E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten
Zweig Magellan
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-908968-08-1
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 352 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-908968-08-1
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna, into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Between the wars, Zweig was an international bestseller with a string of hugely popular novellas including Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok and Fear. In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, he left Austria, and lived in London, Bath and New York-a period during which he produced his most celebrated works: his only novel, Beware of Pity, and his memoir, The World of Yesterday. He eventually settled in Brazil, where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in an apparent double suicide. Much of his work is available from Pushkin Press.
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THE FIRST FLEET that sailed from Lisbon down the estuary of the Tagus into the unknown distance was on a voyage of discovery; the second fleet was dispatched for the purposes of peaceful trade with the newly annexed territories; the third fleet was armed and equipped for war. On this 25th March 1505, came the next stage of that inexorable rhythm which was to prevail throughout the colonial epoch now opening. For centuries the same process would be repeated: first a ‘factory’ (as trading stations were then called) would be established; next would be built a fortress for its alleged protection. The native rulers were, to begin with, deluded by prospects of pacific trade; then, when enough soldiers had been sent to the ‘factory’, the local potentates would be forcibly deprived of their land and their other possessions. A decade had scarcely elapsed before Portugal, dizzy with success, had forgotten that her primary aim had been nothing more than to secure a modest share of the spice trade. The fortunate gamester soon forgets his good intentions. From the day when Vasco da Gama landed in the Indies, Portugal’s main task became to thrust other nations from the groaning board. For she now regarded all Africa, India and Brazil as her exclusive domain. From Gibraltar to Singapore and China no ships were to trade upon half the globe unless they belonged to the smallest country in Europe.
It was made a spectacular occasion, this 25th March 1505, when Portugal’s first war fleet, which was to inaugurate the conquest of the New Empire, left the port of Lisbon. There had been nothing comparable to it in history since the crossing of the Hellespont by Alexander the Great. The affair was no less tremendous, seeing that the Portuguese fleet, likewise, was setting forth to conquer a world. Twenty ships were awaiting the King’s order to up-anchor and sail; no longer the little open barcas of the early days of Prince Henry the Navigator, but broad-beamed, heavy galleons, with several decks, high in the bows and the stern, each ship having three or four masts and being amply manned. In addition to the hundreds of able seamen trained for war, there would be on board such a galleon as many as fifteen hundred fully equipped and armoured soldiers, as well as a couple of hundred bombardiers or gunners. Besides the ship’s carpenters, they carried other craftsmen to build ships and fortresses in the Indies.
At the first glance, every one of the onlookers must realise that so important a fleet had an important aim—the seizure of the East. For good reasons had the title of Viceroy of the Indies been bestowed upon Dom Francisco de Almeida, the admiral of the fleet. Nor was it by chance that Vasco da Gama, ‘Admiral of the Indian Ocean’, the first hero and navigator of Portugal, was entrusted with the fitting out of the expedition. Almeida’s military task had been made perfectly clear. He was to dismantle and demolish all the Muhammadan trading stations in India and Africa, to build fortresses at all important strategic points, and to garrison them adequately. In anticipation of England’s political ideas, he was to occupy the places of ingress to and egress from all inland seas, block the chief straits from Gibraltar to Malacca, close the southern inlets from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf into the Indian Ocean, which was to be made impracticable for any maritime traffic other than that of Portugal. He had also received instructions to annihilate the sea power of the Sultan of Egypt and of the Indian rajas, was to keep the Eastern ports under such strict control that from the year of Our Lord 1505 no ship unprovided with a Portuguese licence could take on board so much as a peppercorn. In pursuance of these military and naval schemes, he was to spread Christianity in the countries he would conquer—this plan giving his expedition the character of a crusade. With his own hand, in Lisbon Cathedral, the King gave Dom Francisco de Almeida a new banner of white damask bearing in crimson satin the Cross of Christ, and this banner was to wave victoriously over the lands of the Moors and other pagans. The admiral knelt to receive the sublime emblem, and there knelt with him fifteen hundred of his men who had confessed their sins and received the Host, taking an oath of fidelity to their earthly lord, the King of Portugal, as well as to their heavenly master, whose realm was to overcome that of the foreign unbelievers. From the cathedral they marched in solemn procession to the harbour. The guns thundered farewell. Magnificently, then, the ships sailed down the Tagus into the open sea which the admiral had vowed to conquer for Portugal as far as the ends of the earth.
