Having received no reply by noon on…

October 1502 CE

Having received no reply by noon on November 1, Gama orders that his Malabari prisoners be strung up by their necks from the shipmasts, allocating a few to each ship.

Calicut crowds approach the beach to watch the grisly spectacle.

The armada then advances into the harbor and opens fire.

The bombardment is principally aimed at clearing the beach and trenches.

The Malabari shore cannons are too few, their range and power too weak, to provide an effective reply.

The bombardment continues until nightfall.

That night, the corpses of the hung Malabaris are taken from masts, their feet and hands severed off and sent by a small boat to the beach, with an insulting message to the Zamorin, including a demand that the Zamorin reimburse the Portuguese for the powder and shot expended on destroying his city.

The bombardment resumes the next morning.

The mostly poor dwellings on the shore having been razed the previous day, the Portuguese cannons now have a clear view of central city and the statelier homes of the richer citizens of Calicut and bring their larger ordnance to bear.

The city is relentlessly bombarded all morning with some four hundred large rounds and an indeterminate number from the smaller caliber guns.

At noon, when the Portuguese pause for lunch, a small group of Malabari vessels tries to attack the idling squad, but are quickly repelled.

Barros reports that the two-day bombardment had sufficiently crippled the city that several of the captains urged Gama to authorize a landing of troops to sack Calicut.

But Gama, still hopeful the Zamorin might come to terms, turns down their request, believing a sack would only escalate matters to the point of no return.

Te next morning, vengeance satisfied, Gama sets sail out of Calicut harbor.

Gaspar Correia, in his somewhat different account, does not report the hanging of the prisoners; instead, after the bombardment, while still anchored before the harbor of the smoldering city, the Fourth Armada captures a Coromandel merchant convoy of two large ships and twenty-seven small boats unlucky enough to turn up at Calicut at that very moment.

Seizing the convoy, Gama orders the cargoes transferred, the crews tied, their teeth beaten out, their noses and hands cut off and the ships set alight.

The Brahmin emissary (still being held by the Portuguese) is sent back to shore with a bag full of severed hands and a note for the Zamorin telling him to "make a curry out of them".

The violent treatment meted out by Vasco da Gama sends shockwaves throughout the Malabar coast.

Merchant ships in Indian ports hurriedly leave the area or go into concealment.

All shipping along the coast essentially freezes.

Before leaving Calicut, Gama assembles a squadron of five or six fighting ships under Vicente Sodré and his brother Brás Sodré, with some two hundred soldiers (mainly crossbowmen), to maintain the blockade on Calicut harbor, and patrol the coast preying on Calicut shipping.