It seemed at first that Dom Emmanuel’s lucky star would not abandon him

in his relations with Castile. Indeed the kings of Portugal and Castile

were still at Valencia de Alcantara when they received the news of the

unfortunate death of the prince Don Juan, heir to the crown of Castile.

By this event Doña Isabella, queen of Portugal, wife of Dom Emmanuel,

became heir presumptive to the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Leon.

This fact, which plunged the kingdoms of Spain in consternation, filled

Dom Emmanuel with joy and promised to satisfy his ambitions more promptly

than could have been expected.

But his wife was advanced in pregnancy. In spite of her state, she

resolved to continue her journey and go to Saragossa to be sworn heir to

the throne of Aragon. Here she was seized with the pains of child-birth,

and on the 24th of August, 1498, brought forth the infante Dom Miguel,

in that city, his birth costing his mother her life. And Miguel died two

years later.

Thus the dream of Dom Emmanuel vanished like smoke. The famous expulsion

of the Jews and New Christians, an iniquitous measure, unwise and

unpolitic, price of the marriage with Doña Isabella, was not a happy

augury. Once more the attempt at an Iberian union under the sceptre of a

Portuguese king by matrimonial means had failed.

Dom Emmanuel did not completely lose hope in his relations with

Castile[162] by the death of his wife and son. The Catholic sovereigns

also seemed determined on an alliance with Portugal. Without loss of

time, in the same year, 1500, Dom Emmanuel sent Ruy de Saude, of his

council, as ambassador to the sovereigns of Castile with full powers to

request the hand of the infanta Doña Maria, the daughter of Ferdinand and

Isabella, and consequently sister-in-law of the king of Portugal. The

heirs to the crown of Castile were Doña Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and

Isabella, and her husband, son of the emperor Maximilian and the empress

Mary of Burgundy. The princess of Castile had already a son at that time,

Charles, who was born at Ghent in Belgium on the 24th of February, 1500,

and was afterwards Charles I of Spain and V of Germany. Queen Isabella

died on the 25th of November, 1504, and King Ferdinand on the 23rd of

January, 1516. The throne of Castile was lost to Dom Emmanuel. The crown

of Spain was about to pass to the house of Austria. The wedding to Maria

nevertheless took place at Alcacer-do-Sal on the 30th of October, 1500.

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

In the same year, 1500, Gaspar Cortereal went to North America and

discovered the land of Labrador, which was then called Cortereal, getting

beyond 50° north latitude. He returned to Portugal, and repeated his

voyage in 1501, but was never heard of again. His brother, Miguel, went

in search of him, but he also disappeared. Other lands and islands were

discovered in the time of Queen Maria. In 1501, João da Nova,[163] on

his voyage to India, discovered the Ascension Island in the Atlantic,

and the island which bears his name on the coast of Africa. On his

return journey in 1502 he discovered the island of St. Helena in the

Atlantic. The Florentine Amerigo Vespucci made voyages to America by

order of Dom Emmanuel in 1501 and 1503, discovering Rio de la Plata and

Patagonia. This navigator had the glory of giving his name to the group

of lands discovered by Columbus, Cabral, etc. In 1506 were successively

discovered: by Tristan da Cunha, the islands of that name in the

Atlantic; by Ruy Pereira Coutinho and Fernão Soares, the western and

eastern coasts of the island of Madagascar; in 1507, the Maldive Islands

by Dom Lourenço de Almeida; in 1509, by Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, Malacca

(Malay Peninsula) and Sumatra; in 1512, by Francisco Serrão, the Molucca

Islands in the Chinese seas; in 1513, by Pedro Mascarenhas, the island

to which he gave his name and which is at present called Réunion, in the

Indian Ocean; in 1516, Duarte Coelho discovered Cochin-China; in 1517,

Fernão Peres de Andrade went to China.[k]

THE GREAT VOYAGE OF MAGELLAN

The celebrated line of demarcation between the right of discovery and

conquest was not so clearly understood as to avoid disputes between Dom

Emmanuel and his brother sovereign of Castile. His splendid empire in the

East had long attracted the jealousy of Ferdinand, who had frequently

attempted, but as frequently been deterred by his remonstrances, to share

in the rich commercial advantages thus offered to the sister kingdom.

After the death of that prince, a disaffected Portuguese who had served

Emmanuel with distinction both in Ethiopia and India, and who was

disgusted with the refusal of his sovereign to reward his services with

becoming liberality, fled into Castile, and told the new king, Charles V

of Austria, that the Molucca Islands, in virtue of that line, rightfully

belonged to Spain. This man was Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães),

whose name is immortalised in the annals of maritime discovery. He

proposed a shorter route to the Moluccas than the passage by the Cape of

Good Hope--the route by Brazil: he well knew that the American continent

must terminate somewhere, and his notion of the earth’s rotundity was

sufficiently just to convince him that a western voyage would bring

him to the same point as the one discovered by Dias and Vasco da Gama.

In August, 1519, he embarked at Seville, with five vessels, over the

crews of which he was invested with the power of life and death. On

reaching the Brazilian coast, he cautiously proceeded southwards, and in

September, 1520, arriving at a cape which he called after the Eleven

Thousand Virgins, he passed into the dreaded straits which bear his name.

After a passage of fifteen hundred leagues, unexampled for its boldness,

he reached the Philippine Islands. Here closed his extraordinary career

in 1521. Though the object of the expedition failed, through the

catastrophe of its leader, he will be considered by posterity as by far

the most undaunted, and in many respects the most extraordinary man that

ever traversed an unknown sea.[e]

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

In the midst of this splendid series of voyages and discoveries, and of

brilliant victories and conquests of the Portuguese in Asia, a fatal

incident afflicted Lisbon, in the year 1506. The deplorable catastrophe

which plunged the capital in mourning sprang from religious intolerance,

of which Dom Emmanuel had given such a fatal example on the occasion

of his first marriage. On Low Sunday, the 19th of April, 1506, in the

church of St. Dominic in Lisbon, where a vast concourse of people were

assembled, the rays of the sun striking upon the splendour of a crucifix

produced such a brilliant effect that certain visionaries, religious,

or fanatics, took it for a miracle. The cry of “a miracle” already flew

from mouth to mouth, when a bystander, more intelligent but with little

prudence for his speech, suggested that this effect was due to the

reflection of the sun and could only be called a natural phenomenon. This

sufficed to cause him to be looked upon as a disguised Jew; a tumult

arose, and such was the frenzy of the populace that a horrible massacre

upon the so-called New Christians followed.

The massacre lasted for three days. More than a thousand persons

perished. Dom Emmanuel was at Aviz at the time. As soon as he heard

of what had occurred in the capital, he sent Dom Diogo Lobo, baron de

Alvito, and the prior of Crato with full powers to punish the guilty.

He ordered that besides the special punishment of the guilty all the

inhabitants should forfeit a fifth of all their property, movable and

immovable, to the crown, and that from the date of the sentence there

should be no more courts of aldermen, freemen of guilds, nor judges of

hospitals; he further subjected the municipality to the jurisdiction of

the harbingers, the amount of these impositions to be levied by officers

of the crown. This species of interdict lasted for two years.

This splendid period of the reign of Dom Emmanuel, which includes the

years 1500 to 1517, the eighteen years during which the fortunate monarch

was married to Doña Maria of Castile, the most brilliant in Portuguese

history for the military glory and wealth and commerce enjoyed by

Portugal, and in which science, letters, and art were so flourishing--was

not equally happy as regards public health, the safety of the lives

and property of the inhabitants of these kingdoms, and internal

administration.

The plague, which had frequently visited Portugal since the fifteenth

century, attacked and ravaged the capital many times, as well as other

towns of this kingdom; then royalty and those able to follow their

example might be seen flying from the infected places. Real preventive

measures were never adopted until the reign of João III. Novenas,

feast-days, processions of the relics of St. Roque, which Dom Emmanuel

sent for from Venice, such were the chief means adopted by the king and

people to combat the epidemic, not, however, forgetting the safest course

of flight.[k]

Dom Emmanuel died December 12th, 1521, after one of the most glorious

reigns on record. Of his public administration enough has been said; and

of his private character what little we know is chiefly in his favour.

He administered justice with impartiality; and had regulated hours when

he received his subjects without distinction; nay, such was his anxiety

to do them justice, that if at the expiration of the appointed period

complaints remained unredressed, he would sacrifice the hours sacred to

enjoyment or repose. The persecution of the unfortunate Jews is a deep

stain on his memory; but in every respect he was a great monarch, and

his fame filled the world as much as his enlightened policy enriched

his kingdom. He despatched embassies to all the potentates of his

time--to the king of England, and the ruler of Abyssinia; to the royal

chief of Congo, and the sultan of Egypt; to the sultan of Persia, and

the emperor of China. Some of them--that, for instance, in which he

displayed before the astonished pope and cardinals a Persian panther and

an Indian elephant, with their native attendants--were distinguished by

magnificence suitable to the lord of so many regions.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[144] A bastard daughter of Ferdinand and her husband were about the same

time placed in confinement.

[145] The fate of this prelate has excited little pity among the orthodox

Portuguese, such as Lemos[b] because he favoured the anti-pope.

[146] [In the Moorish form _Sebta-a_, corruption of _Septem_, from the

seven hills on which the town and fortress are built.]

[147] The memory of this English princess is held in high respect in

Portugal: “_Tantæ enim opinionis apud populum erat, quod solúm illud

rectè factum videbatur, quod ipsa comprobâsset_,” says Matthæus de

Pisano.[c] From the bed of death, this queen, who had all the martial

spirit of her high race, delivered each of her sons a sword, with a

charge to wield the weapon in defence of widows, orphans, and the

country, and especially against the misbelievers.

[148] Azurara,[d] though a Portuguese, shows some pity for the poor

infidel wretches: he first curses Cain for setting the example of mortal

enmity; and still more the “abominable Mohammed” for separating so many

souls from the true faith, and by subjecting his followers both to

temporal death by Christian swords, and to everlasting torments by the

devils. When a Christian soldier dies, intimates the orthodox sage, he

has the prospect of eternal bliss; but for the cursed Moors, what remains

for them but brimstone and fire, with Dathan and Abiram?

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

[150] In Portuguese computation of the number of their enemies, the

reader will do well to drop one cipher; hence he will have one thousand

horse and eight thousand foot; as many no doubt as were present.

[151] Read thirteen thousand.

[152] The rule before recommended of subtracting a cipher will not do in

this case. The aggregate of horse and infantry must be divided by about

fifty to come near the truth.

[153] Even the mild Lemos[b] can curse this man: “_Hum malvado monstro

horror de sacerdocio, indigno da humanidade. Judas de seu Senhor, o

inferne clerigo Martim Vieira_.”

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

chronicler.

[155] These miracles are alluded to by Ruy de Pina,[i] by

Vasconcellos,[j] and are more boldly detailed by Lemos.[b] [He is called

“the constant prince.”]

[156] By the Portuguese historians, the death of Leonora is suspected to

have been violent, and the guilt is thrown on the constable of Castile,

the famous Alvaro de Luna. But what interest could he have in her

destruction? And when did he commit a useless crime?

[157] The address of this count to the king and council, as it appears

in Ruy de Pina,[i] is a noble instance of magnanimity and courage. He

appealed to his services--and they had been splendid--as a Portuguese

noble; to his honour as a knight of England’s proud order--then at least

a proud one--the Garter; to his unimpeachable integrity; and to his

intimacy with Dom Pedro--that he knew and spoke the truth. Neither his

zeal nor the challenge with which he concluded affected Alfonso.

[158] [João II said with justice that his father had left him “only the

royal high roads of Portugal.”--STEPHENS.[l]]

[159] [It is curious that Alexander the Great almost never rewarded those

who did not ask, but took joy in granting requests.]

[160] That of Christopher Columbus, whose proposals he himself was ready

enough to receive, but was overruled by his council.

[161] [The _Rum_ was a term applied by the Arabs to all subjects of the

Roman Empire and continued to be the designation of the inhabitants of

western Christendom after they had ceased to yield obedience to the “king

of Rum,” the Byzantine emperor.]

[162] [The Portuguese have a saying: “_De Castella nem bom vento nem bom

casamento_” (From Castile neither good wind nor good wedding).]

[163] [A Spaniard by birth, who entered the Portuguese service. His

original name was Juan de Nova.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER III. THE FALL, THE CAPTIVITY, AND THE REVOLUTION

[Sidenote: [1521-1640 A.D.]]

Upon the death of Dom Emmanuel in December, 1521, he was succeeded by Dom

João, his eldest son, who had not yet completed his twentieth year. The

chroniclers who wrote under the influence of the immediate successors of

this prince, having the fear of censure before their eyes, represented

him as endowed with high intelligence and qualities worthy of a king.

[Sidenote: [1521-1540 A.D.]]

During his father’s life many considered him an idiot. Dom Emmanuel

himself feared the influence which unworthy men exerted over João during

his early youth. It is certain that through inattention or incapacity he

could never master the rudiments of science, nor even those of the Latin

tongue. Throughout his reign monkish questions always appeared among the

gravest business of the state, and his first action, when he had scarcely

emerged from infancy, was to build a Dominican convent. This may be

regarded as the worthy presage of an inquisition king. Whether from want

of natural intelligence, ignorance, or errors of education, João III was

a fanatic. The intolerance of his reign, though furthered by different

incentives, was chiefly due to his character and inclinations.

