Goa Falls to Portugal, 1510

From Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire, by Roger Crowley (Random House, 2015), Kindle pp. 249-252:

AT THE ISLAND OF Anjediva, Albuquerque was surprised to meet a small squadron of four ships bound for faraway Malacca, on the Malay Peninsula, under the command of Diogo Mendes de Vasconcelos. Manuel had airily ordered this insignificant force to conquer the place. Some of the financing had been provided by Florentine investors; their representatives included Giovanni da Empoli, who had accompanied Albuquerque on an earlier voyage. Empoli found the governor “very displeased at the defeat sustained in Goa and also about many other things.”

Empoli’s surviving account, written probably two years later during a bout of scurvy while becalmed off the coast of Brazil, is sour and peevish. He recounts how Albuquerque was obsessed with Goa, determined to return and take it as soon as possible; he needed all the forces he could muster, including the squadron bound for Malacca, and, given the wearisome ordeal in the Mandovi River, he needed to be sly about his tactics in order to get consent from his commanders. Albuquerque had seen the potential of the island, and he feared that the return of a Rume fleet could render it an impregnable base against Portuguese interests. He stressed the approaching threat of a new armada. To Empoli, the Egyptian menace had become a phony war: “the news about the Rume was what had been expected for many years past, but the truth had never been known…at present such news could not be considered as certain because of the lack of credibility on the part of the Muslims.” Privately, he accused Albuquerque of concocting letters, with the aid of Malik Ayaz in Diu to bolster his case.

Whatever the truth of this, Albuquerque quickly managed to reason, bully, or cajole the fleet, including the Malacca squadron, into a new strike. Given the sensitivity of the Portuguese factions in Cochin and Cannanore, this was a considerable feat. Word from the ever-alert Timoji informed him that Adil Shah had left Goa to fight new wars with Vijayanagar; the moment was right. Two months of frenetic refitting and reprovisioning readied the fleet. At a council in Cochin on October 10 he imposed his will on the captains: let those who would follow him, follow. Those who refused must give their explanations to the king. The matter of Malacca and the Red Sea would be rapidly returned to afterward. Again, by sheer force of personality, and some threats, he carried the day. Diogo Mendes de Vasconcelos, with the reluctant Florentines in tow, agreed to postpone the visit to Malacca. Even the mutineers in the Ruy Dias episode, who had preferred to stay in prison, were released and joined up. On October 16, Albuquerque was writing a letter of justification to the king, explaining yet again why he persisted with Goa: “You will see how good it is, Your Highness, that if you are lord of Goa you throw the whole realm of India into confusion … there is nowhere on the coasts as good or secure as Goa, because it’s an island. If you lost the whole of India you could reconquer it from there.” This time it was not just a matter of conquest. Goa was to be utterly purged of a Muslim presence.

On the following day he set sail with nineteen ships and sixteen hundred men. By November 24, the fleet was back in the mouth of the Mandovi. Increasingly the Portuguese did not fight alone. Within the fractious power struggles of coastal India, they were able to pull small principalities into their orbit. The sultan of Honavar sent a reputed fifteen thousand men by land; again Timoji was able to raise four thousand and supply sixty small vessels. Adil Shah, however, had not left Goa undefended. He had placed a garrison of eight thousand men—White Turks, the Portuguese called these men, experienced mercenaries from the Ottoman empire and Iran—and a number of Venetian and Genoese renegades with good technical knowledge of cannon founding.

Deciding not to wait, on November 25, St. Catherine’s Day, Albuquerque divided his forces in three and attacked the town from two directions. What followed was not a triumph for the organized military tactics he had been trying to instill. It was the traditional berserker fighting style of the Portuguese that won the day. With cries of “St. Catherine! Santiago!” the men rushed the barricades below the town. One soldier managed to jam his weapon into the city gate to prevent it from being closed by the defenders. Elsewhere a small, agile man named Fradique Fernandes forced his spear into the wall and hoisted himself up onto the parapet, where he stood waving a flag and shouting, “Portugal! Portugal! Victory!”

Distracted by this sudden apparition, the defenders lost the tussle to slam the gate shut. It was ripped open, and the Portuguese poured inside. As the defenders fell back, they were hit by another unit, which had smashed through a second gate. The fighting was extremely bloody. The Portuguese chroniclers reported acts of demented bravery.

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The Muslim resistance collapsed. Men tried to flee from the city across the shallow fords, where many drowned. Others who made it across were met by the Hindu allies. “They came to my aid via the fords and from the mountains,” Albuquerque later wrote. “They put to the sword all the Muslims who escaped from Goa without sparing the life of a single creature.” It had taken just four hours.

Albuquerque shut the gates to stop his men intemperately chasing their enemies. Then he gave the city up to sack and massacre. The aftermath was bloody. The city was to be rid of all Muslims.