a practical man, who should try to husband the resources of the nation,
could have attempted such a task, and even he would have had
difficulties to face which might well seem insurmountable. But practical
measures of reform, such as a systematic attempt to regulate the
expenditure of the kingdom, and an effort to check the corruption which
had grown up in all departments of the state, demanded an amount of
serious and prolonged labour which the dreamy king was little inclined
to bestow; he thought he had done enough in issuing his sumptuary edict,
and paid no further attention to the evils which were sapping the
strength of his kingdom. For one measure, however, he deserves much
credit. Though paying no attention to the slaves in Portugal, and
regarding negroes as a race made for slavery, he yet under the influence
of the Jesuits issued a decree of the greatest importance for the colony
of Brazil, by which it was ordered that for the future none of the
aboriginal Brazilians should be publicly sold or sent as slaves to work
in the plantations, except prisoners taken in a just war. Even in the
higher domain of foreign politics as opposed to internal administration,
he made no attempt to watch over the interests of Portugal. His early
marriage was a matter of supreme importance to the kingdom, for the only
male heir of the house of Aviz was his great-uncle, the Cardinal, and
the deaths of Dom Sebastian and Dom Henry without direct heirs would
inevitably be followed by a civil war arising from the disputed
succession. This consideration weighed but little with the romantic
monarch, who after making a half-hearted attempt in 1570 to secure the
hand of the beautiful Princess Margaret, sister of Charles IX. of
France, the famous “Reine Margot,” by the mediation of Dom Luis de
Torres, abandoned the idea of marriage, and devoted himself to his
schemes of fighting the Mohammedans.
The times were singularly unfit for a war against the infidels.
Crusading ardour had long been extinct, and though Pope Pius II. (Æneas
Sylvius Piccolomini) had in the preceding century tried to form a
coalition against the Turks, and in 1571 Don John of Austria had broken
their naval power at Lepanto, the ardour of the Pope and the navy of the
prince were directed against the Turks, not because they were
unbelievers, but because they were a conquering race and threatened
Western Europe. The expeditions of the Emperor Charles V. against Tunis
in 1535, and Algiers in 1541, were dictated rather by naval and
commercial than by religious considerations, and John III. had acted
with the thorough sanction of the Church, whose most humble devotee he
was, in abandoning the smaller towns held by Portugal in Morocco. Yet
Dom Sebastian persisted; he would be crusader rather than politician,
and he was determined to fight the Mohammedans. His first idea was to go
in person to India and place himself at the head of the Portuguese
forces there; but the minister, Pedro de Alçaçova Carneiro, pointed out
the difficulty of finding a regent to govern during his absence, and his
former tutor, Aleixo de Menezes, turned his thoughts to Africa. He was
fired by the fame of his ancestor, Affonso V. “the African,” and
determined to waste what strength still remained to the exhausted
Portuguese nation in useless expeditions to the barren regions of
north-west Africa, where no possible advantage could be obtained of the
slightest value to Portugal. Filled with the notion of recapturing the
useless places which his grandfather had evacuated, such as Alcacer
Seguier, Azamor, Arzila, and Cafim, King Sebastian in his twentieth
year, in 1574, suddenly made up his mind to sail across to Africa. The
expedition partook rather of the nature of a _reconnaissance_ than of a
serious campaign. The king spoke only of a visit to Tangier, and started
off suddenly with his guards and courtiers from a hunting excursion,
ordering the Duke of Aveiro to follow with a force of four hundred
cavalry and one thousand two hundred infantry. With these troops Dom
Sebastian made a few raids, and exhibited his personal courage by
uselessly exposing his person, and he returned more bent than ever on a
great war in Africa, which was to end in the Portuguese conquest of
Morocco, and the acquisition of everlasting fame for its leader as a
brave “soldier of the Cross.”
