PORTUGUESE PORTRAITS
_By the same Author_
THE MAGIC OF SPAIN, 1912.
IN PORTUGAL, 1912.
POEMS FROM THE PORTUGUESE, 1913.
STUDIES IN PORTUGUESE LITERATURE, 1914.
LYRICS OF GIL VICENTE, 1914.
PORTUGAL OF THE PORTUGUESE, 1915.
New York Agents
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
FOURTH AVENUE AND 30TH STREET
[Illustration: NUN’ ALVAREZ.
From the earliest (1526) edition of the _Cronica_.
[_Frontispiece._]
PORTUGUESE PORTRAITS
BY
AUBREY F. G. BELL
_A notavel fama dos excelentes barões e muito antiguos antecessores
dina de perpetua lembrança_
DUARTE PACHECO PEREIRA, _Esmeraldo_
Oxford
B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET
MCMXVII
TO
THE COUNTLESS FORGOTTEN HEROES
OF PORTUGAL
In burning sands or Ocean’s blinding silt,
In Africa, Asia, and the icy North,
They lie: yet came they home who thus went forth,
Since of their bones is all their country built.
Preface
Not seven, nor seventy, names exhaust the tale of Portugal’s great
men. The reader need but turn to the fascinating pages of Portuguese
history. There he will find a plentiful feast set out before him--the
epic strife between Portuguese and Moor, Portuguese and Spaniard,
and deeds of high emprise in the foam of perilous seas and the
ever-mysterious lands of the East. His delight will be impaired unless
he can follow the events in detail in the chronicles and histories of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and for this a knowledge of
Portuguese is requisite, since there are few satisfactory translations.
But it is as easy to acquire a sufficient knowledge of Portuguese to
read it with pleasure as it is difficult to write or speak it.
There is a whole literature, often not less attractive in style than in
subject, of histories, memoirs, travels, accounts of wrecks and sieges,
recording the deeds of the Portuguese on and beyond the seas. Of the
battle of Ourique (1139) Portuguese historians have loved to tell how
the Moors numbered 600,000 (since to say 900,000 were an exaggeration)
and how, heavy rain having fallen after the battle, the streams that
flowed into the far-distant Guadiana ran red with blood. But there were
scrupulous and moderate chroniclers like Fernam Lopez and Azurara, and
many of the historians of India were sober writers whose narratives
(those, for instance, of Fernam Lopez de Castanheda, Diogo do Couto,
and Gaspar Correa) bear the stamp of truth while they delight the
reader by their wealth of detail and personal anecdote.
They may be pardoned for declaring that their heroes’ achievements
outshone those of Greek and Roman. For indeed the half-century
(1498-1548) between the voyage of Vasco da Gama and the death of
Dom João de Castro is thick with names; the great men tread on one
another’s heels in the halls of fame, worthily continuing the work of
their predecessors during four centuries in Portugal. Sousa, Mello,
Meneses, Cunha, Castro, Noronha, Mascarenhas, Coutinho, Pereira,
Pacheco, Almeida, Azevedo, Sá, Silva, Silveira--these are names the
very catalogue of which must be music to a Portuguese, and which would
require a large volume to chronicle in detail.
And many women hold a high place in Portuguese history, as the
Queen-Saint Elizabeth (or Isabel),[1] the stout-hearted bakeress of
Aljubarrota, Brites (Beatrice) de Almeida, who slew, if we are to trust
the tradition, seven Spaniards with her wooden baker’s shovel, or the
heroines of Diu.[2]
Among the men there is Affonso Henriquez, first King of Portugal, half
French by birth, and grandson of the Spanish King of Leon, but in heart
and action wholly Portuguese; loyal Egas Moniz; Gualdim Paes and other
legendary heroes in the conflict with the Moors which transformed
Portugal from a dependent province into a free kingdom; and later, if
not less legendary, Fernão Rodriguez Pacheco, the astute defender of
Celorico, who in starvation by a miracle obtained a fish and sent it to
the besieger to show that plenty reigned in the town; or the defender
of Coimbra, Martim Freitas, heroically, almost quixotically loyal to
the deposed King Sancho II.
On the sea the first to signalise himself was Fuas Roupinho, in the
twelfth century; and thenceforth Portugal never failed to produce hardy
if obscure seamen, to fish for cod in the Northern Seas or to discover
the west coast of Africa till Bartholomeu Diaz rounded the Cape of
Storms in 1487, and King João II rechristened it the Cape of Good
Hope.[3]
João II (1481-95), “the Perfect Prince,” or as Queen Isabella of Spain
more bluntly called him _el hombre_, “the man,” was one of a series
of great kings of the House of Avis, founded by João I (1385-1433)
“of good memory,” darling of the Lisbon people. João I was succeeded
by his eldest son, the noble but unfortunate student-king Duarte
(1433-8). Other brothers of Prince Henry the Navigator, scarcely less
famous, were the Infante Pedro, statesman and author, who travelled
through “the seven parts of the world,” and the Infante Fernando, who
died slowly with saintly patient heroism as a prisoner of the Moors in
Africa.
