On August 10, 1511, on an incoming tide, which they hoped would dislodge the castellated junk from its sandbank and float it even closer to the strategic bridge, the Portuguese prepared to conquer a city of 120,000 people with some thousand men and two hundred Malabars.
“On August 10, 1511, on an incoming tide, which they hoped would dislodge the castellated junk from its sandbank and float it even closer to the strategic bridge, the Portuguese prepared to conquer a city of 120,000 people with some thousand men and two hundred Malabars. It was probably the most disciplined, carefully planned military venture they had yet undertaken. Albuquerque was haunted by the lessons of Calicut and the ghost of Coutinho—the fear that, if they broke the barricades at the sea and took the bridge, the dream of imagined treasure would lure the men feverishly forward into the tangled lanes of an unknown city, where, weighted down with plate armor and exhausted by the stifling heat, they could be picked off and massacred.”
