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Draft:Siege of Chaul (1570–1571)

Siege of Chaul, 1570–1571
Part of War of the League of the Indies

Depiction of the siege of Chaul
DateDecember 15, 1570 – July 24, 1571
Location
Chaul
Result Portuguese victory
Belligerents
Portuguese Empire Sultanate of Ahmadnagar
Commanders and leaders
Dom Luís Freire de Andrade
Dom Francisco de Mascarenhas		 Nizam Ul-Mulk Shah of Ahmadnagar
Strength
900 soldiers 120,000 men (including many Turkic, Abyssian, Persian, Afghan, and Mughal mercenaries,), 38,000 cavalry, 370 war elephants, 38 heavy bombards
Casualties and losses
400+ Portuguese soldiers, unknown number of Hindu auxiliaries and civilians 3,000+ killed, heavy material losses

The siege of Chaul was ...

Background

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Although protected by a small fort built near the shoreline in 1521, the city of Chaul was not fortified. Just as the threat of a siege became evident, the captain of the city, Dom Luís Freire de Andrade ordered the evacuation of women, children, and elderly to Goa and barricades be set up in the main streets with artillery. In October, Dom Francisco de Mascarenhas arrived from Goa with 600 men and immediately ordered the digging of an extensive network of ditches, trenches, earthen walls, and defensive works around the outer perimeter of the city, fortifying outer houses and monasteries into blockhouses and demolishing others to clear the line of fire for the artillery.[1]

Battle

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The warships were distributed in the river to the east, so as to deny the enemy a venue of approach to the city along the river banks with their artillery. This way, it would only be possible to approach the city through a swampy, narrow section to the north, forcing the enemy to bottleneck their forces.[2]

On December 15, the vanguard of the army of Ahmadnagar arrived under the command of an Ethiopian general, Faratecão (formerly at the service of the Sultan of Gujarat), and clashed with the Portuguese, who repelled the attack. The Nizam arrived with the rest of his army on December 21. Through a spy, the Portuguese determined that the forces of the Nizam Ul-Mulk Shah of Ahmadnagar (Nizamaluco in Portuguese) might have risen up to 120,000 men, including many Turkic, Abyssian, Persian, Afghan, and Mughal mercenaries, 38,000 horsemen, and 370 war elephants, supported by 38 heavy bombards. Not all were fighting men; according to António Pinto Pereira:

The infantry passed one-hundred and twenty thousand, but they do not rest on them their strength, nor do they care but of the cavalry and artillery for matters of war; the footmen are brought along for the march and for service in the camp and as labourers, rather than any confidence they might have of them. In said camp came 12,000 konkanis, very good people in war, mustered by the tanadares of Konkan, which lays between the edge of the Ghats and the sea, as bomb throwers, bowmen and a few arquebusiers and 4,000 field craftsmen, blacksmiths, stonemasons and carpenters.

The Portuguese for their part numbered 900 soldiers, but each fully equipped with plate armour and matchlocks, compared to only 300 arquebusiers on the enemy side. But because cavalry and elephants were rendered useless in a siege by the marshlands and trenches, the infantry would have to bear the brunt of the assault.[3]

The Nizam assembled the rest of his forces around the north and northeast of the city. On the 21st day of December he breached the fortified perimeter around the monastery of São Francisco on the outskirts of Chaul, but the heavy fire of the Portuguese arquebuses and a swift counter-attack forced them to retreat. In the meantime, the Nizam set his powerful artillery to the east of the city under the supervision of a Turkish general, Rumi Khan, near a village the Portuguese dubbed Chaul de Cima (Upper Chaul).[4]

At the same time, about 2,000 horsemen of the Nizam proceeded to devastate the lands owned by Portuguese around Bassein and Daman, but were repelled trying to assault a small Portuguese fort at Caranjá near Bombay, defended by 40 Portuguese soldiers.[5]

On January 10, the batteries of the Nizam began bombarding the outer blockhouses of Chaul, reducing them to rubble after a few days. One such piece earned from the Portuguese the nickname "Orlando Furioso".