Under Manoel I (1495-1521) the Great, the Fortunate, and his son João
III (1521-57), Gama, Albuquerque and Dom João de Castro are the most
conspicuous names; but Dom Francisco de Almeida, first Viceroy of
India, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, discoverer of Brazil, Fernão de Magalhães,
the harsh and fiery navigator[4] who first penetrated by sea to the
North Pacific and was slain in the hour of his triumph--his name
lives in the Straits of Magellan--and many more were almost equally
celebrated. But especially among the discoverers and early adventurers
in India the men of fame are but types of hundreds of less fortunate
heroes who perished. Men left Portugal with their lives in their hands,
and for every one who (like Fernam Mendez Pinto) survived to tell the
tale scores sailed away who were never seen or heard of afterwards.
Yet the population of Portugal in the first third of the sixteenth
century may have been but 1,500,000, and certainly did not reach twice
that figure. That is a fact that must uplift and inspire those who
study Portugal’s history or consider her future. For the Portuguese of
the sixteenth century fought not against or not only against hordes of
undisciplined savages, but against Moors and Turks highly civilised and
well equipped with artillery.
Perhaps the secret of their success is that their motto was “God, King,
and Country,” and that each man among them relied, under Heaven, on
himself, not on this or that sect or party or philosophy, election
promises or political programmes. They did not wait and watch for some
wonderful Ism, like a brazen serpent, to change the face of the world:
they as individuals simply, persistently set to work and--changed it.
In less than fifty years after the Portuguese first reached India they
were in Japan, converting and civilising the Japanese, and had made
possible that tremendous saying of Camões:
E se mais mundo houvera lá chegára.
And had there been more world they would have reached it.
That is, of course, a terrible condemnation as well as an undying
honour, for unless each generation were to produce an Albuquerque there
could be no hope of maintaining conquests so wide, and Albuquerque had
had his hands tied by his own countrymen, so that, like the blinded
Samson, he achieved the ruin of his enemies by his unaided strength
and at the expense of his own life. But if Portuguese statesmanship
was at fault in India, there never failed a sprinkling of individuals
who spent their lives in ungrudging service and heroic effort to
counterbalance errors committed, and often died heartbroken for their
pains.
Two anecdotes will give an idea of the spirit that animated the
Portuguese in the sixteenth century. During the siege of Diu a soldier,
Fernão Penteado, seriously wounded in the head, went to the surgeon,
but, finding him busy with other wounded and hearing the noise of a
Turkish attack, he returned to the fight and came back with a second
serious wound in the head, only to find the surgeon busier than
before. Again he went to fight, and when the surgeon was finally able
to attend to him he had a third wound, in his right arm.
The second incident occurred in North-West Africa. During a fight Dom
Affonso da Cunha, aiming a mighty cut with his sword at a Moor, missed
him, and the sword leapt from his hand. “Go fetch it, you dog!” roared
Cunha, and the terror-stricken Moor obediently picked it up and gave it
to him, trembling. Cunha thereupon spared his life.
Such were those Portuguese of old, persistent, brave, proud,
magnificent. And something of their spirit survives in the Portugal of
to-day, ready to reappear at a crisis--more of it, perhaps, than is
generally imagined.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Antonio Coelho Gasco in his _Conquista, Antiguidade e Nobreza
da mui insigne e inclita Cidade de Coimbra_ (Lisboa, 1805) drew the
following rash picture of her from an ancient portrait at Coimbra:
“This very saintly lady was of gigantic frame and very stout, very
white and very red, with a long face and large serene green eyes, nose
rather low with wide nostrils, head long and beautiful.”
[2] Isabel Fernandez, Barbara Fernandez, and Isabel Madeira. Later
heroines at home were Isabel Pereira in the defence of Ouguella against
the Spanish in 1644 and Elena Perez in the similar siege of Monção in
1656.
[3] The Portuguese accounts of these discoveries are most vivid and
minute, a fascinating introduction to the geography of what is now
largely part of the British Empire.
[4] Garcia da Orta introduces him with the words “The Devil entered
into a Portuguese.”
Contents
I
PAGE
KING DINIS 1
II
NUN’ ALVAREZ 17
III
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 47
IV
VASCO DA GAMA 61
V
DUARTE PACHECO PEREIRA 79
VI
AFFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE 103
VII
DOM JOÃO DE CASTRO 127
List of Illustrations
NUN’ ALVAREZ _Frontispiece_
From the earliest (1526) edition of the _Cronica_.
FACING PAGE
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR 49
VASCO DA GAMA 63
AFFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE 105
From Gaspar Correa, _Lendas da India_, frontispiece to vol. ii. pt. 1.
JOÃO DE CASTRO 129
I
KING DINIS
(1261-1325)
Co’ este o reino prospero florece.
CAMÕES, _Os Lusiadas_.
Um Dinis que ha de admirar o mundo.
ANTONIO DE SOUSA DE MACEDO, _Ulyssippo_.
When Henry of the French House of Burgundy became Count of Portugal
in 1095 he merely held a province in fealty to the King of Leon, but
by his son, the great Affonso I’s victories over the Moors it almost
automatically became an independent kingdom. The second king, Sancho
I, who has so many points of resemblance to King Dinis, further
established the new realm, and he and his successors continued to
wrest territory from the Moors. In the reign of the fifth king, Dinis’
father, Affonso III, the conquest of Algarve was completed, and the
only remaining difficulty was the claim of the kings of Castille to
this region.
Dinis, born on October 9, 1261, was but a few years old when he
was sent to Seville to win the consent of his mother’s father, the
celebrated Alfonso the Learned, to waive his right to the latest
Portuguese conquest. As the shrewd Affonso III had foreseen, he proved
a successful diplomatist. Alfonso X, enchanted with the grave, courtly
bearing of his little grandson, knighted him and sent him home with all
his requests granted.
