Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 480

62
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ NOVEMBER, 1923
Parmentier took hostages before commencing to trade, and, after a treacherous attack, during which some of the hostages escaped, upon his men ashore, put the rest of the hostages to death and then sailed away. He and his brother dying soon after, his successor in command returned to Sumatra, effected a reconciliation, secured a cargo and came safely baok to France.
187. In 1533 Francis I of France issued Letters of Marque against the Portuguese, declaring that the sea was free to men of all nations. It is reported that, in contemptuous defiance of the Papal Bulls, he remarked : "Je voudrais bien voir la clause du testament d'Adam qui m'exclut du partage du monde" (La Roncière, III, 300).
188. The Portuguese and Spaniards, finding that they could no longer trick the French by the loan of treacherous pilots (see para. 116 above), next tried to intimidate the French sailors by gross Cruelty. Having taken a ship, the Petit Lion of Dieppe, off the Azores, after dropping the officers from the yard arms into the sea and then beating them, they garotted them in a particularly cruel manner. Finally, throwing the officers' bodies into the hold, they drove the crew below and sank the ship by gunfire. In 1537 French corsairs patrolled the sea from Cape St. Vincent to the Antilles and, in reprisal for this and similar brutal behaviour, when they took any Portuguose or Spanish prisoners, they cut off their noses, saying in derision “ Eternuez l'or" (La Roncière, III, 291, 294).
189. The English records make but few references to French ships in the East at this time. In faot, Crawford (II, 516) says that the French first appeared in the Malay Archipelago under General Augustin de Beaulieu in 1621, ignoring the various instances already mentioned. It is, I suppose, in reference to Beaulieu's visit that Tavernier (III, 22) tells how, on a visit to Batavia, the French ships were treacherously set on fire and destroyed by the Dutch, whilst the crews were being entertained ashore by the Dutch Governor. In 1602 the Corbin and the Croissant from St. Malo visited St. Augustine in Madagascar. Beaulieu also touched at the same place in 1620 (Froidevaux, p. 8).
English. 190. English enterprise in this direotion began with Sir Francis Drake, who way, ac. cording to Andrew Lang (Hist. of Scotland, II, 339)," the most notorious of the sea-thieves who preyed upon the commerce of the world." It is sometimes good to see ourselves as others see us, but one wonders whether Lang would have described Drake in this way, haul Drake had the supreme good fortune to have been a Scotchman. Drake, leaving England in November 1577, raided the Pacific shore of South America, then failing to find a passage by the north of America, he determined to come home across the Pacific, though he had lost all his little fleet except his own ship, the Pelican (or Golden Hind). This determination was, no doubt, due to the fact that on board a Spanish galleon carrying a new Governor to the Philippines, which he had captured near Guatalco, he had found, besides a rich booty in goods and jewels, a chart of the Indian or Malayan Archipelago. By the aid of this he sailed a direct course from St. Francisco to the Moluccas, dooked and scraped his ship at Celebes, sailed into the Indian Seas along the coast of Java, vory narrowly escaping shipVreck in the Straits of Sunda, and thence by the Cape of Good Hope and Sierra Leone safely back to Plymouth with all his Spanish booty. There was at this time no war between England and Spain. Drake's conduct had therefore been, technically, piratical, and the Spanish Ambassador, anticipating Lang, described him as the "Master Thief of the Un. known World." Elizabeth, however, did not base her judgment on the opinions of her enemies. She accepted the rich presents which Drake offered in homage, and most of her courtiers followed the royal example, though Burleigh and Sussex refused to accept any preoious gifts from a man whose fortune had been made by plunder (Froude, English Seamen of the 16th century, p. 138; Kerr, X, 49).