HISTORICAL SURVEY
[Sidenote: Count Henry.]
The early, the first five, centuries, of Portugal’s history read like
some enchanting romance of chivalry, a long chain of heroic deeds by
a few great men in an age when the individual counted for everything.
In Roman history, Viriathus, the chieftain of the _Serra da Estrella_,
and the Lusitanians under Sertorius had signalized themselves for their
courage and powers of resistance. But Portugal was but a part of a
Roman province—modern Portugal corresponds only in part to the ancient
Lusitania—nor was it in existence as a separate region when Count
Henry of Burgundy became Count of Portugal in 1095. The Moors, who had
conquered Lisbon three centuries after the Roman rule in Lusitania came
to an end in A.D. 409, were still in possession, although temporarily
ousted by Alfonso VI, King of León, in 1093. Thus the province which
separated itself from Galicia consisted of a narrow tract with wavering
borders between the Minho and the Tagus.
[Sidenote: Affonso I.]
Count Henry had extended its southern frontier before he died in 1112,
but it was his son Affonso Henriques, who, by his mighty deeds of war,
really established the kingdom. Santarem was taken in 1147, and in the
same year, with the help of English and other Crusaders, Lisbon. His
mother, the Countess Theresa, was Regent from 1112 to 1128, but in the
latter year he took over the reins of power. For the first year of
his rule he was at war with Castille, but soon all his energies were
directed against the Moors, and the battle of Ourique, before which
Christ was supposed to have appeared to the Infante, promising him
victory, definitely turned the scales in favour of the Christians
(1139). Henceforth he was known as King of Portugal, a title conferred
perhaps on the battlefield of Ourique and confirmed at the Cortes of
Lamego (1143). The King’s untiring energy had the great incentive that
whatever territory he won from the Moors he held in his own right, and
if this territory became greater than that originally held in fealty to
León, Portugal would almost naturally become independent. His prudence
seems to have matched his valour, and he parried the claims of León by
making Portugal tributary to the Pope. In 1184, after nearly sixty years
of warfare, begun in 1128 against his own mother in order to obtain his
kingdom, the old King was once more in arms, with the object of relieving
his son, besieged in Santarem by the Moors. He died in the following
year, in great honour and glory. The King had made the nation.
[Sidenote: Sancho I.]
His son, Sancho I, second King of Portugal (1185-1211), and perhaps
also her first poet (in a poem addressed to the fair Maria Paes), had
proved himself in his youth worthy of his father’s great reputation. The
conquest of the south of the Peninsula from the Moors continued. Silves
was taken in 1189, retaken by the Moors in 1191. But Sancho did not
confine himself to war: he founded towns and encouraged agriculture to
such an extent that he became known as the _Lavrador_ or the _Poblador_.
In his reign occurred the first disagreement between Church and State,
which was soon to grow to so serious a conflict. The religious orders for
their past and prospective services against the Moors had received huge
grants of land from his father and from King Sancho himself. Often an
Order would be given the whole of a vast tract of land still unconquered
from the Moors. It seemed a little thing at the time, but when conquered
and cultivated, made the possessors as powerful as the King or more so.
King Sancho, however, left a prosperous kingdom at his death. By his will
he bequeathed certain important towns to his daughters absolutely.
[Sidenote: Affonso II.]
Their brother, King Affonso II, refused to waive his right to these
towns, and the first years of his reign were occupied with civil war,
while it ended in a first serious disagreement with the Clergy and Rome.
The most welcome event of his reign was the capture of the strongly
fortified town of Alcacer do Sal from the Moors in 1217, with the help of
Crusaders who had sheltered in the Tagus and sailed up the Sado to the
attack.
[Sidenote: Sancho II.]
In the reign of his son, Sancho II (1223-46), the strife with the Clergy
developed and the powerful nobility took part against the King, the
dissatisfaction being fanned apparently by the report that the King
intended to marry his distant cousin, Mecia Lopes de Haro, daughter of
the Lord of Biscay. The King, who had continued the conquest of Algarve,
and won the important town of Tavira, was powerless to withstand the
forces united against him. A deputation of Portuguese prelates and nobles
waited on the Pope at Lyon, and persuaded him to depose King Sancho,
or rather to appoint his brother Affonso as Regent. The cynical and
ambitious Affonso had been long resident in France, and he now accepted
the offer with some alacrity, taking whatever oaths were required of him
before he set out for Portugal. The King fled at his approach, and died
two years later an exile at Toledo (1248).
[Sidenote: Affonso III.]
As he was childless, Affonso was his natural successor. His ambitions
realised, he made a good king—he seems to have had great personal
attractions—and continued successful in all his undertakings. The
conquest of Algarve was completed, Faro, facing out towards Africa,
falling to the King in 1249. A dispute between Affonso III and Alfonso
X, the Learned, of Castille, arose out of these Portuguese victories in
Algarve. The Guadiana was not yet a boundary between Spain and Portugal,
and it seemed as if the victorious Portuguese might eventually deprive
Castille of the potential possession of the whole southern strip of the
Peninsula, even to Almería. A treaty settled their differences in 1253.
By this treaty Affonso III was to marry Brites, illegitimate daughter
of Alfonso X. The wedding, as well as the bride, was illegitimate, for
the Portuguese King was already married to the French Countess Mathilde.
The dowry now offered was a glittering temptation, and the Pope, who
excommunicated Affonso III for bigamy, should have included in his ban
the Castilian monarch, fellow-conspirator with Affonso in this wickedness.
[Sidenote: Diniz.]
