with the prosperity which largely by his own exertions had fallen
upon his country. Nor was it a careless or degenerate prosperity. The
five noble sons of King João I and his English wife, Queen Philippa,
daughter of “time-honoured Lancaster,” had grown to manhood, and the
time was pregnant with great deeds. If Duarte was perhaps Nun’ Alvarez’
favourite among the princes, he certainly must have discerned in his
younger brother his own successor in guiding the destinies of Portugal.
Although possibly less chivalrous than Nun’ Alvarez, Prince Henry
possessed his strong will and intensity of purpose, with a wider range
of vision. A Portuguese writer represents him living in retirement at
Sagres, his eyes fixed exclusively on Heaven; but Prince Henry believed
that he could best serve Heaven by bringing to success the earthly
affairs on which he had set his heart.
It was certainly with the keenness which marked the young Nun’ Alvarez
that Henrique, then twenty-one, embarked with his father, King João I,
and his brothers, Duarte and Pedro, in the expedition against Ceuta in
1415. He had his father’s promise that he should be the first to land,
and in the storming of the town he was ever in the thickest of the
fighting. The Moors defended the town obstinately, and a fresh danger
arose when the victorious Portuguese dispersed to plunder. Henry, with
a little band of seventeen followers, saved the situation against such
odds that news was at first brought to the King that his son was dead.
For his gallant behaviour on that day he was made Duke of Vizeu and
Lord of Covilhã, while his brother Pedro became Duke of Coimbra.
But Henry returned from North-West Africa with perhaps a still
greater prize--increased knowledge of the Dark Continent and a fixed
determination to explore further a land which he now knew to be no mere
sandy and unfertile desert. To this work he devoted the next forty-five
years, without a shadow of turning, since political events might hamper
but could not weaken his purpose, merely delaying the promised end.
It is often asked what was his object, as though the wish to win
fresh knowledge, to acquire new territory for his country, and glory
and riches, and to extend the Christian faith were unaccountable or
unworthy aims. Rather we cannot wonder that the discoveries became the
absorbing passion of his life, so that he has been blamed for his
lukewarm intervention in contemporary politics and his weak defence of
his brother, the Duke of Coimbra.
On the discoveries as Grand Master of the Order of Christ he spent its
princely revenues, and in 1418, retiring from the Court, he settled
on the Sacred Cape, or Sagres, now Cape St. Vincent. His palace and
observatory soon drew a village round it, known as Terça Naval, or
the Villa do Infante (Princestown). Here, as Governor of Algarve, he
spent the greater part of his life, fitting out ships in Lagos harbour,
welcoming travellers, poring over maps brought to him by Prince Pedro
and others from their travels, observing the heavens, and watching for
the return of his ships.
His keenness was not inconsistent with a certain shyness and reserve.
He was a student prince, but less literary and more scientific than his
brothers. All day, and often far into the night, he would be at work,
an energetic hermit such as the Middle Ages had not known. His eyes in
the intensity and even fierceness of their glance repelled the timid,
but they also had the far-away look as of one watching and dreaming,
while his firm lips and jaws were those of one planning and willing.
His iron will and self-discipline curbed his equally strong temper and
impatient eagerness, so that when most moved to anger he would merely
say, like an Irishman, “I leave you to God.”
Courageous and persistent, he prepared all his schemes with the utmost
thoroughness, and all the help that science could afford, and he
carried them out with unfaltering resolution. All through his life he
acted up to his French motto, _Talent de bien faire_, which we may
translate by the “love of useful glory” to which, according to the poet
Thomson, he roused mankind. And if we do not sit cowering before the
unknown on all sides it is to Prince Henry and a few men of similarly
keen intellect and stout will that we owe it.
It must not be thought that he met with no opposition, apart from
the great difficulties that naturally beset all discoverers and
innovators. On the one hand, the perils of navigating down the coast of
Africa were considered insurmountable, and, on the other, the gains to
be derived from it were held to be nugatory. It was not till the first
slaves and the first gold arrived that men began to realise thoroughly
that Prince Henry was something more than an empty dreamer. No one with
less faith, a faith based both on religion and science, would have
persevered, as Prince Henry persevered, in face of the slight support
at first given by public opinion and the slight success obtained.
