Siam : The Land of the White Elephant as It Was and Is - Bacon George Blagden

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on all the pallisadoes and lodgings of the camp, he parted away on Tuesday the 15th of October, 1548, for to go to the town of Martabano." So was Ayuthia honorably saved, but Pinto, we fear, followed with his countryman Diego in the Bramaa's train, for he has much to say henceforth of the civil disturbance in Burma and the Xemindoo's final suppression, but of Siam, excepting a brief description of the country, he tells us nothing more.

      About a century after Pinto's stay in Siam another adventurer found his way thither while seeking his fortune in the golden Orient and encountered there such vicissitudes of experience as to rival in picturesqueness and wonder the tales of the Arabian Nights. This was the Greek sailor, Constantine Phaulcon, whose story, even when stripped of the extravagant embellishments with which the devout priest, his biographer, has adorned it, is marvellous enough to deserve a place in the annals of travel and adventure. His strange life has been woven into a romance, "Phaulcon the Adventurer," by William Dalton, but the following sketch of his career, condensed from Sir John Bowring's translation of Père d'Orléans' "Histoire de M. Constance," printed in Tours in 1690, is a better authority for our purpose.

      Constantine Phaulcon, or Falcon, born in Cephalonia, was the son of a Venetian nobleman and a Greek lady of rank. Owing to his parents' poverty, however, he left home when a mere boy to shift for himself, and presently drifted into the employ of the English East India Company. After several years passed in this service he accumulated money enough to buy a ship and embark in speculations of his own, but three shipwrecks following in rapid succession brought him at length into a desperate plight of poverty and debt. Being cast in his third misadventure upon the Malabar coast, he there found a fellow sufferer, the sole survivor of a like catastrophe, who proved to be the Siamese ambassador to Persia returning from his mission. Phaulcon was able with the little money saved in his belt to assist the ambassador to Ayuthia, where that officer in gratitude recommended him to the Baraclan (prime-minister) and the king, both of whom were delighted with his ability and determined to make use of him. He was first taken into favor, it is said, from the address with which he supplanted the Moors in the employment, which seemed to have been made over to them, of preparing the splendid entertainments and pageants that were the king's chief pride. Reforms introduced into this office resulted in the production of much more effective spectacles at a smaller expense to the treasury, for the Moors had indulged in some knavish practices, and when their dishonesty was discovered by the Greek his high place in the sovereign's estimation was fully assured.

      At this time his prosperity was interrupted by a severe illness that well-nigh proved fatal to the new favorite, but was turned to good account by Father Antoine Thomas, a Flemish Jesuit, who was passing through Siam on his way to join the Portuguese missions in China and Japan. Thoroughly alive to the importance of securing so powerful a man to the Roman Church, the good father adroitly converted the invalid, and at last had the satisfaction of receiving from Phaulcon abjuration of his errors and heresies and numbering him among the faithful. By the priest's advice, also, "he married, a few days afterward, a young Japanese lady of good family, distinguished not only by rank, but also by the blood of the martyrs from whom she was descended and whose virtues she imitates." It is an interesting episode in the history of Siam that for about a generation near the beginning of the seventeenth century there existed, besides the free intercourse with Western nations, an active exchange of commodities between this part of Cochin China and Japan, many of whose merchants found good employments under Phra Narain, the Siamese king. They proved themselves, however, to be such profound schemers as finally to earn the hatred of the natives, who drove them out in 1632. Soon after this date Japan adopted a policy of complete exclusion and we hear no more of her subjects in any foreign country.

      "If, as a man of talent," continues Père d'Orléans, "Phaulcon knew how to avail himself of the royal favor to establish his own fortune, he used it no less faithfully for the glory of his master and the good of the state; still more, as a true Christian, for the advancement of religion. Up to this time he had aimed chiefly to increase commerce, which occupies the attention of Oriental sovereigns far more than politics, and had succeeded so well that the king of Siam was now one of the richest monarchs in Asia; but he considered that, having enriched, he should now endeavor to render his Sovereign illustrious by making known to foreign nations the noble qualities which distinguished him; and his chief aim being the establishment of Christianity in Siam, he resolved to engage his master to form treaties of friendship with those European monarchs who were most capable of advancing this object."