Before entering on the history of this expedition, which was to end so
disastrously, and strike a last and final blow at the declining power of
Portugal, it would be as well to see how the Portuguese dominion in
Asia had been faring during the regencies of Queen Catherine and the
Cardinal Henry, and during the earlier part of Sebastian’s own tenure of
power. Dom Constantino de Braganza, the friend of the poet Camoens, had
succeeded Francisco Barreto, the enemy of the poet, in 1558, the year
after the death of John III., and had distinguished his viceroyalty by
the capture of Daman. He was a truly great governor, although he
permitted the Inquisition to be established at Goa, and his high rank
gave him an ascendency not possessed by previous viceroys. His conduct
was so blameless and his power so wisely exercised that the queen-regent
begged him to accept the viceroyalty for life. He refused, and at the
end of his three years of office resigned and was succeeded by Dom
Francisco Coutinho, Count of Redondo, a nobleman of high character, who
died in office, and was succeeded first by João de Mendonça, and then by
Dom Antonio de Noronha, who took the important city of Mangalore by
assault. During his viceroyalty in 1565 occurred the battle of Talikot,
in which the powerful Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar, which embraced the
greater part of Southern India was overthrown by the Mohammedan kings of
Ahmadābād, Bīdar, and Bijápur, and the way prepared for the
extension of the Mohammedan power over Southern India. The next viceroy,
Dom Luis de Athaide, was specially selected by King Sebastian himself in
1568, and he certainly justified the choice of the boy-king and his
advisers. The Mohammedan kings of the Deccan were full of delight at
their great victory of Talikot, and Alī Adìl Shah, king of Bijápur,
believed he could expel the Portuguese from his dominions. With this
intention he collected a vast army of one hundred thousand men,
recruited from various adventurers of the Mohammedan religion, and laid
siege to Goa in 1570. The city was being ravaged by a pestilence, but
nevertheless the defence was a gallant one--the last great feat of arms
of the Portuguese in India. The siege lasted ten months, and ended in
the discomfiture of the besiegers and their final defeat in a pitched
battle beneath the walls of Goa, when a victory was won, second only to
that of Dom João de Castro at Diu, twenty-five years before. On his
return to Portugal, Dom Luis de Athaide was received with the greatest
favour by King Sebastian, who created him Count of Atouguia, and also by
the people of Lisbon, who gave him the greatest reception vouchsafed to
any Indian governor on his return for many generations. King Sebastian
then made an important alteration in the government of his Asiatic
possessions. Hitherto all the petty governors from the Cape of Good Hope
to Japan had been subject to the Governor-General or the Viceroy at Goa,
an extent of command which caused many serious inconveniences. In 1571
this vast extent of land and sea was divided into three separate
governorships. The new viceroy, Dom Antonio de Noronha, was to be
supreme from Cape Guardafui to Ceylon with his capital at Goa, while
Francisco Barreto was to govern the south-east coast of Africa with his
headquarters at Mozambique, and Antonio Moniz Barreto was to rule from
Pegu to China with his capital at Malacca. Antonio Moniz Barreto
succeeded as viceroy in 1573, and Dom Diogo de Menezes in 1576; and in
1578, the very year in which King Sebastian met his fate, his faithful
servant, Dom Luis de Athaide, became viceroy for the second time, and it
is said that the defeat of his sovereign broke the heart of the defender
of Goa and caused his untimely death.
The expedition which was to meet with such a disastrous termination had
long been contemplated by Sebastian, but its despatch was hastened by
the state of affairs in Morocco itself, which seemed to the king most
propitious for the success of his enterprise. The empire of Morocco had
been divided between two brother Sherīfs, as the rulers of that
country were termed, in the early part of the sixteenth century. The
younger of the brothers, Maulā[20] Mohammed, beheaded his senior,
Maulā Ahmed, and was in his turn assassinated in 1556. The successor
to the throne, Maulā Abdallah, murdered two of his brothers and was
succeeded by his illegitimate son, Maulā Ahmed ibn Abdallah, the
“Muly Hamet” of old English writers. At this, the brother of the late
Maulā Abdallah, Abd-el-Melik, commonly known as Muley Moloch, fled to
Constantinople and, with the help of the Turks, ousted his nephew,
Maulā Ahmed. The defeated usurper then decided to make an application
for Christian help, and when refused asylum by Philip II., of Spain, he
appealed to Dom Sebastian. This was the opportunity the young king had
longed for, and when Maulā Ahmed promised to hold the crown of
Morocco as a vassal of the King of Portugal, Sebastian enthusiastically
welcomed him and promised him assistance. The wiser statesmen of
Portugal pointed out that the strength of Portugal in men and arms was
in Asia, and that it was impossible to attempt such an enterprise as the
invasion of Morocco without foreign help. Sebastian therefore sent
embassies asking for help from the Pope, and from his uncle, Philip II.
of Spain. Pope Gregory XIII. sent him an arrow of S. Sebastian and
nothing else, but the arrangements with Philip II. were more important.