The secretary of Dom Emmanuel, Antonio Carneiro, who deserved his

confidence for many years and continued to serve the new king, when

fatigue forced him to withdraw from a charge which he still held

nominally for many years, left as his successor his second son Pedro de

Alçaçova. This man, whom we find years later managing the most various

affairs at the same time, and whose activity appears almost incredible,

by the side of a prince whose lack of culture his very panegyrists cannot

bide, must have been practically king in resolving the most difficult

questions, as was the marquis of Pombal at a later epoch. Pedro de

Alçaçova made no parade of his influence, hiding in the shadow of the

throne, and leaving the frequently sterile brilliance of importance and

favouritism to a vain nobility. But every dark stain that rests upon the

reign of João III may be attributed to him, except the establishment of

the horrible tribunal of the faith. In this particular, although the

actual deed was his, the impulse came from the monarch. The resistance

of the New Christians was long and persistent. A steadfast will made up

of a million hatreds struggled against this resistance for more than

twenty years and overcame it. In the end the rack, whip, and stake

reigned supreme in the region of religious belief, prevailing over the

evangelical doctrine of tolerance and liberty.

The failure of the attempt to establish the Inquisition in Portugal in

1515, from whatever cause arising, and the predominance obtained by the

policy of tolerance, must have increased the spite of the irreconcilable

enemies of the Jews. The hatred of João III for the Jews was profound

and well known. This sufficed to excite in the minds of the people the

ancient spirit of persecution and assassination. Ignorance and monkish

tendencies, unassisted by envy or the memory of former wrongs, made the

king naturally a fanatic, though fanaticism did not prevent him from

abandoning himself to debauchery with women.

His marriage was treated of and Doña Catherine, sister of Charles V

who then reigned in Castile, was chosen for his bride. The marriage

took place, and an attempt was made to tighten the bond between the two

countries by negotiating the marriage of Charles V with the infanta

Donna Isabella, sister of the king of Portugal. The final conditions

were adjusted and it was agreed that the dowry of the Portuguese infanta

should be 90,000 doubloons, or more than 800,000 cruzados. Resources were

wanting and it was necessary to obtain them. Perhaps this circumstance

and several others caused the convocation of the cortes in 1525. Since

the fifteenth century the Portuguese parliaments had lost their true

value; they were more a matter of pomp and formality than of substance.

The essential point, which was to raise money, was effected, for the

cortes voted the impositions of new taxes to the amount of 150,000

cruzados to be raised in two years. This was the most urgent business.

The representations of the councils were generally answered in fair

words, which were only partially carried out long after the cortes of

1535, when the same representations were for the most part renewed. It

was in this assembly that the general ill will towards the New Christians

was at last able to manifest itself in a solemnly significant manner,

but within strictly legal limits.[b] In 1536 the Inquisition was finally

established. Its methods and its effects will be sufficiently shown

in the appendix to this volume. It destroyed life, liberty, humanity,

commerce, literature, and art in Portugal as elsewhere. When the Jesuits

were admitted in 1540 and given charge of education, the church and the

state were one, and the result was as usual a shameful combination of

atrocity and paralysis.[a]

THE PORTUGUESE IN AFRICA, INDIA, AND BRAZIL

[Sidenote: [1523-1535 A.D.]]

The long reign of João exhibits interminable contests in India and

Africa. Their details would be perused with little interest by an English

reader. They can be noticed in so far only as they affect the general

state of the monarchy. During these transactions in the East, Morocco

continued to be the sanguinary theatre of the worst human passions. On

the one hand the Portuguese were eager to extend their possessions; on

the other, the _sherifs_, exulting in their successful ambition, were

not less so to free the country from so troublesome an enemy. From the

accession of the new dynasty, the affairs of the Portuguese began to

decline. Indicative of the ambitious schemes which they had formed,

the sherifs assumed the title of emperors of Africa: the elder, Hamed,

remaining at Morocco; the younger, Muhammed, occupying the more western

provinces.

To the king of Fez this assumption was not less odious than it was

to the Portuguese themselves. That on one occasion the sherif, with

four thousand horse, was signally defeated by a Portuguese noble

with one hundred and forty, is gravely asserted; victories equally

improbable, we may add equally impossible, occur at every step in the

Portuguese relations concerning the wars of their countrymen with the

misbelievers. But what, we are told, could not be effected by valour

was done by fortune. Considering the war which he had to support in

India, and his want of troops, João took the extraordinary resolution of

dismantling four of his African fortresses, Arzilla, Saphin, Asemmur,

Alcacer-Seguier, and of abandoning the ruins to the enemy. This

resolution was carried into effect; but that this was owing as much to

the arms of the sherif as to the motives will be admitted by every reader

except a Portuguese.[c]

The oriental empire of Portugal, however, continued to increase by

the wars which the able statesmen and warriors, whom João sent out

as viceroys and governors, waged, upon the most frivolous pretexts,

against the different neighbouring princes. They took advantage of the

dissensions of the princes of the Moluccas, to obtain the complete

sovereignty of those valuable islands. The disorders provoked by the

tyranny and consequent assassination of the sultans of Cambay enabled

them to wrest from those monarchs the important fortress and city of

Diu; and similar convulsions in the Deccan gave them opportunities of

considerably extending the Portuguese dominions in that wealthy country.

It is to be observed, however, that the sovereigns, thus lawlessly

despoiled, were themselves equally lawless conquerors. They were the

chiefs of the Mohammedan hordes, who had overrun India, overthrown the

native princes, and oppressed the Hindus. The enslaved natives probably

cared little for the expulsion of one foreign master by another, if

they had not cause to rejoice at exchanging the wantonly cruel tyranny

of oriental despots for the more orderly extortion and oppression of a

civilised people.

The increase of the power of the Portuguese now alarmed all the

Mohammedan potentates, and they applied to Constantinople for assistance

to expel the Christian intruders. Again the request was enforced by a

Christian power, Venice, whose jealousy of the Portuguese rivals of her

own commercial greatness extinguished all nobler feeling, all religious

sympathy. Suleiman, thus doubly urged, equipped a powerful armament in

the Red Sea, which, proceeding to the Indian Ocean, joined the Cambayan

forces in besieging Diu. The defence, first by Antonio de Silveira,

and afterwards by João de Mascarenhas, of this place, or rather of the

fortress, for the town and rest of the island were quickly abandoned as

untenable, ranks amongst the most celebrated feats of the Portuguese in

India. They repulsed incessant assaults, the women labouring day and

night at the fortifications, and venturing into the posts of greatest

danger, to carry every needful assistance to the combatants, who, from

their scanty numbers, could hardly ever quit the walls. During both

sieges, the place was reduced to the utmost extremity; and upon both

occasions was relieved by the seasonable appearance of the viceroy with a

powerful fleet.

Of the viceroys and governors who effected these acquisitions scarcely

one was duly recompensed. Many died in poverty, and Nuño da Cunha, who

gained Diu for King João, was only saved by death from being dragged

in chains to the foot of his ungrateful master’s throne. During João’s

reign, the celebrated apostle of India, St. Francis Xavier, visited that

country to attempt the conversion of the idolatrous natives: and the

Portuguese obtained an establishment in China, and a free trade with

Japan.

[Sidenote: [1531-1562 A.D.]]

Brazil first acquired importance under João III. In 1531 he began the

colonisation of that immense empire, then little more than a long line

of seacoast. This he divided into several captaincies, which he granted,

with large powers of jurisdiction, civil and criminal, to such persons

as, upon those conditions, were willing to settle there, and to people

and cultivate their respective grants. The French made various attempts

to form rival settlements in Brazil, especially about Rio de Janeiro.

They never obtained more than temporary possession of any part of the

country.[d]

The greatest credit that can be given to João III is that he kept his

country out of all European complications, a task made comparatively easy

by his close alliance with the greatest monarch in Europe, Charles V.

This alliance was sealed by three marriages: for King João was married

to the infanta Catherine, the sister of Charles V; his only son, Dom

João, was married to the infanta Juana, daughter of Charles V; and his

only daughter, Donna Maria, was the first wife of Philip, prince of the

Asturias, the eldest son of Charles V, and afterwards King Philip II.[e]

João died in 1557. By his queen, Catherine, he had several male children,

of whom none emerged from their infancy except João. Nor did that infante

survive the father. In 1553 he received the hand of Juana, daughter of

the emperor; but he died in the third month of his marriage, leaving the

princess pregnant of a son, afterwards the unfortunate Dom Sebastian.

Of João’s brothers one only, the cardinal Henry, whom he had vainly

endeavoured to place in the chair of St. Peter, survived him. As his

sister Isabella was the mother of the Spanish monarch, the connection

between the royal families of the two kingdoms was, as we shall soon see,

fatal to the independence of Portugal. As Sebastian, on the death of his

grandfather, was only three years of age, the regency, in conformity with

the will of the late king, was vested in the widowed queen, Catherine of

Austria. In a few years, however, being disgusted with the intrigues of

Cardinal Henry, who aspired to the direction of affairs, she resigned it

in his favour.[c]

Before going on with the chronicle, it will be well to read a Portuguese

historian’s picture of the decline of this period.[a]

ENNES’ ACCOUNT OF THE DECADENCE OF PORTUGAL

[Sidenote: [1521-1557 A.D.]]

We are about to enter upon the saddest and most unfortunate period in the

history of Portugal. The brilliant epic which the bright sword of Alfonso

Henriques began with the battle of Ourique, stops at the exact epoch at

which an immortal bard appears. The _Lusiadas_, that Homeric apotheosis

of a great, heroic people, arises almost at the hour of their fatal fall.

But a few years and the epic is transformed into an elegy, the apotheosis

into a funeral panegyric. But a few years and Camoens drags from his

Olympic strophes these four lines:

“_Fazei, senhor, que nunca os admirados_

_Allemaes, Gallos, Italos e Inglezes_

_Possam dirzer, que sao para mandados_

_Mais que para mandar, aos Portuguezes._”

--in vain, when the descendants of the old heroes were cowardly and

infamously about to sell their humiliated country, poor and agonised, to

the sinister son of Charles V, the emperor of legends.

These years of servitude and captivity spread like an immense oil stain

over the brilliant history of Portugal, and the sun which sank in clouds

of blood at Kassr-el-Kebir plunged the country into an obscure and long

night until it rose radiantly once more on the field of Montijo. It falls

to our lot to relate the history of this painful period of darkness and

tears, barely illuminated in the beginning by the last rays of light

thrown out by the conquests of the old East. The warlike genius which

gave to Portugal the most glorious pages in modern epopee, the spirit

of adventure, chivalrous and combatant, which carried its name to every

corner of the world, and gave it a place of honour in the vanguard of

the nations of Europe, was the same that apparently lowered the national

colours before the victorious crescent on the sands of Africa, was the

same that strangled national independence with the bonds of captivity,

and delivered it inert and defenceless into the hands of the devil of the

south, the lugubrious Philip II.

Portugal, having reached the apogee of her glory, became giddy and fell

into the abyss of slavery. In the supreme hour of her agony, the red hat

of a cardinal appeared at the bedside of the dying kingdom. Portugal’s

grave-digger, the cardinal Dom Henry, was a sinister figure. But who

killed her, who struck her the fatal blow? It was not the perverse

imbecilities of the cowardly Jesuit; it was not the dangerous errors of

the youthful knight-king. The assassin of Portugal was that fanatic and

imbecile monarch who opened his foolish arms to the Society of Jesus,

who planted deep in the kingdom that deadly tree known as absolutism,

under whose protecting shadow was planted, thrived, and flowered that

colossal infamy--the Inquisition. And who has to answer before the same

tribunal of history for the lost liberty, the outraged honour, the

valour spurned, the ruined wealth of that nation which gave to the world

the most magnificent spectacle of modern times, a diminutive country

throwing over the two hemispheres her power, her influence, her name?

It is not the ambitious and imbecile old man chronicled under the hated

name of cardinal-king; not the heroic child, the beardless youth who,

enamoured of glory, died in pursuit of it, like a daring paladin on the

sands of Kassr-el-Kebir; not the cold inert corpse to whom, with pungent

irony, tradition has given the nickname of _Piedoso_, and who is known

in history as João III. In history’s terrible logic Philip II was fatal

heir to João III. It was the unhappy reign of this inept monarch which

prepared the way to Portugal’s ruin.

His internal policy completely transformed the government into a fierce

unchecked absolutism; his external policy of pure neutrality, at a time

of grave disputes between all the European nations, alienated from him

the sympathies of all the states of Europe; and later, when Philip II

wiped from the map this diminutive nationality which, hidden in a corner

of the west, had spread its fame and name throughout the world, Europe

paid back to Portugal the debt of haughty indifference she had incurred

under the pious king. When the Spaniards made their threatening invasion

into Portugal, instead of finding an energetic and valiant nation

defending its life and its liberty, they found a weak and inert people,

humbled beneath the yoke of fierce absolutism, fanaticism enveloping the

souls of all, demoralisation rampant in the army, luxury enervating the

higher social classes, hunger and misery devastating the people; a nation

of lions transformed into a flock of sheep by immorality, by despotism,

by misery--a flock of sheep guided by an imbecile and disastrous

shepherd, the unlucky cardinal, Dom Henry.

Dom Henry and Dom Sebastian could barely reap the deadly fruits of the

venomous seeds sown by João III. It would seem that in such critical

moments providence chooses incapable, weak, and blundering kings, who

instead of delaying for a time the inevitable fall, seem rather unhappily

to hasten it.

