I. EARLY HISTORY TO JOÃO I…

I. EARLY HISTORY TO JOÃO I

LAND AND PEOPLE

[Sidenote: [TO 1383 A.D.]]

The reasons for which Portugal is neglected are precisely those which in some eyes make her truly lovable. For a half-century art has done almost nothing for the natural river highways; and the Douro, the Guadiana, and the Tagus flow through this kingdom like the wandering rivulets of great English parks. The large towns of the interior, Coimbra, Santarem, Evora, and Miranda, look like pretty kiosks rising about flowering thickets; peaceful retreats, solitudes animated with a life that jogs quietly along and does not go with leaps and bounds as in France, where a satisfied humanity stands still, instead of rushing into the unknown risks of the future.

The cities of the coast, Lisbon, Oporto, appear more like dwelling-places conveniently placed the better to enjoy the sunlight and the ocean breezes than wide-awake communities guarding their mercantile interests in the commercial exchange of the products of the Old World with the riches of the New.

[Sidenote: [TO 1147 A.D.]]

If the Portuguese had been as skilful speculators as they were intrepid sailors and distinguished warriors, Henry the Navigator, who set the example of maritime conquest, Dias, Vasco da Gama, Cabral, Albuquerque, valiant captains identified with all the glories of the Aviz dynasty, would have imitated the speculative prudence of the Dutch, their rivals. And if, when the illustrious house of Braganza opened the era of national liberties, the people had had in their heads less of poetic imagination and more power of reason; if, courageous and adventurous as they were, they had shown themselves more positive, the French, at first, and then the English, would never have invaded their treasury, exploited their soil, and paralysed their industries. Truly a childlike nation, satisfied with little, pursuing the ideal, economical without avarice, pure in morals, sober, generous, hospitable, the Portuguese have bred heroes in place of diplomats, poets in place of capitalists: they knew how bravely to defend their country against the Romans, the Arabs, and the Spaniards, and still more recently against the army of Napoleon. They have kept themselves a free nation, independent and original, possessing a language, a literature, distinct manners and customs, and governed politically by one of the most liberal constitutions of Europe.

To make Portugal complete, Brazil and the colonies were necessary to this country whose language is spoken on the European continent by only five millions of men; and again the narrow domain which so restricts the use of this tongue creates an obstacle to the popularity of the works to which language gives birth, just as its poverty impedes the development of the fine arts. Jealousy and indifference, the double affliction of southern nations, have curbed the artistic and literary aspirations of the Portuguese. What man of genius would resolve on a career of self-denial only to be calumniated and persecuted as was Prince Henry, to achieve a miserable end like Admiral Pacheo, or like Camoens; or to languish forgotten, like the painter Glama, reduced to making tavern signs; like the sculptor Machado de Castro and the founder Costa, creators of an equestrian statue of José I, worthy of ranking with the greatest art works of the eighteenth century? Encouragement and recompense are the safeguards of emulation, and emulation, utilising the moral resources of a people, permits them the use of its advantages to rise to the level of other nations.

Except for a few coins, the Phœnicians, the Phocæans, and the Carthaginians have left almost no trace in Portugal of their occupation or their passing; but the touch of Rome clings better than in Spain. Cæsar’s Pax Julia sleeps thirty feet beneath the city of Beja and needs only the simple power of will to be awakened, with its population of statues, its inscriptions, and its frescoes; Liberalitas Julia, the Ebora of Ptolemy, planted like Beja upon high ground in the province of Alemtejo, has a double character, that of a Grecian town with its temple of Diana and that of a Roman city with its great aqueduct, immense works, wrought under the hand of Quintus Sertorius, who made himself master eighty years before the Christian era. The aristocracy of Pax Julia and Liberalitas Julia was accustomed to spend its summers in the little municipality of Alcacer, where there was a famous bath under the protection of a local divinity, the nymph Salacia. Braganza, the Juliobriga; Lisbon, the Felicitas Julia of the Augustan era, had equally received their political baptism from the conqueror of Gaul; while ancient Lusitania, become a Julian or Cæsarian country, easily adapted the popular customs and organisations of the Roman government to its Carthaginian institutions.

Vespasian and Trajan made an important town of Chaves; Viseu is the Vesontium of the consul D. Brutus; Lamego, the Urbs Lamacœnorum of Trajan. Setubal occupies a terrace opposite the ancient Roman colony of Cetobriga. At Braga, Ponte de Lima, Salvaterra, we find traces of amphitheatres, aqueducts, baths, and temples; so that well-directed excavations would evoke the manes of that sovereign people which, governing the universe, kept watchful station on the coast of Hispania to keep an eye on Numidia.

[Sidenote: [TO 1170 A.D.]]

From the seventh century to the capture of Lisbon in 1147 Moorish architecture had its compromising effect on the elegant majesty of the great lines and arches of the Saracens’ predecessors; the baths of Cintra, the wall and seventy-seven towers of Lisbon, the fortifications and palaces of Evora, and many mosques since transformed into churches, signified, towards the close of the twelfth century, the degree of Islam’s foothold on Portuguese soil--an unsteady tenure, without consistence, without depth, bearing witness to the rapidity of conquest as well as to the fear of ephemeral possession. Little by little, in place of the mosques, arose churches, veritable apostolic citadels, headquarters for the war against the infidel. Formless and rude at first, they developed as the Christian armies won back the land; but when the native peoples effected their definite triumph they were obliged to call in foreign artists, more skilful than themselves in the interpretation of the architectural vernacular.

The Portuguese knew how to fight bravely and to sing their triumphs, but they did not know how to build; and for this reason the monastery of Alcobaça, founded in fulfilment of a vow by Alfonso I, king of Portugal, in 1170, is an Anglo-Saxon church, built by workmen from England. A new architectural epoch dates from the fifteenth century, and its character has been best perpetuated in the abbey of Batalha. Of its kind, this is one of the most beautiful edifices in existence; and assuredly it is the most majestic and the most pure in form that Portugal possesses. It was built in the reign of João I (1385-1433) who brought from England a celebrated sculptor named Stephenson. Many German, English, and Norman artists summoned by the monarch came to aid him. João himself and his queen Philippa, granddaughter of Edward III of England, supervised the work. And that nothing might be lacking to the poetic magnificence and graceful details of the building, another queen, the pious Leonora, and two monarchs--João II, the poet king, and after him, Emmanuel--followed the continuance of the work with intelligent interest. Nothing in the whole peninsula rivals in magnificence the façade of the monastery, nor in boldness of design its chapter hall.[b]

THE ORIGIN OF PORTUGAL

[Sidenote: [712-1109 A.D.]]

It has been stated that geographically the kingdom of Portugal is an integral part of the Iberian peninsula; the only reason why it has retained its independence, while the other mediæval states of that peninsula have merged into the kingdom of Spain, is to be found in its history. When Philip II of Spain annexed Portugal it was a century too late for it to coalesce with Spain. It had then produced Vasco da Gama and Alfonso de Albuquerque, and its language had been developed from a Romance dialect into a literary language by Camoens and Sá de Miranda. Conscious of its national history, it broke away again from Spain in 1640, and under the close alliance of England maintained its separate and national existence during the eighteenth century. A union with Spain might have been possible, however, during the first half of the present century had not a generation of historians and poets arisen who, by recalling the great days of the Portuguese monarchy, have made it impossible for Portugal ever again to lose the consciousness of her national existence.

The history of Portugal really begins with the gift of the fief of the Terra Portucalensis or the county of Porto Cale to Count Henry of Burgundy in 1094; for any attempt to identify the kingdom of Portugal and the Portuguese people with Lusitania and the Lusitanians is utterly without foundation. With the rest of the Iberian peninsula, Portugal was colonised by the Phœnicians and conquered by the Carthaginians; and the Roman province of Lusitania, whether according to the division of Iberia into three provinces under Augustus or into five under Hadrian, in no way coincided with the historical limits of the kingdom of Portugal. In common with the rest of the peninsula, it was overrun by the Vandals, Alans, and Visigoths, and eventually conquered by the Arabs in the eighth century. It was not until the fifteenth century that an attempt was made by Garcia de Menezes to identify Lusitania with Portugal. Under the influence of the Renaissance, Bernardo de Brito insisted on the identity, and claimed Viriathus as a Portuguese hero. Other writers of the same epoch delighted in calling Portugal by the classical name of “Lusitania,” and Camoens, by the very title of his great epic, Os Lusiadas, has immortalised the appellation.

For two centuries Portugal remained subject to the Omayyad caliphs, and under their wise rule the old Roman coloniæ and municipia, such as Lisbon, Lamego, Viseu, and Oporto, maintained their Roman self-government and increased in wealth and importance. Towards the close of the tenth century, as the Omayyad caliphate grew weaker, the Christian princes of Visigothic descent who dwelt in the mountains of the Asturias began to grow more audacious in their attacks on the declining power, and in 997 Bermudo II, king of Galicia, won back the first portion of modern Portugal from the Mohammedans by seizing Oporto and occupying the province now known as Entre-Minho-e-Douro. In the beginning of the eleventh century the Omayyad caliphate finally broke up, and independent emirs established themselves in every large city, against whom the Christian princes waged incessant and successful war.[c]

In 1027 Alfonso V of Leon fell before Viseu, the siege of which was in consequence abandoned; but in 1057, both it and Lamego were recovered by his son-in-law, Ferdinand I; and the following year Coimbra shared the same fate. In 1093, Santarem, Lisbon, and Cintra were reduced by Alfonso VI, the famous conqueror of Toledo, whose arms were generally so successful against the misbelievers.[135] As these conquests were continually exposed to the irruptions of the Almoravids, in 1095 that monarch conferred the government of Portugal from the Minho to the Tagus, and the right of conquering as far as the Guadiana, on Henry of Besançon or Burgundy, who in 1072 had married his illegitimate daughter Theresa, and to whose arms he had been so much indebted for many of his recent successes.[136]

[Sidenote: [1095-1139 A.D.]]

The nature of the authority conferred on the new count has been a matter of much controversy between the Castilian and Portuguese writers. While the latter maintain that the concession of Alfonso was full and entire,--a surrender of all feudal claims over the country, which the count was to govern in full sovereignty,--the former no less zealously contend that the government was to be held as a fief, hereditary indeed, but no less dependent on the crown of Leon. In the absence of documentary evidence, probability only can guide us. It is unreasonable to suppose either that the king was willing, or, if willing, that his nobles would allow him to dismember at once and forever so fair a territory from his crown, and that too in favour of a stranger and an illegitimate daughter--for illegitimate she was, notwithstanding the allegations to the contrary by some Portuguese writers, who seldom regard truth if unpalatable to their national vanity. That Portugal was conferred as a dependent fief is also confirmed by the disputes between its early sovereigns and those of Leon--the former striving to maintain their avowed independence, the latter to reduce them to their reputed original vassalage. Alfonso died in 1109.

The administration of Henry was vigorous, and his military conduct glorious. His triumphs over the Mohammedans were frequent, whether achieved in concert with his father-in-law, Alfonso, or by his own unaided arm. Nor were his efforts to crush rebellion, whether of his local Christian governors or of his Mohammedan vassals, less successful. One of his last acts was to assist his natural sovereign, Urraca, daughter of Alfonso, against her husband the king of Aragon. He died in 1112, leaving many ecclesiastic structures enriched by his liberality. Braga, Oporto, Coimbra, Lamego, and Viseu were the places most indebted to his piety. Unfortunately for his memory, many of the great deeds recorded of him by his partial people rest on authority too disputable to be received. Probably some of them have been confounded with those of his more famous son.

During the minority of Alfonso [or Affonso], the son of Henry, who, at his father’s death, was only in his second year, the administration of the kingdom was assumed by the widowed Theresa. The character of this princess is represented as little superior to that of her sister Urraca: the same violence, the same unbridled passions, and the same unnatural jealousy of her son appear, though in a degree undoubtedly less criminal, to have distinguished her conduct. Yet on that sister and her nephew, the successor of Urraca, she sometimes made war, in the hope of profiting by the dissensions of the period; on every occasion she was repulsed, and was forced to sue for peace. Her intimacy with Dom Ferdinand Peres, whom she is supposed to have secretly married, and through whom all favours were to be solicited, roused the jealousy of the courtiers. By their persuasion Alfonso, whom she had rigorously endeavoured to exclude from all participation in public affairs, undertook to wrest the sovereignty from her hands. He had little difficulty in collecting troops; for no sooner did he erect the standard of resistance, than the discontented nobles flocked round it. His preparations reached the ears of his mother, who wrathfully armed to defend her authority. The two armies met near the fortress of Guimarães, where the princess was utterly routed, and forced to seek refuge in the castle of Leganoso. There she was speedily invested, and compelled to surrender the reins of government into the hands of her son, while her favourite or husband fled into Galicia. She survived her fall about two years.[137]

The new count was destined to prove a more formidable enemy to the Mohammedans than even his able father. During the first years of his administration, he was at variance with his cousin, Alfonso VII or VIII, whose Galician territories he invaded, and with whose enemy, the king of Navarre, he entered into alliance.[h]

When Alfonso Henriques was no longer checked by the enmity of his Christian neighbours, he prosecuted his enterprises against the Moors with such vigour that he soon extended his sway nearly to the Tagus; and, by the terror of his progress, obliged Ali to send from Africa a powerful army, to support the walis, next threatened against him. A battle ensued, esteemed the most memorable in Portuguese annals, but which has been so disfigured by national vanity or ignorance that the facts relating to it are not easily ascertainable. The numbers of the Mohammedans are rated at three hundred thousand, and even at six hundred thousand men; and this host is said to have been commanded by five kings. Since the establishment of the Almoravid domination, there were no Moorish kings left in Spain; but the name was erroneously given to the walis who led the troops of their respective provinces. What does seem certain respecting the battle in question is that the Mussulman forces were incomparably superior to the Portuguese; that, dreading an invasion, which, even if ultimately foiled, must still bring inevitable ruin upon his territories, the count boldly crossed the Tagus, and advanced to the plain of Ourique [or Orik], where he entrenched himself strongly, and awaited the attack; that the Moors repeatedly assaulted his fortifications and were as often repulsed, until at last, from weariness and mortification, they fell into some disorder; and that Alfonso Henriques, seizing the critical moment, burst out upon them from behind his lines, and completed their discomfiture. Upon the field of victory the army were said to have hailed their count king of Portugal; and this glorious day, the 25th of July, 1139, is considered the epoch of the foundation of the monarchy. The five walis of Badajoz, Beja, Elvas, Evora, and Lisbon were found amongst the dead, and honoured with the royal title. The conqueror assumed, as the arms of Portugal, their five shields, arranged in what he called a cross, though the figure they present more resembles that of a cinque upon dice; and accordingly the Portuguese arms are termed As Quinas, the Cinques.

[Sidenote: [1139-1147 A.D.]]

Alfonso’s military election was said to have been subsequently confirmed by the cortes of Lamego, with a solemnity well deserving attention, as perhaps the only instance on record of a formal compact between prince and people, at the original establishment of a monarchy.[i] But it is now denied that such a cortes ever sat, the story being of much later date. The true kingship of Alfonso Henriques dates from 1143 when, at the intervention of a papal legate, Alfonso VII recognised him as king and vassal of the pope.[a]

Having established his own independence of foreign authority, the new king proceeded to the emancipation of his clergy from their subjection to the archbishop of Toledo, whose primacy extended over the whole peninsula. This was the subject of long negotiations with the papal see; but Alfonso Henriques at length obtained from Pope Alexander III a bull dissolving the connection with Toledo, and constituting the archbishop of Braga primate of Portugal.

Alfonso Henriques’ last conquest from the Moors was the city of Lisbon, which he took by the help of a fleet of French, English, and German crusaders, who put into the Tagus in their way to the Holy Land. He easily persuaded these champions of Christianity that it would be no violation of their vow to suspend their voyage for a while, in order to fight the Mohammedans in Portugal; and some of them, chiefly English, he is said to have induced permanently to settle in his new acquisitions.[i]

[Sidenote: [1147-1169 A.D.]]

In 1147, we find the Portuguese intent on regaining Santarem. As the fortifications were strong, and the defenders numerous, he caused a small but resolute band to scale the walls by night: scarcely had twenty-five reached the summit of the wall, when the Moorish inhabitants took the alarm, and flew to arms. In vain one of the gates was opened by the Christians, and the rest of the assailants rushed in. The struggle which ensued, amidst the darkness of night, the clash of weapons, the groans of dying warriors, the shrieks of women and infants who were indiscriminately butchered, constituted a scene which none but a demon would have delighted to witness, which none but a demon would have commanded.[138] In an hour this important fortress, one of the great bulwarks of Christian Lusitania, was in possession of the victor. His success, and the embarrassment of the Mohammedan princes of Spain, both on account of the rising power of the Almohads in Africa, and of the hostilities of the kings of Leon and Castile, emboldened him to attempt the recovery of Lisbon. That city was invested; but the valour of the defenders and the strength of the walls would doubtless have compelled him to raise the siege, had not a succour arrived which no man could have expected. This was a fleet of crusaders, chiefly of English, under the command of William Longsword, who was hastening to the Holy Land. The Portuguese king had little difficulty in persuading them that the cross had no greater enemies than the Mohammedans of Spain, and that the recovery of Lisbon would be no less acceptable to heaven than that of the Syrian towns: the hope of plunder did the rest; the crusaders disembarked, and joined in the assaults which were daily made on the place. After a gallant defence of five months, the besieged showing no disposition to surrender, the Christians appointed October 25th for a general assault on the city. It was carried by storm; a prodigious number of the Moors were put to the sword; the crusaders were too much enriched to dream of continuing their voyage; so that, with the exception of a few who received lands in Portugal, the rest returned to their own country.

But the Mohammedans had still possession of one-half of Portugal, and of several strong fortresses. Having reduced Cintra, Alfonso passed the Tagus, and seized on several fortified places in Estremadura, and even in Alemtejo. It was not, however, until 1158 that he seriously attempted the reduction of Alcacer-do-Sal, which fell, after a vigorous resistance of two months. In 1165 Cezimbra and Palmella were invested: the former place was speedily taken; while, before the latter, he had to encounter a strong force sent to relieve it by the Moorish governor of Badajoz.[139] The misbelievers were defeated, and many places made to surrender.

The martial character of the Portuguese king, as well as the almost uninterrupted success of his arms, inclined him to perpetual war--whether with Moors or Christians appears to have given him little concern. In 1167 he seized on Limia, a territory of Galicia, which he claimed on the ground of its having formed part of his mother’s dowry. The following year he advanced against Badajoz, the Moorish governor of which was a vassal of the king of Leon. Ferdinand II hastened to its relief; but before his arrival the Portuguese standard floated on the towers. The forces of Ferdinand were greatly superior in number, and the Portuguese king prepared to issue from the gates--whether, as the national writers assert, to contend for his new conquest on the open field, or, as the Castilians say, to escape from the incensed monarch of Leon, is uncertain. What is indubitable is that, as he was passing through the gate with precipitation, his thigh came into contact with the wall or bars, and was shattered. He was taken prisoner by the Leonese, and conducted to their king, who treated him with courtesy, and consented to his liberation on the condition of his surrendering the places which he had usurped in Galicia. From this accident, however, he never recovered so as to be able to mount a horse; but it had a much worse effect than his own personal decrepitude: it encouraged the restless Mohammedans to resume their incursions into his territories.

[Sidenote: [1169-1185 A.D.]]

Though these incursions were repressed by the valour of his son, Dom Sancho, who, not content with defending Portugal, penetrated into the Moorish territory, to the very outskirts of Seville, his people could not fail to suffer from the ravages of the misbelievers. This irruption, too, had its ill effect; it so much incensed Yusuf ben Yakub, the emperor of the Almohads, that he despatched a considerable force into the kingdom. The discomfiture of this army under the wall of Abrantes, and the exploits of the celebrated Dom Fuas Roupinho, one of Sancho’s captains, preserved the country indeed from the yoke of the stranger, but not from the devastation; Alemtejo, above all, suffered in this vindictive warfare.

Alfonso Henriques died December 6th, 1185. His memory is held by the Portuguese in the highest veneration; and hints are not obscurely given that he merited canonisation. He, who had been favoured by a celestial vision at Ourique, whose holy intentions had been so miraculously communicated to St. Bernard, and after death whose mantle, preserved with religious reverence, could cure the diseased, was surely worthy of ecclesiastical deification. That, in after times, when João I gained Ceuta, he appeared in white armour in the choir of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, and informed the holy brotherhood that he and his son Dom Sancho were proceeding to Ceuta to assist their vassals, no true Portuguese ever yet disbelieved: hence the peculiar office which the monks of that magnificent house solemnised in his honour. To a less Catholic reader, “this always adorable king” (sempre o rei adoravel) may, from his indiscriminate slaughter of the innocent and guilty, and from his amours, appear to have been imbued with the imperfections of our nature.[h]

HERCULANO’S ESTIMATE OF THE FIRST PORTUGUESE KING

[Sidenote: [1128-1185 A.D.]]

Alfonso I was not generally over-scrupulous in sacrificing his knightly generosity and even his political faith to public convenience. The methods which he nearly always adopted to secure the independence and extend the limits of Portugal do more honour to his strength and dexterity than to his delicacy on points of honour. If, however, the severe and impartial historian must perceive blemishes in the character of Alfonso I as a man, justice must, in his favour, throw into the scale the difficulties which beset him in bequeathing to the next generation a well-cemented political existence, and a nationality, as we may say, sufficiently compact to withstand the storms which shook the peninsula. He had to attend to the internal organisation of society and externally to secure it an advantageous position in relation to the various nations of Spain, Christian and Mussulman.

Founder of a new dynasty in the midst of a society equally new, what more natural than that Alfonso I should conceive it necessary gradually to accustom his subjects as well as foreigners to look upon his son Sancho as king before death came to make, as it were, solution of continuity between father and son, and therefore in the monarchy? In Leon and Castile heredity had superseded election to the throne in point of fact; but the Visigothic right of election still existed as a written law, and was still presupposed by the formula of coronation even in the thirteenth century. There were no particular institutions in Portugal to fix the succession, nor any security that the Leonese-Castilian dynasty would offer a long line of kings succeeding each other from father to son. Neither daring nor ambition were lacking in those days; and the death of the first king of the Portuguese might give rise to serious disturbance, either in the country itself or from without, especially as Ferdinand II had already shown in his conduct towards the young king of Castile that his generosity could not always resist an opportunity of adding another crown to that which he already possessed. These and similar considerations probably moved Alfonso I to associate his son with him in the government, not by any formal act of which we have record, but by giving him a free hand in the government of the state, especially in matters of warfare.