The minister Pedro de Alçaçova Carneiro was sent in person to the King
of Spain to ask for troops and ships, in recognition of which Dom
Sebastian would marry a Spanish infanta. Philip opposed the project
strongly, but eventually promised five thousand men and fifty galleys to
assist in an attack on Larache (El Araish), an offer which he afterwards
withdrew, when the Duke of Alva assured him that at least fifteen
thousand veteran soldiers would be necessary. In December, 1576,
Sebastian had an interview in person with his uncle, when Philip II.
again opposed his nephew’s mad idea, and he is reported to have said
when his efforts proved in vain, “If he win, we shall have a good
son-in-law; if he lose, a good kingdom.”
[Illustration: VIEW UP THE DOURO TOWARDS OPORTO. (_After a drawing by J.
Gibbs of Bath._)]
Dom Sebastian then decided to have all the glory of conquering Morocco
for himself, and his hopes reached their height when Maulā Ahmed
managed to buy over the Kaid of Arzila and handed over that place, one
of those surrendered by John III., to the Portuguese monarch. Maulā
Abd-el-Melik, who was in bad health, tried to dissuade his rash opponent
from attacking him, and in a letter pointed out that he was the rightful
Sherīf of Morocco. He even went further, and offered to the young
king a district of ten miles round each of the Portuguese
towns--Tangier, Ceuta, Mazagon and Arzila--if he would give up
supporting the usurper. Never might the hackneyed line of Horace be
quoted with more justice than in regard to the rash young Christian
monarch:
“Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.”
No amount of opposition could check the king’s ardour; he believed
himself already surpassing in glory both John “the Great” and Affonso
“the African,” and proceeded to raise money in every possible way. The
treasury was nearly empty owing to peculation and bad management, and it
was filled by imposing new taxes, by further harrying the converted
Jews, and by partial bankruptcy. As the country was nearly drained of
men the king had to hire mercenaries belonging to different nations, who
were not properly equipped, and he never seemed to realize the
difference between an expedition to take a sea-side town and the
invasion of a powerful empire. If Affonso V. had met with difficulty in
taking Tangier, how could Sebastian hope to penetrate to Fez, seventy
miles up the country? Dom Sebastian trusted too much to the promised
help of Maulā Ahmed; he believed other cities would yield as quickly
as Arzila; and he had been thoroughly convinced by the expelled usurper
that his uncle Maulā Abd-el-Melik was not only hated in Morocco, but
enfeebled by illness; and that his offers of peace were dictated by
fear.
The preparations made for the campaign were ridiculous in the extreme;
all the most experienced generals and most tried Portuguese soldiers
were in India, and the Portuguese troops who were enlisted consisted of
a few old veterans whose time had expired in Asia, and of youthful raw
recruits. These latter were not in the least disciplined, and were
officered by young courtiers, who may have been brave, and were
certainly inexperienced. The king himself intended to take the command
in person, and instead of making plans for the conduct of the campaign
and looking after his troops, he spent his time in borrowing the sword
of King Affonso Henriques from the convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, and
in having a banner worked in which the arms of Portugal were for the
first time surmounted by an imperial crown. This banner was solemnly
blessed by the archbishop in the cathedral of Lisbon on the 14th of
June, and the king then considered that all was ready.
On the 24th of June, 1578, King Sebastian set sail with a fleet of fifty
ships of war and about nine hundred transports under the command of the
Admiral of Portugal, Dom Diogo de Sousa, carrying fifteen thousand
infantry, two thousand four hundred cavalry, and thirty-six guns. Of
this army only about ten thousand were Portuguese, the rest consisting
of Spanish and German volunteers and mercenaries, and of nine hundred
Italians, under the command of a gallant Englishman, Sir Thomas
Stukeley. This well-known English Catholic, who had been created Marquis
of Leinster by the Pope, had been stopped with his soldiers by
Sebastian while on his way to raise an insurrection in Ireland against
Elizabeth. In spite of the desperate hurry in which he had been to
start, Sebastian made no attempt to hasten his passage and try the
effects of a surprise. He first stopped at Lagos in the Algarves, then
at Cadiz, where he was sumptuously entertained by the Duke of Medina
Sidonia, and did not reach Tangier until July 6th. He was there met by
his Mohammedan ally, Maulā Ahmed, who handed over his son as a
hostage, but who only brought eight hundred Moors instead of the army
which he had promised. Sebastian at first amused himself with hunting,
while his opponent was concentrating his forces, and then repulsed a few
Moors in a skirmish, which he magnified into a victory. From Tangier he
suddenly carried his army to Arzila, where he encamped beneath the walls
and wasted time. At last he determined to hold a council of war to
decide in what way the army should attack Larache; Maulā Ahmed wisely
suggested by sea, so as to have the advantage of a convenient means of
retreat to the ships, but Sebastian answered the Moorish prince so
rudely that he left the council, and the king decided to march by land.
