to face with the problem which all had been discussing ever since the
melancholy fate of Dom Sebastian. There were seven candidates for the
throne, but only five of them need be seriously considered, for the
claims of Pope Gregory XIII., as heir-general to a cardinal, and of
Catherine de’ Medici, through the first marriage of Affonso III. to the
Countess of Boulogne in the thirteenth century, need no further notice.
The relationship of the other five claimants to Emmanuel “the Fortunate”
can be best perceived from the table on the opposite page. From this
table it clearly appears that the true heiress to the throne was
Catherine, Duchess of Braganza, and failing her heirs, the Duke of
Parma; and that the claims of Philip II. of Spain and of the Duke of
Savoy were only legally valid in case of the extinction of the
descendants of Dom Duarte or Edward, Duke of Guimaraens. The University
of Coimbra, after due consideration, declared in favour of the Duchess
of Braganza, but Philip II. of Spain cared little for this opinion; he
had long hoped to sit upon the throne of Portugal, and to rule over the
whole Iberian peninsula, and he wished still more to add the profits of
the Portuguese trade with Asia to his own American revenues, and thus
fill his exchequer with the sinews of war for his struggle against the
Protestants of the north of Europe. Philip II. therefore set to work to
win over the majority of the Cortes which had been convened at Lisbon,
to settle the succession to the throne. Money and lavish promises
assisted the eloquence of the two chief supporters of the King of Spain,
Christovão de Moura and Antonio Pinheiro, Bishop of Leiria; and when the
death of the cardinal-king was announced in January, 1580, the Cortes
was quite ready to recognize Philip as king, although the people, or
rather that small section of the people who were Portuguese patriots,
felt and expressed all the traditional hatred against the union of the
thrones of Spain and Portugal.
TABLE II.
THE DESCENDANTS OF EMMANUEL.
EMMANUEL, = (1) Isabella, eldest dau. of Ferdinand
king, 1495; | and Isabella of Castile and Aragon.
d. 1521. | (2) Maria, her sister.
| (3) Leonora of Austria, sister of Charles V.
|
--------------------------------------------------------=====>
| | | |
John, III. = Catherine Luis, Ferdinand, Affonso,
b. 1502; | of b. 1506; b. 1507; b. 1509;
king, 1521;| Austria. d. 1545. d. 1534. d. 1540.
d. 1557. | Duke of Duke of Cardinal
| Beja. Guarda. and
| | Archbishop
| | of Lisbon.
John = Joanna ANTONIO,
b. 1537; | of Prior of
d. 1554. | Spain. Crato
| (illegitimate).
Sebastian,
b. 1554; king. 1557;
d. 1578.
============>--------------------------------------
| | | |
Henry, Edward, Isabel, Beatrice,
b. 1512; b. 1515; b. 1503; b. 1504;
d. 1580. d. 1545. d. 1539. d. 1538.
Cardinal Duke of =Emperor =Charles III.
and Guimaraens= Charles V. of Savoy.
king. Isabel of | |
Braganza. | |
| | |
| | |
| PHILIP II., PHILIBERT
| King of EMMANUEL,
| Spain. Duke of Savoy.
|
|
----------------------
| |
CATHERINE= Maria=
John, sixth Alexander
Duke of Farnese,
Braganza. Duke of Parma.
|
RANUCCIO, Duke of Parma.