When Affonso died his eldest son, Diniz or Denis (1279-1325) was in his
eighteenth year. Owing to the illness of his father—bedridden for years
before his death—he had early taken a part in affairs. Indeed, at the age
of six, we find him a full-blown diplomatist, sent on a mission—connected
with the independence of Algarve—to his grandfather, King Alfonso the
Learned, at Seville. As King, his activities were many-sided, and in all
of them he showed the same strong will and good sense, always directed
towards the strengthening of Portugal, and making the interests of throne
and people one. The quarrel between the State and the Church in Portugal,
backed by the Vatican, which had caused his father to die excommunicate,
continued, but by an attitude of equal firmness and justice. King Diniz
contrived to bring about a settlement, and to check the acquisition of
real property by the religious orders. The same firm hand dealt with
the overweening nobility. Some discontent was felt among the nobles,
and Diniz’ real popularity was with the workmen, peasants, and small
farmers, whose interests he so unflaggingly protected. Throughout the
country he built and rebuilt walls and towns and towers, and encouraged
the cultivators of the soil as “the nerves of the republic.” He founded
in 1290 at Lisbon the University, which after several removals from
Lisbon to Coimbra and from Coimbra to Lisbon, is now definitely fixed at
Coimbra. And, as if he foresaw all Portugal’s destined task and glory,
he encouraged ship-building, imported an admiral for his fleet from
Genoa, and planted the country about Leiria with pines. As a poet he has
left us a greater number of lyrics than any other early king, with the
exception, perhaps, of his grandfather of Castille. And he wrote them
not only in the Provençal manner, but characteristically encouraged the
indigenous poetry derived from the soil of Galicia. He was a thorough
Portuguese, and ruled over a clearly defined region with the boundaries
of modern Portugal. The first years of his reign were clouded by civil
strife with his brother, who based a claim to the Crown on the fact that
Diniz was born before the Countess Mathilde died, and his last years were
saddened by disagreement with his eldest son. This only did not come
to battles even more serious than those actually fought owing to the
untiring mediation of King Diniz’ wife, the Queen Saint Elizabeth.
[Sidenote: Affonso IV.]
King Diniz, the _Lavrador_, was reconciled to and succeeded by this son,
Affonso IV. Under Affonso the relations with Castille became more and
more frequent, and in 1340 the Portuguese King and the flower of the
Portuguese chivalry helped to win the great battle of Salado against the
Moors. Affonso IV, who had embittered his father’s last years, suffered
in turn at the hands of his son. It must be allowed that Pedro had some
excuse, for the King had sanctioned the murder, during his son’s absence,
of the mother of Pedro’s three children, the lovely Inés de Castro.
Maddened with grief, Pedro harassed his father’s realm with fire and
sword.
[Sidenote: Pedro I.]
This sorrow seems to have increased the eccentricity of his character, so
that at times there seemed a streak of madness. It was he who thrashed
the Bishop of Porto, it was he who condemned a stonecutter who had
killed a man to the same sentence as a priest who had killed a man:
after ascertaining that the priest had been forbidden to say mass as
punishment, he sternly forbade the stonecutter to cut any more stones.
There was grim humour in many of the sentences of this _Rei Justiceiro_,
and they were always directed against the powerful, the nobility, the
clergy, the King’s officials in favour of the weak and unprotected, so
that the people sang his praises. He seems to have had something of his
grandfather, King Diniz’, art of popularity without his high sense of
dignity. Pedro’s passion was for the dance and to the blowing of his long
silver trumpets he would dance through the streets of Lisbon by night or
day.
[Sidenote: Fernando I.]
After a reign of ten years (1357-67) he was succeeded by the reckless
and irresponsible Fernando, who contrived during his reign of sixteen
years to squander the great wealth built up by the Kings of Portugal
since Affonso III. He must needs lay claim to the Crown of Castille,
and in a series of unnecessary wars brought his kingdom to the verge of
ruin. Lisbon was besieged by land and sea by the Castilians in 1373.
The King’s unpopularity was increased by his marriage with the wily
and unscrupulous Leonor Telles. It was in this reign that occurred the
murder of the beautiful and innocent Maria Telles, at the hands of her
own husband, brother of the King and son of murdered Inés, by instigation
of her sister Leonor. Her fate has been less celebrated than that of
Inés, but had no less of tragedy and pathos. During the whole of the
fourteenth century a succession of double marriages between the royal
families of Castille and Portugal increased the mutual familiarity, if
not friendliness, of the two countries. Finally, to crown the impolicy
of his whole reign, Fernando married his daughter Beatrice to King Juan
I of Castille in the year 1383, thereby almost irretrievably assuring
Portugal’s union with or rather subjection to Castille. He had previously
settled to marry her to nearly every prince in Europe, but did not
consider himself bound by treaties. To him they were mere scraps of
paper. The old-fashioned German historian, Heinrich Schäfer, writing in
1835, says that “neither duty nor honour could bind him” to respect them.
[Sidenote: João I.]
His widow, Queen Leonor, stood for the cause of Castille, wishing the
Portuguese throne for her daughter and son-in-law. After her favourite,
João Fernandes Andeiro, Count of Ourem, had been murdered almost before
her eyes in the palace, and popular excesses at Lisbon, Evora and other
towns had fully showed the danger of her position, she retired from
Lisbon and joined the Spanish invader. Early in 1384 King Juan I was
at Santarem, styling himself King of Castille, León and Portugal. Thus
Portugal was ruled at one and the same time by two Kings John I, for
the Infante João, Master of Aviz, illegitimate son of King Pedro, and
intensely popular, especially at Lisbon, was now king in all but name.