And thus at the close of the sad reign of João III, on seeing the crown

placed on the head of an infant of three years, obstinately disputed by

two great ambitions, that of the queen Catherine the grandmother, and

that of Cardinal Henry the uncle, on seeing the indifference of Europe,

on seeing Spain’s vast power in Portuguese policy, one does not need to

be a prophet to foretell in the near future the sad development which

fanaticism, tyranny, and the stupidity of the unworthy son of the great

Dom Emmanuel had prepared for the splendid epic commenced at the battle

of Ourique; to foretell the tremendous downfall of the colossus known as

Portugal. Before entering the most lamentable reign of Dom Sebastian, let

us cast a glance over the state of Portugal during the last years of Dom

João’s life, and consider what manner of kingdom and people the desired

king received in heritage, upon taking his first childish steps in a

world to which he was to leave so sad a tradition.

The reign of Dom João III is an original mixture of splendours and

threats, of wealth and misery. It presents brilliant lights and

implacable shadows, but unhappily the lights were the last reflections

of Portuguese glory soon to be extinguished, the shadows the unfortunate

heralds of the immense night into which Portugal was to be plunged.

Portugal at this epoch had reached the apogee of her prosperity. The

Portuguese flag fluttered over the most remote countries of the wealthy

East. Her commerce sucked fabulous wealth from the abundant breasts of

old Asia. India resigned herself to the conquest; Brazil was beginning

to be peopled; China and Japan discovered, Oceania subjected, Abyssinia

explored, were rich harvests of glory and gold, of heroic deeds and vast

fortunes for Portugal. But this gold scarcely circulated in the country;

instead of benefiting the latter, it went to enrich England, to give

power to Italy and Flanders, stupidly to fill the ever insatiable coffers

of the Vatican. This glory instead of acting as a stimulus was suffocated

by the tyrannies of absolutism, was crushed by the stupid fanaticism

of the Jesuits, who paraded, triumphant and strong, under the sinister

protection of the Inquisition. The period of Dom João III marks out

distinctly and perfectly in history the transition from the pinnacles of

triumphant power to the dark abysses of slavery, from a glorious life to

a humiliating death.

The conquests and prosperity in the East were the outcome of the former

impulses; what the country owed to the pious king was the demoralisation

of the army and people, the glorification of tyrants, the relaxation of

judicial authority crushed by the Inquisition, the gilded poverty of

the people, the enervation of the aristocracy, the loss of commerce by

the flight of foreigners residing in Lisbon harassed at every step by

the infamous cruelties of the Inquisition, and the stupid despotism of

individual power. All the glory of his reign is due to his predecessors;

the shame, opprobrium, immorality, and misery are due to him, and

unhappily were left as an inheritance to his successors and to the

country.[f]

THE REGENCIES AND THE REIGN OF SEBASTIAN (1557-1578 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1557-1574 A.D.]]

João III, dying, had committed the government of his kingdom, and the

care of his grandson, then only three years old, to his widow, Queen

Catherine. She governed ably; and by her active exertions sent such

effective succours to Mazagan, which was almost the only remaining

Portuguese fortress in northern Africa, and then reduced to extremity

by a Moorish army of eighty thousand men, that the Mohammedans were

compelled to raise the siege. But the Portuguese detested queen-dowagers,

especially when Spanish; and Queen Catherine in 1562 found it expedient

to resign the regency to her brother-in-law, Cardinal Henry, for

whom João had unsuccessfully endeavoured to obtain the papal tiara.

The cardinal was a good man, but unfitted, by the habits of his past

life, for government. Under his feeble administration, the authority

of Portugal over her distant colonies was weakened, and the inferior

governors struggled against the control of the viceroys; whilst, by

committing the education of the infant king wholly to Jesuits, he

prepared the way for the heavier calamities that followed.

Sebastian is represented as naturally endowed with many great and good

qualities, especially an eager desire for knowledge. But the Jesuits

seem to have studied only to guard their royal pupil from a tendency to

vice. But scarcely any vice, however injurious to his own individual

character and happiness, could have brought such wide-spreading misery,

such utter destruction upon his kingdom, as did the extravagance into

which Sebastian was hurried by mistaken virtues.[164] He grew up with the

idea that hatred of the infidels was Christianity, and courage the first

virtue of a king. He proved the ruin of Portugal.

He was very desirous of going out to India, to remedy, by his personal

intervention, the disorders which had greatly increased during his

minority, and to relieve Goa and Chaul, besieged, in consequence of

the weakness those disorders had produced, by the whole force of the

Mohammedans, in that part of the world. His ministers remonstrated.

Sebastian listened to their representations, and resigned his purpose. It

might have been happier for Portugal had he been suffered to execute it.

Be that as it may, effective measures were taken. The enemy was repulsed

from Chaul and Goa, and the Indian empire of Portugal was tranquillised.

In the year 1571, Philip II invited his nephew to take a part in the

great armament against the Turks under Don John of Austria, which

Sebastian declined doing, upon the plea of his dominions being desolated

by the plague. Sebastian’s first visit to Africa more resembles some of

the expeditions of the knights errant of romance, than anything in real

sober history. He is said to have left Lisbon on a hunting excursion, in

the course of which he crossed the sea, to pursue his sport in another

quarter of the globe. Upon landing in Africa, he sent home for a small

body of troops, and when they joined him, gave over hunting for the still

more exciting amusement of making hostile inroads upon the neighbouring

Moors. In these, he of course could do no more than take some booty and

prisoners; and when he had roused the Mohammedans to assemble their

forces, he was compelled, by the consciousness of inferior strength,

to re-embark for Portugal. From this moment he thought of nothing but

recovering the African possessions which his grandfather had lost

or abandoned, and his court became a scene of contest and cabal--his

grandmother, and Cardinal Henry, and all his sagest counsellors

remonstrating vehemently against what they justly deemed the visionary

projects of extravagant ambition; whilst flattering courtiers, heedless

young men, and fanatical ecclesiastics eagerly encouraged his views.

[Sidenote: [1574-1578 A.D.]]

In the midst of these contests, a revolution in Africa seemed to offer

an opportunity too favourable to be neglected. In the empire of Morocco,

upon the death of the emperor Abdallah, his son Mulei Ahmed usurped

the government. He ruled tyrannically, and his uncle Mulei Moloch [or

Maula Abd-el-Melik], the legitimate sovereign, easily formed a strong

party against him, with which, after a severe struggle, he succeeded

in overthrowing the usurper and establishing himself in his place.

Mulei Ahmed sought foreign assistance. Philip II declined interfering,

when Mulei Ahmed addressed himself to Sebastian, adding to his offer

of tribute that of the restitution of Arzilla. Philip is said to have

laboured to deter his nephew from embarking in an enterprise altogether

beyond his means. Most historians, with the exception of the Spanish,

accused Philip of having employed underhand methods of instigating the

young king to persevere in the determination he affected to dissuade.

Especially he is charged with inducing the pope to applaud and encourage

Sebastian in his purpose.[165] Certain it is that the king of Portugal’s

resolution to accept Mulei Ahmed’s offers was not to be shaken. The old

queen died of the anxiety occasioned by her grandson’s rashness and

obstinacy; Cardinal Henry marked his disapprobation by refusing to act

as regent during the king’s absence: and Sebastian appointed in his

stead the archbishop of Lisbon and two noblemen, one of whom was João de

Mascarenhas, an ex-viceroy of India, and as distinguished a warrior as

any of those who had conquered and secured the Portuguese empire in the

East.

THE DÉBACLE AT KASSR-EL-KEBIR (1578 A.D.)

The army with which, in June, 1578, Sebastian sailed for Africa, to

overthrow the powerful sovereign of Morocco, consisted of less than

sixteen thousand men. But he was accompanied by almost all the young

nobility of Portugal, and he relied upon the assurances of Mulei Ahmed

that great numbers of his former subjects would immediately declare in

his favour. A few volunteer adventurers, from different countries, joined

the standard of the chivalrous young king [including Sir Thomas Stukeley,

an English Catholic].

Mulei Moloch assembled an army of one hundred thousand men, and at their

head, although so reduced by illness that he was obliged to be carried in

a litter, he advanced to meet the invader. Some of these troops having

been formerly partisans of his nephew, Mulei Moloch, distrustful of their

attachment, issued a proclamation, that whosoever pleased was at liberty

to pass over to his competitor. This magnanimity secured his triumph

over any who might have previously hesitated between their old and new

sovereigns, and very few indeed of the dispossessed usurper’s former

adherents took advantage of the liberty offered them.

Sebastian’s camp was now distracted by contending opinions. Mulei Ahmed,

who was disappointed in his expectation of deserters from his uncle’s

army, and now relied upon the impending fatal issue of that uncle’s

malady for making him master, without a blow, of empire and army, and

perhaps of his Christian allies, urged Sebastian to fortify himself in a

strong position on the seacoast; but Sebastian, rejecting all rational

counsel, led his small army forward, into the open country, to encounter

the overwhelming superiority of numbers there awaiting him.

On the 4th of August, 1578, the armies met near Kassr-el-Kebir

(Alcazar-Quivir). Mulei Moloch was conscious that his death could not be

long deferred, and fearful that, upon its occurrence, his nephew might

gain some advantage over his brother and lawful successor, Ahmed ben

Muhammed, he sought an opportunity of engaging the invaders, and by their

defeat insuring the peaceful succession of Ahmed ben Muhammed. He caused

himself to be carried through the ranks in his litter, that he might

personally exhort his troops.

[Illustration: PORTUGUESE COSTUME OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]

Sebastian likewise displayed a degree of military skill not to have been

anticipated from the rashness of his previous movements; and, at first,

victory seemed to incline towards him. One division of the Moorish army

was routed, when Mulei Moloch, forgetting his malady in indignation,

insisted upon being placed on horseback; and in person rallying the

fugitives, attempted to lead them back to the attack. The effort was

too much for his strength; he fainted, and was replaced in his litter,

where he only recovered sufficiently to charge his attendants to conceal

his death, lest it should discourage his troops, and expired, with his

finger on his lips, to enforce these last commands. They were obeyed.

His attendants affected to open and reclose the curtains of the litter,

as if making reports, and receiving orders; and the troops, encouraged

by his last exertion, and believing themselves still under his eye,

fought with irresistible valour. The Portuguese, notwithstanding their

dauntless intrepidity and discipline, notwithstanding the invincible

heroism of their king, who, flying from place to place, was seen wherever

the danger was most imminent, were completely defeated. More than nine

thousand of the army fell, and the rest were made prisoners, with the

exception of about fifty, who escaped by flight. The young nobility,

fighting desperately, were almost all slain; many a noble family was

there extinct, and all were plunged in mourning. Mulei Ahmed was drowned

in endeavouring to fly; and Ahmed ben Muhammed obtained uncontested

possession of his inheritance.

Some portion of obscurity hangs over the fate of the adventurous

Sebastian himself. But little real doubt can exist of his having fallen

upon the fatal field of Kassr-el-Kebir. He had several horses killed

under him, and was seen fighting, long after the general rout, with only

three companions, against a host of enemies. The sole survivor of this

devoted little band, Nuño de Mascarenhas, stated that, after the fate of

two of their company, the king was disarmed and taken prisoner; when,

his captors quarrelling about their prize, one of the Moors terminated

the dispute by cutting Sebastian down, and he was forthwith despatched.

Ahmed ben Muhammed, hearing this, sent one of Sebastian’s servants to

the spot indicated, who pointed out and brought away a corpse, which was

recognised as the king’s by the other attendants upon the royal person.

The emperor of Morocco afterwards delivered it up to his ally the king of

Spain, together with some noble prisoners, including two sons of the duke

of Braganza. Philip generously sent home the released captives, as well

as the remains of Sebastian, which were interred in the royal sepulchre

of Belem.[d]

The 4th of August will ever be the most memorable of days in the annals

of Portugal. Never was victory more signal than that of Kassr-el-Kebir.

Of the Portuguese force which had left Lisbon, fifty individuals only

returned; the rest were dead or in captivity, and with them the chivalry

of the kingdom. Eighty of the nobles, through the good offices of Philip,

were subsequently ransomed for 400,000 cruzados. The uncertainty which

hung over Sebastian’s disappearance was converted into a doubt of the

catastrophe; and this doubt was still further improved into a report that

he was still alive. Several nobles, and among them the prior of Crato,

always affected to believe that he had survived the dreadful slaughter

of that day. As the public mind was taught to expect the possibility

at least of his re-appearance, impostors, in such an age and at such

a crisis of affairs, would scarcely fail to personate him--with what

success will soon be related.[166]

On the character of this prince, after the preceding relation, it is

needless to dwell. Without judgment or power of reflection; the tool of

interested flatterers; unacquainted alike with war, with human nature,

or the world; misled by the lying miracles recorded of Portuguese

valour--one Portuguese being affirmed as a sufficient match for one

hundred Moors; confiding in his natural courage, which knew not fear,

because it had never been conversant with danger; and taught to believe

that to the valour of his people all things must yield--he persisted in

the wildest schemes of conquest ever devised by disordered brain. The

obstinacy with which he adhered to this resolution, in opposition to

representations the most forcible and pathetic; the lamentable imbecility

which he displayed alike in the preparation and execution of his purpose,

prove that his only virtue was courage. Had there been some superior

power to confine the moonstruck prince in the same apartments with his

cousin, Don Carlos of Spain, well would it have been for unhappy Portugal.

