already been pointed out, and the attempt made by King Edward to check
accumulations by the “Lei Mental” has also been mentioned; but this
regulation had had but little effect, owing to the profuse prodigality
of Affonso V. This monarch had granted away nearly the whole patrimony
of the crown; and John II. said with justice that his father had left
him “only the royal high roads of Portugal.” This liberality had kept
Affonso poor in spite of the increasing wealth of his people and his
extravagance had been such, that he had been formally rebuked by a
Cortes, held at Guarda in 1465, and had been obliged to promise
amendment. Under the influence of this headstrong monarch and his
favourites the evils, inherent in the feudal system, had increased
alarmingly; crimes in country districts were only punished by fines, and
every means which rapacity could suggest to wring money out of an
impoverished tenantry were resorted to, while the wealth of the great
landlords had been increased by the improvement in the cultivation of
their lands due to the large importation of slaves. John II. determined
to crush the powerful and turbulent feudal nobility, and to draw back
some of its wealth into the royal treasury, and for this purpose he
summoned a great Cortes to meet at Evora in 1481, the year of his
accession. In this Cortes he proposed that a “inquiracão geral” should
be held into all titles to landed property, and that the royal
corregidors should alone be empowered to dispense and execute criminal
justice throughout the country. Both measures were agreed to, but the
nobles determined to resist the examination into their titles, and the
loss of the lucrative privilege of dispensing criminal justice, and they
combined to oppose the king, under the leadership of the Duke of
Braganza.
Ferdinand, Duke of Braganza, was the wealthiest and most powerful
nobleman, not only in Portugal, but in the whole peninsula. He was the
grandson of Affonso, Count of Barcellos, the illegitimate son of John
“the Great,” who had been created Duke of Braganza by Affonso V., and
he had inherited the vast possessions of his grandfather and of his
grandmother, the daughter of the Holy Constable. These possessions had
been increased by the lavishness of Affonso V., who had showered favours
on the first and second Dukes of Braganza. Ferdinand possessed fifty
cities, towns, and castles, and nearly one-third of the land of the
kingdom; he was patron of one hundred and sixty canonries and religious
benefices; he maintained a royal household, and bore the titles of Duke
of Braganza and Guimaraens, Marquis of Villa Viçosa, Count of Barcellos,
Ourem, Arrayolos and Neiva, and Lord of Montalegre, Monporto, and
Penafiel. His brothers were nearly as powerful as himself. The eldest,
João, was Marquis of Monte Mor, and Constable of the kingdom; the
second, Affonso, was Count of Faro; and the youngest, Alvaro, held the
important office of Chancellor. In the reign of Affonso V. this great
nobleman had quarrelled fiercely with John II., then heir apparent, but
he believed he had secured his safety by marrying a sister of the future
queen, for both Prince John and himself married daughters of Ferdinand,
Duke of Viseu and Beja, the brother of Affonso V., and inheritor of the
wealth of Prince Henry “the Navigator.” The Duke of Braganza took the
lead in opposing the king’s decrees passed in the Cortes of Evora, and
John II. was glad of it, not only because he coveted the wealth and
lands of the Braganza family, which dimmed the splendour of the Crown,
and on account of their former quarrels in the late king’s lifetime, but
also because he remembered that he was, through his mother, the
grandson of the great regent, Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, who had been
defeated and slain at Alfarrobeira by this very Duke of Braganza and his
father. For all these reasons John II. decided to strike a sudden and
decisive blow, which should at once re-establish the power of the Crown
and paralyze the feudal nobility with terror, and he therefore had the
Duke of Braganza arrested, and executed, after a very short trial, at
Evora, on June 22, 1483.
The nobles, however, were not yet defeated, and they continued to
intrigue against the king’s authority under the leadership of a yet
nearer relation of his own, Diogo, Duke of Viseu and Beja, the eldest
son of Dom Ferdinand, and grandson of King Edward, and the
brother-in-law alike of the king and of the executed Duke of Braganza.