Thus it came about that when Dinis, to whom his father had given a
separate household but a few months before, ascended the throne at the
age of seventeen, he was the first king to begin to reign over Portugal
with its modern boundaries, from the River Minho to Faro. Two centuries
of great deeds had achieved this result--two more were to pass before
Spain was likewise entirely free of the Moorish invader--and Dinis now
in a reign of half a century (1279-1325) saw to it that the heroism
and sacrifices of his ancestors had not been in vain.
His tutor had been a Frenchman, Ébrard de Cahors, who now became Bishop
of Coimbra, and the fame of his grandfather Alfonso X was spread
through the whole Peninsula. But, young as he was, Dinis at once made
it clear that he intended to rule as the national King of Portugal
and had resolution enough to withstand the Castilian influence of his
mother and Alfonso X. His first care was to acquaint himself thoroughly
with his kingdom, and he spent the great part of the first year of his
reign in visiting the country, paying especial attention to the still
almost deserted region of Alentejo.
But the first years of his reign were not entirely peaceful, for his
younger brother Affonso laid claim to the throne. Dinis was born before
the Pope had legitimised Affonso III’s second marriage; Affonso,
two years his junior, afterwards: hence the partisans of the latter
affected to consider Dinis illegitimate. The dispute was scarcely
settled when Dinis married Isabel, daughter of Pedro III of Aragon,
who proved so efficacious a mediator in the even more serious troubles
at the end of his reign, and, after sharing his throne for forty-three
years, is still venerated as the Queen-Saint of Portugal.
In his differences with Castile, Dinis was successful, both in peace
and war, and it was a tribute to his character and authority that he
was chosen as arbitrator between the claims of the kings of Castille
and Aragon. At home he was confronted by a powerful secular clergy,
by the excessive and growing wealth of the religious orders, and by
an overweening nobility, while his newly conquered kingdom urgently
required hands to till it and walls and castles for its defence. Dinis
dealt with all these problems in a spirit of equal wisdom and firmness,
upholding the rights of the throne and the rights of the people till he
had welded a scattered crowd of individuals into a nation.
His quarrel with the clergy, who protested that the King had infringed
their rights, was referred to Rome, and in 1289 a formal but not a
lasting agreement was reached.
Two years later the King checked the ever-growing possessions of the
religious orders by a law limiting their right to gifts and legacies.
Their wealth was the result of the great part they had played during
the long conflict against the Moors, but it naturally began to prove
inconvenient to King and people in time of peace. The nobles were
in like case, and Dinis showed the same resolution towards them and
abolished certain of their privileges.
He could protect as well as check. When the Knights Templar were
abolished by the Pope, Dinis secured an exception for Portugal and
reorganised them as the Order of Christ in 1319. Indeed he was
essentially a builder, not a demolisher. In 1290 he founded the
University of Coimbra; in 1308 he renewed and consolidated the
treaty between Portugal and England; in 1317 he invited to Portugal
a Genoese, Manuel Pezagno, to organise his fleet and command it as
Admiral.
He encouraged agriculture, calling the peasants the “nerves of the
republic” and passed many laws to ensure their security, so that in his
reign men began to go in safety along the roads of Portugal, hitherto
infested by brigands, and he divided grants of land among the poor
of the towns. He planted near Leiria the pines which still form so
delightful a feature of the country between that town and Alcobaça.
Some have called King Dinis a miser, others declare that in his reign
there was a saying “liberal as King Dinis.” It is certain that he
expended his money wisely, and, while no early king ever accomplished
more for the land over which he ruled, he left a full treasury at his
death. The charge of avarice perhaps arose from the charming legend
which so well exemplifies the simplicity of those times.
The Queen was in the habit of distributing bread daily to a large
number of poor, and Dinis, who perhaps would rather have seen them
digging the soil, forbade the charity. Queen Isabel continued as
before, and one morning the King met her as she went out with her apron
full of bread.
“What have you there?” said King Dinis.
“Roses,” said the Queen.
“Let me see them,” said King Dinis.
And behold the Queen’s apron was filled with roses.
In the matter of buildings King Dinis not only fortified many towns
with castles and walls, but founded numerous churches and convents. The
traveller in Portugal even now can scarcely pass a day without coming
upon something to remind him of the sixth King of Portugal. The convent
of Odivellas, the cloisters of Alcobaça, the beautiful ruins of the
castle above Leiria are but three of many instances which show how King
Dinis’ work survives even in the twentieth century.
It was said of him that--
Whate’er he willed
Dinis fulfilled.
But he nearly always wrought even better than he knew. He realised
no doubt that Portugal was an all-but-island, especially when the
relations with Castille were unfriendly; but he could scarcely foresee
that of his pinewoods would be built the “ships that went to the
discovery of new worlds and seas”; that a future Master of his new
Order of Christ would devote its vast revenues to the great work of
exploring the West Coast of Africa, the work which bore so important a
share in transforming Europe from all that we connect with mediævalism
to all that is modern; that his embryo fleet would grow and prosper
till Portugal became the foremost sea-power; or that the treaty with
England would still be bearing fruit six centuries after his death.
The University, too, lasted and became one of the glories of Portugal,
and a source of many of her greatest men in the sixteenth century.
