The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama (41 page)

Europe’s horizons were expanding at a bafflingly fast rate, but Cabral would not reap the glory. He had found no Christian allies, and he had not made a single convert. He had lost hundreds of experienced sailors and half his fleet. He had let the merchants of Calicut destroy the Portuguese factory, and though he had exacted bloody revenge he had failed to stamp out the rebellion. All told, he had not been bold or successful enough for his king’s liking. It was a harsh judgment on a man who had been set an impossible task, but Cabral spent the rest of his life in disgrace.

Manuel put the best spin on things he could. A feast was held in the palace to mark the fleet’s return, bells pealed across Lisbon, a
procession set off around the country, and more crowing letters were dispatched to Spain. But the king’s grandiose claims were in danger of looking threadbare, and many of his counselors once again urged him to take the glory and abandon the perilous enterprise. Besides, Manuel had sent many ships to fight the Turks and more to attack the Moroccans—none of which had met with much success—never mind the fleets that were even then headed into the North Atlantic to search for more lands on the Portuguese side of the line. The country was overextended and too many lives had already been lost; goodness knew, they murmured in private, how many more would be sacrificed to Manuel’s insane quest for world domination.

The king was not to be brooked. Before Cabral had even returned, Manuel had sent out another four ships under the command of João da Nova, a middling official with strong connections at court. By then, Manuel had assumed, Cabral’s intimidating fleet would have either made mass conversions or cowed India into submission, and Nova’s orders were merely to follow on where Cabral had left off.

According to one report, the new fleet rounded the Cape of Good Hope and found a message left by Cabral in an old shoe hung from the branch of a tree. Having read of the ruction at Calicut, Nova set off across the Indian Ocean and burned and sank several ships around the Zamorin’s harbor. He visited the factory at Cochin and set up another at Cannanore, but as he waited for the monsoon to take him home, dozens of vessels crammed with armed Muslims sprang at him from Calicut. The Portuguese guns pounded at the boats, and as the light faded and the wind dropped, the Muslims hung out a flag of parley. Nova suspected a trick and carried on firing, but eventually, with his guns nearly burnt out, he answered with a flag of his own. The two sides agreed to desist until the next day, and a tense night followed with the enemies anchored at close quarters and the jittery Portuguese firing blindly into the dark. Like Cabral, Nova thought better of fighting another day, and the fleet
returned to Lisbon in September 1502 with a large cargo of spices and a fine haul of booty.

It was not enough for the impatient king. To put the flagging Crusade back on track an overwhelming display of force was clearly needed, and it would have to be masterminded by Portugal’s most valiant knight.

There was only one man for the job.

V
ASCO DA
G
AMA
had finally returned to Lisbon in the late summer of 1499. He was still in mourning for his brother, but he was not allowed to grieve for long.

After stopping to give thanks to God for preserving him from peril, he sent notice of his arrival to the king. Manuel dispatched a cortege of nobles to conduct him to court. Huge crowds pressed in, eager to see the new national hero whom they had long thought dead. When he came into the royal presence, the chronicles recorded, “the king honored him as one who by the discovery of the Indies had done so much for the glory of God, for the honor and profit of the king of Portugal, and for the perpetual fame of the Portuguese name in the world.”

Gama was asked to name his reward, and he chose the hereditary lordship of Sines, the town where his father had been governor. The title was granted him in December, but the Order of Santiago refused to give up its rights over its fiefdom, even to its own prodigal son. The explorer pressed his case in person, and as the matter dragged on, fights broke out between his servants and the governor’s men. Nearly two years later he was still waiting, and a substantial royal pension was cobbled together to make up for the dues he had been denied.

Meanwhile the king ordered his scribes to draft an elaborate grant letter that formally celebrated Gama’s great feat. The long letter traced the history of the discoveries from Henry the Navigator to Vasco da Gama himself. It recognized that Gama had triumphed over mortal dangers unlike any faced by his predecessors—dangers
that had taken the lives of his brother and many of his men. It commended him for performing a “most excellent service” by discovering “that India, which all those who have given descriptions of the world rank higher in wealth than any other country, which from all time had been coveted by the Emperors and Kings of the world, and for the sake of which such heavy expenses had been incurred in this kingdom, and so many captains and others forfeited their lives.” It predicted that great advantages would flow from the discovery, “not only to our kingdoms but to all Christendom: the injury done to the infidels who, up to now, have enjoyed the advantages offered by India: and more especially the hope that all the people of India will rally round Our Lord, seeing that they may easily be led to a knowledge of His holy faith, some of them already being instructed in it.”

Princes, Manuel added, should be generous, and the details followed. Gama, his family, and their descendants were permitted to add the prefix
Dom
to their names, an honorific comparable to the English “Sir.” The explorer was appointed to the royal council. He was granted another substantial annual pension, to be paid in perpetuity to his heirs, and the right to send money to India every year to buy spices, which he could import free of royal duties. Finally, he was named Admiral of India, “with all the honors, prerogatives, liberties, power, jurisdiction, revenues, quit-rents, and duties that by right should accompany the said Admiralty.” Spain had Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea; now Portugal had Vasco da Gama, Admiral of India. The title outrageously flouted anything the Indians themselves might have to say about the matter, but to its intended audience nearer home the message was unmistakable: while Columbus had been busy sailing around the Atlantic, Gama had won the prize that both had sought.