But John II. was not dismayed: imitating Louis XI. of France, he
determined not to spare his own relations, and on August 23, 1484, he
stabbed the Duke of Viseu with his own hand in his palace at Setubal.
This murder he followed up with decision: he had the Bishop of Evora,
one of his father’s favourites, thrown down a well; and he executed,
with or without trial, about eighty of the leading noblemen of the
country. By these means John II. broke the power of the feudal nobility
for ever, and as happened in France under Louis XI., and in England
under Henry VII., the fall of the nobility was followed by the
absolutism of the monarch. Now that the nobles had lost their power, and
the Crown had become wealthy by the confiscation of their property, John
II. needed the support of the people, as represented in the Cortes, no
longer, and he became a despot, though a benevolent one. But the weight
of this despotism was not yet felt, for John II. possessed all the
political ability of his grandfathers. He tried to find means for
encouraging his nobility, now that they were frightened out of treason,
to enter into the career of maritime exploration, which had been opened
by Prince Henry, while at home he won the love of his people by
reorganizing the government of the kingdom, and proved so good an
administrator that the Portuguese gave him the title of “the Perfect
King.”
It has been said that in his foreign policy John II. followed in the
course set before him by John the Great. With the great monarchs then
ruling in Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, he
consistently remained on friendly terms, and in 1490 his only legitimate
son, Affonso, was married to Isabella, eldest daughter of these
sovereigns. The death of this son in the following year, without leaving
children, was a terrible blow to him, but he nevertheless maintained his
friendship with Ferdinand and Isabella, and in 1494 concluded the Treaty
of Tordesillas with them. By this treaty, which was confirmed by a Bull,
issued by Pope Alexander VI., the limit of the future possessions of the
Spaniards and Portuguese in the regions explored and discovered by their
mariners was 370 leagues west of Cape Verde, and it was agreed that the
Spaniards were to have full right to all lands discovered to the west of
this line, and the Portuguese to all to the south and east. What a
curious commentary this treaty forms on that of Cella Nova, concluded
three hundred years before between Affonso Henriques of Portugal and
Ferdinand of Leon, by which these two monarchs agreed to take the course
of the Guadiana as the line to separate their future conquests from the
Moors. Both nations had now developed; the energies of both, heightened
by the long struggle with the Mohammedans, sought for fresh fields, and
expanding far beyond the boundaries of Europe, were to prove themselves,
in the one case in Mexico and Peru, and in the other in India and the
countries of the East.
In the other cardinal point of the policy of John “the Great,” the
maintenance of a close alliance with England, John II. carefully
followed the example of the founder of the house of Aviz. Affonso V. had
not neglected this important tradition, and had even promised his
sister, Donna Catherine, to Edward IV., in 1461, a marriage only
frustrated by the death of the princess in 1463; and the English monarch
had solemnly ratified the Treaty of Windsor in 1471, and again after the
battle of Barnet in 1472, and he had also included the name of the King
of Portugal, as an ally of England, in his treaty with Louis XI. of
France, in 1475. John II. drew the bonds of friendship still closer, and
sent important embassies to the three kings of England, who ruled in
quick succession in this country. In 1482 Edward IV. ratified the Treaty
of Windsor in the presence of the ambassadors of John II., and
recognized his new title of “Lord of Guinea,” and in 1484 Richard III.
did the same. In 1485 the King of Portugal proposed in a Cortes held at
Alçobaça, that his only sister Joanna should be given in marriage to
Richard III., but the princess, who was famed for her piety and wished
to become a nun, fortunately for herself, refused the alliance, as she
afterwards did the hand of Charles VIII. of France. Henry VII. bore no
enmity towards John II. on account of his friendship with Richard III.,
but, on the contrary, showed every disposition to assist him in his
struggle with his nobility, and in 1488 went so far as to arrest the
Count of Pennamacor, one of the insurgent Portuguese noblemen who had
escaped to England, and to imprison him in the Tower. It was in this
year also that the last treaty of commerce between England and Portugal,
before the famous Methuen treaty in 1703, was concluded at Lisbon by
Richard Nanfran and Thomas Savage, who had been sent for that purpose,
and to invest John II. as a Knight of the Garter.
