The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama (39 page)

The Signoria, the supreme council of Venice, pondered the matter for a while and finally sent its Spanish ambassador to investigate. He quickly reported back that the Portuguese king had already sent thirteen more ships to Calicut to buy spices, and another fleet stood in the port ready to depart within days. Along with his letter another arrived in Venice, this one from a certain “Dom Manuel, by the Grace of God King of Portugal and of the Algarves on this side of and beyond the sea in Africa, Lord of Guinea and of the Conquest the Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India.” Despite his grandiloquent new title it was far from obvious precisely what Manuel had conquered, but it was crystal clear that his letter was a flagrant attempt to upturn Venice’s entire way of life. Henceforth, the king provocatively proposed, the Venetians should buy their spices from Portugal, not Egypt. Since Venice’s wealth was based on its near monopoly of trade with the Islamic world, the offer to split its profits was hardly enticing, but Manuel was determined to make Venice treat Portugal with the respect due an equal.

Three days after the letters arrived, the Venetian senate voted to appoint its first ambassador to Portugal. It chose Pietro Pasqualigo, a twenty-nine-year-old product of centuries of breeding. Pasqualigo
held a doctorate from the prestigious University of Paris, and his oration to the Portuguese court—delivered in flawless Latin—was intended to impress.

What was needed was flattery, and he laid it on thick. Every age, he declared, would celebrate Manuel’s amazing deeds; for the rest of time Europeans would acknowledge that they owed a greater debt to him than to any king present or past:

People, islands, and shores unknown until now have either surrendered to your military might or, overawed by it, have voluntarily begged for your friendship. The greatest kings and unconquered nations of the past used to boast justifiably that they had extended their power to the ocean, but you, invincible King, are entitled to take pride in having advanced your power to the lower hemisphere and to the Antipodes. What is greatest and most memorable of all, you have brought together under your command peoples whom nature divides, and with your commerce you have joined two different worlds.

Manuel, he marveled with a straight face, had outdone the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Carthaginians, the Greeks, the Romans, and even Alexander himself. His high character was known throughout the world, and across Europe people and nations were giving thanks that God had sent them a king “who in his virtue, wisdom and felicity will not only protect the weary and tottering Christian Commonwealth but even extend it far and wide.”

The soft-soaping over, Pasqualigo broached the real subject of his mission. Sailing the oceans was a fine thing, he acknowledged, but “a far fairer thing it is, far more splendid and more promising for the immortality of your name, to defend the most noble part of the world from the fury of the infidels.” Naturally, he was talking not of Paradise or Jerusalem but of Venice. The republic was imperiled by that “most ferocious monster,” the fierce and powerful Turkish sultan, who was doubtless even then constructing diabolical new
weapons with which to pound Christendom. “I do not know of anything you could do or conceive that is finer, braver, or more lofty,” the ambassador wheedled away, “of anything, in short, more worthy of your godlike character and brilliant abilities.”

Venice was indeed in deadly peril. In 1499, while the republic was still recovering from the stinging naval losses it had sustained in seeing off a French invasion of Italy, the Ottomans had launched a ferocious attack with an armada of nearly three hundred ships. In an unprecedented admission of weakness, La Serenissima had conscripted its own cititzens—three of Pietro Pasqualigo’s brothers were at sea fighting the Turks—and as the war lurched from disaster to defeat it had petitioned Rome to declare a new Crusade. Venice’s novel pose as the champion of Christendom came late in the day—in 1483 the papacy had excommunicated the entire city for refusing to call off a war against an Italian duke, albeit a war that Rome had itself engineered—but the threat to Europe was undeniable and the Crusade was called. Recalling the zeal of Manuel’s forebears to fight the Turks, the young envoy framed his request as a holy war on behalf of the Christian faith against the sultan, that “pernicious destroyer of the Christian people . . . that barbarian stained with Christian blood.”

