The Travels of Mendes Pinto by Fernão Mendes Pinto

Author:Fernão Mendes Pinto [Pinto, Fernão Mendes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2013-05-24T04:00:00+00:00

151

The Sack of Martaban

It was almost nightfall when the surrender ceremony ended, and since the king was afraid that the troops might enter the city and make off with the plunder for themselves, he had Burmese captains posted at all twenty-four of the gates to stand guard over them and, on pain of severe penalties, not to allow anyone to pass into the city until he should provide otherwise, in keeping with the promise he had made to the foreign mercenaries to give them a clear field. But these precautions were taken, not so much for the reasons he gave, but because he wanted first and foremost to safeguard the chaubainhá’s treasure.1 That is why he let two days go by without doing anything about the captives in his power, for it was the time he needed to secure all the treasure, which was said to be so great that a thousand men had all they could do to gather it up.

One morning, after these two days had passed, the king climbed to the top of a hill called Beidao, located about two falcon shots away. From there he gave the order for the captains guarding the gates to withdraw, and then the unfortunate city of Martaban was delivered up to the field soldiers. At the sound of a bombard, which was the final signal, they made such a mad dash for the city that it was said that on entering the gates more than three hundred people were trampled to death. Since there was such an infinite number of people, from many different nations, most of them without king, or law, or fear, or knowledge of God, they were so blinded by their lust for plunder that they thought nothing of killing a hundred men for a single cruzado. And things got so out of hand that it became necessary for the king to intercede personally, six or seven times, in order to quell the disorder and tumult going on in the city.

The king, with another ceremony, complete with official proclamations and the blasting of trumpets, ordered the rich and noble palaces of the chaubainhá and thirty or forty others belonging to his most important captains to be torn down, along with all the varelas, pagodas, and bralas2 in the entire city. The loss of these sumptuous temples with their buildings and magnificent artworks was said by many to have amounted to well over ten million in gold. Still not content with this, the king ordered the torch put to whatever else had been left standing, in over a hundred different places, and since it was a windy day, the flames spread so quickly that the destruction wrought by the fire on that first night alone was so complete that even the city walls in some places, with their towers, bulwarks, and guard stations, burned down to their very foundations.

A rough estimate and list of the losses suffered during this disastrous campaign of vengeance having been made, it was

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