Jornada, who was himself a Kandyan prisoner at the time, reports that the young warriors considered Colombo as good as captured and abandoned themselves to wenching and revelry.^ What they did not suspect was that the commander of the fort at Malwana, Francisco de Brito Almeida, learned of the disaster almost immediately (on August 28) and lost no time in rushing a message to Lançarote de Seixas Cabreira, whom Sá had left in charge of Colombo.' As one of its inhabitants, Afonso Dias da Lomba, reported, "the scanty force that was there did not exceed 300 Portuguese, good and bad, aged and sick, and all the walls [had] fallen on the ground and the bastions [were] with very little artillery."" But the news electrified the city. Dom JVIanuel, the fifth ringleader who had stayed behind, was surprised, tortured, and executed, the Muslim traders suspected of being in league with him were expelled, and men, women, some lascarins, and the clergy all struggled ceaselessly to plug gaps in the walls with fascines of palm trees and earthworks. JVIeanwhile, a large galley sailed in from Malacca with some men and extra artillery aboard; they were immediately commandeered.^ By the time the Kandyan army had sobered up and come down from the hills, pausing to

III Ceylon / Stalemate and Dutch Intervention,

1630-1641

31

Southwest Ceylon Boundaries of Dutch territory during the truce-jears

Boundaries of Portuguese territory in 1638

Boundaries of Dutch territory in 1658

boundaries of Portuguese territory during the truceyears

5 Ю

\Sam)H3tyant-'

32

20

30

40

-SO

Miles

Stalemate and Dutch Intervention,

1630-1641

take Sabaragamua and besiege Menikkadawara, the Portuguese were barricaded behind Colombo's jury walls and waiting to rake balls and shot down from its bastions. The enemy host was formidable—both Fathers da Lomba and Assuncao estimate and probably exaggerate it as 30,000 (among whom perhaps a third were nonfighting service personnel), and it had with it a dozen or more elephants.® But it hardly ever happened in Asia that native troops prevailed over a watchful Portuguese citadel, unless they had help from other Europeans. The Portuguese could fight Ике madmen when they had to, and one gathers that, despite their large numbers, most of the native besiegers idled about most of the time or else got in one another's way on the scaling ladders. Because they lacked sufficient artillery to punch a very big hole in the defending walls, their main weapon was to starve the besieged. This seldom worked since nearly every Portuguese city in Asia was built up to the water. The siege of Colombo began in mid-September, and the Portuguese—soldier, merchant, and priest alike—clawed, slashed, bashed, and shot the invaders down. On October 3 some stopgap reUef sailed in from nearby Cochin under its captain-general Dom Felipe Mascarenhas; a week or two later another garrison delivered some more aid. In November the Kandyans burned fields and buildings outside Colombo's walls and then withdrew. Portuguese Ceylon thereafter regained its equilibrium. Troops dispatched by Linhares began to appear, and in February, 1631, he found a suitable commander in the experienced, if elderly, Dom Jorge de Almeida. When this new captain-general arrived later in the year at the head of several hundred additional troops, the Portuguese took the offensive and erased whatever gains the Kandyans had made following Sá's death.^ J

The Lion

King

By the mid-1630s Kandy had a new ruler. Raja Sinha II, who named himself for an old Portuguese enemy, the sixteenth-century King of Sitawaka. If his choice was out of admiration for the bad time this former Lion King had given Portugal, then one might almost believe in transmigration of souls. There are no portraits of Raja Sinha II aside from a quaint engraving made in London from the description of Robert Knox, an English sailor long marooned in Kandy. Knox's word picture is far more graphic, though it must be remembered that it was writ-

33

ΠΙ I Ceylon I

ten about Raja Sinha II as a septuagenarian (1681) and may even be largely fanciful: He is not tall, but very well set, nor of the clearest colour of their complexion, but somewhat of the blackest; great rolling eyes, turning them and looking every way, always moving them; a brisk, bold look, a great swelling Belly, and very lively in his actions and behaviour, somewhat bald, not having very much hair upon his head, and that gray, a large, comely beard, with great Whiskers; in conclusion, a very comely man. He bears his years well, being between Seventy and Eighty years; and though an Old man, yet appears not to be like one, neither in countenance nor action. His apparel is very strange and wonderful, not after his own Country-fashion, or any other, being made after his own invention. On his head he wears a Cap with four corners like a Jesuit's three tier high, and a Feather standing upright before, like that in the head of a forehorse in a Team, a long band hanging down his back after the Portuguese fashion, his Doublet after so strange a shape, that I cannot well describe it, the body of one, and the sleeves of another colour; he wears long Breeches to his Ankles, Shoes and Stockings. He doth not always keep to one fashion, but changes as his fancy leads him; but always when he comes abroad, his Sword hangs by his side in a belt over his shoulder; which no Chingulays [Sinhalese] dare wear, only white men m^y: a Gold Hilt and Scabbard most of beaten Gold. Commonly he holdeth in his hand a small Cane, painted of divers colours, and towards the lower end set round With such stones as he hath, and pleaseth, with a head of Gold.® Fanciful or not, Knox's image does not belie the character of this Asian despot. He was a law unto himself: able, enormously vital, vain, and given to caprice. He was also pathologically suspicious. Raja Sinha (formerly the Prince MahaAsthana) was the youngest of Senarat's three sons and the one whom his father recognized as the most capable.® It was he who directed the massacre of Dom Constantino de Sá. In fact, from about 1629 he shouldered much of Senarat's burden of government, seemingly a prime cause of resentment between him and his elder brothers, Kumarasinha and Wijayapala. Then in late 1634 or early 1635, when the old King died. Raja Sinha proclaimed himself emperor. Kumarasinha had apparently just predeceased his father, but Wijayapala was very much alive and raised an army to oppose Raja Sinha's accession. He had httle luck with it, however. Although Kandy and Portugal suspended hostilities again in 1634, the truce held little meaning so far as Raja Sinha was concerned. In fact, precisely what the Portuguese had dreaded for three dozen years was about to happen: the new Kandyan "emperor" intended to seek out the Dutch at his earliest opportunity. They

34

Stalemate and Dutch Intervention,

1630-1641

were now eminently available, prowling about the Indian Ocean as if it were the Zuider Zee, plundering Portuguese shipping (150 vessels in 1636), and blockading Goa with increasing frequency; in 1636 they had even established a post at Vengurla in the lands of the Adii Shah of Bijapur, only five leagues north of the viceroy's palace in Goa.'» Meanwhile, to the east, they were closing in upon Malacca. Raja Sinha seems to have been fully aware, nonetheless, that if he went unaided, his enemies from the Iberian Peninsula were stiH capable of thwarting him through their mobility on the sea. That Raja Sinha so intensely hated the Portuguese as a group apparently had nothing to do with them as individuals. He seems to have treated them as kindly as he ever treated anyone, including his own subjects. Rather, their sin in his eyes was a national one: they ringed him with strongholds and blocked his own ambition to expand over the entire island and actually make himself emperor. It is difficult to find manifestations of any genuinely paternal feelings for those Sinhalese who were then living under Iberian rule. In addition, he had some more immediate grievances against the Portuguese in 1638, but those appear to have been little more than minor irritants: they had frequently assisted his rebellious subjects, a ship bringing him goods had run afoul of their naval vessels, an elephant he presented to an ingratiating Portuguese trader had in turn been seized by Captain-General Diogo de Melo de Castro. And he might have guessed that they were in secret communication with his malcontent brother, Wijayapala. On September 9, 1636, Raja Sinha made his initial move to contact the Dutch and dispatched a Brahman messenger to Karel Reyniersz, the commander of Pulicat, a Coromandel outpost established by the Dutch East India Company in 1625. Though the message was delayed for months when its carrier had to hide in Jaffnapatam to escape detection, Reyniersz was more than cordial when he received it. His superiors in Batavia had, apparently, already been considering the prospects of striking an arms-forcinnamon bargain and had just instructed him to offer his help to Raja Sinha." It would have been better for the Kandyan if his faithful Brahman had been arrested by the Portuguese in Jaffnapatam. For if Reyniersz had taken the initiative, he would have offered not only arms and aid but payment 50 percent over current Portuguese prices, provided only that Kandy withhold cinnamon from Portugal and sell it to the Dutch company.'^ But before he could act, the

35

III I Ceylon / Brahman had arrived. Now it was a different matter. Ignorant of the plans of the company, Raja Sinha had instead offered to furnish the Dutchmen everything necessary to build their own fort at Trincomalee or Batticaloa, plus all operating expenses for Dutch ships to begin attacks on the Portuguese. Reyniersz immediately concealed his intended offer. Raja Sinha had shown himself much too eager. Late in October, 1637, Reyniersz dispatched two envoys, Jan Thyssen and Adriaan Helmont, to lay the groundwork for the signing of a treaty; their directions were to avoid all mention of the 50 percent, saying only that the company would pay "more" than the Portuguese. A month later they appeared before Raja Sinha with a letter from Reyniersz stating that help might be forthcoming if they were granted the cinnamon monopoly, and, if so, the commander of the squadron blockading Goa would be prepared to send ships in about April. Raja Sinha was overjoyed. Since Thyssen and Helmont had no authority to conclude an agreement, he dispatched ambassadors directly to the commander himself. Admiral Adam Westerwolt. The admiral, who was himself a member of the governor's council in Batavia, had already been prepared. Providing he could "direct affairs in such a way that we may obtain from the King of Kandy a good, profitable and binding contract and a great quantity of cinnamon," he was to proceed with seven ships and 250 soldiers in the fleet and undertake what was possible with them. He was warned, however, only to assault places where cinnamon was available. When Thyssen, Helmont, and the King's ambassadors arrived at Westerwolt's fleet two days before Christmas, 1637, they held an immediate conference and presented Raja Sinha's letter. In it Raja Sinha indeed affirmed his eagerness to sell all spices to the company, whereupon Westerwolt decided to attack Batticaloa first. This port on the east coast, it will be remembered, had been fortified by Dom Constantino de Sá in 1628 and provided convenient entry through Ceylon's back door to Kandy itself. As a Portuguese enclave in Raja Sinha's realm, the Dutch calculated, it might be attacked with a force inadequate against stronger emplacements in the west. And, when they had taken it, they would possess a convenient harbor for haison with Raja Sinha. Accordingly, Westerwolt dispatched his second-in-command, Willem Jacobsz Coster, with the ambassadors and three ships to lay the foundation.

36

Stalemate

and Dutch Intervention,

1630-1641

On the island, meanwhile, history had virtually repeated itself. Hearing that Dutchmen were again prowling about Raja Sinha's domain and rightly suspecting the worst, the current Portuguese captain-general, Diogo de Melo de Castro, hastily assembled a large force of European soldiers and with several thousand lascarins marched on Kandy in the desperate hope that he might smash Raja Sinha and ward off the impending u n i o n . R a j a Sinha merely dusted off the old battle plan. There were the unopposed raid on Kandy by Melo, his retreat, his interception by Raja Sinha, and another last stand. When Coster anchored in the roads before Batticaloa on April 9, he was presented with Melo's sword and informed the King was again beleaguering Colombo. Confident there would be no Portuguese reinforcement. Coster set to work erecting batteries and transferring his ships' artillery. On May 10 Westerwolt sailed in. Four days later Raja Sinha appeared in splendid array with a battle train of elephants, attendants, and 15,000 fighting men. Coster checked the sighting of his transplanted naval guns and opened fire. The Portuguese fort of Batticaloa lay in a small estuary, on a spit of land whose base had been moated to let in the sea and form an island. An engraving in the book by East India Company historian and divine Philippus Baldaeus shows that it was thoroughly modern, at least in form: built low, with shghtly sloping walls, three small bastions on the water sides, and a single rampart facing the moat.'^ Ribeiro says it was garrisoned by no more than forty men capable of fighting.^« In any case, they were clearly no match for the host spread out before them. After a day or two of cannonading, Dutch batteries knocked apart two of the bastions and battered a gaping hole in the rampart wall (sure indications that Portuguese engineers were inexplicably still designing defenses in 1628 against native attack but not European ordnance). On May 18 a white flag fluttered up, whereupon the Dutch granted defenders free passage to Negapatam, a Portuguese city on the Coromandel coast. Raja Sinha had his own plans for some fugitive Kandyans who had taken refuge there: he horrified the Dutch by impaling them on stakes. The Westerwolt

Treaty

Raja Sinha was wide eyed for another reason: the fort that the Dutchmen had compelled to surrender within hours had once withstood a huge force of his own. This display of fireworks,however, had only been a sample. Admiral Westerwolt now turned to his

37

III I Ceylon / aides and was handed a draft treaty whose ink had been sprinkled with cinnamon, the timing dehberately perfect. After a f e w days' debate, the King affixed the coiled Sinhalese characters of his name and titles. Though both original copies in Portuguese (the hngua franca of Asia in this period) have been lost, translations kept by the Dutch appear complete, save for one controversial phrase." The company intended to make the Kandyans bear the entire expense of the war, while at the same time assuring the company exclusive access to all the spices it wanted. The Dutch drove so hard and specific a bargain that it is hard to believe they had territorial ambitions at the time the treaty was drafted—good ways in Hollanders' eyes to run up the overhead. There were nineteen articles, with twenty stipulations, the last, for some reason, unnumbered. In Article 1 the King and his subjects acknowledged the Dutch as allies and protectors against the Portuguese; Article 2 stipulated that booty taken by the Dutch with the help of the King, either through treaty or force, was to be divided equally. Articles 3 and 4 later were the occasion of wrangling: they provided that, should any forts or strongholds be taken in the above manner, they should be garrisoned and supplied; that if the Dutch considered their defenses inadequate, the King was to fortify them to the company's satisfaction; finally, that the King should pay Dutch occupants their monthly wages. Whether by intent or accident in the Dutch translation, the words "if the king is so disposed" were left out. Article 5 dealt with the Kandyans' building of warehouses and a powder magazine for the Dutch. Article 6 provided that the King should consult Dutch officers before undertaking any independent action. Article 7 stated that the King should construct galleys to be armed by the Dutch for harbor defense. The heart of the treaty for the Hollanders was in the following six articles. The yearly expenses of the company's naval and müitary action were to be "recouped in cinnamon, pepper, cardamom, indigo, wax, rice and other valuable products" of Ceylon, "except wild cinnamon." The Dutch were to be granted full permission to trade throughout Kandyan dominions without toll; it was required that they be sold a like number of elephants whenever the King (who owned all the beasts personally) sold "four or ten or twenty" to anyone else; and king and subjects were to "resist to the utmost" any other nation, Asian or "English, French or German," whose ships sailed into their harbors. The company was to share its com-

38

Stalemate and Dutch Intervention,

1630-1641

mereiai prerogatives with no one, except the neighboring people of Travancore, who were permitted to "come and go unmolested in their vessels with provisions and paltry supplies." In addition, the King was to send to Batavia yearly "at least one or two shiploads of cinnamon, pepper, cardamon, wax, indigo," and so forth "in payment of the expenses incurred in the equipment and upkeep of the vessels sent here in his service, the Company undertaking to reimburse His Majesty in merchandise, articles or cash, according to his pleasure, any excess in value of the yearly expenditure which the shiploads amounted to." Other stipulations regarded freedom of factors to travel about and the transport of merchandise at subjects' own expense; subjects were forbidden to deliver treaty articles to nonauthorlzed persons on pain of imprisonment. The remaining articles were less important. N o one was permitted to coin or circulate money; fugitives from Dutch justice were to be returned; there was to be no communication with the Portuguese, "who are forever to be declared our enemies"; Roman Catholic priests were not to be tolerated; prizes taken on inward or outward voyages were to remain Dutch property, as was artUlery installed in island fortifications. Assaults and

Bickering

Their bargain struck, the Dutch went back to work. A hundred soldiers were left to garrison Batticaloa and supervise its repair. Westerwolt packed his ships with spices, picked up two Sinhalese legates who were to obtain ratification from Governor-General Anthonie van Diemen's council, and set sail for Batavia. Coster remained in charge; Raja Sinha went back to the hills. Quibbling began immediately. When CoSter set out to obtain ladings for some other vessels, he did not get as much as the company felt entitled to. Kandyan officials gave no explanation. Coster protested that the cinnamon, wax, and pepper received did not cover expenses. He then traveled to Kandy and memoriahzed the King on August 28, requesting that spices be priced favorably. Raja Sinha replied, reasonably enough, that he would like a statement of Dutch expenses, something he had asked from Westerwolt, but had not received. He also pointed out that the Dutch had promised to pay him more than the Portuguese had. Finally, he agreed to price the bahar of cinnamon about 15 percent lower than the Portuguese marked it in Colombo. At the same time, however, he decreed somewhat ominously that no one should see Coster without the imperial Ucense.

39

III I Ceylon / A Sinhalese scholar, К. W. Goonewardena, has reviewed the question of prices and come to conclusions perhaps more significant to modem readers than to contemporary participants. Coster's valuation placed on 143 bahars, 269 pounds of cinnamon, 21 bahars, 421 pounds of wax, and 6 bahars, 179 pounds of pepper was but 53,750 florins. Goonewardena complains the cinnamon alone fetched over 100,000 florins in A m s t e r d a m . I t is, however, by no means certain that Coster was up on the latest market prices or that Goonewardena took into account the markup between wholesale and retail valuations, to say nothing of transportation costs or the high depreciation factor of company ships and other equipment. It is obvious from the treaty that the Dutch were not fishing in Ceylon on an at cost basis. By seventeenth-century standards, a 100 percent increment in price between Asia and Europe must have seemed as modest as the penny profits of a grocery chain today. IS Meanwhile, the governor-general and council in Batavia had received news of Raja Sinha's massacre of Melo's forces and decided that a few brisk expeditions might chase the enemy from the island. They now instructed Admiral Anthonie Caen, new commander of the Goan blockade, to abandon his watch for prizes there and strike at Galle, second in importance only to Colombo, on the southwestern coast. When informed by Coster, however, the King held out for attacking Colombo itself, as he called it "the mother of all the evil." 2» Since there was some latitude in his instructions, Coster agreed and set off toward Caen's fleet with ambassadors from Kandy and a native pilot for the harbor. He met Caen January 23, 1639. According to arrangements then made, the fleet was to put Dutch soldiers ashore for a rendezvous with Raja Sinha's forces just north of Colombo. Once there, however, Caen apparently feared that a Kandyan message from shore might have been a Portuguese trick, and caution overcame him. He then sailed for Galle, which he also skirted upon judging it too strong to attempt an attack without Kandyan forces. Finally, he decided to launch an ofl^ensive against Trincomalee, the other eastern port that had been fortified by Sá. Raja Sinha rejected his plan to assault it with Dutch forces alone and insisted on a joint attack. Caen ignored him. Trincomalee was a fort of about the same magnitude, or lack of it, as Batticaloa.2' Ribeiro says it was garrisoned by fifty soldiers and had bastions filled only with earth. Dutch artillery made short work of it, but before the white flag went up this time, defenders

40

Stalemate and Dutch Intervention,

1630-1641

had shown enough tenacity to be allowed their personal property on the trip to Negapatam. Then the trouble began. Two Kandyan mudaliyars appeared with 3,000 men and asked Caen to hand it over. The admiral asked whether they could defend it without company help, and when he was told they did not think so, he refused. The commanders produced a letter from the King. Caen obtained a copy of the treaty, pointed to Article 3 (minus the qualifying clause "if the king is so disposed") and terminated the matter. When the mudaliyars next proposed an assault on Jaffna, Caen excused himself and sailed away. When Raja Sinha heard of this, he protested Caen's action bitterly and proclaimed the admiral persona non grata. But he continued his proposals for new exploits against Colombo. At Batavia there was a long deliberation. Several objectives presented themselves for military consideration. The Portuguese and Spanish forces in the Moluccas occasionally put up a scrap; it was argued that the 1,300 soldiers pooled for aggressive action should be used to squelch them. Other possibilities were Malacca or Macau. Finally, the council decided that Ceylon took precedence over all the others. Governor-General van Diemen himself proposed to lead the force until someone reminded him of recent orders from Amsterdam that forbade his leaving Batavia. The company's second-in-command, Phillips Lucasz, then received the job. Although Colombo was briefly considered as an objective once more, the plan of attack ultimately devolved upon Negombo, the important area twenty miles up the coast that commanded cinnamon districts inland and protected the capital's northern flank. After Melo's disastrous raid on Kandy, the acting captain-general, Dom Antonio Mascarenhas, had been obliged to withdraw most remaining troops from the interior and concentrate them as a shield to the western ports. The result was that whenever Raja Sinha chose to turn out in strength, he could traverse Portuguese territory at will. Dutch by sea and Kandyans by land were to crack the post between them. The plan went almost according to schedule. Portuguese troops who had been blocking the Kandyans inland at Arandora got almost immediate news of Lucasz' landing at a village north of Negombo and hurriedly turned west in an attempt to surprise Lucasz' soldiers, who were getting water and unloading supplies. But the Portuguese failed; they were exhausted by their forced march and attacked the Dutchmen raggedly. Then, to their dismay, the Kandyans came chasing in on their heels. Soon the Latins were