Since the sixteenth century, after being several times moved from
Coimbra to Lisbon and from Lisbon to Coimbra, it has been fixed in
the little town on the right bank of the Mondego and remains one of
the most treasured possessions of modern Portugal. The quality that
explains how so many of King Dinis’ institutions endured and prospered
marvellously in succeeding centuries was thoroughness, the conviction
that any work, however humble, if thoroughly done must bear excellent
fruit, and a certain solidity which finds little satisfaction in
feeding beggars precariously, but great satisfaction in setting them to
work on the land.
Perhaps, then, it may come as a surprise that King Dinis was also a
poet, one of the greatest of Portugal’s early poets. We have nearly one
hundred and fifty poems under his name. He may not have written them
all, some may have been composed by the palace _jograes_, but he showed
his good taste and inclination for the national and popular elements in
writing or collecting not only poems in the Provençal manner, then on
the wane in Portugal, but that older, indigenous poetry which is the
most charming feature of early Portuguese literature.
And King Dinis’ poems are among the most charming of all. Here is one
of his quaint popular songs, the fascination of which is only faintly
discernible in translation:
Friend and lover mine
--Be God our shield!--
See the flower o’ the pine
And fare afield.
Friend and lover, ah me!
--Be God our shield!--
See the flower on the tree
And fare afield.
See the flower o’ the pine
--Be God our shield!--
Saddle the colt so fine
And fare afield.
See the flower on the tree
--Be God our shield!--
The bay horse fair to see
And fare afield.
Saddle the little bay
--Be God our shield--
Hasten, my love, away,
And fare afield.
The horse so fair to see
--Be God our shield!--
My friend, come speedily
To fare afield.
It was King Dinis’ affection for his illegitimate son, Dom Affonso
Sanchez, also a poet, that brought trouble on the latter years of his
reign. His eldest son and the heir to the throne, Affonso, jealous
of the regard, the lands, and privileges bestowed upon Dom Affonso
Sanchez, afraid perhaps that the King might devise a way of leaving
him the throne, rose in rebellion in 1320 and advanced through Minho
to Leiria and Coimbra, ravaging the country as he came. The King, now
nearly sixty years old, set out against him and several engagements
were fought: it was not till 1322 that Queen Isabel succeeded after
strenuous exertions in bringing about peace.
The reconciliation was but temporary. Dom Affonso Sanchez retired to
Spain, but returned, and the Prince Affonso rose in arms again in
1323. Again Queen Isabel, going from one to the other, exerted herself
to make peace. King Dinis, his anger now thoroughly roused, was not
easily appeased. Finally he agreed to increase the Prince’s income,
and, much against his will, to part once more from Dom Affonso Sanchez.
Not many months after this settlement King Dinis fell ill at Lisbon,
where he had been born, and which he made the real centre of his
kingdom (his instinct unfailing in this as in other matters concerning
the future greatness of his country). Prince Affonso was summoned from
Leiria, and a sincere reconciliation followed. The Queen watched day
and night by her husband’s bedside, and to her his last words were
spoken when on January 7, 1325, one of the greatest of Portugal’s kings
died. He was buried according to his wish in the Convent of São Dinis
de Odivellas, which he had founded near Lisbon.
Three hundred years after his death it was still the custom in
Portuguese law-courts for a prayer to be said for his soul; and if
we consider how far-reaching, how immense were the results of the
measures taken by this strong-willed, wise, and energetic ruler, we
may conclude that the custom might well be continued in the twentieth
century. Humane and affable (_conversavel_, the quality of so many
great men), he won the personal love of his people and gave them
immediate prosperity, but he also, apparently, saw deep into the
future.
II
NUN’ ALVAREZ
(1360-1431)
Mas quem podera dignamente contar os louvores deste virtuoso barom,
cujas obras e discretos autos seemdo todos postos em escrito ocupariam
gram parte deste livro?--FERNAM LOPEZ, _Cronica del Rei Dom Joam_.
Fifty years after the death of King Dinis it seemed as if the kingdom
that he had so carefully built up was to crumble away like dry sand.
The disorders and extravagances of King Ferdinand’s reign had brought
it to the verge of ruin, and the marriage of his only child Beatrice
with the King of Castille in 1383 appeared to destroy the last hope of
an independent Portugal.
It is ten years before that date that Nun’ Alvarez Pereira, to whom
mainly Portugal was to owe her continued existence as a separate
nation, first comes on the scene. His father was the powerful Prior of
Crato, Dom Alvaro Gonçalvez Pereira, in high favour at Court, son of
the Archbishop of Braga and descendant of a long line of nobles. His
mother, Iria Gonçalvez, was lady-in-waiting to the Princess Beatrice.
In 1373 there was war between Portugal and Castile, and a rumour spread
that the enemy was approaching Santarem. The Prior sent Nuno and one
of his brothers with a few horsemen to reconnoitre. On their return
they were received by the King and Queen. Queen Lianor, struck by
the bearing of the shy, precocious boy of thirteen, took him for her
squire, and the King knighted him, after a suit of armour of his size
had at last been found, belonging to the king’s half-brother John, the
Master of Avis, he who was king thereafter.
For three years in the palace the Queen’s squire gave his days to
riding and the chase, and to the reading of books of chivalry, of Sir
Galahad and the knights of the Round Table. Then his father arranged a
marriage for him with the rich and noble Dona Lianor d’Alvim, a young
widow of Minho.
