Lords of Spice and Sea: The Spanish Sword
“There is an unfortunate tendency in western histories, when reviewing the expansion of the west in the early modern era, to focus entirely on the actions of the westerners. Easterners, when they appear, exist merely as an exotic but irrelevant backdrop or, at most, token actors without much agency who seem to exist solely to be exploited, conquered, and absorbed. Yet even a cursory review of our period shows that is ridiculously inaccurate.
“In the Eulhae War, which involved armies comparable in size to those mustered for the battle of Thessaloniki, the star players were the eastern realms of China, Korea, and Japan, with the Jurchens playing a supporting role. For all the attentions lavished on the Roman squadron and the exploits of Leo Kalomeros, their contributions were hardly decisive or even consequential. In that great drama, the Roman was very much a B-list cast member.
“The same can be said for the Viet-Cham wars of the same period. And during the 1630s, Roman involvement in the Indian subcontinent, by far the biggest element in the Indian Ocean & Island Asia theater, doesn’t even reach that level. In this series, at best the Roman was a guest supporting actor in one or two episodes of an entire season.
“Now in the Malaccan-Java War, westerners, the Spanish and the Romans, were the main characters. However the main cast also included Sunda and Mataram with the key guest star of Vijayanagar, without whose contributions the story is impossible to tell.”
-Excerpt from This is the End of the World: A Global History of the 1630s and 40s
“I do not find talk of ‘natural borders’ any more pleasant when it is spoken in Greek as opposed to French.”-Mateo Alemán, Spanish court official
“It is the nature of empire to expand, or at least to desire to do so. A valuable province requires a buffer zone for its defense. However as that buffer zone is integrated as its own province, it in turn requires a buffer zone, and so the cycle repeats. The Romans of the classics did not intend to conquer the Mediterranean when they first took Sicily, and yet they did in the end.
“That the Triune should overtake all of Lotharingia is not ideal, for that will mark a significant accrual of power to the Triple Monarchy. However its expansion, and all the complications that will entail, will draw it east into Germany, away from Spain. Thus such an eventuality, while dangerous, is not necessarily fatal.
“That is not the case in Italy. If the Greek were to overtake all of Lombardy, this would also mark a significant accrual of power to the Greek Empire. However its expansion there, and all the complication that will entail, will draw it west into Provence, at which point the Greek will be at the very doorstep of Spain. Such an eventuality very well could be fatal to Spain. Lombardy is the Mediterranean outwork of Spain; it must be defended at all hazards, even if to do so requires allying with the Triunes and endorsing their conquests in the Rhineland.”-the Duke of Osena, Constable of Spain [Equivalent to Megas Domestikos], in an official report to the Spanish crown
The royal approval for a large Spanish expedition had only been issued in the autumn of 1635, but plans for a reinforcement of Spanish eastern possessions had been in the works ever since the fall of Al-Andalus had freed up the bulk of the Spanish fleet. Furthermore valuable logistical experience in provisioning war fleets had been gained by the long blockades imposed on the Andalusi and North African coasts and the dispatch of larger-than-usual convoys to eastern waters in recent years. As a result, preparations for the Spanish expedition proceed surprisingly quickly but quite effectively.
For those expecting a sea-cracking armada, the size of the Spanish expedition can come off as rather underwhelming. It is comprised of eight battle-line ships, two fregatai, a sloop, and three auxiliaries, hardly an imposing force in the Mediterranean or the English Channel. (This is separate from the regular merchantmen planning their India runs.) However in eastern waters even a handful of dedicated warships, surrounded by armed merchantmen and smaller native craft, is a juggernaut. Furthermore all of the warships are new, the oldest just three years old, and three of the battle-line ships are of the
Flor de la Mar class 72-gunners. These fine and beautiful vessels are considered by Spanish, Triune, Lotharingian, and Roman contemporaries, in a rare fit of agreement, to be overall the best warships on the sea in their day. These third-raters are about twice as powerful as the typical 50-gunner and larger than any Roman warship in the east, giving way only to the
Shiva,
Ganesh, and
Krishna in Vijayanagar’s service.
The commander of the expedition is Duarte Pacheco Pereira, a salt-bearded veteran with more than forty years of experience in eastern waters, ever since sailing out there as a teenager. He’s fought Acehnese, Semarang, Bugis, and Roman Malays, with a bullet still in him from the last. Although he served in the Mediterranean during the Andalusi War, his heart is very much in the east along with his Sundanese Catholic wife and two mestizo children.
Pereira throws himself wholeheartedly into preparing for this expedition. He is strongly supported by a wide swath of the great and the good in Spanish society, particularly the great merchants and bankers of Lisbon. Many of the latter are of Genoese origin and utterly enraged by the treatment of their cousins back in their mother city. Furthermore any Spaniard who has any interest in matters beyond the Line knows that there the Romans are a far greater threat than the Triunes.
There are certainly many Spaniards who are worried about provoking the Romans and who are concerned about the Triunes. But in the words of the Archbishop of Coimbra, “the Greeks seem to have forgotten that they are not the only ones in the world with concerns and interests.” The Spanish are well aware of the conversations that go on in the Queen of Cities, and if the Romans were going out of their way to deliberately aggravate the Spanish they couldn’t have done any better.