THE CARDINAL-KING AND THE PORTUGUESE SUCCESSION

[Sidenote: [1578-1580 A.D.]]

For some time the nation, unwilling to believe that Sebastian had

perished, regarded Henry merely as regent; but on the arrival of the

royal body, and on the confirmation of the catastrophe by every

Portuguese who arrived from Africa, the cardinal, the last surviving

male of the ancient house, was solemnly crowned. He was an excellent

ecclesiastic; but his bounded capacity, his meekness of character, his

subjection to the arts of his courtiers rendered his administration of

little use to his country. His short reign has nothing to distinguish it

beyond the intrigues of candidates for the throne, which, as he was in

his sixty-seventh year, broken down by infirmities, and evidently on the

verge of the tomb, could not fail to be soon vacant. At first, indeed,

he was advised to marry; and application was actually made to the pope

for the necessary bull of secularisation; but Philip of Spain, who had so

close an interest in the affair, frustrated his views at the pontifical

court, and compelled him to abandon them.

The candidates for the throne of Henry, as may be seen from the adjoining

chart,[167] were: (1) Antonio, prior of Crato, who affirmed that his

father Luiz, brother of João III, was married to his mother, and that he

was consequently legitimate; (2) João, duke of Braganza, in right of his

wife Catherine, a younger daughter of the youngest son of Emmanuel; (3)

Ranuccio, prince of Parma, whose mother, Maria, was the eldest daughter

of Dom Duarte; (4) Emmanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, sprung from

Beatrice, a younger daughter of King Emmanuel; (5) Philip, king of Spain,

whose claim was twofold--his mother, Isabella, being eldest daughter of

Emmanuel, and his first queen, Maria, eldest daughter of João III. From

this genealogy nothing can be more clear than that, if the claim were to

be decided by consanguinity alone, Philip’s was by far the most powerful;

but by the laws of Lamego, the princess who accepted a foreign husband

was _ipso facto_ excluded from the throne. Hence, according to the

strict letter of the constitution, Isabella and Beatrice, the daughters

of Emmanuel, and Maria, the daughter of Duarte, had, by their marriages

with the emperor Charles, the duke of Savoy, and the prince of Parma,

renounced all claim to the succession: hence, too, by their exclusion,

João was the true heir. Besides--and Philip was probably aware of the

fact--the law of exclusion, in its very origin, had been expressly aimed

at the probability of a union with Castile, seeing that, if the same

prince ever became heir to the two crowns, the less must be absorbed

in the greater--the independence of Portugal must be at an end. But

conventional forms must yield to necessity. We have before seen how, on

the marriage of Beatrice, daughter and sole child of Ferdinand, with Juan

I of Castile, the states of the kingdom agreed to recognise the issue

of that marriage as their future sovereign; and how, on the death of

her father, she being yet without issue, she was actually proclaimed in

Lisbon and other places. But such was the hatred of the Portuguese to the

Castilians--hatred now as then deep, cordial, and everlasting--that they

preferred the bastard, grand-master of Aviz, to that princess.[c]

PHILIP II OF SPAIN BECOMES PHILIP I OF PORTUGAL

[Sidenote: [1578-1580 A.D.]]

Dom Antonio, who, after being taken prisoner at Kassr-el-Kebir, had

broken his Moorish fetters by the help of a Jew, was the favourite of

the populace. He still asserted his legitimacy, imputed corruption

to the judges who had decided against his mother’s marriage, and

reminded his friends that João I, the founder of the reigning house,

was an illegitimate son, raised to the throne by popular election.

The feeble-minded Henry, whose chief ministers, as well as his Jesuit

confessor, were gained over by Philip’s money, hesitated to pronounce,

lest he should involve the country in civil war. The cortes, whom he

convoked, were divided, and timid as himself. The seventeen months of his

reign passed in deliberation; and at his death, on the 31st of January,

1580, he left the question to be decided by five regents, whom he named.

Had he boldly declared Catherine his heiress, the greater part of Dom

Antonio’s adherents would most likely have deserted an illegitimate

pretender for their recognised lawful queen. As it was, the kingdom,

divided between two strong factions, lay at the mercy of a powerful

invader.

Philip had hitherto committed the management of his pretensions to

ambassadors and secret agents; and he now supplied these persons more

abundantly than ever with pecuniary means to continue their operations.

A majority of the regents were bribed by those agents, and consequently

sought to dispose the nation in Philip’s favour, by publishing the terms

he offered to grant. The chief of these were, in addition to the general

maintenance of the constitution, that he would reside as much as possible

in Portugal; that the viceroy appointed to govern in his absence should

always be either a prince of the blood or a Portuguese; that a Portuguese

council should always attend him for the management of Portuguese

affairs; that natives of Portugal should be admitted into offices of the

household and others of minor importance in Spain, whilst Spaniards, and

all strangers, should be excluded from all offices in Portugal, civil and

military, as well as from all church preferment; and that crown lands, as

the existing grants fell in, should be regranted to the nearest relations

of the former grantees. Conditions so favourable seem to have had great

influence in lessening the abhorrence with which the nobles had hitherto

shrunk from a connection with Spain; and Philip now prepared to enforce

and support his claim with the potent argument of thirty thousand men. A

fitting commander for this army was, however, not so easily found. The

duke of Alva was the only general esteemed by Philip competent to the

task.

[Sidenote: [1580-1583 A.D.]]

The corrupted regents took all measures for betraying the country to the

usurping invader. They dissolved the cortes, and placed creatures of

their own in the command of the frontier towns. In June, Alva entered

Portugal at the head of his army. Every fortified place threw open its

gates at his summons, and he marched onwards unopposed. The duke of

Braganza had taken no steps for maintaining his wife’s rights, otherwise

than by argument. The prior of Crato got possession of Lisbon, where

he was proclaimed king by the populace. The nobility, disgusted by his

elevation and the inaction of the regents, withdrew sullenly to their

houses; and the regents, freed from their control, boldly declared Philip

the lawful heir of the crown.

Dom Antonio seized the crown jewels, church plate, and other funds. He

released all prisoners, armed them and the rabble, and offered liberty

to all negro slaves who would embrace his cause. With an army thus

constituted, he attempted to defend the passage of the Tagus against

the veteran Alva, who was master of the whole province of Alemtejo, and

had reached the south bank of the river, without more fighting than a

short siege of one fortress that had declared for Dom Antonio, and the

commandant of which, when taken, he had executed. Dom Antonio was, of

course, defeated, almost at the first onset. He fled through Lisbon,

northwards; collected another army, with which he was again defeated;

and thenceforward thought only of escape. Philip set a high price upon

his head, but could not tempt any one of his adherents to betray him.

For nine months Dom Antonio lurked in the kingdom, concealed now in

one place, now in another, sheltered by rich and by poor, in castle,

monastery, and cottage, and everywhere diligently sought by his enemies,

ere he could find an opportunity of getting on shipboard.

After Dom Antonio’s second defeat no further resistance was attempted.

Portugal submitted, and swore fealty. Her American, Indian, African, and

insular possessions followed her example, with the single exception of

the Azores, which proclaimed Antonio. The duke of Braganza and his sons

acknowledged Philip. The duchess would not thus surrender her rights; and

even when Philip, upon the death of Queen Anne and the duke of Braganza,

offered her his hand, she refused a crown as the price of disinheriting

her sons; but she too desisted from further contest. When all was quiet

Philip visited his new kingdom, convoked the cortes, and swore to the

conditions he had previously offered.

Thus was effected, however illegally, the union of Spain and Portugal--a

union apparently as important to the true interests of the peninsula as

is that of England and Scotland to the well-being of Great Britain; and

not more repugnant to the inclinations of the two nations in the one

case, probably, than in the other. Had Philip and his successors strictly

observed the terms of the union, and endeavoured otherwise to conciliate

the Portuguese, these last might, erelong, have considered the Spanish

monarchs as their lawful kings, and have reconciled their pride to their

incorporation with a larger state. But although rather a usurper than a

conqueror, he chose to treat Portugal as a conquered country. He rejected

the proposals for beneficial laws, and, indeed, all the demands of the

cortes, except a few of the most insignificant, and speedily dissolved

that assembly. He refused the favours solicited by the nobles, withheld

the honours and pecuniary compensations promised to the Braganza family;

and although he did publish an amnesty, the exceptions were so large

(including all who had favoured Dom Antonio) that, it was said, Philip

had pardoned only those who were free from offence. He then proceeded

to punish the persons thus excepted; and the extent of the executions

which followed may be judged by two circumstances: one that, from the

number of dead bodies thrown into the sea, the people would not eat

fish again, until the archbishop, in a solemn procession, had purified

by his blessing the polluted ocean; and the other, that Philip himself

thought it requisite to obtain absolution from the pope, for having put

such numbers of ecclesiastics to death. He then appointed his nephew and

brother-in-law, the cardinal-archduke Albert, viceroy of Portugal; and

committing to him the government of the country, where discontent was

already very general, he returned to Spain.[d]

THE ENGLISH IN PORTUGAL

[Sidenote: [1582-1589 A.D.]]

During the next few years Portugal had nothing to do with the foreign

or domestic policy of Philip. Governed with great moderation by the

archduke, enjoying internal peace, an extended commerce, and a high

degree of prosperity, she might have been happy--happier than she had

ever been under her native monarchs--could hereditary enmity have been

forgotten, and national pride sacrificed to interest. The exiled Antonio

was made aware of the existing discontent: he had many well-wishers

and not a few spies in the country, who constantly communicated with

him. After the second defeat of his armament in the Azores, he abode at

the French court, with the hope of obtaining increased supplies for an

invasion of Portugal; but as the civil wars which raged in the former

country were likely to prove interminable, he passed over into England to

renew his intrigues with the earl of Essex. He arrived at a favourable

time, just after the destruction of the Spanish armada, when the

resentment of the English was at the highest pitch, and they were longing

for revenge.

[Illustration: PORTUGUESE NOBLE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY]

At first, however, Elizabeth, with her usual prudence, disapproved of

the project of a Portuguese invasion; but, with her usual weakness,

wherever the tender passion was concerned, she was persuaded by the

favourite earl to enter into an alliance with the exile, and to equip

an armament for placing him on the throne. Nothing can better exhibit

the unprincipled impostor than certain conditions of that alliance. He

engaged to subjugate Portugal in one week from the disembarkation of

the troops; to pay Elizabeth an immense sum for the expenses of the

armament, and a considerable annual tribute in token of her sovereignty;

to receive English garrisons, at his own expense, into the principal

maritime fortresses; on his arrival at Lisbon, to abandon that city

to a twelve days’ pillage. In conformity with another article of the

treaty,--a treaty not over honourable to Elizabeth herself, since she

grasped at advantages which generosity, or even justice, would have

scorned,--twenty thousand men were embarked at Plymouth in 120 vessels,

the whole commanded by Drake and Norris (1589).

The success of this expedition corresponded with its flagitious design.

After an unsuccessful attempt on Corunna, the armament cast anchor at

Peniche, and disembarked the troops who marched to Torres Vedras, where

they proclaimed Dom Antonio, and continued their route towards the

capital. But the peasantry, instead of joining his standard, fled at

his approach. As the English general approached the suburbs, the monks,

the women, and most of the inhabitants retired within the city. The ill

success of the English, who repeatedly assailed the outworks, stifled

the intrigues of the disaffected; and a vigorous sortie decided the fate

of the expedition. The English general, who throughout exhibited strange

imbecility, retreated; he was pursued; many of his followers were cut

off; with the rest he sought refuge in the tower of Cascaes, which the

cowardly governor surrendered to him. Here, considering the want of

provisions, and the deception which had been practised on him by Dom

Antonio, who had persuaded him that the moment a hostile standard were

raised it would be joined by all true Portuguese, he wisely resolved to

return home. This was fortunately the last time Portugal was cursed with

the prior’s presence. Deserted by his nearest friends, neglected by the

sovereigns, his former allies, in 1595 he ended his unprincipled life in

merited obscurity and indigence.

THE FALSE SEBASTIANS

[Sidenote: [1584-1595 A.D.]]

But though Philip was thus rid of a formidable enemy, he had others who

were actuated by even a superior spirit of imposture, and who might

have occasioned him some trouble. We have before alluded to a strange

impression among the vulgar that Sebastian yet lived, and that such

an impression, in such an age and country, could not fail to produce

impostors. The first, who appeared in 1584, was a native of Alcobaça--a

man of low extraction and of still lower morals. Though he was condemned

to death, the sentence--very wisely--was not put into execution. He was

condemned to labour in the galleys, where all who had the curiosity might

visit him, and be convinced by their own eyes that he was not Sebastian.

The failure of this impostor did not deter another from the same

hazardous experiment. There was a stone-cutter’s son, Alvares by name,

a native of the Azores, who, having passed some months in the monastery

of the Holy Cross, on the heights of Cintra, left that community, and,

like the youth of Alcobaça, retired to a hermitage. At this time he does

not appear to have meditated the personation of Sebastian: when, from

his frequent self-inflictions, and from his extraordinary habits, he was

suspected to be that prince, and even addressed as such, he replied that

he was a stone-mason’s son of Terceira. But the more he affirmed this

truth, the less was he believed: he was evidently fulfilling a rigorous

penitence, to atone for the misfortunes which he had brought on his

people; and, like Roderic the Goth, he had doubtless renounced forever

all human grandeur. Perceiving that opposition was useless, Alvares

consented to be treated as a king: he was soon joined by hundreds of the

peasantry, whom he allowed to kiss his hand with much affectation of

condescension. At length the hermit was taken, was brought to Lisbon,

paraded through the streets on the back of an ass, exposed to the jeers

of the populace, and publicly hanged.