Marriage was not in Nuno’s thoughts, but Dona Lianor had consented, the
King approved, and reluctantly he yielded. His life on their estate
was happy. Fifteen squires and thirty henchmen were in attendance in
their house, and after hearing his daily mass Nun’ Alvarez would spend
long days hunting the boar and the wolf in the wooded hills of Minho or
exchanging visits with the Minhoto nobility.
Of their three children two sons died in infancy; the daughter,
Beatriz, was married to the Count of Barcellos, son of King João I, and
through her Nun’ Alvarez was the ancestor of that line of kings which
was still reigning in 1910.
It was a life too quiet for the times, and a few years later Nuno was
ordered to Portalegre to defend with his brothers the frontier against
the Spanish. As they marched from Villa Viçosa to Elvas, Nuno, the wish
father of the thought in his keenness to encounter the enemy, mistook
the glint of the morning sun on the lances of their own footmen, who
had been sent on ahead, for the enemy advancing and gave the alarm. To
his vexation there was no fighting, and when he challenged the son of
the Master of Santiago to combat, ten against ten, the king forbade the
encounter, and the Earl of Cambridge, then at the Portuguese Court, to
whom Nun’ Alvarez appealed, pleaded for him in vain.
In 1382 a powerful Spanish fleet besieged Lisbon. The defence of the
city was entrusted to Nun’ Alvarez and his brothers. It was in late
summer, _quando l’uva imbruna_, and parties from the fleet would land
to gather grapes and other fruit. Nun’ Alvarez saw his opportunity
and, leaving the city one night with some fifty horse and foot, lay in
ambush in the vines by the bridge of Alcantara. The first boatload of
twenty Spaniards to land was driven headlong into the sea, but a larger
force came ashore and the Portuguese, seeing themselves outnumbered
five to one, fled.
Nun’ Alvarez, left alone, spurred his horse to a gallop and dashed into
the midst of the enemy. His excellent armour stood him in good stead,
but his lance was shattered, his horse cut down, and one of his spurs
caught in the saddle as he fell. Thus disabled he still fought on, and
then for very shame his followers turned to assist him. The first to
come up was a Lisbon priest, afterwards Canon of Lisbon Cathedral.
Nun’ Alvarez, hearing a few months later that the King was to engage
the enemy between Elvas and Badajoz, proposed to his elder brother
Pedr’ Alvarez, who had succeeded their father as Prior of Crato, that
they should have a hand in the fighting. Pedro, who had orders to
defend Lisbon and intended to obey them, refused, and, having previous
acquaintance of Nuno’s methods, gave instructions that no armed
persons should be allowed to leave the city. Nuno with a few attendants
dashed past the guard at the gate and rode post-haste to Elvas. He was
well received by the king, but again there was no fighting. Peace and
the betrothal of Beatrice were celebrated in a banquet at Elvas. King
Ferdinand was too ill to attend, but King Juan was present.
Nun’ Alvarez, in his bitterness at seeing Portugal given over to
Castille, for once forgot his manners. He and his brother Fernão, going
in more leisurely than the rest, found all the tables crowded, and,
unable to obtain a place, he pushed away the support from one of the
tables, which went crashing to the ground, and calmly went out. King
Juan remarked that he who so acted had a heart for greater things, but,
in the words of the old chronicle, had they been Castilians he might
have spoken differently.
After King Ferdinand’s death Nun’ Alvarez, brooding over his country’s
wrongs, keenly took the part of the young Master of Avis. He was not
present at the murder of the Queen’s favourite, the Count Andeiro, but
he approved the act, and when news of it reached him at Santarem he
hastened to Lisbon to the Master of Avis.
It was at Santarem one evening as he sauntered along the banks of the
Tagus after supper that he chanced to pass the door of an armourer
and sent for his sword to be sharpened. The _alfageme_ refused any
payment till he should return as Count of Ourem. Hail to thee, Thane of
Cawdor! The story adds that Nun’ Alvarez, returning Conde de Ourem to
Santarem after the battle of Aljubarrota, found the armourer in prison
as a friend of Castille and his property confiscated, and was able, by
protecting him, to pay his debt.
Nun’ Alvarez now became one of the Prince of Avis’ Council, his most
loyal and most trusted counsellor to the end of their lives. His first
important command was in Alentejo, and after delaying in order to take
part in a fight with eight Spanish ships in the Tagus he set out at the
head of his two hundred horsemen. Henceforth Evora, the ancient walled
city in the wide plain of Alentejo, was his headquarters. He instilled
confidence into his men and increased his army, although it rarely
exceeded five hundred horse and as many thousand foot, and was often
very much below that number.
The war continued with varying success. At one time Nun’ Alvarez
advanced to Badajoz, at another the Spanish were at Viana, but a
couple of leagues from Evora across the flowered _charneca_. But Nun’
Alvarez seized town after town and more than once defeated the enemy
in the open field. Monsaraz was taken by a wile, for some cows were
driven temptingly beneath the walls and when the commander sallied out
to seize them the Portuguese rushed in through the open gate. Nun’
Alvarez’ favourite method was to ride all night across the _charneca_
and appear unexpectedly before a town in the early dawn, so that the
enemy called him “Dawn Nuno,” _Nuno Madrugada_.
Thus he attacked Almada. He had but recently taken Palmella on the
height overlooking the Tagus, and, hunting in the neighbourhood, had
slain a boar and sent it as a present to the commander of Almada,
promising to pay him a visit soon. He now set out to ride thither by
night across the _charneca_, but they lost their way in the many paths,
and the sun was up when Nun’ Alvarez, in his eagerness outriding his
companions, advanced alone into the town. Four squires presently came
up to his support, and Almada was taken without difficulty.