Following the phases of this long reign, and judging impartially the actions of the man placed by providence at the head of the nation, to guide it in the first years of its existence, it is recognised that the idea of fixing the Portuguese independence outweighed all other considerations in his mind, sometimes perhaps to the prejudice of some which should have been respected. It is this idea which in reality links together many acts of Alfonso Henriques which, taken separately, would give men a right to accuse him of little faith and immoderate ambition. Besides the revolt against Doña Theresa which is to be attributed rather to the nobles than to an inexperienced youth, the breaking of the truce with the emperor in 1137, the cruelties practised upon the Saracens, and finally his conduct towards the king of Leon, his son-in-law, whose noble and generous character cannot fail to cast a reflection upon that of Alfonso I, are actions which, taken separately, are worthy of condemnation, at least until records reveal some circumstances still unknown to us, which may absolve them. But, if we consider them in connection with the idea to which the king of Portugal had devoted himself, and which was so to speak incarnate in him, who will not find excuses for such actions, especially if we consider the barbarous epoch, the difficult situation of the country, and the real weakness of a society separated from another which struggled to bring it to reunion? The great need to which Alfonso I was bound to attend was to give homogeneity and internal and external strength to the nation which was being formed. For this purpose he was forced at the same time to seek the favour of the church, the first element of strength in those days; to favour the nobles, the chief nerve of the army, and finally to impart the utmost degree of vigour to the municipal spirit without which, in our opinion, popular spirit and keen love of country never have existed and never will exist.

Besides this labour of internal organisation, he had to extend the limits of the territory which he inherited, too narrow for the establishment of an independent state. The fear of his name among the Mussulmans and Christians and the daring of his troops were means to accomplish it. Naturally warlike, two successive generations learned in his school the hard business of war and succeeded in bequeathing to those to come the glorious traditions of strength and patriotic love which the nation guarded religiously for several centuries. However, before Alfonso I could trust the independence of the country to the chances of war, it was necessary to shield it while a frail plant, by political dexterity. In some cases this gave rise to actions which considered summarily would be condemned by severe morality. But view the picture in the proper light, and the stains which before cast a shadow upon the noble and haughty figure of the first Portuguese king will almost disappear, and the sympathy which the Portuguese nation has in all ages shown for the memory of the son of Count Henry will again appear estimable, for it has its roots in a sentiment rarely found among nations--gratitude to those to whom they are most indebted. This national affection went so far as to attribute to Alfonso Henriques the halo of the saints, and urge that Rome should bestow upon the fierce conqueror that crown which belongs to the martyr’s resignation. But if a creed of peace and humility forbade Rome to grant that crown, another religion likewise venerable, the religion of patriotism, teaches us that when we pass the pale, worm-eaten portal of the church of Santa Cruz we are about to pay homage to the ashes of that man but for whom the Portuguese nation, and perhaps even the name of Portugal, would not be in existence to-day.

REIGNS OF SANCHO I AND ALFONSO II

[Sidenote: [1185-1211 A.D.]]

The historical value of the twenty-six years’ reign of the son of Alfonso I is perhaps no less than that of his own long term of government; but the character of the two epochs differ as much as did the gifts and characters of the two princes who presided over the political life of each. Less able as a captain than his father, and without that superior invention and daring which incited the founder of the monarchy to great enterprises, Sancho I was far from winning equal renown as a conqueror, but wasted the best years of his manhood in wars for the most part useless and obscure.

Upon this point the two epochs admit of no comparison. Before the sword of Alfonso, Saracen and Christian drew back dismayed, citadels and castles opened their gates; the limits of the country were extended, and the foundations of the existence of Portugal, cemented by torrents of blood, were permanently laid in the west of Spain. After a conquest Sancho always lost again, and for years carried on a sterile strife with Leon; and if he recovered a part of the north and west of Alemtejo it was because the Almohads, whose power was already on the decline, had not sufficient forces to maintain the almost useless dominion of those inhospitable deserts, and so abandoned them, while the Christians, especially the military orders, gradually reclaimed them and built castles and preceptories.

But if we turn our eyes from the frontiers and look upon the interior of the country, the name of the second monarch appears no less glorious than that of the first, and we see his reign as a complement of the preceding reign. Fertilised by the ashes of the martyrs of the Gospel and the Koran, turned and furrowed by the steel of combatants and the whirl of battles, the land of Portugal received from the hands of Sancho the seeds of greatness and royal strength in the councils which were everywhere established; in the farms and villages which were founded in the districts least subject to invasion and incursions; and in the frontier castles which were crowned with bastions and provided with military stores. In those days the courage which faces death was but a trivial virtue. Without the grand idea which dominated all his conquests, without the political skill and extraordinary military talent with which he made up for the lack of strength and resources of the monarchy which he founded, Alfonso I, in spite of his courage and energy, would rank no higher than a fortunate knight.

Upon this point his son was not fortune’s favourite. However, he revenged himself nobly, labouring to earn the title of the Povoador, or city-builder, which he indeed deserved. History, so subject to the vulgar error of rating the barren laurel crown above the fruitful olive branch, has treated the last years of Sancho’s reign with scorn because therein he endeavoured to substitute cities for deserts, cultivated fields for waste lands, and life for death. He pursued this end with energy, and his highest praise lies in the collection of documents which prove his activity and which are perhaps but a small portion of those once existing. This monarch sincerely followed the system which the internal state of the nation demanded, and enabled his successors to be, if not more valiant, at least more fortunate soldiers.

Such is the justice due to Sancho as king. As a man his moral character was not relatively bad, it was vulgar; that is, he had the defects common to princes and barons of the times; he was ignorant and credulous--for science, according to the opinion of the age, was only fit for the mean-spirited--irascible, and violent, because moderation is not learned upon the battle-field, where his father educated him. Besides this he seems to have been inclined to gallantry and the pleasures of the chase. Certain facts of his life also cast upon him the suspicion of cupidity, and of having gathered large sums into his treasury by means grievous to his nation. Sancho himself asserts that the defenders of the state often lacked necessaries, and yet he left in his will nearly a million maravedis, almost all in gold coin, that is, more than three million cruzados of the actual currency--truly an incredible sum, if we consider the rarity of precious metals at that time. Such riches presuppose frequent rapine or a too violent system of taxation. Indeed it is proved by a law of Alfonso II that the king as well as his barons obtained the greatest necessaries of life at an incomparably inferior price, a monstrous imposition which may give us some idea of the other exactions of the treasury.

But the point in which the reign of Sancho has perhaps the highest significance lies in the beginning of that varied and complex fact which for three centuries constituted the principal feature of our Middle Ages. We speak of the alliance of the king and councils against the privileged classes, the clergy and the nobility. The first phases of the struggle are not only the beginning but the epitome, or rather the symbol of the whole. The burgesses of Oporto, attacking their bishop and lord with the officers of the crown, confiscating his property, expelling him covered with ignominy, and braving the anger of the powerful family of Martinho Rodrigues, are a type of the resistance and ill will exhibited by the municipality and the king towards the two high classes of the state, until the monarchy gained a final and decisive victory. Sancho, abandoning the citizens of Oporto, transferring, so to speak, his inert strength of a dying man to the opposite camp, and even associating himself with the clergy to assist in subduing the burgesses, gave a deplorable example to his successors and stirred up the popular spirit to future strife. In spite of this, history cannot condemn him, for everything seems to indicate that the last months of his life were one protracted agony; and if even in our own times, when religious feeling has grown dim and weak, souls calling themselves strongly tempered waver at the approach of death, and bow not only to the terrors of religion but often even to the superstitious beliefs of infancy which then importunately revive--how can we fail to excuse an ignorant and credulous man, born in an inexorable age, for sacrificing both political convenience and loyalty to the voice of a frequently legitimate remorse?[j]

[Sidenote: [1211-1245 A.D.]]

Alfonso II “the Fat” had no sooner ascended the throne than he showed a disposition to evade the execution of his father’s will. Not only did he refuse to allow his brothers the money which had been bequeathed them, but he insisted on the restitution of the fortresses which belonged to his two sisters, the saints Theresa and Sancha; and on their refusal to surrender them, he seized them by force. The infantas complained to the pope and the king of Leon: the former ordered his legate to see justice done to them; the latter, who still bore an affection towards his divorced wife Theresa, interfered more effectually by way of arms. The Leonese entered Portugal by way of Badajoz, reduced several fortresses, and spread devastations around them. In the sequel, Alfonso of Portugal, at the command of the pope and doubtless through fear of the Leonese, consented to treat with his sisters.

The transactions of Alfonso with the Mohammedans were not so remarkable as those of his predecessors--a circumstance that must be attributed not to his want of military spirit but to his excessive corpulency, which rendered the fatigues of the field intolerable. Though he sent a handful of troops to aid in the triumphs of Las Navas de Tolosa, he did not take the field in person against the enemies of his faith, until 1217 when the arrival in his ports of another crusading armament, which promised to co-operate in his designs, roused him to the reduction of Alcacer-do-Sal, a place that still remained in the power of the misbelievers. It held out till the end of September. The Mohammedans who had remained in Alemtejo, and were pressing the siege of several fortresses, were compelled to retire.

During the last three years of his reign, Alfonso had new disputes with the church. He appears to have borne little respect for the ecclesiastical immunities, some of which were, indeed, inconsistent with the interests of the community. Alfonso insisted on churchmen heading their own vassals in the wars he undertook, and such as refused were compelled to go. For such violence there was no excuse; but in subjecting the ecclesiastical possessions to the same contributions as were levied on the property of the laymen, and churchmen themselves to the secular tribunals, he attempted a salutary innovation on the established system of the clerical exemptions. The archbishop of Braga, like the English Becket of the preceding century, remonstrated with the king; and when remonstrances were ineffectual, hurled at the head of his abettors the thunders of the church. In return he was deprived of his revenues, and compelled to consult his present safety by flight. He complained to the pope: Honorius III ordered three Castilian bishops to insist on ample reparation, to excommunicate the king, and impose an interdict on the nation. The afflicted people now endeavoured to effect a reconciliation between the king and the archbishop: the former promised to make satisfaction, and in future to respect the privileges of the church; he was accordingly absolved, and the interdict removed, but before he could fulfil his share of the compact he was surprised by death (1223).

Sancho II, having reluctantly promised to respect the immunities of the church, prepared to extend the boundary of his dominions at the expense of the Mohammedans. He recovered the important town of Elvas, which had been regained by the Moors: next Jarumeñha and Serpa yielded to his arms. He now carried the war into Algarve. He appears to have left the enemy no fortified places in Alemtejo; the frontier fortresses of that province, thus rescued from the infidels, he intrusted to the defence of the order of Santiago, who triumphed in several partial engagements. The frontier places continued for some years to change masters, according as either of the hostile powers prevailed.

In his domestic administration, Dom Sancho was doomed to be far less fortunate. From his infancy he appears to have been of a weak constitution, and of a still weaker mind; but if he was weak, we have no proof that he was vicious, though great disasters afflicted his kingdom, and the historians of his country have stigmatised his memory. His hostility to the immunities of the clergy appears to have been the first and chief cause of his unpopularity.[h]

SANCHO II CALLED CAPELLO, “THE HOODED”

The account of the state of the kingdom which served as a foundation for the acts which afterwards emanated from the Roman curia affirmed that the king in spite of his former promises showed on the one hand pertinacity in the perpetration of violence, and on the other the most inexcusable tolerance towards criminals, and neither amended himself nor restrained his subjects; that robbers, highwaymen, incendiaries, sacrilegists, and murderers swarmed everywhere, robbing and killing clergy and laity without distinction, and living secure of impunity. That through this contagious example of the impotence of the laws, barons and knights, nobles and plebeians made general practice of those acts which the church by the most severe comminations had endeavoured to restrain. That certain patrons of parishes and monasteries, and others falsely giving themselves out as such, accompanied by illegitimate children, wasted the property of the said parishes and monasteries without pity, reducing them to such misery that the very ministers of worship could not maintain themselves; so that in some there was even no one to perform the indispensable services, and in others the cloisters, refectories, and other offices were converted into stables and brothels for the lowest of men, and it might almost be said that divine worship had ceased there and the property of these holy places was given over to dilapidation and plunder. That at the same time Sancho allowed the castles, towns, and revenues of the crown to be destroyed and squandered, and suffered the increase of assassinations without any distinction whatever of the class, age, or sex of the victims; as well as robbery, incest, the rape of nuns and secular women, grievous oppression of labourers, priests, and merchants, with the purpose of extorting money from them; violation of temples and cemeteries, incendiarism, and breaches of truce. That Sancho was aware of all this and yet tolerated it, and through neglect of punishment facilitated the perpetration of further crimes; that finally, by abandoning the defence of the frontiers, he, the king of Portugal, allowed the Saracens to occupy the lands and lordships of the Christians. “We,” added the prelates, “have used our utmost endeavours to move the prince to devote himself with due ardour to the repression of such evils; but he closes his ears to our admonitions, which have so far been entirely vain.”

If the reader will reflect upon this last invective of the clergy against Sancho, he will recognise with what good reason we attribute to the long wars of this reign an immense influence upon the strife with the clergy, and see in these repeated enterprises against the infidel an idea, or maybe a political instinct, of the monarchy which drew strength from them for the eternal duel with the priesthood. As far as documents throw light upon the last conquests in Algarve, the accusation that Sancho in a cowardly manner abandoned the defence of the frontier and allowed the Mussulman arms to encroach upon the territory of the kingdom was a calumny.

[Sidenote: [1237-1245 A.D.]]

But the heads of the clergy did not hesitate to adopt such means, for it was necessary to destroy the reputation of a conqueror of the enemies of the cross which the king of Portugal must still have enjoyed in the Roman curia, where the solemn testimonies of praise lavished upon him more than once by Gregory IX could not be yet forgotten. It was necessary to snatch the crown from the soldier’s helm and place it on a dishonoured brow, that they might afterwards roll it in the dust before the priestly sandal. But up to a certain point Sancho offered a pretext for such calumny by the fatal repose of the preceding years, and perhaps some obscure event, the loss of some unimportant tower or grange of Ayamonte in the east or Tavira in the west, a loss exaggerated by ecclesiastical malice, gave the absurd assertion some appearance of truth.

The description of the state of Portugal, drawn up by the Roman curia, although exaggerated, was based on facts proved by various documents and memoirs of that time, and above all by the inquisitions of the following reign. But these very inquisitions prove that the members of the secular clergy and monastic orders were not innocent of the public evils, especially as regards robbery and the diminution of the patrimony of the crown. They complained of the contempt in which canonical censure was held, but the fault was theirs. The spiritual sword was blunted by excessive use; excommunication, interdict, denial of burial in consecrated ground accompanied all the pretensions of the ministers of the altar, even those which the rudest of men could plainly perceive to be dictated by shameful cupidity. It is not surprising, therefore, that the nobles as well as the burgesses and peasants laughed at the chastisement which the clergy themselves taught them to despise. It was this contrast which throughout all Europe wounded the most enlightened men and gradually undermined the foundations and political influence of the church. The representation of the prelates was therefore doubly disloyal, attributing to the king alone the evils of which they were no less guilty, and describing the crimes and excesses of the laity towards the clergy, but forgetting to mention the abuse of divine things and the cupidity and lawlessness of the clergy.

The truth is, however, that this new phase of the interminable conflict between the clergy and the civil power did not arise from the cause assigned, but from the conjunction of circumstances which gave the bishops the means of gaining a decisive victory over the crown. The idea of deposing a king through the initiative of the church was old, and was considered so feasible that in grave cases the popes did not hesitate to allude to it clearly in their comminations and threats. In Portugal especially, as a kingdom in a manner dependent upon the papal throne, such a course must have seemed even easier, as the king was without moral or material means of defence.[j]

SANCHO DEPOSED, ALFONSO III SUCCEEDS (1245 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1245-1253 A.D.]]

Censures were passed on the monarch for his persecution of the dean of Lisbon. His subsequent repentance disarmed the pontiff; and, notwithstanding the complaints of the people that the laws were silent, and brute force only triumphed, he would doubtless have ended his reign in peace, had he not resumed or permitted the spoliation of the church. At length, both clergy and people united their murmurs; they perceived that the king was too feeble to repress the daily feuds of his barons, who broke out into open war and committed the greatest excesses. They applied to Innocent IV, who, in concert with the fathers of the council, issued a decree by which, though the royal title was left to Sancho, the administration was declared to be vested in the infante Alfonso, brother of the king.

No sooner did Alfonso hear of the extraordinary proceedings of the pope and council, than he prepared to vindicate the title which it had conferred upon him. He was then at Boulogne-sur-Mer, the lordship of which belonged to him in the right of his wife Matilda. Having sworn before the papal commissioners to administer Portugal with justice, and leaving the government of Boulogne in the hands of his countess, he embarked at that port, and safely landed at Lisbon. At first the king intended to oppose the infante; but seeing how generally the deputies owned him,--how all classes, nobles and citizens, prelates and peasants, joined his brother,--he retreated into Spain, to solicit the support of his cousin, Ferdinand III. As that saintly monarch was too busy in the Andalusian wars to assist the fugitive king in person, he recommended the interests of his guest to his son Alfonso. The Castilian infante showed no want of zeal in behalf of his relative. He collected a considerable army, and invaded Portugal. Arriving before Leiria without much opposition, he was preparing to storm that fortress, when he was visited by a deputation from the archbishop of Braga, which conjured him, as a true son of the church, not to incur excommunication by opposing the execution of the pontifical bulls. The Castilian infante listened, and obeyed: he led back his army; and the deposed monarch, now bereft of all hope, retired to Toledo, where, early in 1248, he ended his days. So long as the latter lived, some of the fortified places in Portugal refused to acknowledge the regent; but on his death without issue--there is no evidence that he was ever married--his brother was peaceably acknowledged as his successor.

[Sidenote: [1253-1279 A.D.]]

Alfonso III, on arriving at a height which, a few years before, his ambition could scarcely have reached, was not without apprehensions that the Castilian king or infante might trouble him in his usurpation, and assembled the three estates of his realm to deliberate on the means of defence. Fortunately for his ambition, both father and son were absorbed by their Andalusian conquests. To secure, if possible, the good will of the former, he sent a considerable aid to the Christian camp, which was readily received by the hero. In the meantime he himself resolved to profit by the reverses of the misbelievers, and finish the conquest of Algarve. At the head of a sufficient force, he accordingly penetrated into that province, and speedily recovered the places which the Mohammedans had again surprised. In a subsequent expedition, his ardour or avarice led him to encroach on the possessions of Alfonso el Sabio, Ferdinand’s successor. The Castilian army marched against the Portuguese, who were compelled to retreat. The Castilian king did not stop here. On the pretext that Algarve, as chiefly conquered by his subjects, the knights of Santiago, belonged to him, he invaded that province, and quickly reduced its chief fortresses. The Portuguese was glad to sue for an accommodation; and it was at length agreed that he should marry Doña Beatrice de Guzman, a natural daughter of the Castilian, and with her receive the sovereignty of Algarve. As the province had been conquered by the subjects of both crowns, equity would have indicated its division by the two monarchs; but as such a division would probably have led to future wars, the present arrangement might be a politic one. The Castilian appears to have reserved to himself the sovereignty of Algarve, his feudatory being required both to pay tribute and to furnish a certain number of forces whenever he should be at war. The cession, with whatever conditions it was accompanied, was disagreeable to the Castilians, who thought that their monarch had sacrificed the interests of the state in favour of his daughter. The marriage was solemnised in the following year (in 1254), and a few years afterwards Portugal was declared forever free from homage to the Castilian kings.

From the facility with which this matrimonial connection was formed, it would be inferred that the Portuguese was become a widower. But the countess Matilda still lived, and was anxious to return to her lord. Her only defects were her barrenness and her age--two which, though no canonist would recognise, were sufficient in the mind of so unscrupulous a prince as Alfonso. She sailed for Portugal. He refused to see her; and when at length she forced her way into his presence, he heard, unmoved, her entreaties, her expostulations, and threats. The queen (for such history must call her) retired to Boulogne, and laid her complaints before the pope and her liege superior, St. Louis. After a patient examination of the case, Alexander IV expedited a bull, by which he declared Matilda the lawful wife of Alfonso, and annulled the recent marriage with Doña Beatrice. The king persevered in his lust, as he had already done in his usurpation, even when excommunicated by the pope; and he and his household were interdicted from the offices of the church. A second time is she said to have visited Portugal, but with as little success. She had married him when poor--when almost an exile from his native court--and had thereby raised him to power and riches: and her unshaken attachment--unshaken even by his sickening ingratitude--proves that though the empire of the passions had ceased, she possessed an uncommon share of woman’s best feeling. Her last act, by which she bequeathed a considerable sum to this faithless deserter, was characteristic enough of her ruling misfortune. On her death, in 1262, his prelates obtained from the pope a bull to render legitimate the present marriage.[h]

POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF ALFONSO’S REIGN

Alfonso determined to bridle the power of the bishops, in spite of his oath at Paris. Perceiving that this could only be done with the help of the mass of the people, he summoned a cortes at Leiria in 1254, to which representatives of the cities were elected and sat with the nobles and higher clergy. With the help of the cortes--one of great importance in the constitutional history of Portugal--he dared the interdict laid upon the kingdom for having married again (the daughter of Alfonso el Sabio) whilst his first wife (Matilda, countess of Boulogne) was alive. Finally, however, on the petition of the archbishops and bishops of Portugal, Pope Urban IV legalised the disputed marriage in 1262 and legitimated his eldest son, Dom Diniz, while in 1263, Alfonso X made over to him the full sovereignty of Algarve. On the other hand, the people made use of their power, and in a full cortes at Coimbra in 1261 the representatives of the cities boldly denounced Alfonso’s tampering with the coinage, and compelled recognition of the fact that taxes were not levied by the inherent right of the king but the free consent of the people. After a prosperous and successful reign Nemesis came upon Alfonso in the rebellion of his eldest son Diniz[140] in 1277, which continued until 1279, in which year the king died.