Many of the Portuguese nobility favoured the cause of Castille, and King
Juan I appeared to have good chance of ultimate victory. Queen Leonor
soon found that she had exchanged one difficult position for another. She
was virtually a prisoner in the King’s hands, and was finally relegated
to the Convent of Tordesillas. The Castilians besieged Lisbon closely by
land and sea, and only the plague in their ranks brought relief to the
starving city. On the 6th of April, 1385, the Infante João was formally
chosen King of Portugal. His chief supporter was, like Napoleon, worth a
whole army. Others might waver, but in Nun’ Alvares’ straight and clear
mind loyalty to Queen Leonor, who was held to have forfeited loyalty,
could not weigh for an instant against his love of an independent
Portugal. To secure that, he said, he would fight against his own father.
Against his brother he did fight, and no suspicion of the loyalty of the
Constable, not long out of his teens, could be instilled into the mind of
his friend João I, who rewarded him for his victories with well-nigh half
his kingdom. The first great Portuguese victory was at Trancoso in July,
1385, followed on the 15th of August by the battle near Aljubarrota,
in which the flower of the Spanish nobility, and of Portuguese nobles
fighting on the side of Castille, fell. It was a victory of King and
people over the nobility. King Juan fled in haste to Santarem, and
thence to Spain. Nun’ Alvares in October won another great victory at
Valverde, and after that there was little more fear of serious Spanish
invasion. Fighting, however, went on at intervals, till a truce in 1389
was followed by a more permanent truce in 1400, and by a treaty of peace
in 1411, after the death of King Juan’s successor, Henrique III. The last
great achievement of King João I’s great reign was the conquest of Ceuta.
The expedition was saddened at its outset by the death of the Queen, of
plague, a few days before the King and his three older sons, Duarte,
Pedro, Henrique, sailed on their crusade against the Moors (1415). The
expedition was completely successful. Ceuta was taken immediately owing
to the eager heroism of the Princes and their Portuguese followers. This
was the first of Portugal’s great deeds beyond the seas. The last years
of King João I’s reign were peaceful, and when he died in 1433, two years
after the death of his life-long friend, Nun’ Alvares, Portugal was as
independent as Spain or any other country, and her alliance with England
already ancient and secure.
[Sidenote: Duarte.]
King Duarte (1433-8) himself married an Aragonese princess, another
Leonor. In spite of his good sense and great qualities, in spite of
his personal courage amply shown in the expedition against Ceuta, his
combination of king and philosopher was not entirely successful. He
had the weakness to yield to the fiery determination of his brother,
Infante Henrique, to send a force against Tangiers. The expedition ended
disastrously (had it been a success there would, of course, be no talk
of King Duarte’s weakness). After thirty-seven days of heroic fighting
against vast numbers of Moors, the Portuguese were forced to surrender.
In return for permission to sail back without their arms, to Portugal,
they agreed to give up Ceuta, and the Infante Fernando remained as
hostage and died a prisoner after many months of fearful ill-treatment.
His brother, King Duarte, had died before him, leaving his wife, Queen
Leonor, Regent for the infant King.
[Sidenote: Affonso V.]
Another of his brothers, the Infante Pedro, soon became Regent, while
another, the Infante Henrique, now known as the Navigator, was preparing
Portugal’s future glory with a faith and persistency rarely surpassed. At
his bidding and under his direction, Portuguese mariners crept down the
west coast of Africa, and at his death in 1460 he had cause to feel that
his labours had not been in vain, and that a rich field for the merchant
and the missionary would yearly extend. The discovery of the Cape of Good
Hope followed, and in 1497-9, when Vasco da Gama, rounding the Cape,
crossed from East Africa to India, and returned in triumph to Lisbon,
this successful enterprise was felt to be, and indeed was, the crown and
natural outcome of Prince Henry’s life-work. He was the last of that
noble galaxy of brothers. When the Infante Pedro, answering to the wishes
of a great part of the kingdom, and especially of the people of Lisbon,
assumed the Regency, he ruled firmly and wisely (1438-47), and did not,
therefore, make the fewer enemies. Queen Leonor died in 1445, and two
years later the young King took power into his own hands. No sooner had
Pedro ceased to be Regent than his enemies combined for his ruin, and
the King, his nephew, and son-in-law, an amiable but weak young man, was
induced to listen to their accusations. The Infante Pedro was banished
from the Court, and was given no opportunity of defending himself. The
matter finally came to open war, and the King’s large army met the
Infante Pedro’s small force at Alfarrobeira in May, 1449. The Infante
was killed in a preliminary skirmish. Affonso V (1438-81), gifted with a
noble and generous character, as king proved at once weak and obstinate.
An extant letter from him to the historian Azurara shows him in a very
pleasant light. In his external policy he had two chief aims, to conquer
North-West Africa, and to make good his claim to the Crown of Castille.
As to the first he obtained some measure of success, so that flatterers
called him the “African.” Alcacer was taken in 1458, Tangiers thirteen
years later. But the last ten years of his reign had no victories to
show. He espoused the cause of Juana, daughter of Henry IV, King of
Castille, making it his own by betrothing himself to her (_a excellente
Senhora_). War with Castille followed, and he was defeated at the battle
of Toro (1476). He was not more successful in his attempt to obtain the
support of France. In his visit to the French Court he was a puppet in
the hands of the astute Louis XI, and when he returned to Portugal it
was felt that he had failed doubly. Indeed, he had renounced the throne
and decided to retire to a convent, but he now reassumed his position as
king, although the real power and direction of affairs remained in the
vigorous and able hands of his son João. Before Affonso V died, João had
effected a peace with Castille (1479), by which the hapless Juana was
shut up in a convent, at Santarem.
[Sidenote: João II.]
