Shivaji and His Times c8.s7: §7. Surat described
Shivaji and His Times c8.s7
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§7. Surat described
c8.s7.1
While this change of governors was going on at Aurangabad, Shivaji performed a feat of even greater audacity than he had ever displayed before. From 6th to 10th January he looted the city of Surat, the richest port of the west coast and "the gateway to the holy places of Arabia" for Indian Muslims, who here embarked for the pilgrimage to Mecca.
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The fort of Surat stood on the south bank of the Tapti, 12 miles from the sea. It was impregnable to a body of light raiders like Shiva's troopers. But the city close to the fort offered a rich and defenceless prize. It had, at that time, no wall to protect it. Its wealth was boundless. The imperial customs alone yielded a revenue of 12 *lakhs* of Rupees a year (in 1666, acc. to Thevenot, v. 81.)
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The city of Surat covered nearly four square miles, including gardens and open spaces, and had a population of 200,000 souls. The streets were narrow and crooked; the houses of the rich were near the river-side and substantially built; but the town was mainly composed of poor men's huts built of wooden posts and bamboo walls and with floors plastered with mud. "In the greater part of the town scarcely two or three brick-houses were to be seen in a street, and in some parts... not one for many streets together. The whole town was unfortified either by art or nature and its situation was upon a large plain of many miles' extent. They had only made against the chief avenues of the town some weak and ill-built gates [more for show than for defence.] In some parts there was a dry ditch easily passable by a footman, with no wall on the inner side. The rest was left so open that scarcely any sign of a ditch was perceivable." (Bom. Gaz., ii. 301, 90-91; Letter from the English chaplain Escaliot to Sir T. Browne, in Ind. Antiq. viii. 256.)
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Early in the morning of Tuesday, 5th January, 1664, Surat was suddenly alarmed by the news that Shivaji had arrived with an army at Gandavi, 28 miles southwards, and was advancing to plunder the town.[*] At once the people were seized with a panic, and began to flee away with their wives and children, mostly across the river, to save their lives. Rich men found shelter in the fort by bribing its commandant. Later in the day a courier brought the intelligence that Shivaji had come still nearer, and at night it was learnt that he had halted only five miles from Surat. Inayet Khan, the governor of the town—who was quite distinct from the commandant of the fort,—had sent out an agent to treat with Shiva for terms of ransom. But when he heard that the Maratha chief had detained the messenger and was approaching with all speed, he himself fled to the fort, leaving the town at the enemy's mercy. He used to draw from the Treasury the pay of 500 soldiers, but had so long appropriated the money without maintaining a proper force. His cowardice also prevented him from organizing a defence or even from standing at his post.
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∗ First sack of Surat: The most minute details and graphic accounts are found in the factory records: Log of the Loyal Merchant (Orme MSS. vol. 263, pp. 23-24); F. R. Surat 2 (Surat Consult. 6 Jan., 1664), vol. 86 (Surat to Persia; Surat to Co. 18 and 28 Jan. and 4 April); Dutch Records, vol. 27, Nos. 711 and 719. Letter of Escaliot very valuable. Bernier, 188-190; Storia, ii. 29, 112, 120, 132, iv. 428. Ishwardas 52a. (A.N., K.K., and Tavernier silent.) For a good description of the city and fort, Kaeppelin, 52n, and Carré, i. 16-49.
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The townspeople were sheep worthy of such a shepherd. A population composed mostly of money-loving traders, poor artisans, punctilious fire-worshippers and tender-souled Jains, cannot readily take to war even in self-defence. The richest merchants, though owning millions of Rupees, had not the sense to hire guards for the protection of their wealth, though they might have done so at only a twentieth part of what they were soon to lose through pillage.
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§8. *Heroic defence of the English at Surat.*
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The shame of this cowardice in high and low alike was deepened by the contrast afforded by the manly spirit of a handful of foreigners. The English and Dutch merchants resolved to defend their own factories at all costs, though these were open houses, not built to stand an attack. They might have sought safety by escaping to their ships at Swally on the coast, 10 miles west of Surat; but "it was thought more like Englishmen to make ourselves ready to defend our lives and goods to the uttermost than by a flight to leave money, goods, house to merciless people.”
c8.s7.9
Sir George Oxenden, the English President, and his Council stood at their posts in Surat, and improvised a defence of the factory. They procured two small brass guns from a merchant in the town and four others from their own vessels. With the armed sailors promptly sent up from the English ships at Swally, they mustered in the factory 150 Englishmen and 60 peons, a total of 210 defenders. Four of the guns were mounted on the roof to scour two broad streets and command the large and lofty house of Haji Said Beg, adjacent to theirs. Two other guns were posted behind the front gate, in which port-holes were cut for firing into the passage leading to the factory. What provisions, water and powder could be got were hurriedly laid in. “Some were set to melt lead and make bullets, others with chisels to cut lead into slugs; no hand idle but all employed to strengthen every place. Captains were appointed and every man quartered and order taken for relieving one another upon necessity. To secure the approaches to the factory, the English went outside and took possession of a temple just under their house, and cleared it of its refugees, and also shut up a mosque on another side, whose windows looked into the outer courtyard of the factory. President Oxenden at the head of his 200 soldiers “drawn out in rank and file, with drum and trumpet,” publicly marched through the town in the morning of the 6th, “declaring that he intended to withstand Shivaji with this handful of men.”
