The siege of Johor of 1587 was a military operation in which Portuguese forces successfully sieged, sacked, and razed Johor (''Jor'', in Portuguese), capital of its eponymous Sultanate. The city would later be rebuilt in a different location. Because of a dearth of personnel then available in Malacca, in 1586 naval forces of Johore had begun diverting shipping to the

Strait of Singapore The Singapore Strait is a , strait between the Strait of Malacca in the west and the South China Sea in the east. Singapore is on the north of the channel, and the Indonesian Riau Islands are on the south. The two countries share a maritim ...

. Malacca itself was threatened by a large Johor fleet, but it was driven back by the presence of heavily armed Portuguese galleons in its harbour. For these reasons, the captain of Malacca João da Silva requested from the Viceroy in Goa, Dom Duarte de Meneses, urgent reinforcements to deal with the threat. These numbered 500 men and 3

galleon Galleons were large, multi-decked sailing ships first used as armed cargo carriers by European states from the 16th to 18th centuries during the age of sail and were the principal vessels drafted for use as warships until the Anglo-Dutch War ...

s, under the command of Dom Paulo de Lima. The forces of Johor were incapable of preventing the heavy Portuguese infantry from landing and storming the city after a naval bombardment, and its Sultan was forced to retreat into the jungle in a

rout A rout is a panicked, disorderly and undisciplined retreat of troops from a battlefield, following a collapse in a given unit's command authority, unit cohesion and combat morale (''esprit de corps''). History Historically, lightly-equi ...

. The Portuguese captured ample spoils, which included over 1,000 cannon, the great majority of them of small caliber, 1,500 firearms, and burned upwards of 2,000 craft of many sizes. Following the attack, Dom Pedro de Lima (brother of Dom Paulo de Lima) also sacked

Bintan Bintan Regency (formerly Riau Islands Regency; id, Kabupaten Kepulauan Riau) is an administrative area in the Riau Islands Province of Indonesia. Bintan Regency includes all of Bintan Island (except for the city of Tanjung Pinang which is sepa ...

, then a vassal of Johor.Diogo do Cout
''Da Ásia, Década Nona''
1788 edition, volume II, p. 629.

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Johor Johor (; ), also spelled as Johore, is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia in the south of the Malay Peninsula. Johor has land borders with the Malaysian states of Pahang to the north and Malacca and Negeri Sembilan ...

Johor (1587)

History of Johor 1587 in the Portuguese Empire

See also

References