[Illustration: CHART OF GOA. (_From the Sloane MS. 197, folio 248._)]
But it was not only on account of his suppression of the power of the
feudal nobility, and of his wise peace policy, that John “the Perfect”
was beloved by his people, it was also because he showed himself a
worthy successor of Prince Henry “the Navigator,” in promoting
exploration, and devoted his best energies to discovering a direct route
to India. The two famous voyages of Diogo Cam and Bartholomeu Diaz,
which had resulted in the discovery of the Congo and of the Cape of Good
Hope, have been mentioned, but it was rather in other directions that
the originality of mind which distinguished John II. showed itself. He
was the first European monarch who thought that if it might be possible
to reach India by sea by sailing round the continent of Africa, it
might also be possible to find a road to “Cathay” by sailing round the
continent of Europe to the north-east. On this mission he despatched
Martim Lopes, who sailed past the North Cape into regions hitherto
unexplored, and discovered the great island to the north of Russia,
which still bears the name he gave it of Nova Zembla. John II. also had
ideas of striking out new routes to India by land, or at least of
exploring the land routes in order to correct prevalent geographical
mistakes. With these ideas he sent forth the two first European
explorers of the interior of Africa, Pedro de Evora and Gonçalo Annes,
who managed to get as far as Timbuctoo. Still more important were the
missions which he sent overland to India, and in search of that mythical
Christian potentate, Prester John. The two travellers he despatched were
João Peres de Covilhão and Affonso de Payva. The former of these
enterprising men made his way safely to India by following the regular
trade route and accompanying the caravans. He visited both Goa and
Calicut, and though he was refused a passage to the Cape, he managed to
find his way back to Arabia, and eventually to Abyssinia, where he
became the chief adviser and almost prime minister of the king, at whose
capital he died. The other traveller, Affonso de Payva, went direct to
Abyssinia, where the mythical Prester John was supposed to reign, and
also died there.
[Illustration: VASCO DA GAMA. (_From the Sloane MS. 197, folio 18._)]
The energies of John II. were so wholly absorbed in these expeditions to
the East, and he felt so certain that he was in the right direction in
trying to reach India by eastern routes, that he made the great
mistake in 1493 of dismissing Christopher Columbus from his court as a
visionary. He listened to all the arguments of the great discoverer with
patience, but he did not agree with his conclusions that it was possible
to reach India by sailing westwards across the Atlantic, and he
therefore lost the opportunity of immortalizing his name and reign by a
greater discovery than that of Vasco da Gama, the discovery of the vast
continent of America. In other departments his energies found full
scope. He greatly improved the art of ship-building, and encouraged the
immigration of skilled shipwrights from England and Denmark; he did much
to promote the improvement of fire-arms, and established a cannon
foundry and a corps of artillery, of which he made Diogo de Azambuja the
first Inspector-General; and, above all, he patronized literature, and
encouraged Ruy de Pina, the greatest of all the Portuguese chroniclers.
His court abounded in great men, the founders of great families and the
fathers of the coming generation of heroes, among whom may be noted,
besides his navigators, Diogo Cam, Bartholomeu Diaz, and Lopo Infante,
and his famous travellers just mentioned, his Lord High Admirals, Pedro
de Alboquerque and Lopo Vaz de Azevedo; his Lord Stewards, Diogo Soares
de Albergaria, Pedro de Noronha, and João de Menezes; his Master of the
Horse, Affonso de Alboquerque; his Secretary-General Ruy Galvão; and his
Chancellor, the acute lawyer and most strenuous supporter of the
despotic power of the king, Ruy de Graa.