Affonso V had always been man first and king by an after-thought, his
son João II was always king first. In his reign (1481-95) the royal
power was strengthened and made supreme in Portugal. This was indeed the
outstanding feature of the rule of the “Perfect Prince,” in whose strong
hands Portugal reached the height of her strength, though not of her
glory. The most powerful Portuguese subject was the Duke of Braganza,
who owned a third of Portugal, or more. The founder of this house was
an illegitimate son of João I, married to the daughter of Nun’ Alvares,
who had received from the King a large proportion of the towns and
territories conquered by his skill and energy in battle. The Duke of
Braganza was now arrested by João II and executed at Evora as a friend of
Castille, but essentially as a too powerful vassal of Portugal. Part of
the nobility, disaffected owing to the King’s strenuous proceedings, and
the Bishop of Evora involved the Duke of Vizeu in a plot to dethrone his
brother-in-law, although, as it proved, he would have become king in the
natural course of events a few years later. King João II’s son, Prince
Affonso, married in 1490 to Isabel, daughter of the Catholic Kings, died
in the following year at the age of sixteen. The Duke of Vizeu’s plot
was betrayed to the King, who acted with his usual energy and decision.
His brother-in-law he stabbed to death with his own hand. The other
principal conspirators were sentenced to imprisonment or death. The title
of the Duke of Vizeu was extinguished, but his younger brother, Manoel,
became heir to the throne with the title of Duke of Beja.
[Sidenote: Manoel I.]
As King Manoel, the Fortunate, he ruled over Portugal for twenty-six
years (1495-1521), a period which will always be considered the greatest
of Portugal’s prosperity and glory, as well as the golden age of her
literature (although her greatest poet, Camões, was unborn when King
Manoel died). The fruits of the labours of the Infante Henrique, of King
João II, of a long line of glorious or obscure heroes and adventurers
and administrators from the time of King Diniz now fell into the mouth
of King Manoel. Compared with his predecessor on the throne, he has been
aptly described as an orange-tree succeeding an oak. But it must not be
supposed that he was without energy, witness the speed with which he
prepared to rescue Arzilla in 1508, and the fact that he would be up
and at work when most of his subjects were still asleep in their beds.
But what astonishes and must ever astonish the world is the mighty
achievement of this tiny kingdom. The series of wars with Castille, of
adventures along the west coast of Africa, of battles in Morocco, of
internal troubles, might seem to justify and explain a period of complete
inactivity. Yet in the years that followed the Portuguese conquered not
one country or one province, but a whole world.
[Sidenote: Portugal’s World-Empire.]
To tell the wonderful story of the Portuguese discoveries, culminating in
the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartolomeu Diaz and the voyage
of a handful of Portuguese under Vasco da Gama, and how the Portuguese
Empire in the East was defended by such heroes as Duarte Pacheco Pereira,
and strengthened and extended by the indomitable Affonso d’Albuquerque,
would fill volumes. The tiny Portuguese nation provided men to do these
deeds, and also historians to record them worthily. Sometimes the hero
was himself author, and wrote with a directness and vigour of style
scarcely ever attained by Portuguese writers of to-day. Only half a
century elapsed between the voyage of Vasco da Gama and the death of
D. João de Castro in India in 1548, and into this brief period is
crowded a bewildering array of fighters, writers, poets, historians,
administrators, men of science, to such an extent that no brief summary
of Portuguese history can even record their names. But large tracts of
Asia and Africa now acknowledged Portugal’s sway, and all the kings of
the East sent costly presents, gold and spices and precious stones, to
their suzerain in the West. The name and fame of the Portuguese extended
throughout all lands in mixed fear and admiration. Foreign adventurers
and merchants and men of curiosity and learning flocked to Lisbon, which
for a brief space appeared as the true centre of the universe. The Pope
and Cardinals in Rome gazed in wonder at the unprecedented gifts from
the East sent by the King of Portugal. But not in the East only were
great deeds performed at this time by the Portuguese, for in North-West
Africa D. João de Menezes won undying glory by his brilliant military
achievements, taking Larache, Azamor (1519), and other towns. When we
read that in a single day—in the defence of a fortress they were building
in North Africa—1,200 Portuguese are said to have fallen, and know that
this was a comparatively unimportant link in the huge chain of empire
which Affonso d’Albuquerque (the fear of whose name penetrated far into
China) was even then (1515) forging in India, we are not surprised that
agriculture in Portugal was neglected and that two generations later King
Sebastian could only collect a force of 9,000 Portuguese to accompany
him to Africa. Rather we marvel how Portugal could continue so long to
sustain efforts so many and so various. For a skilful historian the story
of Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries affords an epic
subject more wonderful than perhaps any in history—except that of the
events exactly four centuries later which welded together another empire
and again saw all the Princes of India sending gifts to the West. And the
materials to the hand of such an historian are fascinating and abundant,
both published and manuscript. Unfortunately the age of King Manoel
did not provide a fresh crop of heroes equal to those who had grown to
manhood under King João II, and when he died in 1521 the disquieting
symptoms were many. In Portugal the real prosperity had been replaced by
a garish and deceptive luxury, and the old simple pleasures and jollity
had vanished with the old austerity of life. In the East the mighty
compelling arm of Affonso d’Albuquerque had sunk to rest in 1515. King
Manoel had married as his first wife Isabel, daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella. She died in childbirth, and their son Miguel died two years
later in 1500. Had he lived he would have succeeded not only to the
throne and mighty empire of his father, King Manoel, but to the throne
and mighty empire of the Catholic Kings. Such a load of empire would
seem too great for the shoulders of one ruler to bear, and in the very
year of the infant prince’s death the Portuguese Pedro Alvares Cabral’s
discovery, or rediscovery, of Brazil added another huge item to the
burden and the glory.
[Sidenote: João III.]
King Manoel was succeeded by his son, João III (1521-57), born in 1502.
