was taken up, and being put to the torture confessed that he was employed by the Ottoman emperor and king of Achin to poison the principal officers of the place, and to set fire to their magazine.  He was put to death, and his mutilated carcase was sent off to the king.  This was the signal for hostilities.  He immediately landed with all his men and commenced a regular siege.  Sallies were made with various success and very unequal numbers.  In one of these the chief of Aru, the king’s eldest son, was killed.  In another the Portuguese were defeated and lost many officers.  A variety of stratagems were employed to work upon the fears and shake the fidelity of the inhabitants of the town.  A general assault was given in which, after prodigious efforts of courage, and imminent risk of destruction, the besieged remained victorious.  The king, seeing all his attempts fruitless, at length departed, having lost three thousand men before the walls, beside about five hundred who were said to have died of their wounds on the passage.  The king of Ujong-tanah or Johor, who arrived with a fleet to the assistance of the place, found the sea for a long distance covered with dead bodies.  This was esteemed one of the most desperate and honourable sieges the Portuguese experienced in India, their whole force consisting of but fifteen hundred men, of whom no more than two hundred were Europeans.

1568.

In the following year a vessel from Achin bound to Java, with ambassadors on board to the queen of Japara, in whom the king wished to raise up a new enemy against the Portuguese, was met in the straits by a vessel from Malacca, who took her and put all the people to the sword.  It appears to have been a maxim in these wars never to give quarter to an enemy, whether resisting or submitting.

1569.

In 1569 a single ship, commanded by Lopez Carrasco, passing near Achin, fell in with a fleet coming out of that port, consisting of twenty large galleys and a hundred and eighty other vessels, commanded by the king in person, and supposed to be designed against Malacca.  The situation of the Portuguese was desperate.  They could not expect to escape, and therefore resolved to die like men.  During three days they sustained a continual attack, when, after having by incredible exertions destroyed forty of the enemy’s vessels, and being themselves reduced to the state of a wreck, a second ship appeared in sight.  The king perceiving this retired into the harbour with his shattered forces.

It is difficult to determine which of the two is the more astonishing, the vigorous stand made by such a handful of men as the whole strength of Malacca consisted of, or the prodigious resources and perseverance of the Achinese monarch.

1573.