Yet the reign of John “the Perfect,” full as it was of great events, and
great as is its importance in the history of Portugal, was but
comparatively short. His happiness was clouded by the sad death of his
only son, Dom Affonso, in 1491, the year after he had married the
Infanta Isabella, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, who then
ruled in Spain, and he felt with repugnance that his successor on the
throne must be Manoel, or Emmanuel, Duke of Beja, the brother of the
murdered Duke of Viseu, a man in whom he could see no fit qualities for
carrying on his own great schemes and projects. To oust him John II.
thought of legitimatizing his illegitimate son by Anna de Mendonça, Dom
Jorge, or George, whom he had made Grand Master of the Orders of
Santiago and Aviz, but the reflection that on his death the country he
loved so well would then be torn by civil war restrained him, and he did
not interfere with the law of succession. During the last days of his
life the “Perfect King” was busily engaged in fitting out the fleet
which, under Vasco da Gama, was to realize his most cherished dream, and
he was still in the ripe strength of manhood when he died at Alvor, in
the province of the Algarves, on October 25, 1495.
The quarter of a century during which the successor of John II.,
Emmanuel “the Fortunate,” reigned, is the great heroic period of
Portuguese history, and during it the great deeds, which make the Story
of Portugal an important part of the history of Europe and of the world,
were done. Discoveries and daring feats of arms distinguished nearly
every year of this truly fortunate reign, and the fame of the great
Portuguese generals, captains, and travellers is rivalled only by that
of its poets and men of letters. As the progress of the Portuguese in
the East and West, and their great literary development, will be
examined in three different chapters, it will here be possible only to
narrate the events of Emmanuel’s reign in Portugal, and to show how, at
the period of the greatest glory of the country, the age of its rapid
decline was at hand. The causes of that decline were manifold, and are
generally placed in the reign of Emmanuel’s successor, but the seed of
each appeared in the reign of the “fortunate” monarch himself.
Emmanuel himself contributed but little to the blaze of glory which
illustrates his reign. He despatched great fleets and armies to distant
parts of the world, and received the wealth their discoveries and
exertions brought into his treasury with equanimity; but he had only one
fixed idea, the old wild dream which had brought disaster upon Ferdinand
“the Handsome” and Affonso V., the longing to sit upon the throne of
Spain and to unite the kingdoms of the peninsula under his sovereignty.
To gain this end he proposed to marry the Infanta Isabella, the eldest
daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile, and
widow of the unfortunate Affonso, the only son of John II., and in order
to be recognized as heir to the kingdoms of Spain, he promised to expel
the Jews and unbaptized Moors from Portugal.
No class had done more to promote the height of commercial prosperity to
which Portugal had attained than the Portuguese Jews. In another volume
of this Series[11] Mr. Lane-Poole says: “Wherever the arms of the
Saracens penetrated, there we shall always find the Jews in close
pursuit,” and in no part of the peninsula had they collected in greater
numbers than in the great cities of Portugal, especially in Lisbon,
Santarem, and Evora. These Jews belonged for the most part to the
Sephardim, and were in every intellectual quality superior to the
Ashkenazim, or German and Polish Jews; protected by the Moors, they had
grown in wealth and power, and when they came under the rule of Affonso
Henriques, that great monarch extended the same tolerance towards them.