But, although there were many disappointments and progress was slow,
the mysteries of the African coast did gradually recede before his
persistency, as year after year he sent out ships with definite
instructions based on his maps and scientific knowledge.
The death of King João I in 1433 did not seriously interfere with his
plans; his brother Duarte gave him every possible support, and the
expedition against Tangier in 1437 was not an interruption but rather
one aspect of his life-work. Indeed, he was the leading spirit of
the enterprise. He and his younger brother, Fernando, obtained from
King Duarte the consent for which they had ceased to hope from their
father; but Duarte at first, and Pedro throughout, were opposed to
the expedition. It set out in August, and the little army of some six
thousand men disembarked at Ceuta, and, without waiting for the ships
to return to Portugal for reinforcements, marched to attack Tangier.
Failing to take the place by storm, the princes settled down to
blockade it. The danger of such a course was obvious, but even when the
Moors, who trooped down from the hinterland, outnumbered the Christian
force by twenty to one they were driven back in a series of magnificent
attacks. But the Moorish host continued to grow by scores of thousands
daily, and in the second week of October it became apparent even to
the fiery heart of Prince Henry that he was embarked on a hopeless
enterprise.
The siege was raised and the small army attempted to regain their
ships. Henry with the cavalry protected their retreat. But the
cowardice of some, the treachery of others, and the overwhelming number
of the enemy proved too much for his splendid defence, and on October
15 he was forced to come to an agreement with the enemy. By this
capitulation the Portuguese were to be allowed to re-embark without
their arms, Ceuta, their twenty-two years’ possession, was to be given
up, and Prince Fernando, with certain other hostages, was to remain in
the hands of the enemy until the Portuguese should have evacuated the
town.
Prince Henry, in his despair, fell ill at Ceuta and afterwards retired
to Sagres. He would not give up Ceuta, and he could not save Fernando
otherwise. King Duarte, confronted by the same cruel alternative,
succumbed to grief and illness at Thomar in the following year.
To Henry’s sorrow for the death of one brother and the living death of
another--the tortures of Fernando’s captivity ended in a miserable
dungeon in 1443--was added the crushing of his hopes and projects. For
the new King was but a boy, and it needed no peculiar foresight to
prophesy impending trouble in Portugal. It required all Prince Henry’s
fortitude and faith to persevere, in loneliness and remorse. Prince
Pedro had strongly opposed the expedition: it was on Henry that its
failure rested. Nor was he one to wish to shirk responsibility, and
many an hour he must have spent brooding over the fatal effects of his
rashness.
Henry is too great a man to need to have his mistakes glossed over.
He had underestimated the difficulty of the enterprise, he had been
rash in advancing from Ceuta without awaiting reinforcements, he had
been rasher in not retiring after the first unsuccessful attempt to
scale the walls of Tangier. His object certainly had been a noble one,
based on no personal greed or ambition, and the results of his failure
were felt by none more than by himself. In the eyes of others his
magnificent courage and steadfast retreat placed him even higher than
before.
Fortunately for him, there was plenty of work ready to his hand, for,
although he did not personally accompany the ships of exploration,
he scientifically worked out their instructions, equipped them, and
followed their progress on his maps. Perhaps a certain estrangement
between Pedro and Henry was natural after 1437; Henry, at least,
did not very actively support his brother in his quarrel with the
Queen-Regent, and failed to stand by him later when he had resigned his
Regency and was venomously attacked and slandered by his enemies before
his weak son-in-law, King Affonso V. When the matter came to open
conflict Pedro, with his small band of followers, could not hope for
victory, and again Henry did not resolutely intervene. Pedro’s tragic
death at Alfarrobeira in 1449 cannot have diminished Henry’s remorse
for the death of Duarte and Fernando eleven and six years earlier.
Meanwhile, his austere devotion to the work of discovery bore
increasing fruit, and before he died the rich islands of the Azores,
Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde were discovered, and the coast of
Africa explored as far as Sierra Leone, which was reached by the famous
Venetian, Luigi Cadamosto, in the service of Prince Henry, nearly a
quarter of a century after Gil Eannez had rounded Cape Bojador in 1434.
The Infante himself had lost little of his energy, and although nearly
sixty-five, accompanied his nephew Affonso V in the expedition against
Morocco in 1558, and took a prominent part in the siege and capture of
Alcacer.