To the oak and the orange succeeded the cypress. But the gloom of his
reign has been much exaggerated, and the King’s character wilfully
distorted by the historians, who have described him as a bigot and a
witless idiot. King João was no fool, and had an intelligent love of
letters, and, if the Court was now less given up to pleasure than in the
reign of his predecessor, we still read of _serões_ continuing at the
palace during several nights. But the power of Rome in Portugal certainly
grew in his reign, and a succession of personal sorrows increased his
devotion to religion. About fifteen years after his accession many of
his nearest relations died, and, although a son and heir to his throne
survived till 1554, his death in that year came to crown the many griefs
of this reign. This precocious boy, the Infante João, had already won
some fame as a patron of letters, and was married when he died at the age
of sixteen. His death was one of the greatest misfortunes of Portuguese
history, from which indeed the goddess of Good Fortune seems to have
departed in the first half of the sixteenth century, leaving in her place
a poor Mofina Mendes, personification of ill luck. King João III and his
brother Henrique had worked persistently to introduce the Inquisition
into Portugal, and the Company of Jesuits, destined to do excellent work
in education at home and in the colonies overseas, also came to Portugal
during his reign.
[Sidenote: Sebastian.]
Prince João’s infant son, Sebastian, born in 1554, was educated by
priests and Jesuits, and in 1562 his grand-uncle Henrique, priest first
and prince afterwards, succeeded Queen Catharina as Regent, and continued
to rule till the King came of age (14) in 1568. King Sebastian reigned
in person for ten years. His character and capacities have been much
discussed. To a love of sport and all dangerous enterprises, he united a
deep religiousness, instilled into him by his education, and a consuming
desire to extend the Christian faith and win personal glory by a victory
over the Moors in Africa. To this end the ten years of his reign were
directed, and in 1578 he sailed from Lisbon (25th June), with a force of
about 14,000, Portuguese and foreigners, including members of all the
noblest families in Portugal. Surrounded by a vastly superior number of
Moors in the battle of Alcacer Kebir (4th August, 1578), the majority of
the Portuguese were slain or taken prisoners. The King himself, a Don
Quixote before Don Quixote was born, died fighting valiantly. His body
was recovered later and sent to Spain and thence to Portugal, where it
was buried in the convent of Belem, built by his great-grandfather, King
Manoel. Yet in the confusion of that battle many rumours arose and the
people in Portugal never believed in his death, a fact which occasioned
various episodes in the following year, and was the basis of a kind of
religious faith which lasted on into the nineteenth century. Not quite
two centuries had passed since the battle of Aljubarrota, and into that
period the Portuguese had crowded a history more brilliant than that of
any other country. Now it seemed as if the ship had gone by, leaving only
a wake of troubled water.
[Sidenote: Henrique.]
Sebastião was succeeded by his great-uncle Henrique, Cardinal at 33, and
King at 66, who, however, only survived him for a few months, dying in
1580. His last days were embittered by the question of the succession.
Seven pretenders claimed the Crown of Portugal, and chiefly the Duke
of Braganza, in his wife’s right, Antonio, Prior of Crato, the Lisbon
people’s favourite, and King Philip II of Spain.
[Sidenote: Philip II of Spain.]
The right seems to have been doubtful, but the might was on the side of
King Philip, who made no secret of his resolution to win the kingdom
by force if it were not given to him willingly. Many of the Portuguese
nobility were on his side, and the King Cardinal was finally induced
to recognise his claim. But the people strongly resented the intrusion
of the Spaniard, and the Prior of Crato found no difficulty in having
himself proclaimed King at Santarem. When, however, King Philip’s army,
under the Duke of Alba, arrived at Setubal, and after taking Cascaes,
advanced on Lisbon, Antonio’s forces, encamped outside the capital,
melted away—they consisted of untrained citizens for the most part—and
Antonio himself fled into Lisbon and thence to Oporto and Vianna in the
North. From Vianna do Castello he escaped in disguise by sea, accompanied
by the Bishop of Guarda and the Conde do Vimioso (October, 1580). He did
not, however, yet leave Portugal, remaining disguised there and even at
times at Lisbon till June, 1581, when he retired to France. Philip II
had entered Portugal by Elvas, and was received as king without further
resistance, making a solemn entry into Lisbon, the fourth king of
Portugal in the last three years. A French fleet was sent to the Azores
in favour of Antonio, but was defeated. He made a last fruitless effort
in 1589 in combination with Drake, who took the town of Cascaes. There
was no support forthcoming in Portugal, and the Prior de Crato returned
to France, and died there a few years later. If Philip II expected now
to rule over Portugal in peace he had mistaken the character of his new
subjects. Antonio was dead, King Sebastian dead and buried at Belem,
but in the wishes and thoughts of the people King Sebastian was alive
and might be expected to return from one day to another. Pretenders
accordingly abounded and gave considerable trouble; one, especially,
who appeared in Italy, bore so striking a resemblance to Sebastian, and
displayed knowledge of matters which only Sebastian could, apparently,
have known, that to this day some believe him to have been the real king.
[Sidenote: Spanish Domination (Philip II-IV 1580-1640).]
But Portugal was now definitely wedded to Castille for the next sixty
years. Spain’s enemies became her enemies, and her great colonial empire
lay at their mercy. Before the end of the century the Dutch were in
the East, and like rats in cheese, battened on the possessions of the
Portuguese. A few years later the English followed. All the old daring
and enterprise of the Portuguese mariners of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries seemed to have fallen from them like the cloak of Elijah. Their
ships were used in the service of Spain, and their own overseas dominions
left unprotected. Lisbon, accustomed to see the fleets depart and come
in traffics and discoveries from the East, now watched the building of
the invincible Armada against her old ally England. But Philip II’s hand
was a strong hand, and not lightly to be shaken off by an exhausted
people. Under the rule of his successors it was otherwise. Hollow pomp
took the place of real power, and the concentration of affairs in
the King’s hands, or in those of his minister, required men of more
insight and astuteness than Philip IV (Philip III of Portugal) or the
Count-Duke Olivares possessed. In Portugal discontent was widespread.
