_ 240 _ voyage to Calicut unless they had the permission of the King of Portugal"(A). Twenty years later (1537), however, the traders of the Languedoc proposed that the Calicut voyage should be entrusted to Normans, giving as their reason the experience of the Normans in this matter. The merchants of southern France (Languedoc) were not capable of undertaking the task; they claimed that "nobody dared to do it. A fleet of twenty-four vessels would be required, half of them for carrying provisions and troops, the other half for the cargo". They themselves would not be able to provide all this. In their opinion, it was a matter for the king(B). In the interval between these two dates mainly in the decade 1525-35 the Normans had gained experience of navigation in the Indian Ocean. Why were the Normans? The legends, even if they were not true, at least bore witness to the exceptional activity of Norman sailors on the high seas from the 14th century onwards. Loans are (A) M. Mollat, Le commerce maritime normand à la fin du Moyen Age (Paris 1952), pp.467,473. (B) Resolution taken at Carcassonne, 13 February 1538; publ. by L.Bigard, Le trafic maritime avec les Indes sous Francois ler (Congrès des Soc. Sav., Nice, 1938), Paris 1939.
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