The death of King Henry hurried on matters, and Philip, in order to
establish himself peacefully on the throne, entered into negotiations
with the Duke of Braganza. The King of Spain solemnly promised the duke
that he should have Brazil in full sovereignty with the title of king,
and that a marriage should be arranged between his daughter and the
Prince of the Asturias, heir to the conjoined thrones; and the duke, who
hated war and loved peace, accepted these terms, in spite of his wife’s
opposition. But, to the surprise of Philip, another competitor for the
crown, to whom he had paid no attention--Dom Antonio, the Prior of
Crato--declared himself king at Santarem, and, entering Lisbon without
opposition, struck money and began to raise soldiers. This Dom Antonio
was the son of Dom Luis, Duke of Beja, the second son of Emmanuel “the
Fortunate,” by Violante de Gomes, surnamed “the Pelican,” one of the
most beautiful women of her time. Dom Antonio alleged that his father
was secretly married to his mother, and reminded the people, in a
proclamation, that, even if the marriage were not legal, one of the
greatest of all the kings of Portugal, the victor of Aljubarrota, was a
bastard also. But the Portugal of the close of the sixteenth century,
enervated by wealth and luxury, oppressed by the Inquisition, and with
its free population reduced in numbers, possessed none of the energy of
the Portugal of the fourteenth century, and felt no inclination to fight
against the King of Spain, the son of the great Emperor Charles V., and
the uncle and friend of their lamented monarch, Dom Sebastian. The
brave, but hot-headed and noisy Prior of Crato could not be compared in
warlike prowess or statesmanlike qualities to John of Aviz, and he had
no “Holy Constable” to support him; and the Cortes of 1580, unlike that
which in 1385 had listened to the manly words of João das Regras, and
declared John “the Great” king of Portugal, listened to the promises of
Christovão de Moura, and rejected the Prior of Crato. Dom Antonio raised
a few soldiers, but the Duke of Alva who entered Portugal at the head of
twenty thousand men, defeated them without difficulty at Alcantara on
August 26th, when the pretender fled to France, and Philip II. was
proclaimed king.
[Illustration: PHILIP II.]
In 1581 Philip II. of Spain and I. of Portugal, as he now styled
himself, solemnly entered Lisbon, and in the presence of a great Cortes
held at Thomar he swore on April 15, 1581, that he and his successors
would observe the following conditions, which had been settled by his
agents. He swore that he would maintain the privileges and liberties of
the Portuguese people; that the Cortes should be frequently summoned to
meet in Portugal; that the viceroy or chief governor should always be a
native, unless the king should give that charge to one of the royal
family; that the royal household should be kept up on the same scale as
hitherto; that all offices, civil, military, and judicial, and all
dignities in the Church, and in the orders of knighthood, within the
kingdom, should be conferred upon Portuguese subjects alone; that the
commerce of Africa, Persia, and India should be reserved to them, and
carried on only in their vessels; that he would make no royal grant of
any city, town, or royal jurisdiction to any but Portuguese; that
forfeited or lapsed estates should never be absorbed in the royal
domain, but be regranted to some relative of the last possessor or to
some other Portuguese subject; that the king should reside as much as
possible in Portugal, and that, when he did come, he should not take the
houses of private individuals for his officers, but observe the custom
of Portugal; that there should be always resident at the royal court an
ecclesiastic, a chancellor, a treasurer, and two masters of requests,
of Portuguese birth and nationality, to manage all business relating to
their country; that the revenue of Portugal should be kept distinct from
that of Spain, and spent in the kingdom; that all matters of justice
should be finally settled there; that Portuguese noblemen should be
admitted to offices in the households of the King and Queen of Spain;
that all customs duties at the land frontiers should be abolished; and
that King Philip should at once grant three hundred thousand crowns out
of his royal treasury to redeem prisoners, repair cities, and relieve
the miseries which the plague had brought upon the Portuguese people.
All these conditions Philip II. solemnly swore to observe, and he was in
consequence recognized as King of Portugal, not only in Portugal itself,
but in Brazil and the Indian settlements, where Fernão Telles had
succeeded the viceroy, Dom Luis de Athaide, as governor-general.
