He said, “Don João was the only hope of this land, to govern wisely and with effect.”
“Aye. So I felt also.”
“But can it truly be? He is so shrewd, surely he would have guarded himself against such an attack!”
“I do pray so,” I replied. “I know only what was told me, that the scheme was so ordered by Don Jeronymo, and that when I departed last from São Paulo de Loanda there was no word of the return of Don João.”
“But none of his death, either?”
“Nay, no news of that.”
“Then there is still hope for him,” said Barbosa. But that hope seemed scant to me.
Having this man by my side as I marched made the burden of it much more light. Within a few days more we arrived at the camp where the main body of the Portuguese army had assembled, and a fine grand force it was, filling half the plain. There must have been seven to eight hundred Portugals there, along with an army of their black allies that I could not count, it was so huge, to a number of twenty thousand or even thirty or forty thousand. All these were arrayed in a long confused mass, the Portugals in their tents with some horse grazing about, and , the Negro auxiliaries to the side.
The way it is done with these auxiliaries is that the Portugals have out of Kongo a black nobleman, which is known to be a good Christian and of good behavior. He has brought out of Kongo some one hundred Negroes that are his followers. This Macikongo, as he is known, has the rank of tandala, or general, over the black camp, and has authority to kill, to put down lords and make lords, and has all the chief doings with the Negroes.
So now the loyal sobas and their armies and the black tandala who was their high master and the Portugal troops all were drawn up together getting ready to go in quest of that unruly and powerful soba Kafuche Kambara. It seemed beyond possibility to me that that chieftain could withstand the Portugals, owing to the vast size of the army that would take the field against him, with all these blackamoors and the many Portugal troops.
But God in His wisdom doth prepare many severe surprises for those who go too proudly upon the world.
The surprise that befell the Portugals on the twenty-second day of April in Anno 1594, which I did witness and which came near to taking from me my life, had the form of a sudden and most terrible ambush as the Portugals and their allies went their way through the countryside. For a great army may sometimes be so great that it is cumbered by its own size, much as those elephantos are of which I spoke, that venture into narrow places and cannot turn around, and have their tails lopped off by a cunning hunter. As we moved into a deep gorge, so long and narrow that one might scarce insert a picktooth into it, I felt a sudden sense of utter alarm over just such a likelihood, I know not why. Balthasar d’Almeida and Pedro Alvares Rebello were leading the way as if they were Alexander the Great and Hannibal, and the black tandala did spur his immense Negro horde along behind them, when in a trice the armies of Kafuche Kambara sprang upon us out of nowhere, the same manner as in the old Greek tale the armed men did mysteriously arise around the hero Cadmus when he sowed the earth with dragon teeth.
This was my first view of land warfare, and a wild and barbarous scene it was. In Angola and also in the Kongo they do fight more by cunning than by direct onslaught, depending much on surprise. All about us had secretly been created paths armed with thorns, and stakes tipped with the strong and hard nsako wood that the Portugals call iron wood, and traps consisting of ditches covered over with earth and branches. And when the enemy fell upon us there was immediate panic, with large numbers of our force behind driven into these traps at once, and either perishing straightaway or else suffering such injury that they were useless thereafter.
The native armies here do always fight on foot, this land having no horses except the wild and unmanageable zevveras. They divide their force into several groups, fitting themselves according to the situation of the field. The moves of their army are guided and directed by certain several sounds and noises, that proceed from the captain-general, who goes into the midst of the army and there signifies what is to be put into execution, that is to say, either that they shall join battle, or else retire, or put on forward, or turn to the right hand, and to the left hand, or to perform any other warlike action. For by these several sounds distinctly delivered from one another, they do all understand the commandments of their captain, as in European armies we do understand the pleasure of our general by the sundry strokes of the drum and the sounds of the trumpet.
Three principal sounds make these messages of war, and they were horrid and frightening in my ears as they burst upon us. One is uttered by great rattles hollowed out of a tree and covered with leather, which they strike with certain little handles of ivory. Another comes from a three-cornered instrument made of thin plates of iron, which are hollow and empty within. They make them ring by striking them with wooden wands; and oftentimes they do also crack them, to the end that the sound should be more harsh, horrible, and warlike. The third instrument is the mpunga that I met in the land of Loango, that is the fife made from the hollowed tusk of the elephanto, which yields a warlike and harmonious music. With these devices they signal and encourage one another from one part of the battlefield to the other, and some valiant and courageous soldiers go before the rest, and strike their bells and dance, and stir up the emotions of battle, and by the notes they play do signify unto them what danger they are in, and what weapons face them.
The military dress of our attackers was frightful. The high lords wore headdresses garnished with plumes made of the bright feathers of the peacock, and those of the ostrich and other birds, which made them to seem men of greater stature than they are, and terrible to look upon. From the girdle upwards they were all naked, and had hanging about them from their necks and down to their flanks certain chains of iron, with rings upon them as big as a man’s little finger, which they used for a certain military pomp and bravery. From the girdle downward they had linen breeches, and wore boots in the Portuguese style. The common soldiers did not wear much, except that they were garbed about the loins. For weapons these people use bows and arrows with barbed iron tips, and clubs made of ironwood branches, and daggers, and lances that exceed the height of a man. The sword is not a weapon of battle among them, generally being carried only by kings and nobles as a mark of their office. Nor do they have the use of musket and shot, for which God be praised, though by the folly of some Portugal and Dutch traders, and some French lately, these most deadly weapons are being now sold into their hands. I do not see how the civilized races of the world will withstand the onslaught that is sure to come, once all the black and red savages do comprehend the use of firearms, that are the most terrible weapon ever loosed in the world.
But that day it was enough for Kafuche Kambara and his men to employ arrows and clubs and daggers. Like a shining black tide did they spew down upon us, making their ghastly music and shouting their war-cries, and they did cause a river of blood to flow from us. They came in waves, one group fighting until weary, then being called back by the drums and fifes and bells and fresh warriors fighting in their places.
Our black auxiliaries at once entered into panic, for all that the brave tandala and his sobas tried to form them into fighting array. It was no use, for surprise is fatal to them, and whole legions of them began to flee, trampling others and breaking down all order.