was taken by his tutor and guardian to Zamora to receive the honour of
knighthood, in the cathedral from his cousin, Alfonso VII. It was at the
feast of Pentecost, in 1125, that he thus devoted his life to chivalry,
and he made his vows and watched his arms throughout the night in the
cathedral with all the ardour of his age and temperament. He was to
fight in many a war with the cousin who then made him a knight; but
neither of them, though failing to lead moral lives, ever failed to
acquit himself as a chivalrous knight. Affonso returned to Guimaraens
with Egas Moniz, and many of the Portuguese nobility at once proposed
that he should assume the government of his county in person and deprive
his mother of the regency. He was trained to this idea by Archbishop
Paio Mendes and his party, and when Donna Theresa and Egas Moniz
promised for him that he would submit to Alfonso VII. he refused to
ratify their promises, and declared himself of age in 1128. He speedily
defeated his mother at the battle of S. Mamede, and then became the real
ruler of his county. In his conduct after this behaviour of his ward and
pupil, old Egas Moniz showed how fit he was to have been the tutor of a
hero. When the old nobleman understood that Affonso would not make the
submission to the King of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia, which he had
promised in the young count’s name, he went to Toledo with his wife and
children, and, surrendered himself to Alfonso VII. The young king
honoured the old man’s loyalty to his word, and, instead of punishing
him, pointed him out to his courtiers as a model to be imitated, and
said aloud, “What great things will not the pupil of such a noble knight
be able to perform!”
The reign of Affonso Henriques may be divided into four clearly marked
periods--the regency of Donna Theresa; the wars of dismemberment, by
which the independence of Portugal was established; the wars of
acquisition against the Moors, by which the southern frontier of the
country was extended; and the period of partial decline after the defeat
and imprisonment of the king in 1166. Of these four periods the first
has been described, but each of the others deserves a close examination,
for each of them possesses a distinct importance in Portuguese history.
The four wars of Affonso Henriques with Alfonso VII. ended in the
recognition of the Portuguese hero as king, and in the abandonment by
him of all interference in Gallicia. The first Gallician war consisted
of an incursion by Affonso Henriques into Gallicia, in 1130, the year of
his mother’s death, which was caused by the desire of the Count to
punish Fernando Peres, who was preparing on his side an invasion of
Portugal. From this incursion Affonso was recalled by the news that
Fernando’s brother, Bermudo Peres, who had married Affonso’s sister, and
was governor of Viseu, was in open insurrection. Affonso instantly
returned, took Bermudo’s castle of Seia, confiscated his estates, and
forced him to become a monk; and the Gallician party in Portugal
received a blow from which it never recovered. In 1135 Affonso made a
second incursion into Gallicia, took the town of Limia, and built the
great castle of Celmes. Alfonso VII., who had in this year been elected
Emperor, and whose supremacy was acknowledged not only all over Spain,
but in Provence as well, was not likely to brook this insolence on the
part of the Count of Portugal, and speedily sent an army, which captured
Celmes and then withdrew. Affonso did not feel grateful for the
leniency with which he had been treated, but in 1137 made a third
incursion into Gallicia, at the invitation of Gomes Nunes of Tuy, and
Rodrigo Peres of Limia, and utterly defeated the counts true to Alfonso
VII., headed by his old enemy Fernando Peres, and by Rodrigo Vela, in
the hard-fought battle of Cerneja. This defeat at last roused the
Emperor Alfonso, who came in person with a powerful army to punish the
count, or as he now termed himself, the Infante of Portugal. Fortunately
for Affonso the two armies did not come to blows; the ecclesiastics on
both sides argued that it was monstrous for two Christian princes to
fight with each other instead of with the Moors, and by the mediation of
the Archbishop of Braga and the Bishop of Oporto, on behalf of Affonso,
and of the Bishops of Tuy, Segovia, and Orense for the Emperor, the
Peace of Tuy was signed on July 4, 1137. By this peace Affonso Henriques
promised to abandon all interference with Gallician affairs, and to
submit himself as a vassal to the Emperor, and both princes swore to
turn their arms against the Mohammedans. But the Portuguese prince did
not abide by the terms of the Peace of Tuy, in so far as it made him a
vassal; and after winning his famous victory over the Moors at Ourique,
in 1139, he again invaded Gallicia, and in 1140 the last battle between
the sons of the two brothers-in-arms, the French counts, Raymond and
Henry, was fought. Affonso Henriques was wounded, and it was agreed, in
consonance with the ideas of the times, to refer the great question of
Portuguese independence to a chivalrous contest. In a great tournament,
known as the “Tourney of Valdevez,” the Portuguese knights were entirely
successful over those of Castile, and in consequence of their victory
Affonso Henriques assumed the title of King of Portugal.