41

III I Ceylon / put to rout. On February 6 the combined forces of Lucasz and Raja Sinha arrived before Negombo, a fortress larger than either Batticaloa or Trincomalee but weakly armed and less defensibly located on the Katunayaka Lagoon. Three days later, they merely blew the gate with a mortar and stormed in, only to find it garrisoned by the elderly, sick, and disabled. Whüe the Kandyans occupied themselves with pursuit of stragglers from the abortive surprise a f e w days before, Lucasz set about to buttress the fort's weak walls and small redoubts with a strong palisade of palm tree fascines.22 The King was along this time, and when he saw Dutch troops sweating over their labors, he requested, on the strength of Article 3, that the fort be delivered to him for demolition. Lucasz refused on the same grounds. Both men sent for their treatiesRaja Sinha for his Portuguese original, Lucasz for his Dutch translation. Then the Dutch omission "if the king is so disposed" appeared. Lucasz thereupon proposed a new treaty, giving the Dutch a clearer right to the garrison, but disclaiming any thought of encroaching on the King's sovereignty. Raja Sinha was incensed; he broke off relations and withdrew. Lucasz remained in control, posting 300 men in the captured fort. By this time, each partner had become thoroughly suspicious of the other's intent. The Dutch felt they had not been reimbursed or provisioned adequately for their previous expeditions and had even begun to fear that Kandy might end up giving them nothing in return for their aid. Most likely they had decided that a firm hand was needed to show the King their resolve. But so far as Trincomalee and now Negombo were concerned, Raja Sinha was disturbed by visions of new devils occupying the house swept clean. He need only have taken prolonged Dutch occupation as proof of evü design. The omission in the Dutch translation can never adequately be explained. Even the staunchest Dutch apologists have no satisfactory ahbi, but it is difficult to imagine what the governor-general and council might have thought to gain by self-deception.^^ Even accomplished tricksters keep the facts straight for their own record, and from Lucasz' own actions it is plain that he was caught off balance. However the clause became lost, it gave ample grounds for Raja Sinha's misgivings. More fundamental in explaining difficulties that beset the alliance is the Westerwolt Treaty itself. As the Dutch historian Willem van Geer writes, "Perhaps never yet had an agreement so advantageous for it been made by the Company with an oriental prince.

42

Stalemate

and Dutch Intervention,

1630-1641

This was just the difficulty; elsewhere the company had not needed quite all its expenses paid to wrest spicelands from Portuguese control. No sooner, apparently, did Raja Sinha sign the treaty in his enthusiasm to enlist Dutch guns than he felt its weight. Because the treaty set no valuation on his nation's services rendered to the Dutch, moreover, he might have felt with justification that the Dutch were exploiting him. While Goonewardena believes it was the company's secret intent to administer Ceylon from the outset, this does not seem plausible in light of the extensive benefits Westerwolt asked. The agreement of 1638 reads more like a document designed to provide all the advantages Dutchmen wanted while saving all the expense of involvement. But it seems that the company fell victim to its own sharp practices: when Raja Sinha failed to live up to the unreasonable terms, it began to foreclose; in foreclosing, it became a landlord. Fissures in the alliance were patched over temporarily with an agreement that gave Trincomalee to the King in return for ten elephants, while Colombo was to be leveled upon capture and the other forts occupied pending settlement of accounts. Then the company was to receive one fort from Raja Sinha as a permanent base. Galle

Taken

By now the task of ousting Portugal must have seemed in its terminal stages. The next logical objective was Galle, a citadel that, besides flanking Colombo to the south, possessed the strongest natural defenses of any site on the island and lay at the edge of Ceylon's prime cinnamon lands. It sat wholly on a stalklike promontory that might almost have been created with military engineers of the black powder era in mind. Except for the neck of land that joined it to Ceylon, the site sheered abruptly down cliffs to the water on all sides and further confounded would-be landing parties with rocks, surf, and treacherous currents at its base. These also made access to Galle's self-contained harbor tricky, but the Portuguese had long since mastered the art of entering it and mooring their vessels with storm anchors against the current. In a place thus isolated, the town's fortification scheme was simple and might have proven effective had only the walls been designed to withstand Dutch artillery and had the garrison been sufficient; it consisted of a single, moated wall with bastions strung across the neck of the little peninsula, and a battery built at the far side of

43

III / Ceylon I the harbor to catch hostile ships in a cross fire between it and a great bastion at the harbor side of the landward curtain. Then there was a lone artillery tower on the sea side at the southernmost extremity.^® Command of its siege fell to Coster, whom Lucasz had named presiding officer before becoming ill and embarking for Batavia late in February, 1640. Coster, hoping for a surprise, sailed in before the island citadel on March 9, barely out of artillery range. As it turned out, Mascarenhas had now gathered what was left of his attacking force from the vicinity of Negombo and once again planned to surprise the surprisers. Soon after the Dutch landed, he fell upon them, whüe by signal a gate to the fortress flew open and its garrison boüed out in support. Actually the joke was on Mascarenhas after all; Coster had been warned by spies and had already entrenched himself. Battle was joined before this move had become fatally apparent. It was the war's bloodiest engagement to date; some hundred Portuguese were killed and twice that many captured, while the Dutch lost another hundred. The Portuguese could not stand the loss; their walls were left defended by a mere forty-eight who escaped inside together with some volunteers and a few of the regular garrison. Nonetheless, Galle proved strong. Dutch artillery battered its bastions and pounded its wall for five days before troops stormed it successfully on March 13. Raja Sinha's men arrived just in time to cart off their half of the plunder. The company, quite naturally, accused them of lurking behind a coppice until the danger was past.^® Dutch

Setbacks

The Dutch were jubilant; Galle, more than Colombo itself, had been what their hearts desired, "the keys to the most fruitful cinnamon lands," as they called it. The place exacted a kind of initiation fee from them, however: before they could learn how to approach Galle's harbor, they dashed one of their ships, the Herkules, to pieces on its rocks. But aside from this mishap, things looked favorable indeed. Raja Sinha received Trincomalee in return for the elephants, while chuleas (members of a special Sinhalese cinnamon-gathering caste) were sent down to peel some of the condiment for the King's debt. Coster, stUl rankling over the tardiness of the Kandyan troops, set out for Raja Sinha's capital to collect it. What transpired remains a partial mystery. Apparently, Coster proved less than ingratiating; his interpreter was surprised having an illicit chat

44

Stalemate

and Dutch Intervention,

1630-1641

with Raja Sinha's rival brother, Wijayapala, whom the King had caught up with and temporarily imprisoned, while Coster himself bluntly pressed demands for some of the spicelands surrounding Galle to go with that citadel. Besides this, he seems to have comported himself boorishly. On the way home, his throat was cut by bandits, or so said the King, who disclaimed all knowledge. Murder of the highest ranking Dutchman in Ceylon, however, left the company shaken and indignant. There were soon other woes to plague the Dutch. First, the French mercenary left in command of Galle, Captain Walraven de St. Amant, along with two Hollanders betrayed the Dutch and went over to the Portuguese. Then, just as Dutch Ceylon needed reinforcements to offset recent arrivals of Portuguese soldiers, all company troops who might have been made available were assigned to help in the final siege of Malacca.^^ Before the Dutch realized what was happening, the new captain-general of Ceylon, Dom Felipe Mascarenhas (brother of Antonio), had sneaked up on Negombo with a force of over a thousand men and compelled it to surrender after an eight-day assault.^s To make matters worse, the Kandyans coming to reheve it had mistaken the victory salvo for the attack, had charged up, and had been annihilated.^» Shocked by Coster's death and suddenly made aware that the Portuguese were not to be underestimated, the company seems to have resolved that either Raja Sinha must pay up what it thought due or the Dutch would remain in possession of what they had taken. It does indeed seem that they now stretched their due bills to make it hard for Kandy to get rid of them.^" Raja Sinha they considered depraved. In Kandy, meanwhile, Wijayapala had escaped and instigated a revolt in Uva. Raja Sinha could not now risk an open breach with the Dutch lest he be surrounded by enemies. More spices flowed from him as he prepared to attack his brother's forces; at the same time, Wijayapala offered to negotiate with the Dutch, who turned him down. By spring, 1641, the Hollanders again began receiving reinforcements; Malacca had fallen in January. But within months, a new obstruction arose from a most unexpected quarter—the States General of the United Provinces, the very body to which the East India Company owed its charter. On June 12, 1641, at The Hague, Their High Mightinesses had declared a truce with King John IV of Portugal. In Batavia, Governor-General Anthonie van Diemen, angry and

45

upset when he learned of it, fought a stubborn delaying action. Before long, he was to discover that the arrangement actually provided him with opportunities for aggression, in spite of its intent.

46

Part Two The Abortive Negotiations

What had taken place was no less than a revolution in Portugal against sixty years of Spanish rule. After this revolution Portugal quickly reversed its alliances in the Thirty Years' War, impelled as it was to protect itself against the weight of Spanish reprisal. But in concluding a truce with Spain's enemy, Holland, it evaded the problem of an outright colonial settlement. It is helpful to reconstruct the circumstances leading to this arrangement, for Ceylon was ultimately to founder amid its unforeseen results. In contrast to the miasma of problems that arose from it, Portugal's revolt against its "Spanish Captivity" had proved almost ridiculously easy. Somewhere between the 1620s, when the Count-Duke of Olivares first moved to subordinate Lisbon wholly to Madrid, and the Évora tax riots of 1637, the Portuguese had lost any feeling of kinship with their Spanish cousins. Then in 1638, as Olivares strove to impose his Union of Arms scheme upon Portugal and Aragon so that he could free more troops for service against Spanish foes in Flanders and Germany, Cardinal Richelieu had sent an agent to circulate among Portuguese of gentle estate. An alliance with France was possible, the emissary let it be known, if the Portuguese would but cast off Spain and elevate to the throne Duke John of Braganca, great-greatgrandson of King Manuel the Fortunate and the most powerful nobleman in Portugal. While more adventurous Portuguese formed a conspiracy, John hesitated.

/V Lisbon, Goa, The Hague, Brazil, Angola / A Crown in Crisis, 1641-1643

Then, in the summer of 1640, Catalonia rose up in arms. Olivares thereupon diverted his attention from Portugal, raiding heavily his garrisons along the Tagus for manpower. In doing so, he neglected to notice how near Lisbon approached the boiling point. Encouraged by Dr. Joáo Pinto Ribeiro—a Braganca employee and linchpin of the cabal—and pushed from behind by his ambitious Andalusian wife, Duke John

49

ÍV I Lisbon, Goa, The Hague, Brazil, Angola I had consented to accept the throne. Following a round of autumn meetings, the conspirators scheduled their coup d'état for December 1, 1640, a date that prevailed despite last-minute qualms. That morning, after showing themselves in the vast square before the royal palace, as if casually to collect the latest gossip, the revolutionaries bounded up the palace steps, overpowered the Spanish guard, and burst inside. No Portuguese functionary wielded so much as an inkpot to defend Margarida, the regent, or Olivares' hated lackey. Minister of State Miguel de Vasconcelos. Margarida was arrested; Vasconcelos, found crouching in a cupboard, was shot and dumped into the street from a window. With few exceptions, the bureaucracy acclaimed John IV and was retained to serve him. Inside a fortnight, Spanish forces throughout the land had all surrendered, while Spanish residents and Hispanophile nobles fled across the frontier. On December 15, 1640, after acclamation in all principal cities of the mainland, John was solemnly crowned as King John IV in the plaza where the overthrow had begun. Then he and his councillors addressed themselves to the complexities of their new reign. For six months the Spanish border was ominously still while the battle raged for Catalonia; Olivares did not expect an attack from Portugal and was wise enough to concentrate his forces on the graver threat to the east. Portugal knew its t u m would come soon and armed swiftly. Meanwhile, on other fronts. King John's work awaited him. Thanks to the slowness of seventeenth-century transport, colonials had not the slightest inkling of what had taken place. Moreover, if they declared in favor of Spain, as had the garrisons of Ceuta and Tangier, the restored crown might do little to stop them. There was also some apprehension lest the Spanish might try to beat the Portuguese by sending ships of their own to forestall the messengers of independence. ^ The Acclamation

at Goa

It was not until March 30, 1641, that two ships, the Nossa Senhora da Quietacäo and the Nossa Senhora do Rosàrio were dispatched from Lisbon to India, timed to arrive in Goa at the close of the Malabar monsoon. By standard practice of the day, they carried identical messages and were ordered to separate below the Cape Verde Islands to lessen the chance of capture. Either Manuel de Lis, captain of the Rosàrio, was a better sailor, or he had a fast caravel to Captain Sancho de Faria's cumbersome carrack, for he

50

A Crown in Crisis,

1641-1643

arrived in Mocambique long before his colleague. On August 2 he entered the fortress with the news, reported to the commander, and soon learned that any fears were unfounded. The city went wüd with "Vivas!" to the new monarch.^ Then he slipped off for Goa and the important test. When he arrived in the vicinity on September 6, he found the bar blockaded by the usual Dutch squadron. There was no time to waste. He hove to on the beach of S álcete, a few leagues down the coast, and, fearing to leave his ship, he put the precious papers into the hands of his young son, André, with strict orders to deliver them to none other than the viceroy himself. Seldom in history has an ordinary lad of nine enjoyed such a glorious moment. Arriving in Goa, on September 8, he learned that the principal fidalgos of the city were hearing Mass in the cathedral church of Santa Catarina. Undaunted, he burst in, scampered up the aisle, and, as the startled cleric looked down from his pulpit, the boy shrilled the news. Led off to the viceroy, the Count of Aveiras, he thrust his precious documents into the count's hands and cried (according to the contemporary version that seems least pompous): "These routes [dispatches] the King, Our Lord John the Fourth, gave my father to bring to Your Excellency—and because he is busy in the ship that he is captain of on account of enemy ships around the bar, he gave them to me for delivery to Your Excellency. Take them and say: 'Long live Our Lord John the Fourth, King of Portugal!'"3 Portuguese accounts all agree that Aveiras was delighted and that, amid the tumult, he met with his council to make André's proclamation official. The Dutch, who were past masters at ferreting out Portuguese secrets, had different views of the conference. Aveiras, they said, hesitated until the archbishop primate of Goa produced a letter from the official packet that authorized him to take over the government if that viceroy refused.^ In any event, the populace, in the words of one contemporary, went "crazy with joy," and Goa began an orgy of celebration and ceremonial that lasted a fortnight. The depth of feeling was perfectly expressed by a fortress commander, Dom Gil Eanes de Noronha, who wrote when the news arrived: "For many a year now, I have obeyed a Portuguese king in my heart; now I can swear to one with my voice whom prelates, nobles and gentlemen acclaim unanimously !" ^ Goa, on September 11, and then the other outposts —Bardez, Salcete, Bassein, Chaul, and, finally, Macau, are all recorded to have outdone themselves in proclaiming fealty to the

51

ÍV / Lisbon, Goa, The Hague, Brazil, Angola / new monarch. In the customary fashion, the officialdom was first called into the palace or fort, then the prelates and nobles, and finally the people; all of them, in the order of their invitations, cried: "Long hve the King, John the Fourth of Portugal, and of the State of India!" Then, after an impressive procession to the principal church, the viceroy, the captains, and their officers took a more formal oath on the missal, administered by the ranking prelate—all this accompanied by salutes, merrymaking, and legally notarized documents. Then, when this process was completed, the municipalities of Portuguese India began all over again, in order to confirm the Infante, Dom Teodosio, to the succession. Chaul, for instance, built a "great and spacious theater," seemingly a tent of four masts and ships' sails painted with the royal arms; the captain of the city sat on a dais in a velvet-covered armchair, the fidalgos and heads of religious orders on ones of damask. Dom Teodósio's acclamation was completed amid a din of happy voices and booming artillery.« Even as India was celebrating, however, the joyous atmosphere was overlaid with sulphurous fumes. In Goa there had been the expectation of automatic peace with the Dutch; after all, it was reasoned, if Dutchmen had been enemies because of Portugal's identity with Spain, now two enemies of Spain should be friends. On September 22, 1641, the slower message-bearing ship, the Nossa Senhora da Quietacäo, Captain de Faria commanding, came lumbering up to the harbor entrance of Goa under a flag of truce, bearing Dutch letters of safe-conduct obtained in Europe. Admiral Hendrik M. Quast, who had received news of the Portuguese restoration politely enough some days before, promptly opened fire with five of his blockading vessels. Both Quast and Faria were killed, and the Quietacäo was taken as a prize. Upon protest, the acting Dutch East India Company commander replied that his forces refused to accept any cessation of hostiUties without due orders from Batavia. The viceroy was frightened. Five days later, on September 27, he sent a report overland to his new monarch: S i r e , . . . the state in which the happy news [of your accession] overtook us is the most distressed India has ever experienced . . . Things have arrived at such an extreme that I am forced to say to Your Majesty, prostrated at your royal feet, that, regardless of the circumstances, we must conclude peace or at least a truce with the Dutch here, where they are so powerful and the arms of Your Majesty so feeble . . . And if this peace is not successful, great

52

A Crown in Crisis,

1641-1643

damage wül result to the service of Your Majesty; therefore, may it please, Sire, that Your Majesty send us assistance every monsoon, initially, eight or ten strong galleons, filled with soldiers, sailors, artillery, and money . . King John's apprehensions concerning the loyalty of his distant subjects had been dispelled by a nine-year-old boy, but the angry problem of company intransigence was to elude all his diplomats. In fact, hopes splintered by Admiral Quast's broadsides were mended time and again, only to be sundered anew. By the time Aveiras' report of the naval engagement reached Lisbon, John was already bitterly disappointed over Dutch reactions. Today, nothing seems more natural than the course events took—the Dutch East India Company was gaining too much to allow a political shift to intervene that did not vitally concern it. Dutch objectives were purely commercial, and commerce is universally understood in our age. But the Portuguese of the time never fully comprehended this. Their own imperial undertaking had been conceived two hundred years before in a peculiarly medieval amalgam of evangelization and lust for wealth; it would seem they were never capable of distinguishing between these two components or of rationalizing their position in a more modern world. As the Luso-Hispanic jurist and imperial theorist Frei Serafim de Freitas had written of the empire some years before, its roots struck into the soil, but its branches swept the very heavens. Even the title deeds were from Pope Nicholas V, and though Francis I of France had seen it all clearly enough when he spoke of King Manuel as "that grocery monarch," it was not in the Portuguese psyche to apprehend the noble undertaking of their ancestors in such (to them) crass terms.® People spoke of India, not as a colony, but as their Conquista (Conquest), the material and the spiritual aspects of it being inseparably and mystically bound together. The Dutch were trespassers completely beyond their ken—"the rebels of Europe," "the heretics," as the official correspondence often referred to them. King John wrote that they were "governed by their greed and not by the laws of reason."» The Spanish

Assaults

To John IV, however, the colonies hardly seemed his most pressing worry for the moment. He had written Aveiras in March, 1641 : "At present it is necessary to spend much money to secure our

53

ÍV I Lisbon,

Goa, The Hague, Brazil, Angola /

frontiers against Spain, as greatly as I might want to help India . . . " No doubt uppermost in his mind lay the real distinction between heroism in a revolution and treason in a rebellion: whether he won or Spain hanged him. Fortunately, Portugal had six months of grace in which to prepare itself, and if the generals had not raised all the armament they wished, they were consoled by the fact that Spain had its own troubles elsewhere. The Dutch were helping indirectly, by pinning down Spanish tercios on the frontier of Flanders, while the French had armed in earnest, and the Catalans continued to fight. The situation was, nonetheless, far from comfortable miUtarily. First to be fortified was the Elvas-Olivença-Campo Maior frontier, lest a Spanish army recapitulate Alva's tactics of 1580 and bowl across the Alentejo directly into Lisbon. What armament and manpower was left had to be spread among the Galician border, Beira, opposite Madrid, and the Algarve to the south. Portuguese troops were raw; most of those with professional interests were already scattered about Asia. It was not until September, 1641, that anything besides raiding was attempted; in that month, 8,000 Spanish troops surprised Olivença, but were beaten off. As the preparations ran into 1642, the crown encountered grave financial problems. Meanwhile, both sides built up around Beira, where the Portuguese even fielded a miniature "army" of priests commanded by a cathedral canon. John himself had remained aloof from the actual military operation until this time; his tastes were more for diplomacy. Now he was warned by the revolutionary leaders that his ministers were incompetent and had sadly underestimated Castüe—a case of civilians snarling the military. He resolved, accordingly, to do something; no less than a costly campaign into Spain would suffice. Thus monetary problems pressed more relentlessly than ever. John advocated an increase in the defense budget to 2,400,000 cruzadoes, but the Cortes of September, 1642, which met separately in the three estates—clergy, nobles, and bourgeoisie—did not agree. After an impassioned speech by the King's staunchest and ablest supporter. Father Antonio Vieira, S.J., that the load be shared proportionately, there followed wrangling and the usual compromise of the ancien régime: the bourgeoisie and, in this case, the crown had to put up all the money. The campaign of 1643 began with feints of timid commanders and a few minor Portuguese victories; then, in May, a major force of more than 10,000 Spanish crossed the Guadiana and converged

54

A Crown in Crisis,

1641-1643

on Montijo in a crushing attack. The Portuguese wavered, then stood firm, and finally chased the Spaniards, who had sustained heavy losses, back across the river. Angered by this reverse, the Spanish then made another move, this time on Elvas with 17,000 men. After ten days of desperate fighting, Portuguese forces beat them off again. By now, it was well into December. Though they had had a good year, John's armies were suffering from something akin to nervous exhaustion. Their victories were not especially decisive; there had been, moreover, defections of mercenaries and evidences that the officer corps was taking the war all too casually. Loose talk had spoiled a surprise of Badajoz, for example, and subalterns regularly shpped over the border to junket in Madrid. Meanwhile, there had been diplomatic worries.