The Master of Avis had summoned Nun’ Alvarez to Lisbon or Nun’ Alvarez
had determined to see the Master. From Palmella one night looking
across the river he saw the whole city apparently in flames. Not
knowing that the fires were lit by the King of Castille, whom plague
in his camp had forced to raise the siege, and aware that the Master
had powerful enemies within the walls, he watched the conflagration in
dismay, but next morning the city reappeared in all its beauty.
The Spanish fleet remained in the Tagus, and a squire besought Nun’
Alvarez not to cross, saying that he had dreamt that the enemy had
captured him as he passed through their fleet. Nun’ Alvarez went on his
way, leaving the squire with his dream on the further shore. When he
was in mid-stream, still perhaps thinking of the timid _escudeiro_, he
bade his trumpets blow the enemy a challenge. But the Castilians little
imagined what a prey was within their grasp, and his small boat passed
through safely to Lisbon.
A little later he joined the Master of Avis at Torres Vedras and
together they advanced to Coimbra, where the Master was crowned king as
João I. His first act was to appoint Nun’ Alvarez his Constable.
At Oporto, whither he went to organise a fleet, Nun’ Alvarez found his
wife and daughter, who had been prisoners of the Castilians for a time
at Guimarães.
From Oporto he set out on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. His
purpose was threefold, “to serve God in pilgrimage,” to reduce Minho
on the way, and to secure mounts for his men. But the River Minho
was too swollen to cross, and the news that Braga was wavering thus
came opportunely. Leaving Viana do Castello he turned east along the
beautiful valley of the Lima and seized the little granite town of
Ponte do Lima and Braga on its steep hill. The King had also come
north, but the news that King Juan had crossed the Beira frontier and
was advancing rapidly into the heart of Portugal brought them south
again.
At Abrantes the King held a council. Many were of opinion that he
should not advance further against the enemy. Nun’ Alvarez--the same
Nuno who had ridden alone into two hundred and fifty of the enemy
on the banks of the Tagus and advanced alone into Almada--thereupon
set out with his men, and in the name of God and Saint George sent a
challenge to the King of Castille. Each fresh success of Nun’ Alvarez
had raised him envious backbiters in Portugal, and here was a new
opportunity to accuse him of arrogance. King João silenced his accusers
by following him to Thomar.
They then went west to Ourem and took up a position towards Leiria.
The advance of the King of Castille caused them to turn the front of
their battle towards the little village of Aljubarrota. The Portuguese,
barely 5,000 strong, were outnumbered seven to one, but they were
drawn up on foot in a small compact force and desperate, flight being
practically cut off. On the right was the _Ala dos Namorados_, the
lovers’ wing, pledged to yield no inch of ground; on the left fought a
few hundred English archers, _gens-d’armes Anglois si peu qu’il en y
avoit_, says Froissart.
The Spanish chronicler and poet, Pero Lopez de Ayala, and Nun’ Alvarez’
brother Diogo rode over before the battle and asked to speak with him
alone, but succeeded neither in winning him to their side nor in
casting suspicion on his loyalty. As he had said when fighting against
his brothers earlier in Alentejo, for the land that gave him birth he
would fight against his own father.
At nine o’clock on the morning of August 15, 1385, the battle began
with a great hurling of stones, followed by fighting with the lance,
and then at still closer quarters with axe and sword. Nun’ Alvarez was
constantly where the fight raged most fiercely, and his words “Fight,
Portuguese, fight for king and country” kept ringing out above the din.
The flower of Castilian chivalry fell that day and many Portuguese
nobles fighting for Castille. Nun’ Alvarez saw his brother the Master
of Calatrava fall pierced by a lance, but was never able to find his
body. The King of Castille fled to Santarem. The Convent of Alcobaça
still preserves a huge cauldron taken from the enemy at Aljubarrota,
but the noblest memorial of Nun’ Alvarez’ victory is the Church and
Monastery of Batalha.
Nun’ Alvarez, not yet as old as Napoleon when he conquered Italy,
crossed the Guadiana with a few hundred horse and a few thousand foot
and advanced into Castille. All the nobles from the south of Spain who
had not been present at Aljubarrota collected to give him battle. The
enemy, he was told, were as the grass of the field in number. “All the
greater will be our honour,” said Nun’ Alvarez.
A trumpeter with a bundle of rods knelt before Nun’ Alvarez seated to
receive him: “My Lord Constable, the Master of Santiago, my lord, sends
to defy you with this rod,” and the Master of Calatrava, the Master of
Alcantara, the Count of Medina Celi and many another had sent him rods
of defiance. The Constable received them one by one patiently, gave the
messenger a hundred gold pieces and bade him thank the senders for the
rods with which he would presently come and beat them.
The battle of Valverde that followed was an attack of several hills
from which the enemy had to be dislodged. “If Portuguese kneel in
battle,” said a later, sixteenth-century historian, “it is to the Cross
of Christ”; and certainly it was from no fear or weakness that Nun’
Alvarez, wounded by an arrow in the foot, knelt to pray in the thickest
of the fight. Anxious messengers came up with news that his men were
hard pressed, imploring his presence, but he, without answering, still
knelt in prayer. At last rising with a look of great joy he ordered on
his standard to the attack, and a few hours later no Spaniard was to be
seen.