This is the turning-point of Portuguese history, and it is a curious
fact that the independence of Portugal from Gallicia was achieved by
victory in a tournament and not in war. Up to 1136 Affonso Henriques had
styled himself Infante, in imitation of the title borne by his mother;
from 1136 to 1140 he styled himself Principe, and in 1140 he first took
the title of King. There is no document extant in which the Emperor
acknowledged his cousin as a sovereign as early as this date, and,
indeed, the agreement is only known as the “Truce of Valdevez,” but he
obviously acquiesced in it, on condition that Affonso Henriques gave up
all idea of interfering in Gallician politics or of extending his
frontiers towards the north. But a more important consent than that of
the Emperor had to be obtained before the Portuguese prince could obtain
admission into the sacred circle of Christian kings, and this was the
consent of the Pope. The head of the Church at this period was Innocent
II., who was earnestly desirous of promoting the crusading spirit, and
was especially grieved at the very existence of the Moors in Spain. He
despatched Cardinal Guy de Vico to establish union amongst the Christian
princes there, and the cardinal in 1143 drew up a regular peace and
treaty between the Emperor and Affonso Henriques at Zamora. By this
treaty the latter was recognized as sovereign monarch of Portugal, and
the Emperor also granted to him the lordship of Astorga as a fief, in
order that he might thus exercise some control over the Portuguese king.
In reward for the mediation of the cardinal, Affonso Henriques further
declared himself by letter to be a vassal of the Pope, and promised to
pay four ounces of gold a year, by which measure he placed himself under
the protection of the Spiritual Head of Christendom, and secured a
guarantee for the perpetuation of his dynasty.
Portugal was now an independent kingdom. The wars of dismemberment were
over; the wars of extension and establishment were now to take their
place. The next twenty-five years of the reign of Affonso Henriques were
spent in one long crusade against the Moors, and were full of incident
and adventure.
But before entering upon a summary description of these wars, which
spread the fame of the Portuguese and of their monarch throughout
Europe, something must be said of the Moorish wars, which were carried
on simultaneously with the wars of dismemberment. These Gallician wars
have been described first and by themselves, because of the common
mistake made that it was by his successes against the Moors that Affonso
Henriques won his crown. This mistake is of old standing; the early
Portuguese chroniclers always ascribed the independence of their country
as due to the successes of their first king over the infidels, and it
was not until the modern school of historians arose in Portugal, which
examined documents and did not take the statements of their predecessors
on trust, that it was clearly pointed out that Affonso Henriques won
his crown by his long struggle with his Christian cousin, and not by his
exploits against the Moors. This fact is such an important one that it
ranks amongst the most startling discoveries made by the modern
scientific school of historians, and to bring it into clearer prominence
the early years of war with the Moors have been purposely passed over
until now; although there can be no doubt that the exploits of the great
Portuguese crusader made the Emperor more ready to recognize him as an
independent sovereign, and the Pope more anxious to comply with his
desire to be admitted among the sovereigns of Europe. As a proof of his
admission it may be noted here that Affonso Henriques married in 1146
the daughter of a European prince, Matilda of Savoy, daughter of Amadeus
II., Count of Savoy, Maurrienne, and Piedmont.
[Illustration: A VIEW OF THE ANCIENT MOORISH BATH AT CINTRA.
