Siege of Colombo
The siege of Colombo ( 1655 - 1656 ) aimed to capture the city on the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka ), which was under Portuguese control. The besiegers were the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which was supported by the Sinhalese Kingdom of Kandy . On May 12, 1656, the Portuguese gave up.
background
The Portuguese explorer Lourenço de Almeida was the first European seafarer to reach Ceylon in 1505. In a contract with Parakramabahu VIII (1484-1508), the king of Kotte , the trade in cinnamon was agreed . With the treaty, authority over the coast of the empire was transferred to Portugal. In return, the Portuguese guaranteed to protect the coast against invaders. In 1517 the Portuguese built a fortress in Colombo , which was replaced by a larger and stronger fortification in 1518 by Viceroy Lopo Soares de Albergaria . The fortress was named Nossa Senhora Das Virtudas , also known as Santa Barbara . The outer walls were laid out in a triangle around a central tower. In the war with the Kingdom of Sitawaka , the fort was abandoned in 1524 and only one agent remained to occupy the trading post. During this time, the Muslim traders tried to rebuild their lost monopoly on trade with Ceylon, but the few Portuguese who were still under the protection of the King of Kotte in Colombo managed to drive them out again. In October 1550 Viceroy Afonso de Noronha attacked Sitawaka with 500 soldiers and also occupied Kotte. In 1554 Duarte de Eca began to rebuild the Colombo Fortress.
The wooden fort became a fortified city with hexagonal walls and a dozen bastions . The total scope was 1300 paces. There were trenches on either side of the walls that were connected to a lake that shielded the city by a third of the land area. The artillery consisted of 237 guns, from 10 to 38 pounders. The fortress lay on a large bay that offered space for numerous small ships and was open to the sea on the north side. In the 1650s, 900 families of noble settlers and 1,500 craftsmen and traders lived within the fortress. The settlement had two churches, the parish church and São Lourenco, and convents of the Dominicans, the Augustinians, the Capuchins and the Jesuits. Also within the walls were the Santa Misericordia poorhouse and the royal hospital.
Since 1580 Portugal was united with Spain in a personal union, which marked the beginning of the conflict with the Netherlands. In addition, the Portuguese fleet was weakened. With the decline of Sitawaka in 1593, the Portuguese were able to bring large parts of Ceylon under their control.
In 1638 the VOC concluded an alliance against the Portuguese with King Rajasingha II of the Kingdom of Kandy. For this, the VOC was awarded a trade monopoly by Kandy. The Dutch-Portuguese war for the colonial territories in America and Asia had raged since 1624 . From 1639 the war of conquest began on Ceylon, against which the Portuguese put up bitter resistance. In 1640, Galle in southern Ceylon was conquered by the Dutch and made the colonial capital of the VOCs. There was an armistice from 1641 when Portugal freed itself from Spanish supremacy. As a result, the Portuguese captain general neglected the fort's military infrastructure. In the meantime the entire space inside the fortress was occupied by houses, of the 4,000 inhabitants only 1,200 were soldiers. Coconut palms grew on the walls, the cannons were covered with rust and the wood had been eaten by termites. In September 1647 a VOC army with 300 men from Batavia landed on Ceylon . Among the Dutch soldiers was the German mercenary Johann Jacob Saar , who recalls the later siege of Colombo in his memoirs.
The rude awakening for the Portuguese came in October 1652 when the Dutch commander of Galle sent messengers to Colombo and informed the captain-general Emanuel Mascarenhas Homem that the closed season was now over and hostilities would be resumed. On November 30th, Homem was deposed by soldiers under Gaspar de Figueira de Serpa and the population.
