He Had Two Breaches, Almost
Equally Good, Yet Applied All His Men To The Assault Of One Only,
Instead Of Attempting Both At One Time.
Besides, he had at least eighty
or an hundred scaling-ladders, yet not one of them was brought near the
castle walls.
His soldiers hung clustering on the breach, like a swarm
of bees, or a flock of sheep at a gap, none having the heart to enter,
while the Portuguese gleaned away five or six at a shot, sometimes more,
driving forwards their black soldiers to throw powder-pots among the
Persians.
The assault was renewed on the 18th, but with more harm to the Persians
than the Portuguese. During the intervening night, two blacks made signs
to the Persians on the top of the breach, that they wished to come over
to them, and were drawn up with ropes. By these it was learned that the
captain of the castle had been wounded in the head by a stone; that
there were not above an hundred men in the garrison able to handle their
arms: and that their water grew daily more scanty and worse in quality,
by which the mortality continually increased. They reported also that
great difference in opinion prevailed among the Portuguese, some wishing
to endeavour to escape by sea, while others held it more honourable to
sell their lives at a dear rate, by defending the castle to the last
extremity, and proposed, when they could no longer hold out, to put all
their women and treasure into a house and blow them up, that the
Persians might neither enjoy their wealth nor abuse their wives; and,
when this was done, to rush upon the Persians, and so end their days.
In the evening of the 19th, the Persians made another effort to press
forwards, and got possession of the entire bulwark, forcing the
Portuguese to retire farther within the castle. In this conflict many of
the Portuguese were wounded, and sore scalded with fire-pots, in the
management of which the Persians had now become expert, though many of
them had paid dearly for their instruction. In this conflict four
Portuguese were slain, and their heads brought to the Persian general.
In this art of cutting off heads, the Persians are particularly cunning,
insomuch, that I do not think there is an executioner in all Germany
that can excel them. No sooner does a Persian lay hold of an enemy, than
off goes his head at one blow of his scymitar.[308] He then makes a hole
in the ear or cheek with his dagger, by which he will sometimes bring
three or four heads at once to his general. When it is proposed to send
these heads taken in war to be seen by the king or the khan, they very
adroitly flea off the skin of the head and face, which they stuff up
with straw like a foot-ball, and so send them by whole sackfulls.[309]
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