a very different type to the Portuguese who were sent to Asia. The
latter were chiefly soldiers, sailors, and officials, despatched to
India and the settlements in the East in royal fleets as servants of the
Crown, who, while acknowledging themselves servants of the king, yet
went to the East with the idea of making their own fortunes, and
eventually returning home to Portugal, while the Brazilian colonists
went out at their own expense with their wives and families, and made
their homes in their adopted country. These men were invaluable to a new
country; they went out with no intention of ever returning home, and
with the power and will to labour with their hands. Throughout the
sixteenth century a steady succession of Portuguese emigrants made their
way to Brazil, either on account of the favourable report of its climate
and resources, which they received from their friends or relations
already settled there, or in order to escape the misfortunes impending
on their own country, and more especially the heavy hand of the
Inquisition. Mention has been made of the vast importation of slaves
into Portugal; this employment of negro labour threw a number of
agricultural labourers out of work, who did not care to enlist as
soldiers for the East, and could not make a livelihood in cities, and
from this class many of the first colonists to Brazil came. Some weight,
too, must be attached to the adventurous nature of the Portuguese
people; and this side of their character, which showed itself in
individuals in the East, made men who loved a family life better than
fighting find their way to the western continent. The colonization of
Brazil was essentially popular; it was not initiated by king, priests,
or nobles; and illustrates the extreme self-reliance and daring which
made Portugal so great at this period. The one blot upon the careers of
these early settlers was their treatment of the natives. Accustomed to
the existence of slavery at home, they tried to make the natives work
for them, and this attempt brought about a bitter hatred between the
aboriginal races and the immigrants, which showed itself in murder and
massacre. The steady tide of emigration to Brazil did not at this time
contribute to the wealth of the mother country; on the contrary, it must
be noted as one of the chief causes of that depopulation of Portugal,
which has been spoken of as the germ of the decadence of the Portuguese
power.
It has been said that some of the emigrants from Portugal to Brazil were
moved by a fear of the Inquisition, and hoped to escape from it by going
to the New World. Especially was this the case with numbers of the
“novaes Christiãos,” or half-converted Jews. This class comprised many
families of wealth and influence, who, when they saw the rapid approach
of persecution, removed _en masse_ to Brazil. In the new country they
thought themselves free, and were joined by many of their unconverted
brethren, who had been expelled by King Emmanuel. As usual, even if not
wealthy, these people were able to raise money, and they brought into
the new colony, what it most needed, capital. Many of the greatest
families in Brazil trace their descent from these laborious and
hard-working colonists, who, as in every other place, gave an impulse to
trade and industrial development unfelt before. It was owing to their
perspicacity that the sugar-cane, the greatest source of Brazilian
wealth, was introduced into the colony from Madeira in the year 1548,
and they started the direct slave trade with the Guinea Coast,
recognizing both the impossibility of reducing the aboriginal races
into a state of servitude, and the advantages of negro labour. From all
these causes, Brazil was growing a wealthy colony by the middle of the
sixteenth century, possessing many well-populated and well-cultivated
districts upon the sea coast, surrounding the various ports and
harbours, where prosperous towns had sprung up, of which may be noted at
this time Pernambuco, Tamacara, Ilheos, Porto Seguro, and St. Vincent.
The prosperity of Brazil attracted the attention of John III., and he at
last decided to establish a viceroyalty there, instead of leaving the
colonists to govern themselves, and for the first governor-general he
selected a nobleman of talent and experience, Dom Thomas de Sousa. At
the same time the king revoked his decree forming the three “chief
captainships,” and granted his representative full powers to arrange for
a new system of administration. In 1549 Dom Thomas de Sousa arrived in
Brazil with a fleet of six ships of war, many officials for the new
government, a strong force of soldiers, and the first contingent of
Jesuits, who were despatched with the especial purpose of converting the
natives. Fortunately for Brazil, Thomas de Sousa was a great statesman;
he made no attempt to enforce his powers unduly; he carefully avoided
interfering with the subordinate captainships, and left the system of
local government established in each without modification; he made no
attempt to levy taxes or to interfere with the liberties of the people,
and even avoided quartering his soldiers in any of the existing towns.
He perceived that the weak point of the existing administration was
that the captainships were too independent of each other, scattered as
they were down the coast like little states, and he therefore determined
to found a capital, and to establish a central government, which,
without interfering with local liberties, should become a court of
appeal, and regulating power over them. The place he selected for his
capital was at the head of All Saints Bay, better known as the Bay of
Bahia, where he erected the city of San Salvador. This town he made the
headquarters of his troops, and the seat of the central government, and
the Jesuit fathers also made it their point of departure. The most
important question that Thomas de Sousa had to face was the treatment of
the aboriginal tribes. The attempts of the Portuguese settlers to reduce
them to slavery had been met with stubborn resistance, and a chronic war
raged along all the landward boundaries of the captainships. The natives
did not often attack the settlements of the Europeans, but they resisted
any advance towards the interior, and small parties of Portuguese
attempting to settle in the interior were often massacred. Dom Thomas de
Sousa determined to check this continuous guerilla warfare by both
warlike and peaceful measures. He sent his troops, and led them himself,
against tribes which had committed any particular act of atrocity, and
punished them severely, and at the same time he gave all the help in his
power to the measures of the Jesuits for civilizing them.