The period of war and of territorial extension in the peninsula was now over, and the period of civilisation was to dawn. Territorially and constitutionally Portugal was now an established kingdom; it remained for it to become civilised and thoroughly homogeneous before the great heroic period of exploration and Asiatic conquest should begin.

DOM DINIZ

[Sidenote: [1279-1325 A.D.]]

No better man for such work than the new king, Dom Diniz, could have been found; he was himself a poet and loved letters; he was a great administrator and loved justice; above all he saw the need of agriculture and the arts of peace to take the place of incessant wars, and nobly earned the title of the Ré Lavrador, or Diniz the Labourer. From all these points of view his reign is of vast importance in the history of Portugal, though, like all reigns of peaceful progress, it is not signalised by many striking events. It began with a civil war between Diniz and his brother Alfonso, who disputed his legitimacy, which ended in a compromise; and in 1281 Diniz married Isabella, daughter of Pedro III of Aragon, who for her pure and unselfish life was canonised in the sixteenth century. His reign is marked by only one war with Sancho IV and his successor, Ferdinand IV, of Castile and Leon, which was terminated in 1297 by a treaty of alliance, according to the terms of which Ferdinand IV married Constanza, daughter of Diniz, while Alfonso, the heir to the throne of Portugal, married Beatrice of Castile, sister of Ferdinand. At the end of this reign war broke out between the king and the heir-apparent, and a pitched battle was only prevented in 1323 by St. Isabella riding between the armies and making a peace between her husband and her son, which lasted until the death of the great peace-monarch, the Ré Lavrador, in 1325.[c]

Treachery and abuse of power were so frequent that, notwithstanding various diplomatic disloyalties, Diniz was considered one of the most loyal and just princes and lords of the two kingdoms. For this reason the two great kingdoms of Aragon and Castile appointed him arbitrator in the most serious disputes, and submitted to his judgment. Although the genius of war did not weave martial crowns for him, as conqueror in battles--for during his time no great honours fell to the Portuguese arms--yet he was ever at the head of the national armies in all the campaigns; knowing that his most powerful allies had been destroyed and others had betrayed him, he had the skilful audacity to penetrate forty leagues into the interior of Castile, and availing himself of the opportunity afforded by his opponents’ weakness, he increased the Portuguese dominion by two castles and eleven important towns, as though he were the most successful of warriors. The civil dissensions which disturbed his reign both arose from the same causes and circumstances, mediæval feudalism, assisted by Castilian elements. Taking for leaders first the brother and then the son of Diniz, the rebels combatted royal power in the kingdom, which, supported by the people, daily increased feudal privileges and forces.

The husband of Isabella was as rapid and successful in his measures against his brother as he was undecided and weak in repressing his son. In the first instance his courage was heightened by the just ambition of safe-guarding his throne; whereas, in the second instance, it was weakened by paternal affection and respect of legitimacy in the succession of the crown.

However, the principal glory of Diniz was not won with his sword. Of his epoch a perfect king, penetrated by his country’s needs, he notably increased the territory of Alfonso Henriques, but above all he raised to an amazing height the edifice of internal organisation, the foundations of which had been laid by Sancho I. His disloyalties with respect to the neighbouring kingdoms, his rare moments of repressive cruelty, the errors into which he may have fallen as a politician, the many faults into which he was in truth led by an ardent and sensual character--Diniz redeemed them all by the general and profound reform he effected with regard to Portuguese society.

He raised the population of the country, as none of his predecessors had done, by the means we have spoken of; he brought agriculture to a pitch of prosperity which we now marvel at; he created the internal industry and commerce, promoted municipal organisation, favouring labour, encouraging markets, and raising the spirit of the people; he safeguarded navigation by establishing vast societies of mutual aid between merchants, and definitely established a navy, with which he defended the coasts and the Portuguese merchant ships against pirates, and equipped his subjects for the discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which brought universal and eternal fame upon Portugal. He built nearly fifty fortresses, reorganised the popular militia, and nationalising the military orders with praiseworthy abnegation, he widely prepared the defence of the country, and bequeathed to Dom João I the possibility of opposing a formidable invasion by Castile and establishing once for all, with immortal glory, the independence of the country.

He was a zealous administrator, wise and economic, so that with the national resources he left the public treasury wealthy. Of a tolerant spirit, prudent and just in the application of the laws, no prince of his own times surpassed him in these qualities, then most rare. With gentle measures, affectionately and frequently protecting individual rights, he was one of the most determined opponents of the excessive privileges of the nobility and the church. Having received civil power, bound beneath the yoke of the Portuguese clergy, in their turn fettered to the Roman tiara, Diniz not only raised this power, but even succeeded in giving life to the national episcopacy.

The establishment of the councils begun by previous governments largely progressed, and the cortes, continuing to summon the deputies of the people, was a new and powerful aid towards the destruction of mediæval, ecclesiastical, and military feudalism in Portugal. With the laws respecting mortmain decreed and executed with civic firmness and superior wisdom, the clergy were deprived of territorial power and the sovereign right of administering justice; civil actions were brought before secular tribunes, which by a usurpation of jurisdiction had up to that time been brought before ecclesiastical tribunals.

The nobles were prohibited from raising new seigniorial castles, and many of the old were levelled; they were deprived of their traditional rights of deciding mutual disputes with the sword, of making knights, of exempting themselves from the royal tax, turning into fiefs and boroughs the lands they had seized without just cause, and even those with which they had established merely personal relations, and finally by giving judgment in causes in which the nobles claimed for themselves exclusive knowledge, the feudal nobility was totally destroyed, as was the temporal power of the church. Up to then the beneficial influence of the times sufficed to totally undermine the old oligarchic institutions of the Middle Ages, which were an overwhelming oppression of the people, and absorbed the forces of the state.

[Sidenote: [1300-1340 A.D.]]

Finally Diniz, who was the greatest poet of the first four centuries of Portugal, founded to his honour the Estudaria de Santo Eloy in Lisbon, and also the university, causing general enthusiasm; and by spreading the love of letters and study in the country, laid the foundations of secular and public instruction and opened to the Portuguese people the gates of science, and consequently those of civilisation and liberty.

After the work of Alfonso Henriques, that of Diniz is the most important which Portuguese history records to us: the first was the founder of the military nation; the second, that of the cultured people. The union of those two works gave to Portugal centuries later the possibility of realising, in the long evolution of mankind, her glorious mission of enlarging the known world.[k]

Alfonso IV, surnamed the Brave, had scarcely grasped the reins of sovereignty, when he exhibited, in a manner little becoming royalty, his vindictive feelings towards his illegitimate brother, Alfonso Henriques, who, to escape his wrath, had just fled into Castile. Having collected some troops, and been joined by a prince of Castile, he entered Portugal, laid waste the frontiers, and put to the sword every living being that fell in his way. The king now took the field in person, and laid waste the neighbouring territories of Castile. These harassing though indecisive hostilities might have continued for years, had not St. Isabella left her retreat in the convent of St. Clair, which she had founded, and prevailed on her son to permit the return of the exile.

Another defect of the new king gave great offence to the people--his neglect of public business, and his addiction to the chase. The first twelve years of Alfonso’s reign were distracted by hostilities with his namesake of Castile, the husband of his daughter. Though these hostilities were chiefly owing to the perversity of the infante Don Juan Manuel, it cannot be denied that the Portuguese king had abundant reason for dissatisfaction with his son-in-law. The usage experienced by the Castilian queen at the hands of her husband; her mortification at seeing a mistress, Leonora de Guzman, not only preferred to herself, but the sole depository of the royal favour; the studied insults to which she was daily exposed both from her husband and his minion, at length exhausted her patience, and drew forth some complaints to her father. The influence, too, which Don Juan Manuel obtained in the Portuguese court through the marriage of his repudiated daughter Constanza with Pedro, son and heir of the Portuguese king, was uniformly exerted to embroil the two crowns. Alfonso of Portugal at length sent a herald at arms to defy his son-in-law, on the ground both of the unjust treatment of the queen, whom her husband was suspected of seeking to repudiate, and of the continued detention of Constanza. His next step was to enter Castile and ravage the country as far as the vicinity of Seville.

The war was now as destructive as it was indecisive and even inglorious: it was one of mutual ravage, of shameless rapine, and unblushing cruelty. Instead of meeting each other on a fair field, they seemed intent on nothing but laying waste each other’s territory, and collecting as much booty as they could carry away: sometimes, however, the contest was decided on the deep, but with little success to either party. At length, through the efforts of the pope, the two princes agreed to a truce, and to the opening of negotiations for peace. But one of the conditions was the removal of Leonora de Guzman--a condition which Alfonso of Castile, who was entirely governed by that lady, was in no disposition to execute, but the preparations of the Mohammedans, which he knew were chiefly directed against himself, and the loud complaints of his own subjects, forced him to promise at least that it should be conceded. To the departure of Constanza, the restitution of some insignificant fortresses which had been reduced, and even to the return of his queen, the Castilian felt no repugnance; but though he consented for Leonora to leave the court, he recalled her immediately after the conclusion of peace. To his queen, however, he no longer exhibited a marked neglect: on the contrary, he treated her with all the outward respect due to her character and station; and the good understanding was confirmed by her admirable moderation.

In the wars which the Castilian had to sustain against the Mohammedans, the Portuguese--so nobly did he forget his wrongs when the interests of Christendom were at stake--was no inefficient ally. He was present at the great battle on the banks of the Salado, in which the barbaric power was so signally humbled. This aid he continued readily to supply, until the death of Alfonso of Castile, by the plague, before Gibraltar, in 1350.

THE ROMANCE OF IÑES DE CASTRO

[Sidenote: [1340-1357 A.D.]]

The tragedies represented in Castile by Pedro the Cruel, successor of Alfonso XI, were fully equalled by one in Portugal. Soon after his marriage with Constanza, Pedro, the infante of Portugal, had become passionately smitten with one of her attendants, Doña Iñes de Castro, a lady of surpassing beauty, and frail as beautiful. That he made love to her, and that his criminal suit was favourably received, is indubitable, both from the deep grief which preyed on the spirits of Constanza, and from the anxiety of the king, lest this new favourite should be the cause of the same disturbance in Portugal, as Leonora de Guzman had occasioned in Castile. To prevent the possibility of a marriage between the two lovers, Alfonso caused Iñes to hold over the baptismal font a child of Pedro’s--in other words, to contract a near spiritual affinity. But the man whom the sacred bond of wedlock could not restrain was not likely to be deterred from his purpose by an imaginary bar. After Constanza’s death in childbed, 1345, he privately married the seductive favourite. How soon after the death of the first wife this second union was contracted, whether immediately, or after Iñes had borne him three children, has been matter of much dispute. It appears that the marriage was celebrated on the 1st day of January, 1354, when Iñes must have borne him four children, of which three survived. It also appears that a papal dispensation was obtained for it, and that it took place at Braganza, in presence of a Portuguese prelate and his own chamberlain. However secret this step, it was suspected by some courtiers, who, partly through envy at the rising favour of the Castros, and partly through dread of the consequences which might ensue, endeavoured to prevail on the king to interfere in behalf of young Ferdinand, the son of Pedro and Constanza, and the lawful heir to the monarchy. From the boundless influence possessed over the mind of Pedro by Doña Iñes, it was feared that the true heir would be set aside from the succession in favour of her offspring. In the end, they wrung from him a reluctant consent to her death. The king, hearing that his son had departed on a hunting excursion for a few days, hastily left Monte-mor, and proceeded to the convent of St. Clair, at Coimbra, where Iñes then was. On learning his approach, she at once apprehended his object. Her only resource was an appeal to his pity. Taking her three children by the hand, she issued from the convent to meet him, prostrated herself at his feet, and in the most pathetic terms begged for mercy. Her beauty, her youth, her deep emotion, and the sight of her offspring--his own grandchildren--so affected him that, after a struggle between policy and nature, the latter triumphed, and he retired. No sooner, however, was he in private with his confidants, than they censured his compassion, though natural in itself, as ruinous in its consequences to his family and kingdom, and obtaining his consent hastened to the convent. The unfortunate, guilty Iñes fell beneath their daggers. The fate of this lady has called forth the deepest commiseration of novelists and poets, and has given rise to some vigorous effusions of the tragic muse.

When Pedro returned from the chase, and found his wife so barbarously murdered, his grief was surpassed, if possible, by his thirst for revenge. He leagued himself with the kindred of Iñes; and though he could not fall on the murderers, who were protected by the king, he laid waste the provinces of Entre-Douro-e-Minho, and Tras-os-Montes, where their possessions chiefly lay. King Alfonso was in consternation at the unexpected fury of his son. In the end he proposed, as the price of reconciliation, that the obnoxious nobles should be banished, and his son admitted to the chief share of the administration. Pedro accepted it, laid down his arms, and proceeded to court where he was received with an affection truly paternal, and where he engaged, though with a fixed resolution of breaking the engagement, never to seek revenge on the assassins of Doña Iñes.

Alfonso did not long survive this forced reconciliation with his son. His death, which happened at the beginning of 1357, is said to have been hastened by remorse for the tragical deed of which he had been the occasion. That he exhibited great repentance is certain; but his character was unamiable. He had been a disobedient son, an unjust brother, and a harsh father. The rebellion of his son was but fit retribution for his own conduct to the royal Diniz. His justice too often degenerated into blind vengeance. During his reign (in 1348) Portugal was afflicted with the plague, which spread throughout most of Europe, but which raged with more violence in that kingdom than anywhere else. Whole towns are said to have been left desolate, and some priests to have abandoned their flocks to the care of the monks.[h]

If we consider Alfonso IV--not isolated, nor in the light of our present-day views and social conditions as a son or as a father (even in this character we can bring forward the virtuous and exemplary spouse), but principally as leader and as king, in the moment when he assumed and exercised his power--we must confess, in face of the numerous documents relating to his external policy and his enormous legislation, that he is one of the most important figures, and that his government was one of the most advantageous, the most brilliant, and the most able of the intelligent and energetic governments which presided over the national formation of Portugal. In the character of this king there is a certain harmonious stamp of austerity which gives him a decided and characteristic originality in the midst of the free customs, and, we may say, of the traditional moral license of the kings of his time. Dom Diniz, the father of King Alfonso IV, in spite of the perfect devotion of his wife, was the easy prey of adulterous loves, and far from disguising them, flagrantly and heedlessly published them by the generosity of his gifts, calling to himself his bastard children and lavishing favours upon them, and confessing even by public documents the rewards conferred on his mistresses.

As to Dom Pedro, the Romeo of Iñes de Castro, we know that he was not so absorbed by this fatal passion but that the nation’s history owes to him the bastard progenitor of the second dynasty. In this instance Dom Alfonso presents a totally distinct character from that of his son; an exemplary husband, he made every effort to raise by royal authority the moral tone in the relation between the sexes, and to check the dissolute customs of the times. He made severe laws against those who availed themselves of such usages and customs up to that time in vogue, which seduced by endearments, or other means, various virgins and widows leading honest lives to make use of them for their evil purposes; he denounced “any man or woman guilty of panderage, and keeping in their houses for this purpose virgins, married women, religious, or widows.” At the exact moment that he was publishing some of his most severe laws upon this matter his son gave cause of scandal by his real or apparent cohabitation with Doña Iñes de Castro. Finally he left the kingdom to his successor in perfect internal and external peace, and it would be cruel injustice to deny that under his government the work of the political consolidation of Portuguese society made important progress.[k]

PEDRO THE SEVERE

[Sidenote: [1357-1361 A.D.]]

Pedro I was scarcely established on the throne before he gave way to his uncontrollable desire for vengeance on the murderers of Doña Iñes. Knowing that they had sought protection in Castile, and how eager his namesake of that country was for the surrender of several Castilians, who, in like manner, had obtained an asylum in Portugal, he paid court to that monarch, with whom he entered into a close alliance, and to whom he despatched ten of his galleys to serve in the war against Aragon. Having declared the fugitive nobles, who were three in number, Pedro Coelho, Alvaro Gonsalves, and Diogo Lopes Pacheco, traitors to their country, and confiscated all their possessions, he either proposed or received the proposal--there is some doubt from which of the two monarchs it originally came, or whether it may not be equally attributed to both--for the arrest of their personal enemies. On a given day the obnoxious Castilians were arrested in Portugal, the Portuguese in Castile, and were surrendered to their respective executioners. Of the three Portuguese, however, Pacheco escaped.

The escape of even one victim was gall to the Portuguese king; but he resolved to satiate his rage on the two who were placed in his reach. Both were thrown into a deep dungeon, put to the torture, with the view of eliciting whether others were implicated in the same crime. They withstood the acute torments they were made to endure with a firmness truly admirable--a circumstance that increased beyond measure the rage of Pedro, who was present at the hellish scene. With Coelho in particular, whom not a word, not a groan had escaped, he was so exasperated that he seized a whip and struck him on the face. This indignity affected the high-spirited knight far more than his present sufferings. Regarding the king with eyes full of fury, he loaded him not merely with the keenest reproaches, but with a torrent of abuse. The latter foamed at the mouth, and ordered his victims to be transferred from the dungeon to a scaffold erected in front of his palace. There he appeared at the window, expressing a savage delight at the new torments they sustained. At length the living hearts of both were plucked from their bodies; hearts and bodies were next consigned to the flames; and when consumed, the ashes were scattered by the winds.

The next proceeding of Pedro was to honour alike the remains and memory of the unfortunate Iñes. He convoked the states of his kingdom at Castanedo, and, in their presence, made oath on the holy Gospels that, in the year 1354, he had married that lady. The witnesses of the fact, the bishop of Guarda and his own chamberlain, were likewise publicly sworn, and the bull of dispensation produced which Pope Innocent VI had granted for the celebration of the ceremony. No doubt was entertained by the assembled nobles and clergy that Iñes had been the lawful wife of their prince; and she was unanimously declared entitled to the honours usually paid to the Portuguese queens. That the legitimacy of her offspring might never be disputed, copies of the papal dispensation and of the oaths taken on this occasion were multiplied and dispersed throughout the kingdom. The validity of the marriage being thus established, Pedro now proceeded to show due honour to her remains. He ordered two magnificent tombs, both of white marble, to be constructed, one for himself, the other for that lady, and placed them in the monastery of Alcobaça. He then proceeded to the church of St. Clair at Coimbra, caused her corpse to be brought from the sepulchre, to be arrayed in royal ornaments, to be placed on a throne with a crown on the head and a sceptre in the hand, and there to receive the homage of his assembled courtiers. From that church it was conveyed on a magnificent car, accompanied by nobles and high-born dames, all clad in mourning, to the monastery of Alcobaça.[141]

[Sidenote: [1361-1367 A.D.]]

As the subsequent transactions of the Portuguese king with his namesake of Castile have been already related [in the history of Spain, Chapter III], nothing now remains but briefly to notice his internal administration. It is allowed to have been as rigorous as it was whimsical. With the view of correcting the extravagance which had long seized on the higher orders of his people, he made a law that whoever bought or sold on credit should be punished--if the first offence, by stripes; if the second, by death. In his own household he set the example of paying for everything in money the instant it was purchased. If he was thus severe against thoughtless imprudence, he could not be expected to be more lenient towards guilt. Of the vices which he visited with unpitying vengeance, fornication and adultery were the most obnoxious to him. That the lover of Iñes de Castro should thus hold in abhorrence those which he had so long practised might create surprise, were it not proved by general experience, not only that we are most forward to condemn in others imperfections to which ourselves are prone, but that kings are too often eager to plead exemption from obligations binding on the rest of mankind. Hearing that the bishop of Oporto lived in a state of concubinage, the royal moralist laid on him unmercifully with a whip. As he was one day proceeding along a street, he heard a woman call another by an opprobrious name. He speedily inquired into the affair; and, finding that the latter had been violated previous to her marriage by her husband, he consigned the offender to the executioner. Suspecting that the wife of a certain merchant was unfaithful to her conjugal duty, he caused her to be watched until he detected her in the actual crime; both lady and paramour were immediately committed to the flames. An old woman prostituted her daughter to a Portuguese admiral; the woman was burned, the admiral sentenced to lose his head--a sentence, however, which he escaped by flight. Other offences against the laws were punished, sometimes in proportion to their magnitude, but generally to his caprice. An inferior officer of the law one day complained that a gentleman on whom he had served a process had struck him and plucked him by the beard; Pedro turned to the presiding judge, and said, “I have been struck, and my beard has been plucked, by one of my subjects!” The judge, who understood the appeal, caused the culprit to be arrested and beheaded. Perceiving that causes were frequent, tedious, and expensive, and shrewdly divining the reason, he purged his courts of all advocates and proctors,--of all who had a manifest interest in litigation, and reduced all processes to a simple statement of the case by the parties concerned, and of the sentence by the judges, reserving, however, to himself the privilege of deciding appeals. If we add that Pedro was liberal of rewards, and fond of music and dancing, the character of the royal barbarian will be completed.

[Sidenote: [1367-1382 A.D.]]

Ferdinand I, son of Pedro and the princess Constanza, was ill fitted to succeed monarchs so vigorous as his immediate predecessors. Fickle, irresolute, inconstant, without discernment, directed by no rule of conduct, obedient only to momentary impulse, addicted to idleness, or to recreations still more censurable, the very benevolence of his nature was a calamity.

After the death of the Castilian Pedro the Cruel, Ferdinand, considering himself the true heir to the crown, assumed the regal title and arms of Castile. His ambition was lamentably inadequate to an enterprise so important as that of encountering and attempting to dethrone the bastard usurper Henry of Trastamara. From the recesses of his palace, he appeared to witness the invasion of his kingdom and the defeat of his armies with indifference. When, in 1373, Lisbon itself was invested by the Castilian king, the defence of the place was abandoned to the valour of the inhabitants, and to their deep-rooted hatred of the Spanish sway. The same year, indeed, peace was made through the mediation of the pope; but it was often broken by Ferdinand during the reign both of Henry of Trastamara and Juan I, the son and successor of that prince. The marriage of Beatrice, daughter of Ferdinand, with Juan, in 1382, and the treaty for uniting the two crowns, have been related in the history of Spain [Chapter V], and to that history the reader is referred for an account of the obscure and indecisive, however destructive, wars between the two kingdoms.

[Sidenote: [1372-1376 A.D.]]