It might have been expected that the failure of these two attempts

would have had some effect even on imposture and credulity; but a third

Sebastian appeared, and, strange to say, in Spain, under the very eyes

of Philip. There was an Augustinian monk, by name Miguel dos Santos,

who had been a chaplain of Sebastian, confessor to Dom Antonio, and who

was now confessor to the nunnery of Madrigal. Here he met with Gabriel

de Spinosa, a native of Toledo, whom he had known in Portugal, and of

whose intelligence, boldness, and dexterity he had seen frequent proofs.

As this man really bore a resemblance to King Sebastian, he persuaded

him, though not without difficulty, secretly to personate that monarch.

Finally the priest, being put to the torture, confessed all. The same

means extorted a similar confession from Spinosa, who was hanged and

quartered. The priest was degraded, delivered over to the secular arm,

and suspended from the public gallows at Madrid.[c]

A fourth impostor was more famous than all the rest, by birth supposed to

be an Italian; who, after a long confinement in Naples, was transferred

to Spain, where he ended his days in a prison. His imposture was the more

remarkable from the fact that he could not speak Portuguese.[a]

The remaining actions of Philip must be sought in the history of Spain.

Four years before his death, on the removal of the cardinal-regent to the

archiepiscopal see of Toledo, the government of Portugal was intrusted to

a commission of five. In 1598, Philip breathed his last.[c]

CHAGAS’ ACCOUNT OF THE LOSS OF THE COLONIES

[Sidenote: [1585-1600 A.D.]]

As yet it was only our pilots who were acquainted with the navigation

of the Indies; in India we were the only nation who had dominions and

solidly established settlements, and consequently we were sole lords of

the commerce of the East. The English confined themselves to plundering

our ships on their return voyage from India, but they dared not come to

fight us in the land conquered by our superhuman feats. A young nation

that was about to appear at this period on the historical stage was

chosen by fate to be the one to wrest from our grasp the sceptre of

the East. The Low Countries had long held important commerce with us,

principally the town of Antwerp, where a Portuguese factory had been

long established. The ships of this industrious country came to Portugal

to fetch the merchandise of the East, and scattered it afterwards over

Europe. When the Flemish and Dutch rising broke out against Spain,

dominator of the Low Countries, Antwerp, the central point of the war,

lost her commercial importance, which Amsterdam inherited.

While Portugal was independent she continued the commerce which enriched

Holland, but when Philip II effected the union of the two crowns, he

had the unhappy inspiration of attacking his rebellious subjects by

issuing in 1594 an order for the sequestration of fifty Dutch ships at

anchor in the Tagus, and at the same time promulgated a decree closing

all Portuguese ports to the Dutch. The blow was terrible, and might

have proved mortal, but for the unshakable energy of those republicans

of the north. Being unable to come to Portugal for the merchandise of

the East, they determined to go and seek it in India herself. In 1594,

some merchants of Zealand, assisted by the subsidies of Amsterdam and

Enkhuizen, equipped three ships, intrusted them to the care of their two

most able mariners, Barentz and Heemskerk, and despatched them to the

north in quest of a new passage to the Asiatic seas. The English had

already made a similar attempt in 1556, but without success; this attempt

of the Dutch was not more successful, and the shipowners were in truth

discouraged when the hope which upheld them proved vain.

A chance circumstance favoured them. A Dutchman, named Cornelis Houtmann,

had been long in Portugal, and had either succeeded in obtaining a

passage to India, or had obtained ample information in the country

respecting the route first taken by Vasco da Gama. In 1595, a fleet of

four ships piloted by him set out for the coveted lands of the East. In

August, 1597, he returned to Texel with barely two ships, but having

displayed the colours of a new European flag to the amazed natives

of Madagascar, Bantam, Java, Madura, and Bali. The spell was broken.

Overjoyed at the result, the Dutch merchants equipped a fleet of eight

ships in 1598, commanded by Jacques le Neker and Heemskerk and despatched

them to the East. This fleet touched at the island of Cirne, which they

named Mauritius, in honour of their great general Maurice of Nassau,

a name by which it is still called, though also known as the Isle of

France, which Bernardin de St. Pierre has immortalised in his romance,

_Paul et Virginie_. From thence they proceeded to Bantam, where they

freighted four ships with spices and despatched them to Europe. The

remaining ships visited the Moluccas and, in 1600, returned to Holland

with a most valuable cargo.[i]

The success of this enterprise was of the greatest importance to England,

to which country Philip II had also closed Portuguese ports, in 1589. The

English had despatched an expedition to India in 1591. The result did

not correspond with the hopes of success, and the British merchants were

already discouraged when the example of the Dutch excited them to form

the famous company of the Indies, one of the most fruitful origins of

England’s prosperity.[f]

Under Portuguese administration the constant war always agitating India

never ceased, but the Portuguese arms were ever victorious. Yet this

state of war made it impossible to frustrate from the outset the attempts

of the English and Dutch.

We must always bear in mind that whereas externally Portuguese dominion

was firmly maintained, internally the most profound corruption was at

work, and paving the way to the dissolution of this vast empire in the

near future. The vices of the Portuguese, the corruption of those in

office, the excesses of the Inquisition, the cruel treatment of the

subjected Indians, the senseless preponderance of the priests, all this

is painted by Diogo do Conto[j] in vivid colours.

Mathias de Albuquerque, and especially the count da Vidigueira, attempted

to reform these appalling abuses, but all these vices were deep rooted,

and no amount of cauterising could check the gangrene. The governors

might consider themselves lucky that they yet, at least, possessed

valiant soldiers, who did not bring dishonour on the name of Portugal in

the wars, and who supported with the edge of their swords the trembling

empire. During the government of Dom Francisco da Gama, a most important

annexation was made. The last king of Ceylon, dethroned by his kinsman,

Raju, and protected by Portuguese soldiers, bequeathed the island in

gratitude to the Portuguese. It was the last ray of the dying lamp. As

heralds of the approaching disasters the Dutch ships appeared in the

East. Of Cornelis Houtmann’s four ships, two only, as we have said,

returned home; of the other two, one was lost on the reefs, and the

other was destroyed by the Portuguese; but in the following voyage they

succeeded in evading vigilance. What other result was to be expected,

when the natives welcomed them as liberators, and the Portuguese were

always engaged in wars which prevented them from openly repulsing their

rivals?[i]

We have referred elsewhere to the conspiracy in favour of Mary Stuart,

favoured by Philip II, and of how this incident resulted in the outbreak

of hostilities between the courts of Madrid and London. Elizabeth Tudor

decided to declare war against the Catholic king, and despatched Admiral

Drake with a fleet of twenty-three ships, furnished with twenty-three

hundred men, against the Spanish colonies. The first to fall a victim was

the Portuguese colony of São Thiago, Cape Verd Islands, where the English

admiral put in on his way to America, on the 16th of November, 1585.

Thence the squadron continued its course, capturing various galleons on

the way, some of which were bound to Lisbon.

Almost at the same time various African chiefs allied themselves against

the Portuguese at the instigation of Ali Bey, despatched by the sultan

of Turkey to subjugate to the viceroy of Egypt the petty kings who did

homage to the crown of Portugal. Ali’s first victory was not, however,

of long duration, as in 1587 a squadron was despatched from India under

command of de Mello, who compelled the sovereign of Patta to become a

Portuguese vassal, and killed the king of Lamu. Proceeding to Mombasa,

he laid waste that place, and put an end to the confederation which Ali

Bey had organised. Shortly after, in 1589, the Turks again returned, but

this time directed their attack against Melinde, which place had remained

faithful. Thomé de Sousa Coutinho hastened from Goa with a fleet, and

routed the Turks in the first encounter.

While in east Africa the native population, excited by the Turks, were

using every endeavour to throw off the Portuguese yoke, in the west Paulo

Dias de Novaes, founder of Loanda, was conquering the kingdom of Angola

for the crown of Portugal, at the moment when Philip II was conquering

the kingdom of Portugal for Castile. From that day to this the two

settlements have remained in the possession of the Portuguese.

Affairs in Brazil were less prosperous. In 1591 the port of Santos was

attacked by an English pirate, and the town of São Vicente was sacked and

burned; four years later the storehouses of Recife were also sacked by

another pirate of the same nation. Worse even than the English pirates

were the Spanish defenders.

Before this time the French had already made various incursions into

the colony, with the design of establishing themselves there. The

province was saved by the patriotism of the residents of Pernambuco, who

rushing to arms, under command of the governor, put an end to the French

invasions. Enemies more terrible still succeeded them; these were the

Dutch who were expelled only after a long and obstinate struggle, when

Portugal had already recovered her liberty.

DOMESTIC DISASTER

[Sidenote: [1596-1598 A.D.]]

To return to the kingdom, where, as we have said, public misery was

aggravated by the losses caused to commerce by the pirates of hostile

nations, who infested the seas, we must now add that frequently even the

ports were attacked. The most daring of these attempts was that made

at Faro on the 22nd of July, 1596, where an English and a Dutch fleet

put in, commanded by Admiral Effingham, who after entering the port of

Cadiz and there burning a number of ships, and plundering at the same

time thirty-three ships laden with merchandise of the Indies, made for

the coasts of Portugal, and after landing three thousand soldiers on the

shores of Algarve, plundered and laid waste the capital of that province.

The English then made for Lagos, but the governor was able to repulse

them.

We will conclude this account of the reign of Philip II by giving a

résumé of the instructions he is said to have left to his son, and which,

if they show the evil of his policy, are also an eloquent proof of how

ambition will lead the clearest judgments astray, making them dream of

impossible ventures, and waste their energy in useless projects. His

advice was:

“That without examining into the justice of the case he should obtain

complete dominion over Portugal, and once conquered, disorder and terror

could be spread throughout Germany, France be conquered, the forces of

England weakened, and the terror of the Spanish arms carried to the

extreme north.

“That profiting by the advantages gained, his Catholic majesty could

thereby get possession of the navigation of the Indies, found colonies

wherever he thought fit, conquer new lands, establish an immense

commerce, and subjugate all the countries he considered it to his

advantage to subjugate. But above all he was to secure the respect of the

Portuguese, as this was of the very greatest importance. That far from

burdening them with taxes and subsidies, he should grant them all the

privileges and favours to which they laid claim. When the kingdom was

pacified and the people moulded to Spanish dominion, then he should begin

to oppose these privileges, appointing from time to time, under various

pretexts, Spanish magistrates who should insensibly mould the people to

this.

“That he should strictly watch the duke of Braganza, closely examining

into his actions, but always showing him every attention, until the

opportunity offered of persecuting him and all his family. As for the

rest of the nobility, the only course was to remove them from the

country, sending them to fill honourable posts in Flanders, Germany,

and Italy. Proceeding in this manner the kingdom of Portugal could be

monopolised and reduced to a province, and the people rendered powerless

to make any movement; but by burdening them with taxes and subsidies,

their anger would be roused, and hatred awakened, which would be fatal to

the Spanish monarchy.

“That his majesty should give the viceroyalty of the kingdom to some

prince or princess of his house, to inspire the Portuguese with greater

respect for the government, and spare them the repugnance of giving

obedience to any other.

“That he should be no less careful in dividing up the house of Braganza;

that they should contract no new alliances in Portugal; deprive them of

all state dignities, which should be bestowed on Spanish subjects only,

and finally prevent them from holding correspondence with foreign courts.

“That whenever disputes arose between the Spanish and Portuguese grandees

it was most necessary to favour the latter, and at the same time to

bestow the principal offices of the kingdom upon those who appeared the

most attached to the court of Castile, and thus attract others with the

hope of favours.

“That when there was no longer cause to fear the grandees, the nobility,

and still less the people, then it would finally become necessary to

destroy the whole house of Braganza, deprive the Portuguese of all

public ecclesiastical and secular offices, and give them to Spaniards,

and govern the kingdom of Portugal as any other province forming part of

the Spanish monarchy.”

If the treacherous and immoral policy which Philip II counselled his heir

to follow caused the ruin of the oppressed, it was no less fatal to the

oppressors. After the death of the son of Charles V the decadence of the

Spanish monarchy, the most vast and formidable of the sixteenth century,

was rapid and profound.[f]

PHILIP II (1598-1621 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1598-1634 A.D.]]

Of Philip III of Spain (II of Portugal) we have only to say that in

the course of his reign he once visited his Portuguese subjects. On

this occasion the hungry and ambitious chivalry expected much from his

liberality; but, except a few, all were disappointed. If he did not treat

them with studied insult--a charge levelled at him by the Portuguese

historians--he exhibited so great a predilection towards his hereditary

subjects that he could not fail mortally to offend a people who would

not even have been satisfied with an equal share of his attention. Yet

many of them are just enough to blame the weakness, rather than the ill

will of Philip: they contend that the truth was kept from him; that

every art was taken to confirm his dislike to them as a nation; that

the Castilian nobles behaved with intolerable haughtiness to their own;

that, in everything, a studied contrast was drawn between the two classes

of subjects; that taxes were imposed without the consent of the cortes,

and strangers nominated to the most important offices--both violations

of the compact signed at Thomar by the first Philip; and that revenues,

appropriated to objects exclusively Portuguese, were diverted into the

treasury of Madrid.

PHILIP III (PHILIP IV OF SPAIN) (1621-1640 A.D.)