The history of the Jesuits in Brazil is far more glorious if less
interesting than that of the Jesuits in India. In America they had not
to contend with the trained and subtle intellects of the Hindus, who
were able and ready to meet them in the most abstruse philosophical
arguments, but with simple-minded savages willing to be taught. The
success of the famous Society was unbounded; the teachings of
Christianity did far more to quiet the aboriginal inhabitants than the
swords of De Sousa’s soldiers, and in a comparatively short space of
time, either Jesuits, or native emissaries trained and taught by them,
had penetrated many miles into the interior of the continent. The rapid
conversion and civilization of the native tribes produced many fortunate
results: the great domain of Portugal in South America was saved much of
the terrible warfare with savages, which marks the history of the
English settlers in North America; but, on the other hand, peace between
the two races brought about intermarriage, and produced a class of
_mestizos_, or half-breeds, which now includes about a quarter of the
population. This conversion to the Christian religion was not hastened
or in any way assisted by the terrible power of the Inquisition. That
institution, which did so much to weaken the influence of Christianity
in India, by its _auto-da-fés_ and its persecution of the Nestorian
Christians was never allowed to take root in Brazil, and the atrocities
of Goa were not imitated at San Salvador or Rio de Janeiro. Many reasons
have been given for the non-establishment of the Inquisition, but the
chief credit is undoubtedly due to Dom Thomas de Sousa, who was well
aware of the services rendered to Brazil by the “novaes Christiãos” and
other persons, whose orthodoxy could be impeached, and who urged at
the Court of Lisbon, that it would be impossible to establish such a
hated institution as the Inquisition against the will of the people of
the captainships without the assistance of a powerful army, and as the
king wanted all his soldiers for India, he gave up the idea of setting
up an offshoot of the Holy Office in America.
[Illustration: PROCESSION OF AN AUTO DA FÉ.
(_From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne et Portugal.” La Haye, 1720._)]
The establishment of the Jesuits in Brazil, the foundation of a central
authority to superintend but not harass the captainships, and the
pursuance of a steady and uniform policy towards the natives, are the
points which mark the government of Dom Thomas de Sousa. That of his
successor, Duarte da Costa, was less important than his predecessor’s.
He followed De Sousa’s example, and the prosperity of Brazil became so
obvious that emigration from unhappy and declining Portugal continued to
such an extent that the Europeans in the colony doubled in number during
his administration. One point of his administration deserves notice,
namely, that he superseded the old earthen fortifications round the
principal towns by walls, and erected forts to guard the most important
harbours, mounted with artillery. These precautions show that there was
fear of foreign aggression; other European nations heard of the wealth
and fertility of Brazil, and coveted its possession, and a systematic
attempt to oust or conquer the Portuguese was made in the next century
by the Dutch. During the sixteenth century, however, only one nation,
the French, attempted to make a settlement in Brazil, and their effort
deserves a brief notice.
France, it is well known, was torn by religious wars during the
sixteenth century, and it was one of the Huguenot leaders, Nicolas
Durant, Sieur de Villegagnon and Vice-Admiral of Brittany, who first
conceived the idea of expatriating himself and founding a colony with
his co-religionists in the fertile country of Brazil. The Admiral de
Coligny warmly supported this scheme, and obtained leave from Henry II.
to put it into execution. Three large vessels were accordingly
chartered, and a number of intending colonists set sail from Havre for
Brazil in May, 1555, under the command of Villegagnon. They reached
South America in November, and, without even attempting to obtain the
consent of either of the King of Portugal or of the authorities of the
captainship in which they landed, deliberately settled in an eligible
spot, and for protection alike against the natives and the Portuguese,
they built Fort Coligny. Villegagnon immediately reported his success to
the admiral, who sent on his letter to Calvin at Geneva. Calvin
expressed his satisfaction at the notion of a Protestant colony in that
quarter of the New World, and with his approbation a Genevese named
Dupont, and two ministers, Richer and Chartier, collected together three
hundred more French Huguenots and joined the original settlers in 1557
at Fort Coligny. Violent religious quarrels soon broke out between
Villegagnon and Richer, and the newly-arrived colonists first removed to
the banks of the Rio de Janeiro, and then returned to France, where they
vehemently reviled Villegagnon. He returned to France to meet their
accusations, and the Portuguese, under their governor, Emmanuel de Sá,
took advantage of his withdrawal to demolish Fort Coligny and expel the
French settlers. Thus ended the first attempt of the French to settle
in Brazil.
