Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/220

 168 ENGLAND'S ATTEMPTS TO REACH INDIA Indian seas. They thus retained the trade with Alex- andria and the Levant a monopoly which they had in time to share with the Turkey Company of England and the Mediterranean merchants of Marseilles. The Venetians realized, indeed, that the ultimate victory must be with the Cape route, and decided to divide its profits with Portugal in the West while encouraging the Turkish onset against Portugal in the East. In 1521 the court of Lisbon refused an offer of the Repub- lic of Venice to buy up all the spices yearly brought to Portugal, over and above what Portugal itself re- quired. To the east of Suez, Venice made herself felt not by her actual presence, but by her intrigues. In the Indo-Portuguese archives she appears vaguely as an ill-wisher to Portugal and a confederate of the Turk. The Indian letters to Lisbon report such incidents as the arrest of a seditious Venetian pilot, or the apostasy of a Venetian who had turned Moor; rumours of joint preparations by the Turks and Venetians against the Portuguese; and apprehensions of the Turks and Vene- tians lest Portugal should block their Red Sea route by the capture of Aden. Of the French we hear little in the Indo-Portuguese records during the sixteenth century except that " the French will be ill-advised if they come seeking us." Spain proved a more serious rival. The demarcation Bull of 1493 overlooked the fact that the earth is a sphere. The Portuguese had, indeed, only to pursue their discoveries far enough to the east of the dividing