If the Portuguese had so much reason to complain of the government of

the second Philip, that of his son and successor was, doubtless, still

more onerous, more insulting: a good one, like that of Philip I, would

have been hated; a bad one would naturally add to the existing mass

of discontent. That the weak, the profligate, and the unprincipled

count-duke de Olivares could direct the affairs of this kingdom with

advantage, either to it or to his royal master, will not be expected by

anyone who has perused the account of his administration in Spain. There

can be no doubt that, by forced loans, by intolerable taxes, and by using

the native soldiers in foreign wars, he wished to break the proud spirit

of the people--to make them the mere slaves of his will.

Finding themselves ground to the very earth by exactions, their

complaints disregarded, their persons insulted, their prosperity at an

end, we need not wonder that they began to meditate an escape from their

yoke. They turned their eyes towards the duke of Braganza, the next heir

in the order of succession.[168] That ambitious noble adopted a line

of conduct which could not fail to forward his views. To the world he

appeared absorbed by hunting, feasting, and other diversions; yet his

emissaries were at work in every part of the kingdom, fanning the flame

of discontent, and teaching the people to regard him as one able, at

least, to effect their deliverance.[169] Owing to their representations,

but in a still greater degree to the rapacity of the revenue collectors,

open insurrections appeared at Lisbon, at Braga, and, above all, at

Evora, and were not quelled without much difficulty and some bloodshed.

Though pressed, the duke was too wise to declare himself at this moment:

he knew that his combinations were not formed;[170] he therefore

determined to await the silent but resistless course of events. The

sequel soon justified his policy. The chief nobles, prelates, cavalleros,

and clergy were suddenly summoned to Madrid. What could be the object in

this mysterious, unexpected, and unparalleled mandate? Conjecture was

vain: to disobey it would be dangerous; and a magnificent display of

retinues immediately filled the road from Lisbon to the Spanish capital.

What passed at the conference between the ministers and this deputation

will never be known; but that some extraordinary concession was required

from them may be easily believed. That their consent was demanded to

the incorporation of the Portuguese with the Spanish cortes, or that a

certain number of deputies from the three estates should be summoned at

the same time with those of Castile--in other words, that the kingdom

should be forever degraded to the rank of a province, is loudly affirmed

by the Portuguese. The nobles probably returned the answer attributed to

them--that, in an affair of such moment, they could do nothing without

the sanction of a legitimate meeting of the cortes in their own country.

[Sidenote: [1634-1640 A.D.]]

But another reason for this extraordinary mandate may be assigned,

more plausible than either. The court could not be ignorant of the

disposition of the people towards the duke of Braganza, nor, perhaps,

with his intrigues. His arrest might be resolved on: and, as it could

not be effected in Portugal, where his connections were so numerous and

powerful, he must be inveigled to Madrid. This supposition is confirmed

by three facts: he had evaded compliance when summoned alone to the

capital; he was not present now; and the subsequent endeavours of the

minister to draw him to Madrid were as earnest as they were ineffectual.

Disappointed in his views, Olivares now proceeded more boldly: he ordered

all the disposable troops in Portugal to march into Catalonia, and the

duke of Braganza to place himself at their head. But the war of Catalonia

concerned the Castilians only. Both nobles and people resolved to disobey

the mandate; but, lest an open refusal should subject them to instant

invasion, they merely demanded a short delay, until their preparations

were matured.

In the meantime the duke of Braganza was pursuing his end with

persevering art: knowing how suspicious was the Spanish court, how

jealously every action was watched, he plunged more deeply into his

favourite amusements, and asserted that, when the troops were ready to

march, he should not be wanting at his post. So well did he counterfeit

his part, that many of the conspirators, believing that he had neither

ambition nor compassion for his countrymen, declared their intention of

soliciting his brother, Prince Duarte, to head them. At length, when

obedience or open refusal to the orders of the court was imperative, the

conspirators hastened to Lisbon, and began their meetings. Their numbers

increased; yet so artfully were their proceedings conducted, that they

escaped the notice of the duchess of Mantua, the vice-queen.[c]

ENNES’ ACCOUNT OF THE CONSPIRACY

[Sidenote: [1640 A.D.]]

It is an old and lasting tradition that the conspirators assembled in

the garden of the palace of Antonio de Almada, in a pavilion with stone

benches, which had the advantage of a staircase communicating with the

turret, where there was a secret door leading into the wood of Santa

Anna, fronting the garden of the knight-commanders of the Incarnation.

This door supplied an easy entrance to the conspirators, who never

assembled all at one time, for fear of the enterprise being crushed with

one blow, through treachery. A decision adopted by any seven was binding

on all the rest. All the letters of the conspirators were written in

an enigmatical manner against the possibility of seizure. Dom João was

evidently not anxious to risk his fortune and greatness in a dangerous

throw. Egoism was more powerful with him than patriotism, and the voice

of prudence deadened the suggestions of ambition. The nobles were in

despair, and began to discuss whether it would not be advisable to form a

republican government if the duke persisted in his obstinacy.[171] But,

thanks largely to the skilful efforts of João Pinto Ribeiro, the duke was

won over. But when João Pinto attempted to kiss his hand, this the duke

would not allow, saying with a smile, “Let us not buy the cabbage before

the meat.”

Upon his return to Lisbon, Pinto Ribeiro lost no time in assembling the

nobles to communicate the news he brought from Villa Viçosa. He painted

in colours more glowing than truthful the prince’s enthusiasm and

determination, and urged his good intentions of sharing the government

of the kingdom with those who had given him the throne. João Pinto’s

communications were received with the greatest enthusiasm; he had

received full power from the duke to adopt in his name any measures he

thought fit. The plan of the revolution was then discussed, opinions

at first being very varied, but eventually the most sensible opinion

prevailed, which was that the nobles should make a surprise attack upon

the palace, December 1st.

On Friday, the 30th of November, the last assembly of the nobles took

place at the house of Dom Antão de Almada. None now recoiled before

danger, and knowing that they were risking their lives, they prepared for

death; nearly all confessed, and some made their wills, whilst others

recommended their friends in religion to pray for their souls. The judge

of the people, and other influential persons of the lower classes, had

on this afternoon promised that their men would be ready to follow the

nobles at the first summons. It was decided that they should assemble on

the following day in the courtyard of the palace, and as nine o’clock

struck some should attack the Spanish guard, whilst others should mount

immediately to disarm the German guard, and seize all the entrances; upon

which, some were to gain the verandas to attack the people, and proclaim

Dom João and liberty, whilst others should seek the hated secretary

Vasconcellos. The ministers had been warned repeatedly of the suspected

assemblies at the house of Dom Antão de Almada, and Vasconcellos

received warning of the very day fixed upon the revolution. In spite of

all, the conspirators did not meet with the slightest resistance! A few

hours sufficed to conclude the revolution.[f]

CHAGAS’ ACCOUNT OF THE 1ST OF DECEMBER (1640 A.D.)

The 1st of December dawned serene and clear! No clouds dimmed the aurora

of Portuguese liberty. Who can divine the thoughts which assailed the

conspirators at waking upon this cold winter morning to undertake

this hazardous enterprise? Hiding her scalding tears behind a smile,

Donna Filippa de Vilhena herself girded on the swords of her two sons,

commanding them not to think upon her fate, but upon the fate of

Portugal; declaring that to die for one’s country when she lay groaning

under oppression was still more beautiful than to live for one’s mother.

With the same manly resolution Donna Marianna de Lencastre blessed her

two sons; and these two Spartan mothers, nobler indeed than the Spartans,

for such rigid principles had not been instilled into them by a stoical

education, left an heroic example to posterity.

From every quarter of the town the nobles and their followers came to the

courtyard of the palace, some on foot, some on horseback, some in their

carriages, not revealing the anxiety matured to so critical a moment, but

with a calmness which gave no sign of what was about to occur. A little

before nine all the conspirators were assembled in the courtyard. The

soldiers were not alarmed at the carriages which continued to arrive,

accustomed as they were to seeing the duchess’ courtiers come to the

palace; in those days business was earlier than in ours. The people, too,

had not as yet assembled in great numbers. With their hands upon the

doors of their carriages, the nobles impatiently waited the striking of

the solemn hour.

Nine o’clock! The doors of all the carriages are thrown open

simultaneously, the nobles descend, and while Jorge de Mello, Estevão

da Cunha, Antonio de Mello e Castro, Father Nicolão da Maia, and others

still wait in their carriages for the signal from the palace to attack

the Spanish guard, the majority of the conspirators rapidly mount the

stairs, enter the hall of the German archers, and giving them no time

even to suspect what is about to happen, some throw down the stands of

the halberds, others draw their swords, and the archers fly, astounded

and disarmed. Some of them, whether because their halberds are not in

the stands or because they are more determined, do their duty with a

certain show of courage, and only fly after seeing two of their men fall

to the ground, one dead, the other wounded. Meanwhile, drunk with joy,

Dom Miguel de Almeida runs to a veranda, throws open the window, and

brandishing a sword, cries out: “Liberty! Liberty! Long live the king Dom

João IV. The duke de Braganza is our legitimate king!”

Tears prevented his further speech, and ran down to his white beard,

which floated in the breeze blowing from the Tagus, whose waters were

gilded by the sun riding triumphant in the heavens. He was answered by an

immense cry of enthusiasm and joy; “Liberty! Liberty!” shouted the people

with one voice. And in the heroic Dom Miguel de Almeida, this venerable

old man of eighty years, radiant with youthful ardour, all saw the symbol

of Portugal, decrepit and broken, but illuminated in this hour of her

resurrection by the reflection of the splendour of her eras of glory.

Those in the courtyard did not limit themselves merely to this unanimous

response. Before the Spanish guard could grasp the meaning of the cry

of liberty, which thundered above their heads, Jorge de Mello and his

men fell upon them with drawn swords and pistols cocked. They attempted

to resist, but the suddenness of the attack and the ardour of our men

rendered resistance vain.

Meanwhile Miguel de Vasconcellos had been warned that something was

occurring. He was yet in bed and had scarcely time to dress, when,

following on the warning, a strange noise was heard in the corridors.

Pale with fear he ran to the door and locked it on the inside, and

immediately heard the nobles knocking furiously at the door, when the

wood was shivered with the hatchets they had brought to break it down.

Thereupon, seeing that he was lost, he seized a loaded musket and shut

himself into a cupboard full of papers. There holding his breath, his

forehead bathed with the sweat of anguish, he heard the door give way;

the nobles entered like a torrent, and blaspheming, searched in every

corner of the apartment. His safety hung on a thread; as, not finding

him, the conspirators were about to make their way to the department of

India, to which place they presumed he had fled, when the narrowness of

his hiding-place caused Vasconcellos to make a slight movement. It was

heard; with a shout of ferocious joy they rushed upon his hiding-place;

a few shots were fired, two balls pierced his throat, and he fell dead,

the blood spouting from him. After killing him, the avengers of their

country abandoned him, and it was the servants who threw the body of the

hated minister out of the window. When the tumultuous crowd of people who

filled the courtyard saw the body of their oppressor thus contemptuously

thrown out, they gave a roar of triumph and in the satisfying of their

eagerly desired vengeance there was no insult which they did not heap on

the pitiful remains.

While the nobles rushed from the secretary’s apartments to those of the

vice-queen, the people with shouts of enthusiasm crossed the courtyard,

shouting, “Liberty!” And meanwhile the rabble--who ever desecrate

victory and insult the conquered, who to-day drag in the mire their

oppressors and to-morrow their liberators--surrounded Vasconcellos’ body,

dragging out his beard, putting out his eyes, and foolishly laughing

at the infamous jests of a Moorish slave of the victim, who, seated on

the corpse, mocked at and execrated him before whom he had trembled

when alive. On the following day the body of the unfortunate wretch

was yet in the courtyard, and seeing it João Pinto Ribeiro expressed

his astonishment that none had shown Christian piety to him who had so

cruelly expiated his faults. Some of Ribeiro’s men carried the body away

in a skiff.

The duchess of Mantua had already heard the noise, and coming to the

window, she cried out in a loud voice: “What is this, Portuguese? Where

is your loyalty?” Meanwhile some of the conspirators, having forced

open all the doors they had found closed, courteously compelled her to

withdraw from the window. She wished to descend to the courtyard, and as

the nobles prevented her: “Enough, gentlemen!” she cried, “the guilty

minister has already paid for his sins. Go no further, I pledge my word

that the king of Castile shall not merely pardon you, but shall thank you

for having delivered the kingdom from the excesses of the secretary.” The

nobles replied that they no longer recognised any king but Dom João de

Braganza. This answer so enraged her that Dom Charles de Noronha begged

her to retire before they lost respect for her. “For me!--how?” she

inquired haughtily. “By obliging your highness to leave by the window,

if you will not go in by this door,” replied the noble in tones equally

haughty. Realising that under the circumstances resistance was folly,

the princess gave way and withdrew to her oratory.

The nobles dispersed through the town to rouse public enthusiasm with

the cry of victory, and in a short time the multitude rushed through

the streets drunk with joy. A vast cry arose of “Miracle! miracle!” and

from mouth to mouth the report spread, that the arm of the Christ on the

crucifix, carried by one of the chaplains, had unnailed itself to bless

the people. This incident, which probably had been prepared, produced an

enormous effect, exciting the imagination and rousing popular enthusiasm.