The Portuguese possession of Brazil was to be far more dangerously
disputed by the Dutch in the following century, and the only reason why
they did not lose their American, as they did their Asiatic dominion is
to be found in the method by which the colony had been settled. What was
best in old Portugal, not necessarily what was bravest, but what was
best and most industrious had gone to Brazil; the colonists there had
been most wisely and prudently governed; they had been allowed to
develop free from all restrictions by the wise policy of prudent
governors; and the result of this free development was that the
Brazilians remained Portuguese at heart. They repulsed the attempts of
the Dutch, and even, when able to stand alone, they preferred to cling
to the mother country. Therefore it was that when in the eighteenth
century the Portuguese possessions in Asia were only a drain on the
exchequer of the kingdom, Brazil became the main source of the wealth of
the Portuguese Crown. Little did Cabral, or King Emmanuel, think that
Brazil would be a far more valuable possession to Portugal than Cochin,
or Goa, or Malacca, and that it was so was due to the manner in which it
was settled; for colonies, whose prosperity rests on stout hearts and
industrious hands, are of a lasting value to their mother country, while
possessions, won and held by force of arms, are only of fictitious
advantage and of transient value to the conquering race.
[Illustration: text decoration]
XI.
THE LAST KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF AVIZ--DOM SEBASTIAN AND THE CARDINAL
HENRY.
The germs of the rapid decline of Portugal have been already noticed in
discussing the reigns of Emmanuel and John III.; the country, exhausted
by its efforts to conquer Asia and colonize Brazil, and deprived of
liberty of thought by the deadly influence of the Inquisition, was fast
losing its old vitality; and what Portuguese were left in Portugal were
either enervated by luxury in the upper classes and slaves to the Court,
or in the lower beggars upon the charity of the King and the Church. The
Portuguese of the upper classes, who preserved the old Portuguese spirit
of daring were in Asia; the sturdiest peasantry of the lower classes had
found their way to Madeira or Brazil. Cultivated mainly by slaves,
subject to an absolutist and bigoted court, and chiefly inhabited by
slaves, priests, and beggars, it was no wonder that keen observers, like
the Dutchman Cleynaerts, perceived that beneath its appearance of
seeming prosperity, the Portuguese kingdom was rotten to the core.
Lisbon was indeed the centre of the trade of the East; it was from the
Tagus that the ships from the rest of Europe came to fetch the muslins
of Bengal, the brocades of Gujarāt, the “calicos” of Calicut, the
spices of the “Spice Islands,” the pepper of the Malabar coast, and the
teas and silks of China. Lisbon was the commercial capital of the world;
the King of Portugal was the richest sovereign in Europe. But in spite
of wealth and luxury and universal consideration Portugal was a decaying
power, and a single shock was sufficient to strike the country from its
place, as the leading nation of Europe, the nation of heroes, and leave
it defenceless against foreign foes.
This shock was supplied by the African expedition of Dom Sebastian and
its disastrous result, and Portugal was then an easy prey to the
ambition of Philip II. of Spain. The reign of Dom Sebastian has
therefore a pathetic interest to posterity: the romantic character of
the young king; his gallantry, and his death on the field of battle; and
the sudden end of the house of Aviz, which had seemed so powerful, have
contributed to make this reign one of the best known to students of
general history in the whole annals of Portugal. To contemporaries this
sudden collapse of the kingdom, which a few years before had seemed so
great, appeared nothing short of marvellous, and political philosophers
were never weary of dwelling on this extinction and finding reasons for
it. Rabid Protestants argued that it was all due to the Inquisition;
humanitarians agreed that it was a punishment for the high-handed
conduct of the Portuguese “conquistadores” in the East; shortsighted
historians attributed it entirely to the defeat of Dom Sebastian in
Africa. But more careful inquiry has shown that the seeds of decline had
long been planted, and that the fall of Portugal from her high estate
was due to the exhaustion of her vital energies and to the rapid
depopulation of her territory in Europe. No country can continue to
exist and be a power, which sends forth all its best energies to foreign
lands and foreign continents, and becomes exhausted at home; it might as
well be expected that a man should be vigorous when his heart is
hopelessly diseased.
Portugal was thus already rapidly decaying, when an infant of three
years old became its monarch. Three times before in its history minors
had succeeded to the throne, but in each case wise regents had governed
the country, and the minorities had been marked by advance not
retrogression. The first King of Portugal, Affonso Henriques, was but
three years old, when he succeeded to his country; but the wisdom of his
mother, Donna Theresa, during his minority paved the way for his
subsequent success. Sancho II. was but a boy when he became king; but
the great Bishop of Lisbon, by his self-abnegation, made his minority a
triumph. Affonso V. had also been a child sovereign; but his uncle, the
great Duke of Coimbra, ruled so wisely, that the king’s coming of age
proved to be a disaster, not an advantage, to the country. But there
were no such regents for the minority of Dom Sebastian: his grandmother
was Spanish to the core, and loved Spain more than Portugal; his
heir-presumptive was his great-uncle Dom Henry, Cardinal and Grand
Inquisitor of the kingdom.