During these transactions proposals were frequently made for restoring permanent harmony by matrimonial alliances. At first Ferdinand cast his eyes on the infanta Leonora of Aragon, whom he engaged to marry; but, with his usual fickleness, he escaped from the obligation. He next promised to raise a daughter of Henry of Trastamara, also named Leonora, to the Portuguese throne. When the time approached for the celebration of this marriage, Ferdinand fell passionately in love with one of his own subjects--a Leonora like the rest.[142] To beauty of the finest order, Leonora added a sprightliness which charmed and a wit which captivated him; but these were far inferior to her ambition, and unsupported by one single principle of honour or virtue. She was already the wife of Dom João Lourenço da Cunha, lord of Pombeiro. “Of that we are well aware,” said Ferdinand; “but they are related by blood, and they married without a dispensation: the engagement may easily be annulled.” Proceedings for the cassation of the marriage were instituted in the ecclesiastical courts; and as the husband offered no opposition to them,--doubtless because he had no wish to contend with a plaintiff whose cause was backed by legions of soldiers,--it was declared null. Not considering himself safe in Portugal, Dom Lourenço fled into Castile, evidently little afflicted at the loss of an unprincipled woman.[143] There is reason to believe that it was Ferdinand’s original intention to make her his mistress; but she had too much policy to become the tool of one whom she had resolved to rule; and she assumed the appearance of so much modesty, that to gain his object he was forced to marry her.

But this marriage was strictly private--a precaution adopted as well to stifle the murmurs of his subjects as to prevent the indignant remonstrances of Henry. It was, however, suspected, and the very suspicion produced great dissatisfaction throughout the kingdom--nowhere so great as in the capital. A mob, formidable from its numbers, assembled in the streets, and headed by a tailor, proceeded to the palace to reproach the king for his imprudence. Ferdinand said that he had neither married nor intended to marry Leonora. This declaration satisfied the mob; who, however, insisted that he should take an oath the following day to the same effect in the church of Saõ Domingos--a promise which he readily made. At the time appointed, they proceeded to the church, but found to their mortification that, during the night, the king and Leonora had fled to Santarem. In the height of their fury they apostrophised both in no measured terms. Their insulting conduct so incensed the queen that she procured a royal order for the arrest and execution of the tailor and his chief associates. The fear which this act of severity struck into the people emboldened the king to publish his marriage. The nobles and prelates now hastened to court, to recognise their new queen. All readily kissed her hand with the exception, of Dom Diniz, son of Pedro and Iñes de Castro, who accompanied his refusal in open court with expressions of contempt. Ferdinand drew his poniard, and would doubtless have laid his obnoxious brother at his feet, but for the interference of two nobles who arrested his arm. Even João, the grand-master of Aviz, a natural son of the late king, who is about to perform so memorable a part in the national history, bowed before the triumphant Leonora. To render her power more secure, she began to act with great policy, disarmed hostility, and secured to herself an undisturbed possession of her new dignity.

The insult to the royal family of Castile involved in this imprudent marriage was one of the causes which led to the hostilities that followed--hostilities in which the country was laid waste, from Badajoz to Lisbon, and that capital invested. On the conclusion of peace, in 1373, which was cemented by the marriage of a natural daughter of Ferdinand with a natural son of Henry, tranquillity visited the kingdom for some years; but the Portuguese court, through the ambition and wickedness of the queen, was often distracted and disgraced. As Ferdinand had only a daughter--the princess Beatrice--by Leonora, and as no hopes of future issue appear to have been entertained, the infante João, brother of the king, (not the bastard of that name who was the grand-master of Aviz, but the eldest surviving son of Pedro and Iñes de Castro), was regarded as the presumptive heir to the crown. To set him aside from the succession was now the object of the queen. Fortunately for her purpose, the imprudence of the prince presented her with the means. Struck with the personal charms of Donna Maria, sister of the queen, he privately married her. The step was not hidden from Leonora; who, so far from betraying her knowledge of it, and to lull her intended victim into profound security, proposed to the infante the hand of her own child, and with it the throne of Portugal. As she expected, her offer was declined; but she was resolved to move heaven and earth rather than see her sister and brother-in-law in the possession of supreme power. The former she appears to have hated: her destruction was certainly planned with demoniacal coolness. Sending one day for the infante, she assumed the appearance of intense affliction; assured him that she knew of his marriage with her sister; but that regard for him and his honour, as well as for the honour of the royal family, would not permit her to conceal that sister’s depravity. “You are betrayed, prince!” was the substance of her address. “Maria loves another, to whom she grants her favours!”

[Sidenote: [1376-1381 A.D.]]

Unfortunately, João, who was unacquainted with her real character, and who could not suppose her capable of deliberately destroying a sister, implicitly believed her; and in the madness of his rage, hastened to Coimbra, where the princess then abode. She met him with her usual smiles, and, on being repulsed, falteringly demanded the cause. “Because,” replied the infuriated husband, “you have divulged our marriage and sacrificed my honour.” “Bid your attendants retire,” pleaded the poor woman, “and I will satisfy you.” “I come not to hear your excuses,” João returned furiously, “but to punish your guilt,” and at the same time his dagger found a way to her heart. She fell into the arms of her weeping attendants, while he mounted his horse and fled. The cause of all this wickedness affected inconsolable grief, threw herself at the royal feet, and cried for vengeance on the murderer. But whether she found the king averse to justice, or whether she feared the indignation of the infante, who, sooner or later, would become acquainted with the innocence of Maria, she suddenly changed her proceedings, and obtained permission for him to return to court. But there everyone shunned him--no one more eagerly than Leonora; so that, seeing his hopes of Beatrice at an end, he retired into the province of Entre-Douro-e-Minho, where he was soon acquainted with the bloody perfidy of the queen. Having reason to distrust his safety, he fled into Castile, his heart torn by remorse for the fate of one whom he had passionately loved, and whose bleeding image was incessantly before him.

Though on the accession of Juan I of Castile Ferdinand readily renewed the peace between the two crowns, and consented to marry his daughter Beatrice to the heir of the Castilian, his characteristic fickleness was such that he soon resolved to resume hostilities. To engage the duke of Lancaster in his cause, he sent a trusty messenger to England, Dom João Ferdinand Andeiro, who concluded a league with the Plantagenet. To conceal this negotiation from the world, especially from the Castilian, he pretended great anger with Andeiro, whom he arrested, and confined to the fortress of Estremos. During his agreeable captivity in this place, he was frequently visited by the disguised king, who was sometimes accompanied by the queen, and was made to unfold the conditions he had contracted, and solicited for his advice. As his person was unexceptionable, his address elegant, and his manners prepossessing, he soon won so far on the credulous Leonora that she became the willing partner of his lust, and still more of his ambition. In the hostilities which followed the arrival of the earl of Cambridge, he was released, and, by her influence, was invested with the lordship of Ourem.

[Sidenote: [1381-1383 A.D.]]

Ferdinand at length saw that the affections of his queen were estranged from him, and transferred to Andeiro. Yet--such was his deplorable weakness!--he met both with constrained smiles, and deputed both to be present at the marriage of his daughter Beatrice with Juan of Castile. On this occasion the favourite appeared with a splendour which might have become a sovereign prince, but which filled the beholders with indignation or envy. The perpetual sight of a faithless wife and her insolent paramour was at length too much even for the feeble Ferdinand. In the agony of his feelings he one day opened his heart to the grand-master of Aviz, who he knew hated Andeiro, and with whom he planned that minion’s assassination. But his own death, the result alike of constitutional weakness of frame and mental suffering, saved him from the guilt of murder. The reign of this sovereign was one of the most deplorable that ever afflicted Portugal. The wars with Castile,--wars lightly undertaken and ingloriously conducted,--and the consequent invasions of his territory by his more powerful neighbours, impoverished his people.[h]

FOOTNOTES

[135] According to the Chronicon Lusitanum,[d] the Chronicon Complutense,[e] and other authorities, Lisbon and Cintra were taken by Alfonso. They must, however, have been soon recovered by the Moors.

[136] That Henry, whose extraction has given rise to much disputation, was of the family of the first duke of Burgundy, and of the royal blood of France, is indisputable from a MS. discovered in the monastery of Fleury, according to La Clède.[f]

[137] Lemos[g] endeavours to vindicate the character of Theresa from the charges imputed to her: the same vain effort, as the reader will remember, has been made by the Castilian writers in favour of Urraca.

[138] “Mas o rei mandando fazer as mortes indistintas, sem differenca de sexo, e idade; o horror dos gemidos, o tropel da genté, o clamor das mulheres, a meninos, o escuro da noite causan hum espanto tao geral.”--LEMOS.[g]

[139] On this occasion Alfonso, with no more than sixty horsemen, is said to have encountered five hundred horsemen of the Almoravids, and forty thousand foot; and, what is more, to have defeated them! (See Chronicon Lusitanum.[d]) These prodigious relations were admitted without scruple by the earlier historians of Portugal.

[140] [According to some authorities Diniz did not rebel at all, but was an exemplary son, and was present at his father’s death-bed.]

[141] [Like all other romantic events, this story has attracted the critics, their chief objection to it being the fact that the contemporary historian Lopes,[l] who describes the death of Iñes with much detail, has nothing to say of the exhumation and coronation. But such negative argument must be cautiously used and historians have not yet annulled the story of Iñes.]

[142] “This name proved terrible to the king,” says Lemos.[g] This name, indeed, in all the three cases, is a most singular coincidence: it did not prove terrible, however it might be pernicious to the interests of the kingdom.

[143] To disarm ridicule by braving it, and to prove how little the affair had affected him, the exiled husband attached to each side of his cap a golden horn.

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II. THE PERIOD OF GLORY AND DISCOVERY

[Sidenote: [1383-1521 A.D.]]

By the death of Ferdinand, his daughter Beatrice, queen of Castile, was the true heir to the throne of Portugal. But the kingdom, far from expecting a foreign yoke, had, on the marriage of the infanta, expressly stipulated that, in case of Ferdinand’s death, the government should be vested in a regent, until she had a son capable of assuming the sovereignty; that son, too, to be educated not in Castile but in Portugal. When that event happened, she had no child--a circumstance that induced her husband to claim the crown in her right, and that filled the Portuguese with vexation. They were satisfied neither with their intended sovereign, Juan, nor with the regent, Leonora, the queen-mother, whom the will of the late king appointed to that dignity. And when, in conformity with the demands of the Castilian, Beatrice was proclaimed in Lisbon, the people either exhibited a mournful silence, or cried out that they would have no other king than their infante João, son of Pedro and Iñes de Castro, and the unfortunate husband of Maria, sister of Leonora, whose tragical fate has been recorded. But João and his brother Diniz now languished in the dungeons of Castile,[144] whither they had been consigned by the king, who knew that, if suffered to enter Portugal, they would speedily thwart his views of dominion. Until these princes could be restored to their country, and until Beatrice should have an heir, the Portuguese resolved to deprive the queen-mother of the regency, in favour of Dom João, the grand-master of Aviz, who alone seemed able to defend their national independence.

[Sidenote: [1383-1384 A.D.]]

Dom João, as before observed, was an illegitimate son of King Pedro, by a lady of Galicia, and born in 1357. At seven years of age he had been invested with the high dignity of grand-master, and his education intrusted to one of the ablest commanders of the order. No man could be better adapted for the conjuncture in which circumstances placed him. Cool, yet prompt; prudent, yet in the highest degree courageous; unrestrained by conscience, and ready to act either with cunning or violence, according as either appeared necessary to his purpose, he would indeed have been a formidable opponent to any sovereign, much more to one so weak as the Castilian. Seeing the favourable disposition of the people, and confiding in his own mental resources, he commenced a policy which, if at first cautious, was sure to prove efficacious. Though Leonora pretended great sorrow for her husband’s death, and endeavoured, by affected mildness, as well as by an administration truly liberal, to win the popular favour, her object was penetrated and despised. But a stronger sentiment was felt for Andeiro, who directed her at his pleasure, and whose death was now decreed by the grand-master. To remove the latter under some honourable pretext from court, he was charged by Leonora with the government of Alemtejo. He accepted the trust; but, accompanied by twenty-five resolute followers, returned to Lisbon, December 6th, 1383, and hastened to the royal apartments, where he knew he should find Andeiro. The guilty pair were as usual together. João struck the count with a dagger; a knight of his suite by a second blow deprived the victim of life.

The tragical deed was hailed with characteristic acclamations by the populace, who, profiting by the example, massacred everyone suspected to be hostile to the pretensions of their new idol, among them the bishop of Lisbon.[145] Their mangled corpses remained long without sepulture, a prey to dogs and beings more savage than dogs. Leonora now fled from the city to Alemquer. On the way, she turned her eyes for a moment back on the towers of that capital, and, in the bitterness of her heart prayed that she might live to see it wrapped in flames. After her departure, João complained that he was unequal to oppose his powerful enemies; and pretended that he would retire into England, to pass his remaining days in tranquillity. This hypocritical policy alarmed the mob, who dreaded being abandoned to justice, and tumultuously flocked around him, insisting that he should assume the regency until Beatrice should become the mother of a son destined to rule over them. With much apparent reluctance, he accepted the proffered dignity, in the resolution of securing one much higher.

The first measures of the new regent were characteristic of the man. He published an edict in which entire pardon was promised to all criminals, whatever their offences, who should assist him in opposing the queen and the Spaniards. At this unexpected call, great numbers--amounting, we are told, to thousands--hastened from their prisons or their haunts to swell his army. Many of the great towns were persuaded to follow the example of Lisbon. The impunity with which his followers perpetrated every possible crime was too alluring not to increase the number. Murder, plunder, rape, and sacrilege were the constant attendants of this lawless party. The abbess of the convent of Castres was dragged from her cloister, poniarded before the high altar, and her body was subjected to brutalities of which not even the mention would be tolerated by the reader. In the end it was dragged to a public square, and there left. This is but one instance, among numbers which have been preserved and among thousands of which the memory has perished, of the monstrous crimes of this interregnum; yet no attempt was made to punish them by the regent, who felt that the license thus allowed was his only tenure on the attachment of his adherents.

The king of Castile invaded the kingdom, received the submission of several places, and penetrated to Santarem, to concert with his mother-in-law, Leonora, the means of annihilating the resources of João. But that ambitious woman, who perceived that with the arrival of the king her authority had ceased, soon regarded his cause with indifference, ultimately with dislike. Her intrigues were planned more frequently to thwart than to aid his measures; so that, aware of her faithless character, he at length caused her to be arrested and to be confined in the convent of Tordesillas, near Valladolid.

[Sidenote: [1384-1411 A.D.]]

As allusion has already been made [in the history of Spain, Chapter V] to the chief events of the present war, little more remains to be said of them. Though Lisbon was invested both by sea and land, and in a few months reduced to the greatest distress, it was defended with equal ability and valour by the grand-master and his captains. To end the distractions of his country, the states, early in 1385, were convoked at Coimbra. There the creatures of the regent proposed his proclamation as king, as the only measure capable of restoring internal tranquillity, and of enabling the nation to withstand the arms of Castile. They even endeavoured to show that he was the nearest heir to the crown. The issue of Iñes de Castro they set aside, as sprung from an adulterous connection; and the same objection they urged against Beatrice, whose mother they considered as the lawful wife, not of the late king, but of the lord de Pombeiro. On the 6th day of April, 1385, João was unanimously proclaimed king.

João I, having attained the great object of his ambition, vigorously prepared for the war with his rival of Castile. The decisive victory gained by João at Aljubarrota; the alternations of success and failure that succeeded; the arrival of the duke of Lancaster to obtain the Castilian crown in right of his wife Constanza, daughter of Pedro the Cruel: the alliance between the two princes, João marrying Philippa, a daughter of the duke; the subsequent reconciliation between the latter and the king of Castile, cemented by the marriage of the princess Catherine, daughter of the Plantagenet, with Henry, son of Juan, and other transactions of these troubled times, have already been noticed in the history of Spain. Peace was made and broken more than once; the success lay with the Portuguese king--a success, however, attributable as much to the internal troubles of Castile after the death of Juan I as to the valour of João. When a more durable peace was concluded in 1403, the Portuguese had recovered their fortunes, and were in possession of Badajoz.

The next few years were passed in tranquillity by the king in improving the administration of the realm. His salutary severity was above all directed against murderers and robbers by profession, and also against such as took justice into their own hands. By these means he became a popular monarch with all but some of his nobles, whose discontent he had powerfully excited during the late wars. To his valiant constable, Dom Nunho Alvares Pereiro, called the “holy constable,” he was more indebted than to any other cause, both for his crown and for the successful issue of the Castilian war; and he had thought no rewards too great for such services. But if he showered the revenues of whole towns and vast estates on that able and faithful man, he rewarded with a pitiful spirit the attachment of others.

THE TAKING OF CEUTA (1415 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1411-1415 A.D.]]

By his queen Philippa, daughter of the duke of Lancaster, João had several children, of whom five were sons. As these princes grew in years, they displayed great martial ardour, and promised to become the bulwarks of the country and throne. He had resolved to confer on them the honour of knighthood, and to celebrate the occasion by a magnificent tournament. But they despised the peaceful lists, and besought his permission to win their spurs in a nobler manner, by an expedition against the Moors. The fortress of Ceuta[146], on the African side of the straits of Gibraltar, seemed to them the most inviting of conquests. Though eager to gratify a propensity which he loved, the king was at first startled by the magnitude of the proposed enterprise. The fortifications of Ceuta were strong, and defended by the bravest portion of the Mohammedan population: to reduce them a considerable armament must be prepared, and at an expense which he was loath to incur. In the end, however, he yielded to their urgent entreaties; the expedition was resolved, two confidential officers were sent to reconnoitre the place, and the royal council gave a reluctant consent to the project. But, as secrecy alone could insure its success, as a premature disclosure of the design would have enabled the pirates to increase the number of their defenders and the strength of their works, the whole peninsula was in suspense, and not without alarm at the preparations of the king. Having tranquillised the Castilians, the Aragonese, and the Moors of Granada, as to his intentions, and fearful of rousing the suspicions of the Africans, he intimated that his armament was to be led against the count of Holland. Not even the death of his queen, who was carried off by the plague,[147] nor his advanced years, could suspend his preparations. At length, having collected a considerable number of vessels from most parts, and been joined by adventurers from most nations of Europe, accompanied by his sons and his chief nobles, João embarked, proceeded towards the straits, and, the middle of August, 1415, arrived before Ceuta. The Moorish governor, Salat ben Salat, a man advanced in years but of undaunted courage, prepared for a vigorous defence.[e]

“So soon as the Moors of the town,” writes the contemporary historian Azurara,[d] “saw the fleet nearing their walls, they placed lighted torches in all the windows and apertures to show the Christians that they were much more numerous than they thought, and thus on account of its great size, and being illuminated on all sides, the town presented a beautiful sight. This was interpreted by our men in the ships to signify that as a dying candle first throws out great light, so these men, who soon were to leave their houses and property, and many of them to quit this life, made this brave show of light, signifying their approaching end. As these Moors illuminated the town, so also our men lighted up their ships, but this they were compelled to do, not to show their vast numbers, but that each ship having cast anchor should be enabled to make preparations for the following day, and with the lanterns in front of the flag ships, and the torches the men carried in their hands, the fleet was well illuminated.”

A spectacle as dazzling as it was sinister, by the light of which the waters of the strait must have presented a terrible and fantastic appearance, reddened by the reflection of the torches as though a sea of blood, covered with dancing lights, separated the Moorish city from the floating Christian camp. At dawn on the following day, the 20th of August, the Portuguese were ready for the combat, and the king, João I, in a galiot went about among the ships giving the last instructions, recommending to all that Dom Henry should be the first to land.

But as the Moors had sailed out of the town to attack the Portuguese upon the landing, some of the knights became so impatient that two at least, João Fogaca and Ruy Gonçalves, jumped on shore a few moments before the prince, who, however, took the lead in the battle. The movement of the Moors in coming down to the shore was a vain attempt of the younger men; the truth was that, following the example of Salat ben Salat, they were greatly discouraged, and panic increased among them upon seeing two athletes of Barbary, two giants of the desert, overcome, one by Ruy Gonçalves, and the other by Vasco Martius de Albergaria. The infante Dom Henry fancied he caught sight of his brother Dom Duarte, whom Dom João had forbidden to take part in the combat, in the thickest of the fight, and presently discovered that he had not been mistaken. The presence of the two brothers if possible raised the courage of the Portuguese still more.

Dom Henry wished to await the landing of the rest of the army, as he had been recommended to do, but Dom Duarte was of opinion that they might enter the town with the Moors, or at least seize the gate of Almina to open a passage for their men. The gate was indeed taken by surprise. Having passed the gate, the two infantes took up their position on a hill dominating the streets of the city.

Meanwhile Vasco Fernandes de Athaide had succeeded in beating down another gate, thus opening a new passage to the Portuguese soldiers, who were now divided into three bands. To have greater freedom, the heir to the crown threw off his armour, leaving merely a coat of mail; his movements being thus made freer he was able to advance rapidly, so that when Dom Henry resolved to follow his example he could no longer find him. Dom Duarte had reached the highest point of the Moorish town, called Cesto, and Dom Henry, wishing to join him, entered the street leading to it, driving the Moors before him.

The general landing of the army had not yet taken place, as Dom João I had not finished his review of the fleet. When he sent his son Dom Pedro to tell Dom Duarte to land, the answer came that he was already within the town. The king then gave orders for all to land, and the Portuguese army, divided into four bodies, marched upon the town.

The affliction of the women who fled, pressing their little children to their breasts, and the despair with which many men concealed their property, or fled carrying it with them, raised the courage of the Moorish warriors, and spurred them to make one supreme effort by which they succeeded in driving many Portuguese before them. Dom Henry would not check the first fugitives in their flight, for fear of harming those who followed, who would consequently be thrown back on the Moors, but when the latter approached, followed by a few knights, he barred the way. At the same time, ashamed of their fear and encouraged by the infante’s presence, the Portuguese returned to the charge, and the enemy fled in confusion. Meanwhile the Moors received reinforcements and renewed the fight, but were again repulsed by the Portuguese, encouraged by the infante.