Many prisoners had been set at liberty, and it was feared that they

would commit great acts of vengeance; but on the contrary numerous

reconciliations took place of long standing enemies, and not one act of

violence occurred throughout the city. At eleven in the morning the town

had already peaceably resumed its usual occupations.

Meanwhile the government was careful to take all necessary measures to

secure public order, stationing companies of militia at different posts.

The fortresses surrendered peaceably and the commander of the galleons at

anchor in the Tagus was convinced of the uselessness of bombardment and

perhaps feared reprisals.

On the same day, Pedro de Mendonça and Jorge de Mello set out for Villa

Viçosa; they found Dom João in the chapel, who having heard the news

with calmness, commanded the divine office to be continued. This being

concluded, he entered a carriage and set out for Lisbon escorted merely

by a few mounted servants, being enthusiastically received in all the

towns and lands through which he passed. He reached the capital on the

6th.

The speed with which the revolution spread in the provinces is a proof

how eagerly liberty was desired. A few days sufficed for a yoke of sixty

years[172] to be thrown off, and the Spanish monarchy, yet powerful,

could not resist a disarmed and weak people, to whom invincible energy

was lent by the thirst for liberty and the despair born of oppression.[i]

FOOTNOTES

[164] [“The young king was rather German than Portuguese in appearance,

with his blue eyes and fair hair and face disfigured by the Habsburg lip,

and in his nature there was much of the Teuton dreaminess and love of the

marvellous.”--STEPHENS.[e]]

[165] [La Clède[g] will allow no virtue to Philip, who, he pretends,

suddenly approved the enterprise, in the diabolical view of hastening the

destruction of his nephew, and profiting by the catastrophe. “_Philippe

avait fait, de son côté ses réflexions: autant qu’il s’étoit d’abord

opposé à l’entreprise que le roi de Portugal méditoit, autant il montra

de désir que l’on l’exécutât. Sébastien étoit jeune téméraire, sans

enfans: il pourroit périr et alors le Portugal pouvait être réuni à la

Castille._”]

[166] By the populace of the kingdom, Sebastian was believed, even in

the nineteenth century, to be yet alive, concealed, like Roderic the

Goth, or the English Arthur, in some hermit’s cell, or, perhaps, in some

enchanted castle until the time of his re-appearance arrives, when he is

to restore the glory of his nation. During the aggressions of Bonaparte

on the kingdom, his arrival was expected with much anxiety. [The sect of

Sebastianistas often rose to cause excitement, and as early as 1763, Lord

Tyrawley exclaimed, “What can one possibly do with a nation, one-half of

which expects the Messiah and the other half their king, Dom Sebastian,

dead two hundred years?”]

[167] [We may omit from the contest the pope, Gregory XIII, who claimed

to be heir to a cardinal, and Catherine de’ Medici, who traced back to

Alfonso III’s marriage to the countess of Boulogne in the thirteenth

century.]

CHIEF CLAIMANTS OF THE PORTUGUESE SUCCESSION

*EMMANUEL-+-Maria, daughter of

| Ferdinand and Isabella

| of Castile

|

+-----------------+------+---+----+--------+----------+

| | | | | |

†JOÃO III-+-Catherine,| | Luiz, HENRY, Duarte-+-Isabella

| sister | | father cardinal | of

| of | | of the and king, | Braganza

| Charles | | bastard died |

| V | | ANTONIO, without |

| | | prior issue |

| | | of Crato. |

| Isabella-+-Charles| Claimant |

| | V | |

| | Beatrice-+-Charles, |

| | | duke of |

+-------+----+ +-+--------+ | Savoy +-----+

| | | | | | |

| Maria-+-PHILIP II Juana, |Alessandro-+-Maria |

| of Spain. married |Farnese, | |

João----+-Juana, Claimant to |prince of |Catherine-+-João,

prince | daughter in right prince |Parma | |duke of

of | of of his João of | | |Braganza.

Portugal| Charles mother Portugal| | |Claimant

| V and wife | | |in right

| | | |of his

| | | |wife

| | | -+-------+--+--

SEBASTIAN, EMMANUEL PHILIBERT, duke | | |

who died of Savoy. Claimant in |THEODOSIO-+-Anne

without issue right of his mother | | de

| | Velasco

| |

| João IV

RANUCCIO, prince

of Parma. Claimant

in right of his mother

* The first wife of Emmanuel was Isabella, eldest daughter of

the Catholic sovereigns, who died in childbed, and was soon

followed by her infant son. By Maria, his sister-in-law and

his second queen, he had three other children, besides those

enumerated in this table, but all died without issue.

† João III had also other children, but as they all died

without issue and before him, they need not be enumerated.

[168] [See the chart of Portuguese successions on page 503.]

[169] [According to some historians the duke was really as indifferent as

he seemed, and it was the ambition of his wife and of his friends that

did all the work for him.]

[170] [“This movement reached Villa Viçosa, where the residents changed

it to a rebellion, and under cover of the night some of them proclaimed

the duke of Braganza, eighth of the title, as João IV king of Portugal.

But the time prescribed from centuries had not yet come; the duke sent

his son Dom Theodosio, duke de Barcellos, through the streets, and,

although he was only four years of age, the light of the great virtues

which afterwards distinguished this excellent prince shone in his face,

and he became as it were a rainbow of peace, and returned leaving the

people pacified, and saved from anxiety the father whom a serious illness

prevented from going himself to check the disturbance.”--MENEZES.[k]]

[171] [This statement, which was made by Vertot[l] in 1689 and is

repeated by many historians, is denounced by Stephens[e] as “absurd,”

though the Netherlands offered an easy analogy.]

[172] [This is the period from 1580-1640 which the Portuguese love to

call the “Sixty Years’ Captivity.”]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER IV. JOÃO IV TO JOÃO VI

[Sidenote: [1640-1822 A.D.]]

The revolution thus wisely planned, secretly matured, and happily

executed, was now complete. Portugal had recovered her independence, and

replaced the legitimate descendant and representative of her ancient

sovereigns upon the throne. João IV was crowned on the 15th of December,

and immediately abolished the heavy taxes imposed by the king of Spain,

declaring that, for his own private expenses, he required nothing beyond

his patrimonial estates. He summoned the cortes to assemble in January,

when the three estates of the kingdom solemnly confirmed his proclamation

as king, or acclamation, as the Portuguese term it, probably to express

the spontaneous unanimity with which he was chosen. The cortes further

acknowledged his eldest son Theodosio as heir-apparent; and voted ample

supplies of men and money, to resist the expected Spanish invasion.

[Sidenote: [1640-1647 A.D.]]

In the islands, in the African settlements, with the single exception of

Ceuta, which adhered to Spain, and in what remained of Brazil and India,

King João was proclaimed, the moment intelligence of the revolution

arrived, the Spaniards scarcely anywhere attempting to resist. In Brazil

the viceroy communicated the tidings to Count Maurice of Nassau, the

governor of the Dutch conquests, who ordered public rejoicings for the

emancipation of Portugal; but Nassau refused either to restore his

conquests to their legitimate possessor, or even to desist from further

aggression. The Dutch governors and admirals in India proved equally

unaccommodating.

In Europe, the new king was readily acknowledged by all the states at war

with the house of Austria. He concluded treaties of alliance with France,

England, Sweden, and even with Holland, colonial affairs being, in the

last instance, reserved for future negotiation and adjustment. The pope

refused to receive João’s ambassador; and the Spanish ambassador at Rome,

with the aid of a band of assassins, attempted his life. Several persons

were slain on both sides, though the intended victim escaped.

It is possible that, had Olivares immediately applied himself with vigour

to reduce Portugal, unarmed as she then was, with an empty exchequer

and an unorganised government, she might have been again subjugated.

Fortunately for her the count-duke looked upon the insurrection with

a contempt that averted the danger. He announced the event to Philip,

by wishing him joy of the forfeiture of the duke of Braganza’s large

estates; and, influenced partly by disdain for the Portuguese, partly

by excessive exasperation against the Catalans, he positively rejected

all advice to send against Portugal the army preparing for Catalonia. He

thus gave Portugal all she needed--time; and a very few months saw her in

a condition to maintain and defend the independence she had recovered.

Olivares was not, indeed, altogether inactive with regard to Portugal and

her king, but his measures were rather those of a petty intriguer than

of a great statesman. He prevailed upon the emperor, Ferdinand III, to

seize and imprison João’s brother Dom Duarte, who was then serving as a

general in the imperial armies. He appears likewise to have instigated

the plots and conspiracies by which the new Portuguese government was,

for a while, considerably disturbed. The first of these was perhaps the

most formidable, being conducted by the primate, the inquisitor-general,

and many of the chief nobility, including some connected, by blood or

marriage, with João. Not less than six hundred persons, of different

ranks, are said to have been concerned in the plot, the object of which

was to kill the king and submit Portugal again to Spain. Various stories

are told as to how the conspiracy was detected. The following seems

the most probable. The archbishop, it is said, endeavoured to seduce

the Count of Vimisis to join in the scheme, relying on that nobleman’s

supposed anger at his ill treatment by the king, who had deprived him of

the government of Alemtejo. The prelate had mistaken his man. The count’s

loyalty was superior to his resentment, and the aggrieved nobleman

immediately revealed the plot to the king.

The whole project was known to the government, and preparations were

quietly made for defeating it; a grand review was ordered, and the

principal ringleaders were invited to the palace for the occasion. They

went fearlessly, were there made prisoners without difficulty, and the

number of troops present prevented any rising in the city. The prisoners

were tried and convicted; about ten persons were executed; the primate

and inquisitor-general were imprisoned for life; and the remainder were

pardoned. The duchess of Mantua was sent back to Spain, under the idea

that she had fomented the conspiracy; and the only person for whom Dom

Duarte might have been exchanged being thus dismissed, the unhappy prince

languished out the remainder of his days in prison. The next plot was

entirely hatched at Madrid, where Olivares engaged a Portuguese fugitive

to murder João. The man made every arrangement, but his courage failed

him at sight of his intended victim, and he fled, without perpetrating

his meditated crime. By increased bribes, Olivares induced the villain

to renew the attempt, when he was betrayed by an accomplice, seized, and

executed. A base fraud, contrived to deprive the king of the ablest of

his ministers, Lucena, secretary of state, answered better.

The two countries were now decidedly at war, but their languid and

desultory hostilities produced little effect beyond harassing the

frontiers. Portugal was weak, and thought only of self-defence; Spain was

chiefly intent upon chastising the Catalans.[b]

[Sidenote: [1647-1663 A.D.]]

The Portuguese were at first successful, and after the defeat which

Mathias de Albuquerque inflicted on the baron of Molingen at Montijo

on May 26th, 1644, felt at their ease, until it became obvious that

Mazarin would desert them without compunction if it suited his purpose.

The colonial war with Holland deprived them of the assistance of the

Dutch in Europe. Mazarin’s refusal to insist on their independence at

the congress at Münster, though he protected their envoys against the

Spaniards, made them despondent; and a very curious letter of Mazarin’s

(October 4th, 1647), offering the crown of Portugal to the duke of

Longueville, exhibits at once the feeble character of João IV [who had

timidly offered to abdicate], the despair of the Portuguese, and their

dependence on France. Mazarin’s desertion did not at first do great harm,

for the war between France and Spain continued, though peace was made

with the empire.[c] In the war which, notwithstanding their alliance in

Europe, the Portuguese prosecuted against the Dutch in their colonies,

they displayed much of their original valour and energy. In Brazil

they gradually recovered their lost possessions.[b] But if the arms of

João were successful in Brazil and Africa, in India they met with many

reverses. In several engagements the Dutch had the advantage; and, in

1655, they succeeded in wholly expelling the Portuguese from the island

of Ceylon.

João died in 1656. His eldest son, Prince Theodosio, preceded him to

the tomb. Three other children survived him: (1) Catherine, married to

Charles II king of England; (2) the infante Alfonso, who, by the death of

Theodosio, was heir to the monarchy; (3) the infante Pedro, who, as we

shall soon perceive, succeeded Alfonso.

ALFONSO VI (1656-1667 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1656-1667 A.D.]]

As the new king was only in his thirteenth year, and had exhibited no

proofs of understanding, but a waywardness which would have adorned a

savage, the queen-mother was intrusted with the regency.

The administration of this princess--a lady of the house of Guzman,

her father being the eighth duke of Medina Sidonia--was distinguished

for prudence and spirit. As a Castilian, she was at first obnoxious

to the people, who suspected that she must have a leaning towards her

own country; but the vigour with which she prepared for war, and the

perseverance with which she conducted it, prove that the suspicion was

injurious. We cannot advert to the interminable and trifling events which

followed, where the combat of a few hundreds is described with as much

minuteness as if whole nations had been embattled on each side; where

the destruction of a hundred enemies is hailed with as much exultation

as if the force of Attila had been annihilated; and the whole campaign

was disgraced by the most deplorable imbecility, on the part both of the

Portuguese and the Spanish leaders, until the count de Schomberg and

Don John of Austria were opposed to each other. After the Peace of the

Pyrenees, between France and Spain, when Catalonia was pacified, and the

Spanish troops were at liberty to turn their undivided force against

Portugal, no doubt was entertained that this country would be subdued.

