East, carrying sometimes as many as 3000 and 4000
soldiers. Of these men few ever returned to Europe. Many perished in
battle, in shipwreck, or from the climate, and those who survived
were encouraged to settle down and marry native women. During the
whole of the sixteenth century Portugal was being drained of men, and
those the strongest and bravest of her sons. In return she got plenty
of wealth, but money cannot take the place of brain and muscle.
Besides becoming exhausted {203} in quantity, the Portuguese in the
East rapidly degenerated in quality. It was not only that
Albuquerque's successors in supreme command were his inferiors; some
of them proved worthy of their office; but the soldiers and sailors
and officials showed a lamentable falling off. Brilliant courage was
shown up to the siege of Goa in 1570. After that time it is difficult
to recognise the heroic Portuguese of Albuquerque's campaigns.
Albuquerque's imperial notions were set aside as impracticable, and
interest in commerce and in Christian missions took the place of vast
schemes of conquest and of empire.

The later history of the Portuguese in Asia may be summed up in a
rapid record of their disasters. In 1603 and 1639 the Dutch blockaded
Goa. In 1656 they drove the Portuguese from Cannanore; in 1661 from
Negapatam and Kayenkolam, the port of Quilon; in 1663 from Cranganore
and Cochin. Nor were the Dutch victories confined to India; in 1619
they founded Batavia in the island of Java, and in 1640 they took
Malacca and concentrated the whole trade of the Spice Islands at
their new settlement. The Dutch were equally successful in Ceylon,
which they completely controlled after the capture of Jaffnapatam in
1658. The English were but little later in the field: in 1611 Sir
Henry Middleton defeated the Portuguese off Cambay, and in 1615
Captain Best won a great victory over the Portuguese fleet off
Swally, the port of Surat. The Dutch and English agencies quickly
covered the East, and soon after {204} the middle of the seventeenth
century the Asiatic trade of Portugal had practically disappeared.
What little commerce survived was in the hands of the Jesuits, and
became finally extinct on the suppression of that body by the Marquis
of Pombal in 1742.

It was not only by European competitors that the Portuguese power in
the East was shattered. It was the Emperor Shah Jahan who took Hugli
in 1629, after an obstinate resistance, and carried away 1000
Portu