Page:Further India; (IA furtherindia00clif).pdf/139

 CHAPTER V

THE EAST INDIA COMPANIES, AND AFTER

HERE is a certain characteristic irony in the fact that the nation whose king enjoyed the title of "The Eldest Son of the Church" should have been the first of all the peoples of Europe to set at defiance the Bull of Alexander VI. In 1528 the brothers Jean and Raoul Parmentier of Dieppe sailed from France, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and penetrated as far south and east as Sumatra, where Jean, the leader and the inspiring genius of the adventure, died in the following year. His friend, the poet Pierre Crignon, who sailed with him, says of his dead captain:

"C'est le premier François qui a découvert les Indies jusques à l'isle de Taprobane, et si mort ne l'eust pas prévenu je crois qu'il eust été jusques au Moluques."

This, however, was not to be, and though the French broke through the ring-fence of Portugal before any other nation of Europe had ventured to do so, their efforts were isolated and of no importance. The first organised chal- lenge to the monopoly enjoyed by the Portuguese in Asia emanated from the city of London, England once again playing the part which has earned for her so much hatred among the nations of the Continent—that of chief thwarter of individual ambitions.

During the concluding twenty years of the sixteenth