But the queen-regent did not neglect to strengthen the national cause by

alliances. Some French, Dutch, and English adventurers, under Schomberg,

were obtained; the infanta Catherine, with the fortress of Tangier and

a large sum of money, were given to Charles II as the condition of his

alliance, and for the aid of some English regiments. Schomberg sustained

so much opposition, so much jealousy and ill will from the chiefs

associated with him, that he could not prevent Don John from obtaining

some rapid successes. Among them was the conquest of Evora. But this

advantage was soon neutralised by a signal victory attained over the

Castilians; it was still further improved by the recovery of Evora--both

monuments of Schomberg’s ability and of English valour. Don John was

deprived of the command. This change was fortunate for Portugal; for the

new general was so signally defeated at Villaviciosa, that it may be said

to have secured the independence of that kingdom. This was the last noted

exploit during the reign of Alfonso.

During these hostilities the court of Lisbon exhibited strange scenes.

The depraved tastes, the low and profligate habits, the headstrong

perversity of the king daily acquired strength, and afforded a melancholy

prospect to the nation. He associated with the lowest of the people;

he introduced them into his palace; or accompanied them in nocturnal

expeditions, undertaken as much for bloodshed as for mere mischief.

His band of young companions became the terror of the capital. By his

caprices several youths are said to have been tortured to death; and

young girls to have suffered a still worse fate: all his diversions

partook of his savage and capricious character. So long as he confined

them to boxing in the ring, to wrestling, or to breaking the windows by

night, the citizens, however scandalised at such conduct, did not much

complain; but when their daughters were seduced, or their sons ill used

by the royal satellites, even they began to think that a king might do

wrong. When common prostitutes were brought to the palace, which was

thereby converted into a brothel, their indignation yielded to contempt.

The influence of the queen was ineffectual. At length the indignant

nobles, at her instigation, forcibly seized two brothers, the vilest and

most dangerous of his satellites, and sent them away to Brazil; but other

creatures were found to supply their place.

With all his stupidity, the royal brute felt that he was a king; he

knew that the time of his majority was long past; he insisted on being

invested with the regal authority in all its extent; and, after a

struggle between him and his mother, he forced her, in June, 1662, to

resign the regency. The removal of so salutary a rein on his excesses

could not fail to make things worse. The licentious youths with whom he

surrounded himself disgusted by their conduct the oldest servants of the

crown, and forced them to retreat from their public offices. His own

extravagances increased. His satellites paraded the streets, or scoured

the highways, night and day; they not unfrequently returned with plunder,

oftener still with their swords stained with blood. We are told that he

even charged the people in a public procession; that he instigated the

assassination of some obnoxious nobles; that, to show his contempt of a

comet which was believed to be the forerunner of some great change, he

fired a pistol at it, at the same time reviling it with the lowest terms

of scurrility.

It was hoped that, if a wife were procured him, he would, at least,

refrain from some excesses; and one was found in Mademoiselle d’Aumale,

daughter of the duke of Nemours. But he treated his beautiful queen with

open neglect; he disregarded alike her entreaties, her tears, and her

remonstrances; nor did the death of his mother make the slightest change

in his conduct.

But the strangest part of these transactions remains to be told. That the

queen-mother had resigned her authority with reluctance is certain; that

she had entertained thoughts of procuring the transfer of the sceptre

from Alfonso to Pedro is confirmed by the general tenor of her actions.

It is no less true that Pedro aspired to supplant his brother; that he

intrigued with the nobles and prelates for that end; and that, by the

outward decorum of his conduct, by a scrupulous regard to the decencies

of his station, he laboured to make the contrast between himself and

the king too marked to be overlooked. Equally certain it is that no one

observed this contrast more narrowly than the youthful queen, who soon

formed a suspicious connection with the infante. That their plans for

the future were soon arranged, is evident enough from the sequel. When

Pedro’s plans were matured, when he had interested a considerable party

in his behalf, he sought an open rupture--and he had causes enough--with

the king. In October, 1667, a furious mob, which had been gained by his

emissaries, conducted him to the palace, insisting that justice should

be done him on his enemies. On the 21st of November, the queen hastily

left the palace, and retired to the convent of St. Francis. Her pretext

was the ill-usage she hourly received from Alfonso. The true reason for

so extraordinary a step appeared in a letter in which, after adverting

to her domestic sorrows, she surprised the public by saying that her

marriage was, from its origin, null; that it had never been consummated.

[Sidenote: [1667-1668 A.D.]]

The perusal of this extraordinary letter filled Alfonso with indignant

wonder. He hastened to the convent, and on being refused admission,

he ordered the gates to be broken; but his brother, arriving with an

escort, persuaded or compelled him to depart. No sooner was he retired,

than the infante had a long interview with her. The subject of their

conversation appeared from a letter to the chapter of Lisbon, which

contained the same charge of impotence against the king. The counsellors

of state forced him to sign an act of renunciation. He was then arrested,

and sentenced to perpetual confinement, but with permission to enjoy

the comforts of life. In conclusion, Pedro was proclaimed regent; and,

in that character, was recognised by an assembly of the states. By his

creatures, the same states were persuaded to petition the queen, who

no longer showed any inclination to leave the kingdom, that she would

accept the hand of so deserving a prince. She required no solicitation.

Her uncle the cardinal Vendôme, anxious that his family should contain a

queen, expedited it without delay. The marriage was celebrated in haste,

lest a papal inhibition should arrive, and blast the fruit of so many

intrigues. Subsequently, an application was made to the pope, to confirm

the dispensation of the cardinal; and Clement, who saw that the mischief

was done, admitted the allegation of impotence, and despatched the brief

of confirmation.

Thus concluded one of the most extraordinary scenes that has ever been

exhibited to the eyes of mankind--extraordinary alike for effrontery

and duplicity. However the constitution of Alfonso might have been

impaired by debauchery, he was not impotent. No one labouring under

such a disability would have been at the trouble either of visiting the

public stews or of introducing women of loose morals into the palace.

But, without insisting on this presumptive evidence, we are positively

informed that Alfonso had one child at least by his favourite mistress.

If the _debitum conjugale_ had never been paid, why should a circumstance

so important to the kingdom be concealed during sixteen months? Why

should it be mentioned, for the first time, when Pedro was ready to usurp

the crown? The whole proceeding is explicable enough. The queen felt that

she was neglected; she admired the infante, and was gained by him as an

accessory to the long meditated plot of dethroning the king. The means

adopted by these paramours were even more daring, more indicative of the

contempt with which they regarded public opinion, than the end itself.

[Sidenote: [1668-1706 A.D.]]

Before this iniquitous consummation of ambition and lust, Pedro had the

glory of ending the long dispute with Spain. Both nations were exhausted

by their past exertions, and both naturally inclined for peace. It was

concluded at Lisbon, under the mediation of Charles II, king of England.

By it all conquests made by either party were restored, and the subjects

of each nation admitted to the privileges enjoyed by the most favoured

people. The arms of Portugal were immediately erased from the escutcheon

of the Spanish monarchy. This was almost the only transaction of moment

in which the regent was engaged, from his marriage to the death of

Alfonso. There was, indeed, a conspiracy formed to restore that prince;

but it was easily detected and its authors punished. That unfortunate

monarch was first removed to the Azores; and then transferred to the

palace of Cintra, where, in 1683, he ended his days. The same year was

fatal to the queen, who left no other issue than a daughter, the infanta

Isabella.

PEDRO II (1683-1706 A.D.); JOÃO V (1706-1750 A.D.)

On the death of Alfonso, the coronation of the new king was celebrated

with the usual pomp and circumstance. His reign, like his regency, was

passed in profound peace, and consequently furnishes no materials for

history, until the celebrated War of the Spanish Succession, following

the demise of Charles II, called him into the field. The motives which

induced him to take part with the allies against Philip V have been

already explained, and the chief events of the war have been related in

the history of Spain.[173]

During the reigns of Alfonso and Pedro, the affairs of India continually

declined. The Dutch, the most persevering enemies that ever assailed the

Portuguese empire in the East, not satisfied with the richest settlements

in Malacca and in the India islands, prepared to expel the subjects of

his most faithful majesty from the continent. The latter were insulted,

sometimes defeated, within sight of Goa. In 1660, they blockaded the bar

of Goa, thereby preventing the annual sailing of merchandise for Lisbon.

Bombay was delivered to the English. In 1665, Diu was plundered by the

Mohammedans, three thousand of the inhabitants being led into hopeless

captivity, the rest put to the sword. Finally, Cochin was reduced by the

king of Travancore, and the Portuguese empire in India was confined to

Goa, Diu, and a few commercial settlements on the coast of Malabar and in

the islands. The African and Brazilian possessions continued unimpaired.

By his second queen, a princess of Bavaria, Pedro had several children,

most of whom, however, died either in infancy or without issue. He was

succeeded, in 1706, by the infante João, born in 1688.[e]

[Sidenote: [1706-1750 A.D.]]

Dom Pedro’s successor was but eighteen years of age. Lacking in

experience and doubtless desirous of equalling his father’s glory, he did

not know how to get out of the dangerous political course which Portugal

was pursuing and he continued to take part in the war of succession to

the sole profit of England and Holland. This persistence was all the

more deplorable as the success of the allies in Spain was not long

maintained. Scarcely had João V become king when Philip V returned

to Madrid in the midst of enthusiastic acclamations and the duke of

Berwick achieved over the combined forces of De las Minas and Galway the

brilliant victory of Almansa (April 25th, 1707). The Portuguese, against

whom the efforts of the Spanish and French were especially directed,

lost thirteen regiments and they were unable to hold the positions

they had taken. Far from profiting by the hard lesson that fortune had

administered to him, João V lost no time in rebinding through marriage

the political alliances that his father had adopted; he married Maria

Anna of Austria, sister of the emperor Joseph I and of the archduke

Charles, Philip V’s rival, and celebrated this brilliant union with the

most magnificent fêtes that Portugal had ever seen.

All this did not prevent Philip’s taking each day a more marked

advantage. Victor at Badajoz, victor at Villaviciosa, he invaded Portugal

in turn; it became evident that whatever else might happen this prince

would at least keep the crown of Castile. The victory of the allies at

Saragossa completely disappeared amid all these disasters. But what was

much more unfortunate still was that Portugal nearly lost Brazil, which

was the sole possession that would permit her henceforth to cut some

sort of figure in the world. It was the very moment when new explorers

had just discovered the opulent mines of Goyaz and the Matto-Grosso that

a Spanish-French fleet under the command of the valiant Duguay-Trouin

put in an appearance. Powerful with its seven vessels and eight frigates

it had no difficulty in forcing the channel to Rio de Janeiro, and

after it had landed its forces there was no resistance (September 14th,

1711). Soldiers and inhabitants quickly evacuated the town, taking

refuge with their valuables in the neighbouring mountains. Brazil’s fate

would doubtless have been settled there and then had it not been for

the grave troubles with which France was at that time overwhelmed, and

especially for the small number of soldiers assigned to the expedition.

Duguay-Trouin had to content himself with sacking Rio de Janeiro and

making it pay a ransom of 600,000 cruzados. Instead of a conqueror he

was only a devastator, but he went far towards making the Portuguese

appreciate all the advantages of the English alliance, and brought back

to exhausted France a booty of over twenty-five millions of francs.

The Portuguese, however, were still more convinced by the events which

were taking place at the same time in Europe. In taking part in the

prolonged quarrels of which Charles II’s succession had been the source,

England had but a single aim in view--to inflame the whole of western

Europe and take advantage of the conflagration to obtain ascendency

over the seas. Just as soon as she had obtained her end by destroying

the remains of the French and Spanish navy, by reducing Portugal to the

state of a colony, and by making herself sure of the Mediterranean by the

rascally occupation of Gibraltar and Minorca, then, having no further

interest in continuing the war, she withdrew and was the first to accept

Louis XIV’s proposals. But what could the powerless João V do without

her? He had to come to terms, or be conquered; and lost in negotiating

all the fine hopes that the allies had held before his eyes. The Peace of

1713 with France simply stipulated that the most Christian king renounce

all claims upon Brazil, that King Philip V would arrange matters in a

manner agreeable to Portugal, and that England would be responsible

for the carrying out of the agreed-upon conditions. That of February

6th, 1715, with Philip V gave the territory and colony of Colonia del

Sacramento to Portugal in exchange for Albuquerque which had been taken

from Castile. And so all the money spent and all the blood spilled,

devoted, after all, to establishing England’s supremacy, had brought

nothing to Portugal but an impoverished and subdued kingdom, unless we

may consider as sufficient consolation João V’s honour of being mentioned

first in the text of the treaty.

Scarcely had João emerged from this terrible twelve years’ struggle when

the Venetians asked his assistance against the Ottomans. Too devout

to reject such a petition, he hastened to send them the count of Rio

Grande and a few ships, without any other object than that of sustaining

the Christians against the infidels. But in spite of all the great

questions over which Europe was still divided, this war was henceforth

the only war into which he let himself be dragged. On the contrary he

took care to maintain the friendliest relations with Castile, which he

should never have ceased to do. He made this union the closer by two

marriages--that of his eldest son José, prince of Brazil, with Doña

Maria Anna Victoria, daughter of Philip V; and that of the infanta Maria

Barbara with the prince of the Asturias (1728). Perhaps we may even

reproach João V with having carried his desire to oblige Spain too far by

giving up the Philippines and by exchanging the rich colony of Colonia

del Sacramento, with all the northern region of La Plata, for a few small

colonies in Paraguay, between the Ibicuhy and the Uruguay, which the

Jesuits, possessors of all the territory, did not wish to give up (1750).

But by this time João V was dying, and the Recollet friar, Gaspard de

Incarnação, who ruled in his name, was solely responsible for this

foolish concession.

_The Colonies Decline_