Even at this last moment Maulā Abd-el-Melik offered to cede Larache
to Sebastian if he would cease his military operations, but the rash
young king returned no answer whatever, and the Sherīf of Morocco,
finding all his efforts for peace repulsed, determined to crush the
invader.
On the 29th of July the march inland, away from the cool breezes off
the sea, was commenced under the burning sky of an African summer; the
soldiers were soon maddened by hunger, thirst, and heat, and by the
incessant attacks of the Moorish skirmishers; and the army was
dispirited before a battle took place. These miseries continued for five
days, until August 3rd, when the Portuguese had some success in a
skirmish, and Dom Sebastian took up what he considered a strong position
near the little town of Alcacer Quibir, or more correctly El-Kasr
el-Kebīr. The position was from a military point of view utterly
indefensible, for both flanks were exposed, and Maulā Abd-el-Melik,
who was now face to face with the Christians with an army of forty
thousand cavalry and fifteen thousand infantry saw that the Portuguese
king was lost. At daybreak on the 4th of August, 1578, the battle
commenced with some brilliant charges on the part of the Portuguese, but
in a short time the wings of the Moorish army, which were entirely
composed of cavalry, overlapped the small Christian army, and for four
hours the army of Dom Sebastian was compelled to defend itself. The
result of the continued charges of the Moorish cavalry could not be
doubtful, and at the end of the four hours’ fighting nearly the whole of
the Christian army was cut to pieces. The Moorish monarch, Maulā
Abd-el-Melik, had been in the agonies of death when the battle
commenced, and died in his litter from the exertion of trying to mount
his horse at the first charge of the Christians, placing his finger on
his lip as a sign that his death should be kept secret for a time. His
rival, Maulā Ahmed, was drowned in crossing the Wed or Wady
M’Hassan, and his brother, Ahmed ibn Mohammed, was declared king by the
soldiers at the conclusion of the battle. The slaughter was terrible;
more than nine thousand Christians were killed, and all the rest, except
about fifty, were taken prisoners. Sir Thomas Stukeley, after gallantly
defending himself, was killed, with many of the chief Portuguese nobles
and prelates, including Dom Jaymé, brother of the sixth Duke of
Braganza, the Duke of Aveiro, who had commanded the cavalry, and the
bishops of Coimbra and Oporto, while among the prisoners were the Duke
of Barcellos and Dom Duarte de Menezes, Quarter-Master-General of the
army.
Dom Sebastian throughout the battle behaved himself as a gallant knight,
though he had not been a prudent general, and when the fortunes of the
day went against him he determined to lose his life also. Many accounts
are given of his death. One tradition says that he was taken prisoner by
some Moors, who stripped him of his arms, and began to quarrel about
him, and that a Mohammedan general rode in amongst them, and shouting
out, “What, you dogs, when God has given you so glorious a victory,
would you cut each other’s throats about a prisoner,” immediately struck
the King of Portugal down in ignorance of his rank. Another story is
that the king met Dom Luis de Brito with the consecrated banner wrapped
around him, and said, “Hold it fast, let us die upon it;” and that when,
after fierce fighting, Brito was taken prisoner with the banner, he saw
the king riding away unpursued. Dom Luis de Lima also asserted that he
saw the king making his way towards the river unhurt. According to the
most trustworthy account, Christovão de Tavora, the king’s equerry,
showed a flag of truce, and offered to surrender with the fifty
horsemen, who still remained about the king, when Sebastian suddenly
dashed on the Moorish cavalry, who, irritated at this breach of faith,
instantly slew him, as well as the brave equerry, who followed his
master. Anyhow, it is certain that the new Sherīf Ahmed ibn Mohammed
sent out Sebastião de Resende, a gentleman of the bedchamber, to
discover the corpse of the king, and that a naked body was brought in
covered with wounds, which the Portuguese prisoners at once recognized
as that of the ill-fated Dom Sebastian. The body was temporarily buried
in the palace at Alcacer Quibir, and removed in the following September
to Ceuta, at the request of Cardinal Henry. It was eventually taken to
Portugal in 1582, by the orders of Philip II., and buried with great
pomp in the church of St. Jerome at Belem.
