However, Cabral entered into a conflict with the local Arab merchant guilds, with the result that the Portuguese factory was overrun in a riot and up to 70 Portuguese killed. Cabral blamed the Zamorin for the incident and bombarded the city. Thus war broke out between Portugal and Calicut. Vasco da Gama invoked his royal letter to take command of the 4th India Armada, secheduled to set out in 1502, with the explicit aim of taking revenge upon the Zamorin and force him to submit to Portuguese terms.
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The heavily-armed fleet of fifteen ships and eight hundred men left Lisbon on 12 February 1502. One of the squadrons was led by his cousin, Estevao da Gama (the son of Aires da Gama), and two of his maternal uncles, Vicente Sodre and Bras Sodre, were pre-designated to command an Indian Ocean naval patrol. Along the way, on the outgoing voyage, Gama’s fleet opened contact with the East African gold port of Sofala, and reduced the sultanate of Kilwa to tribute, extracting a substantial sum of gold.
On reaching India in October 1502, da Gama started capturing any Arab vessel he came across in Indian waters, most notoriously the Miri, a pilgrim ship from Mecca, whose passengers he had massacred in open water. [24] He then appeared before Calicut, demanding redress for the treatment meted out to Cabral. While the Zamorin was willing to sign a new treaty,[25] Gama made a preposterous call to the Hindu king to expel all Muslims from Calicut before beginning negotiations, which was naturally turned down. The Portuguese fleet then bombarded the city for nearly two days from the sea shore.
He also captured several rice vessels and barbarously cut off the crew’s hands, ears and noses, dispatching them with an insulting note to the Zamorin. [26] A depiction of Gama’s fleet (from the Livro das Armadas). The violent treatment meted out by Gama quickly brought trade along the Malabar coast of India, upon which Calicut depended, to a standstill. But the Zamorin nonetheless refused to submit to Portuguese terms, and even ventured to hire a fleet of strong corsair warships to challenge Gama’s armada (which Gama managed to defeat in a naval battle before Calicut harbor).
Gama loaded up with spices at Cochin and Cannanore, small nearby kingdoms, half-vassal and half-at-war with the Zamorin, whose alliances had been secured by prior Portuguese fleets. The 4th armada left India in early 1503. Gama left behind a small squadron of caravels, under the command of his uncle, Vicente Sodre, to patrol the Indian coast, continue harassing Calicut shipping and protect the Portuguese factories at Cochin and Cannanore from the Zamorin’s inevitable reprisals.
Vasco da Gama arrived back in Portugal in September 1503, effectively having failed in his mission to bring the Zamorin to submission. This failure, and the subsequent more galling failure of his uncle Vicente Sodre to protect the Portuguese factory in Cochin, probably counted against any further rewards. When the Portuguese king Manuel I of Portugal decided to appoint the first governor and viceroy of Portuguese India in 1505, Vasco da Gama was conspicuously overlooked, and the post given to D. Francisco de Almeida.
