Page 77 - Journal of Asian History_Neat

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V!
SO SAi.iii o/uakan

for the service of the King, Our Master. Because this land has been
so ruined, [then] all will be lost. We all believe, however, that Your
Lordship will [send aid) as fully as the necessity requires, in accord-
ancu with the. news we now have that Your Lordship is preparing [to
send to] this land a great armada, should the need arise. Please bcliovo .‘i
,v
that, just because Your Lordship is mindful of us, we feel free already :r$
s
of all these troubles that we expected.
I wrote to Your Lordship, by Ruy Lopes, how wc were besieged on
land and sea by the Turks, in the course of which [sieg-s] these Turks
placed six pieces of heavy artillery, [i.e.,] [four] basalisks, one espalha-
jalo,l one salvage- together with some small pieces set on the flat roofs
of certain buildings belonging to the King. During the eleven days the
Turks bombarded the fortress, they did little harm to it, because it
was so strong. The Turks destroyed one of our camello de ferro3 and
with one of our shots we ruined from the fortress, their espalhajalo. .Ji
That killed four Portuguese and wounded some ten or twelve; but as
it appeared after their departure-they received [even] greater damage
from the good shooting that our gunners made against their mantelets. |
On the last night when the Turks gathered together their cannons 3
and raised the siege, they brought to the walls a Portuguese bombardier,
whom they had captured at the fortress of Muscat. [This man] came
to speak with the men on the [fortress] wall, asking that they should
try to rescue him and the other captured. Until that moment we
knew nothing about him, though in fact on numerous occasions at ';«j
night our men had called out to the renegades [in the Turkish camp],
asking them to come to speak with the soldiers who stood on the wall
-but the renegades had never replied to this request. On the day that
the Turks went away they left with us two Christians, the one a .'2
Russian by race and the other an Italian; through these men we
learned all that occured at Muscat-that Mehmed Bey, the son of j
Pin Bey (Barba Negra) who was admiral of the Ottoman fleet, attacked

1 Pieris and Fitzler (Ceyloi\ and Portugal, Pt. I: Kings and Christians 1539— /l
1552, Leipzig, 1927, p. 304) write the following: ". . . the greatest of all guns was
Bazalisco, which reached a weight of 150 quintals with a ienght of 35 palms, i
Smaller basiliscos weighing 70 quintals were described as has tar do s. The espala-
falto was heavier than these latter, though it was only eixteen palms in length,
which was also the length on the salvage, a pioco of 40 quintals. There were
smaller guns like the camello and the camalole which were used with stone balls, ?
\ as well as the Ledo (lion), Aguia (eagle), Serpe (serpent) and cao (dog).** 1
1 See abovo, note 1.
i
: 1 See abovo, note 1.
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