The Simple Truce Although the Portuguese felt they could hold off Spain while that country was engaged in the Thirty Years' War and in Catalonia, the anxiety in John's council chambers was that France and Holland might suddenly conclude a peace that would free the main Spanish forces to return home and smash Portugal within weeks. It therefore became necessary to seal treaties with both nations against this possibihty. In the enthusiasm of national revival, these seemed reasonable favors to ask, and the new government was sure its diplomats would be warmly welcomed. As it turned out, they were warmly welcomed, but they were soon begging for an agreement. French recognition and aid were sought first. Remembering the promises of Richelieu's agent in 1638, John sent öff three ambassadors in February, 1641, headed by Joao Franco Barreto, with instructions to estabUsh an alliance "from which none of the contracting parties might depart without consent of the other, nor make any truce or peace." " The league proposed would, it was hoped, include the allies of France, particularly Holland; its goal was to keep guns firing at Spaniards on all fronts. Barreto was also to ask that twenty French ships bolster an attack on Cádiz and try for the Spanish sUver fleet from America; besides this, he was to make it known that Portugal needed Frenchmen for cavalry units and could also use spare arms and munitions. When the ambassador finally reached his destination on March 21, Paris greeted him joyously, and signs were fair; Richelieu had actually ordered an emissary to Lisbon on March 6, before he knew of Barreto's

55

ÍV I Lisbon, Goa, The Hague, Brazil, Angola / arrival, with a proposal that France should make no treaty with Spain unless it embraced Portugal. Negotiations proceeded apace through approval in April of a first draft. At this point the cardinal began to wonder why he had been so generous. Portugal had, after all, committed itself without his having to pay a price. Now, apprehensive lest Spain drive a wedge between him and his ally, Holland, he backed off. Lisbon's aim in The Hague, he learned, was to make a simple truce rather than a peace in order to avoid the question of what conquered Portuguese colonies the Dutch were to keep. By signing an agreement gratifying to John IV, Richelieu reasoned, he might appear to be dictating to his Dutch allies. Hence, there was to be no bargain without the assent of Holland and Sweden. He probably also had in the back of his mind that, should he wish to make peace with Spain, it would not be wise to involve himself irrevocably with King John, whom he knew Spain would never accept. French responsibility was now to be considerably more modest, though even the Portuguese did not know how modest it really was to be. In any case, they were helpless, as Richeheu knew. In lieu of a league, the proposal was now no more than a wispy secret clause that France would do its best when treating with Spain to preserve the right to help John—if its alUes did the same. A marginal notation on the French draft copy explains (in a negotiator's handwriting, but probably dictated by the cardinal): "I put allies of the King in general, so that His Majesty may have further means of not being bound by such a condition, even if the Dutch consent . . . I do not know if the Portuguese ambassadors will accept, but it seems they are very bent on some kind of a treaty now." France promised a "perpetual alUance" and immediate aid, to include twenty ships. Barreto swallowed hard and signed on June 1, 1641. French army officers now came down to help out, while the presence of French men-of-war at least prevented the Dutch from intimidating the Portuguese fleet. But the basic insecurity remained. Meanwhile, John's mission to the States General in The Hague had run up against factions with a direct stake in not giving Lisbon what it wanted. The chill recesses of the Binnenhof, the buildings where Their High Mightinesses convened, were hardly the ideal place to look for imperial salvation. As with France, affairs began auspiciously enough. King John led with a concession: on January 21, 1641, Portugal opened its ports to the Hollanders, granting them the old trading privileges enjoyed under the Aviz dynasty. There was still some value in

56

A Crown in Crisis, 1641-1643 this—a trickle of carrying trade and, more importantly, the preferred salt from Setubal for Holland's North Sea herring catch. Three weeks later Ambassador Tristao de Mendonça Furtado sailed at the head of a delegation to deliver these tidings and propose a bargain. He was warmly welcomed on April 9. Portugal's unswerving position was that Holland had never been at war with it, but only with Spain.^^ Now that Portugal had freed itself of Madrid's domination, it insisted, the Dutch ought to return its possessions taken from the common foe. In this spirit, Portuguese jurisconsults naturally chose the tenet most favorable to their national cause: the "law of first possession." The government did not aim for a solid peace as it should have, for this would have made permanent the loss of all possessions to date. Instead, it chose a truce, both because one seemed easier to conclude and because it did not necessarily imply recognition of the status quo. What the Portuguese did not foresee was that the future might hold even graver dangers for their remaining empire if a final solution were postponed. Accordingly, Ambassador Mendonça Furtado proposed the following: a ten-year truce, during which true peace might be negotiated and common action be taken against Spain; twenty warships and ten frigates, furnished at Dutch expense, ten others hired by Portugal to do battle with Spain and, if possible, capture the plate ñeet; conquests in Brazü and Asia be returned to Portugal for a cash equivalent or, alternatively, traded for lands taken from Spain by joint effort; free trade in Portugal, with old and new privileges; officers, especially artillerymen, to be recruited in the Netherlands and munitions purchased for their use." The effect was akin to a proposal that Their High Mightinesses embrace the reUgion of Rome. How could they consider restoring possessions theirs by right of conquest? Besides, they retorted, this confused a peace treaty with a simple truce. Under the circumstances, thirty ships were also not easy to part with. It seems all too obvious that Mendonça Furtado, whose forte was war and not diplomacy, had revealed his monarch's whole hand too quickly.i^ From then on the Dutch were wary of Portuguese ambitions, and their policy was evasive. Even the French cautioned the inexperienced diplomat that his master might well be more concerned with securing his throne than finding ways to bait the Dutch. Mendonça Furtado hastily withdrew the offending proposals and awaited counteroffers. Debate now passed to the local assemblies, which aided Por-

57

ÍV / Lisbon, Goa, The Hague, Brazil, Angola / tugal's cause. Under the peculiar Dutch political system, the States General was no more than a chamber whose delegates took instructions from bodies representing each of the United Netherlands' seven provinces. Of these, Holland, and, to a lesser extent, Zeeland, conducted seven-eighths of the national commerce and held nearly that proportion of the country's riches; in fact, outside Dutch boundaries people spoke (and speak) as if Holland were the entire country. Constantly overshadowed by the delegation from this financial giant and highly jealous of its success, other provincial representatives in the States General, those from Gelderland, Overijssel, Utrecht, Friesland, Groningen—and even Zeeland at times—pounced upon opportunities to embarrass Holland whenever they could do so without endangering the commonwealth. In the issue of the truce they sensed a perfect occasion. It was natural that so powerful an entity as the Holland-based Dutch East India Company was violently opposed to any settlement with Mendonça Furtado that included Asia in its terms, and if Holland's representatives in the States General needed any encouragement at all to uphold the company's interests, lobbyists stood eagerly by to gild their pockets. Meanwhile, in favor of a full truce with Portugal was the stadhouder* of Holland and Zeeland, Prince Frederik Hendrik of Oran ge-Nass au, who had dynastic ambitions, which were backed by the lesser provinces, but traditionally opposed by the republican Hollanders. As commander of Dutch land armies against Spain, he applied counterpressures in the States General for a settlement that would acquire Portugal as a strong ally and thereby divert Spanish energies from Flanders. When it came to a vote, all the inner provinces followed his lead, and Holland was isolated. By interprovincial treaty, however, no foreign bargains could be struck without unanimous consent, and for a time there was an impasse. Then Holland, always realistic, capitulated, and the way to further negotiations was cleared. Counteroffers, however, disillusioned the Portuguese. The States General now agreed to a cessation of hostilities among their country, Portugal, and all the colonies declaring for John IV—"details to be arranged." Twenty warships and ten frigates were to become * The stadhouder was commander in chief of the armed forces of several provinces and, originally, a member of the Burgundian council of state. A f t e r the Dutch revolt, WUliam I of Orange, the stadhouder of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht, became architect of the United Provinces, but refused an extension of his traditional powers. His heirs, especially his second son, Frederik Hendrik, no doubt wished WUliam had not been so modest. As it was, the stadhouder's power was great in time of war, but almost ceremonial in peacetime.

58

A Crown in Crisis,

1641-1643

fifteen and five, with the king buying or hiring an equal number; Spain was the target, the booty to be equal. So far, perhaps, so good. But on the point concerning restitution of colonies, the answer was angrily and unequivocally negative, unless, by chance, some valuable Spanish properties might be conquered in the West Indies and exchanged for fallen Portuguese ones. In other words, "first possession" to the Portuguese was "conquest" to the Dutch. On the point relating to trade the States General asked real "free trade" and not merely "old privileges" with a possibility of enlargement. The Dutch did agree to Portuguese engagement of officers. Mendonca Furtado persisted; he wished to keep the door open to f u t u r e restitution; regarding free trade. His Majesty was firm that it not include products of Brazil and India. What was meant, he asked, by "details to be arranged"? Was it, perhaps, a device by which the corporate interests might continue ingesting Portuguese colonial real estate? His attempts at bargaining promised to be futile, except that meanwhile the French were applying pressure to the Prince of Orange. The Portuguese were fortunate to have the Prince rescue their cause: the joint-stock companies had just rallied again and all but persuaded Holland's provincial government to withdraw its acquiescence for any truce save one in Europe. On May 10, supported by the lesser provinces, Frederik Hendrik made Holland capitulate once more. Many reasons were given by the States General for this decision, but the principal ones concerned keeping Portugal an effective military partner: to seek it as a friend in Europe while ruining it abroad seemed hardly realistic. Thus European strategic interests had triumphed for a time over opposing colonial and commercial ones. The following treaty emerged after Mendonca Furtado had done his utmost to gain concessions. The ten-year suspension of hostilities would be effective in Europe on ratification, in Brazil six months from the time John's signed copy reached The Hague, and in Asia one year; this was to include Asian allies of the company as well. (The Portuguese diplomat, who sensed the danger in delaying observance overseas, won no more t h a n a proviso granting suspension of hostiUties earlier, if news arrived before the deadline, but to achieve it, he had to promise a territorial status quo and to begin work on a peace within eight months.) Places, ships, and persons siding with Spain were declared common enemies, subject to attack and possession by their captor. Free trade between Dutch and Portuguese Brazil was not permitted, but free trade in

59

ÍV I Lisbon, Goa, The Hague, Brazil, Angola / Asia was; all commerce with the Spanish Americas was forbidden, while conquests made jointly there were to be divided. Mutual friendship was to prevail in Brazil, together with freedom of religion for the Dutch. Among the miscellaneous provisions were permission to contract for Dutch officers, protection for Dutchmen and their goods in Brazü, and final ratification of the treaty within three months. It was signed by the States General on June 12, 1641. As events developed, however, the treaty laid the groundwork not so much for peace as for renewed conflict. It was one matter for Frederik Hendrik and the landward provinces to impose a truce upon the reluctant colonial interests; it was another for these interests to obey Uke automatons. Here the hidden contradictions in both national pohcies decided the outcome rather than the beribboned Latin of the treaty itself. Ever since the foundation of its empire, Portugal had stood for peace at home in order to concentrate its martial interests abroad. Now the Restoration had caused a switch: the country was fighting for life on its frontier and sought peace in the colonies. The price, though, it did not clearly see or in any case was unwüUng to pay. It would doubtless have done best to write off its losses, concentrate its forces at home, and retain only that part of its empire held at the time of Mendonça Furtado's negotiations. Portugal's policy was designed to gain security at home, preserve its colonies abroad, and eventually recover what had been lost. Under the circumstances, this was too much to expect. But its "Conquests," as suggested, did not seem mere parcels of commercial property, and so there was Uttle room for a poHcy of bargaining. Having thus chosen an unrealistic policy, Portugal sought refuge in the perennial tactic of small nations of binding the stronger power with treaties; it had successfully interposed restraining popes against Spain ever since the mid-fifteenth century; now France and Frederik Hendrik had apparently saved the day by holding back the voracious trading interests. Unfortunately for John IV, they did not have the persuasive influence Their Holinesses had once exercised. The Dutch companies were soon using every deception they could invent to pursue their fortunes at Portugal's expense.

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A Crown in Crisis,

1641-1643

The W.I.C. The companies—for by now a Dutch West India Company operated in the Atlantic—were far from subservient creatures of the States General which chartered them. Where the empires of the old Catholic powers were on tight leash from Madrid and Lisbon, comparatively speaking, the new joint-stock imperialists of Amsterdam roamed the globe Ике half-trained hounds, and it took more than a command to call them from the chase. Hence, if Portugal's foible was to ask too much when it was in a weak posture, that of the States General was to promise too much when it had given its imperial interests almost independent power. The "X" factor, as Professor Garrett Mattingly has called the unplanned and unexpected, proceeded to unravel aU that had been knit at the conference table. The first indications Portugal received that something had gone amiss with its Dutch settlement were in Brazil, where the West India Company held sway. Patterned after the senior East India Company, or V.O.C., as it will henceforth be called, the West India Company, or W.I.C., was established nineteen years later, in 1621, to imitate in the Americas what that eminently solvent enterprise had accomplished in Asia.* The differences in purpose, as stated in the companies' respective charters, were subtle but significant. While the V.O.C, had been created for purely commercial activity in Asia and had as its antecedents a number of small, though flourishing, trading combines, the W.I.C. was conceived by belUcose Calvinist refugees from Spanish rule and chartered to colonize while it struck blows at the enemy in the Atlantic theater. It did not particularly bother its promoters that organization of raiding parties by land and sea required heavy capital outlay; rather, they envisioned the newer company as an instrument of war or, at best, a patriotic lottery. Because resumption of hostiUties was at hand after twelve years of truce (1609-1621) and bitterness against Spain ran high, it is understandable that many Dutchmen who queued up with their sacks of guilders to buy shares relaxed, momentarily, their keen business sense. But unUke the reUgious avengers, the merchants who invested could not long be expected to live on patriotism alone. Much about what happened later becomes clearer if one realizes that of • The letters V.O.C. represent Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (literally "United East-India Company," which used the initials as its monogram: dkfc). W.I.C. stands for West-Indische Compagnie.

61

ÍV / Lisbon, Goa, The Hague, Brazil, Angola / the W.I.C.'s capital of 7,000,000 guilders, the States General (which had contributed nothing to the financing of the V.O.C, in 1602) put up fl. 500,000, Zeeland, stronghold of the Calvinist war party, fl. 1,380,000, and normally profit-minded Amsterdam all the rest, or nearly three times as much." It is ironic that whenever the Dutch took aim at colonial Spain during the union of the two kingdoms, they missed and hit Portugal. Just as the V.O.C, had poached on Portugal's Asian preserve under cover of Lisbon's forced union with Madrid, the W.I.C. attacked Brazil beginning in 1624 because nowhere else in the Spanish Indies was there so rich and so unprotected a stretch of coastline, in this case, one where Dutch sea power might deposit settlers and carry home valuable cargoes of sugar. The company had to vent martial inclinations against Spain proper mostly by taking prizes at sea. Had its performance been measured solely by the havoc it inflicted in the Hapsburg Atlantic, the W.I.C. might have been accounted a great success. In the first fifteen years of its existence, it tallied 547 ships captured and sunk, swallowed up half the plantation coastline of seventeenth-century Brazil, and cost Spain an estimated 118,000,000 florins' worth of damage that country could ill añ'ord.^® But war machinery is notoriously expensive to operate, and the company's own burden was sobering to shareholders, save for 1628, when its silver lining, a newly minted 15,000,000 florins, shone through the financial clouds. That year Admiral Piet Heyn waylaid the entire plate fleet homeward bound from Havana, and investors received back 50 percent on their holdings. In 1629, however, one of the company's most astute directors, CorneUs Bicker of Amsterdam, quietly resigned his post and liquidated his interests. Soon there occurred a flurry of selling; by 1636, the W.I.C. was 8,000,000 florins in debt and waging a costly war in Brazil over sugar that could not ripen in the conflict. As Dutch historian Cornells Goslinga has remarked, investors ultimately proved themselves more concerned with gain than glory from an organization whose chartered goals—warfare and colonization— proved incompatible." News of the Portuguese Restoration in December, 1640, caught the W.I.C. off balance. Dutchmen in Brazil, eager to operate captured sugar mills and plantations, assumed it meant an almost automatic cessation of their stalemated war and celebrated the event with roistering and booze. Their masters at home, however.