The other candidates for the crown of Portugal were obliged to acquiesce
in Philip’s success; the Duke of Braganza, though greatly disappointed
at only receiving the office of Constable of Portugal and the Order of
the Golden Fleece instead of the sovereignty of Brazil, was too
apathetic to resist, and, in face of his apathy, the Dukes of Parma and
Savoy were forced to surrender their claims, which were obviously
inferior to those of the Duchess of Braganza. Only the Prior of Crato
persisted in his attempts to win the throne from Philip by relying on
the old dislike of the Portuguese people for the Spaniards. He was
cordially received in France by Catherine de’ Medici, who, though
Italian by birth, was true to the French policy of trying to weaken
Spain; and through her influence a strong French fleet of sixty ships of
war, with many troops on board, was sent, under the command of Philip
Strozzi, to the Azores, which had recognized Dom Antonio in 1580 as king
of Portugal, and had refused to acknowledge Philip. But the ill-luck of
the Prior of Crato followed him; the French fleet was defeated at
Terceira by the Spanish admiral, Don Alvaro de Bacam on July 26, 1582;
Strozzi was killed, and Dom Antonio escaped with difficulty to England.
There Elizabeth received him cordially, and in 1589, the year after the
defeat of the Great Armada, she sent a strong fleet, under Sir Francis
Drake and Sir John Norris, to help him win back his “kingdom.” This
attempt also proved a failure; Maulā Ahmed ibn Mohammed of Morocco
was prevented from advancing to the prior the loan of two hundred
thousand crowns, which he had promised on receiving Dom Antonio’s son,
Dom Christovão, as a hostage, by Philip’s timely surrender of Arzila;
Drake and Norris quarrelled, and the English retired without effecting
anything of importance. The unfortunate prior, finding that Elizabeth
would do nothing more for him, once more went to France, where he died
in great poverty and distress on August 26, 1595. He was buried in the
Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois at Paris, where the inscription on his
tomb styles him “King of Portugal”; and he left several children behind
him, who were not recognized as legitimate, owing to the fact that
their father had taken a vow of chastity on becoming a Knight of Malta.
The attempts of the Prior of Crato did not affect the equanimity of
Philip II.; he satisfied himself, when he entered his new kingdom, by
making fifty-two exceptions to the general amnesty, which he had
declared, including Dom Antonio himself and his chief adviser, the
Bishop of Guarda. He returned to Spain shortly afterwards, leaving his
nephew, the Cardinal-Archduke Albert as viceroy at Lisbon, with a strong
guard of Spanish soldiers. The most interesting occurrences of the
cardinal’s administration were the risings of the two first “false Dom
Sebastians.” It has been said that the lower classes of the Portuguese
people refused to believe that the young king was dead, and it was not
long before impostors arose, who tried to make profit out of this
credulity. The history of these impostors[24] is as curious in its way
as those of the “False Smerdis,” the “False Demetrius,” and the
pseudo-Louis XVII.s, and proves how strong a hold the memory of Dom
Sebastian, in spite of his being a rash and foolhardy tyrant, had taken
upon the minds of the Portuguese people. The first two of these
impostors, who were mockingly called the “King of Pennamacor” and the
“King of Ericeira” from the headquarters of their operations, were
Portuguese of low birth, whose risings were easily put down. The
original inventor of the idea was the son of a tiler of Alçobaça, named
Sebastião Gonzales, who, after leading a profligate life, had retired
to a hermitage near Pennamacor. From this retirement he emerged in July,
1584, and declared that he was King Sebastian; that he had escaped after
the battle of Alcacer Quibir, and had since been praying in the
hermitage, but that the miseries of his people had reached his ears, and
he had determined to come forth to remedy them. He was accompanied by
two men, who styled themselves Dom Christovão de Tavora and the Bishop
of Guarda, and began to collect money in Pennamacor and the
neighbourhood. The trio were speedily arrested and marched through the
streets of Lisbon to show that they were impostors; and the false
Sebastian was then sent to the galleys for life, and the pretended
Bishop of Guarda was hanged. In the following year, one Mattheus
Alvares, son of a mason at Ericeira, declared himself to be the lamented
Dom Sebastian, to whom he bore a considerable personal resemblance, and
solemnly promised to marry the daughter of Pedro Affonso, a rich farmer,
whom he created Count of Torres Novas. His future father-in-law advanced
the impostor a large sum of money, and he had raised a small corps of
eight hundred fanatical followers, when the cardinal-archduke thought it
necessary to send royal troops against him. The poor enthusiasts were
defeated with much loss, and both the pretender and Pedro Affonso were
hanged and quartered in Lisbon.
