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JOURNAL, R.A.S. ( CEYLON). [VOL. XXI. 



Chapter I. 



The battle of Danture in the year 1594, when Pedro Lopes 

 de Sousa and the pick of his army were left dead on the stricken 

 field, was a crushing blow to the prestige of the Portuguese in 

 Ceylon. Don Hieronymo de Azavedo was hastily despatched 

 from Goa to retrieve the position, but he was hurled back 

 with the loss of three hundred Portuguese and a vast number 

 of the Sinhalese allies by the brave Domingos Correa,* who then 

 led the armies of Wimala Dharma. The death of Dharma- 

 pala — " the most high Prince 13 om Joam, by the grace of 

 God King of Ceilam, Perea Pandar "—on May 28, 1597,f 

 was followed by a convention at which delegates representing 

 the subjects of the late king took the oath of allegiance to the 

 absent king of Portugal as their deceased sovereign's heir by 

 will. A vigorous and bloody series of campaigns followed, 

 the Portuguese being greatly strengthened by the reinforce- 

 ments which were poured in from every side ; and in the last 

 year of the sixteenth century so much progress had been made 

 that the general was in a position to send a punitive expedition 

 to bring the turbulent king of J affnapatam to his senses. J But 

 the tide of success soon ebbed, and in 1603 Don Hieronymo 

 had again to flee before the victorious arms of the Sinhalese 

 king, his army a disorganized rabble and his reputation 

 destroyed.§ This campaign, the most important during his 

 eighteen years' administration in Ceylon, and named by the 

 Portuguese historians the Great Retreat, || was immediately 

 followed by the revolt of the native troops, only the gallant 

 chief of Matara, the Sinhalese Christian who continued to- 

 serve the foreigner with the courage and devotion which he had 

 always displayed in the service of his own king — Samarakon 

 Rala, known among the Portuguese as Don Fernando 

 Mudaliyar — remaining faithful to the Portuguese flag with 

 a thousand of his lascorins. All the outlying forts were soon 



* De Couto, Decade XI. ; Ribeiro (my translation), p. 73. 

 | De Couto, Decade XII. ; Ribeiro, p. 74. 

 | Ribeiro, p. 150. 



§ Indiae Orientalis Navigationes duas, &c. (Frankfort, 1606). 

 || Bocarro, p. 45. 



