Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/82

 54 THE STRUGGLE WITH THE PORTUGUESE During two nights he hung out a lantern to show his track to his enemies; on the third the battered hull drove upon the rocks and was set fire to by the rem- nants of her crew. But valour could not stay the cancer of misrule. The abuse of patronage which had shipped off young women from Lisbon with the gift of an Indian appoint- ment as their dowry for a husband to be picked up at Goa, reached its height after the forced union of Portu- gal with Spain in 1580. The sale of Indian offices was an illicit trade at the Court of Philip IE; under Philip III of Spain it became a source of the public revenue. The Lisbon fleet of 1614 carried orders to the Goa vice- roy " that all commands and high appointments that would be likely to yield money were to be put up to sale, there being then no other visible means whereby to provide for the wants of the administration." Old incumbents were ruthlessly dispossessed, and were suc- ceeded by men who clutched at everything to repay the price of their -unstable appointments. In 1637, and perhaps on other occasions, the auction included the command of fortresses. In 1618 two English ships took a Portuguese carrack with £517,500 in specie, " which was the pay of all the soldiers in the East Indies,' 9 according to the records in the State Papers. The Spanish kings began to look upon the East Indies as a mere drain to their silver supply from America, and the stories of their indifference to Portuguese interests in Asia border on the incredible. During the three years that Fernao de Albuquerque was viceroy at Goa,