The Moors falling back, the infante, followed only by seventeen of his men, pursued them; a desperate fight ensued, principally because the Moors attempted to carry off a Portuguese knight, whom the infante wished to recover. The Moors finally gave way, but the infante Dom Henry found himself shut in by the ruinous walls of the town, with only five knights at his side. Heroically maintaining his difficult position, he waited in vain for reinforcements; he was believed to be dead, until he was at last found by a Portuguese knight.

The infante wished to remain in his dangerous position until reinforcements reached him, but the entreaties addressed to him in the name of his father and Dom Duarte induced him to retreat; he proceeded to join his father at a mosque. Meanwhile the sun had set, and seeing a flight of sparrows resting upon the towers of the fort, the Portuguese inferred that the Moors had abandoned it. Salat ben Salat had fled with the garrison. They thereupon raised the flag of St. Vincent, patron of Lisbon, on the top of the fortress. The conquest was won; the loss on the side of the Moors was heavy, but the Portuguese loss was trifling; we will not however quote any number as great doubts exist on the subject.

On the following day the Moors appeared once more before the fortress; Dom Duarte and the constable sallied out to encounter them; these vain attacks were repeated, but the king strictly forbade his heir to take part in these skirmishes.

On the first Sunday the king decided to hear mass with his sons in the principal mosque of the town, already purified. Two bells pealed joyously from the highest tower. “How is this?” asked the major. The reply is not uninteresting: the town of Lagos had been a few years previously attacked by the Moors, who sacked the place and carried away these bells, and concealed them, but now discovered, they summoned the Christians to divine service.

The service was celebrated with great solemnity; Dom João knighted his sons, Dom Duarte, Dom Pedro, and Dom Henry. On their side João I’s sons knighted various valiant noblemen of their retinue. The aim of the expedition was realised, and the African lion began to give way before the power of Portugal.[f]

The government of the place was at first offered to a valiant knight, Martin Alfonso de Mello; and when he declined the dangerous honour, it was solicited and obtained by one of greater prowess still, Dom Pedro de Menezes, founder of the illustrious house of Villa Real. Having left a small but select garrison in Ceuta, and provided for the defence of the place against the inevitable assaults of the Moors, João re-embarked, and with the remainder of the armament returned to Lisbon.

[Sidenote: [1415-1419 A.D.]]

The heroism of the governor, Dom Pedro, and of the horsemen he commanded, is the constant and enthusiastic theme of praise by the national writers. The number of skirmishes which he was compelled to sustain during the three years immediately following the reduction of Ceuta is said, no doubt hyperbolically, to have exceeded the number of days. It is certain that during his government the place was frequently assailed by the whole power of the African Moors, aided by the fleet of their brethren of Granada. Sometimes the garrison by sorties obtained considerable booty, especially in flocks and herds. This warfare was as horrid as it was picturesque. When the Christian hidalgos and Almagaveres arrived at the village which they had been ordered to destroy, and the inhabitants of which were sure to be sunk in sleep, they generally divided into two or three bands, forced the doors of the houses, which they set on fire, and either massacred such as attempted to escape, or forced them back into the flames. The sudden conflagration, the shrieks of the women and children, rendered still more dismal by the silence of night, and the bloody figures of the assailants, gazing with ferocious joy on the scene before them, bore a character too demoniacal for this world. When all was finished, when the flames were expiring, and the last groan had pierced the sky, the orthodox warriors returned to the city, “praising God and our Lady for their success.”[148]

To avenge these atrocities, the Moors now gathered in formidable numbers, not merely from the neighbourhood, but from wherever the fame of their wrongs had penetrated; but they were always repulsed by the valiant count, whose exploits are represented as not much inferior to those of the Cid Ruy Diaz, in Valencia. The very exaggerations, however, prove that Dom Pedro was the most valiant knight of a valiant nation. But during three years no formal siege was laid to the place; a circumstance sufficiently explicable by the perpetual struggles for empire among the Mohammedan princes of western Africa. In 1419 the fortress was first invested, and by an army formidable enough to inspire the assailants with the hope of success. In the combats which ensued, the Christians, notwithstanding the loss of some brave captains, were, as usual, victorious; and “a pleasant thing it was,” says the chronicler,[d] “to see our men, like the waters which flowed on the beach, sprinkled with infidel blood.” After some days the siege was raised, with the loss of some thousands on the part of the Africans. But scarcely had the governor time to congratulate himself on this event, before he received news which filled him with apprehension--that a more formidable army, and a fleet from Granada, were preparing to move against him.

He lost no time in soliciting succour from King João, who as readily granted it. Again was the place invested--this time by sea and land; and, as before, the valour of the besieged was almost superhuman. Fearing, however, that it must ultimately surrender, if not more effectually succoured, the king ordered two of his sons--the infantes Henry and João--to sail with a considerable armament. As they approached the place, they perceived that the Mohammedans had landed, and furiously assailed Dom Pedro, who, with his handful of brave companions, was making terrific carnage among them. This formidable host was totally routed; while the infantes took or dispersed the Moorish vessels, commanded by a prince of the royal house of Granada. This splendid success drew the eyes of all Europe towards this extremity of Africa. That a Christian noble, with so few companions in arms, should not only retain possession of a distant fortress against the frequent attacks of great armies, but should triumph over those armies in the open field, would appear incredible, had not equal wonders been exhibited by the knights of some religious orders. The exploits which have been already recorded were frequently equalled in the sequel by this renowned baron. In the subsequent wars, he was greatly aided by his son, a youth of the same dauntless courage as himself, who made frequent incursions into the Moorish territory, and never failed to return with abundance of spoil.

[Sidenote: [1419-1430 A.D.]]

During these years, the king was constantly employed in the duties of administration. As he advanced in years, his sense of justice appears to have greatly improved; at least we hear no more of the violent acts which disgraced his early days, and which will forever tarnish his memory.[e]

He re-established his finances by an economy pervading his government and household. He spent little in pomp and splendour; lived frugally, and associated upon an easy footing with the friends of his youth. He was wont to say that conversation was the cheapest of pleasures; and he introduced literary pursuits amongst his courtiers. When he had replenished his exhausted treasury, João made abundant compensation to those whom the inevitable expenses of war had obliged him to offend by revoking the ample donations, with which, upon first receiving the crown, he had recompensed the services that had helped to place it upon his brow. But after satisfying these just claims, João neither lavished his money upon friends and favourites, nor hoarded it in his coffers.

PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR

[Sidenote: [1402-1418 A.D.]]

A certain employment of João’s wealth ultimately produced far more glory and power, as well as opulence, to his kingdom, than his Mauretanian conquests. His third son, Henry, was the first projector of those remote maritime enterprises and geographical discoveries that opened new channels to the commerce of Europe, poured the riches of the Indies into Portugal, exalted the reputation and consequently the energies of her sons, brought immense realms in Asia and America under her sceptre, and temporarily elevated her to a rank amongst the nations of Europe altogether disproportionate to her natural extent and population.

Prince Henry was grand-master of the order of knights of Christ, instituted by King Diniz, upon the abolition of the Templars, to do battle constantly with the Mohammedans. The grand-master had accompanied his father to the siege of Ceuta, and there highly distinguished himself even beyond his brothers; which circumstance, combining with his strong sense of the duties of his sacred office, inspired him with an irrepressible desire to conquer and convert. But expeditions of the kind he meditated against Mohammedan misbelievers, whether in Spain or Mauretania, could only be undertaken by the authority and under the control of the king, and the infante in consequence turned his thoughts towards the more distant heathen. His studious disposition and especial taste for geography, astronomy, and mathematics also contributed, in all probability, not a little to give his schemes of conquest and conversion that direction. These sciences Dom Henry assiduously cultivated at Sagres, a seaport town he had himself founded near Cape St. Vincent in Algarve, where he drew around him learned men, travellers, and mariners. When he had speculatively satisfied himself of the possibility of sailing round Africa, of which, at that time, little beyond the northern coast was known, and of thus reaching the East Indies, he built and collected vessels in the harbour of Sagres, and sent them forth upon voyages of discovery. The despatch of the first two was determined so suddenly one morning, that it was believed the prince had been favoured with an especial revelation upon the subject during the preceding night, a mark of divine favour of which his great devotion, and the virginal purity of his morals, were judged to render him worthy. Dom Henry fitted out these first expeditions at his own expense; but the king soon entered into his son’s views, and took the principal charge upon himself. Navigation was then still almost in its infancy. The name of Cape Nun had been given to the southernmost African promontory yet known, and terrified the imagination of the ignorant almost as much by its very sound as by the thousand superstitious terrors connected with all beyond it, particularly with the torrid zone, then supposed to be actually uninhabitable from heat. For many years Dom Henry’s mariners advanced only a few leagues past the dreaded cape, and Portugal resounded with murmurs against the waste of men and money occasioned by the infante’s mania for discovery. But Dom Henry persevered, and his father countenanced him. Gradually his captains grew more enterprising, emboldened in some measure by the assistance his astronomical science afforded them. The first, and, during King João’s life, only great fruit of these labours was the rediscovery and settlement of the island of Madeira, about the year 1418. But far from appeasing the popular clamour, this only increased it; the colonising of the island being regarded as a frightful drain upon the population. Nearly about the same time the Canaries were accidentally discovered by an English ship, driven from her course. In 1402 a private adventurer, a Frenchman, named De Bethencourt, with a mixed French and Spanish crew, conquered the savage natives, and took possession of some of these islands, which his heirs afterwards sold to Prince Henry.[h]

[Sidenote: [1418-1437 A.D.]]

Of Prince Henry it has been said that, to his “enlightened foresight and perseverance the human race is indebted for the maritime discovery, within one century, of more than half the globe.” His funds were drawn from the large revenues of the order of Christ, and the Moors had told him much of the riches of interior Africa and the Guinea coast. He was the victim of unusual opposition and ridicule, as was Columbus, but, like him, was impervious to both. His personality is strongly to credit for the success of his couriers, for, as his biographer Major[g] has said: “Had that failure and that ridicule produced on Prince Henry the effect which they ordinarily produce on other men, it is impossible to say what delays would have occurred before these mighty events would have been realised; for it must be borne in mind that the ardour, not only of his own sailors, but of surrounding nations, owed its impulse to this pertinacity of purpose in him.” It is to be charged against Prince Henry that he began the slave-trade, which meant so much of shame to the world. It is pleasant to recall that it was he who, forsaking the usual path of exploration, the land, began to seek the wealth of Araby and India by the water-ways and, beginning that fever of adventurous curiosity that opened new worlds south and west, with him began the age of discovery.[a]

By João I the era of Cæsar was abolished in Portugal, and the Christian mode of computation adopted. He died in 1433.

THE REIGN OF DUARTE OR EDWARD (1433-1438 A.D.)

The reign of Duarte [or Edward[149]], though short, was doomed to be more disastrous than that of any preceding monarch. The first great calamity was the plague which raged during the whole of his reign, and which lamentably thinned the population. But a greater was an expedition against Tangier, the preparations for which oppressed his people, and the result of which filled the kingdom with murmurs.

The restless ambition of the king’s brother, Ferdinand, hurried him into this disastrous enterprise. This infante had been too young to share in the glorious conquests of Ceuta: and had not, like Pedro or Henry, obtained celebrity either by travelling or science. But he burned for distinction as much as either and proposed an African expedition. The king seems, however, to have entertained very honourable scruples as to the justice of the warfare in which he was about to engage. He proposed the subject to his theologians and the pope. The chief of the Christian world, with more reason than has dictated some papal decisions, replied that there were only two cases in which war against misbelievers could be lawfully undertaken: (1) when they were in possession of territories which had belonged to Christians, and which the latter sought to recover; (2) when by piracy or war, or any other means, they injured or insulted the true believers. In other cases, proceeded his holiness, hostilities are unjust: the elements, earth, air, fire, and water, were created for all; and to deprive any creature without just cause of those necessary things, was a violation of natural right. There was, however, one point which the pontiff omitted to notice: the obligations contracted by every Catholic sovereign, and still more solemnly by every military order, to advance the glory of God--in other words to convert or to destroy the heathen. This consideration removed the scruples of Duarte, and the expedition was resolved.

[Sidenote: [1437 A.D.]]

The inexperience which governed the preparations, and the accidental hindrances which impeded their completion, were regarded as melancholy omens by the people. The armament sailed on August 22nd, 1437, and on the 26th arrived before Ceuta, a place which the heroic governor and his no less heroic son had continued to defend with the same success. The two infantes Henry and Ferdinand, who commanded the present expedition, perceived that instead of fourteen thousand men, the number ordered by the king, they had no more than six thousand. They were advised to solicit and wait for a considerable reinforcement, but with their usual impatience they resolved to proceed to Tangier--Henry by land, and Ferdinand by sea, so as to co-operate with each other. The former reached Tangier without accident on the 23rd day of September, and found that his brother had arrived before him. The Portuguese immediately encamped before the place, which was defended by Salat ben Salat, former governor of Ceuta, with seven thousand Moors. But as if every measure of this ill-concerted expedition were doomed to be at once imbecile and unsuccessful, after sustaining a heavy loss the besiegers, finding that their scaling-ladders were too short, were compelled to retreat with shame from the foot of the ramparts. Before others could be procured from Ceuta, the Moors of Fez and Morocco, amounting, we are gravely told, in numbers to ten thousand horse, and eighty thousand infantry, advanced to raise the siege.[150] Instead, however, of being alarmed at this prodigious force, Henry with four thousand of his valiant troops hastened to give them battle; but so great was the dread which this heroic little band had struck into that immense host, that none of the misbelievers daring to wait for the onset, all escaped with precipitation over the neighbouring hills! But as their numbers soon increased by new accessions to 130,000 men,[151] they returned, and this time fought with courage. After a struggle of some hours this vast force yielded to the impetuousity of the infante Ferdinand and fled, leaving some thousands dead on the field! These wondrous fables are not enough. Indignant at their repeated losses of their brethren, the kings of northwestern Africa combined the whole of the respective forces, and marched towards the place. The surprise of Henry was great on seeing the neighbouring hills moving with life; the number of enemies on this occasion, we are veraciously assured, being sixty thousand cavalry, and seven hundred thousand foot![152] On contemplating, however, the dense and widely extended ranks of the Moslems, even he acknowledged that to withstand such a host would be temerity.

He accordingly gave directions for his little army to fall back and to regain the ships. Before this could be effected, the Africans, like tigers of their own deserts, sprang upon them, eager to drink their blood. But what could even a Portuguese do against myriads? His guards were killed by his side, and he was compelled to retreat, fighting, however, at every step, until he reached the entrenchments, where the contest became more bloody and desperate than it had yet been. Some of the defenders now fled,--for the chroniclers reluctantly allow that even a Portuguese may flee,--but the seamen on board the vessels landed, forced the fugitives to return, and the conflict was sustained during some hours with miraculous valour! Towards night it was suspended; and the infante agreed with his remaining captains that at midnight the Christians should silently leave their entrenchments, pass to the beach, and be received on board.

As the invaders were now without provisions and water, this expedient was the only hope of safety which remained to them. But even of this they were soon deprived by the treachery of Martin Vieyra, Henry’s chaplain, who passed over to the misbelievers, and acquainted them with the project. At this very day the Portuguese are seized with indignant wonder at this almost incredible instance of apostasy and treason; and however great their confidence in the powers of the visible head of the church, or even of the glorious Mother, they doubt whether either or both could, even in the event of repentance, procure for such a wretch the commutation of everlasting to purgatorial fire.[153] In consequence of this information, the Moors stationed a formidable guard along the passages to the sea and on the beach. The following morning they advanced to the trenches; the battle was renewed, and, we are told, sustained for eight hours with unshaken firmness, though with greatly diminished numbers. On this occasion no one exhibited more valour than the bishop of Ceuta; who, as he strode from rank to rank to distribute indulgences with one hand, with the other hewed down the misbelievers in a style that called forth the enthusiastic admiration of the faithful. Now he exhibited the consecrated host, and with tears of devotion besought his dear children in Christ to defend the holy Body; while, at the same time, he gave a practical illustration of his meaning, by aiming another deadly blow at some rash son of perdition.[154]

In the end the enemy, unable to force the entrenchments, set them on fire, and on the approach of night retired. The hours which should have been given to rest were occupied in extinguishing the conflagration, a labour not less fatiguing than the conflict of the day. To allay the hunger of his followers, the infante ordered the horses to be killed; but as there was no water, and as everyone raged with a burning thirst, the boon was scarcely acceptable, until heaven sent a copious shower of rain. But however seasonable this relief, it could only be momentary. Famine, or death by the sword, or what was still worse, perpetual captivity, stared the unhappy Christians in the face, when they received a proposal which they could not have expected. They were promised both life and liberty, as the condition of their surrendering the artillery, arms, and baggage, and restoring the fortress of Ceuta. To men in their desperate condition this proposal was too liberal not to be joyfully accepted. For their performance of the covenant the infante Ferdinand offered himself as hostage; and was accompanied by four other knights. The Moors delivered into the hands of Henry a son of Salat ben Salat. The Portuguese, reduced to three thousand, prepared to re-embark. But with characteristic duplicity, the barbarians attempted to prevent the departure of the Christians, who were constrained to fight their way to the ships.

While this once proud armament was slowly returning to Lisbon, Henry, ashamed to appear at court, proceeded to Ceuta, where fatigue of body and anxiety of mind threw him into a serious illness. No sooner did Prince João, who was then in Algarve, hear of the illness of one brother and the captivity of another, than he repaired to Ceuta. The two infantes there agreed that, as the royal consent to the restoration of the fortress could not reasonably be expected, João should propose the exchange of their brother for the son of the African. The proposal was scornfully rejected by the Moors, who threatened, if the place were not immediately restored, to take signal revenge on the person of the infante. João now returned to Portugal to acquaint the king with the melancholy position of affairs. The states were convoked and the subject proposed. Some deputies voted for the restoration of the fortress and the delivery of the infante; but others considered that the recovery of the prince would be too dearly purchased by the surrender of a place which had cost so much, and which might serve as a point of departure for future conquests. It was accordingly resolved that the prince should remain in captivity until the efficacy of money should be proved vain. His sufferings are represented, probably with truth, as at once cruel and humiliating. No sooner was he delivered into the hands of Salat ben Salat, than he began to experience the most savage barbarity. He was, at first, paraded to a dungeon at Tangier, exposed to the insults of assembled thousands, of whom some spit in his face, others covered him with filth; and, on reaching his temporary abode, his food consisted of the vilest aliments, and his bed was the hard ground. From Tangier he was transferred to Arsilla; but two hours before his departure he was placed on a platform, and again subjected to the insults of the populace. All this he bore with unshaken constancy. No ransom would be received by Salat, whose only object was the recovery of his lost seat of government. But when the king of Castile, Juan II, began to remonstrate against the detention of the infante, and even to threaten hostilities unless a ransom were received for him, the Moor, unwilling to incur the responsibility of his charge, delivered it into the hands of his superior, the king of Fez. By that tyrant Ferdinand was consigned to a subterraneous dungeon, excluded alike from air and light. After some months, however, he was drawn from his prison--doubtless, because his persecutors knew that a longer confinement would soon place him beyond their reach--and made to work, like the vilest slave, in the royal stables and gardens. In this situation he heard of Dom Duarte’s death.

The victim was now subjected to new indignities. Not only was he deprived of all food, except a crust of bread once in twenty-four hours, but he was ironed, put to harder labour, and allowed no apparel beyond a rag, for the modesty of nature. The relation of his sufferings at length moved the pity of his brother Pedro, regent of the kingdom, who, in the name of the royal Alfonso, despatched commissioners to Ceuta, to receive the infante and to remit the keys of that fortress into the hands of the king of Fez. But they soon found that the barbarian had further views; that he insisted on the restoration of the place prior to the delivery of his captive; that his object was to gain possession of their persons, and be thereby enabled to dictate whatever terms he pleased. The negotiations were abruptly ended, and the ill-fated prince transferred to his dungeon, where he languished until 1443, when death put a period to his sufferings. The constancy with which he bore them, his resignation to the divine will, his sweetness of disposition are said to have endeared him to his jailers; and his decease to have called forth the tardy compassion of the royal Moor, who exclaimed that so good a man deserved to know the true faith. His memory accordingly is, as it ought to be, revered in Portugal; but that superstitious nation, not satisfied with the rational sentiment, represents him as a martyr and saint--as one fully entitled to the honours of semi-deification. Miracles[155] are recorded of him with unblushing effrontery.

[Sidenote: [1438-1439 A.D.]]

The unfortunate issue of the African war, and the complaints of his captive brother, most sensibly affected the heart of Duarte, over whom, had his life been spared, fraternal affection would, doubtless, have triumphed. That he meditated another expedition, and that he commenced preparations on a formidable scale, is honourable to his heart: but his subjects were thinned by the plague; commerce was suspended; the fields remained uncultivated; the public revenues were exhausted, and the people unwilling to make further sacrifices. In 1438 he was seized by the plague at Thomar, whither he had retired to escape its fury, and in a few days he breathed his last. This prince was worthy of a better fate. He had qualities of a high order, he was enlightened, just, and patriotic; and if virtue or talent would have controlled the course of human events, his kingdom would have been happy.

THE REGENCY OF PEDRO

[Sidenote: [1439-1446 A.D.]]

Alfonso V, the eldest son of Duarte, being only six years of age on his father’s death, the regency devolved, in conformity with the last will of her husband, on the queen-mother, Leonora, a princess of excellent disposition, but not exempted from the fickleness of her sex, and ill qualified to rule a fierce people. To such a people, the sway even of a native woman could scarcely have been agreeable; as a foreigner (a princess of Aragon), she was peculiarly obnoxious. Seeing this general discontent, some of the nobles, with three uncles of the king, resolved to profit by it. Of the three infantes, the hostility of João was the most bitter; of Henry the most disinterested; and of Pedro [duke of Coimbra] the most politic, the most ambitious, and consequently the most to be dreaded.

She offered to Dom Pedro to affiance his daughter Isabella with the young king--an offer which he readily accepted, but which in no manner interrupted his career of ambition. He procured, not only the sanction of the deputies to the proposed marriage, but his recognition as joint regent. At this crisis, Henry proposed in the states assembled at Lisbon that the executive should be divided--that the education of the king and the care of the finances should rest with the queen, that the administration of justice should be intrusted to the count of Barcelos, and that Pedro should be nominated protector of the kingdom. At first, Leonora opposed this extraordinary expedient to satisfy the ambition of the princes; but, finding that the populace were arming in great multitudes to espouse the cause of their favourite, she was terrified into submission.