[Illustration: LISBON IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. (_From Braun and
Hohenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum, 1574._)]
The youthful king had none to help him. His father Dom João, the only
son of John III., had died fifteen days before the birth of his only
child, and his mother, Donna Joanna, the daughter of the Emperor Charles
V., had immediately retired to Spain, leaving the child to the care of
his grandparents. On the death of John III. in 1557, his queen, Donna
Catherine, the sister of Charles V., assumed the regency in the name of
her grandson. From the very first, the Portuguese people, from the
highest to the lowest, disapproved of her rule; she was so aggressively
Spanish in speech, bearing, and appearance, and had so persistently
refused to identify herself with her adopted country, in spite of her
long residence there, that every one believed her to be plotting to
secure the eventual succession of her favourite nephew, Philip II. of
Spain, to the crown of Portugal. Her bigotry and encouragement of the
Inquisition did not tend to make her popular, and national prejudice
declared itself strongly against her. Yet she was not a bad ruler; she
maintained the old servants of John III., and the machinery of
administration though in many places clogged by corruption, went on
smoothly, and she even managed to despatch a sufficiently powerful army
to relieve Mazagon, when it was besieged by the Moors. Yet throughout
her five years’ tenure of power the queen-regent found herself hampered
by the intrigues of the Cardinal Henry, who, as heir to the throne,
thought he ought to be in her place, and at last she decided to give up
the struggle, and in 1562 she retired to Spain.
The Cardinal Henry then satisfied his ambition and became regent of the
kingdom, of which he was to be for a short time the unfortunate monarch,
and during his rule the government of the country fell entirely into the
hands of two brothers, who had made themselves very conspicuous in the
intrigues which had led to the retirement of Queen Catherine. Of these
brothers, the elder, Luis Gonçalves da Camara, was an able Jesuit, who
had been appointed confessor and tutor to the young king, while the
younger, Martim, was prime minister, and carried on the work of
administration during the regency of the Cardinal Henry. The two
brothers were both men of considerable ability, and, though they made no
attempt to initiate reforms or to check the decay of Portugal, they
managed to conceal her rottenness as much as possible from the eyes of
Europe. In 1568 Dom Sebastian was declared of age by the Camaras, though
only in his fifteenth year, and from that time they excluded their
former master, the Cardinal, from even a semblance of power. This
behaviour did not ensure their continuance in office, for as soon as the
young king began to take an active interest in affairs, he dismissed the
brothers, and placed the chief power in the hands of an upright
nobleman, Dom Pedro de Alçaçova Carneiro.
The character of Dom Sebastian was one of the most important factors in
bringing about the final overthrow of Portugal, and therefore deserves
some examination, the more especially as the nature of the Portuguese
monarchy was now entirely absolutist, owing to the wealth brought into
the private treasury of the king by the Asiatic trade, and his
consequent independence of the Cortes. The young king was rather German
than Portuguese in appearance, with his blue eyes and fair hair and his
face disfigured by the Hapsburg lip, and in his nature there was much of
the Teuton dreaminess and love of the marvellous, which impelled him to
take part in rash undertakings.[19] He was fond of solitude, and of
building up castles in the air, in which he always appeared as a
Christian hero exterminating the Mohammedans. For with his German
dreaminess he united a truly Spanish fanaticism. His tutor, Luis
Gonçalves da Camara, made him a bigot, and his governor, Dom Aleixo or
Alexis de Menezes, taught him to look upon warlike enterprise as the
chief aim of a monarch’s career, and the double teaching had inspired
him with crusading ardour. He was not likely to be satisfied like his
grandfather, John III., with showing his zeal for Christianity by
rigorous orthodoxy and systematic persecution at home, but longed rather
to unite war with religion, and to spread Christianity, like St. Louis
of France, by his sword. To fanaticism and warlike ambition he added an
obstinacy and imperiousness of character, which made him a tyrant. While
training himself from boyhood for war, he determined to train his people
also by issuing a sumptuary edict that none of his subjects might have
more than two dishes, and those of the simplest character, for their
meals, forgetting that no decree could alter the daily life of his
people. Lastly, with these characteristics he united a spirit of
profoundest melancholy, which is evident in his portraits and in all his
actions, a melancholy which seemed to presage his early and tragic
death, and is indicated by the motto he selected for himself:
“Un bel morir tutta la vita honora.”