The people had never willingly accepted Spanish rule, and the increased
burden of taxation did not lessen their dislike. The nobles, even if
they were not fired by the misfortunes of their country, were enraged by
slights inflicted upon themselves. Margaret, Duchess of Mantua, had been
appointed Regent of Portugal in 1634. The real power was in the hands of
Miguel de Vasconcellos, who concentrated in his own person all the hatred
of the Portuguese for the Spaniard.
[Sidenote: The Restoration.]
In 1640, forty nobles, sure of the support of the people, and encouraged
by the enthusiastic approbation of the Archbishop of Lisbon, decided that
the hour had come to throw off the hated yoke. The Duke of Braganza’s
agent, João Pinto Ribeiro, was the heart and soul of the conspiracy.
The secret was well kept. _Fu cosa meravigliosa il concerto_, says an
Italian historian. The Countess of Atouguia, Filippa de Vilhena, who had
knowledge of the plot, herself armed her two young sons to take part
in it on the 1st of December. As nine o’clock struck that morning the
conspirator nobles forced their way into the palace and proclaimed the
King, João IV, Duke of Braganza.
[Sidenote: João IV.]
He was the grandson of the Duchess Catharina, one of the claimants to the
Portuguese throne on the death of the Cardinal King. Spain, with burdens
not less great than her vast resources, and the revolt of Catalonia on
her hands, was unable to do more for the moment than encourage plots in
Portugal against the new King. The most serious of them was a conspiracy
to kill the King, of which the Archbishop of Braga was the organiser
in 1641. The Vatican gave its support to Spain and connived at this
conspiracy. King João IV was too deeply religious to take the opportunity
to free the Church—and State—in Portugal from the supremacy of Rome,
and his foreign policy generally was not marked by the strength which
the circumstances required. His foreign ministers had extraordinarily
difficult tasks. In the year after the Restoration, treaties were made
with France and Holland, and the alliance with England was renewed. But
the custom to plunder Portugal’s overseas territories was now inveterate,
and she derived little profit from her new allies, although a common
cause united them against Spain. The Dutch gave the Portuguese fair words
in Europe and hard blows in her colonies, and Portugal was powerless to
do more than protest with words against such double dealing. Actual war
between Spain and Portugal began in 1643, and continued desultorily till
1646, when it was broken off till the death of King John IV in 1656. King
João’s brother, the Infante Duarte, had been arrested by order of Philip
II as soon as news came of the Restoration in 1640, and was subjected to
a process of slow murder till he died in prison in 1649, a second Infante
Fernando, only that his gaoler was no prince of Fez but the Catholic King.
[Sidenote: Affonso VI.]
King João’s eldest son, Theodosio, who had shown great promise, also
died before him, aged nineteen and the second son, Affonso, succeeded
at the age of thirteen. Although completely uneducated and incapable of
affairs, he wrested the power out of his mother’s hands six years later.
Affonso VI is said to have been more at home in the company of grooms
than in that of statesmen, but fortunately at the beginning of his reign
he had an affection for a statesman of strong and wise views, the Conde
de Castello Melhor, and allowed himself to be guided by his counsels.
There seems no reason to think that he would not have continued to rely
on ministers as excellent, and in that case his reign might have ended
as prosperously as it began. But dissensions at Court deprived him first
of Castello Melhor, then of his capable successor, Antonio Sousa de
Macedo, and without them he was helpless. The Queen, a daughter of the
Duc de Nemours, insisted on taking part, and no minor part, in affairs,
was determined, in fact, to govern Portugal in the interests of Louis
XIV. The strife between her and Castello Melhor was open and continuous
till the Secretary of State fell. The King’s brother, the Infante Pedro,
who must have known better than most how the country would gain if King
Affonso had a wise minister at his elbow, supported the cause of the
Queen. He forced Sousa de Macedo to flee from the palace to save his
life, and when the King was thus left defenceless, obliged him to resign
(November, 1667) and proceeded to marry the Queen.
[Sidenote: Pedro II.]
He did not himself assume the title of King but used that of “Governor”
until the death of the King, who had been sent to the island of Terceira
and then brought to Cintra, where he died in 1683. (The Queen, his former
wife, died in the same year.) During these internal affairs events had
happened which were of vast importance for Portugal. The war with Spain
had at first been favourable to Spain, but three years after Affonso VI
came to the throne the Spanish were decisively defeated at Elvas, and
four years later, in 1663, the Portuguese under the leadership of the
Count of Schomberg, achieved the victory of Ameixial, by which Portugal
really established her independence. The capture of Elvas and the victory
of Montes Claros followed. These were good answers to the exclusion
of Portugal from the peace between Louis XIV and Spain in 1659. The
Restoration of Charles II brought about renewed relations of friendliness
between England and Portugal. A fresh treaty was signed between the two
countries in May, 1661, and Englishmen (as well as Frenchmen) fought
at Ameixial. Negotiations for peace with Holland began in the same
year, and were brought to a successful issue in 1662, although, owing
to new conflicts in India, the Portuguese and Dutch were not really at
peace till 1669. Finally, in 1666, negotiations for peace were carried
on between Spain and Portugal. They were, however, broken off, and in
1667 a treaty was signed, not between Portugal and Spain, but between
Portugal and France. However, in 1668, the war with Spain, which had
lasted for over a quarter of a century, ended, and peace was concluded
between the two countries. Ceuta remained in the hands of the Spanish.
This was unhappily the fate of many of Portugal’s overseas possessions.