To bring the great question to issue, the mob, the only authority then subsisting, assembled in the church of St. Dominic, and swore that, until Alfonso reached his majority, the government should rest in Dom Pedro; that if Pedro died he should be succeeded in the office by his brother Henry, and the latter by the infante João, and that thenceforward no woman should be allowed to rule the Portuguese. Under the pretext that the education of the young king, if left to her, must necessarily be effeminate, and unfit him for his station, he was removed by a sudden decree of the same cortes, from her care, and placed under that of the regent.

The wisdom of Dom Pedro’s administration daily reconciled to it some of his former enemies: he restored tranquillity, encouraged the national industry, was indefatigable in his labours, and impartial in his judgments. Grateful for the benefits he procured them, the people of Lisbon would have erected a statue in his honour, had he not rigorously forbidden them. He was too well acquainted with both history and human nature not to know that popular favour is fleeting as the wind. He observed that, if such a statue were erected, it would be one day disfigured by the very hands which had made it. We are assured, indeed, by a contemporary chronicler, Ruy de Pina,[i] that he had some anticipation of the melancholy fate which awaited him. Yielding to the representations of her pretended friends, Leonora openly erected the standard of rebellion, and a civil war commenced: its horrors were increased by a body of Castilians, who, at the instance of Leonora, penetrated into the kingdom, and committed many ravages. In 1445, she formally requested permission to return, to end her days with her children; and her wish would doubtless have been gratified, had not death surprised her at Toledo.[156]

In 1446, King Alfonso reached his fourteenth year--the period of his majority. His first acts were regarded by the people as favourable omens of his future administration, and, above all, of his disposition to cultivate a good understanding with the regent. When, in the cortes convoked for the occasion at Lisbon, Pedro resigned the delegated authority into his hands, he desired the latter to retain it till he was better able to bear the load; and he soon afterwards married Isabella, to whom he had been affianced in his tenth year. But these buds of hope were soon blighted. The regent was powerful; he therefore had enemies--and enemies the more bitter, that there was now a master who could destroy him with ease. Of these none were more vindictive or base than his natural brother, the count de Barcelos, on whom he had just conferred the lordship of Braganza, with the title of duke. No sooner did the duke of Braganza perceive the secure place which he held in the king’s affections, than he began to inveigh against the character and actions of Pedro. These discourses, and the mention of his mother’s wrongs, which were artfully distorted, made a deep impression on the king, who at length regarded his father-in-law with abhorrence. The regent perceived the change, and he requested permission to retire to Coimbra, of which he was duke. His request was granted; and so also was another--an act, under the royal signature and seal, approving the whole of his administration.

No sooner had he departed than a hundred reptiles darted their stings. Among the new charges brought against him was one of poisoning the late king and queen. In vain did the sage Henry hasten from his aërial residence above Cape St. Vincent, to vindicate the character of his brother; in vain did Dom Alfonso de Alamado, a nobleman of unsullied honour, join in the chivalrous act--for chivalrous it was, when the lives of both were threatened as their reward, if they did not immediately retire from the court;[157] in vain did the latter challenge all who dared to dispute Dom Pedro’s virtues to a mortal combat; in vain did the royal Isabella plead her father’s innocence. Alfonso published an edict debarring all his subjects from communication with the prince, and ordering him to remain on his estates. His arms were next demanded: these he refused to surrender. The duke of Braganza now assembled his troops, and marched towards Coimbra; he was met at Penella by Dom Pedro, before whose handful of friends he fled with ignominy. Again did his daughter affectionately labour to avert his fate. In an agony of tears she cast herself at her husband’s feet, and besought his pardon. Alfonso was affected: he raised his queen, whom he tenderly loved, and promised that if her father would acknowledge his crime, it should be forgiven. More jealous of his honour than fond of life, the high-spirited prince would acknowledge no crime, simply because he had none to acknowledge. The incensed monarch tore the reply into pieces, and said, “Your father wishes his destruction; he shall have his wish!”

[Sidenote: [1446-1455 A.D.]]

The duke left Coimbra with one thousand horse and five thousand foot, all resolved to perish rather than permit a beloved leader to be oppressed; and on their banners were engraven, “Fidelity! Justice! Vengeance!” The king hastened to meet him with about thirty thousand veteran troops; they approached each other on the banks of the Alfarrobeira (May 21st, 1449), above which was an eminence where Pedro entrenched himself. The prince, who desperately sought the most dangerous post, and who evidently resolved to sacrifice his life, fell through a wound in the throat. The carnage which followed was terrific: the troops of the fallen infante, intent on revenging his death and resolved on their own, would neither give nor receive quarter; almost all fell on the field. The vengeance of Alfonso passed beyond the grave: he ordered the corpse of Pedro to remain on the ground, to be forever deprived of the last rites of humanity; but in a few days some compassionate peasants, whose souls might have put to shame the boasted chivalry of nobles, privately removed it, and interred it in the church of Alverca. The descendants of all his adherents to the fourth generation were declared infamous--incapable of holding any public charge. The mob of Lisbon testified characteristic joy at his catastrophe--a remarkable confirmation of his prudence in forbidding them to erect the projected statue of him.

The death of this prince--the greatest whom Portugal had lately seen--caused a deep sensation throughout Europe, and from Rome to Britain drew forth nothing but execrations against his murderers. Through the indignant remonstrances of the pope and of his brother-in-law, the duke of Burgundy; through the increasing influence of his daughter, whose virtues were appreciated by her husband, and whose efforts to honour his memory were at length successful; and more still through the king’s conviction of his innocence, in the fifth year from this tragedy his bones were removed from their humble sepulchre, and were transferred with great pomp to the mausoleum of the Portuguese kings. In 1455, the queen suddenly sickened and died. That her death was the effect of poison administered by her enemies, and the enemies of her father--among whom were doubtless the detestable princes of Braganza--is the unshaken opinion of her own times and of posterity.

[Sidenote: [1455-1475 A.D.]]

The disastrous captivity of the infante Ferdinand had sunk deep into the heart of Alfonso, as into that of most princes of his family; and the desire of revenge had been suspended, not abandoned. The reduction of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 had filled Christian Europe with consternation, and had led to the formation of a general league, the object of which was to drive back the misbelievers into their Asiatic wilds. Alfonso’s original intention was to reduce the fortress of Tangier, the siege of which had proved so unfortunate to the princes Henry and Ferdinand; but the advice of a Portuguese noble determined him to invest Alcacer-Seguier [or es-Seghir]. In September, 1457, the armament, consisting of above two hundred vessels, and carrying twenty thousand men, sailed from the three ports, effected a junction at sea, and steered towards the Moorish coast.

The success which had attended the attack on Alcacer-Seguier animated Alfonso to renew the attempt on Tangier. Accordingly, in 1464, he sailed with another armament. The assault was repulsed with deplorable loss; the flower of the Portuguese chivalry either perished on the spot, or were compelled to surrender. The king himself had considerable difficulty in effecting his escape. For some years the result of this inglorious expedition seems to have inspired him with too much dread to renew the attempt; but, in 1471, he embarked thirty thousand men on board 308 transports, and proceeded to invest Arsilla, a fortress on the Atlantic. The king himself, and his son the infante João, were among the foremost in the assault. The Portuguese massacred all--as well those who resisted as those who threw down their arms in token of submission--with diabolical fury. In this work of destruction João was behind none of his countrymen. Terrified by the fate of Arsilla, the inhabitants of Tangier abandoned the city with all their movable substance. It was immediately occupied by the Christians, and it was formed into an episcopal see. From these successes, the Portuguese courtiers surnamed their king Africanus--an epithet which, with any other people, would have been considered a bitter satire. Throughout his operations in Africa he had shown great incapacity, and had met with unparalleled reverses; nor were the successes recently obtained in any way attributable to his valour or abilities, but to those of his generals and his son. The latter, who had attained his sixteenth year, was knighted on this occasion.[e]

ALFONSO V AND LA BELTRANEJA

We have now reached a shameful page in the history of Portugal. A vision passed through the brain of Alfonso V of uniting beneath his sceptre the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile. He thought to realise his dream by marrying his niece Doña Juana, daughter of his sister Doña Juana and of King Henry IV of Castile, who would succeed to that throne upon the death of her father. But Alfonso V was too faint-hearted and too unskilful a politician for so great an ambition, which had already turned the weak head of his predecessor Ferdinand I.

[Sidenote: [1475-1479 A.D.]]

On the death of Henry IV of Castile his daughter Doña Juana inherited the throne, she having been recognised and sworn queen of Castile even during her father’s life. Nevertheless Ferdinand, king of Aragon, who was married to Isabella of Castile, disputed her claim. It was then that Alfonso V sought to unite upon his own head the crown of Portugal and Castile by marrying his niece, the queen Doña Juana. The marriage took place by proxy at Palencia, in May, 1475. The pope, Paul II, was prevailed upon to grant the dispensation of consanguinity, but it was immediately revoked by his successor, Sixtus IV.

How different was the character of Alfonso V from that of some of his predecessors! How weak was his policy! The grandson of João I never even completed his marriage, in spite of his ambition to be king of Portugal and Castile, Doña Juana having been recognised and sworn queen of Castile even during her father’s life. What a difference between Alfonso V and his predecessor Alfonso III, who mocked at Rome and the pontiff, married one wife, with another living, raised one queen and deposed another, in spite of the excommunications of the Vatican, creating a strong faction in Portugal and getting himself proclaimed king; politically availing himself of every element in and out of the country to accomplish his ends, and only repenting on his death-bed, when he had won everything. It might be said that the cold British blood of his grandmother Philippa of Lancaster was still dominant in Alfonso V who, according to certain chronicles, observed complete chastity after the death of his wife, Queen Isabella.

In the meantime intrigues were active in Spain; one argument, on which great stress was laid against the claims of Alfonso V, was that Juana was the child of adultery, for the faction of Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon never wearied of repeating that she was not the daughter of Henry IV of Castile, but of Beltran de la Cuenca [whence she was called the Beltraneja], making great sport of the dissolute morals of Juana, the sister of the king of Portugal, and mother of his bride. In the end the two factions came to blows. The fortune of war went against the Portuguese, who were defeated at the battle of Toro in 1476, in spite of the prodigies of valour performed in this battle by the infante Dom João, heir to the throne.

[Sidenote: [1479-1483 A.D.]]

Defeated in battle, Alfonso V attempted to gain his end by policy, for which he had not the necessary dexterity. He bethought himself of attempting to persuade Louis XI, king of France, to take his part and give him the help and protection of his troops to place the crowns of Portugal and Castile upon his head. The king of France remained unmoved, although the king of Portugal went in person to solicit his help. In disgust Alfonso V announced his intention of visiting Palestine, and declared to his son, Prince João, whom he had appointed regent during his absence from Spain, that in such a case he should be proclaimed king. But he returned unexpectedly in 1477, and on the 14th of September, 1479, signed the peace with Castile at Alcantara--a shameful treaty, by which the king of Portugal abandoned his wife, who was forced to become a nun and exchange the crown for the veil. She entered the convent of St. Clair in Santarem in 1479, afterwards passing to the convent of St. Clair of Coimbra, where she was professed on the 17th of November, 1480. In the meanwhile the negotiations were so prolonged that the prince Dom João lost patience, and with his impulsive disposition took upon himself to send the Castilian ambassadors two documents, one declaring for peace and the other for war, bidding them choose without further parley. Upon this final resolution, the Castilians concluded the negotiations. Greater energy on the part of Alfonso V might perhaps, even at the end of the dispute, have obtained less shameful and degrading conditions of peace. Alfonso V, crushed and reduced to the last extremity of consternation, was resolved to convoke the cortes and abdicate in favour of his son, when he fell sick of the plague at Cintra, and died in the very room of the palace in which he was born, on the 28th of August, 1481.[k]

With the exception of the accidental success in Africa, his reign was almost uniformly disastrous--a misfortune more owing to the deplorable weakness of his character than to any other cause. He founded the order of the Tower and Sword, under the invocation of Santiago, and was a great patron of literature; he was the first of the Portuguese kings to collect a library, and to order the national history to be treated by competent writers. His reign is, however, somewhat redeemed by the discoveries of the infante Henry, who, from his residence at Tagus, continued to fix his eyes intently on the maritime regions of western Africa. Through this enlightened prince, the Azores, with the Madeiras, the Canaries, Cape de Verd, and other islands west of that great continent were discovered or colonised. The discovery of the Cape de Verd, the last which illustrated the life of Henry, was owing to the enterprise of a Genoese, Antonio Nolle, who had derived a confused knowledge of their existence from the ancient geographers, and who, from some dissatisfaction with his own country, offered his services to the prince. Having coasted from Morocco to Cape de Verd, he deviated westwards and soon fell in with the islands, which he called after the cape of that name.[e]

REIGN OF JOÃO II “THE PERFECT”

[Sidenote: [1481-1495 A.D.]]

Dom João II was now proclaimed king. His accession to the throne was the signal for a despotic war against the aristocracy and the territorial influence of magnates. João began by convoking the cortes at Evora in 1481. A law was then published introducing a new oath to be taken by all the chief alcaides and holders of grants. The restrictions placed upon the criminal jurisdiction of the nobility, the examination of grants, and the diminution of the political influence of the nobles, produced great discontent among the aristocracy, which gave rise to intrigues, plots, and conspiracies, which João II, following the example of Louis XI of France, repressed with all severity, not sparing blood nor executions even of his own kindred. Under these circumstances João II seized the opportunity of satisfying his vengeance and giving vent to the hatred which he had nourished for many years against the duke of Braganza, Dom Ferdinand, his second cousin, who was married to his wife’s sister. He had him publicly beheaded at Evora on the 22nd of June, 1483; he is now judged to have been innocent of the crime of high treason imputed to him.

In the following year, João II with his own hands plunged a dagger into the breast of the duke of Viseu, his cousin and brother-in-law, in the palace of Setubal, for having conspired against him. After his death the duke was judged and condemned (a ludicrous determination of the despotic monarch) and his accomplices executed. The bishop of Evora, who was accused of being concerned in the conspiracy, was ordered to be thrown into a well; and more than eighty nobles and fidalgoes paid with their lives for the opposition which they made or were accused of making to the king’s policy. It was the second time that the assassin’s dagger had been publicly used in Portugal in the royal palace, by a prince upon whose brow the crown of the kingdom was to rest. Both the royal assassins were excellent kings, who governed the country diligently with courage and wisdom, raised it and gave it prosperity. In the case of the blow struck by João II, it is to be noted that it was dealt to a subject whom the king might easily have committed to a proper trial, with the certainty of finding judges who would condemn those guilty of high treason. To lessen the awful impression which these extraordinary assassinations make upon the mind and the stain which they leave upon the memory of these monarchs, it is necessary to consider the political circumstances and the ideas and customs of those times. Things inadmissible to our present civilisation were not so to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries--above all when the deed was that of an absolute king who had to render an account to God alone.

There is no doubt that the wealth and therefore the influence successively acquired by the nobility had reached such a pitch that they absorbed the best revenues of the land, vexing the people by the insolence, cupidity, and abuses which oppressed the vassals of the great lords and proprietors, though Portugal happily never suffered the terrors of feudalism. This excessive power of the nobles dated from the time of João I, who was forced to create a new aristocracy to enable him to combat the king of Castile, most of the old nobility having joined the Castilian banners, and to liberally divide the property of the crown with those who were faithful to his cause. The king afterwards endeavoured to obviate the inconvenience of these excessive grants by the “mental law” (lei mental), which, without revoking the grants already made to the possessions thereof and their lawful descendants, put great restrictions upon the alienation of such property. The mental law, published only in the reign of Dom Duarte, did not have the desired result; the infante Dom Pedro, during his troubled regency, was forced to make concessions which decreased the patrimony of the crown.

But the reign of Alfonso V was above all disastrous upon this point, as we have said; it was the best time for the nobles and holders of grants. To remunerate the nobles who fought at his side, the luckless pretender to the throne of Castile considered nothing too much--titles, favours, grants, salaries, pensions, allowances, marriage dowries, education of the children of nobles, gratifications for ordinary and extraordinary services, real or pretended; everything was conceded with liberality and profusion by the monarch who was called the African, but might more properly have been called the Prodigal.[158]

The internal political situation as well as the state of the treasury called for an effectual remedy, and it is certain that only an energetic, inflexible, and dauntless character such as that of João II could have applied by sheer force a prompt though violent remedy. It may therefore be said that the king, who was called “the perfect prince,” rendered a memorable service to the country by the tremendous blow which he struck at the aristocracy and territorial power, restoring freedom of action to the crown, and liberating the public exchequer from the heavy charges and expenses placed upon it by the nobility. It is not surprising that in this struggle between the crown and the nobility the middle classes and the people should be found on the side of the king, since he made the offences, sufferings, oppression, complaints, and petitions represented by the deputies of the councils in the cortes of 1481 his chief pretext and principal weapon in declaring mortal war against the aristocracy and allying himself with the people.

Thus there was a firm alliance between the king and the people, although João II convoked the cortes only three times during his reign, and the crown and councils were generally on the best of terms. On the 12th of July, 1491, the prince Dom Alfonso went hunting in Almeirim, and as he was galloping at nightfall the horse took fright at some object which lay across the path, and fell, dragging the prince with him. He was picked up speechless and unconscious, and carried to a fisherman’s hut where he died a few hours later in the arms of his father, mother, and wife.

This untimely death was a great affliction to the king and queen of Portugal, especially to João II, who thereby lost his hope of an heir to his throne; for by the death of Prince Alfonso the right of succession fell upon Dom Emmanuel, duke of Beja, the brother of Queen Leonora and of the duke of Viseu whom he had stabbed at Setubal. The thought that the crown of Portugal would pass to his wife’s family oppressed and tormented João II. The probability that his brother-in-law Dom Emmanuel (Manoel), the duke of Beja, whom he hated, would be king of Portugal, put his cousin the king beside himself. In this affliction João II thought of having his natural son Jorge [or George] acknowledged as his successor. Jorge was master of the orders of Santiago and Aviz, and duke of Coimbra. But Dom João did not carry out his intention; he remembered the precedent of João I, but the clear judgment of his wife, Donna Leonora, pointed out to him that the circumstances were very different; on the one hand there was no fear of foreign invasion as in the days of the master of Aviz, while on the other hand the king had left wounds still unhealed from his war against the aristocracy. Upon the death of João II, 1495, Dom Jorge had not sufficient partisans to secure to him the crown which his father so earnestly longed to bequeath him.[k]

Character of João II

João was a great prince--comprehensive in his views, vigorous in the execution of his designs, as he was cautious and politic in their formation; zealous for justice, and for the happiness of his people. That zeal, however, sometimes degenerated into vengeance, and was sometimes disarmed by capricious clemency. But his character will be better conceived from a few striking traits or sayings (and many such are recorded of him) than from any description.

He placed little value on the recommendations of his nobles; and a favour solicited through their medium was almost sure to be denied. But he was fond of honouring and rewarding merit, especially when, as is generally the case, that merit was dumb.[159] To a faithful and valiant knight he one day observed: “You have hands to serve me; have you no tongue to request a recompense?” Being at dinner, he was once served among others by Dom Pedro de Melo, a knight of great prowess, who was better fitted for handling the sword than a dish in the palace of princes, and let fall a large vessel of water, which sprinkled some of the courtiers, and made others laugh. “Why do you laugh?” inquired the king; “Dom Pedro has dropped a vessel of water, but he never dropped his lance!” He had borrowed money of a rich merchant at Tavira, to whom, at the expiration of the stipulated period, he returned it with legal interest. The merchant--a wonderful instance of disinterestedness in such a capacity--refused to receive more than the principal; João sent double interest, with the order to continue doubling it as often as the merchant should persist in the refusal. In one of his public edicts, with the view of recruiting his cavalry, he ordered all his subjects to be in readiness to furnish excellent war-horses. The churchmen pleaded their immunities, and some of them went so far as to say that they were not his subjects but those of the pope. To punish them in the way they deserved, João loudly asserted that he had never regarded them as subjects; and by another ordinance he forbade all smiths and farriers to shoe their mules and horses--a measure which soon compelled them to submit. The monopolists in corn had created an artificial famine by purchasing and piling in their warehouses all the grain in the kingdom, which they refused to sell under an exorbitant price. By a royal ordinance the people were forbidden to purchase from these dealers, and the Castilians were permitted to import in whatever quantities they pleased; the kingdom soon teemed with abundance, and the monopolists were ruined. He was a great enemy to detraction. One praised a recent feat of arms of a Portuguese governor in Africa: another attempted to detract from it by saying that the success was merely owing to chance. “That may be,” observed the king: “but how is it that such chance never happens to anyone else?” Nor was he less jealous of his dignity with foreign princes than with his own subjects. A Portuguese vessel had been captured by some French pirates: he ordered all the French vessels in his ports to be seized. The owners complained to their king, Charles VIII, who immediately punished the pirates, and caused their prize to be restored. It was found, however, that a parrot had not been restored with the rest, and he insisted that every vessel should be retained until the bird were produced. In short, the success of his administration was unrivalled; he introduced industry and comfort among his people; added largely to the national resources; and was in many respects the greatest monarch that ever swayed the sceptre of Portugal.

In the reign of this prince, the Portuguese spirit of maritime enterprise was carried to a high pitch--a spirit which, except in one instance,[160] he was always anxious to foster. His first care was to found a fort on the coast of Guinea, which had been discovered during the preceding reign, for the purpose of maintaining a permanent commercial intercourse with the natives. The barbarian king, who had entered into an alliance with the strangers, consented to the erection of the fortress. From this moment Portugal, or rather her monarchs, derived a great revenue in ivory and gold from this unknown coast; so great, indeed, that he feared lest the vessels of other European nations should be attracted to it. To damp their avidity, he took care that the voyage should be represented not merely as difficult, but as in the highest degree dangerous; and as impossible to be undertaken in regular ships; in any other than the flat-bottomed round smacks at that time peculiar to Portugal. The secret, however, was near coming to the knowledge of the vigilant monarch of Castile, who suspected the truth, and who longed to obtain a settlement on the same coast. In the hope of a princely reward, a Portuguese captain and two pilots proceeded to Castile. They were pursued into the neighbouring territory by the agents of João; and, as they refused to obey the summons of recall, two were killed on the spot, and the third brought back to Evora, where he was quartered. The severity of this punishment sank deep into the minds of the other pilots, and retained them in the service of their own sovereign. And when João heard that vessels were constructing in the English ports, unknown to Edward IV, and at the cost of the duke de Medina Sidonia, for an expedition to Ethiopia,--so the Portuguese termed all central Africa from the Nile to the western coast,--he sent an embassy to the English monarch, whom he reminded of the ancient alliance between the two crowns, and whom he easily induced to prohibit the preparations. In a short time, the fortress of São Jorge da Mina (Elmina) became a considerable city, and afterwards infamous from the traffic in slaves.