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saw things in wider perspective. For if the company directors (known as the Heren XIX) also hoped to stanch its deficits, they were fearful lest the Portuguese turnabout ruin their opportunity for expansion, perhaps forever. In February, 1641, they resolved to move, despite sharp reproaches from their government. The orders to Brazil: seize as much Portuguese real estate as possible while there was still an opportunity.'"' King John IV played directly into their hands. Not happy with the treaty of June 12 negotiated by his legation to The Hague, he dawdled over it until November 15 before affixing his signature. Thanks to the treaty's requirement for receipt of King John's copy in The Hague, plus six months, the W.I.C. had plenty of warning and time to mount a major offensive. Accordingly, Johan Maurits of Nassau, W.I.C. governor-general in Brazil, set his war machinery in motion while the Portuguese prepared for peace. Considering the citadel at Bahia too difficult for the time being, he instead seized the cattle-raising area of Sergipe d'el-Rei in April, 1641. Then, the following month, in a stroke aimed at wresting control from Portugal of the vital African slave marts needed to supply Brazilian plantations, he dispatched a major expedition under Admiral ComeUs Jol that crossed the South Atlantic from Recife and captured Sao Paulo de Luanda in August, Benguela in September, and Sao Tomé Island in October. In November the company occupied the Maranháo in northern Brazil. Finally, in February, 1642, Jacob Ruyghaver, new director of the W.I.C. African Gold Coast operations, stormed the last Portuguese stronghold of Axim. When the truce was finally proclaimed in July of that year, Dutchmen held an upper hand territorially in the whole Atlantic theater. The Portuguese seethed helplessly at this opportunistic aggression—inaugurated only after they had withdrawn in good faith all their guerrillas from Pemambuco, leaving the Dutch to tiU their sugar lands securely and shunt their troops back and forth across the oceans at will. (In preparing for his strike against Luanda, Johan Maurits had told a Portuguese agent that he was merely getting ready to beard Spaniards in the West Indies.) Finally, in May, 1643, nearly a year after the truce had taken effect, the Dutch sailed out of Luanda, fell upon the nearby Portuguese settlement at Bengo, and butchered some fifty people, lugging home booty and captives. Though Maurits professed to he shocked, no restitution was made. Wrote the Portuguese ambassador to The Hague: "I would rather be a slave in Algiers

63

ÍVI Lisbon, Goa, The Hague, Brazil, Angola / than an emissary to Holland, where there is neither good faith, justice, nor truth." 21 Diplomatic protests were useless; except for the last incident, the Heren XIX could (and did) retort they were acting within their legal, if not their moral, rights. Such influential Portuguese as Salvador Correla de Sá e Benevides of Rio de Janeiro began to propose that Brazilians fight back. As he observed, "War consists of stratagems and [the Dutch] have used m a n y . . . " John IV, however, remained lukewarm, convinced as he was that Portugal had more than enough to do if it wrestled Spain at home. To his painfully cautious nature, "peace with the Hollanders was totally necessary and war manifestly i m p o s s i b l e . " ^з NQ doubt this had been the Portuguese intention, but the program for achieving it was Ш conceived. The truce had served not as a brake on Dutch colonialism in the Atlantic, but as an accelerator instead. What seems obvious today is that Portugal sought the impossible. Above all, it wished the United Provinces and Richeheu's France to bind themselves to it with unequivocal treaties that would assure safety against Spain and to lend material assistance in telüng amounts. But it also wished to regain Malacca and the lost parts of Brazü and Ceylon at the expense of the Dutch India companies. So long as Portugal insisted upon a truce that left the question of colonial restoration in abeyance, the States General—and, indirectly, the French—would not deal helpfully with it. The country was forced to accept on an unconditional basis an arrangement that barely met its minimum requirements at home or abroad. The outcome might have been much the same even had an experienced diplomat handled the negotiations, but Mendonça Furtado was inexperienced, and his ineptness precluded any of the hard bargaining over arrangements that at least might have made the truce more difficult for the companies to evade. But perhaps the gravest blunder was that of King John IV himself, for once the treaty was handed to him he waited months to ratify it, when the whole cease-fire mechanism, leisurely as it was, depended upon his signature. While he delayed, the W.I.C. was served warning and had a full year to mount an ofl^ensive, most of which was technically within Mendonça Furtado's time limits. Once the truce actually did go into eñ'ect, the Portuguese in Brazil were on the point of rebellion. In Asia the treaty and its slow ratification had precisely the same effect. The V.O.C., given so much notice, merely redoubled its ag-

64

A Crown in Crisis, 1641-1643 gressive efforts. Hence Portugal's only diplomatic opportunity to stop Dutch encroachment on its colonies, which was offered by the revolution at home, was spoiled by its unwillingness to surrender what had already been lost.

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The truce might have worked tolerably in Ceylon, despite all the faults, if the Portuguese viceroy had been a trifle less rigid. When it heard of the impending arrangements, the V.O.C., like the W.I.C., mounted an offensive as fast as it could—only to see it blunted until the cease-fire took effect. Then Governor-General van Diemen resorted to another tactic, calculated purely upon the belief that might makes right: if lands had not been seized in time, the Portuguese should be made to realize that they must yield something or the treaty would be circumvented. The Portuguese had little choice, or so the company thought. Unfortunately for themselves, the Portuguese felt otherwise.

V Goa, Batavia, and CeylonI A Matter of Principle, 1643-1644

The Count-Viceroy of Aveiras turned to diplomacy only a few days after Admiral Quast had attacked the Nossa Senhora da Quietacao. He dispatched two envoys to Batavia in hopes of negotiating a truce. For the task, he selected a venerable Franciscan friar. Padre Goncalo Veloso de Sao José, and a middle-aged fidalgo, Diogo Mendes de Brito. Appropriately and perhaps somewhat hastily, retainers were outfitted with bright orange raiment. Upon arrival, the party was hospitably received and lavishly feted: Governor-General van Diemen seemed far less interested in ministering to political needs than in good fellowship. While he was busy avoiding the ambassadors' requests (this was February, 1642), news arrived from Europe of the ten-year truce and its proviso that hostilities should not cease in Asia until one year after King John's ratified copy could reach The Hague. Van Diemen's answer was now crisp enough: the war must continue until that moment.' Crestfallen, Mendes de Brito shipped back to Goa whüe Sao José remained until April 10. The signed copy, meanwhile, was just being received in The Hague (February 28, 1642). Word of this ratification finally reached India

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ν I Goa, Batavia, and Ceylon / during September of that year and Batavia in October. The Portuguese world showed its relief; van Diemen and his council were deeply disappointed. According to their expectations, the campaign of 1641-1642 was to have yielded half the cinnamon lands of Ceylon, perhaps even Colombo itself. Instead, everything had gone amiss. Galle, which was to have been the staging port for Dutch aggression, had turned into a Dutch prison. Not only had strong Portuguese forces laid the vicinity waste and hemmed it in on the land side, but Raja Sinha's provisioning had been spotty and left the garrison on survival rations most of the time. Reinforcements from Java and Pulicat had barely offset troops in the sick bay suffering from beriberi and dropsy. Then in August, when ninety Dutch soldiers had set out on a foraging expedition, the Portuguese ambushed them, killing their captain and lesser officers. Moreover, the V.O.C, distrusted Raja Sinha so intensely that Commander Thyssen refused to let Kandyan soldiers inside his gates.^ The King during this time was having his own troubles with his brother, Wijayapala. It was not until late in the summer of 1641 that he defeated Wijayapala, who fled to the Portuguese in Colombo. Thereupon Raja Sinha attacked the Portuguese rear and jeopardized the ring around Galle. By December two Dutch squadrons arrived, and matters had seemed to be improving. As it turned out, the twelve ships and 1,000 reinforcements of 1642 were scarcely used to better advantage than had been the meager forces of 1641. Deciding that his combined forces of about 1,500 were insufficient for an attack on Colombo, Thyssen turned down a proposal from Raja Sinha's generals for a joint march on that citadel by land, but did decide to attempt a surprise assault on Negombo. Hoping that the Portuguese would believe he was following the King's scheme to attack Colombo, he planned to sail north beyond sight of land, then fall on the unsuspecting garrison. Telling even the Sinhalese that his destination was Colombo rather than Negombo, he set sail. The winds, however, were Portuguese, not Dutch: they forced him along the coast all the way north. When he arrived, the reinforcements from Colombo were just catching their breath. Thyssen turned back. After rejecting another overture from Kandy that he join forces for an attack on Colombo (which was Raja Sinha's perennial project), he finally consented to cruise before it for some weeks so that the King's chaleas, or cinnamon peelers, might work unmolested in other parts of the island. The result of a year's military scrambling had therefore been

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zero; in February, 1643, the official cease-fire was upon Asia. For all their trouble, the Dutch were within viewing distance of Ceylon's richest cinnamon acreage with never a stick of it for their own coffers.

The Holdup Van Diemen was desperate to salvage something, and so he invented a claim based upon the V.O.C, occupation of Galle. Under Article 12 of the treaty signed at The Hague on June 12, 1641, it was specified that whichever side held a town at the effective date of the truce was also entitled to the districts administered by it. Accordingly, before he would consent to observe the truce, the governor-general, as master of Galle, decided to press the Portuguese to hand over two spice districts located near that fortress. Van Diemen's case may have been feeble, but his strategy was not: if the Portuguese refused his claim, which sounded reasonable enough on the surface, the V.O.C, might report convincingly to the States General that Portuguese, and not Dutchmen, were flaunting the truce. Then it could officially resume the war. If the Portuguese did not want the war renewed, they would have to acquiesce to his chicanery and present the V.O.C, with a substantial gain over the conference table. Van Diemen seems to have expected that the latter would be the choice. For soon after formal notice of the ratification had arrived from Holland, his council stated it this way to their departing negotiator, Councillor Extraordinary Pieter Boreel, who was charged with delimiting boundaries of the truce: "As the situation of the Portuguese in Europe as also here is not suited for a continuation of hostilities with us, we believe that they will concede rather more than they themselves imagine."' Boreel set out for Portuguese India on October 21, 1642, stopped in Malacca to proclaim the outright cessation of hostilities there, and arrived at Batticaloa, January 28, 1643, with van Diemen's stratagem. He first tried it out on Ceylon's Captain-General Felipe Mascarenhas. Mascarenhas, however, would have none of it and immediately pointed out when Boreel's messenger reached him that the lands in question had never been administered from Galle, which was not the capital of a dissawany* at all, but merely a site recently fortified by the Portuguese.5 Even from a contemporary perspective, it is obvious enough that the dissawanies appertained to the Matara and Sabaragamua dissawes, whose townships of the same names he a ridiculously great distance from Galle; the Dutch had scarcely set foot in either

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ν I Goa, Batavia, and Ceylon I territory. In any case, after spluttering his objections, Mascarenhas quite properly refused to decide upon the matter.® It was, after all, for Viceroy Aveiras in Goa that van Diemen's trick had been designed. Boreel was to indicate to Aveiras that even if Portugal and the States General were to reject van Diemen's demand, he was determined to claim the lands as though they belonged to his erstwhUe ally. Raja Sinha II, but were mortgaged to the Dutch in recognition of his debt.^ Raja Sinha, of course, had still to be consulted, for the Dutch strategy had been decided without him. In fact how the company was ultimately to deal with Kandy hinged entirely on Aveiras' stand. If the Portuguese surrendered quickly, Boreel was even authorized to conclude a joint alliance with Goa against the native kingdom. If, on the other hand, the Portuguese stood firm, then he was to see what could be done to appease Raja Sinha.® In no event, however, was Kandy actually to occupy the spice-ñlled dissawanies. The V.O.C, strategy contained even more double-deahng than this. While the Dutch were to threaten the Portuguese with more war unless Aveiras complied with their wishes, Boreel first had to seek Raja Sinha's assent to the truce lest he might want to continue hostilities against the Portuguese when they wished to end them. He might always cite the embarrassing 1638 offensive treaty. Moreover, it would be hollow to claim lands in Kandy's name if the V.O.C, had so obviously gone its own way and made the truce without Raja Sinha's consent. Fortunately for the company, the King agreed, perhaps unwilling, to face the Portuguese alone should the Dutch withdraw. Having made sure of this, Boreel packed his belongings. On February 26, following a barrage of protests and counterprotests between Boreel and Mascarenhas, he left for Goa on the ship Salamander to test Portuguese nerves there. On the way, a Dutch yacht overtook him with two emissaries from Raja Sinha, who promised him presents, but made it clear that the King expected to remain in control of the lands he occupied at the time of the truce. In return for a Dutch courtesy of a personal nature, he also offered to fix cinnamon prices at a favorable figure. Boreel sailed on, arriving in Goa April 1. The Duel with

Boreel

The V.O.C, negotiator's treatment in Goa was reminiscent of Veloso de Sao Jose's and Mendes de Brito's in Batavia. Boreel found Aveiras awaiting him over tables sagging with viands, but

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quite unwüling to submit to his conditions. When he later embarked upon a round of negotiations with the viceroy's deputies, it soon became apparent that, weak as they were, the Portuguese had ideas of their own regarding Galle's proper hinterlands. The negotiations lasted a scant twenty-six days, which was short for a seventeenth-century diplomatic conference. Mendes de Brito, who had helped conduct the previous year's round of futile interviews in Batavia, headed the team of Portuguese negotiators appointed by Aveiras. He enjoyed the hollow pleasure of countering argument after argument put forward by Boreel. Not only was the Dutchman outshouted, but he was hopelessly outwitted in the logomachy. Taking a cue from Mascarenhas, the team began by maintaining that Galle could not properly command any real estate beyond the range of its fortress artillery.® They explained fully that there was no historical justification whatsoever for the Dutch claim on the two dissawanies; not only this, but they adduced a new argument, that Article 12 did not apply to the East, but only to Brazil, Instead, they offered to purchase Galle back from the V.O.C, for a fair price; it is needless to say that this was flatly refused, and the allegation as to the nonapplicability of Article 12 was denied. But the Portuguese were just warming to their task. Van Diemen's insincere argument that the two dissawanies were being claimed out of good faith to the company's ally, Raja Sinha, was countered by one just as brittle: Raja Sinha, they said, did not possess anything validly, even though provision was made for native rulers in The Hague ratification," for he was an interloper without title or c l a i m . N o such heathen or tyrant, they implied, could become legal party to a treaty. Even if almost no one believed this old Catholic argument, the application was brilliant: it demolished Boreel's whimsical posture as Kandy's bounden defender with an equally preposterous fiction. At this point, Boreel departed from his instructions and made an offer: the matter should be referred to the authorities in Europe; meanwhile, the dissawanies should be divided up equally, and the profits from both should be split in two. A scrupulous accounting should be maintained simultaneously of profits from either half. Then when the authorities in Europe had decided the case, the profits from all the korales, or districts, assigned to the losing party would be restored to the victor. The Portuguese ought to have seized upon this for a variety of reasons. Boreel was obviously backing down, but they might have

71

ν I Goa, Batavia, and Ceylon I gathered that the superior and aggressive power he represented did not intend to go home empty-handed; instead, the V.O.C, would only rejoice at an opportunity to renew the war. Besides (though one can hardly expect Aveiras to have been aware of it), the problem would have been referred to the States General (and not the company home office), where political crosscurrents could easily have deflected the matter in Portugal's favor. Boreel had already offered to take less than the V.O.C, was capable of obtaining by other means, and in doing so he had clearly abandoned all arguments, save that of superior might. Yet the Portuguese did not see things this way. Boreel was not to get off so easily. The viceroy and deputies replied that they were willing to hand over the dissawanies should adverse judgment arrive from Europe; in addition, they would keep their incomes on deposit. But there could be no question of Dutch occupation until then." This, of course, would have sent Boreel back with nothing. While he might have anticipated opposition enough in Batavia and in Amsterdam for his own improvisation, it would at least have extracted something of immediate benefit to the company, and van Diemen might have left things at that. But Boreel could hardly have defended the Portuguese solution before his masters. They would surely have repudiated him. After a last exchange of recriminations, Boreel proclaimed resumption of war in the East and sailed away. In all the realm of diplomatic relations among Western European powers, the negotiations conducted by Boreel, Aveiras, and the Portuguese intermediaries are among the strangest. It is as if the count-viceroy and the Portuguese chose to stand before an onrushing rogue elephant in Ceylon. On the face of it, the Portuguese appear so flushed with moral indignation that they were oblivious to the danger. "It would not be honorable to yield," Aveiras wrote the King soon afterward, "even if we should have to suffer thereby." It may indeed be true that such devotion to principle was the main ingredient in the Portuguese stand. But there appear to have been others. "My power does not extend to giving away lands," Aveiras wrote Boreel as the Dutch negotiator w a s departing.'« This might suggest an alternate reason: that the viceroy and his intermediaries lacked ultimate competence to bargain with the V.O.C. But had competence been the major impediment, one fancies that the negotiators would have been only too eager to thrust this argument before Boreel in a ploy to transfer the responsibility to Lisbon. That

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Aveiras was alibiing is further indicated by the appropriate resolution in his viceregal council, one also passed at the time of Boreel's departure, which reads as if members thought Aveiras indeed had the power to "give away lands," but should not use it." Unless Aveiras really was so maddened by the unreasonableness of Dutch demands that he could not think straight, there is only one other plausible explanation for the Portuguese negotiators' conduct. Though they did not put it into so many words, it seems from the context that they regarded the whole of Boreel's demands for cinnamon territories to be a mere bluff, as Aveiras put it, "one of the schemes of Antonio van Diemen . . . a terrible man full of deceits and inventions." i® Just before Aveiras' departure, the minutes of the viceregal council interpreted what had just transpired: "In Goa, on the 22nd of April, 1643, his Most Excellent Lordship, the Viceroy Count of Aveiras, being present with the Most Reverend Archbishop Primate and the other nobles and ministers who assist him in council, proposed to them that all that had been accomplished had been for the purpose of concluding the truce between the King and the States General of Holland. He did not agree with any of the ways [Boreel] insisted upon." This is corroborated by a consulta dated September 20, 1644, in which King John's Overseas Council reported on several of Aveiras' letters written the previous year. From these they understood the whole negotiation to be a trick on the part of the company to acquire some additional advantage, whereas the actual terms of the truce had been known in southern Asia for months. They said, moreover, that Aveiras had observed that the Dutch were not doing well and only pretended to reinforce Galle at the time of Boreel's arrival, ostensibly to put pressure on the negotiations. Hence it is most likely that Aveiras and his advisers were victims of too literal a faith in the treaty negotiated between King John and the States General. The viceroy was surely unaware of how loose the ties actually were between the government of the United Provinces and the management of the chartered India companies. For this he can almost be excused; after all, his compatriots in Brazil had not realized it in time either, and even Their High Mightinesses of the States General were deceived on occasion. Aveiras must have seen his role as one of holding van Diemen to the terms of a truce the governor-general would ultimately be obliged to honor. There is support for this in the one explanation the Dutch could offer for the failure of negotiations: that the Por-

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ν I Goa, Batavia, and Ceylon / tuguese supposed the company might not really renew the war without first consulting The Hague.^' But even if this is the main reason, one may still entertain the suspicion that once Aveiras conceived his task as holding the company to a treaty made by its superiors, he fell naturally into the posture of indignation and self-righteousness. He seems to have been oddly inconsistent in his attitudes toward the Dutch, sometimes frightened and sometimes truculent. After the sea fight off Goa that killed Admiral Quast and Captain Sancho de Faria, he had sent the alarmist letter to Lisbon already quoted to the effect that the Hollanders were so powerful and the Portuguese so weak that any kind of peace was imperative. He had begged "prostrate at the royal f e e t " for more armament, which had never been sent. Then, after the Dutch had suffered a f e w setbacks in Ceylon, he began to speak almost as if the Portuguese could handle them.^^ Yet nothing had happened in the meantime to alter the fundamental imbalance between antagonists. The Dutch tell a curious story about Aveiras. It seems that soon after the arrival of the text of The Hague treaty, but before King John's ratified copy had been received to give it finality, Aveiras had himself rowed out in person under a flag of truce to the blockading Dutch fleet. Thereupon he proceeded to read the entire treaty to its commander and demand that he weigh anchor.^^ According to the treaty itself, the Dutch were still at war with Portugal, at least in Asia, and it is hard to see what might have been gained by the action. One can only judge from it that the subsequent negotiations with Boreel were carried out in the same indignant and rather pointless style. It seems that Aveiras' handling had rather worried King John. He wrote on April 4, 1644: "In addition to that which you wrote me on the last ship [from India], namely the particulars of the incident with Pedro Burel, who came to [Goa] ostensibly to publish the truce I concluded with the States of the United Provinces, I feel that I must warn you to handle the Dutch with the utmost caution. Do not make any offensive war against them, but rather, wage such a strong defense when they wish to make trouble that you cause them to understand that they prejudice themselves more with hostilities than with peace." Had Aveiras been willing to make the concessions Boreel finally demanded, it is hard to believe that the monarch would have taken it amiss, especially since he was later so reluctant to provoke war with the Hollanders in Brazil even when his own subjects had risen in arms against them.