The last two years of his life were spent at Sagres. In September 1460
he disposed of certain of his revenues, potential rather than actual,
to the Order of Christ and to the State, which had hitherto recognised
his right to receive the profits of the discoveries as it had allowed
him to bear its burden. The burden to the day of his death was far
greater than the profits. Yet he must have realised that his life’s
purpose was attained, and that the rest was but a matter of time, as
surely as though he had planted an orange-tree and died when it was
covered with blossom. His body was taken to Batalha, and, if it was
not to remain on Cape St. Vincent looking southwards over the sea
to Africa, no worthier resting-place could be found for it than the
splendid church built to commemorate the victory of his father and of
his friend Nun’ Alvarez. Prince Henry spent himself, his time, and
his revenues without stint in the service of a great idea and a high
ambition. Nun’ Alvarez had worked for the independence of Portugal;
Prince Henry left it well on the road to an imperishable glory.
A generation later, when the full effects of his life’s work were
manifest, his countrymen and the world recognised in this strong,
tenacious ascetic, with his burning zeal for God and country, his
fearlessness and unwavering devotion, the inspirer and origin of
Portugal’s new greatness.
[Illustration: VASCO DA GAMA]
IV
VASCO DA GAMA
(1460?-1524)
O qual Vasco da Gama era homem prudente e de bom saber e de grande
animo para todo bom feito.--GASPAR CORREA, _Lendas da India_.
King João II pressed on vigorously with the discovery of the west
coast of Africa. The year of his accession was not ended before Diogo
de Azambuja set out with ten ships (1481), and after his return the
King assumed the title of “Lord of Guinea.” Diogo Cam in 1484 and
1485 carried the discovery still further, past the River of Crabs
(Cameroons), past Congo and Angola to Walvisch Bay, and two years later
Bartholomeu Diaz rounded the Cape, and with that the problem of the
sea-route to India was practically solved, so that King John died
(October 1495) in sight of the promised land. Indeed, the departure of
the ships which Vasco de Gama was destined to command was only delayed
by the King’s death. He had given “orders for such wood to be cut in
wood and forest as the carpenters and builders should desire, and this
was brought to Lisbon, where at once three small ships were begun.”
In appointing Vasco da Gama, a knight of his household, to the command
King Manoel showed that he knew the value of the men who had grown up
in the stern school of João II. The Gamas were a distinguished family
of the south of Portugal; they had already rendered good service to the
State--Vasco himself may have had a part in the work of discovering the
coast of Africa--and if they were at times quarrelsome and unruly their
loyalty and courage were never in doubt. In 1497 the meekest of them,
Paulo, Vasco’s eldest brother, was in trouble for having wounded a
judge at Setubal,[5] and received the King’s pardon before he sailed as
captain of one of the ships.
Vasco, a man of medium height and knightly bearing, was bold and
daring in enterprise, patient and determined in adversity, but harsher
and more irascible than his brother. It is a curious instance of the
continuous if often slight connection between the two nations of
seafarers, the English and the Portuguese, that Vasco da Gama had
English blood in his veins. The name of his mother, Isabel Sodré, which
survives in Lisbon’s _Caes do Sodré_, was a corruption of Sudley, her
grandfather having been Frederick Sudley, of the family of the Earls of
Hereford. Vasco was born probably in 1460, in the little sea-town of
Sines, of which his father was _Alcaide Môr_, and in honour of which
Vasco later is said to have been in the habit of firing a salute as he
passed.
The third captain appointed by King Manoel was Nicolao Coelho.
The three ships, of about a hundred tons, _São Gabriel_ (Vasco da
Gama), _São Raphael_ (Paulo da Gama), and _São Miguel_[6] (Nicolao
Coelho), after solemn procession and leave-taking of the King, on July
8, 1497, sailed down the Tagus from Belem and rounded Cape Espichel to
the south. The crews averaged little over fifty men, being perhaps 170
in all, including six convicts in each ship to be cast ashore in order
to spy out the land at different points. Bartholomeu Diaz, bound for
the fortress of São Jorge da Mina, accompanied them as far as the Cape
Verde Islands.
