Battle of Gannoruwa 1638
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 28 March 1638 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1638 | Wikidata P585 (point in time) |
| Era | Early modern (1500–1799) | derived from year |
| Location | Sri Lanka | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Asia | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Sinhalese–Portuguese conflicts | Wikidata P361 |
| Coordinates | 7.2795, 80.6018 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Battle of Gannoruwa was a battle of the Sinhalese–Portuguese War fought in 1638 between the occupying Portuguese forces and the Sinhalese King's army at Gannoruwa in the District of Kandy, Sri Lanka. The Portuguese had attempted three times without success to capture the Kingdom of Kandy, in order to bring the entire island under their rule. In 1635, Rajasinghe II became the king of Kandy and started negotiations with the Dutch to obtain their help in driving out the Portuguese. The Portuguese hastened their efforts to take Kandy because of this, and Diogo de Melo de Castro, the Portuguese Captain General, tried to provoke the Sinhalese on several occasions.
Melo seized an elephant presented to a merchant by the king, to which the king responded by seizing two of Melo's own horses. Following this incident, Melo assembled his troops and set out for Kandy. The city of Kandy was evacuated by the Sinhalese, and Melo's army found the city empty when they arrived. They sacked and burned the city, and started to return to Colombo. However, their way forward was blocked by the Kandyan army at Gannoruwa. The Portuguese force was surrounded with all escape routes cut off.
On 28 March 1638, the Sinhalese army attacked the Portuguese force, leaving only 33 Portuguese soldiers alive, along with a number of mercenaries.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Battle of Gannoruwa (revision 1378837132), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
Nearby battles
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- Siege of Kotte (1557–1558) 1557 · 89 km
- Dutch–Portuguese War 1654 · 95 km
- Siege of Galle (1640) 1640 · 146 km
- Battle of Providien 1782 · 148 km
- Action of 9 July 1806 1806 · 153 km
Other battles of the Sinhalese–Portuguese conflicts
Browse more: battles in Sri Lanka · Asia · Early modern battles