of the Algarves, was the third son of John “the Great” and Philippa of
Lancaster, and after winning great credit in the capture of Ceuta, he
took up his residence at Sagre, near Cape St. Vincent, in 1418, and
devoted himself to the task of maritime exploration. His father and his
brothers assisted him, but they recognized his special fitness for the
work, and therefore, though encouraging him as much as possible, they
did not interfere with his projects, and made no attempts to contest his
well-earned title of Prince Henry “the Navigator.”[9] The prince was too
wise to neglect scientific knowledge, and he therefore summoned learned
mathematicians and astronomers from all parts of Europe to his aid.
Enjoying immense wealth, he established an observatory and a school of
navigation at Sagre, where he employed the men of science in making
charts and, above all, in improving the working of the compass. This was
the theoretical side of his work; the practical was not less important.
He collected together all the most daring captains and mariners he could
find, and sent them forth year by year on voyages of discovery along the
western coast of Africa. He never went on any of these expeditions in
person, but he was acknowledged by all the men of science and sailors in
his pay to be their master and presiding genius.
[Illustration: ST. SALVADOR IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
(_From Braun and Hohenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum. 1574._)]
The idea in Prince Henry’s mind was that it was possible to sail round
Africa to India, and thus trade directly with the East, and he died
after more than forty years of endeavour without having fulfilled his
dreams. There were legends of old time, which he knew well, that the
southern continent could be sailed round, legends probably founded on
the tales of Carthaginian sailors, but no geographer of that period
could assert that these legends were founded upon fact. If it were true,
and ships could sail direct from Lisbon to India, it was easy to see
what enormous profits must accrue to the people who found and followed
this route. At that time the products of the East came by a long and
dangerous journey to Venice, whence they were distributed over Europe.
They had either to be conveyed by land all the way to the Levant, or
else to be borne up the Red Sea and carried across Egypt. By either way
the expenses and risk were enormous, and the prices of the commodities
of the East were proportionately great. Could a direct sea route be
discovered, it was obvious that these risks and expenses would be
avoided, and that Lisbon would take the place of Venice as the
distributor of the treasures of the East to Europe. Dom Henry understood
this, and, urged by patriotism, as well as by an ardent zeal for the
cause of exploration, he devoted his wealth and time to discovering this
direct sea route. As has been said, he did not himself succeed in
attaining this great end, but he did much towards it, and the navigators
who were successful, Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral, were men
imbued with his ideas and in a way his disciples. In speaking of the
explorers of Prince Henry’s time, the word “ship” must not be taken to
mean the comparatively well-built and well-appointed vessels of the end
of the sixteenth century. Modern sailors would think but little of
Drake’s famous ship the _Pelican_, yet it was far superior in size and
equipments to the wretched sailing boats of the first explorers of the
fifteenth century. The enterprise of Dom Henry did much to improve the
ship-building of the Portuguese, and towards the end of his life their
vessels could carry as many as sixty men, but at the beginning of his
career his ships were little better than half-decked sailing boats, with
a crew of at most thirty-six sailors.
A mere record of discoveries, a list of names of places along the
inhospitable west coast of Africa, may be monotonous in itself; but when
the scanty means of these early Portuguese mariners is considered, and
the greatness of the goal at which they were aiming, a fresh interest
arises in the study of the map of Africa. The first-fruits of Prince
Henry’s exploring ardour were the discovery of the island of Porto Santo
by Bartholomeu Perestrello, in 1419, and of the more important island of
Madeira by João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz, in 1420. These
successes delighted Prince Henry and his father, and John “the Great”
immediately granted the two islands to the Order of Christ, of which his
son was Grand Master. Prince Henry at once rewarded his captains, and
leased Porto Santo to Perestrello, and Madeira in equal parts to its two
discoverers. The provinces of the larger island were named Funchal, from
“funcho,” the Portuguese word for fennel which abounds there, and
Machico, said to be derived from the Englishman, Robert Machin. Prince
Henry’s first effort, before proceeding further with his explorations,
was to colonize these two islands. With Porto Santo he was not
successful, for the rabbits introduced by Perestrello ate up the whole
produce of the island; and a similar fate seemed to await Madeira, where
the indigenous vegetation was almost entirely destroyed by a great fire,
which lasted seven years. However, he did not despair, and it was Dom
Henry who had the sugar-cane and the vine, which are to this day the
chief sources of its wealth, introduced into Madeira.