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A Matter of Principle, The War

1643-1644

Resumes

Upon catching a north breeze, the Salamander headed directly for Ceylon, where Boreel disembarked at Batticaloa. He immediately sent Senior Merchant Marten Vinck to Galle with dispatches that the war had been resumed. President Thyssen was instructed thereby to give due notice to the Portuguese, then proceed to do them all hurt possible. This was May 8, 1643. Next, Boreel turned his attention to Raja Sinha. While the monarch promptly delivered the presents he had offered six weeks earlier, he reneged on his promise of dropping cinnamon prices for the benefit of the V.O.C.^^ In any case, the company was now saddled with him as an ally; it would hardly do to have his hostility. In Batavia van Diemen and his councilmen gaped at Boreel's report of the proceedings at Goa.^® Though they found it difficult to understand the Portuguese diplomatic psyche, they did not fail to take full advantage of the unwitting Portuguese cooperation. Fortunately for the V.O.C., thirteen ships and 4,500 men had just landed at Batavia from Amsterdam; 1,400 under Councillor François Carón soon recrossed the Indian Ocean en route to Galle. Meanwhile, another squadron of eight ships was on its way to Goa for resumption of the blockade, so hated by the Portuguese. Upon arrival in the autumn of Caron's force—the largest yet sent to Ceylon at one time—the struggle between the colonial antagonists was certain to become more critical than ever. While 1,400 men are barely enough to staff the communications network of a modern army, they represented a decisive advantage in the battlefields of the island. Fully realizing their fresh martial opportunity and numerical advantage, Thyssen and Caron laid plans to break out of their beachhead at Galle and gather in as much profitable spiceland as possible. As the Dutch were preparing their forces for a major assault, the Portuguese scored their last minor victory for a decade. Its only historical importance is that it illustrates the Portuguese were experienced jungle fighters who were inured to the tropics and, when well commanded, were fully able to outmaneuver and outwit their European adversaries. For this reason contemporary writers like Philippus Baldaeus were prone to exaggerate the difficulties of company forces in capturing the island; it certainly explains why in future campaigns the Dutch showed themselves painfully cautious. Four days after Thyssen had received Boreel's dispatches instructing him to renew the war, he sent 300 men to

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ν I Goa, Batavia, and Ceylon I warn the Portuguese that they should evacuate lands surrounding Galle. As the Dutch approached the enemy headquarters at Weligama, Portuguese forces fell back, weakened by detachments previously deployed toward Kandy to counter Raja Sinha's renewed threat. At Akuressa the Dutch forces who followed them walked into a skillfully constructed ambush. Though Dutch troops fought manfully, withering harquebuscades out of the overhanging foliage and Portuguese who turned up in unexpected places killed a third of them and sent the remainder, including both commanders, home in a trail of blood. As 1643 drew to a close so too did Dom Felipe Mascarenhas' luck. Dutch vessels had by December scouted the coastline near Negombo and selected the shores of nearby Panadura for their amphibious strike. Their victory at Akuressa and their earlier recapture of Negombo show the Portuguese commanders and fighting men at their best. There was, unfortunately, another aspect of the Portuguese military in Asia that was more typical than their cunning: their foolhardiness. The usual tactic of leaders in the field was to give the order for a headlong charge in the brainless feudal tradition. It was almost a point of honor among soldiers to vie with their comrades in seeing who could reach the enemy first in order to work upon him the mightiest deeds, and the tactic often unnerved Kandyans and lesser Malabar opponents of Portugal. But, as Francisco Rodrigues de Silveira, himself a common Portuguese foot soldier, pointed out in the seventeenth century, this "indisciplina militar" often led to disasters when the Portuguese failed to dislodge their opponents in the first shock.^' Such frontal tactics seldom worked against the Dutch, who were not only superior in predetermining the exact enemy strength, but who invariably deployed their forces before battle expressly in order to avoid being overwhelmed. In addition, the Dutch soldiers (including the many German and Scandinavian troops the V.O.C, had recruited in Europe) were physically larger and more powerful than the Portuguese and could outdo them in hand-to-hand combat. If the Portuguese had really expected to hold their own, they would have had to employ tactics against the Dutch designed to gain full advantage from their superior familiarity with the jungle—or else to have taken no chances. As the coming battle well illustrates, they could profitably have followed either of these options; instead, their commander rejected both in favor of the usual pell-mell charge. Dom Felipe Mascarenhas had guessed that the new forces under Caron did not intend to occupy the lands around Galle permanently.

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A Matter of Principle,

1643-1644

but could only be saving themselves for Colombo or Negombo. Since Negombo was by far the weaker of the two and since its capture would leave Colombo stranded between Dutch coastal possessions, he correctly identified it as the target of Dutch attack. In January, 1644, he dispatched a force of 600 soldiers and lascarins there under his rash younger brother, Dom Antonio. Dom Felipe had, in fact, barely moved in time to thwart the V.O.C, commander, for Dom Antonio arrived on the scene before dawn of the same night that Caron, who outnumbered him by two to one, had cast anchor offshore. Almost simultaneously another Portuguese contingent of perhaps 200 men joined Dom Antonio's forces from another quarter. Its commander was the elderly but tough and experienced Antonio da Mota Galvào, a veteran of many campaigns on the island and an architect of the victory at Akuressa. Dom Antonio knew that his brother would soon march north from Colombo to join him, and his orders were apparently to remain near the fort itself, entrenched on the flanking islet of Jorge Fernandes, only a musket shot away from it in the Negombo lagoon. Dom Felipe must have envisioned his younger brother's role as one of helping the fort hold the Hollanders' superior strength in check until he himself could arrive with reinforcements. When Mota Galváo arrived, however, the two commanders held a conference, and Mota Galväo proposed that the Portuguese instead attack the Dutchmen at the very vulnerable moment of their landing in the darkness. Though the Portuguese were outnumbered, one can imagine them as almost invisible against the somber shoreline, whence they could have seen the enemy troops clearly silhouetted against any light reflected from the moving waters and slaughtered most of them as they floundered ashore. Dom Antonio would have done well either to have followed this advice or to have fallen back upon his standing orders, which of course did not envision the opportunity that had arisen in the landing. Instead, for no very good reason, he overruled his wiser inferior's advice and allowed Caron to land all his troops. But then, rather than falling back to the islet near the fort, he shook ofl" Mota Galváo's protests and charged furiously the next day, after the Dutch were ready for him. Accounts differ as to whether the Portuguese enjoyed any initial success against the barrage of musket balls poured into them from the Dutch ranks; in any case, Dom Antonio and Mota Galväo were both soon killed, and their demoralized troops fled toward the fort, pursued by the victorious Hoi-

77

ν / Goa, Batavia,

and Ceylon /

landers. The Dutch quickly captured a cannon In the outworks, turned it around, and blew open the postern. Negombo fell swiftly, after there had been fighting on the bulwarks and redoubts. Moments later, most accounts agree, the powder magazine blew up, apparently injuring no one.^® The Portuguese lost about 300 men— nearly half of Dom Antonio's army—to the enemy's approximately fifty. Colombo was again caught between Dutch strongholds. Galle to the south and now Negombo, which was Dutch for the second time. Later, when Caron interrogated prisoners and read the orders found on Dom Antonio's corpse, he admitted quite openly that it would have been much harder for the Dutch if Dom Antonio had either attacked their landing operations or followed the instructions provided by Dom Felipe. According to Father Queiroz, he even taunted some Portuguese priests aboard his ship with these words: "Your captain must have had an iron skull, because if he had kept the orders of his general... the power of Holland would have been defeated here this time." ^^ Even allowing for a certain exaggeration on Caron's part, it would indeed seem that Dom Antonio made the worst military mistake of the whole war on the island, except perhaps that of Gaspar Figueira de Serpe eleven years later, for he virtually presented the Dutch with a major victory when he might have dealt them a discouraging blow. Indeed, had Dom Antonio not been so keen to have it out with his enemy, the Dutch and Portuguese forces might soon have engaged in a far truer contest. During the seven-month lull between Boreel's departure from Goa and Caron's attack, Aveiras had managed to scrape together some reinforcements; at the very moment Dom Antonio was leading his men to disaster, his brother, the captaingeneral, was pushing north with a relief column. When the terrible news filtered through to him en route, Dom Felipe could only return quickly to Colombo and organize its defenses. On the way, he skillfully deployed part of his forces along the Kelani River, where there were few crossings between the bordering marshes and underbrush. When the Dutch had finally caught their wind at Negombo and turned south toward Colombo, they could find no opening or ford unprotected. For nearly a week Caron bombarded the Portuguese at Mutwal without effect. Though Kandyan forces had joined him, by then the Dutch had a low opinion of their martial capacity; moreover, the garrison left behind in Negombo reduced his available forces to some thousand men. Portuguese

78

A Matter of Principle,

1643-1644

strength at Colombo he now estimated at 1,400 to 1,500, buttressed by more than an equal number of half-castes and lascarins.^ With regret, Caron decided to give up; he returned to the scene of his victory and contented himself instead with reengineering Negombo's defenses. As soon as Raja Sinha heard of this, he did his best by messenger to convince Caron to make a renewed march on the Portuguese capital. When letters failed to produce desired results, he began to complain. Why, he persisted, had Negombo not been offered to him or had the treaty-bound Dutch at least not asked his permission to garrison it? The company had, moreover, taken its time to chase out the Portuguese—as he implied, merely to increase his own debt. In the south, relations with Kandy took more than a verbal turn for the worse. When Portuguese forces were hurried north to counter the new Dutch landing, the company had helped itself to extensive lands around Galle. This rankled Raja Sinha more than ever, for the Dutch were making every attempt to win the allegiance of chuleas and other Sinhalese essential to the harvesting of cinnamon bark. There ensued a curious tug-of-war for their control. The King sent agents into the territory who induced lascarins and chuleas alike to leave Galle; eventually these agents cleared a swath ten miles around of resident Sinhalese. The few who remained did so because Dutchmen both locked them up nights and raised their salaries, but their loyalty was dubious. When the King extended his efforts to the Negombo area, even fishermen abandoned their nets and trekked inland.^' Relations swiftly worsened between the allies: Raja Sinha threatened van Diemen with forfeit of his debt, and Batavia authorized Thyssen to treat Kandyan agents as brigands and rough them up, ironically enough, in the King's own n a m e . In an attempt to gain timely advantage of this breach, Portugal moved to establish ties with Raja Sinha. Such a project had been under previous consideration; on February 20, 1644, just after news of Negombo's loss had reached them, Goan councillors had split over the question and shelved it.^^ At this point, the viceroy put into Mascarenhas' hands two letters he had written for the Lion King, dated April 21 and May 14, 1644, which touched upon the good relations that had prevailed between Portugal and Kandy in the past, dwelt upon the perfidy of the Hollanders for fighting after the truce and seeking to enslave the natives, thanked the King for desisting from Dutch plans to

79

ν / Goa, Batavia, and Ceylon / attack Colombo (little did he know!), and spoke of important matters to be broached by his embassy.»·· Just when the emissaries arrived in Kandy is not known, but they must have done so in the middle of May, judging from the subsequent timing. Exactly what they proposed is equally open to conjecture; one would imagine that, under the circumstances, they were instructed to feel their way. Once at the King's court, they received a tepid audience. Events were amply to demonstrate what Raja Sinha told them: that while he had not the slightest intention of reversing his alliance, he was indeed disgruntled with the company and determined to punish it. He consented, accordingly, not to fall on the Portuguese as they attacked Negombo.»® During all this time, Aveiras had shipped out every soldier he could find in order to strengthen Mascarenhas' garrison, despite universal preference among the ranks for duty elsewhere. Captains of convoying vessels, in fact, had to be warned not to pause in the vicinity of Cape Comorin lest soldiers take French leave before they ever arrived.^® Though all this whüe complaining bitterly of India's "deplorable" poverty because of the Dutch blockade, he seems to have provided more than 900 men between early February and April.»' Once again Portugal had a respectable combat force on the island. Recapture of Negombo was thereupon given top priority. As soon as Captain-General Mascarenhas heard of the King's promise, most likely the following week, he moved on Negombo and laid it under a siege that lasted two months, from the end of May until late July. His captain-major finally convinced Mascarenhas that a storming of the ramparts could succeed. On July 23, three waves of desperately charging Portuguese withered under Dutch fire. Within two hours, half the attackers were dead, and the painfully rebuilt offensive capability of the Portuguese was in total ruin. Though Aveiras may have been upset, he can hardly have been unprepared. The preceding December he had made another desperate attempt to bargain with Dutch blockaders off the bar, as he wrote Mascarenhas, "with little or no success."»' In February he wrote John IV: "If there is any hitch in arrival of the relief [India] implores at this moment, it might turn out (God forbid) that when it arrives, it will be useless because there wUl be nothing left to relieve."»®

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A Matter of Principle,

1643-1644

Upon hearing of the fiasco at Negombo, the count-viceroy was ready to submit. It seems he had gradually become conditioned to the idea. In April he had gone so far as to broach seriously the subject of a truce (though on Boreel's original terms of 1643) to van Diemen. In return for restitution of subsequent Dutch conquests, however, he had offered no more than to return the Pauw, a ship richly laden with Persian silks that put into Goa under the false assumption the truce had gone into effect.^» Van Diemen, of course, had hardly been of a mind to make major concessions for a petty one. Now, in August, Aveiras fully prepared himself to accept V.O.C, conditions. On its part the company was far from unreceptive to the idea of negotiation. Colombo had begun to appear a difficult and expensive conquest; there were, moreover, warnings that Lisbon was exerting the utmost diplomatic pressure on the States General to bring about a cessation of hostilities imposed from Europe.^' Hence, van Diemen decided even before divining Aveiras' new disposition that he would be acting to the company's advantage if he might strike a bargain on its own terms. In August, therefore, his council dispatched one of its members, Johan Maetsuyker, to Goa. The timing was clairvoyant, for news of the Portuguese disaster at Negombo was known to Aveiras, but had not yet arrived in Batavia. Maetsuyker was told, in fact, not to negotiate with Aveiras if he learned Portugal had recaptured it.^^ щ д mission was, essentially, to demand half the lands between Galle and Colombo and half between it and Negombo. While Boreel's demands at least had been clothed in careful arguments regarding articles and allies, Maetsuyker's terms were blunt as the muzzle of a field mortar: accede— or else. India was ruined, and by now everyone in Goa knew it. There was a universal willingness to admit (as voiced in the assent of one member of the viceregal councü, Antonio de Faria Machado) that "all our possessions are at present scarcely defensible. While a certain amount of futile steam was released in private council against "Mastnycher" (the Portuguese ear's rendition) and Dutch "inconstância," the viceroy and his council were now ready to negotiate seriously. On only one point would Aveiras stand firm: to insist that the division of lands be provisional pending final settlement. Obviously, this was where his scruples had properly belonged eighteen months before when he used the argument "my power does not extend to giving away lands" in justification of

81

ν I Goa, Batavia,

and Ceylon /

his obstinacy. It is quite possible that this shift in emphasis was a result of letters from the King like the one of April, 1644, already quoted to the effect Aveiras should take no chances with the truce.

The

Capitulation

Maetsuyker had arrived off Goa on September 28 aboard one of ten blockading ships. After nearly a fortnight of preliminary negotiations and formalities, he came ashore at Panjim October 10, whereupon he and the Portuguese negotiators turned to real business. At first the Portuguese maintained strongly that Negombo must be restored. This, in a Dutch phrase used for another occasion, was "so much preaching to deaf ears." Maetsuyker ignored what he called their "scholastic arguments" and warned that these only acted as irritants to the Dutch. If the Portuguese clung to their position, the war would continue, he threatened.^^ After offering to buy Negombo back for a huge price, the Portuguese capitulated, acknowledging in their inner councils that they could barely scrape together three hundred men for Ceylon if new fighting erupted. As a face-saver for their opponents, the Dutch merely agreed to a provisional arrangement and the old machinery allowing for deposit of income. The Portuguese now meekly accepted the division of lands halfway between Colombo and the captured fortresses of Galle and Negombo with no more than a proviso that Portuguese owners and holders of extended leases in the territories be allowed to continue them if they appeared within six months and agreed to pay Dutch taxes. They were to be allowed freedom of worship, and chaleas were to be made equally available to them. So far as possible, the division of lands halfway between Dutch fortresses and Colombo was to follow traditional boundaries of Sinhalese korales nearest the Bentota River. This, it was felt, might preclude jurisdictional confusion under the native system of workers and administration, which the Dutch had seen fit to follow, as had the Portuguese before them. Finally, the treaty was in no way to prejudice whatever ultimate arrangements might be made between the States General and Lisbon.^^ The text was signed by Maetsuyker and Aveiras on November 10, 1644. Precise boundaries were to be fixed at a later date. Raja Sinha's position in all this was cloudy. The Portuguese agreed (by Article 5) to make peace if Kandy wished it, but Aveiras' hints that Portugal should hold a veto over a Dutch conflict with the King were rebuffed. It would seem Aveiras had sensed the cur-

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A Matter of Principle,

1643-1644

rent V.O.C, drift and hoped to prevent Dutch land grabbing in Kandy without cutting Portugal in for a suitable share. At this point, Aveiras was relieved of his viceroyship (he had requested this long before) ^^ and was replaced by Ceylon's captaingeneral, Dom Felipe Mascarenhas. It was therefore Dom Felipe's task to work out the final arrangements. For a time, friction arose out of his peculiar ideas on the matter, but ultimately. Father Sao José persuaded him not to hold up the arrangements and jeopardize the truce. On January 25, 1645, more than three years after Mendonça Furtado had concluded the agreement with the States General of Holland, the boundaries and truce finally went into effect. By now, Portugal's representatives in Asia had frittered away whatever benefits Mendonça Furtado had gained for them. It would appear that Portuguese negotiators were as reckless as Portuguese commanders were rash and that diplomacy lost as much of Ceylon as did military weakness and blunders. Aveiras and his men were technically right. But it was a matter of assessing the greater evil—of allowing the Dutch to press them for a spice district to go with possession of Galle—or of permitting the Dutch to reopen the war to obvious Portuguese disadvantage. The available facts seem to indicate that the choice was not sufficiently clear at first to the Portuguese and that Aveiras played into van Diemen's hands because he thought the company would be obliged to back down. In the end, he was virtually bludgeoned into accepting less reasonable terms. Portugal had, meanwhile, lost the choice parts of its conquista.

83

Part Three The Disordered Polity

00

369, 370, 394. 28. This is Boxer's point. See his "Refiexos," p. 26. 29. "Sobre о socorro que se ha-de mandar à India em Marco de 1648,"

189

Notes to Pages

114-119

Consultas Mixtas, A.H.U., Codex 14, fols. 93 verso-94. This document is quoted in extenso by Boxer in his "Reflexos," p. 21. 30. Prestage, Azevedo, and Laranjo Coelho (eds.). Correspondencia, III, 43. 31. Boxer, Salvador de Sá, p. 214. 32. See Prestage, Azevedo, and Laranjo Coelho (eds.), Correspondencia, III, 20; see also Cornells van de Haar, De Diplomatieke Betrekkingen tussen de Republiek en Portugal, 1640-1661 (Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1961), p. 96. 33. Prestage, Azevedo, and Laranjo Coelho (eds.). Correspondencia, III, 56. 34. Van de Haar, Diplomatieke Betrekkingen, pp. 102-103. 35. Prestage, Azevedo, and Laranjo Coelho (eds.) Correspondencia, III, 57. 36. Azevedo (ed.). Cartas de Antonio Vieira, III, 568. 37. The opinion of Monteiro is in Pontos provisonalmte propostos para tirar, e pacificar as differenças entre о Senhor Rey de Portugal de huma parte e os Senhores Estados Geraes das Provincias Unidas e Paizes Bayxos da outra, B.N.L., Codex 1.570 F.G., fols. 111-142. 38. This is a recurrent proposal, but voiced in Monteiro's parecer. Ibid., fol. 123. 39. This is conveniently reprinted in Frei Antonio Vieira, S.J., Obras Escolhidas, ed. Hemani Cidade (12 vols., Lisbon: Sá da Costa Editora, 1951-1954), 111,29-106. 40. B.N.L., Codex 1.570 F.G., fol. 143. 41. Ibid. 42. Papéis do Conselho da Guerra, A.N.T.T., Maco 9. 43. The exact date is hard to establish, but the change evidently occurred in 1647. There is a consulta in Documentos Avulsos Relativos à India, A.H.U., Caixa No. 19, unfortunately without a month or a day, but marked 1647. It indicates that no clear priority had been established between India and Brazil. But in April King John sounded as if the choice had been made. See Chap. VI. 44. See Codices 14 and 15 of the Consultas Mixtas, A.H.U. There are other consultas on the same subject in the Documentos Avulsos Relativos à India, A.H.U., but one suspects that if they were tabulated the proportion would remain substantially equal. 45. Livro das Moncöes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 22b, fol. 242. 46. Ibid., fol. 357. 47. Documentos Remetidos da Ìndia, A.N.T.T., Vol. 60, fol. 33. 48. Ibid., Vol. 61, fol. 28. 49. Ibid., fol. 29. 50. Livro das Moncöes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 22b, fols. 352-353 verso, 349-360 verso, 361-362 verso. 51. Ibid., fols. 367-367 verso, 365-365 verso. 52. Ibid., fols. 377-378 verso. 53. Ibid., fols. 375-375 verso. 54. Ibid., fols. 383-383 verso and skips to 386. 55. Ibid., fols. 379-389 verso, 381-382 verso. 56. Instructions to this effect from Amsterdam's Heren XVII arrived in

190

Notes to Pages

121-124

Batavia on June 20, but the council decided to delay until reinforcements arrived and until elephant hunting and cinnamon peeling in Ceylon could be completed for the season. While formal notice was not served on the Portuguese until late September, the seizure of Portuguese vessels by the company plainly heralded the move. See Goonewardena, Dutch Power, p. 155; Kssurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 526.