But this was only the beginning of Portuguese enterprise. The king had been taught to suspect that by coasting the African continent a passage to the East Indies might be discovered; and he not only equipped two small squadrons expressly for this object, but despatched two of his subjects (Pedro de Covilhão and Alfonso de Payva) into India and Abyssinia, to discover the route to and between these vast regions, and what advantages Portuguese commerce might derive from the knowledge thus acquired.

PROGRESS IN DISCOVERY

[Sidenote: [1487-1497 A.D.]]

The discoveries of Covilhão encouraged João to attempt the passage to India. One of the squadrons--that under João Alfonso de Aveiro--discovered the kingdom of Benin. The other, under Cam, was more fortunate. Crossing the equinox, he arrived at the mouth of the Congo. He coasted two hundred leagues further to the south; but finding no cape, he returned to Congo, and was honourably received by the barbarian king, whom he disposed to Christianity, and impressed with a favourable idea of European civilisation. His departure affected the half convert, who besought him to return with missionaries, and who at the same time permitted several natives to accompany him, for the purpose of being thoroughly instructed in the new faith. By the Portuguese king and court they were received with great joy, and at their express desire were soon regenerated in the waters of baptism, he, his queen, and many of the nobles standing sponsors at the font. After a residence of two years in Europe, they returned to Congo, accompanied by several monks, some mechanics and agricultural labourers, and an embassy, headed by Ruy de Sousa. Hundreds repaired to the missionaries for instruction; the idols were broken or removed; a church was built, and mass celebrated with imposing pomp. But to renounce worldly pleasures, and to mortify the strongest passions, to forego the privilege of many wives, and the gratification of revenge--were too much for these licentious barbarians. By degrees the new faith changed, and was finally extinguished.

Though no paramount advantage was derived from the alliance with Congo, the discoveries of Cam led to a solid one--that of the Cape of Good Hope. This memorable discovery was made in 1487, by Bartholomeu Dias, an officer of equal enterprise and experience. The high winds and still higher seas which assailed this vast promontory induced the captain to call it the Cape of Storms; but João, who had more extended views, called it O Cabo da Boa Esperança, or the Cape of Good Hope. On this occasion Dias ventured little beyond the promontory; nor was it passed by any vessel until the following reign, when the famous Vasco da Gama doubled it on his voyage to India.[e]

Martius’ Account of Vasco and Cabral

[Sidenote: [1497 A.D.]]

To Covilhão belongs the honour of marking the itinerary of the voyage to India, asserting that the East might be reached by the south of Africa. In the letters which he sent from Cairo, he said that ships navigating along the coast of Guinea would ultimately reach the extreme south of the African continent; and from thence steering east in the direction of the island of Lua, by Sofala, would find themselves on the way to India. From this and other information received, was composed the plan of the daring expedition of 1497, the destined course of which was first Kalikodu or Calecut (Calicut), as it was called then, and from thence to where Covilhão was. Vasco da Gama was chosen by Dom Emmanuel (Dom João II had then been dead three years) to command the expedition. He was a daring but prudent man, uniting the qualities of a soldier and sailor, a thing common at that time and even later. The same thing applies to Alfonso de Albuquerque, Dom João de Castro, and many others. Such a combination had a decided advantage; the separation of these qualities did not come to embarrass their plans; there was unity in the command, for the captain was likewise pilot.

The greatest judgment and prudence directed the preparations for the expedition. The information sent by Covilhão was weighed and considered and compared with that previously obtained. Charts and maps were examined, and Bartholomeu Dias himself related what had befallen him, the obstacles which he had encountered, and the difficulties which must be overcome. With his vast experience he directed the building of the ships, doing away with exaggerated dimensions, and insisting on the strength of the ribs. The discoverer of the cape was to accompany the expedition as far as São Jorge da Mina, and remain there to carry on the gold trade. There were four small ships, that they might be able to enter all the ports, explore every creek, pass over shoals, and cruise along the coast. Their construction was strong and perfect, such as had never been seen before.

They carried six freestone columns carved with the Portuguese arms, and the armillary sphere which the king had adopted as his emblem. One was to be set up at the bay of St. Braz, another at the mouth of the Zambesi, another in Mozambique, another in Calicut, and another in the island of Santa Maria. There were two chaplains on board each ship; negro, Kaffir, and Arab interpreters, ten convicts for any sacrifice that might be necessary, and finally 148 soldiers. The best pilots had been chosen and the king would allow nothing to be spared. He came in person to view the ships on the stocks, and remained conversing with the masters, listening to the observations of Bartholomeu and Pedro Dias, and Vasco da Gama, who showed him the new astrolabe of Behaim, a rough triangle of wood but very effectual.

The three ships bore the names of the three archangels: S. Gabriel the capitanea of 120 tons; S. Miguel (formerly Berrio), and S. Raphael of 100 tons. The name of the fourth, of 200 tons, is unknown. At the end of June they were all finished and ready, and rode at anchor before the church of Restello, where the captains watched all the night of the 7th of July. The next day, after mass, accompanied by the king and all the people of the city, singing, with tapers in their hands, they all went in procession to the shore and there embarked. Camoens says that at that moment:

But now an aged sire of reverend mien, Upon the foreshore thronged by the crowds, With lore by long experience only grown, Thus from his time-taught breast he made his moan: “O curst the mortal who the first was found, Teaching the tree to wear the flowing sheet.”

--The Lusiads, Burton’s translation.

Indeed many in their hearts strongly condemned the persistency of the monarchs in sacrificing men and money to this chimera of navigation. The cold and tardy prudence born of past experience did not believe success possible after so many vain attempts. The result was to prove the contrary; but the words of the poet prophesied the fatal consequences of an empire which all, both daring and prudent, were ready to acclaim upon the return of Vasco da Gama. Camoens, watching the decline of the sun, could relate the hunger endured at sea, the tempests, shipwrecks, and wanderings in the burning lands of the terrible Adamastor, and the trail of white skeletons left across the sands of both Africas--a rosary of mournful tragedies. He could relate how waves of tyranny and crime from that Indian sea stretched out to Europe to overwhelm Portugal with their slime.

They were three months reaching St. Helena Bay (Nov. 7th). They landed to take the sun with their astrolabe, the rolling of the ship preventing them from doing so on board; here they had several skirmishes with the natives, and set out again at last upon the 16th of November. On the 19th they came in sight of Cape Tormentoso, or of Good Hope, both names being fully justified on this occasion. For three days they were beaten about by tempests. The wind and waves were such that the upper parts of the ships were under water, and it could scarcely be seen if they advanced upon the waves or were wrapped around by them. Upon the stern castles the ships had painted pictures of the saints whose name they bore, and when the raging sea flung the pictures on to the tilt the crews grew pale with horror. It was a bad omen, for it seemed as if they were deserted by the divine favour. Fierce and angry seas washed over the poops, dashing the boats against the sides of the ships and damaging the helms. They furled the sails, cut down the tilt, and began to throw the cargo overboard. At last the weather cleared.

Having doubled the cape, they entered the bay of St. Braz, where the calms detained them until the 7th of the following month. Navigating for a week along the southern coast of Africa, on the 15th they reached the Chaos Islands, the farthest point reached by Bartholomeu Dias. Then they began to follow the instructions of Covilhão, the pilot absent in the lands of the mythical Prester John, of whom they were in search. They wished to proceed along the coast, but the currents, which were a great danger, carried them towards the vast and unknown southern sea. The sailors rebelled in vain; Vasco da Gama, like an inexorable destiny prudent in his audacity, overcame the currents and revolts.

[Sidenote: [1497-1498 A.D.]]

At last they got out of the “sea of darkness” (mar tenebroso), and then only could the terrific cape be looked upon as overcome. The tempests and the currents grew still. By day there was calm with the sky of purest blue; by night, several times the light of S. Pedro Gonçalves, the St. Elmo of Lisbon, shone above the tops of the masts. All promised fair weather. They climbed the masts to see the marks of the miracle, and brought back with great devotion the droppings of green wax left by the saint.

On January 10th, 1498, they touched land at Inhambane, and had some intercourse with the Kaffirs; on the 22nd they had reached Quilimane (Kilimane), where “noblemen” came on board to visit them, with turbans of worked silk upon their heads.

India was reached for the first time. They saw men of divers nations, and traces of that distant civilisation so eagerly sought for. They had emerged from the African sea, and from the heavy shadow of the dark continent. Yet these “noblemen” whom they gazed upon almost with love, regarding them as brothers, were to be their cruelest enemies. They reached Mozambique on the 2nd of March. Around the fleet at anchor came the native vessels, without decks or sails. The Moors came to trade with them. The sultan in person wished to compliment Vasco da Gama, who received him on board. The sultan proved perfidious, and the fleet, without the pilots, cruised along the coast to Mombasa (on the 8th of April), where chance alone saved it from the plot which the Moors had prepared against it; they had already recognised dangerous competitors in these men who had come over the sea to these regions, which had until then been the undisputed possession of Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia. Saved by a miracle, Vasco da Gama went on to Melinde (15th), where the sultan received him well; but not trusting these “noblemen” of Zanzibar, he availed himself of a Moor who had remained on board at Mozambique, and who chanced to know the way to Calicut. They put to sea, and in twenty-seven days (24th of April to the 19th of May), they were in India. The voyage had lasted ten months and eleven days.

It was now that their wonder reached its limit. Everything they had seen as yet gave not a distant idea of what they now saw upon their landing. The natural pomp and splendour of the East filled them with surprise and cupidity. In their religious ignorance they saw everywhere the Christians of Prester John. The natives adored the Virgin Mary, and the Portuguese also prostrated themselves before our Lady, in the person of Gauri, the white goddess, Sakti of Siva, the destroyer. This confusion, increased by the fact of not understanding each other’s speech, occasioned scenes ingenuously comical. Some who were doubtful, remarked that if the idols were devils their prayer was intended for God alone, quieting their consciences by this mental reservation. To increase their amazement, there came to them a Moor who spoke in Portuguese, “Good luck! good luck! Many rubies, many emeralds!”

From Lisbon to India was but a short distance, for the feelings have no measure. They were all Christians, they also had kings. The world was all one and man the same everywhere. The ingenuous way in which the greatest things were accomplished is the greatest proof of the heroic strength of these men of the Renaissance.

[Sidenote: [1498-1500 A.D.]]

At that time India--and by that name we designate all the coasts and islands included between the meridians of Suez and Tidore, and between 20° south latitude and 30° north latitude, the scene of the Portuguese campaigns--in India, we say, foreign races held a kind of dominion resembling in all things that which afterwards belonged to the Portuguese--a commercial-maritime monopoly, and consequently, factories, colonies, and states. The races they were about to dispossess of this dominion were the Arabs, the Ethiopians, Persians, Turks, and Afghans, who, coming down from the Red and the Arabian seas, and confounded in the religious wave of Islam, had subjugated the peninsula from the Indus to the Ganges, and eastern Africa from Adal to Monomotapa. Extending themselves to the extreme east, they reached as far as Cambodia and Tidore in the Moluccas, across Arakan and Pegu, from the peninsula of Malacca (Malay peninsula), and from Burma and Shan (Siam) into the continent, through Sumatra and Borneo and the middle of the Sunda archipelago. The Portuguese called all the natives Moors, a generic term already in use in Europe to denote the followers of Islam, and therefore now adopted when, having come from afar and traversed so many seas, they again found themselves face to face with the Turk, the opponent of the Christian throughout the world.

“The devil take you! What brought you here!” was the compliment addressed to the Portuguese by a Moor in Calicut; and in Mozambique and Mombasa the Moors (we will henceforward use this word as a generic term, as aforesaid) persuaded or forced Samundri Rajah (Zamorin) king or count (India was under a pseudo-feudal rule) of Calicut, to exterminate the Portuguese. Calicut was the commercial empire of the coast of Malabar, and the dominions of the rajah formed the so-called kingdom of Kanara.

It was an easy matter no doubt to persuade the ruler that Vasco da Gama was a pirate and his king a myth; certainly the Moors of Calicut defined, in advance and unawares, the Portuguese dominion, which differed from common piracy only in that it was rapine organised by a political state. Convinced or constrained, the rajah ordered the navigators to be pursued, but they embarked and defended themselves, August 30th. After remaining some months in the island of Anjediva, upon the coast, Vasco da Gama resolved to return and set sail for Portugal on the 10th of July, 1498. A year later on the same date he reached Lisbon. Great was the enthusiasm. Dom Emmanuel also had his Indies, and Portugal her Columbus. But what tidings of Prester John? And what of Covilhão? None. The navigator had succeeded in overcoming the cape and discovering India, but he had not succeeded in solving the enigma which at that time had baffled their search for three centuries. This was of small account in history. The essential point was the solving of a greater enigma--that of the “dark ocean.” Little was now wanting; in twenty years there would not remain an unknown corner of land in the whole circumference of the globe, nor a span unexplored in the vast expanse of seas. “Under the wild waves to learn the secrets of the earth, and the mysteries and illusions of the sea,” the Portuguese with heroic curiosity took in their hands the future of Europe and of the world. In the year after the discovery of India, Pedro Alvares Cabral, who was sent thither with an imposing fleet, could not resist the temptation of curiosity. Steering east in the Atlantic a question constantly tormented him--what lay to the west? In that direction Columbus had discovered the Indies in the northern hemisphere; were there not perhaps Indies in the southern hemisphere also? He steered west to explore--what were a few months more or less in the long journey to the east? Thus he discovered Brazil; the western land lay from the extreme north to the extreme south, extending through the two hemispheres. Not till then could it be said that America was completely discovered (1500).

The news of the discovery of new lands made little impression in Lisbon; the fervent desire of the court was the discovery of the Prester, the enchanted Prester John, in order to make a good alliance with him and bring to Portugal a little at least of those good things which Vasco da Gama had seen with his own eyes, the report of which inflamed the whole nation with cupidity. Cabral was sent for this purpose, not to discover lands; the names in their repertory were now barely sufficient to designate the islands, capes, ports, bays, coasts, and continents. Their desires were set on other things; other hopes seethed within them: “Good luck! good luck! Many rubies, many emeralds!”

It was resolved to send a fleet to India, for now that the way was known there was nothing to fear and no reason to diminish the number or tonnage of the ships. Pedro Alvares Cabral was appointed admiral of the fleet, which consisted of thirteen ships and carried twelve hundred men. The fleet raised anchor in the Tagus on the 9th of March, 1500. The shouts of the sailors as they worked at the capstan in unison, a sound as sad and mournful as the sea; the low murmur of the cables in the hawses; the whistle of the masters as they directed the manœuvres; the many-coloured flags flying in the breeze; the sails half-furled upon the masts, made a vivid picture of the nation which in the year 1500 was also setting out, shriven and well-disposed, upon this long voyage of a little more than a century, full of disease and shipwreck, at the end of which waited a tomb vast as the sea and silent as the ocean in the funereal calm of the tropics.

Cabral’s voyage, besides beginning the Portuguese dominion in India, had really two desirable results: it swept away the two legends of Prester John and of the “sea of darkness.” He discovered Brazil and returned to tell Emmanuel that the supposed emperor of the East was a miserable black heathen king, intrenched in the inaccessible mountains of Abyssinia. In pursuit of a myth, drawn by an abyss, Portugal discovered the continents and islands of the Atlantic and reached India. For the sake of an illusion they achieved the reality which struck the world with wonder. The world is a mirage and men are but shadows borne upon the cunning winds of destiny. With the lands discovered and the seas ploughed from east to west, it still remained to unite these two halves of the known world, and sail round them, to make sure that they lay whole and complete in the hands of men. This was the effect of the voyage of Magellan (Magalhães) twenty years after. The sea was dark no more, the great conquest was complete. But a new enterprise now revealed itself--to devour what was discovered, to assimilate the world. The whole of Portugal embarked for India in Cabral’s fleet.

THE CONQUEST OF INDIA

[Sidenote: [1500-1502 A.D.]]

On the 13th of September of the year 1500, Cabral reached Calicut. He went, not like Vasco da Gama, as a discoverer, but as the emissary of the noble Portuguese monarch, the bearer of his letters and proposals of alliance to the rajah of Calicut. As such he was received in a solemn audience. The Portuguese, donning their richest clothes and their best and brightest arms, thought to make an impression upon the Eastern potentate by their riches; but the representatives of Europe, poor and strong, were to be outdone by the magnificence of opulent India. The polish of their arms was dimmed by the blaze of precious stones “whose rays were blinding.”

The rajah was borne in a palanquin, or litter, upon the shoulders of his nobles, reclining upon silken cushions among coverlets worked in gold thread, falling in folds and edged with borders encrusted with precious stones. The litter advanced slowly, under a silken canopy fringed with gold, and within this double tabernacle appeared the black rajah, covered with precious stones. It was blinding to look upon him. On each side of the canopy were pages stirring the air with fans of peacock feathers, and beside the palanquin came those who bore the insignia of royalty--the sword and dagger, the foil of gold, the symbolical lily-flower, the ewer of water, and finally the cup into which the king spat the betel, the chewing of which makes the teeth pink, and gives “a most sweet breath.”

Throughout the whole length of the procession and bringing up the rear were bands of musicians rending the air with their drums, tom-toms of gold and silver suspended by cords from poles of bamboo, and enormous trumpets, some straight and some curved, raised in the air, which gave the musicians the appearance of elephants with golden trunks, their flags encrusted with rubies and emeralds.

The reception was conducted with solemnity on either side, although they could not understand each other well; the scribes displayed in vain their long palm leaves covered with writing; the Portuguese by signs indicated their wish to establish factories there. The scribes gradually came to understand, and distrusted; and the Portuguese also distrusted the smiles of the rajah. In spite of this, however, their request was granted, and Cabral founded the first Portuguese factory in India at Calicut. Afterwards the Moors came and exclaimed against the intruders who were despoiling them, and, favoured by the natives, fell upon the factory, murdering all the Portuguese therein--fifty in all. Then followed the terrible vengeance of the admiral. He took ten ships of the Arab merchants, and put the crews, five hundred men, to the sword; bombarded the city, and set it on fire.

The burning of Calicut on the 16th of December, 1500, was the gloomy dawn of modern oriental history. In the middle of January (1501) Cabral loaded his ships with pepper and cinnamon and returned to the kingdom. Of the thirteen ships with which he set out a year before, barely three returned with him. The terrible enemy though conquered was not subdued, and this first expedition to India, the first act of a tragedy of more than a century, sketched out the course of its action; assassination, fire, massacre, shipwreck; the sword and pepper; the soldier’s arms in one hand, the merchant’s scales in the other--a modern Carthage; and in the background the open maw of the sea, ready to devour men, ships, and treasure; a perennial fount of vice pouring forth torrents of wickedness.

To inflict a terrible chastisement upon the rajah and to consolidate the factory of Cochin by fortifying it, was the object of the second fleet which set out from Lisbon in February, 1502, under the command of Vasco da Gama, the implacable captain. The story of the voyage is full of horror; and the revenge of the captain a proof of the sanguinary, impassive, and cruel coldness which does indeed exist in the almost African temperament of the Portuguese. Obliterated in peace and subjection it ever bursts out afresh in dominion, victory, and warfare. If such sentiments, alive in the soul of Gama, inspired his actions, his campaign followed no plan, nor could his rude spirit entertain the wide views of the statesman. If he had any plan in view, it was to amaze India by the cruelty of his deeds, and dominate it by the terror of his slaughters. Navigating the Indian seas, Gama met a ship of Arabian merchants going to or coming from Mecca. Besides the crew the ship carried 240 men, passengers with their wives and children. This was on the 1st of October, 1502; “which I shall remember all my life,” wrote the pilot, still horror-stricken at the remembrance of the cowardly way in which the ship was set on fire with all whom it contained, so that every soul perished in the flames or in the sea. Well pleased with himself, the captain steered for Calicut. He intimated to the rajah that he must expel all the Moors, who numbered five thousand families, the richest in the city; saying that any servant of the king Dom Emmanuel was worth more than the Zamorin, and that his master had power to make every palm tree a king! As was to be expected, the rajah refused. Then the captain, who upon anchoring had captured a considerable number of merchants in the port, ordered their hands and ears to be cut off, and crowded them into a boat in which they drifted ashore with the tide, bearing Gama’s answer to the refusal of the wretched prince.

[Sidenote: [1502-1503 A.D.]]

Then he began the bombardment, November 2nd. The city was in flames for the second time, and the lamentations of the people answered the cynical and ferocious laughter of the sailors sheltered behind the sides of the ships near the guns which vomited fire. This was a foolish, cruel, and cowardly deed; for the short lances and arrows of the natives could not measure themselves against the grenades fired from afar on board the ships. Gama left part of his fleet in India under the command of Vincente Sodre, as eminent and celebrated a man as the admiral, whose uncle he was.