(_From Murphy’s “Travels in Portugal,” 1795._)]
The condition of the Moorish power in Spain had been particularly
favourable to his early enterprises in Gallicia, for it had left him
comparatively free from the fear of invasion from the south, and given
him opportunities for winning signal victories. The wave of Mohammedan
fanaticism, which had established the Almoravid dynasty in Spain and
Morocco, and defeated the Christian chivalry at the battle of Zalaca,
had lost its power, and the Almoravides had degenerated.[2] Independent
Mohammedan dynasties had again established themselves in the different
provinces of Spain, while in Africa, the successor of the Mahdi,
Abd-el-Mumin, was destroying the power of the Almoravides with a fresh
fanatical movement. The three independent emīrs with whom the
Portuguese had to deal were those of the Alfaghar or Algarves, of
Al-kasr Ibn Abi Danes, which comprised Badajoz, Elvas, and Evora, and of
the Belatha, which included the Mohammedan possessions to the north of
the Tagus with the important cities of Lisbon, Santarem, and Cintra.
Under these emīrs were numerous “wālis” of districts, “vezīrs”
of cities, and “kāids” of castles, who were semi-independent; and as
not only the emīrs, but their subordinates were constantly at war
with each other, and could expect but little help from the Almoravide
caliph, the incursions of the Portuguese were generally crowned with
success.
After his accession to the government, Affonso Henriques had chiefly
left the duty of harassing the Moors to the Knights Templars and Knights
Hospitallers, who engaged in frequent expeditions from their
headquarters at Soure and Thomar, where they had been established by
Donna Theresa. Busied as he was with his schemes for independence,
Affonso did little to assist these knightly monks, except to build a
great castle at Leiria, which was intended at once to cover his capital
Coimbra, and to serve as a base for expeditions against Santarem and
Cintra. The erection of this castle alarmed the Mohammedans of the
Belatha, and caused them for a moment to drop their quarrels with each
other. They raised a large army, and in 1135, the very year in which the
castle of Leiria had been built, they stormed it, killed the 240 knights
who had been left as its garrison, and defeated a Christian army at
Thomar. At the time of these disasters Affonso was in Gallicia, but when
affairs there were temporarily settled by the Peace of Tuy, he prepared
to undertake a great expedition against the Moors and gathered all the
chivalry of Portugal to follow him.
When he had collected his army in May, 1139, he determined to do more
than make one of the usual expeditions into the ruined and devastated
districts of the Belatha, and to force his way to the south of the
Tagus, and thus drive the war into the heart of the enemy’s country. He
knew that the opposition would not be so serious as it would have been
in previous years, because Teshfīn, the last Almoravide caliph, who
had succeeded his father in 1137, had in 1138 taken the flower of the
Mohammedan chivalry of Spain across the straits to Africa to make a last
effort to subdue the growing power of the Almohades or followers of the
Mahdi. He knew also that his cousin Alfonso was making his second
incursion into the heart of Andalusia, and he therefore boldly crossed
the Tagus and entered the province of Al-kasr Ibn Abi Danes, as the
western portion of the old Moslem emirate of the Gharb was called. The
emīr, Ismar or Omar, tried to collect an army, but Affonso advanced
with rapidity and utterly defeated him, with four of his “wālis,” at
Orik or Ourique eight leagues south of Beja, on July 25, 1139.
This is the famous victory of Ourique, which, until modern investigators
examined the facts, has been considered to have laid the foundations of
the independence of Portugal. Chroniclers, two centuries after the
battle solemnly asserted that five kings were defeated on this occasion,
that two hundred thousand Mohammedans were slain, and that after the
victory the Portuguese soldiers raised Affonso on their shields and
hailed him as king. This story is absolutely without authority from
contemporary chronicles, and is quite as much a fiction as the Cortes of
Lamego, which has been invented as sitting in 1143 and passing the
constitutional laws, on which Vertot and other writers have expended so
much eloquence. One ought, perhaps, to speak with more reverence of the
legend which tells how Christ crucified appeared to Affonso in his tent,
on the evening before the battle, and promised him the victory, even
though there is no contemporary tradition referring to it; because it
would have been quite in keeping with the mysticism of the Middle Ages
for Affonso to assert that he had seen such a vision in order to
encourage his soldiers. This tradition was certainly current a century
after the battle, and the kings of Portugal to this day bear the five
wounds of Christ in a chief upon their coat of arms in memory of it.[3]
These legends all deserve record, if only to show how great was the fame
of the victory of Affonso, rather from his courage in penetrating so far
into the enemy’s country than from his success in the battle itself.