It was in memory of this battle that the Constable built the Church
and Convent of Carmo, still in its ruins one of the most beautiful of
Lisbon’s buildings. This was the last of his great battles, although he
saw much more fighting (for peace with Castille did not come for many
years), and when fifty-five years old took part in the expedition that
conquered Ceuta.
But his abiding fame was won when he was twenty-five. His success was
due to his singleness of purpose. The independence of Portugal was
his object, and to secure that object he put forth his whole strength
not only ungrudgingly, but with a passionate eagerness, his strength
based on deep piety and faith. A keen judge of men, he was terrible in
his calm disdain to those whom he suspected of shirking or treachery;
without a word of abuse on his part he made their humiliation
unbearable. But he inspired his followers with extraordinary
devotion. His clear, piercing eyes and his self-possession gave
them confidence--_des yeux pleins de mitraille et un air de
tranquillité_--and he was always generous in rewarding constancy and
valour. His energy, fearless courage and fervent serenity won many a
fight against overpowering odds.
His fame extended throughout Spain. One evening near Caceres ten
henchmen appeared before him. The Count received them kindly, and on
hearing that they were from Castille asked how they were so bold as to
come without safe-conduct. Relying on his great goodness, they said.
He then asked what he could do for them, and they announced that their
only object in coming was to see him, and now they had seen him; and
so, refusing the supper he ordered for them, they departed as they had
come.
Many incidents show his power over his own men. Once, when they were
unwilling to go forward to attack a superior force, he just stepped
across a stream and bade those who were willing to follow him cross it,
and not one held back.
On another occasion an uproar arose in his camp owing to the fact that
the day’s booty had consisted of “many and good wines.” The Constable
came unarmed from his tent, but many soldiers, seeing him thus and
hearing the noise, rushed forward to protect him and formed a canopy of
swords over his head.
The irregular pay and supplies received for his men made it difficult
to maintain strict discipline; for some days they lived entirely on
figs, then as now one of the principal fruits south of the Tagus; for
one whole day Nun’ Alvarez’ own food consisted merely of a piece of
dry bread, a turnip, and a drink of wine from the flask of a common
soldier. Another time there was no bread in the whole camp except five
small loaves reserved for Nun’ Alvarez’ table; five starving Englishmen
came up, and he entertained them to dinner, giving each a loaf of bread.
It was impossible in such circumstances to forbid or prevent plunder
when it was obtainable. But, although he was obliged to allow his
followers to live on the land, he set his face against any unnecessary
pilfering, and one squire, convicted of taking a chalice from a church,
he sentenced to be burnt--indeed, the wood was piled and the fire lit
before he pardoned him at the instance of his captains.
In the teeth of great opposition, too, he resolutely forbade the
presence of women in his camp.
He was not less renowned for his chivalry towards the weak, women,
prisoners, and peasants, than for his victories in battle. He provided
pensions for “women who had been honoured and prosperous and were now
poor.”
But his chivalry went further. A countess at Coimbra who had held out
against him, and then plotted to seize his person by treachery, he
secured from the reprisals of his followers; the wife of the commander
of a captured town he sent away free to Castille. And these were no
isolated instances; his conduct never varied in its simplicity, dignity
and charming thought for others.
His biographers love to tell of the poor blind man of Torres Vedras
who had no way of escaping from the advancing Castilians and whom Nun’
Alvarez carried behind him on his mule for four leagues out of the
town. “Oo que humano e caridoso señor!” exclaims the old chronicler.
But it is the incidents of an illness when he was between thirty
and forty that throw most light on his character and on the devoted
attachment of those around him. The fever and deep depression that
came over him seem to have been in part, at least, due to the perpetual
self-seeking and mendicity with which he had to deal now that he was
a power in the land as great as the King himself--greater, said his
enemies. Sometimes, we are told, he seemed to have recovered from
his illness, and then the very sight of a stranger, especially of a
man with a letter, would give him a relapse. His secretary found it
necessary to intercept all letters.
Nun’ Alvarez, who had sought health in vain at Lisbon, set out to
return to Evora. Accompanied by his mother and his daughter, he was
carried in a litter to Palmella. His illness prevented him from going
further, and he was taken to the small village of Alfarrara, where
there were many trees and streams. The very sight of the garden of the
_quinta_ where he was to lodge seemed to restore his health. Several of
the foremost citizens of Setubal came to welcome him, and he received
them gladly; but, as they were leaving, one of them (who was very
stout) had the misfortune to bid him “remember the town of Setubal.”
Nun’ Alvarez, thus reminded of “men with letters,” fell into so great
a passion and fever that he was like to die. He refused to eat, and
it was only after much coaxing that he was persuaded to sit down at
table. They brought him water for his hands and roast birds to eat. His
daughter began to carve them before him, and his mother fanned him with
a fan; but he refused to eat, telling his mother that “that bloated
churl with his Setubal has been the death of me.”
His secretary, Gil Airaz, would have excused the offender, but Nun’
Alvarez turned on him in a rage: “The fellow, for what he said,
deserved a score of blows, and if you cared for me or my health you
would have given him them.”
Gil Airaz said that there was still time, if that was his pleasure, and
the Constable answered that such a pleasure would seem to him all too
long in coming. So the secretary, in his presence, took a stick and
went out. When he came back and told him how he had beaten and kicked
and covered with mud and water the citizen of Setubal, Nun’ Alvarez
seemed to recover instantly and began to eat and drink.