In February, a small fleet of 5 half-galleys and 25 smaller craft with 2,000 men from Calicut, commanded by Catiproca Marcá, arrived in Chaul to meet up with the forces of the Nizam, under cover from the night. The Portuguese had five galleys and eleven foists in the harbour, but the Malabarese avoided clashing with the Portuguese galleys.

Fighting around Chaul broke down to trench warfare, as the army of Ahmadnagar dug trenches towards Portuguese lines to cover from their gunfire, amidst frequent Portuguese raids. The Portuguese dug counter-mines to neutralize them.[6]

At this point, a Portuguese captain Agostinho Nunes introduced for the first time an innovation that the Portuguese historian António Pinto Pereira considered to have been critical in withstanding the enemy bombardment: he ordered his soldiers to dig a special trench with a firing parapet, protected by sloped earth—a "fire trench".[7]

In late February the Nizam ordered a general assault on the city, but was repelled with heavy losses, just as the Portuguese received important reinforcements by sea from Goa and Bassein. Fighting continued over the possession of the outer strongholds throughout the months of March and April, as the army of the Nizam suffered heavy casualties. Following a sortie of the Portuguese on April 11, the Nizam ordered the city to be subjected to a general bombardment, which demolished several strongholds and sunk the Viceroy's galley anchored in the harbour.

Yet the disparity in numbers was still immense, and despite frequent sorties, little by little, the Portuguese were forced to give ground to the great mass of enemies, retreating from several defensive lines until by May they were finally cornered in their last line of defence. For the following thirty days, the Portuguese desperately defended their lines against several waves of attackers, discharging volleys of matchlock fire and hurling gunpowder grenades at day and night. Portuguese casualties now amounted to over 400, besides their Hindu auxiliaries and civilians.[8]

The forces of the Nizam however, failed to overcome the Portuguese in time—they had successfully held out through the monsoon season, and now that it had passed the weather finally allowed vessels to flow freely into the city, bearing fresh reinforcements nearly every day; when on June 29 the Nizam ordered a general assault on the city, the Portuguese repelled the attack and pushed his army back to their camp in a complete rout, capturing cannon, weapons, and destroying the saps and siegeworks along the way, having slain over 3,000 of the besiegers at the end of six hours fighting. [9]

Aftermath

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After this setback, on July 24 Murtaza Nizam Shah requested peace, and withdrew his army.[10]

References

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  1. ^ Danvers, Frederick Charles (1894). The Portuguese in India: A.D. 1571-1894. W.H. Allen & Company, limited.
  2. ^ Pereira, António Pinto (1987). História da India no tempo em que a governou o Visorei Dom Luís de Ataíde: reprodução em fac-símile do exemplar com data de 1617 da Biblioteca da INCM (in Brazilian Portuguese). Impr. Nacional-Casa da Moeda.
  3. ^ Danvers, Frederick Charles (1894). A. D. 1481-1571. W. H. Allen & Company, limited.
  4. ^ Danvers, Frederick Charles (1894). A.D. 1571-1894. W.H. Allen & Company, limited.
  5. ^ Murrin, Michael (1994). History and Warfare in Renaissance Epic. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-55403-7.
  6. ^ Tracy, James D. (2000-09-25). City Walls: The Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-65221-6.
  7. ^ Carvalhal, Hélder; Murteira, André; Jesus, Roger Lee de (2021-04-05). The First World Empire: Portugal, War and Military Revolution. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-37282-3.
  8. ^ Subrahmanyam, Sanjay (2012-10-30). Courtly Encounters: Translating Courtliness and Violence in Early Modern Eurasia. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-06736-3.
  9. ^ Cunha, Joseph Gerson Da (1876). Notes on the History and Antiquities of Chaul and Bassein. Thacker, Vining.
  10. ^ Schwartz, Stuart B. (2008-10-01). All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-15053-7.


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