The Portuguese dominion thus assumed from the very first the twofold character which it never lost in spite of all subsequent attempts at law and order. On the sea was anarchy and theft; on shore, a succession of blood-thirsty depredations. Vasco da Gama showed how to rule by fire and sword; Sodre showed how to reap a harvest at sea by boarding the ships of Mecca. Piracy and pillage were the two foundations of the Portuguese dominion, its nerves were cannon, and its soul was pepper. When Gama returned from his second voyage a third fleet left Lisbon (April, 1503) with Alfonso de Albuquerque and Duarte Pacheco on board. They went to Cochin to assist the rajah in his war against the rajah of Calicut, and built the first fortress in India. Albuquerque returned to the kingdom; Pacheco remained at Cochin with the troops and ships prepared for the attack. The hero--for he fought like a wild beast in his den of Kambalaan, nobly, disinterestedly, and fiercely--said at once that now all lay with the artillery. This will explain the possibility of the resistance of Pacheco’s seventy men, feebly assisted by the natives, against the fifty thousand attributed to the army of Samundri, rajah of Calicut. But the artillery alone would not have sufficed to repulse the solid body of the enemy’s columns, if the courage and wonderful rapidity of the marches, the ubiquity, so to speak, of the first soldier-hero of the East, had not supported the powerful means of defence. The fleet of Lopo Soares Albergaria brought back Pacheco to the kingdom in 1505. Being a simple and upright man he returned rich in wounds and poor in money and diamonds; he had remained in the captaincy of São Jorge da Mina, from whence he was brought in irons because of the accusations brought against him, to languish in prison for a long time and to die at last in poverty and oblivion. “The fate of this hero,” says Goes,[n] “was of a nature to warn mankind to beware of the inconstancy of kings and princes and their small remembrance of those to whom they are bound.” And yet Dom Emmanuel owed the consolidation of his still incipient empire in the East to this man.

[Sidenote: [1505-1509 A.D.]]

Dom Francisco de Almeida was the man chosen to be governor of India, now constituted a viceroyalty. He is the first of the successive figures presented by the Portuguese empire of the East; and the first of the three most notable viceroys. The government of India formed three great men--Castro, who may be called a saint; Albuquerque, to whom the name of hero is better adapted; and Almeida, a wise administrator and intelligent factor. The viceroy, his plans matured by observation on the spot, and the first naval war with which he was received by the unrepentant rajah of Calicut, mentally completed his system of government. “Let all our strength be at sea,” he said; “let us refrain from appropriating the land. The old tradition of conquest, the empire of such distant lands, is not desirable. Let us destroy those new races (the Arabs, Afghans, Ethiopians, and Turks) and reinstate the ancient races and natives of this coast; then we will go further. Let us secure with our fleets the safety of the sea and protect the natives in whose name we may practically reign over India. There would certainly be no harm in our having a few fortresses along the coast, but simply to protect the factories from surprise, for their chief safety will lie in the friendship of the native rajahs placed upon their thrones by us, and maintained and defended by our fleets. What has been done so far is but anarchy, scarcely an outline of government, a system of murder, piracy, and disorder which it is necessary to remedy.” The difficulties seemed to him more formidable in that “the past warfare was with beasts, but now we are to fight Venetians and the Turks of the sultan.” The former impunity disappeared as soon as the Venetians and Egyptians launched a powerful fleet upon the Red Sea, with artillery.

Dom Francisco de Almeida advanced up the coast, leaving behind him a trail of ashes and blood which everywhere marked the passage of the Portuguese. The Egyptian admiral still feared the viceroy, and as soon as the fleet had anchored and grappled with his ships, he meant to cut the cables and drift ashore, dragging the Portuguese with him, where the Indian launches and fustas might fall upon them furiously. But the viceroy perceived the snare and ordered the anchors to be prepared in the stern, and the enemy’s ships went ashore alone. It was the 3rd of February (1509), the feast of St. Braz, at noon. The confusion of races gathered in that fight was inextricable; the banners of the cross and crescent flying from the masts covered the most extravagant sentiments and varying beliefs. The truth is that they fought not for faith or fatherland, but furiously disputed the spoils of India; and covetousness can make brothers of men of every faith and children of every race. There were French and Germans as bombardiers on board the Portuguese ships; there were Indian Brahmans and even Moors. On the other side in the confusion of ships there might be found from the Nubian to the Arab; from the Ethiopian to the Affran; there were Mussulmans of every caste; Persians and Rum[161] of Egypt--mercenaries from all parts to whom this generic name was given. Besides the heathen multitude was the Venetian renegade or Catholic--but above all the merchant, who had come with artillery to the Indian Sea by order of his republic to defend the interests of his associates in the commerce of the East. Around the confused bands on board the fleet of the Rum gathered the dark mass of Indians in their junks, from Diu in Guzerat and from Calicut in Kanara.

Once more the waters of the Indian Sea were stained with crimson. Countless numbers perished. The wounded floated, crying for mercy and receiving bullets. At last, after the scenes and episodes proper to such tragedies, the victory fell to the viceroy who destroyed Rum and Indians. This naval victory had a higher importance even than the victories of Duarte Pacheco in Cochin, for the Indians, observing and considering, recognised that the Portuguese forces were invincible not only to themselves but also to the Rum of Egypt and the artillery of Venice. The viceroy remembered that he had lost his son, and “he went and sat under the awning, a handkerchief in his hand which could not stem his falling tears.” All thronged to console him, and recovering his spirits he arose, drying his tears and calling them his sons, and said that this grief had pierced and must ever remain in his heart, but bade them rejoice at the gallant vengeance which God in his mercy had bestowed upon them! But to complete his vengeance for the death of his son, he ordered prisoners to be tied to the mouths of the guns, and the heads and scattered members of these unfortunate wretches were thrown into the city of Kanara like shot. The death of his son disturbed his sound judgment and transformed his former opinions of a statesman to blood-thirsty furies, attested by the devastation of the coast of Guzerat. He yielded also to the intrigues and slanders of the captains who had come from Ormus, recently conquered by Albuquerque and ruled with the terrible wildness of his titanic enterprises. They scoffed at the viceroy who had just finished his term of office, and at Albuquerque, already appointed from Lisbon to succeed him; and treacherous accounts of the excesses of the wise Almeida had already reached the court. The dungeon of Duarte Pacheco awaited him in payment of his labours. However, on his journey to the kingdom he landed on the coast of Kaffraria, and was killed by the natives with assegais and javelins.

His plan of government, though wise, was chimerical, for India itself was insanity. Only a man of genius like Albuquerque could make the doomed enterprise great. Only a saint like Castro could save the Portuguese valour from the stain of positive ignominy. Dominion, as Almeida conceived it, was not to despoil; it was armed protection extended to a commerce, free on one side, and the monopoly of the state or appanage of the crown on the other. The captains and governors should be simultaneously commercial agents of his majesty, the high trader in pepper. This required a stolidity of which the Dutch alone were capable and that at the cost of salaries which outweighed temptation. Besides this, the Portuguese flung themselves famished upon this eastern banquet, as did the races of the north, centuries before, upon the banquet of Gaul, Italy, and Spain. No one could have wrenched from their fangs the palpitating flesh which they so anxiously devoured; the fatal consequences which Dom Francisco de Almeida wisely foretold were inevitable. Albuquerque in Ormus, Goa, and Malacca, established on land the limits of the empire, which in his predecessor’s judgment should have floated vaguely on the waves.

King Emmanuel forgave everything, crimes, robbery, incendiarism, and piracy, so long as they sent him what he most longed for, curiosities, novelties and riches, to fill his palaces in Lisbon and dazzle the pope in Rome with his magnificent embassy. “Send pepper, and lie down to sleep,” said Tristan da Cunha later on, writing from the court in Lisbon to his son Nuño, governor of India. The sack of the East--such a name best fits the Portuguese dominion--was already ordained in Lisbon.[m]

[Sidenote: [1495-1515 A.D.]]

Albuquerque, like Almeida, for all his splendid services, was rewarded with envy and ingratitude. His abilities, his bravery, his successful administration made the courtiers fear or pretend that he aimed at an independent sovereignty in those regions; and by their representations they prevailed on the king to recall him. Dom Lopo Soares was despatched from Lisbon to supersede him. But before his successor arrived, he felt that his health was worn out in the service of his country; he made his last will, and died at sea, within sight of Goa. However violent some of his acts, his loss was bewailed by both Indians and Portuguese. He certainly administered justice with impartiality; laid no intolerable burdens on the people; restrained the licentiousness of his officers; and introduced unexampled prosperity throughout the wide range of the Portuguese establishments. If to this we add that the qualities of his mind were of a high order, that he was liberal, affable, and modest, we shall scarcely be surprised that, by his enthusiastic countrymen, he was styled the Great. It is probable that no other man would have established the domination of Portugal on so secure a basis: it is certain that no other, in so short a period, could have invested the structure with so much splendour. His remains were magnificently interred at Goa, and his son was laden with honours by the now repentant Emmanuel--the only rewards of his great deeds (1515).

Under the successors of Albuquerque, the administration of India was notorious for its corruption, imbecility, and violence, and in the same degree as wisdom and justice were discarded, so did the military spirit decay.[e]

EMMANUEL THE FORTUNATE

When Dom Emmanuel I had been proclaimed king in the town of Alcacer on the 27th of October, 1495, he had reached the age of twenty-six. He had found everything prepared for a quiet and prosperous reign; his predecessor, João II, had smoothed the way for him by overthrowing the power of the nobility. The conciliation of the fidalgos and great lords was easily effected.

Two matters seriously occupied the new king during the first years of his reign--his marriage, and the discovery of India. In the hope that he or his descendants would one day unite the crowns of Spain and Portugal, Dom Emmanuel desired to marry the widow of his nephew. The Catholic sovereigns, having first approved the king of Portugal’s request, appointed as their agent Ximenes, who was afterwards cardinal. The marriage of the king, Dom Emmanuel, and Doña Isabella of Castile being agreed upon, a treaty was made at Burgos, on the 30th of November, 1496, in which large dowries in money were promised on both sides.

[Sidenote: [1496-1500 A.D.]]

In 1497, the king sent his delegate to Castile to continue the negotiations, and a new article was introduced into the treaty, to which the Catholic sovereigns attached extraordinary importance, going so far as to make it a question of annulling the treaty of Burgos and breaking off the marriage. This article was that Dom Emmanuel should expel from his kingdom and dominions all the Jews or Moors who refused baptism, and all those who had been found guilty of heresy or apostasy, the clause to be fulfilled before September, 1497. Such was the origin of the greatest political mistake and blackest injustice perpetrated by the “fortunate” king, Dom Emmanuel, which left an indelible stain upon his happy reign; for the ambition of eventually uniting the crowns of Portugal and Castile cannot be considered a sufficient excuse. Dom Emmanuel fulfilled this treaty, expelling from his kingdom all the Jews and free Moors who refused baptism, including all those unfortunates who, banished from Spain in 1492 by the Catholic sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella, had fled to Portugal thinking to find in that country a refuge from the intolerance and tyranny of Castile. In October, 1497, the marriage of King Emmanuel of Portugal with the princess Isabella, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, and widow of Prince Alfonso, son of João II, took place in the town of Valencia de Alcantara.

It seemed at first that Dom Emmanuel’s lucky star would not abandon him in his relations with Castile. Indeed the kings of Portugal and Castile were still at Valencia de Alcantara when they received the news of the unfortunate death of the prince Don Juan, heir to the crown of Castile. By this event Doña Isabella, queen of Portugal, wife of Dom Emmanuel, became heir presumptive to the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Leon. This fact, which plunged the kingdoms of Spain in consternation, filled Dom Emmanuel with joy and promised to satisfy his ambitions more promptly than could have been expected.

But his wife was advanced in pregnancy. In spite of her state, she resolved to continue her journey and go to Saragossa to be sworn heir to the throne of Aragon. Here she was seized with the pains of child-birth, and on the 24th of August, 1498, brought forth the infante Dom Miguel, in that city, his birth costing his mother her life. And Miguel died two years later.

Thus the dream of Dom Emmanuel vanished like smoke. The famous expulsion of the Jews and New Christians, an iniquitous measure, unwise and unpolitic, price of the marriage with Doña Isabella, was not a happy augury. Once more the attempt at an Iberian union under the sceptre of a Portuguese king by matrimonial means had failed.

Dom Emmanuel did not completely lose hope in his relations with Castile[162] by the death of his wife and son. The Catholic sovereigns also seemed determined on an alliance with Portugal. Without loss of time, in the same year, 1500, Dom Emmanuel sent Ruy de Saude, of his council, as ambassador to the sovereigns of Castile with full powers to request the hand of the infanta Doña Maria, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and consequently sister-in-law of the king of Portugal. The heirs to the crown of Castile were Doña Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and her husband, son of the emperor Maximilian and the empress Mary of Burgundy. The princess of Castile had already a son at that time, Charles, who was born at Ghent in Belgium on the 24th of February, 1500, and was afterwards Charles I of Spain and V of Germany. Queen Isabella died on the 25th of November, 1504, and King Ferdinand on the 23rd of January, 1516. The throne of Castile was lost to Dom Emmanuel. The crown of Spain was about to pass to the house of Austria. The wedding to Maria nevertheless took place at Alcacer-do-Sal on the 30th of October, 1500.

[Sidenote: [1504-1520 A.D.]]

In the same year, 1500, Gaspar Cortereal went to North America and discovered the land of Labrador, which was then called Cortereal, getting beyond 50° north latitude. He returned to Portugal, and repeated his voyage in 1501, but was never heard of again. His brother, Miguel, went in search of him, but he also disappeared. Other lands and islands were discovered in the time of Queen Maria. In 1501, João da Nova,[163] on his voyage to India, discovered the Ascension Island in the Atlantic, and the island which bears his name on the coast of Africa. On his return journey in 1502 he discovered the island of St. Helena in the Atlantic. The Florentine Amerigo Vespucci made voyages to America by order of Dom Emmanuel in 1501 and 1503, discovering Rio de la Plata and Patagonia. This navigator had the glory of giving his name to the group of lands discovered by Columbus, Cabral, etc. In 1506 were successively discovered: by Tristan da Cunha, the islands of that name in the Atlantic; by Ruy Pereira Coutinho and Fernão Soares, the western and eastern coasts of the island of Madagascar; in 1507, the Maldive Islands by Dom Lourenço de Almeida; in 1509, by Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, Malacca (Malay Peninsula) and Sumatra; in 1512, by Francisco Serrão, the Molucca Islands in the Chinese seas; in 1513, by Pedro Mascarenhas, the island to which he gave his name and which is at present called Réunion, in the Indian Ocean; in 1516, Duarte Coelho discovered Cochin-China; in 1517, Fernão Peres de Andrade went to China.[k]

THE GREAT VOYAGE OF MAGELLAN

The celebrated line of demarcation between the right of discovery and conquest was not so clearly understood as to avoid disputes between Dom Emmanuel and his brother sovereign of Castile. His splendid empire in the East had long attracted the jealousy of Ferdinand, who had frequently attempted, but as frequently been deterred by his remonstrances, to share in the rich commercial advantages thus offered to the sister kingdom. After the death of that prince, a disaffected Portuguese who had served Emmanuel with distinction both in Ethiopia and India, and who was disgusted with the refusal of his sovereign to reward his services with becoming liberality, fled into Castile, and told the new king, Charles V of Austria, that the Molucca Islands, in virtue of that line, rightfully belonged to Spain. This man was Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães), whose name is immortalised in the annals of maritime discovery. He proposed a shorter route to the Moluccas than the passage by the Cape of Good Hope--the route by Brazil: he well knew that the American continent must terminate somewhere, and his notion of the earth’s rotundity was sufficiently just to convince him that a western voyage would bring him to the same point as the one discovered by Dias and Vasco da Gama. In August, 1519, he embarked at Seville, with five vessels, over the crews of which he was invested with the power of life and death. On reaching the Brazilian coast, he cautiously proceeded southwards, and in September, 1520, arriving at a cape which he called after the Eleven Thousand Virgins, he passed into the dreaded straits which bear his name. After a passage of fifteen hundred leagues, unexampled for its boldness, he reached the Philippine Islands. Here closed his extraordinary career in 1521. Though the object of the expedition failed, through the catastrophe of its leader, he will be considered by posterity as by far the most undaunted, and in many respects the most extraordinary man that ever traversed an unknown sea.[e]

[Sidenote: [1500-1521 A.D.]]

In the midst of this splendid series of voyages and discoveries, and of brilliant victories and conquests of the Portuguese in Asia, a fatal incident afflicted Lisbon, in the year 1506. The deplorable catastrophe which plunged the capital in mourning sprang from religious intolerance, of which Dom Emmanuel had given such a fatal example on the occasion of his first marriage. On Low Sunday, the 19th of April, 1506, in the church of St. Dominic in Lisbon, where a vast concourse of people were assembled, the rays of the sun striking upon the splendour of a crucifix produced such a brilliant effect that certain visionaries, religious, or fanatics, took it for a miracle. The cry of “a miracle” already flew from mouth to mouth, when a bystander, more intelligent but with little prudence for his speech, suggested that this effect was due to the reflection of the sun and could only be called a natural phenomenon. This sufficed to cause him to be looked upon as a disguised Jew; a tumult arose, and such was the frenzy of the populace that a horrible massacre upon the so-called New Christians followed.

The massacre lasted for three days. More than a thousand persons perished. Dom Emmanuel was at Aviz at the time. As soon as he heard of what had occurred in the capital, he sent Dom Diogo Lobo, baron de Alvito, and the prior of Crato with full powers to punish the guilty.

He ordered that besides the special punishment of the guilty all the inhabitants should forfeit a fifth of all their property, movable and immovable, to the crown, and that from the date of the sentence there should be no more courts of aldermen, freemen of guilds, nor judges of hospitals; he further subjected the municipality to the jurisdiction of the harbingers, the amount of these impositions to be levied by officers of the crown. This species of interdict lasted for two years.

This splendid period of the reign of Dom Emmanuel, which includes the years 1500 to 1517, the eighteen years during which the fortunate monarch was married to Doña Maria of Castile, the most brilliant in Portuguese history for the military glory and wealth and commerce enjoyed by Portugal, and in which science, letters, and art were so flourishing--was not equally happy as regards public health, the safety of the lives and property of the inhabitants of these kingdoms, and internal administration.

The plague, which had frequently visited Portugal since the fifteenth century, attacked and ravaged the capital many times, as well as other towns of this kingdom; then royalty and those able to follow their example might be seen flying from the infected places. Real preventive measures were never adopted until the reign of João III. Novenas, feast-days, processions of the relics of St. Roque, which Dom Emmanuel sent for from Venice, such were the chief means adopted by the king and people to combat the epidemic, not, however, forgetting the safest course of flight.[k]

Dom Emmanuel died December 12th, 1521, after one of the most glorious reigns on record. Of his public administration enough has been said; and of his private character what little we know is chiefly in his favour. He administered justice with impartiality; and had regulated hours when he received his subjects without distinction; nay, such was his anxiety to do them justice, that if at the expiration of the appointed period complaints remained unredressed, he would sacrifice the hours sacred to enjoyment or repose. The persecution of the unfortunate Jews is a deep stain on his memory; but in every respect he was a great monarch, and his fame filled the world as much as his enlightened policy enriched his kingdom. He despatched embassies to all the potentates of his time--to the king of England, and the ruler of Abyssinia; to the royal chief of Congo, and the sultan of Egypt; to the sultan of Persia, and the emperor of China. Some of them--that, for instance, in which he displayed before the astonished pope and cardinals a Persian panther and an Indian elephant, with their native attendants--were distinguished by magnificence suitable to the lord of so many regions.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[144] A bastard daughter of Ferdinand and her husband were about the same time placed in confinement.

[145] The fate of this prelate has excited little pity among the orthodox Portuguese, such as Lemos[b] because he favoured the anti-pope.

[146] [In the Moorish form Sebta-a, corruption of Septem, from the seven hills on which the town and fortress are built.]

[147] The memory of this English princess is held in high respect in Portugal: “Tantæ enim opinionis apud populum erat, quod solúm illud rectè factum videbatur, quod ipsa comprobâsset,” says Matthæus de Pisano.[c] From the bed of death, this queen, who had all the martial spirit of her high race, delivered each of her sons a sword, with a charge to wield the weapon in defence of widows, orphans, and the country, and especially against the misbelievers.

[148] Azurara,[d] though a Portuguese, shows some pity for the poor infidel wretches: he first curses Cain for setting the example of mortal enmity; and still more the “abominable Mohammed” for separating so many souls from the true faith, and by subjecting his followers both to temporal death by Christian swords, and to everlasting torments by the devils. When a Christian soldier dies, intimates the orthodox sage, he has the prospect of eternal bliss; but for the cursed Moors, what remains for them but brimstone and fire, with Dathan and Abiram?

[149] Duarte or Edward was named after Edward III of England.

[150] In Portuguese computation of the number of their enemies, the reader will do well to drop one cipher; hence he will have one thousand horse and eight thousand foot; as many no doubt as were present.

[151] Read thirteen thousand.

[152] The rule before recommended of subtracting a cipher will not do in this case. The aggregate of horse and infantry must be divided by about fifty to come near the truth.

[153] Even the mild Lemos[b] can curse this man: “Hum malvado monstro horror de sacerdocio, indigno da humanidade. Judas de seu Senhor, o inferne clerigo Martim Vieira.”

[154] This is no exaggerated description; it is taken from a contemporary chronicler.

[155] These miracles are alluded to by Ruy de Pina,[i] by Vasconcellos,[j] and are more boldly detailed by Lemos.[b] [He is called “the constant prince.”]

[156] By the Portuguese historians, the death of Leonora is suspected to have been violent, and the guilt is thrown on the constable of Castile, the famous Alvaro de Luna. But what interest could he have in her destruction? And when did he commit a useless crime?

[157] The address of this count to the king and council, as it appears in Ruy de Pina,[i] is a noble instance of magnanimity and courage. He appealed to his services--and they had been splendid--as a Portuguese noble; to his honour as a knight of England’s proud order--then at least a proud one--the Garter; to his unimpeachable integrity; and to his intimacy with Dom Pedro--that he knew and spoke the truth. Neither his zeal nor the challenge with which he concluded affected Alfonso.

[158] [João II said with justice that his father had left him “only the royal high roads of Portugal.”--STEPHENS.[l]]

[159] [It is curious that Alexander the Great almost never rewarded those who did not ask, but took joy in granting requests.]

[160] That of Christopher Columbus, whose proposals he himself was ready enough to receive, but was overruled by his council.

[161] [The Rum was a term applied by the Arabs to all subjects of the Roman Empire and continued to be the designation of the inhabitants of western Christendom after they had ceased to yield obedience to the “king of Rum,” the Byzantine emperor.]

[162] [The Portuguese have a saying: “De Castella nem bom vento nem bom casamento” (From Castile neither good wind nor good wedding).]

[163] [A Spaniard by birth, who entered the Portuguese service. His original name was Juan de Nova.]

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