That success was a victory over five provincial wālis in a country
which hated the Almoravides, at a time when the flower of the Moslem
chivalry was fighting in Africa, and it was not by such victories, but
by hard struggles with his Christian cousin that Affonso achieved the
independence of his country. If any other further proof that the victory
was not all that poets and later historians painted it was needed, it
might be found in the fact that in the very next year Ismar or Omar, the
emīr who was defeated at Ourique, was able to raise a fresh army with
which he took the castle of Leiria by storm.
[Illustration: ARCH OF THE WESTERN ENTRANCE TO AN OLD CHAPEL AT LEIRIA.]
For many years after the recognition of Affonso’s independence the
history of his reign is filled by accounts of the wars against the
Moors. But the warfare no longer comprised single expeditions, such as
that crowned by the victory of Ourique, but steady persevering conquest
of the Belatha. The efforts of the Portuguese were at first directed
against cities and castles, and the country districts were ravaged and
left to lie waste. The whole of the district between Coimbra and the
Tagus was one great battle-ground, and Affonso had all he could do to
take and hold the cities, and was obliged to leave the villages in a
state of desolation. The population of his original kingdom was not
large enough to colonize the new conquests, and Affonso therefore
confined his efforts to laying waste the fields and garrisoning the
cities he took from the Moors with any soldiers he could manage to take
into his pay. It must be noted that the war was not one of
extermination; the Mohammedan and Christian soldiers fought fiercely
enough, but the Celtic inhabitants of the cities, and the large
intermixture of Jews, who dwelt amongst them, passed from the dominion
of the one race to that of the other quietly enough. The war was a war
of soldiers, and Affonso’s difficulty was to get enough of them to make
a successful attempt to maintain his conquests. The nobility of Portugal
followed him gladly with their vassals, and the religious orders of
knights repaid him by their services for the liberality with which Donna
Theresa had received them, but neither of these sources of military
strength were so valuable to him as the crusaders of northern Europe. He
gained their assistance in two ways. Pope Innocent II. had declared it
as praiseworthy to fight the infidels in Spain as in the Holy Land, and
many crusaders fulfilled their crusading vows by coming to Portugal and
taking service there. But most of the warriors of the cross preferred
rather to make their way to Palestine, and as those from England,
Flanders, and the north of France went round by sea, and invariably
touched at Oporto, Affonso was able to persuade many of them to do a
little fighting under his command against the Moors before proceeding to
attack the Saracens in the Holy Land. This was what he did in 1143,
when, with some French crusaders, he ravaged the district around Lisbon.
The history of the Portuguese conquest of the Belatha is of the greatest
importance in itself, and it is noticeable that Affonso’s first
incursion into the country, held by the Moors after the signature of the
Treaty of Zamora, took place at the invitation of a Moorish emīr.
