Travels in India (Tavernier) 35.1.4

35.1.4

This was very cruel, and the Council, moderating the sentence, only condemned him to the lash. The same day ten men of each company were ordered to go to one of the houses of the King of Cochin, but they found no one there, and the previous year it had been pillaged. The Dutch then slew four kings of the country and 1600 blacks, and there escaped only one old Queen, who was taken alive by a common soldier named Van Rez, whom the General of the army promoted to be a captain at once, as a reward. They left a company in this house, but the Queen remained there only six days, as she was given into the custody of the Zamorin, who is the most powerful of the petty Kings of this coast, to whom the Dutch had promised that if they took the town of Cochin they would give him that of Kranganur, provided he was faithful to them. The Dutch then began to entrench themselves and to erect batteries, taking shelter under small forts made of palms, one laid upon another together with earth. They made one of them in the direction of the Church of St. Jean, which is near the sea, with a battery of four pieces of cannon ; and another in the direction of St. Thomas, where there was the hospital for the wounded, and close by that for the sick. They also made a battery of seven pieces of cannon and two mortars in a quarter called Calvetti. Sometimes they threw bombs, sometimes stones, and the stones did by far the most injury to the besieged.