In November they reached the bay of St. Helena where Vasco da Gama was
slightly wounded in an affray with the natives. Hitherto their voyage
had been prosperous; but they encountered heavy storms both before and
after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and it required all Vasco’s
resolution and Paulo’s persuasiveness to keep the crews to their
voyage. The mutinous crew of the _São Gabriel_ had counted without its
host, and found Gama little less formidable than the storms of these
unknown seas. Not if he were confronted with a hundred deaths, he said,
and not if the ships were all filled with gold, would he go back a
single yard; but he did not wholly disregard the murmurings of the men,
for he clapped the mate and pilot of his ship in irons, to hold them as
hostages, and, as they were the only persons who knew anything of the
art of navigation, the crew was effectually cowed.
At Christmas they reached the land which to this day bears the
Portuguese name, Natal, of the time of its discovery. Passing slowly
north along the coast, they arrived towards the end of January at the
Zambezi River, and in this shelter made a stay of several weeks; but
scurvy among the crew forced them again to sea, and in the beginning of
March they reached Mozambique. Here, as at Mombasa a month later, the
natives received them with every appearance of friendship, but made a
treacherous if rather courageous attempt to seize their ships. The King
of Melinde, a little further north, was friendly and loyal, and here
the Portuguese obtained pilots for the voyage to India.
The passage lasted less than a month, and on May 18 they sighted
Asia, the end and object of their enterprise, and came to anchor
off Calicut on the 21st. Calicut was a few miles distant, and Vasco
da Gama, although implored by his brother not to risk his person
by disembarking, started on the overland journey. It required some
courage, for among the native sightseers who crowded round the
Portuguese there were not a few armed and covertly hostile Moors.
In the minds of the Portuguese, the East had long been connected with
the empire of the Christian Prester John, the half mythical ruler of
Abyssinia, and they expected to find the majority of the natives
Christians. Accordingly they were easily duped here (as indeed they
had been in Africa) and Vasco da Gama and his companions on the way
to Calicut worshipped in a Hindu pagoda. The images on the walls
were unlike those of the saints to which they had been accustomed in
Portugal. Some of them had four arms, the teeth of others protruded a
whole inch from their mouths, and their faces were hideous as the faces
of devils. Like Little Red Ridinghood, one of the Portuguese, João de
Sá, was in the most serious doubt when he saw these figures, and, as he
knelt down, in order to avoid any mistake, he said aloud “If this is a
devil I worship the true God.” And Vasco da Gama looked across at him
and smiled.
A che guardando il suo duca sorrise.
This does not tally well with the character of the disciplinarian,
despotic Gama, as it is usually represented. But these qualities
developed later.
The Portuguese were as ignorant about the King of the country as about
its gods. For the Samuri of Calicut was no simple King of Melinde, but
a great potentate accustomed to traders and to foreign civilisations.
It was not without difficulty that Gama obtained an interview, and
when he succeeded, the King, all aglow with jewellery, seated chewing
betel, a page on either side, and his chief Brahman behind his chair,
was fully a match for the haughty Gama. From one of his bracelets
gleamed a priceless stone of a thumb’s thickness, his necklace was of
pearls almost of the size of small acorns, and from a gold chain hung
a heart-shaped jewel surrounded by pearls and covered with rubies,
and in the centre a great green stone, an emerald, of the size of a
large bean, belonging to the ancient treasure of the Kings of Calicut.
His golden trumpets were longer by a third than those of the King of
Portugal.
It appears that the Portuguese had brought no present worthy of
so great a monarch. The same historian, Correa, who thus vividly
describes the King’s appearance, also gives a detailed account of the
present. It consisted, he says, of “a very delicate piece of scarlet,
and a piece of crimson velvet, and a piece of yellow satin and a chair
richly upholstered with brocade, with silver-gilt nails, and a cushion
of crimson satin with tassels of gold thread, and another cushion of
red satin for the feet, and a very richly wrought gilt ewer and basin,
and a large and very beautiful gilt mirror and fifty red caps with
buttons and veils of crimson silk and gold thread upon them, and fifty
gilt sheaths of Flemish knives, which had been inlaid in Lisbon with
ivory.”
The King should have been satisfied, but probably this present, if it
ever existed, had dwindled in gifts to natives of Africa on the way.
The question in the King’s mind was that asked once of Telemachus: Had
they come as peaceful traders, or were they pirates?
