Azevedo was less successful in his attempts to subdue Kandy. He invaded the kingdom in 1603 in a carefully planned operation with a total force of about 1,100 Portuguese and 12,000 Sinhalese, but despite initial successes he was forced to withdraw after a rebellion erupted among the Lascarins, the indigenous troops who fought alongside the Portuguese forces. In contrast to his predecessor Pedro Lopes de Sousa, who lost his life and his troops in a previous invasion, he did manage to prevent the annihilation of the Portuguese forces and showed exceptional military capabilities during this retreat that thus came to be known as "a famosa retirada""." After this setback, Azevedo brought innovations to the formulation of Portuguese military strategy in Ceylon. He decided to abandon the traditional approach of trying to subdue Kandy with a single, decisive military offensive and adopted instead a new strategy based on economic warfare. Every year the Portuguese would engage in smaller but highly destructive biannual forays and raids deep inside Kandyan territory, burning crops and villages and driving off the cattle. This greatly weakened Kandy - in the words of a Portuguese chronicler, the Jesuit Fernão de Queiroz, the kingdom "never in our time recovered its former opulence and size". However, this strategy aimed at the economic strangulation of the kingdom of Kandy did not produce all the effects expected by Azevedo, because Portuguese traders in Indian port cities such as São Tomé de Meliapor, with the support of the Hindu king at Jaffna, refused to abandon their highly lucrative trades with Kandy. When he finally left Ceylon for Goa, Azevedo issued directives to his successor, insisting that his new strategy should continue to be followed until Kandy accepted a status of vassalage to the kingdom of Portugal  Azevedo was appointed 20th viceroy of Portuguese India on 24 November 1611, and left Colombo for Goa where he assumed his new duties on 16 December 1612. In 1615 he backed an audacious expedition to Pegu to loot the Moon imperial treasures in Mrauk-U, an enterprise that ultimately did not succeed. However, the fact that it was supported at such a high official level showed how plunder was considered a legitimate policy objective in 16th-century Portuguese-ruled Asia. Also in 1615 Azevedo led a huge fleet that tried to drive English East India Company ships under the command of Nicholas Downton off Surat, but after a series of engagements (including a clash in which the viceroy's brother, Dom Manuel de Azevedo, captain of Chaul and Diu, sank a couple of English merchant vessels) he failed to achieve the strategic objective of dislodging the East India Company from the Indian Ocean trade routes – an incident which demonstrated that Portuguese Goa had lost the capacity to protect its monopoly of commerce on the Western coast of India.