It is important to lay stress on this subject, because for many years
the lower classes of the Portuguese people refused to believe that their
sovereign was dead, a belief encouraged by the stratagem of a wounded
noble on the evening of the fatal battle to gain admission into the city
of Tangier by asserting that he was the king. It was this belief which
led to the acceptance of the successive false Dom Sebastians, who played
a part in the ensuing half century, and it had a still further influence
upon the whole future of the Portuguese people. That the “Principe
Encuberto” or Hidden Prince would appear again became a religion, and
the sect of the Sebastianistas became a powerful body of fanatics. Their
belief was fostered by the princes of the House of Braganza as
patriotic, and whenever Portugal has been subject to a great strain, the
Sebastianistas have always come to the front. Even at the present day
they are not extinct, and Sir Richard Burton asserts that he has met
with them in the interior of Brazil. It was this firm belief that gave
point to the remark of Lord Tyrawley, in the English House of Lords in
1763: “What can one possibly do with a nation, one half of which expect
the Messiah, and the other half their king, Dom Sebastian, who has been
dead two hundred years?”
The news of the terrible disaster of Alcacer Quibir was brought to
Lisbon by the Admiral Dom Diogo de Sousa, and occasioned the most
passionate lamentation. There was not a noble family which had not lost
more than one of its representatives, not a patriot who failed to see
that ruin was staring his country in the face. Deprived of soldiers,
resources, and reputation at one fell blow, the Portuguese nation seemed
stunned at the extent of its calamity. Even in India the same alarm was
felt, and it is said that the brave Viceroy, Dom Luis de Athaide, died
of a broken heart at the news. The Cardinal Henry was solemnly crowned
king, but he was a feeble old man of sixty-six, who had to be fed like a
baby, and he was quite incapable of facing the situation. He utterly
refused to acknowledge any successor, or to express any opinion on the
subject, and when he died on January 31, 1580, the Cortes which had been
summoned to decide this important question was still sitting at Lisbon.
With him ended for a time the separate existence of the Portuguese
nation, and it is significant and interesting to observe that Camoens,
the great national poet of Portugal, the poet who had immortalized its
heroic epoch, died in a hospital of semi-starvation a few months before
or after the Cardinal-king. It was well he did not live longer, for
Portugal was to enter on the period of its “Sixty-Years’ Captivity,” and
her proud sons, who had the patriotism of a Camoens in their hearts,
would not have been able to bear the burden of subjection to a foreign
king.
[Illustration: text decoration]
[Illustration: text decoration]
XII.
PORTUGUESE LITERATURE--CAMOENS.
It has always been the case in the history of a nation which can boast
of a golden age, that the epoch of its greatest glory is that in which
its literature chiefly flourished. The energies of a nation at its
zenith cannot be bounded by the vastest schemes of conquest, but develop
in other directions as well. It was so with Portugal. The age which
witnessed the careers of its famous captains and conquerors was also the
age of its greatest poets and prose writers. The establishment of the
Inquisition soon checked the progress of Portuguese literature, but
before its fatal power had time to thoroughly stifle free thought, and
before the disaster of Alcacer Quibir, and the annexation of the country
by Philip II. of Spain, Portugal had been able to produce many great
writers, and one of the most supremely-gifted poets the world has ever
seen, Luis de Camoens.
The affection which the first princes of the house of Aviz had felt for
literature, and especially for purely national literature, has been
alluded to, and the natural result is to be seen in the works of the
early poets, and of the eloquent chroniclers of the fifteenth century.
The honour given by these princes to literary endeavour heightened its
importance in the eyes of the people, and raised the whole standard of
education. The Portuguese were therefore prepared to take advantage of
the stores of knowledge revealed by the revival of classical learning,
and to profit greatly by it. Ayres Barbosa, a native of Aveiro, was the
first to introduce the study of ancient Greek into the peninsula; he had
listened to the lectures of Politian and his contemporaries at Florence,
and after teaching “the humanities” at the University of Salamanca for
about twenty years from 1495, he returned to Portugal as tutor to the
younger sons of King Emmanuel. His most distinguished Portuguese pupil
was, however, Andrea de Resende, the antiquary, who was one of the
professors at the University of Coimbra, during the epoch of its
greatest reputation, and is well known as the friend and correspondent
of Erasmus.