ceed with a powerful fleet to the Malay Peninsula, and
firmly establish Portuguese influence in that quarter.

Diogo Mendes felt the force of these arguments, but the master of his
flagship, Dinis Cerniche, would not {95} agree, and setting sail
crossed the bar of Goa harbour on his way out. The Governor at once
sent a ship, under Jayme Teixeira, with orders to make Mendes return
by any means in his power. Since the master would not shorten sail,
the ship was fired on and forced to return by the destruction of its
main yard. Albuquerque forgave Mendes, but ordered Cerniche to be
executed, which sentence was not carried out, but the master was
instead sent back to Portugal in custody. Nevertheless the
persistency of Mendes and his men seems to have greatly influenced
Albuquerque, for finding in Feb. 1511, when he sailed out of Goa
harbour, that it was impossible to sail westward owing to the
monsoon, he resolved to make his way to Malacca. He first sailed to
Cochin, where he appointed Manoel de Lacerda to be Captain of the
Indian Sea with supreme authority, and he directed that Lacerda's
orders should be obeyed as if they were his own.

Albuquerque's conquest of Malacca ranks second in importance among
his great feats of arms to the capture of Goa. It gave the Portuguese
the complete command of the spice trade, and eventually of the
Chinese and Japanese trade. It struck the final blow at the
Muhammadan commercial routes to Europe. Hitherto the Portuguese had
only secured the monopoly of the Indian trade, and Muhammadan
vessels, largely manned by Arabs, still collected the produce of
Bengal and Burma, of Sumatra and the Spice Islands, of Siam and
China, at the great commercial {96} port of the Malay Peninsula.
Albuquerque resolved to check this trade by holding the mouth of the
Red Sea, but it seemed to him of even more efficacy to seize upon the
headquarters of the trade itself.

The city of Malacca, with its splendid harbour, was the capital of a
wealthy Muhammadan Sultan. This man's ancestors were said to have
come from the neighbouring island of Java, and to have been converted
to Islam some 200 years before. Constant war had been waged between
the Kings of Siam, who formerly ruled the whole peninsula, and the
Javanese immigrants; but the latter had held their own, and by a wise
encouragement of commerce had become very wealthy and powerful. The
trade of Malacca with India is said by the Portuguese chroniclers to