the caravel of António do Campo (who having missed the previous year's monsoon, was forced to stay in East Africa throughout all this) arrives in Anjediva and joins the patrol. They are still repairing at Angediva when the ships of Francisco de Albuquerque and Nicolau Coelho, the vanguard of the 5th Armada, arrives in India in August, 1503. First Siege of Cochin April 1503 – Not long after the Sodré patrol departed for the Red Sea, the Zamorin of Calicut arrived with his 50,000-strong army at Repelim (Edapalli), on the boundaries of the Cochinese state. He demanded that the Raja Trimumpara of Cochin hand his Portuguese guests over to him. But Trimumpara refused and his son Narayan repels two Calicut assaults. By bribery and deceit, the Zamorin manages to detach a lot of Cochin's army, overwhelms the defenses and kills prince Narayan at a battle near the Edapalli ford. The Trimumpara Raja and his Portuguese guests (factor Diogo Fernandes Correia and his assistants), accompanied by a small loyal Nair guard, abandon Cochin city and flee across the harbor to Vypin, a barrier island of the Vembanad lagoon. Vypin's natural defenses and the deteriorating weather prevent the Zamorin from launching assault boats and seizing the island. Frustrated, the Zamorin burns down the city of Cochin. The siege will drag on for several months, until Francisco de Albuquerque, leading the remnant of the Sodré patrol, hurrying down from Angediva, arrived in Cochin in August–September, and forced the Calicut forces to withdraw. Sometime during the course of this siege, the two Italian military engineers (and probable Venetian agents) that had come as passengers on Gama's ships - known only as João Maria (Gianmaria) and Pêro António (Pierantonio) – escaped Cochin and made their way to the Zamorin' camp, offering their services to the army of Calicut. Expert gun-founders, the Italians will teach Calicut to found large European guns and help close the technological gap between Indian and Portuguese artillery. The Zamorin of Calicut, before burning down Cochin, removed an ancient sacred stone, upon which the ancient Kings of Malabar (see Chera Dynasty) were traditionally ceremonially esconsed as lords of the sea and overlords of all the Malabari states. The sacred stone had originally been housed at the ancient Malabari capital of Cranganore, but had since been moved to Cochin. The Zamorin now moved it once more, to Edapalli. See also Portuguese India Armadas