Afonso de Albuquerque died

Happened: 1515-12-16

Description

Afonso's life ended on a bitter note, with a painful and ignominious close. At this time, his political enemies at the Portuguese court were planning his downfall. They had lost no opportunity in stirring up the jealousy of King Manuel against him, insinuating that Afonso intended to usurp power in Portuguese India.

Since at least the beginning of November 1515, Afonso knew that he had been replaced in the government of India by a political adversary, Lopo Soares de Albergaria. Reportedly, he even received a letter from the ambassador of the Persian potentate Shah Ismael, inviting Afonso to become a leading lord in Persia. His illness was reported as early as September 1515.

While on his return voyage from Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, near the harbor of Goa, he received news of a Portuguese fleet arriving from Europe, bearing dispatches announcing that he was to be replaced by his personal foe, the Portuguese Lopo Soares de Albergaria. Feeling himself near death, he drew up his will, appointed the captain and senior officials of Ormuz, and organized a final council with his captains to decide the main matters affecting the Estado da Índia.

He wrote a long letter to King Manuel, voicing his bitterness: "I am in ill favor with the King for love of men, and with men for love of the King." He asked the King to confer onto his natural son "all of the high honors and rewards" that were justly due to Afonso. He wrote in dignified and affectionate terms, assuring Manuel of his loyalty. On 16 December 1515, Afonso de Albuquerque died within sight of Goa. As his death was known, in the city "a grait wail arose", and many took to the streets to witness his body carried on a chair by his main captains, in a procession lit by torches amidst the crowd.

Afonso's body was buried in Goa, according to his will, in the Church of Nossa Senhora da Serra (Our Lady of the Hill), which he had be built in 1513 to thank the Madonna for his escape from Kamaran island. That night, even the Hindu natives of Goa gathered to mourn him alongside the Portuguese, "for he was much loved by all", and it was said that "God had need of him for war, and for that he had taken him".

In Portugal, King Manuel's zigzagging policies continued, still trapped by the constraints of real-time medieval communication between Lisbon and India and unaware that Afonso was dead. Hearing rumours that the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt was preparing a magnificent army at Suez to prevent the conquest of Ormuz, he repented of having replaced Afonso, and in March 1516 urgently wrote to Albergaria to return the command of all operations to Afonso and provide him with resources to face the Egyptian threat. He organized a new Portuguese navy in Asia, with orders that Afonso (if he was still in India), be made commander-in-chief against the Sultan of Cairo's armies. Manuel would afterwards learn that Afonso had died many months earlier, and that his reversed decision had been delivered many months too late.

After 51 years, in 1566, his body was moved to Nossa Senhora da Graça church in Lisbon, which was ruined and rebuilt after the 1755 Great Lisbon earthquake.

Participants

Name	Date of Birth	Date of Death	Short Biography
Afonso de Albuquerque	1453	1515	a Portuguese general, a "great conqueror", a statesman, and an empire builder.

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