Not To Tell A Lie : Western Tourists In Burma See Local Customs
The account given by Pinto of the final surrender of Martaban to the Burmese, and of the events which followed, is graphic and interesting, and in many particulars bears the impress of accuracy and truth, though to the Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who had a very vague and inadequate idea of the greatness and splendour of the cities and countries of Eastern Asia, it appeared absurdly exaggerated. Here, as elsewhere, it must be remembered that Pinto had no means of accurately estimating numbers, and that he frequently was obliged to take his details from the reports of men who no doubt employed Eastern hyperbole with great freedom.
It appears that the unfortunate King of Martaban had reckoned greatly upon the assistance of the Portuguese, and had held out in the full hope that they would give him efficient succour. When he found them, to his intense chagrin, ranged on the side of his enemies, he gave up his cause for lost, and entered into negotiations with his assailant, offering to surrender his capital on condition that he should be allowed to retire in safety with his family. The faithless Burmese tyrant, after pledging his word that this condition should be granted, shamefully broke the promise he had given, and the unhappy prince was led forth in triumph with his wives and children, and exposed to great humiliation and ignominy. Pinto gives a very circumstantial account of the procession of guards and captives who marched forth from Martaban, giving the names of many of the princes, the chief priest, &c. He then says — “Immediately after these there came in a litter Nhay Canatoo, daughter of the King of Pegu, whose kingdom the Burmese monarch had taken away, and wife of the Chambainhaa. She had with her four little children, two boys and two girls, the greatest of whom was not more than seven years old, and around her were thirty or forty young women of noble family, and grandly beautiful. They all had their faces bowed down towards the ground, and tears in their eyes, and leaned upon other women. After these marched in order certain Falagrepos, who are among themselves like the Capuchins among us, and who all, barefooted and bareheaded, marched onward praying, and carrying in their hands a kind of chaplets. Moreover, they encouraged these ladies as well as they could, throwing water in their faces to revive them when their hearts failed them, which happened often enough — a lamentable spectacle, which it was impossible to look upon without shedding tears. This unhappy company was followed by a number of foot-guards, and after these came some five hundred Burmese on horseback. Near them was the Chambainhaa, mounted on a small elephant, in token of poverty and of the disregard of the world, conformably to the religion to which he had devoted himself anew. There was no greater pomp about him than this, and he was dressed simply in a long garment of black velvet, in token of mourning, having his beard, his hair, and his eyebrows shaved off; and, moreover, he had caused an old cord to be placed about his neck before he gave himself up to the king. This spectacle, too, was so mournful that none could look upon it and refrain, from weeping. With regard to his age, he was about sixty-two years old, of very lofty stature, with a grave and severe countenance, and the look of a very generous prince. When he had come to a place where a confused company of women, children, and old men awaited him, when they saw him in such a lamentable condition, before he had emerged from the city, they all raised, six or seven times, such a loud and terrible cry, that one would have said the earth was crumbling under his feet; and these lamentations and cries were incontinently followed by a multitude of blows that they inflicted on their own faces, striking themselves heavily with stones, with so little pity for themselves that the majority of them were in a short time covered with blood. Moreover, these things so horrible, to see and so terrible to hear, in such measure afflicted all the bystanders, that even the Burmese guards, though they were men of war, and consequently little inclined to compassion, and enemies of the Chambainhaa, could not refrain from weeping like children. It was at this place, also, that the heart of Nhay Canatoo, the wife of the Chambainhaa, twice failed her, and: all the other ladies gave way also, insomuch ilhat it was necessary to let him dismount from the elephant on which he was riding, that he might be able to encourage his wife and to console her. Then, seekig her lying on the ground like one dead, and embracing her four littte children, he knelt down on the ground and looked up with tears in his eyes.”
The severest part of the unfortunate prince’s trial was the mortification of meeting the Portuguese, who had behaved very treacherously towards him, and who were now standing to see him pass “all clothed in holiday dresses, with cuirasses of buffalo leather, their hats on their heads ornamented with a great number of plumes, and their arquebuses on their shoulders.” Juan Cayeyro, one of the number, especially attracted the notice of the Chambainhaa by flaunting in crimson satin. On seeing him, the fallen monarch bent forward on his elephant’s neck, and declared that he would go no farther unless these wicked and treacherous men were removed. The Birmans themselves were irritated at the double-dealing of the Spaniards, and the captain of the guard sarcastically bade them go shave their beards, and no longer deceive people into the belief that they were soldiers; and the Burmese would hire a number of women in their stead, who would serve for money. The Burmese guards, following their commander’s lead, thereupon pushed away the Spaniards with great contempt, and Pinto adds pathetically, “Not to tell a lie, nothing ever so sensibly affected me as this, for the honour of my compatriots.”