His successors followed his example, and under monarchs with commercial
aspirations such as Diniz and John “the Great,” the Jews had been more
than protected, they had been favoured. While persecuted in other
countries, they had met with consistent protection in Portugal, and they
acknowledged the generous treatment which they received by extending the
commerce of their adopted country. The Portuguese Jews possessed a high
reputation all over Europe for wealth, integrity, and commercial
acuteness, and had business agencies and banks in every land, which
contributed to the wealth of the country, which had been for centuries
their home. Such was the wealthy and industrious class of citizens,
which Emmanuel consented to banish from his dominions, partly to please
the bigotry of Ferdinand and Isabella, whom he hoped to succeed, and
partly in order to absorb, as the Portuguese crown eventually did, the
whole of the coming trade with the East. These unfortunate families
were obliged to leave the country, which had been their fatherland, and
the cities, which had been their homes, from generation to generation,
with but six months in which to prepare for banishment; they were
obliged to dispose of their flourishing businesses at a loss, and to
start anew in the world to find new occupations and new homes. It is
hardly a matter for wonder, that many Jews preferred to be baptized and
to become half-hearted Christians rather than expatriate themselves, but
these “Novaes Christiãos” had, as will be seen, no reason to rejoice a
few years later at their apostasy. With the Jews were banished also many
unbaptized Mohammedans, the especial enemies of Ferdinand “the
Catholic.” This class had become numerous since the taking of Granada in
1492, when many of them fled from Spain into Portugal, and had been
kindly received by John II. It is worthy of notice that the Most
Catholic monarchs, who persuaded Emmanuel to take such severe steps
against Jews and Mohammedans, who were ready to earn an honest
livelihood as free men, made no protest against the thousands of negro
slaves, who were being yearly imported into Portugal, and left to their
belief in superstitions far more degrading than the religions either of
Jews or Moslems.
For this decree of banishment passed against law-abiding Portuguese
citizens, Emmanuel had his reward, for he was married to the Infanta
Isabella in 1497. But the curse of the Jews followed him, and he never
sat upon the throne of Spain. Whilst the royal bride and bridegroom were
passing through the cities of Castile in a state progress as heirs to
the thrones of Spain, Queen Isabella fell ill, and died at Toledo on
August 24, 1498. She left an infant son, Dom Miguel, at whose birth she
had died, but he did not survive to realize the hopes of his father, and
died in 1500. Even these two deaths did not put an end to Emmanuel’s
schemes, and in the same year 1500, he married the Donna Maria of
Castile, the sister of his deceased wife. This marriage was not so
likely to promote his success as the first; for whereas the Infanta
Isabella was the eldest daughter of Ferdinand and his queen, the Infanta
Maria was but the third daughter, and the daughter between them, the
Infanta Joanna, had a son who, as the legitimate heir of his
grandparents, was to succeed to thrones of Spain and eventually become
the Emperor Charles V. By his second wife, Emmanuel had no less than six
sons, but what has been called the “curse of the Jews” pursued them, and
his descendants soon failed in the direct line. Even to the last, the
same wild fancy possessed him, and in 1518, the year after his second
wife’s death, he married again, and this time also with a view of
succeeding Charles V., for he married his own niece, the sister of the
Emperor. She survived him, and afterwards married Francis I. of France.
From these restless longings after the neighbouring thrones, and the
ignoble schemes of the Portuguese monarch, it is a relief to turn to the
actions of the Portuguese heroes. Their deeds will be related
separately, but after the barren intrigues of Emmanuel, it will be as
well to mention chronologically the chief discoveries of his captains.
In 1497, Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope and reached India
by sea; in 1500 Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil, and Gaspar
Corte-Real, Labrador; in 1501 João da Nova Castella discovered the
islands of St. Helena and Ascension; and in that year and in 1503
Amerigo Vespucci first visited the Rio Plata and Paraguay; in 1506
Tristão da Cunha discovered the island which bears his name; and Ruy
Pereira Coutinho explored Madagascar and the Mauritius; in 1507 Lourenço
de Almeida touched at the Maldive Islands; in 1509 Diogo Lopes de
Sequeira occupied Malacca and explored the island of Sumatra; in 1512
Francisco Serrão discovered the Moluccas; in 1513 Pedro de Mascarenhas
first touched at the Île de Bourbon or Réunion; in 1516 Duarte Coelho
worked his way up the coast of Cochin China and explored Siam; in 1517
Fernão Peres de Andrade established himself at Canton, and the same
explorer made his way to Pekin in 1521; and in 1520 Magalhães
(Magellan), a Portuguese sailor, though in the Spanish service, passed
through the Straits which bear his name and led the way into the Pacific
Ocean.