History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c42.s6: §7. Portuguese pirates of Chatgaon.
History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c42.s6
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§7. Portuguese pirates of Chatgaon.
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These were the Portuguese adventurers and their half-caste offspring. As early as 1517 the first Portuguese ship had touched at Arrakan and received an invitation to trade. In 1532 a closer intercourse sprang up: "big ships" of the foreigners began to visit the country, and, though they at first plundered the coast villages, friendlier relations were soon formed. Portuguese soldiers of fortune took service under the local Rajah and rose to great influence and power. The Portuguese traders made some settlements on the coast, especially at Dianga (22 miles south of Chatgaon town) and Syriam, at the mouth of the Pegu river.
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∗ Early history of Arrakan in Phayre's History of Burma, 77-79, 172. Previous encounters between the Arrakanese and the Mughal governors, Baharistan (best for 1608—1622); Fathiyah, Continuation, 154 b—156 a, 164a, 176 a and b; Stewart's History of Bengal, Sec. vi.
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But these were private men unauthorized by their sovereign's representative in India. Their main occupation was piracy in the Bay of Bengal, varied by service as mercenary soldiers and private trade in salt and such other commodities. Their power, by reason of its isolation from the Government of their mother country, was easily broken by the local princes, and they failed to found any independent colony in these parts. In 1607 the king of Arrakan took Dianga and massacred the foreign settlers. The most notorious of these pirates, Sebastian Gonzalves Tibao,* seized Sondip and two other islands at the head of the Bay of Bengal and created a reign of terror at the mouths of the Ganges by the range and boldness of his depredations, the ruthless vigour of his rule, his administrative capacity and inborn command over men. But in 1617 the Arrakanese conquered Sondip and Gonzalves disappeared from history. Syriam, too, was wrested from the Portuguese. Thereafter, the Portuguese settlers in Arrakan gave up all attempts at independence and territorial power, and lived on as the obedient instruments of the local Rajah.
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∗ Career of Sebastian Gonzalves, Campos's History of the Portuguese in Bengal, 81-87, 154-157 (best); Phayre, 174-176. Stewart's Bengal, vi. under Islam Kh. and Qasim Khan. Portuguese intercourse with Arrakan, Phayre, 79, 171-174. D'Anvers, ii. 123.
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The Burmese are noted for their skill in managing boats and loose formation fighting in jungle and river. Allied to the Portuguese, they became irresistible in our eastern waters. The Mughal soldiers,—Turks, Afghans and Rajputs alike,—were mere landsmen; expert riders, no doubt, but hopelessly inefficient on board ship. The sea was not their element, and they used to run into port for shelter at the least sign of a gale. The swift galleasses of the Arrakanese made raids in the rivers and creeks of Dacca and Bakarganj without meeting with any reprisal or even opposition from the local Mughal officers. After taking Sondip in 1617, the Arrakan king occupied a portion of the Bakarganj district. He sacked the town of Dacca itself in 1625 and for years afterwards continued to levy blackmail from Eastern Bengal. One Mughal viceroy, Khanahzad Khan, retired to Rajmahal in fear of the pirates, leaving the defence of Dacca to his subordinates. (Cont. 176b.)
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§8. Feringi pirates ravage East Bengal.
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A contemporary historian, Shihab-ud-din Talish, thus describes the ways of the pirates:— “The Arrakan pirates, both Mag and Feringi, used constantly to come by the water-route and plunder Bengal. They carried off the Hindus and Muslims that they could seize, pierced the palms of their hands, passed thin strips of cane through the holes and threw them huddled together under the decks of their ships. Every morning they flung down some uncooked rice to the captives from above, as we fling grain to fowl. On reaching home the pirates employed some of the hardy men that survived such treatment in tillage and other degrading pursuits. The others were sold to the Dutch, English and French merchants at the ports of the Deccan. Sometimes they brought their captives to the ports of Tamluk and Baleshwar for sale at high prices. Anchoring a short distance from the coast they sent a man ashore with information [about the prisoners]. The local officers, in fear of the pirates committing any depredation or kidnapping there, stood on the shore with a number of followers, and sent a man with money on board. If the terms were satisfactory, the pirates took the ransom and set the captives free with the man. Only the Feringis sold their prisoners. But the Mags employed all whom they had carried off in agriculture and other services, or as domestic servants and concubines."
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"As they continually practised raids for a long time, Bengal daily became more and more desolate and less and less able to resist them. Not a house was left inhabited on either side of the rivers lying on their track from Chatgaon to Dacca. The district of Bakla (i.e. Bakarganj and part of Dacca), which formerly abounded in houses and cultivated fields and yielded a large revenue as duty on betel-nuts, was swept so clean with their broom of plunder and abduction that none was left to tenant any house or kindle a light in that region."
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"The sailors of the Bengal flotilla were inspired with such fear of the pirates that whenever a hundred war-boats of the former sighted only four of the latter, the Bengal crew thought themselves lucky if they could save their lives by flight;* and when the distance was too short to permit escape, they—rowers, sepoys, and gunners alike—threw themselves overboard, preferring drowning to captivity."
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"Many Feringis living at Chatgaon used to visit the imperial dominions for plunder and abduction. Half their booty they gave to the Rajah of Arrakan, and the other half they kept. They were known as the *Harmad* (i.e., *Armada*) and owned a hundred swift *jalia* boats full of war-material.........Latterly the Rajah of Arrakan did not send his own fleet to plunder the Mughal territory, as he considered the Feringi pirates in the light of his servants and shared their booty."