The continued chatter in Constantinople about annexing all of northern Italy cannot help but set alarm bells ringing in Arles and Spain despite all of Demetrios III’s assurances. After all, it keeps coming up and sometimes from prominent officials. Roman attempts to deflect this away by pointing out the unofficial nature of the suggestions are badly undermined by Demetrios III previously making a huge deal out of the proposal from a cardinal’s secretary regarding the abduction of Orthodox children to raise them up as Catholics.
Other Roman talk about how the Spanish should just be focusing on fighting the Triunes also sets Spanish teeth grinding. That is because for all of the talk about fighting the Triunes, no Roman has so much as lifted a finger to help contain the Triunes, and through their actions in southwest Germany, the Romans have been actively counter-productive. The Archbishop of Coimbra, who is good friends with the Roman ambassador in Lisbon through their mutual interest in ancient Greek texts, points out that if Constantinople really was in earnest, they’d be offering subsidies, not self-righteous lectures. Many Spanish view such efforts as a cynical ploy to divert Spanish arms so that the Romans can seize Lombardy without contestation and present Lisbon with a fait accompli.
In short, there has been a drastic reversal of Spanish popular opinion vis-à-vis the Romans in just the last year or so. In 1633, the Roman ambassador was able to raise 34,000 gold ducats in contributions from Spanish notables to finance an orphanage for children from Upper Macedonia, even while the Spanish were still hotly engaged in fighting to the south. Now the ambassador watches as Lisbon prints off war bonds for financing the fleet and those same notables buying them up to the tune of 100,000 ducats.
Pereira has the pick of the Spanish fleet for his crews, with a slew of veterans as options. Most who sign up admittedly do it simply because they need employment as the Spanish fleet is drawn down in strength after the fall of Al-Andalus. The promise of rich prize money in eastern waters certainly helps. But there is definitely at least a dash of nationalist pride, for the Spanish are a proud people with much to be proud of in their recent history, and the ambassador reports much resentment at the perceived tone of the Romans, who he says are viewed as “having grown intolerably arrogant and self-absorbed in victory”.
The fleet departs in Lisbon in late March of 1636, well equipped with ordnance and supplies, including a ration of two ounces of lemon juice a week per sailor for three months. There has been work by Spanish scholars as a way to avoid the Triune disease, as they call scurvy, although in 1636 there are still a wide and extremely diverse range of suggestions. The choice of lemon juice for the expedition comes about simply from the fact that Pereira happens to like the taste.
The voyage of the fleet, along with the regular eastbound merchantmen, is relatively uneventful. Rounding the bulge of Africa, swinging past Brazil, the fleet makes good time as it reaches the Cape of Storms. The Cape lives up to its name with a storm that batters the fleet, damaging spars and rigging and washing a few sailors overboard, but no ships are lost.
As the Spanish enter the Indian Ocean, thus far it seems like a typical voyage that hundreds of Latin ships and thousands of Latin sailors have undergone. Yet it is here that Pereira departs from the usual script. Thus far Latin vessels have almost always swung up the east coast of Africa to head for southern India, sometimes stopping somewhere in east Africa or if they go around Madagascar to the east, the Mascarenes. If their destination lies farther east than Vijayanagar, they proceed from southern India through the Straits of Malacca onto their goal.
However Pereira, with his long eastern experience, is familiar with a new navigational technique pioneered by some Spanish merchantmen in the last decade. Instead of swinging north he and the expedition continue east, catching the Roaring Forties and riding them all along the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Rough waters and sea ice are an issue, with one of the 50-gunners and an auxiliary taking hits that require regular shifts at the pumps.
When Pereira estimates they’ve reached the right longitude (a very rough calculation with the instrumentation of the day), they pivot north, skirting the western coast of Australia which is sighted by the sloop. The next important landfall they sight is southern Bali, at which point the Spanish turn west, sailing along the south coast of Java before entering the Sunda Strait. These can be treacherous waters but Pereira knows these waters well and on August 23 the Spanish fleet sails into Banten harbor to be warmly welcomed by the Sundanese.
The Sundanese, well used to receiving Spanish vessels battered by long voyages halfway around the world, promptly set to work repairing damages and resupplying the ships. Meanwhile the Spanish unload their own cargoes for the Sundanese while Pereira meets with the Sundanese Raja, Sang Ratu Jayadewata, to secure cooperation. It is an easy task; Pereira is married to a cousin of the Raja and his brother-in-law is the commander of the Palace Guard. Sundanese lascars reinforce the fleet, making up losses from the voyages although the rations of lemon juice mean that casualties from scurvy are much lower than usual. Furthermore a Spanish forty-gunner, a sloop, and three armed merchantmen that were in Banten are added to the flotilla.
All this is done in a flurry of activity as Pereira wishes to strike fast. The Romans, who expected to see him first off Cape Comorin and thus to get at least a month’s warning before he arrived in Island Asia proper, are completely flummoxed to find him materialize in Banten seemingly out of thin air. On September 8th, the Spanish fleet (minus the 50-gunner still undergoing repairs to her hull) sail out of Banten harbor.