It is but fair to mention that many authors have held these great
discoveries to be merely re-discoveries. Some people affirm that Madeira
was really discovered by Emmanuel Pessanha, the first Lord High Admiral
of Portugal, in 1351, during the reign of Affonso “the Brave,” and there
seems to be more foundation for the story of Robert Machin, which is at
all events of great antiquity. The story runs that Robert Machin, son of
a merchant in Bristol, loved and was beloved by a lady of noble birth,
whose relations refused to countenance him, and threw him into prison.
About the year 1370, on his release, he found that his lady love had
married a wealthy baron, but he continued his suit and she consented to
elope with him. He took her on board a ship intending to go to France,
but a gale came on and the ship, after being driven south for thirteen
days, struck upon an island. They found the island uninhabited and very
beautiful, and Machin and some of his companions took up their residence
upon it, and built huts under the branches of a spreading tree. Here
they lived very happily until a storm one day drove the ship from its
moorings, which so grieved the lady that she died in despair at the
thought of never seeing her native land again. She was buried beneath
the tree, and Machin soon followed her to the grave, having first
erected a cross with a brief inscription, narrating his adventures, and
begging any Christians who might come to the island to erect a church
over the place where her remains rested. After his death, those of his
companions, who remained, determined to try to escape in the ship’s
boat, but they were taken by a Moorish cruiser and sold for slaves.
While in captivity in Morocco, one of the Englishmen told a Spanish
fellow-captive, named Juan Morales, the whole history, and this Morales,
being afterwards taken prisoner by João Gonçalves Zarco, related the
narrative to his captor and to Prince Henry. Morales, according to this
tale, was the pilot of Zarco and Tristão Vaz on their voyage of
discovery, and the story goes on to say that the grave of the two
English lovers was discovered, and that Machin’s dying desire was
fulfilled, and a church erected over their remains. Whatever may be the
truth of this legend, and whether Machin ever landed on Madeira or not,
the fact remains that the first occupation of the island, and its being
marked upon the chart, were due to the enterprise of Prince Henry.
The discovery of these islands formed no part of Prince Henry’s plan.
His desire was to circumnavigate Africa; the expeditions of Perestrello,
Zarco, and Tristão Vaz were all intended to sail south and double Cape
Bojador, and it was certainly in an attempt to achieve this purpose that
Perestrello was driven out to sea to the island of Porto Santo. Many
years passed, during which Cape Bojador remained the great obstacle to
the Portuguese mariners. Year after year Prince Henry despatched fleets
of two or three ships at a time, which sometimes made important
discoveries among the islands off the north-west coast of Africa, but
they never doubled the great cape. Among these discoveries the most
important were the Canary Islands and the Azores. With regard to the
former group, the Portuguese were met by a prior claim on the part of
Castile; and after a dispute, into the details of which it is not
necessary to enter, John the Great, in pursuance of his consistent
policy of maintaining peace with Spain, and at the request of Dom Henry,
who did not wish to waste his strength in occupying islands, surrendered
the Canary Islands to Castile. The Portuguese, however, successfully
maintained their claim to the Azores, which still belong to them. This
group was first touched at by Bartholomeu Perestrello, the discoverer of
Porto Santo, in 1431; and in the following year Gonçalo Velho Cabral
discovered the island of Santa Maria. To this captain was allotted the
task of further exploring and occupying this cluster of islands; and in
1444 he discovered the island of St. Miguel or St. Michael, where he
founded the beautiful little town which gives its name to the St.
Michael oranges.