Chapter

Vili:

1. Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 527. 2. Carta que escreueo da India о Pe. frey Antonio da conceicao comissario gl. Codex 51-VII-29, B.A., fol. 255, in Fitzler (ed.). Cerco de Columbo, p. 136. For a contemporary complaint regarding this action, see Documentos Avulsos Relativos à India, A.H.U., Caixa No. 22, doc. of Mar. 16, 1654. 3. Carta que escreueo ... Antonio da conceicao. Codex 51-VII-29, B.A., fol. 253 verso, in Fitzler (ed.). Cérco de Columba, p. 134. 4. Conceicao places this force at sixty ships ("sesenta navios"), probably gaUeys, which seems highly improbable under the circumstances. See Fitzler (ed.). Cèreo de Columba, p. 135. Obidos himself, in a letter dated January 16, 1653, reports the correct number, in terms of paraus, or small coasting galleys, but, unfortunately, the wording is obliterated in the only surviving copy of the letter. See Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 540. 5. Carta que escreueo... Antonio da conceicao. Codex 51-VI1-29, B.A., fol. 253 verso, in Fitzler (ed.). Cérco de Calumbo, p. 134. 6. Homem's earUer career remains largely a mystery. I was told by Dr. Francis Dutra of a Manuel Mascarenhas Homem who served as a royal councillor in Lisbon and Brazil during this period, but he can hardly have been the same person. Nor can he have been the Manuel Homem Mascarenhas who served as Ceylon's captain-general in 1614. Not only is the name inverted, but the chronology is inappropriate, for Homem would scarcely have been made captain-general in his extreme youth, and he does not seem to have been beyond middle age in the 1640s and 1650s. But Queiroz speaks of a Manuel Mascarenhas Homem who was elected as captain-major of Ceylon in 1623. Then Homem is mentioned in a consulta of the viceregal council in 1639 as captain-general of Sao Tomé de Meliapur and possibly as having served as captain-general of Cochin. After the death of Diogo de Melo de Castro in 1636, he acted temporarily as captain-general of Ceylon. See Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, II, 734; Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 235-236, 248-249. 7. The reasons are not clear. Ribeiro ventures that Homem might have wished to deceive the enemy. It is hard to see what he might have accomplished, save to arouse suspicions of the Portuguese themselves. See Ribeiro, Historic Tragedy, p. 164. 8. Documentos Remetidos da Ìndia, A.N.T.T., Vol. 61, fols. 196-197; Ribeiro, Historic Tragedy, p. 260. 9. Livra dos Segredos No. 1, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Doc. 83; see also Jesuítas na Asia, Codex 49-V-8, B.A. 10. Documentas Remetidos da Ìndia, A.N.T.T., Vol. 51, fol. 53; Vol. 52, fol. 40.

191

Notes to Pages

124-129

11. Livra das Monedes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 22b, fols. 221, 221 verso. 12. Ibid., fols. 226,'226 verso. 13. Ribeiro, Historic Tragedy, p. 163. 14. Ibid. 15. Livro das Moricöes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 23, fols. 341-343. 16. Jesuitas na kka. Codex 52-VII-63, B.A., Doc. 8, in Fitzler (ed.). Cérco de Columho, p. 111. 17. Ribeiro, Historic Tragedy, pp. 163-164. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., p. 167. 20. Ibid. This seems a rather excessive move and only lends credence to later charges against him. 21. Livro das Moncöes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 22b, fols. 247-248, letter dated Nov. 12, 1952. 22. Ibid., fols. 243-246. The Dutch often wrote during the truce years of Colombo's "incessant" fortification, but it is hard to explain why there could have been so many Portuguese complaints if Homem had indeed been active or why Homem himself would have spoken of "great deficiencies" in the walls less than three weeks before his overthrow. It is most probable that Homem indeed undertook some work, which, together with maintenance operations, was overestimated by Dutch spies or visitors. It would have suited Dutch purposes to have made the Portuguese seem aggressors in any case. See Goonewardena, Dutch Power, p. 140n.; Ribeiro, Historic Tragedy, p. 170. It seems Homem inadvertently built at least his own prison. 23. Jesuitas na Asia, Codex 52-VII-63, B.A., Doc. 8, no pagination, in Fitzler (ed.), Cèreo de Columba, p. 112. 24. Jesuitas na Asia, Codex 49-V-14, В.Α., fol. 119, in Fitzler (ed.). Cèreo de Columba, p. 107. 25. Jesuitas na Asia, Codex 52-VII-63, B.A., Doc. 8, no pagination, in Fitzler (ed.). Cèreo de Columba, p. 112. 26. Jesuitas na Asia, Codex 52-VII-63, B.A., Doc. 8, no pagination, in Fitzler (ed.). Cèrea de Columba, p. 113. 27. Jesuitas na Asia, Codex 49-V-14, B.A., fol. 117 verso, in Fitzler (ed.), Cèreo de Calumbo, p. 105. 28. This is again Ribeiro's estimate. That of Father André Lopes, provincial of Cochin, is less than half this figure (300 Portuguese and some 700 native troops), but this would place the total number of Portuguese men-at-arms on the island at too low a figure. Except for the garrisons at Manar and JafFnapatam in the north, nearly all troops in Ceylon at the renewal of war seem to have been divided between the city and the mutiny. 29. There is little doubt but what the Costas remained in control of the movement. While the mutineers went through the motions of electing a representative from each company to serve on a shadowy governing board, the obvious purpose was to diffuse responsibility for the uprising and to protect its authors from retribution. 30. Ribeiro, Historic Tragedy, p. 168. 31. Jesuitas na Asia, Codex 49-V-14, B.A., fol. 118 verso; Codex 52-VII63, Doc. 8, no pagination, in Fitzler (ed.). Cèreo de Columba, pp. 107,113. 32. Ribeiro, Historie Tragedy, p. 169.

192

Notes

to Pages

129-136

33. Ibid., p. 170. 34. Ibid., p. 173. 35. Homem's wife, Antonia Pimentel, received word from Ms prison and presented her husband's vigorous protestations of innocence. See Documentos Remetidos da Ìndia, A.N.T.T., Vol. 56, fols. 487, 487 verso; see also text of her letter in Carta que escreueo ... Antonio da conceiçào. Codex 51-Vn-29, B.A., fols. 247-250 verso, in Fitzler (ed.), Cèreo de Columbo, pp. 131-134. 36. Ibid., fol. 254 verso, in Fitzler (ed.). Cèreo de Columbo, pp. 135-136. 37. Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 225-229. 38. Ibid. 39. Documentos Remetidos da Ìndia, A.N.T.T., Vol. 56, fols. 491, 491 verso. 40. Ribeiro, Historic Tragedy, p. 175. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid.; Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 556; Fitzler (ed.). Cèreo de Columbo, p. 101. 43. Goonewardena, Dutch Power, p. 167. 44. Ibid., pp. 160-161. 45. Documentos Remetidos da Ìndia, A.N.T.T., Vol. 56, fol. 470; see also ibid., fols. 468, 487-492; Livro das Moncöes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 22b, Does. 126, 127, 128, 131, among others. See also Documentos Avulsos Relativos à ìndia, A.H.U., Caixa No. 22, doc. of Jan. 28, 1654. 46. Codex 51-Vn-29, B.A., fol. 257 verso, in Fitzler (ed.). Cèreo de Columbo, p. 140. 47. For information regarding the nature of the Cámara, see Boxer, Portuguese Society in the Tropics, pp. 14-21. 48. All the foregoing is from Dom Brás de Castro's account to John IV printed conveniently in Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 556-557; it is from the Livro das Moncöes, A.H.E.I., Vol. 23-B, fols. 272-273. Óbidos returned to Portugal in 1654. See Relacäo do sucedido na India no anno de 1654, Codex 50-V-38, B.A., Doc. 23,'fol. 206. 49. Ericeira, Portugal Restaurado, I, 782; Codex-VII-29, B.A., fols. 252 verso-257 verso, in Fitzler (ed.). Cérco de Columbo, pp. 134-140. The person was Dom Manuel Mascarenhas who was captain-general of the Armada of the North and a member of the viceroyal council—seemingly no relation of Manuel Mascarenhas Homem. It is significant that this same man was one of the few supporters of the Count of Sarzedas three years later in that viceroy's efforts to bring help to beleaguered Colombo. (See Chap. IX.) Because this officer was so conspicuous in his loyalty, one wonders where most of the other councillors stood in their enthusiasm for reform and the King's service. Note in this connection that the writer of the article on Obidos in the Grande Enciclopedia Luso-Brasileira has confused Dom Manuel Mascarenhas with Manuel Mascarenhas Homem. Castro was correct when he said that Manuel Mascarenhas Homem was in the south of India at this time. 50. Memorias do Conselho do Estado and Pareceres do Estilo do Estado (a duplicate volume, despite its different title). Codices К VIII 6b, 1081, and К VII 6a, 1049, Arquivo da Casa de Cadaval, Muge, Portugal [hereafter cited as A.C.C.], both fol. 2. That the Conselho Ultramarino had nothing to

193

Notes to Page 137 do with the matter is demonstrated by a statement of that body: "The business of the expulsion [of Obidos] was neither brought before nor handled by this council, either in whole or in part, and what will happen depends upon what justice Your Majesty might send to guide the Secretariat of State, which issued the orders bome by the Count of Sarzedas . . . " Documentos Avulsos Relativos à Ìndia, A.H.U. Caixa No. 24, doc. of Apr. 6, 1660. Every attempt has been made to learn more details of the mutiny because it was hoped that revelation of its true authors, motives, and mechanism would illuminate Goan society as well. But all avenues proved disappointing. It seems final that, barring an outside chance, nothing wall ever be found in Portugal concerning the matter: the papers referred to in the document here quoted were kept highly secret by the Council of State and no doubt perished along with all the material pertairung to that body in the November, 1755, cataclysm that destroyed the Torre do Tombo. The survival, incidentally, of the Memorias do Conselho do Estado and the identical Pareceres do Estilo do Estado was a fluke: many or all of the seventeenth-century volumes of the Arquivo da Casa de Cadaval originally belonged to the Count of Odemira whose only daughter married the Marques de Cadaval. Odemira at the time was a member of the highest council and must have had the copies made for his convenience. There is a brief account in a volume of miscellaneous papers in the Cadaval archive caUed Relacäo Verdadra pa Sua Mge Res do Motim e a Lauantamento q о pouo da Cide de Goa fez pa desapossar da gouernanca do estado da India ao Conde de Obidos V Rey (Codex 1091, fols. 460-461 verso), but despite its promising title it is mere propaganda of the mutineers and is even less explicit than Castro's letter. I tried two archives outside of Portugal, the Archivum Historicum Societatis lesu, in Rome, where Father Georg Schurhammer, S.J., kindly but vainly searched for a report that might have been written to Rome, and the Algemeen Rijksarchief, in The Hague, where Mevr. Dr. M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz, despite her interest and wilhngness, could find no trace of a V.O.C, report on the subject from its spy station at Vengurla. 51. Ericeira, Portugal Restaurado, I, 687. 52. Documentos Remetidos da Ìndia, A.N.T.T., Vol. 59, fols. 24-30 verso, 32, 36, 36 verso, 40; Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, ΠΙ, 119-122. 53. See also Documentos Avulsos Relativos à Macau, A.H.U., Caixa No. 1, doc. of Dec. 10,1648, entitled D. Bras de Castro queixa-se de D. File de Mascarenhas de Ihe retardar a merce de Cap. gl. de Macau. 54. Ericeira, Portugal Restaurado, II, 298; Livro dos Segredos No. 1, F.U.P., fol. 90 verso; Tavernier, Travels, I, 228-229. 55. He was only reinstated as a councillor by the triumvirs because experienced India hands were needed so desperately in the followdng period. See Chap. VI. 56. Carta que escreueo . .. Antonio da conceiçâo. Codex 51-VII-29, B.A., fol. 258 verso, in Fitzler (ed.). Cerco de Columbo, p. 141. 57. The Count of Ericeira corroborates Castro's assertion that two other men. Nicolau de Moura de Brito and Antonio В arreto Pereira, were approached by the mutineers and asked to govern. Both refused and were left unharmed in spite of their refusal. Even supposing these other men were approached, I do not believe this necessarily clears Dom Brás of being

194

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138-139

a party to the fundamental plotting, merely because he appears an alternate choice. In the first place, the crown held him responsible, and it certainly had far more information on the subject than exists today. Secondly, in a matter so grave as that of a mutiny against a viceroy, it would behoove the plotters to remain in the background and to gain the complicity of leading citizens, partly to lend respectability to their acts and partly to deflect the blame should the King prove unwilling to countenance the overthrow. In fact, Castro may well have been unwdlUng to take over alone, but was forced to when others, earmarked for the job, or some part of it, would not participate. For one might suspect that the aim of the plotters was rather to depose Obidos and return things to "normal" than to enjoy power for its own sake, which no one might much have wanted in such troubled times. Perhaps the plotters really were angry at Dom Brás because he did not wish to stand alone as "governor"—that is, if one can trust Castro's story at all in this particular. See Ericeira, Portugal Restaurado, II, 398. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. There were a number of investigations, lawsuits, and petitions over the forced loans. See, for example. Documentos Avulsos Relativos à India, A.H.U., Caixa No. 20, doc. of Mar. 3, 1655, in which the heirs of Joâo Pereira Murato petitioned for return of the money; see also ibid., Caixa No. 24, in which Obidos was accused of extorting aid for Ceylon. Then see Pareceres do Estilo do Estado, fols. 20, 20 verso. This document is quoted in Chapter IX. See also Livra das Moncöes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 25, fols. 39, 69, 72, 72 verso, 73, 73 verso, 74-76. 62. Paraceres do Estilo do Estado, fols. 20, 20 verso. 63. Obidos appears to have made at least one other mistake in his career, but, to judge from the number of responsible posts he held, he seems to have been a capable enough commander. After becoming general of artillery in Brazil, he served as its temporary governor while waiting for a new viceroy to arrive, and he is said to have carried on a scorched earth policy against the Dutch in the Pernambuco region. Returning to Portugal in 1640, he was made a councillor of war and governor of the Alentejo in 1642. In 1643, however, he tried to besiege Badajoz with too few troops at his disposal and was forced to retreat, narrowly escaping disaster to his army when the Spanish cavalry sallied out of the city in pursuit. For this, John IV relieved him of command and ordered him confined to his house in Lisbon. But he was later forgiven and in 1646 was reinstated as governor. When he returned from India after his deposition, he is said to have been received rather coldly, but served as a councillor of war once again, until his nomination in 1662 to the Council of State. In 1663 he was appointed viceroy of Brazil, in which post he served for four years. His career appears, on the whole, to have been a distinguished one and does not suggest that personal incompetence underlay his treatment in Goa. The French ambassador to Portugal, Francois Lanier, CEdled him "one of the most accomplished lords of this crown." See Edgar Prestage, Informes de Francisco Lanier sobre Francisco de Lucena e a corte de D. Joäo IV (Coimbra: Coimbra University Press, 1931), p. 16.

195

Notes to Pages Chapter

141-146

IX:

1. Copia de hua carta que о Conde de Obidos excreueo a sen Irmäo da prizäo em que estaua, Codex 51-VII-29, B.A., fol. 259, in Fitzler (ed.), Cèreo de Columbo, p. 142. 2. Quoted in Alfredo Botelho de Sousa, Subsidios para a Historia das Guerras da Restauracäo no Mar e no Alem-Mar (2 vols., Lisbon: Agência Geral das Colonias, 1940), I, 287. 3. Kssurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 312-317. All this time the weather was favorable. 4. Ibid., 288; see also Willem Philippus Coolhaas (ed.). Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs-Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (2 vols, to date. The Hague: Martinas NijhofF, 1960- ), II, 763-765. 5. Goonewardena, Dutch Power, p. 164; cf. Coolhaas (ed.). Generale Missiven, II, 764. Ribeiro does not even mention the incident. 6. Ericeira, Portugal Restaurado, I, 786. 7. See Jacobus Aalbers, Rijkloff van Goens, Commisaris en Veldoverste der Oost-Indische Compagnie, en zijn Arbeidsveld, 1653154 en 1657158 (Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1916), pp. 92-94; Willem M. Ottow, Rijkloff Volckertsz van Goens: De Carrière van een Diplomaat, 1619-1655 (Utrecht: Pressa Trajectina, 1954); see also Relacäo de Novas da India Oriental desta Moncäo de 1655. Codex CV/2-15, Á.D.E., fols. 46-48. This document is also found in Goa, Doc. 34 11, A.H.S.I., and in Codex 50-V-38, B.A., Doc. 26, fols. 218-225. For a synthesis, see Boelho de Sousa, Subsidios para a Historia das Guerras da Restauracäo, pp. 292-295. 8. Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, II, 921-922. 9. Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 336. Beyond doubt they were indefensible. 10. Livro dos Regimentos e Instruccöes No. 5, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., fols. 82, 82 verso, 85, 85 verso. 11. Pareceres do Estilo do Estado 1654-1655, A.C.C., fols. 20, 20 verso. 12. Fitzler (ed.), Cèreo de Columbo, p. 93 n. For Dutch commercial contacts with Bijapur, see Roelofsz, Vestiging der Nederlanders ter Kuste Malabar, passim. 13. Ericeira, Portugal Restaurado, I, 816. He placed this sometime during 1653, but the Count of Ericeira is not reüable as a chronologist. 14. Livro das Moncöes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 24, fol. 287; Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 335; Livro dos Regimentos e Instruccöes No. S., A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., fol. 82, 82 verso. 15. See Father Antonio da Silva Rego, Documentacäo para a Historia das Missöes do Padroado Portugués no Oriente (12 vols., Lisbon: Agencia Geral das Colónias-Agéncia Geral do Ultramar, 1947-1958), V, 436-439. 16. For what it is worth, the English reported that Adii Shah's motive was an old claim on Bardez and Salcete. See Sir William Foster (ed.). The English Factories in India, 1618-1669 (13 pts., London: Clarendon Press, 1906-1927), pt. 1655-1660, pp. 246-249. 17. Livro das Moncöes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 24, fols. 280, 296. 18. Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 357-360. 19. Livro das Moncöes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 24, fol. 296; Relacäo de

196

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to Pages

146-150

Novas da India Oriental desta Moncäo de 1655, A.D.E., fols. 49-50 and versos; see also Adelino Delduque da Costa, Os Portugueses e os Reis da india (Bastorá: Tipografia Rangel, 1933), p. 77. 20. Plssurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 366-367; Biker (ed.), Tratados, II, 232-239; also printed in appendix to Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 582-587. 21. Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 357. 22. This is guesswork. Ribeiro, Historie Tragedy, p. 192, says nine galliots and 250 men; Baldeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 281, eight frigates and 500 men; Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, III, 933, five galliots and does not venture the number of men. Goonewardena, in Dutch Power, p. 166, states there were 400 men, but does not divulge his source, probably a Dutch manuscript. One can make about this much sense out of the puzzle: if approximately 500 men arrived from Portugal the previous September, it is possible that most of them were made available after the threat to Goa has subsided, for the new captain-general had made it clear he did not wish to sail without a force that could command respect. (Pissurlencar [ed.], Assentos, III, 364.) Baldeus, who gives the best account of all three contemporary writers, estimates 500. Ribeiro's figure may weU be that of survivors. 23. Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 281. 24. Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, p. 934. 25. See Chap. VIII. 26. Goonewardena, Dutch Power, p. 167. Portuguese estimates of 3,000 are excessive; cf. Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, III, 937. 27. Goonewardena, Dutch Power, p. 168. 28. Contemporary description of its walls (in Fitzler [ed.]. Cérco de Calumbo, p. 202) does not reveal as much as an engraving in Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," reprinted opposite p. 128 of the cited Brohier translation. If the illustration can be trusted, it must have appeared unwise to storm Kalutara immediately. Baldaeus remarked that the Dutch were busy erecting batteries when it capitulated. Ribeiro, Historic Tragedy, p. 194, complained that none of the forts in Ceylon were ever adequately victualed. 29. Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, III, 939-940. 30. Ibid. Ribeiro, Historic Tragedy, p. 195, assumed that Figueira de Serpe learned of the surrender only after he was on the way. 31. See Copia de hüa Carta q о pe Joäo Camelo, Reitor do Collegio de Columba escreueo ao pe Lucas Correa Superior de Manar e em sua absencia a qualquer outra pe daquella Ilha escrita em 26 de 8 bra [October] de 1655, Codex 50-V-38, B.A., Doc. 27. See also Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 413-419; and the account of Johann Jacob Saar, in Johann Jacob S aar s Ost-Indianische fünfzehen-jährige Kriegs-Dienst und wahrhaftige Beschreibung was sich ... von ... 1644 biss ... 1659 ... mit ihm... begeben habe, am allermeisten auf der Insul Ceilon (Nuremberg, 1672), pp. 125-126. 32. Ribeiro, Historie Tragedy, p. 196. Also, Capia de hüa Carta q о pe Joäo Camelo ... escreueo ao pe Lucas Carrea, Codex-V-38, B.A., Doc. 27. Father Camelo, who wrote only nine days after the rout, seems to have been unaware that there were about twice as many Dutchmen. 33. Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, III, 942. Baldaeus allows only 160.

