The Portuguese had first visited Malacca two years previously, Emmanuel having sent one Siguiera to make a treaty with the king. He had been perfidiously treated, and Albuquerque now, in 1511, appeared before the city to call the monarch to account. A long and obstinate battle resulted in the defeat of the natives and the unconditional surrender of the peninsula. The Kings of Siam, Sumatra, and Pegu sent ambassadors to Albuquerque, asking the honor of his friendship. He built a citadel and returned to Cochin. But, as he left one spot to repair to another, revolt was sure to follow; and, as the Venetians now joined the Moors to repel the Portuguese, he saw that his dominion could not be complete till he controlled the navigation of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The city of Aden, in Arabia, was the key to the Red Sea, commanding, as it did, the Straits of Babelmandel; and the island of Ormuz was the key to the Persian Gulf. He failed to take Aden, but he succeeded easily with Ormuz, whose king acknowledged himself the vassal of Emmanuel. Albuquerque then formed a gigantic plan in reference to the Red Sea. Unable to command it by the capture of Aden, he determined to ruin Suez, at the other extremity of the sea, by forming an alliance with the King of Ethiopia, and inducing that monarch to dig a new course for the Nile and make it empty into the Red Sea instead of into the Mediterranean, thus rendering Egypt uninhabitable and Suez desert. The invasion of Egypt by the Turks, however, prevented the accomplishment of this undertaking. Thus the people and kings of the East everywhere gave way before the grand plans and deeds of Albuquerque, whom they both feared for his energy and loved for his justice. When, in 1515, he died at Goa, disgraced by his king and worn out by a thankless service, the heathen monarchs wept over his grave, and for many years went in pilgrimage to his tomb, asking his protection against the cruelty or injustice of his successors. The Portuguese, in little more than fifty years from the first expedition of Vasco da Gama, had established an empire in these seas of truly wonderful extent and power. They held exclusive possession of the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of India Proper, were masters of the Bay of Bengal, ruled the peninsula of Malacca, and held tributary the islands of Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, and the Moluccas. To the westward, towards Africa, their authority extended as far as the Persian boundary, and over all the islands of the Persian Gulf. In Arabia, even, they had tributaries and allies, and no Arabian prince dared confess himself their enemy. They exercised an influence in the Red Sea: and upon the eastern coast of Africa, they were the masters of Quiloa, Sofala, Mozambique, and Melinda.