To any other man, lord of half Portugal, it might perhaps have seemed
a little thing to have had a citizen beaten and rolled in a ditch, but
presently Nun’ Alvarez stopped eating, his eyes filled with tears, and
he began to wish he was dead. “Do you not see, Gil Airaz,” he said,
“that it would have been better for me to die than that you should have
done what you did to that good man?” “Now would to God I had no part of
all that land that God and my Lord the King have given me, so that this
thing were undone!”
When Gil Airaz saw that he was in earnest he told him how he had only
made a pretence of having beaten the man of Setubal and how all the
citizens had gone contentedly home. Nun’ Alvarez was so overjoyed
at this that he rose straightway from the table and went out to the
orchard and flowing streams. In three months, with the help of the
King’s physicians, he was well, and going alone with a page he set
to cutting the brushwood in front of him, and found his strength had
returned.
There is something infinitely touching in this story about a man who
was usually so calm and restrained that he might be in a passion of
anger and only show it--to those who knew him--by his smile, and
whose whole life was marked by exceptional strength of will. But his
old vigour returned, and very soon he was challenging the Master of
Santiago, begging him not to tire himself in advancing through so hot a
country, as he, “Nun’ Alvarez Pereira, Count of Barcellos and of Ourem
and of Arrayolos and Constable of my Lord the King of Portugal,” would
save him the trouble.
The great grief of the latter part of his life was the death of his
daughter Beatriz, Countess of Barcellos, and his life must have been
lonely despite the friendship of the King and especially of Prince
Duarte, heir to the throne. Before the expedition to Ceuta they went to
ask his advice under pretext of consulting him about some dogs for the
chase, so as to keep the secret of their enterprise. None better than
the King knew the value of Nun’ Alvarez’ opinion. He always seemed to
know precisely the right thing to be done and the right moment to do
it, was as far removed from boasting and vanity as from false humility,
and respected his own rights as well as those of others.
In charity he gave liberally, but never carelessly. Thus he yearly
bestowed the same quantity of cloth, but bestowed it in different
districts, and stored the corn from his estates, to be given away in
years of scarcity.
Before the end of the fourteenth century (1393) he divided most of
his land, that is a great part of Portugal, between his followers.
Large portions of Tras-os-Montes, Minho, and Alentejo belonged to him.
He was Count of Ourem, of Arrayolos and Barcellos, Lord of Braga,
Guimarães, Chaves, Montalegre, and nearly a score of other towns. His
policy of dividing these lands among his vassals under condition that
they should maintain certain forces in his and the King’s service,
proved unsatisfactory. Like the sated Marshals of Napoleon, they were
subsequently less willing to leave their estates and risk their persons
in battle.
The King, who had been too lavish in his gifts, proposed to buy back
his grants of land. Other nobles agreed to sell, but Nun’ Alvarez was
resolved not to brook the injustice, and, far from agreeing to the
proposal, departed to Alentejo and gathered his followers with a view
to leave Portugal, although, as he said, he would never serve any other
king.
King João, thoroughly alarmed, sent the Bishop of Evora, the Dean of
Coimbra and the Master of the Order of Avis post-haste after him. But
Nun’ Alvarez then, as always when he seemed to be acting rashly on
impulse, was carrying out a quick but well-reasoned decision, and was
only with difficulty persuaded to a compromise. It was finally agreed
that his vassals should be transferred to the King, while Nun’ Alvarez
was to retain in his own hands most of his territorial possessions.
Seven years after the victorious capture of Ceuta he again renounced
them.
He had always been a man of great piety; after one of his victories
he had gone barefoot in pilgrimage to Santa Maria de Assumar; he
had founded churches throughout the country, heard mass twice or
thrice daily, and would rise at midnight to pray the hours. But it
was probably the death of his only daughter that moved him to retire
to serve God in the monastery of Santa Maria do Carmo, which he had
founded in memory of his victory of Valverde. There, on August 15,
1423, he professed as Frei Nuno de Santa Maria, after giving away all
his lands and titles. Of his daughter’s three children, Isabel married
the Infante João, Affonso became Conde de Ourem, and, later, Marquez de
Valença, and Fernando, Conde de Arrayolos and, later, Duke of Braganza.
When Nun’ Alvarez, penniless, retired to his cell it was his purpose to
beg his daily bread in the streets of Lisbon, and he also intended to
end his days where he might be quite unknown; but Prince Duarte went to
see him at the Carmo and affectionately ordered him to accept a pension
from the King, a great part of which, however, he spent in charities.
In 1431, in his seventy-first year, and two years before his life-long
friend, King João, the greatest of all Portugal’s great men died. “God
grant him as much glory and honour as in this world was his,” says the
old chronicle.
Surely no truer man or more chivalrous knight ever donned helmet or
drew sword. Tradition says that the Lisbon people long assembled to
sing songs and witness many miracles at his grave. But his fittest and
most enduring monuments are the noble buildings of Carmo and Batalha,
and, above all, a free and united Portugal.
[Illustration: PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR.]
III
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR
(1394-1460)
Ca trabalho seria de se achar antre os vivos seu semelhante.--GOMEZ
EANNEZ DE AZURARA, _Cronica de Guiné_.
Mestre insigne de toda a arte militar.--D. FRANCISCO MANOEL DE MELLO.
O homem a quem a Europa deve mais.--JOSÉ AGOSTINHO DE MACEDO, _Motim
Literario_.