Know Your City: How Portuguese saved Daman from the Mughals

Interestingly, the Jesuit fathers at Agra brought this aggression to the emperor’s notice and protested against the unprovoked attack on the Christian rulers of Daman. Akbar could not deny the charge but shifted the responsibility onto his generals. At the Jesuit fathers’ request, he sent orders to Qutub-ud-din Khan to withdraw his forces, which he promptly obeyed. The Portuguese further strengthened their defences, building a land gate on the south side, with a large inscription slab commemorating the valour of the Portuguese under the stewardship of their commandant, Martin de Mello.

However, hostilities did not end there. In the eighth year of Jahangir’s reign, tensions flared again between the Mughals and the Portuguese. During the autumn of 1613, the latter incurred the wrath of the Mughal emperor by plundering a large Mughal pilgrim ship, the Rahimi, which had a capacity of 1,500 tonnes and was carrying a rich cargo. This act of defiance, aimed at expressing displeasure over the favourable reception given to the English at Surat, provoked extreme resentment among the Mughal court, particularly as some of the most important nobles, including the emperor’s mother, had vested interests in the cargo valued at Rs 10 lakh. The emperor resolved to inflict a severe punishment on the Portuguese.

Jahangir patched a truce with his enemy, the sultan of Ahmednagar, so that imperial and Deccani troops could carry out a joint attack on the Portuguese forts in western India. Muquarrab Khan, the governor who seems to have been on a visit to the court, was instructed to proceed to the coast and seize the goods and persons of all Portuguese in the empire. In Agra and Lahore, all their church doors were sealed and the exercise of their religion was forbidden. Father Jerome Xavier, who had been in high favour at the court, was sent down to the governor of Surat in disgrace and placed under detention by the Mughal officers, though he was shortly released to discuss terms of peace with the Portuguese viceroy.

Viceroy Dom Jerónimo de Azevedo, who played a significant role in the Portuguese expansion in the Indian Ocean.

Since the Mughal naval power was insignificant, active steps were taken to lay siege by land to the Portuguese at Daman, Bassein and Chaul. Simultaneously, Muquarrab Khan appealed to the Dutch at Masulipatnam (Machilipatnam today), who had a factory at Surat, for help, promising them Daman when it was taken by the besieging Mughal forces. Faced with this grave threat, the Portuguese sought reconciliation, offering to restore the ship and the goods, but their offer was rejected.

In revenge, the Portuguese sent frigates to Ghogha, burning 120 vessels, of which 10 were of large size, as well as a significant portion of the city. They also conducted raids along the coast, pouncing upon Broach (Bharuch) and setting fire to many houses in the suburbs. Meanwhile, the combined Ahmednagar and Imperial forces dispatched by the Mughal emperor appeared before Daman after laying waste to the surrounding country and burning some villages. Around this time, Luiz de Britto, who had captured the Mughal ship, arrived with his squadron of 14 vessels and 350 Portuguese soldiers. This force, combined with the garrison at Daman, attacked the besieging Mughal army, which, despite being greatly superior in numbers, was forced to retreat. Britto then sailed for the Bharuch port, burning part of the town and all the vessels lying in the river. He subsequently attacked and burned Bhadbhut, which was held by the Rajputs, resulting in the deaths of 450 of them.

These incidents illustrate that although nearly 70 years had passed since the time of D Jao Castro, the Portuguese in India had not modified their old policy of terrorising the coastal towns of Gujarat to maintain their claims. At the same time, the smaller kings and the great Mughals had not learned any lessons and not taken effective steps to strengthen their navy. The Portuguese exploited this inability of the Mughals to their full advantage. Their viceroy, Jeronimo Azavedo, at Goa, collected a great armada and personally sailed to Surat in December 1614 to deliver a decisive blow against the great city, completing the series of reprisals made by his captains against the Gujarat ports.

The Portuguese and English clash at sea

A few weeks before, Captain Nicholas Downtown reached Surat on October 15 with a fleet of four ships and 400 men sent out by the East India Company. Muquarrab Khan was pleased to learn of this but was disappointed when Downtown flatly refused his request for support on the grounds that there was peace between the English and the Spaniards. The Portuguese, however, made a tactical mistake. Taking the English neutrality to be a weakness, the Portuguese viceroy decided to use this opportunity to crush the English attempt to intrude upon the Portuguese monopoly of trade on the west coast of India. Another major assumption was that success in the struggle with the Mughal power depended on visibility and the ability to destroy Downtown’s small fleet, which stood between him and the attack on Surat.

In the decisive battle that took place on January 20, 1615, the English, despite their smaller numbers, carried the day due to the sheer valour of their crew. The English flagship, Hope, was anchored some distance ahead of the others. The Portuguese viceroy sent three of his great ships, along with some frigates, to grapple with her and to pour swarms of Portuguese soldiers on board the Hope. After boarding, they soon engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the English crew. Other English ships quickly came to the rescue, directing a steady stream of fire into the enemy’s men of war. At the end of a desperate struggle, the Portuguese soldiers were driven back from the Hope, suffering heavy casualties. Many were killed or threw themselves overboard, leaving the shore littered the next day with the bodies of those who drowned.

The failure of the Portuguese armada was also due to their galleons being cumbersome and sailing slowly, while their guns, though more numerous, were operated with much less skill than those of the English. When Jahangir heard the news of the Portuguese naval disaster, he was obviously delighted by this serendipitous turn of events and recorded it in his autobiography. Within six months of the defeat, a treaty of peace was signed between the Portuguese viceroy and the Mughal governor on 7th June 1615. One result was the withdrawal of forces besieging Daman, which thus once again escaped conquest and absorption into the Mughal empire.

(Dr Amarjit Singh is a retired IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre who has held posts in the central and state governments.)