Prince Henry’s endeavours were crowned with partial success, though not
in the reign of his father, for in 1434 Gil Eannes doubled Cape Bojador,
and in 1436 Affonso Gonçalves Baldaya reached the Rio d’Ouro. The
attention of “the Navigator” was, however, soon absorbed by the progress
of political affairs at home, and he had for a time to abandon his
schemes of exploration. He served with distinction in the unfortunate
expedition to Tangier, and then played an important part in the events,
which ended in confirming the power of his brother Dom Pedro, the Duke
of Coimbra, as Regent of Portugal. This enlightened prince took the
greatest interest in the African explorations, and he assisted Prince
Henry with even greater ardour than King John or King Edward. These were
the most successful years of Prince Henry’s career. In 1441 Antão
Gonçalves went a hundred leagues further than the Rio d’Ouro, and in the
same year Nuno Tristão, the greatest and most daring of all Prince
Henry’s captains, reached the cape which closes on the south the sort of
shoulder formed by North-west Africa, and named it the Cabo Branco or
White Cape. He did more than this; he brought home several captives,
including a native prince. The capture was hailed with enthusiasm, and
from this time the slave trade on the coast of Africa really began.
It is strange that Prince Henry “the Navigator” should have been the
founder of the African slave trade, but so it was, and the reasons are
not hard to find. The provinces of the Alemtejo and the Algarves had
never been thoroughly populated since their conquest, and the great
lords and religious military orders, the owners of those districts, had
never been able to bring them properly under cultivation. Slavery was
not regarded with the modern sentiment of abhorrence; it was the natural
fate of prisoners of war, and flourished greatly in the neighbouring
country of Morocco. Prince Henry and the Duke of Coimbra felt the need
of procuring labour to cultivate the southern provinces, and it seemed
quite natural to them to carry off the unfortunate savages of the
African coast. This idea greatly impressed the Portuguese nobles with
Prince Henry’s sagacity; they did not understand his schemes about
discovering a direct route to India, but they highly appreciated the
introduction of cheap forced labour. The commencement of the slave trade
greatly favoured the progress of the Portuguese navigators; they no
longer came home empty-handed, and exploring became a profitable as well
as an adventurous business. In 1444 Lançarote, with a fleet of eight
ships, went upon a slave-taking expedition, and brought home two hundred
captives, who were set to work on the domains of the Order of Christ in
the Algarves, and in 1445 the same captain sailed with a fleet of
fourteen ships from Lagos and brought home a still larger body of
unfortunate slaves. From this time forth the tracks made by the
explorers were followed closely by the slave-dealers. Large profits were
made in the trade, which had its centre at Lagos, and by the labour of
the captives the great estates of southern Portugal were speedily
brought under cultivation. The employment of slave labour was to have
serious consequences in the near future; but at this period, during the
life of Dom Henry, it had not yet begun to drive the poorer class of the
Portuguese people out of work in the fields, and into more precarious
modes of earning a livelihood.
It is not necessary to do more than notice the commencement of the slave
trade here; it is far more important to trace the progress of the
explorers.[10] In 1445 Nuno Tristão sailed as far as the Senegal river,
and in the same year, Diniz Dias, his most daring rival, discovered
Guinea, and first saw the really black negroes. This advance, as a
glance at the map will show, meant much; the Portuguese explorers had
now thoroughly learnt how to find their way round the inhospitable
shoulder of North-west Africa; Cape Bojador and Cabo Branco had no
terrors for them, and their hopes of reaching India were excited by
finding that the coast trended abruptly to the east. The country, too,
was very different to that which they had toiled around so slowly; the
fertile land of Guinea with its powerful negroes, its spices and ivory,
and its prospect of gold, gave them encouragement, and on their return,
the acute merchants of Lisbon were not long in opening up a trade with
the newly-discovered country. Unfortunately the slave trade accompanied
the ventures of the Lisbon merchants, and the white men, instead of
making friends with the blacks, did not hesitate to seize them and to
sell them into slavery. The Church made no effort to restrain this
traffic; the blacks were heathen, and so it was to their advantage to be
brought to a Christian land to work, and perhaps to be converted.
