ure of the sued throughout by the Guzerat Sultan is all of the CHAPTER IX. same character. He had been forced into friendly Sudden departalliance with the Portuguese. He had then implored Turkish expethe aid of Turkey to help him to get rid of his Portuguese allies. He had next grown anxious for the departure of the Turks. Finally he seems to have come to terms once more with the Portuguese, without abandoning the hope of effecting their ultimate expulsion from the Eastern Seas. Portugal. The news of this glorious repulse of the Turks Rejoicings in filled the whole Portuguese nation with joy and exultation. The brave Commandant of Diu returned to Lisbon, and was received at the capital with the highest honours. Scarcely had his ship anchored in the Tagus, when all the Court nobles thronged on board to conduct him to the presence of the king and queen. Indeed so great was his fame that all the foreign ambassadors came to do him honour; and the French ambassador was so enthusiastic as to engage an artist to paint the portrait of the brave man, who had repulsed the Great Turk on the Indian shores. Diu: triumph Seven years later, in 1545, the Sultan of Guzerat Second siege of made another attempt to expel the Portuguese from of the Viceroy. Diu. The details were famous at the time, but are of little interest now. On that occasion the Viceroy relieved the fort in person; and on returning to Goa was received with all the honours of a Roman triumph. He was crowned with laurel, and accompanied through the streets of Goa by a procession of prisoners, cannon, and carts loaded with arms. Salutes were fired, bands of music were playing, to have captured a hundred and forty Portuguese in Arabia, and to have sent their heads, noses, and ears to the Great Turk as trophies of his victory. CHAPTER IX. the streets were adorned with silks, and fair women thronged at the windows, and threw flowers and sweet waters on the victor. When the Queen of Portugal heard the story, she observed that the Viceroy had conquered like a Christian, but triumphed like a heathen.30 Overthrow of the Hindú empire of Twenty years of comparative quiet followed this Narsinga, 1565, last triumph. Meantime revolutions were convulsing India, which could not fail of influencing the affairs of the Portuguese. In Hindustan the Moguls had established a paramount power; and the illustrious Akber had pushed his empire to the bay of Bengal, and established his suzerainty over the greater portion of Rajpootana. In the Dekhan the Mussulman Sultans of Bíjápúr and Golcónda were exposed to constant aggressions from the unwieldy Hindú empire of Narsinga. The reigning Hindú sovereign of the Peninsula at this period was Ráma Rai, a potentate who is as celebrated as his great predecessor Krishna Rai. The haughtiness and arrogance of this great Raja is without a parallel in European history. He seems to have been an embodiment of Southey's conception of Kehama. He treated the envoys from the Sultans of Bíjápúr and Golcónda with such pride and insolence, that on their return to their own courts, they threw down their turbans before their sovereigns, and demanded revenge against the infidel. For a brief interval all political rivalries and jealousies were cast aside; and a flash of the old Bedouin enthusiasm, which carried the banners of the Khalifat to the Oxus and the Indus, was kindled in the breasts of the Mussulmans. 30 Faria y Sousa, vol. ii., p. 116. In 1565 four of the Sultans of the Dekhan joined CHAPTER IX. hands and hearts against the idolaters. Ráma Rai assembled his vast hosts of Hindús, but they fell like sheep before the slaughtering artillery of the Mussulmans. A hundred thousand Hindus were slain. Ráma Rai was himself taken prisoner, on which his head was straightway cut off and exposed on a spear. All was lost by the Hindús. The avenging army of Mussulmans rushed on like a resistless flood, and forced an entrance into the great capital of Vijayanagar, which for centuries had proved impregnable. This splendid city had long been one of the wonders of the world. It was the great centre of the Brahmanical religion in the Peninsula. Festivals and sacrifices were performed with a magnificence which is almost beyond belief. The court was the scene of successive assassinations and intrigues, which are almost without a parallel, even in oriental history; whilst the public establishments of courtesans were famous throughout the east.31 The city itself was a Hindú metropolis of stone and granite; and the paved cities and aqueducts, the granite palaces, temples, and fortifications, still remain in lonely grandeur to testify to the mighty conceptions of the old Hindú Rajas. The plunder must have been immense, for the city was one vast treasury of gold and jewels. Its capture was a death-blow to the last great Hindú empire in India. The deputy governors of the little kingdoms of Southern India asserted their independence, and then in their turn 31 Our knowledge of the empire of Narsinga or Vijayanagar is chiefly derived from Mussulman writers; and therefore will be brought under review in dealing with the history of the wars between the Mussulmans of the Dekhan and the Hindús of the Peninsula. CHAPTER IX. began to fall one after the other before the aggression of the Mussulmans or the Mahrattas. Thus within another century of the famous battle of Talikotta in 1565, the memory of the old empire of Narsinga was fast passing away.32 Disastrous results to the Portuguese. Decline of the 1603. The results of this last great struggle between Mussulman and Hindú were most disastrous to the Portuguese. Amidst such a convulsion all trade was of course at a stand-still. Meantime the Sultans of Ahmednagar and Bíjápúr combined with the Zamorin of Calicut to expel the Portuguese from Chaul and Goa. The Zamorin failed to keep his engagement, but the two Sultans succeeded in making simultaneous attacks on the two Portuguese cities. But the old jealousies had begun to revive, and although they carried on both sieges for months, they failed to capture either place, and at last separately concluded a peace. From this period the political history of the Porpower in India, tuguese in India is devoid of interest. Their great commercial rivals, the Dutch, began to appear in India, and to deprive them of many of their best possessions. In 1603 the Dutch besieged Goa, and though they failed to take it, they inflicted a severe blow upon the political power of Portugal in the east. The Portuguese maintained some outward show for a century longer, but meantime they were harassed by the Mahrattas, and impoverished by the loss of trade which was passing into the hands of the Dutch and English. At last the people of Goa sunk into squalid poverty. The city became un 32 Faria y Sousa, vol. ii. Ferishta's history of the Dekhan, Scott's translation, vol. i. Selections from the Mackenzie MSS. made by the author. Folio. healthy and the government was transferred to the CHAPTER IX. new town of Panjim or New Goa. In the present day Old Goa is still an object of the deepest interest; its glory has passed away, but the surrounding scenery is as beautiful as ever; whilst the magnificence of its ruins are beyond the finest European architecture in either Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay. Goa, 1583. The palmy days of Goa must have been about Palmy days of the latter end of the sixteenth century. At that time the whole of northern India was quieting down under the mild and tolerant rule of the Mogul emperor Akber; whilst the Dekhan and the Peninsula had ceased to be the theatre of a deadly struggle between Mussulmans and Hindús. The Portuguese themselves were no longer threatened by the Mussulman Sultans of Ahmednagar and Bíjápore, and were not as yet exposed to the hostilities of the Dutch. Goa had thus attained to the zenith of her prosperity. As yet it showed no outward symptoms of decay; although the old political vitality was already on the wane, owing partly to the oriental influences of the women, and partly to the universal craving for gold. Goa. To all external appearance Goa must have been Magnificence of at this period an imposing city. Amidst the busiest scenes of traffic, there was an air of stately magnificence and ecclesiastical grandeur, softened down by the voluptuous languor of an oriental clime. Here the illustrious Camoens, the national poet of Portugal, drank in the inspiration, under which he composed his once famous epic of the Lusiad; and the atmosphere of Goa, the spirit of daring enterprise, religious crusade, and impassioned love,-seems to |