It was a handsome settlement; Nicolau Coelho, who was also a fidalgo of the court, received about a tenth the amount. Besides, Gama was widely reported to have returned from India with a
lucrative cache of pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, lac, and precious stones that he had bartered for his personal silverware.

Like every ambitious man of his age, though, he knew that real power lay with land and titles. He kept pressing for his promised estate, and meanwhile he set about courting the well-connected Dona Catarina de Ataíde. When they married, Gama’s pedigree rose another notch. Like most women of her time, Catarina has remained utterly inscrutable to history, though the large brood that gradually surrounded her suggests the match was not purely political.

Gama was a man on the make. When the opportunity to take charge of a great new fleet came his way, he could not resist the chance to redouble his stature.

It was a dangerous move worthy of a gambler who played the odds. If he succeeded in subduing India, he would strengthen his claims on the king’s favor. If he failed, he might suffer, like the hapless Cabral, the ignominy of royal neglect. He calculated the risks and took the bet.

On January 30, 1502, Vasco da Gama was formally commissioned as Admiral of India in Lisbon Cathedral. Among the throng of assembled dignitaries was one Alberto Cantino, the envoy of the Duke of Ferrara, and Cantino carefully reported the important occasion to his employer:

First, every one attended a sumptuous Mass, and when it was over, the above-mentioned Don Vascho, dressed in a crimson satin cape in the French style, lined with ermine, with cap and doublet matching the cape, adorned with a gold chain, approached the King, who was attended by the whole court, and a person came forward and recited an oration, praising the excellence and virtue of the King, and went so far as to make him superior in every way to the glory of Alexander the Great. And then, he turned to the Admiral, with many words in his praise and in praise of his late predecessors, showing how by his industry and vivacity he had discovered all this part of India, [and] when the oration was over, there appeared a herald with a book in his hand, and made the above-mentioned Don Vascho swear perpetual fidelity to the King and his descendants, [and] when this had been done, he knelt before the King, and the King taking a ring from his hand, gave it to him.

The royal standard was carried to the presiding bishop, who solemnly blessed it and returned it to the king. Manuel unsheathed a sword and placed it in his admiral’s right hand. He placed the standard in his left, and Gama rose to his feet and kissed the royal fingers. The rest of the knights and lords filed past and followed suit. “And thus it ended, with the most splendid music.”

Dom Vasco da Gama, Admiral of India, marched out of the cathedral to a trumpet fanfare, a figure far grander than the young adventurer who had set sail less than five years before.

A
MONG THE GRANDEES
who lined up that day to pay his homage was the young ambassador from Venice.

Spy or not, Pietro Pasqualigo had struck up a cordial relationship with the Portuguese king. Manuel had knighted him, and he had even asked him to be his son’s godfather. The personal warmth between the two men did not disguise the fact that Venice was increasingly horrified by Portugal’s obsession with the East. Nor did the shiny black gondola, its cabin festooned with gold cloth, that Venice sent Manuel in the month of Gama’s departure. The Most Serene Republic was still trying to convince the king to attack Muslims in the Mediterranean, rather than sail halfway around the world and strike at the trade arteries through which its lifeblood flowed.

Two months later, Venice changed tack and recalled its ambassador. Instead, in December 1502, the Signoria established a special
giunta
of fifteen prominent men to deal with the Portuguese peril.

Since persuasion had failed and cooperation was out of the question, the only remaining option was sabotage.

That same month, the giunta dispatched a confidential agent named Benedetto Sanuto to Cairo. Sanuto’s mission was to convince the sultan of Egypt that the Portuguese were as much a menace to Muslims as they were to the Venetians. He was mandated to suggest two strategies to counter the threat. The first was for the sultan to cut his custom duties so that the Venetians could compete with the Portuguese. Even Venice knew that was a long shot. The second was “to find rapid and secret remedies” to deter the Portuguese from sailing to India. The Venetians could not quite bring themselves to ask their Muslim allies to use force against their Christian competitors, but there was little doubt where their sympathies lay. If the Portuguese met with concerted opposition in India, Sanuto predicted, they would soon think again. Perhaps the sultan could have a word with the Zamorin of Calicut and urge him “to do the things that seemed appropriate to his wisdom and power.” There was little doubt, either, what he meant by that.

PART III

CHAPTER 14

THE ADMIRAL OF INDIA

O
NCE AGAIN SEA
biscuit was baked, barrels of wine rolled along gangplanks, and the banners, standards, and crosses fluttered in the winter breeze. The usual devotions were made, the artillery fired a farewell salvo, and Vasco da Gama sailed out of Lisbon on February 10, 1502.

Altogether the fleet numbered twenty ships, though only fifteen were ready in time. Gama had chosen as his flagship the sturdy
São Jerónimo.
From the
Esmerelda
, his maternal uncle Vicente Sodré, a knight of the Order of Christ, commanded a subfleet of five ships. Also among the captains was Brás Sodré, another of Gama’s maternal uncles, and Álvaro de Ataíde, Gama’s brother-in-law. Gaspar da Gama, the admiral’s unlikely godson, was again prominent among the personnel. The remaining five vessels were due to leave in early April, with Vasco’s first cousin Estêvão da Gama in command on the big new warship
Flor de la Mar.
Paulo da Gama’s steadfast support and calm voice would be much missed, but the new mission was even more a family business than the first.