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The Dutch, too, defended their house, though its distance of a mile from the English factory made mutual aid between the two nations impossible. The example of the Europeans also heartened a body of Turkish and Armenian merchants to defend their property in their serai, close to the English factory.
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§9. First loot of Surat, 1664.
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Shivaji had been heard of at Bassein, twenty-four miles north of Bombay, only nine days before. But he had made a forced march to Surat with 4,000 men mounted on choice horses with such speed and secrecy that he was at Surat a day after his approach had been detected. His route lay by the forts of Nar-durg (probably Naldurg, s. w. of Nana Ghat), Mahuli, and Kohaj and then across the zamindaris of Jawhar, Ramnagar and Lakdar(?), north of the Thana district. Two Rajahs had joined him on the way with their contingents in the hope of sharing the plunder, and his army now mustered 10,000.
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At 11 o'clock in the morning of Wednesday, 6th January, 1664, Shivaji arrived at Surat and pitched his tent in a garden a quarter of a mile outside the Burhanpur or eastern gate. The night before he had sent two messengers with a letter requiring the governor and the three most eminent merchants and richest men in the city, viz., Haji Said Beg, Baharji Borah, and Haji Qasim, to come to him in person immediately and make terms, otherwise he threatened the whole town with fire and sword. No answer had been given to the demand, and the Maratha horsemen, immediately after their arrival on the 6th, entered the defenceless and almost deserted city, and after sacking the houses began to set fire to them. A body of Shivaji's musketeers was set "to play upon the castle, with no expectation to take it, but to keep in and frighten the governor and the rest that had got in, as also [to prevent] the soldiers of the castle from sallying out upon them whilst the others plundered and fired [the houses.]" The garrison kept up a constant fire, but the fort-guns inflicted more damage on the town than on the assailants. Throughout Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, this work of devastation was continued, every day new fires being raised, so that thousands of houses were consumed to ashes and two-thirds of the town destroyed. As the English chaplain wrote, "Thursday and Friday nights were the most terrible nights for fire. The fire turned the night into day, as before the smoke in the day-time had turned day into night, rising so thick that it darkened the sun like a great cloud."
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Near the Dutch factory stood the grand mansion of Baharji Borah, then "reputed the richest merchant in the world," his property having been estimated at 80 *lakhs* of Rupees. The Marathas plundered it at leisure day and night till Friday evening, when having ransacked it and dug up its floor, they set fire to it. From this house they took away 28 seers of large pearls, with many other jewels, rubies, emeralds and "an incredible amount of money."
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Close to the English factory were the lofty residence and extensive warehouses of another very rich merchant, Haji Said Beg, who, too, had fled away to the fort, leaving his property without a defender. All the afternoon and night of Wednesday and till past the noon of Thursday, the Marathas continued to break open his doors and chests and carry off as much money as they could. Entering one of his warehouses they smashed some casks of quicksilver and spilt a great quantity of it on the floor. But in the afternoon of Thursday the brigands left it in a hurry, on being scared by a sortie which the English had made into the street to drive away a party of 25 Maratha horsemen who seemed intent on setting fire to another house in dangerous proximity to the English factory. In this encounter one Maratha trooper was wounded with a bullet, and two Englishmen with arrow and sword, but slightly.
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The English merchants next day put a guard of their own in the house of Said Beg and thus he suffered no further loss. Shivaji was angry with the English at being balked of his prey, and in the afternoon of Friday he sent them a message calling upon them to pay him three *lakhs* of Rupees or else let his men freely loot the Haji’s house, and threatening that in case they refused to do either he would come in person, kill every soul in the English factory, and raze their house to the ground. President Oxenden took time to consider the proposal till next morning (Saturday), when he rejected both the demands of Shivaji and boldly defied the Maratha chief to come and do his worst, saying, “We are ready for you and resolved not to go away. But come when you please; and [as] you have, as you say, resolved to come, I ask you to come one *prahar* sooner than you intend.” To this challenge Shivaji gave no reply. He was surfeited with booty and was too wise to run a needless risk by facing artillery concealed behind defences and served by resolute and disciplined men, for the sake of a few *lakhs* more.