The next two years were marked by the greatest activity. In 1446 Diniz
Diaz reached Cape Verde, which he called by that name from its green
appearance; and in the same year, Nuno Tristam was killed in a chase
after slaves, and Alvaro Fernandes, the nephew of João Gonçalves Zarco,
who had discovered Madeira, starting from that island, went one hundred
leagues further than Cape Verde, and left João Fernandes at his own
request among the negroes. It is a strange commentary upon the death of
Nuno Tristão, that João Fernandes was able to remain among the negroes
for seven months in safety, learning their language and studying their
customs. It shows that there was no deep-rooted antipathy between the
whites and the blacks, and that the latter only attacked the Christians,
when they showed themselves enemies, and tried to rob them of their
liberty. João Fernandes was taken off in safety by Antam Gonçalves, in
the year 1447, and testified to Prince Henry that the blacks, if
heathen, were not monsters, but people of peaceful and affectionate
dispositions.
This activity was followed by another pause. Dom Henry was deeply
affected by the overthrow of his brother Dom Pedro; and his nephew,
Affonso V., failed to give him the moral and material support he had
formerly received. It is indeed a blot upon the reputation of “the
Navigator” that he made no greater effort to assist the great regent,
and that he was not by his side at Alfarrobeira. The next decade is
marked only in the history of maritime exploration by the discoveries of
Luigi Cadamosto, a Venetian, who had entered the service of Dom Henry,
and who had become his right hand both as a cartographer and an
explorer. On the voyages of Cadamosto there has been much controversy.
Some writers, resting upon certain notes of his, assert that he
discovered the Gambia as early as 1445, and the Cape Verde Islands in
1446; but modern inquirers believe that he greatly antedated his
discoveries in order to enhance his own glory. It is now generally
believed that in his famous voyage in 1455 and 1456 he managed to get
past the Senegal, and discovered the Gambia, and that the Cape Verde
Islands were discovered in 1460 by Diogo Gomes. The tale that Cadamosto
went as far as the Rio Grande is quite discredited, and seems in itself,
apart from the evidence, to be most improbable.
[Illustration: STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY.
(_From Major’s “Prince Henry the Navigator.”_)]
The period of the discoveries made under the direction and inspiration
of Prince Henry “the Navigator” was then at an end, for he died at Sagre
on November 13, 1460. What he had done appears better from a study of
the map then in any number of words. He had not discovered a direct sea
route to India, but he had paved the way for it, and it was quite
certain that, if it existed, the gallant captains trained by him would
find the route in time. His services are beyond dispute, and though he
left no successor to carry on the work, he had given it such an impulse,
that it remained only for the sailors themselves to complete it. He was
never married, but was succeeded as Duke of Viseu, Lord of Beja and
Madeira, and Grand Master of the Order of Christ, by his nephew, Dom
Ferdinand, the second son of King Edward, and brother of Affonso V.,
whom he had adopted. This prince had also become Grand Master of the
Order of Santiago by his marriage with his first cousin, Donna Leonor,
daughter of Dom John, the fourth son of John “the Great,” by whom he was
father of Dom Manoel, or Emmanuel, who reigned under the title of
Emmanuel “the Fortunate,” and was to reap the fruits of the discoveries
of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral.
The death of Prince Henry did much to check maritime exploration for
exploration’s sake, and for the purpose of discovering the direct route
to India; but the slave trade and the general trade with the Guinea
Coast were growing into importance, and the results of the labours of
the early Portuguese navigators were not forgotten. Affonso V. was more
bent on his Moorish expeditions and his schemes upon the crown of
Castile, than upon maritime discoveries; but, nevertheless, something of
importance was done during his reign in strengthening the hold of the
Portuguese upon the part of the African coast already known, and in
making their topographical information more exact. What Affonso did was
done rather to improve trade or protect it for the benefit of his own
exchequer than for love of exploration. It was for these reasons that he
built a fort on the island of Arguin, near Cabo Branco, which became the
depôt for the trade with Guinea, and eventually he granted the monopoly
of the trade with the African coast to Fernan Gomes for five hundred
_crusados_ a year. This enterprising merchant employed able captains, of
whom the chief were João de Santarem, Pedro Escobar, and Lopo Gonçalves,
who worked their way further along the coast; and in 1471, in which year
Fernando Po discovered the islands of St. Thomas, Fernando Bom and Anno
Bom, they crossed the equator, and explored as far as Cape St.