This severe punishment effectually checked the appearance of any fresh
impostors in Portugal itself, and the populace, though firmly convinced
that Dom Sebastian would one day appear again, were not to be deceived
by any more pretenders.
But these stories had spread far beyond the limits of Portugal, and two
more attempts to personate the deceased monarch were made in Spain and
Italy. The first of these impostors was a handsome young man named
Gabriel Espinosa, who bore a striking resemblance to the King of
Portugal, and who was given out as Dom Sebastian by a Portuguese Jesuit,
named Madujal, who introduced him to Donna Anna, a natural daughter of
Don John of Austria, and induced her to believe in him. The whole scheme
partook rather of the nature of a personal intrigue than of a political
plot. Donna Anna, who was very wealthy, showered favours on the young
man and his sponsor, and even advocated his claims to Philip II. The
deception was, however, too obviously absurd to gain many supporters,
and Espinosa and his clerical adviser were both executed in 1594. Far
more curious is the story of Marco Tullio, a poor Calabrian peasant, who
could not speak a word of Portuguese, but who nevertheless asserted that
he was Dom Sebastian in 1603, twenty-five years after the disaster of
Alcacer Quibir. His story was most carefully worked out, and his
imposture ranks among the most extraordinary on record. He asserted that
he was the king, and had saved his life and liberty by remaining on the
battle-field among the dead bodies; that he had made his way into
Portugal, and had given notice of his existence to the Cardinal-King
Henry, who had sought his life; that he then returned to Africa, because
he was unwilling to disturb the peace of the kingdom by a civil war,
and travelled about in the garb of a penitent; that he next became a
hermit in Sicily, and was on his way to Rome to declare himself to the
Pope, when he was robbed by his servants, and obliged to find his way to
Venice. When he told this elaborate tale at Venice, he got a few
Portuguese residents there to believe in him, and was soon arrested in
that city at the demand of the Spanish ambassador as an impostor and a
criminal. He was several times examined, but stuck to his story so
cleverly, and with such obstinacy, that the authorities, who were not
sorry to embarrass the Spanish Government, refused to punish him as an
impostor. The story of his claim spread so widely abroad, that the
enemies of Spain became anxious to prove it true, and to set him up as a
thorn in the side of Philip III. The Prince of Orange went so far as to
send Dom Christovão, son of the Prior of Crato, to request the Venetian
authorities to make further inquiries; but those prudent governors only
held a solemn public examination, when the Calabrian told his tale
again, and then expelled him from their dominions without expressing any
opinion as to its truth. From Venice he went to Padua in the disguise of
a monk, and thence to Florence, where the Grand Duke of Tuscany had him
arrested and given up to the Spanish Viceroy at Naples. He was
imprisoned in the Castle del Ovo, publicly exposed, and sent to the
galleys; and as he made adherents even there, he was transferred to San
Lucar, and eventually executed. The singular boldness of this imposture,
and the tenacity with which the ignorant Calabrian stuck to his story,
in spite of its evident falsity, make it memorable in the history of
pretenders.
The “Sixty Years’ Captivity,” as the domination of Spain over Portugal
from 1580 to 1640 is called, was a time of unexampled disaster for the
country in every quarter, and the Portuguese, with their independence,
seemed to have lost all their old courage and heroism. Under the
administration of the Cardinal-Archduke Albert great efforts were made
to send a powerful contingent to the fleet known as “The Great Armada,”
and the destruction of this fleet by the English in 1588 ruined the
naval power of Portugal. So low did the country fall, that it could not
even defend its own ports, and in 1595 the English, under Sir Francis
Drake, sacked the important city of Faro in the Algarves. As a portion
of the Spanish dominions, Portugal had to suffer defeat from all the
enemies of Spain. The foremost of these enemies were England and
Holland, and the Dutch were the first nation to break down the
Portuguese monopoly of the lucrative trade with Asia. This they did with
the more ease, since, with the true commercial spirit, they not only
imported merchandise from the East to Holland, but also distributed it
through Dutch merchants to every country in Europe; whereas the
Portuguese in the days of their commercial prosperity were satisfied
with bringing over the commodities to Lisbon, and letting foreign
nations come and fetch them. The incursion of the Dutch merchants into
Asia was caused by the action of Philip II. in closing the port of
Lisbon to them in 1594; and in 1595 Cornelius Houtman, a Dutchman, who
had been employed by the Portuguese as a pilot in the Indian seas, and
had afterwards been imprisoned by the Inquisition, led a Dutch fleet
round the Cape of Good Hope for the first time.