Ahmad Ibn Kasi, Emīr of Mertola, wrote to him in 1144 under the name
and title of Ibn Errik, Lord of Coimbra, and begged him to come to his
assistance against the Emīr of Badajoz. But the Moorish soldiers of
Ahmad Ibn Kasi refused to fight in the same ranks with the Christians,
and Affonso was requested to retire and loaded with presents. After this
he felt increasingly that it was more advantageous for him to conquer
the neighbouring cities one by one than to make these distant
expeditions. It was obvious that his first attack should be directed
against the great and beautiful city of Santarem, which commanded the
upper reaches of the Tagus, and lay at but one day’s march from his
capital at Coimbra. Abu Zekeria, the “vezīr” of Santarem, was the
most famous Mohammedan warrior in the Belatha, and had inflicted a
signal defeat upon the Knights Templars at Soure, and in him Affonso had
a worthy opponent. The only way to take his city was to surprise it, and
for this end the Portuguese king made elaborate preparations. He told no
one of his real intention, except one old soldier, Mem Ramires, and the
first Portuguese canonized saint, St. Theotonio, then prior of the
convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra. On March 2, 1147, he led his army
forth, and, surprising the city before its “vezīr” had time to
provision it, he laid siege for a few days, and on March 15th carried it
by storm with but slight resistance from the dispirited garrison.
[Illustration: VIEW OF LISBON. (_After a Photograph._)]
This feat of arms was surpassed in the same year by a still greater
event, the capture of Lisbon, the important city at the mouth of the
Tagus, the future capital of Portugal, and the port from which the
Portuguese ships were to sail forth on their voyages of discovery both
to the east and the west. Affonso Henriques had long wished to capture
this great city, for if he possessed it as well as Santarem, he would be
able to defend the Tagus as his southern boundary, and have a much
better base of operations. This ancient city was, from its position on
the Tagus, the natural capital of the western coast of the Iberian
peninsula, and had been an ancient Greek colony. The legend that it was
founded by Ulysses, who gave its name, Ulyssipo, afterwards corrupted
into Olisipo and Lisbon, is an ancient one; and it certainly held that
name up to the time of Augustus, when a Roman colony was fixed there,
and its name was changed to Felicitas Julia. Its capture by the Moors in
714 had marked one of their greatest stages of advance, and it remained
the capital of their province of the Belatha for more than four hundred
years. It had three times been captured by the Christians--in 792 by
Alfonso the Chaste, of Castile; in 851 by Ordonho I., of Leon; and in
1093 by Alfonso VI., the father-in-law of Count Henry, but had only
remained in their possession twenty years after the first recapture, and
only a few months upon the second and third occasions. On this occasion
Affonso hoped to be permanently successful, and to make it the capital
of his kingdom.
It is very doubtful if the Portuguese king would have entered upon this
hazardous feat of arms so soon after his capture of Santarem, had not
the news reached him from Oporto that a great fleet of crusaders had put
in there, and that the Bishop of Oporto had persuaded the soldiers of
the cross to commence their holy war against the infidels by assisting
to take Lisbon before they proceeded on their way to Palestine. The
bulk of these crusaders were Englishmen, and as a letter describing the
expedition and siege by one of their number has lately been discovered
and published,[4] it is possible to trace the whole history of this most
important event in the history of Portugal. The fleet which had sailed
from Dartmouth consisted of 164 ships, under several captains, of whom
the most important were Arnold of Aerschot and Christian Ghistell,
commanding the Germans, Flemings, and men of the county of Boulogne;
Hervey Glanvill, constable of the men of Norfolk and Suffolk; Simon of
Dover, “constable of all the ships of Kent;” Andrew of London, and Saher
de Arcellis. The English crusader tells in his letter that the
proposition of the Bishop of Oporto was not universally well received,
and that two “pirates,” named William Vitulus and Ralph his brother,
succeeded in leading away for a time the men of Hampshire, Bristol, and
Hastings, whose cooperation was, however, soon secured by the eloquence
of Hervey Glanvill. The northern crusaders thus re-united set sail for
the Tagus, and having disembarked at the mouth of the river, marched up
to join Affonso and his Portuguese knights. Even with this large
reinforcement, the King of Portugal had not sufficient soldiers to
blockade the great city, and he concentrated all his efforts on one
particular spot, where at last he forced an entrance on October 24th.
The resistance does not seem to have been very obstinate; the Moors of
the Belatha had been dispirited by the capture of Santarem; those of
the provinces to the south were either distracted by internecine war or
paralyzed into inaction by fear of the Almohades; and Affonso was
allowed to achieve and consolidate his conquest.