The plunder of the rich city of Martaban was the bait that had attracted the Spaniards to serve the Burmese invader. They made no doubt that their help would.be paid for by the abandonment to them of a great part of the spoil. But the Burmese conqueror had all the cunning of an Asiatic and all an Asiatic’s disregard of promises and oaths. He eaused the gates of the city to be very strictly guarded, that none might enter or go out without his express permission. He took occasion to convey away the Chambainhaa’s treasure privately; and so great was this treasure, according to Pinto’s assertion, that a thousand men were employed for two days in removing it. When he had thus taken care of his own interests, the tyrant gave up the city to be plundered by his own soldiers, to the great chagrin of the Portuguese, who found themselves cheated of the wages of their treachery. Pinto tells the story of these events in his usual graphic style. He says —
“After these two days were past, the king went very early on a hill called Beiddo, distant a couple of gunshots from thence, and caused the captains who guarded the gates to withdraw. Then the miserable city of Martaban was given up to the mercy of the men of war, and as a last signal a cannon was fired. Immediately all the soldiers rushed pell-mell into the place in such crowds that it is considered more than three hundred were suffocated at the entrance of the gates; for as there was an infinite number of men of different nations, the majority of them without a king, without law, or £he fear of God, they all rushed with dosed eyes to the spoil, and were so fierce about it, that they made no scruple of killing a hundred men for a crown. In truth, the disorder in the town was so great that the king was obliged to go six or seven times to allay it. The sacking of the city lasted three days and a half, and was carried on with such avarice and cruelty by these barbarous enemies that it was completely pillaged, and nothing remained that could attract the eye of covetousness.”
And now come some of Pinto’s magnificent figures. He tells us — “When this was done, the king, with a new ceremony of publications, caused the palaces of the Chambainhaa to be destroyed, which were very beautiful and very rich ; and with them thirty or forty houses belonging to the principal captains, together with the pagodas and temples of the whole city, insomuch that, according to the opinion of many, it is held that; the loss of these magnificent edifices may be estimated at ten millions of gold ; with which, not yet content, he caused all the buildings of the city which still remained standing to be set on fire, and by the violence of the wind these kindled so fiercely that on the first night there remained nothing that was not burnt down; and even the walls and the bulwarks were destroyed to their very foundations. The number of the dead was more than sixty thousand persons, and that of the prisoners was no less. There was a hundred and forty thousand houses burnt, and seventeen hundred temples, in which were likewise destroyed sixty thousand statues of idols of different metals. Moreover, during the siege, those of the city had eaten three thousand elephants. There were found there six thousand pieces of artillery of bronze and of iron, a hundred thousand quintals of pepper, and as much more of different drugs — of sandal, benzoin, lac, aloe-wood, camphor, silk, and of divers other kinds of very rich merchandise; but especially an infinity of goods that had come from India in more than a hundred ships of Cambaya, Achem, Melinda, and Ceilam ( Ceylon ), and from Mecca, the Loochoos, and China. As to the gold, silver, and precious stones which were found there, its amount cannot be truly known, because things are usually concealed; therefore it shall suffice me to say that what the Burman king had for himself of the treasure of the Chambainhaa amounted, so far as I was assured, to more than a hundred millions of gold, whereof, as I have before said, our king ( the King of Portugal ) lost more than half, as much for our sins as for the weakness and want of courage of men who were cowardly and full of evil inclinations.”
The promises of the Burman tyrant were no more kept towards his captives than his engagements with the Spaniards had been. Wars in Eastern Asia at that time, and long afterwards, were wars of extermination. A captured dynasty was generally put-to death to the last man, woman, or child, for fear of reprisals; and this course was pursued by the conqueror of Martaban. He caused a number of gibbets to be erected; a great body of horsemen came forth from the king’s quarters, proclaiming that no man, “on pain of death, should appear in arms, or say with his mouth what he thought in his heart.” [ * ] Presently the whole army was paraded, and amid a great display of barbaric pomp and splendour of war, the unhappy king and his wives, children, and dependants were hanged en masse with circumstances of atrocious cruelty. In concluding the chapter which tells us of these barbarous proceedings, Pinto says — “As for the rearguard, it consisted of a hundred elephants, like those that marched in front. So that the number of warriors who were present at this execution, partly as a guard and partly for the pomp of justice, amounted to ten thousand foot soldiers and two thousand horsemen, and two hundred elephants, not to mention an infinity of other men, natives and foreigners, who had assembled to see the end of this wretched and miserable tragedy.”
Relation of Fernand Mendez Pinto, 1547 : World’s Explorers c.1872
* Early political correctness
