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.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER 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.

[Illustration: A PORTUGUESE WOMAN OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

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]

[Illustration: HENRY THE NAVIGATOR

(From an old print)]

[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.

[Illustration: A PORTUGUESE NOBLEMAN OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

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.

[Illustration: A PORTUGUESE WOMAN OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

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.

[Illustration: A PORTUGUESE CAPTAIN OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY]

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.

[Illustration: A PORTUGUESE CAPTAIN OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]

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.