      We must be cautious, however, in accepting all his motives from his Jesuit biographer, who doubtless does him too much honor. According to the Dutch historian Kämpfer, Phaulcon had the fate of all his kind ever before his eyes, and the better to secure himself in his exalted position, "he thought it necessary to secure it by some foreign power, of which he judged the French nation to be the most proper for seconding his designs, which appeared even to aim at the royal dignity. In order to do this he made his sovereign believe that by the assistance of the said nation he might polish his subjects and put his dominion into a flourishing condition."

      Whatever his intentions, it is certain that Phaulcon carried his point, and an embassy was sent to the court of Louis XIV. In return the Chevalier de Chaumont, accompanied by a considerable retinue, and bearing royal gifts and letters, was despatched to Siam, where he arrived in September, 1685, and was splendidly received. Phaulcon was, of course, foremost among the dignitaries; the shipwrecked adventurer, who had risen from the position of common sailor to the post of premier in a rich and thriving realm, found himself receiving on terms of equality and in a style of magnificence that, even to European eyes, seemed admirable, the ambassador of the most illustrious king in Europe. Whether his loyalty to the sovereign whom he was bound to serve was always quite above the suspicion of intrigue with the French is more than doubtful. He greatly desired on his own behalf to effect the conversion of the king to Catholicism, and did what he could to support the arguments of the French envoy to this end. But the king, who was a shrewd man, refused to abandon the religion of his ancestors for that of these designing foreigners.

      "Phaulcon had long thought," says the Père d'Orléans, "of bringing to Siam Jesuits who, like those in China, might introduce the Gospel at court through the mathematical sciences, especially astronomy. Six Jesuits having profited by so good an occasion as that of the embassy of the Chevalier de Chaumont to stop in Siam on their way to China, M. Constance upon seeing them begged that some might be sent to him from France; and for this especial object Father Tachard, one of the six, was requested to return to Europe." This was really the first step in Phaulcon's ruin; for, aware that his master could not in this way encourage the Christians without incurring the hatred of both the Buddhists and Mohammedans in the kingdom, he conceived the plan of begging Louis for some French troops ostensibly to accompany and support the missionaries, but practically to sustain his influence by force, and in the event of defeat to hand the country over to France. Three officers returned with M. de Chaumont and effected a treaty whereby Louis promised to send some troops to the Siamese king, "not only to instruct his own in our discipline, but also to be at his disposal according as he should need them for the security of his person, or for that of his kingdom. In the mean time the king of Siam would appoint the French soldiers to guard two places where they would be commanded by their own officers under the authority of this monarch." The troops and a dozen missionaries set out under Father Tachard's charge in 1686.

      But ere they arrived trouble was brewing in Siam. "The Mohammedans," says the historian, "had long flattered themselves with the hope of inducing the king and people of Siam to accept the Koran; but when they saw the monarch thus closely allying himself with Christians, their fears were greatly excited; and the great difference which had been made between the French and Persian ambassadors, in the honors shown them in their audiences with his majesty, had so much increased the apprehensions of the infidels that they resolved to avert the apprehended misfortune by attempting the life of the king. The authors of this evil design were two princes of Champa and a prince of Macassar, all of them refugees in Siam, where the king had offered them an asylum against some powerful enemies of their own countries. A Malay captain encouraged them by prophecies which he circulated among the zealots of his own sect, of whom he shortly assembled a sufficient number to carry out the conspiracy, had it not been discovered; which, however, it was" – and promptly suppressed by the minister, to his great credit and honor at court. Phaulcon then was at the pinnacle of his power when the Frenchmen landed,

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