The Battle of Macau in 1622 was a conflict of the Dutch–Portuguese War fought in the Portuguese settlement of Macau, in southeastern China. The Portuguese, outnumbered and without adequate fortification, managed to repel the Dutch in a much-celebrated victory on 24 June after a three-day battle. The battle is the only major engagement that was fought primarily between two European powers on the Chinese mainland.
Background
After the Portuguese gained permission from the Ming mandarins in Guangdong to establish a permanent settlement and trade base in Macau in 1557, the port of Macau benefited greatly from being the intermediary of the lucrative China–Japan trade, since the direct routes were banned by the Ming court due to fears of the wokou pirates. Portugal's success in Macau drew the envy of other European maritime powers who were slower to gain a foothold in East Asia. When Philip II of Spain became King of Portugal after the 1580 Portuguese succession crisis, Portuguese colonies came under attack from Spain's enemies, especially the Dutch and the English, who were also hoping to expand their overseas empires.
Macau had encountered the Dutch in 1601, 1603, and 1607, but the Dutch invasion of 1622 represented the first real attempt to capture the city. The Dutchmen, frustrated that their trading post at Hirado was unable to compete with the Portuguese traders at Nagasaki as a result of the latter's easy access to China, hoped that the capture of Macau would grant them a commercial base in China while at the same time depriving the Portuguese of the profitable Macau–Nagasaki route. The fall of Macau would also leave the Spaniards in the Philippines without means of support and make it easier for the Dutch to mount an attack on Manila.
Despite the raids, the Portuguese authorities had not raised an extensive defensive system for the city because of interference by Chinese officials. Macau's defenses in 1622 consisted of a few batteries, one at the west end of the Macau Peninsula (later site of the Fort São Tiago da Barra), and one at each end of the southern bay of Praia Grande (São Francisco on the east and Bom Parto on the west), plus a half-completed Fortaleza do Monte that overlooked the Cathedral of St. Paul.
The sorry state of Macau's defenses became known to the Dutchmen when the Dutch ship Gallias seized a Portuguese ship carrying a case of letters off the coast of Malaya at the end of 1621. Judging by these intercepted letters and information available from Japan, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies Jan Pieterszoon Coen considered that Macau was not in a position to resist a serious attack, and set his invasion plan in motion.
Before the invasion, the Portuguese authorities, aware of the territory’s lack of artillery and the imminence of the Dutch attack, sought help from Spanish East Indies in the name of Iberian Union. The Captaincy General of the Philippines answered by sending some pieces of artillery (this was essential in providing cannons for the city's defenses) and one hundred Castilian and Filipino soldiers.
Expedition to Macau
At Batavia, headquarters of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Coen organized an initial fleet of eight ships for the expedition to Macau, with orders that any Dutch vessel encountered along the way was to be incorporated into the invasion fleet. The soldiers that composed the landing force were specifically selected, and even among the crew there were fewer lascars and Malays than usual; it had been customary for Europeans to carry locals for navigation.
Coen was so satisfied with the fleet that when he wrote to the VOC directors at The Hague he expressed regret for not being able to lead "so magnificent an expedition" in person. The VOC directors did not share Coen's enthusiasm in this venture, stating that they had enough wars at the time, and ordered Coen to wait until they could make a more informed decision. But the fleet, under the command of Cornelis Reijersen, had already left Batavia on 10 April 1622 before the order was sent.
The ultimate goal of the expedition was to establish a Dutch base of operations on the China coast and force the Chinese to trade with the Dutch, so Reijersen was given the option not to attack Macau; he was to form fortifications on the Pescadores regardless of whether he attacked. On 8 June the fleet sailed into Cam Ranh Bay for firewood and water, where it incorporated four Dutch ships encountered off the coast of Indochina and detached a ship with dispatches for William Janszoon, admiral of the Anglo-Dutch Fleet of Defence blockading Manila. So when the fleet set sail again from Cam Ranh Bay two days later, it was composed of eleven ships. A few days later, the fleet encountered a Siamese war junk carrying 28 Siamese and 20 Japanese people. The Japanese asked to join the Dutch expedition, and their request was granted. The landing force now amounted to about six hundred, with some Japanese, Malays, and Bandanese among the numbers.
Coen had previously ordered Admiral Janszoon to detach a few ships from the Manila blockade to join Reijersen's fleet; as a result, two Dutch and two English vessels had waited outside Macau since 29 May. The four ships had tried to disrupt Macau's sea traffic while waiting for the invasion fleet to arrive, but they were unsuccessful in capturing any Portuguese prize, because Macau's leader at the time, Captain-Major of the Japan voyage Lopo Sarmento de Carvalho, had hurriedly fitted seven junks with guns to provide escort.
The invasion fleet arrived in sight of Macau on 21 June and rendezvoused with the four friendly ships there. According to Coen's directives, the English were free to join in maritime operations but were not allowed to take part in the landing or take any share of the spoils of victory. As a result, the English captains refused to commit their ships for the attack. So Reijersen had thirteen ships under his command for the attack on Macau, totaling 1,300 men, including a landing force of 800.