Catherine.
[Illustration: TOMB OF PRINCE HENRY.
(_From Major’s “Prince Henry the Navigator.”_)]
John II., the successor of Affonso V., set the seal upon Prince
Henry’s labours. He it was who built the fort of Elmina, and took the
title of Lord of Guinea; and it was in his reign that Diogo Cão or Cam
discovered the Congo in 1484, and Bartholomeu Diaz reached Algoa Bay in
1486, and doubled the cape, which he called Cabo Tormentoso, or Stormy
Cape, from the winds he met there, but which his sovereign, presaging
from this fortunate voyage the future glory of his country, called the
Cape of Good Hope. John II., like Prince Henry, was fated not to see the
fulfilment of his dearest hopes, and it was not until the fifteenth
century was within three years of its close that Vasco da Gama made his
way from Lisbon to Calicut.
While, in political life and commercial prosperity, the people of
Portugal had been at home becoming more civilized, more self-controlled,
and more wealthy during the fifteenth century, its sailors had been
growing more daring and enterprising. In the sixteenth century the
Portuguese were to have their reward. Lisbon was to take the place of
Venice as the depôt for all the products of the East; the trade of
Persia, India, China, Japan, and the Spice Islands, was to fall into
their hands; they were to produce great captains and writers, and were
to become the wealthiest nation in Europe. But that same sixteenth
century was to see the Portuguese power sink, and the independence, won
by Affonso Henriques and maintained by John “the Great,” vanish away; it
was to see Portugal, which had been the greatest nation of its time,
decline in its fame, and become a mere province of Spain. Hand in hand
with increased wealth came corruption and depopulation, and within a
single century after the epoch-making voyage of Vasco da Gama, the
Portuguese people, tamed by the Inquisition, were to show no sign of
their former hardihood. This is the lesson that the Story of Portugal in
the sixteenth century teaches, that the greatness of a nation depends
not upon its wealth and commercial prosperity, but upon the thews and
sinews and the stout hearts of its people.
[Illustration: text decoration]
[Illustration: text decoration]
VIII.
THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL.
John II., surnamed “the Perfect,” the only son of Affonso V., succeeded
his father as King of Portugal in 1481, and his short reign was marked
by events of the utmost importance at home, as well as by the great
discoveries of Diogo Cam and Bartholomeu Diaz. He had shown himself a
gallant soldier in his father’s last African expedition, when he was
knighted, and at the battle of Toro, and also a capable ruler, as
regent, during the absence of Affonso V. in France, and during that
king’s frequent periods of abdication. He saw the folly of his father in
wasting his strength in African expeditions, and in fruitless wars with
Castile, and he therefore recurred to the wise policy of his
great-grandfather, John “the Great,” in avoiding all interference with
Spanish affairs, and maintaining a close alliance with England. He also,
as has already been said, adopted enthusiastically all the schemes of
Prince Henry “the Navigator,” and laboured for the discovery of a route
to India by sea. He possessed all the hereditary aptitude of the princes
of the house of Aviz for literature, and fostered the spirit of the
Renaissance in Portugal in the study of the classical languages, the
advancement of science, and the encouragement of art. He was a
broad-minded, tolerant man, with ideas far in advance of his age in many
respects, and possessing at once an inflexible will and remarkable
sweetness of disposition.
But John II. was more than all this; he was a politician and a statesman
of the first rank, and openly professed himself a disciple of
Machiavelli and a believer in the theory of absolute government. He
imitated Louis XI. of France, just as one of his predecessors, Sancho
II., had imitated Louis IX., and in his policy and in his manner of
carrying it out, he showed himself an apt pupil of his wily master. The
first great task he set himself, in imitation of that monarch, was to
break the power of the feudal nobility of Portugal. In doing this he
relied, and with justice, upon the assistance of the mass of the people,
who had learned during the last reign to detest and fear the almost
unlimited power of the nobles.