Manuel had already sent thirty-five heavily armed warships and a sizable force of men-at-arms to Venice’s aid. Like his uncle Afonso, he had even angled for an invitation to lead the new Crusade in person, though in fact the fleet arrived without the king and too late to be of much use. Officially Pasqualigo had come to convey the republic’s gratitude and to exhort Manuel to greater sacrifices. Unofficially, he was there to keep a close eye on the king’s Indian enterprise, and to assist him, he was accompanied by a squad of seasoned spies masquerading as a diplomatic delegation.

The young ambassador’s very first communiqué relayed deeply disquieting news. Two months before he had arrived, the second Portuguese fleet to reach India had returned.

“This is more important to the Venetian State than the Turkish
War or any other war that might take place,” the chastened Priuli wrote in his diary:

Now that this new route has been found by Portugal this King of Portugal will bring all the spices to Lisbon and there is no doubt that the Hungarians, the Germans, the Flemish and the French, and all the people from across the mountains who once came to Venice to buy spices with their money will now turn to Lisbon because it is nearer to their countries and easier to reach; also because they will be able to buy at a cheaper price, which is most important of all. This is because the spices that come to Venice pass through all of Syria and through the entire country of the Sultan and everywhere they pay the most burdensome duties. Likewise, in the State of Venice they pay insupportable duties, customs, and excises. Thus with all the duties, customs, and excises between the country of the Sultan and the city of Venice I might say that a thing that cost one ducat multiplies to sixty and perhaps to a hundred. . . .

Thus I conclude that if this voyage from Lisbon to Calicut continues as it has begun there will be a shortage of spices for the Venetian galleys and their merchants will be like a baby without its milk and nourishment. And in this I clearly see the ruin of the city of Venice, because lacking its traffic it will lack money from which has stemmed Venetian glory and fame.

In Lisbon, the Venetians turned up the heat. A number of Indian envoys had returned with the latest fleet to establish diplomatic relations with Portugal, and Pasqualigo’s attachés covertly approached them. The king of Portugal, they explained, was broke, and they had come from Venice to bail him out. Venice was the preeminent power in Christendom, and nothing could be done without its say-so. Besides, while Venice was purely interested in trade, the Portuguese were warmongers, and they were hell-bent on attacking India’s Muslims. The Indians began to believe that they had fallen
into a terrible trap, and their fears were alleviated only when Vasco da Gama took them on a tour of Portugal’s treasury and gave them a good look at its growing stacks of gold.

E
VEN BEFORE
V
ASCO
da Gama had returned to Portugal, Manuel had ordered celebratory processions to be held throughout the land, “returning many thanks to Our Lord.” With equal alacrity, he had dashed off a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile. As a statement of how inextricably religion and trade were entwined in the discoveries, it could hardly be bettered.

“Most high and excellent Prince and Princess, most potent Lord and Lady!” it began:

Your Highnesses already know that we had ordered Vasco da Gama, a nobleman of our household, and his brother Paulo da Gama, with four vessels to make discoveries by sea, and that two years have now elapsed since their departure. And as the principal motive of this enterprise has been, with our predecessors, the service of God our Lord . . . it pleased Him in His mercy to speed them on their route. From a message which has now been brought to this city by one of the captains, we learn that they did reach and discover India and other kingdoms and lordships bordering upon it; that they entered and navigated its sea, finding large cities, large edifices and rivers, and great populations, among whom is carried on all the trade in spices and precious stones, which are forwarded in ships (which these same explorers saw and met with in good numbers and of great size) to Mecca, and thence to Cairo, whence they are dispersed throughout the world. Of these they have brought a quantity, including cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and pepper, as well as other kinds, together with the boughs and leaves of the same; also many fine stones of all sorts, such as rubies and others. And they also came to a country in which there are mines of gold, of which, as of the spices and precious stones, they did not bring as much as they could have done, for they took no merchandise with them.