Among the fifteen hundred who, with bowed heads, had knelt before the altar, and with uplifted hands had taken the oath of loyalty, was a man of twenty-four, Ferdinand Magellan, who had not as yet made a name in the world. Of his origin little more is known than that he was born about the year 1480, his very birthplace being open to dispute. Chroniclers have spoken of Sabrosa, in the province of Trazos-Montes, but this is now known to be erroneous, recent researches having disclosed as a forgery the will in which that birthplace is mentioned. It seems most probable that Magellan was born in Oporto. Nothing more is known about his family than that it was noble, though only in the fourth grade of nobility, that of the fidalgos de cota de armas. Still, this sufficed to make him an armiger, and to give him entry at court. It seems probable that in early youth he had served Queen Elinor as one of her pages, though there is no evidence of his ever having held an important position at court. When, at the age of twenty-four, he became a member of the expeditionary force to the East, it was only as a plain sobresaliente, one of the fifteen hundred supernumeraries who took their meals with the crew and the cabin boys, and shared the sleeping accommodation of these; no more than one of the ‘unknown soldiers’ who set forth by thousands in this war for the conquest of the world—thousands of them to perish, a dozen or so to survive—but the only one upon whom was to devolve the immortal fame of their common deed.
Magellan was merely one among fifteen hundred. There is scant mention of his name in the chronicles of the wars in the Indies, nor, to be honest, can one say about him during these years more than that they must have been years of invaluable experience. A sobresaliente is not likely to be coddled; he will be treated as roughly as a maid of all work, will have to do his share in reefing sails during a storm, to take his turn at the pumps, to stand in the forefront of the battle, to dig trenches under fire and beneath the burning sun. In the ‘factory’, he will have, alternately, to play the part of shopkeeper and sentry, will have to fight among the common soldiers and sailors by land and at sea, will have to heave the lead and use the sword, to obey orders as well as issue them. By thus participating in all risks and all tasks, he learns every trick of the trades of war and of commerce, becoming at one and the same time soldier, sailor, merchant, acquiring knowledge of men, lands, seas and the movements of the stars. In due course, Destiny, having in view for him a lofty task, will have initiated him into those supreme concerns by which the station of his country and man’s knowledge of the globe will be decided for decades and for centuries. Thus it came to pass that, after a few minor skirmishes, which were plunder raids rather than genuine warfare, Magellan received his true baptism of fire in the naval action of Cannanore on 16th March 1506.
This battle of Cannanore marked a turning point in the history of Portuguese conquests in the Indies. In 1498, at the time of Vasco da Gama’s first arrival on the Malabar coast, the Zamorin of Calicut had given him a friendly reception, being fully prepared to trade with the representatives of this unknown people. Eight years later, however, when the Portuguese reappeared with a fleet of larger and better-armed ships, the Indian ruler was quick to realise that the strangers from the West had come for conquest as well as for trade. With alarm the Hindu and Muhammadan traders became aware that a fearsome pike had invaded their trout stream, that the strangers intended to make themselves masters both by land and by sea. Dread of the Western pirates kept the Eastern ships in port; the spice trade was brought to a stand-still; the supplies of overland commerce by the desert route to the Mediterranean were withheld; and at Venice, on the Rialto, it grew plain that the customary channels of a lucrative traffic had been forcibly blocked.
The Sultan of Egypt, whose transit dues were thus cut off, began by trying whether a remedy could be found in threats. He wrote to the Pope that if the Portuguese continued their robber campaign in the Indian Ocean, he would, as a reprisal, destroy the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. But neither the Pope nor any other European emperor or king could control the imperialistic will of Portugal. Nothing but force could put restraint upon these conquerors, so that the sole resource of the injured parties was to get together in an attempt to destroy the Portuguese in the Indies before they had established their power. The attack was prepared by the Zamorin of Calicut,...