But before studying the rapid manner in which, first, the Dutch, and
then the English and other foreign nations, contended for a share in the
Asiatic trade, and eventually destroyed the Portuguese power in the
East, it is necessary to draw attention to the fact that this
destruction did not commence until the beginning of the seventeenth
century, and the reign of Philip III. The ruin of Portugal was indeed
due to the policy of Philip II., whose enemies Holland and England
consummated it; but it was hardly commenced in his reign, which ended in
1598. Indeed, during that period, when the power of Portugal was on the
very point of extinction, its Asiatic trade, and more especially its
Indian trade, was at its height.[25] Philip II. faithfully observed the
promises he had made to the Cortes of Thomar in this respect. All the
viceroys he appointed were Portuguese, and he made no attempt to intrude
Spaniards into either official appointments or into the conduct of the
Asiatic commerce. The Portuguese viceroys of his reign, Dom Francisco
Mascarenhas, Dom Duarte de Menezes, Dom Manoel de Sousa Coutinho, Dom
Mathias de Alboquerque, and Dom Francisco da Gama, were all able and
enterprizing rulers, who increased the prestige of the Portuguese power
throughout the East by many deeds of daring, and especially by the
conquest of the King of Kandy in Ceylon. The yearly fleets increased in
number; the peoples of the East had got accustomed to regard the
Portuguese as invincible; and the wheels of administration, from long
practice, ran smoothly. Especially active were the missionaries,
principally Jesuits, in Asia, and their progress was forwarded rather
than checked by the accession of Philip II. to the throne of Portugal.
The bishopric of Goa was raised to an archbishopric in 1577, and
suffragan bishops were appointed wherever the influence of the
Portuguese spread, and it is curious to note that an important mission
headed by Dom Luis de Sequeira, consecrated Bishop of Japan, and Father
Alexandra de Valignano, was despatched to Japan to 1598 and had much
success.[26] But though the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church in
Asia paid much attention to preaching the gospel among the distant
peoples of the East, in India they were chiefly occupied in persecuting
the Nestorian Christians on the Malabar coast with the help of the
Inquisition. These Nestorian Christians were especially obnoxious to the
orthodox Catholics, who got the Portuguese to prevent the arrival of any
consecrated Nestorian bishop in India by blockading the coast, and who
solemnly condemned the doctrines of the Nestorians in the famous synod
of Diamper (Udayampura) held by Archbishop Alexis de Menezes in 1599.
The history of the work of the Jesuits in India at this time is
peculiarly interesting; the keynote to their policy is contained in the
following words: “The Christian religion cannot be regarded as
naturalized in a country, until it is in a position to propagate its own
priesthood;”[27] and it must be remembered that the credit of their
activity must not be attributed to Portuguese priests alone, for Jesuits
of all nations cooperated in the work of evangelization, and among them
should be noted Thomas Stephens, an Englishman and rector of the Jesuit
college at Salsette. In preaching, teaching, and writing these early
Jesuit missionaries were equally able, and it is recorded that the first
book printed in India was printed by the Jesuits at Cochin in 1570. In
opposition to this activity must be noted the terrible severity of the
Inquisition at Goa, which stained the labours of these early
missionaries with blood.
[Illustration: FIGURES OF MEN AT AN AUTO DA FÉ.
(_From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne,” &c. La Haye,_ 1720.)]