She lost or pawned one jewel after another till her splendid heirlooms
were reduced, not indeed to insignificance, but to insignificance
in comparison with their former worth. She did at least succeed in
recovering Brazil from the Dutch. Pedro II, who ruled as Regent from 1656
to 1683, and as King from 1683 to 1706, was little better educated than
his unfortunate brother, but he proved a wise and capable statesman with
the good of his country constantly at heart. If personal ambition seemed
to mark the first events of his public life, he redeemed these faults
by a real devotion to Portuguese interests, and under his rule Portugal
again attained a degree of importance which was clearly shown at the
beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession, when all the European
Powers eagerly sought her assistance. Portugal at first maintained her
neutrality, and, not for the last time in her history, bobbed and wavered
like a cork between conflicting waves. But before Pedro II died he had
set the seal on his wisdom by openly throwing in his lot with England and
her Allies (May, 1703). As events proved, the other course would have
meant Portugal’s ruin. The same year, 1703, witnessed the signing of an
important and much discussed commercial treaty between Great Britain
and Portugal, known as the Methuen Treaty (27th December). It provided
that Portuguese wines should be admitted to Great Britain at reduced
rates (a third less than those upon French wines), and that as regards
the prohibition of the importation of manufactured woollen goods into
Portugal an exception should be made in the case of Great Britain.
[Sidenote: João V.]
João V was but seventeen when he began his reign of forty-four years in
1706. His noble qualities and lofty aims were marred by the grandiose
taste of the time and by an unwise imitation of the _Roi Soleil_. He
wished to be the Portuguese Louis XIV. He lavishly encouraged art and
science, and took personal and intelligent interest in their progress. He
acted generally with a magnificence befitting a lord of all Europe, or at
least of all the possessions in the East that had once been Portugal’s,
whereas his treasury was supplied mainly by gold from Brazil. In the
matter of buildings, especially, his extravagance was unbridled, and two
of them, the Convent of Mafra and the Alcantara Aqueduct, still excite
wonder and admiration. It was all very splendid, and very unwise when
agriculture at home and the development of the colonies abroad as well as
a fleet to maintain them required every available penny. The principal
event of his reign in foreign affairs was the peace of Utrecht, signed
between France, Spain, and Portugal in 1713.
[Sidenote: Joseph I.]
His successor, Joseph I (1750-77) might perhaps have reigned in Portugal
as a Philip IV of Spain, and been known chiefly for his love of the
theatre had he not possessed a minister far wiser and abler than
Olivares. This minister, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, Marquez de
Pombal, born in 1699, had been Ambassador in London (1739-45), and then
at Vienna before becoming Joseph I’s Secretary of State. A terrible event
on the 1st of November, 1755, proved his decision, calmness, and energy.
At 9 a.m. on the morning of that day an earthquake of unparalleled
severity set Lisbon in ruins in the space of a quarter of an hour.
Slighter shocks continued to terrify the inhabitants—the survivors
(between 25,000 and 30,000 had perished) during the next two months. That
the consequences were not even more disastrous and that the population
did not get wholly out of hand was due to one man—Pombal. His plan for
rebuilding the city was not carried to completion, but the regular
streets and squares of the lower part of Lisbon, the _Baixa_, still
attest his energy and foresight. The other event with which his name is
chiefly associated is the expulsion of the Jesuits whose power had been
steadily growing in Portugal and her colonies for the last two centuries.
[Sidenote: Pombal.]
To this end Pombal’s great energies were for years directed, although
he found time in some measure to give attention to the more important
objects of agriculture, education, etc. An attempt on the King’s life on
the 3rd of September, 1758, in which the King was wounded in the arm,
gave Pombal his opportunity against the Jesuits, who were accused of
being the promoters (_impulsores_) of the plot. First the Duke of Aveiro,
as the chief conspirator, was executed with horrible cruelty, worthy of
the twentieth century, at Belem. The Count of Atouguia and the family
of Tavora, the Marquez de Tavora, who had recently returned from ruling
Portuguese India as Viceroy, his noble and witty wife and their two sons,
were executed with him. They were probably all innocent. Their ashes
were thrown into the Tagus, their arms crossed out from among the noble
families of Portugal. Then, exactly a year after the attempt, the Jesuits
were banished from Portugal and her colonies (3rd September, 1759), and
their goods confiscated (25th February, 1761). Relations between Portugal
and the Vatican were broken off and were not resumed until 1770 after
prolonged negotiations and the death of Pope Clement XIII. His successor,
Clement XIV, extinguished the Society of Jesus (August, 1773). Soon after
King José’s death the Marquez de Pombal retired to the village of Pombal,
and died there five years later in 1782, in his 83rd year. Ambitious to
obtain power and merciless in its use, he was, undoubtedly, a man of
strong will and enlightened views (he condemned slavery and protected
the Jews), but he was unattractive and often unjust in his methods. He
is sometimes spoken of as if he were the only enlightened ruler of the
eighteenth century in Portugal, whereas both the preceding and succeeding
reigns were marked by a steady progress and culture. King João V gave
a strong impulsion to literature and science: and in the reign of King
José’s daughter, Queen Maria I, the first roads worthy of the name
were built. In Pombal’s methods we may perhaps see the germ of that
embitterment in Portugal which has manifested itself in open or latent
civil war almost ever since.
[Illustration: THE CONVENT, MAFRA
[_See p. 91_]
[Sidenote: Maria I.]