Battle
On the night of 22 June Reijersen sent ashore a scouting party of three men and a Chinese guide to see if the 10,000 Chinese residents of the city would remain neutral. They soon returned after finding the Chinese had fled the city ahead of the invasion. The following morning, Reijersen himself boarded a launch with some senior officers to scout for a suitable landing site. It was decided that the invading army would make their landing on the eastern Cacilhas Beach (劏狗環) the next day, 24 June.
To distract the defenders from the intended landing site, three ships – Groeningen, Gallias, and Engelsche Beer – started to bombard the São Francisco battery in the south on 23 June. After an afternoon of cannon volleys and insults (where Dutch seamen threatened to rape Macau's women after killing all men above twenty), the ships withdrew for the night without inflicting any casualties on the Portuguese side. Nonetheless, the Dutch celebrated their expected victory in advance by blowing their trumpets and beating their drums all night. The Portuguese responded with similar martial festivities in the city's bulwarks.
Macau was inadequately fortified and short of fighting men. The Dutch fleet arrived while most of Macau's citizens were in Canton buying goods for the annual Japan trade; furthermore, the Ming emperor had requisitioned able-bodied men and cannons from Macau to fight the Manchu conquest of China in October 1621. Portuguese records estimate that there were only 50 musketeers and 100 residents capable of bearing arms. Lopo Sarmento de Carvalho fully understood that the Dutch would land the next day, so he spent the night inspecting the fortifications and rallying his men to fight to the last.
The Dutch ships Groeningen and Gallias resumed their attack on São Francisco at daybreak on 24 June, the Feast-day of St. John the Baptist. The Portuguese gunners at the bastion responded with such ferocity that they badly damaged the Gallias, which had to be scuttled a few weeks later.
At approximately two hours after sunrise, the landing party of 800 set off for Cacilhas Beach while São Francisco was being bombarded. The amphibious assault included 32 launches equipped with swivel guns and 5 barges, supported by the gunfire from two ships. Also, a barrel of damp gunpowder was fired into the wind so that the Dutch could land under the cover of smoke in what has been suggested as one of the first recorded instances of the tactical use of a smoke screen.
About 60 Portuguese and 90 "filhos da terra" entrenched at the beach under the command of António Rodrigues Cavalhino gave some initial resistance by shooting into the smoke, killing 40 and wounding Admiral Reijersen in the belly, taking him out of action. Captain Hans Ruffijn took command of the landing force and speedily overran the entrenchment, forcing Cavalhino to pull back, after which the rest of the landing force disembarked without opposition. The beachhead now secure, Ruffijn left two companies at the beach as rear-guard and advanced into the city with 600 men, fighting skirmishes with Cavalhino's retreating men along the way.
The Dutch marched toward the centre of the city in orderly fashion until reaching the artillery range of the Fortaleza do Monte, where they came under heavy bombardment by a varied mosaic of militiamen, including retired Portuguese soldiers from the State of India who had married and settled in Macau, Eurasian traders and their domestic servants, local and maritime Chinese, Spanish merchants and their Tagalog helpers, and hundreds of African slaves from Portuguese Mozambique. When the invaders passed by a small spring called Fontinha, the Dutch ammunition cache exploded in their midst, causing many casualties. Portuguese records attribute the cause of the explosion to the Jesuit priest Giacomo Rho, who is said to have fired a cannon-shot from the Fortaleza do Monte at the Dutch. The Swiss mercenary Elie Ripon, writing from first-hand experience on the ground in service of the Dutch, instead says the explosion was caused by a clumsy Japanese who accidentally set fire to the gunpowder while replenishing his munitions.
The Dutch commanders halted the advance to deliberate their next steps. They decided to climb Guia Hill, upon which a hermitage was situated, to get a better view of the enemy, but their ascent was resisted by a party of 30 Macanese and blacks, whose ferocity and effective use of terrain forced the Dutch to turn back. The invaders moved toward a patch of high ground near the Guia Hill, with the intention of retreating for the day due to fatigue and low ammunition (most was lost in the explosion).
By then it had become apparent to the Portuguese that the main Dutch force was attacking from the east and that the bombardment of São Francisco was just a feint. The commander of the São Thiago garrison therefore sent 50 men under Captain João Soares Vivas to aid the inland defense.
When the Portuguese realized the Dutch intentions, the defenders occupied the high ground ahead of the Dutch. With the battle cry "Santiago!", Lopo Sarmento de Carvalho signaled the counterattack, and the combined forces of the Portuguese defenders, Macanese citizens, Dominican friars, Jesuit priests, and black slaves charged the enemy, forcing the Dutchmen to retreat.
Captain Hans Ruffijn urged his countrymen to stand fast, but he was killed in the fighting as the Dutch retreat turned into a rout. The onset of the "drunken negro slaves" in particular, sparing no one as they beheaded all Dutchmen they came across in the name of John the Baptist, greatly demoralized the Hollanders. One black woman was even compared to the legendary Brites de Almeida by a contemporary Jesuit for her incredible skill with a halberd during the battle. However, the Dutch got some reprieve in the pursuit when the slaves abandoned the chase to plunder the dead.