Vasco da Gama, faced by a reception so courteous yet so insulting,
maintained a proud, serene attitude, as he had when on his way to the
palace--he is represented advancing slowly, waiting for the crowds
to be cleared out of his way--and as he did later when placed under
arrest by the Catual, or Governor of the city. By his resolution during
the dangers and obstacles of the voyage and by his calm behaviour in
Calicut he justified the King’s choice and his subsequent fame.
The Samuri himself was far more favourably inclined to the new-comers
than were the Moors, who naturally resented the appearance of other
traders. The Portuguese were greatly helped throughout by a Mohammedan
who had learnt Spanish at Tunis, but, although Gama brought home
specimens of pepper, ginger, cloves, musk, benjamin, and other spices
as well as pearls and rubies, his visit to Calicut, which ended with
the high-handed measure of seizing and carrying off several natives,
was unsuccessful, since it resulted in no treaty of friendship or
commerce.
At the end of August they started on the homeward voyage, but remained
for some time off the coast of India, and in the Indian Ocean lay
becalmed for many days, during which the crew again suffered terribly
from scurvy, a considerable number dying. The remnant of the crews
struggled on in their three ships towards Portugal; at Cabo Verde,
Coelho separated from the others and carried the news to King Manoel
(July 1499). Paulo da Gama was worn out by anxiety and exertions, and
Vasco sailed with him north-west to the Azores, where, in the island of
Terceira, Paulo died. It was not till the end of the summer that Vasco
da Gama reached the Tagus.
It is said--although Coelho’s earlier arrival contradicts the
story--that a Terceira trader, Arthur Rodriguez, about to sail from his
island to Algarve, saw two ships at anchor and asked whence they were.
“From India,” came the answer. At these magic words he set sail, not,
however, to Algarve, but due East, and in four days cast anchor in the
harbour of Cascaes. The King was at Sintra, and had just sat down to
supper when Rodriguez hurried in with the good news.
When the few survivors[7] arrived at Lisbon (September 1499) they
were given a splendid reception, and Vasco da Gama was never able
to complain that his services went unrewarded. He was granted the
coveted title of Dom, and became hereditary Admiral of India, while
his pensions (300,000 réis a year) and facilities of trade with India
made him one of the richest men in the realm. So powerful did he become
in Sines that the Order of Santiago interfered, with the result that
Gama was obliged to leave his native town and in 1507 went to live at
Evora.[8] In November 1519 the Duke James of Braganza sold him the town
of Vidigueira, of which Gama became first Count.
A large part of his triumph belonged to Prince Henry, to King João II,
and to Bartholomeu Diaz, who was drowned in the following year off the
Cape which he had been the first to round.
King Manoel, overjoyed at having attained the goal of nearly a
century’s constant striving, now styled himself not only King
of Portugal and the Algarves and Lord of Guinea but Lord of the
Navigation, Conquest, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and
India; he sent word of the discovery to the Pope and all the princes
of Christendom; and at Belem, on the right bank of the Tagus, whence
the discoverers had set sail over two years before, he built the fine
monastery of São Jeronimo, where now are the tombs of the King himself,
of Dom Vasco, who brought him all this glory, and of Camões, who
celebrated it in deathless verse.
The building stands in strange contrast to that of Batalha, where
Prince Henry the Navigator lies buried. The pure Gothic of Batalha,
with its magnificent plain pillars and soaring arches, spells heroic
aspiration; the Manueline of Belem in its exuberance and rich profusion
of detail bears traces of satisfied accomplishment, as though Portugal
might now throw simplicity and austere endeavour to the winds.
Dom Vasco da Gama in February 1502 set sail a second time for India,
and returned in September 1303 with the first tribute of gold from
India. “As the King was then at Lisbon, Dom Vasco, when he went to see
him, took the tribute which he had received from the King of Quiloa[9].
A nobleman in plain doublet with uncovered head went before the Admiral
on horseback in great solemnity, carrying the gold in a large basin of
silver, to the sound of drums and trumpets, and in company of all the
gentlemen of the Court. And the King ordered a monstrance to be wrought
of it, as rich in workmanship as in weight, and offered it to Our Lady
of Bethlehem as first fruits of those victories of the East.”