Diogo Soares (seafarer)

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Diogo Soares de Mello (also written Melo ; † around 1553 in Burma ), also known as Diogo Soares de Albergaria or in Spanish Diego Suárez , called o Galego ("the Galician "), was a Portuguese mercenary , seafarer and pirate who lived in the 16th century in India , East Africa and Southeast Asia .

Diego Suarez Bay (now Antsiranana Bay ) on the northern tip of Madagascar

He was a lower country nobleman ( Fidalgo ) from Galicia, who was exiled to India around 1538 because of his involvement in several homicides and hired himself there as a mercenary. In 1540 he assisted the leader of his mercenary unit in eliminating a rival for a woman's favor. The governor Estêvão da Gama had the leader executed after the murder was discovered; Soares was able to escape from Goa , fled with twenty like-minded people to Melinde in East Africa and turned to piracy here. In 1542 he was pardoned by the new governor Martim Afonso de Sousa - with whom he was on friendly terms -, returned to India and entered its service. The following year he was sent to Madagascar to look for De Sousa's brother who was shipwrecked in the area. He could not find the brother, but turned back to piracy and plundered the coastal regions, so that he returned to India with large amounts of silver and numerous slaves on board. The natural harbor on the northern tip of Madagascar was later named Diego Suárez after him (since 1975 Antsiranana ).

In 1547 Soares landed in Malacca and from here came to Burma ( Taungu Empire ), where he became a friend and general of King Tabinshwehti and fought in the war against the Siamese in 1548 . His stay in Burma is described in detail by Fernão Mendes Pinto ; the truthfulness of these stories is uncertain, even if confirmed in principle by Burmese chronicles (which, however, do not name him). Allegedly Soares should have had a bad influence on the king and made him an alcoholic, which led to his murder. After the king's death, Diego Soares was also executed by stoning, according to Pinto for raping a woman and killing her groom and other relatives.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ MN Pearson: The Portuguese in India , The New Cambridge History of India, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 86
  2. ↑ Pierre van den Boogaerde: Shipwrecks of Madagascar , Strategic Book Publishing, New York 2011, pp. 40/41
  3. ↑ Fernão Mendes Pinto: Peregrinação , Chapter 191/192
  4. ^ Sanjay Subrahmanyam: The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500-1700: A Political and Economic History , Second Edition, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester / Malden 2012, p. 135
personal data
SURNAME Soares, Diogo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Diogo Soares de Mello; Diogo Soares de Melo; Diogo Soares de Albergaria; Diego Suarez; O Galego
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Portuguese mercenary, navigator, explorer and pirate
DATE OF BIRTH 15th century or 16th century
DATE OF DEATH around 1553
Place of death Burma