Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/196

 144 THE PORTUGUESE POLICY IN THE EAST The chivalrous confidence of the first Portuguese ad- venturers in their Christian saints degenerated among their half-caste successors into a vague hope of super- natural succour, a habit of " always awaiting the bene- fits of our Lord working miracles on our behalf which is a trying thing." I have confined my survey to the period preceding the union of Portugal with the Spanish crown in 1580. After that event the necessities of Spain in Europe did not give the Portuguese a fair chance in India. But even before it, the resources of Portugal were being exhausted. The African slave-trade which had sup- plied forced labour for the tillage of Portugal and set free the coast peasantry especially in the south for enterprise beyond the seas, had eaten like a canker into the nation. In the sixteenth century whole dis- tricts of Portugal were partitioned into great estates cultivated by slaves and denuded of their free popu- lation, who flocked to the capital. The Portuguese in India in like manner depended more and more for their subsistence on slave labour, and for their defence on Indian troops. The officers of the Indian Department at Lisbon and at Goa embezzled pay for seventeen thousand soldiers, while only four thousand were actu- ally kept up. The native troops became masters of the situation. After many troubles they had to be dis- banded, and, when re-established on a different footing, commenced in our own day a fresh course of mutiny and revolt. That Portugal succeeded even for a time in impos-