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Notes to Pages

151-153

34. These détails concerning Colombo have been taken from Queiroz' Conquest of Ceylon, for the most part, which work is indispensable here. It can best be supplemented with a map of Portuguese Colombo numbered 941 in the collection of Indian maps and charts of the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, or with Baldaeus' map of the siege, as printed in the 1672 edition of his "True and Exact Description." For another description of Colombo, see Relacäo do Cérco, Codex 52-VII-63, B.A., Doc. 9, in Fitzler (ed.), Cérco de Calumbo, pp. 145-193. 35. See Livro das Moncöes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 25, fol. 259. 36. Ribeiro himself must have played a personal role in this part of the action. At one point it looked as if a breastwork near shore was about to be carried by the enemy. Ribeiro reported that Figueira de Serpe ordered one of his trusted captains to reinforce the defenders. The captain, as Professor Boxer believes, was certainly Ribeiro himself. Thinking himself to be accompanied by his men, he hurried over, only to discover that just one man had followed him and that the breastwork had been abandoned by the volunteers from the town who had been defending it. Undaunted, he cUmbed to the walls with his one soldier. They fought off some of the enemy who had just scaled the wall; as they jumped back to the beach, they discouraged a great number of their oncoming fellows. Thinking substantial reinforcements had arrived, the Dutch then threw grenades over the walls; their explosions set off some powder pans which burned the captain and started a fire. This attracted the original defenders, who were ashamed that only two men had been able to do their job and repel the attack. See C. R. Boxer, "Captain Joào Ribiero and His History of Ceylon, 1622-1693," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Britain and Ireland (Pts. 1, 2, 1955), p. 10; see also Ribeiro, Historic Tragedy, p. 191. 37. See Summaria relacam dos prodigiosos feitos que as armas Portuguesas obraräo na llha de Ceiläo cötra os Olandezes & Chingala no anno passado de 1655. Lisboa, na officina Crasbeeckiana Anno 1656. The author, a priest, wrote immediately after the event and jubilates that Dutchmen who died in the lagoon became "food for crocodiles." I know of only one copy of this very rare printed pamphlet, now in the collection of Sr. Afonso Cassuto, of Lisbon. 38. The Portuguese, of course, wildly overestimated their success. Ribeiro and Queiroz placed the number of wounded in the thousands. Baldaeus was probably correct in estimating 200 dead and 350 wounded, though he excluded the losses of the lagoon, which have been estimated here and added on. See Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," pp. 150-151. 39. Saar, Ost-Indianische ... Kriegs-Dienst, p. 127. 40. Goonewardena, Dutch Power, p. 170. 41. For full consideration of this problem, see Chap. III. 42. Only a summary of this letter exists in one of Hulft's communications to the governor-general and council. See Koloniale Archief, Algemeen Rijksarchief [hereafter cited as KA., A.R.], Doc. IIOOA, fols. 878-884. Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 152, also contains a synopsis. 43. Letter to governor-general and council, K.A., A.R., Doc. IIOOA, fols. 878-884. 44. Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 153. 45. Goonewardena, Dutch Power, p. 171.

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154-155

46. Joseph Tissanier, S.J., Relation du Voyage du P.J. Tissanier depuis la France jusq'au royaume de Tunquin, avec ce qui s'est passé ... dans cette Mission durant les années 1658-1663 (Paris, 1663), p. 30. There appear to have been only about thirty deaths on the trip. See also Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, II, 939; Noticias dos Estados da India, extrahidas de varios livros e papéis manuscriptos, sendo Уice-Rey dos mesmos D. Manoel Lobo da Silveira, por ordem do Dezor Luiz Affonso Dantas no anno de 1727, in Serie Azul, MS. No. 58, Biblioteca da Academia das Ciências, Lisbon [hereafter cited as A.C.], fols. 29 verso, 30. See Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 282. It is an interesting sideUght that the Council of State in Portugal had talked of sending really effective aid with Sarzedas, and then they were quite unable to produce it. See Pareceres do Estilo do Estado 1654-1655, A.C.C., fol. 3 verso. 47. Noticias dos Estados da India, A.C., fol. 31. Sarzedas bore a patent from the King, addressed "to the person or persons who might be governing India" ordering them to recognize him as viceroy. See Livros das Monedes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 24, fol. 336. 48. This "King" seemingly was the one mentioned by Ericeira as having come to Portugal in 1645 to seek help against his brother, who, it was said, had usurped his throne in the Maldive Islands. During his trip to Portugal, he served the Portuguese army in the Alentejo. He must have returned to Goa thereafter and become a public charge, as had Wijayapala. The same individual must have seen the Dutch factor in Calicoylan either before or after his visit to Portugal and applied for V.O.C, transportation to Europe. The Dutch seemed less impressed with him than the Portuguese, for they turned him away, apparently because his haughtiness offended them. See Roelofsz, Vestiging, pp. 147-148; also Boletim da Filmoteca, VIII (1963), 228.

49. Noticias dos Estados da Ìndia, A.C., fol. 60 verso. 50. Documentos Avulsos Relativos à India, A.H.U., Caixa No. 24, doc. of Apr. 6, 1660; see also Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 193; Ericeira, Portugal Restaurado, I, 859; and Foster, English Factories, pt. 1655-1660, p. 55. 51. Noticias dos Estados da India, A.C., fol. 55; Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 387-426. 52. Livro das Moncöes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 25, fols. 432,432 verso; Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 409. This aid neared Colombo just after the unsuccessful attack, but was turned away by the Dutch blockaders. See Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 153. 53. Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 423. 54. Documentos Avulsos Relativos à India, A.H.U., Caixa No. 24, doc. of Feb. 8, 1656, in Fitzler (ed.). Cérco de Columbo, pp. 168-169n.; see also Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 426-431. Little is known about Dom Rodrigo Lobo da Silveira, except that he was born in the last decade of the sixteenth century and was made first count of Sarzedas by Philip III of Portugal (IV of Spain) in the 1630s. At the time of the Restoration, as captain of the Portuguese garrison of Tangier, he remained loyal to Philip until the pro-Portuguese populace deposed him. Yet, Ericeira implied that this action was inspired by conscience, not disloyalty, since he merely felt himself bound to that monarch by whom he had been invested with the city's

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care. Ericeira noted that Sarzedas, having thus stuck it out, then felt his duty had been fulfilled and willingly delivered himself and all his family into one of the new Portuguese King's prisons. John IV did not leave him to languish there very long, however, but honored him and named him president of the Cámara of Lisbon and a councillor of war. At all times thereafter he seems to have enjoyed the fuU royal confidence. When it was announced that he was to become the next viceroy of India, Ericeira called his nomination "an appointment that forecast the salvation of that state, for all the virtues and qualities coalesce in the person of the count, who might revive the dead memories of viceroys of old." Ericeira, Portugal Restaurado, I, 858-859. One assumes that only a hyperconscientious and respected man could have been forgiven so readily, and that, once invested with the Estado da Ìndia, Sarzedas could be expected to apply himst.. to the viceregal job with all his might. See note 56, below, for more evidence suggestive of Sarzedas' zeal. 55. He was still signing letters two days before his death. 56. Relacäo de Novas da India Oriental desta Moncho de 1955, Codex CV/2-15, A.D.E., fol. 57 verso. Anyone who died rather suddenly in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries was rumored to have been poisoned. Sarzedas was no exception, and certainly his policies were as unpopular as those of Obidos, who was deposed. But all proof for this assertion is lacking, and it is most reasonable to assume that malaria kiUed Sarzedas, as it can do very swiftly, following a brief coma. Sarzedas had previously been unwell, for in October and November of 1655 he complained of swelling in his left arm and of fever. But he apparently recovered from this ailment, which was probably an infection. His diary ceases on January 1, 1656, thirteen days before his death. Father Tissanier believed that Sarzedas died of fever, brought on by overwork. After remarking that sicknesses in Goa were prevalent at the time he and Sarzedas arrived in August, 1655, he wrote: "This good seigneur, having upon his shoulders a great many affairs of prime importance, in a city where the heat is so dangerous, and being of an age where he needed his rest, fell sick of a fever that carried him off in a few days, at the beginning of the year 1656. It was remarked that this seigneur, a little before his Ulness, courted death through his activities, so worthy of a Christian viceroy." He went on to say: "at death, there was scarcely found in his house the money to pay his staff and a part of his funeral expenses." Tissanier was hardly interested in telhng his readers much about the political activities of the Portuguese, but his observation provides additional proof that Sarzedas was working too hard on affairs of state to devote much time to the usual chicancery. See Tissanier, Relation du Voyage, pp. 35, 41-42. Another testimonial to Sarzedas' virtue comes from a patriotic fidalgo, Bartolomen da Vasconcelos da Cunha, who wrote of Sarzedas' death as "a loss of one of the greatest men India ever had, because the honesty, zeal, and determination of this fidalgo had revived the golden age and we had found a viceroy whom this state badly needed." See Fitzler (ed.). Cerco de Columbo, pp. 199-200. 57. Votes were seemingly cast for him because he had been royally designated as an alternate successor in the past. See Relacäo de Novas da India Oriental, Codex CV/2-15, A.D.E., fol. 57; for more details on the voting, see Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 427-431.

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Notes to Pages

156-163

58. Livra das Monçôes, A.H.E.I. and F.U.P., Vol. 23-В, fol. 272; see also ibid., Vol. 24, fols. 280, 296. 59. Relacäo do Cérco, Codex 51-VIII-7, B.A., fol. 147, in Fitzler (ed.). Cerco de Columba, pp. 171-172. 60. Ribeiro, Historie Tragedy, p. 196. 61. Saar, Ost-Indianische ... Kriegs-Dienst, p. 130. 62. Goonewardena, Dutch Power, p. 173. 63. Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 185. 64. Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, III, 967. 65. Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 220. Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, III, 974, gave a less probable text. 66. Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 220. 67. See Saar Ost-Indianische ... Kriegs-Dienst, pp. 130-131. 68. These are (somewhat arbitrary averages) derived from the estimates of Queiroz, Ribeiro, and Baldaeus. 69. Ribeiro, Historic Tragedy, p. 213. 70. Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, III, 971; see also Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 214. 71. According to the anonymous writer of a relacäo entitled Novas de India desde Febreiro de 1656, Codex 49-V-14, B.A., fol. 110 verso, in Fitzler (ed.). Cèreo de Columba, p. 196. 72. Queiroz, Conquest af Ceylon, III, 992. 73. Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 164. The Brohier translation, here quoted, must be used with caution. 74. See C. R. Boxer, critical introduction to The Tragic History of the Sea (London: Hakluyt Society, 1957), p. 2. 75. Anonymous writer in Relacäo do Cèreo, Codex 52-VII-9, B.A., in Fitzler (ed.). Cèreo de Columba, p. 180. Incidentally, the same relacäo is carried in a contemporary Dutch translation in the original (1672) edition of Baldaeus, i.e., the Beschryving der Oast Indische Kuste Malabar en Charamandel. It is located immediately following the section on Ceylon, on page numbered 105. (But the pagination is irregular, and there is at least one other page 105 in the book.) It is entitled "Aanhangsel. Belegeringh van Columbo, door de Portugezen beschreven." It continues on through a page numbered 132. Please note that the Brohier translation of the Ceylon section of Baldaeus does not include this appended account. 76. Fitzler (ed.). Cèrea de Columbo, p. 180; cf. Novas da India, Codex 49-V-14, B.A., fol. 110, in Fitzler (ed.), Cèreo de Columbo, p. 195. This writer says they were badly provisioned, and many were also sick. 77. Novas da India, Codex 49-V-14, B.A., fol. 190 verso, in Fitzler (ed.), Cèreo de Calumbo, p. 195. Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 165, confirms this. 78. Letter of Dom Manuel Mascarenhas (not to be confused with Manuel Mascarenhas Homem) to John IV, Sept. 12, 1656, printed in Fitzler (ed.), Cèrea de Calumbo, pp. 189-191. This document, formerly in the Documentos Avulsas Relativos à India of the A.H.U., was stolen and sold to the British Museum, who own it now. B.M., Add. MSS. 41996, fols. 82-83 verso. See also doc. of Nov. 26, 1655, Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 413-419, which corroborates Mascarenhas' statement that Sarzedas had been encountering difficulty with his council.

201

Notes to Pages

164-166

79. Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 422. In this consulta only one соипсШог, Dom Femando Manuel, supported Sarzedas' view. 80. Ericeira, Portugal Restaurado, I, 882. 81. Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," pp. 217-218. Raja Sinha, after all, had had eight years to study Homem. 82. As causas por que Ceüäo se perdeu, e as mais fortalezas do estado. Codex 50-V-38, B.A., Doc. 22. It is undated and appears to be a first draft. 83. Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, III, 437. Baldaeus, "True and Exact Description," p. 193, confirms such a departure on February 8, 1656. 84. Queiroz, Conqwesi о/Cei/ion, III, 968. 85. See Documentos Avulsos Relativos à India, A.H.U., Caixa No. 24, docs, of Jan. 24, 1657, and Mar. 6, 1660. The latter document read in part: "helping with the reinforcements for Ceylon and other special matters of service to Your Majesty, searching for money to accomplish these ends through his own personal credit; only to suffer on this account imprisonment and other vexations instead of praise." 86. Queiroz, Conquest of Ceylon, III, 968. For two other such accusations, see As causas por que Ceiläo se perdeu. Codex 50-V-32, В.Α., Doc. 22, quoted above; and the Novas da India, in Fitzler (ed.). Cérco de Columbo, p. 196. 87. Ericeira, Portugal Restaurado, I, 882. 88. King John died in 1656, the treasury was low, and no one could be sure the Dutch, ejected in 1654, would stay out of Brazil. See letter from Francisco de Brito Feire to John IV, Sept. 2, 1654, Codex 50-V-38, B.A., Doc. 6f, fols. 307-309 and versos.

202

Bibliography I. Archival Materials Archivum Historicum Societatis lesu, Rome Goa Doc. No. 67, Breue relucho do procedimento que о viso-rey D. Phelippe Mascarenhas teue com a Religiäo da Companhia de Jesu na Provincia de Goa. Arquivo da Casa de Cadaval, Muge Memorias do Conselho do Estado Anno de 1654-1655, Codex К-VIII6b, 1081. Papéis Varios, tomo 2, Codex K-VIII-lb, 1091. Relacäo Verdadra pa Sua Mge Res do Motim e a Lauantamto q o pouo da Cide de Goa fez pa desapossar da gouernanca do estado da India ao Conde de Obidos V Rey. Pareceres do Estilo do Estado 1654-1655, Codex K-VIII-6a, 1049. Note: Identical manuscript volumes but pagination varies. Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon Consultas Mixtas, Codices 13, 14, and 15. Documentos Avulsos (ou Soltos) Relativos à India; Caixas Nos. 4; 13-24. Documentos Avulsos (ou Soltos) Relativos à Macau; Сагха No. 1. Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon Documentos Remetidos da India ou Livras das Mongóes, Vols. 13, 47-62. Manuscritos da Livraria, No. 1699; Assuncáo, Pe. Manuel, Recopilacäo breue das gerras da Ilha de Ceilâo e da Rebeliam dos Leuantados, morte do geral Costantino de Sa de Noronha e perda de todo о arrayal cò outras couzas q succederâo. Papéis do Conselho da Guerra, Maco 9. Biblioteca da Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Lisbon Serie Azul, MS. No. 58, Noticias dos Estados da India, extrahidas de varios livras e papéis manuscriptos, sendo Vice-Rey dos mesmos D. Manoel Lobo da Silveira, por ordem do Dezor Luiz Affansa Dantas no anno de 1727. Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon Codex 50-V-38, Doc. 22, As Causas por que Ceiläa se perdeu, e as mais fortalezas do estado. Codex 50-V-38, Doc. 27, Capia de hua carta q о pe Joäo Camelo Reitor do Collegio de Columba escreueo ao pe Lucas Correa Superior de Manar e em sua absencia a qualquer outra pe daquella Ilha Escrita em 26 de Obro de 1655. Codex 50-V-38, Doc. 67, Letter of Sept. 2, 1654, from Francisco de Brito Freire to John IV. Codex 51-VIII-40, Doc. 21, Parecer que о conde de Vidigueira Vizorrey mandau pedir ao capitäa geral Constantino de Ssa de Noronha perhua carta que se nos leo as pessoas do consso da Guerra ao Reina de candea primeira parecer he do disaua das sete corlas Luis Teixeira de Maceda. Codex 51-XII-42, Doc. 9, Aduertencias de mta importancia ha Ma-

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210

Index

Abdul Haklm, 146 Adam's Peak, 21 Aden, 92 AdU Shah (of Bijapur), 145-146, 154 Aguada, 90, 113 Ahmadagar, 92 Akbar, the Great Mogul, 92 Akuressa, 76 Albuquerque, Governor Femâo de, 13, 15 Albuquerque, Jorge de, 15 Albuquerque, Viceroy Matías de, 7 Alelxo, D., 23-24, 27, 28 Almeida, Francisco de Brito, 31 Almeida, Captain-General D. Jorge de, 33 Alutgama, 124 Angola, 116-117 Anguruwatota, 125, 130 Antwerp, Portuguese feitoria in, 92 Arandora, 130 Aranha, Captain Antonio Mendes, 147 Aratchis, 18 Areca nut, 4 Assuncâo, Frei Manuel de, 18-19,23,2627, 33 Ataíde, D. Alvaro de, 132 Ataíde, D. Luís de, 92, 95 Aveiras, Count of (D. Joáo da SUva Telo de Meneses), 51-53, 67, 70; motives for his diplomatic stand, 72-74; sends reinforcements to Ceylon, 78; conciliatory toward Raja Sinha, 79-80; writes King despairingly, 80; strategy with Maetsuyker, 81; signs truce with V.O.C., 82; relieved of command, 83; concludes truce, 102; to succeed Mascarenhas, 110; dies, 110 Axim, 63 Azevedo, Captain-General and Viceroy D. Jerónimo de, 8-9 BaduUa, 20, 22-24 Baltasar, D., 23-24, 28 Barcelor (Basrúr), 122 Bardez, 90, 145-146 Barrete, Joâo Franco, 55-56 Barreto, Martim Velho, 131, 165 Barriga, Lopo, 126 Bassein, 146 Basto, Frei Pedro de, 94 Batticaloa, 10-11, 16, 36-37, 39 Bengo, 63 Bemardes, Joáo, 25 Bicker, Comelis, 62 Bidar, 92 Bijapur, 92, 145 Binnenhof, 56 Blockades, Dutch: of Goa, 36, 40, 51, 75, 80, 82, 94, 121-122; of Colombo, 132, 142, 163 Boreal, Pieter: demands dissawanies,