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"When Shaista Khan asked the Feringi deserters, what salary the Mag king had assigned to them, they replied, ‘Our salary was the Mughal empire. We considered the whole of Bengal as our jagir! We had not to bother ourselves about amlas and amins, but levied our rent all the year round without any difficulty. We have kept the papers of the division of the booty for the last forty years.’”
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∗ This is supported by Bernier, p. 179.
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The contemporary European travellers, Bernier and Manucci, give them the lowest possible character: ‘‘These people (says the French doctor) were Christians only in name; the lives led by them were most detestable, massacring or poisoning one another without compunction or remorse, and sometimes assassinating even their priests, who were too often no better than their murderers’’ (p. 174). Manucci knew them to be equally bod, as ‘‘men hard of heart, accustomed to kill even little children without a regret. They boasted among themselves of having reached the very acme of evil-doing. If any one undertook to speak of these men, of their violence and of their barbarous habits, he would find enough to fill several books.’’ (ii. 117.)
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‘‘In Jahangir’s reign the Mag pirates used to come to Dacca for plunder by the stream which, after leaving the Brahmaputra, passes by Khizirpur and falls into the river of Dacca. Autumn and winter were the season of their raids. After some time this water-route to Dacca was closed by the drying up of the above stream and also some points in the Brahmaputra, and the pirates ceased to visit Dacca town, but plundered the villages only."
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Their lines of advance are thus clearly indicated by Shihab-ud-din Talish: "When the pirates came from Chatgaon to ravage Bengal, they skirted the imperial frontier post of Bhalua on their right and the island of Sondip on their left and reached the village of Sangramgarh, at the southern apex of the delta of Dacca, [some 36 miles from Dacca] and the then point of junction of the Brahmaputra and the Ganges. From this place they sailed up the Ganges if they wished to plunder Jessore, Hughli and Bhushna, or up the Brahmaputra if Vikrampur, Sonargaon and Dacca were their objective."*
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A heavy loss was caused to imperial revenue by the depopulation of the riverside areas of East Bengal. Imperial prestige was even more grievously affected. As Shihab-ud-din Talish complains, "In no other part of the Mughal dominions has any neighbouring infidel king the power to oppress and domineer over Muslims, but has to humble himself to save his lands; in Bengal alone the opposite is the case." (Cont., 125 a.) The safety of the province demanded that the nest of pirates should be conquered. Chatgaon was a convenient half-way house between Arrakan and Bengal, and the base of operations of the pirates. The king of Arrakan, therefore, strongly defended this outpost of his dominions. "Every year the Rajah of Arrakan sends to Chatgaon a hundred ships full of soldiers and artillery munitions, with a relieving officer, and then the former officer with the ships sent the previous year returns to Arrakan. There is always some trusted relative or faithful clansman of the Rajah in charge of the Government of Chatgaon." (Ibid., 163 b.)
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∗ Account of the Feringi pirates, in Fathiyah, Continuation 122 b—125 b, 108 a, 139 a and b, 150 b, 152 a, (translated in my Studies in Mughal India). Bernier, 174-179; A.N. 941.
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§9. Bengal flotilla created anew by Shaista Khan.
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At first sight, Shaista Khan's task seemed to be utterly hopeless. The Arrakanese were supreme at sea and had a long and unbroken record of success in keeping foreign invaders out of their land. "Their cannon are beyond computation and their war-vessels exceed the waves of the sea in number." On the other hand, the Mughal flotilla stationed in the eastern waters had now ceased to exist. "During the vice-royalty of Prince Shuja, great administrative confusion was produced by his slackness, and the rent-collectors by their extortion and violence ruined the estates which yielded the maintenance charge of the Bengal navy, 14 lakhs of Rupees a year. Mir Jumla abolished the old system of management and naval organization, but before he could set a new one afoot, he succumbed to disease. Many naval officers and men, too, perished in the Assam expedition, so that at the time of Mir Jumla’s death the Bengal navy (nawwara) was utterly ruined.* Early in 1664 the pirates came to Bagadia, in the Dacca district and defeated Munawwar Khan, a zamindar, who bore the high title of the cruising admiral. The few war-vessels that still belonged to the nawwara were thus lost, and its name alone was left in Bengal.” (Continuation, 112b—122.)
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But Shaista Khan’s spirit and energy overcame every obstacle : a navy was created anew and manned and equipped for war in a little over a year. Immediately on his arrival in Bengal, (March, 1664) he issued urgent orders to the Inspector of the Fleet to renovate the nawwara, gave him plenary powers, and sent bailiffs to every province to seize the timber and ship-wrights and take them to the great dockyards of Dacca. Boats were also built at the minor ports, such as Hughli, Jessore, Chilmari, Karibari, and Baleshwar. At Dacca, where he arrived in December, “he devoted all his energy to the rebuilding of the flotilla. Not for a moment did he neglect to mature plans for assembling the crew, laying in stores of provisions and needments, and collecting carpenters and ship-building materials. For all posts in the navy expert officers were selected. Through his ceaseless exertions in a short time nearly 300 ships were built and equipped." (Cont., 115b, 137b—138a.)
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∗ In 1662, during Mir Jumla’s absence in Assam, the pirates carried off from the neighbourhood of Dacca the Mughal ‘cruising admiral’ who was the adopted son of the deputy governor of Dacca, and advanced plundering up to Nazirpur, on the way to Rajmahal.” Fathiyah, Continuation, 125 b.