At the end of the century Portugal’s prosperity stood high. In 1792,
owing to the Queen’s failing reason, her son João took over the reins of
government. The Queen lived till 1816, and the Regent then became King
João VI till his death ten years later. The greater part of his rule,
as Regent and King, was fraught with a series of disasters which from
prosperity dashed Portugal into distress and despair, and threatened her
very existence as a nation. The two causes which contributed most to her
ruin were the invasion of Portugal by the French armies of Napoleon, and
the declaration of the independence of Brazil, with which Portugal had
hitherto had a monopoly of trade. Portugal, as England’s ally, and the
possessor of excellent seaports, could not hope to escape Napoleon’s
attention. In vain she attempted to maintain her neutrality, even to
the extent of wishing to close her harbours against and yet remain the
ally of Great Britain. But the treaty of Fontainebleau in October, 1807,
between Napoleon and Godoy, made it clear that whatever hope there was
for Portugal consisted in her old alliance. By this treaty Portugal
was to be divided into three parts, and to cease to be an independent
country. Junot advanced rapidly upon Lisbon, and the Regent and Royal
Family set sail for Brazil, accompanied by many of the noble and wealthy
families of Portugal. The land of Portugal itself remained for years the
scene of warfare, for, although the convention of Cintra in 1808 freed it
from its immediate invaders, other armies followed and were only slowly
forced northwards by the genius and persistency of Wellington.
[Sidenote: João VI.]
Wellington himself was not unpopular in Portugal, but with Beresford,
who was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Portuguese army under the
regency which governed Portugal during the King’s absence in Brazil, it
was otherwise. His punctual discipline was hated, and a growing number
of Portuguese, filled with the ideas of the French Revolution, nourished
a hope of freeing their country from what they considered the undue
interference of the foreigner, and the dominion of what appeared to be
obsolete and reactionary methods. In 1817 a plot of General Gomes Freire
de Andrade against Beresford proclaimed to all the world how necessary
discipline was for Portugal. The plot was discovered, and Gomes Freire
was executed. But three years later a revolution broke out. Beresford,
who had been absent in Brazil, was refused a landing on his return, the
Regency was overthrown, and a new Constitution drawn up. King João VI
returned in the following year from Brazil. In 1822 Brazil pronounced
itself independent and chose the King’s popular and liberal-minded son,
Pedro, to be its ruler. King João was disposed to accept some kind of
constitution, and entrusted the Conde de Palmella with the drawing up of
a constitution less radical than that of 1820. He had, however, counted
without the Queen Carlotta and his son, Dom Miguel. They succeeded in
overthrowing the constitutional party, and King João VI was obliged to
take refuge from his own son on an English man-of-war in 1823. In the
following year, with the help of the Powers, he succeeded in restoring
his authority, and Dom Miguel was banished. King João died two years
later.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH, BATALHA
[_See p. 95_]
[Sidenote: Maria II da Gloria.]
His eldest son, Pedro, as Emperor of Brazil, renounced the throne of
Portugal in favour of his daughter, Maria II da Gloria, then a small
child. In the hope of healing the strife which bade fair to be the
irremediable ruin of Portugal, he decided that his brother Miguel
should act as Regent and marry his niece, under condition of swearing
to accept the Constitution. Dom Miguel came to Portugal—_o rei chegou,
o rei chegou_—and under cover of accepting the Constitution had himself
proclaimed King (in June, 1828), while his niece and betrothed wife
was being educated in Paris. A vigorous persecution of Liberals and
Constitutionalists followed. Thousands of them left the country as
exiles, others suffered cruel torments in prison, and others were
executed: and more seeds of that mutual hatred and vindictiveness were
sown between Portuguese and Portuguese which a century was unable to root
out. Pedro returned from Brazil to fight for his daughter’s throne, and
reached the Azores in the spring of 1832. Two years later Miguel, who in
spite of all his faults possessed many good qualities, and was beloved by
the Portuguese people, was finally defeated at Thomar and by the treaty
of Evora renounced the throne. King Pedro himself died in the same year.
In 1836 Queen Maria was married to Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
Her reign was embittered by military _pronunciamentos_ in favour of
a more radical or more moderate constitution, and, in 1852, a year
before the Queen’s death, the Duke of Saldanha succeeded in imposing a
constitution which remained in force for some years. He himself continued
to be the make-weight in Portuguese politics until 1871, when after a
brief term of office he was overthrown in turn by the Conservatives and
sent as Ambassador to London, where he died in 1876.
[Sidenote: Pedro V.]
After Queen Maria’s death, the enlightened and art-loving King Consort
Ferdinand ruled on behalf of his son, Pedro V, until he was pronounced to
be of age in 1855. The new King died in 1861, and was succeeded by Luiz I
(1861-89), during whose reign the unpatriotic strife between Liberal and
Conservative politicians, _Progressistas_ and _Regeneradores_, went on
unabated.
[Sidenote: Luiz I.]
It is not pleasant to dwell on the fate of a country, once as glorious as
any in Europe, now torn and harassed by party feuds, personal ambitions,
false ideas of liberty, artificial and purely formal conceptions of
Constitutionalism, misgovernment and corruption, neglect, indifference,
despair.
[Sidenote: Carlos I.]
Luiz I was succeeded in 1889 by his son, Carlos I, whose reign began as
it ended, disastrously for Portugal. In the very year of his accession,
the house of Braganza was driven from Brazil, which declared itself a
Republic. In the following year a colonial question between Great Britain
and Portugal led to the presentation of an ultimatum by Great Britain,
and what was ignorantly regarded as the King’s weakness inspired an
abortive republican rising at Oporto in 1891. In the following year
Portugal’s credit was laid in the dust by a formal declaration of
bankruptcy. The events of these four years were sufficient to disgust
anyone with the business of king. The King, under the Constitution, had
really little power to interfere. The Queen, Marie Amélie, daughter
of the Comte de Paris, was looked upon askance as a friend of the
religious orders, and her courage and charity awakened no response of
chivalry in the hearts of the Portuguese. The position came to be this:
that every kind of support was refused to the Monarchy, which was then
bitterly criticised and attacked by those who, had they supported it
loyally, might have made it a success. It was “a Monarchy without any
monarchists,” said King Carlos.