The siege
On August 14, 1655, 1200 soldiers left the VOC under General Gerard Pietersz. Help Batavia on twelve ships in the direction of Ceylon. There were also Dutch troops on site, so that Hulft had 9,800 European soldiers. He was also supported by 16,000 men from King Rajasingha II of Kandy. However, they held back during the fighting themselves, only secured the siege ring and otherwise supplied the Dutch with provisions. Hulft had already conquered Negombo in September and the Kalutara fort on October 15 . Advancing troops of the legendary Portuguese captain Gaspar de Figueira de Serpa were defeated the next day. By the end of the month Colombo was surrounded. 16 ships blocked the port. The attack on Colombo began on November 12th. The civilian population was also prevented from fleeing. In April 1656, the Portuguese attempt to bring support from Goa failed. 22 small ships had started with troops and provisions, but were scattered to all winds by a single Dutch ship. A famine broke out in the city. Saar reports that the people ate grass in their desperation and that "a Mohress ate her own child". With the besiegers there was a lack of water, especially on hot days, and the water you got as a soldier was full of worms, which you filtered out with cloths from your mouth.
On May 7th, the VOC managed to storm the city with fresh troops from Batavia and capture the northeast bastion. There is a legend according to which Captain Gaspar de Figueira de Serpa deserted and showed the Dutch the weak point of the fortress. But this version of the story is doubtful ("see the article on Gaspar de Figueira de Serpa "). On May 10th, the Portuguese finally sent negotiators to the besiegers. One of the surrender conditions of the Dutch was that the Portuguese had to pay nine months' wages for each Dutch soldier, regardless of whether they were still alive or had died in battle. According to Saar, the condition that all unmarried women and girls had to stay in Colombo and marry Dutch people, while families and married people were brought to the Portuguese bases on the west coast of India, caused "great, powerful woes and weeping and screaming". The Portuguese had still considered taking the surviving women and children to a church and setting it on fire while the men seek death with swords in hand, but this was unacceptable for the prelates of the community, which is why they did so finally accepted the demands. On May 12, 1656 at three in the afternoon, 73 emaciated and partly wounded men came out of the fortress and surrendered. They were the last survivors of the Portuguese defenders.
300 Dutch people died during the siege and 350 were seriously wounded. General Hulft also died on April 10, 1656 after an arquebus bullet hit him in the right shoulder. From then on, Adriaan van der Meyden was in command . Hulft was buried in Galle three days later. In 1658 he was reburied in Colombo.
consequences
Van der Meyden did not have the close relationship with King Rajasingha II as Hulft had before. The king distrusted him and when he realized that the Dutch would not give up control of Colombo, he stopped all food deliveries to them. In November van der Meyden sent a small troop to the king's camp in Raygamwatte , but the king fled to the mountains before the Dutch got there. Ultimately, the king had only managed to have one colonial power replaced by another, which was paraphrased by the phrase “miris deela Inguru gatta wage” ( German to get ginger in exchange for chili ).
On June 23, 1658, Jaffna, the last Portuguese city on Ceylon, fell into the hands of the Dutch. They stayed for almost 150 years. In 1796 Colombo was conquered by the British .
literature
- João Ribeiro: The Historic Tragedy of the Island of Ceilão
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b European Encroachment and Dominance: The Portuguese , In: Sri Lanka: A Country Study , accessed November 1, 2016.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h J. Sarath Edirisinghe: The siege of Colombo , In: The Sunday Times, May 4, 2014 , accessed November 1, 2016.
- ^ A b c European Encroachment and Dominance: The Portuguese , In: Sri Lanka: A Country Study , accessed November 1, 2016.
- ↑ a b c d e Hans Holzhaider: Johann Jacob Saar: Der Leichtherzige , accessed on October 27, 2016.
- ↑ Simon Gregory Perera: Jesuits in Ceylon (in the XVI and XVII Centuries) , 1941, p. 120 , accessed on November 1, 2016.
- ↑ a b c d e f g Arthur Percival Newton: The Cambridge history of the British Empire , Part 2
- ↑ Wolvendaal Foundation ( Memento of the original from September 2, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Steven Thomas: ' Timeline for Colonial Ceylon , accessed November 1, 2016.
- ↑ J. Sarath Edirisinghe: The rise and fall of Gaspar de Figueira de Cerpa, the ruthless Portuguese Captain , accessed November 1, 2016.
- ↑ Philippus Baldaeus: A true and exact description of the most celebrated East India coasts of Malabar and Coromandel and also of the isle of Ceylon with their adjacent kingdoms and provinces , accessed on November 1, 2016.
- ↑ Amazing Lanka: Dutch Reformed Church of Galle ( Memento of the original from June 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed November 1, 2016.
