THE TROUBLES OF THE REGENCY AND THE FALL OF DON PEDRO.
1440-9.
Don Pedro had been nominated sole Regent of Portugal on November 1,
1439, and by the end of the next year all the unsettlement consequent on
the change at court seemed to be at an end. But a deep hatred continued
between the various parties.
First of all, the Count of Barcellos, natural son of John I., created
Duke of Braganza by Affonso V., had taken up a definite policy of
supplanting the Regent. The Queen Mother had not forgotten or forgiven
Don Pedro's action at Edward's death, and the young King himself, though
engaged to the Regent's daughter, was already distrustful, was fitting
himself to lead the Barcellos party against the Prince.
On February 18, 1445, died the Queen Leonor, with suspicions of poison,
diligently fostered by the malcontents. Next year (1446) Affonso, now
fourteen, came of age, and his uncle proposed at once to resign all
actual power and retire to his estates as Duke of Coimbra. But the King
was either not yet prepared to part with him, or still felt some
gratitude to his guardian, "the wisest head in Spain."
He begged him to keep the chief direction of affairs, thanked him for
the past, and promised to help him in the future. More than this, he
protested that he wished to be married to his cousin, Pedro's daughter
Isabel. They had been formally betrothed four years; now Affonso called
on his nobles and the deputies of Cortés to witness the marriage.
In May, 1447, this royal wedding was celebrated, but coldly and poorly,
as nephew and uncle had now drifted quite apart. The more the younger
disliked and suspected the elder, the more vehement became his
protestations of regard. But he bitterly resented the Duke's action in
holding him to his promise, and he made up his mind before the marriage
that he would henceforth govern as well as reign.
The Regent just prevented his dismissal by laying down his offices; the
King seemed almost to relent in parting from his guardian, who had kept
the kingdom in such perfect peace and now resigned so well discharged a
duty; but even his wife could not prevent the coming storm. She
struggled hard to reconcile her father and her husband, but the
mischief-makers were too hard for her. Persuaded that the Duke was a
traitor, the King allowed himself to be used to goad him into revolt.
"Your father wishes to be punished," he said fiercely to the Queen, "and
he shall be punished."
[Illustration: HENRY IN MORNING DRESS, WITH GREAT HAT.]
If Henry, who in the last six years had only once left Sagres, to knight
Don Pedro's eldest son at Coimbra in 1445, had now been able, in
presence as well as writing, to stand by his brother in this crisis, the
Regent might have been saved. As it was, Pedro had hardly settled down
in his exile at Coimbra, when he found himself charged with the secret
murders of King Edward, Queen Leonor, and Prince John. The more
monstrous the slander, the more absurd and self-contradictory it might
be, the more eagerly it was made.
Persecution as petty and grinding as that which hunted Wolsey to death,
at last drove Pedro to take arms. His son, knighted by Henry himself for
the high place of Constable of the Realm, had been forced into flight,
the arms of Coimbra Arsenal seized for the King's use, his letters to
his nephew opened and answered, it was said by his enemies, who wrote
back in the sovereign's name, as he would write to an open rebel. All
this the Prince bore, but when he heard that his bastard brother of
Braganza, who had betrayed and maligned and ruined him, was on the march
to plunder his estates, like an outlaw's, he collected a few troops and
barred his way. At this Affonso was persuaded to declare war.
Only one great noble stood by the fallen Regent, but this was his friend
Almada, the Spanish Hercules, his sworn brother in arms and in travels,
one of the Heroes of Christendom, who had been made a Count in France
and a Knight of the Garter in England. It was he who now escaped from
honourable imprisonment at Cintra, joined Pedro in Coimbra, and proposed
to him that they should go together to Court and demand justice and a
fair trial, but sword in hand and with their men at their back. Was it
not better to die as soldiers than as traitors without a hearing?
So on May 5, 1449, the Duke left Coimbra with his little army of
vassals, 1000 horse and 5000 foot and passed by Batalha, where he
stopped to revisit the great church and the tombs of his father and his
brothers. Thence he marched straight on Lisbon, which the King covered
from Santarem with 30,000 men. At the rivulet of Alfarrobeira the armies
met; a lance thrust or a cross-bow shot killed the Infant; a common
soldier cut off his head and carried it to Affonso in the hope of
knighthood. Almada, who fought till he could not stand from loss of
blood, died with his friend. Hurling his sword from him, he threw
himself on the ground, with a scornful, "Take your fill of me, Varlets,"
and was cut to pieces.
Though at first leave could hardly be got to bury Don Pedro's body, as
time went on his name was cleared. His daughter bore a son to the King,
and the proofs of his loyalty, the indignant warnings of foreign Courts,
the entreaties of the Queen, at last brought Affonso to something like
repentance and amendment. He buried the Regent at Batalha and pardoned
his friends, those who were left from the butchery of Alfarrobeira.