Campaign of Danture

Campaign of Danture
Part of the Sinhalese–Portuguese War
Date5 July 1594 – 9 October 1594
(3 months and 4 days)
Location
Danture, Kingdom of Kandy
07°16′55″N 80°32′27″E / 7.28194°N 80.54083°E / 7.28194; 80.54083
Result Kandyan victory
Belligerents

 Portuguese Empire

  • Lascarins (local soldiers on the Portuguese side)
  Kingdom of Kandy
Commanders and leaders
Pedro Lopes de Sousa †
Francisco da Silva
D. Gastão Coutinho †
Francisco de Brito †
Jayavira Bandara Mudali †		 Vimaladharmasuriya I of Kandy
Ekanayaka Mudali
Strength

On 5 July 1594
Total 20,000[1]

By 8 October 1594

  • 368 Portuguese
  • a few Lascarins [6]

On 5 July 1594
10,000 men[7]

By 8 October 1594
10,000–20,000 men[8] (estimates range up to 40,000)[9]
Casualties and losses
A handful of Portuguese and Lascarins escaped back to Colombo;
93 Portuguese were captured;
the majority of the Lascarins deserted;
the rest of the army was killed[10]		 5,000 Sinhalese Soldiers[11]

The Danture campaign comprised a series of encounters between the Portuguese and the Kingdom of Kandy in 1594, part of the Sinhalese–Portuguese War. It is considered a turning point in the indigenous resistance to Portuguese expansion. For the first time in Sri Lanka a Portuguese army was essentially annihilated, when they were on the verge of the total conquest of the island.[12] A 20,000-strong Portuguese army, led by Governor Pedro Lopes de Sousa, invaded Kandy on 5 July 1594. After three months, severely depleted by guerilla warfare and mass desertions, what remained of the Portuguese army was annihilated at Danture by the Kandyans under King Vimaladharmasuriya. With this victory, the Kingdom of Kandy emerged as a major military power; it was to retain its independence, against Portuguese, Dutch, and British armies, until 1815.[13]

Victory at Danture notwithstanding, only the mobile section of the Portuguese army in Ceylon was annihilated, while their strongholds remained intact, and so Kandy was unable to follow up with an advance into the lowlands. The Portuguese would in the future renew their offensive against Kandy under the reorganized forces of captain-general Dom Jerónimo de Azevedo, devastating Kandy in the process.[14]

  1. ^ Queyroz, p. 482.
  2. ^ C. Gaston Perera. pp. 179, 180.
  3. ^ Queyroz, pp. 480, 481.
  4. ^ Queyroz, p. 485.
  5. ^ a b Phillipus Baldaeus, p. 16.
  6. ^ Queyroz, pp. 487, 489.
  7. ^ C. Gaston Perera. p. 21.
  8. ^ Channa W'singhe, pp. 75, 76.
  9. ^ Phillipus Baldaeus, p. 17.
  10. ^ Queyroz, pp. 488–490.
  11. ^ Cite error: The named reference Q489 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ C. Gaston Perera. p. 197.
  13. ^ Channa W'singhe, p. 16.
  14. ^ Chandra Richard De Silva (1972) The Portuguese in Ceylon 1617–1638 H. W. Cave & Company, Colombo, p. 13