As we are aware that your Highnesses will hear of these things with much pleasure and satisfaction, we thought well to give this information. And your Highnesses may believe, in accordance with what we have learnt concerning the Christian people whom these explorers reached, that it will be possible, notwithstanding that they are not as yet strong in the faith or possessed of a thorough knowledge of it, to do much in the service of God and the exaltation of the Holy Faith, once they shall have been converted and fully fortified in it. And when they shall have thus been fortified in the faith there will be an opportunity for destroying the Moors of those parts. Moreover, we hope, with the help of God, that the great trade which now enriches the Moors of those parts, through whose hands it passes without the intervention of other persons or peoples, shall, in consequence of our regulations be diverted to the natives and ships of our own kingdom, so that henceforth all Christendom, in this part of Europe, shall be able, in a large measure, to provide itself with these spices and precious stones. This, with the help of God, who in His mercy thus ordained it, will cause our designs and intentions to be pushed with more ardor [especially as respects] the war upon the Moors of the territories conquered by us in these parts, which your Highnesses are so firmly resolved upon, and in which we are equally zealous.

And we pray your Highnesses, in consideration of this great favor, which, with much gratitude, we received from Our Lord, to cause to be addressed to Him those praises which are His due.

Manuel was well aware that Christopher Columbus’s star was waning in Spain. The Genoese explorer had still found no spices, no gems, no Christians, and no Chinese Great Khan. In 1498, just as Vasco da Gama was sailing into the Indian Ocean, Columbus had finally reached the mainland he had long sought, but the experience
had been distinctly unsettling. As he made his way down the coast his ships had lurched into the vast outflow of the Orinoco River, and the disoriented navigator decided that such a torrent must cascade down a great slope. From that he deduced he was sailing up the foothills of the Holy Mountain of Paradise, a vast protuberance that he pictured thrusting up from the earth’s surface like a nipple from a breast. Since he knew no human could enter the Garden of Eden and live, he fled in fear. Columbus, who often wore the simple habit of a Franciscan monk, had always believed he had been chosen to save souls; lately he had begun to hear the voice of God and considered it his destiny to fulfill the old prophecies by discovering a new paradise on earth. His confidence, though, had been badly shaken, and he hanged some of his crew for insubordination. When he returned to Hispaniola his sailors and the settlers he had promised untold riches accused him of torture and gross mismanagement, and the fifty-three-year-old explorer, afflicted with arthritis and a painful inflammation of the eye, was manacled, thrown in jail, and transported back to Spain in chains.

To most observers, Vasco da Gama had clearly trumped his archrival. What Columbus had promised, Gama had delivered. While Columbus had sailed west with a fair wind and reached land in thirty-six days, Gama had swept around the Atlantic, followed the east coast of Africa, crossed to India, and made it home against terrible odds. Where Columbus had parleyed with a few tribesmen, Gama had survived hostile sultans and negotiated with powerful kings, and he had brought home spices, letters, and hostages to prove it. Whatever Columbus had found—and it was by no means yet clear—Gama had opened the sea route to the East and had shown the way to circumvent the Islamic world. The whole of Europe was astonished, and the Portuguese king was only too happy to rub his in-laws’ noses in it.

Having performed that pleasant duty, Manuel shored up his position by addressing letters to the pope, the College of Cardinals, and the Cardinal Protector of Portugal in Rome. He instructed
them to hold public thanksgivings for God’s favoritism toward the Portuguese nation, and he reminded them that by virtue of a papal bull of 1497—the latest attempt to try to adjudicate between the rival powers—he and his heirs enjoyed “very fully the sovereignty and dominion of all we have discovered.” Nothing else, he carefully added, was surely needed, but he affectionately begged “for a fresh expression of satisfaction with reference to a matter of such novelty and great and recent merit, so as to obtain His Holiness’s renewed approval and declaration.”

As the midpoint of the millennium approached, Manuel was determined to push his claim to be the chief monarch of Christendom. His discovery, he declared, was not just for Portugal: it would benefit every Christian nation, “from the damage to the Infidels that is expected.” Soon the Muslims would be vanquished, the Holy Land would be repossessed, and Eastern Christians would return to the true Catholic path. Even so, he was not minded to share the glory with rival nations. It was next to impossible to obtain a map of the Portuguese voyages, wrote the secretary to Venice’s ambassador in Spain, “for the king has decreed the death penalty for anyone who sends it out of the country.”