69-70; makes compromise offer, 71; visits Raja Sinha II, 75 Boschouwer, Marcellus, 12 Boxer, Charles R., 102-103 BrazU, 61-64, 71, 73, 74, 94, 103, 106107, 116-117, 121, 168 Brazil Company, 103 Brito, Diego Mendes de, 67; counters Boreel's arguments, 71 Bulategama, 130 Cabo, 90, 113, 141 Cabrai, Manuel de Sousa, 154 Caen, Admiral Anthonie, 40-41 Cambolim (Cambalam), 122 Cannanore, 146 Cardamom, 4-5 Caron, Francois: arrives in Ceylon, 75; lays plans to recapture Negombo, 75; recaptures Negombo, 77-78; rebuffed at Kelani River, 78; strengthens Negombo, 79 Castro, D. Brás de: whitewashed, 97; characterized, 104; heads errant relief expedition, 124; nominated possible successor to Hpmem, 131; describes overthrow of Óbidos, 134-135; assumes control of government, 136; account of overthrow rejected, 136; stirs up dissension, 137; relieved of charge, 137; flees Goa, 137; lax war effort, 143-145; abandons Onor, 146; relinquishes power, 154; arrested, 154; dies, 154; document defends, 155 Castro, D. Joâo de, 95 Castro, D. Pedro de, 154 Catalonia, revolt in, 49 Catarina, Dona (Princess and Queen of Kandy), 7-8 Chuleas, 44 Chaul, 52, 119 Choráo, 90 Cinnamon, 4; in V.O.C, treaty, 38-39; pricing, 40; dispute over districts, 6872, 82 Cochin, 33, 119, 133, 155-156 Colombo: description, 5, 150-151; besieged, 31-32, 151-153, 156-160; bastions, 150, 151-152, 157-160; gates, 150-153, 156-158; surrenders, 160 Combarjua, 90 Comorin, Cape, 10, 147, 161 Conceiçâo, Frei Antonio da, 122,134,136 Cosmo," D., 23-25, 28 Costa, Antonio da, 126, 128 Costa, Gaspar da, 126, 128 Costa, Jerónimo Nunes da, 118 Costa, D. Joáo da, 117 Coster, WUlem Jacobsz, 36-37, 39, 44-45

211

Index Council of State (Conselho do Estado), 145 Council of War (Conselho da Guerra), 117 Coutlnho, Viceroy D. Joáo, 9 Coutinho, Ruy Lopes, 126 Couto, Diogo do, 91-94, 96, 98-99, 112 Croes, Sybrant de, 123 Cunha, Rui Dias da, 146 Danish East India Company, 12 Dharmapala, D. Joäo (King of Kotte), 6-8 Diàlogo do Soldado Pràtico (of Diogo do Couto), 91, 96 Diemen, Governor-General Anthonie van: proposes to lead force in Ceylon, 41; angry at truce, 45-46; diplomatic strategy and instructions to Boreel, 67, 69-70; astonished at Boreel's account, 75; sends Maetsuyker to Goa, 81 ; death noted, 105; scheme for secret defensive alliance against Raja Sinha, 105 Dissawes, 18 Diu, 92 Divar, 90 Dividas velhas, 99-100, 109-110, 112 Documentos Remetidos da India, 101 East India Company (of United Provinces): visit of de Weert to Ceylon, 11; rebuffs Boschouwer, 12; approached by Raja Sinha II, 35; attacks Batticaloa, 37; makes treaty with Raja Sinha, 3739; quarrels with Raja Sinha II, 39-45; attacks Trincomalee, 40-41; attacks Negombo, 41-42; murder of Coster, 45; loses Negombo, 45; opposes truce, 58; monogram of, Bln.; compared with West India Company, 61-62; refusal to negotiate with Sáo José and Mendes de Brito, 67; demands on Galle, 69-70; Boreel's negotiations, 70-72; resumes war and recaptures Negombo, 77-78; Maetsuyker's negotiations, 81-83; offers a defensive alUance to Portuguese ambassador, 105; tells Portuguese of revolt in Brazil, 106; does not resume war, 107; hostilities with Kandy, 107108; reconciled with Kandy, 108; reasons why war was not resumed until expiration of truce, 113; war resumed, 119-121; squadron under van Goens destroys Portuguese vessels, 142-143; expects to invade Goa, 145-146; damages Portuguese convoy, 147; weakness in Ceylon, 147-148; sends massive reinforcements under Hulft, 148; retakes Kalutara, 149; defeats Figueira de Serpe, 149-150; lays siege to Colombo, 150-153; promises Colombo to Raja Sinha, 153; continues siege, 156160; mounts final assault, 159-160; accepts surrender, 160

212

Eckhout, Albert, 20 Elvas, 55 Ericeira, Count of (D. Luis de Meneses), 110, 136-137, 164, 166 Falcato, Jerónimo de, 154 Fana, Luís Cabrai de, 20 Farla, Captain Sancho de, 50, 52 Farla e Sousa, Manuel de, 29-30 Fatalidade Histórica da Ilha de Ceiläo (of Joáo Ribeiro), 104 Fidalgos, grades of, 197 Figueira de Serpe, Gaspar de: leads mutineers, 128; marches on Colombo, 128; becomes real ruler in Colombo, 129; defeats Raja Sinha, 129; defeats Dutch, 130; evacuates Anguruwatota, 130; defeats Raja Sinha, 130; made field commander, 133, 148; called for, 149; fails to stop Dutch, 149-150; hunted by Homem, 165 Frederik Hendrik, Prince of OrangeNassau, 58-59 Freitas, Ambròsio de, 16, 17 Freitas, Frei Serafim de, 53 Galle, 3, 5, 10, 40, 43-44,68-72,130,133, 149 Gemstones, 4 Genoa, 92 Gil, Captain Manuel, 150 Goa: acclamation of John IV, 51-52; location and description, 87-91; private wealth and declining power, 9192; protected unintentionally by Akbar, 92; nature of trade, 92-93; administration and bureaucracy, 94-99; effect of blockades on, 94, 113; sickness in, 94, 113; inequality and competition, 96100 Goens, Admiral Rijklof van, 142, 143 Golconda, 92, 112 Goonewardena, Karunadasa W„ 40, 43 Gujerat, 92 HalmaduUa Pass, 22 Helmont, Adriaan, 36 Henriques, D. Pedro, 154 Herkules, 44 Heyn, Admiral Piet, 62 Holland, 58 Homem, Manuel Mascarenhas: rebuffed by Maetsuyker, 106; proposes war on Kandy, 107; detains Croes, 123; blamed for weakness of fortification, 123; whitewashed, 123; and errant relief expedition, 124; complaints by, 124; prepares to defend Colombo, 125; rumored to be traitor, 125; rejects advice, 125; reacts to rebellion, 126; few soldiers remain loyal to, 127; seeks to be recalled, 127; his pardon rejected by soldiers, 127; accuses Jesuits, 127;

Index prepared to fight, 127; rejects pleas of populace, 128; imprisoned, 129; compared to Obldos, 133; mentioned in Brás de Castro's letter to King, 135; elected governor of India, 156; inactivity, 156; sabotages relief to Colombo, 164-166; death, 166 Hondius, Jodochus, 3 Houtman, Comelis, 10 Hulft, Gerard: arrives in Ceylon and takes Kalutara, 148-149; defeats Figueira de Serpe, 149-150; storms Colombo, 151; wounded, 152; letter to Sousa Coutinho, 158; kiUed, 158 Idalgashinna, 22 Idrumaraturi, Jerónimo, 23 Ins. Ceilan, incolis Tenarisin 3-5, 10

dicitur,

Jaffna, Jaffnapatam, 4, 14, 100-101, 112 Jayawira Bandara, 7-8 Jerónimo, D. (alias Raja Pasha), 24 Jesuits, 111, 127-128 Johan Maurits of Nassau, 20, 63 John III, King of Portugal, 95 John IV, King of Portugal: plots revolt, 49-50; accession, 50; acclamation in Mocambique, 51; acclamation in India, 51-52; gives priority to domestic defense, 53-54; decides upon offensive against Spain, 54; sends ambassadors, 55; delays ratifying treaty of June 12, 1641, 63; quoted on attitude toward war with Dutch, 64; tells Aveiras to be cautious, 74; writes Goa, 95-96; proposes an East India Company for Portugal, 103; fears Dutch to evade Asiatic truce, 106-107; seeks rapprochement with Raja Sinha, 108; decries absence of Goan financial reports, 109; reappoints Aveiras to succeed Mascarenhas, 110; appoints triumvirate to succeed Mascarenhas, 110; urged to finance relief armada for Ceylon, 113114; backs insurgents against W.I.C., 114; submits treaty to councils, 116; inclined to favor treaty, 116; upset by councils' rejections of Dutch demands, 116-117; expresses concern for Ceylon, 118;, sent letter concerning overthrow of Óbidos, 134-136; presides over Council of State deliberation rejecting D. Brás de Castro's account, 136 Jol, Admiral Cornells, 63 Kalu River, 20, 125, 147 Kalutara, 125-126, 147-149 Kanara, 122, 132, 145 Kandy, 5-14. See also Raja Sinha II Katunayaka Lagoon, 42 Kelani River, 18, 78, 130 Kittensteyn, Jacob van, 133

Knox, Robert, 33-34 Konappu Bandara, see Wimaladharmasuriya Konijn, 147 Kotte, 4, 6, 7-9 Kumarasinha, 34 Lafreri, António, 3 Lascarins, 18 Leeuw, 147 Linhares, Third Count of (D. Miguel de Noronha), 16-17, 33, 95 Linschoten, Jan Huighen van, 87-88, 99 Lis, André de, 51 Lis, Captain Manuel de, 50-51 Livra dos Segredos No. 1, 101 Livras das Mongóes, 101 Lomba, Frei Afonso Dias da, 31 Luanda, 63 Lucasz, PhUlips, 41-42 Machado, Cahsto, 26 Maetsuyker, Johan, 81-82, 105-107 Malacca, 41, 45, 92, 168 Malwana, 9, 31, 126 Manapar, 161 Manar, 132 Mandovi River, 90, 113 Mangalore, 122 Manuel, D., 28, 31 Manuel I, King of Portugal, 91 Maranhäo, 63, 116 Margarida, Duchess of Mantua, 50 Mart, Captain Adriaan van der, 161-162 Mártires, Archbishop Frei Francisco dos, 110 Mascarenhas, D. António, 41, 44; arrives before Negombo, 77; killed, 77-78 Mascarenhas, D. Felipe: brings Colombo help, 33; recaptures Negombo, 45; disputes with Boreel, 69-70; sends brother to reinforce Negombo, 77; stops Dutch at Kelani River, 78; besieges Negombo, 80; becomes viceroy, 83; writes King about Mocambique, 95; guilty of enrichment at crown's expense, 100; opposes formation of a Portuguese India Company, 103; presses for restitution of Negombo, 105-106; reassuring attitude, 109; fears Dutch will break truce, 110; seeks to be recalled, 110; succeeded by triumvirate, 110; dies, 110; diamond collection of, 110111 ; grudge against Jesuits, 111; memorial against, 111-112; îaces fidalgo dissension, 137; relieves D. Brás de Castro, 137 Mascarenhas, D. Fernando (First Count of Serém), 117 Masulipatam, 12 Matara, 69 Mattingly, Garrett, 61 Maurits, Prince of Orange-Nassau, 10-11

213

Index Mayadunne, King of Sitawaka, 6-7 Melo, Duarte de Figueiredo de, 154 Melo, Esteváo Scares de, 154 Melo de Castro, Diego de, 35-37 Melo de Castro, Francisco de: made Goan triumvir, 110; nominated successor to Homem, 131 ; sails into Colombo, 132; offers pardon, 132; releases Homem, 132; recognizes Figueira's talents, 133; presence probably inhibits conspiracy, 134; steps down as Ceylon captain-general, 147; fights Dutch, 160; leads Portuguese troops in surrender, 160 Mendonca Furtado, Tristao de: arrives in The Hague, 57; initial proposals, 57-58; Dutch counterproposals, 58; negotiates treaty, 60 Menikkadawara, 9, 18-20, 33, 126 Mercator, Gerardus, 3-4 Mesa de Relacäo (High Court of Goa), 134, 156 Meyden, Adriaan van der, 133, 149, 159 Misericòrdia, Santa Casa de, 135, 138 Mocambique, 50, 95, 119, 168 Mocquet, Jean, 99 Monsanto, D. Rodrigo, 154 Monteiro, Dr. Paulo Femandes de, 116 Montijo, 55 Mota Galvào, Antonio da, 77 Mudaliyars, 18 Municipal Council of Goa (Senado da Cámara de Goa): reports disease and poverty, 113; reports death of Sarzedas, 155 Muscat, 95, 110, 113 Mutwal, 78, 151 Namunakuli, Mount, 23 Negapatam, 118, 128 Negombo: described, 5; strategic importance, 41; captured by Dutch, 42; recaptured by Portuguese, 45; Dutch attempt fails, 68; recaptured by Dutch, 77-78; besieged by Portuguese, 80; return sought by Mascarenhas, 105106; return ordered by States General, 108 News from India since February, 1656, 162 Nisa, Marquis of, 115 Noronha, D. Gil Eanes de, 51, 131 Nossa Senhora da Quietacäo, 50, 52 Nassa Senhora de Nazaré, 142-143 Nossa Senhora do Rosàrio, 50 Obidos, First Count of (D. Vasco Mascarenhas): arrives, 119, 121; bemoans state of Portuguese India, 121; prepares relief force, 122; authority weakened, 123,141; hears of mutiny against Homem, 130-131; considers the mu-

214

tineers traitors, 131; argues with Sousa Coutinho, 131; outfits mission against Muscat, 131; nominates successor to Homem, 131; initiates campaign against Dutch, 132; reports to King, 132; compared to Homem, 133; makes enemies, 134; seeks to order finances, 134; overthrown, 134-139; imprisonment order, 136; writes brother, 137, 141 ; need for forced loans, 138 Odemira, Seventh Count of (D. Francisco de Faro), 116, 145 Olivares, Count-Duke of (D. Báltasar de Zúñlga), 49-50 Olivença, 54 Omani Arabs, 95, 110, 113 Gnor (Honawar), 122, 132, 143, 146 Ormuz, 110, 113 Overseas Council (Conselho Ultramarino), 73, 113 Panjim, 90 Papel Forte (of Frei Antonio Vieira), 116 Pasdum Korale, 125 Pauw, 81 Pereira, José Pinto, 103 Pernambuco, 63, 106 PhUip II (of Spain) and I (of Portugal), 6 Pina, Simáo de, 26 Pinto, Luís Gomes, 20, 23-26 Pinto Ribeiro, Dr. Joao, 49 Plancius, Petrus, 3, 10 Post, Frans, 20 Puhcat, 36 Pyrad de Laval, François, 5, 90-91, 99 Quast, Admiral Hendrik M., 52 Queiroz, Frei Fernáo, 5, 13, 17, 27, 165, 167, 168 Quilon, 161 Raad van Indie, 105 Rachol River, 90 Raja Slnha I, King of Sitawaka, 7, 33 Raja Süiha II, King of Kandy: accession and negotiations with Dutch, 33-38; quarrels with Dutch, 41-45; troubles with Wijayapala, 68; agrees to truce making by Boreel, 70; complained to Caron, 79; encourages defection from Dutch, 79; resents Dutch failure to consult him, 107; releases Portuguese ambassador, 107; reestablishes friendship with Dutch, 108; defeated by Figueira de Serpe, 129, 130; helps Dutch, 133; possible actions worry Dutch commanders, 133; confines role to raiding, 133; spums Sousa Coutinho's offer, 153; replies to Sousa Coutinho, 158; predicts Homem will betray Colombo, 164 Ratnapura, 20

Index Rayigam Korale, 125 Reyniersz, Karel, 35-36 Ribeiro, Joào de, 27, 104, 123, 125, 126, 128-129, 132, 149, 157, 167, 168 Richelieu, Cardinal (Armand Jean du Plessis), 49,55-56 Ruwanella, 9 Ruyghaver, Jacob, 63 Sá e Benevides, Salvador Correla de, 64, 114, 117 Sá e Meneses, Joào Rodrigues de, 17, 27, 29 Sá e Meneses de Noronha, Captain-General D. Constantino de, 12, 18-20 Saar, Johann Jacob, 142, 152, 157 Sabaragamua, 20, 21, 33, 126 St. Amant, Captain Walraven de, 45 Salamander, 70, 75 Salazar, Diogo de, 154 Salcete, 51, 90, 142 Saldanha, Viceroy Aires de, 9 Sanches, Cipriano, 3, 4 Santiago e Sào Felipe, 142 Santo Antonio, 143 Sao Joào Fèrola, 142-143 Sào José, 142 Sào José, Frei Concaio Veloso de, 67, 105-106 Sào Sebastiào, 151 Sào Tomé Island, 63 Sarzedas, First Count of (D. Rodrigo Lobo da Silveira): arrives from Portugal and provisions Colombo, 153; arrests D. Brás de Castro, 154; prepares relief for Ceylon, 155; dies, 155-156 Seixas Cabrelra, Francisco de, 161-162, 164 Seixas Cabreira, Lancarote de, 17, 31 Senarat, King of Kandy, 9, 12-13, 23, 27, 31 Sergipe d'el-Rei, 63 Setubal, salt from, 57 Seven Korales, 129, 133 Silveira, Francisco Rodrigues de, 76, 92, 98 Sinapa Naik, 122, 143, 146 Sitawaka, 7, 20 Sotomaior, Francisco da Silva, 131 Sotomaior, José de Chaves, 135-137 Sousa, Pero Lopes de, 7-8 Sousa, Simâo de, 161 Sousa Coutinho, Antonio de; appointed triumvir, 110; argues with Obidos, 131 ; suggests successors to Homem, 131; arrives in Colombo, 147; reoccupies Kalutara, 147; sends Figueira de Serpe to intercept Dutch, 149; offers Raja

Sinha lands and warns him, 153; implores Raja Sinha, 158; last appeal for help, 158 Sousa Coutinho, Francisco de, 106, 114115, 117 Spilbergen, Admiral Joris van, 10-11 States General of the United Provinces: negotiations with Mendonca Furtado, 56-60; orders restitution of Negombo, 108; intervention against Portuguese alluded to, 114-115; negotiations with F, de Sousa Coutinho, 115 Tavemier, Jean Baptiste, 93-94, 98-99, 110-111 Teixeira de Macedo, Luis, 24-25 Teodosio, D. (plotter), 23-24 Teodosio, D. (Portuguese Infante), 52 Thyssen, Jan, 36, 68; lays plans to recapture Negombo, 75; authorized to mistreat Kandyan agents, 79; agrees to make public secret Luso-Batavian alliance, 107; declares war on Kandy, 107; hesitates, 107-108; relieved of command, 108 Trincomalee, 11-13, 16, 36, 40-41,43-44 Tuticorin, 162-163 Uva, 13, 23 V.O.C., see East India Company VaHe, Pietro della, 99 Vasconcelos, Miguel de, 50 Vengurla, Bijapur, 35, 142 Venice, 91-92 Vieira, Frei Antonio: pleads with Cortes, 54; advocates Portuguese company similar to the Dutch company, 103; persuades F. de Sousa Coutinho to stay on in Holland, 115; carries treaty to Lisbon, 115; paraphrases John IV, 116; writes Papel Forte, 116 Vinck, Marten, 75 Vlissingen, 161-162 W.I.C., see West India Company Weert, Sebald de, 11-12 Weligama, 76 West India Company (of United Provinces), 61-64, 114-115 Westerwolt, Admiral Adam, 36-39, 42 Wijayapala (Prince of Kandy), 34, 45, 68, 108

Wimaladharmasuriya, 7-9, 10-11 With, Admiral Witte de, 114 Zuari River, 90 Zydeworm, 143

215